Oblivion (5 page)

Maybe it’s because we’re at church, where I’m reminded that no man can stand alone, that we’re a community and must rely on one another. Maybe it’s because he seems to be a genuinely nice guy. I hope it isn’t because I can’t stop looking at his hands, but a longing pulls at my heartstrings, filled with injustice and regret. It’s crazy. What do I care if Lindsey reels in this poor soul, watches him struggle on the end of the line for a while, then bashes him on the head once he swallows the hook? It’s his business if he wants to fall for a girl who won’t extend him the courtesy of spelling his name correctly.

But if that’s true, why do I feel like I set a trap? Maybe I won’t be there when the jaws close around his body, but I laid the bait. Carefully and methodically, I designed every sentence and placed every word in the manner most certain to snare him.

I open my calculus notes and stare blankly at theorems.
We have a test first period, and after seeing Elijah, fighting off nightmares, and the late-night smoke session with Lindsey, I’m exhausted and unprepared.

Crucify, quarter, and stone her
.

This is the worst, when phrases gnaw at me for days on end. I don’t know how I’m going to concentrate on anything, if it continues all day long.

Signaling the beginning of chapel, a pealing of bells fills the nave, and in an instant, I’m back there: running through the labyrinth behind the Church of the Holy Promise, whilst two teenaged girls, accompanied by my father, Reverend Palmer, yank on the bellpulls in the tower. Their laughter chases me.

Get out
, I want to scream to them.
You aren’t safe with him. Get out of that bell tower!
They can outrun him. He’ll always have the limp my mother stabbed into him just before he committed her.

I see it now in my mind’s eye: the pearl-handled knife protruding from his thigh.

I hear her shriek, rising up from the confessional: “Don’t you touch her! Don’t you touch her! Don’t … you … touch her!”

The organ music begins, jolting me from that atrocious memory.

Bodies in my periphery rise, making me feel like Alice in Wonderland shrinking in the rabbit hole.

Yasmin Hayes elbows me as she stands. “Callie,” she hisses. “Come on.”

I slide off the pew, stowing my textbook on the bench in my stead, but still holding tight to my pen. I rise.

Father Bernard, flanked by Ryan Waters and Gianna Watson—we’re at the Ws for altar servers—walks the travertine-tiled aisle toward the stained glass Blessed Virgin and Son, which serves as a backdrop to the altar.

I clear my throat and with numb fingers reach for my hymnal.

Voices rise around me, singing the welcome hymn, but I hear the voice of only one. A crisp tenor.

John Fogel’s.

“Blood of my Savior, bathe me in thy tide.”

I don’t sing at chapel. I can’t distinguish why, really, except that Catholic Mass is extremely formal, compared to what I grew up with at Holy Promise. Singing at the latter was more like joining the crowd at a concert. Elijah calls Holy Promise the Happy Clappy Place, because our music is of the rock variety, complete with electric guitarist and amp on stage, astride which jumbo screens reach for the heavens. Singing in chapel, or at any Catholic church, feels controlled, supervised somehow. If I didn’t often trust myself to unleash my voice at Holy Promise once my mother left, I don’t know why anyone would expect me to sing at Carmel’s morning chapel.

A soprano rises up, melding in perfect harmony with John Fogel’s tone: “Wash me with waters gushing from thy side.”

He turns with the onset of the powerful voice, his amused
gaze locked on mine. He raises an eyebrow and smiles between the catastrophic lines of the hymn. Only when I attempt to smile in return, which is weird enough on its own, do I realize that the soprano is belting from my lungs.

It’s me. I’m
singing
.

More tragically, however, than my sharing my voice with the world of Carmel Catholic: I’m sharing a moment with Lindsey’s potential boyfriend.

Instantly, I silence my tongue. This now awards me a deep frown from John Fogel, who glances at me again over his shoulder.

Need my notebook. But I have to remain standing. Can’t sit before Father invites us to, can’t. Once John looks away, I press the felt tip to my forearm:

Buried alive buried alive buried alive.

My mother loved to sing, loved to sing with me. And singing stirs a longing in me: I miss her.

My God, I have to see her. I’ve been alone too long.

“You may be seated.” In a blink of time, Father Bernard is standing at the altar, with the light shining through the stained glass and illuminating him from behind, making him look like something of a saint himself. Clumsily, I take my seat, landing half on, half off my open textbook. I catch my balance and pull the book onto my lap.

Although I’m staring at
x
s and
n
s, although Father Bernard is welcoming us to his morning service, I’m a million miles away, or at least fifteen—diving into the
maze of manicured bushes behind Holy Promise, hoping not to be seen, praying I’ve gotten away.

A twin of the note I just passed to John lands atop the pages, zipping me out of my reverie. Out of the corner of my eye, I see John’s arm, clad in a Land’s End light blue, long-sleeved oxford—buttoned at the cuff, slipping back over the pew.

The letter
C
, written in a black gel-writer and with flourish, labels the square of paper. His reply is apparently meant for me. Quickly, I clamp my hand over the note, although I’m certain Yasmin already saw it. I pray she won’t tell a soul.

My heart pounds, its beat encompassing my entire body from fingertips to toes. I don’t even know what John might have to say to me, but this isn’t normal behavior for one of Lindsey’s prospective boyfriends.

I search the chapel for Lindsey. Did she see that he wrote back?

She’s sitting in her assigned row, digging in her suitcase of a Louis Vuitton purse. Completely unaware.

I shove John’s note into the pocket of my navy blue pencil skirt, twenty-one inches from the waist and lacking in style, thank you very much. Whatever John Fogel has to say to me, it isn’t as important as Lindsey’s trust. I decide right then and there I should never read it. But my track record in this regard is less than stellar.

I do plenty of things I shouldn’t.

“
I
’m here to see Serena Knowles.”

The droning of the air conditioner at the Meadows surrounds and encompasses me. I’d feel cold here even if I were wearing a parka in July. Through the cotton/poly blend of my skirt, I pat the square of notebook paper, which I stowed in my pocket and have yet to open. Its presence warms me, like thoughts of Elijah.

“And you are …?”

“Calliope Knowles.” I clear my throat. “Her daughter.”

It sort of bothers me that the staff never recognizes me. Not because I’m a frequent visitor—I’m not—but because I look so much like my mother that it should be evident I’m here to see her. If they don’t see the resemblance,
particularly with the long, burgundy hair, I wonder how much time they spend looking at my mother, and they’re supposed to be taking care of her.

Today, I’m following a twig of an African American orderly, whose name tag boasts an all-capitals SHEILA, down a maze of dim hallways, past more than two gated corridors. Her white rubber-soled shoes squeak against the gray linoleum. The Meadows always smells like an odd mixture of piss and antiseptic cleaning solution, as if cleaning bodily messes and making bodily messes to clean is an ongoing cycle within the walls.

Still, it
is
clean, which is more than I can say for some of the other state-sponsored facilities Reverend Palmer considered for her. While I appreciate the cleanliness, however, I can’t imagine my mom is comfortable here. She preferred, when free choice was part of her existence, a life of clutter. I grew up amongst piles of colored tissue paper, jars of gesso and abandoned buttons, strings of beads and gems. Batiks served as curtains, pillows as chairs, and we ate off any random creation of the potter’s wheel—be it ashtray or vase.

Sheila knocks on a door, which I assume must be my mother’s. You’d think I’d recognize it by now. But either they always lead me down different paths, or my mother has set a record for most room changes. I don’t think I could find my way here if I’d borrowed Hansel and Gretel’s bag of bread crumbs for the journey. I wonder if I’ll find my
way back in time to report to the women’s shelter, where I’m required—thanks to Mrs. Hutch—to serve dinner this evening. Time will be tight. I have to take the Pace bus back to town.

Lindsey dropped me off here after school, but she was clear on this: she can’t come back to get me. She’s on the homecoming committee, and they’re making final arrangements for the parade float.

Final arrangements. Funny that those two words can refer to festivities, as well as funerals.

When the orderly shoves a key into the lock and turns the knob, it’s clear to me that the knock was purely a courtesy. “Serena? Someone’s here to see you.”

A voice so familiar that it may as well be my own floats through the crack between the door and frame—in song. I close my eyes for a split second and savor the sound of the vocal vibrations:
Let my love open the door
.

The words morph to a hum by the time I cross the threshold. I wonder when and where she might’ve heard the song. Sometime in her childhood, maybe, although I haven’t considered until this very moment that perhaps my mother had a life before Holy Promise.

But of course Mom had lived before she met my father, before he’d enveloped her into his suffocating congregation.

I join her, humming the intuitive melody.

Her glance meets mine, and her lips turn upward slightly at the corners.

When I was a child, she sang frequently; she has the voice of an angel. It seems like such a long time ago. I’d sit in awe of her at the Vagabond, or even at Sunday service, when she’d grasp the barrel of the mic and release pure symphony from her soul.

My eyes well with the resurfacing of the memory, or maybe it’s the stark juxtaposition of this place and our apartment above the Vagabond that reduces me to tears. Crazy or not, my mother does not belong in these laminated quarters—clinically white walls, institutional carpeting void of nap or pad, machined furniture that reflects neither my mother’s vibrancy, nor her insanity.

Her eyes are nearly black, and their fathoms impossible to navigate, especially on days like today. She’s looking right through me. She knows I’m here. She knows who I am—always—but it’s like any other day, if her nonchalance is any indication. I want to plow into her arms, to feel her embrace tighten, as if she’ll never let me go. Instead, she leans over her snack table and resumes sketching. Continues humming, as if she’s content to be locked away here, as if a life with me isn’t worth a fight for her freedom.

Sheila turns to leave us alone. “Have a nice visit. Ring me when you want an escort out.”

It’s then I realize there’s no knob on the inside. I was right. She’s been moved—to a more secure wing of the building.

Buried alive, buried alive, buried alive …

I bring a few fingers to the pain beginning to accumulate in my temples. I can’t have a graphomania attack here. I just can’t. But already, I’m fixating on the image of my pen. Already, I’m envisioning the next blank page in my notebook. Please, God. Please. I feel the words engraving into my mind, actually feel the script taking form in my head. Please. Help me fight it. Just this once.

The moment the door clicks closed, the words scatter to the periphery. They’re not gone—I feel them beginning to encroach again—but I’m holding them at bay.

My mother drops her project—“Calliope, listen to me”—and grasps my hands over the surface of the tray.

I startle, although I know there’s no reason to be afraid of her temporarily slipping into mania. It’s nothing new. This has been happening most of my life. Still, it’s been a while since she’s accosted me like this, and I’m taken aback.

“It’s beautiful,” she says, as if we’re in the middle of a conversation, and I ought to know what she’s talking about. “The most beautiful pendant in the world, and I want you to have it. It’ll help you go home.”

She’s been talking about this pendant since Palmer sequestered her here, or maybe because he put her here. But no one has seen it—even, I suspect, my mother—if not in our imaginations.

“Mom …” I search her eyes for the here and now.

Claw at the case, claw at the case, claw at the case …

“Callie.” She brings a hand to my cheek, her eyes softening. “Well, sit down. It ain’t much, but it’s home, right?”

Despite the no-way-out, it’s as much of a home as any other room in this joint. I open the tabletop refrigerator and grasp a small bottle of water, the only beverage available outside the cafeteria. It’s a far cry from the flavorful coffees she used to sip at the Vagabond.

“Any word on Palmer? Have you seen him?”

It’s odd that she asks about him, seeing as though she’s in here because of him. One Sunday evening, she knifed him in the confessional. She’d wanted to kill him, she’d told me, before he crossed another line.