“I thought it was one of those things we knew but didn’t say out loud,” I say. They don’t look mad, my sisters. They look sad.
“We need to get out of this closet,” Eleanor says.
“Wait, I have to look at another memory,” I say. It’s time to know how Laurel died. Or if she died. How she got stuck in the closet. Why Mom feels so helpless and angry and gets so drunk. I can’t look away anymore.
Thirty-Four
I can’t stop thinking about this one day. It was back when the New Hampshire house was a summer house and not an all-the-time house. Maybe a year ago. Maybe more. It’s getting hard to remember, because I used to mark time by Mom’s trips Away, but they started happening so often that I lost track. So I started sort of losing track of time in general.
Mom had been sick a lot. I was downstairs. It was the first time I heard her feet pad back and forth across the floor a million times a day. I pictured her like a ghost wandering from room to room, looking for answers to some question that she maybe hadn’t even managed to ask. I couldn’t decide whether to go check on her. I wasn’t sure what I would say, if I did check on her, or what exactly I would be checking for.
I eventually snuck upstairs, very carefully, because sometimes loud noises or unexpected noises or really all noises upset Mom.
It turned out Mom was at the top of the stairs, and she was crying. She had a mug next to her, and I remember thinking it smelled too sweet to be coffee and too intense to be juice. It smelled like a steak dinner, but without the steak. I didn’t like it.
“Wanna watch TV?” I said, like she wasn’t crying, or at least like this wasn’t weird.
I guess it wasn’t that weird. I’d seen Mom cry before. I’d kind of seen Mom cry a lot.
“I forgot to do something,” Mom said. She looked confused and tired. I wanted to go back downstairs so I wouldn’t have to look at her anymore. Looking at her was giving me a feeling in my stomach. Weight mixed with sickness. My ribs felt full up but my head emptied out. I was pretty sure I would feel okay again if I could get away from her.
“What’d you forget to do?” I asked. “I’ll do it for you. Groceries? Laundry?”
“I do more than chores,” she spat. It was unexpected, the sudden rise of anger, the way her voice sounded more like breaking glass than anything else. “I’m not just a mother. I’m not just a housewife. I have other things to do, you know. I know you think all I know how to do is shop and make the beds and fix dinner, but I’m a person. A whole person. Not that any of you care.”
I couldn’t breathe. I thought I’d walk down the street for her and pick up milk, or put together Kraft macaroni and cheese for my sisters so they’d have something on the table when they got home. I thought she would be happy if I vacuumed my room or the hallway or something. I don’t know. I guess I thought I could fix something small and it would maybe help fix something big.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I could barely get the words out. And as soon as I’d apologized, I wanted to take it back. I wanted to tell her she was mean and unfair and all kinds of other things.
She kept on crying.
“I can’t believe I forgot,” she said. She maybe said it a few times. I was mostly looking at a spot on the carpeted stairs.
But I wonder, now, if she was remembering her sister. Remembering the closets, and remembering that she forgot about the closets. Realizing she didn’t know where her sister was, and that she hadn’t told her daughters anything about her. Remembering she hadn’t saved her.
I don’t know, but I wasn’t going to do that. I wasn’t going to forget. I was going to get Marla out.
Thirty-Five
A strid tries the door, but I decide they can’t leave, so the door doesn’t budge.
I ask the memory closet to show us what happened to Laurel, and brace myself for a mirror-image memory of Marla getting stuck in the closet. Instead the ballroom memory fades and we end up at the lake.
The lake looks about the same as it does now—the water’s a little darker, there’s no grill, the bench that Eleanor reminded me about isn’t under the birch tree—but the birch tree is every bit as tall and thin and sloping as I’ve always known it.
Young Mom and Young Dad are on the dock. Her legs are over his, and their noses are touching. They kiss every third moment.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Astrid says. She’s still recovering from the ballroom, and it’s too much, I think, seeing Mom and Dad on our dock in a whole new memory. My heart’s pounding too. I know what’s coming before I see it.
Laurel rushes into the lake. She swims out far, farther than we’ve ever been able to go. Past the dock and the buoys and the sandbar.
Mom doesn’t see. She doesn’t yell after her or glance in her direction to check on her, like she’s always telling us to do with one another. There’s no lifeguard. There’s not even a lifeguard stand.