She didn’t want friends to visit or call. She had no interest in going anywhere, doing any shopping, having her hair and nails done, or taking me to do any of those things. She didn’t even appreciate her own mother, my grandmother Clara Beth, making the trip from Arizona to Pennsylvania to see her. She frustrated Nana by refusing to talk about anything but the needlework she was doing or a chicken recipe she had discovered. She behaved as if nothing terrible had happened to this family, and whenever she made a reference to me, she cloaked it in words and images that made it sound like she was referring to Haylee as well. Clara Beth finally threw her hands up in frustration and fled from our house as if she were breaking free of any guilt herself. She didn’t even say good-bye to me.
I supposed, in some ways, I couldn’t blame her. In a real way, our house was on fire. Despite Mother having been released from continuous psychiatric care, she was as good as in a hospital in our own home, which was another reason I was happy to go off to a private prep school and avoid every opportunity but Christmas and spring break to go home.
I would much rather have spent my holidays with my father, but by now, he had found someone new to love again and was trying to make a
new life. In a real sense, he was fleeing from the past as much as I was. I couldn’t blame him for it. How else could he go on? How else could I?
Once, before all this had happened, when I criticized Haylee for being so selfish, she smiled at me the way an adult might smile at a child for being so innocent.
“Sometimes,” she said, “you have to be selfish in order to survive, Kaylee. You’ll figure that out on your own, I’m sure.” Her voice dripped with condescension.
I didn’t believe her at the time, probably because I didn’t want to believe her.
But she was right. She was right about many things.
And when I permitted myself to think about my captivity and the brutality inflicted on me in that basement apartment, I realized I had survived because of what I had learned from my twin sister, the sister who had maneuvered to put me there and whom I couldn’t imagine ever forgiving, even after I had seen her in her dreadful catatonic state.
But I knew in my heart that eventually, somehow, that was precisely what I had to do to help her survive, and what I had to do to help myself survive—forgive.
Mother knew nothing about my visiting Haylee and what had happened. My father had told Mother’s therapist, who had advised us to keep it from her. Her doctor said that the news could send her reeling backward and return her to the psychiatric ward. Keeping it from her was no problem. I had no trouble not talking about my visit. I wanted to forget it for as long as I could. It was another reason I was willing to leave and try to start anew.
Several weeks after Mother had been brought home, my father was there to help me bring down my luggage. It was the start of a new semester at Littlefield. Mother knew I was leaving and was in the living room with Irene. All the arrangements had been made. The pamphlets about Littlefield had been received, and I had deliberately left them on the coffee table in the living room for days after they had arrived. I could see, however, that no one had picked them up, not even Irene. This morning, Mother didn’t—as I had expected, actually hoped—offer her opinion on what I should pack for my stay at Littlefield.
“Does she fully understand what’s happening, Daddy?” I asked, pausing at the foot of the stairway and nodding toward the living room.
“Oh, she understands. I went over it with her in great detail last week and again yesterday. You probably forgot how your mother could pout sometimes. There were days when she wouldn’t say a word to me, answer a question, anything, until I said I was sorry for whatever innocent thing I had done or uttered.”
I nodded. Of course, I remembered days like that. None of us could stand the silent treatment. Haylee was probably the least concerned of the three of us about upsetting Mother, but she was bothered by silence and hated it. When she wasn’t with me or Mother, she was constantly wearing earphones or on the telephone. I had no doubt she would have had more trouble than I had surviving in Anthony Cabot’s basement apartment with no one but a cat to talk to most of the time.
I walked to the living room and stood in the doorway. Mother and Irene stopped talking and turned to look at me. Mother was in a housecoat and her pink and green slippers. She had yet to get to the stage where she would dress nicely, with concern about her hair and makeup, even if she wasn’t leaving the house. The one exception was the half dozen or so dinners we’d had with my father since her return. Never once during any of those dinners did Haylee’s name come up. Periodically, Mother would gaze at the chair Haylee would have occupied, but then she would look away quickly or down.
There were long moments of silence at these dinners, followed by my father talking about the house or his work. Irene showed interest and asked questions, but whenever my father mentioned the prep school looming on the horizon for me, Mother stared blankly at him and just ate. My father and I exchanged looks, but neither of us forced her to comment. It was like tiptoeing over thin ice. Neither of us wanted to be blamed for causing her to have a relapse.
“I’m going now, Mother,” I said now. “To my new school,” I added with emphasis. I was really leaving. There was no point in pretending otherwise.
Normally, whenever Haylee and I left for somewhere, even just to go to school in the morning, we always kissed Mother good-bye, me kissing her on her right cheek and Haylee kissing her on her left. Since she had returned from the hospital, whenever I kissed her, she always brought her hand to the other cheek to confirm that Haylee hadn’t kissed her, and then she would grimace. It was disturbing, giving me the feeling that my kiss was insufficient or that it stung. It was eerie for me, because I imagined Haylee there, giving me her confident smile to say, See! Mother likes my kiss better.
However, my father told me that before Mother had gone to therapy, when I had been abducted, she would act as if I had kissed her, too, that I was there. Now that he thought about it more, he said it really bothered Haylee, who would go into a pout.
“I should have realized something from that,” he said. “I should have realized what she had done. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.”
I never dreamed that something as simple as a kiss good-bye would become such a deeply traumatic thing, but it was. When we were younger, Haylee was especially embarrassed about Mother’s special kisses and her demands that we kiss her so much, even in front of our classmates. Haylee complained to my father, but he told us that kisses were important to Mother because she had so few when she was a little girl. Neither her mother nor her father was a very affectionate person.
“People who have suffered great thirsts of any kind are more obsessive about satisfying themselves when they finally can,” he said. “That can often be overwhelming. Try to be understanding.”
I thought that made sense, but Haylee grimaced and continued to complain whenever Mother wasn’t around. “Why do we have to suffer for what our grandparents did to her? That’s unfair!”
Now, as I stood in the doorway, holding my luggage, I knew Irene was waiting, along with me, for my mother to say something, to wish me luck, a good trip, anything. She simply stared at me blankly, the way she had at dinner when the private school was mentioned. Finally, Irene said, “Have a nice trip. We’ll be anxious to hear how the school is and how you are doing.”
Mother looked at her, not simply surprised but a little annoyed that she had put words in her mouth by including her.
She pulled herself back on the sofa and, sitting stiffly, added, “I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.”
I could practically hear her thinking, I’m waiting for your sister to come home.
I was afraid to approach her and kiss her. Her face would feel like cold marble.
“?’Bye,” I said, and hurried to the front door, where my father was waiting. He saw the disappointed look on my face. I told him what Mother had said. “I’m surprised they let her come home,” I added, not hiding my anger.