Writing Toward Healing
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Leap of Faith, 2015 (mixed media with collage elements on deep wood panel, 30x30x3) by Patricia Steele Raible
in the Poconos, how they were going to lend it to him for the honeymoon. “I’ll be right back,” I said. In the bathroom I sat on the floor, pulling my knees to my chest. I stared at the cracks in the linoleum, filled with little hairs and dead spiders, til my vision wettened and blurred. I hated that I wasn’t crying because of what happened. I was crying because I couldn’t tell Larsen about it. Back in my bedroom, I opened the closet and stared at my duffel bag. As a kid I’d carved stuff into the closet wall: initials of boys I liked, or had told myself I liked, encircled in hearts, and random letters that I’d used as codes. Most were made incomprehensible by time, but I did remember that AIG? was “Am I Gay?” and IHMF was “I Hate My Father.” I’d written that one a couple years before he left. My mother had made a chocolate cake for him to take to a potluck he had for work, but she’d used baking soda instead of baking powder. He’d cut a piece, dense and shiny as soap, and told her to try it.
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We saw the pucker of her face against her will, and I waited for him to yell. When he didn’t, just said he guessed he’d pick something up at Food Lion, I should have known. That night she went to crawl in bed and the cake was crushed between the sheets. He was still at the potluck, so she came and got me from my room and took me for a drive, and I think I believed we might be making a getaway, racing off toward a new life as outlaws in Florida or something. “I thought the dog had shit in there,” she muttered. But she made a U-turn after ten minutes on I-40, took one hand off the steering wheel and put it on my leg. It wasn’t something she usually did, but it was nice. Her knuckles were chapped. “When you’re older, you’ll understand, Meredith. In some situations you have to make concessions.” I didn’t know the word in that context, had only heard it in reference to the snacks at the movies. But I promised myself that concessions were something I’d never make. I took the two hastily-wrapped Christmas gifts from my bag. I’d gotten a blue topaz necklace for Wanda – her birth stone. For Blake, a Steelers beanie. I’d known it was a little lame – that he’d like it but that I could also have tried harder, spent more. Now I was glad I hadn’t. I tossed it into the back of the closet, where there was an ancient pile of clothes once meant for Goodwill. Wanda called from downstairs. “We’re ready anytime, Meredith!” I fired off a text to Rhoda. I know you’re doing family stuff, but if at any point you can talk – I was fucking right about Blake all along. I stopped for a few seconds on every single stair, but eventually I reached the living room. My mother was still in her bathrobe, white with big, floppy-looking irises printed on it. “Well, Meredith, you’re the guest of honor, so you open one first,” said Blake. The little box he handed me wasn’t wrapped, but it had a ribbon around it. “Big things come in small packages, you know.” That wink again. Inside the box was a gift card to a bridal shop. “Two hundred dollars,” said Wanda, a little louder than before. “So you can get any dress you want for the wedding. Well, as long as it matches our color scheme.” “Thanks,” I said, careful to look only at Wanda. “It’s from both of us,” she hinted.