6. Truths Without Words
Missing Julian (6 of 13)
(Maria came back to find Julian, among other reasons. Many people are looking for Julian. Every man makes a presence, and their absence leaves a hole. This is the second to last section of Milestone.)
Rosie sat at the kitchen table and drank her second cup of coffee since midnight. She saw a dozen Rosies in all the windows, all sipping coffee, all calm, all answerless in the dark.
James was asleep in his Lego dreams. And Rick slept a narcotic doze. She knew enough about her husband not to want to know about his dreams.
And Maria? Maria was also awake. Rosie was sure of it. The girl was too quiet, too still, too aware up in that room. She was a scared rabbit hiding from the wolf. Not scared enough, of course. A little more scared would have suited Rosie just fine.
Preferably, if she could backdate that fear a few months.
Maybe she could have left the blanket in the house.
Now, Rosie sipped coffee.
Fear of the Lord, she had been told, was the beginning of wisdom. Rosie sighed. She could do with a little less wisdom right now.
She knew it would be like this.
All of her life, Rosie knew that she would be the one up in the middle of the night. When Jacob Marley arrived with his “parley,” she met him at this table. Rick was for daylight and tomfoolery. Rick was for bluster and bravado and the hard negotiations that men do over trivia. How much will the land cost? How much for the truck? When will the plumbers come? He could wrestle clerks. But when Marley came, Rosie stepped forward.
He stood silent before her now. What would she do about the baby?
Rosie sipped her coffee.
Well, it wasn’t her baby. Technically.
But it would be. The girl was too young to be a mom, although she was old enough to give birth. When that baby came, her brave and angry bitch of a daughter would hold the child out and ask for help. And then it would be the three of them for years.
There was a father.
No, there wasn’t. Not if the Inspector was looming around. The boy was long gone or dead. Either way was much the same. He wasn’t here. He left a lucky swimmer.
Maria would make a good mother.
She might. But she wouldn’t make a good lawyer or a good doctor or a good Indian chief. For the seven years that the little one would take to get going, Maria would slip back seven years from everyone else. By the time she drifted into the workforce, she would be a decade behind and have an iron cuff on her ankle. When the law firm wanted her to spend 18 hours a day, she couldn’t. She couldn’t be a surgical resident. She might not even be a wife. When she cleared the dreams away from her eye, she saw her daughter turn thirty at the checkout counter. Her grandson would turn ten in a rented room with a drunken stepfather and a partial paycheck.
And the Rangers would still be here.
Rosie could raise it.
Yes, she could. And she knew how it would be when she first held the baby. She knew what she would feel when she saw the little ears, the little fingers, and toes. She knew how she would be drawn into this life. But she had been raising babies since she was 25. When Maria was old enough to go to school, James came along. And now that James was old enough…
But it wouldn’t be her baby. Rosie knew herself. She would be indulging in the warm, nourishing martyr’s bath of sacrifice and rectitude. Of course, she could do the feedings, the diapers, and the playtime that the baby needed. James’s old crib and clothes were packed away up in the attic.
They had to stay there. It had to be Maria’s baby, even if Rosie would do a better job. Maria had to get up at three in the morning, Maria had to spoon the peas into the little mouth. Rosie would be the better mother, but it wasn’t Rosie’s baby.
If there was a baby.
It wasn’t her body. It wasn’t her choice.
Actually, yes, it was. Yes, that little sixteen-year-old was wandering around in a body that had been created, nourished, treated, and loved by her mother. She had that body on loan. She was test-driving it, while it was still under Mom’s warranty. Rosie formed it in her uterus, gave it life, and brought it into the buxom and fertile adolescence. When Maria broke her arm, she came crying to Mommy. When she stepped on a nail, she came to Mommy. When she had a runny nose, a black eye, or a big whitehead, she came to Mommy. Mommy fixed it.
Well, now she has a plugged-up uterus.
It wasn’t her body.
No, she admitted, it wasn’t. But it was her house. Rosie sipped her coffee.
Maria rolled from the bed and wrapped herself in a polar fleece bathrobe. She knew her mother was downstairs and sitting at the table. There were things they could talk about and things they couldn’t, but they certainly needed to talk.
She was no stranger to sneaking down the stairs in the middle of the night. The trick was to walk down the side of the riser, up against the wall. There, the boards wouldn’t move and wouldn’t, of course, squeak. But there was no need to go sneaking about this morning. There was no need to avoid her mother. Those days had gone.
Rosie looked up from the coffee. She set the mug down on the table. “Good morning, star shine.”
Maria did a small curtsy.
Maria sat down at the table, in her usual spot.
“I’m sorry for troubling you.”
Rosie lifted her hand. “Do we really need to go through all that?”
Maria stopped. Her mother looked at her with kind, but unblinking eyes. She had been at this table for hours. She was parked like some huge rock as wave after wave, visitor after visitor washed past. Chaos and confusion swirled and then drew out to sea. And still she sat at the table. Her face was calm, her eyes were tired, and her clothes were dirty.
“So, what are we going to do?” Rosie asked.
She had blown past therapeutic and nice.
“About what.”
“Don’t.”
“What do you mean, don’t?”
“Don’t fuck with me. We are a long way past that, don’t you think?”
“Well, narrow it down.”
She looked at her daughter. And she was her daughter, no fucking doubt about that.
“We need to look for a hospital off-island. A recovery center.”
“I don’t really want to.”
“Me neither. But that is where we are.”
“I was thinking I would go back to school after Thanksgiving.”
“You think that?”
“Yeah.”
Rosie sat back and had an Oreo.
“What if those boys are still there?”
“Fuck ‘em.”
“Don’t you think,” her mother started, “that you are giving them too much power and too much control? If you go somewhere else, you get a new start and a new life. Around here….” Rosie paused. “No one is going to forget.”
“I don’t want them to forget. I want them to remember for every day of the rest of their lives.”
Her daughter felt the rage build.
“Maria, think about what this means? Think about what this is going to mean months from now.”
Because Rosie was thinking about it. If she stayed on the island, Rosie knew what would happen in the spring. She would have a new life, but it would shit its diapers on a schedule.
“I am not going to run away from them.”
“But you’re letting them run your life. What are you going to do? Follow them around screaming for the next two years? What happens to you?”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
The two women settled back and threw daggers at each other.
“Maria, I am sorry. I am sorry to have to say this to you, but you’re a woman now and there is no need to keep things away from you. Is there?”
Maria didn’t answer.
“Do you know what being a woman means? It doesn’t have anything to do with sex or babies or clothes or Oprah. It means that you get a kitchen table.”
She sipped her coffee.
“You get a kitchen table with four spots at it, and your day, your life, is bounded by those four spots at the table. You can be a doctor, a lawyer, the head of a bank, or the leader of a Lesbian Biker Death Cult, and you still have a kitchen table. Kids, husbands, lovers, parents, friends, they all take a turn sitting at your kitchen table. That’s the thing about being a woman. There are always a bunch of people depending on you….or you are waiting for those people to come into your life. And then they are there, and you worry about them. You serve them coffee or cereal or wine or cookies, and you listen and you worry.”
She paused.
“So, when you sit at your kitchen table, wherever it is, you need to know one thing. You can’t lie to yourself. You can cry, you can yell, and you can bitch. But you can’t lie to yourself. That is when you get into trouble.”
“And I am lying to myself?”
“That’s a question for you.”
“Fine. I am not lying to myself.”
Maria felt the life inside her. She shushed it. This was not the time or the place.
Rosie said nothing. She waited with the patience of granite. Her daughter needed to keep that one lie from her.
Fine. Tonight, she can keep it.
Not tomorrow.
“Think about this.” Her mother said. “You can’t go to school right now. You’re still suspended for pounding that kid’s head.”
“Jack.”
“Who cares what his fucking name is?”
Her daughter felt the rage ebb. Half-consciously, she put one hand on her waist. She nodded.
“You’ve had a nightmare. An absolute, incredible nightmare.” For all of her callousness and heat, Rosie’s heart still reached out. “And you need to deal with it. You need some serious help. Not just Martha.”
Rosie paused.
“But here is the one thing you can’t do. Here is the one thing I won’t let you do while you sit at my table. You can’t look back. You need to look forward. You need to do what is best for you, and you need to look weeks, months, and years into the future.”
Maria nodded.
She knew exactly what her mother meant.
Rosie stood and left the kitchen, the morning, and the table to her daughter.
The Inn on Brant Point (Novella)
Milestone 1: The Boy Who Climbed the Windmill
Milestone 2: Remember
Milestone 3: Snitches Get Stitches
Milestone 4: Survival Ain’t Pretty
Milestone 5 Missing Julian
Chapter 2: He’s Missing
Chapter 4: A Word to the Wise
Chapter 5: Lollipop
Chapter 6: Truths without words
Chapter 7: Predators
Chapter 8: A Warning in the Night
Chapter 9: Good Man. Would Act
Some of my writing…
Barr’s For Life: A substack of essays and claptrap
The Boat at the End of Lover’s Lane
(NEW) The Girl Who Ran the Polpis Road
The Inn on Brant Point (Novella)
Her Lover on Monomoy Road. (Novella)
Her Father Came Home to Deacon’s Way (Novella)
Love Letters (Novella)
The Fisher King (Novella)
The Costs of Faith (Novella)
Winter: A Collection of Island Living Essays set between January and April 1.
The Boys: A collection of essays about my two sons, written as they grew.
Rolling in the Surf: Essays on Teaching.
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Very proud of the art in this one. I was between the Klimt and the Munch as the lead. I sam not sure I chose the right one.
I had a long moment where I just wanted to toss this story. It ha been the first Coffin story and I am happy to stick it on the Bunny slope of writing. Here's the first bad novel. Or, to use Hemingway this is the manuscript I left in the suitcase. Bt there is Rosie. I love torturing my characters and Rosie sees a lot. But she is such a fighter and scrapper.
Also, Jacob Marley first popped up in my mind when I wrote the table scene. Since then, he has grown. At this point, I am settling into a Lovecraft island. Now, Jacob is not real, even fiction real. Rosie is bu herself at the table. But, every mystery writer that uses the same setting has to ask why bad things keep happening there? I think that there is a Lovecraftian force sleeping off shore; Cthulhu is in the waves. His magnetic ley Iines affect the characters. People make darker choices than they might. Big Mike uses a shot gun on Billy and Jack. Jack and Billy go over the top. I think psychology and psychology of island could do it. but the entire series makes more sense if, at some level, I have the Quaker faith in people against a Lovecraftian abyssal darkness.