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As if Geraldine's spirit slipped into me, I looked with critical eyes at the house right after they left. Maybe to keep myself occupied and not think of things that would make me tremble inside, I decided to vacuum and dust and wash the kitchen floor. As I worked, I imagined her beside me urging me to use more elbow grease or to concentrate on what I was doing. Whenever I completed something, I considered how Geraldine would react, and occasionally, I would go back and either polish, dust or vacuum the same spot over again.
After housecleaning, I started on clothes, I set the machine and turned my attention to the
refrigerator. If the girls were here and saw me, I knew they would think I had gone mad, but the more I worked, the more I found to do. It seemed an easy way to pass the time and for the first time I considered that this might have been the very reason Geraldine had made the house her whole world. Maybe it was the only time she didn't feel lonely and defeated by her life.
These thoughts brought back images of her I had stored in a different place in my memory. In them I saw her sitting and staring out the window or standing alone in the backyard and looking west toward the ocean, as if she could see something way out there that had caught her interest and longing. I saw her pausing over some vase or some otherwise meaningless artifact and turning it around in her fingers as if she had found a valuable jewel. Never once did I think it might hold some cherished memory for her. All I thought was she was inspecting it for a smudge or dust.
All I had learned about her and myself had served only to make her more of a stranger. And yet, I wondered what her life would have been like without me. I recalled the day I had forced her to tell me about my adoption. She had told only a partial truth. She left me believing I was her half sister, that we shared the same mother, when all the while she knew she had been adopted as well and we had no blood
relationship. Yet, she wanted me to believe we had. Surely that must have meant she wanted me to believe we were still close in a way. She wasn't ready to tear us completely apart. Could it be that she needed me after all? That even in her meanest, most insensitive moments, she needed me?
Loneliness was another kind of starvation. With no love, no friendship to feed her soul, Geraldine withered away inside herself. Her spirit had died long before her body. Surely this was why she didn't try to get the medical attention she knew in her heart she needed, and de- pended entirely on her herbal remedies even when they weren't really working.
Eventually Geraldine had become just another shadow sliding along the darkened walls of our home, shying away from the sunshine, from anything bright and warm, retreating from the sound of other voices, blocking out smiles like some vampire terrified of the illumination which would only, in the end, destroy her.
Her heart ran out like an old clock. She made no attempt to wind it or restore its batteries. She finally welcomed the silence, the stilled hands. She turned to reach back for her lost spirit and joined it in whatever place she was destined to rest forever and ever.
With every wipe of the cloth, every spray of the disinfectant and dip into the detergent, I stopped hating her a little more. For a few moments in time, I had become her and I understood her, and just as she had, I hated what had created the creature she had become.
All these thoughts exhausted me more than the actual work had. I made my way back upstairs to rest a while and then freshen up for our OWP meeting. For an hour or so, I dozed on and off, finally waking to what I was sure was the sound of footsteps below. I looked at the clock. It was only one-thirty. Perhaps Misty had decided to come earlier, I thought.
I rose, washed my face, and fixed my hair, straightened my blouse and skirt and then made my way downstairs. We had so much to talk about now, so much to do and decide. In many ways this was the most important meeting of all, I thought, and I was anxious to get it started.
When I descended t
he stairs, however, I didn't find anyone in the house. It was quiet and nothing had been disturbed in the kitchen. How strange, I thought. I guessed I had imagined the footsteps. There was still a good hour and a half before the girls were supposed to arrive anyway. Then, I heard the sound of footsteps again, but this time, they were coming from the stairs. I held my breath a moment and listened hard. Yes, the stairs creaked. My eyes went to the back door. I had forgotten to lock it after I had rushed in to greet Star and Larry.
I felt like there was a small fire in my chest, the flames licking at my heart, and the feeling melting my breath until I actually had pain in my lungs. Trembling, I made my way back into the hallway and looked at the stairs. My father had just turned into the corridor. He stood there, smiling at me.
"What have you been up to, Cathy?" he asked
I didn't think I was capable of getting the words out, but they came rushing up, regurgitated out of my heart.
"You're not supposed to be in here. You better get out now," I said.
His smile widened.
"Let's you and I have a quiet little talk first, Cathy. Come along," he beckoned with those long, spidery fingers of his. "In the living room, the much changed living room," he added, still smiling.
His face looked thinner, darker, the lines deeper, and his eyes seemed vacant and filled with shadows. He wore one of his black sports jackets, but he didn't have a tie on and his jacket and pants looked creased enough for someone to believe he might have slept in them. I hadn't noticed how long and stringy his hair was when I saw him on the beach that afternoon. I had been too shocked by his sudden appearance, and he had been standing with the sun blazing behind him, his face shadowed. This disheveled appearance was very unlike him. Usually, he was immaculately dressed. It frightened me even more to see him like this.
"I'd advise you to come in and sit with me, Cathy," he followed, his voice full of a heavy threat.
There wasn't very much else I could do. I hobbled along into the living room. The closer I drew to him, the more my heart pounded. It was as if it had become a Geiger counter and he had turned into pure radiation. I placed my crutches beside me and sat on the sofa. He stood in the doorway a moment and then he went to the window and gazed out.
"Where are your girlfriends today?" he asked.
"They'll be here very soon," I said. "And they all know you're not supposed to be here. They'll go for the police."
He turned, his face stern, his lips tight.
"I doubt that very much, Cathy. Very much. Yes, I broke in here the other night. I couldn't understand why your mother was behaving like she was and I needed to get some things. Imagine my surprise when I saw what had been done to the house and to your mother's room. I left thinking maybe she had gone mad and was redoing it in some bizarre fashion. When I saw that old, cheap furniture out in the hall, I thought finally she's letting go of something. Maybe her attitudes about what's valuable and what isn't had changed and she wouldn't be as penurious.
"God, how she drove me mad with that 'a penny saved is a penny earned' crap. If I heard 'waste not want not' one more time, I think I would have gone mad. It got so I heard it in my sleep!" he cried, his hands turned up as if he was pleading his case in front of some jury.
"I knew she had hoarded every nickel I ever gave her and was ever given to her. She had a lot in that safe of hers. You know she never trusted me with the combination? What kind of a marriage is it where the wife wouldn't give her husband the combination to the safe in their bedroom, huh?
"I'll tell you," he answered for himself, much like she would have, "not much. It was never much. I was a fool to have let myself be talked into it."
