Author’s Note: The beautiful cast iron fountain that sits in the center of Fountain Park in Chestertown, MD was sent away for restoration several years ago. What remained was a brown blemish on the earth where it had been. And it seemed as if the very soul of the park was gone. This made me think about how people seem to lose their soul from time to time in their lives, and it takes much love and support to restore one’s faith in self and humanity. Thus, this story came about.
Mare and her estranged husband Tim are peeling back the tiles on a client’s kitchen floor, unearthing what was originally there, a tedious process made more tortuous by the ticking of the antique clocks in the dining room—a cacophonic orchestra that clamors away at each new hour—three hours into the job and very little progress made.
What Mare didn’t expect to find was linoleum underneath the kitchen tiles before getting to the original cedar planks. She had to up her estimate and approximate time of completion and bring Tim in on the job who dumped the business in her lap when the economy collapsed a few years back. He jams the spade knife under a tile at a bad angle, bends the blade, curses.
“You wanna break for lunch?” he asks her.
“It’s too early,” she says, just after eleven.
“I’m starving,” he says, throwing down the knife.
Her stomach growls, making it hard to argue with him.
They sit on the expansive back deck, one of those warm Indian summer days in October, look out over the Chester River, the slow-moving water blurring the reflection of the colored leaves, making it all seem surreal. Mare packed ham and cheese sandwiches, cans of Pepsi and a bottle of Vodka for when the day’s work was nearly done. She has to be careful not to get a reputation for drinking on the job—once word gets around you’re done in this backwater town.
But it might be the only way she gets through the day—in fact, how she makes it through the next few weeks. Their only child Sydney is coming home tomorrow from Shepherd Pratt, a psychiatric hospital in Baltimore that has a bright green happy bus they drive around, picking up and depositing their patients. Mare wanted to pick up Sydney, but the therapist said the bus ride would give her the necessary “transitional time.” They haven’t seen Sydney in six weeks, part of Shepherd Pratt’s therapy program to separate the patient from her family (who may or may not have contributed to the problem, they are careful to say).
“She can stay with me if you want,” Tim says, running a hand through his light brown hair, still cut in the same style as when they first met in college, a seventies’ shag. The problem with Tim is that he never grew up—he never made it much past puberty.
“She hates you,” Mare says.
“Well she doesn’t think much better of you.”
Mare takes a bite of her sandwich, barely tasting it. She encouraged Tim to take Sydney with him to Germany, to ostensibly study Gothic architecture— convinced herself it would be a chance-of-a-lifetime for both of them, a bonding experience. She procured the grant, filled out all the papers, got permission to take Sydney out of school last year, her eighth grade year. She throws the rest of her sandwich in the bag, finishes her soda. “I’m going back to work,” she says, “We have to have that linoleum off today.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Tim says, spotting a blue heron nearly camouflaged in a bare tree across the river. This fall they would’ve celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary; they married after graduating from Washington College, both architect majors drawn to the southwest, the Native American influences. But the restoration business isn’t as lucrative out there as it is in the East; they moved back to the eastern shore of Maryland when Sydney was nine. It made sense at the time, but nothing makes sense now. Not Germany. Not a divorce.
Mare struggles with a section of linoleum, the glue creating a solid bond to the cedar—no air to breathe. She frees the section with both hands, each lifted section a small victory, helping to ease her anxiety. Sydney never really adapted to the east coast, her personality started to change that first year back; she became darker, moodier. And after she got her period in sixth grade, Mare could no longer talk to her—everything was a challenge.
The cedar planks are in great shape, nothing a good sanding and some varnish won’t restore. If only, Mare thinks, they could restore their daughter as easily, bring her back to that place of happiness, peace.
In Sante Fe they would go to St. Francis Cathedral, the stained-glass windows transported by ship and covered wagon to Santa Fe from France. It was the building itself that instilled faith in Mare. She hardly listened to the words of the priest. But Sydney would listen; she took it all to heart. She was the child who prayed on her knees at night, who read the Bible, who would pick wildflowers and offer them to Mare as a gift from God. At one point Mare feared (why on Earth would she fear this?) that she would grow up to be a nun.
Sydney is stable, but she’s still on fragile ground, the therapist told Mare. Be patient, vigilant. Mare coats a slice of bread with egg white, drops it in the sizzling pan, the electric burner turned up way too high—patience not her specialty these days.
“There’s a slight knock on the front door then Tim strolls in, the local paper in his hand. “Clark’s hiring again,” he says. “That man can’t keep his employees to save his life.”
“He hasn’t been paying them,” Mare says.
“When’s the bus dropping her off?” Tim asks, sitting down at the table, his eyes puffy from undoubtedly drinking too much last night.
“Any minute.”
“Sure you want me here?”
“The therapist thinks it would be best.”
“What do you think?”
Mare shakes her head. “I don’t know. Let’s see how it goes. We both fucked up.” She flips the burning bread in the pan.
Tim pours a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter, adds a generous amount of creamer from the fridge, stirring to soften the darkness. He had a few indiscretions of his own in Germany, but he never thought Mare would have an affair—she was always more focused on things, rather than people. And when they stopped having sex, he thought it was a physical thing—that she’d lost her sex drive.
They hear the bus pull up in front of the house, the whoosh of the air brakes, the door screeching open. Mare goes over to the window, looks out. “It’s her,” she says, as if they were expecting someone else. She turns back to Tim who sets down his coffee, steadies his hands on the table, the light spilling in from the window aging him even more. She has a sudden urge to walk over to him, take his hand, but Sydney is at the door.
“Welcome home!” Mare says, hugging her daughter, aware that her voice is too high-pitched, cheery. “I made your favorite breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry,” Sydney says, pulling away. But Mare doesn’t let go; she takes stock of her daughter: still too thin, but the color is back in her cheeks, blue eyes clear.
“Cinnamon French toast,” Mare says, releasing her.
“I said I’m not hungry.”
“Come on, Sydney,” Tim says, sitting down at the table, three places set.
“Let her get settled,” Mare says, placing the platter in the middle of the table.
“I’m going to my room,” Sydney says.
“I’ll be up in a few minutes,” Mare calls.
Mare knocks at Sydney’s door, wanting to give her some semblance of privacy, but she’s scared to death to leave her alone too long—the worst moment of her life was finding Sydney in the bathtub, trying to drown herself. Of course Tim wasn’t around, and Mare had stayed longer than she’d meant to at work, installing period correct windowsills.
“Come in,” Sydney says.
She’s unpacking her clothes from the duffle bag, putting them back in her dresser in an organized fashion. A good sign, it seems, to Mare.
Mare sits down on the bed. “I’m keeping your French toast warm in the oven.”
“Thanks,” Sydney says, pairing her socks.
“They said you did well there,” Mare says, but what they actually said was that Sydney was reticent in therapy sessions, but she’s slowly responding to the light medication, coming out of her dark depression. Make sure she’s eating well, they said. Sit down together as a family.
Sydney nods, keeps folding her clothes.
Mare folds and unfolds a faded tee-shirt, a retro David Bowie. “It’s good to have you home,” she says.
“Is it?” Sydney says.
“Of course it is,” Mare says. “We’ve been so worried.”
Sydney closes a drawer, looks over at Mare. “We?”
“Sydney—you know how much we love you.”
Sydney looks away.
Mare gives her a hug, fighting back tears. “Come down when you’re ready to eat.”
Mare looks out the window of her friend Paula’s small apartment on the second floor, above a sewing shop. The bus from Summer House Detox is parked at Fountain Park, addicts on an outing, smoking cigarettes on the benches. The fountain has been removed for restoration, a large brown blemish in the middle of the park where it once stood; it’s been gone since the end of August, over a month now, sent to an architectural metals firm in Alabama.
She takes a sip of the herbal tea Paula made for her—a blend for stress-reduction. “I’m thinking of asking Tim to move back in,” she says.
“Are you still sleeping with Franco?” Paula asks about the philosophy professor at Washington College.
Mare shakes her head. “He’s continuing his hopeless quest—he believes perfection can be realized in the visible realm but has yet to find that in a woman.”
“Perfection is man’s invention.”
“That’s what I try to tell Sydney.”
“How’s she doing in school?” Paula asks.
“She’s doing her work, but not socializing.”
“Is she eating?”
“Barely—she’ll take crackers up to her room, and butter.”
“That’s something.”
“Yeah,” Mare says. “Something.” She sinks down in Paula’s arm chair, the springs collapsed. “I know I have to be patient. It’s only been a week.”
Paula sits up, takes a sip of tea. “Let me try talking to her again. Maybe she could help me out at the shelter a night or two a week—get out of her head.”
Mare agrees, thanks her. Paula’s been like an aunt to Sydney, and she has a natural way with kids, particularly teenagers, that Mare doesn’t have.
The next day Sydney reclines on Paula’s chaise lounge smoking a Clove cigarette. Her hippy look replaced by a more European flair since Germany: a brown wool skirt with a black turtle neck, brown beret. The genes coming together in the most attractive way: Tim’s fine features, high cheekbones, and Mare’s blonde hair, blue eyes. But she’s still too thin.
Paula brings over a pot of tea, two mugs, a small pitcher of creamer, puts them on a TV tray. She’s been close to this old soul since Tim and Mare moved back from New Mexico, but she hasn’t been able to reach her since Germany. She pours the tea, adding creamer for sustenance, the home-made macaroni and cheese in the oven nearly finished baking. “I’d love to see some of your paintings,” she says. “Your mom says you brought a few home.”
Sydney blows out smoke. “It was just therapy stuff.”
“You got to get the crazy out somehow,” she laughs.
Sydney smiles. “They made us journal everyday too. I’m still doing that. It helps.”
“Sort out Germany?”
Sydney nods, looks out the window.
Paula sinks down in the arm chair.
“I met this guy over there,” Sydney says. “We drank beer and he read me some stories he wrote, but he had to translate them, and in English they lost their beauty—at least that’s what he said. I think the German language is ugly. . . He told me I was beautiful.”
“You are.”
“One of his stories was about this woman who mastered the power of alchemy. People would come from all over the world for her elixir, and after they drank it they’d be young again. But the problem was that they still weren’t happy.”
“What happened?”
“They got tired of living.”
“No, I mean with the guy,”
Sydney sips her tea, looks back out the window. “I slept with him, and then I never saw him again.” She lays back in the lounge, closes her eyes. “He told me he loved me.”
“That wasn’t love,” Paula says. “Love stays with you forever.”
Tim lights a cigarette on the screened in back porch, a distant view of the Chester River through the woods; the deciduous trees bare, choked by grapevine. Maybe he was going through some mid-life crisis over in Germany—he told Mare that it felt like he’d gone temporarily insane.
She comes out on the porch, sits in the Adirondack chair beside him, pulls her sweater around her. “My mother called,” she says. “She invited us over for Thanksgiving.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“I told her we’re just putting up a front.”
“Is that what we’re doing?”
“I really don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.”
“We’re trying to help Sydney.”
“And we’re sucking at it.”
A screech owl trills in the distance, a cry soon returned by its mate.
“I tried to talk to her today,” Tim says. “About Germany.”
“How’d that go?” Mare asks, the sarcasm dripping in her voice.
He hadn’t planned on leaving Sydney alone in Germany, but she started sulking all the time, the home-schooling harder than he’d imagined—he had to get away some nights.
“I reminded her of the good times,” he says. “She loved the gargoyles.” He smiles. “We named each one. . . She was laughing about that—Henry, Floyd, Elmer. . . She loved the Cologne Cathedral. Those flying buttresses. It’s fully restored now.”
He crushes his cigarette butt on the arm of the chair. “I was thinking. . . maybe we should all go on a trip together.”
“Brilliant—maybe Disney World?”
“I was thinking New Mexico.”
Mare closes her eyes, their time there like a dream, pieces of a life: the brown, barren earth with tangled brush, jagged mountains; the small stucco house with terra cotta pots in the back yard, where they grew their herbs and vegetables; Tim still played his guitar then, and she would sing, “whisper words of wisdom, let it be. . . ”
Sydney is helping Paula get ready to serve dinner at the homeless shelter, stacking the clean plates, putting out the napkins and silverware on the counter. “You should go,” Paula says.
“They can only afford one room.”
“It’s only for a week.”
“It’ll feel like forever,” Sydney says, staring at her reflection in the white of the plate, a disembodied face that seems trapped inside the porcelain. She can’t imagine being in a room with her bickering parents for a week.
Paula unlocks the front door, a line of hungry people waiting outside. “None of us have forever,” she says.
Mare sets the plate down in front of Tim in the kitchen: two eggs sunny side up, hoping to start the trip on a positive note. He’s just finished putting the last of their bags in the car.
“I’ll go wake her,” she says, wiping her hands on a dish towel, then climbing the stairs. Paula talked with Sydney, persuaded her to go on the trip with them. She’s even managed to get her to eat something other than crackers.
She knocks gently on the door, calls out Sydney’s name.
No answer.
She calls out her name again, this time a little louder, knocking a little harder.
Still no answer.
Mare’s heart is pounding in her chest now, her palms starting to sweat. She opens the door, the lock intentionally busted by Tim: a lump under the covers in the bed. Mare presses down, as if to resuscitate, then throws back the covers, finds only Sydney’s packed duffle bag. She calls out for Sydney again, louder, so that Tim is running up the stairs now, his face distorted, alarmed.
“She’s gone,” Mare says.
She tries Sydney’s cell but it goes straight to voice mail: Hey it’s Sydney, I’m not around, leave a message or not.
Mare and Tim took water, a blanket, flashlights, in case they’re looking for Sydney into the night—the police not willing to help until she’s been missing for 24 hours. Last summer Sydney had been gone all day, many times, but this is different: She’s on shaky ground. Of course she’d been on shaky ground last summer, but they were too busy hating each other to see.
They’re walking along the riverbank, calling out Sydney’s name. They thought about splitting up but decided it would be best to stay together: a united front.
“What if we don’t find her?” Mare says.
“We will,” Tim says. “We have to.”
“But what if we don’t? What if we don’t ever—”
Tim takes her hand, looks in her eyes. “We will,” he says, in that same affirmative tone as when he said “I do” so many years ago. It gives Mare hope.
The wind is brisk off the river. Sydney crosses her arms for warmth, wearing only jeans and a tee-shirt, her brown beret that they will find, she thinks, bobbing in the water, or caught in a bush or tree on shore. She shivers, her ears and hands numb, just wanting to get it over with, but the water looks so cold, uninviting, and then she feels a gentle touch on her shoulder. She jumps, calls out in fear, quickly turns around, but there is just the squawk of a heron flying overhead. She is alone. Or is she? She feels a presence, a warm breath around her, like the time when she was a young child, alone in her room in New Mexico. She had been praying, and she felt someone beside her. She thought it was God then, was sure of it, but then he deserted her.
She sits down on the embankment, wraps her arms around her bent legs. She has felt so alone, so very, very alone, for so long. The tears begin to flow. She doesn’t want to die; she never wanted to die. She just wants to feel something again. She wants to believe again.
And then she hears her parents calling out to her. She understands now. She understands this presence that is with her now: love.
Lisa Lynn Biggar received her MFA in Fiction from Vermont College. Her novella-in-flash, Unpasteurized, was recently published by Alien Buddha Press, and her short story cycle, Garden of Motherless Children, set on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, will be published in October by Secant Publishing. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in various literary journals, including The Minnesota Review, The Delmarva Review, Superstition Review, San Antonio Review, Bay to Ocean Journal, Ghost Parachute, Pithead Chapel, Litro Magazine, Kentucky Review, and Main Street Rag. She’s the fiction editor for Little Patuxent Review and she and her husband own and operate a cut flower farm in Galena, MD with their two hard-working cats.
