The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson, page 11
Isabelle smiled, shook her head, and put a finger to her lips. “It’s way out east, and it’s a state, not a real island. We’ll get there someday, probably.”
An island that was not an island didn’t make sense, but Cecily believed Isabelle, anyway. “Why did you leave?”
Isabelle’s lips pursed. “My mother died when I was eleven, and, when I was twelve, my father married a woman I couldn’t stand, and who couldn’t stand me. I didn’t last a year in the same house with her. When the circus came to town, I stowed away on the train, and I didn’t come out for three days. When I finally did, we were in Cleveland, and Tebow asked me what I could do. I said I was good with horses. Which was an utter lie. I’d ridden one once, at the home of a friend of my father’s.”
This was a lot to take in, but Cecily had picked up especially on the catch on the last word. “I never knew my father at all,” she ventured. “What was yours like?”
Isabelle grabbed a stick and poked the dying fire, then dropped the stick in and let it burn. “He kept pennies in his pocket and would pretend to pull them out from behind my ear. Before my mother died. Then, afterward, he grew old overnight. I almost didn’t recognize him, you know? It was as if he was driving a car and decided to give up on steering.” She gave a short laugh. “And then the car went into a fast river and bobbed away on down it. The woman he married was only twenty-two. I knew she was just after his money. She didn’t even bother to deny it to me. She was about to have a baby when I left. I guess she thought that would make her seem serious.”
Cecily couldn’t help feeling a bit wounded at that news. “You might have a real sister, then.”
Isabelle waved that off. “Not really. Anyway, my father was hoping for a son and heir. He owns a mill that produces worsted wool. ‘Cahill Woolen Mill.’ Very high-quality stuff. For suits and things, you know? I guess he thought a baby boy would solve all his problems. William, Junior, I suppose.” She pulled out her cigarettes and lit one. “I’ve never written to him once to tell him I’m alive. I think he would be fifty years old now.”
Fifty years old! Near death! “Well, you should write to him right now! Don’t you know how lucky you are? To have a father?”
Isabelle’s eyes narrowed. She smoked, then shrugged. “He knew it was a choice between her and me, and he chose her.” She brushed invisible dust off her pant leg. “Anyway, there was a rider here with the circus called Suzanne, and she taught me everything she knew, like I’m doing now with you. And then Suzanne left the show to get married.” She smoked again. Cecily didn’t know what to say. Would Isabelle leave her someday? To get married?
Then Isabelle smiled. “So, kid, you’re the only family I’ve got. Don’t you forget it.”
“Oh, Isabelle!” Cecily had had no idea: Isabelle really needed her, just as much as Cecily needed Isabelle! “I’ll learn any new tricks you show me, I swear I will, don’t worry!”
Isabelle reached over and patted her hand. “It’s a rough road, kid, this life, but you and me are going to be all right, aren’t we? Sisters.”
“Yes!” Cecily said, and she meant it as a promise, and she’d go over Niagara Falls in a barrel before she broke it. She hadn’t kept her oath to Flip and Dolores, but that hadn’t been her fault, exactly—they’d been just kids, without any choice in things. Now she was grown up, almost eight—and she was Isabelle’s sister.
Chapter 18
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Itasca, Minnesota
“Oh, I don’t know, Moll,” Stacey Thorson said, hands in the pockets of her nurse’s scrubs, when Molly asked her late Saturday morning at the hospital about taking the saliva sample from Cecily. “I could get in big trouble for doing that, you know.”
“Oh, of course! I didn’t even think!” Molly’d been up half the night ruminating, but evidently hadn’t thought twice about making this outlandish request, though she and Stacey hadn’t been close in years. She wanted to blame Evan. Not that last night had gone horribly—he’d said good night pleasantly enough, after they’d finished with ice cream and making arrangements for today. But, if he hadn’t come to town, she could’ve probably continued avoiding thinking about the past. Instead, now, she kept hearing what Caden had said the other night: It was probably your fault. You just need to accept it.
But Molly had spent years—a decade!—trying to accept what had happened. Even as it had happened again and again! Trying not to blame herself for losing the babies. Trying to heal her grief, even heal her body, while her doctors, mystified, would only say “keep trying.” She’d spent weekends at Kripalu doing primal scream therapy, workshops on detoxing after trauma, discovering your inner goddess, writing your way through grief. She’d studied and trained and traveled to get certified in Reiki, yoga therapy, Jin Shin Jyutsu, and craniosacral work.
And yet.
She’d kept on having miscarriages. Her marriage had broken apart.
Now, though, she wanted to believe there’d been a reason for all of this—even for her dad’s dying long before it should’ve been his time. Because her journey had taught her more than she’d ever expected to need to learn about suffering—and about how to help people find their way through it—and it had brought her here, back home. In Rhode Island, she hadn’t yet put together all she’d learned, but, here in Itasca, she’d managed to build the practice of her dreams, if she’d known enough to dream of things that, ten years ago, she’d had no knowledge of at all.
Sure, not everyone here believed in alternative modalities, but Molly was, slowly but surely, building a good reputation. She kept the two arms of her practice separate and was careful not to push her talk therapy clients into alternative services. But—for those who were open to it! She had clients, previously immobilized by grief, often for years, who were now launching businesses, creating online dating profiles, eating healthy, exercising, not drinking or smoking anymore. These were not small things! These were habits that created the framework for a life of possibility. And Molly was the only practitioner within a hundred miles offering these particular modalities.
She liked to think of the time when her grandpa Sam had been the only doctor in town. She liked to think he’d be proud of her.
Of course, it was a different thing entirely to try to convince Caden that all the suffering—hers, and Evan’s; even Caden’s own—had been for a reason: to bring Molly back home to Itasca, to help these people who needed help.
If only she could keep from getting so angry with him.
If only he didn’t say such stupid-teenager things . . .
Even this morning, she’d snapped at him again, because, when she’d stuck her head in his door, intending to tell him goodbye and that she loved him, she’d spotted teetering stacks of dirty bowls on his desk, piles of sweaty T-shirts and filthy socks strewn across the floor. “Oh my God, we’re going to get cockroaches!” she’d blurted. “Clean this place up before your father picks you up today, or you’re grounded!” Which was ridiculous—cockroaches surely couldn’t survive the subzero temps outside, right? Also—way to make herself look like the not-fun parent, at just the moment Evan was going to swoop in and probably treat Caden to one of the best days of his life.
Now Stacey was looking at her quizzically, seeming to want to help, and Molly was embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Stace. That was lame of me, to ask you that.”
“Oh, no,” Stacey said, brushing off the apology. Her eyes sparked. “Listen, though, I’ll tell you what I can do.” She leaned in to whisper her plan.
“How are we doing today, Mrs. Larson?” Stacey sang out, as she walked into Cecily’s room, carrying a tray that held the Ancestry kit’s test tube alongside a lemon slice on a small white hospital plate. (“To make it look official,” she’d told Molly with a wink.) Molly had brought the lemon from home, because the Ancestry instructions said that older people sometimes had trouble creating enough saliva to fill the tube, and that a wedge of lemon would do the trick.
“Fine, thanks.” Cecily’s white hair gleamed in the sun that streamed through the window, reflecting off the snow outside.
“Just another little test,” Stacey said. “Very painless. All you have to do is fill the tube to the line with saliva.” She looked down at her pager, pressed a button. A beep sounded. “Oh, dear. An emergency! Listen, Molly, can you do me a favor and help with this?” She shoved the tray at Molly and hurried out.
Well, she wouldn’t win an Academy Award, but it got the job done.
“Back in my day, that would not fly as nursing care,” Cecily grumbled, hitching herself up to sit straighter against her pillows. “Now, this doesn’t have to do with TB, does it? I am not going to be incarcerated again.”
Molly felt a stab of guilt. Yet one more thing she hadn’t put together today: that a spit test was what had landed Cecily in the sanatorium, long ago. “No, Grandma, not at all. Nothing like that.”
“Hey, Mom! How are you feeling today?” Liz was walking in, still wearing her parka, her face flushed from the cold outside. “Oh, hi, Moll!” Liz hugged Molly, and the familiar comfort was a relief: this morning, when Molly had texted to ask if Liz would be at the hospital and if she needed anything, Liz had responded simply, Yes, see you in a bit. A long list of instructions and to-dos, specific arrival and departure times, would’ve been far more expected—not to mention questions about Caden’s game, Evan’s arrival.
Cecily was spitting into the tube. “I can’t imagine what they need this for,” she grumbled.
Liz gave Molly a secret thumbs-up and a wink. But, wait—was that a tear in her eye?
Yes, and now it was running down her face.
Molly thought of all the times she’d confided in her grandma Cecily rather than in her mom, all the times Cecily had listened to Molly’s frustrations about Liz: how Liz so rarely showed emotion, how she was so distant and businesslike all the time, or else her head was in the clouds of her latest creations, not on the ground where Molly needed her. And Cecily had, time and again, dried Molly’s tears and said, “Listen, your mom is who she is, and we love her for it, don’t we?”
At the time, teenaged Molly wouldn’t answer; she’d grudgingly, silently wish for a different mother, or, at least, that her mother could be different! Molly had actually often thought that the reason she’d become a therapist was because she was so hungry for connection, for people to talk about what they really felt.
Now, though, Molly saw that the answer to Cecily’s question—we love her for it, don’t we?—was Yes! Resoundingly! The unflappability, the dependability, the practicality, the unexpected bursts of creativity and laughter—Molly absolutely relied on all of it, and had, all her life.
And Liz did not seem like herself at all right now. As far off as she’d been the other day, this was, like, a hundred times more off.
“Are you all right, Mom?” Molly ventured.
Liz waved Molly off, busily removing gloves, scarf, parka. “Oh, yah, fine.”
Molly exchanged a glance with Cecily, as Cecily handed over the tube of saliva and Molly closed it up.
“Did you get some rest, honey?” Cecily asked Liz.
“Yah, yah,” Liz said, piling her things on the chair by the window. Molly saw her wipe her eye before she turned to ask Cecily with a smile, “How are you feeling today, Mom?”
Neither Cecily nor Molly could pry a thing out of Liz, even when Molly took her down to the café for a cup-of-soup lunch, while Cecily’s therapist came to work with her on getting out of bed and taking a couple more steps with the walker. All Liz would admit to was feeling “a bit out of sorts; probably just tired, you know?” Then she started asking how Evan was faring in the house, if he’d noticed any problems, if he’d been sure to open all the taps to make sure no pipes had the opportunity to freeze.
This was more like it—more like the Liz that Molly knew. Not asking how things had gone with Evan, or between Evan and Caden, but how Evan was finding the house. Aggravating, as always—but the normalcy of it was a comfort today, too.
They finished up and walked back toward Cecily’s room, Molly conscious of the tube of Cecily’s saliva in the little package in her purse. She should’ve gotten her mom’s sample while they’d been out of view of Cecily; she’d have to remember later, she thought, as they whooshed up to the second floor in the elevator.
Just outside Cecily’s room, Molly’s phone buzzed with a text from Caden. Practice was great—plus a picture of the left side of his face, his eye bruised blue all around.
She gestured for Liz to go ahead, and, five seconds later, she had Evan on the phone. “What is going on? A black eye? Does he have a concussion? Does he need to come to the hospital? I’m here! I’ll meet you at the ER!”
Evan was laughing. “Moll, calm down. He’s fine. Just a normal day of hockey practice. He got elbowed, not hit with a puck. The trainer ran him through the concussion protocol, and he checked out fine. We’re having lunch at the Thai Garden now.”
Molly tried to unclench her jaw. “Only when you’re left in charge is that a ‘normal day of hockey practice.’ Are you sure he’s all right? Maybe I should come get him—”
“He’s fine, Moll. I can handle it. How’s your grandma today?”
Molly exhaled. “—Um, she’s okay.” Molly wasn’t going to mention how off Liz seemed, or how weird it had been to fool Cecily into giving that saliva sample.
“Hey, Moll,” Evan said, in a new, more serious tone. “Can we set a time to sit down together, just the two of us? Maybe tomorrow?”
He paused long enough that she had to answer. “Um, okay . . .”
“We need to talk about how I can spend more time with Caden. I mean, I haven’t even gotten the time that was allotted to me by the court, and that wasn’t nearly enough, to start.”
Molly went light-headed. The world was suddenly tilted off-kilter. Her son. Hers. She was not going to let Evan take him from her. No way. No way. Oh, they were going to sit down and talk, all right.
She swallowed. Tried to sound like an adult. “Let me text you later, and we can set a time.”
“Okay.” He laughed a little, as if everything was just fine now that he was going to get his way. “And, hey,” he added, “don’t worry about our boy, okay? He’s just inhaled about two pounds of pad Thai. I’m pretty sure that’s a sign of good health.”
After they said goodbye, Molly unclenched her teeth, took another deep breath, closed her eyes, and leaned back against the hall’s handrail, trying to shake off her anger and fear with a little prayer of thanks: that Caden was okay, that Cecily was well enough to grumble, that Liz seemed at least halfway normal—
She pocketed her phone and headed back into Cecily’s room.
“Ah, there she is!” Cecily was sitting up in bed, bright-eyed in the sun, with Liz looking tired beside her. “The incredible Molly Anderson!”
“Oh, Grandma,” Molly said, her face heating up like she was eight years old again.
Chapter 19
July 1930
Iowa City, Iowa
“And now, the incredible child phenomenon, Jacqueline DuMonde!” Tebow’s voice thundered from the loudspeakers, as ten-year-old Cecily, standing on Prince’s back, raised her arms, pasted on a smile, and clicked to Prince. Stagehands pulled the tent flaps back, and Prince was in motion, cantering for the ring, his ears perked to the cheers of the crowd.
They were in Iowa City, and Cecily wanted to put on the best show of her life so far, in this, her third season with Sax & Tebow—just in case. Somewhere in the shadowy grandstands—she tried to see into them, but could not—somewhere sitting watching, high in the rafters or from the front row, could be her mother, Madeline.
The band played Cecily’s number, “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue.” As Prince cantered to the rhythm, she flipped frontward and landed on her feet on the rippling muscles of his back to the crash of a cymbal, clutching his hair with her toes. The crowd whooped; she steadied herself. Prince shook his mane, basking in the cheers as he continued round the ring. Cecily counted to the music, then—at the exact planned moment—jumped down into the dust and vaulted right up onto Prince’s back again, holding up her hands as the cymbal crashed once more. She loved the smell of sawdust and popcorn, the shouts and gasps of the crowd, the feel of Prince’s body under her feet. Quickly, she sat sidesaddle, then hung upside down off his side, hooked on with just her legs, the dust of the ring inches above her sparkling tiara. She swung back up and posed again, then did another flip to another cymbal crash, Prince’s back moving under her feet. She heard the song’s words in her mind as the band played: Five foot two, eyes of blue, has anybody seen my girl? The crowd roared. She held out her arms, then did a little curtsy, as Prince cantered round and round.
“Good job, boy,” she said to him afterward, out back in his stall in the stable tent, rubbing his nose and feeding him a carrot. In the ring now was Isabelle, and Cecily, listening to the distant oohs and ahhs of the crowd, imagined her leaping from Doc to Wyatt to Virgil and back again. Tebow wanted Cecily and Isabelle to combine acts, but Isabelle had so far resisted. Cecily still wasn’t tall enough to work with the big horses; at least, that was the reason Isabelle gave, though Cecily suspected Isabelle just didn’t want to wonder, when she heard the crowd cheering, if it was really for her.
Cecily didn’t blame her one bit. What else did they really have?
That and each other, anyway.
Cecily stood on Prince’s back for the curtain call with all the performers—they marched out waving to the crowd, then processed around the ring and back out again. The instant Cecily was out from under the Big Top, she leaped down and asked Isabelle to take charge of Prince. “Sure, sure, go on!” Isabelle said, smiling and waving her away. Whenever they were in Iowa, she always let Cecily go out to watch the crowd exiting. Again, just in case.
