Disclaimer: Not mine. Stop asking.
A/N: A huge thanks to Cropper, LosingInTranslation, Mingsmommy and Superlibn for the beta work. They are all amazing!
December 20, 2007
Reaching out, Sara laid her hand over her mother's. "Doing normal things didn't make us normal. It just made the rest of it worse."
Laura looked down to where Sara's hand covered hers; one long and elegant, the other work roughened and old. Not once since Mike died had the touch of another person affected her as much as this one did. The simple fact that Sara hadn't thought about it first, hadn't even hesitated, spoke volumes. "It's funny, the things you remember." She looked up and gave Sara a soft smile.
"For the longest time, I've worked very hard to forget the bad stuff. And now you're asking me to dredge it all up again." Turning her hand over, Laura grasped Sara's fingers and gave a light squeeze.
Sara considered the woman across from her. The long gray braid and crow's feet seemed to melt away, replaced by auburn curls and smooth skin. And Sara was taken back more than twenty years. She remembered the bruises on Laura's face, the scratches on her arms and chest. Vividly she recollected the blisters across Laura's back following an altercation that involved a bowl of soup that hadn't met with her father's approval.
"I've never forgotten." Sara gently extricated her hand from her mother's grip. She held Laura's gaze and said in a low voice, "I've never forgotten what it was like to watch him hit you, or the way it sounded. And I remember what it felt like to be hit by him. I've never forgotten what it was like to live in fear."
Pushing to her feet, Laura moved over to the sink. Leaning on the counter, she stared out the window into the backyard. The brilliant blue of the mid-winter's sky seemed to mock her. In direct contrast, the room behind her seemed dark and stormy with all the long suppressed emotions swirling around. "You have to let this go, Sara. It ruined my life. Don't let it ruin yours, too."
"That's why I'm here." Sara gripped the can of root beer, her fingers denting the metal with a quiet thunk, her eyes boring into the hole in the top. "Because it is ruining my life. It controls me and I'm tired of living like that."
Laura's head dropped down, her chin resting on her chest, as her eyes slid closed and she drew in a shuddering breath. Her fingers gripped the edge of the sink until her knuckles turned white, her fingertips bloodless with the effort. "What is it you think talking about all of this is going to accomplish?"
The kitschy salt and pepper shakers shaped like crowing roosters blurred before her unseeing eyes. Her gaze turned inward, Sara thought for a moment, her mind trying vainly to offer up any kind of plausible answer. She wanted desperately to say that some answers to her questions would put an end to her anger and fear. But she was pretty sure it might not be the case. Her problems ran much deeper than just her past and the death of her father.
"I don't know." Sara's voice quivered, and her eyes grew glassy with unshed tears. Straightening her shoulders, she drew in a calming breath. When she spoke again her words were strong. "But I need to understand where it all went wrong. I need to know why."
With a bitter smile on her lips, Laura let the memories wash over her. Suddenly, she wasn't a middle-aged, ex-con, innkeeper drinking root beer with her adult daughter. Instead, she was back in that rundown house, back in the fucked up mess she used to call her life.
She could smell the stale smoke and the old grease and sweat. She could taste the fear. That old table with the metal legs and cream laminate top, the chairs that would barely support Sara but were solid enough to break a bone, the clock on the wall that ticked away the seconds between fights; they were so real Laura was positive that she could reach out and touch them. She fought back nausea as in her mind she heard Mike screaming her name.
As if from a great distance she began, "You know, Sara, there are some people who should never have children. Mike and I…we were those people." A smirk twisted her full lips and she huffed out a bitter laugh even as tears began their slow slide down her cheeks. Turning, she faced Sara, making one last attempt to leave the past where it belonged – in the past. "Do we have to go through all this now? What will it solve?"
"It may not solve anything," Sara choked out, dragging her hands through her hair. "But I know, deep down, that I have to come to terms with it so I can move past it. I need to put it behind me so I can have a life." Laura began to slowly shake her head back and forth, but Sara held up a hand to stop her from speaking. "I need to know why it had to end like it did. I need to know that I'm not as damaged as I feel."
"Sara," her mother interjected, "you are not damaged. Look at you," she waved a hand in her daughter's direction. "You're a strong, brilliant, beautiful woman. You are everything I never was."
"That's not true." Sara argued, her voice rising as anger surged through her. "I can't do the job. I can't be the woman Gil deserves. I can't let it go."
"Fine," Laura bit out, as her anger floated to the surface. "You want to know, I'll tell you." Drawing herself up to her full height, back ramrod straight, she wiped the tears from her face. "I did it for you. And for Josh." She paused for a long moment before adding, "I may not have been the best mother in the world but I knew that I couldn't let it continue. The two of you deserved better."
Sara could feel her heart hammering. She was on the cusp of something far scarier than anything she had ever faced. For better or worse, nothing would ever be the same. Her hands trembled and she pressed them against her aching stomach. Finally she managed to choke out, "Why? Why that day? Why not before?"
Even as she asked the question, as she took another tiny step toward the truth, Sara steeled herself against the answer. She was so close. Close enough to taste the fear. Invisible to the eye, her whole body began to tremble. Her mouth was dry, drier than she could ever remember, drier even than when she was lost in the desert. She ran her tongue over her lips in an effort to wet them.
The silence was deafening, but in her head, Sara could hear a voice whispering, "Please don't tell me. Please don't tell me." The words short and choppy, anxiety evident in every desperate syllable.
Turning away from her daughter and the conflict written on her face, Laura once again rested her hands on the counter. She heaved a sigh and when she spoke her voice sounded old and frail, tired beyond her years. "Because he raped you." Her narrow shoulders began to shake with the sobs racking her body.
Sara covered her mouth with her hand in an effort to hold in the cry of anguish that was rising in her chest. She wasn't sure she was ready for this, if she'd ever be ready. Until that moment, she had been able to tuck that memory away, hiding it from herself and everyone else, but not anymore. Now it was out there, standing in the kitchen of the B&B like the proverbial elephant. And the guilt that had been gnawing at her for more than half her life suddenly had fangs. It ripped through her body leaving a burning, bloody ache behind. For several long minutes there was no sound.
Finally, Sara broke the silence with a ragged, whisper. "It wasn't a nightmare."
Laura merely shook her head, unable to force words out through her sobs.
"So, it was my fault." The words were sad and resigned, so quiet they were almost inaudible.
"What?" Laura spun around, her braid flying out behind her, eyes wide and confused. "How could you think that?"
Standing, Sara began to pace, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, bare feet silent on the linoleum. "I should have fought harder. If I had…if I had stopped him, he wouldn't be dead."
"Oh, my sweet baby girl," Laura murmured, moving over to stand in front of Sara, stopping her frantic movement. Putting her hands on the younger woman's shoulders, she looked directly into her eyes. "You were a child…my child. It was my job to protect you and I failed. None of this, and I mean NONE of it, is your fault."
"Logically I know that. But," Sara's hand came up to thump against her chest, "in here it feels like it belongs to me."
"I can't absolve you, Sara. I'm not a priest. But I was there and I can tell you that the fault for your father's death belongs only to me and to him." Laura's shoulders sagged and her hands slid from Sara's shoulders as if her arms were too heavy to stay aloft any longer. Slowly, she made her way to a chair and slipped into it.
"The years before Josh are really a blur." Her eyes were looking straight ahead but she wasn't seeing anything but the pictures inside her mind. "We settled in. We met our neighbors and made friends. Mike had a job working at a service station." She turned her head slowly, her eyes struggling to focus on Sara. "He was a really good mechanic, you know."
Again her gaze turned inward. "I was waitressing. We were the life of every party. We were stoned most of the time. Never anything more than a little pot, maybe some hash. We were right where we wanted to be."
"But then I got pregnant and had to quit work. Money got a little tight and the drinking started." Laura looked up surprised to see Sara still pacing. "Come sit down. I've got more to say."
Sara hesitated, fighting the need to keep moving, before sliding into the chair she had left only a few minutes earlier. "I'm listening."
Laura looked at Sara, surprised at the flatness of her tone and her eyes. The disdain. The disbelief. It was hard to reconcile that with the woman who had laughed and cried with her over the past couple of weeks. It reminded her of the cops that had interviewed her all those years ago. Once again, she realized that life was full of irony and God really did have a sense of humor.
"Suddenly it wasn't just the two of us. We had Josh and he needed things; more shoes, more milk, more clothes, toys, a bike. And money got tighter still. Before long I was pregnant again and then the recession happened. Mike lost his job. And things just got worse.
"I loved him, you know." Her words were weary, heavy but her eyes glowed with something soft and feminine, something Sara had seen countless times in battered faces, "More than I had ever loved another person. More than I loved myself or my children. It was all consuming. All I wanted was for him to love me too. So I thought if I could be better, do things the way he liked, he would love me.
"I know it's not true – now. But when you live like that you get caught up in it." Laura once more clasped Sara's hand, her words spilling out in a torrent. "It's a cycle. The pain, the apologies, the fear, the love. They become entangled in your mind until you believe that one is necessary in order to have the other.
"I had no friends. I had no family. I had no one but Mike; he made sure of that." Tears ran down her cheeks, falling unheeded onto her blouse, leaving black splotches on the brown fabric. "The first time he hit me I told myself it was an accident. The first time he hit Josh I swore it wouldn't happen again. The first time he hit you I was too far into the bourbon to give it a second thought. When he…when I realized he had molested you I knew we needed to get out but I had nowhere to go." She flinched when Sara jerked away the hand she had been holding. Swallowing back sobs, she continued, "Surely, in your line of work, you've heard this story a thousand times, Sara. Mine just didn't end as well as some."
"Why not just leave?" Sara ran her hands through her hair, using the heels of her hands to massage her temples. "Why not go to a shelter? Or back to your parents?"
Laura's smile was sad, her pain obvious. "Whether you want to believe it or not, I did try…but maybe that's something you've heard a thousand times, too." She sighed. "My parents disowned me…would always hang up when I called." Chewing on the corner of her lip, she shrugged. "I guess they were determined to make me pay for my rash decision." Taking a deep breath, Laura met Sara's fierce gaze unflinchingly. "So, when it came down to it, I couldn't let you pay for my choices either, Sara. At least not any more than you had paid already."
Sara swallowed, torn between wanting to stop and needing to go on. "A shelter?"
"Domestic violence wasn't something you talked about back then. Nobody wanted to be involved in other people's personal lives." Taking a long drink from her now warm root beer, Laura sighed again. "I didn't know what else to do, Sara. I had no one. I had no car, no driver's license. There may have been shelters, but I didn't know where they were and even if I had known, I wouldn't have been able to get there."
She shut her eyes briefly, and when she opened them again, her eyelashes were wet. "I know it sounds ridiculous now, but at the time I really thought it was the only way out, the only way to save us." The look on her face was one of overwhelming pain and sadness. "Please believe me when I say I'm sorry."