Missing Mom: A Novel Read online

  I am returning your letters. I would not destroy them for then you could not know their “fate”—but now, they are in your position to destroy as I truly hope you will.

  I promise to destroy my letters, when they are returned. I am ashamed

  I hope that God will bless you as He has blessed me and helped me through this time of temptation and doubt.

  Your friend,

  Brendan Dorsey

  There appeared to be only a few letters of Brendan’s, tied together with a piece of green yarn. In the manila envelope marked G.K. there were many more, the envelope was crammed. After nearly forty years, still a sweet, flowery scent wafted from them. I had a glimpse of pink stationery, earnest schoolgirl handwriting that bore little resemblance to my mother’s mature handwriting. One of the letters, dated Christmas Eve 1965, was twelve pages long.

  “Forgive me, Mom! I have to know.”

  This girl I had never met nor even imagined. In 1965, young enough to be my daughter now. This girl who, when she’d been eleven, had lost her mother, too. Who had come home to find her mother in a way that would be a mystery to her, incomprehensible.

  I wanted badly to know, I could scarcely breathe with the excitement of wanting so badly to know, yet, somehow, even as I held the letters, I was pushing them away.

  That sweet flowery scent. My fingertips would smell of it, afterward.

  And Brendan Dorsey’s letters, I pushed more emphatically away. What did I care for Brendan Dorsey’s letters, they had no value to me.

  It would have been a (vaguely insulting?) gesture to return the man’s letters to him without a word. But I wouldn’t do this, either.

  Instead, I returned all the letters—Brendan’s, and Mom’s—to the sewing box. Exactly as I’d found them, in the secret compartment beneath the sewing supplies. How like a child’s hiding place it was! I had to laugh, I would have liked to tease Mom about the sewing box, to make her blush.

  I wasn’t sure what I should do with the sewing box, myself. I did not think that I could destroy it. But I would never tell Clare, certainly. I would never tell anyone. After the trial, I would be able to think more clearly. After the trial, my life would resume. I had faith, I knew that this was so. I loved the man who had promised me this. I think I loved him. Or maybe it was a wish, a childish dream. We would sell the house, Clare and me. Clare would have to return, we would prepare the house to be sold. I would move out, it was time. But I didn’t think that I would return to the apartment in Chautauqua Falls, where unwanted mail was accumulating. Not there. No more. If Clare had moved away, even temporarily, I could move away. There was no reason, that I could not move away. There had been a reason, but what was it?

  I was very happy suddenly. I could not think coherently, I felt as if I’d been awake for months, a terrible light shining into my brain. And now my soul was exhausted, extinguished. Yet I was very happy. I would stumble into my darkened bedroom, to fall on my bed. I would sleep for twelve hours waking to sunshine glaring like a beacon in my face. I would keep my mother’s secrets, that had been entrusted to me.

  Even those secrets of Mom’s I would never know, I would keep.

  part five

  the trial

  “bearer of good news”

  I was ready. I was sick with apprehension and I couldn’t sleep for rehearsing my testimony. And then I entered the house. By the kitchen door. And I called Mom’s name. And I knew that something was wrong but I could not turn back. And at the door to the garage I saw her. I saw her, where she had fallen, and I went to her. And I saw that she had been hurt, and she was not breathing. And I went for help. And I turned back, for it seemed to me that she was breathing, and I could not leave her. And I held her. And I talked to her. And I had to let her go, a second time. I could not sleep feeling the scrape of these words in my throat. Hearing the inadequacy of these words in my mouth. I could not sleep seeing Ward Lynch at the defense table only a few yards away. He would be wearing a suit and a tie, he would be cleaned up, “groomed.” Haircut, cleanshaven. Nothing like the scruffy WANTED: ARMED AND DANGEROUS Lynch who had murdered my mother.

  Except for his eyes. His eyes would be unchanged. Sullen, impassive. Dead eyes of no repentance, no remorse. The last human eyes my mother had seen.

  For Ward Lynch was beyond Mom’s forgiveness. He’d never have wished it. Not from any of us, her survivors. He was beyond us, untouched by us. He was one whom “Feather” Kovach had not touched.

  The trial! Looming before us like a guillotine.

  After months of refusing to speak of it, insisting she wasn’t returning, Clare had returned. “I couldn’t let you go through this alone, sweetie.”

  Sweetie! This was my bossy older sister in her tender-Mommy mode.

  I have to confess, I’m a sucker for Clare as tender-Mommy. I fall for it every time. I’m like my brother-in-law Rob. Kick me, if you promise to kiss me.

  It wasn’t just for the trial that Clare had returned to Mt. Ephraim, obviously. She’d brought Foster, they were living with Rob and Lilja in the Chisholms’ upscale suburban house. For sure, Clare wasn’t about to stay with Aunt Tabitha or other dreary/inquisitive relatives.

  I said, “I’d think, Clare, if you and Rob are ‘separated,’ you wouldn’t be sharing the same house.”

  “It’s a large house, sweetie. There’s a ‘guest suite.’”

  “Who’s the guest, you or Rob?”

  Clare laughed in a way you’d mistake as mirthful if you didn’t know her. “Nikki, obviously you’ve never been married. You can share a bed, you can share a toothbrush, and you can still be ‘separated.’ And you can still be married.”

  Rob had told me that he’d been flying to Philadelphia to see his wife and son, on weekends. He’d brought Lilja with him and the visit had gone “pretty well, considering.” He’d told me that he and Clare were “probably” going to get back together, but not to speak of it to Clare who hated being pressured and hadn’t quite made up her mind. “Clare’s biggest dread is people talking about her.”

  “Are we putting pressure on her? Are we talking about her?”

  “Well, we want her back, don’t we? We love her.”

  This was a phone conversation. Rob was sounding elated, effervescent. There was an almost inaudible clicking of ice cubes. For a weak moment I wished I was there with him, sprawled on a sofa in the Chisholms’ cathedral-ceilinged family room, exchanging bemused complaints of Clare and sharing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The upcoming trial scared me so, I hadn’t dared drink in weeks. Once started, I might not have been able to stop.

  I missed Rob, close up. I missed my flirty brother-in-law. Since observing Rigger in his soiled-green Hedwig House uniform, spike-braided hair and sexy swagger, I’d been thinking about men, and missing them. Not just sex (well, yes: sex) but men.

  “…a taboo subject, O.K., Nikki?”

  Taboo? Was Rob reading my thoughts?

  “With Clare so sensitive like she is. Thin-skinned, you might say. Any reference to her getting a D in that linguistics course, and this blow-up she allegedly had with her old roommate Amy Orlander, she’d be furious with me, and we’d be back at zero.”

  “‘I have a friend in Philadelphia.’”

  “You do? Also?”

  “No, Rob. It’s Clare who has a ‘friend in Philadelphia.’ You must have heard.”

  We laughed together. We were feeling cozy together. After Clare returned to Mt. Ephraim, and to her marriage, I had a hope that she might return to me, too; that I could resume my old relationship with my brother-in-law, that had suited our needs just fine.

  The trial. Postponed another time, to April 11.

  “How can they do this! Keep doing this! When will this end!”

  Angrily I crossed out *TRIAL* on the March date in Mom’s calendar and wrote in *TRIAL* on April 11.

  I felt a taste of horror, that Mom’s animal shelter calendar would be running out soon. From January 2004 to June 2005. That was it.
r />   (How I loved using Mom’s calendar! Since the New Year, I’d been able to check each morning to see what Mom had been doing a full year before and even if I did not follow Mom’s example, there was Mom’s example to be followed.)

  “The trial? No. I don’t talk about it, thank you.”

  Quickly I moved on. In public places I was learning to move in a way that brought to my mind, for some wistful reason, Wally Szalla’s son Troy as he’d been at sixteen, a brash beautiful kid not just fast on his feet but moving in an instinctive zigzag to elude pursuers.

  Six days before the trial was scheduled to begin, Wally Szalla called.

  In the house at 43 Deer Creek Drive in Mom’s sewing room where I’d been experimenting with her sewing machine, for which I had as much aptitude as I’d have had repairing cars, I listened mesmerized to that voice so familiar to me.

  “Nikki? Please pick up, if you’re there. I have news.”

  A pause. Urgent breathing.

  “…if you’re there, Nikki, please? Talk to me?”

  In a panic I thought He’s divorced. He wants to marry me.

  “Darling, I have some good news, I think. I wish I could tell you in person. I wish we could be together. I know I’ve behaved badly and irresponsibly and so much precious time has gone by when we could have been together, but I have news now, darling, my divorce from Isabel will be final by noon on Monday. Darling, I’m on my cell phone just entering Mt. Ephraim on Route Thirty-nine, I’m five minutes from you please tell me you want to see me…”

  Now I did panic. Rushed for my jacket, my car keys, fled for my life.

  Wally, no.

  I can’t, Wally.

  Understand, please Wally.

  I loved you but that time in both our lives is past.

  It was the Chautauqua County Courthouse. It was the brightly lighted first-floor courtroom in which the preliminary hearing had been held the previous June. I had been counseled by the prosecutor who would try the case to “dress conservatively” yet somehow it had happened, don’t ask how, I had stepped into the courtroom naked. In a belated gesture of modesty, embarrassment, I tried to turn back but hands pushed me forward. And in the confusion of blinding lights I was also inside our garage at 43 Deer Creek Drive. Embarrassing to be naked in the eyes of strangers, yet more embarrassing that strangers were gaping at the messy interior of our garage, for all my housecleaning had been undone, everything I’d set out by the curb to be hauled away by trash men was back inside the garage, so crammed and cluttered I could hardly make my way to the witness stand, clumsily trying to shield myself with my hands. There were Mom’s bloodstained clothes, the linen jacket, the floral-print blouse, I fumbled for these to cover my nakedness, still I was naked from the waist down in dream logic consoling myself Well! If I am blinded by the lights I don’t have to see who is watching.

  The trial of the People of the State of New York vs. Ward W. Lynch. This time, the judge had ruled, it would not be postponed.

  I was the first prosecution witness. I was due to arrive at the prosecutor’s office, close by the courthouse, by 9 A.M. of April 11. The trial would not begin until later in the morning, or in the afternoon, for a jury had to be selected and the voir dire, in a case involving murder, might take time. After I gave my testimony, I was “free to depart” the courtroom. But I would not depart the courtroom, I would see the trial through to the very end.

  The prosecutor would bring into evidence, he would show to the jury, Mom’s bloodstained clothes and shoes. He would remove from paper bags her bloodied and torn blue linen jacket, her blouse, her slacks and her underwear: brassiere, panties. He would remove from a paper bag her crepe-soled shoes, stained and stiffened with blood and of the size of a child’s shoes. He would “enact” the murder. He would place a female-looking mannequin on the floor in front of the judge’s raised platform and on this mannequin, in mimicry of the wounds in my mother’s body, there would be bright red strips of tape to indicate where the knife had gone in. With a Swiss Army knife in his hand he would count out thirty-three blows to the mannequin. It would require some time, thirty-three separate blows.

  Seeing the sick look in my face the prosecutor asked me frankly if I believed that I could bear to watch this. I said, “I don’t know. Maybe not. But I will try. For my mother’s sake.”

  The week before the trial. What to wear.

  At night I lay awake not thinking of my testimony but of what I would wear. I had been warned that clothing, hairstyle, makeup and “deportment” weighed heavily with jurors. I was the daughter of the murder victim and would be expected to appear, and to behave, in an appropriate way. Do you think I would wear a tank top, miniskirt, platform shoes? Did you think I would have my hair cut punk-style, and re-dye it purple? (I didn’t ask.) I had been warned that when I saw Ward Lynch, he would not much resemble the individual I’d seen at the preliminary hearing but would be wearing a suit, necktie, his hair would be trimmed, he’d be cleanshaven, unshackled. I had been warned that the defendant was “innocent until proven guilty” and that his clothes would signal innocence and not guilt.

  Those nights before the trial was scheduled to begin I lay awake in my bed thinking of what I would wear and what Ward Lynch would wear. I did not think of my testimony. I did not think of seeing Ward Lynch another time, at so close a distance. I did not think of his sullen face and his unrepentant eyes. Instead I thought, in the way of an anxious schoolgirl: the darkish pinstriped jacket with the cloth-covered buttons and shoulder pads, a long-sleeved white silk blouse beneath, scarcely worn, that Mom sewed for me. Neatly pressed dark trousers. Better, yet: the flared black wool skirt, Mom sewed for me many years ago, I’d worn only once, at a family gathering, to please her.

  I realize you don’t wear skirts very often, Nikki. But this so suits you.

  I love it, Mom! It’s beautiful.

  Are you sure the waist is right? I can adjust it.

  It fits perfectly, Mom. Thank you!

  Well. I hope it’s something you will wear…

  Absolutely, Mom. I will. With the boxy little pinstriped jacket, it will be perfect.

  “‘Innocent until proven guilty.’ I hate it!”

  In her new, sisterly-tender mood, Clare did not accuse me of being a squatter. Her emotions were fierce and unpredictable but they were directed toward Ward Lynch and the protocol of the upcoming trial.

  “‘Alleged’ murderer, he’s called. As if Mom is ‘allegedly’ dead.”

  In this mood, Clare allowed herself to utter the word dead.

  Though usually we preferred passed away, or gone.

  “My nightmare is, they find him not guilty.”

  Did I want to share my sister’s nightmare, no thank you. I had my own.

  Though she was right, of course. Lying awake at night choosing my clothes for the trial, I had time between breaths to think of this possibility.

  “It’s like Mom is on trial, too. Maybe they will try to blame her.”

  Clare spoke angrily but I knew that she was frightened. We were girls strangely alone together in our parents’ house, uneasy because our parents weren’t home, but might come home at any minute, unless maybe, and this was the really scary part, they were gone and were not coming home, it was only just us, Clare and me.

  “‘Not guilty.’ The jury handed that verdict to O. J. Simpson, remember. It can happen.”

  We were examining the darkish pinstriped jacket, the flared wool skirt. The long-sleeved white silk blouse with the eyelet bodice. These clothes were laid out on my bed girl-style. We were sisters contemplating an “outfit” one was going to wear for some special occasion. The older sister’s opinion would count for more than the younger sister’s though it was the younger sister who would be wearing the outfit.

  Clare repeated, “It can happen, Nikki. For sure, they will try to blame Mom the way they blamed Simpson’s wife.”

  I wasn’t going to be drawn into Clare’s madness. I wasn’t going to discuss the Simpson
decision! I would wait for Clare’s emotions to run their course.

  “He has concocted a story, we know this. He is claiming that another man, another hitchhiker, was with him in Mom’s car, and came to the house, and Mom wanted to ‘hire them as handymen’ and Lynch was in another part of the house when—”

  “Clare, stop. I don’t want to hear this.”

  “In court, you’ll hear it. We all will.”

  “All the evidence points to Lynch. There was never any second hitchhiker. The jury will know this. Please!”

  Clare was following me through the house. She’d frightened Smoky with her vehemence, and now she was frightening me. “Rob says I’m being ridiculous, but what if, Nikki. What if. It would only take one juror, to poison everything. A woman, maybe. She looks at Lynch and falls in love with him, it could happen. Crazier things have happened. Ted Bundy’s trial, a woman fell in love with him and proposed to him and they were married while he was in prison. These things happen, Nikki. Don’t shut that door on me!”

  I was trying to hide in the bathroom. Clare pushed the door open, glaring.

  “Clare, that woman wasn’t a juror. I’m sure she wasn’t.”

  “But what if she had been?”

  The trial. And after the trial, a second jury to deliberate the “penalty phase.”

  In the event that Ward Lynch was found guilty of the numerous charges against him, a second jury would decide if his sentence should be life in prison without the possibility of parole or death.

  The second trial would take place immediately following the first trial. At this trial, members of Gwendolyn Eaton’s family would be invited to testify. Clare would testify. Dad’s brothers Herman and Fred would testify. Possibly, Aunt Tabitha would testify. And maybe Lucille Kovach.