Bones and Roses Read Free Page B

party than place of employment. Her blond hair was in a French braid, curly tendrils trailing around her heart-shaped face. From a distance she looked like Marilyn Monroe. I was at an age when my friends were embarrassed by their parents, but I never felt that way about my mom. I was proud of her. Proud to be her daughter, even though I felt I could never measure up. I had been told I was pretty, but I wasn’t beautiful like her. My hair was dirty-blond rather than golden; my flat chest and boyish hips showed no hint of coming attractions the likes of which she boasted. The only thing I got from her was my eyes: gray-green and thick-lashed. (My boyfriend, Daniel, once said gazing into them was like gazing into a tide pool, which was a compliment coming from him: He’s an associate professor of marine biology.)
    I had noticed at breakfast she seemed preoccupied, as if something were weighing on her, but I didn’t think too much of it. My parents hadn’t been getting along, so I chalked it up to another argument with Dad. When I arrived home from school later that day, she was gone, along with her suitcase. She’d left a note saying she had to go away for a little while, but she’d be back for Arthur and me as soon as she could. Don’t worry. Everything will be okay. Love, Mom . I didn’t know then about her lover, whom she’d met at work—Stan was on the construction crew building the new wing at the Fontana Spa and Wellness Center, where my mom ran the gift shop. I didn’t find out until much later when a kid in my class, Cam Pressley, called my mom a whore. After I was sent to the principal’s office for slugging Cam with my backpack hard enough to give him a bloody nose, my dad had to come pick me up. I asked him about Mom on the way home. He was careful not to lay blame, saying only that she had found someone else who made her happier than he could. To his credit, he never once said a bad thing about her. Whatever he might have felt or thought, he took those feelings to his grave.
    My mother was far from perfect. She drank too much and flirted with other men. She was always buying stuff my parents couldn’t afford and she’d pout when Dad made her return it. She was famous for starting and abandoning projects. When I finally got around to clearing out the basement of our old house after Dad died, I found boxes with half-completed scrapbooks; squares for a quilt that was never stitched; fabric from bolts, folded but not cut, and dress patterns never opened; recipe books with page after page of bookmarked recipes she’d never gotten around to trying. Yet she could light up a room just walking into it. She had a laugh so infectious random passersby on the street would often pause and smile at hearing it. She was generous in her affections, too, always pulling me or Arthur into a hug and snuggling up next to us on the bed before tucking us in at night. That’s what made it so hard to believe she would abandon us. For years I clung to the hope that, if we hadn’t heard from her, it was due to circumstances beyond her control: amnesia from a blow to the head, or that she was being held prisoner by Stan, who’d turned out to be a bad guy. It was a long time before I had reason to doubt her love.
    Ten years ago, I got a postcard from a cheesy theme park in Florida. On the front was a photo of a burly guy wrestling an alligator. On the back was a brief message that read “Sorry for everything. ” It was signed “Stan Cruikshank.” It was only then I had learned Stan’s name. A subsequent Google search turned up nothing but a couple of misdemeanor arrests, one for driving with a suspended license, the other for assault and battery. But it dispelled the notion that my mom was being held prisoner or that she had amnesia. Or that she was dead—if he felt bad enough to contact me, surely he would have informed me. Which left the inescapable