Unbreathed Memories

chapter 19

Ever notice how you can go for days and days and nothing much happens? Get up, eat, sleepwalk through the day, eat, go to bed? Then all of a sudden-bah-bing-everything seems to happen all at once.

It began on Lincoln’s Birthday, the day I saw my plastic surgeon. This miracle-working woman, whose office was decorated with her own paintings and sculptures, had created another masterpiece. My breast. A beautiful, healthy pink mound that stood tall and proud upon my chest. I was thrilled to be the owner of a boob that I didn’t have to take out of a drawer every morning.

While the doctor warned me to examine myself often for telltale signs of rejection, I stood in front of the mirror, half listening, wearing not much more than a goofy grin and admiring my newly matched pair. I was enormously pleased; so pleased that after I left the office, I had to control an irrational desire to show off Dr. Bergstrom’s remarkable handiwork to everyone I met.

I fantasized strolling up Maryland Avenue from shop to shop. “Look at this,” I’d say to Jehanne, the curly-headed barista at Seattle Coffee. And she’d go, “Why, Mrs. Ives, wherever did you get that?”

I had permission to drive again, too. After we returned home from the doctor’s, I left Paul happily puttering in his basement workshop and celebrated my new freedom with a trip to the grocery store. I wandered up and down the aisles as if greeting old friends-the coffee bins, the dairy case, the gourmet food counter-then carried some English muffins, cheddar cheese, and a carton of half-and-half through the checkout, managing to keep my shirt on the whole time.

My second solo outing caught me totally by surprise. I had spent the early part of Friday afternoon getting my prescribed exercise by strolling along the Naval Academy seawall, a bulkhead of heaped-up boulders and concrete that edged the academy shoreline from the Visitors’ Center all the way to Hospital Point. I began my walk at the end of the seawall nearest the Visitors’ Center, stopping to enjoy a panoramic view of Annapolis harbor. In Feburary only a few hearty cruisers and die-hard sailing live-aboards were anchored in the scenic harbor. In summer, though, it would be a different story; boats would be anchored wall-to-wall, and you could practically walk to Eastport without getting your feet wet. I smiled. Eastport. Home of Severn Sailing Association, the school where Paul had spent many dollars and hopeless hours trying to turn me into an accomplished sailor.

I had stopped to rest at the submarine memorial near Trident Light and had just parked my buns on the topmost step, when the cell phone in my parka chirped. Ruth was calling from a pay phone in the Los Angeles airport to tell me she was on her way home. Worry and guilt had gradually eroded her ability to concentrate on her spiritual growth. She’d left Bali after discovering an escape clause in the travel agency’s contract that allowed partial refunds for bona fide medical emergencies.

Seven hours later, I met Ruth at BWI, gave her a hug, told her she’d need to heft her own luggage into my trunk, and drove her straight to University Hospital in Baltimore.

Mother was overjoyed.

Ruth was in tears.

I paced. I couldn’t keep my shirt on, quite literally. “You gotta see this, Mom.” I drew the privacy curtains across the glass partitions that separated Mother’s room from the adjoining ones. I unbuttoned my shirt and unfastened my bra. “Tah-dah!” I flashed my mom. “What do you think?”

Mother beamed. “Beautiful, Hannah. A work of art.”

From a bedside chair Ruth studied my chest with interest. “Weirdest show-and-tell I’ve ever seen.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud of anything in my whole life,” I declared while reassembling my clothing. “It’s a shame I can’t show off Dr. Bergstrom’s work to everybody.”

“Speaking of everybody, where’s Daddy?” Ruth wanted to know.

Mother managed a grin. “He’ll be back in a bit. He went home to bathe and change his clothes after I complained that he’d been wearing the same olive-green trousers for the last three days and I was sick of looking at them.”

Ruth brought Mother up to date on her abbreviated trip while I listened jealously. Morning walks to the rice paddies, meditation, herbal steam baths-it sounded positively divine. After an hour, Daddy joined us, smelling like Ivory soap and having changed into a pair of freshly pressed khaki pants and a red plaid shirt. His hair was still damp. I listened impatiently while Ruth repeated it all for him, but Mother didn’t seem to mind. She smiled and asked questions as if it were the very first time she’d heard about colonic hydrotherapy.

Ruth’s Conduit Street cupboard had never been so thoroughly bare, so I made her come to our house for dinner. Carryout was on the menu again, a particular specialty of mine. Ruth happily joined Paul and me in the kitchen, where we heaped our plates high and dug in.

That was where Connie and Dennis found us a few minutes later, our teeth sunk into slices of garlic bread and our forks fully draped with spaghetti puttanesca from Cantina d’Italia.

I wiped tomato sauce off my chin. “Hi, you guys.”

Dennis removed his leather jacket and draped it over the back of a vacant chair. “Got something you’ve been waiting for, Hannah.” He laid a photocopy of a fax on the table. “It’s from the Waterville police department. Came in today.”

“You are amazing!” My dinner was forgotten. “But how are you able to show this to us?”

Dennis pulled a chair out for Connie, waited until she was seated, then sat down himself. “It was all part of the official court proceedings. Although Mrs. Voorhis’s note was never made public, the gist of it certainly leaked out.”

Connie wriggled out of her jacket, leaned forward to snitch a strand of spaghetti from my plate, and continued, “Small wonder, when you read what it says.”

I picked up the photocopy with both hands and held it in front of me. Paul leaned sideways and craned his neck to get a better view.

In a neat, looping hand, Fiona Voorhis had written:

I can’t go on living. Truthfully, I have been dying for years, a little bit every day, sick with the knowledge of what Mark has done to our daughter; hating myself for the part I played in his abuse out of simple ignorance and denial. Will anyone listen to me now?

Underneath, on the same piece of paper, was the photocopy of another note. Fiona had left a message for her daughter, too.

My darling Diane. Someday you’ll understand. Forgive me. I love you. Mother.

A dozen words that thirteen-year-old Diane Sturgis must have memorized and carried about with her in her heart.

Finally, all these years later, Diane had understood.