Page 42 of All We Thought We Knew
It had been a disaster.
I’d come home from school the day after the hateful telegram arrived, telling us of Mark’s death. It took the military two weeks to get his body back to Tennessee. Mama wanted her son buried near home rather than the national cemetery in Nashville orfaraway Washington, and a service was planned, complete with a seven-gun salute. We’d laid Mark to rest on a Wednesday the week before Thanksgiving, and it felt utterly wrong to go forward with a meal that was meant to remind us of our blessings. Mama had insisted Mark would want us to, but when Pastor Arnold referred to Mark as a hero during grace, I lost control.
“Mark isn’t a hero!” I screamed in response, drawing everyone’s shocked attention.
I’d spent the wee hours of the morning in my room, crying and consuming an entire bottle of Jack Daniel’s. My head throbbed, and my stomach rebelled at the aromas, but I’d let Mama coax me downstairs.
That was a huge mistake.
“Mark is a victim. You all killed him.” I staggered over to Dad and dared him to look me in the eye. “You sent him to war. You had no right to encourage my brother to go to Vietnam. To sacrifice him on the altar of politics and money. I will never forgive you for what you’ve done.”
Mama’d hurried to pull me from the room and escort me back upstairs. I saw disappointment and sorrow in her eyes as she stood in the doorway, but I ignored it.
“Mattie, you aren’t the only one who loved Mark. We all miss him,” she said, sniffling.
To my shame, I slammed the door in her face. The following morning, I boarded a bus for California.
A howling wind rattled the kitchen window, bringing me out of my miserable thoughts. The thermometer on the porch said the temperature was thirty-three degrees, but I suspected the windchill was in the twenties. Dad left the house early this morning to check on the horses. I’d caught glimpses of him and Nash coming and going as they cared for the animals. The disagreeable weather was yet one more reason we should forget Thanksgiving Day. I’d rather eat bologna sandwiches and call it done.
I glanced in the direction of the stairs, just out of sight from where I sat.
Mama wasn’t doing well. She’d been in terrible pain the past week, which meant more medicine. While the tiny white pills took the pain away, they took Mama away too. She’d sleep for hours, and in the short periods she was awake, her speech was slow and difficult.
I thought back to my meeting with Dr. Monahan. It hadn’t gone as I’d hoped. He had, just as Nash predicted, told me the same thing he’d told my parents: the cancer was too far advanced. New medicines and treatments were on the horizon, but they would come too late to help Mama. When I pushed back, declaring the need to take her to a specialist in Nashville, the man who’d tended my birth spoke bluntly.
“Mattie, there comes a time when we have to accept that life and death are not in our hands. We in the medical profession do our best, but we aren’t God. If I thought the doctors in Nashville could save your mom, I would’ve taken her there myself. The best thing you can do now is spend time with her and make her as comfortable as possible.”
I left his office and cried all the way home.
With a sigh, I closed the lid on the recipe box and stood.
Why bother with Thanksgiving? What did we have to be thankful for? Mark was gone, and if the doctors were right, Mama wasn’t long for this world. Although Nash volunteered to go to town yesterday and came home with all the usual fixings, the very idea of preparing the meal without Mama’s help made me want to chuck Tom Turkey in the garbage and forget the holiday.
I made my way upstairs and tiptoed into Mama’s room, but she wasn’t sleeping. Her eyes were glassy, and I guessed she’d taken another pill. It wouldn’t be long before she was asleep again.
“There’s my girl.” Although her voice was rough from disuse, her smile was genuine.
“Can I get you anything, Mama? Some water or something to eat?” I came forward and sat on the edge of the bed.
She reached for my hand. “You’re all I need. Stay and talk a while.”
I curled my fingers around hers, swollen to nearly twice their size. Dr. Monahan assured me the swelling was a side effect from the medicine and showed me some massaging techniques that might help. I used one of them now while we chatted about the weather, the horses, and, finally, the upcoming holiday where I confessed I felt inadequate for the job.
“I remember the first Thanksgiving dinner I cooked after your father and I married,” Mama said, her eyes half-closed and a soft smile on her lips. “Granny had moved out of the main house into the cabin and declared it no longer her responsibility to cook the meal. I’d never roasted a turkey before, but I was willing to try.” She gave a weak chuckle. “As you might guess, it didn’t turn out very well. I didn’t know you had to baste the bird often to keep it from drying out.”
I gently rubbed her arm up and down. “Granny was always so mean to everyone. She didn’t even like Dad, her own son.”
Sadness washed over her features. “Mattie, there are things you need to know. To understand. Our family... it isn’t what you’ve always believed.”
I stopped massaging her arm, trying to make sense of what she was saying. “What are you talking about?”
She closed her eyes, her face squinched in the way that told me she was hurting inside. When the episode passed, she looked at me with such urgency in her gaze, it set me on edge.
“I want to show you something.” She motioned to the trunk in the corner. The same one she’d been rummaging through the day she dug out our baby things. “There’s a box with some letters in it. Can you find it for me, please?”
I knew the box she meant. Although I’d rather not travel downmemory lane by going through the trunk’s contents, the task seemed important to her.
The hinges on the lid of the trunk creaked when I opened it. I knew exactly where to look for the old shoebox and soon placed it on the bed beside her. However, she didn’t open it right away. She ran a hand over the top, as though it held something valuable.
