The Holding Place

Chapter Four

Abby…          





         My little girl is the breathing image of me. Place a childhood picture of me right beside and it is almost impossible to tell the difference, but she has no idea how much of her is myself. She knows nothing about me. Michael has removed every trace of me from the home we once lovingly share. He does not speak to Norah about me; he hardly speaks to her at all. Claire is unsure of what to tell her about me so instead she chooses to say nothing. For four years Michael has tried to forget me, still trying to bury my memory so deep that it will never find him again.


         I am with Michael every day, close enough to feel his every torment. There is an unremitting loneliness inside of him and he tries to find its cessation at the bottom of a brown glass bottle. He no longer dreams anymore, does not even have nightmares. His sleep is never regenerating, if he even sleeps at all. The moment he closes his eyes he is with me again, not dreaming, just seeing.


         He relives a singular dark moment over and over again, hoping every time it comes back to him that he can finally the answers that he spends all of his nights seeking. He will never find what he is looking for. He did not find them four years ago or every night since then. I know this because I relive the same moment every time he does, the searing pain it brings to him always brings me back.


         I am trying to find answers as well. It is torture for me, my existence. I watch Michael slowly but surely fade away from the people who love him. I am terrified what will become of Norah when Claire finally decides to leave and force Michael to finally start being a father. Claire will leave, of this I am sure. Michael has given her no other choice. She is a wife with a family of her own. She raises Norah out of loyalty for her brother. She never thought the grief would last this long.


         I did not think it would last this long either. I did not think that my death was real or that my funeral was real. I kept thinking, sometimes still keep thinking, that this is all a dream and that I must wake up soon. 


         Four years are gone and I’m still not waking up. I’m still watching Michael continue to hold on to me. I love him so dearly; he is the love of my life. This is never what I wanted for him; nobody wants the people they love to suffer.


         I cannot touch him. I cannot talk to him. There are times when the pain is so great that I believe he is going to shatter inside. So much of him is broken that there is not much left to shatter. I am helpless to help him. There is no reason why Michael should suffer so much. He loved me more than life itself, dedicated his entire life to me, and still does. He was the man who saved me.


         It was true love the night I met him at that restaurant, nobody ever brought out such a brave side of me before, even I did not know it was there within me. It did not take us much time to know that we would spend the rest of our lives together. We married in a little white chapel in his home town, with only our closest loved ones in attendance. Michael and I barely made it across the threshold before we made love. 


We were wild that way, wild in love and ignited with passion for each other.


         Michael is just now starting his nightly ritual, the familiar burning is beginning to grow inside of me .I must start learning how to resist the pull of Michael’s pain. I need to be able to watch Norah for just a little longer. I miss so much of her life. Michael was not there for her first steps, her first word, none of the firsts that he should have witnessed. His perpetual melancholy makes it almost impossible for him to be here with Norah. When Norah looks at him with her expressive green eyes all he sees is my face and the pain he associates with it. Letting me go is something Norah cannot allow him to do, she is the living picture of me.


         “Abby, what are you doing?” a male voice from behind me asks.


         Blaine is standing a short distance behind me. There is a grim look beginning to settle upon his handsome face. I know why he is here. I am not supposed to be standing here, watching the happier moments in my daughter’s life. Michael’s sorrow is calling to me and I want to stay with my little girl a little longer.


         “She is turning four today,” I whisper.


         Blaine puts a comforting hand on my shoulder and gives me a sympathetic nod of his head. I sense his regret for calling me back. He wants me to be able to stay as much as I want to. He knows how much I ache for my daughter. His sympathy is almost tangible, a rarity in my existence.


Blaine says nothing and he takes his hand from my shoulder. There are things that he is searching for as well. He is as lost as I am and he is reminded of it with every moment that he misses in his loved one’s life.


         “He doesn’t even touch her, Blaine,” I say softly, thinking that he is still standing behind me.


         When I hear no reply I turn around to find him no longer standing a few feet behind me. I am no longer at the park watching Norah grow anxious as her party starts to begin. I am standing on a dark street in front of a row of older houses that look vaguely familiar to me. I cannot exactly place in my memory to the time that I have stood on this road before.


         The vague familiarity of this dark street is almost haunting. I cannot imagine a time when I would have walked this lonely street. The houses seem to go on forever in a straight row, all of them the same, give or take the difference of a mini-van or sedan in the driveway.  Lawns are trimmed neatly and potted flowers are placed meekly in entrance ways, the welcoming of those who want better but cannot attain it.


         It is the congruence that sends shivers down my spine, the routine sadness as palpable as velvet. This is the street that holds the darkest memories of my youth, where I watched my mother stumble through a life she could never be satisfied with.  I stand at the driveway of the small home I grew up. It is modest, painted light blue and a garden splashed with marigolds and daisies borders the walkway.  This is the small home where my parents once hoped that their small dreams could grow bigger.


         The brightness of the paint and the gaiety of the flowers almost make it look welcoming but I know better than that. It is an image that my mother created to try to smooth over the cracks in her life. She wanted but peace and harmony in her life. The hours she spent tending her flowers were endless. All she ever wanted was to plant her dreams and let them grow.


         I cannot fathom why I have been brought to this place. I left this lonely place at sixteen, determined to always leave it behind me. Few happy memories were made within the wall of this blue house. A childhood home is supposed to be a place where one comes back to visit for the nostalgia of a time spent growing up here. I never grew in this house; I barely managed to exist.


         The happiness that did occur was with a man that I barely remember, it was the way that my mother wanted it. I remember dancing with him in the living room to Bruce Springsteen, my small feet atop his huge ones.  He would braid my hair and he would allow me to pretend to braid his.  He would come home late in the day and bring me small presents that never failed to light up my face; somewhere in the house I shared with Michael there is still a box filled with every little knick knack he ever gave me.


         There is not much I remember about his death, I was only four years old when he passed. I don’t remember ever going to a funeral. I remember her not crying at all, only staring blankly at those who looked at her. She put herself together perfectly, almost too perfectly. She was beautiful, she still is. She loved making things beautiful.


         Quiet surrounded his death. One day he was coming through the door to eat dinner with his wife and little girl and the next he just stopped coming through it. I was with my grandparents the night that my father died; I remember this because he died on a night during one of my rare visits to my grandparents. My mother hated his father’s parents and did all she could to keep them from me. My grandparents loved me as much as my father did and was devastated that after his death my mother absolutely refused to allow them to visit me anymore.


         “An accident, Abigail,” my mother had told me. “Just a terrible accident.”


         That was all she ever said to me about it. My father quickly became a subject that was forbidden to be brought up in her presence. My memory of what he looked like is severely eroded. Sometimes I see a tall man with brown hair and at other times he has blonde or red hair. I mix the colors of his hair with the colors of the men that followed after him. Sometimes he is short, sometimes he is tall, and sometimes I cannot remember anything about him at all. This is how my mother wanted my memory of my father to be.


         I know my mother loved him, hearing her say his name in her dreams sometimes long after his death. She resented him too. She was from Midwest small town America and it was a life she grew up hating. She fell in love with a man who grew up in that life and was completely content with it. My father was a plumber, just as his father was before him. He loved his wife and he adored his daughter. He was satisfied.


         It was my mother who could never be satisfied with the things she had in her life. She married my father to save her, unintentionally falling in love with him. The love she had for him was not enough to make her happy. The child he had with her was not enough to make her happy. If anything, my birth made her resent him all the more, it stopped her from leaving. She would always threaten him that she would take me away and find another man who would give her the life she wanted.


         My father loved me as much as Michael loved me, what little I remember about him is filled with his love of my mother. He would shower her with flowers and chocolates, tell her he loved her numerous times a day. He was utterly devoted to her and would never dream of doing anything that might hurt her. He dreamed of giving her the world but he could only go as far as a plumber’s salary would let him.


         My mother thought she deserved all the finer things in life and my father tried to give them to her. He bought her a car when he couldn’t afford it and would go without just to make sure that she was happy. She was never happy and this dragged my father down. My last few memories of him are remembered with him having a deep sadness about him. He couldn’t make the woman he loved happy and this destroyed him.


         It was like my mother barely even flinched at my father’s death, wasting no time in removing everything that was a reminder of him from the house that she lived in. She loved me as a child, I know she did, but there was something that stopped her from being able to show it. I could never understand why I caused her so much grief. She thought me a difficult child and I was. Acting out and rebelling were the only ways I knew to try to reach out to her. The day my father died I became an orphan.


         It hurts to simply stand in front of this blue house. I think of all of the things that I never had and it reminds me of the things that Norah will never have. The pain the childhood will bring her is the very pain I swore to myself that she would never have. That is why I ran away from this place and left the memory of my mother and father behind me. I forced the memories from my mind every time they threaten to plague me. The cycle is starting all over again.


         I can do nothing to save her. I can do nothing to save Michael. I cannot even save myself. I watch every day, just watching and watching, unable to do anything else. The concept of time is my curse. I am well aware of it as every day passes by and I am still in this place. I am willing to do just about anything to escape it. I am tired of watching Michael’s soul dying.


         The presence of a man on the side of the house distracts me from my miserable thoughts. I wonder if this is someone who moved into this house long after I left it. He has dark hair and he is a very tall, lithe man. Even in the nighttime I can tell that his skin in darkened from many hours spent outside. He is standing at the side of the house and staring straight at me. I know that he cannot see me; I have met only two others who have been able to see me. I have never seen this man before.


         He disappears suddenly from the side of the house. I do a double take. I must be seeing things; people just don’t disappear like that. I look in all directions but he is still nowhere to be found. There is no trace of the dark haired man. All that is left on the street is the sound of the wind teasing the leaves in the trees. My mind is just playing tricks on me.


         “I’ve been waiting twenty five years to do that," a voice chuckles, warm and deep.


         I jump in fear and see that he is standing directly behind me. He is giving me a toothy grin with white, even teeth. This man is simply an apparition, I decide. I must be losing my mind. Nobody can see me. People cannot see what isn’t tangible, and that is certainly what I am not. My loneliness and heartache is causing my mind to scream out for company, I’d recognize this mind trick anywhere. My mother was plagued with it so many times.