Family Inheritance (17 page)

Agony encompassed Alice as she listened to Suzanne. She didn't know what to say or
do. So much was changing so fast between the three of them, and Alice wasn't sure
she understood the changes or was even ready for them.

When Suzanne reached for Alice's hand and tightly squeezed it, Alice was taken aback
by the tears that glistened in Suzanne's eyes and the words that she spoke in a voice
that was barely above a whisper. “And, Alice, I didn't
have you to mother me. I really
missed that. I hated it when you married Jake. He wasn't good enough for you. I could
tell he wasn't going to take care of you, but you wouldn't see it. Remember when
I tried to talk with you? You said I was jealous because you were getting married
when I couldn't even get dates. I turned down dates all the time. I just studied.
I decided I was never going to risk having to depend on a man.” Suzanne choked up.
“Then I met Stephen, and I really thought it could work, but I couldn't have sex
unless I was drunk, even with him. So I started drinking more, and that really ended
the marriage. I still grieve for him, for what could have, should have been. Something
I'll never have.”

“And just why won't you have it, Suzanne?” Helene demanded. “Just answer me that.”

“I told you I hate it when you go into your big sister voice.” Suzanne grinned. “Yet
I sorta like it. When you used to do that, then I'd know everything was going to
be okay. Because if Helene said there was a better way to do it, we knew she'd find
the better way. I never doubted you'd have a good husband and great marriage and
all the trappings.”

Suzanne grabbed Helene's hand. “Do you remember when we used to play paper dolls?
I used to get so mad at you. You would spend hours cutting out all this special furniture
and arranging it just so. You knew exactly what you wanted. I bet your home is a
dream house. You always said it would be, and you always made your wishes come true.”

“How can you say that?” Helene cried out. “My wishes haven't come true. My marriage
is a disaster, my son is an alcoholic, and the only close friend I have is my maid.
Quit painting this perfect picture of my life. It's not perfect. Dreams don't come
true. There's always a black cloud somewhere. Nothing is perfect. We can't make it
perfect no matter how hard we try.”

“Have you stopped trying, Helene?” Alice urged. “There's always a way. That's what
you always told us, that there are always options. You used to always tell me, ‘You
just haven't considered all your options, Alice. The best ones might not be perfect,
but there are always options.' Why are you just accepting that your marriage is a
wreck and your life is awful?” Alice huffed in desperation.

Helene's eyes grew large as teardrops hugged her cheeks and dropped
from her chin.
She didn't stop them from falling . . . just sat there and stared at her sister.

Alice moved closer and pulled Helene's head onto her shoulder. Suzanne moved to the
other side and placed her head on Helene's shoulder. Silently, they sat there as
tears ran scattered patterns down their faces.

“Everything will be okay, you know,” Alice whispered. “We've got each other, right?
Mom and Dad gave us that. They gave us each other. Maybe we just gotta check out
all the options that come with that.”

Helene curled her sisters closer. “I love you two. I don't think I've ever really
realized that. But I really do.” She gently placed a kiss on the top of their heads
as the sisters lapsed into a peaceful silence.

Chapter 19

Northern Minnesota

The breakfast clatter in the restaurant was pleasant to Alice's ears. She couldn't
remember the last time she had eaten out in a nice restaurant. This was just a diner
as Helene said, but to Alice it was eating out. She had dressed in her best polyester
pantsuit and had taken special care with her hair this morning. In fact, she had
even borrowed some of Sarah's makeup, and her daughter had shown her how to apply
it.

“Mom, you could be pretty if you just took some time with yourself and—”

“And wasn't
so fat.” Alice had slapped her hands against her stomach in disgust.

“No, Mom,” Sarah had sighed. “I wasn't gonna call you fat. I was gonna say go on
a diet. Why don't ya? Why don't you take care of yourself?” Sarah had gazed at her
mom in the mirror in the tiny bathroom.

“I don't know.”

“Yeah, I know.” Sarah had grabbed Alice's shoulders as they continued to gaze at
each other in the mirror. “Me either. I don't know why I let myself be used by boys
just 'cause of Dad. I don't know why I think I'm not worth anything.”

“You been really talking to the counselor, huh?” Alice had asked.

“Yeah, we've been talking a lot.” Sarah had paused for a few moments as if she was
deep in thought, then she had continued, slowly and deliberately. “She's
helping
me see it wasn't my fault or yours. It was him. He's an adult, and what he did was
wrong. I hear it with my ears. I just don't feel it with my heart yet.”

Alice had wrapped her arms around Sarah as her mind raced. Maybe she could make it
all better. Helene had done it. She'd done it for years. Maybe dreams could come
true. Helene had just stopped believing in dreams and herself for a while. But she'd
come around. Alice knew she would. And if Helene could do it, maybe Alice could too.
Maybe she just needed to look at all her options.

Maybe she did have a lot more options when she married Jake. She wasn't as pretty
as Helene or as smart as Suzanne, but there had to be something she was good at.
The counselor had told her that everybody was good at something. The secret was finding
what you were really good at and what you really liked. Alice could do that. Maybe,
just maybe, she could do that.

Her thoughts came back to the table as she glanced over at Helene and Suzanne. “I
feel really bad and dumb,” Suzanne was saying.

“Dumb about what?” Alice asked.

“Haven't you been listening? Dumb about being so caught up about ourselves and the
past that we really haven't put a lot of thought into Mom. I mean, for heaven's sake,
she's in a coma, and we've all been dealing with the past. That seems pretty stupid
to me. She raised a bunch of selfish brats. Maybe it's about time we just closed
the door on the past.”

“Quit being so hard on us. I don't think we can close that door until we shovel all
the crap out of the way,” Helene insisted.

“Yeah, Suzanne,” Alice interjected. “The doctor told us they were doing all they
could for Mom. What can we do? Besides, we're working on getting close to each other,
and I think Mom would like that.”

Helene smiled. “I think she would too.”

“What did the doctor say this morning when you called him, Helene?” Suzanne asked.

“He just said not much has changed.” Helene glanced at her sister. “He mentioned
that we should think of putting Mom in a nursing home where she'll have constant
care without the high cost of the hospital. He said if it
doesn't change after another
week, he'd highly advise it. He said it was time for us to go on with our own lives.”

Silence settled over the table.

Chapter 20

Northern Minnesota

It was the end of their third week together. The beginning of the week had been windy
with thick rolling clouds tumbling across the sky, bellowing their warning of oncoming
storms, but today was eerily quiet with a gentle breeze. Gray silent clouds hovered
in the heavens as the three women rode in Helene's rental car. They were heading
out to the farm, the home of their childhood. Alice had recently been there, but
Helene and Suzanne had not stepped foot there since they left many years ago.

It was time. They needed to go back. They felt a force pulling them back to the house,
back to the setting of their childhood, back to the bad memories and perhaps buried
somewhere, the good ones as well.

The camaraderie in the car was strong. In the short time they had been together,
the bond of being siblings had been ripped from its hiding place and slammed solidly
into their hearts. They needed each other. They couldn't put their fingers on what
they needed or why, but the need was apparent. They weren't sure they liked each
other, or that they agreed with the lives each had chosen; they just knew at this
moment that they needed the bond of common genes.

It had been Helene's idea to go out to the farm. She had been shocked to hear that
her mother hadn't changed the farm over all these years. “I can't understand it.
Was she that bad off financially?” Helene asked Alice.

“She didn't have a lot, but that wasn't the reason. It was dumb, but she seemed to
take comfort in keeping things the way they were. She and Dad didn't get along, not
even in the end. He was still mean to her, but somehow it was like she was used to
that. She still has his things all over the house, and he's been gone for years.
It's kinda freaky. I'd try to talk to her about it. She'd just say that maybe her
life with Dad hadn't been perfect, but it had been her life and that's all she had.”

“I can't understand it,” vehemence seared into Helene's voice. “I can't understand
not fighting for better.”

“Can't you?” Suzanne whispered. “Are you really fighting for better with Bill, or
are you just settling?”

“That's different,” Helene bristled.

“Why? Because you're at a different socioeconomic level than Mom? You're still settling.
Why are you so pissed at Mom when you're doing the same damn thing?”

Helene stared at the road ahead of her. “Now if I could figure that out, maybe I
could figure out the rest of the puzzles in my life. I guess it's just so much easier
to look at somebody else's life and tell them what's wrong. We can't see the forest
for the trees and all that stuff.”

“Maybe that's why we're all clinging to each other right now,” Alice quietly observed.

“Are we clinging?” Suzanne mused.

“I am. That's for damn sure,” Alice spurted out. “I'm scared. I ain't got nobody
except the kids and you two. I ain't never faced life before, not where I've had
to take it by the straps and figure out what to do with it, and I'm scared as hell.”

“Alice, do you have to swear so much? And don't use ‘ain't.' It makes you sound so
dumb.” Helene's eyes were dark and intense as she briefly gazed at her sister through
the rearview mirror.

“I am dumb!” Alice's eyes met Helene's without flinching. “So how else do you want
me to sound? I ain't got no education beyond high school. What do you want me to
do, Helene? Try to copy you? I couldn't do that. I'd be a fake. You're sophisticated
and live in a different world. You've always had that air about you, and it's gotten
you far. I ain't got it.”

“Alice! You're not dumb,” Helene fumed as she turned her head toward Alice in the
backseat and then back to the road. “That really makes me mad when you say that.
Quit pulling yourself down. You've got talents, abilities, skills. Maybe you haven't
researched them yet or brought them to light, but you've got them. I won't accept
that attitude. It's a loser's attitude, and you're no loser.”

“It ain't your attitude to accept or change. It's mine.” Alice leaned forward toward
the front seat. “I'm doing the best I can. I'm dealing with me, Helene—with what's
inside of me, not what's inside of you. I gotta be honest. I think that's been the
problem for too long. I ain't been honest about how Jake treated me, about how I
hated my life, about how I felt, or maybe didn't feel. So, I've gotta be honest,
the counselor told me that. She said that my opinions and feelings don't have to
agree with nobody else's, 'cause they're mine. Maybe you don't like them or like
the way I talk, but you don't have a say. This is me. I may change it and become
better, but it's gotta be on my time and my choices. So, get off my back, okay?”

“Do I do that? Do I get on your back?” Helene asked.

“Yeah.” Alice flopped against the backseat.

“I don't mean to,” Helene apologized as she continued to navigate roads that were
now gravel as they got nearer to their homestead. “We just deserve so much better
than we were taught.”

“Then why don't you have better than what you have with Bill?” Suzanne chimed in.

“Suzanne!” Helene pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned toward her
sister, her hands gripping the steering wheel. “Why, oh, why do you keep going back
to the Bill thing? I told you that in confidence, not to be harped at about it. Not
to be belittled by it! Not to have you use it as a knife to cut into me! You find
my weak spot, my turtle's tummy, and you chop it into pieces or pick it full of holes.
Just stop it. It hurts too much. I can't handle it. I'm too vulnerable right now.
I don't know if I can deal with Mom, Dad, going back to the farm, you, Alice, everything
about our childhood, let alone trying to deal with Bill and Thomas. I'll have to
do that later. So, let it lie, will you?”

“I didn't mean it like that, Helene.” Suzanne reached out to touch her arm, but Helene
quickly pulled it away. “It just makes me mad because you
deserve better. You're
beautiful, your figure is great, you're classy, and you've always accomplished everything
you set out to do. Bill doesn't know what he has, and it really grinds me to the
core that you're letting him get away with it because you're scared of losing him.
What would you be losing that you couldn't get again?”