Fragile
Cassandra Sieg
A mid-life crisis. How many times had she joked about it with her dad? It didn’t seem funny now, not when it was his turn to go off the deep end.
Sara ground the bag of complimentary pretzels against the flimsy airline food tray. The man sitting next to her looked at her from the corner of his eye. He quickly buried his face back in The Economist when she caught him staring. She returned to smashing the pretzels. They weren’t edible anyway.
And why was this guy staring at her? With his navy business suit and shiny patent leather shoes and thinning hair. He probably traveled all the time and cheated on his wife with skanky women he picked up in hotel bars.
God. Why did it have to be some woman her dad met in a hotel bar?
The announcement to turn off electronics came over the airplane intercom. Sara flipped off her iPod and tucked it away in her purse. Her dad gave her the iPod for graduation with an elbow poke and a comment about how hip her old man was to know what was popular. She had told him that hip people didn’t say “hip” anymore.
In a few minutes she would see her mother. And say what? Act how? She couldn’t remember the last time one of their conversations lasted longer than thirty seconds. Her mother was like a ghost that haunted the house, leaving traces, like her shoes in a neat line by the door, but no tangible presence.
The landing seemed to take less time than usual, only seconds between the announcement to prepare for landing and the jolt of the ground as the plane touched down. A few short minutes later, she strode through the airport terminal. She caught a whiff of pizza and her stomach grumbled. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate. When her dad sent the e-mail saying he had moved out, of course her mother said nothing, and Sara booked the next flight down from Boston. She knew she couldn’t trust her mother to be alone at a time like this.
Sara paused right before she reached the security exit and smoothed her hair with her hands. She caught herself and straightened, not willing to let a nervous habit betray her. Her mother excelled at hiding her feelings; surely she could do the same.
She took a steadying breath — it didn’t help — and walked around the corner. No one waved or walked forward. She scanned the waiting faces and didn’t recognize a single one.
Fifteen minutes later and a search of the entire airport area confirmed what she had already guessed: her mother hadn’t come to pick her up. The car ride would probably be too much exposure for her to deal with. Sara dug out her cell phone and dialed the taxi company’s number from memory. Home, sweet home.
The taxi followed the curve of the road away from the industrial downtown and into Sara’s neighborhood. Leafy trees reached across the street to tangle branches, the old houses with turrets, balconies and arched porches crowded the narrow street, sleek black cars lined the curb—the familiar caused Sara to relax back into the sticky brown seat of the cab. Once they reached her driveway, she paid the cabbie quickly and jogged up the walk to her house, filled with a sudden burst of energy. The clash of the red door against the soft lavender of the house made her smile briefly. Her dad had no concept of color coordination.
He wasn’t here anymore.
Sara found her mother seated in the kitchen sketching on a large pad. She had lost even more weight since Sara saw her last: her long fingers looked skeletal, the rope-like muscles straining against her skin as she worked. Her entire body was fragile, thin bones setting her muscles in sharp relief. She swallowed and Sara could practically see every individual muscle in her cheek flex.
Her mother didn’t look up from her pad, but she angled it so Sara couldn’t see anything. Sara almost asked her mother about the last time she ate, but instead she stuffed down the question. Her mom barely tolerated her existence; she wouldn’t tolerate personal questions.
Sara plopped down on a stool next to her mother and fought past the sudden tightness in her throat to say, “Well, the flight was nice and plane like. No snakes though.”
“That’s good.”
The failed attempt at levity drained Sara of her last shred of energy. Silence stretched out between them. Her mother stood up and slipped into the garage without an explanation. Her dad might have changed, but her mother certainly hadn’t.
Sara woke up the next morning to a weather report. Sunny with both temperature and humidity in the eighties. Possible rains in the evening. Her throbbing head told her she set her alarm way too early. She groaned and rolled out of bed. The bright yellows and lime greens of her bedroom walls jabbed into her eyes. Why hadn’t she ever painted this place since elementary school?
She stumbled down the stairs rubbing sleep from her eyes and trying to convince her body to start functioning at the unholy hour of five. She wanted to eat breakfast with her mother, to make sure her mother actually ate something, and her mother liked to go to work early.
Sara found her sipping from a mug that smelled like coffee and reading the business section of the paper. Her mother graced her with a look and the comment, “You will have to make some more coffee if you want any.”
Sara sank onto the chair across from her mother. “Anything interesting in the paper?”
“The usual.”
Sara traced the square tiles of the table top. “I’m not sure how I’ll spend today. It’s weird being home when everyone else is in school and wrapped up in midterms.”
“You could go back.”
“Maybe I’ll go to the museum; I haven’t been in a while. The glass room is beautiful.”
“Uh-huh. That sounds nice.”
Her mother folded the paper and left with her coffee. Sara sighed and set to making her own pot. She was up and not likely to go back to sleep anytime soon. Time with her mother always filled her with energy to burn. She rubbed her tense neck and watched the water drip through. Why was it taking so long?
Just as the pot finished she heard the front door close, heralding her mother’s departure. She probably wouldn’t be back until late at night, which left Sara with a lot of empty time to wonder if her mother was eating lunch, skipping lunch or vomiting lunch. Usually when her mother got like this Sara’s dad intervened. Now, apparently, he didn’t care.
Sara shoved away from the kitchen counter and cut through the house to the backyard. She needed air. Real air. She stepped outside and shivered. Even during the spring, the early morning had a slight bite to it. She settled in the chair hammock and scanned the yard. Her mother hadn’t only given up eating, she gave up taking care of the yard as well. Weeds choked the flower beds and even the shrubs were overrun by grass.
The backyard had always been one of Sara’s favorite places. She used to sit in this hammock for hours and watch her mother garden. She had tried offering to help a few times, but her mother’s comments about gardening being a peaceful time for personal reflection made her point clear. Like everything, she wanted to do it alone.
But obviously she wasn’t doing it now. Maybe if Sara helped her with this, it would make the rest easier. Her mother used gloves and a kneeling pad when she gardened and Sara could probably find them in the shed if she could get into it. She’d never been inside the shed before. It was strictly reserved for her mother.
Sara found the usual padlock missing from the shed door and easily pushed her way inside. Her foot sunk into a layer of sawdust, and the smell tickled her nose. Instead of a mess of yard supplies, she found the space mostly empty. A long table stood in the center. Tools hung on the lower half of the walls, the upper half covered with built-in shelves that held shadowy lumps. She eased further inside and pulled on the light hanging from the ceiling. A soft glow illuminated the space better.
Now she could see that the lumps on the shelves were really dozens of wooden carvings. She picked one off the closest shelf. She held a seagull laying down, its chest puffed out, beak buried against its breast feathers. It looked nearly lifelike, detailed down to the pattern on the feathers.
She slowly worked her way down the shed, picking up and looking at every single carving. They were amazing, an assortment of animals, plants and shells, and at the very end was the people section. She found carvings of her dad, forehead scrunched as he read a book, one with his goofy smile and floppy fishing hat, another him with his hands thrown up in a wild gesture as he worked on making a cake; each caught his essence perfectly.
At the very back corner she found carvings of her in a neat line. It took her only a moment to realize it formed a timeline—her leaned over the car packing her suitcases for college, her marching with a saxophone in the marching band, her stretching for ballet, her wearing the ladybug costume for a school play in fourth grade—all the way back to her as a baby.
Sara picked up the last carving carefully. The wood was pale and thin, the carved fingers delicate enough to wave even as she tried to hold it steady, the round head supported by a too-tiny neck, enormous eyes staring straight into her. The outstretched hands held a spider’s web, no thicker looking than curled wood shavings. Gently, terrified she would break the piece, she placed it back on its blanket on the shelf.
“Sara?”
Sara jumped. Then felt a rush of gratitude she had already put the baby back down. She turned as her mother crossed the shed towards her. “I thought you left for work.”
Her mother held up a bag. “I went to get donuts. Frosted ones.”
Sara’s favorite. Her mother set the bag on the table and joined her by the shelf. “I haven’t been to work in a while; I spend most of my time here.”
Sara wrapped her arms around herself and scanned the shed again. The beautiful carvings peered down at them. “They’re amazing. Especially,” she nodded at the baby, “that one. I can’t believe something so fragile came from a block of wood.”
Her mother gently stroked the cheek. “This is how you looked when you were born. Your father had to hold you, I was too tired and knew I would drop you.”
How could a mother not want to hold her newborn baby? Weren’t all mothers tired after giving birth, but they still held their children? She really had never changed.
Her mother rested a finger on the baby’s wrist. “I remember looking at your fingers and thinking how easy it would be for them to snap. And they couldn’t be respun like a spider’s web. I’m so sorry for that.”
Sara stared at her mother; tears were gathering in her eyes! “For what?”
Her mother turned to her, puckered lips making the skin even tighter over her sharp cheekbones. “That time I kept you in the room as I ironed my skirt. I let the iron fall, it burned straight through your skin, broke your fingers. You didn’t stop screaming for hours.”
Her mother yanked her hand away from the baby carving. “It was just like when you were first born and I couldn’t hold you. Your father had to drive to the hospital, had to talk to the doctors, got you to calm down. I couldn’t.”
Her mother spun on her heel and slashed a hand toward the table. “Donuts are for you.”
Sara watched her mother stalk out, too surprised to say anything. A few minutes passed before she realized her frozen state, and then she stepped to the side and rolled her shoulders back. The spider web held by the baby swayed a little from the slamming of the shed door. Sara touched it carefully and it stilled. I never asked to be safe; I just wanted to know you.
Fragile is the first part of an ongoing series.