I dreaded the moment for years... What will my mother think when she reads it? Will she view my story as a betrayal?
I dreaded the moment for years... What will my mother think when she reads it? Will she view my story as a betrayal?
Savannah, Georgia, January 1985. Slate sky, a blustery wind, cold rain not out of the question as several hundred runners huddled at the starting line. My first marathon comprised two loops of flat and unforgiving runways at Hunter Airfield, adding up to a foot and mind-numbing 26.2 miles.
Traffic snarled at Dearborn and Madison. Ten minutes before Margie could squeeze her scrappy 2002 Honda into the backlogged buses, bullying cabs, and ubiquitous Uber drivers.
The fresh catch that landed mid-October came not from England, like her predecessors, but from a tiny Welsh hamlet. In every other way, she fit the species of teachers Dede was accustomed to: early twenties, glue-white, and completely overdressed for the island school.
Benjy never lasted at any of the group homes. Dad pulled him out of the first one, the only residential facility in Georgia for the profoundly challenged, when he was twelve. He’d been there about two months,
Cap on, goggles raccooning my eyes, I stand shivering in the shallows, and then hop in place, hop a little deeper, but still refuse the jolt of full submersion.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, untied the silvery tendrils of the scarf and pulled back the four corners, one by one, to reveal the Tarot. She let the scarf drop next to Ivy on the smooth marble steps and began shuffling,
Thirty-one years ago, my brother Clive, age 19, killed himself. He reached onto the shelf in my parents' closet, uncovered the handgun Dad kept for protection, and shot himself through the temple.
