Chapter 13 - The Autopsy Of A Mother’s Soul
I pulled the metal visitor’s chair from the corner of the room, setting its rubber feet down softly beside the edge of Eleanor’s bed.
I sat down, smoothed the fabric of my black linen dress, and looked directly into my mother’s eyes from three feet away.
For eight years, I had never been allowed to sit in her presence without bowing my head or apologizing for taking up space in the living room.
Tonight, Eleanor could not turn away; she could not walk up the grand staircase or slam the deadbolt shut to hide the truth from her delicate sensibilities.
She was trapped in the front row of the final theater of her life, and the only actress on stage was the daughter she had tried to erase from the census books.
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, my voice dropping into a quiet, conversational rhythm that felt more chilling than a scream.
I told her that I had visited Arthur at the federal correctional facility in Alabama three days before coming to see her.
A violent tremor ran through Eleanor’s right hand at the mention of her husband’s name, her breath hitching in her throat.
I told her the unvarnished reality of what had become of her dignified municipal accountant.
I told her that Arthur had lost forty pounds, that his hair was completely white, and that he spent eight hours a day mopping the prison laundry room floors just to earn credit for extra phone calls.
I told her that when Arthur looked at me through the reinforced visitor’s glass, he didn't scream or make excuses like Garrett.
Arthur had simply put his forehead against the scratch-resistant acrylic and wept until the guards had to escort him back to his cell.
Arthur had confessed that every single night for eight years, he had heard my footsteps above the garage ceiling, and every single night he had known that he was a coward who had sold his soul to buy his wife's approval.
Eleanor’s damaged lips trembled violently, a thick, guttural sob escaping from deep within her chest, her fingers clawing at the hospital blanket.
I pulled a small, silver-bound book from my portfolio and set it upon the bed right beside her paralyzed left hand.
It was my old high school diary—the one she had locked away inside my childhood bedroom eight years ago to preserve her macabre shrine.
I opened the faded pages to an entry dated October 14, 2014, two months before she had driven me to the psychiatric retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
I read her own daughter’s words back to her in a steady, melodic voice:
“Mom told the pastor today that I am delicate and spiritual, but when we got in the car, she told me that my tears make people uncomfortable. She said that if I cannot smile at the holiday luncheon, she will tell everyone that I have severe mononucleosis so nobody asks questions. I don't know how to stop crying, and I am so afraid that if I stop smiling, she won't love me anymore.”
I closed the little book with a soft, quiet thud that sounded like a hammer hitting earth.
I looked at Eleanor’s tear-stained, withered face and asked her why she had hated me so deeply that burying me alive seemed like a reasonable domestic compromise.
I asked her if my panic attacks were truly so offensive to her precious country club peers that she preferred to pretend I was rotting in a pine box.
Eleanor’s face contorted in agony, her right hand reaching out across the sheet, her crooked fingers brushing against the fabric of my dress in a pathetic, desperate plea for touch.
Tears flooded her sunken cheeks, pooling in the deep wrinkles around her mouth, washing away the final remnants of her aristocratic arrogance.
She struggled with every remaining neuron in her damaged brain to form words, her vocal cords vibrating with agonizing effort:
“F... for... for-give... m... me...”
The word hung in the sterile, air-conditioned room like a dead bird falling from the sky.
Forgive me.
The great Eleanor Dunaway, who had spent decades dictating who was worthy of grace and who belonged in social exile, was begging for absolution from the ghost in the black dress.
I looked down at her trembling hand touching my knee, feeling the cold, fragile bone beneath her paper-thin skin.
I didn't feel rage; I didn't feel hatred, and I didn't feel the sudden rush of vindictive triumph that petty people mistake for victory.
I felt only a profound, vast emptiness—the realization that this woman was not a formidable, untouchable goddess of high society.
She was merely a tiny, insecure, terrified creature who had spent her entire existence terrified of what the neighbors might say through the churchyard hedges.
She had sacrificed her husband to prison, her son to a penitentiary cage, and her daughter to the wilderness, all to protect an illusion that had vanished in a single afternoon.
I gently took her trembling, crooked right hand, lifted it from my dress, and laid it back down upon the white cotton blanket.
I stood up from the metal chair, picking up my portfolio and my old high school diary.
I looked down at Eleanor Dunaway for the final time in my life, my eyes calm and clear as mountain water.
I told her that forgiveness was a currency that belonged to the living, and according to the state of Georgia, Anastasia Dunaway had died on December 2, 2014.
I told her that Maya Cross bore her no malice, no hatred, and no lingering debt.
I told her that she would never have to be embarrassed by my presence again, because after tonight, she would never see my face, hear my voice, or know my whereabouts for as long as she drew breath on this earth.
I turned toward the door, my heels clicking softly against the linoleum.
May you like
Behind me, Eleanor let out a long, broken wail of absolute, final bereavement—the sound of a mother who had finally realized that she was not mourning a fake grave.
She was mourning the living daughter she had thrown into the dark, who had walked out into the sun and left her behind forever.
