Page 37 of Mad Mabel

We walked to the front porch, and Cess opened the door, and gestured for me to go in.

“Go on,” she said.

But I didn’t. I wasn’t entirely sure what stopped me at that particular point. Perhaps I was afraid of the house, knowing my mother wouldn’t be there? Or perhaps I was waiting for her to come home?

Cess didn’t push me to go inside, nor did she go in. When it was clear I wasn’t entering, she moved to a patio chair and sat down. We stayed there for nearly an hour, not talking. I found myself looking around, imagining myself out there when I was a child with polio. Imagining a sister playing with me. It felt familiar yet intangible, like a movie I’d seen a long time ago, or a dream I’d had.

It was the sound of a car door closing—soft but final—that pulled me from my trance. Then came the gentle crunch of footsteps on gravel.

Ness appeared on the porch seconds later, her arms outstretched, and without a word she folded both Cess and me into her embrace. We stood there, the three of us, held together in a kind of human knot—me in the middle, the unlikely center of something warm and aching.

It should have felt awkward. Ness was so small, barely up to our shoulders, and Cess and I were not huggers. Not with each other. Not with anyone. We were stiff-backed, self-contained women, trained from girlhood to tuck our feelings in like the corners of a hospital sheet.

But somehow, it didn’t feel awkward. It felt right. And it must have felt right to Cess too, because as Ness held us, she let out a sound I’d never heard from her before—a raw, involuntary gasp, sharp as a snapped string.

That was the moment—five days after my mother fell from the seventh-floor balcony—that I finally cried for her.

Not because I wanted to. But because, at last, I could.

I’m not sure if Ness moved in after my mother died, but it felt like she was at our house around the clock after that. She was there when I woke in the morning, there when I went to bed.

I was glad for Ness’s presence, not only because I liked Ness, but also because she filled the silence. She talked about the kind of day it was going to be—overcast, sunny, possible showers. She talked about how it might be nice to go down to the beach later and get our toes wet. She talked about how she’d seen fish on special and wouldn’t it be nice to have salmon for dinner. It wasn’t annoying. It felt like a lifeline.

She did other things too—opened all the windows to let in the breeze, spread bright cloths across the table like she was laying out sunshine, turned on the wireless to let a little music move through the rooms. Looking back, I sometimes think this should be a service one could gift the grieving: the quiet, steadfast presence of someone who still believes there’s joy to be found—someone willing to hunt for it on your behalf. Because in those early days after my mother died, it was Ness, I am certain, who allowed me to continue to breathe.

There was one other thing that allowed Cess and me to continue breathing: our mutual hatred of my father.

“He didn’t deserve Mary,” she said to Ness one morning, apropos of nothing. I was eating breakfast and she was clattering around the kitchen. “He never did. He was always speaking to her like shewas a fool, all because he was threatened by how smart she was. Any woman would turn to the booze, being married to a man like that.”

“Cess,” Ness said, tipping her head toward me.

Cess had abandoned her all-black outfit for high-waisted jeans rolled up to below the knees with a white shirt and black flats. She even wore a red scarf around her hair. But it didn’t do much to brighten up her mood.

“What? You’re the one always saying we don’t give kids enough credit. You think she doesn’t know her father is a sorry excuse for a human being?”

She looked at me. “Mabel, you know your father is a sorry excuse for a human being, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Cess!” Ness stood up and started collecting plates. “He’s her father.”

“I hate him,” I said. “And he hates me. Because of Kitty.”

I didn’t look at them, but I imagined Cess and Ness were exchanging a look. “I didn’t know you knew about Kitty,” Cess said.

“Mum told me. In the hospital.”

Cess pulled up a chair at the table and sat beside me. Ness stood behind my chair with a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not sure what your mother told you, Mabel, but Kitty succumbed to polio, like many kids did. Your father had some odd beliefs about it but—”

“She caught it from me.”

“For heaven’s sake,” Cess said. “No one knows where she caught it. It was everywhere. Besides, you were three years old, it wasn’t your responsibility to keep your sister away.”

“Whose responsibility was it?”

“I don’t know.” She threw up her hands. “No one’s. Everyone’s!There were plenty of us about. Your mother. Your father. Me. We all kept an eye on her, but Kitty was a busy one-year-old, crawling around, getting into everything. I know your mother blamed herself. I blamed myself.” Cess placed a hand on my head, then ran it through my hair. “We don’t need anyone else blaming themselves. Certainly not you, darling.”

She’d never called me “darling” before. It brought tears to my eyes.