Page 40 of Upstate

“That’s fine. The chakras spin whether or not you’re awake.” Sandra’s hands cup the soles of my feet. “I’m feeling called to work on your spleen meridian, which surprises me, since the lungs are more closely associated with grief, energetically. But the spleen is vital for processing emotions. If the energy pathway is blocked, that processing can’t happen.”

I’m able to visualize the major organs of the body—lungs, heart, liver, kidneys—but when it comes to the spleen, I’m stumped. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got nothing better to do right now than slumber in the shade, serenaded by woodpeckers and frogs.

“Do whatever you want, Sandra.”

She walks around to the top of the massage table. “I should warn you that releasing the spleen may bring up powerful feelings. You’ll let me know if it’s too much, okay?”

Already sleepy, I mumble my consent. Sandra’s fingertips follow some sort of pattern as she rubs small circles across my chest. I feel like a lump of clay being pressed into shape by a patient potter until she finds a tender spot.

“Ouch!”

“There it is.” Sandra’s fingers stop moving and settle in. “I’ll hold this point until the energy clears, then I’ll continue along the meridian, which goes all the way down to your big toe. It may take a while, Audrey. Whatever emotions arise, simply acknowledge them.”

The pain is exquisite, like the pins and needles of a sleeping foot. It penetrates my chest, radiating up to my throat and out to my armpits. I invite my breath to diffuse the discomfort. Suddenly, tears overspill my eyes as if on a conveyor belt. Sadness emanates from me, darkening the sky, lowering the temperature, turning the croaking frogs into harbingers of menace. My hands are cold. My head hurts.

Sandra’s hands lift. The pressure eases. The sky clears. Then her fingers find the next point on the meridian. Her touch is firm, but this spot isn’t as tender. Sighing, I hope for sleep. Instead, memories from when I was ten years old flicker across my mind’s eye like home movies projected onto a screen.

It’s March, the Wisconsin sky getting brighter each day, the sun melting the mounds of plowed snow along Kenosha’s streets. Emerging at last from her winter blues, Mom has been waking up early enough to join us for breakfast. Dad sings silly songs while he scrambles eggs, happy to be cooking for both his girls, he says, pretending not to notice Mom’s untouched plate. At school, I daydream about the upcoming summer, when my mother will be happy again and we’ll spend all our days together. We’ll go swimming in the frigid waters of Quarry Lake or wander the woodland trails at Petrifying Springs Park. She’ll take me shopping at the Regency Mall, or down to Chicago for our annual visit to the Field Museum. We’ll go antiquing at flea markets, Mom pointing out the potential in all kinds of junk. We’ll grocery shop at specialty stores where she’ll get inspired by a nice cut of beef to attempt a bourguignon, or by a live trout in a tank to try an amandine—overambitious experiments that typically result in frustration and Chinese takeout. Dad might shake his head in frustration at the flea-market finds or mutter as he scrubs burnt pans, but the days will end with the three of us cozy on the couch, Mom’s legs stretched across my lap so Dad can rub her feet while we watch reruns of The Waltons.

Sandra’s touch has traversed my chest and ribs. Now she places one hand near my belly button. The fingers of her other hand slide from hip to pubic bone. The two spots connect with a spark, like a jumper cable clipped between batteries.

The front door is locked when I come home after school. I ring the bell and knock, too, but Mom doesn’t open it. Annoyed she’s not back yet from wherever she’s gone, I dig out my key from the bottom of my backpack and let myself in. For some reason I can’t name, seeing Mom’s pocketbook on the hall table makes my daydreams of summertime fun freeze over. I tell myself she must be around the house somewhere, but there’s no answer when I call out.

Any other kid walking into an unexpectedly empty house would grab a snack and turn on the TV, putting off homework until their mother appeared to harangue them. I’m not any other kid. Instead, a sickening dread seeps through my body as the silence reminds me of a winter evening back when I was six years old.

Dad came home late from work to find me in the living room by myself, reading Brave Irene and crying. He asked what was wrong. I blurted out that Mom went to take a bath an hour ago. She made me promise not to bother her so I didn’t, even though I was scared she might be sick like Irene’s mother in the story. Dad bolted upstairs. I chased after him. In the bathroom, Mom was in the cold tub, her nose barely above the waterline. Urgent as a lifeguard, Dad hauled her out, water sloshing across the floor and soaking my socks. He wrapped her limp body in towels and slapped her cheeks, but Mom wouldn’t wake. Dad sent me to wait in my room while he called for an ambulance. I watched from the window as they wheeled Mom away. She came home a week later, fragile but fine, she said, all better now. Dad explained it away with a story about Mom accidentally taking a sleeping pill instead of an aspirin before her bath. At the time, I believed he was telling the truth. The panic rising in me now is proof I knew, even then, he was lying.

I run upstairs to check the bathroom, but the tub is dry and Mom’s not in it. The dread sticks with me as I search the rest of the house, going up to the attic and down to the basement, checking under beds and behind closed doors. Rummaging through the hall closet, I discover Mom’s winter coat and boots are missing. She’s left the house, it seems, but where would she go without her pocketbook?

Last time, I was six and scared. Now I’m ten years old and smart. I’ve watched Murder, She Wrote and reruns of Columbo. I know what a detective would do. I go out to the garage, where I find her car parked, the hood cold. Okay, I think, she must be on foot. I circle the block looking for clues, but the leftover snow that slicks the sidewalks is too hard-packed for footprints.

Back home, I dial Dad’s pager number. He’s on a job in Racine and it’s a while before he calls me back. I’m trying really hard to be brave but my voice quavers as I say, simply, “Mom is missing.” He doesn’t quiz me on my search or tell me not to worry. “Sit tight, kiddo,” he says. “I’ll wrap things up here and head right home.”

I wait for him on the couch, cradling a framed photo in my hands. It was taken a week ago, after my school’s spring pageant. I’m still in costume as a daffodil, sandwiched between both of my parents, all three of us smiling for the camera. Dad was so proud of my performance, and so proud of Mom, too, for keeping her promise to attend, that he had the film developed at the one-hour kiosk even though he hadn’t shot the whole roll yet. I touch Mom’s chest and pretend my finger is a magic wand that can keep her heart beating until we find her.

Sandra’s touch drifts to a tender place on my upper thigh. Her other hand presses below my knee. I gasp as my leg throbs and pulses. Sandra inhales deeply, exhales slowly. I mimic her, sinking back into the past.

I read the fear in Dad’s eyes as soon as he comes through the door, his work bandana still knotted around his head. There’s no banishing me to my room this time. I shadow him as he rechecks every inch of the house. He goes down the list of numbers tacked to the wall by the phone, calling neighbors and friends to ask if they’ve seen Gloria. No one has. Next, he gets out the phone book and dials the hospital in Kenosha, then in Racine, Milwaukee, and even Waukegan. No place has admitted a thirty-six-year-old woman named Gloria Beacon or a Jane Doe fitting Mom’s description. It’s past my bedtime when Dad calls the police, but sleep is out of the question. I feel very grown-up giving the officer who comes to our house my testimony. He assures Dad they’ll put out an alert if Mom hasn’t come home by morning.

The alert about my missing mother goes out during a spring snowstorm that brings the city to a standstill. Her disappearance takes a back seat to pulling people out of cars that have careened off the road. A week goes by with no leads. Desperate, Dad contacts a reporter from the Kenosha News who interviews us for a story in which we ask the public for help. That’s when the psychic calls to share her vision of a woman trekking across a desert somewhere. “A desert?” Dad asks, incredulous, looking out the front window at the snow-covered streets. “There’s sand, I’m sure of it,” the psychic says, “and the sun is shining.”

Cursing, Dad hangs up on the psychic, then reluctantly calls Mom’s parents in Florida because of the sand. I can only hear his side of the conversation, but it sounds like he’s defending himself from accusations that her disappearance is somehow his fault. The police are starting to suspect him, too. They come in pairs now, their interviews more like interrogations, leaving me terrified they’ll take my dad away and toss me into foster care. The worst, though, is the local television news spot. A satellite van parks in front of our house, drawing a crowd of curious neighbors. The reporter tells me to look into the camera as I ask anyone with information about my mother to dial the tip line on the screen. The spot generates some calls, but Mom remains missing.

She’s been gone three weeks when Dad goes back to work, obliged to finish the Prairie house in Racine he’s been restoring. At school, my teachers pull me aside to offer private pep talks in which they exhort me not to give up hope. During the day, I’m tormented by fears that my mother’s been kidnapped, or that she’s wandering the streets of some city suffering from amnesia. At night, I dream she’s knocking on my window, begging to be let in. My paralyzed arms refuse to reach out until I wake with a shudder, screaming.

The snows of March melt into muddy April. Another month goes by before a policeman shows up with news. His slumped shoulders start me crying as soon as Dad opens the door. The officer tells us a Boy Scout troop hiking through the sand dunes along the shore of Lake Michigan wondered about a swarm of flies a few yards off the trail. Investigating, the scout leader found my mother’s body beneath some bushes. Dad asks about making an identification at the morgue. “That won’t be necessary,” the officer says, shaking his head. “There’s not enough left to identify.”

The suspicions swirling around my father are finally put to rest when the coroner rules Mom’s death a suicide. I’m so indebted to the scout leader for ending our ordeal, I copy his address from an article in the paper and write a thank-you note in my best fifth-grade cursive.

Sandra’s touch has traveled the length of my body. Her fingers move now from ankles to toes, giving them a final squeeze. My damp eyes flutter open. My neck is wet from the tears puddled beneath my head. As a child, I never had the luxury of simply being sad. Seeing how Dad unraveled when faced with my misery, I learned to mask my grief with reassuring smiles. I was angry, too, at my mother’s selfish choice to indulge her death wish rather than sticking it out to raise her daughter. But what I remember most is the guilt in my gut over having done something wrong, though I never knew what, and the weight on my heart of not being a good enough reason for my mother to live.

“How are you doing, Audrey?”

“Okay, I guess.” I sit up, drying my face with the hem of my shirt.

“I released a tremendous amount of energy along the meridian,” Sandra says. “Did it bring up memories of your husband?”

“Actually, I was thinking about my mother.” I hesitate, then say, “She died by suicide when I was ten.”