Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 38855 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38855 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
Beverly gives me a sympathetic nod. “You loved her. Love never dies, but I’m so sorry. That’s a shitty deal on lotsa levels.”
“Yeah. The entire five years they were married, it never felt right, you know? I wish I had had the guts to ask her why she married Robert, because from everything I saw, she didn’t love the dude. He was safe, I guess. Insurance salesman with a Buick type of safe. Ten years older, but I think he loved his golf clubs more than her.”
And certainly, more than me. I told Beverly that he wasn’t violent, and that was true, but there were moments when I felt like if I didn’t tread carefully around him...I don’t know, it was just a feeling. I tried to wear beige and keep my mouth shut for the most part. And he never was violent with me, just indifferent.
Maybe Mom was just scared of being alone. She knew I’d always had a wanderlust, and even from a young age talked about going on adventures and traveling the world.
She’s always encouraged me with my free spirit and my art, which over the years developed into a passion. My love of the woods turned into a clear voice in my paintings. Abstract, yet refined, the art teacher at the community college where I was taking a few classes told me. Trees with life and light playing with unusual color and a bit of a style that was reminiscent of Monet’s impressionism, married to my own sense of modernism.
Painting was my church. My solace, even as Mom’s health declined, yet she insisted on doing one local art fair with me. I took twenty-four paintings with me and we only came home with two. She was so proud, telling everyone she was my mother and taught me everything I knew, even though we both knew she was lucky to get the sticks on a stick figure in the right places.
The irony is, when she got sick, Robert became more distant. I don’t want to say she died alone, because she had me, but I don’t think things turned out quite the way she planned.
Of course not, dying at thirty-seven was not in her plans and sure wasn’t in mine.
“How long ago did she pass?” Beverly’s interest seems sincere, and it’s good to talk about it. I realize, I’ve not really told anyone what I’m telling this near stranger.
“Forty-two days ago.” I tell her and draw a deep breath.
The day I finally decided to leave the house where we’d lived with Robert, I went to the bank and withdrew a few thousand dollars from the life insurance money she left me.
It was the money that really changed things with him. I got a call from an attorney soon after her death. Turns out, she had a will, trust and a life insurance policy, none of which left Robert a dime. In fact, it was explicit that he was not to receive anything.
I look over at Beverly, her eyes soft, waiting for me to continue which to my surprise, I do. “Every day, my stepfather would badger me. Tell me he was the one that paid for the roof over our heads. The medical bills. My phone and everything else. And he deserved that money.” I shake my head, the lightness and relief of talking about it suddenly turning darker. “Anyway, so it’s been a weird year, and here I am.”
I don’t care all that much about the money, but I care about honoring my mother’s wishes and it gave me some insight that she specifically excluded him in her last wishes.
One day after mom’s death, I came home from my art class at the community college, and Robert was sitting in his La-z-boy, drinking a beer and watching golf. He proceeded to tell me he’d taken it upon himself to scatter her ashes in the back yard without me, and I cracked.
That devastated me, but to add to the grief he told me Ginger, the mini-dachshund my mom got me from the pound the week she was diagnosed—after Robert had forbade me from getting a dog for five years—had been hit by a car and didn’t make it. All this without taking his eyes off the TV.
I knew I had to leave. I grabbed some photos, a few personal things, a duffel bag of clothes, and set out north in my trusty, or not so trusty, Subaru—ending up here in Walkerville.
It hurt to leave my art and so many of Mom’s things behind, but it was clearly time to go.
Beverly’s voice snaps me back to the moment. “Camping in the back of beyond up here in Walkerville...there are worse ways to get your head straight.” Beverly places a hand over mine, then her eyes light up with a thought. “Oh, you must be that girl that Damon from Badger’s Sporting Goods said came in and practically bought out the store. Made his day. He closed early and came in here and got shit faced. Lucky me.”