Intentional Fallacy (Book 5)

Chapter 5

After dinner I tried calling Jeff. His studio rang and rang but there was no answer. I hung up and walked over to the bay window. The streets were empty. It looked freezing outside. Maybe it was feeling the cold air through the panes of glass and the occasional gusts of wind, causing them to rattle. A plow had come through a couple of times and the snow had let up some time that afternoon. It was worse than fresh fallen snow, because it had warmed up some, once the temperature dropped, the streets glistened with a thick layer of ice. The roads looked treacherous, but passable. I glanced up and down the street. All the houses seemed sealed up tight with the families inside. Families. All the children in our few blocks had grown up and gone on to have families of their own. We were all middle aged and childless. I thought back to when my kids were young and had inhabited the neighborhood. They were part of a pack, a generation of children who'd grown up together, played outside all day, and in the summers up until bedtime. They would have been outside on a snowy winter night like that one. Back then, when the kids were outside playing in the snow, I used to sit with the other mothers in one of our kitchens drinking coffee or sometimes mixed drink while the children were out building igloos or sliding down the snow covered yards of some of the houses that sat on a hill with a long slope. Jeff had never been there. He would have admitted it himself; he was terrible at being a parent. He'd never wanted to be one and still didn't seemed to have any regrets. Even now when we were older and should be enjoying our grandchildren. I often wondered if the reason we'd waited eight years to get back together was because the children were grown and going off to college. The truth was, that Matt had been there. I didn't acknowledge it to myself very often, but there were many occasions where Matt had filled that role, particularly the role of husband.

As much as I pretended that I was relaxing in my house, enjoying the cozy night really it was nagging at me; I wanted to read the rest of Margaret's journal. A part of me criticized myself, wondered why I needed so desperately to drag the past out into the present? And worse why was I summoning my own terrible memories along with Margaret's story?

A darkness was moving through my veins. I considered the problems Clara had had and it was no wonder. It was a terrible thing because it wasn't something that should have been denied, but I'd never known the truth about Margaret's death. Then, ten years ago, Clara started to reveal what had happened; I thought Margaret had died of an abortion. That's what Jeff had told me. It was Clara who told me that her mother had killed herself. She'd been in the room with her. Her mother's death. It was like a corpse. It was same malevolent spirit that was haunting me at that moment—it had always been amongst us. When I asked Jeff why he'd lied about her death, he said he wanted to protect me. If he'd told me the truth I would have blamed myself for having an affair with him. He was sure I would think that was what led her to do it.

The absurdity made me angry. That gave me enough conviction to venture back down into the basement and retrieved one of the journals. I had been smart enough to leave the light on so that I wouldn't have to feel around in the dark for the chord. I picked up the first one, dated 1948. I left the other in the box and pushed it back into the shelf. I walked back up the wooden steps that led from the basement to the kitchen. I was also smart enough make the decision to get drunk while I ingested the rest of her madness. In a sense I was inviting this apparition into my life. I'd hidden from her, apologized to her, I'd lived on the outskirts of her destruction. I took the blame for it! I put the leather bound book on the couch and I walked over to the liquor cabinet. I picked up a glass and was about to pour some scotch. I always drank scotch with Jeff, it gave me a kind of legitimacy with him. But, really I just wanted a regular mixed drink. I walked into the kitchen and filled an ice bowl and brought it back in, placed it on the table next to the cabinet. I fixed a gin and tonic and sat on the couch. I picked up the brown leather journal and ran my fingers over it. The leather was dry and had a rough texture despite how smooth its surface appeared.