Murder mysteries are on the weekends. This is the time I watch tv. I don’t like to watch tv but I like a good murder mystery. Must have gotten that from my mother. She was a perfect sleuth.I remember when we all took Mom out to a murder mystery dinner theater in the city. The crowd inside was a few hundred, and in her quiet, unassuming way, she solved the mystery. She won the night’s prize, $100 gift certificate! I thought she might have been bored; how she was looking here and there, almost not paying attention, while paying attention. And then they announced her winning name. Did I even know what she was really thinking?

Tonight was Vera, the detective, solving the case of a missing girl, dead. The girl was from a farm. Her younger brother was still there, at home. He thought she was missing because she had gone away to find a new place to live…and she was coming back to get him. To take him out of his lonely life, from parents who didn’t know he existed. He knew she was coming back to get him. But she never did.

It hit me, then. The memory came back cascading. An ocean wave with all its wet. Its pieces of shells scratching and cracking with stones and pebbles pushing up inside me as it forced to win its prize. I felt the depth from where it came, below, rising into the place I was holding. Resting. It had stayed there in the dark for these decades. There was no door to let it out.

It was when my last sister left home. It doesn’t seem like her leaving would have meant much to me. She wasn’t involved in the way life was at home. She was there, but when she could escape, she did.

There was my brother. We were soul connected, but had different lives to live. And different fathers. He was too young. To be the person in this house that I had to be. He would succeed me.

I was on my own. To defend this. God! What was I defending!? That which was happening from him that was wrong and was supposed to be right for her. My mother. I stepped into the blasted confrontations. Into the meddling middle. I arrived. At the time when I could hear the siren of disturbance escalating. At the moment just before the switch was flipped, potential infliction. The moment that one who lives this type of life recognizes by listening to what they don’t want to hear. I defended her. When he came forward and she backed down. When he came forward and she didn’t back down. When I thought they were crazy and deserving of each other. When they were both not worth defending.

It was difficult to lift my arm to wave. I walked away as the car left with her in it. Turned around as if it didn’t matter, feigning strength, like glass before its shatter. Into the house, into that crowded bedroom with the geraniums in halved milk cartons lining the window sill, earth on the ledge, mold on the frame, that temporary space. He came in shortly after, like he was following me, thinking exactly what I was thinking…I was the last one.

‘Get the dishes done.’ He wouldn’t waste any time. The push. The rub of the loneliness into its awakening. I didn’t believe in hate. But just because you don’t believe in something, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Mom entered when she saw him leave. Me sitting on the rumpled bed. Tears came, falling ones, that I couldn’t stop. Trying hard to close the door from where they poured.

‘What’s the matter?’ Had I ever heard these words before? Not for years and years since she was soft and gentle and I was little and the same. Before this house. This wasn’t the house for that. It was too hard for tears; the admittance of defeat. This was a home for fight. Staged like charades that never ended. While in the background I saw the life of love that once had been. The sewing machine running in the night for a pretty dress, flowers in a newly painted rubber tire, liquid embroidery in wooden hoops, doilies and dollies and doughnuts, Easter baskets, and Christmas stockings. Would we have a moment now? To reconcile where we came from to where we are.

It took a while for me to answer. To conjure it up. The diminished hope from deep below come cracking at the surface now. ‘I don’t want to be here.’

‘Why not?’ It was matter of fact. Perhaps with a hint of frustration. Impatience.

Was this a real question? Could she be asking as if she didn’t know? Was she pretending; being flippant? As if she didn’t know what an awful life this was? As if she didn’t know how much I wanted to be away from here? How unhappy I was? How unhappy we all were…and she was, too! (She must be!) As if she didn’t know we couldn’t wait to leave!? How we wished we’d never lived here? Was she just being cruel? Or could she really be this person now? The one who thinks this life here is simply fine?…as if she doesn’t know what I am talking about!?…sitting here aching with my open heart dying. Crying.

I didn’t tell her more. I couldn’t. Not another word. I couldn’t dispel her belief that she had created a good life for all of us who moved here with her to his farm. It would be too hurtful. I was so full of hurt I wanted to put it somewhere. But without a place, I could only hold it. Until it rested. I loved her too much. Surely, she knew. She let it rest inside her, too. Until the road was travelled. There are no detours, no early arrival, no temporary escape. There are no shortcuts.