1972–1974

1972–1974

Henry’s sense of parental responsibility seemed to have died with Etta. His heart was too broken to care for anyone else. He blamed himself for Etta’s suicide, although he was the only one who did—Cecilia knew he loved Etta, and that he had tried. Nobody said a word to Cecilia about what happened. Nobody knew what to say.

She barely went to school after that, but she was smart enough to keep her truancies below the point where they’d expel her. She had a hard time facing anyone there, and the feeling seemed mutual. She suspected all anyone saw when they looked at her was her dead mother hanging from a tree.

She spent most of her time reading poetry, which she discovered wandering the town’s library during the classes she skipped. The collection wasn’t very big. She could make it through the entire two shelves in about two and a half weeks, and then she would start over again. She had dreams of finding Etta dead with her head in the oven, like Sylvia Plath, whose books she sometimes slept with under her pillow.

She began writing her own poetry, filling notebook after notebook, although she didn’t think any of it was any good. She did this until she turned seventeen, the year before graduation. She had decided by then that she needed to make her own money if she wanted to leave town and become someone new.

She took a caregiver job with Mrs. Smith, an elderly woman who lived a few doors down. Mrs. Smith had left ahelp wantedsign on her front door in printing that looked like a child’s. She was deaf and nearly blind, but she could still go about most of her business on her own. She needed someone to help with things that her hands couldn’t feel their way through anymore, so Cecilia would mend her clothes with a needle and thread or pinch the right amount of spice into her stew. She wasn’t used to helping anyone but herself, so she found this role unexpectedly satisfying, if a little tedious at times. But she liked that she could go around a familiar house without another person’s demons threatening her day. There was a kind of peace and order there she had never felt before.

When Mrs. Smith died in her sleep, Cecilia was the one who found her, lying halfway off the bed. One shrunken breast had fallen out of her white nightgown. While she thought of what to do next, she took the tin from the woman’s top dresser drawer. Cecilia had watched Mrs. Smith tuck her money away when she came from the bank each week. She found $680, enough for a ticket to the city, and room and board for a couple of months. Cecilia wondered if maybe Mrs. Smith had meant for her to have it—she had never tried to hide it from her, and she had no next of kin. Or at least this thought made her feel less guilty when she took every last dollar.

Henry drove Cecilia to the train station the morning after. He didn’t say a word, not even good-bye. But she knew this was only because he couldn’t. She kissed him for the first time in her life, once on each of his hairy cheeks. He didn’t shave much after Etta died. She whispered to him the only possible thing there was to say: thank you.

Outside of his car, Cecilia straightened her nicest outfit, a plum corduroy skirt and blouse that she’d bought secondhand. The rest of her things were packed in Etta’s teal-colored monogrammed luggage, a gift from Henry that she’d never used. There was nowhere Etta had wanted to go.

Cecilia had turned eighteen and knew she had a classic sort of beauty, a kind her mother never had. She suspected it would work to her advantage more in the big city than it ever had back at home. No sooner had Cecilia stepped out of the taxi than she saw Seb West, the doorman at a fancy hotel she couldn’t afford to stay at. The hotel was the only place she’d ever heard of in the city—she hadn’t known what other address to give the taxi driver. Seb held out his white-gloved hand to take hers, and they barely let go after that.

Seb showed Cecilia the city and introduced her to his friends. One of them helped her get a poorly paid job at his uncle’s high-end livery service. She helped with bookings and kept the office tidy and went for lunch with the other women who worked there. One of them told her about a small studio for rent above an art gallery that had gone out of business, but she still couldn’t afford the cost of city living on her own. Seb moved in with her to split the rent, and he paid for almost everything else in Cecilia’s life. They were officially a couple.

She reveled in the freedom of the city. Having somewhere important to be in the morning. Getting coffee from the vendor on the street, reading poetry in the park during her breaks. Meeting people who had no idea where she came from. Or from whom.

Cecilia was right about her beauty and the kind of attention it attracted. Men’s eyes followed her down the street and around the office, and she was always being touched—a hand here, a hand there. She felt both powerful and vulnerable at the same time. Seb and Cecilia would go out for drinks often, or to poetry readings at underground bars. She felt like prey the minute he turned his back. Even Seb’s friends who knew they were an item would place their hands a little too low when they squeezed past.

One night, his friend Lenny, who Seb thought hung the moon, shoved her against the wall of the bar and stuck his tongue down her throat while Seb was in the bathroom. Cecilia pushed him away and wished she hadn’t liked it.

But being wanted in that way was thrilling for her. It made her feel wild for the first time in her life. So she let this kind of thing happen often with Lenny.

Soon they began meeting during her coffee breaks at work. Cecilia loved what he had to say. He told her he could help her get into modeling, and that her looks shouldn’t be wasted working at a dead-end office job and sleeping with a doorman. He liked to say there was something about her, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. She told him she loved poetry and hoped she might one day find a job at a publishing house, maybe even get something of her own published. She had never told Seb any of this. Lenny said he had a friend with big connections whom he could introduce her to. He talked to her about leaving Seb and moving in with him.

One week later, Cecilia learned she was pregnant.

As quickly as she found the city, she lost it.

Seb had no savings and he insisted they move into his parents’ house in the suburbs until he had more money put away. He was thrilled to start a family. He’d had a happy childhood with memories of big Thanksgiving dinners and camping vacations.

Cecilia was devastated.

When she finally found the courage to tell Seb she wanted an abortion, he told her never to mention it again. He said she could move back home for good and ask her stepfather for the money, if the idea of having a baby with him was that terrible.

Cecilia couldn’t stop thinking about her mother hanging from the tree.

She felt trapped and she felt foolish. And so she gave in.