Entry - 6/23 - The Picture

-1000 words-



'It never rains this much in Florida,' Ellie thought solemnly as she stood at her brother’s door, squeezing her arms around herself as if she were going to be blown away. Apparently Vermont hadn’t gotten the memo that summer had arrived, with its cherry sunsets and sand between your toes. It wouldn’t have been so bad had Patrick gotten home on time, but his car was just pulling in now, an hour late.

“Jesus,” Ellie snapped as she hurried into the rain to help him. She grabbed his briefcase as he fumbled with the jacket and tie that had somehow ended up on the floor of the backseat. “I’m not a fish, you know. I’m drowning here!”

Patrick laughed, slamming his car door. “When did you get in?”

Ellie attempted to wrap her jacket around the briefcase, thought better of it, and let the leather exterior get a taste of her troubles. “Oh, not long ago,” she started with syrup in her voice, “only three o’clock.” The sugar turned to bite as they made it back to the porch where Ellie’s soaked bag lay. Patrick shrugged and opened the door. Ellie rolled her eyes. For once she wished her brother would take care of her, not the other way around.

“It’s not much, but it’ll do for the night, right?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” Ellie threw her bag on the futon and looked around. Patrick had bought the house just a few months before, so she hadn’t gotten the chance to visit it yet. Patrick looked warily at his little sister’s dripping clothes.

“I have some of mom’s stuff in the attic,” he muttered, “I bet she has something you can wear, want me to – "

“No, I’ll get it,” Ellie said quickly, too quickly. She looked away. She hated when people tried to read her.

“If you want to go through some of her stuff, maybe clean it up a little . . . I’m sure she’d uh, want you to have it.”

Ellie took the steps two at a time and yanked on the pull-down door with a strength that came only from her anger. Was it too much to ask him to clean his own damn house?

In the attic, several boxes were stacked against a wall, the meager light from the window shining like a beacon. Ellie swallowed and approached them tentatively. Several of them were filled with dejected items from Patrick’s youth. The last one was where she found them, the shirts and dresses that had once graced her mother’s body. Ellie took a deep breath and decided to find the first shirt that fit, grabbing a green, button-down sweater she had seen her mother wear on so many occasions. She took a sniff as she pulled it out, and was embarrassed because it didn’t smell like anything.

As she threw it on, something fluttered out of the front pocket and landed like a bird at her feet. Ellie paused, frozen with her arm half in the sleeve, as she caught the image of a woman and a man in a living room. In front of a fireplace, they sat, his arm around her, her cheek on his shoulder. A stranger and Ellie’s mother. Smiling.

The rain seemed to stop; the creaking of the wood under her feet disappeared. Before she knew it she was downstairs, her eyes narrowed in the harsh light of the kitchen.

“What’s this?” Ellie held the photograph out with trembling fingers, her heart struggling to find a rhythm in her chest.

Patrick looked up from the counter and hesitated, a knife in the air above some carrots. “What?”

Ellie threw the photo down next to the cutting board. Patrick wiped his hands on his pants and picked up the picture as if it were a specimen. Something in the way his eyes searched it, the way he set it down without flourish, told Ellie that he had known for a long time.

“Who is he?”

“Len.” Patrick turned back to his preparations.

“Len. Okay.” Ellie nodded, wanting to find something to hold onto, anything. “Who the fuck is Len?”

Patrick set his knife down. He turned and leaned back against the counter. “Look, I don’t know why I kept it. I should have just thrown it away, I don’t know, she just looked so . . .”

“What’s going on?” Ellie’s voice sounded higher than she wanted it to.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he said, studying her in the exact way she hated. “I couldn’t. When we were little – "

“Little?!” Ellie screeched, “When we were little? Christ, Patrick, how long did this go on?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, “I was fifteen when . . . they didn’t see me.”

“So since I was, what, ten? Seriously?” She couldn’t breathe.

“Ellie, listen to me, listen.” Patrick’s hands were outstretched, pleading, “Don’t you remember what things were like, when mom first got sick? I didn’t want to make it any worse.”

“And this is better?” Ellie sat down heavily at the kitchen table, cupping her forehead in a hand.

“Ellie, listen to me,” Patrick repeated, as if finding an anchor in his words. He pulled a chair over next to her. “You have to believe that I thought I was doing the right thing. You were just a kid, I didn’t want you to have to deal with grown-up shit like that.”

“You were just a kid, too,” Ellie muttered, finally looking at him. They stayed like that for a moment, studying each other. Patrick sighed and patted her hand, heading back to the counter.

“The cups are in the cabinet above the sink,” he said, putting the photo discreetly in his pocket. “They’re clean.” Ellie stood and found the cupboard. The glasses were smeared with dish soap. Obviously, Patrick didn’t know how to do dishes properly yet. Ellie took a deep breath, pulled two down from the cabinet, and set them gently on the table. “What’s next?” she asked.