He was sixteen when he received a call from Gramma, who sounded alarmingly distraught, asking to speak with Mom. Peter’s curiosity could hardly be contained, as his grandmother was generally so cheerful. Mom’s expression went quickly from neutral, to concern, to shock. Then, she left the house for the rest of the day, leaving Peter only with the command to make sure that Trini gets something to eat and completes her homework.
Three days later was Aunt Marjorie’s viewing and funeral. Peter and Trini sat towards the back of the parlor, already having paid their respects to the stranger in the box at the front. Gramma was most upset, having lost her youngest child; at this time, Grandpa had already been dead for a few years, so she was denied the consolation for which she longed most desperately. Aunt Sherry, Uncle Tim, and Mom were gathered around their mother, providing the best comfort they could in such an odd situation.
Peter and Trini had never met the woman. Her pockmarked face and sunken cheeks provided clues to a story with over a decade’s worth of missing chapters. Though she was the youngest of the four children, she looked like a withered up old woman. Her hair had been cut quite short by the mortician, they overheard, because it was unmanageable otherwise. Regardless of this fact, it was thinning out and patchy, revealing a pink, scabbed scalp underneath.
The parlor was scarce, as the only people who showed up were there to show their support for Gramma in this most trying of times. In hindsight, this was not surprising; Aunt Marjorie had spent fifteen years in a communicative blackout; most of the folks who knew and cared about her had been completely out of contact with her. The minister stood formally alongside the wall of the parlor, awaiting the time that he might begin his duty.
Brody joined his younger cousins in the back of the parlor. Their older cousin, at this time, was finishing up college, and reluctantly complied with his father’s wishes to make a special trip home for the sake of making an appearance at the funeral. He was wise and dutiful beyond his years, being ever studious and self-sufficient. His demeanor was confident and professional.
There was little noise in the parlor to cover up a private conversation, but Brody decided against discretion. “You know, I remember her a little bit from whenever I was very, very young. She left before you kids were even crawling around, but I can remember her just a little bit.”
Peter was not sure how to continue such a discussion, so he wanted to keep Brody talking. “What do you remember about her, exactly? Did she ever do anything fun, or anything like that?” he inquired.
The older cousin gazed at the ceiling briefly before answering. He had always displayed his confidence through his demeanor and vocal intonations, but was still very particular about choosing words. He replied, “You know, I really don’t. I couldn’t have been much older than five or six when I last saw her, so I only remember seeing her; I don’t really remember much about her personality or what she did with us. I don’t remember her being very talkative, but again, I was just a kid. One time I guess I do remember, we were having dinner at Gramma’s, and I remember her sitting out on the patio with Grandpa. I walked out through the sliding doors and he shooed me back in right away. Ha ha! He always was a bit curmudgeonly. But no, nothing about Aunt Marjorie sticks out in my mind.”
Trini shifted around in her seat. She was only about ten years old at this time, so she was still short enough to let her legs dangle and swing below her. Though she hardly knew the person at the front of the parlor, she understood the gravity of the situation enough not to be pestering her mother.
After an hour and a half, the family began taking their seats in the front few rows. Not too many visitors came through; a few old classmates came to pay their respects, and some extended family that Peter only saw every few years or so made their appearances. Gramma was really the only person showing any emotion; Aunt Sherry, Uncle Tim and Mom were apparently stuck in awkward funks between pity for their own mother, and relief that such a perpetual anxiety has been relieved from their conscious pondering.
With only a half-hour left for viewing, a man came in and paid his respects up front, and looked at the board of pictures hanging near the door. He had a trimmed beard and a suit, and Peter noticed some tattoos creeping out from underneath his cuffs. Uncle Tim introduced himself, and then brought the stranger over to the family for further introductions. Brody made his way to the front to eavesdrop on the group; Peter and Trini, curious at the appearance of this mysterious man, followed suit.
They were able to listen from a few rows back, and missed only a minute or so of conversation.
“… and I left the group after that little ‘revelation.’ It was nice and whatnot, living in and contributing to an entirely self-sufficient community is quite an experience, but a few years into the excursion things became a little bit too Koresh-esque, even for me, so I bailed. Even though there wasn’t any kind of creed or code of conduct to make it a formal cult, it got a little creepy. Found some work in the city, and I was able to stay in touch with Marjorie. Unlike most of the people who were there, the friendship between her and me was more than circumstantial, and we genuinely enjoyed one another’s company – this, of course, I didn’t find out until after I left.
Gramma and the rest of the family were all ears. The man continued, “Did you know she had a kid?” Gramma gasped and covered her mouth.
Wow, another cousin and not even Gramma knew about it, Peter thought to himself. What kind of trouble was she getting into?
“Yeah, turns out one of the fellows at the camp and her had a kid before she left. Assuming she was truthful about the matter in her letters to me, she hightailed it out of there and left him with a baby. Don’t think poorly of her because of that; I’m sure the cult of personality was at an all-time high at that point, so staying there was dangerous. Really a no-win situation for anyone involved, but worse even for a pregnant woman.”
Such consolation did not seem to dissipate the shock. He continued his anthology to his captivated audience. “After that she moved to the city, too. She was living in some charity home, ‘Father Ferapont’s Welcoming Home.’ That was about four years ago, now. I would visit her a few times a year, and I’ll be totally honest: she didn’t look good after that. She was violently addicted to using. No idea where she got them from, but she got them, alright. The caretakers at the house kind of recognized her as a hopeless case. She stayed there for maybe a year, until she was such a danger to everyone they had to kick her out; this I found out one day when I went to see her – yes, about three years ago, now – and she was nowhere to be found. They did tell me about how she left, though.”
Gramma was crying softly, and though Mom offered to escort her outside, she was adamant on listening to the man until he reached the end of his story.
He continued, “When I asked about her, they called me into the little office they kept on the downstairs level. They told me she never gave them any references or details on family or friends; only that she ‘escaped from a madhouse’ and wound up there. That being as it was, I was her only known contact, so they divulged as much information to me as they had. She got heavy into drugs for the few months leading up to her departure from the Ferapont home.
“She would get high in her room by herself. Since they kept all the keys in the office, when she wouldn’t respond to knocks or shouts, they would unlock her door and find her passed out. She didn’t move in with much in the way of belongings, but they flipped the room a few times looking for drugs. There were no opportunities for her to get to rehab, because the Ferapont home had a reputation for sending nothing but repeat cases, and with the budget tightening for that sort of care, they had to make due with in-house counseling. Almost a completely volunteer force; most of them weren’t qualified for that line of work. According to the records she, for the three counseling sessions, she showed signs of wanting to kick the habit. It couldn’t really be called ‘relapse’ because there was technically no ongoing treatment, inside a few months’ time she relapsed four times. The fourth and final time involved her tearing apart the downstairs rooms – kitchen, living room, dining room, pantry, laundry – looking for drugs she had stashed previously. They had her arrested