No nightmare, but my body didn't seem to care. As if waking up due to the shock of my unconscious had become the new normal - one of my body's natural rhythms. I tilted my head up to look at the clock.
2:41am.
I didn't feel as I usually did when I awoke from a nightmare. I struggled to define the feeling, there was no fear or dread, but there was no happiness or excitement either. Was I in emotional limbo? If there was such a thing.
I turned on my side to see Lyle peacefully asleep, her head resting just enough to the side where her hair cascaded over her left cheek. For a moment I lay there finding content in the unburdened hour until the feeling I couldn't place leached its way into my gut again.
My woven blanket sat at the foot of the mattress and I grabbed it slinging it around my shoulders before descending down the ladder. I would let Lyle sleep tonight.
The air was warm as I lay on my back in the middle of the greenspace. The moon shone bright through the otherwise pitch black night sky and I felt as if she shone directly on the spot where I lay. Grey and black blemishes were clear tonight and reminded me of my locket as I studied the craters in her sides. How beautiful, staring at the moon could be so personal as if you were holding an intimate conversation, yet the light that she reflected upon me was the same that shone on a person halfway around the world.
When I was younger I spent hours staring up at the moon wishing she could speak, but now I think I relish her quiet more. She was constant, maybe not in shape and not even all the time in vision but you always knew she was there. Even when you couldn't see her you knew. I smiled to myself as I rubbed my locket with my thumb in a soothing motion.
"What are you thinking about?" Lyle's soft voice sailed through the silence as she appeared at my side.
"The moon."
"Ah, mind if I join?"
I nodded and she rested her head beside mine.
"Lyle, if she could speak what do you think she would say?"
"She?"
"The moon."
Lyle hummed in response shifting her gaze from me to the question above us. "I don't think she'd say anything, even if she could talk. I think she'd just smile down at us like she is now."
"I like that."
"Good I passed the test."
I wrapped my arms around her planting a kiss at the base of her chin trying to ignore the feeling that persisted in my gut. But then it struck me as soon as I folded myself around Lyle's body, the feeling was loneliness. Guilt tapped on my heart immediately after the thought. I couldn't be lonely, I had Lyle, Grace, and now Frankie.
Was I really so poor at diagnosing my own emotions?
Then it hit me.
"Do you think my mother was alone?"
She paused for a moment. "Why do you say that?"
"The only relationship she mentioned was Monroe, there's nothing about friends or family. If she had people that loved her why would they let her go back to Monroe a year later, why wouldn't they have come for me? How could someone be so isolated? Wasn't she lonely?" I tried to place myself in my mother's shoes but they didn't seem to fit, my heels wouldn't slide past the edges. The dull pain in my gut wasn't a reflection of my own worry but an anxiety over how my mother must have felt. By choice or by circumstance she was alone. And it hurt me in as a human but more acutely selfishly. I was my mother's daughter after all, would I take after her?
In a way I had already – before I met Lyle. Sure I had Grace and the folks at White Pine, they were a part of my life but only because Grace had effectively shouldered her way into my heart. I was thankful for her maternal persistence but what if she hadn't taken such a liking to me? Would I be alone? Still working in a dirty restaurant and eating frozen meals in my one room apartment whose windows stuck.
Or maybe I wasn't that far off. Sure my windows didn't stick anymore and I was able to bask in the cool summer breeze but I wasn't running into the wind. I kept everything hidden from Grace, so well in fact that it became natural. Something I had to do to keep her safe instead of a conscious choice I made time after time.
"All my life I've wanted so desperately to know more about my mother, maybe because I wanted to be more like her. To have a role model, someone to look up to. But now I think I am scared that I will become her. She had an affair with a married man – an awful manipulative man. She left me. I spent all this time building her up to be beautiful and perfect thinking deep down that she'd come back to me, but now she's..." I struggled to define who my mother had become in my eyes.
"She's human May." Lyle spoke. "I'll admit before my parents died there were sometimes when I wished they would. And when they actually did ... I was distraught. I don't think it was entirely because they passed . But because the chance of them becoming better, becoming the parents I always wanted them to be was taken away completely. Someone took the rug out from under me and I was left face down on the floor. It sucks, the fact that you'll never know what could've happened." She paused running her hand over my back.
"Stay right there." Lyle held up her hand before running off into the cabin returning moments later with the tiny red bound book in her hands. She lay on her back and we reassumed our position with my head underneath her arm as I took the journal into my hands.
Placing her hands over mine Lyle opened the journal to page seventy seven. Coarse shading lines constituted the penned drawing of a positive pregnancy test.
"Maybe your mom wasn't the greatest person in the world. Misguided yes, but you have to hold onto the fact that she loved you. That's how I got through it – at least how I'm trying to. Whenever I become angry with my parents for wasting their time at that stupid business or neglecting me while they worked late I try look at it through their eyes. They wanted to provide for me and working -the money- it was the only way they knew how. Were they good parents? Fuck no. But that doesn't mean I am going to give up all my energy to hating them."
I let her honest words sink in. "You're a good person Lyle Ayres."
She bit her lip as she paused. "You know I didn't come to that conclusion because it kicked me in the ass." She held my gaze. "I went looking for it."
I swallowed hard as a vision of my mother came into view. Serene, beautiful, she was who I imagined her to be.
For a while we stared at the simple drawing until my arms grew tired and we retired the journal. The moon filled my sight as I lay side by side with Lyle our fingers intertwined.
"What's the Lily Pad Place?" Lyle's quiet by assured voice brought me back as I felt myself drifting off to sleep.
How long had we been out here? There was no sign of the sun so it couldn't have been more than a few hours - still it felt like days.
I mumbled a question and rubbed my eyes. Slanted cursive script came into my view as Lyle pointed limitedly with her hand as I lay on her arm.
"I am meeting with R.M tonight at the Lily Pad Place for the sake of love."
"Do you know where that is?"
"No," I stifled a yawn. "It must be where they met. He was – is married they couldn't just walk out of the office hand in hand."
Lyle hummed in thought but said no more on the subject.
"What do you think we'll find in Monroe's files?"
"Something good if we're lucky."
"Have you ever broken into a building before? I know you've gone into houses but aren't they less secure – not that I don't trust you or think you aren't up to it."
Lyle chuckled and brushed some hair out of my face.
"Frankie's helping. Don't worry."
I nodded and tried to focus on something else. There was no use getting more worked up than I already was.
"Will you tell me more about your childhood?" I turned my head to the side so that the cotton material tickled my ear. "When did you stop missing Margaret and Miguel?"
"Have you ever stopped missing your mother?" Lyle shot back.
Her words weren't cruel but rather practical. Pumping the breaks on my over zealous nature to ask without thinking.
"I don't think it's so much that you stop, but you slow down. Your mind isn't running a mile a minute thinking about what you could've done or said differently – even if I was just a baby."
Lyle nodded in agreement. "It's a little light in your heart that goes out."
"Sometimes it flickers though. You know?" I said and Lyle titled her head to look at me. Her startling light green eyes shone through the darkness and I felt a flicker in another part of my heart. "When I first found my mother's paintings I felt the light flicker. Sometimes when I draw I feel it go on. Just for a second but I know it's there, I can feel the warmth."
"It's a nice feeling." She smiled pulling me into a hug.
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