Becoming Ellen Read online

She couldn’t make out all the words, but it sounded like “Love is in the air . . . every sight and every sound. Love is . . .” Temerity went on, half humming, half singing. Ellen went through and closed the door.

  Hours later, Ellen walked downstairs to find that the big open room was empty. She went into the kitchen area and began to pull out the ingredients she had put in a cabinet under the sink until she had time to label them.

  When you live in a house with a blind person, a certain order needs to be maintained. Everything in the cabinets, for example, was put away as neatly as possible, and marked with a Braille label maker. There was no other way for Temerity to know the difference between, say, cayenne pepper and paprika, except for smelling it, and a nose full of hot red pepper would be a costly way to find out.

  So the first thing Ellen did was take the label maker from the drawer and punch in the names of the ingredients. Letting her fingertips trail lightly over the Braille bumps on the keys, which were printed with letters and numbers as well, Ellen typed in c-i-n-n-a-m-o-n. She pushed the print button and the little device spit out the series of bumps that meant those letters. She peeled off the paper to expose the adhesive, and stuck it to the side of the jar. She followed this procedure for the other ingredients.

  Once she had finished, Ellen began lining up the things she needed for her cinnamon muffins on the counter. That was when she spotted the letter from social services that she had discarded on the table and tried to forget.

  It lay in the midst of a sea of warm wood, rigid and pale as a dead fish on a dock. Unable to ignore it, Ellen went to pick it up, hoping she might have been wrong, that the address read some other name, one close to hers, but just enough different to not be her.

  But the lettering, handwritten, was clear. Ellen Homes.

  There was a noise in Ellen’s head. Crackling static that made it hard to think. Ellen stood looking at the ominous missive for a full minute before she decided that it wouldn’t go away. Resenting every effort and movement, she sat down and tore the envelope open.

  The letter was typed, but she could see at a glance that the signature at the bottom was not printed.

  Dear Ms. Homes,

  I am sorry to inform you that Melissa Homes has passed away. There is no obligation on your part to respond to this letter, but as a formality the next of kin are being notified and given the option to collect her remains. They will be kept at the county morgue until February 12th. If there is no reply to this letter, Ms. Homes will be interred in the county cemetery on February 13th.

  Melissa Homes died with no estate, and there is no legal obligation or inheritance. Again, this letter is a formal notification, no action is required on your part.

  If, however, you would like to contact my office for more information, such as place of internment, please feel free to call during regular office hours, 8 to 5, Monday thru Friday.

  Kindest regards,

  Frank Martinez

  Ellen stared at the strange, unwelcome words. What was the thought, if there was any, behind sending her this information? The words were clearly written, typed or printed, each word had its own, individual definition and the sentences were complete, and yet the resulting communication meant nothing, it made no sense to Ellen. Swirls of memories, all horrible, rushed at and around her, chasing the next worse one as they roiled past.

  Ellen tested out a summary. Her mother. The woman who had tortured and then deserted her. Dead.

  That was fine, what was weird was that her mother had been alive all this time and Ellen hadn’t ever even considered that a possibility. She’d deliberately not given the woman, her actions, or her fate any consideration. Ellen had nothing but the vaguest image of this person who had abused her, burned her face into a grotesque mask, starved her, and then abandoned her to an uncertain, but almost certainly horrible, fate when she was five years old.

  She did not want to know that the woman was dead. But even more, she did not want to remember that she had been alive.

  Ellen thought, My mother has been dead to me since I was five, and I didn’t care then.

  She looked again at the piece of paper. Avoiding the bulk of the text, she scanned the other details in an attempt to distract herself, reading the heading, the date, the name and address of the sender and his office.

  And the cc.

  Someone had been copied on this letter. At first Ellen thought it must be some other government worker, a legality, a notification, and then she let the name register.

  cc: Frank Homes

  The name seemed to glow in a small pinpoint of light, and the white sheet around it went gray. At the same time, Ellen felt the blood drain out of her face and collect in the pit of her stomach, where it curdled and she found herself gagging back bile. She heaved, covering her mouth with both her hands as the room swirled, blending into the dark memories that churned the air around her with the fetid, half-remembered stench of that room where she had waited for three days with no food for a mother who did not return. The cold and the darkness descended, and Ellen, unable to process the pain, shut down.

  11

  Ellen! Ellen!” Someone was rubbing her arm and calling to her. Ellen could feel the hard wood of the table on her right cheek, and slowly Temerity’s face, anxious and frightened, wavered and then solidified in front of her.

  “Hold on,” a soft male voice said behind Temerity. A voice filled with concern. “Ellen, can you see me?”

  Ellen shifted her focus from Temerity to just behind her. “Rupert?” Ellen asked.

  “Yes!” exclaimed Temerity. “Oh my God, what happened?”

  Ellen straightened up too quickly. Dizziness made her sway in the chair, and Rupert hurried behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

  “I, uh, I guess I fell asleep,” Ellen lied, wishing she could just go and curl up in her room with the curtains closed, dark and safe.

  “You did not!” Temerity insisted, stamping one foot. “I was coming in from the hallway and I heard a loud thump. I called out to you, but you didn’t answer and then Rupert was at the door so I let him in, and he told me you were unconscious. Oh, Ellen!” Temerity found the chair next to her and sat down heavily. “I was so afraid!”

  Feeling horrible to have caused her friend so much anxiety, Ellen didn’t see Rupert, on her left, reach down to pick something up from the floor. But as her brain cleared, she remembered the letter and turned to find and hide it.

  Too late. It was in Rupert’s hand and it was clear that he had seen at least a little of what it said. The first line was hard to miss. Melissa Homes has passed away. Rupert’s eyes met hers with embarrassment. He hadn’t meant to read it, it wasn’t his fault. He was just picking it up for her.

  Ellen wanted to be angry with him for this violation but she couldn’t be. She dropped her eyes and held out her hand. Rupert handed over the letter, saying, “I’m so sorry.”

  Temerity’s head shot around. “For what? What do you have?”

  Ellen felt the unfairness of Temerity’s blindness that excluded her from so many details obvious to others. She sighed and said, “It’s a letter that came for me. The woman who . . . my mother, is dead. It’s just a letter informing me, in case I wanted to know.” To her surprise, she laughed, a flat, humorless sound. Ellen hated it.

  “She was alive?” Temerity said.

  Somehow, Ellen found the humor to say, “Right? That was my first thought, too.”

  Temerity’s mouth was pursed into a tight knot. “Wait a minute. Was that what made you pass out?”

  Ellen considered hiding the truth from her friend, but she knew that wouldn’t do. “No, it was the fact that someone else got the same letter. Someone else was notified.”

  Temerity’s face worked like a thick soup bubbling, and then, just as steam pops up through the surface, her mouth fell open. “Another relative? Who?”
r />   Ellen couldn’t speak, couldn’t answer, the word had no resonance for her, no meaning. She had no relatives. She turned to Rupert, who looked down at the letter in Ellen’s hands. He glanced nervously at her and she nodded. He read the name. “A Frank Homes,” he said.

  “Oh my God,” Temerity repeated. “Do you think it’s your father?”

  Ellen reeled again, and she put her head down on her arms, trying to get control. The whirlpool was raging below her, and strong, watery feelers had snaked up in tendrils and were wrapping their cold fingers around her legs and stomach. She fought to stay calm, to keep above the turbulence. After a few attempts, she was able to draw in enough air to speak. “I don’t think it could be. Wouldn’t that mean he would have been involved, I mean somehow, in the legal paperwork that released me to the state? There was never any mention of a father, not in the paperwork they gave me when I turned eighteen anyway. This . . . woman never showed up in court to sign off on me, which I guess is why I got notified now.”

  Temerity stood up and moved, then stopped a few feet away and spun back. “Her father. It must be. Your mother’s father.” She said it again. “It must be, or, wait . . . maybe a brother. Frank Homes must be your mother’s father or brother, and either way, he’s alive.” She came back and put a hand on Ellen’s head, searching for her shoulder. When she found it, she gripped. “Ellen, you have a grandfather, or maybe an uncle.”

  Ellen raised her head, it was getting clearer now. “No,” she said firmly, “I do not. I don’t have any family.”

  “But . . . this is good news, right?” Temerity asked, sitting down next to Ellen, and that simple question confirmed to Ellen that Temerity equated family with good, and she was glad she hadn’t told her friend about the boy in the basement.

  Neither Ellen nor Rupert said anything. Even in her distress, Ellen could feel their discomfort like a responsibility. It wasn’t their fault that her life had been so unhappy.

  Ellen said, “Even if they are related to me, I don’t know them or anything about them. They have no connection to me, and . . .” Something was bothering her, a sense of anger that pierced the unsummoned feelings of loneliness and memories of hardship. “And if they were there when . . . you know . . . then they must have made the decision to not have anything to do with me. So . . .” She almost choked. “It just doesn’t matter. I can’t . . . It doesn’t matter.”

  Temerity leaned sideways and put an arm around Ellen’s shoulders, squeezing with a firm, even pressure. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  The spiraling, sucking force below Ellen was lessening as, with exhausting effort, she snapped the grasping tendrils. Deliberately anesthetizing the pain by amputating the past. She asked, “It’s not your fault. Why would you be sorry?” with genuine interest.

  Temerity sighed. “Because it’s got to be painful. Not the fact that that horrible woman is dead, but being reminded of it . . . all. I’m sorry that you have to deal with so much unhappiness.”

  Rupert had thoughtfully retreated and was standing in the kitchen, pretending to be absorbed in the recipe book Ellen had left on the counter. He asked quietly, “Does anyone want some tea?”

  Clenching her stomach and forcing her limbs to ignore the signals that told them to give up and just lie there, Ellen said, “No, I want to make cinnamon muffins.”

  She felt Temerity’s hand move and land on the top of her head. “I think that’s a much better idea!” she said. “Nobody can be unhappy while they are eating a warm cinnamon muffin. They’re like weapons of mass happiness, little bombs of joy.”

  Except, a voice much like Ellen’s own but more objective, said in her head, it wasn’t muffins—it was a bun. The words cracked open time. Suddenly, without warning, Ellen was catapulted backward in time, to a day nineteen years before, when, starving and alone, the ache in her stomach had finally given a five-year-old Ellen no choice but to crack open the door and trust a stranger in a hostile place, not knowing if he would prey on her or save her.

  She had worked hard to block that day out entirely, relegating any sensory or mental pictures to the muffled junkyard of her bad experiences, smothering them with tarps and locking the gates on an electrified chain-link fence topped with brutal barbed wire. Somewhere in her past, she had posted a sign on this barricade that said EXTREME DANGER. DO NOT ENTER, and, heeding her own advice, had forgotten it.

  And there the memory stayed, trapped in her unconscious, but now, for a few crystal clear seconds, it came back with a gut punch. She remembered a man’s face, bloated and smoke-stained, the image appearing in her mind as vibrantly as if it were on the big-screen TV. Ellen distinctly saw the repulsion of his expression as he registered her still-festering, wounded face. She heard the rustle of a plastic bag as he reached inside, and she saw the shiny, clean cellophane package, glinting in the dim stairwell as it arced toward her when he threw it.

  A packaged cinnamon bun.

  She put her head down on the table again and began to cry, though she did not understand why. Temerity just stroked her hair and told her it was a good thing, to let it out.

  But Ellen could not permit this, and within a few minutes she had rethreaded the chain around the gates, fastened the heavy padlock, and turned her back on those rotting memories that meant only suffering.

  She opened her eyes to see Rupert’s hand extending a tissue to her. Without looking at him, she took it and wiped her face, blowing her nose as quietly as she could. She was mortified that he had been here to witness her breaking, and she stole a glance at him, expecting pity, or even disgust, but all she saw was Rupert. Standing by, in his clumsy, embarrassed, unobtrusive way, just being there. Solid, yet slightly, comfortingly squishy.

  She felt a little lurch in her chest. Rupert understood. She patted Temerity’s leg to let her know it was okay now and stood up. “So . . . let’s make some muffins.”

  They went to work, Temerity producing bowls and mixers and measuring cups, Rupert supervising the blending of ingredients and the order in which they are added. Temerity explained the use of the oven, which did indeed speak, calling out the temperature and then signaling them with three sharp beeps when it was ready.

  Ellen loved it all. She loved watching the dry flour and baking soda mix together with cream and melted butter into something smooth and thick and sweet. Loved watching the eggs add a golden hue to the concoction, loved the smell of the oven heating up. Following Rupert’s surprisingly confident instructions, Ellen sprayed the muffin pans with cooking spray, ladled in the silky batter, and put the pans in the oven. She loved the way they looked in there, loved the delicious scent that began to waft around them.

  But most of all, she loved the way that making this with her friends made her forget the letter. Not completely, of course, but enough. It flattened the erratic seismic scratchings of her emotional upheaval and lent her a sense of control. She could do nothing to change or erase her past. And now the containment of her pain had been breached, had proven to be beyond her control, but this activity she could master. She could take these ingredients—items that varied in texture, taste, color, and source—and put them together and make something entirely different. She could control this one small thing.

  It felt good. And feeling good, Ellen was startled to realize, was exactly what she wanted, though she was still afraid to expect it.

  When the little bell chimed, all three of them went to stand around the oven. Carefully opening the glass-fronted door, Ellen leaned back to avoid the blast of heat Rupert had cautioned her about, and then reached in and pulled out the pan of sweet-smelling, golden-brown domes.

  Temerity was excited. “Coffee or milk?” she asked.

  “Milk,” both Rupert and Ellen answered in unison. Then they laughed. The hardest part was waiting a few minutes for the muffins to cool in the pan before carefully extracting them. Temerity produced china plates and linen napkins to mark th
is as a special occasion, and they all sat down together. They ate one, and then another, of the treats, and Ellen felt not only a contented sense of taste and of fullness, but of accomplishment.

  She had made something, and it was yummy.

  • • •

  When they had put the plates in the dishwasher, Ellen took three of the muffins and wrapped them in a paper towel, then placed them in a brown paper bag. Finally, she put that inside a plastic grocery bag. Rupert was gathering his coat, and Ellen went to pull hers from the coat hooks as well.

  “I’ll walk down with you,” she told him. “If that’s okay.” His face flushed to almost purple, all the self-assuredness of his baker’s persona deserting him in an instant.

  “Uh, okay,” he said.

  “I’m going out for a walk,” Ellen called out to Temerity.

  “Sure you are,” Temerity said with a grin, sending Rupert’s pigment into an onslaught of rosy hues ranging from pink to violet.

  But as they stepped out the door, Ellen felt a light tug at her midsection and heard the sound of a clear, high-toned bell. She stopped in surprise. Temerity, who of course had heard the musical tone, came to the door. “What is that?” she asked. Rupert ducked under the string, which had been attached to the doorjamb on both sides with thumb tacks. It was tied off on the right, but on the other side, it dangled a single metal bell, which rang when the string was disturbed. Below the bell, tied with a ribbon, was a roll of white paper, neatly scrolled.

  Rupert reached out and gently pulled the scroll free, studying it. “I think it’s a special delivery for you, Tem,” he said.

  “Me?” Temerity said, surprised. “Why do you think that?”

  Rupert unrolled the large sheets of what appeared to be blank paper. “Because of the bell, so you’d, um, see it, and because . . . it’s in Braille,” he said.

  “Which we don’t read,” Ellen added.

  Temerity took the sheets from him and ran her fingers over them. She smiled. “It’s sheet music,” she said.