Jeanna Mason Stay
“One day you’ll understand,” he said to her. His last words, rasped out with his last breaths as he lay, tired and worn, on his hospital pillow. The words washed over her with weight and power. And she ignored them.
She set them aside with the other superstitions of her family. She’d spent years believing that such power didn’t exist, that people saw what they wanted to see. Mattie left the hospital room and numbly walked down the eternal white corridors, squinting under the bright lights. The family, of course, were crowded into the waiting room. Sitting on the dingy chairs, chattering to fill the emptiness left behind by his decline. Magazines flipped through, never read. Aunts, uncles, cousins huddling together just a little closer.
“He’s gone,” she told them in a flat voice. She knew she should feel grief, should feel pain welling up in her soul at the death of her father, but she only felt raw and emptied. What she would feel later, when the numbness passed, she didn’t know. For now there was only detachment, as if she were watching the scene on TV. They hadn’t been close for a long time; he had been one of the many things she left behind with her family’s traditions, a leaving that had started the moment she knew why her mother was never coming back.
A tap on her shoulder snapped her out of her thoughts, and she turned. It was the doctor, the one with the somber face and the name she could never remember. His blue eyes were sympathetic. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” she said automatically, tonelessly.
She turned back to the others sitting there, looking at her, waiting to see some reaction.
And at that moment the universe felt very small—it all fit here, in this waiting room. She was the sun surrounded by her planets, all orbiting, all focused entirely on her. Or maybe it wasn’t like the solar system. Maybe she was the lone seal in a sea full of sharks, circling closer and closer and—she had to get out.
She mumbled something about needing a moment, then she turned and ran. Down the hall. Out the door. Away.
Out under the open sky, Mattie knew she couldn’t go back inside and greet the faces that would be waiting for her. She wasn’t ready for the questions or concerned looks, for the inevitable smothering, for the arms that would try to pull her back into a world she had left behind.
If she just didn’t go back in, they’d eventually catch on. They didn’t need her there anyway. The work of the funeral preparation was long past. There was nothing for her there except to dodge their loving bullets.
So she walked across the parking lot to her blue Corolla, still feeling far removed from everything around her. The doctors would call it shock, probably, but what did she have to be shocked about? The past several months had been a process of slow decline with intermittent emergencies that landed her dad in the hospital for a few days before he went back home. His death now could not possibly be a surprise.
Before she realized it, she’d driven out of the parking lot and was heading home. In the last months, she’d made this trip so many times it was automatic. Like breathing. Something you didn’t fully appreciate until it was gone.
Out of nowhere, a car pulled in front of her, snapping her out of her daze—a red sporty thing, a midlife crisis splurge or maybe a rich daddy’s girl’s birthday present. She slammed on her brakes, barely avoiding a collision. “Learn to drive!” she yelled out her open window as her heart pounded faster in a rush of adrenaline.
Her heart pounds, her palms sweating as she clutches the steering wheel. A wave of terror, unreasoning and unyielding, washes through her. She never wants to drive again. Dad can have the car back, all she wants is to go home, curl in a ball, and cry.
Mattie blinked. Where had that come from? She brushed the strange thoughts from her head and drove home as usual. But that night she dreamed of fiery car crashes, broken brakes, pedestrians appearing in the headlights from nowhere. Her heart pounded as she slept.
Nine-year-old Mattie woke from her nightmare cold and sweating. She couldn’t remember what she’d dreamed, but it had hurt. “Daddy!” she yelled, waiting for a response in the quiet. “Daddy!” she called again, more urgently.
Eternities passed before his silhouette appeared in the doorway, rimmed with a dim light from down the hall. “What, Mattie?” he asked, his voice tired.
“I had a scary dream,” she whimpered.
“Oh, honey, it’s okay. It was just a dream.” He tucked her back into bed and kissed her forehead. “Go to sleep. You’re okay.”
She clung to his arm. “Stay here with me. Please.” Her voice trembled.
He was silent for a moment before replying, reluctantly, “I’ll stay—for a few minutes. You rest now.”
She rolled over and curled up, slipping quickly back into restless, uneasy sleep.
The funeral was brief and boring. They sat in pews, in ranks of relatives, under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the church’s chapel. A Mormon bishop said a few words that seemed appropriately meaningless. She didn’t listen much, and neither did the rest of the family. The only “religion” the Landers had ever set much store by was their own unique mythology. Still, Mattie’s dad had joined the Mormons a few years back, and this was the funeral he’d wanted.
The bishop seemed to be doing his best, even if the words he said felt like they were about someone else, someone Mattie didn’t even know or recognize.
Then again, she did barely know her father, so maybe that made sense.
Finally the sermon was over, and several family members took turns sharing reminiscences and light-filled memories.
When her turn to speak arrived, she stood, frozen, looking out at the sea of faces. She’d spent hours thinking about what she would say, but she had nothing. “My father,” she finally began, opting for honesty, “was not an easy man.” A few subdued chuckles came from the listeners. “We didn’t get along well. I don’t know whose fault it was.” Yes I do, she thought at the closed coffin. “But that’s over now. We did our best, I guess.” She looked down. This is such a pathetic tribute. “I was the last one to talk to him. He wanted you all to know how much he loved you.” This was a lie. By the end, he’d only had the energy for those last few words to her. Remembering them, she chuckled dryly. “You know what else he said?” She dropped her voice, leaned forward, and waggled her fingers like she was telling a campfire ghost story. “‘One day you’ll understand.’”
A collective gasp arose from the relatives. She looked out at them in surprise then realized her mistake. Now they’d all believe she’d been given an opportunity.
The Landers family said the word opportunity like it deserved all caps or italics or some sort of fancy, curly font. It was the family delusion, the idea that a powerful ability ran in their blood. They never called it magic, but it sure sounded like magic to Mattie—speaking words that bestowed blessings and curses. Or rather, opportunities that could become either.
As far as she was concerned, the only thing all those aunts and uncles and cousins actually bestowed was a smothering sort of affection. And usually loudly. But she was alone among the extended family; the rest of them believed in the gift.
She’d never seen the proof, never believed them when Great Aunt Hannah told the story of Great-great-great-granddad Benjamin who had given an opportunity to a reckless young man he knew, something about seeing possibilities and consequences, whatever that was supposed to mean. Then magically, mystically, the opportunity had changed his life. Of course. He grew up, grew responsible, ended up the mayor of some little town in Connecticut—all because of the opportunity.
Then there was the story about a man who was terrified of everything. Some Landers relative—a third or fifth cousin, or maybe a grandsomething—gave him the opportunity to “know the danger around him.” When the relatives told the part of the story where he jumped in front of a car to save his wife from the danger he saw coming, everyone would cheer. See, the opportunity gave him courage. See how wonderful it all is.
The family lore was full of these events—the greedy made selfless, the careless turning careful, the Landers’s opportunities changing the fate of the universe, one soul at a time.
Mattie always tried not to roll her eyes. She could never get anyone to see that none of it was cause and effect. The supposed opportunities were coincidences and nothing more. Correlation, after all, was not causation.
In her skepticism, however, she was a minority of one. She learned early on that if she didn’t nod enthusiastically, piles of proof would be heaped upon her, endlessly, until she drowned in their weight.
So she began to pretend. It was the only way to get any peace. Sometimes she felt like she was living in a fairytale realm of magical creatures, and she was the only normal one. Like a pony trying to fit into a herd of unicorns. But other times she felt like the only sane person in the asylum.
A few days after the funeral, she was heading home from a long day in the publishing house where she worked. She’d been editing a particularly dry chemistry text, and her eyes were sore from staring at equations on a screen all day. She stood under the little bus shelter out of the warm, heavy rain. She wished she’d decided to drive instead of bus that day; she could be home by now. So far she’d managed to avoid getting soaked in the downpour, so that was something at least. If she dashed from the shelter onto the bus, she might stay relatively dry.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t notice a car swerving a little too close to the gutter. A wave of water splashed toward her, and in a moment she was drenched.
Jerk, she thought.
He’s hurrying home, a thread of worry thrumming through him, twisted together with a love so vibrant it hurts. He didn’t mean to stay late at the office, but everything kept piling up. He just wants to get home to Sammi and the baby, to grab them both in his arms and hold them close and please-let-it-be-so never let them go.
She shook her head to clear it. A smaller sluice of water hit her as another car passed too close, and she gave up on being dry. As the cars continued to fly past, she rubbed at an ache in her chest, unsettled by the hazy sense of something she was missing.
It didn’t take long for little Mattie to realize her mother wasn’t coming back, but it took years before she had any real guess why.
In the meantime, she asked the relatives. Their answers ranged from vaguely comforting to enraging.
“Your mother didn’t know how to be someone she wasn’t,” said Aunt Mae, the matriarch of the family, presiding over Landers life with a presence larger than her frail physical body.
“Sweetheart, she wasn’t ready to settle down.” This from gentle Aunt Erin.
“She was scared.”
“She was a wanderer.”
“She was selfish.”
But whatever the reason, whatever the background, events, emotions—whichever way the wind blew that day—her mother had left. She called it a vacation and only packed a few of her things. She told everyone she just needed a break, some fresh air, to clear her head. She kissed Mattie on the top of her hair, wrapped her arms briefly around Mattie’s little shoulders, and said, “Be good.” Then she was gone.
Mattie had not clung to her mother, had not wept frightened tears into her mother’s dark hair as it tangled with her own lighter curls. She had not begged her to stay. Mattie had not known her mother was not coming back.
It was a warm Sunday afternoon. Mattie was walking through Lincoln Park, trying to clear her head of the past week’s frustrations. This walk usually brought her peace, helped her focus her mind and prepare for a fresh start, but something felt off. Was it grief? Maybe. Some sort of complicated mess of missing what she wanted her father to be and guilt that she didn’t miss more of who he was?
She shook her head to clear it. The mess didn’t matter. It was time to move on. She turned back toward home, unsatisfied. Her eyes caught on a man sitting against a tree nearby, his head leaning back against it, his chin tilted upward. He was, like so many of the wanderers sheltering in the park, shabbily, dirtily clad. She’d seen him there before, always the same, always seeming oblivious to the world around him. Probably stoned. She never paid attention, but this time her eyes were drawn to him.
Her sandals scuffed the ground as she approached, but he didn’t look up. His chest rose and fell slowly beneath his canvas jacket.
Pain fills him, his body always a dull ache, punctuated with moments of sharp tearing at his mind. He takes a deep breath, holds it for a count of ten, tries to send his mind to somewhere else, where the pain can’t reach him. He—
Mattie stumbled, almost falling. She caught herself on the nearby garbage can, then closed her eyes against the rush of adrenaline.
“Hey, are you okay?”
She opened her eyes again and looked straight into the eyes of the man. He’d gotten up to help her. “Yes, I’m fine now.” She smiled tentatively. “Just a sudden crazy pain.”
His eyes turned serious. “You should get that checked out.”
She nodded and picked up the purse she’d dropped. “I’m sure it was nothing.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
She shook her head and kept walking. The breeze through the trees tickled her back as a breeze of thought—pain, calming rituals, memories of daily suffering that were not hers—tickled at the back of her mind.
Opportunities were never given lightly. Most of the relatives had never done it at all. An opportunity, after all, was a chance to go in any of multiple directions—a chance to discover and grow and be magnificent.
Or a nice strong rope for making a sturdy noose.
It was no wonder the family didn’t talk much about the opportunities that went bad, and then only in hushed tones.
“Being good at things isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” someone would murmur. “Remember that Georgia woman.”
“Sure, it sounds good to not be afraid of anything, but don’t forget what happened to Niklas.”
“She couldn’t take it,” Mattie heard her Uncle Samuel whispering one night. He stood inside the door of one of the guest bedrooms, talking with someone Mattie could not see.
As usual, the house was full of people that night. Family dinners were not just a Sunday event for the Landers family; they were a nearly daily religion. Everyone poured in—cousins Beckah and Sarah and Aiden, Aunt Leah, Uncle George, Great-uncle William, everyone filling the house to overflowing. Discussions were rowdy and raucous, with someone yelling from the dining room into the living room and vice versa. So a tiny whisper was unusual and attractive to the quiet young Mattie. She drew nearer to hear it.
“Do you think it was the opportunity?” Aunt Erin asked.
Uncle Samuel sighed. “We’ve been all over this before. I don’t know. None of us do . . . She seemed so happy at first. I thought she was thrilled. And then, just—just gone.” He paused. “I think we may as well give up on her ever coming back.”
Mattie shifted to peek in through the door. Who were they talking about? Who wasn’t coming back?
“I know. I mean, it’s been years. It’s just sometimes I look at them and think, how could she do that? To leave Mattie and Jake like that.” There was a note of disbelief in the whisper.
Mattie took an involuntary step backward. No, she thought. They aren’t talking about my mom. She stepped back again, still stunned, and hit the wall behind her.
Mattie had long since stopped believing in the opportunities. But she still believed in the power of suggestion, and if her mother thought she’d been cursed with one of those stupid Landers opportunities, she might have acted on that belief.
“Do you think it was the opportunity?” her aunt had asked—in a whisper because this was how the Landers family talked about opportunities that went bad.
For the first time Mattie had an explanation for her mom’s abandonment that didn’t make her feel lost and hurt. It only made her angry.
She tried to ignore the flashes. They weren’t real. She refused to believe they were real. They were the product of an overactive imagination. Her father’s last words plus her family’s beliefs had convinced her subconscious to create these crazy imaginary glimpses into other worlds and other lives.
But slowly, as the little jolts of memory and emotion grew stronger and more frequent, she began to fear them.
The flashes were varied, as individual as the people they came from. Sometimes they simply brushed past her mind, leaving barely an imprint. Sometimes they overwhelmed her. They contained thoughts and images. They contained memories. They contained stories within stories—how the people saw themselves, what they believed about the world around them, their backgrounds, their worries, their griefs and loves.
She hated it. Birds chirped outside her bedroom window and the sky was clear and blue in the late summer sun, but she rolled sluggishly from her bed, wishing for just one more day of peace, free from the terrible, beautiful, fearful complexity of the people around her. She dimly remembered what it had been to move naively through the world, thinking everyone and everything was simple:
The store clerk who gave her the wrong change twice was an idiot.
Her neighbor’s life was so simple.
Her coworker was clingy.
She didn’t want to know that the store clerk had met the most enchanting girl the night before and just couldn’t focus on anything but the first musical strains of adoration. She didn’t want to see everything Arya had gone through just to get here, now, to a nice “simple” life. She was ashamed to find that Samantha was just looking for friends, but Mattie had brushed her off one too many times.
A flash of her boss’s novel-writing hobby distracted her long enough that she missed a question during a meeting. Another day she had a perfect memory of paying the parking meter. She only realized it wasn’t her own memory when she came back to a ticket on her windshield.
She missed her turnoff from the highway on the way to work. What if the flash had lasted longer and caused a crash? She made a mistake on a textbook edit. What if it had been a major error and cost her company business? Nothing irreparable had happened yet, but she felt like she stood on the edge of a cliff, and just a single gust of strong wind would push her off. She wasn’t sleeping well, her dreams filled with other people’s feelings. She never felt alone anymore, never had the chance to rest and recharge, away from the noise of the people around her. She carried it with her everywhere she went.
People were pools of quicksand, sitting for centuries, filled with the bones of unsuspecting passersby, broken branches, layers of decay and sediments, explanations and excuses and justifications and fears and worries and joys and torments and plans and dreams and doubts and loves piled together incomprehensibly. And she was drowning in the layers.
“How do you know if it worked?” Mattie once asked her father as he was tucking her into bed one night. This was when she still believed in the family magic.
“If what worked?”
“The opportunity. How do you know if it helped someone? When is it finished?”
“Ah, Mattie. That’s the thing about an opportunity. You really never know for sure. It always comes with a choice—you make it a blessing, or you make it a curse. You make that choice every day. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes you don’t know what to do or you feel lost. But when you choose the blessing . . .” He smiled. “When you choose the blessing, it’s beautiful.”
“It sounds tiring.”
He chuckled. “Sometimes it is.”
She hadn’t visited her father’s grave since the day they’d put his body in the ground. She hadn’t wanted to. There was nothing for her in the cemetery, no peace or comfort, just a little plaque that said almost nothing about the life he’d led. She could just see it peeking above the grass.
Jake Landers, it said, with a couple of dates and a picture of the Mormon temple. Oh, and one more word: Father.
Honestly, if he hadn’t already purchased the gravestone and chosen the design before he died, she would have left the “Father” off. But now it was there, memorialized forever.
She stared down at the plaque, and the fear she’d been trying to ignore washed through her. How could she live this way? How could she feel so much, all the time, missing more and more of her own life while feeling everyone else’s?
She couldn’t. But what choice did she have?
What kind of father would do this to his daughter?
She wanted to kick at the stone, stomp on it, scream at it. Scream at him. But he was safe now forever, safe from her feelings or fears or needs. He had abandoned her more thoroughly than even her mother had.
The rage boiled over suddenly, and she did scream. “Why did you do this to me?”
There was only silence.
She wished she could make him answer her one last time, even if his answers were never good enough.
She turned away. It was stupid to come here. She’d figure it out on her own, like always.
And then . . .
He sits on the edge of her bed, staring down at Mattie asleep, wondering how he will explain her mother’s abandonment. He strokes her hair lightly then swipes the tears from his face.
He tries to make her favorite birthday meal, but he never can get the recipe right.
He gets stuck in traffic on the way to her game. She yells at him. He never explains.
He thinks he has too much work to stay in her room one night and listen to her questions about school and friends and life.
He can’t bear to talk about her mother, can’t bear to feel all that pain again, has to shut it out.
Realizes too late he shouldn’t have.
Watches Mattie close herself off—from him, from the family, from everyone.
Fails to keep her close.
Fails to understand her needs.
Fails fails fails.
Tries tries tries.
He is lying in the hospital bed, body broken, waiting for eternity, wishing there is anything he can do to leave her a better legacy, one of connection instead of distance. One of love, even with the pain. He fears her spirit is broken. He fears—a fear so dark he barely dares to think it—to see her become like her mother, unmoored and unwilling to hold onto anything. The fear wells up within him and pushes its way out. “One day you’ll understand.”
Mattie sucked in her breath. Somewhere in the midst of the flashes, she’d fallen to her knees, and the cool dampness of the grass and dirt had soaked through her jeans, chilling her in the cool autumn air.
She shivered. It was strange and breathtaking, seeing her life through his eyes. Like twisting a kaleidoscope—all the same pieces were there, but they were completely rearranged. It burned. Her eyes stung. Her chest ached. But for the first time she thought maybe—maybe—it could be the burning of sore muscles instead of broken bones. Maybe in time she could forgive him. Maybe in time, wherever he was, he would forgive her.
She leaned against a headstone nearby, closed her eyes, and cried.
“Please come home, Mattie,” her father had asked her over the phone. She hadn’t been back in months, despite living less than half an hour away. “I want to talk to you about something.”
She had come reluctantly, worried about what he had to say that he couldn’t over the phone. Had he found a new girlfriend? Was he dying?
“I’m being baptized this Saturday.”
“Huh?”
“I’m joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” He paused. “You know, the Mormons?”
Oh. She’d heard of them. Their little boy missionaries had knocked on her door once or twice. “How does the family feel about that?” she asked, not bothering to keep the skepticism from her voice. “Exchanging one weird mythology for another?”
“No, actually, I believe them both, the weirdness and all. I think this church is my opportunity.”
“Well, hooray for you.” She raised her eyebrow. “What did you call me here for then? You want my blessing?”
He sighed. “I was hoping you would come. I thought maybe you might want this opportunity too. It’s—”
“Oh no,” she interrupted. “I’m not interested in any opportunities, thank you very much.” She turned to go.
“You know,” he hurried on, “I’ve been thinking a lot lately. I’ve been thinking that everything is an opportunity.”
“I don’t think the family would be happy with that idea.”
He smiled then, a genuine smile. “Well, maybe not the way they talk about it. I just think . . . you can decide what to do with something, no matter how bad it is. You can make it something else.”
She stood silent for a minute, her thoughts whirring. “You’re talking about Mom again, aren’t you?” Over the years, they’d talked—usually argued—about her so many times.
He sighed. “A little bit I am. Her leaving us was terrible. But how did we deal with it? That’s the real question.”
“Not very well,” she said stonily.
He looked at her then, one of the few times she could remember that she felt like he really looked at her. “You’re right,” he said. “Not very well.”
In that moment she might have spoken to him again, asked him about her mom, begged for understanding. But in that moment, he rose to his feet and looked away. “I’m sorry,” he said and left the room.
She drove home from the graveyard, too spent to stop for groceries like she’d planned, too wrung out to even grab takeout. Understanding her father’s desires and his imperfect attempts at love didn’t suddenly fix everything; it wouldn’t stop her world from spinning out of control. She still had to find a way to take in what she learned and saw and felt now—and not go mad.
Mattie hadn’t asked anyone in the extended family for anything in a long time. Sure, she still grudgingly saw them once a year or so, but she would never go to them for help. And yet . . . She thought of Aunt Erin, with her quiet thoughtfulness, her compassionate eyes. Maybe she would have an answer. Maybe Mattie would call her. Tomorrow, though. Tonight she needed rest.
Mattie parked and headed for her front door. Her neighbor Arya was just coming home too. Mattie braced herself for a flash.
She knows she’s buying too many groceries for just one person. But it’s hard to remember when she’s so used to the crowds she used to feed. So she’s home now with far too much food and only herself to eat it. She bites her lip. It’s fine. She’ll get used to it eventually.
Mattie closed her eyes and breathed through the sadness. Something had to shift, something had to give. And if the flashes wouldn’t give, she supposed she would have to. She sucked in a deep breath and opened her eyes, willing the tiredness from her limbs and a smile to her face. She walked to where Arya was pulling grocery bags from her back seat. “Hey, Arya. You need some help bringing those in?”
Arya looked up and blinked. “Um . . . sure?”
“Great.” She picked up a couple of bags and headed for Arya’s front door. “Hey, you wanna come over and hang out? We could have dinner and watch whatever dumb reality show is on.”
Arya perked up visibly. “Really?”
Mattie smiled again, surprised to find it didn’t feel quite so forced this time. “Really.”
“Yeah,” Arya said. “Yeah, I’d like that. I’ll cook.”
Jeanna Mason Stay mostly writes fantasy and fairy tales, but she also enjoys creating intimate peeks into loving but imperfect families. Getting to combine the two is even better. Jeanna loves fireflies, serial commas, birds of paradise, and her wonderful husband and children—not necessarily in that order. You can find her (occasionally) at calloohcallaycallay.blogspot.com, on Instagram at jeanna.mason.stay, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/JeannaMasonStay.
