Wrong
Tasted wrong. Smelled Wrong. Was Wrong. But still, it broke hearts.
I’ve been excited about making this trip home, and now that I’m here there are so many emotions, that at times I feel I’d have to have the qualities of a magician to know and understand them all. Hills happen in life. I get that. I’ve climbed or slid down them, but none ever conquered me. I’ve lived a life of alternatives and only now has it become a worry to me. Why?
Because one morning I woke and wondered what my alternatives were. The only alternative is to be without you; like saying the only alternative to life is death. Death is never an alternative, as being without you is not.
I came with Jenny to the old cemetery, there’s a new one up the hill, but I have no one there to say hello, only here. If you came, you’d think like I do, that it is a beautiful place, peaceful, yes, of course, nestled amid rolling hills and whispering woods. The air is scented with flowers, potted, and left, and wildflowers, which have woven themselves into a living tapestry over the weathered headstones. Each headstone tells a story, etched by hands long since themselves returned to the soil, their inscriptions softened by the wind and rain into the stone.
I have friends here, lying among these townsfolk, living still in memories. People think that Jack Rafferty is a figment of my imagination, having created his life as a policeman in my stories. Ivy creeps lovingly over his headstone and moss blankets his grave like a verdant quilt.
It’s not until evening that sunlight filters through the canopy of old oak trees, creating patterns over the graves, that dance like fleeting ghosts and I cannot imagine they are not.
Over there, that’s Hanna. Such a wonderful friend of my parents. Dad said it is rude for children to call her by her name unless I use the word aunty before it. So, there she lies, Aunt Hanna.
I remember, so many years ago, that I wanted to write a story about Aunt Hanna. I never did. Hers was such a sad story. To this day I feel regret about not doing so, and now, standing here, feelings of guilt return.
The quandary back then was choosing the right story to tell about her life. It was the most ordinary of lives. For the last few years, I’ve left her story alone. But if something hurts me, as it does right now, standing where she lies, I realize I’ve never made peace with it, her story.
While one could not imagine anything in her life would make a story, it was the least truthful. Every day of her life was a story entirely unto itself. I don’t need to coax up memories, they are there, truly, all the time.
You see, I’m not being truthful with you, or myself.
Aunt Hanna was, when in her thirties, a schoolteacher. She fell in love with a boy of fourteen years old who attended the school. It is only in the last twenty years that a headstone was placed on her grave, such shame was brought on the town those many years ago.
I wrote the story.
The reaction by several readers, in 2019 I believe, was so shocking to me that I took down the story.
Aunt Hanna did not tell my parents of her relationship with the boy but admitted it when the boy revealed that he had been on a picnic with her and kissed her.
As a child myself, thirteen at the time, I knew there had come a darkness over the friendship between my parents and Aunt Hanna. The island was a strong community, fishermen with sacks full testosterone, and women and wives conditioned to be mothers.
Hanna died two years after the episode was revealed. No one will say if it was suicide, and to this day no-one knows. Every time I come here to her grave; I lay flowers. I look over and wonder what Jack thinks of me doing such a thing. Right was right, with Jack, and anything else was wrong.
For a long time, there was a smell in the house. It was mum. I’ll explain. I believe there were times with my mother when she craved attention. Never said. Never would. She was married to a deep-sea fisherman.
I remember smells. I remember them very well.
This smell in the house was caused by wrong. Yes, it was mum who smelled. She was wrong. She moved wrong. Felt wrong. Talked wrong. Tasted wrong.
It remained in the cottage, this smell, until a year or so after Aunt Hanna died. She longed for her friend, the conversations they had, the walks, talks, and evenings together when Dad was at sea.
It was many, many years before Mum told me that what she did to Aunt Hanna. Well, the guilt broke her heart.
No one would ever tell me the truth of this story. So, I made it up. I took what I knew, twisted the end, and told a beautiful story.
“Isn’t it funny, Jenny, the things we remember.”
“The tears, they tell me so much. Do you want to leave, love?”
“I do.”
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