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Karen Regen Tuero
Memento
When she met her sister in the midwestern city of their childhood to clean out the family home, Suzanne was assigned their mother’s room. Claudia was relatively neat and not prone to hoarding over her long widowhood, so the filling of Hefty bags and donate boxes was pretty straightforward, the task simplified by Claudia not being there to slow things down. Around three, Suzanne took a break, calling a friend, reporting, “This is way easier than I expected!” But almost as soon as she got off, when she opened the drawer of the bedside table, she found something. Inside, alone, was an unfamiliar snapshot in the oversaturated oranges and browns of the seventies. Suzanne, a long-haired teen, was smiling beside a particular bald-headed family friend with a pencil mustache. Suzanne steadied her hand enough to turn the photo over and see the faded date in Claudia’s distinctive cursive, do the calculation, then place the photo in time: this was approximately a year after it happened.
Suzanne could not believe that, one, a photo isolating just the two of them existed; and, two, Claudia had kept it. Suzanne dropped it on the table and holding herself, sank onto the bare mattress.
She heard her sister come in, her footsteps ending at the table. The silence that followed made Suzanne look up. Vicky was studying the snapshot.
“Look how cute you were in that white blouse with those pearls. What ever happened to them?” Vicky said, in all honesty.
"Who cares about the fucking pearls,” Suzanne said, scrambling for a box of tissues. There was none, so she sucked in through her nose, trying to pull herself together. “How could she keep it? I told her, she knows who he is. Why would she keep it?”
Vicky dropped the photo in the open drawer and sat down, patting Suzanne’s hand. “He was a good friend of hers, okay? The picture doesn’t have the same meaning to her.”
“Bullshit,” Suzanne said and swallowed her thoughts: Claudia had hung onto the picture as proof that nothing of note had happened to Suzanne. How could it have when this snapshot of Suzanne smiling with him was taken at a later date? Obviously that meant everything was fine.
After the photo’s discovery, Suzanne was unable to get a solid night’s sleep, even home in New York, though she had long figured out the mattress and the soundproofing vital to living there. She always slept well down the shore so she took her friend Genevieve up on her offer, visiting at her beach house. Even unobservant Genevieve said Suzanne had rings under her eyes.
Suzanne slept better than ever and the next day spent quality time with her friend tipped back side by side under Genevieve’s generous blue umbrella, moving their chairs back as the day progressed and the tide came in. It was easy to talk to Genevieve because she knew the characters in the story. Suzanne didn't have to explain that Vicky was the super mom who had married a Super Bowl champ and settled not in the midwestern city of Vicky and Suzanne’s childhood, but a slice of paradise on the west coast, as far from Suzanne on the east coast as she could get. On the surface, Vicky, two years younger, professed contentment over shepherding her children into the colleges best suited to help them attain their dreams, following in their mother’s footsteps. But Suzanne knew Vicky had regrets based on the snarky remarks she made about Suzanne’s successful career as a personal trainer.
Suzanne also didn’t have to explain to Genevieve who Claudia was. She was eighty-nine, a widow by forty, self-educated in the language of investments (ROI was one of her favorite words), ensuring her girls would never know the poverty of her own childhood, and was so deserving of love that supermom Vicky — who also wanted to be superdaughter Vicky — was planning to do “Ninety Days to Ninety,” each day of the countdown doing something extra special for their mother. Vicky had even asked Suzanne if she wanted to join along.
“‘For fuck’s sake, no,’ I told her,” Suzanne told Genevieve, who said, “Of course!” knowing what had happened to Suzanne under Claudia’s watch.
For a moment it rushed back to her. The fingers digging into her wrist before she was yanked into the room. The groping, the hand covering her mouth. And then, she was returned to the present by the packed cooler being tugged over, Genevieve handing her one of the deli sandwiches — Suzanne’s favorite roast beef on rye with a swipe of mustard — and a can of the diet cola they used to drink during all-nighters in college. Righting their beach chairs, they ate without talking, then Suzanne, contented, took out one of the tangerines she brought and, peeling it, shared pieces, happy that there were no seeds and it was just the right degree of tartness.
“You should confront her,” Genevieve said. “While she's still here. That’s the only way you’ll ever recover.”
Suzanne felt it was pointless. What could she possibly get from Claudia? Admission that she hadn’t protected Suzanne? An apology? Suzanne laughed at the absurdity, explaining she had already told Claudia what happened that night. “You have no idea how unsatisfying telling her was.”
Genevieve accepted another tangerine piece, pressing Suzanne until she told her the story.
Years ago, one autumn, Claudia came into New York to buy Christmas toys for Vicky’s children. Normally, Suzanne and her mother followed an unspoken script of regrets over being too busy working or volunteering to get together, lamenting that there just weren’t enough hours in the day. But Suzanne, in her early forties, was going through a crisis, her biological clock running out, her trust issues with men unresolvable. Following through on her therapist’s advice — speak with her and have her apologize — Suzanne insisted on Claudia meeting her that afternoon.
They pecked each other on the cheek and sat down at the rear diner booth they were led to, Suzanne keeping the conversation safe — her professional success as a trainer to the stars. Many of the big names that her mother knew from Broadway were Suzanne’s clients and had been stretched out on the gym mat doing sit ups, cheered on to Suzanne’s count. Conversing about this was an overture, a way of saying, “See, look where I landed because of your guidance. You weren’t an entirely shitty mother.” She also shared news that she would be getting an achievement award she had always hoped for at an upcoming annual conference. Hearing this, Claudia set the menu down and gave Suzanne advice on wardrobe — color and style — to appear on stage in the best light. Suzanne thanked her.
Their orders were taken — Suzanne black coffee; Claudia, Lipton tea — and during the uncomfortable lull in conversation, Suzanne felt sick over the subject she would have to visit. She regretted ever listening to her therapist.
The coffee’s arrival at least gave Suzanne something to do with her hands as she asked Claudia if she remembered the night, thirty years earlier, when Uncle Charlie was in town and took them to The Wiz, then to the steakhouse with the famous banana splits. She set down the coffee. “I was fourteen and a half.”
Claudia withdrew from her tea, giving the impression she wasn’t surprised by Suzanne pinpointing this night, despite Suzanne having never spoken to her about it.
Suzanne folded the upper right corner of the paper placemat, then recounted that night. After the ice cream, which Suzanne was only able to finish with the help of the adults, they returned to Uncle Charlie’s fancy hotel. They stood by the elevator bank where the button was encrusted in ornate gold, and Claudia touched Suzanne’s arm.
“Uncle Charlie has something for me,” she said, so Suzanne, as instructed, followed him upstairs to save him the trouble of going back down with whatever it was he had for Claudia.
When it was over, he called to Suzanne in the bathroom, saying her mom was downstairs, could she hurry up, we don’t want her getting cross now do we? Then he handed her a small package which she brought down to where Claudia was waiting on the seal-gray sofa with her black square purse with the gold chain straps on her lap. Passing her the package, Suzanne did not meet Claudia’s eye. She heard: “Why are you crying? You’re not going to ruin a perfectly good evening, are you?”
Suzanne swallowed coffee, then folded the placemat’s corner once more, waiting for Claudia’s response. She supposed Claudia could conceivably apologize, as her therapist believed possible. Briefly Suzanne imagined Claudia bowing her head, begging for forgiveness, saying she understood how wrong it was to let her young daughter accompany a grown man to his room; Suzanne then wrestling her feelings, pinning them down long enough to bestow forgiveness. With this, Suzanne’s troubles with men would vanish, allowing her to have a child before her clock ran out.
Claudia sat upright with perfect posture. She was a small but mighty woman, her bobbed auburn hair always done just right. That afternoon was no different.
“He was a perfect gentleman. He never laid a hand on me. And I never heard a bad word spoken about him. Until now.”
Suzanne sat on her hands so she wouldn’t throw something at her.
“He was a good friend. I was a widow. He didn’t have to spend time with me,” Claudia said and sipped her tea. “Oh that bowtie he used to wear!” she added and gave a little giggle. Genevieve’s beach chair jolted as she leaned toward Suzanne. “She giggled? You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
Genevieve quickly shook her head, which reminded Suzanne of why she often ended up regretting confiding in her. Genevieve had never met Claudia and now probably considered her a monster — when in fact she had given Suzanne a great deal. Life, for one. Education, for another, allowing Suzanne to achieve all her professional goals. It was complicated, Suzanne thought, sitting up.
“What was in the package?” Genevieve asked.
“What do you mean?” Suzanne said.
“The package from this creep. You brought it down to your mother.”
“Oh I don’t know. Could’ve been anything,” Suzanne said. She looked out at the ocean, at the swimmers enjoying the day. Different ages and heights. Different responses to the waves. Some avoiding them by wading; others, far off the shore, bodysurfing; still more, chest deep, treading water.
“Well, you were beautiful. Fourteen and a half,” Genevieve said with meaning. “Are you sure what happened wasn’t arranged?”
It took a moment until Suzanne found enough coordination to turn in her chair toward Genevieve.
“You’re white as a ghost, Suzanne. Sorry, I thought you would’ve thought this yourself.”
Suzanne struggled to find the words for Genevieve’s accusation. “You think she pimped me? Jesus Christ, Genevieve. You always think the worst of people. She didn’t know.”
“So what was in the package?”
“Probably money for the theater tickets.”
“Sure,” Genevieve said skeptically.
“What?”
“Forget it. But, you know, the fact that she’s been hanging onto the snapshot for years — even after you spoke to her at the diner — makes it much worse. It’s like some kind of memento. Of what? I think it has more to do with her relationship with him than with you. I hate to say it, were you her gift to him?”
Suzanne drew her finger along the sand, the sandwich heavy in her gut.
"You really need to talk to her again. Get an apology. For the whole thing.”
Suzanne heaved a sigh. “I’d rather not get my hopes up,” she said and made a firm decision not to bring the topic up if she ever saw Claudia again, which she was not planning to do.
The problem was that with Claudia’s ninetieth birthday approaching, Vicky was pressuring Suzanne to visit Claudia, who she had moved to an assisted living in Vicky’s city on the opposite coast. Suzanne tried the usual excuses over text but Vicky phoned her. She said it was the least Suzanne could do for Vicky, considering she had singlehandedly taken care of the move. Not to mention the hospitalization and the rehab that preceded it.
When Suzanne said, “I don’t get the logic. What difference does it make to you whether I see her or not. It’s my business, not yours,” Vicky said it was her business. “It happens to matter to me that our family stays together.”
“Why?” Suzanne said. “It’s over. Done. I’d rather spend time with my friends. I don’t have years and years left. Why do you think you can tell me how to spend my time?”
“Because I have kids,” Vicky said. “And I’m trying to show them how an extended family functions properly.”
“Oh Jesus,” Suzanne said, rolling her eyes.
“Don’t Jesus me,” Vicky said. “I should think you’d want to be a good aunt.”
The flight felt unendurably long and she couldn’t nap. As the plane leveled off above the clouds, her thoughts drifted. She thought of a conversation she’d had with Genevieve. Suzanne was complaining about Vicky. How she had hitched her wagon to a Super Bowl champ and everything from there on in had been easy. After Suzanne said it, Genevieve was noticeably quiet; not siding with her, making Suzanne ponder why Vicky’s life choice bothered her. She realized it was because Vicky’s choice was like looking in the mirror. By hitching her wagon to Broadway stars, she had not only made a living, but a big name for herself, forging an identity. She was Trainer to the Stars, just as her sister was Wife of the Super Bowl Champ. Both of them had fed their egos — their need to feel like success stories — or, viewed more charitably, found a safe place for themselves in the world. Why couldn’t she just respect Vicky’s choice and be done with it? Was it her own feelings of worthlessness that prevented this? If so, this worthlessness seemed to be at the core of all her problems.
She looked down at her hands in her lap atop the metal seatbelt and thought of how these hands — and the rest of her exterior — would still be the same had that night never happened, but her interior — her thoughts and how she processed every experience — would be vastly different. In a way, she would be a different person.
Was Genevieve’s theory right? Was she some kind of gift to Claudia’s dear friend? But then why was the gift Suzanne and not Vicky? Did he signal to Claudia that he wanted Suzanne, maybe determining there was something base in Suzanne, deserving of this? Or maybe he had initially wanted Vicky but Claudia said no, sparing her, allowing her to lead a normal life. Envy rose inside her as it often did toward Vicky, and to control it Suzanne had to consciously tell herself to put it aside and store it in an invisible box.
By midday Suzanne found the assisted living where dutiful daughters Suzanne’s age push the wheelchairs containing their bent mothers through the hall. Into the elevator Suzanne went, to the seventh floor, expelled to find the room number she had been given. Halfway down the hall she spotted the number and Claudia’s name on the door. It was ajar, so Suzanne knocked, then let herself in, shutting the door behind her.
Claudia was napping on the sofa, giving Suzanne the chance to take in the framed graduation portraits of Vicky’s three children displayed on the credenza. She couldn’t recall if Vicky had given her copies and felt panicked over her memory slipping.
Shortly, Claudia awoke abruptly, smoothing her skirt. “Look what the cat dragged in,” she said.
Suzanne fixed her hair and put her purse down. “You’re looking well. This place is nice.”
“Well, your sister knows how to get a job done.”
“Good for her.”
Claudia’s spot was by the end table. To avoid her, Suzanne considered the armchair from home that was arranged catty corner. She was about to sit down when she excused herself to use the bathroom.
“It’s right there,” Claudia called. “Next to my room.”
Instead of going into the bathroom, Suzanne peeked into Claudia’s room. Beside the bed with its familiar cheerful comforter with the pink and green paisley stood the oak bedside table. Bracing herself, Suzanne opened the drawer.
The snapshot was still there. She slammed the drawer shut, then found the bathroom, sitting down on the closed toilet lid, furious with Claudia for hanging onto it. She splashed cold water on her face, toweled it dry, then returned to the sitting area, forcing herself into the armchair.
She unclenched her teeth long enough to say, “You still have it.”
“What’s that?” Claudia said.
“While I was cleaning out your place I found a picture. In the drawer of your bedside table. Of me and him. It’s still there.” She attempted to slow her breathing. “Why did you keep it? Why didn’t you burn it, for God’s sake. I told you what he did.”
Without waiting for Claudia’s response, she tried explaining why it mattered. She said she wasn’t alright. This was the one thing that had derailed everything in her life. She would have had kids, she said, glancing at the photos of Vicky’s children. “Nothing was ever the same.” She was on the verge of saying more — of adding Genevieve’s accusation that she was some kind of sordid gift — but seeing her mother’s clouded eyes and wrinkled face — her frailness — made her hold her tongue.
Claudia shook her head. “Get over it. I should have told you that years ago, at the diner, when you came after me.”
In a hush, Suzanne repeated, “Get over it?” Suddenly she realized how Claudia viewed her: she thought she was weak. That she had used this as a crutch, to avoid fully living.
Maybe Claudia was right. Maybe there was something wrong with her — because she had not been able to get over it. No wonder she had ended up alone.
“You think you’re the first person in the world this has happened to? It happened to me,” Claudia said. “I was twelve. So, there.”
Suzanne clasped her hands to her face, holding them there.
“I didn’t crawl under a rock, I made myself a life. I had children. I moved on. I didn't become an embarrassment to my family.”
Suzanne was still reeling from rebuke when a key turned in the door.
“Hey, look what the cat dragged in,” Vicky said.
Suzanne swallowed, unnerved by their mother’s words in her sister’s mouth.
“Your sister’s been berating me,” Claudia said.
“Oh?” Vicky said. She looked askance at Suzanne and said, “Is that how you contribute to ‘Ninety Days to Ninety?’ If you didn’t want to play, fine, but don’t go ruining it for us.” She disappeared and soon came back with Lipton tea she had brewed in the kitchenette, followed in quick succession by a white bakery box. “Ta-da!” She untied the string to reveal Claudia’s favorite Palmier cookies. Claudia squealed in delight, taking one while Vicky hustled to put out little plates.
Suzanne got her purse but Vicky had her sit down and herself took the seat beside Claudia on the sofa. “Have some tea. Cookies. Relax,” she told Suzanne, who kept her arms crossed.
Claudia finished the cookie in record time, brushing her palms over the plate. “She said I was wrong to keep that photo of her,” she said.
“Which photo?” Vicky said.
“The snapshot with him,” Suzanne supplied. “The one I showed you when we were cleaning her place out.”
Vicky cracked off a small piece of her own cookie. “Well, you did look great in those pearls,” she said, Suzanne unable to tell if she was joking.
Claudia had a second cookie while Vicky stuck to tea. She was dressed for an evening out, it seemed. She wore a turquoise silk blouse with a silver sequined collar and black trousers with wide legs. Heels. When she turned briefly toward Suzanne, she noticed Vicky’s neck was absent of jewelry. She told Vicky she liked the blouse. “It’s fancy enough you don’t need a necklace.”
Vicky thanked her, then said, “What happened to those pearls, anyway?”
With their mother there, Suzanne didn’t answer. She wasn’t about to say she threw them out in her late twenties when she felt the need to make a statement about her contempt for Claudia, who gave her the necklace.
“I always felt jealous that you had pearls, and I didn’t,” Vicky said, then looked at their mother. “Why did she get pearls and I never did?”
Claudia said nothing, even after Vicky repeated herself. “Where’d they come from, anyway?” She put down her teacup. “They were from you, right?” When she got no answer she sipped her tea, then said, “Or from your dear friend Charlie?”
Claudia flicked a crumb from her mouth and reached for the bakery box but Suzanne noticed with satisfaction that it was empty now.
Karen Regen Tuero is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose work has been published in Glimmer Train, North American Review, Potomac Review, Harpur Palate, Hawaii Review, Lunch Ticket and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. For links to her stories, go to: https://linktr.ee/kregentuero.
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