Dani settled back and found herself pinned underneath Sandy’s intent perusal.
“What’d Philly say to you?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t play dumb. You know what I mean. What’d she want?”
Dani shrugged. She wasn’t in a considerate mood to explain anything to anyone anymore.
Sandy saw that too and narrowed her eyes. “What happened to you?” She wanted to know.
“It’s my second visit—” But Dani was cut off by Sandy’s snort.
“It’s your third and we both know it.” Her grandmomma shifted on her seat and reached for a blanket to wrap around the skinny sturdiness that screamed from her bones.
“Right, well…” Dani shifted to get more comfortable. “I wasn’t really here last time.”
“Right. Your momma was.”
“My momma was.”
Sandra O’Hara didn’t care to discuss her obvious lucidness. She asked, “What do I owe you?”
“What do you mean?” But Dani knew.
“You know. What do I owe you? I owe you something.”
“How about my father?” Dani requested.
“Let it slip last time, didn’t I?”
“Not really. You called him ‘Emmy,’ but I don’t know any Emmy.”
“Sure you do, you just don’t know their full names.”
Dani opened her mouth to reprimand her grandmother, but the words felt clumsy and awkward. She no longer knew what to call her grandmomma, so she closed her mouth and sat up straight again.
“Are you going to tell me who my father is?”
“No,” Sandy said swiftly and plopped her foot onto Dani’s lap. “I need to raise my legs. My doc said something about elevating the edema.”
“Why not?”
Her hands rested over her grandmother’s blanketed feet without thought and Dani said further, “You promised me.”
“I know, but I’m a liar. Part of the reason why I’m in this place.”
Her grandma shone her jaded colors, but Dani pushed her feet off her lap and said angrily, “I deserve to know—”
“You don’t deserve a goddamn thing.” Sandy got right in her face. “I deserve to have my daughters by my side, but where are they?”
“One’s dead. Another’s dying. And who knows when Mae’s name is up,” Dani countered, cruel.
Sandy fell still.
“You already lost a daughter. Kathryn is dying, did you even know that? Maybe you could start bridging the gap with your family by starting with me.”
Sandy glinted disdain as she said dryly, “By telling you who your daddy is?”
“If you don’t, I’m not coming back.”
The glint disappeared.
Dani pressed, “I’ve come here and there’s always a new you I meet. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of getting around by you.”
“I haven’t done any pushing.”
“That’s all you’ve done!” Dani cried out and shoved off her chair. It screeched across the floor and rattled against the wall.
Sandy sat undisturbed and she suggested casually, “If you pick it up and slam it against the wall, it feels a lot better.”
“Damn you.”
“No, I’m serious. You could even throw it at the window—won’t do a darn good. They got ‘em turned plastic or something so no one can throw themselves out the window. We just bounce off like rubber birds. It’s not a good feeling when you go splat on the floor.”
“Are you insane?” Dani asked, incredulously.
“Yeah.” Duh.
“You’re impossible.”
“No, just crazy, but it probably means the same thing.” Sandy tipped her head back and chuckled. “Clary’s impossible. Thinks she sees damn angels. Can you imagine that?”
Dani fell silent and reached for her chair again. As she sat, slowly, reluctantly, she heard Sandy murmur, “Clarissa—that’s her real name—she tells me every day that my girls are around. Danielle and Erica. Can you imagine that? Talk about delusional. I don’t see things that don’t exist. When I’m out of it, I see people from my past. More possible than Clary. She’s impossible.”
“I’d like to know who my father.”
Sandy sobered from her quick sojourn into her amusement. She huffed and proclaimed, “You can’t handle that yet.”
“I can to.”
“No, you can’t. It’d roll up a whole other slew of barrels and you’re barely holding it together as it is.”
Dani frowned fiercely and cried out, “What right do you have to choose decisions like that? He’s my father and there’s enough secrets in our family as it is!”
“Well, there’s a whole bunch more when you find out who he is and his twisted story.”
“What do you mean?” Dani demanded through gritted teeth.
Sandy plopped her feet back in Dani’s lap and settled back once more. She dismissed, “Don’t worry about your daddy. He’ll come to you when you’re ready. I know that much, if I don’t know a lot else. Let me tell you about your granddaddy. How about that? He’s another story.”
Dani still seethed, but she did it silently.
“I stole your granddaddy from someone else.” Sandy chuckled dryly. “Maybe not the best thing to say, but it’s true and I’m sure proud of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your granddaddy’s name is Oscar Bendsfield.”
“What?” Dani exclaimed. Mr. Bendsfield. Mrs. Bendsfield.
“That’s right.” Sandy chuckled again. “Nanery Bendsfield used to be my best friend until her husband up and left her. He didn’t leave her for me so she never suspected a thing, but…I hope you don’t got the O’Hara curse for stupidity.”
“What do you mean?” Dani repeated.
“I was stupid. I went back around for more and more. He got me pregnant four times. I lost the last kid—which is what I think set off my crazy spells, but…he wasn’t with me. He never made no promises with pretty words and such, but…I loved him and I kept going back for more and more.”
“Does…”
“Does Nanery know?” Sandy shook her head and grinned wickedly. “She sure does, but she didn’t find that out until years later. It took her nearly twenty years before she got told what her precious Oscar was up to outside their cold bed, long before their marriage went stale.”
“You talk about it…like you don’t even care. You ruined a marriage.”
“The marriage was ruined long before Oscar came sniffing around.”
“Well, you didn’t help it.”
That got her grandma and Sandy sat back. “Huh. Got a point.”
“Marriage is sacred,” Dani exclaimed.
“Theirs wasn’t. Theirs was just wrong.”
“What?”
“Sometimes,” Sandy sat up and said, “sometimes partnerships aren’t meant to be. And sometimes…they only do more bad than any good that might come from it. Theirs was one of those. They weren’t meant to be married and Oscar knew that.”
“Lilies and daisies,” Dani announced.
Sandy grew still. She asked stiffly, “What you going on about?”
“Her husband. My grandfather. He liked lilies and daisies. She told me that two days ago. Now tell me that their marriage wasn’t sacred?” Dani stood up slowly. “It was sacred in her mind, long enough to tell me, how many years later what her husband’s favorite flowers were.”
“They just flowers.”
“Funny.” Dani dripped in disdain. “Those were her words too.”
Sandy O’Hara looked away from her granddaughter’s towering judgement.
“She cared enough to remember him. She named her son after him.” Dani turned away. “Those were my momma’s favorite flowers too.”
“What you say?” Sandra O’Hara asked her granddaughter, hoarse with awakened pain too long buried.
“Lilies and daisies. They’re my momma’s flowers so don’t say they’re just flowers. They’re more than that,” Dani clipp
ed out.
“Why are you doing this? Why do you care after all these years?” Sandy broke and asked.
Dani whirled back and saw her grandmomma’s eyes beseeching. Sandy choked out, “Why do you care? These are secrets better left buried. They just…they just bring pain to everyone involved.”
“So says the one who’d rather have her sins left buried,” Dani said softly, wondrously. “You’d like everyone to forget about you, don’t you? You want to forget what you did, what you did to your daughters. You don’t want to be remembered because then you gotta start looking at some messed decisions that you chose.”
“It’s not like that,” Sandy started.
Dani cut her off, unheeding, “That’s all this family has right now: secrets. I never talked to two of my sisters. Half the time, I don’t even know if I loved Erica and Julia—she’s like an anal, obsessive-compulsive, stranger who just knows all my hurts. Secrets got us where we are right now. I think I have a right to find out who I come from. I have a right to know who I am!”
“You’re going to tear up this family—”
“There’s no family to tear apart!” Dani cried out. “We got the same name, but that’s it. There’s no family anymore and it started with you!”
“Now, I didn’t—”
“You told your daughter to give her children away. You told her that Mae could have me, if she cleaned up her act. You acted like—like we were cattle given away to the richest owner. You told your daughter, who came to you—knowing that she was dying and you told her to split her children up.”
“She didn’t.”
“She might as well have because I never felt a part of that house.” Dani started to pace, anguished and torn inside.
“I gave my two cents. That’s all I did—”
“You were a mother who told her dying daughter what to do. She listened to you and she broke up our home. You did that! Not my momma! You tore my home apart and you did it because that’s where you came from.”
“I didn’t…,” But she did and the fight left her frail figure as quickly as it came. She accepted her defeat as evidence loitered in her trail now stood before her, proclaiming her injustices.
“You—” Dani started.
“Leave!” Sandra O’Hara stood quickly, but held onto the end of her bed for sure footing.
“What?”
“Leave. This is my room. This is my home and I get to say who comes to judge me. I say: leave and don’t come back.”
Dani let her words sink in before she shook her head. “I cannot believe you…”
“Well believe it on your way out. Get out!” Her grandmomma said harshly as she turned and sat on the opposite bedside, her stubborn face pointed towards the window.
Dani knew her grandmomma wasn’t watching outside. She was locked within herself and Dani pitied Sandy O’Hara. The anger swept aside as she realized what human being sat before her, who could spew words as she did to a granddaughter who still had yet to feel any grandmotherly love.
“This isn’t a hospital,” Dani murmured. “They might call it that, but it’s an asylum and you got here because of your secrets. You can’t live with who you are and because of that—part of your heart isn’t whole. It broke. If you want to die with your secrets to keep you company, then fine—that’s who’s going to be at your funeral.” She stopped at the doorway and said softly, “I chose to run, but I can’t run. I’m getting that now. But you—you choose to hide. You can’t run or hide. Those secrets are going to be there, no matter if it’s your secrets or someone else’s. The only thing you can do…you gotta stand and face ‘em.”
Sandra O’Hara glanced over her shoulder, but she quickly turned to the window. Her eyes had turned into glass and they merely reflected whatever looked back them.
Dani saw that her grandmomma wasn’t there anymore. She’d shriveled up and took refuge inside of her.
Another moment and Sandy would think her daughter stood in the doorway, and not a granddaughter who’d finally started to piece together her family.
Dani said to herself, “It’s alrighty painful, but the secrets gotta be put out. It’s the only way.”
Dani talked as her aunt in that moment. As her grandmomma in that moment.
She was connected to both, but Dani only remembered the favored lilies and daisies.
They danced in the sky and circled above.
Dani felt their magic and her eyes caught a single clove on her grandmomma’s nightstand. One clover, tucked underneath the bible, and Dani knew it had been kept for a purpose.
“I always found a clove under my pillow. I never knew who put those there, but I guess…it was your momma. She was always worried about me.”
“The cloves were for…” Dani murmured.
“The cloves were to attract my guardian angels or that’s what Danielle told me one night.”
“You know what’s funny?” Dani spoke to a stranger’s back who had first been her family’s foundation. “I think I believe Crazy Clarissa. I think your guardian angels really are Danielle and Erica.” She smiled in sadness, “You don’t need the clove to attract ‘em. They’re already here. Just ask Clarissa.”
Phyliss smiled in greeting as Dani passed the desk.
“How was your visit?” Phyliss asked warmly.
Dani stopped and turned. Her face was flat. “I ain’t coming back.”
“What?” The warmth left.
“She doesn’t have room for me in there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“No room with all those secrets standing about,” Dani said softly as she saw Clarissa trudge around the corner and moved to resume her normal seat. She rocked and hummed, but her eyes cast up and to the left—as if someone whispered a secret in her ear.
“Your grandmother can be difficult,” Phyliss started.
Dani shook her head, “No. She’s not difficult. She’s in denial.”
“She suffers from a very debilitating disease.”
“Yeah. It’s called hiding. That’s her disease.” Dani shook her head again and said firmly, “She’s chosen her walls and she’s messed up a lot of lives to keep safe and insane from everyone.”
“What are you talking about?” Phyliss was dumbfounded.
“My grandmomma is not insane. She very sanely chose to hide away inside of herself just now, as I imagine that she’d made a habit over the years.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I think I do,” Dani interrupted.
“No, you really don’t,” Phyliss said just as strongly.
Dani stopped and turned back. “My grandmomma knows enough to know that she can’t hide from who she is. That’s what she’s doing. I’m betting she’s here because no therapy has worked with her. It’s because she chooses not to let it work. She chooses not to change.”
“It’s not—”
“Yes,” Dani said gravely. “It is. You make the decision to change and you do it. I’m finally making that choice…” She found Clarissa again.
Dani walked past and said, as she waited for the elevator to open, “You tell my sister that I’ll be visiting her real soon.”
The doors opened and Dani stepped inside.