Keeping the Window Open

"Is Mommy dying, Aunty Jen?" The three-year-old looked up at her mother's sister with a pair of ever-changing eyes, which were a deep, turbulent blue at that moment.

Jen, who was currently 28, knelt down and brushed a golden wisp of hair out of her niece's eyes, "I don't know, Nicola, I really don't know."

Jen pulled the tiny girl into a tight hug. Nicola looked over her Aunty Jen's shoulder at the prone form lying on the hospital bed. She was almost skeletal and wraith-like in the hospital gown, but looked as though she'd once been very beautiful. Now, her long brown hair had lost its shine, and her once healthy skin was sallow. She looked brittle and quite hollow.

"What happened to Mommy, Aunty Jen? Sometimes, after she's put me to bed, and I'm supposed to be sleeping I can hear her. She doesn't sleep much. Sometimes she paints, or reads letters from the cedar box, or she wanders through the garden, but when everything is dark, and all the stars are asleep, mommy cries until she falls asleep. I think she has bad dreams. Sometimes she tosses and turns, and sometimes she wakes herself up screaming."

The little girl looked so sad and so afraid; it made Jen cry. Her sister had changed so very much. All she could do for a very long while was hold Nicola and sob. Then, she stood up and called the nurse, "I am taking Nicola home for the night. Please call me if anything at all changes for Polly."

The nurse nodded, and Jen let Nicola kiss her mother on the cheek, after which she kissed her sister on the forehead and led Nicola outside. "Your mommy's story is a long one, and it will take a long time to tell. Are you sure you can keep up and understand it, baby?"

"No, I'm not sure, but I want to hear it anyway, okay? I want to know what makes my mommy cry," the small girl looked up at her hand with her chin jutting determinedly in a familiar gesture, eyes wide and nearly unblinking.

"Okay, honey. I'll start telling you at bed time, but only one part of the story per night, okay?"

"Nicola nodded, and her golden curls bobbed, "Just like the bedtime stories mommy used to tell me every night?"

Jen smiled sadly and ran a hand through her shoulder-length golden-brown hair, "Sure, baby. What do you want for supper? Chicken? Veggie soup?"

Nicola pulled a face, wrinkling her small, slightly upturned nose, "I want stir-fry."

Jen shrugged tiredly, "Sure thing. I suppose it's doable."

The drive to the small cottage by the lake was spent in silence. Jen let Nicola color while she went back to her sister’s room. She immediately spotted the cedar hope chest at the foot of the bed and felt a pang of sadness mingled with anger throbbing in her chest. Then, her eyes traveled over to her sister’s paintings. They stood leaning against the wall, and she noticed that most of them were acrylics on canvas or art board. Jen couldn’t resist the urge to look at the pictures.

One was of a trapped water-sprite, all done in shades of blue, from almost-white to the shade past midnight. The sprite looked sad, but determined. The next one was a wolf-cub with coal-black fur sleeping peacefully beneath the branches of a fallen tree. After that came a picture of an angel and a child. The angel lay at the feet of the child, its wings battered and broken. It was bleeding and crying, and the child stood before it with an outstretched hand.

There were a few landscapes, and a still-life of a bouquet of confederate jasmine and magnolias with a single yellow rose in the center. There was a self-portrait, too, of the beautiful, happy Polly from a few years before. Another picture lay there, of a castle in the sand. It was being swallowed by the tide on a dusky, moon-bathed night. Also, there was one painting wrapped up in brown paper, and tied with heavily knotted twine. Jen started to reach for it, but just then Nicola called, “Aunty Jen, I’m hungry!”

Jen let out a heavy sigh and gave herself a shake as she walked back down the hallway. She made Nicola’s supper, and while the three-year-old ate, she drew the girl a hot bath. Getting the girl ready for bed fairly efficiently for a woman who had no experience with children, Jen scooped the girl up and started carrying her to her room.

Nicola piped up, “Aunty Jen? I want to sleep in Mommy’s room.”

“Okay, sweetheart, do you want me to get your night light?”

The little girl shook her head, “Just turn on Mommy’s fairy light.”

Jen knew immediately what she was talking about. It was a crystal with a hologram of fairies etched in the center that sat on a rotating, lighted base. Polly had cherished it for a very long time before she fell ill. Jen deposited Nicola gently in her mother’s bed and turned on the fairy light, which immediately started spilling soft, prismatic color all around the room.

She was about to walk back into the living room when she saw the open window, and walked over to close it.

“Don’t,” Nicola commanded sleepily, “Mommy never, ever closes the window, unless the weather’s so bad it’s blowing across the porch and inside. She says never to shut hope out.”

“Okay, Nicola. Are you ready for the first part of your Mommy’s story?”

Neither of them noticed the man standing on the outside who decided to stay and hear more about the woman who left her window open.

Nicola nodded her assent and Jen began, “Your Mommy was very young when she found out she was pregnant with you. It was a very big surprise, but your Daddy married her so they could take good care of you, but soon after you were born, your Daddy was in the military, and he got called away to another country.”

By then, Nicola was sitting bolt-upright, wide awake, “You knew Daddy, Aunty Jen? Was he good? Did he love Mommy?”

“Honey, your Daddy was complicated, but your Mommy was convinced that he was a good man, and she loved him very, very much. He had a lot to think about when he went off to fight in the war. I do believe that, deep down, he loved your Mommy. They declared him missing in action some time around your first birthday, and they finally declared him dead right after you turned two.”

“So Daddy’s dead,” the child’s voice trembled with intense fear and sadness, not selfish, but entirely for her Mother as she wondered how it must have felt to lose someone you loved.

“I really can’t say, honey. Your Mommy never allowed herself to believe he could have died. She was so sure he was coming back for the two of you,” Jen shrugged and took a deep breath, not wanting to go any further with the story tonight, “It’s late, baby. Get some sleep. We’re going back to the hospital again in the morning to see her.”

“Okay,” the toddler sighed, burrowing down in the covers, “Love you, Aunty Jen. ‘Night.”

“Goodnight, darlin’,” Jen whispered, smoothing the ringlets back from Nicola’s face, “Sweet dreams, love bug.” The child smiled angelically at the special nickname her aunt kept for her, and was almost instantly asleep.