Heather Buyce-Vasquez
Rose, Seattle, 2017
The night is warm and the light sweater Rose wore was not needed. Sitting out on the deck under the early night sky – that blue it turns just before it gets dark with her daughter Lyllian. Michael has gone inside to get them all glasses of red wine. Lyllian was telling her all about the girls’ and their summer plans. Frankie is starting driving school and landed her first official job at a burger joint down the hill.
In between all of that she’s working on college essays and looking at different universities. The very idea of her in a car driving to a job while in college is enough to send Lyllian running for a drink, some doc martens, and some 90s cassette mashups. Little Viv is entering the first grade with a bang and she and the dog Hazel have become fast friends taking over the back yard with their secret forts and catapults.
Lyllian chatters on about other things of note. The way her cubicle faces the morning sun and how when she gets in she pretends she’s on a beach somewhere. And how if she scoots her chair over just so she is virtually invisible to all the world. And then she writes.
Rose knows her daughter. Her eyes are dark pools and she is wringing her hands a little. She knows she wants to ask about the blackouts, the memories. And Rose is prepared to tell her despite her own misgivings and experiences. Despite her own questions never answered.
Michael comes back and hands out the wine. He also has a plate with some cheese and grapes and laughs a little at the fanciness of it. Lyllian stuffs her mouth and takes a gulp of wine much of which goes down the wrong pipe and she sputters into her glass.
Rose smiles gently. ‘”Love. I wish I could explain those memories. Those moments when you are not you but her. But I can’t. I can say that I think it is no accident this is happening to you. Or me. And I even believe that perhaps my mother, your grandmother, had them too.”
She pauses to let that hang in the air. Inside she hears Viv yelling at her sister about a last slice of fancy bread that apparently was gobbled up while Viv was involved in an art project with Hazel. There is an answering yell but Rose cannot make it out.
Lyllian opens her mouth then closes it again. Michael leans forward, his black curly hair glinting in the backyard lamp. “So…what can you tell us? Are you having the same sort of memories Lyllian is? Do you recognize anything? Have you made any connections?”
Rose smiles. “Yes. A bit. I know that these visions are of someone close to me. Us. And that she lived a hard and terrible life. I know that she did things she is not proud of. I know she was watched. I know she was strong. “she stops and considers, “I also know that I believe the visions are passed down through the locket.”
Lyllian is startled. The locket? “The locket I found when I was little? In Jim’s box? And then” she is getting animated, “and then found again just recently. It was hidden in our house. This house. The window.”
Rose is nodding. Michael is looking at them both. “Wait what locket?”
Lyllian turns to him. “When I was seven or eight I found a locket in my brother’s room. I took it because I was a bratty little sister. And then I lost it and forgot about it. Then a couple of months ago I find it again – here.” She turned to her mother. “Why did Jim have it?”
Rose smiled. “I don’t know. I really don’t. My mother gave it to me right before I left California with your father. I was pregnant with your brother. She said it had been given to her by her father, your great-great grandfather Joe. She, my mother, believed the girl in the locket to be her mother. The mother who disappeared when she was a little girl.”