14. exactly 5 minutes

Dolores did not know why this realization had rearranged her so, but it had. She had never been anonymous, her birth never covert--never rejection by omission. Rejection, all by itself.

She left the lights off; only the glow from the park's trail lamps filtered through the stained glass in the back kitchen door. She felt small.

She found her mother's old suitcase in the hall closet and dragged it into the bedroom. Todd followed. "We have to go," she told him. She opened the top drawer of her dresser and stared at rows of rolled socks. "I don't know why," she added. A red pair with black spiders printed in stripes around the ankles. The cotton was soft, and she pumped it like a stress ball, watching the veins on the backs of her hands go smooth and then plump, smooth and then plump. She had her mother's hands. Capable, her mother had called them.

And so it came then, waves of longing that overwhelmed her. Her mother would have known what to say to her and how to say it. You have exactly five minutes to wallow, Dolo. I'll set the timer. How many times had her mother done this to shake Dolores loose from the thousand pounds of worry that followed her?

Dolores threw the balled spider socks into the suitcase and wandered into the dark kitchen where she set the microwave timer for five minutes and then sat at the kitchen table. Her chest heaved three times; and then she fell quiet, waiting for the timer to ding and for her mother to arrive. Time's up. Who are you?

Dolores.

Good. That's the only thing you ever have to know or get right. Then she'd held Dolores's hands between her own. Capable. Look at what fine, capable hands we have. We can fix just about anything. Except the world. We cannot fix that, and that's okay. Now who are you?

Dolores.

The timer dinged, and there was nothing.

The quiet of the house snaked through her chest and squeezed her from the inside. She opened her mouth and the weight of it all pushed out one long scream. It blew over the countertops and rang her aunt's cast iron pan hanging from a metal hook over the stove. Grief was a sneaky trick; it was never quite done with you. She screamed again, and it tore at her throat until it felt raw. Then silence again.

Out of breath, Dolores slipped from the chair and curled up on the kitchen floor, her cheek warm against the cool tile. Something in her pocket mashed against her hip bone. She pulled out Phillip's tiny car and held it tightly in the palm of her hand until she fell asleep.

Dolores Dolores Dolores. My Dolo, I'm here. You don't have to go. I see everything now.  

Read previous chapters here: HERE.

note from ph
I feel a little self-conscious about how melodramatic this scene is. I'm not completely sure why Dolores has had such a strong reaction to learning that Karen knew about her. I wrote a song a few days ago that seemed to be directing this scene. So I wrote the scene for the song, instead of the song for the scene. I'm thinking I need to go back and explore some previous interaction a bit more closely. Now that I'm 14 chapters in, I'm starting to see where I need to do a lot of rewrites, and that's starting to make the drafting process feel clumsy. My internal editor-dialogue is getting really pissy because of it. But, I'll keep going. It will work itself out eventually. This note is my way of acknowledging that this chapter or point in the story might not make any sense at all whatsoever. Oy vey.