Worn Masks by Phyllis Carito

book to pull from the shelf. A wave of nausea passed
through her, making Mary Grace unsteady on her feet. She heard music playing. A
record scratched along the groove, catching the needle: my heart has gone
away, my heart has gone away, repeated over and over .
    It must just be the smells and dreary way the nursing home made
her feel. She had been going so often. The thought of this trauma in Aunt
Maggie’s life, and then how Aunt Maggie was left never to find love, while
Uncle Paul seemingly lost the love of his life all felt sad and heavy on her
heart.
    She sat in her one cozy chair, an old stuffed recliner, and tried to clear her mind. Across from her was a
Vic torian two-seat couch, nothing you could lie across or sink into.
Again, she ruminated, thinking of the letters from her dad to her mom, what was
their love about? There had been other chairs in their living room back in the
house, but her parents had always sat on the couch, together. Memories like
this kept flooding her mind. Snapshots flashing in front of her in black and
white, which somehow left her with a new awareness of herself. Mary Grace knew
she herself had always held back emotionally, losing any possible love that
tried to come her way, not able to comprehend what keeps love alive.
    Should she try to talk to Aunt Maggie? Who else was left that she
could talk to about her mother? It still seemed her mother was at the heart of
her own discontent. Even that first guy she had left with from home hadn’t
lasted long around her, and he had said when leaving, “You’re an iceberg,
loosen up kid.” At the time Mary Grace just focused on the word “kid” and
easily countered for herself, “So, you’re four years older than me and you know
everything!” 
    “Iceberg?” 
    Mary Grace sat up all night drinking a bottle of champagne, the
apartment dark other than a small table lamp illuminating the letters she was
reading. The love letters sent from her father to her mother, the words on the worn pages came in and out of the light as she
un folded them one at a time. Letters that just didn’t ring true to her
somehow, felt somehow wrong. Could her father write such passages of desire?
Her parents, in her memory, never showed this kind of passion or dedication to
each other. Or was her dad’s love hidden behind the whiskey? He was dedicated
to Teresa, but was theirs the kind of love of your life that you pour
out in letters?
    The next day the drink wore off, but not the
dullness in Mary Grace’s eyes. She stopped along the way to work to light a
candle at St. Raymond’s for her Aunt Maggie, for all the suffering she had
endured. She considered lighting one for her mother—but blew out the thin stick
before she put it to the next candle. If the light of love doesn’t ever happen
for you can you ever feel at peace? She never worried over such things before,
but now it seemed to her that everything in her life was turning in side out.

 
    Uncle Paul -3
    Chapter 14
     
    AUNT MAGGIE WAS talking about everything now. The floodgates had
opened. She talked about how often Mary Grace’s mother and Uncle Paul fought.
Aunt Maggie relayed that according to Teresa Uncle Paul was always drunk.
Teresa hated having to share the bathroom with him. Aunt Maggie would hear them
as he mounted the stairs and Teresa exited the bathroom.
    “You think you have the right brother and that I’m a good for
nothing,” Uncle Paul barked, on a night that he
had been tossing a few stiff whiskeys down, breath ing heavily and
struggling to stay focused in his drunken state. He was on the top of the
stairs, turning to go through the bathroom and into the attic.
    “Teresa was always annoyed with him for something. She always
complained that he left the bathroom dirty.” Aunt Maggie shook her head. “Your
mother would try to tell him that she had a child to take care of and didn’t
have time to be cleaning up after him, phew.”
    Mary Grace knew this was nonsense. She had
seen