Mothers and Daughters

Daedalia: Chapter 24

Daedalia is a serialized novel, with a new chapter released every Monday morning. The story is designed to unfold slowly, the days in between, a space for it to settle into your imagination. Each chapter is a 10–15 minute read/listen. Check out the Table of Contents if you want to jump to a specific chapter. Want something to binge while you wait? Three novels, complete with audio narration are ready for you to dive in.

Previously…

Marabelle pressed Lefty about Greta and the period when Kelly disappeared again, and he admitted Greta became an escape while refusing to give details about the affair. He then revealed he’d been holding all of Kelly’s journals and offered Marabelle the trunk, insisting she can’t tell the story honestly without reading what Kelly wrote.

The following text is transcribed directly from Kelly Ann Mudd’s journals. There are fifty-three volumes in the collection that was donated to MoMA by her estate.

September 28, 2005

Grass is a remarkable thing. I’ve missed it, the way it’s alive beneath you when you lie down. This afternoon, I lay down in a high meadow and studied a patch of it until it got too dark to see anything. I admire the sprawl of grass and the way it’s all interconnected, like it’s all one organism, not a trillion tiny, individual blades. Grass is defined by its plurality. It’s everywhere and virtually invisible. I guess that’s a good way to describe me.

I didn’t bring my sketchpad on purpose. When I have it, I miss everything that falls outside its dimensions. I’ve missed so much, too much already. I say that’s the reason. It sounds nice. It’s what a thoughtful person would say.

The truth is I’m angry at Ona and afraid, and I don’t think I will ever forgive her. I can feel her pushing, nudging me to engage, but I refuse. Better to have the headaches.

I flew into Charlotte two days ago and rented a car. I drove until I reached the Blue Ridge Parkway, and then just kept driving. I found a little motel right off one of the overlooks, which is crazy. There’s literally nothing along the parkway for miles. The place is ancient, built in the fifties, I think, and I might be the only person staying here. The sheets are starched and scratchy and there’s no air-conditioning. My small, cedar-paneled room smells like a dry old attic, or like the smell of a box of puzzle pieces, a box that hasn’t been opened in a decade. It’s perfect.

I missed dinner at the little restaurant, but the old woman who sat behind the register was kind enough to bring me a plate of cold fried chicken, a biscuit, and some slaw. I devoured it sitting in a little folding chair I put outside my room so I could look at the stars above the dark, bear-like silhouette of the mountains.

I called Lefty to tell him I was safe and that I was back in North Carolina. He didn’t speak much, didn’t ask any questions. I know he’s sick of my shit and thinks I’m a terrible mom. I am objectively a terrible mom.

The thing about being a terrible mom is that you don’t get better by being around your kid because their presence just reminds you you’re a terrible mom and then you feel like shit and that just makes you a more terrible mom. I do miss her though. I don’t deserve to miss her. I don’t deserve her.

I can’t stop thinking about Fiodor. He was never going to hurt Marabelle, he was just trying to get my attention. He didn’t deserve to die. The way he wrote about my art, the things he saw in it, amazed me. It was like someone reading thoughts in my mind that I didn’t even realize I had. How could he possibly see me so clearly just from looking at my work? He saw me the way Lefty did before Daedalia.

I missed being seen. But that’s no excuse. I should never have started talking with him. Did I flirt with him? Maybe, but it wasn’t like that. I entertained his theories and teased him with glimpses of the thing he obsessed over. He was a lonely man who had no one, no connection to anything but my work. I was his whole identity and then I just cut him off. Even the kindest, most harmless person can become dangerous when they’re drowning. I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself for what I’ve done.

It’s late and I need to sleep, I guess, but I don’t know why. There’s nothing I have to do tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. I have more than anyone could ever ask for and it doesn’t make any difference.

October 2, 2005

I called home to try to talk to Marabelle but she wouldn’t get on the phone. I don’t blame her. Lefty asked if I would come home, but I can’t. Not yet.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks mostly outside, hiking or just sitting. I need to work. It’s like a terrible itch, an itch inside my brain, inside my gut. There has to be something more to me apart from my art and I’m determined to find it. I’m not sure that I will, but maybe I can at least get some peace away from Ona’s persistent nagging.

I bought a used VW bus. I’ve never bought a car before. It was a practical purchase, I think. I can sleep in it. It’s comfortable and I like driving it even if it does putter up hills. I like waking up and deciding whether I want to stay or go.

I’m really just circling these mountains, though, trying to work up the courage to go and visit my mother. I don’t know why it’s suddenly important. Maybe I need to see her up close to be reminded that there’s a reason why I’m so fucked up. Or maybe now I’m beginning to understand her better. What if she’s not even alive?

My dreams these days are so vivid. I can’t just turn it off, the little Daedalia factory in my mind. Just because I shut down the production line doesn’t mean the idea machine stops. I confess that I look forward to sleeping and I do a lot more of it, sometimes pulling off to the side of the road, drawing the curtains, and taking a nap. Can someone be addicted to sleep?

When I wake up, I lie there for a while in that halfway space, dancing with the ideas, pushing them around on the temporary canvas. It’s as close as I’ll allow myself to get to making art.

These journals have lined pages for a reason, but still my pen drifts to the margins, always looking for the white space. The most recent series of dreams feature vines, a vast network of them twisted together at points like nodes, then separating out into a thousand different directions only to converge again. I was moving along one of the vines, following it slowly at first from some distance, and then I was inside it, moving so fast it’s just a blur of light and color until I explode into the next node.

The nodes are orbs, each like tiny worlds with their own atmosphere, their own life forms, strange, scary, and sometimes beautiful. Writing about them is impossible. Words are inferior, like trying to draw the fine hairs of a downy feather with the fat end of a charred stick.

Besides, it’s not the image anyway, even if I could describe it perfectly. Even if I could draw it exactly. It isn’t what’s on the page, but what’s inside it, beneath it. There’s a thousand pulsing hearts pumping away invisibly behind any great work of art.

I will go see my mother tomorrow. Maybe that’s what will knock me out of this fucking loop I’m stuck in.

October 3, 2005

I debated calling first or just showing up. I didn’t want to do either so I chose the middle ground. I parked on the street at the end of the driveway like some creepy person in the van and watched the place for an hour or two.

The house looked worse for the wear, peeling paint and broken shutters. The only active improvement to the property was a ramp up to the front door. I wondered if they even lived there anymore and was about to leave when the front door opened.

An old woman, roughly the size of my mother, appeared in the doorframe but her shape was all wrong, like a collection of sticks wired together inside a lavender jogging suit. This woman’s hair was limp, lifeless, and muddled with gray. I was convinced it wasn’t her until she turned in profile to shout into the house. A moment later, a crumpled old man appeared in a wheelchair behind her and my heart frosted over.

The comb-over was gone. His head looked like a translucent bird egg. The ruddy, bloated face I remember was replaced by hollow cheeks, pulled into a permanent frown. As she maneuvered him down the ramp, she looked up and saw my van. Her face scrunched up and she paused midway. Her eyes locked on mine, or I imagined they did. I didn’t wait to find out.

I drove back into town, my heart racing. I’m not sure what I’m afraid of. Neither of them have any hold over me and they haven’t since I moved out at sixteen, but I felt that old feeling of being trapped like a small animal. He must’ve had a stroke or something. I feel no pity for him.

For my mother, it’s more complicated. I realize I have no desire to talk to her or tell her about my life, even to gloat and punish her. Still, there’s a stitch of guilt I can feel pinching my gut. She looks so helpless and sad and old, like that house with the shutters hanging off their hinges.

That’s something I can fix at least. I’ll find a contractor in town tomorrow and give them money to repair the house. I’ll do it anonymously. It’s all the “good daughter” she deserves.

I think I’m stunned that she has stayed with him, that she could love him when he was a monster and love him now that he’s a vegetable. She never had that kind of love for me. It’s horrible to admit, but I see myself in her.

I’ve done no better as a mother and as much as I want to, I can’t right now. Better for M to miss me and be angry at my absence than to see the shell of me every day and wonder why she’s not deserving of my attention. I miss her terribly. But going back now would be selfish. She doesn’t need me fucking her up.

October 5, 2005

Tomorrow I’ve decided to leave the mountains. As beautiful as they are right now with the leaves changing, it’s time to go. I need to keep moving. It’s really all I know to do right now.

I kind of did what I came here to do. I didn’t speak to them, but I saw my mom and my stepfather. I made some effort to atone for my neglecting her all these years. It’s okay if she doesn’t know the help with their house came from me. I know it did and that makes me feel a little better.

Marabelle still won’t talk to me, but Lefty put the phone on speaker for half an hour while he was helping her with her homework so I could hear her voice. She sounded so grown up and confident, I couldn’t stop crying and had to put the phone on mute so she wouldn’t hear me.

He was helping her with a book report she was having to write and I was reminded what a patient teacher he is. I was really just a girl the first time I met him and his voice had this effect on me, like a calming, settling feeling. He asked her to read what she wrote aloud and I could just picture them there at the kitchen table, him nodding and humming his approval at specific points.

I’m not ready to face them, but tomorrow morning I will at least start driving west.

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