All I Once Held

By Gaylynne Sword

Katy Walton spent her life trying to be a good girl, or at least giving the appearance of one. When she marries into a long family line of Southern Baptist preachers, it becomes her job to maintain the image of the perfect family in the perfect church with a perfect future ahead. When the façade starts to crumble and even her best intentions fail t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quoir
• Release date: Jul 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9780991334537

Gaylynne Sword

Gaylynne lives in Northern California with her husband, children and retired racing greyhounds. She is passionate about telling real stories about real people and encouraging others to embrace the story they are living.

Book preview

PREFACE

YOU’D THINK, BY AGE FORTY-FIVE, I’D LEARN TO NEVER SAY NEVER.

I said I’d never move from California. I lived in Florida for over ten years.

I said I’d never settle for marriage before first having a career. I dropped out of school to get married at age twenty.

I said I’d never own a dog, being a born and bred cat person. I have two very large, very lovable retired racing greyhounds.

And most recently, I said I’d never get into the ridiculous social media craze, wasting countless hours mulling over photos of former boyfriends’ families and reading how my neighbor down the street burnt the pot roast. Facebook made my dreams come true.

It was my boyfriend’s idea. A term, by the way, I hate because it makes me feel twelve, but preferred over the formality of significant other or partner, which makes me feel either gay or in a business relationship, neither of which is accurate. Anyway, Jeremy’s son, (another never. I said I’d never get involved with someone with kids. Jeremy has two) Josh, at fifteen, like many kids his age spent entirely too much time unsupervised on the computer. Jeremy lived blissfully unaware of these activities until he was forced to enter the 21st century after a girl from Josh’s high school attempted suicide after some bonehead posted naked pictures of her on his Wall. Jeremy decided he should keep better tabs on his son’s cyber activity, so he made himself a FB account and required his son to become his friend if he wanted to keep his prized laptop. Which I thought was a valid and wise idea. What I wasn’t prepared for was for Jeremy to catch the social networking bug so severely. He’d call me at work to tell me how he’d found out that the kid that lived next door to him when he was in the third grade was now married with thirteen kids, living on a goat farm in Nebraska, or ask me if I knew anyone at work who might have an extra acre or two on Farmville.

You have entirely too much time on your hands.

I’m on my lunch break.

It’s 9:30 in the morning.

I was hungry.

How’s Josh doing?

Fine. Do you know that kid has 237 friends?

Popular boy.

I only have fifty-eight.

Well, umm, sorry?

No, wait, fifty-nine. Sam Donaldson from junior high just accepted my request. Cool.

I’ve got to go.

Can you ask around about the acre? I just got…

See you tonight.

Needless to say, I was more than a bit reluctant to jump on the bandwagon and there was no way on earth I was going to get sucked into one of those ridiculous games. I vowed to never spend more than fifteen minutes a day on it, and never at work, and I would never, ever, under any circumstance, tell anyone what I had for dinner, or how I got a blister on my baby toe from a new pair of ballet flats, or type the letters LOL as a form of communication.

Never.

You’d think I’d learn.

IT’S AMAZING WHO YOU CAN FIND. I’VE RECONNECTED WITH people I haven’t heard from in years, Jeremy said, as I sat at his desk and filled out my profile page.

Doesn’t it scare you just a little bit that we are so easy to find? Should it concern us that we are making ourselves so, I don’t know, accessible?

You can make it so only your friends can see information about you.

I know. But it sets up this whole new social expectation. Like what if someone finds me that I don’t want to reconnect with? Or vice versa.

Just ignore their request.

But isn’t that rude and guilt inducing? As if I don’t already have enough self-condemnation in my life. Soon we are going to be hearing about some new form of depression caused by the damaging effects of unfulfilled friend requests. I don’t know if I can live with that hanging over my head.

You are reading too much into this. Just try to have fun, he said ruffling my hair in that slightly annoying, but still endearing way of his. There must be someone out there that you’d like to reconnect with."

Which, of course, was true.

But if I found her, would she be willing to reconnect with me? And if not, what would I do with that? Was it better to just let things be?

CHAPTER 1

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

IT TOOK WHAT SEEMED LIKE THREE HOURS JUST TO TYPE THE letters in the little box next to the magnifying glass. Okay, maybe not to type the letters, but definitely to press the enter key. I really didn’t think it would be so easy to find her. I guess that’s one advantage to giving your child a weird name. Or at least an unusual one. I didn’t fight for much in my marriage, especially in the early days, but I’m certainly grateful I fought for that one.

I don’t know exactly when or how it started. It was at least four generations back I suppose. The firstborn daughters of the Lowe family were named after the parent's grandparents.

Example: My Grandmother Lowe was named Scarlett Grace Harbage. My Grandmother Fox was named Pamela Kathryn. So I became Kathryn Scarlett, which I shortened to Katy Scarlett after reading Gone with the Wind when I was in the 6th grade. So, when I found out that my child was going to be a girl, I told my husband that she would be named Ivy Rose Walton, after my grandmother, Lee Ivy and his grandmother, Rose Johanna. Which he was not too thrilled about.

It sounds like some California-hippie-sunshine-and-granola name.

To which I responded, trying to remain lighthearted, Well, she does have California-hippie-sunshine-and-granola roots, so I guess it’s perfect.

To which he said, not so lightheartedly, "My daughter is going to be raised as a southern girl and I do not want her saddled with some crazy name.

It’s a beautiful name.

Why not Rose Elizabeth?

After your mother and your grandmother?

Yes.

No. I like the tradition. I don’t want to be the one to end it. She can still be a southern girl, I promise.

I will not call her Ivy.

I will not call her Rose Elizabeth.

I will call her Rose.

Can we talk about this later?

We named her Ivy Rose Walton.

We called her Rose.

But every night when I rocked her to sleep, I whispered a song I had made up to the tune of Jesus Loves Me, Ivy Rose is beautiful, she’s a sweet and special girl... And when I was on one of my rare and thankfully short-lived crafty kicks following a MOPS meeting (Mothers of Preschoolers, a group of cute and perky sleep-deprived Southern Baptist women who met every other Friday for coffee and cookies, an inspirational or informative speaker, and a demonstration of how to make both Christmas ornaments out of mason jar rings and wreaths out of dried eucalyptus branches, in order to make an inviting and festive home environment) I sponge painted ivy leaves and vines all along the top of her nursery walls and around the door frame. I was very proud of myself.

Subtle rebellion.

My specialty.

When we moved back to California, everyone called her Ivy Rose. She didn’t seem to mind it. When I asked her, before signing her up for the 5th grade, what she wanted to be called, she asked me what her Dad would have wanted. I said that he always liked the name Rose, but that he would want her to do whatever made her happy. Ivy Rose makes me feel more beautiful for some reason, she told me, more unique. I hoped my smile didn’t look too smug.

Jeremy was standing over me when I found her. There wasn’t a thumbprint-sized photo next to her name like I was hoping, but a beautiful picture of a rose with vibrant green ivy wrapped around the stem. What a pretty painting, I said, lightly touching the screen.

That’s not a picture, Jeremy said with a laugh. Looks like your little girl has a tat.

Subtle rebellion.

Must run in the family.

Once I found her I was greedy for more. I wanted pictures, stories, information to help me piece together the life of my little girl I no longer knew. But she was smart and only shared information with friends.

I hesitated.

I knew I would get obsessed and worried and drive myself crazy wondering and regretting pushing that blasted Friend Request button. For a week, maybe two, I became one of those electronically possessed people, unable to ignore the intrusion of instant connection in my life, as every beep of my phone and notice on my computer made my blood pressure soar and my palms sweat, and I just had to check and see if it was her. Which it never was. My Macy’s bill was ready to view and I better not miss my last chance to take advantage of the 0% interest rate on all balance transfers to my MasterCard, and Zappos was still offering free shipping and returns. Oh, and Janice Morgan Lenoir wanted to be my friend, which I suppose should have made me feel a little better, if I could only remember who in the heck she was. This forced me to pull down my high school yearbooks, an activity I tended to avoid, especially knowing that my fragile psyche was not at all prepared for a trip down that portion of memory lane.

CHAPTER 2

HIGH SCHOOL

IT’S NOT LIKE MY TEEN-YEARS WERE OUT-AND-OUT HORRIBLE. IT could have been worse. If you asked anyone who knew me back then, they would say that I was a good kid. A great kid in fact. I was smart, near the top of my class. I was super involved as class president, the drama club treasurer, the forensic team captain. I was popular, with lots of friends and even more acquaintances, all with our eyes set towards the moon. The future was ours. Class of 1985.

As I sat uncomfortably leaning against my overstuffed bookshelf with titles ranging from Dr. Seuss, to Harry Potter, to The Purpose Driven Life, flipping through the pages of the Knights Annual, all silver and blue and glossy, the pictures told the same story.

We were all smiles and spirit and hairspray, scrawling the typical, Hey babe, I just want you to know that you’re the best and hope to see you tons over the summer,

It seems like I’ve known you forever and I’ll never forget you… replete with hearts dotting fat exclamation points and illegible signatures, next to pictures of people I vaguely recognized but could not name if my life depended on it. Janice Morgan, by the way, was a year behind me and played the oboe in the orchestra for West Side Story in which I played Maria.

What the pictures did not capture was the underlying sadness that permeated my smiling social circle of friends.

Midway through our junior year the gang and I were heading to town to see a movie on a Saturday night. It was January, cold and rainy and wet. I was in a car with Eric and Kim and Doug. The other car was filled with my best friend since kindergarten, Stacy Lovett, and her new boyfriend, Skyler, at the wheel. Skyler yelled to Eric as we pulled out of his driveway, I’ll beat you to the T. Not waiting for a response, he took off down the road with wheels squealing and horns blaring. There were two roads that met up at an intersection known as the Terrible T, turning right towards the high school and left into town. One road was bumpy and low, often flooded by the nearby creek. The other had steep hills and sharp curves with little to no shoulder. We went straight, choosing bumpy and possibly flooded. Skyler turned right. We got to the T first and waited with the windows down, ready to pump our fist and tell Skyler that he should of known his little VW Bug was never going to beat Eric’s cooler than cool baby blue Pinto.

The VW never came around the corner. We waited and waited, laughing nervously as the minutes went by and they still hadn’t arrived. Eric backed up and turned around to head down the road that they had travelled, joking still about flat tires or getting stuck behind a garbage truck. About half way up the road, midway through a sharp turn, we saw smoke rising off the wet pavement. Eric pulled off on the opposite side. We jumped out. The right front tire was over the edge of the embankment, stopped by a tree from plummeting down to a rocky creek probably twenty feet below. It didn’t look like they hit anything, just slipped off the side. Skyler had climbed out his side, unhurt, but screaming. When we got to the side of the road we saw it. Stacy, tiny and fashionable and always refusing to wear a seat belt because it hit her under her chin or wrinkled her blouse, had somehow managed to open the door when they went off the side and fell, tumbling down the side of the hill, where her head of auburn feathered hair hit a rock. She lay, unmoving, a few feet from the creek. Kim ran to the closest house to call an ambulance. Doug and Eric slid down the embankment, ripping their jeans and scraping their arms, cursing and yelling, Stacy, we’re coming Stacy. Don’t move. I stood sobbing at the top of the hill with my arm around a frantic Skyler. "She told me to slow down, she told me to slow down. I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. She was so scared and I thought it was funny. He collapsed into me and I sunk down to sit on the side of the road, his Knights cap slipped off his head and fell into a puddle.

The rest was a blur. Neighbors came out and directed traffic around us. The ambulance came in what seemed like hours, assessed the situation and sent a paramedic down the hill to the crumpled body. The boys had taken off their jackets to cover her up and stood next to the paramedics shivering and wet and silent. It didn’t take them long to ascertain that there was nothing to be done for Stacy Lovett. She had broken her neck, smashed her skull, she had been dead since she landed. The cops asked us questions. None of us knew what to say. Skyler was hysterical. No, he hadn’t been drinking. No, he wasn’t stoned. He lost control. His tire went over the side. No, she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. No one wore seatbelts back then. The door opened. She tumbled out. He couldn’t catch her.

No one said anything about the race.

All I could think about was Stacy’s mom and dad. They were in Tahoe for the weekend. Skiing. I think it was their anniversary. Stacy was staying over with me. We had bought a bunch of junk food. She was going to show me the new routine the Song Leaders were learning for Nationals in Disneyland next month. We were going to listen to her new Pat Benatar cassette. Her favorite song was Invincible. How was I going to face her parents? How could I explain what happened. How would we go on from that day? We had our whole life ahead of us, and in an instant, one bad decision, one quick turn of the wheel, and it was all over.

But time, always relentless, moved forward. There was a memorial service and a special assembly at school. We were all interviewed by the highway patrol a couple more times but it was agreed by all that it was just a freak, tragic accident. Guard rails were placed along the road and parents became stricter than ever about letting their kids out of the house. At least for a month or two. The basketball team dedicated their season to Stacy, everyone wearing a small SL on their jersey and painted on their cheeks during the championship game. A tree was planted in her honor on the campus near the bus circle. Her parents moved to Colorado.

And the five of us lived in a strange bubble. We never talked about it. We didn’t attend any of the events at school. Kim and I, never very close before, became inseparable until she moved away when school ended. Her father was in the military, but everyone figured she left because of the accident. At her going away party Skyler and I found ourselves on the deck away from the rest of the crowd.

What’s up, he asked, startling me out of my gaze into the woods behind the house. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.

Oh, no, it’s okay. Just needed to get some fresh air. How you doing?

You know, fine. I guess. How about you?

Fine. You know.

Duran Duran’s, Hungry Like the Wolves, escaped from an open window.

Any big summer plans? he asked.

Not really, I need to get a job. I usually go to this camp in the redwoods every year. I think I’m going to try to be a counselor or something. How about you?

I’m working a couple jobs. One with my brother at the apple packing farm, which sucks because I have to get up at like 5 am every morning. But it’s decent money. Also at my dad’s shop. You know. I’ve got to pay for my insurance next year. It went up after...

That sucks. I’m sorry.

Yeah. Well…

There was a long pause and all of the sudden I realized that he was crying, deep guttural sobs making his entire body tremor in slow motion.

Oh, Skyler, don’t it’s… and I started to cry too, as we kind of collapsed into each other.

She told me to slow down. She wanted me to slow down…

Nobody blames you, I lied. There was plenty of blaming. But I didn’t blame him. I didn’t blame anyone. Or, maybe, I blamed us all. "It was just stupid. Crazy. An accident. And he wrapped his arms around me, buried his head in my neck. We stood there and cried together for at least two songs, until we were kissing. With snot and tears and tongue and grief eliminating any self-consciousness. I remember hearing the sliding door to the deck opening, Billy Joel growing louder, and then muffled again as the door shut quickly. Everyone steered clear from the awkward, painful connection that was taking place.

Guilt likes company.

It also likes to feed itself.

Our relationship did both.

We combined our guilt and grief and covered it up with self-indulgence. We consumed each other, behaving recklessly and passionately, only adding to my guilt and shame, making it nice and fat and overpowering. But I found that smothering myself with guilt and shame over my own personal activities, the things I did have control over, was much easier to manage than the guilt over the whole mess that was so out of my control. It was as if I had to keep feeding my personal guilt to keep the out-of-my-control guilt undercover. Of course, I was not cognizant of these things back then. It’s amazing what years of life-experience and thousands of dollars of therapy will do for your self-awareness.

My parents had no idea.

I don’t know if they simply chose to close their eyes to it all or if they figured I was just being a typical teenager, sewing her wild oats. Or perhaps they were just clueless. Whatever the reason, they gave me a wide-berth. Too wide. They trusted me to make decisions on how and with whom I spent my time. They very rarely questioned my whereabouts, believing me when I said I was staying at Joanne’s or crashing at Chad’s after a pizza party. They were cool with it. They would not have been cool knowing that I was actually spending my nights crashed on Skyler’s futon after smoking his mom’s dope or snorting his stepdad’s coke and downing a couple of Bartels and James. I didn’t like the drugs. I hated the feeling of being out of control. But I liked the closeness they seemed to create and I liked being part of someone else’s world, no matter how utterly messed up that world was.

Despite myself, I finished high school at the top of my class with aspirations and opportunities to be a great success in life. I applied and was accepted to many good and prestigious schools in California, UCLA, UCSD, Pomona, Pepperdine. But I really wanted to get away. I felt trapped, all wrapped up in the ridiculously unhealthy relationship with Skyler and completely unequipped to get out of it on my own. He had graduated the year earlier and was taking classes at the junior college while working in his dad’s auto detailing shop. He made decent money and had no real reason or motivation to do anything else. He was happy with our relationship and wanted it to remain the same. He was settled. I was not. I wanted to escape and reinvent myself and figured this wouldn’t be possible if I remained in driving distance from my hometown. So, on a whim, I applied to Rollins College, this cute little private college in Winter Park, Florida, a wealthy suburb of Orlando. We had driven by it the previous Christmas break when my family took a trip to Disney World and Atlanta. I liked the artsy feel and thought it would be fun to live so close to the happiest place on earth. I wanted to major in theater, preferring to pretend I was someone else. But I wasn’t good enough for any of the big name programs in California. I sent in an audition tape from my senior project performance to Rollins and was accepted with a small scholarship. Skyler was freaked out. He actually asked me to marry him before I left, thinking that a ring on my finger would keep us together. I laughed, thinking he was kidding, and he played it off like he was. He cried and grasped on to me the night before I was set to leave.

I’ll come out to see you as soon as I can.

I’m coming home at Christmas.

Maybe I should move out and get a job in Orlando. I’m sure there’s like hundreds of detailing shops out there.

But not your dad’s detail shop. You need to stay here. We’ll talk every day.

I’m no good without you. I love you, Katy.

I love you too. Don’t worry. It will be fine, I lied.

As he drove away I knew in my gut we would not be together in a month. I had to move on, no matter how painful. And as I’ve learned, over and over again, it is on these most painful journeys we learn the most valuable lessons.

CHAPTER 3

HURRICANE SAMSON

IT WAS OCTOBER, THE