PURGUS: Alison Lost

By Angie Gallion

When Alison Hayes finds herself suddenly set free in the world to build her life out of the crumbled ruins of her childhood, she must come to terms with her own demons before she can make her way out of the chaos left by her mother's life.

Were people right to think she would follow the same road her mother travelled, or would Alison be able to

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beech House Books
• Release date: Dec 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781954309036

Angie Gallion

Angie Gallion has been a stage actor, an anti-money-laundering investigator, a photographer, and a paralegal. She has lived in Illinois, California, Missouri, and Georgia and has traveled to Greece, the Dominican Republic, Scotland, and Ireland. Angie dreams of traveling the country on wheels with her husband once her children are grown. She is currently rooted outside of Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, their children, and their two French bulldogs. Angie’s writings usually deal with personal growth through tragedy or trauma. She explores complex relationships, often set against the backdrop of addiction or mental illness. Her first novel, Intoxic, was the 2016 bronze medalist in the Readers Favorite for General Fiction. That book was a twenty-five-year adventure in self-doubt and hesitation.

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Purgus: Alison Lost

(Book Two of the Alison Hayes Journey) 

Copyright © 2016 Angie Gallion

All Rights Reserved

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First edition 2016 (Published by Beech House Books)

Second Edition 2018

Published in the USA by thewordverve inc. (www.thewordverve.com)

Third Editions 2021

Published in the USA by Beech House Books

eBook ISBN: 978-1-954309-03-6

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-954309-02-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018901775

Purgus

Alison Lost

Cover Design, Interior Design, and eBook Formatting

by A.L. Lovell

www.angiegallion.com

Cover art created by Alexandra Haynak

Dedication

In memory of Leslee McGinness,

who took in all the strays.

and

For my husband Jeff,

who taught me the importance

of making choices and helped heal

all my broken pieces.

Special Thanks To

Alexandra Haynak, from St. Petersburg, Russia, for the use of her beautiful artwork on the cover of this book. Ms. Haynak's work was made available to me through her participation at Pixabay.com, a photo/art sharing site. Pixabay has amazing collections from very talented people all around the world.

Kali Bhargave. Without her encouragement and near insistence, these words would have stayed in my computer, a series of never-ending project pieces.

Janet Fix, my first editor, and champion not only of my writing but of all my creative potential.

One special woman, L, who chose adoption. The gift you gave is extraordinary.

Part One: Spring

1

The light outside the window is haloed around the street lamp, and I am sitting in the police station, on one of the metal folding chairs that line the front window. A fan whirs in the corner, moving the sultry air from one side of the room to the other. I am so alone—not so much different from every other day, really. Except it is. Today is different, and nothing will ever be like it was again.

You can come home with me, says Leslie McGill, laying her large, square hand on my arm.

I am here because this is where they brought me after they put up the yellow CAUTION tape and began to process the scene. The crime scene. The scene where my mother had ended her life, or somebody had ended it for her. Suicide is murder—ending a life. No difference. I remember being asked months ago if she had suicidal tendencies, and at the time, all I could think was: don’t we all? Back when I had sliced my own little lines of self-destruction into my skin, writing the words that defined my life on the arches of my feet, into the hollows below my ankles, and finally, just angry, wordless lines in the soft flesh of my arms.

I do not look up at her, this large, soft woman, but stare at the dark skin of her square hand, her clean, trimmed fingernails showing pink. She is fabulously big and round, in a tunic that may have been originally designed as a tent. It is every color imaginable all at once. Her black tights stretch taut over the thick muscles of her calves. I think I have seen her somewhere before, but don’t have the mental capacity to figure out where. I don’t want to go home with you. I have a home, I say, looking away from her hand and back through the window, out into the night. The glow of headlights pool in the street as a car passes.

Yes. I know you have a home, but it looks like your home is going to be tied up for a little while. She pauses, lifting her hand off my arm, folding it over the small manila envelope that sits across her lap. My name is written in the top left corner. Alison Hayes. Written in black pen, with such force that I can see where the paper has dented with the passage of the pen. You’ll just be with me until we find your family.

I don’t have any family, I say. I’ve been through this already, with the policeman who brought me here. I don’t have any family. I don’t know my father. I don’t know who my grandparents are or if my mother had siblings. It rolls off my tongue, foreign, their word, not mine.

Yes. That’s what they told me. I am sorry, she says in a quiet voice, resonant with sympathy, and I glance up at her for maybe the first time. She has blue eyes, large and slightly protruding, circled in dark by the skin around them. The dark color fades to a ruddy mocha down her cheeks, and her full lips are compressed to a tight line. I am very sorry.

I believe her. Her eyes are pooled with liquid, and for a second, I think the liquid will spill over and run down her cheeks. But she blinks several times, looking away from me and out the window, watching as a car moves slowly past, then back. When her eyes latch to mine again, they are dry. Won’t you come with me? I have a cozy room with a nice little bed in a room you'll have to yourself.

When will I be able to go back home?

I don’t know, honey. It depends on what the police decide.

My mother flashes through my mind, as she was when I went into her room, her mouth open, her skin gone to gray. I close my eyes against the vision and feel my brows rising into my forehead. When I have forced the vision out, I open my eyes again and stand up. Then let’s go. I stride to the door and turn back to her as she pushes herself up from the seat, holding one leg out straight, like the knee is stiff and sore. Can we go by and get some clothes on the way? I ask. It isn’t really clothes I want; it is my backpack that has all my money stashed inside.

No. They won’t let us in until they are done.

I nod, not surprised, and push the door open and step out into the night. She leads me to her van, a burgundy Town and Country, and I go around to the passenger side and let myself in. When she settles her bulk into the driver's seat, the van squats with a groan. She inserts a key attached to a collection of dangling fobs that jingle and clink together. She squares her bottom more comfortably in the seat, and the engine roars, taking off and down the street for the whole two minutes it takes to arrive at her house on Polk Street. I almost laugh when she pulls into the drive and turns off the car. I had thought I was going somewhere else, somewhere in another town, Mattoon, Arcola, Tuscola or Arthur, anywhere else. I didn’t think I would end up just three or four blocks south of where we started. I could have walked here in as much time as it took her to get settled into her seat and out again.

The McGill house looks like a little cracker box ranch, stretching out the length of the yard. The living room, which we now step into, is long, connected and open to the dining room. A hall heads off in the other direction toward the two bedrooms at the end of the house. I take my shoes off and follow her as she walks down the hall, flipping on lights as she goes. Mr. McGill, she says, is a fireman. He won’t be home until day after tomorrow. She motions for me to follow her, and I do, my socks sinking into the soft, blue carpet. You know my son? she asks, and I shake my head. Tommy. He’s maybe a year younger than you. You sixteen? I nod, but really I’m seventeen today. Today is my birthday. You a sophomore? I nod. He’s a freshman. You can meet him tomorrow.

Tommy McGill? I ask, because there is something in the name that seems familiar. Does he play soccer? I am rewarded with a radiant smile that lights up the hallway.

That’s my Tommy. The pride oozes from every pore of her body, and I wonder what it would have been like to grow up with this woman as Mother. He’s pretty good with that soccer ball.

Seems to be. I only vaguely recollect the things I have heard over the last year, about how the soccer team was excelling and how it was due to this scrawny little freshman named Tommy McGill. I feel my mouth spreading in a smile, unable to contain it in the glow of this woman’s pride.

You hungry? she asks. We have reached the end of the hall, and she opens a door to the left and illuminates a room, dressed in pink roses from ceiling to bedspread. The blue carpet stops at the door and is transformed into a mauve-pink version, still just as soft.

I shake my head, taking in the roses peeking from the skirt of a dressing table and from the bowl of the lamp. I guess you like roses, I say, laughing just a little.

Charlotte likes roses.

Who is Charlotte?

She was a girl who stayed with us for a time. She smiles. She has moved on now. Got a family of her own. She pauses, a small smile on her face, I’ve just never had the heart to change it.

Where did she go?

Oh, she’s just over in Mattoon. You’ll probably get to meet her. She says probably like prolly and I decide right then and there that I am going to like this woman. I am going to like her and I am going to let her be kind to me, because apparently that is the thing she does best. Suddenly, I am weary on my feet; I’m so tired. She makes her way through the room, showing me that there are several options for clothing in the drawers and hanging in the closet. She tells me that she’ll be up for a while more, in the living room, if I need anything. I almost want to give her a hug, which may be the strangest sensation I’ve ever had, but I contain myself.

Thank you for coming to get me.

Oh, darling, she says, we all need somebody to come and get us from time to time.

She leaves me alone in the rose encased room and I open drawers, looking at the pajamas and sweatpants that fill them. The scent of lavender rises from the drawers and when I finally choose something to put on, I sit for a very long time just holding it up to my face, breathing in the clean of somebody else’s life

2

It is just the two of us in the house the next morning, her moving through the rooms, doing her moving-through-the-rooms routine, wiping dust from the top of the TV cabinet, running the vacuum. I have just finished a shower, where the jets of water prickled against my skin and scrubbed away the grime left from the day before. The phone trills, and Leslie turns off the vacuum to answer. I can hear her from the bathroom.

Yes, she says, then pauses to listen. Of course. We’ll be right there. Another pause. Yes. I think so. Pause. Thank you, George. She hangs up the phone and goes back to vacuuming, continuing her day, heedless of her promise to be right there. It isn’t long before we do head that way, though—that way being back to the police station.

She vacuums until I step from the bathroom, with my hair freshly combed and towel dried, wearing a too-big shirt I found in the closet over a bra I found still wrapped in its plastic. There are a variety of sizes of bras in the drawer and several unopened packages of underwear. It seems that Charlotte’s room gets a lot of us lost kids passing through it.

I feel clean, in a very foreign way. The shower at our old trailer never had enough pressure to even get the suds out of my hair, and even though the water pressure at the crime-scene apartment is okay, it shifts when other tenants use their water and the temperature fluctuates abruptly when someone starts a load of laundry or a dishwasher somewhere ahead of our line. Leslie’s shower has a million different holes in the nozzle and I feel clean like I’ve never felt before. Like a film has been washed away, my skin smelling like flowers, and my hair silky with conditioner, a luxury in my life.

Leslie turns off the vacuum when she sees me standing in the hall, just outside of the bathroom. Good morning. She smiles her wide, toothy smile, her lips tilting slightly to the left. How did you sleep?

Okay. That’s a great shower.

It is. Isn’t it? She begins to wrap the cord around the prongs on the back of the vacuum, her body bobbing up and down with the motion. We have several options for breakfast.

Anything is fine, I say, suddenly awkward, waiting to be fed, waiting for her to provide food for me. I think I may still be in shock. It hasn’t all settled in, the events of last night.

She leads me to the kitchen, opening the pantry and peering in, Lots of cereals, I can make eggs if you’d like?

A lump rises in my throat against the thought of food and even though my stomach is sour with emptiness, I fear that I won’t be able to swallow. How about toast? Just something simple.

Toast, yes. We have toast. Do you want rye, wheat, white? I may even have some sourdough left.

I smile. So many options, I say, overwhelmed even with the choices for bread.

We like choices. She draws out three loaves of bread from a bread box, which I never knew was actually a real thing. She lays them out on the counter and I choose the one that is dark and light, because I have never eaten bread that looks like that, and I feel like today should be full of things that are not what I grew up with. I am relieved when she shows me the toaster, draws out several jams from the fridge, and leaves me to handle the toasting of my own bread.

Rye is my new favorite, with the little seeds and the taste that is so different from the white bread I've grown up on.

***

We reach the police station and she holds the door open for me. I step inside, feeling the churning in my stomach accelerate. We enter a different door from last night and are in the back entrance to the station. Last night I couldn’t see any of this bustle happening in the station, sheltered as it was by the wall blocking the street entrance from view, but today, Leslie takes me right into the thick of the officers’ desks and offices. The county jail must be in a basement, which makes sense, so they can keep all those criminals close at hand, but not in sight.

Good morning, Leslie. We’ve stopped at the counter, and a youngish man greets her before looking at me. Morning, Ms. Hayes. I nod, glancing from him to around the room, wondering if I will see any of the policemen I have met over this last year. The one who came to my house the night my mother had her wreck or the one who was there when the trailer burnt, but I don’t see either of them. I try to pull their names forward in my mind, but the shadows around that time are too dark and I can’t find them.

George called and said you all needed to talk to Alison, Leslie says, smiling, putting her hand on my shoulder, protective and assuring.

I’ll let him know you’re here. He picks up the phone and presses a button. Heya, George. Ms. Hayes is here. He hangs up and says, He’ll be right out. Leslie and I go and sit on the chairs that line the wall, me studying the chewed up edges of my fingernails, and her just sitting, being patient, a woman comfortable waiting.

You okay? she asks in a soft voice and I nod. They just need to ask you a few questions. I nod again. I understand; of course they have questions. I have a few questions of my own. Primarily, why had that water bottle been plugged into my mom, and where had it come from?

***

George sits across the table from me. Leslie waits outside the door. She had asked if I wanted her to come in because as my temporary guardian, she said she could be there. But I don’t know what all this cop may have to say to me, and since she likes me right now, I don’t want that to change. So, I had told her I wanted to go it alone.

Sergeant Pence is maybe the tallest person I have ever seen. His wrist bones stick out past the cuffs of his shirt, and I swear his fingers are nearly five inches long. He looks like a grown-up sitting at a kiddy desk and I feel like Alice, shrinking in Wonderland. His face is long, all of him is long, but there are waddles at the base of his jawline where gravity has begun to pull his skin back to earth. His hair is salt and pepper and the bristle of a closely cropped mustache shades his lip.

First, let me express my condolences for your loss. I nod, feeling strange that I don’t feel what I know I should feel. I don’t feel sad, I don’t feel scared, I don’t feel happy, I don’t feel any kind of emotion. I certainly don’t feel a loss. I feel empty. Are you comfortable? Is it too cold in here?

I’m fine. It’s not too cold.

Do you need anything to drink? Water, tea? I shake my head, and he looks down at the sheaf of papers in front of him, closed in by the open edges of a folder. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?

That’s fine. I don’t mind. The room is small and gray. The walls are gray, the table is gray, the floors are gray. Only the ceiling is white, and that not perfectly so. There is a splotch of a stain where water has leaked at some time or another and my eyes keep drawing up to the stain, roundish and irregular.

I understand you were the one to find your mother, he says, and I hear the I’m diving in tone in his voice.

I was, I say, my eyes coming back to meet his.

Can you tell me about that?

I tilt my head at him. I came home. She was dead. It all seems very simple to me. This is the same conversation I had last night.

Could you explain what you did when you came home? His tone says, I understand, just doing my job here.

I came home, and I think I called for her. I’m not certain that I did call for her, but usually I do, so maybe I did. She didn’t answer. Saliva is building up in my mouth so I swallow, clenching my jaws together for a second before speaking again. The lights were all off so I thought she was probably out. She’d been going to AA in the afternoons. She had a sponsor. I feel the strangest sense of pride. She had been on her way to making it finally—she was going to get clean because somebody else believed in her. But I had smelled the vodka as soon as I entered the apartment.

What made you think to look for her? he asks, his eyes heavy on me.

I just always did. I stare down at my hands, my hands so like my mother’s. The apartment smelled, I guess. Like vodka. I knew she wasn’t at AA. I admit this to him, and I feel like a traitor saying it. But what difference can it possibly make now? She’s dead, regardless of whether she was drunk or sober yesterday.

So you went into her room. Can you tell me what you saw when you went in? I hear the apology in his voice. He is hating to ask, but he has to, and I give him a little bit of a pass because of it.

It was dark. I sniff, not because I am crying, or even because I need to, but to give myself time, a second to force my mind open and back into that room. I look up at the splotch on the ceiling, biting the inside of my lower lip. There was a vodka bottle on the table there, beside her bed, and I picked it up to see how much was left.

Was there anything left? I shake my head. Had you noticed your mother at this time?

No. Not really. I saw her in the bed but hadn’t really looked at her. I didn’t look at her until I turned to leave. I saw her face, vacuous. Her mouth hanging open, skin stretching across bones. She was real still, I say. Her hair was all across her face and I pushed it back and felt how cold she was. I heave a sigh and drop my head onto my arms on the table, my right hand coming up and over my skull, moving through my hair, my still-damp hair from Leslie’s shower. I can’t think about this. I can’t talk about this. I pull myself together and sit upright again. This is life. This is life. Shit happens and this is life.

I’m very sorry to have to ask you these questions, Alison. He glances down at his papers and proceeds. So you say you touched her then?

Yes, I touched her, I pause, letting the moment stretch as I see her in my memory, and she was so cold, I pulled down the blanket, thinking I'd wake her up, but she didn’t wake up.

Did you touch anything else then?

No. It hadn’t made sense—it doesn’t make sense—what I saw under those blankets. I just pulled the covers back up and sat on the floor trying to make sense of everything.

When you first entered the room, the covers were up? he asks, clarifying.

Yeah. They were. I don’t look at his eyes, but stare at his Adam’s apple, large and pointed.

Did you touch anything else in the room?

I don’t think so.

What did you do then? After sitting on the floor trying to ‘make sense’? he asks, giving my words back to me from the notes he has taken.

I went down the hall and asked to use the neighbor’s phone.

Did you return to the apartment? There is a long silence between us, and he waits, being patient, while I relive those moments in that nice college girl’s apartment, with her watching, tears filling her eyes, and her hand reaching out to me when I hung up the phone and told her thanks and turned and left.

No. I finally manage to return his look. You know what I don’t understand?

No. What? He raises an eyebrow.

That water bottle.

He steeples his fingers in front of him and an old verse runs through my head: Here is the church and here is the steeple, look inside and see all the people. For the first time, I feel tears prick the back of my eyes, because the voice singing in my mind is my mom’s. What about that? he asks, and I blink to clear the moisture in my eyes, pulling my gaze away from his hands, refocusing on the present.

That was odd, right? It didn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to me.

That was odd, he says, letting his words stretch with