A Deceptive Homecoming by Anna Loan-Wilsey Read Free Book Online

my childhood, before I could leave town, I had to make the pilgrimage to the site of my father’s one true transgression. He had not respected my mother’s dying wish. I took the streetcar via the Frederick Avenue Line and then walked the two blocks to Mount Mora Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in the city. As I’d walked through the gates and followed the winding roads, under trees that had grown tall since I’d been here last, I sensed that none of my family was truly here, but it was the closest I could get.
    They were such different people I often wondered how my parents ever fell in love, let alone stayed happy together. My mother was a foot shorter than my father with her boots on. She often wore an old-fashioned woolen scarf over her curly dark brown hair while my father sported the latest styles in men’s hats. My mother attended Mass every day and always carried her rosary. The only time I saw my father enter the cathedral was for my mother’s funeral. My mother had big blue eyes, tiny teeth, and coarse hands that she used to cup my cheek with. My father had freckles across his nose and soft hands that he used to shake everyone’s hand. She whistled or hummed constantly but often went hours without speaking. He made his living by talking. She was firm with me while my father indulged my every whim. How different they were and yet all of my memories of them together were of laughter, smiles, and music.
    Until she died, I thought.
    She’d wanted to be buried in the Catholic Cemetery, south of town, alongside my baby brother, Edward, but my father had always fancied himself being buried among St. Joseph’s economic and social elite, including the governor of Missouri Robert Stewart, M. Jeff Thompson, a one-time mayor of St. Joseph and Civil War general, and James Benjamin “Bean” Hamilton, a Pony Express rider. Father would often remark on the growing number of grand mausoleums entombing members of St. Joseph’s wealthy and influential families and how they dominated the entrance to the cemetery.
    â€œI like the idea that one has to pass all these great names to find mine,” he once said. And, of course, my father hated having my brother interred all the way on the other side of town. Thus he purchased a plot that would accommodate them all, in Mount Mora. I learned later that it wasn’t a coincidence that it was then that Mr. Van Beek became a partner in Father’s business. It was the reason my father could afford the plot.
    â€œYou’ll be buried with your husband, Hattie,” Father had said, “or else I’d have bought a bigger plot. It pains me to know that you will spend eternity away from me, but that’s how it must be.” I was a child at the time and had no idea how soon we would be parted.
    I’d visited every Sunday after Mass while I attended Mrs. Chaplin’s school but hadn’t been back since the day I left. I glanced at the stones around me and could tell by the dates on the stones that most were far older than my parents’. Mostly modest rectangular monuments, the words etched into the stones were barely readable and they were covered with streaks of black dirt or lichen. Why would my father have chosen one of the older sections? Was it all he could afford or was there some other reason? I examined the stones nearby. Before I could get my answer, I suddenly had the same presentiment as earlier. Someone was watching me.
    I crawled closer to my father’s tombstone and huddled there. I held my breath as I heard footsteps approaching. I unpinned my hat, carefully setting it next to me. I held the pins out in front of me for defense. A long-legged cellar spider crept over the top of the stone and across my brother Edward’s name. By the time its legs hovered above my father’s name, my racing heart couldn’t take much more. I brushed the spider into the grass and peeked around the edge of the