NO ME WITHOUT YOU Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences of the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Master of Arts in English By Sandra E. Riley, M.Ed UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON Dayton, Ohio August 2017 NO ME WITHOUT YOU Name: Riley, Sandra Elizabeth APPROVED BY: ____________________________________ PJ Carlisle, Ph.D Advisor, H.W. Martin Post Doc Fellow ____________________________________ Andrew Slade, Ph.D Department Chair, Reader #1 ____________________________________ Bryan Bardine, Ph.D Associate Professor of English, Reader #2 ii ABSTRACT NO ME WITHOUT YOU Name: Riley, Sandra Elizabeth University of Dayton Advisor: Dr. PJ Carlisle This novel is an exploration of the narrator‟s grief as she undertakes a quest to understand the reasons for her sister‟s suicide. Through this grieving process, the heroine must confront old family traumas and negotiate ways of coping with these ugly truths. It is a novel about family secrets, trauma, addiction, mental illness, and ultimately, resilience. iii Dedicated to JLH iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to my earliest reader at the University of Dayton—Dr. Meredith Doench, whose encouragement compelled me to keep writing, despite early frustrations in the drafting process. Thank you to Professor Al Carrillo—our initial conversations gave me the courage to keep writing, and convinced me that I did in fact have the makings of a novel. Thank you to Dr. Andy Slade, who has been gracious and accommodating throughout my journey to the MA, and to Dr. PJ Carlisle, who not only agreed to be my thesis advisor her last semester at UD, but gave me the direction and input I needed while understanding my vision for No Me Without You. Finally, thank you to Dr. Bryan Bardine, for being a considerate reader and compassionate teacher. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………………………iii DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………………………..iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………………………….v CHAPTER I: DON‟T FEAR THE REAPER………………………………………………………1 CHAPTER II: THERE WAS NOTHING MORE TO DREAD……………………………25 CHAPTER III: SILENT ALL THESE YEARS………………………………………………...42 CHAPTER IV: A BOX FULL OF DARKNESS………………………………………………..56 CHAPTER V: YOU RATHER PUT ME TO SLEEP THAN SIT BY MY SIDE……..74 CHAPTER VI: I‟M JUST LOOKING FOR ONE DIVINE HAMMER………………..91 CHAPTER VII: A PANDORA‟S BOX FULL OF DARKNESS………………………….114 CHAPTER VIII: NAG CHAMPA TIME MACHINE……………………………………….131 CHAPTER IX: I‟VE GOT DREAMS TO REMEMBER……………………………………134 CHAPTER X: BEREFT OF A JOYLESS BASTARD……………………………………….141 CHAPTER XI: RED FOX IN STAR CAVE……………………………………………………160 CHAPTER XII: TRAVEL DOWN THE ROAD AND BACK AGAIN…………………171 CHAPTER XIII: HER FACE WAS ALL I COULD SEE, AN OLD ANTHEM ON A NEW MORNING .......................................………………..187 CHAPTER XIV: THE ART OF LOSING ISN‟T HARD TO MASTER……………….212 vi CHAPTER I DON‟T FEAR THE REAPER The riotous reek of flowers competed with my mother‟s White Diamonds and the faintest hint of cigarettes. Nobody listened to the “in lieu of flowers” request in the obituary, my mother took a bath in her perfume to disguise her failure to shower, and Garrison forgot to dry clean his suit, last worn to his sister‟s wedding, where he smoked cigarettes all night into the morning. When I think of my sister‟s funeral, this is the strongest memory—the aura of my mother‟s perfume, the heady flowers, and the slightest whiff of cigarettes haunting the stiff gray fabric of my boyfriend‟s lapels. I sat between Garrison and my mother, listening to the minister drivel on about suffering, heaven, and God‟s plan. I clenched my thighs together to keep my legs from touching my mother and put all my weight against Garrison. I measured my breaths into long steady intervals, willful in preventing my body from quivering. This minister, he presumed we all believed in God. I clenched my jaw and let my molars pinch in the wet walls of my cheeks to keep from screaming or howling or wailing. I knew that if I lessened the grip of my resolve I would startle everyone with the desperation of my grief. I wanted to extract 1 myself from the horror of listening to this man of the cloth who didn‟t know my sister from Adam but had the audacity to speak about her soul with such familiarity it was disturbing— I was waiting for him to say that “everything happens for a reason,” but I suppose “God‟s plan” was bad enough. Garrison had his hand on my knee. My mother‟s body shook with her sobs. I wanted to smack her, to slap off Garrison‟s hand, to run out of the oversized creepy Victorian funeral home, and gulp in the cold January air. The air was too heavy with the sickly sweet flowers, overwrought perfume, and cigarette smoke. I swallowed back the rise of salty bile threatening to erupt, likely all over Garrison‟s suit and my mother‟s gray sateen dress. I should have stepped out during the rites, excused myself to the bathroom, to the coat room, hell, even to the upstairs office marked with Private on the door. I would have been forgiven for fleeing—after all, I was grieving, a woman who‟d lost her sister to suicide. Instead, I was polite. I mouthed the words to “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art” while my mother‟s vibrato warbled a little too loud over the chorus of attendants. Afterward, I stood next to the urn on the pillar holding my sister‟s remains--Jenna, embodied in ashes. I wished my parents would have kept her body long enough for an open casket funeral. I needed to see her body, her hands neatly folded on her abdomen, wearing more makeup than she ever did alive, for some sort of closure I guess, but my parents decided it was better to burn her remains and hold a memorial with that ugly ass green urn staring everybody in the face. 2 They must have thrived on failing to meet the most common of expectations—decorum, decency, the milk of human kindness. You know, giving their long-suffering eldest child a proper fucking burial and funeral. Instead, some half-hearted memorial. An obituary full of lies. My sister‟s body ash instead of embalmed flesh and bone and fair hair the color of wheat that would have just kept growing and growing in her casket, a river of hair, her grass green dress I would have buried her in, if it were all up to me. Sure the planet was running out of room for such silly human trappings—dead bodies tucked into dirt, but it would have been nice, you know, to come visit. To stretch out on top of my sister on a nice spring day and look at the clouds like you see in the movies and talk to her. To know sure, she‟s dead, but she‟s still here somehow. But no. The memorial, Jenna in a vase. Yes, I stood next to the pillar holding my sister in that ugly pea green speckled vase, between my parents, my father stoic, my mother red-faced and ugly crying, her greasy badly dyed hair sticking in clumps to her freckled forehead. I shook hands with people I didn‟t give a shit about—old neighbors, coworkers of my Dad‟s, cousins and uncles I hadn‟t seen in years. “It‟s such a shame,” “So sorry for your loss,” “She was so young and talented.” After the glum greetings and accepting of condolences, I was sandwiched between Garrison and my mother listening to the drivel from the minister that was supposed to make me feel better, then I had to sit through a so-called reception watching people shovel food in their mouths and drink pop from little paper Dixie cups while they muttered small talk about their home repair projects and the trip to Florida they intended to make, it‟s always Florida for some reason. 3 And to think, they had postponed the service until I could arrive. It meant something to my mom and dad to have me here—so I could say goodbye to my sister in such a way it‟s palatable for the relatives who would talk about my no show or tardiness, so my parents could half-grin in the bizarre pictures my mother insisted on taking. As though Jenna‟s funeral was the perfect time for an updated family picture. They waited so everyone could dispense all these macabre pleasantries until I could be present so they checked the box of appearing to be the grieving parents with their grieving daughter in tow, and all I wanted to do was run. There was a collage of pictures of my sister on a bulletin board, pixelated digital images where her fair hair looked brash and her skin had an eerie glow. “Jenna was so pretty. I‟m so very sorry for your loss, Maddie.” Everyone was so sorry. But not nearly as sorry as I was that she did it this time, she finally quit talking shit and committed suicide. Jenna was dead. She finally did it this time, she followed Delaney into the dark woods and she won‟t be back. ---- After five suicide attempts since our brother‟s death I should have felt relief. I had sat across from my sister in crowded inpatient psychiatric wards during visiting hours, her wrists bandaged, while she cheerfully talked about painting again and the new Strokes record and how she wanted to learn to knit. Jenna‟s eyeliner unsmudged, her bitten nails softened by pink polish, her hair straightened and smooth.