Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel by Caro Claire Burke - 56

This house is not my house. It’s smaller, much smaller, and the kitchen is all wrong.

“Are you sure?” I say. “That we’re in the right place?”

The producer told me her name a few minutes ago, but I forget it now. Something harmless, I think, like Lucy. “I’m sure,” she says, and guides me to the kitchen table, which is similar to my kitchen table, but definitely not my kitchen table.

She pulls out a chair and helps me sit. It’s hard to keep balance with the ankle cuffs, especially the way I keep looking around, getting distracted by the details. The production crew members are rushing past, setting up lights and screens. I’ve been told we’re running behind schedule.

“A flower vase makes no sense here,” I say. “And these muffins—who chose these?”

A young man dressed in black and standing a few feet away looks at me, then the muffins, suddenly nervous. “I did so much research,” he says, to everyone in the room. “In the pioneer days, they made this exact recipe, so I just figured—”

Quietly, Lucy says, “They never had a historically accurate household, John. I told you that in last week’s email.”

He looks truly panicked now. “No one told me not to make the muffins!”

“We never made muffins,” I say loudly. “We made biscuits. And this isn’t the right house, I’m telling you, this layout is all wrong!”

Lucy sends the boy away with a sharp look, and then she turns back to me. “Natalie, can I ask you a question? When we were driving up to the house, did you look out the window?”

I hesitate, then say, “Yes.”

“So you saw when we turned onto your old dirt road?”

I’ve always hated games, and this feels like a game. “Yes.”

“And you saw the mountains and the big red barn?”

“Yes.”

“So help me understand: How could this not be your house?”

I open my mouth and close it. Suddenly I feel unmoored.

“Do you see how I might be confused, Natalie?”

“Well, yes,” I say. “But—”

Then I am saved by a commotion: Reena Magliotti walks through the front door in a flurry of earth tones and clacking heels, a cashmere coat shrugging off into the arms of an assistant, revealing a silk blouse that has, I notice approvingly, not a single wrinkle to be found. I watch her as she speaks to a series of crew members, her gaze carrying wondrously around until finally it lands on me. “Natalie,” she says. “My God.” She looks—yes. Gobsmacked.

Suddenly I am nineteen years old again, pregnant with my first child, and Reena is hungover, standing before me with that same astonished look on her face. Then I blink again, and I am fifty-five years old, covered in worldly shackles. A few literal ones too.

“Reena,” I say. Instinctually, like the raising of a moat to shore up for battle, the corners of my lips lift.

She’s a regional anchorwoman now, after years of climbing slowly up the media ladder. She lives in Chicago. She is far from a household name.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m here.” She looks around again, taking in the muffins, the cameras, the lights; the flower stems strewn across the cutting board, the jar of sourdough starter placed just so by the window. “I think this might be the strangest day of my life,” she says.

“Not me,” I say happily. “I’ve had much stranger days. But Reena, we have a problem.”

Her eyes flit back to me. “What’s that?”

“This isn’t the correct house.”

She frowns. “Oh?”

“And Lucy over here”—Lucy is now desperately trying to catch Reena’s eye—“she keeps trying to tell me it is my house. But she’s lying to me.”

Reena is maintaining eye contact with me now, ignoring Lucy’s waving arms. “Ah,” she says. “I see.” She pulls out the chair next to mine, and sits down. “Natalie,” she says, looking closely at my face. “Do you still want to do this interview?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I just want to make sure you’re feeling…comfortable. On top of your game.” She leans forward and says quietly, “And I want to make sure you weren’t coerced, or anything like that.”

“Not at all. My lawyers tell me this is the best way for America to see the true Natalie Heller Mills,” I recite faithfully. “It’s how I’m going to”—I lift my hands to make air quotes—“ engender sympathy. And I told my lawyers if that was the case, then there was only one person up for the job of speaking to me: Reena.” I lean forward confidentially. “That’s you.”

“All right,” Reena says. She’s smiling now. “And forgive me, Natalie: But you do know this interview will be seen by quite a lot of people?”

“Oh yeah,” a nearby camera girl says. “It’s pretty much guaranteed to go viral.”

“Virality,” I inform the girl mildly, “is a curse. But yes.” I look at Reena. “I’m aware of how this will work. I’m not an idiot, you know.”

“Of course you’re not. I just—”

“God, Reena. You always were so annoying.” I survey her bemused expression. “I was always prettier than you, but I’ll admit: you look fine for your age.”

“That’s very nice of you.”

This is a huge win for her career, this interview with me. I’m surprised she hasn’t thanked me yet.

“Tell me,” I say, while someone dabs her nose with an oil blotting sheet, “did you ever have a family?”

“Oh,” she says, keeping still. “I’m not sure we have time to get into all that.”

“We should get rolling,” a producer adds. “Or we’re going to lose the light.”

I roll my eyes. “I’ve spent far too much of my life chasing the light.” Then I say to Reena, who has just received a stack of note cards, “Did you, though? Get married? Have kids?”

She hesitates, then says, “I have a family now, yes—but it probably looks different than what someone like you would imagine.”

“What does that mean?” I press.

She taps the stack of note cards on her thigh. “How about this: I’ll answer your questions after the interview. Okay? I’ll tell you all about it.”

Soon we’re surrounded by lights. Reena is sitting opposite me. She lets out a long, shaky breath while the producer counts down. “We’re live in five, four—”

“Don’t be nervous,” I say quietly. “You’re going to do great.”

Reena looks at me like she can’t tell if I’m mocking her or encouraging her. We’re a team, I try to signal with my eyes. We need each other.

The red light flicks on.

Reena looks into the bright white light. “My name is Reena Magliotti. I’m the nightly news anchor for WUBZ Chicago, and I am Natalie Heller Mills’s former college roommate.” Crisp smile. “A few months ago, I received a call from ABC News with a highly unusual request: They were hoping to interview Natalie, who is currently serving out a thirty-year sentence for four counts of aggravated child abuse, among other lesser charges. I was told that Natalie was interested in having a conversation only if the conversation, in question, was with me. To say I was surprised by this request would be an understatement. Tonight, I want to get to the bottom of why, exactly, Natalie would choose me of all people to interview her.”

I’m ready for this question. I’ve been waiting my whole life to answer this question. Hello, Angry Woman.

“But we’ll get to that later in the interview. First, I want to talk about the book news that has lit America on fire this last week.”

I frown.

“Natalie, do you know what book I’m talking about?”

“No, I don’t.” What is this, a book club?

“Well. In advance of this interview, I was lucky enough to receive an early copy.” Someone has just handed Reena the book. She leans forward, handing it to me.

I look at the book in my lap, run my fingers across the raised letters of the title: The Book of Mary.

“It’s your daughter’s memoir,” Reena says. “It will be released this week. By preorders alone, it’s expected to be a bestseller. Did you know that?”

“No,” I say softly. “Well—yes.” My lawyers mentioned something, but I never thought it was—I didn’t think it could—

Suddenly I am acutely aware of my own body: the coat of sweat on my hands, the heat of the production lamp on my face and neck.

This house is not my house.

“Open it,” Reena says. “See what it says.”

I open the cover, and then flip past a few blank pages. Finally, my eyes rest upon the first printed words:

For my mother

I look up at Reena.

This kitchen is not my kitchen. These children are not my children. This life is not my—

“I was wondering if you’d read the prologue today.”

“Right now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

“You read it,” I say. Then I think of my lawyers, who always tell me to be polite, and my mother, who always told me to be kind, and so I add quickly, “Please!”

Once upon a time, a little girl lived out in the mountains, in a small cabin on a hillside, surrounded by woods. There was no town nearby. There were no other families. But the girl was never lonely, for she had her mama and her papa and her sister and brothers, not to mention their beloved cow and their coop full of chickens and their trusty quarter horse.

It was a quiet, simple life. The little girl never wanted for anything. In the mornings, she went out to the chicken coop and got eggs for breakfast. During the day, she did all the chores a little girl is fit to do. And at night, she sat with her family by the fire, listening to stories about faraway lands. The only food they ate was the food they caught or grew. The only stories the little girl heard were the ones her parents told her, about wolves and cowboys and Indians, about the great battles of good versus evil that were being waged out there beyond the woods, a very far ways away. Sometimes the little girl would have strange dreams, dreams that almost felt like memories. When she woke up screaming, her papa and mama would remind her that none of the nightmares were real. She was safe, they insisted. Safe and warm and hidden in the world they’d built just for her. They would never let the wolves inside.

Then the little girl grew up and realized her mama was sick. When she was old enough to understand, Pa told the little girl that her mama was filled with evil spirits. He said it was her job now to take care of the house and her siblings. He told her she needed to become a mother for her own mama. And so she did.

Years passed. Soon the little girl was no longer a girl at all, but a young woman. And one fine day, she was walking in the woods, looking for saffron, when she saw an angel standing in the trees.

A woman, standing still as a blade of grass, wearing clothes so bright it looked like she was glowing. At first, the girl thought it was her mama, restored to health. Then the angel spoke.

She told the little girl a terrifying story, too horrible for her to ever believe. The angel said the little girl’s parents were not parents at all but wolves. If you want a better life, the angel said, then you and your siblings must come with me.

But the girl didn’t want a better life. She didn’t even know what that could possibly mean. She began to think this woman was no angel, and so she ran back into the house and vowed never to return to the woods again.

Then one day, not long after the first time they met, the angel reappeared in the kitchen of the girl’s house. The request was now a demand: It’s time for you to come with me. And so she did.

The little girl in the woods was me. Mary Heller Mills.

It’s been five years since I left Yesteryear Ranch. I live in Santa Monica now, in a small apartment with my older sister, Clementine, and my little sister, Maeve, and my brothers, Noah and Abel. It was Clementine’s idea to move here. She always wanted to live by the ocean but had refused to move away from town until she found a way to save us from our parents. The day we left Yesteryear, she broke her apartment lease. It was time, she said, to begin again.

In the last five years, my life has changed completely. One of the police officers I met the day we left the ranch gave me a journal and said I should write everything down, that so many things were going to happen, and so quickly, that I’d be happy to have a record of this time period. He felt really guilty after I told him I only knew how to write my family members’ names. Then he gave me an audio recorder instead. One day, he said, I would be able to write it all down, but for now, if I couldn’t write, I could speak.

I’m glad he told me that. If I hadn’t had that audio recorder, then I might never have been able to write this book.

The story you are about to read is in many ways a very sad one, so I would like to give you my ending up front: I’m okay. I survived. I have my real family with me: my sisters and my brothers, a grandmother I never knew I had, an aunt who calls me weekly. I take reading and writing classes at the local community center. Most of my classmates are people who want to learn how to speak English. They’re all very patient with me, even though I’m definitely the furthest behind in class.

On Saturdays, I work as a grocery bagger at the Whole Foods down the street, and on Sundays, we all go to a church in Ocean Park. During service, our pastor talks about a God who is so very different from the God my parents taught me to know. I am starting to think that church might just be another word for people. After service, if it’s sunny, Clementine buys us donuts and then we walk to the beach. We’ve been living here for years, and still, she can’t see the Pacific without crying.

Clementine says our mother will never read this book, but I know she will someday. And so I want to address her directly now, before I tell my story, the whole story, of what it was like to grow up on, and eventually escape from, Yesteryear Ranch:

Hello, Mama. I miss you.

Isn’t that funny? Even after everything, I still miss you. I miss your temper and your jokes and your strange little moods. I miss what it felt like in the rare moment that a true smile lit up your face. I want you to know I’m sorry you got so lost in Yesteryear. I’m not sure if it’s your fault, but I don’t think that matters as much as some people say it does. I know it was hard for you either way.

There’s a lot about our life that makes me sad, but do you know what makes me the saddest, Mama? How much beauty you’ve missed. Because it really is beautiful: this future you prayed we would never get the chance to see. I think you’d like it if you gave it a chance. But that’s something I’ve learned in the years since I left the ranch: you cannot change people who refuse to be changed. You can only love them. So here it is, all the love I have to give, pressed into the pages of this book. I hope you read this book one day, all the way to the end, because as it turns out, the place where your life ends is exactly where mine begins: the moment when I saw the world and wanted every part of it.

The moment happened when we reached the end of our long dirt road. The car slowed to a stop. I tried to understand what was laid out in front of me.

“Highway,” Clementine said. “This is what we call a highway.”

The children were crying in the back seat. They didn’t understand. I stared at the smooth gray road, then I shrieked as a truck roared past, shaking the car frame. I thought I was going to die.

“The car’s going to pick up speed now,” Clementine said. “It’s going to go much faster than you’re used to. But I need you to trust me when I say: you’re safe.”

A trio of cars barreled past, one after another. How did they not slam into one another? What kind of world was this? How would we ever survive it?

And yet: the only future more terrifying to me than the one where we merged onto this highway was the one where we turned around. “I trust you,” I said, because I had to.

She reached for my shaking hand. “Hold on tight.”

I nodded and closed my eyes. Squeezed her fingers. Braced for impact. But there was none. Just a muffled rushing sound and a rising sensation in my stomach.

A moment later, I opened my eyes. We were flying, hurtling into the future, toward a world I couldn’t yet begin to imagine.

For the first time in my life, I smiled.