The Aftermath

by Gail Schimmel

  It didn’t work though. Even though I’m a nurse, and a good one. It was too hard. Mike needed twenty-four-hour nursing, and I had to work. And Julia was upset and frightened by Mike. I tried to help her see him as her dad, just different, but she wouldn’t go near him. She’d been through so much, lost so much – and I wasn’t looking after Mike well. Eventually I conceded defeat and we moved him to the best long-term care facility that I could find. I sold our house, and Julia and I moved into a smaller house, so between that and our insurance, we could afford the care. In the beginning, I visited daily, and took Julia once a week. But even that was too hard, and eventually I started visiting less, although I always took Julia once a week. I never again spoke to Mike about those terrible hours trapped in the car on a dark abandoned highway. I never spoke to anyone about it. So there are things Julia doesn’t know, things she can never understand about me.

  But I still speak to Mike about everything else. I still know that somewhere deep inside, he’s awake, living his own personal hell. When I realised how bad it must be for him – trapped in his body with an active mind – it was too late for me to help him. I had already got him into care. There was nothing I could do because I couldn’t risk getting caught. My only remaining duty was to be Julia’s mother, and I had to do that to the best of my ability. And that included not murdering her father – no matter how much I knew he needed me to.

  When I had my epiphany about a year later – my realisation that I could kill myself if I just fulfilled my duty to Julia first, I realised that this freed me to kill Mike too, when the time came. I didn’t even need to be subtle. I could kill Mike and free him from the prison of his body, and then kill myself and free myself from the prison of my pain. If the religious people are right, then it will be even better because we’ll be together. But even if they’re not, even if it’s just nothing after this, anything would be better than this. It is true that Julia will experience huge loss, but she’ll either have a reliable partner or her own child to see her through. The focus of her life won’t be on being my child; it will be on being a wife and mother. That’s why it is okay for me to do it then. I will have handed on the baton of Julia’s happiness.

  I told Mike about this as soon as I realised. I went to visit him and drew up my chair right close to his ear, and explained that as soon as Julia had a good partner or a baby of her own, I would free us. I said it clearly so I knew he would hear, and I repeated it a few times.

  ‘Don’t worry, my love,’ I said to him. ‘We just have to be patient, but I will make this hell end. I promise you. I will free you from this prison.’

  The doctors and nurses at Mike’s facility tell me he has no affective response – that he feels nothing and has no significant intellectual activity except that his body keeps itself breathing and moderately functioning. They tell me that nothing I say can upset him but also, nothing can please him. In the beginning they were quite gentle with their explanations, but over the years they’ve gotten more blunt. The doctor in charge of Mike’s case at the moment seems to feel personally responsible for me, and about annually he sits me down and explains again that Mike is still non-responsive and that I should move on with my life. Well, firstly, they didn’t see Mike cry. Nobody believes that happened, but I know what I saw. And, secondly, there might be people who move on, but I’m not one of them. I understand that for other people there are second chances at love but that’s not how it is for me. I’m not judging those people – and maybe if The Accident had been different, I would be one of them. But for me, there is only Mike. I don’t need to move on.

  In the early years I thought I’d meet other people like me. Sometimes I would think I had – people who drifted around in the corridors of the facility like I did. But I would watch them slowly heal, and visit their person less, and move on. I would say things like ‘I’m so happy for you,’ and ‘You deserve to be happy,’ but I knew it wasn’t like that for me, and eventually I stopped even acknowledging these passers-through.

  I can’t wait to tell Mike our time is coming. I can’t wait to tell him we are nearly free to die.

  Julia

  I love visiting my dad. It is my absolute most favourite thing in the world. I know the doctors say he’s brain dead, that he knows nothing and if he hears us, he doesn’t understand us, but that’s just not true. Even my mother feels better after she’s spoken to him. He’s like a wise recluse who lives on a hill, hearing our problems and bringing peace to our lives without saying a thing. I don’t need to talk to him to know that he’s conscious and at peace with where he finds himself.

  My mother doesn’t realise how much I visit and how much I talk to him. I’ve told him about Daniel. I spoke to him when it all started and I was feeling confused and guilty and unsure. When I hold his hand and close my eyes, it can feel like he’s talking back to me, and I can almost hear his voice telling me not to worry, that everything will work out and I’m his little princess (although I don’t actually know if he ever said that).

  I know it’s not fair – my mother has been the parent who cared for me and worked really hard to provide for us and give me as normal a childhood as she was capable of. But it’s my dad who roots me to my life.

  It’s my dad that I can’t live without.

  I’ve thought about taking Daniel to meet him before, but it seemed wrong somehow. I mean, it’s not like Dad could tell Mum he’s already met Daniel, but the nurse or someone might, and that might make Mum feel bad. Or maybe it’s that I wish it would make Mum feel bad – because she probably wouldn’t really care.

  I have a fantasy that one day my dad is just going to wake up. A few years ago I talked to some doctors about it, because if you read up on the internet it seems that people are waking up the whole time and thinking it’s 1972 and wondering what they’ll have for lunch. The doctors said that absolutely couldn’t happen to my dad, and that it actually barely ever happens, and when it does the person is profoundly brain damaged, or wasn’t actually in a coma at all, and that no one actually understands how my dad isn’t dead. But I bet the doctors of the people who woke up said the same thing. After all, there’s only so much that medical science can explain. It’s not even like he’s on life support, so obviously some part of his brain is working. And the doctors have to be careful not to give false hope, so they downplay the fact that people sometimes wake up. There’s a part of me that really believes it will happen for us one day, and then my mum will be alright and we’ll all be happy. I believe it so much that I sometimes worry about all the personal things I’ve told him – I’ve found myself whispering, ‘Don’t tell Mum, but . . .’

  I wasn’t worried about asking the doctors if he’d wake up because I knew they’d have to say no. But I was too scared to ask my mother. Alice says I’m scared she’ll say no too. But Alice doesn’t realise that wouldn’t change anything – I know my dad is still alive in that body. I know he could wake up one day. I think my mum also believes it.

  I can’t wait to introduce him to Daniel. I can’t wait to place my baby into my dad’s arms. Maybe that will shake him out of his coma.

  Then everybody will live happily ever after.

  THURSDAY

  Claire

  Thursday is the day I spend the morning at the hotel, catching up on news I can use in tweets and Facebook posts over the coming week, taking photos and checking in on event planning. It’s a pain because I’m less flexible, but I also quite like that I’m less flexible. I imagine this is how it is for women who work full time. ‘No,’ they can say – to the class mum request, to the coffee, to the volunteer work, to the cake sale, to the lift shares – ‘no, I will be at work.’

  Once, before everything went wrong, I told Daniel about this fantasy. A life in which I could say no.

  ‘But Claire,’ he said, ‘even if you were the CEO of Apple, you wouldn’t say no. It’s not in your nature. You’d be running Apple and still doing every cake sale and every charity event and answering every cry for
help. Apple’s profits would probably double with you in charge, but you’d be even more of a wreck.’ He was probably right, as much as I hate to admit it.

  Anyway, he’s gone now. New start. New attitude. And today my goal is to say no to one request.

  My chance comes early in the day – Janice corners me at drop-off.

  ‘Claire, darling,’ she says, and we air-kiss. ‘How are you?’

  I immediately know she wants something – it’s the stress on the ‘are’, to convince me she really cares. Given that she knows absolutely nothing about my life, an honest answer would kill her.

  ‘Lovely,’ I answer. ‘And you are looking so beautiful.’ She isn’t really. She’s dyed her hair a really strange colour and looks like a giant aubergine. ‘Your hair is divine.’

  Janice tosses her head. ‘Do you really think so? I’m not sure.’

  What I want to say is that I don’t have all day to stand around giving people therapy about bad hair decisions, and that frankly she looks like a member of a hippy coven. I take a deep breath, knowing this anger is not really because of Janice at all.

  ‘You look fab,’ I say. ‘Must run now.’

  ‘Oh, Claire.’ She touches my arm as I try to make my getaway. ‘I wanted to ask you – we need someone on the board for my breast cancer charity. I wondered if you’d be interested? You’re the best person I can think of, and I know you really care about the cause.’

  This is my opportunity to say no, and a good one because I actually want to. I care about breast cancer in that I hope people stop getting it one day, and I think it’s very sad that people die from it, and I certainly don’t want to get it myself, but I don’t want to be on the board. I am absolutely clear about this.

  ‘Janice,’ I say firmly, and then look at her big, hopeful eyes, blue irises ringed with a darker outline. ‘Um . . . send me some info, okay? Not promising anything, but let me see what’s involved.’

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ She hugs me warmly. ‘You are the best, Claire, you really are.’

  I feel good, but also stupid and useless and spineless. As she turns to walk away, I call her. ‘Janice,’ I say, ‘you have really beautiful eyes. I think your new hair colour makes them stand out more.’

  Janice smiles and blows me a kiss, and I wonder how much time being on the board of a breast cancer charity can really take. I’ve got a whole lot of extra time after all, what with being single again.

  I’m intercepted on my way to the car by Liandri. She has her new baby with her, and I don’t think she’s brushed her hair.

  ‘Thank you for that lasagne yesterday, Claire. It saved the day. Jan thinks I’m superwoman for having such a divine meal on the table – I didn’t tell him you’re actually the superwoman.’

  I laugh. ‘It was no problem, Li,’ I say. ‘I remember how it was when Mackenzie was born, and I can only imagine what a second must be like.’

  I’m hit by a sudden moment of sadness. Daniel and I started trying for a second baby a while ago, unsuccessfully. I guess now I’ll never know what a second child is like.

  Liandri looks like she might start to cry. ‘It’s harder than I thought,’ she says. ‘I just feel like everything’s falling apart.’

  Join the club, I want to say, but I just smile and pat her arm. ‘Anything I can do, just yell.’

  ‘Well . . . Could you possibly give Tatum a lift home today? I have to take the baby to the nurse and I just can’t figure out how to do both.’

  ‘No problem.’ I do a mental reshuffle. I can’t say no to this – I’ve just offered to help. And it isn’t really a big issue. I’ll just have to phone Mackenzie’s art teacher and explain that she’ll be slightly late for art class.

  Liandri hugs me, an awkward sideways hug to avoid squashing the baby, and finally I get into my car.

  On the way to the hotel, I take a wrong turn and suddenly I’m in a street I don’t know. I slow down to get my bearings and then I see it: a garden full of gnomes. Full. I pull over and I stare.

  Garden gnomes are mine and Daniel’s in-joke. On our first date he took me to a party. As we walked into the house, he pointed to the two garden gnomes flanking the door and said, ‘You’re never going to come out with me again – you’ll think I’m a garden gnome kind of guy.’

  I looked at him and said, ‘Oh, you’re definitely a garden gnome kind of guy.’

  The garden gnome thing gained momentum and turned into an ongoing joke. Whenever we see gnomes, we stop and photograph them to send each other. In recent years, we’ve added ‘My gnome is sad because . . .’ So Daniel will send me a picture of a gnome saying, ‘My gnome is sad because he thinks he’s fat,’ and then I must comfort the gnome, and say that it is all muscle, or that he looks distinguished. It’s so silly. It’s so Daniel. It’s so us. For my thirtieth birthday he had a white gold necklace made with a garden gnome charm on it. The gnome is holding a diamond in his fat little hands. It is perfect.

  I stare at the garden full of gnomes and I don’t know what to do. After about a minute, I get out of the car and take a picture. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. And then I send the picture – there must be about twenty gnomes just in the frame I caught – to Daniel. And I type, These gnomes are sad because everything has changed.

  As soon as I press send, I regret it. I start madly pushing buttons trying to find a way to recall the message, but of course I can’t, and then I see that he’s read it already. And I watch as the phone shows that he’s typing, and I’m imagining all the scathing things he might say.

  And then the message comes through and it says, Those gnomes can’t be sad. They’re looking at you.

  And I sit in my car, and I cry and I cry.

  Daniel

  I answered Claire before I could think, but I don’t regret it.

  The rest of the day, I can’t stop looking at the photo of the gnomes. I want to ask Claire where she was. I want to ask her how many there were, because it looks like there might be even more than I can see in the photo. But instead I just look at the picture she sent me, and I think.

  Claire thought I broke her heart when I left her for Julia. But I think that when I see her tomorrow and tell her Julia is having a baby . . . I think that’s when it might break for real.

  And no number of gnomes can fix that.

  Julia

  When my affair with Daniel started, I didn’t think about him leaving Claire and Mackenzie. I wanted him for my own, I wanted him to be with me, I wanted to be able to go out in public and introduce him as my boyfriend and stop in the road and kiss him. I wanted not to have to sneak around and tell lies and have furtive sex at strange times in uncomfortable places. But in all that wanting, I somehow didn’t think that Daniel would have to leave Claire and Mackenzie. That they would be left. And that I would be the baddie in that story.

  That I am the baddie in that story.

  In the beginning, I worked hard to keep up the front of my friendship with Claire. Because if I was friends with Claire, there was nothing suspicious about me hanging around. And I still loved being friends with Claire. I still loved Claire. I just didn’t love her as much as I loved Daniel. So I still went to pottery. And I still came to visit and I ate meals at their family table. And it was awful and wonderful and secret and sexy and I felt constantly alive. I would sit across from Daniel, knowing that just hours before he had been inside me, and now he was sitting with his family, and I would get so turned on it was difficult not to pull him into the bathroom and have my way with him right there with Claire and Mackenzie sitting outside.

  But Daniel hated it. He hated me being in his home and he was consumed with guilt, and across the table his eyes were dark and held none of the lust I felt certain must be spilling out of me, staining the table.

  Things had to come to a head, and they did.

  Daniel and I had met at lunch-time. We’d rented a room – a seedy hotel just off the highway that lets you pay by the hour – and we’d pretended that I was a hooker he’d
picked up, and I was wearing cheap sex shop underwear under my work clothes and when he unbuttoned my shirt and saw it, he looked at me like he couldn’t believe I was for real, and he pushed me back hard on the bed and ripped off my shirt and said, ‘I’m going to fuck you so hard now,’ and I was so turned on that he barely had to touch me before I came. When we were spent and my kinky underwear was lying in a torn pile on the floor and we were naked on the bed facing each other, he said, ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with you. Nothing has ever been like this for me.’

  And then that night, there I was at their table, Claire having invited me over for supper. And I was so turned on I thought I would faint, thinking of what we’d done at lunch. But Daniel was glowering and refusing to meet my eyes, and even Claire commented that he was in a very sulky mood, and he just snapped at her.

  The next day Daniel phoned me. ‘It’s over,’ he said, without any preamble. ‘I hate the person I’ve become. I’m not doing this any more. And you need to stay away from Claire and me for a bit. Just stay away. Tell Claire you’re busy. Just leave us alone.’

  You’d think I would have been devastated. That I would have begged and pleaded, or even defended myself. But I just said, ‘If that’s what you want, Daniel. I can respect that.’

  And then I didn’t wait for him to hang up, I just put down the phone. I wasn’t upset, because I knew Daniel couldn’t live without me. I knew that all it would take was patience, and he’d call me and say he wanted to see me again. I felt calm.

  I gave him a week before I thought he would cave. He lasted two days. And when he called, it wasn’t to say that he wanted to see me again.

  It was to say he was going to leave Claire for me.

  ‘I’m not a man who can have an affair and feel right about it,’ he said. ‘And it seems that I can’t live without you. So I have to leave Claire.’