by Dan Pope
Later, she would wonder how she heard the sound, so faint, like a faraway bird. Her head felt clogged, her body heavy. The sound persisted until it drew her to the surface. Her cell phone, she realized. She cursed. She didn’t want to open her eyes and get out of bed—the floor was cold, she was exhausted—but she found herself rising and shuffling to the dresser, drawn by some maternal force. It might be Emily; she might be in trouble. She flipped open the phone and said hello.
“Audrey?”
“Benjamin? Is that you?”
“Yes. I’m sorry to call so late.”
“What time is it? Why are you—” She held the phone out to check the display and dropped it. It knocked against the night table and fell behind the bed. She cursed, reaching to turn on the lamp. When she retrieved the phone, the call was lost. Why would he call at this hour? He’d never done that before. She dialed him back, but the phone rang a few times and then went to voice mail. She hung up without leaving a message. Without her glasses, she squinted at the screen. She didn’t recognize the number; it was not his usual phone.
The last time they spoke, she’d told him she would get in touch after the holiday. He hadn’t waited. Instead he’d woken her from a dead sleep. Did he not respect her at all, to call at this hour? She checked for a message; there was none. She returned the phone to the dresser and climbed back into bed. Rude of him, she thought. What could he want from her at this hour, other than the obvious? Booty-calling, like some college kid. She remembered that night at Starbucks. He’d gone to his car before her, leaving his coffee cup on the table. She had brought it to the garbage and tossed it in with a splash. Cleaning up after him, just like she did with Andrew. That was the way of men, leaving their messes behind. She felt a surge of disdain for him. It angered her, enough to shake off the effect of the Valium, enough to keep her from returning immediately to sleep.
A moment later she heard the faint cry:
“Mom.”
She sat up in bed and turned on the light. What now? Had she heard her daughter’s voice or imagined it? She got up and shuffled down the hallway in her slippers. There was a light coming from beneath Emily’s door.
Thank God, she’s home.
She knocked. “Emily? Do you need something?” There was no answer. She would not lecture; she wouldn’t even mention her little escape. She just wanted her daughter to say something kind to her—to wish her good night, a spoken word, any word. They’d gone too long without speaking.
“I just want to say good night—” Audrey said, opening the door.
Emily was lying on the mattress, her hair spread out around her like a shawl. All the lights were burning in the room, like a crime scene. There was something strange about her face. Her lips were bright blue. Audrey wondered why Emily would put on such strange lipstick. Then she realized it was not lipstick, but her lips, somehow turned that unnatural color, as if she’d been frostbitten.
“Emily?”
When she didn’t open her eyes or stir, Audrey went to her, stepping on something—tiny pills; prescription pills—scattered all around her bed.
“Emily, wake up.” Audrey knelt beside her and touched her daughter’s cheek; her skin was cold and clammy. Her breath came in rasps.
“Emily, what did you do? Can you hear me?”
She grabbed her daughter’s arm, squeezed her, jostled her, slapped her across the face. But Emily did not open her eyes, did not show any response at all, except for that terrible raspy breathing. She needed to call an ambulance. But she seemed unable to move. She did not want to leave Emily alone. It took all her will to get up and run to the kitchen.
* * *
AT LAST the sirens sounded.
Audrey rushed outside, wearing only her T-shirt and hospital pants. Soon a fire engine roared to a stop, lights flashing. Why would they send a fire engine? The big rig stopped on the street and an ambulance turned in to the driveway. Two EMTs got out, a man and a woman.
Time altered, a herky-jerky acceleration. The EMTs clambered down the hallway in their blue uniforms, their two-way radios emitting human voices and squelching sounds. Their boots were open, the laces dragging behind. Emily lay on the floor, the EMTs working over her. Audrey stood behind them, looking over their shoulders.
“Whose pills are these?” asked the male EMT. He gathered the pills off the rug and examined them one by one.
“I don’t know.”
“Has she ever done anything like this before?”
“I found some pills in her closet a while back and threw them away. I don’t know how she gets them.”
“What sort of pills?”
“I don’t know. Vicodin. Please help her. She’s freezing cold.”
“We’re trying, ma’am,” said the female EMT, without glancing up.
A fireman appeared in the doorway, standing quiet and motionless. Sheba padded into the room; the fireman took her by the collar, and Sheba sat by his side, watching and whining. A stretcher was unfolded and Emily was lifted onto it and strapped down with Velcro wraps. They carried her to the ambulance, and Audrey climbed in after her. As the vehicle began to move, Emily’s head flopped to the side. Her lips, that terrible shade of frostbite blue, a shade Audrey would never forget.
* * *
THEY TOLD HER to wait in the curtained cubicle. Waiting, she called Andrew. There was no answer. Just like before, absent, unavailable. She left a message, telling him to come to St. Francis Hospital, now. A minute later she tried again. Voice mail, again.
She sat with her head in her hands, half-listening to the muffled humdrum: nurses chatting at their station in the center of the ER; the beeping and buzzing and whirring of a thousand different machines; the sudden yelp of the intercom; an amplified voice; the creaking wheels of stretchers rolling past; doors and curtains opening; squeaky-soled shoes; a janitor’s mop swishing along the tiles; the orderlies talking in Spanish; the sudden complaint of a drunken man; the low groan of the building itself. She couldn’t say how much time passed. It might have been twenty minutes. It might have been hours.
She had been here before. This was a replay of the worst hours of her life. It seemed impossible that this could be happening again. She felt her mind reeling and breaking, unable to differentiate between now and then. She was back in the ER, everything in between then and now leading to this same place. What had she done to deserve this? What could she have done to avoid this? She had failed her daughter. That was clear. She had refused to look her in the eyes. She had wished her daughter dead in place of Daniel, and this, this now, was her punishment.
* * *
AT LAST the ER doctor entered the cubicle. He told her that they were giving Emily a drug to offset the narcotics. It was a matter of getting the poison out of her system. The problem was, there was no antidote for some of the pills she had taken. She had to excrete the toxins through her urinary tract, so they were hydrating her through multiple IVs to assist that process. These fluids would keep up her blood pressure, said the doctor. When she started breathing normally again, they would take her off the respirator, but not until then.
“In simple terms, she has to wake up,” the doctor told her.
“Will she?”
The doctor squeezed her arm and left the cubicle.
* * *
EMILY WAS BACK at their house in Cos Cob. All the furniture had been taken away and the walls were painted a fresh coat of white, the wooden floors polished. In the living room a gust of wind blew the curtain away from the window, and bright sunlight filled the empty rooms.
A deer was standing perfectly still in the center of the room, its head lowered, as if its antlers were too heavy. She approached the animal and touched its velvet fur. The deer raised its head, observing her with its large kind eyes.
Follow me, said the deer.
The animal moved toward the kitchen, its hooves
clacking and echoing on the wood floor. She hurried to keep up, passing through the kitchen and then up the narrow rear staircase to the third floor. She lost sight of the deer but heard its steps, directly above her. On the third-floor landing, she pulled down the attic ladder and stepped up, one rung after another.
The attic seemed bigger than she remembered, a long, deep cavern. All the junk they’d piled up there—their discarded furniture, summer-camp trunks, old toys—was gone. In the far corner, behind cobwebs, she noticed a tiny door in the baseboard, no bigger than a postcard. She bent down and pulled open the door and peered inside, and there came a sudden expansion, the doorway widening to reveal the secret room.
It was a sunny room with sloped walls. There was a large bay window where she could sit and look out over the backyard. Down in the grassy yard below, two children were playing with a beach ball. A boy and a girl, four or five years old. It was she and Daniel, she realized with a thrill. He caught the beach ball against his chest, and she ran after him, calling his name. She couldn’t catch him, he was so fast, running in circles.
Look, Daniel! It’s us!
I know.
Is this where you’ve been? All this time?
Yes.
I didn’t know. I should have known. All along, I knew you were somewhere. I just never thought to look in the attic.
It’s a secret.
Outside, in the backyard, he threw the ball high in the air. She shaded her eyes as the ball climbed into the sky—so bright, so blue. The ball soared, and she waited for it to come down, her arms stretched wide open.
I’m so sorry, Daniel. I should have found you.
You’re not supposed to be here.
It’s beautiful. You can see everything from here. And you must be lonely.
No.
I am. Without you.
High above, the beach ball hovered in front of the sun, becoming the sun, exploding in brightness. A fearsome light emerged, ripping apart the sky. Something terrible was coming forth.
Daniel, I’m scared.
You can’t stay.
I can’t leave without you.
Yes, you can.
But I want to stay.
No, Emily. You have to go back.
Do I have to?
Yes. You have to go. Go now!
* * *
SHE EMERGED into brightness. The effort of waking was wrenching. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t cry out. Something was on her face, suffocating her. An interminable time passed on the cusp of consciousness, trying to surface. She fought to open her eyes, gasping and choking. She could see only the brightness, blinding her. At last, she could see beyond the light.
They were all around her.
A face appeared above her. He had no eyes, no mouth. Not a man but some devil. His voice came from elsewhere, the sounds guttural. Someone sliced her arm, opening her. She tried to scream, but the words turned to mush. She felt herself falling. Down, deep down, back into the sludge. Nothing here but blackness. Not water. Not air. Not anything.
She fought back to the surface. There was something in her mouth. She pulled the thing out and it kept coming, from all the way down her throat, deep down inside her, making her vomit. She spat a black sludge, the taste of death. The thing emerged, something foreign. A plastic tube. She kept pulling until it was out and threw it or tried to, her hands were so weak, she could barely move.
She could hear them, understand them. But she couldn’t speak to them. Bile came spilling out of her, black and thick. She fought to stay conscious even as she vomited. She wavered, falling back. It was impossible to come awake. She couldn’t do it. It was an enormous stone on top of her. To struggle against it was pointless.
Wake up, said the voice. Open your eyes.
I can’t.
Of course you can.
And somehow she did.
* * *
LATER she would remember nothing, or almost nothing, of that night. Glimpses, that was all, like images seen while flipping television channels. She pushed it out of her mind, she did not want to recall what she’d done. She was too ashamed to remember; she would tell no one of her visit to the man’s house, not even her mother.
All of that night, as hazy as a dream—all except the attic. That she remembered clearly, every detail—the sloped, soft-yellow walls, the bay-window seat looking out to the backyard. She not only remembered it but felt it—the sunlight, his presence—a feeling of pure goodness. It stayed with her, a gift she carried wherever she went. She told no one—not the hospital doctors or the therapists who pressed her during her seventy-two-hour stay in the psych ward, not the shrink she met Wednesday afternoons for six months after that, even though she liked the woman and didn’t mind sharing her every other secret with her. She told no one of the attic. That was hers alone, a constant, a feeling undimmed for years afterward—but never as strong as that next morning, waking in the hospital room at dawn with no idea where she was, and her mother sitting beside her. She told no one except her mother—the only person she could ever tell, the only person in the world who could understand.
She opened her eyes and looked around, registering the exhaustion in her body, the tiredness that comes after giving everything. It was like starting blank. Where am I? How did I get here? She felt the IV attached to her wrist, and she turned to see her mother, holding her hand.
“Mom,” she said, “I saw him. I saw Daniel.” She rushed to get the words out, but her voice was hoarse, no louder than a whisper.
“Emily?” Her mother’s hand was warm against her skin. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
“Of course I can hear you.”
“Emily, I’m so sorry.”
“What are you sorry about?”
“Everything, honey. I’m sorry about everything.” Audrey was weeping, the tears running down her cheeks. Her face was pale and drawn. “You’ve been sick and I didn’t do anything to help. Will you forgive me?”
“Oh, Mom. You look awful.”
Audrey laughed and wiped her eyes. “I forgot to put on makeup.”
“Did you hear what I said? About Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t tell anyone. Not even Dad.”
“How are you feeling? Do you need anything?”
Emily pushed herself up in bed. “Mom, you’re not listening to me.” Outside the window, the sun was a red blob, rising over a line of trees. They were somewhere on the fifth or sixth floor, high above the city. “He’s here. He’s with us.”
She told her mother what she had seen. The attic room, how she had opened the tiny door to find him, the warmth and sunlight, like no other place. Heaven. It could only be heaven. “Do you believe me?”
Her mother nodded. She brushed her hair away from her face. “I see him every time I look at you.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
That morning: It was like starting blank. She let the past refill her, choosing what to admit and what to banish. It would become her story to tell. Later, she would look back and say that when she was seventeen, she tried to commit suicide but ended up killing only the parts of herself she no longer wanted.
* * *
EIGHT YEARS LATER, she will arrive in Berkeley, California, to attend graduate school. It is a late-summer day. She walks through town, seeing it all for the first time, this place she will come to know so well. In People’s Park, she finds a place to sit on the warm grass. She watches and admires the activity going on around her—boys playing basketball, students tossing Frisbees, homeless men sleeping in the sun, hippies smoking pot and strumming guitars. All this, she thinks, she could have missed.
A tall young man comes strolling across the grass, like an actor out of a play. He is dressed in a tuxedo coat with tails, wearing a purple top hat. He looks so elegant, so tall, s
o magical. As if on cue, as if he knows she is watching, the man in the purple top hat takes a few quick steps and throws himself onto his hands and cartwheels—three, four, five cartwheels in a row, a blur of arms and legs, with the top hat somehow staying in place—
Are you seeing this?
I am.
Is this amazing or what?
It is.
He lands on his feet, bows deeply, and doffs his hat in her direction. The kids with the Frisbees hoot and applaud, and she stands and claps with the others for the sheer grace and beauty of what he has done, so happy to be a part of it, this crazy park, this beautiful life.
Epilogue
The first day of winter, 2007
ON THE TWENTY-SECOND of December a heavy snow fell. Benjamin Mandelbaum closed down the business early to give his employees a chance to make it home safely. He was one of the last to leave. On the drive home the roads were clogged. On the interstate a few cars slipped out of control, smashing against the guardrails or other vehicles.
His cell phone chimed.
“Where are you?” asked Judy.
“Halfway home.”
“I need you to stop at Whole Foods in Wintonbury Center.”
“Give me a break, Judy. It’s like the demolition derby out here.”
“It’s for your daughter.”
He squinted at the swirling snow, riding the brake, barely moving. “Why didn’t you go to the store earlier?”
“Because she didn’t tell me earlier.”
He took a deep breath. “All right, fine. What do you need?”
She gave him a list. His daughter had gone gluten-free over the past semester; she needed items that Benjamin had never even heard of: amaranth, quinoa, arrowroot.
“And don’t forget the brown rice pasta.”
His children would arrive that weekend on Christmas break. His family would be together for the holidays, despite all, unbroken.
