Outside the Ordinary World

by Dori Ostermiller

  “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, either,” I whisper, knowing how asinine it sounds. “I really wasn’t.”

  He starts chuckling—ironically at first. Still, the laughter seems to cleanse the air a bit; we both giggle in strangled, exhausted surges, like coughs.

  “I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to fix this,” he finally says, indicating the mess.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, wiping a blotch of blood from his chin. “I don’t give a shit.”

  “I thought the house was everything to you.”

  “No, Nathan. All I really wanted was for us to be happy.” I pick up a piece of the shattered tile, weighing it in my palm.

  “Huh.” He shakes his head wearily. “Well, I don’t know if we can be happy now, Sylv.”

  “We need time to—”

  “I just—” He jerks his arm from my touch. “I think I need to get away.”

  “Of course.” The anguish expands in my chest until my eyes smart. “But maybe,” I begin as I gulp a breath, “maybe we could work through it, and—”

  “Work through it?” He presses his hands over his face. “I don’t know.”

  “The family therapist Han saw—I was thinking you could come with me.”

  “Oh. I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

  I nod, hugging my elbows, holding tightly to the words welling inside me. Finally, inhaling, I let them go. “I want you to stay, Nathan,” I blurt. And then, more slowly, “I know we can’t go back to how things were. But maybe we can—I hope we can find our way together. If you’re willing to try.”

  He’s silent, staring into his bloody palms as the dust continues to filter down like pollen, settling in our hair.

  “If only—” he starts. But before he can finish, Hannah is bursting through the doorway in her snowsuit, bits of ice clinging to her long hair, eyes huge and frightened. At first, I assume she’s just startled by my presence, this unexpected scene between her father and me—sprawled in the center of the ruined kitchen, blotting at each other’s heartbreak—this moment she’s risked everything to orchestrate.

  Then she pants, “I can’t find Emmie.”

  “You what?” I ask. Nathan is up in a heartbeat, helping me to my feet.

  “I’ve looked everywhere, all over!” She leans over and grips her thighs, trying to catch her breath. “We were sledding by the lake—Andrea and Maggie and me, and Emmie didn’t want to go anymore so she was just playing up the hill in the snow, and then—I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know, Han?” I realize that I’m talking too loudly, grasping her forearm too tight, but she doesn’t pull away from me now. We lock eyes for a moment while the terror begins its sharp work on my vascular system, while Nathan grabs his sweater and flashlight and tells us to come on, now—just hurry up, leading us into the night.

  I stumble through the woods behind Nathan and Hannah—all of us calling, calling—my voice shredded with fear. The January sky’s a lavender bruise, the light failing sickeningly, and she’s not in her usual hiding place behind the barn, not in the hollow near the stream. She’s not behind the cedars, where she and Nathan have built ten tiny, elaborate fairy houses. Not by the rope swing or the leafless lilacs, not playing a hiding game in the truck bed. An icy wind grates over the south meadow, but I can’t really feel it—I’m too numb with panic.

  “I really screwed up, didn’t I?” Hannah wails in the middle of the driveway.

  “Mom and I should have been paying more attention,” Nathan tells her.

  “Maybe we should split up and look for her.” I am trying to keep my voice even.

  “Good idea,” he says. “Han, why don’t you and Mom go back down to the sledding spot and I’ll scan the woods and the gardens. If anyone sees her, use the family whistle. We’ll meet back here in twenty minutes or so and call the police if she hasn’t turned up.”

  At this, a tiny moan escapes my lips.

  “Don’t push the panic button yet,” states Nathan. “It’s easy to get turned around in these woods. Let’s try to keep our heads.”

  “Okay,” says Hannah, grabbing my sleeve, and I realize how deeply I need my husband’s steady grace right now.

  We stagger down the hill, tripping on tree roots. It’s not until we’re halfway through the fourteen-acre wood that I notice Hannah and I are clasping hands, step for step in the semi-darkness. I don’t know which of us initiated this gift, but there it is. Clutching her warm, sweaty fingers, I feel no pain in my own, for the first time in weeks.

  “Emmie!” I try again in a hoarse scream. “Emmie Rose, where are you, honey?” Again, there’s no response—no distant crying, no laughter as she jumps from the underbrush, ending this wretched game. There’s not even the sweet reassurance of chickadees, squirrel scratching or nuthatches. It’s as eerily silent as Los Angeles before an earthquake.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” whispers Hannah as we wind down to the lake.

  “I am sorry, too, Han. I’m sorry, too.”

  “I really didn’t mean for everything to get so carried away.”

  “Neither did I, honey. Neither did I.”

  “I should have been watching Em better, too—I just never thought—”

  “Shh—no more regrets now, okay, Han? Just show me where you guys were sledding today. Just show me where she disappeared.”

  We scan the border of woods, the east meadow and the sledding hill, tromping through awkward clumps of last week’s snow. It’s raw, agonizing work in my clogs and leather jacket, my fingers lifeless now and this poisonous tangle of fear working its way through my chest. Hannah heads back up toward the place where Emmie left her sled while I comb the shore, looking for breaks in the ice—calling until my voice is nothing but toast crumbs falling through cracks.

  Retrieving a single pink mitten from the shore, a sob erupts from my belly like boiling oil. I swallow it down.

  When I can’t yell anymore, I start to pray—to whom or what I’m not quite certain, but praying nonetheless, shamelessly bargaining in the silent air. Just bring her back to me, I whisper. Just bring them all back. Then my knees give out and I’m slumped on the frozen sand, head in my hands. Though I know I can’t afford this now, my mind won’t stop playing all its last-ditch disasters and lake-bottom scenarios. Suddenly I’m remembering little Lucy Kauffman, the car filling with lake water. Lucy Kauffman galumphing down the stairs, playing in the south meadow, chasing the goats.

  Of course.

  “Hannah!” I scream up the hill, scrambling to my feet, slipping on ice. “I think I know where she is.”

  We tear back through the woods in minutes. Entering the warm stink of the goat barn, Hannah tripping on my heels, I hear their voices floating from the back—Rosalyn’s throaty chuckle pierced by Emmie’s pixie squeal as milk squirts into a metal pail. My legs feel boneless, my lips stinging, my mind aching as I work my way toward them through the riot of goats, finally spotting them in a corner stall.

  “Eeeww, it’s all hot!” Emmie pipes as Rosalyn bends down beside her, helping her grip the nanny goat’s pale teat.

  “Jesus, Emmie Rose, you scared the living—” Hannah begins, but I stop her, grasping her wrist. I am so dizzy to see this child alive, so grateful to have them both within my reach, I don’t want to say a word, don’t want to spook away this moment, don’t want to scold or accuse or demand explanations. Instead, I just have to sit down on a plank, lungs contracting, toes still numb and soaking, hands suddenly burning in the blessed warmth of this little hut.

  “Well of course the milk’s hot, Lucy,” Rosalyn scolds, starting on the other teat. “It’s coming straight from her hot old hide, dear, what did you expect? You didn’t think it’d come out refrigerated?”

  At these words, Hannah raises an eyebrow and I just close my eyes and nod, the chills moving through me in waves.

  “Mommy, come try it,” Emmie commands, as if we’ve been sitting here the whole time, all of us gathered for a regular
Saturday night outing to our neighbor’s. “Bitsy’s going to have baby goats and Auntie Roz said we could keep one!”

  “So it’s Auntie Roz now, is it?” I turn to see Nathan, winded and hollow-eyed, arms braced in the doorway. At the sight of him, I remember what’s still lost, and a heaping portion of dread returns to me. His hair is electrified, cheeks vivid—he looks like a man who’s just glimpsed his own death. He leans over for a moment, clutching his ribs, then comes toward us. “Did Auntie Roz bring you over for a milking lesson, Em, or did you find your way here alone?”

  “She brought my Dalton back to me, the dear.” Roz straightens up and cinches her apron around her. “Out wandering the back woods at sundown; so I took them in for warm goat milk and cookies—that’s what’s called for on a night like this.”

  “Yes, that’s just about what’s called for,” echoes Nathan, shaking his head. “Though maybe with a few shots of whiskey to wash it down.” Hannah rolls her eyes, but can’t stop herself reaching to pat one of the goats nuzzling her snow pants.

  “Say, Sylvia, did you ever burn that sage stick I gave you for energy cleansing?”

  “No, but I think I’ll do that.” I glance up at Nathan. “I think I’ll do that right away.”

  “May take a lot more than sage,” Nathan mutters, returning my stare.

  “Another storm’s expected tonight,” Roz announces distantly, as if to her goats.

  “She calls me Lucy sometimes,” Emmie says, yawning. Rubbing her eyes roughly, she comes over and plops her head right down in my lap. My tingling fingers work through the diaphanous curls. I press my nose against the base of her neck, breathing her soft scent of baby shampoo and milk and apricots, my tears disappearing in all that hair.

  “Let’s get the girls back for dinner,” Nathan says after a few minutes. “It’s getting late.”

  Walking back to the house behind Nathan and the girls, I’m thinking that endings don’t necessarily arrive with trumpet song and angel fire, as my Sabbath School teacher used to predict. The world comes apart quietly, with the smallest, most ordinary gesture—a woman slipping into her car at dusk, a man coming unglued in his kitchen, a child disappearing beneath the ice. In the time it takes to heat the tea water, drive to the neighbor’s, walk through woods on a moonless January night. Ahead, the familiar backs of my husband and daughters recede through the trees, and I can’t help wondering if these are the last hours of our family. A deadly thorn of regret works its way toward my heart.

  Then Emmie stubs her toe again and starts whining as I approach.

  “I’m cold, Mommy,” she complains.

  “What happened to your new coat?” I ask, trying to sound sufficiently annoyed. “What happened to your hat? We just bought those last week.”

  “I bet she left them near the sledding hill,” Hannah says. “She always takes them off.”

  “I’ll go look tomorrow.” Nathan removes his sweater and wraps it around our preschooler, crouching down to let her crawl onto his shoulders. Then he continues solemnly down the path, keeping a wide berth between us in which our eldest walks, sending me anxious glances. I know she’s trying to determine how much damage she’s caused by delivering the e-mails, and I think about the impulse that provoked such a risk: Was it purely anger? The desire to take charge? Alleviate or claim some piece of the trouble? A similar compulsion to the one that made me ignite letters in a Santa Ana wind, the night my father died?

  “I think we took the wrong path there,” Nathan says after a few minutes, halting in a small clearing and shaking his dimming flashlight. “We should be going north here, not east.”

  We cluster beside him, straining for a glimpse of sky.

  “You guys see Orion?” I ask. A gust of glacial wind rattles the branches around us. “Gram used to say that was the entrance to heaven.”

  “I wonder if she’s there already,” Hannah murmurs, hugging her shoulders. “Maybe she’s watching over us.”

  “I hate winter.” Emmie starts to cry. “I’m hungry.”

  “There’s gonna be a lot more winter before it’s over, little dude,” says Hannah.

  “We’re almost home, Em—just hang on,” says Nathan. “The house will be nice and warm.” He carries her through a close stand of pines, leading us on a different course.

  “Daddy made his fried chicken and coleslaw,” I announce through chattering teeth.

  “I want a hot dog,” whimpers Emmie. “I want Friendly’s.”

  Hannah groans.

  “Would you rather go hungry for a week,” I try, “or eat nothing but Friendly’s hot dogs?” I’m hoping that our old game will divert them from the stinging chill, the evening’s discord, the startling fact that we seem to have wandered from our path.

  “Friendly’s, Friendly’s,” Emmie chants. Hannah opts for the hunger strike and Nathan is silent. His flashlight wavers again, then dies completely in a dense section of hickory and oak. The branches are so low, they keep threatening to smack Emmie in the forehead; Nathan places her on the ground, where she clings stubbornly to his leg.

  “Brilliant,” observes Hannah. “We could be out here all night at this rate.”

  “The woods aren’t that deep,” I assure her. Still, with no moon or flashlight, this part of the forest is inky and untenable—anyone’s guess. We might be wandering in circles. I’m so exhausted from the last few days’ events, I could weep, and I picture us finally collapsing in a heap for the night, huddling for warmth in some makeshift burrow.

  “Let’s just stay in a line,” instructs Nathan. “Let’s stay close.”

  Hannah, who has the supple gait of her eight years of dance and sees through night like a raccoon, goes first. Nathan keeps a hand on her shoulder and Emmie clutches his pant leg in her tiny fist. I touch the top of her curly head, to let her know I’m behind her.

  And so we go, making our way slowly through the under brush like some awkward, primordial life-form, grasping for each other in the pitch-dark. There’s no sound but our breathing, the soft crunching of leaves and ice. At one point, Nathan’s freezing fingers reach back and curl briefly through mine. I’m reminded of Poppy’s war stories—soldiers stunned and blinded after a gas attack who had to feel their way toward safety, inch by tender inch. Despite the cold, I have a sudden, childlike wish to stay here, linked in this sylvan blackness—never to reach the glaring havoc that awaits us.

  Finally, we come upon the bridge where Emmie had her accident—our first recognizable landmark. Hannah ends the silence with a sigh that expresses our collective relief and disappointment.

  “Okay,” she says, “here’s one. Would you rather be stranded in the New England woods all night with your family, or safe at home all alone, wondering about the ones who are lost out there?”

  “That’s a tough one, Han,” I say as we break from formation, winding toward our winter gardens. “Would you freeze in the woods with those people, or just have to camp for the night?”

  “No. You wouldn’t die, but you’d think you were going to.”

  I have to laugh, though my arms are shivering violently, knees buckling as we stomp through frozen shrubs.

  “And the one waiting at home—does that person know the others will return?” asks Nathan. He hoists Emmie back onto his shoulders, refusing to meet my stare.

  “I hadn’t exactly worked it out that far.”

  “I wanna be standed inside the house with the lost people,” squeaks Emmie from her wild, windy perch. “We could be standed in our sleeping bags!” She giggles, amazed by her genius.

  “It’s stranded, Em,” corrects Hannah with a sigh, sweeping aside hemlock branches. “Anyway, I’ve told you—that’s not how the game works!”

  “She’ll get it eventually,” I say. “It takes time.”

  “You did promise we would stay in the house tonight, Dad,” Hannah reminds as we stumble into the clear. We all stare up at the vast, jeweled sky above us—a stunning respite between weather events. “Do you guys thin
k that plan could maybe still work?”

  I glance at her angular profile in the starlight, knowing that this is her way of asking if we will be all right, if we’re going to make it past tomorrow. “We’ll have to see, honey,” I start. The thorn of regret works its way deeper toward my center. “The place is kind of a mess now, and—”

  “Let’s give it a try,” says Nathan, coming up beside me. He places the familiar breadth of his hand between my shoulder blades, behind my heart, his other hand gripping Emmie’s thigh. It’s difficult to hold his gaze, so pierced through with sadness, but I do.

  Finally emerging from the woods, we tromp single file and freezing across the south meadow, hunched into the wind. At the top of the hill, our house still blazes with the light of our argument, unexpectedly bright against the new storm rolling in from the west.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Because no writing happens in a vacuum, and because I am lucky enough to live in a rich community of writers, I have many people to thank.

  First, huge gratitude to my fantastic agent, Jessica Papin, who’s had unwavering faith in this story. Also to my gifted editor, Ann Leslie Tuttle, and all the people at MIRA Books who have showered me with enthusiasm and goodwill.

  Many thanks to the writers (I can’t name them all) who, through various Writers in Progress workshops, have offered their insights.

  For valuable feedback on drafts, I thank the members of the WIP Manuscript Series and the Tuesday night manuscript group (especially Elli Meeropol, Celia Jeffries, Rita Marks and Jacqueline Sheehan), as well as India Nolen, David Lovelace, Linda Seligman, Peter Levitt and the talented Diana Gordon.

  Big appreciation to Sarah Browning for her support through the whole process and for permission to use her poem “Something They Never Tell You.”

  My friend Julia Mines has bolstered me in the ups and downs, and I couldn’t have steered through revisions without the solidarity and sharp editorial insight of Dix McComas.