When Willow saw her father through the closed front window of the car at the pickup circle, she was finding it hard to breathe all over again.
Willow waited for her father to roll down the window and tell her to “Get in.” But instead he just stared vacantly out the windshield. It was a look she didn’t recognize in him. And between that empty gaze and the pallor in his cheeks, something felt wrong. Something felt bad.
Asher hopped into the car as Willow dragged herself into the back seat. Asher buckled his seat belt and activated his light-up sneakers by knocking them together, and then so casually asked, “Whewe’s Mom?”
Willow straightened in her seat and prepared for her father’s response.
But Rex didn’t say a word as he focused only on the yellow lines of the road being swallowed up by the front of the car.
The silence had become thick and viscous, but Willow waded through it.
“Yeah,” she said. “Where’s Mom?”
But still, Rex couldn’t bring himself to respond.
And there was just more silence. More thick, sticky, gooey, heavy silence.
But Willow couldn’t stand how that silence clung so heavily to her skin. How it seeped down into it and oozed over her ribs. How it engulfed her lungs and then her heart until once again, she couldn’t breathe.
She needed an answer. She needed an explanation. She needed words. She needed sounds. If that thick silence stayed in her lungs any longer, she was going to suffocate. If that viscid silence surrounded her heart any longer, it was going to stop beating.
“Dad,” Willow said sternly, “I asked you where Mom was.”
Willow pressed her palms into the leather seat. She demanded him to answer her. She willed her father to answer her. She willed it and willed it until he did.
“She’s not coming,” Rex said, and then paused. “She’s dead.”
The whole world did one whole spin, and then everything stopped.
And then, just like that, the silence returned. The sticky, gooey silence. The heavy, viscous, unapproachable silence. And just like she thought might happen, Willow’s lungs stopped taking in oxygen and her heart stopped beating as she sat there drowning in silence.
Drowning in sadness. Drowning in sorrow.
Willow reached over and squeezed Asher’s hand without looking. They both cried silently, still buckled up in the back seat of their father’s silent car.
No noise. No eye contact.
No love. No warmth.
No permission to mourn.
41
The days following Rosie’s death were a hazy blur for Willow. A solitary, aching, hazy blur. It had twisted Willow’s insides to see her mother without lipstick. To see her mother without ideas. Without energy. To find her asleep when she wanted to watch a movie or play her word searches or have her arm tickled. It had twisted Willow’s insides to look at her mother and see a ghost. To see a body but not see anything real or true inside of it.
But, as Willow lay in her bed at her Dad’s house, the physical loss of her mother was excruciating. Because up until now, there was still a shell there for Willow to wrap her body around. To wrap her mind and heart around. To curl up next to and feel against her chest and arms and legs. But now there was nothing. Just hollow crevices and throbbing bones. Just holes and empty spaces.
And even though it was emptiness, the weight of it was profound. It sat on her chest and constricted her throat. It pressed against her ribs and stiffened her shoulders.
She felt it at school and at Dad’s house. At her lunch table and her kitchen table. In her bedroom and in the classroom. She felt it when the sun rose and when the sun set. She felt it everywhere. In everything. Inside Willow’s body and outside in the world around her.
Everywhere.
All the time.
All the time.
Everywhere.
But still, nighttime was the hardest time.
Willow would lie in bed with her knees tucked up toward her chest. She would press her ear into the sheets of her bed and hold a pillow over her mouth to muffle the sound of her crying. She couldn’t bear the sounds of her own sadness.
But no matter how badly she wanted the tears to stop, they poured out of her in relentless waves. They dripped and then spilled and then poured and then gushed out of her in the darkness of her bedroom. Her chest expanded smoothly, and then contracted with short, choppy, syncopated exhales. And then there was more and then more dripping, spilling, pouring, gushing tears.
Willow would wake up in the morning, not remembering how she’d managed to fall asleep, and drag her feet downstairs with a face salty with dried tears.
Rex would be sitting there with his coffee like he always was. And he would turn his neck around at the sound of his daughter dragging her feet across the kitchen. And then he would look at her. Look through her.
And when Willow would meet his eyes, her emptiness and loneliness would wash over her once again.
What would it be like to live with Dad? All the time. With everything bad.
What would it be like to live without Mom? Without love. Without everything good.
She asked herself these questions over and over and over again.
42
Rex thought that the worst day of his life had already happened the day he got the call and learned that Rosie had died, but today at the funeral it was so much worse. The sea of black clothes. All of the tears and choppy exhales. All of the hugging and mourning and hearts broken for Rosie. All of the hearts breaking for Willow and Asher too.
Rex was dizzy with it.
He thought of his children as Rosie’s friends—so many of Rosie’s friends—walked up in pairs of two, arms tightly linked, toward her casket. As they bent over and kissed Rosie’s lifeless cheek. As they ran their hands across her still-curled bangs. As they stood over her body and wept.
Rex was dizzy with that too.
He took three short strides toward Rosie’s casket, and didn’t know if he could make it all the way. He didn’t know if he could see her body that used to be full of life, so empty of all of it.
He felt a gentle hand on his back and continued toward the mother of his children. He traced his finger along the smooth mahogany of the casket and looked at Rosie. Pure, tortured Rosie. He stared at her eyelids and willed them to open. To open and end all of the hurt in the room. To open and look back at him. To open and tell him how to be a father to his children. How to be a mother and a father to his children. How to be better. But there was only stillness. So much stillness. So much harsh and rigid stillness.
As Rex stood there and looked over Rosie, he remembered how he used to wish that Rosie could find stillness. That she could stop twirling and vibrating and just be. And there Rosie was, still at last. It broke his heart.
As he turned away to return to his seat, he wished that he had someone waiting there to hug him. He inadvertently wished that that someone was Rosie. And then he wished for Willow and Asher. He wished he could wrap himself around Willow’s small bones and big hair. He wished he could find calm in Asher’s red cheeks and big eyes. He wondered if his children could hold him up.
But then he was reminded why they weren’t there. He didn’t want Willow and Asher to have to see their mother lifeless like that. He didn’t want them to see someone who was once so warm and full of life, so cold and lifeless. Someone who was once so alive, so dead. So blatantly, crushingly, oppressively dead. He didn’t want them to have that terrible image to carry around in their little minds.
He didn’t want them to see their father with red eyes or weak knees. He didn’t want them to see their father so powerless.
He didn’t want them to see and feel again all the things they already knew they lost.
Instead, he called Roy and asked if he could come down from New York and stay with Willow
and Asher. And Roy said he would without a question.
Rex thought he knew what he was doing. He thought he was doing the right thing.
43
When Willow woke up and walked downstairs to find Roy on the couch, she knew it was an unusual day. “Hey, Willow,” he said casually, but with a tension in his shoulders. “Your dad asked me to watch you and Asher while he was out.”
“Oh,” Willow responded with an equally forced levity, and then went to find Asher playing in the next room.
“Where do you think Dad went?” she asked her brother, knowing he wouldn’t know either, but might be able to comfort her anyway.
“Pwobably just to get us a toy,” Asher responded, not looking up from his action figures. And Willow smiled.
But when a few hours later Rex pressed through the big heavy front door of the house wearing a black pin-striped suit with a silk black tie, Willow confirmed the day was unusual indeed. Rex never wore a suit and tie on the weekends. And what was Roy doing here from New York, anyway?
Willow watched as her father walked directly into his office with his chin on his chest and eyes tracing the floor. And then she watched Roy follow him in there with a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Willow followed a few steps behind them and pressed her ear against the sliding office door.
“Roy. It was awful. The whole thing was fucking awful.”
“I’m so sorry, Rex. I am so sorry.”
“I don’t even know how to talk about it... All of these people—all young like us—crying and holding each other. A funeral for a thirty-six-year-old woman is a tough thing. That’s something you don’t ever expect to experience... I wish I didn’t have to see it, live it. It was awful. Rosie, the love of my life. My ex-wife. The mother of my children. The mother of my children, Roy. Dead at thirty-six.”
A brief pause. Willow couldn’t see it but imagined Rex was cradling his own head with his hand.
“Holy shit, Roy. I can’t believe it. I really can’t.”
Another moment of quiet.
“Thank you for coming down and watching the kids,” her father said through a tight throat. “Thank you for just being here.”
Willow imagined Roy standing over him with that same hand on his shoulder.
“Of course, buddy,” Roy responded.
What Willow had heard was entirely and viscerally maddening.
Her father had neglected to tell her and Asher about their mother’s funeral. It was her mother. Her mother’s funeral. She wanted to be there. She deserved to be there. She needed it.
Willow found her hands shaking and her head spinning. She felt heat in her ears and pressure in her throat. And then all of a sudden, her crotch was wet and warm. She stood outside her father’s office with urine sliding down her legs until it was absorbed by her socks.
She wanted to be there to say goodbye to her mother.
She wanted to see her with her red lips one more time. Even if they were attached to a cold and rigid body and lying in a casket.
Even if she looked nothing like, felt nothing like, the mom she remembered.
44
Rex told Willow and Asher they could stay home from school for two weeks after Rosie died. And then he told his children that it would be best if they could “return to normalcy.”
But this explanation meant nothing to neither Willow nor Asher. For Asher, normalcy was a word that had not yet entered his vocabulary. And when Rex looked at Asher for a reaction, Asher just smiled his genuine and toothless smile and continued banging his action figures against one another. And for Willow, normalcy was not something she could return to. She had never been normal, and neither had the world around her. She had never even aspired to normal.
Rex looked at Willow for a reaction, but she just whipped her body around and walked away. He didn’t understand her. Not at all. Not before and definitely not now.
When the two weeks were over and Rex dropped his children off at school that morning, Willow could see the awkwardness in the air all around her. She knew everyone had heard the news about her mother. She knew everyone was talking about the news behind cupped hands in the hallways.
This was undeniable when, as Willow walked through the front door of Robert Kansas Elementary School, Patricia and Amanda, with matching blond hair, matching pink skirts and matching pointers, extended those fingers directly at Willow.
Willow’s knee buckled and her black Converse squeaked against the green linoleum. But she just readjusted her backpack and kept on walking as she turned heads more than she ever had before. Because the girl with the dead mom was back at school.
* * *
As more time passed, Willow noticed that there were two primary responses to the girl with the dead mom: sympathy and fear. And Willow had to deal with the sympathizers and the fearers over and over and over again.
The sympathizers were the group of moms with black cars and white T-shirts. And also some teachers who previously ignored Willow, even when she had her hand raised and the correct answer on the tip of her tongue. And also the lunch lady who previously refused to give her an extra cookie even though she gave one to Jackie Milham, who was only two girls in front of her in line.
The sympathizers ran right over to Willow with waving arms and forced frowns. They bent down in front of her with creases in their foreheads and the corners of their lips turned down, but not a trace of empathy in their eyes.
“We are so sorry about your mom,” they would say. The volume of the “so” was an eight.
“If you ever need anything, you call me anytime, okay?” They said “anything” at a ten. And then they would draw Willow forcefully into their chests and rub her back in big rounded circles.
And it was all crap.
Willow saw how these women looked at her mother when Rosie would turn the corner in her Lili Von. She knew what they thought about the bright blue color and the googly eyes. She saw how they shook their heads disdainfully when her mother turned the music up and rolled down the windows. She saw how they rolled their eyes when her mother knocked on the classroom door and said, “I need Willow for ummm an appointment.”
Sympathy had caused the histrionics of falling arms and melodramatic frowns, but Willow would have much preferred quieter empathy. Eyes that actually had sadness in them. A hug that actually meant she could call anytime. From anyone. Anyone at all.
And then there was everyone else. And everyone else was a fearer.
They were the rest of the teachers and staff at Robert Kansas Elementary School. All of the other fifth graders in her class. Even Alexandra, who she thought might be a friend after she helped her with her necklace. Willow could feel all of their stares burning into her. All the time. When she was sitting or doing her word searches or eating her lunch. Or even just breathing.
And when Willow would turn around, she would catch the fearers staring into her, unable to blink. And maybe it was because they had never known someone who had been so close to someone who was now dead. Maybe it was because they expected some sort of physical manifestation of grief. A face that twisted with sadness. A big black band on her arm to commemorate her loss. And even though Willow knew those things didn’t exist, the fearers scanned her body for it relentlessly.
Fear had caused them to stare intensely at Willow when she was doing the banal activities she had always done. But Willow would have much preferred a warmer empathy. Someone to ask “How are you?” Or “Are you thinking about Mom today?”
Or anything. From anyone. Anyone at all.
More than anything else, Willow wanted the sympathizers and the fearers to just go away. She wanted it all to go away. But when she thought more about it, Willow considered that those hugs from the white T-shirt ponytail moms still felt good. It felt good to be hugged and cradled for even a millisecond. It felt good to have her back rubbed.
It felt nice even if Willow wasn’t hugging back. And even it was from those other moms who never really liked her real mom.
45
After about a month, the hugs from the other moms stopped and no one else touched Willow. No one tickled her arm before bed, or let her sit in their lap. No one ran their fingers through her hair or held her hand when she crossed the street. No one hugged her or kissed her. No one even grazed by her in the hallways at school.
It left an insatiable hunger on the surface of Willow’s skin.
And without any deliberate thought about it, Willow began to feed that hunger herself. She started sucking vigorously on her arms while her teachers scribbled on the chalkboard. She would fold her arm at her elbow, nuzzle her face into the crease, press her lips into her skin and then suck, suck, suck, like a nursing infant. And Willow sucked her skin so quickly, so rhythmically, so regularly, that her arms were left spotted with raw red hickeys.
And then there was the braiding and unbraiding her hair. All day. Every day. Incessantly. Until now, Willow’s curls had been springy and excited. But now, the constant self-touching had caused them to take on an entire life of their own. Each ribbed strand now thrust itself from Willow’s scalp in every imaginable direction as if it were trying to escape. And each coil developed its own protective web of frizz. All of the braiding and unbraiding, twisting and untwisting, left a wild knot atop Willow’s head.
And then there were the scratches on her left shoulder blade. Rex noticed these even before Willow had. He noticed how his daughter had been nervously hanging her right wrist over her left shoulder and running her nails up and down her back. Up and down, up and down, until her shoulder bled so slightly from those three thin red lines. And even when scabs formed on those scrapes, Willow would scratch and scratch until they fell off and bled so lightly again.
Between the collateral damage of the skin sucking, hairpulling, shoulder scratching, the red eyes from sleepless nights and the faint smell of urine that now followed her around, Willow Thorpe had turned into some kind of barely recognizable monster.
Rosie Coloured Glasses Page 19
