Dear Edward

by Ann Napolitano

  The nurse looks down, as if her feet have suddenly caught fire and she needs to watch the flames. Jesus, some people are so weak. Blow on them and they fall over. He pictures Louisa again and thinks: She never looked away when I yelled.

  The flight attendant with the world-class hips is in front of him. Where did she come from? The pain is abruptly worse. A wave crests.

  “Can I help out here at all?” she asks, in a smooth voice. “Would you like a beverage, sir, or a snack?”

  But the pain is stuck, the wave fixed, and he can’t speak. Next to him, the nurse is mute. She might even be crying, for Chrissakes. Crispin forces his hand into the air, hoping the gesture will make the flight attendant disappear.

  “I’d love a beverage,” a man across the aisle says, and Crispin closes his eyes, the pill safely beneath his tongue.

  * * *

  —

  The plane gives a gentle bounce; Veronica places her hand on a seat as she swivels. It’s quiet on the aircraft; only the overhead vents can be heard clearing their throats. The passengers are pulled into themselves; the long flight has only just begun, and they need to get used to this new space, the silver bullet in which they will spend most of the day. They resign themselves to the new normal, one by one. The prevalent question is: How should I pass this time before my real life resumes?

  Jane hides her smile while listening to her seatmate flirt when the flight attendant returns with his drink.

  “Where are you from?” he asks.

  “Here’s your Bloody Mary, sir.”

  “Mark, please.”

  “Mark.” Veronica readjusts her hips. “I’m from Kentucky,” she says. “But I live in L.A. now.”

  “I’m from Baltimore. I live in New York, though. I couldn’t live anywhere else. How long have you been in the flight industry?”

  “Oh, five years, I guess.”

  He’s nervous. Jane sees his knee bouncing beneath the tray he’s lowered over his lap. She tries to block the scene out. She has to write. She has to finish polishing this script, which means rewriting most of it, before they land. She can do it; she’s good at focusing when there’s a gun to her head. The problem is that she doesn’t want to. If she was sitting next to Bruce, and he wasn’t annoyed at her, he would ask: What do you want to do? He always goes back to the origin, to the essential question. His brain never gets tied up with tangents and obligations and feelings, like hers does. Sometimes his head tips to the side while he’s looking at her, and she knows he’s thinking: Do I still love her? And then, every time so far, thankfully: Yes.

  She’s in first class because she spent weeks obsessively packing their apartment instead of writing. She knows which box Eddie’s elephant is in and the exact location of each of Jordan’s prized books. She numbered the boxes in the order they should be unpacked in L.A. She’d wished, while packing, that there was a competition she could enter for moving a family cross-country with the greatest efficiency, because she would win first prize. When Lacey offered to drive to New York last week to help pull things together, Jane had laughed.

  “Forgive me for trying to be helpful,” Lacey said, offended.

  “Oh, I know. I’m sorry, I was laughing because of me, not you.”

  The exchange fogged up with bruised feelings and their long history of poking and prodding each other, and though they both tried, neither was able to clear the fog before they hung up. Lacey and Jane have different operating systems, which often lands them in trouble. What they care about overlaps, but there are key divergences. Lacey has always, always wanted to fit in, which she believed required a husband, two kids, and a nice house in the suburbs. She wanted her life to look “right.” This has simply never interested Jane much, as a concept. When she wanted something—a relationship, a baby, a job—she tried to get it. She rarely looked to her right or left to check on the progress of other women. She had been amazed once, at Lacey’s house, to find that her sister subscribed to thirteen different women’s magazines. There were subsets, her sister explained. Cooking, housekeeping, fertility, home decor, beauty. “What?” Lacey had said, in response to the look on her sister’s face. “I’m not the weird one here. You are.”

  Lacey keeps score in her relationships in a way that is anathema to Jane but that she can use, in a moment like this, to help smooth away any wrinkles between them. I’ll phone her as soon as we get to the house, Jane thinks. Lacey will be touched that she was the first person I called from the landline. That’s the kind of thing that matters to her.

  She notices that Veronica is gone and Mark looks forlorn, the Bloody Mary cupped in his hand. His mood settles like a fine mist over her skin, and she starts to type.

  * * *

  —

  The test instructions say that it takes three minutes for the results to show. The white stick stares blankly at Linda. She would like to pace, or even leave the room during this period, but that’s not possible. She has to stand still. Perhaps because her body is stuck, her brain goes scattershot.

  She remembers when she drank alcohol for the first time—Jägermeister—the night before the SAT. She arrived at the gymnasium to take the test on two hours’ sleep, with what felt like a brain full of discarded engine parts. Six weeks later, her homeroom teacher, who’d always told her that her father was wrong, that she was smart and had a bright future if she’d only fight for it, went dead in the eyes when Linda told her how badly she’d scored. Linda saw her decide, in that moment, to move her hope and attention to a different, younger kid.

  The bathroom lighting is terrible. Her skin looks yellow in the small mirror. And what was she thinking, wearing all white for a day of travel? She sticks her tongue out at the reflection and sees the scar from when she got it pierced at the age of thirteen. Another terrible decision. Linda had done it simply because a girl she admired had gone goth. Within two days, her tongue had swelled so badly that she was having trouble breathing, and her stepmother had to drive her to the ER. The incident delighted her stepmother, who henceforth liked to insert the memory into unrelated conversations. “You almost lost your tongue, you know. Then where would you have been? You’d have had even less chance of landing a man.”

  “I landed Gary,” she says, to the mirror and her stepmother.

  But she secretly shares her stepmother’s skepticism, and always has. She worries that the only reason she and Gary have lasted an entire eleven months is because they’ve been long distance, and now that distance is about to disappear. They’d visited each other, sure, the most recent visit being six weeks earlier, but visits were short and therefore sweet. There wasn’t time over a long weekend for crankiness or bad moods or long-held insecurities to arise. Day-to-day life in the same location would reveal all of Linda’s flaws.

  They’d met at a wedding—Gary had gone to college with the bride; she had once dated the groom—and ended up servicing each other’s acute loneliness later that night. Linda had assumed it to be a one-night stand, but Gary texted her the following day on his way back to California. They’d chatted by phone and text over the next few weeks. When he told her that he studied whales, she’d felt a surge of annoyance and almost hung up. She thought he was making fun of her lack of education; he had a PhD, and she’d never even gone to college. He obviously thought she was so dumb he could claim to have a fantastical job and she wouldn’t know better. More than that, the lie felt barbed, specifically tailored to take her down. She’d been obsessed with whales as a child. Posters of the giant mammals had covered her bedroom walls, and most of her treasured books had concerned sea life. It felt like Gary was mocking both the twenty-five-year-old and twelve-year-old versions of herself.

  “You mean you’re unemployed,” she’d said, in her meanest voice.

  “I’m emailing you information on my program.”

  They were still on the phone when she opened the link and saw video clip
s of bearded men in windbreakers on a boat in the middle of the ocean. She saw that one of the men was a sunburned Gary. The next clip showed a whale’s hump passing the ship. Then classrooms and cubbies stacked with scuba gear, which is when she closed her laptop and started to cough.

  When the coughing ended, Gary said, “Linda?”

  “I had something in my throat,” she said.

  Linda assumed she and Gary were just friends, because she felt none of the obsessive worry she normally experienced when she was interested in a man. Her day improved after she spoke to him, and he provoked the hiccuppy giggle she’d tried to suppress her entire life. Hideous, her stepmother had once muttered, when Linda laughed in front of her. They’ve never talked about children; Linda has no idea how Gary feels about having one. He had a crummy childhood; he’d said that he would rather kill himself than go through that again. Her secret hope is that they can make a life, together, that will heal the broken paths behind them. When I’m with you, I feel fixed, he told her once, and though she wasn’t able to utter the words at the time, she felt the same way with him.

  There’s a loud buzz, and the speaker in the ceiling announces the commencement of the beverage-cart service. Linda is aware, suddenly, of being thirsty.

  “Hello?” The bathroom knob rattles, and a man’s voice says, “You okay in there?”

  “Yes!” Linda says, and grips the test in her hand like a spear. A pink plus sign wavers in the middle of the white. “Yes!” She slides the bolt open and lurches into the aisle.

  July 2013

  When Edward arrives at the house, he’s shown to the nursery. John had moved the crib to the attic and replaced it with a single bed with a dark-blue bedspread. The bookshelf, filled with cardboard books that babies can safely chew on, remains. The walls and curtains are light pink, because Lacey had been convinced, each time she got pregnant, that it would be a girl. A rocking chair sits beside the window.

  The boy and his uncle stand in the doorway for a moment. John looks confused, like he’s forgotten why they’re there. Edward wonders if he can turn and shuffle away without the man noticing.

  This isn’t my room, he thinks. It can’t be.

  John says, “Would you like to see the lake?”

  He walks toward the window, so Edward follows on his crutches.

  West Milford was built on the edge of a seven-mile lake. During the town’s heyday in the late 1800s, three enormous steamboats operated on the water, carrying visitors from trains to one of the many resorts. With the advent of airplanes, tourism changed. People still came to Greenwood Lake, but it was only families from New Jersey and New York, many of whom bought summer homes there. John’s parents had met as eight-year-olds playing beside the lake, and both had summered there throughout their childhood. It was a safe town, though most suburban towns were safer then. Kids ran free, skidding into the house only for meals and bedtime, lake-wet and suntanned.

  In the 1970s, the lake lost its widespread appeal. If families could afford a summer house, they bought at the New Jersey shore or on Long Island. The hotels didn’t do enough business to stay open. John and Lacey bought a house there shortly after getting married in 2002, because they could afford a nicer place in West Milford than closer to the city, because there were enough businesses to support John’s IT work, and because the lake reminded Lacey of Canada. They have a nice view from the second floor of the house. The nursery looks out over the vast, flat water, as does John and Lacey’s bedroom.

  “When you’re feeling better, maybe we can go swimming there,” John says.

  The new place inside Edward, the one that revealed itself after the crash, starts clicking. He remembers overhearing his mother tell his dad that Lacey had had another miscarriage. He hadn’t known what the word meant and had looked it up in the dictionary.

  “We can fix the room up more,” John says. “We will, definitely. You decide what color you want the walls, and I’ll paint them. Do you have a favorite color?”

  “No, thank you,” Edward says.

  He turns and maneuvers slowly out of the room, then down the stairs. That night he sleeps—or, more truthfully, doesn’t sleep—on the couch in the living room. He hates being out of the hospital. He hadn’t anticipated this feeling, but then, he finds it impossible to anticipate any feeling now. It turns out that the hospital, with its beeping machines and routine and constant parade of medical staff, had been holding him together. His body now hurts in a new way; the dullness has been extinguished. He can sense the metal rod that replaced part of his shinbone, and his skin feels weird and rough to the touch. The hair on his head—which doesn’t even have nerve endings—somehow aches. At 2:00 A.M., on his second night in West Milford, he sits upright on the couch with his hands on his thighs. The pain shimmers beyond the boundaries of his body. It seems impossible that he can survive this.

  The next morning, there’s a knock at the front door. John has already left for work, and Lacey hasn’t yet come downstairs. Edward blinks his eyes—two hot, dry stones—and hauls himself up on his crutches to answer. A woman and a girl about his age are on the front steps. The woman is dark-haired, with light-brown skin. She’s holding a red thermos. The girl is half hidden, peering out from behind her mother. Edward can only see one eye behind a pair of glasses, staring at him. His brain clicks, rattles almost, then stops. For a second, Edward feels okay. Clear, normal, unbroken. The sensation, gone almost immediately, is jarring.

  “Hello,” he says, to the girl.

  “I’m Besa,” the woman says. “And this is Shay. We live next door, so you’ll see a lot of us. I brought this coffee for your aunt, but it looks like you need it more.”

  She holds the thermos out, and Edward hugs the warm cylinder to his chest. The smell reminds him of a café near his family’s apartment that pumped coffee-scented air onto the sidewalk in order to lure people inside.

  “I’m—” He hesitates. This is the first time he’s had to introduce himself. Eddie is gone. He’s glad his aunt made the decision she did in the hospital. “I’m Edward.”

  Besa gives a warm smile, which triggers a memory of Edward’s mother smiling, and then triggers a wave of fear. He has the sudden desire to lie down at this woman’s feet. Is every mom he encounters going to remind him of his own? If this is the case, he’s doomed.

  Besa says, “We know who you are, niñito.”

  Shay steps out from behind her mother, a small frown on her lips. “I’m two months older than him, and you said I had to wait until I was eighteen to have coffee.”

  Besa puts up her hand. “Cállate, mi amor.”

  Lacey appears then and leads them into the kitchen. Edward lowers himself into a seat at the table and pours an inch of coffee into the thermos lid.

  “Do you like it?” Shay asks.

  The coffee tastes like he imagines fresh pavement does, burning and sticky, but he nods and tries to pull himself straighter in his chair. Shay is an inch taller than him, with shoulder-length brown hair and a dimple in her left cheek.

  “Have you gone outside yet?” Besa asks. “Into town?”

  “He needs rest,” Lacey says. “He’s not ready.”

  “Good,” Besa says. “Because this place has gone completamente loco. West Milford is small, Edward, and everyone knows everyone, and nothing as exciting as you showing up has happened in decades, if ever. Did your aunt tell you the town painted this house while you were in the hospital?”

  Edward tries to make sense of this. “How does a town paint a house?”

  Lacey says, “The town council did. They wanted to be helpful.” She pushes her chair back and walks to the counter. “They felt bad and wanted to help but didn’t know what to do. It’s so silly, because John painted the house last summer. It didn’t need it at all.”

  “Everyone at camp is talking about how you’re here,” Shay says. “I’m practic
ally a celebrity because I live next door to you.”

  Camp, Edward thinks. The word sounds familiar, but it takes his brain a moment to figure it out. Summertime. Children. Arts and crafts. He and Jordan did a science camp every summer, at the Museum of Natural History.

  “Do we all want pancakes?” Lacey says, in a bright, let’s-change-the-subject voice.

  He’s staring into the coffee when he hears the girl say, “I met your brother once.”

  He thinks he’s misheard her. When the sentence replays inside his head, he sags slightly in his chair.

  But Besa seems to have heard the same thing. She says, “What are you talking about? You never met his brother.”

  “I met him here,” the girl says. “Well, on the lawn. I think I was six. I knew your family was visiting that day, and I was pretending to cut my lawn with my toy lawnmower. Jordan came outside by himself.”

  “I didn’t know this.” Besa sounds offended.

  “Mom, I was six. I probably told you and you forgot. Also, it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t even remember until”—she pauses—“recently.”

  “Jane loved to bring the boys here.” Lacey’s shoulders straighten. “She needed to give them a break from the hubbub of the city.”

  Edward says to Shay, “Did you talk to him?”

  “A little. When he came outside, he jumped down the steps, from the top to the grass. For some reason I was really shocked by this. Maybe I gasped, because he noticed me.”

  Edward tries to picture this: bright sunshine, green grass, the five cement stairs in front of his aunt and uncle’s house.

  “Jordan said something like, You’ve never seen anyone jump before? And I said that I hadn’t seen anyone jump like that. He laughed and ran to the driveway. Then he climbed on top of your parents’ minivan.”

  “Wait a second.” Lacey frowns. “Don’t tell tales, Shay. We don’t need that around here.”