by Lisa Unger
“I would,” he said. He still wore that smile, and Eloise could see that not even Mrs. Peacock was immune to its wattage. That was it. That’s what he had. He didn’t care what anyone thought. He was himself and never tried to be anyone else. She wouldn’t know how rare that was until they were older.
Mrs. Peacock handed him the note. But he didn’t have to look at it.
“You are the prettiest girl I have ever seen,” he said in a loud voice, head held high. “And one day I am going to ask you to marry me.”
The whole class burst out with laugher, including Alfie. Even Eloise in her total embarrassment couldn’t help but smile.
“It’s true, Mrs. Peacock,” Alfie concluded. “You mark my words.”
They’d rarely been apart since that day. Even though their families had bemoaned their settling down so early, there was a force pulling them together that would not be stopped. Everyone knows true love when they see it. It’s rare enough that no one really wants to stand in its way.
On this rainy, late start morning twenty years later, they had been married a little more than fifteen years and had two teenage girls. Alfie was an advanced algebra teacher at Hollows High and Eloise was a stay-at-home mom. They didn’t have a whole lot of money, but they always had enough for the things they needed and most of the simple things they wanted. The one thing they didn’t have enough money for, and which was a bit of an inconvenience, was two cars.
After breakfast, the girls ran around—brushing teeth, packing up their bags, bickering. Finally, they were all out the door, a little late, yes, but it was okay. And Eloise was right behind them, walking them to the car as she always did. She felt a kind of satisfaction. They’d had their breakfast; their lunches were packed. Homework was done. The rain had cleared to reveal a beautiful sunny morning; her sinus headache had subsided. The crocuses were popping their heads up in her garden bed. There was a robin singing in the tree above. It was a postcard of spring. She was waving to them as Alfie backed down the drive. And then she remembered: her doctor’s appointment! She needed the car. She’d have to drop them all off so that she could have the car today, then go back and pick them up in the late afternoon.
“Wait!” she called. Alfie stopped short. “I need the car.”
She ran inside to get her bag and pull a brush through her hair. Then she raced back outside and hopped in the passenger seat.
“Now are we ready?” her husband asked in mock exasperation.
“God, Mom,” said Emily. “We’re already late.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She laced her fingers through Alfie’s, and their interlocked hands rested on his thigh. She remembered that, his warm hand. The way the girls smelled so pretty, their flowery scents wafting from the back. The relief of her disappearing headache. The smell of spring.
She saw the truck ahead of them, how it was weaving just a little. The semi was not supposed to be on that narrow side road. There were signs all over the place because the roads were too narrow, too old to handle trucks. These backstreets washed out in the rain, people got stuck. But there were all kinds of new folks moving into the area—people from the city building ridiculously big houses, needing huge trucks to haul all their furniture up to The Hollows.
“What’s he doing out here?” said Alfie, musing, almost absentminded.
And then it was in their lane, coming at them, head on. It was a narrow road with a fence on one side, a thick stand of trees on the other.
“Alfie,” she said. It was moving so fast. Impossibly fast. “Alfie.”
But mercifully that was all she would remember, except a blinding flash of light and her girls screaming, mingling with the sound of screeching tires on asphalt.
• • •
And then there was more light. But this light was milky, diffuse, more like a slow dawning. She opened her eyes and had to close them immediately. The brightness was so hot and white that it hurt. There was a low murmuring, as if someone were reading softly from a book. What was Alfie doing? Reading to one of the girls? No, that wasn’t right. It was morning, and neither of the girls had let them read aloud since the third grade.
She forced her eyes open. Strange to see her father-in-law, Gus, sitting there in the too-white room. He looked so much like Alfie. Not as big, not as handsome, but that same sweetness and laughter dancing behind impossible periwinkle eyes. He had a thick leather volume opened in his lap and he was reading. Oh, wow. He was reading from the Bible. She was dreaming. What a strange dream.
And then the pain—her neck, her back, her head. Her throat. Oh, God, what was in her throat, her nose? And then the sounds of the machines all around her, a measured beeping and whirring, growing urgent. She tried to move, but she couldn’t. A strangled noise escaped her. She saw Gus startle.
“Eloise,” said her father-in-law. He was looking at her, eyes wide. He stood, the book dropping to the floor. “Oh, thank the good lord, Eloise.”
He started weeping, dropped to his knees beside her, and took her hand.
“Thank God,” he said. “Thank you, God.”
Then he got up and dashed away from her. Don’t go! she wanted to yell but couldn’t. Her body wasn’t working, wasn’t following the commands from her brain. Don’t leave me here! Where am I? What’s happened? Panic rushed up hard and fast, and was a weight on her chest, a bag over her head. She couldn’t breathe.
“Doctor! We need a doctor!” she heard Gus yelling. His voice was broken and frantic. “Somebody help us!”
And then the room was full—nurses in pink scrubs, a too-young doctor. A light shining in her eyes, hands on her body. Too much talking back and forth, loud and nonsensical. She was fading in and out, there and then not there. How long did it go on? What was happening to her?
Then a voice, stern and cutting above the others, told her to exhale, as hard as she could. She obeyed. It was like the worst fire, the deepest most uncontrollable gag, as they pulled the feeding tube from her. What a violation, to shove something hard and unyielding down a soft and tender place. The body revolts, rejects. She couldn’t even cough, just gasped and wheezed while someone spoke to her in soothing tones.
Just try to relax. You’re okay. It’s okay now. But, of course, it wasn’t okay. Not at all. She knew that; she could feel it. The world had bent and broken in two. It would never be whole again.
• • •
Slowly, over the next day, Gus reluctantly fed her bits and pieces of the enormous, indigestible tragedy that had taken Emily and Alfie from her. Following the collision with the semi, which had sideswiped the driver’s side of the car, Alfie and Emily had been killed instantly. Eloise had been in a coma for six weeks while her husband and daughter were buried without her. The accident had left Amanda physically unscathed, but so deep in a state of PTSD that she hadn’t spoken a word since the accident. Her younger daughter hadn’t shed a tear, had barely eaten enough to keep herself alive. Gus wasn’t even sure she was sleeping, since every time he looked in on his granddaughter at night, she lay as stock-still as when he’d tucked her in, with her eyes wide open. He and Alfie’s mother, Ruth, were taking turns; when Gus was with Eloise, Ruth was with Amanda, and vice versa. They, too, were staggering under an unbearable burden of grief.
But who? But how?
A truck driver, high on the methamphetamines that he had taken so that he could drive his rig longer and faster to make more runs, to make more money, to buy more meth supposedly, had finally exhausted the limits of his wakefulness and fallen asleep behind the wheel of his semi. He had simply drifted into their path.
Maybe they’d have missed him altogether if Eloise hadn’t overslept, if she hadn’t forgotten about needing the car. But it was a pointless thought, a useless one. And Eloise immediately decided that she wouldn’t keep it. Otherwise, there was a black, sucking, downward spiral inside. She could easily travel d
own with it into nothingness. And there was Amanda to live for; Eloise didn’t have the luxury of giving into dark temptations.
She was in the hospital, then in rehab for another four weeks. Time passed in a blur of misery. There was a solemn parade of well-meaning family and friends, a cavalcade of flowers and gifts and cards. But Eloise was buried deep inside her grief. Everything happened on the other side of a gray field of white noise, while she worked herself to exhaustion and beyond trying to get strong enough to go visit the graves of her husband and daughter, to go home and help Amanda get well.
• • •
The night before she was finally scheduled to leave the rehab hospital, Alfie came to see her. She awoke to find him sitting in the chair beside her, holding a stunning bouquet of calla lilies, her absolute favorite. She pushed herself up. She wasn’t surprised at all, just deeply relieved and blissfully happy to lay her eyes on him.
“I thought we’d have so much more time, El,” he said. But he didn’t seem sad. His eyes glittered, and he had that silly smile, the one he wore only for her.
“Me, too,” she said.
“But you know it doesn’t matter, right?”
She felt a sob climb up her throat. No, she didn’t know that. She wasn’t sad either, not really. Sadness was petty, weak, passive. It passed. What she felt wasn’t going to pass. It didn’t have a name—it pulled on the back of her eyes, and lived in her gullet, and screamed inside her head when she tried to sleep. It was ugly. It raged, tossed around memories like china cups that smashed against the walls of her psyche. Her doctor had said to her of her back injury, You’ll probably always have pain, Eloise. You’ll have to learn how to manage it. He was young. He didn’t seem to pick up on the larger implications of his statement.
And she was angry, so deeply, totally angry that she figured it would eat an ulcer in her belly at some point. Maybe if she were lucky, it would even kill her.
“I can’t live without you, Alfie,” she said. “I don’t want to.”
He rose and put the flowers down on the chair, came to sit beside her on the bed. She didn’t reach out for him. She knew if she did that, he would go away.
“You can and you will,” he said. “None of us is promised anything. We don’t get to keep the things we love, not forever. And it’s okay. Like those flowers. Put them in a vase and they’ll last a few days. Then they’ll wilt and turn brown, and you’ll have to let them go. That’s life.”
“No,” she said stubbornly. “No.”
“Take care of our girl,” he said. “And remember how lucky we were to have loved each other so well for so long. It’s a gift some people never have.”
And then he was gone, and so were the flowers. But the air still smelled like lilies as she drifted back to sleep. Even then, when she looked back, she knew that it wasn’t a dream. There was something odd about it. Something just more. But of course she told no one. It’s your grief talking, they’d say. If she insisted that it was something else, they’d put her on the psych ward. And she had to get home to Amanda.
• • •
The silent princess, beautiful and ruined. Amanda’s skin was pale, her eyes dull and empty. Ten weeks after the accident, and her days still consisted only of a silent shuffle from bedroom to living room to bathroom. She drifted around in Emily’s nightshirt, a ratty old thing with a picture of Queen Elizabeth with a safety pin through her nose. She took it off only when she was forced to wash it; she waited in bed in her underpants, buried under the covers, until it was clean.
About a week after Ruth and Gus brought Eloise home and assured themselves that she could manage the house, the meals, the shopping, her in-laws announced worriedly that it was time for them to go back to Florida. Of course, Eloise told them, of course they should go home and—what? Grieve, move forward, take care of themselves a little. Eloise found the idea of their departure terrifying—and a big relief. How could she and Amanda find a new life with Ruth and Gus living in their basement? How could Amanda and Eloise get by without them?
“We’re never far,” Gus promised, holding her. “We’re just a phone call away.”
• • •
Then there was the business of “moving on with life.” This was expected, apparently, even after the worst possible thing had happened. The river of life kept flowing, and one must swim or drown.
The house was a maze of memories. Alfie’s slippers still sat by his nightstand. Emily’s jacket hung over the banister. It’s just lazy to leave it there, Emily. The closet is two feet away. Eloise couldn’t bear to move any of it.
Eloise went through the motions. She didn’t know any other way. “It’s just going to be one foot in front of the other for a while, Eloise,” Ruth had said, obviously speaking from personal experience. “Just keep moving, don’t think too much.”
Eloise made breakfast each morning, careful to set two plates even though she wanted to set four. She woke Amanda, who was nowhere near being able to go back to school. But someday she would go back. And until then, Eloise would continue to plan for every day to be the day that Amanda would open her mouth and speak.
Eloise got herself dressed each morning. She did the dishes, the laundry—now gargantuan tasks that took all her will and her energy. Sometimes she let herself be lured into Emily’s room, which was nothing so much as it was a black hole that drew her in and kept her among the dolls and rock posters and overflowing drawers and stuffed closet. Sometimes she spent hours in there, just lying on Emily’s bed, which still smelled (less every day) like Emily.
And she talked. She talked to Amanda about her feelings, all of them. She’d cry, she’d rage, she’d rant. She wanted Amanda to see her experience all of it, so maybe Amanda would let herself experience her grief, as well.
Eloise let her memories of Emily and Alfie free flow—how Alfie botched his speech at their wedding, how Emily smashed her first birthday cake (with absolute delight), how Alfie killed a scorpion on their trip to the Grand Canyon while Eloise screamed in terror, waking the whole campground. She knew her daughter was listening, even though the girl was utterly stone-faced. Eloise could tell; Amanda wanted to remember them. Otherwise she wouldn’t be wearing Emily’s nightshirt. Sometimes Eloise’s throat ached from talking all day. But she kept on. She’d talk until maybe Amanda said something just to shut her mother up.
• • •
It was a Friday when the first one came.
Silent Amanda had decided to go back to school earlier that week, and Eloise was alone. Her daughter still hadn’t said a word. She had just gotten up that Monday, dressed, eaten breakfast, and then waited by the door with her backpack. Eloise drove her to school, met briefly with her teachers, who were all aware of her condition. They would all support her return, not pressure her to talk, and see how things progressed. Her two best friends rallied at her side, promising to stay with her during the day as much as they could. When Eloise called the family therapist they’d been seeing, Dr. Ben, he thought that this was a promising step.
Eloise, naturally, wasn’t sleeping well at night. She couldn’t stand to lie down in the dark and try to close her eyes. So she kept the television on, her eyes plastered to the screen until she fell asleep. She didn’t want one moment alone in the dark with her thoughts. As a result, she woke up many times in the night.
On the Thursday after Amanda started school again, Eloise had a strange dream. She awoke with the television filling the room with its glow, Amanda sleeping deeply beside her (as was her habit since the accident). Her daughter’s breathing was soft and measured, like waves lapping on the shore. Over that, Eloise heard the sound of sobbing. She froze, listening—afraid but somehow not afraid. Then the sound had stopped. After a moment, she wasn’t sure she’d heard it at all.
But that Friday afternoon, the house so quiet, so lonely that Eloise decided she would sleep rather than be aware of the gaping emptin
ess inside her and out. So she was dozing on her bed when she awoke to hear the sound again. It didn’t stop, so Eloise had no choice but to go downstairs, from where the crying seemed to originate. Was she dreaming again? She felt floaty as she reached the bottom landing and moved into the living room.
The girl, not more than thirteen, sat on the floor of the living room, huddling her small body into the tight right angle where the fireplace hearth jutted out from the wall. Her hair hung in limp, dirty ropes, her shirt with some kind of writing on it, and jeans wet and filthy. She shivered, sobbing weakly. Her stare was blank. It looked like shock.
It was like it was with Alfie. Not a dream. Something else.
“Why didn’t I listen to her?” the girl asked. “I wasn’t even supposed to be out here.”
“Where are you?” Eloise asked.
The girl looked up, startled, as if she’d heard something. But she looked right through Eloise.
“Oh God,” the girl said. Then she started yelling, startling Eloise terribly. “Help! Please help me!”
Then Eloise was there with her—wherever it was—sitting in waist-deep, foul-smelling water. Eloise started shivering with wet and cold, her body aching all over as if she’d taken a terrible fall. The stone walls all around her were slick with algae. She waded over to the girl, who was not aware of Eloise at all. She wrapped herself around the child. She was as fragile as a skeleton, so tiny.
“Mommy,” the girl whimpered. “Mommy.”
“I’ll help you,” Eloise said. She had no idea why she said it. She didn’t know who this girl was or where she was. Eloise had no way of helping her. Still, what else was there to say?
Eloise awoke on the carpet of her living room, afternoon sun washing in through the sheer drapes, dappling on the floral chintz sofa that badly needed replacing. How long had she been lying there? Amanda was standing over her, her backpack slung over her shoulder.
“Mom?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
