by Jackie Hance
“Oh Jackie, you look so pretty,” she said with exaggerated warmth. “It’s good to see you all dressed up. Jewelry and everything.”
“Um, thanks,” I said. My fingers fluttered unconsciously to my face and I twiddled my earrings. Something told me that “you look so pretty” wasn’t meant as a compliment. However kind she meant to be, I imagined her voice held an undertone of reproach. Seeing me out in public with a plastered-on smile, she had no way of knowing about the depression, the despair, the utter blackness that seemed to make up 99 percent of my life now. Her eyes fluttered to my bracelets, and I could almost hear her thinking:
“If my children were dead, I wouldn’t be worrying about makeup and jewelry.”
Devastated that anyone might suggest I’d forgotten the girls, I rushed away from the store and back to my silent house, where I crumpled in sobs on the sofa. Everything I tried to do backfired. Looking good seemed wrong. But was looking bad any better? If I went out gray-faced, wearing sweats, my unkempt hair pulled back in a ponytail, people would whisper about how drained and careworn I looked. Probably that’s what they expected—Jackie as a walking ghost of grief. I’ve always cared too much about what other people think, but looking haggard only fed my depression, and right now, I knew that if I sank any lower into my pit of despair, I might never be able to emerge.
• • •
Before the accident, my daily schedule was set by my children’s needs—school, summer camp, sports practices, play rehearsals, and playdates defined where I was and when. One child or another was always with me. Once Katie started school, I had a few hours to myself and I thought about taking more cooking classes, or getting a job. Free hours felt like a gift.
Now I had nothing but those free hours—and they felt more like a prison.
The success of “Tuesdays with Karen” reminded me that I needed to keep my days full. Empty hours would only hang heavy. As usual, my friends provided a solution. Another Mothers’ Club friend named Kathy Power had been a regular in a Thursday-morning bowling league and insisted on signing me up. I dragged Isabelle in, too, getting her to join us at the lanes. I’m not much of a bowler, but since it was a team competition, I had to show up or I would put everyone at a disadvantage. No matter how low my spirits, my sense of obligation to the team won out and I’d drag myself to the lanes for a couple of hours. Wearing funny-colored shoes and swinging an eight-pound ball down a glossy lane does tend to be a good distraction from real life.
Mondays, my friends Denine and Laura came over for TV Night. Both of them were die-hard fans of The Bachelor, and though I’d never watched it before, we now curled up weekly in front of the show with ice cream and bowls of snacks. Many Monday nights, my neighbors Tia and Desi and Gina swarmed into my den to join us, too. Suddenly there was a houseful of women.
“What’s going on?” Warren asked, coming home from work one night and finding us all there.
“Just watching TV,” someone called out cheerfully. “Want to join us?”
“No!” he said, fleeing upstairs.
If The Bachelor wasn’t on, we’d watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey—or whichever version of that franchise happened to be available. For us, any of those shows were like Monday Night Football must be for a group of guys—we cheered and screamed and were very loud.
“Don’t kiss her!” I screamed during one episode of The Bachelor, covering my face at a too-romantic close-up. “Oh, gross!”
We hollered our opinions at the TV and booed the contestants we didn’t like. Not the highest intellectual activity, but always fun and a way to forget.
• • •
Even though I could fumble my way through the weekdays, Saturday and Sunday loomed as unbearable black holes. Our friends were with their families, going with their children to soccer games and dance recitals and gymnastics shows.
Warren and I had nothing to do.
We’d always followed the women’s magazine rule of Saturday night as date night. When the girls were here, we’d get a babysitter and go out with our friends on Saturday nights, our one chance to let loose and act like grown-ups. To regain some slice of normalcy, Warren insisted that we start having those date nights again. Since the evening activities had never involved the girls, he figured we wouldn’t be overwhelmed by memories.
But everything had involved the girls.
One Saturday night, trying to get ready to go out, I stood desultorily in front of the mirror, staring at my makeup. It had been a long, empty day and maybe Warren was right to try to add some distraction. Halfheartedly, I picked up a lipstick.
And suddenly I had an image of the girls swarming into the bedroom, as they usually did on Saturday night. It was so vivid that it seemed real.
“Oooh, Mommy, you look so pretty!” Alyson said. Always happy, she made me feel happy, too.
She leaned close to me in the mirror, asking to try on the lipstick, and of course I grinned and handed it to her. And then Katie pushed in, asking for blusher for her naturally rosy cheeks.
“Is it a Gersham night?” Emma asked as she, too, began applying my makeup to her already smooth face.
And that memory brought me up short.
On evenings Warren and I expected to have a few drinks, we used to hire a local guy named Gersham to drive us. If he wasn’t available, we arranged for a cab or assigned someone in our crowd to be the designated driver. From a very young age, the girls knew that Mommy and Daddy would never drink and drive. Nobody should. It was too dangerous.
Thinking about that, I dropped the lipstick and stared into space.
Explaining the open vodka bottle that the police found, Danny insisted that Diane was simply transporting it home—an excuse that caused eye-rolling from most people but made some sense to me. Diane once told me that with a lot of teenagers around the campsite, she left only fishing equipment in the camper during the week, worried that somebody would break in.
“That’s all I need—kids drinking in my camper,” she had said.
But the facts seemed to point in a different direction. Open vodka bottle. Drunk driver. Wasn’t it all obvious? The problem was, I could not imagine Diane swigging vodka in front of the children.
And thinking about Emma and Gersham and our getting-dressed-before-a-date conversations, a new thought struck me.
If Emma had seen Diane with a vodka bottle, she would have said something. She knew you didn’t drink and drive. She knew.
The very thought made my head spin.
Are you saying an eight-year-old should have stopped her? a more rational part of myself retorted.
No! I argued back. But Emma knew the danger, so she would have said something on the phone.
But she didn’t. Are you trying to blame her?
Of course not! But maybe that proves something else happened. Maybe Diane wasn’t drunk. Because Emma would have mentioned it.
Somehow, I managed to stop perseverating long enough to put on makeup and get dressed. My mind far away, I added chandelier earrings, a few necklaces, and the stack of EAK bracelets I always wore. I smiled, remembering how Dr. O’Brien had teased me that I might be suicidal, but I still accessorized.
I tried to put myself in a better mood as Warren and I drove silently to a local restaurant called Fiore. Often Melissa and Brad, Jeannine and Rob, or Isabelle and Mark would scoop us up and take us out on Saturday night, hoping that a couple of hours of laughter and good food would be some relief. Tonight, they were all there, along with several other couples, at a noisy table dotted with wine and beer bottles. Warren and I sat down to join the revelry, and the owners came by to make sure we felt comfortable.
“I just want you to have a good time,” one of the owners said generously. “Anything you need, just tell me.”
“Oh, thanks, we’re fine,” I said, lying.
Someone put a beer in front of me, and I looked around nervously, feeling self-conscious about the people at nearby tables. If I thought it wrong to be having fun, how
much more judgmental would others be? Everyone must be gossiping about us, shaking their heads in surprise to see me laughing or holding a beer.
You shouldn’t be partying, the ever-chiding voice in my head warned.
I looked across the table at Warren and saw him trying to put on a brave show. Okay, we could smile for a couple of hours, enjoy our friends, act like normal people. I let my spirits lift ever so slightly.
Later, when Warren and I got home, a toxic mix of guilt and gloom descended on us the moment we closed the front door.
“You really didn’t eat very much tonight,” Warren said as we walked into our empty living room. Maybe he meant to be nice, but it was enough to start a fight.
“I don’t know how you could eat,” I retorted. “The girls don’t get to eat. Why should we?”
“Not eating won’t bring them back.”
“It’s disrespectful. If you had a child in a wheelchair, would you dance in front of her?”
“It’s different, Jackie!”
“It’s not. If they can’t enjoy food anymore, why should we?”
“We have to accept what’s happened and try to live,” Warren said, trying to be reasonable.
“I don’t want to live,” I said bluntly. I folded my arms across my chest, loneliness enveloping me like a shroud. Warren stood very still. He wanted to make things better for me, and I knew of a way he could.
“One of us has to be with the girls,” I said, thinking I sounded very rational. “They’re so little. They need a parent to take care of them. You kill me and I’ll go to heaven and be with them.”
“I’m not doing that, Jackie,” Warren said sadly. “I refuse to make this story any worse than it is.”
“Then I’ll kill you,” I said earnestly. “I don’t care if I go to jail. What difference does it make? I’m glad to sit in jail if I know you’re in heaven with the girls.”
“Nobody is killing anybody. We’ve had enough death.”
“Please, Warren! Kill me or I’ll kill you! I don’t care which! One of us has to be with the girls!”
I started sobbing. I didn’t expect Warren to hold me, since that wasn’t in our repertoire anymore. He couldn’t make the pain go away, and sometimes being with him only made it worse.
I ran up to the girls’ room and slammed the door. It was swelteringly hot but I wouldn’t turn on the air-conditioning. Forget the glorious images I liked to envision of heaven—the girls were lying buried in the ground. They were probably hot. And I would sit here in their room, hot, sweating, crying, alone. It was the only way I could be close to them.
Nine
Birthdays had always been big events in our family. I liked throwing parties at our house with throngs of friends and outsize buffets. I loved to cook and bake and people always raved about my food. Even more important, I knew how to make pretty displays that got lavish praise before anybody even took a bite of the goodies inside.
In September, as Emma’s birthday approached, I started planning her party. Whether the girls were with me or not, I was their mother. Nothing could change my dedication. Even though she was gone, Emma deserved a celebration on September 9, the day she would have turned nine.
Emma’s first birthday had been my best bash ever. We had rented a big tent for the backyard, which we put next to the brand-new swing set our friends had chipped in to buy, one big gift instead of many smaller ones. Already seven months pregnant with Alyson, I whipped up pastas and salads and a prettily decorated cake. I convinced one of Warren’s longtime friends to get into an Elmo costume I’d rented, and he wandered around entertaining the little ones. I’d also hired a clown I found through an ad. She arrived cheerfully dressed in a jester’s costume but turned out to be a slightly weird middle-aged woman who kept fanning herself and complaining about hot flashes.
After Emma’s first birthday party, I had envisioned all the birthday fetes yet to come—and went out and bought a party tent. Warren had gasped at the $2,500 price tag.
“It’ll be worth it!” I promised him. “We won’t have to rent again. It’s a great investment.”
Just for fun, I bought a popcorn machine, too.
My purchases paid off in pleasure in those early years and even led to a catering business that I launched after Katie was born. I got hired for a few big functions like christenings, showers, and an engagement party, and the girls always had fun pitching in. For one Communion brunch, Emma helped me take little baby quiches off the baking trays and we arranged them together on platters, with pretty tomato rosettes between them. I remember looking up at her, hands sticky and face streaked with flour, and thinking how lucky I was to have such a perfect assistant.
People loved my parties, but I spent so much making everything look special that I lost money on every gig. I switched to cupcakes-only-catering, and once again, the girls were my secret weapon. We decorated cupcakes with candies and gumdrops and streaks of sparkle sugar that were a big hit at children’s parties. I got hired for a wedding shower, and I was excited until the bride announced she wanted different-colored hydrangeas on each cupcake. Hydrangeas? I didn’t know enough icing tricks to make elaborate flowers, so I bought premade fondant blossoms to scatter across the frosting. Sure enough, guests cheered when I brought out the trays, but my bank account suffered.
The girls and I loved to watch cooking shows on TV, and one night we all sat together, giddily watching Ultimate Cake Off on the Food Network.
“You should be on this show!” Alyson had said.
“You bake better than anyone,” Katie agreed, giving me a hug.
Eager to make them proud—and have a thriving business that would make us all happy—I signed up for a cake-decorating class at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan. With some training, I could do hydrangeas or daisies or roses. Katie was about to start first grade, and I was about to start my cooking classes. We could learn and grow together. But then the accident happened and I couldn’t imagine going to the classes.
The morning of Emma’s ninth birthday, Warren and I went to mass and then drove out to the cemetery. Friends tried to cheer up the grim scene with balloons and flowers and stuffed animals, but Warren and I cried as we left the presents we had bought our Emma—pink sneakers and a pretty bracelet, her favorite peanut butter, and some magazines she loved. We wanted her to be happy, but the silence of the cemetery seemed to scream a different story. Warren and I walked away without a word, in our own private worlds, with our private tears.
In the afternoon, about forty children and adults came to the house. I felt completely numb. Emma’s friends clambered merrily on the swing set like they always had, and watching them, my head began spinning in confusion. How do you have a happy birthday party when the birthday girl isn’t there to enjoy it?
I hadn’t moved any of Emma’s or Alyson’s toys or clothes since the accident, and the room they shared remained exactly as it had always been. The beds were made and the duvets fluffed. The eye masks the girls liked to slip on at bedtime waited neatly on the pillows and their slippers were tucked by the side of their beds. Their jackets hung tidily from the coatrack. The familiarity of the scene made their friends comfortable. As they swarmed into the girls’ room to play, I pushed aside my own agony. It would be nice if I could still make the other children happy.
“If you like that, you should take it,” I said to one little girl who was admiring a kooky pen on Emma’s dresser. The pens with faces on them were a big fad then and Emma had a huge collection.
“Really?” she asked, picking it up carefully.
“Sure. Emma would want you to have it,” I said, with a smile on my face and a lump in my throat, thinking of how generous my daughter had always been with her friends.
“Oh, thank you!” she said happily.
Almost on autopilot, I repeated similar offers and watched as children walked away clutching little mementos of their lost friends. Even though the offers were genuine, part of me wanted to scream “No, giv
e it back!” each time a child danced off with one of my daughters’ possessions. Handing over their toys confirmed that they would never be here to play with them themselves.
I kept up my friendly charade for the whole party. Having so many children dashing through the house and yard and basement was both heartening and heartbreaking. All our families had been so close over the years that I had come to adore many of these children and care about them as my own.
But they weren’t my own. My own weren’t here.
After everybody left, I fell apart, the facade shattering into shards of grief. And it didn’t get better. For a full week after, I barely left my bed, crying mournfully and hoping each time I went to sleep that I would never wake up again. The school year stretched ahead of me, and all the usual high points now loomed as nadirs of unmitigated misery. I couldn’t face another birthday party, not to mention Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Mother’s Day.
But as Alyson’s Communion date approached, I couldn’t ignore it. Emma had enjoyed the big party we threw at her Communion, and now Alyson deserved the same, right? Food, music, catering hall—we’d do everything just as Aly would have wanted. In the dark of night, I reeled at the thought of smiling through another party that was missing the guest of honor, but I didn’t think I had a choice. I didn’t know how to change the track that my life had been on, and despite the accident, I didn’t want to. I’d continue to shop for the girls, buy them presents, celebrate big events like Communion.
“If a party is going to be too much for you, don’t do it,” one of my friends said.
“How could I not?” I asked. “Aly was so excited about her Communion. She’d been talking about it.”
“You don’t have to, Jackie. Maybe worry about yourself.”
I shook my head, troubled and dazed. I couldn’t think like that. I didn’t ever want to think like that. My friend meant to be kind, but how could she suggest I give up on Aly? As a parent, you may get frustrated and tired or even despairing, but you always put your children ahead of yourself. You sign up to be a parent forever, and the connection never ends. Your children are your children, whatever happens to them.
