by Jackie Hance
So I started planning the party.
Communion is a sacrament, but like a Jewish bar mitzvah, the ritual includes both ceremony and celebration. Going overboard seems to be part of a lot of coming-of-age observances, and Emma and I spent a lot of time before her party discussing what white dress she should wear. We knew girls whose families had spent hundreds of dollars on elaborate Communion outfits and then made them a family tradition. But we figured Alyson and Katie would each want their own Communion dresses, rather than a hand-me-down.
“If you’re going to wear it once and then outgrow it, why go crazy?” I asked. “We can spend money on something else.”
“Okay with me,” said ever-practical Emma.
My mom made a special gift of a headpiece, veil, and shawl that all three girls would be able to wear at their Communions. Then Emma and I went shopping and found a beautiful dress that was under $100. She looked like a princess dancing at her party, and when she spilled a Coke all over it and started to cry, I told her not to worry. And I meant it.
And now it was Alyson’s turn.
I didn’t get to buy a dress for Alyson, but I wanted the party to be just the way she’d like it. I booked a gala room at the New Hyde Park Inn and hired a DJ to get everyone dancing. I sent out invitations, but instead of presents, I suggested our guests donate art supplies to the nearby children’s hospital. Aly had been a good artist and wanted to be an art teacher, and she would have liked knowing that other children would get to paint and draw because of her.
The day of the party, I took more antidepressants and antianxiety pills than usual. I’d become masterful at turning myself into some automated version of myself in public, stripped of feeling, able to smile and function. I knew my ever-smiling Alyson would want everyone happy at her party—including me—so I put on my best false front and danced to the music. Alyson’s sweet friends gathered around me and we all danced together, with arms swinging and bodies moving. My animation gave them permission to have fun, too.
Alyson would have liked the party. She would have been proud of me.
Warren, though, was responsible for the most memorable moment of the night. Just as the party was beginning, he stepped to the dance floor and took the microphone.
“Thank you all for coming,” he said to the gathering crowd. “Before this party starts, I’d like to take this moment to dance with my wife.”
I didn’t quite know what he had planned, but he guided me gently toward the dance floor and put his arms around me. He had arranged that the first song the DJ played would be Michael Bublé’s touching and emotional “Hold On.” All the guests gathered around, swaying to the music and overcome by the words that seemed written just for us.
Didn’t they always say we were the lucky ones?
I guess that we were once,
Babe, we were once.
But luck will leave you ’cause
It is a faithless friend . . .
As Bublé’s mellow, romantic voice filled the room, I leaned my head on Warren’s shoulder and held him tightly. All around me, I saw our friends weeping, but I disengaged myself from the moment and refused to cry. I didn’t want to hear the lyrics about how once we’d been so lucky and now life had turned. If I managed to hold myself together through this song, then I’d be okay for the whole party—and I could go home later and collapse in private.
And in the end, when life has got you down,
You’ve got someone here that you can wrap your arms around.
So hold on to me tight . . .
We are stronger here together,
Than we could ever be alone.
I let the music wash over me, knowing that if I looked into Warren’s eyes, we would both dissolve. Like Sinatra, Bublé has a crooning, worldy-wise style, and Warren had chosen the song carefully. However much we had been fighting, however much our anger and grief threatened to incinerate our marriage and destroy us, he wanted me to believe in him. Most of our guests must have agreed with Bublé that even though life had gotten us down, we were stronger together than apart. Because as Warren and I clung to each other, there wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd.
• • •
The sad truth, though, was that Warren and I didn’t make each other stronger. He couldn’t stand to see me constantly upset, and I had such loathing for Diane and the cruelty of what she’d done that I couldn’t stop myself from lashing out. The accusation I kept promising myself not to make eventually slipped out.
“Your sister killed our kids,” I hissed in the midst of a fight one evening in October. I knew the comment was rude and wrong, but I couldn’t control my venom.
We launched into the kind of pitched battle that occurs only when you think there’s nothing left to lose. Grief is harder to handle than rage, so transforming one into the other had its purpose.
“Do you think Emma died scared?” I asked Warren. “Do you think they all did? Every time I close my eyes, I hear her crying.” Her sobs from our last phone conversation persistently rang in my head.
“I don’t know. We’ll never know. But she wasn’t crying when I talked to her,” he reminded me, as he always did. He had spoken to her after I did.
“They must have known what was happening when Diane drove onto the highway,” I persisted, tormenting us both, and beginning to sob. “Can you imagine? They probably looked out the window and started screaming. But they were helpless.”
“Jackie . . .”
“Why wasn’t I there to hold them? Did they cry out for me?” Now my whole body was shaking in anguish.
“You have to stop.”
“I can’t stop!” I screamed. “My children are dead and I don’t know what happened to them!”
“We can’t keep going over this. It doesn’t help.”
“I need to talk about it!”
“There’s nothing more to say. We’ve said it all.”
“Why won’t you talk to me, Warren?” I yelled, my anger and anxiety spinning out of control. “Is it because you know your sister did this to us?”
“I’m not my sister!” he roared. “I’m not responsible for this!”
“Then, who is? What happened? They’re dead, Warren. They’re dead.”
I sobbed hysterically and trembled and screamed, and Warren hollered in frustration and pain. I was consumed with reliving every torturous moment, while Warren wanted to block out the torment and not think about the horrifying details.
We had plummeted into a black, ugly place so oppressive that neither of us could imagine there would ever be sunshine again. When Warren couldn’t take the hammering argument and emotional hysteria anymore, he stormed out of the house.
“Where are you going?” I screamed, charging after him. However crazed I might be, I had a sudden flash of fear. His bolting in a deranged state after midnight didn’t bode well. We had made a pact early in our marriage that if either of us headed out fuming after a fight, we couldn’t take the car. If you want to kill yourself, okay—but you couldn’t hurt anyone else.
Now Warren raced down the driveway on foot, his flip-flops slapping against the blacktop like shots in the night.
“I’ve had it!” he shouted. “Enough! I’m going to go jump in front of a train!”
Warren didn’t threaten or say things he didn’t mean. Would he really do it? If Warren quit on life, his dad and brothers would fall like dominoes right behind him. I had believed Warren when he said he didn’t want to make this story any worse. But maybe he didn’t care anymore.
I tried to follow him. “Come back,” I called, the intensity of his despair somehow penetrating my own blackness. “Don’t do that, please! Please!”
“Good-bye, Jackie.”
Bloody images flashed into my head. I pictured Warren on the tracks, a train bearing down. I could almost hear the whistle, the screams, the end of the father of my children.
He fled down the dark road, and I followed but couldn’t keep up. I was in better physical shape, but tonight
he was the more desperate one, and the adrenaline seemed to give him Olympic speed. Turning around, I staggered back to the house, shivering in fear.
Normally, I called friends when things got bad, but this time I just crawled into bed, shaking and sobbing. I had done this to Warren and nobody could change that. I talked about dying all the time, but Warren couldn’t be the one who finally quit. Sadness and guilt overwhelmed me. I was supposed to love him, but I had driven him away.
I don’t know how much time went by. Much, much later, I heard the front door opening and footsteps on the staircase. Warren came silently into the room and lay down in the bed next to me.
We didn’t talk about what happened or where Warren had gone for so long. We knew that confronting such depths of despair could only bring more pain.
Ten
One day when the girls were little, we sat together, talking about their futures. I wanted them to have careers and be moms, too. Although I had given up my career to be a mother and didn’t regret it, I realized that their lives might be better with some balance.
“You could be doctors or teachers or lawyers,” I suggested.
“I want to be an art teacher,” Alyson said firmly. “I love art. Anything with art.”
“Good plan,” I told her. “As long as you love what you do.”
Emma thought she wanted to be an actress or singer, since her passion was performing.
Katie, only four at the time, had the firmest plan. “I’m never leaving you and Daddy,” she said. “I’ll be with you forever.”
“You still need a career when you grow up,” I told her, smiling as she climbed into my lap.
“Then I’ll help you make cupcakes, Mommy,” she said. “Nothing else.”
We all laughed. Maybe it was a little early for Katie to make a plan, but as a devoted full-time mom, I tried to stay on top of everything in my children’s lives. I plotted birthday parties months in advance and family vacations years before they happened. I envisaged proms and weddings and talked to the girls about what lay ahead. Or what I imagined lay ahead. I had confidence in the power of our orderly, organized life. The future wouldn’t surprise us because we prepared for it.
After the accident, I understood that all those preparations didn’t add up to much. Control is just an illusion. The children had been my whole life, and now that whole life was gone.
Warren and I had always been careful about money, but now part of me felt like I might as well spend on anything I wanted. What reason did we possibly have to buy bonds or stash money into a retirement account? Warren and I had put money in college savings accounts and never considered a world where the girls wouldn’t head happily off to freshman year with new clothes and dorm furnishings from Target. But all those college savings had gone to pay for a funeral.
Our moods swung dramatically, but Warren, nobly, still wanted to be a good husband. He kept looking for things that would give me some passing glimpse of pleasure. My car had been smashed in the accident, but for a long time, I didn’t need a new one because I wouldn’t get behind a wheel. Warren drove or friends took me wherever I needed to go—which was just as well, because I was too fragile to face the world on my own, anyway.
But eventually I realized I would have to drive again. However generous my friends were with their time, I needed to start taking some first tentative steps back to independence. I didn’t really care what kind of car I got. I didn’t need an SUV or a minivan anymore. A fancy car felt meaningless—even tasteless. But then I remembered that my stylish girls had always wanted me to have a convertible.
“You’d look so great driving with a top down,” Alyson had said one day when a neighbor drove by with her hair blowing in the breeze.
“And you’d have fun,” Emma agreed. “What do you think, Mommy?”
I thought they were right. But who puts kids in a convertible? Practicality won out and we stuck with a minivan.
Sometime in the late fall, almost as a joke, I suggested a convertible to Warren.
“The girls wanted me to have it,” I said. “They used to tell me how pretty I’d look sitting in the front seat.”
“Then that’s what you should get,” he said simply.
I told him the car had to have a retractable hardtop and a full backseat. I never even thought about price—because I didn’t really expect him to buy it—and we dropped the subject. But, eager to prove that life could still have its bright moments, Warren asked his friend Chris to visit car dealers for him. Like me, Warren still felt awkward going out in public where people might recognize him. Our pictures had been in the newspapers a lot, and he felt safer having a good-natured friend make the rounds for him. Chris had my dream requirements tucked into his front pocket as he did his test drives. Finally, he brought Warren to see what he thought was the nicest car with the best price.
Unaware of all that had gone on, I was out with Melissa one day when Warren called my cell phone to ask what time I’d be back.
“I don’t know, we won’t be too long,” I told him. “Why?”
“Oh, just wondering,” he said. He sounded slightly odd, but I didn’t pay much attention.
When Melissa and I got home, Warren stood in the driveway waiting for us. Rain swirled around him, but he didn’t seem to care. He wanted to see my face when I got the first glimpse of what he had driven home—a light blue Volvo convertible with a cream interior.
I jumped out of Melissa’s car and ran over to it.
“Really? For me?” I asked, a huge smile plastered on my face. Warren broke into a genuine grin. This was the Warren I had first fallen in love with—always surprising me with something special and making the extra-thoughtful gesture that most men wouldn’t try. I felt a brief flash of the giddiness I used to experience when we were dating and I knew I had found a man who loved to make me happy.
“Do you like it?” he asked, wanting confirmation for what he already knew.
“It’s perfect! I can’t believe you bought me a convertible!” I said, bouncing around delightedly.
His grin got even bigger. For months now, nothing Warren tried to do eased any of my anguish. The only expressions he’d seen me show were grief and pain and anger. This flash of happiness must have felt like sunshine breaking through the clouds. And in fact, the literal and metaphoric happened together that afternoon, because as Warren opened the door so I could sit in the car, the rain stopped and the sky turned blue.
“I love it!” I said, sliding onto the leather seat. It’s probably hardwired in guys to want to please their wives, and my enthusiasm made Warren puff out his chest just a bit.
Once Warren and I finished admiring the new car, I drove around the corner to show off to Isabelle.
“What fun!” she said excitedly. She and Kailey and Ryan piled into the convertible and we all drove through the neighborhood laughing and talking.
And then I got panicky. What was I doing? Given my constant fears of how other people perceived me, I suddenly dreaded the thought of anyone seeing me with the top down.
How awful! She traded in her kids for a convertible!
The crazy voices in my head always imagined what other people would be saying, and now they screamed that Grace Kelly could ride around with her hair blowing (or neatly tied with a scarf) in To Catch a Thief, but I had no right. I was a mom in mourning, not a Hollywood starlet.
The pleasure of the new car disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. Fortunately, Warren had gotten the hardtop, so from the outside, nobody could tell that the square Volvo sedan could morph into a racy convertible. I never put the top down around town and figured everyone would assume that I’d appropriately moved from a minivan to a safe, smaller car.
But then a funny thing happened. On one of our Tuesday outings, Karen and I were shopping at a mall far away from Floral Park. Going where nobody recognized me allowed me some feeling of release, so when we started driving home and she goaded me to put down the roof, I figured, What the heck. Why not.<
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But transforming from sedan to convertible wasn’t as easy as I thought. It started off okay. When we stopped at a red light, I put my foot on the brake and held down the button. I felt like the captain of the starship Enterprise as the roof lifted slowly, going straight up, before beginning its descent into the trunk, which had also smoothly opened. Then the light changed to green and I started driving again. Big mistake. Safety features don’t allow that. Once I took my foot off the brake, the whole action stopped.
The roof was straight up in the air at a 90-degree angle, like a sailboat mast. It was a windy day, and given the awkward angle of the roof, the wind gusts slammed against it with unexpected force.
“The roof is going to fly off!” I called, almost screaming.
“Can’t happen! Swedish engineering!” Karen shouted back, starting to laugh.
“Well, if it does, you’re going to explain it to Warren. This was your idea!” I said, also laughing.
We were on a one-lane road with no place to pull over, so I drove slowly, not going above 20 mph. With the gusts pummeling the upright roof and the cars behind us honking, the whole situation struck me as hysterically funny. It felt like the car might just lift off the ground—a Volvo version of the Flying Nun.
I laughed louder and Karen did, too. By the time we pulled safely into a parking lot by the side of the road, our gales of laughter blew louder than the wind.
“Ohmygodohymygodohmygod!” I said, trying to catch my breath.
We laughed so hard that we both started crying, and happy tears streaked down our cheeks. It was one of those unexpectedly exuberant moments that gives a jolt of sheer silly pleasure, making us forget everything else in the world. Given all the tears of devastation I’d shed—usually accompanied by howls, wails, and sobs—I didn’t mind these tears at all. They certainly felt different.
