I'll See You Again

by Jackie Hance

  Very early one morning, my mind was racing a million miles an hour and my pent-up anger at Danny felt like it would explode my heart. I didn’t begrudge him whatever money he got for participating in the documentary—he needed it—but I badly wanted an apology. Diane couldn’t talk for herself, and Danny needed to say I’m sorry on her behalf. He also needed to recognize how his actions affected other people.

  I grabbed my phone and began tapping out a text:

  “Do you ever consider Warren and me in any decisions you make? Warren spoke lovely words about Diane and Erin and Bryan at the funeral. Did you ever thank him? He got the burial plots and took care of everything. Doesn’t that count with you?”

  People warn against making phone calls to ex-lovers when you’re drunk. How about not texting a brother-in-law when you’re tired and angry? On the other hand, I don’t think I said anything unreasonable. I thought I was being helpful and giving him the advice nobody else would offer.

  “It doesn’t matter how the accident happened,” I went on, “eight people are dead and they need an apology. Diane’s not here to speak for herself and you need to apologize for her. It’s like when a child does something wrong—you stand by her, but you still apologize.”

  I didn’t hate Danny and I even had some sympathy for him. He needed to take care of Bryan all by himself, and he didn’t have a lot of resources to do it. While Warren and I were surrounded by loving friends, Danny seemed adrift, with nobody to give him good advice. All I wanted to do was point out how hurtful his behavior had been in the hope that it might change. I didn’t believe in turning your back on people. I still had faith that hearing from me would give Danny a new perspective, and we could all hug and be friends again.

  I read the text over. I thought about it.

  I hit Send.

  A few minutes later, he texted back his reply:

  “You’re crazy. Go get help.”

  I stared at my phone and began hyperventilating. After all these months of pain, is this where we had ended up—pointless name calling? We were still family and needed to support each other in our time of need. How did we get to this place of no communication? Maybe Danny’s stonewalling meant he really did know something—something bad—that he wanted to hide. We had all been devastated by the same event, and I wanted to talk and get answers, too. I cared about my nephew and wanted to see him again.

  Needing to restore some sanity after that nasty one-line text, I grabbed my cell phone again. No texting Danny this time—I’d call him. I didn’t really expect him to answer, but suddenly he was on the line. He wasn’t nice—and then neither was I. We started screaming at each other, months of no communication ending in a burst of emotional attacks and accusations.

  I hung up and began crying uncontrollably. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I began clawing at the sofa, gasping for air, trying to get myself under control. I couldn’t get any air into my lungs. I rushed downstairs to the basement, where Warren’s brother David was sleeping, and told him the story.

  “You can’t tell Warren!” I insisted. “He’ll be so mad. But help me! I can’t breathe.”

  “Calm down, calm down. Think of the baby,” David said. He led me upstairs, to get a paper bag I could breathe into. Just then, Warren appeared.

  “What’s going on?” Warren asked.

  “Nothing,” I gasped. “I’m just . . . it’s okay . . . I can’t breathe.”

  But David ignored my warning. “She texted Danny,” David told him. “And then she called him.”

  “Why did you do that?” Warren moaned. “Why did you contact him?”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, sobbing. “I wanted to make things better. But it only gets worse.”

  “You’re not going to get what you need from him,” Warren said. “Why do you keep trying?”

  “I want him to apologize. I don’t understand any of this. We were all so close. How can we not be in each other’s lives?”

  “He won’t apologize,” Warren said. “Stop. Just stop.”

  I sputtered out the whole story, and I watched Warren’s face slowly turn to a frozen mask. The anger seemed to seep from his pores, and if we had been in a movie, flames would have begun shooting from his eyes.

  “I’m done,” he said. “This is it. I’ve bitten my tongue long enough.”

  He started heading out the door and I ran after him, tugging at his arm.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Danny’s. This is enough. I can’t take much more,” Warren said, clutching his car keys.

  “Please stay,” I begged. “Remember our rule? No driving when you’re angry.”

  “I don’t care. I can’t hold back anymore,” he bellowed.

  The intensity of his rage scared me. “Stay here,” I said, sobbing and clinging to him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called him. I just had things I wanted to say. He should understand what he’s doing.”

  “I’ll kill him,” Warren said. The threat reverberated as he slammed the car door and revved the motor.

  I tried to run out to the driveway, thinking I would stand behind the car so he couldn’t go anywhere, but he was faster and pulled out while I stood there sobbing, watching him go.

  • • •

  I don’t know where Warren ended up that morning, but he didn’t go to Danny’s and like so many other upheavals, we both let it drift away. Warren’s ferocity reminded me that while he usually kept his emotions in check, he still felt them as deeply as I did. I had my fabulous friends to talk to almost every day, but who was there to support Warren when he and I resorted to attacking each other rather than leaning on each other? He had a lot of close friends, but they were at work all day. If Warren felt overcome by a wave of sadness at three o’clock in the afternoon, he was unlikely to interrupt Brad at the investment bank where he worked or Doug at his office to get some bucking-up or emotional support. Thank goodness a couple of his friends popped in a few evenings a week to sit on our couch. Nothing monumental was ever said, it was just important that they were there.

  Our neighbor Laura, who had known Mr. Hance since childhood, called him one day when she saw Warren desolate. She figured having his dad to talk to might help.

  “Warren isn’t doing well, he’s having a hard time,” she said to Mr. Hance.

  “Why is he having a hard time?” Mr. Hance asked, looking for something specific.

  Did she really have to explain? Laura didn’t know what to say. Mr. Hance had lost four grandchildren and his only daughter in the accident, but his response was to remain stoic.

  When Laura told me the story, I called Warren’s dad myself.

  “Your son is falling apart,” I told him. “You need to help him.”

  “What should I do?” he asked.

  “Just come be with him. You don’t have to talk. Just sit and watch a baseball game with him on TV.”

  Both my mother and Warren’s father were struggling with their roles vis-à-vis Warren and me. My mother had been a wonderful babysitter for the girls, close and loving and always ready to rush over when we planned an evening out. She was a rock star in their eyes. When she arrived, they always shouted “Nanny!” and ran to the door in delight, their faces glowing at the prospect of the unconditional love that only a grandmother can give.

  After the accident, she felt as unmoored as I did. She had lost her three granddaughters—and in her eyes, she had lost her daughter, too. I was different, empty. I had always been relaxed when she came over, never looking over her shoulder or giving instructions on how to babysit. Now I was tense and cold and didn’t have much to say.

  Mr. Hance had also been a great babysitter for the girls, and they loved him just as much. But now he didn’t feel comfortable coming over, either. And maybe I didn’t help. One day when Mr. Hance showed up unannounced and tried to talk to me, I gave him a cold, what-are-you-doing-here look. I wasn’t feeling very friendly, and I suppose he sensed it. Part of me wanted him there to commiserate with Warr
en, but part of me recoiled. I sometimes felt like I was drowning in Hances. With Warren, his brother David, and the ghost of Diane always in our house, I had to control myself from lashing out.

  • • •

  Warren’s role in our marriage was still to take care of me—despite my resentment that he wasn’t always up to the task anymore.

  “You have to get Jackie through her pregnancy,” friends whispered to Warren every time we went out. “Her hormones are wild right now. Be understanding.”

  What Warren understood was that I could get away with anything—and he had to put up with it. I wasn’t taking any pills for anxiety or depression, and I had a baby growing inside me, and I’d been through a lot to get to this point. On days when I felt particularly cranky, I wondered why women have to take on all the burdens. So I let myself be melodramatic and tempestuous.

  “Just a few more months,” those same friends promised Warren when I abruptly left a party pleading exhaustion, then lay in bed for a full day crying.

  “Does anybody worry about how I feel?” he asked as Isabelle and Jeannine and a host of others came in and out of the house to make sure I was okay.

  “No,” I said bluntly. “Not right now. You’re not the one who’s pregnant.”

  I could handle the physical burdens of being pregnant (and pregnancy hormones, like PMS or menopause, can become just a good excuse for bad behavior), but the whole process felt overwhelming. Even though I had asked Warren about moving and getting a fresh start, I realized I didn’t want to start again. I wanted to live in the house where I could still hear my daughters’ laughter. If we moved, my life with my daughters might fade even more.

  Almost nothing in the house had changed since the day of the accident. Their beds were practically shrines for me. I still went into the girls’ bedrooms and fluffed their pillows and made sure their slippers were lined up. I lay down on the comfy mattresses and thought about them. I had insisted that the girls make their beds every morning because I didn’t like the thought of them getting into unmade beds at night—it just didn’t feel as good. Once I explained, they agreed, and carefully straightened the covers and pulled up the comforters every day before school.

  Such good girls.

  Someone gave me a book about a woman who had lost her beloved husband in a tragedy, and she described how she immediately packed up all his clothes and belongings and got them out of her home. A few months later, she renovated and repainted so she wouldn’t have to live with the memories. I wanted to live with memories. They would help keep the girls with me forever.

  But now we had to get ready for the baby, and figuring out how to arrange the house was complicated. The room Emma and Alyson shared—which we still called “the girls’ room”—would get a crib for the baby, replacing Emma’s bed. And we would turn Katie’s tiny bedroom into the walk-in closet that the girls always wanted. Sometimes on vacations the three of them shared a room, and they talked about doing the same at home and making Katie’s room a dressing room for all of us. Now it would happen.

  One Saturday in June, I went shopping with Melissa, and I really wasn’t thinking about cribs and closets and bassinets when I walked into the house and went upstairs to put down my packages. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Katie’s room was empty—the bed and dresser gone. All the clothes and personal items that had been in the drawers were thrown helter-skelter into Emma and Alyson’s room.

  “Oh my God! What happened? Where’s Katie’s bed?” I yelled, freaking out. “What happened to all her things? Warren! What’s going on?”

  I raced frantically around from room to room, shocked at the sight of my children’s rooms in such disarray.

  Warren came trudging up the stairs, his face pale and sweat beading at his brow.

  “We said we were going to do this,” he reminded me. “I wanted to get the room done and everything moved while David is still here.” After staying with us almost every weekend since the accident, his brother was being reassigned by the air force and heading off to Turkey in August.

  “But look at this room!” I cried. “This is not how you treat Katie’s stuff! How could you do this? Everything is just thrown around! You can’t do this! What were you thinking?”

  “I had to do this quickly. I couldn’t sit and fold clothes!” he yelled back. “We took the dresser to the basement to refinish. And we gave Jonathan the bed for Maddie. She’s just getting out of her training bed and can use it.”

  I began to howl. I liked our neighbors Jonathan and Desi, and I enjoyed watching their little daughter Maddie zip around the street on Katie’s bike. Warren had shined it up and put on a bell and tassels before giving it to her months ago, and it was cute as could be.

  But to have Katie’s bed across the street? To look out the window and know that Katie’s bed was over there, so close but no longer mine? I guess I knew we had to give her precious bed away to make the dressing room, but I hadn’t really thought it through.

  “I want it back!” I screamed.

  “Jackie, it’s Maddie’s bed now,” Warren said.

  “I want it back. Put the bed back, put the dresser back. I don’t need the closet and I want everything as it was.”

  “No, that’s it,” Warren said adamantly. “It’s done.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense!” I yelled. I went to the open window and began screaming so everyone outside could hear. “I want my bed back! I want Katie’s bed back!”

  Warren tried to drag me away, but I was screaming and crying and out of my mind. I went to Emma and Alyson’s room and threw myself on their beds, clutching at Katie’s clothes, which had been thrown everywhere. I cried hysterically, unable to stop. Warren gave up trying to calm me down and finally left me alone.

  After close to an hour, my sobs slowed down. But I still lay there, my head on the sodden pillow and my body trembling. From outside, I heard Desi’s voice. She had come over and was standing on our front lawn, talking to Warren.

  “Should I bring the bed back?” she asked.

  “No,” Warren said. “Please don’t worry. Just go in your house and let it sit.”

  A few minutes later, Laura came over. She talked to Warren outside for a little while, and then I heard her tread on the stairs. I managed to sit up. She stood in the doorway of Emma and Alyson’s room and looked around.

  “Let’s get this room cleaned up,” she said.

  “Can you believe what Warren did?” I asked.

  Laura shook her head. “He was trying to do the right thing. It wasn’t easy for him, either, Jackie. David told me that when they were carrying the bed down the stairs, Warren threw up.”

  I closed my eyes briefly. Funny how our bodies respond to stress. I couldn’t eat. Warren threw up. It happened often now. I heard him in the bathroom gagging, as if his body wanted to reject everything and somehow purify itself. Life without his girls just made him want to vomit.

  I got off the bed. “He didn’t plan this very well. I would have packed up their things.”

  I had already bought some pink bins for the girls’ things, and now Laura and I folded everything carefully and tucked pictures and pants and pajamas into the bins. I left out a few things to hang in the closet Warren would build.

  Much later, Warren came back.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Packing. Everything can go in the attic over the garage,” I said, reasonable at last.

  He stared at a pink pillow I had shoved into one of the bins. It was in the shape of a crown and said Princess on it. He leaned over and pulled it out, clutching it close.

  “The Princess pillow doesn’t go in the attic,” he said. “It has to stay out.”

  He put the silky pillow that he had once bought as a gift for Emma against his own scruffy cheek, and tears filled his eyes.

  I looked away. “Okay,” I said. “The pillow stays.”

  We packed together that whole night.

  The next day, Desi called to ask if I wanted t
he bed back, and I felt a bit of relief when I told her she should keep it.

  • • •

  Now that I had gone off all my medications for the sake of the pregnancy, I felt scared—I had taken them for so long. I believed in the drugs, and whether it was a placebo effect or real chemical action, I worried about being without them, so I continued to take Ambien to help me sleep. Instructions for a drug like Ambien are very specific: take the pill and then lie down and let it work. If I stayed awake on Ambien, I ended up crazy and hyper. Once I found myself furiously sweeping the garage in the middle of the night. Another time, I raced around frantically, sorting through all the girls’ pictures and tossing them all over the floor.

  Now that I was pregnant, I often got up to go to the bathroom during the night, and once I was awake, with drugs in my system, my mind roared a million miles an hour and my adrenaline felt out of control. One night at 4 a.m., I got an urge to make homemade brownies. I pulled out half the pans in the kitchen and dragged out every bit of chocolate and flour I could find. Instead of making batter, I made a mess.

  The next morning, I decided to stop taking sleeping pills—partly to protect the baby, and partly to protect me.

  Warren’s experiences with sleeping pills seemed even worse.

  “You have to let it work,” I reminded him when he took a pill, then went off to do something other than curl up in bed.

  But he hadn’t learned the lesson. One night when he took an Ambien and didn’t sleep, he went downstairs and completely destroyed the basement. I don’t know what he thought he was doing, but he pulled every picture off the wall and every sports trophy off the shelves, and threw all the girls’ toys and puzzles and games into a giant pile. He never mentioned it in the morning. Maybe he didn’t even remember. When he went off to work, I saw the disaster downstairs and knew exactly what had happened in the middle of the night. I called my friend Denine to come help me clean up the mess, and we spent the whole day filling three huge garbage bags with broken remnants of the girls’ playthings.

  Were we really all just bubbling cauldrons of hormones and chemicals and neurotransmitters? For once, I couldn’t really be angry with Warren, because I didn’t think what he’d done had anything to do with the real him. And, come to think of it, had either of us been “the real Warren” or “the real Jackie” since the accident? It was as if our essential core as good, happy, and reasonable human beings had been wiped out by the accident. Neither of us quite understood ourselves anymore.