Tell Me

by Strom, Abigail

  “She wouldn’t have listened. You told her you loved her, Jane. That’s what’s important.”

  She shook her head. “But I didn’t. I started to say I love you, too, but she was gone. I never got a chance to say the words.”

  “You told her plenty of times, Jane. She knew. You know she did.”

  Her hands pressed harder, as though she were trying to crush her own skull between them.

  He grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands away. “Stop that.”

  “If she read my mind, she would have known the truth.”

  Her hands felt so small, so cold, so fragile. He held them tighter, trying to will some of his own body’s warmth into her.

  “She did know the truth. You loved her, and she knew it.”

  Jane shook her head. “But I didn’t,” she whispered. “Not really. The truth is, I was jealous. She was beautiful and alive, and I was jealous of her, and I wish I was dead.”

  Up until that point, the only thing Caleb had felt was pity and sorrow. But now, a whiplash of anger cut through the pain.

  He let go of Jane’s hands, grabbed her shoulders, and shook her.

  “Is that why you’re living like this? Are you trying to kill yourself?”

  The shock of his sudden fury seemed to wake her up a little. Her eyes were a little clearer, a little more focused, as she stared at him.

  “What are you talking about? What’s wrong with the way I’m living?”

  He gestured around the apartment. “Are you kidding? The place is a mess.” He gestured toward her. “You’re a mess. You stink, Jane. When’s the last time you took a goddamn shower? Last month?”

  The harshness of his words woke her up a little more.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you’re going to take one now. Come on.”

  He surged to his feet and pulled her up with him, leading her to the bathroom. She stumbled after him, but he kept her on her feet until they were there, and then he closed the door behind them.

  It wasn’t as messy in here as in the rest of the apartment. There were even clean towels hanging on the rack, maybe because it really had been a while since Jane had taken a shower.

  “I thought I was exaggerating, but how long has it been?”

  The blinds had been closed in the living room, and the only light had come from a lamp on a side table. In here, the cold gray light of a winter afternoon seemed almost cheery in comparison.

  “Since what?”

  “Since you were clean.”

  Jane sat down on the toilet seat. “I told you I don’t know.”

  There was a radiator in here, and with the door closed the small space was warming up.

  “This is actually the nicest room in your apartment right now,” he said to her. “So you’re going to stay in here while I take care of some stuff out there.”

  He went over to the tub, closed the stopper, and turned on the water, fiddling with the faucets until he got the right temperature—hot, but not too hot.

  “A bath will feel even better than a shower.”

  He turned back to Jane as the tub began to fill. He started to ask if she had any bubble bath, but he forgot the question when he saw the look on her face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself as she looked down at the floor. There was a rug, soft and white and fluffy, but she took her feet off it and rested them on the cold tile instead. “You said a bath will feel even better.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t understand. You don’t understand anything.”

  “What don’t I understand?”

  She looked up at him again, and the expression on her face tore at his heart.

  “I don’t want to feel better.”

  He knelt down on the floor and put his hands on her knees. Their faces were level now, and he looked straight into her eyes.

  “You’re wrong, sweetheart. I do understand. I know you don’t want to feel better. But I’m in charge right now, and you don’t have a choice. Do you have any bubble bath?”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s okay. The bath will still feel good. I’m going to wait here until the tub is full, and then I’m going to turn my back while you get in, so I know you did.”

  He thought for a second she might argue, but then her shoulders slumped and she looked down at the floor again.

  For the moment, her depression and exhaustion actually gave him an advantage. They didn’t leave her with enough strength to fight him.

  He didn’t say anything else until the bath was ready. Then he turned off the faucets and went to the door, standing facing it with his back to the room.

  “I’m not leaving until you get in,” he said.

  A moment of silence. Then: “Fine.”

  Another moment passed, and then he heard the faint splashing that meant she was stepping into the tub.

  “Stay in until your fingers get pruny. And if you don’t use the soap and shampoo, we’ll do this all over again.”

  “My God, you’re bossy.”

  He started to answer, but a sudden realization made the words stick in his throat.

  Jane was naked.

  At least, he assumed she was. Considering she was still under the influence of alcohol, he supposed it was possible she hadn’t bothered to undress before getting into the tub.

  It was the last thing he should be thinking about right now. And as if to confirm that truth, Jane’s voice came from behind him.

  “You can go now, Caleb. I’m in the damn tub. I’m putting soap on a washcloth. Go away.”

  “Right.” The word came out as a kind of croak, and he opened the door and closed it behind him.

  He stood there a moment, breathing deep and trying not to imagine Jane naked and covered in water.

  It was a good thing he had a big job waiting for him.

  When he saw how bare the fridge and the cupboards were, he decided he should go to the grocery store on the corner before he did anything else. But then it occurred to him that they might make deliveries, which would save time, and when he called them up they confirmed it.

  He placed an order for more food than Jane could eat in a week.

  He spent the next ten minutes taking care of the easy stuff—bagging up the pizza boxes and other trash. Then he gathered up the laundry from Jane’s bedroom and put a load in the little washer behind the door in her kitchen.

  There was a clean set of sheets in the bottom drawer of her bureau, so he was able to make her bed. He also found her Harry Potter pajamas neatly folded in another drawer, and he wondered for a moment why she was wearing a smelly old T-shirt.

  The answer, of course, was obvious. She loved the pajamas, and wearing them would have felt good.

  Something she didn’t think she deserved.

  She really was out of clean underwear, though—except for the other two pairs in the holiday three-pack sent by her aunt, which was on the coffee table in the living room beside a glitter-covered Christmas card.

  He pulled out the pair covered in green holly and red berries and carried them, along with the Harry Potter pajamas, over to the bathroom.

  He knocked on the door.

  “How’s it going in there?”

  “I’m pruny.”

  He smiled for the first time that day.

  “Well, good. You ready to get out?”

  “I suppose.”

  “I’ve got clean clothes for you to put on. I’m going to open the door a crack and drop them on the floor.”

  “It’s very considerate of you to protect my modesty,” she said, sounding a little like the old Jane again. “That’s definitely something I’m worried about right now.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll just walk right in.”

  He turned the doorknob and she squealed.

  “Caleb!”

  He smiled again. “Don’t worry,” he said, opening the door just wide enough to drop the clothes on the floor before closin
g it again. “Your modesty is safe with me.”

  The groceries arrived, and after he put the bags on the counter, he filled Jane’s copper kettle and turned the burner on. As he put the food away, it started to sing.

  He’d included chamomile tea and honey in his grocery order, and as he made a cup for Jane and one for himself it occurred to him that this had been his mother’s way of coping with tragedy and hard times. Considering he’d never before looked to his mother as an example to follow, he must be pretty damn desperate.

  It wasn’t just his mother he was looking to, though. As he toasted white bread and spread butter on it, he remembered something Sam had told him once when they were on a cold mountaintop together with the temperature dropping. They’d been talking about favorite foods to keep their spirits up.

  “Hot buttered toast,” Sam had said. “That’s what Jane and I decided was the most comforting thing, back when we were kids. Well, that plus puppies and kittens. But if you can’t get puppies and kittens, hot buttered toast is pretty good.”

  And so when Jane emerged from the bathroom in her Harry Potter pajamas with a freshly scrubbed face and wet hair, he had tea and hot buttered toast ready for her.

  She looked less happy to see the tray on the coffee table than he’d hoped she would.

  “I’m feeling kind of queasy,” she said. “I don’t think I can eat anything.”

  “You’re queasy because of all the vodka.”

  “Thanks for that brilliant analysis. Where is my vodka, by the way?”

  “Down the drain.”

  She looked indignant. “Hey! That belonged to me, not you.”

  “Now it belongs to the alligators in the sewers.” He pulled her down on the couch beside him and nudged the tray closer to her. “Have a bite of toast and a sip of tea. It won’t kill you.”

  She looked at the mug he handed her with distaste, but at least she took a sip.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  She nodded, and he pointed to the one thing on the coffee table—the whole apartment, really—that looked intentional instead of chaotic. Several sheets of brightly colored paper, a few of them folded into shapes that weren’t yet recognizable.

  “What’s this? Origami?”

  She looked where he was pointing and then away. “Yes. It’s stupid.”

  “What were you trying to make?”

  She shrugged. “Paper cranes. I haven’t done one for years, though, and I’ve forgotten how. Like I said, it’s stupid.”

  “What is?”

  She took another sip of tea. “There was this story Sam and I both read when we were kids—one of the few books we both liked. It was about this girl who lived near Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. There’s a legend in Japan that whoever folds a thousand paper cranes will be granted one wish. This girl developed leukemia, and she tried to fold a thousand paper cranes before she died. She didn’t make it. I tried a couple times to get to a thousand when I was a kid, but I never finished. The closest I ever got was two hundred.”

  He looked at the sheets of paper. “I don’t think there’s enough here to make a thousand.”

  “Nope. And I don’t know what I’d wish for even if I did.”

  She leaned forward and swept the paper and her half-finished cranes onto the floor, and Caleb resisted the urge to pick them up.

  “I think I’m still drunk,” she muttered.

  “Good thing you don’t have a driver’s license.”

  “I feel like shit.”

  “Eating and drinking will help. Also aspirin.”

  “I don’t have any aspirin.”

  “I ordered some from the grocery store.”

  He went over to the kitchen counter, grabbed the bottle, and came back with two white pills.

  “Here you go.”

  Jane swallowed them dry and then gulped down some tea.

  “You think of everything,” she said.

  “Not everything.”

  “Really? What didn’t you think of?”

  He looked at her for a moment and then away. He rose to his feet, went over to the window, and opened the blinds.

  Night had fallen. In the light of the street lamps he could see snow coming down.

  He turned back. “I didn’t think to check Sam’s climbing equipment before her trip.”

  Jane froze.

  For a moment they just looked at each other. Then Jane said, “That’s stupid. You know that’s stupid.”

  “No more stupid than you thinking you killed your sister because you didn’t make her stay in New York to meet some guy who thought he was in love with her. Or because you felt jealous of her once in a while.”

  Jane started to tremble, and he had to resist the urge to go over and put his arms around her.

  “Get out,” she said, and her voice was shaking, too.

  “As soon as you eat something and go to bed, I will.”

  “You can’t blackmail me into . . .”

  “Into what? Taking care of yourself? I’m doing it right now. You want me gone? Eat something and go to bed. That’s what it’ll take.” He paused. “I’ve actually got better things to do than be here, you know. I’m going to Australia in two days.”

  Her head jerked up like someone had given her an uppercut to the jaw.

  “Australia? You’re going to Australia?”

  He nodded. “So as soon as you eat some goddamn toast, I’ll be out of your hair.”

  She’d stopped trembling, except for the slightest quiver in her lower lip. Almost as though his awareness made her aware of it, too, she pressed her lips together in a firm line, stilling that tiny movement.

  “Fine by me,” she said.

  Then she picked up a piece of toast and started to eat.

  Chapter Eleven

  When Jane woke up, she was sober.

  She hadn’t been this sober for a few days. As she lay awake in the dark, turning her head to see the snow falling in the light of the streetlamps outside her window, she knew why she’d been avoiding this feeling.

  Reality pressed on her like a heavy stone.

  There was a hole in the world where Sam had been. Not just in her life, but in the world. That’s how bright and beautiful and alive her sister had been.

  The sister who was left was only a shadow. She was dull and gray and weak and tired, and she would have drunk herself into a stupor—or worse—if Caleb hadn’t come along.

  Caleb.

  Having him around, even pissing her off and bossing her around, had been wonderful. And now he was gone, heading for Australia, and she’d probably never see him again.

  She squeezed her eyes closed, but it was too late to stop the tears that leaked out, slipping down her cheeks like the drip, drip, drip of melting ice.

  Having him here had reminded her she could still feel.

  He’d made her take a bath. He’d made her drink tea and eat hot buttered toast.

  Now he was gone, and she hadn’t thanked him. She hadn’t said one nice thing to him.

  She rolled over onto her stomach and cried into her pillow. She cried for Sam, for all the things she wished she could tell her. I’m sorry I was jealous of you. I love you. I miss you. She cried because Caleb was gone, and for the things she hadn’t told him. Thank you for trying to help me. Be safe. I love you.

  She spent her life surrounded by words. Millions upon millions of words, books spanning centuries. And yet, when it really counted—for the people who really counted—she couldn’t manage to say the simplest, truest things.

  After a while, she stopped crying. Not because she felt better, but because there couldn’t be any more tears left in the universe.

  She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. They felt sore and swollen, and she wanted to go to the bathroom and splash her face.

  But if she got out of bed, she’d feel the emptiness of her apartment without Caleb in it. He’d been like a fire crackling on a hearth, giving out life and heat that could warm anyone�
�even her.

  And now he was gone, and she hadn’t thanked him. She was selfish and sad and small and weak, and she hadn’t thanked Caleb or wished him a safe journey.

  Stay safe, Caleb. I love you.

  Loneliness and regret spilled out of her heart and into the empty apartment, echoing in the stillness and silence around her. The only thing that could drive it away was alcohol, and Caleb had dumped hers down the drain.

  It was too late for that, anyway. Caleb had pulled her out of that morass, and she knew that however tempted she might feel, she wouldn’t slide back into it.

  She took a deep breath. What was there left to do now but put one foot in front of the other and go through the necessities of being alive?

  She might as well start by going to the bathroom.

  Another deep breath, and then she got out of bed. The floor was cold under her feet, and she felt a moment’s resentment for the loss of her alcohol haze. With vodka in her veins she hadn’t felt the cold.

  She crossed the room to her bedroom door, noticing for the first time that it was closed.

  Which was weird. When you lived alone, you didn’t bother to close your bedroom door.

  She turned the knob and pushed the door open, and then she froze.

  Caleb was sleeping on her sofa.

  For just one second, she wondered if she’d lost her grip on reality. During the first hours after learning about Sam, she’d pushed away the truth so hard she felt like a character in Somewhere in Time, wishing herself into the past with enough force to make it happen.

  It hadn’t happened, of course. She hadn’t gone back into the past to undo Sam’s death.

  She closed her eyes and opened them again.

  The silence wasn’t only in her apartment. It was outside, too, the snow falling in a still night without wind, soft and quiet and blanketing the world.

  The thick flakes made the streetlights seem diffuse. A faint, almost eerie glow came into her apartment through the blinds Caleb had opened yesterday.

  She took a step forward, and then another. She hadn’t wished Caleb into existence. He was really here, snoring on her sofa with her extra blanket covering him.