After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

by Joyce Carol Oates

  7

  From a distance came the voice, a man’s voice. I could barely see him across some kind of ravine, and the wind was blowing his words away. In the blue something panicked me, my heart kicked in my chest and I tried to fly away but one of my wings was sprained, I lifted into the air but could not fly, I fell to the ground so heavily that for a long time I could not move.

  Faint in astonishment and disbelief came the voice suddenly close.

  “Jenna! My God…”

  The swollen eye cranked open. There was Steve Abbott leaning over my bed.

  On Dad’s smooth tanned face a look like he’d been kicked in the stomach. The way a man would stare at a precious possession of his, a sports car, for instance, that had been vandalized.

  “Jenna? You…know me, don’t you?”

  Both my eyes leaked tears. Something was wrong with the tear ducts, my eyes sprang tears for no reason.

  “Can you…speak? Jenna?”

  Just to breathe was such an effort. Just to keep my eyes open was such an effort. To be polite, to be nice. I was so tired. Yet I managed a smile. Some kind of smile. Or maybe not a smile. The look on Dad’s face, he wasn’t smiling back.

  Eleven months since I’d last seen Dad, when he’d been in New York City on business and “extended” his stay for two full days to “visit” with me.

  Three years since he’d left us. Actually three years, five months, seventeen days. The shock of coming home from school to see the moving van in the driveway, movers carrying Dad’s things out of the house.

  Explaining now that he’d have come to see me immediately, within twenty-four hours, except he’d been traveling on business in the East, he’d been in Tokyo and Hong Kong, he was just unpacking his luggage in the Shanghai Omni Hotel when the terrible news came…. Such a long distance, the far side of the earth, and complications had arisen so he’d been unavoidably detained, couldn’t get a flight immediately, which was why he hadn’t been able to get back in time for…

  My eyelids were too heavy, I could not keep them open. My bloodshot eyes leaked tears.

  In time in time. In time for…

  I wasn’t hearing this. Static mostly. Static issuing from Dad’s mouth and static inside my head.

  In time for your mother’s—

  I wasn’t hearing this! Trying desperately to lift myself, to escape. Except my arm, or my wing, my wing-arm, something was wrong, and it weighed heavy as lead. All that side of my body, numb and dead as lead.

  A nursery tune came into my head, to make me smile.

  Numb Dead Lead

  Say Saying Said

  “—and to see you, honey. I’ve been just devastated to hear of what happened to you but—”

  His daughter, this wizened mummy thing?

  “—when you are well again. Strong enough to travel. Come live with us, Jenna. There’s plenty of room—”

  Us. Come live with us.

  “—would you like that, honey? Poor girl, say yes.”

  Poor girl! I felt Dad fumble to touch me, not very convincingly.

  “…your room, waiting for you. Our new house is lovely, just a half block from the ocean. Remember, the time you visited you had to concede, La Jolla is ‘awesome.’”

  Dad was managing to recover from his shock. Or to cover his shock. Dad, who was Steve Abbott, who didn’t live with Mom and me any longer for a reason he could not explain except Things happen in people’s lives that can’t be helped. Dad with his tanned smooth melon face and easy smile. Always well dressed, a man to turn a woman’s head my aunt Katie had said of him, admiring even as she disapproved. Even for this hospital visit, Dad was stylishly dressed. A powder-blue silk Armani tapered shirt tucked into dove-gray trousers, open at the throat. His hair was thicker than I remembered.

  Now there was talk of La Jolla, where you never needed to wear a coat. Where the sun shone and shone and shone. Where Dad’s “new family” lived. Where my room was “waiting” for me. Where in September I could enroll in the La Jolla Academy, which was a “prestigious” private school. Dad had spoken on the phone with my neurologist, who’d estimated at least four weeks’ convalescence, which included physical therapy in a rehabilitation center. Still, that would give me time to transfer. For it seemed that Dad’s new wife had connections. There was a close family friend or maybe a friend’s close family friend who was a trustee of La Jolla Academy whose “influence” could be very helpful.

  Again Dad fumbled to touch me. To take my hand.

  It was a raggedy doll hand, limp and chill and unresisting.

  It was not a hand that could shut into a fist. It was not a hand poised to hit hit hit.

  Saying again how sorry he was oh God! How upset! The shock of such news, unbelievable! His first thought had been of me, of course, his relief that I had not been fatally injured, then the shock sank in, poor Lisbeth. (At last Dad managed to say Mom’s name. It came out hurried and hollow, like a word phonetically pronounced.) An inexplicable, tragic accident, a freak accident it seemed, no real witnesses except the other driver, who was in critical condition…Dad’s words became confused with a ventilator high in the wall above my bed. At all times there was a hum of machines in intensive care. It was a sound of comfort like waves, vibrating air. I was very tired and I wanted to speak to Dad but my throat seemed to have closed up. I was sinking inside the mummy head, where Dad’s words were muffled. Before the wreck I had a way of tuning out people but smiling to indicate that I was listening, after the wreck it was too much effort to smile.

  …past two years, or has it been three…oh honey, someday you will understand. I was not a perfect father, by your mother’s standards certainly. I did not mean to be cruel, it was more that I became confused, thoughtless…. When you are older, Jenna, you will understand, though I am not making excuses for myself, one day you will see how you can fall out of love and it isn’t your fault or anyone’s fault, it is just something that happens when people begin to grow apart in marriage and when they fall in love with someone else, it’s like an accident too, no one’s fault, and honey, it never had a thing to do with you, in fact it was for your sake I stayed with your mother as long as I did, she told me you blamed yourself, now, honey, you must never think such a thought, I hope your mother did not encourage you to think such a ridiculous thought, you know your daddy loves you, honey, just get well, honey, please, darling, they tell me you’ve been such a brave girl, I will make it up to you, I promise.

  I wasn’t hearing this. In the blue I was spared the words of strangers. The shadow of a giant hawk fell upon me. Wide-winged hawks soaring high above the river, spiraling downward to catch their prey. I shuddered and shrank away. Dad was leaning over my bed to kiss my forehead. Not wanting to peer too closely at the IV drip in my hand, my arm bruised and yellow from needles. Not wanting to peer too closely into the bloodshot eyes.

  When he kissed me, I shrank from him.

  “…touch me! No…”

  My voice was a croak. But it was a voice.

  The first time I’d spoken aloud since the wreck.

  8

  In the blue I flew on outstretched wings. In the blue I floated light as a feather. In the blue I laughed at the look on Dad’s face.

  See, Dad, I don’t need you now. Mom and I needed you before the wreck but not now.

  9

  “Jenna, hey. You are one hell of a girl.”

  I guess. I wanted to think so. Dragging my leg, which felt like lead. But I was on my feet, the nurses were amazed. Now I was out of the intensive care unit and in a regular hospital room, and the promise was I would be discharged from the hospital soon.

  I wasn’t spending so much time in the blue now. Only at night.

  Everyone marveled at how I was “improving,” ”mending.” Three times a day “up and about” walking in the corridor outside my room to prevent “muscular atrophy.”

  Maria’s eyes shone. Maria was my big sister.

  Lifting me from the wheelchair, ge
tting me on my feet, and helping me walk. The damn IV needle was still stuck in my arm, had to be pulled along on a pole. Talk about weird.

  In the corridor we passed other patients up and about pulling their IVs with them. Mostly they were older. Some of them had become soft-looking like rag dolls. Even the men moved with such caution, you knew they were waiting for pain to strike them like lightning.

  “Jenna, hello.”

  “Why, Jenna, aren’t you looking good?”

  I tried to remember their names. Older people, adults, their names just drifted past me unless I kept meeting them or had to know who they were, like teachers.

  I was impressed with Maria: She had muscles. Arm and shoulder muscles compact and hard.

  My leg muscles were hard from running. Before the wreck I’d tried to run every day, but after the wreck the thought of running was a joke.

  “You go, girl! One hell of a girl.”

  “Oh, sure. One hell.”

  It hurt when I laughed, like shattered glass being shaken inside my chest.

  Since I’d told my father I didn’t know him, didn’t want him to kiss me, I’d been feeling stronger. My eyesight was coming back, except when I got tired.

  S L O W was how we walked, Maria and me. The hospital floor was like a city block you could walk around, turning each corner until you arrived back where you’d started.

  In the blue I’d been spared this. Leaning on Maria like some broke-back old thing, panting through my mouth. Trying not to see how strangers stared at me.

  Wanting to say, “Think I look bad now? You should’ve seen me when they pulled me from the wreck.”

  In the blue no one ever looked at me with pity.

  In the blue the light was always soft. Out here everything was bright-glaring and felt like sandpaper.

  “Try not to breathe through your mouth, Jenna. Let’s rest for a minute. Deep breaths now. C’mon!”

  Mom used to say, “I wish you weren’t an only child.”

  I wanted to tell Maria I loved her. I wanted to ask Maria to be my friend not just for now but always.

  Except I remembered: After the wreck I wasn’t going to like anybody ever again.

  Why? Because they fly away and leave you alone.

  Too risky.

  Such a feeling of sadness came over me. I couldn’t love Maria anyway, that was ridiculous. Couldn’t return to the track team even as the weakest runner, that was more ridiculous.

  I’d almost made it back to my room, but my legs became weak, and I had to sit in the wheelchair. My face was flushed, I could feel blood vessels pounding inside my ugly shaved head. Maria was going on about how well I’d done, how each day I was definitely improving, the gold cross winked just above the V-neck of her white uniform, and I heard myself say, “You don’t have to be nice to me, Maria. Unless it’s your job.”

  10

  People came to visit. Now that I was out of intensive care.

  Now that I wasn’t so freaky-awful to look at. So piteous.

  Girl friends. A few guys. Some of my teachers. Meghan Ryder, the girls’ track team coach.

  Bringing me hurt-girl gifts: flowers, candy, stuffed animals, paperback books in balloon colors.

  Lots of relatives. (From Mom’s side of the family mostly.)

  Ms. Ryder gripped my hand in her superstrong hand. She smiled so you could see the strain in her cheeks like rubber being stretched. On the track team we’d speculated on how old Meghan Ryder was, some of us thinking twenty-five? -six?—and some of us thinking older, like thirty?—and seeing Ms. Ryder trying to smile at me now and the puckers at the sides of her eyes, I had to think older. She told me in a bright, forced voice that I’d be walking again, I’d be running again, she was sure.

  Physiotherapy, Ms. Ryder said.

  Physiotherapy is the secret. Works miracles.

  Smile smile! My mouth got tired from the strain. Maybe it wasn’t my mouth but my visitors’ mouths. Maybe I got tired from watching their mouths. Maybe I got tired from seeing their pitying eyes.

  Aunt Caroline saw. Aunt Caroline seemed to be in charge. When she saw that I was becoming tired, she asked my visitors to leave.

  Sometimes I just shut my eyes. Tuned them out. A guy from my English class, we were kind of friends, not boyfriend/girlfriend, but I guess I had a crush on him, there he was visiting me in the hospital nervous and not knowing what to say, and I wasn’t going to help him, I shut my eyes, suddenly seeing the snow geese high in the sky disappearing into the blue and I was desperate to join them.

  When I opened my eyes, it was later. A nurse’s aide was informing me: time to draw blood.

  In the blue was my happiest time. In the blue was waiting when I shut my eyes.

  “…try to stay awake, honey? Dr. Currin says…”

  Aunt Caroline was Mom’s good friend. Not just her sister. The two of them laughing together saying how, growing up, they’d had to form an alliance against their oldest sister, Katie: The Bossy One.

  I was confused, not remembering clearly where my aunt lived. Mom and I had visited her…. In New Hampshire, a hilly drive. Rivers, bridges. Lakes. A long skinny lake that on maps looks vertical. She was staying in our house now, she said. So that she could visit me in the hospital every day. So that she could “oversee” things. Sitting beside my bed, sometimes just holding my hand, and we didn’t talk and there was a feeling of Mom coming into the room breathless and surprised-smiling, seeing Aunt Caroline and me together, saying to my aunt, Oh, Carrie, how’d you get here before me!

  Uncle Dwight came to see me. My little cousins Becky and Mikey.

  Aunt Caroline held my hand. Aunt Caroline wiped mucus from my nose.

  “We’ll take care of you, Jenna. If you really don’t want to live with your father.”

  In the blue there wasn’t Dad.

  In the blue there wasn’t Aunt Caroline either.

  11

  Tell us what you remember, Jenna.

  What happened on the Tappan Zee Bridge, Jenna?

  Jenna, try. There are no other witnesses…

  (No other witnesses! In this way I learned that the driver of the truck had not survived.)

  There were skid marks from your mother’s car in both lanes. Before the car struck the right-lane railing, then careened over into the left lane and that railing. And…

  The truck’s tires were skidding for at least thirty feet before impact. We estimate that the driver was over the speed limit by approximately fifteen miles an hour when he began to brake….

  (What kind of truck was it? I wonder. One of those big ugly rigs or something small like a delivery truck? I hadn’t seen the truck coming. I don’t think so. Hadn’t seen the driver through the windshield. I was not going to ask his name, anything about him.)

  …any of it? Any information you can provide, Jenna. To aid us in our investigation. The question is why…

  …why the car driven by your mother suddenly swerved into the railing to the right. Why did your mother suddenly lose control of her vehicle at the approximate midpoint of the bridge…?

  (Lose control! Mom did not lose control! Fuck you, I hate you both.)

  We don’t want to upset you further, Jenna. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal and you’ve been a very brave girl, but until the investigation is satisfactorily completed the insurance claims can’t be processed. The medical examiner has theorized…

  If you could remember, Jenna! You are the only surviving witness to this terrible accident.

  (No. There is no witness. No witness who survived.)

  12

  But I saw it. It was there. I saw.

  I would not ask the investigators. I would not ask the investigators a single question. A pale chill mist like a fog had entered my brain. I was so exhausted, I was a raggedy old thrown-away cloth doll. I was not to blame, I had already forgotten why it might have been that I was to blame. I would not think of it. My head ached too much to think of it. My eyes ached from the blinding sun. My
skin ached from the lacerations, the stitches. I had already forgotten the baby deer. Or had it been a dog? I don’t remember, maybe it had been a dog. A shadow shape like a deer, or a dog. In the lane ahead. A goose that had suddenly fluttered down out of a V formation of geese flying noisily above…I had already forgotten, I wasn’t to blame. I would not remember crying, Mom! Watch out!

  And all that followed then.

  I would not! And nobody would know.

  I would not ask the investigators if anything had been found in the wreckage because I already knew the answer since they had not said anything about finding the body of any creature in the rubble.

  Not a baby deer, not a dog, not a goose. Not a thing.

  13

  “Jenna, I thought you knew? It’s Demerol.”

  “Demerol—what?”

  “To control your pain. It drips into your veins through this tube. It’s an analgesic, a painkiller.”

  I was shocked. I guess I was pretty stupid, to be shocked.

  Not to have known what anybody would know: In the blue was a damn drug high.

  Maria explained that Demerol was one of the “opiate derivatives,” and I was being taken off of it, gradually. As my pain and discomfort lessened, Dr. Currin was cutting back on my prescription, which was why I’d been having trouble sleeping lately.

  “The prescription has to be cut back gradually so that you don’t have a reaction, Jenna. But it can’t continue, because you’d become addicted. That’s the danger with opiate derivatives and why doctors have to be really careful prescribing them.”

  I was still trying to comprehend this. In the blue had been just some neurochemical in my brain? In the blue, where I could fly and float and try to find Mom, where I could explain to Mom that truly I’d seen something on the bridge, truly I’d had a reason to scream and clutch at the steering wheel as (maybe) I had, where Mom and I could be together—in the blue didn’t exist?