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

by Joyce Carol Oates

  When I check, the codeine tablets are down to just two.

  For pain. One tablet at bedtime.

  When I first checked into the rehab clinic, I was taking four or five tablets a day. Even so I had a lot of pain. Gradually the dosage has been cut back, and this is the last refill and I’m trying not to be scared about it.

  The doctor at Tarrytown Rehab said codeine is a powerful drug, and when my prescription runs out, that’s it. If I have pain, I can take aspirin. It will be a little tough at first, Jenna, but you’ll get used to it, she said, smiling at me so I began to tremble, guessing what would be in store.

  6

  Guessing what will be in store just stepping into the high school building and it isn’t the first day of classes, only just my appointment with the principal, and already I’m shaking, the palms of my hands are sweaty. Aunt Caroline has linked her arm through mine as if she senses how I’m wanting to run away. “…should have had some breakfast, Jenna. As an athlete you must know…”

  We’re early for our eleven-A.M. appointment with Mr. Goddard. Staring into glass display cases in the lobby. Brass trophies, plaques. Photos of sports teams. It’s weird how happy people are in photos, mostly always.

  Inside, Yarrow High is just a building. Nothing quaint or New England about it. The floor is worn-looking dark tile, and the walls are pale grimy green. The ceiling is lower than you’d expect. The way rows of lockers stretch almost out of sight makes the corners of my eyes pinch.

  In Mr. Goddard’s waiting room Aunt Caroline glances at me with an anxious smile. All morning I’ve been quiet. The night before at dinner I wasn’t exactly loquacious. It isn’t that I’m not wanting to talk to Aunt Caroline, but I can’t think of anything that’s worth the effort of saying. I’m wearing clean-laundered chinos and a long-sleeved white cotton shirt and the white sailor cap pulled down on my head, the rim partially hiding my eyes. “Maybe, Jenna, you might remove your hat when…”

  I don’t, though. I’m wearing the hat. Mom had one exactly like it, we bought them at a summer place in the Berkshires.

  Mr. Goddard is a fattish middle-aged man with a welcoming TV voice. But his eyes are steely, staring at me like he’s been warned This is the freaky girl who killed her mother.

  “Well, Jennifer Abbott! Welcome to…”

  My aunt and Mr. Goddard do most of the talking. Yarrow Lake is such a small community, naturally they have friends in common. My aunt seems to like Mr. Goddard, and Mr. Goddard seems to like my aunt: He’s registering that Dwight McCarty is an architect, and Plymouth Street is a good address.

  “…transcripts appear to be in order. Tarrytown Day is an excellent school, I’ve been told. And your record is…”

  Aunt Caroline asks about advanced placement classes, and Mr. Goddard tells her these have been cut back except for seniors, the Yarrow Lake School District has had to trim its budget. Aunt Caroline seems mildly disappointed yet sympathetic.

  “…not a large school, fewer than three hundred fifty students but plenty of talent, brimming with school spirit. Did you happen to see our production of Romeo and Juliet last spring, Mrs. McCarty? A columnist for the Yarrow Lake Journal compared it to a ‘thoroughly professional production.’…”

  Aunt Caroline didn’t see the production but heard “wonderful things” about it.

  The adults are looking at me. I think I must have been asked a question. The palms of my hands are sweaty. For a scary moment I can’t think where I am or why. Why has Aunt Caroline brought me here? Mom must be outside in the car if Aunt Caroline is here.

  After tonight, if I can hold off until tonight, there will be just one codeine tablet left.

  “…any questions, Jennifer?”

  Any questions! My head is buzzing.

  When you wear a grimy white sailor hat with the rim pulled low, there’s lots you are spared seeing.

  “Thank you, Mr. Goddard. I don’t think so.”

  Somehow, I manage to get the words out. My voice sounds gravelly, as if it hasn’t been used in a while. Aunt Caroline glances sidelong at me in relief.

  Is the visit ending? The adults are shaking hands. Already I’m out of the office. It occurs to me only now that of course my aunt spoke with Mr. Goddard before this meeting, told him about my mother, my “trauma,” my “split” family. How I was coming to live in Yarrow Lake because there was nowhere else for me.

  Outside, I’m too restless to get into Aunt Caroline’s car. Some fragment of my dream of last night returns to me, a memory of running, the way I used to run. A memory of being happy.

  I want that time again! I don’t want this time.

  Aunt Caroline joins me at the car, smiling happily. What a nice man Mr. Goddard is. How lucky we are that the school district is allowing me to transfer at such a late date.

  “Why don’t we celebrate, Jenna? Day-before-school outing? I have some errands to do in town, then I can pick up Becky and Mikey, and we can all have lunch at the Lakeside Inn.” Aunt Caroline’s voice falters just a little, the Lakeside Inn was a favorite of Mom’s.

  Quickly I tell my aunt that I guess I want to walk for a while.

  I don’t need a ride back to the house, I tell her. I’m feeling that I want to walk.

  Need to get away from you. Need to breathe!

  Aunt Caroline is trying not to look hurt. Saying maybe she could join me. There’s a lovely wood-chip trail that follows the creek, she could show me. “I need exercise too! Last year I was running fairly regularly, but this year…Why don’t you come back to the house, Jenna, and I’ll change my clothes? I’ve bought new running shoes.”

  This is so pathetic. Aunt Caroline practically pleading with me. And I know if I say yes, it will turn out that Becky and Mikey come with us, they’re not going to stay home with the nanny while Mommy and Jenna go running in the park.

  “Aunt Caroline, I’d like to be alone for a while.”

  I don’t say “I’m sorry.” I don’t say “thanks.”

  My sailor hat rim is pulled over my eyes, I can’t see my aunt’s face. Already I’m walking away, trying not to favor my right knee.

  I can feel Aunt Caroline looking after me. Hoping she won’t call my name, and she doesn’t.

  7

  “Hey.”

  I look up, and there’s this guy.

  This guy I’ve never seen before, in jeans and a black T-shirt, ropy-muscled arms, black stubble on his jaws and throat, staring at me.

  “You hurt?”

  I’m swiping at my eyes. Afraid to say anything, I might break into tears.

  “…need some help getting up? Or…”

  No! Don’t need help getting up; really I’m okay.

  Kind of twisted my ankle when my knee gave out. He must’ve seen me wobble and fall. Must’ve seen I’m alone on the wood-chip trail, nobody else running up behind me.

  This lonely place! Except there are voices somewhere close by, laughter, boom-box music.

  For a while I was running okay, sort of slow running like you see some women and older men, panting and puffing and swinging their arms bent awkwardly at their elbows, “jogging” at about a half mile per hour. That’s how I was “running” on the wood-chip trail beside Sable Creek when suddenly my right knee felt like the bones were splintering, both my knees gave out, and I crashed down like a bag of wet laundry and my right ankle kind of twisted and I fell hard. I’m just kind of lying here now, panting and biting my lip to keep from crying, listening to my heart beating rapid and panicked, and angry, feeling some kind of disgusting trickle out of my nostrils I’m hoping isn’t blood.

  “Thanks. I’m okay.” My voice sounds like a choked little-doll voice when the battery’s running down.

  “Yeah? You sure?”

  Is he laughing at me? This guy from out of nowhere. He seems about eighteen. Standing maybe ten feet away, fingers hooked in his frayed leather belt. Unshaven black stubble like quills covering his jaws, he looks kind of scary. A few minutes ago I passed some youn
g guys in the park, some girls with them, loud voices, laughter, like they were drinking beer at midday. Heavy metal rock out of a boom box. Motorcycles parked nearby. This guy is with them? A biker? His black T-shirt is too faded to make out the name of the band (I guess it’s a band) on the front, but I see what looks like a tattoo on one of his forearms. I’m scared of a guy appearing out of nowhere.

  I’ve pushed myself up partway, on my knees now. Moving with caution so I don’t wince visibly with pain. I tell myself this is after the wreck, what’s a sprained ankle? A throbbing knee? I survived broken bones, a brain concussion, I should be used to pain.

  “Now what?”

  The unshaven guy is watching me with a skeptical look. Like he doesn’t know whether to be sorry for me or laugh at me.

  “What do you mean—‘now what’?”

  “Like, what’re you going to do now? You think you can walk?”

  “Walk,” he says, like it’s the punch line of a joke. When it looks like I have all I can do to stand up, cautiously.

  I don’t have to answer this smart-ass remark. I’m managing to walk, slowly. Trying not to limp or whimper in pain.

  “Looks like you sprained that ankle. Maybe you need a ride home.”

  No! I don’t need a ride home.

  Limping along, away from this guy who’s scrutinizing me too closely. My heart is beating against my ribs. I don’t know if I’m embarrassed, or excited, or angry, or scared. In Tarrytown, which is in close proximity to New York City, if a guy appeared out of nowhere on a trail like this, and a girl was alone, she’d have reason to be scared. Only last year an eighteen-year-old girl jogger was dragged into a wooded area, raped and strangled and left to die in Morningside Heights, near the Hudson River, and whoever did it hasn’t been found.

  About twenty feet behind me the unshaven guy is trailing after me, whistling through his teeth. I’m supposed to think he was headed in this direction anyway? Or he’s following me out of kindness, to see that I really am okay? By this time my face is pounding with heat as in the worst, the very worst and most mortifying half-mile race I ever ran, in ninth grade in my first semester at Tarrytown Day, coming in sixth, which was last, before a crowd of hyperventilating parents, one of whom was my mother. Worse yet, there’s a trickle out of my nose (damn, it is blood), I’m fumbling for a tissue out of a pocket in my chinos. Can’t let this guy see my nose bleeding! Can’t let him see how ugly I am, how ridiculous. I can feel how I’ve sweated through the back of my long-sleeved white cotton shirt and beneath the arms. Hoping I don’t smell of my body.

  It’s almost one thirty P.M. I left Aunt Caroline in the high school parking lot at about eleven thirty A.M. I’m worn out and hungry. Whatever gesture I wanted to make, of independence, self-sufficiency, it’s past making now, I just want to go home and soak in a hot bath.

  I didn’t need my aunt to point out the wood-chip trail beside Sable Creek, a deep, brackish stream that cuts through the town of Yarrow Lake, runs into a state park, and empties into Yarrow Lake about three miles from town. If you’re in reasonably good condition, running four miles to the lake and four miles back to my aunt’s house wouldn’t be much of a big deal, but I guess I’m not in the condition I should be. It’s typical of a runner to be in denial that she’s been incapacitated, willing herself to believe that in another few minutes, if she keeps trying, the hurt will go away.

  Jenna, don’t overexert! Take it slow, one day at a time.

  This is Devon’s warning voice. At the time I rolled my eyes.

  “Oh.”

  A hurt-little-mouse cry comes out of me. Sharp pains in both my ankle and my knee. I have to stop still, really sweating now.

  Of course the guy on my trail hears this. He’s like a hunter with sharp eyes, ears. He trots past me, giving me a wide-enough berth so I won’t be skittish, the way you’d behave with a nervous cat. Then he stops, regarding me with bemused eyes.

  Sloe-eyed. Beautiful dark, lustrous eyes on a guy, with dark lashes as thick as a girl’s.

  He has a kind of hawk face, long and bony cheeked. His eyebrows are so thick, they nearly meet over the bridge of his nose. And his nose is long and narrow, with deep nostrils. Something glitters around his neck: a gold chain. His hair is jet black, and coarse, shaved at the sides and back of his head but longer and sticking up in tufts at the crown. I’m feeling kind of faint, how he’s watching me. How alone I am, in my life.

  Like he can read my thoughts, he says, “Trying to run on a hurt ankle—that’s kind of hopeless, eh?”

  I’m gritting my teeth. Is he laughing at me? I pull the rim of my cap down so I don’t have to see this stranger’s face.

  “Don’t want a ride anywhere? You’re sure?”

  No! I mean yes, I’m sure.

  “Is there somebody with you in the park? Want me to look for them, so they can come help you?”

  Why doesn’t he go away and leave me alone? I am so totally embarrassed.

  I’m resting most of my weight on my left leg. I feel like a flamingo! My right ankle and knee are pounding with pain. The headache I used to get deep inside my head at the hospital is starting, like a flickering light.

  Wish I’d never come out here. Wish I’d gone with my aunt, as she wanted me to. Why can’t I be nice to her, and to my uncle? This is my punishment now, what I deserve.

  If this stranger has a cell phone, I could ask to use it; I could call my aunt and tell her what has happened—she’d drive out to get me. At the same time I’m thinking, No! I can’t trust him. He would know that I was alone in this deserted place.

  The next thing he says makes me shiver: “I got a cell phone back with my gear. Want to use it?”

  Suddenly I’m cold, in spite of being sweaty. My face must be smudged with blood and dirt. I’m still breathing hard, trying not to cry.

  He repeats what he said about the cell phone. I’m so confused I can’t think how to reply. There’s a faint roaring in my ears like a waterfall. I’m thinking how the night before, climbing into the prissy canopy bed, in that room decorated like Martha Stewart where I’ll never feel comfortable, I was feeling sorry for myself, hating where I was, and now, in this forlorn place, exhausted, hurting, sick with dread, if I could return safely to that room, I would be so grateful.

  “You know what you look like? Like somebody who’s been in a car crash.”

  My eyes widen at this, I’m so shocked.

  He’s laughing, running a hand through his spiky hair. “How’d I know? ’Cause I been in crashes myself. You could say I’m accident-prone. Except the worst one was just last year, on my damn motorcycle, not even speeding, but the front wheel hit gravel and skidded, next thing I knew I was on the ground. Lucky I was wearing my helmet, which I didn’t always do. My brains would’ve been spewed out on the highway.”

  The way he’s talking to me, like he’s confiding in me, inviting me to laugh at him, makes me want to trust him. But maybe it’s a trick. I smile, just a little. A scared-girl smile meant to evoke sympathy.

  “It’s the way you move, see. I was watching you. I mean, I wasn’t actually watching you, you caught my attention when you fell down. See, you walk like me, like walking on thin ice. After a bad crash you hold yourself tight and stiff like somebody scared as hell of falling through the ice, scared of feeling pain.” He demonstrates, hunching his shoulders like an elderly man and walking with an exaggerated stiff gait. This makes me laugh, though I guess it isn’t funny.

  “Okay. I got the solution.”

  It’s like in an instant the guy has lost interest in me. He’s watching a vehicle driving a short distance away where there must be a park road, except it isn’t visible from where we’re standing. He trots off without a backward glance. I’m left to look after him. Thinking it would serve me right if he abandoned me here.

  But what he does is flags the car to a stop, speaks with the driver, explains my situation, asks if she has a cell phone. It turns out that the driver is an athletic-looking woman
with two young children, the take-charge type who’s happy to hike over to where I’m standing, shivery and forlorn, on the creek embankment, dabbing at my nose with a bloody tissue.

  “That boy said you needed to call someone at home? Here’s how my cell works.”

  Lucky I’ve memorized Aunt Caroline’s number. And lucky that Aunt Caroline is back from her errands. Picking up the phone so quickly, her voice so hopeful—“Yes? Hello?”—it’s like she has been waiting for this call, and for me.

  So grateful I could cry.

  8

  See, you walk like me. Like walking on thin ice.

  Wish I’d been nicer to him. Wish I’d asked his name. Wish I’d thanked him for his kindness. Wish…

  9

  “Jennifer—that’s a pretty name. People call you—Jen? Jenny?”

  “…my mom is a good friend of Mrs. McCarty—I guess she’s your aunt? Mom was saying…”

  “…Tarrytown, you said? What’s it, like, a suburb of…”

  “…get into Manhattan a lot? Is that what people do, like, can you take a bus, or…”

  “…living here all the time now? Or…”

  “…friendly here. Really nice kids, mostly. Our teachers are great, too.”

  “Except…”

  “…there’s some people…”

  “…bikers, druggies. But…”

  “…my dad knows Mr. McCarty real well; they were in the same class here…”

  “…someone said track? We could use…”

  “…girls’ sports are cool here. Mostly.”

  “…Mr. Farrell, he’s weird at first. Don’t let him scare you.”

  “…Mrs. Terricotte, she’s great. But…”

  “…so you’re living here, like, permanently?”

  “…Ms. Bowen, she’s our track coach, she’s really cool…”

  “…algebra, it can be fun, sort of…”

  “…living with your aunt? And Mr. McCarty is, like, your…”