by Julia Hoban
David doesn’t reply to this, but she does have the satisfaction of seeing him flinch.
He leans back in his chair and regards Willow thoughtfully. He looks confused, and maybe even slightly angry. One thing is for sure, though—her antics are finally starting to get to him.
“I got California rolls for us,” Cathy says, coming back into the kitchen. “And tempura for you, Willow. Is that okay?” Neither David nor Willow answers her.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she mutters, opening the food and placing it on the table.
Except for the sounds that Isabelle makes as she fusses in her high chair, there is total silence.
“So how was work today?” Cathy asks David. Clearly, she senses the tension around the table, and is hoping to dispel it with small talk.
“It was fine,” David replies after a moment. He looks away from Willow. “Nothing really special.”
Willow wonders if she should mention the incident with Stephen. Would Cathy be surprised that David didn’t say anything to him about their parents dying? Would that finally bring things to a crisis?
“Wasn’t seeing your old friend—”
“I thought that we could—”
Willow and Cathy speak at the same time.
“Sorry,” Willow says after a second. “You go first.”
“I was just going to say that I had a really hard day at work, and I’d really love to do something tonight.” Cathy sounds a little on edge.
Willow gives Cathy a sideways glance. She does look like she’s had a hard day, there are circles under her eyes, and her hair is somewhat disheveled. Not so surprising, she has a job working in a law firm and a six-month-old. She looks like she needs a break, maybe a movie or something. Willow knows that she should offer to babysit.
Odd that they’ve never asked her to before.
In fact, it’s extremelyodd that a young couple with a six-month-old wouldn’t ask the seventeen-year-oldto babysit at least once in a while. Wouldn’t having a live-in babysitter make more of a material difference to their lives than the few measly dollars she gives them each week?
Although, now that she thinks about it, hasn’t Cathy suggested that she take care of Isabelle a few times? But somehow, they’ve always coordinated their outings with other couples who have infants, either bringing Isabelle along with them, or leaving her with the other couple’s babysitter.
But that’s okay, Willow doesn’t care that she’s never taken care of her niece before—in fact, she’s glad, because now she has the ammunition she needs.
“You do look kind of stressed, Cathy,” Willow says. “You should take a break, why don’t you guys go out to the movies or something?” She looks over her deep-fried shrimp at David, all big eyes and innocence.
“I’d loveto go to a movie.” Cathy brightens up. “Wouldn’t that be great?” She smiles at David.
“Well, I guess so. . . .” He trails off uncertainly.
“What time would work for you?” Cathy asks as she reaches behind her for the paper. “I think there’s a show in about half an hour.”
“Tonight?” David puts down his fork and looks at Cathy as if she were crazy. “We can’t go to a movie tonight.” He makes the idea sound ludicrous, as if Cathy had suggested going skydiving or something equally outrageous.
“Why not tonight,” Cathy answers distractedly as she leafs through the paper. “Too much work?”
“Why not tonight?” Willow echoes her.
Willow knows goddamn well why David won’t go out of the house, but she wants to hear him say it. She’ll makehim say it if it’s the last thing she does.
“No, not too much work.” He shrugs. “I just don’t feel like it.”
“Why not?” Willow asks again.
“I’m really not in the mood for the movies,” David says, but he’s never been a good liar and his voice sounds hollow.
“Why not?” Cathy sounds annoyed. “It would be so great to do something spur of the moment.”
“Why not?” Willow spits out the words. Her chair makes a hideous scraping sound as she pushes it back and stands up.
“What’s gotten into you?” David looks at her in confusion. “Why do you want us out of the house so badly?”
“Willow,” Cathy says, “maybe you should—”
“Why don’t you tell Cathy why you’re so desperate to stay in,” Willow cuts Cathy off with a savage gesture.
“I’m not so desperate to stay in. . . .”
“Fine.” Willow’s hands are shaking. She places them on the back of the chair to steady them. “I’ll tell her.” She turns to look at her sister-in-law. “You see, Cathy, David is afraid to let me be alone with Isabelle. He’s too scared. I guess he thinks that I want to finish off the rest of the family. Mom and Dad weren’t enough.”
For a second there is total silence. Even Isabelle stops fussing in her high chair. Willow can’t believe that she had the guts to say it, but judging from David’s ashen face, she’s finally hit a nerve.
“Willow!” Cathy exclaims in horror. “How could you possibly think something like that?!” She looks back and forth between the two of them. It’s clear that she expects David to make some kind of denial, but he isn’t saying anything.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Willow says. She stares at David, but he’s focused on his plate and refuses to meet her eyes.
“Well?” she persists. “Why don’t you just say it? Why don’t you just tell Cathy that you—”
“It was a hideous accident,” David interrupts her, his face even whiter than a few moments ago. It’s clear that he’s having a hard time controlling his voice.
“Really? Then why are you afraid to leave me alone with—”
“It was a hideous accident,”he repeats. “But staying with a six-month-old . . . Well, you have to be on top of things, it’s—”
“Oh, c’mon David,” Willow interrupts him. “You’ve got to do better than that! It’s not like I haven’t babysat for years. Admit it. You’re scared to leave her alone with me. You’re scared because you think I’m a—”
“I think that you’re still raw,” David cuts her off. “You have a lot going on right now, it’s unfair to expect you to . . . ”
“Stop it!” Willow is breathing heavily. “Just stop it!” She can’t bear to hear him lie like this. “Tell the truth! Just say it already! Admit that you blame me for killing them! Admit that you hate me now!”
Willow claps a hand over her mouth. She’s close, dangerously close to completely falling apart. If anything could make her feel the absolute horror, the pain of her situation, it’s this—knowing for sure that she’s lost her brother’s love. If she weren’t grasping the chair so tightly, she’d collapse on the ground in a flood of tears, and that is something that she simply cannot allow to happen. She’s not equipped to process that kind of grief.
She shuts her eyes tightly, desperate for some kind of control. She pushes herself away from the chair, which falls to the floor with a loud crash, and heads for the stairs.
Willow knows that David and Cathy are calling after her, but she doesn’t listen. She’s too intent on reaching her sanctuary. She gets to her room and shuts the door behind her, grateful for the lock that a previous owner had put there.
She can still hear them shouting her name as she sinks down to the floor, covering her ears with her hands. Anything to shut out the noise. Because the noise is threatening to overwhelm her. Not just Cathy’s and David’s voices, but the squeal of the brakes. The crack of her mother’s head hitting the dashboard. The silvery sound of the windshield breaking into a thousand pieces.
Willow can’t take it anymore. She has to make it stop, she has to block the tidal wave of feelings that are starting to engulf her. Unfortunately she’s left her bag downstairs, but thankfully her room has everything she needs. She crawls across the floor toward the bed and fumbles under the mattress for her equipment, knocking the phone off the bedside table as she does so.
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br /> Some part of her registers the sound of the dial tone piercing the air. But it’s not enough, nowhere near enough to drown out the sounds that are filling her head. She grabs the razor convulsively, ready to do what she has to.
Willow pauses for the briefest instant. She doesn’t know what she’s thinking, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but suddenly she’s dialing the phone, punching in the numbers that she’s already committed to memory.
“Hello?” His voice sounds like it’s coming from incredibly far away.
“Hello?” Guy repeats.
Willow can’t speak. She leans against the bed and unbuttons her shirt with trembling fingers. She looks down at her stomach, searching to find a likely place, and makes the first cut, waiting for the moment when the pain of the razor erases everything else. It’s not happening as fast as it usually does, and her breath comes in little gasps as the razor sinks deeper and deeper into her flesh.
“Willow?” Guy asks. His voice is louder.
Willow closes her eyes, trying to let the sound reach her. It’s a struggle. She can’t stop hearing the windshield splintering, and it’s getting worse. Now the pictures are starting. She sees her father’s face crushed beyond recognition, a bloody pulp. She sees her mother, intact, but with her eyes glazed over. She sinks the blade deeper, as if her blood could wash away theirs.
“Willow?” Guy repeats.
Willow doesn’t talk, she’s breathing shallowly. She watches as the blood springs from the cut she’s making, but it doesn’t change anything. Not this time. She swipes again, deeper. Now she feels pain, but will it be enough?
“Willow,” Guy says a third time. Only this time it’s not a question. This time it’s clear that he’s just making his presence known.
Willow tries to focus on his voice, on the lifeline he’s throwing her. The pictures aren’t fading, but as she listens to Guy’s breathing, the sounds of the accident grow dim.
She stops cutting. The razor dangles uselessly from her hand; it has finally done its work. Willow watches the blood trickle over her skin through half-closed eyes.
Her breath deepens, becomes more regular, in concert with Guy’s. The sound of their breathing in tandem is shockingly intimate, and soon, the only noise that filters through Willow’s pain is the gentle swoosh of their shared inhalations as she drifts off to sleep grasping the phone as if it were a living being, as if it were her lover.
CHAPTER TEN
The first thing that Willow thinks when she wakes up is that the light fixture isn’t where it’s supposed to be. It takes her a second before she realizes that it is she herself who is in the wrong place. Instead of being in bed, she’s lying on the floor, still dressed in all her clothes, grasping a dead phone. She hasn’t felt this dazed, this bewildered since she woke up in the hospital after the accident.
But that momentary disorientation over the light is the only confusion that she feels. Everything else is crystal clear. She knows why she’s on the floor, she knows why she’s still in her clothes, she knows why those clothes are sticking to her, and she knows why there’s the faint metallic smell of blood in the air.
Willow remembers everything from the night before. The look on her brother’s face, the look on Cathy’s face . . .
And Guy’s voice on the other end of the phone, the sound of his breathing as she cut.
She rolls over onto her stomach, dropping the receiver and wincing as the hard floor makes contact with her fresh cuts. She rests her chin on her hands and thinks about the fact that she called him. It never occurred to her, when she took his number, that she would actually phone him, but then again she never expected to sit in the park with him, or buy him a book, or do any of the things that they’ve done together.
But none of that means that Willow feels good about actually having called him. Shame washes over her as she remembers the inarticulate noises that she makes when she hacks at herself. Why didshe decide to make him privy to that? Why did she give him a day pass into her world of pain? He deserves much better.
Willow knows that Guy was the one who told her to call in the first place, but she has to believe that he couldn’t have known what he was letting himself in for. Maybe Guy knew that she was a cutter, but knowing and witnessing—even through the filter of a phone line—are two vastly different things.
She wonders how he’ll act when she runs into him at school. Will he bring up the phone call? More to the point, how will sheact? Of course, it’s possible that she won’t even see him at school.
In any case, she has more pressing things to think about. Forget Guy’sreaction. How is she going to face David and Cathy?
Willow glances at the clock. She’s overslept, so there’s a chance that they’ve already left. On any other day either Cathy or David would have made sure to wake her up, but surely they must be as anxious to avoid her as she is them.
She hauls herself to her feet, not an easy task given how worn and tired she feels, hangs up the phone, then tiptoes to the door. She unlocks it as quietly as possible and sticks her head out.
Silence greets her.
They must have left already. Good. She has a little breathing space. Maybe, with enough time, she’ll be able to figure out what to say when she sees them. Should she apologize for the night before? Maybe David will be the one to apologize. Maybe she should just act like it never happened.
Yeah! That’ll be easy!
Willow shuts the door quietly, even though she knows there’s no one to hear, and heads toward the bathroom. It’s time to get on with the day. She stops for a second to pull some clean clothes out of her dresser.
The first thing that comes to hand is a short-sleeved T-shirt—not at all the kind of thing she can wear these days, given how much it reveals of her arms. Willow pauses in the act of stuffing it back into the drawer.
Of course, if she doesn’t go to school, she can wear anything she wants. . . .
Maybe she should stay home, actually open her French book, or see if she can finally get some work done on the Bulfinch,like finish the reading or get started on the paper. Wouldn’t that make more sense than going to school, where she’ll only sleepwalk through her classes, still dazed from the events of the night before? Not only that, but if she does skip school, that would solve the problem, at least for today, of how to act when she sees Guy.
Fine, one problem solved. Too bad she just can’t skip the rest of her life. She slings the clothes over her shoulder, walks into the bathroom, and turns on the shower.
She leans against the wet tiles as the water cascades over her and watches in sick fascination as the dried, scabbed blood swirls down the drain. Unlike the act of cutting, which never fails to soothe her, this sight offers no comfort. In fact, it makes her more than slightly ill. Willow knows that there’s a terrible disconnect between what she does and what she feels when she sees the fruits of her labor, but it is not so easy to be rational when the urge to cut is upon her.
Willow turns off the shower with a sigh, gets dressed, and walks down the stairs into the kitchen.
There’s not much to eat, beyond a half-empty bag of pretzels and a few jars of baby food. Cathy never has time to shop, that’s part of why they order in so much. Maybe she should go shopping later, that could be like a peace offering, of sorts.
Right. As if that’ll make everything better!
Willow takes a handful of stale pretzels and wanders over to the table. There, propped up against the sugar bowl, is a note with her name on it in Cathy’s handwriting.
She stares at it for a moment, too frightened to open it up. But really, there’s nothing Cathy could say that could possibly make things any worse. Willow wonders if the letter is a reprimand, or an attempt to smooth things over.
Only one way to find out.
She grabs the paper before she can change her mind.
Dear Willow,
I decided to let you sleep in today....
You must know how much David and I both love you.
Don’t ever think that he blames you for what happened or that he doesn’t trust you! Nothing could be further from the truth.
David said that he thought you were so overwrought because you’ve had some trouble in school. You mustn’t worry about that! You have plenty of time to bring up your grades. In any case, we both think you’re doing incredibly well in the given circumstances. Take the day off if you want. Maybe you should go to the park and do some watercolors.
Try and feel better.
Love, Cathy
Willow folds the note carefully and puts it into her pocket. She knows that she should be relieved, and she’s touched by Cathy’s concern, but still, in many ways the letter only depresses her. Cathy’s assurances prove that she just doesn’t get what’s going on. In a way, her protestations of love are no different from David’s unwillingness to discuss what’s happened. In both cases, there is simply a huge failure to connect.
She’s turning away from the window, about to go back upstairs and get to work, when something outside catches her attention. There’s always a lot to look at—young mothers with strollers, harried-looking businessmen rushing to work, joggers in colorful outfits, but this morning there’s something more. Because this morning, Guy is part of the commotion taking place on the other side of the street.
At first Willow is sure that she’s imagining things. But no, he’s really there, standing just outside the park, watching her building. The obvious, the only explanation she can think of is that he’s waiting for her.
So much for skipping school. . . .
Willow isn’t sure what her move should be. She could always stay in the apartment and avoid him that way, but who’s to say he won’t cross the street and ring the bell?
And besides, she’s not really sure that she wants to avoid him.
Yes I do. . . . I mean . . . Well, don’t I?
Willow is ashamed that she called him, no doubt about that, and ashamed that he’s heard her in the throes of an . . . episode. Still, along with the shame is another feeling. She’s connected to him—maybe by a thread of blood, maybe by the bond of the razor, or maybe by something else again—but whatever has caused it, it’s something that she cannot deny.
