by Helen Fisher
His hands shook as he carefully removed my gloves, worried that some of my skin might have burned and stuck to the material. Eventually, Cassie peered round the bathroom door and warily observed the angry, silent nursing that was taking place.
“Everyone’s leaving,” she said, directing her conversation to Eddie, now that I was presumably deemed out of my mind. “Clem’s taking Louis home.”
“Has he got the box?” I said, sounding—even to me—more and more like the madwoman I appeared to be.
Eddie whipped the glove off then, like a Band-Aid—his way of lashing out at my nonsense. Luckily the skin underneath wasn’t too bad, raw in places and tender.
“Yes, he’s got a box with him.” She glanced at me, puzzled, then looked more meaningfully at Eddie, communicating what? That I inhabited a different world to them now because I suddenly existed outside of their realm of understanding.
“There will be a reason for this,” Cassie said to Eddie, putting a hand on his forearm.
I was invisible.
“What reason can there be for almost killing herself for—nothing?” Eddie said.
“I have a reason,” I said, as a by-the-way.
“What is it, then?” He spat out the words, turning fiercely and slopping water over the edge of the sink, piercing me with a stare as full of hatred as if I were a stranger who had almost killed his wife.
And I saw that here was the power of his love for me—the anger rising out of fear of losing me. The measure of love being loss, he had glimpsed that loss and attacked it. And my excuse for hurting me? A cardboard box. When I told him the truth, as I knew I must, I realized that whether he believed me or not, he might at least be comforted by the fact that I didn’t, as he had said, do this for nothing.
“I’m going to tell you everything,” I said, and then my knees gave way and weariness pressed down on me like heavy blankets falling from above.
“Look after her,” Cassie said. “Do you want me to have the children for a couple of days?”
I heard Eddie say yes, and start trying to organize pajamas and overnight things, but Cassie said she had it covered. I surrendered my body to my husband, who carried me to the bedroom, undressed me as he had, on occasion, when I was too drunk to do it myself, and felt my stinging hands being wrapped in soft bandages. I pressed the clean, medicated material to my lips and tried to look my husband in the eyes, but he wouldn’t return my gaze. Eddie held up a glass for me and put some pills in my mouth, painkillers, I guess, and I drifted into a fitful sleep.
At some point I woke and saw Eddie sitting on the edge of the bed, head in hands, crying. I touched his back, but he didn’t move, or stop sobbing, and I sank back into oblivion.
I recall being roused, with water held to my lips, and hearing the murmur of something like a prayer, or maybe simply a word of love or comfort. It was all the same, I realized.
I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when I came to full consciousness. Daylight dappled the room in a calm glow and my muscles hurt from being in the same position for too long. Parched, I took a glass from the bedside table, holding it awkwardly between two bandaged hands, then replaced it carefully; my throat was sore and I wanted some milk, my stomach rumbled like a marble in an empty can, but I couldn’t imagine swallowing actual food. I rolled over, catching my breath suddenly when I saw that Eddie was asleep on one of the girls’ mattresses. He had dragged it through and laid it in front of our bedroom door. To stop me escaping.
My darling husband was frightened of what I could do.
“Eddie,” I croaked, my voice damaged from lack of use, or maybe smoke. He stirred and opened his eyes, looking at me like a hurt animal. “Sorry,” I croaked again, and tried to clear my throat.
* * *
IN SHORTS AND T-shirt, with disheveled hair and puffy eyes, Eddie sat on the edge of the bed, hands in his lap. “I want to know everything,” he said, his voice like the sound of a biplane in the distance on a summer’s day.
“But this is the kind of everything I want,” he continued. “I want the truth, Faye.” His eyes were holding mine, kindness in them, uncertainty, and love. He shook his head sadly. “We always said we wouldn’t lie to each other, and I’ve never broken that promise. But for some reason you have.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he held a finger up.
“Just listen,” he said. “Maybe it’s been easier for me than for you; I’ve never wanted to lie to you, never needed to. So I haven’t. But I don’t deserve a medal for not lying, that’s just the way it should be—you should expect nothing less. You, however, have been lying to me for a long time, and I think I’ve been patient enough. I’ve tried to trust in you, and prayed that your lies are about loving me, and not about deceiving me. But the time has come to tell me what’s going on.” He touched my face. “I want to know how you got all those scratches and bruises when I found you in the attic. I want to know why you went into the fire. I want to know why that bloody box means so much to you. I want to know everything.”
“And I’m going to tell you everything,” I said, my voice hoarse and quiet.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“But it’s going to be hard to hear.”
“How bad can it be?” He smiled weakly, as if he already knew that it would be something terrible.
“You might think I’m crazy,” I said, the salty tingle of tears threatening the backs of my eyes.
“Too late, darling, I’m already there,” he said, kissing my fingers.
“Have you spoken to Louis?” I said.
“Yes. He’s got your box,” Eddie said with a sigh, as though the box were an old boyfriend whose name he was tired of hearing. “He says he’s keeping it safe and it’s not too badly damaged. He also said you had something of his, which you put somewhere safe; he asked if he could have it, but I don’t know where it is.”
He was talking about the box of old money. “In the bottom of the wardrobe, a brown cardboard box.”
“I hope you’re going to explain all of this,” Eddie said.
I nodded. “Can you tell Louis to come and see me tomorrow?”
“Okay,” he said. “And when are we going to talk?”
I moved a lock of brown hair away from his face, and already I felt a huge sense of relief.
I thought about how Eddie’s belief in God was all about faith and trust, a conviction of something that was unseeable, yet for all that, unshakable. I thought about what it was that had made me believe in the fact that I’d traveled in time to see my mother, and how I had only believed in the truth of that experience because of the evidence of my senses: the sights, the sounds, the smells; the taste of toast in the 1970s, the unforgettable feel of skin against skin when my mother held my hand to help me up into a tree. I needed that. But Eddie didn’t. Eddie was no fool, and wouldn’t just believe any old story. But I knew he trusted me and would recognize the sound of truth when he heard it, just as he’d recognized the lies. What he did with the truth, and what he thought of me afterward, I had to leave in his hands. I had faith in him and didn’t want to wait any longer, or make him wait.
“Now,” I said.
Eddie listened. I talked. I started with the photograph and told him about taking the box back to the attic, and everything that had happened that day, the first time I traveled back. I reminded him of my injuries that time and how the truth, no matter how unbelievable, actually made sense of everything. It fitted with him looking up in the loft when the ladder was down and finding it empty, but hearing a crash and discovering me up there later. I told him how much I’d wanted to talk to him, but that I knew he’d think I was insane. I explained how I ended up telling Louis the story, how I thought he’d believed me, but that he only became convinced later on.
I told Eddie that I’d returned to the past a second time, while he was in France, and that I’d stayed longer with my mother on that occasion. I told him about meeting Elizabeth and what had happened with the roller skat
es and my engagement ring. I told him how Louis and I had visited Elizabeth, how she’d lied about my ring being stolen, and that guilt had inspired her to send me an eternity ring.
I explained to Eddie my dilemma about returning to the past, how the missing ring initially made me pause and consider the consequences more seriously, and that I’d been trying to get on with my life like a normal person. I told him about my recent plans, since I’d learned from Henry that my mother hadn’t died, not for certain, but had gone missing, and how it was my fault, because she’d started to think of me as a guardian angel and had gone looking for me.
I told him how I needed to go back one last time, to make amends, tell Jeanie the truth, and that after that I wouldn’t go again. I told him about the old money and the ski suit, and the mattress at Louis’s house. And I told him about how I’d seen the box on the top of the bonfire and had no choice but to rescue it.
And the last thing I said to my husband—in my rasping husk of a voice—the man I trusted more than any other person in the world, was that the Space Hopper box must be kept safe, because it was a lifeline. My mother’s life depended on it, and while he might think I’d already lost my mind, if the box was lost, then I really would be.
And then I slept again.
* * *
WHEN I WOKE, Eddie was sitting on the edge of the bed; we stared at each other, unflinching in our gaze. My mouth was dry, and when my eyes darted to the bedside table, he reached over for the glass and held it for me while I maneuvered myself into a sitting position. I drank deeply and handed the glass back to him. He silently placed it back on the table and we resumed our quiet eye contact.
“How does it feel to have a crazy wife?” I said eventually.
Eddie held my chin gently between his thumb and finger, so I wouldn’t look away, and regarded me with a gravity that felt like the bass note in a song; the kind you can feel vibrating in your heart more than you can hear with your ears.
“It feels wonderful,” he said, leaning forward and kissing me firmly on the forehead.
“Really?” I said, my voice tiny.
“Really,” he said. “You’re no different from the woman you were when I met you, no different from the woman you were yesterday. I loved you then, and I love you now. Only now I can share what you’re going through.”
“But it’s bonkers.”
“Yes, it is a bit bonkers.” He smiled. “But I believe in you, Faye. And whatever this is, it’s crazy, but wonderful. You’re wonderful. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay. We’re just going to take things one step at a time.”
I nodded. “Is the box safe?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. And then slapped his legs as if to signal a change in direction. “So, are you hungry?”
I nodded again, and Eddie got up to make me scrambled eggs. It turned out I’d been drifting in and out of sleep for two days; I bathed, and Eddie redid my bandages. Although my hands hurt, there was no real damage. It felt as though I’d briefly ironed my palms on the cotton setting, and there was some blistering, but not much. I’d been lucky.
Once I’d eaten, I felt revived, and Eddie asked if I felt like seeing Louis, “your partner in crime,” he said, with good humor. Then he drove me to his place, saying it would do me good to get out for a little while, and promised to collect me in an hour. After which we were going to pick up the kids from Cassie’s place.
Louis hugged me when I walked in, and my comrade and I spent a minimal amount of breath on niceties.
“Eddie says the box is safe,” I said, as he led me into the lounge.
“Yeah, apparently he knocked it off the bonfire and it just landed on the grass. Your friends must have thought I was nuts, wanting to take it home with me. It’s got a hole in the side now, and smells a bit charred and is peeling in places; I don’t know how much difference the damage will make.”
“It’ll still work,” I said.
“You haven’t given up on going back, then?” he said.
“If I don’t, then all this drama will have been for nothing, won’t it?” I said.
“Sometimes we need to stop. Sometimes things go too far. You’re lucky to be alive, from what I hear.”
“I’m hardly hurt at all. I just burned my hands a bit, and that’s nothing to do with time travel.”
“It would have been if the box had been on the bonfire when you were coming back from the past,” he said. And I grimaced.
Louis paused, his posture poised for revelation, and I waited.
“I have a little confession,” he said.
“Go on.”
“Well, I tried it myself,” he said.
“Tried what?” I said, sitting more upright. “Did you get in the box?”
“I put the ski suit on and everything.”
“Louis!” I said. I didn’t know how to feel. Proprietorial, was my instant reaction. I wanted to shout My box! I was a bit indignant, but excited too. “What happened?”
“Well, I put on the suit—it was a bit on the tight side—and stood in the box. I waited a bit, because you told me it sometimes takes a while for something to happen.”
“And then?” I said.
“Then, after about ten minutes I got out of the box, feeling like a total dick, and took the suit off and ate a Mars bar. Two, actually.”
“Do you think it still works?” I said.
“Yeah, I think the box is fine. My gut instinct tells me it’s your connection with your mother that makes it work, it’s nothing to do with me. I don’t think the box is a ticket to the seventies for just anyone.”
“I have to go back,” I said. “When my hands are better. Soon, though, I can’t leave it much longer.”
“Do you think Eddie will let you?” Louis said.
“I didn’t talk to him about that, but I told him everything. And it went better than I expected.”
“I know—he came to see me last night, said you’d told him the whole story, and he brought the money with him, the old currency I’d ordered. And took the box.”
“He what?” I said, half standing. “I thought it was here.” Of course it wasn’t. I felt suddenly and dazzlingly deceived as I clocked that Eddie would never have left me here at Louis’s place if the box were here too.
“He said you wanted the box kept safe, and that’s what he said he’d do. He said there was no point in keeping it at my place now that he knew what was going on.”
“Do you think he really believed me?” I said, trying to calm myself and slowly sitting again.
“He’s your husband, what do you think?”
“I thought he did when we were actually together, but now he’s not here… I don’t know.”
“When he came over, he said it was a pretty amazing tale, and I agreed, said it was hard to believe. And he said, ‘But you believe in her, Louis,’ and I told him yeah, because actually nothing had happened to make me think it was anything other than the truth. And that I’d met Elizabeth too.”
“Anything else?”
“He said he believed you were telling the truth.”
“In other words, he doesn’t think I’m lying but he thinks I’m crazy.”
“I don’t know about that, but it’s not going to be easy for him, is it, Faye? All he knows is you almost killed yourself trying to save a fucking cardboard box. Cut the guy some slack.”
We laughed, but mine was a cautious laugh.
“Oh, shit,” I said, my voice grating, realization catching up with me. “Shit.”
“What?” Louis said.
“Eddie’s going to get rid of the box.”
“What? Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? If there were a gun in the house, he’d get rid of that. But it’s the box he thinks will kill me. Oh, Louis, what if it’s too late? Do you think he’s thrown it away already?”
“Well, there’s only two ways to think about this, so stop and calm down. Maybe it is too late, in which case there’s nothing you can do about it
.”
“But my mother,” I wailed, my throat hurting. “I need her, I need to stop her leaving me. If I’d never gone back, she might never have disappeared.”
Louis leaned toward me. “But you did go back, didn’t you?” he chastised me in a fierce, hushed tone. “And you made some lives better. You brought peace to Elizabeth. You brought joy to Henry and Em. Who knows how much peace and joy they in turn spread because of you? You lost something, they gained. You can’t have it all, Faye. You have to let some things go.”
“I can’t!” I wiped the tears from my face with the backs of my hands. “If I go back again,” I said, sifting the logic of the thing once more, “then it’s because I’m meant to go back again, isn’t that the way it works?”
“I’m not sure anymore,” Louis said. “But to be honest, I’m glad Eddie’s got that box, because I think you’re losing the plot. I’d feel bad if I let you get in it.”
* * *
EDDIE PULLED UP outside, and I grabbed my coat in a hurry. He stayed where he was, talking on his phone, and I wondered what he’d think when he saw that my eyes were red. Maybe he wouldn’t notice—but then again, the eyes are the windows to the soul, so maybe it would be the only thing my husband would notice, seeing as he was so interested in souls.
He leaned over to open the passenger door from the inside, and his voice carried up the pathway as I approached. I could tell he was talking to a woman. For the first time in my life I felt a pang of hatred toward him, small and sharp like a stinging nettle. He was too good-looking to be a vicar; women with problems, women with dead husbands, bakers of excellent cakes would throw themselves at him. My husband: Destroyer of Boxes.
When I settled into the car, arms folded, he finished the call and looked at me. I turned away.