by Helen Fisher
“Okay?” he said.
“What did you do with my box?” I said. I couldn’t look at him while he confessed.
He hesitated. Of course he did. “It’s in the attic, at home. Is that okay?”
My head snapped to look at him, which hurt like hell, but I didn’t care. “Is it really?” I said, unbelieving.
“Yes. I thought it was the safest place for it. I know Louis would look after it, but I guess I just thought it should be at our house.”
My eyelids closed against eyes brimful of tears, pushing them over the edge.
“What’s wrong?” Eddie said.
“When Louis said you’d taken the box, I thought you might have got rid of it.” My voice was as shaky as a ramshackle bridge, and as likely to break.
Eddie held my hand and smoothed my hair. “Yesterday you told me everything. Don’t you think I understand how important that box is to you?”
“But it’s so dangerous, and I really hurt myself trying to get it out of the fire—I thought maybe you’d decided to put a stop to it once and for all.” I sniffed wetly and he handed me a tissue. I struggled to unfold it, with my hands bandaged so snugly.
“I’m sorry,” I said, holding them up in exasperation. “Look what I’ve put you through.”
“You’ve been through a lot yourself, and all of it without me. I only wish you’d told me sooner, so I could have been there for you.”
“I thought you would laugh,” I said. But that wasn’t true, I never thought Eddie would laugh. I thought he would think I was crazy. I thought he would think differently of me, less of me. I wouldn’t be the woman he loved. “I thought you would laugh,” I said again, “and try to convince me it wasn’t true.”
“You didn’t laugh when I told you that God tapped me on the shoulder and spoke to me in church. You didn’t try to convince me that it wasn’t true.”
“Isn’t that a bit different?” I said. “Less extreme. Isn’t it a bit less weird?”
“But you don’t believe in God the way I do. In fact, you’ve said quite simply that you don’t believe.”
I nodded. “I’m trying.”
“But that’s not the point, is it? The point is, I believe that God touched me, physically, and spoke to me, with a voice. It was gentle, it wasn’t a roller-coaster ride through space with an unforgiving landing three decades into the past, but it was real. To me. And that’s whether or not you happen to believe it.”
“So… you believe me.”
“I believe you in the same way that you believe in me,” he said, a little cryptically.
“Does that mean you think I’ve lost my mind?”
Eddie laughed and it was a beautiful sound. “Only if you think I’ve lost mine.” He smiled. “Do you—think I’ve lost my mind?”
I shook my head, and there were no tears now. I looked at Eddie and opened my eyes a little wider, to invite him to see into my soul.
“God,” he said in a whisper, “spoke to me!” He shook his head gently. “Don’t you see that my story is as incredible as yours, maybe more so? I’m talking about God, and you’re talking about your mother.”
“So why does my story feel so incredible compared to yours?”
“I don’t know, maybe because it’s more dramatic: boxes, attics, fortune-telling, stolen rings, saving yourself as a child, getting to know your mother whom you haven’t seen since you were a child. Everyone wants to know about that. But certainly, not everyone wants to know about my ‘calling,’ and yet for me, it has been an extraordinary journey.”
“Why are you so good?” I asked, and he shook his head modestly. “No, really, why?”
“When I listen to other people and I find myself starting to judge, I ask myself, Who am I? I’ve heard a widow tell me how her husband stands by her fireplace smiling at her, and she was insistent that she’d actually seen him. It’s not an isolated phenomenon—quite a few people have said things like that. And they all assume that I can’t possibly believe them. But who am I, Faye, to say it’s not true?”
“So, you believe me?”
“Who am I not to?”
“And you think we have something in common in that your thing with God and my thing with my mother are the same thing?” I said.
“ ‘Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children,’ ” he quoted.
“And grown women as well?”
“Probably,” he said.
“So the box is safe?”
“For now,” he said, putting the car into gear and releasing the hand brake.
“Stay where you are, vicar,” I said, putting my hand over his. “What do you mean, it’s safe ‘for now’?”
He switched off the engine and it shuddered into silence, then he turned in his seat and looked at me.
“Listen to me, my darling. I love you more than anyone else in the world, along with the girls, oh, and God.” He kissed me so softly on the lips that it was like a breath of air.
“Anyone else?” I smiled.
“And I believe in you. I believe your box is a bridge to your mother, a way back to her. And it’s not my job to remove that bridge to the past. There are some things we need in order to help us process and keep the past with us: mementos, photographs, postcards, letters. Some links to the past are good, we hold on to them. And some links are not so good: they’re the ones that hold on to us. Sometimes we really do need to let go of the past. I know it’s a cliché, but how else can I put it?”
Eddie’s handsome face came close and he rested the tip of his nose on the tip of mine. I breathed in the woody scent of his freshly shaved cheek.
“We can’t let go of someone else’s past for them,” he said. “We can’t sever the tie for somebody else. If we did, then somehow the knot of that connection would only become tighter. If I got rid of your link to your mother, you would never get over her, never come to terms with your loss.”
I put my hand to his face and closed my eyes.
“It’s not my job to get rid of the box,” he said. “It’s yours.”
About two months later, early January, we decided that Tuesday afternoon would be a quiet time to go to the coast. Eddie had organized for the girls to be collected from school by Cassie, and they were going to stay overnight with her family. We’d probably be back in time to put them to bed ourselves, but neither of us wanted to clock-watch, not today. And it was going to be emotional. We needed to be alone, together.
I dressed nicely, made an effort as you might for a funeral, but not in black. I wore an electric-blue silk scarf around my neck that day. Eddie wore his best jeans and a gray shirt, with a black sweater over the top. We looked like people who dress nicely for the airport, which we’re not, as a rule.
Looking at the map recently we had searched out a secluded cove, where hardly anyone goes so we wouldn’t be disturbed, and we found one, somewhere we’d been years before.
There was a blue winter sky and I opened the window. The cold, clean air was crisp and lovely, but I shut it quickly, suddenly afraid that our precious cargo in the backseat might blow out, like a balloon seeking escape as soon as the opening is large enough. Stupid, though: a cardboard box was never going to simply blow out of the window.
I turned to look at it, make sure it was okay, like a baby, or a puppy coming home for the first time in the car. I reached through the gap between our seats and touched it. If I was going to say good-bye, I wasn’t going to bother feeling embarrassed about treating a cardboard box like a living thing.
We’d had plenty of conversations, Eddie and I, about the box and the need for me to let it go. I resisted, of course I did. It was the hardest decision I ever made in my life. But Eddie pointed out two things that convinced me in the end: one I hadn’t thought of before, and the other I probably had, but had chosen to ignore. The first was that one day, Esther or Evie might find the box and get in it. Would the magic work on them too? If Louis’s hunch was right and it was the link with my mother th
at enabled me to travel back in time, then wouldn’t their blood-link with her make it possible for the box to take them back to the past too? If that happened to my daughters, would they survive the journey? Would they get into trouble without me there to help them? Would they be able to find their way back?
Secondly, we kept our box safe, because we knew its power and kept it shut in the loft to protect it and to protect people from it. But who was looking after the box in the past? What if it had been destroyed at the other end, when I got into the box at this end? Where would I end up? What if, while I was there, it went missing, for whatever reason?
Furthermore, Eddie persuaded me that I’d already gained more than anybody else got after a loved one dies. And he was right. I had everything to lose if I started getting greedy.
We stopped at a traditional little pub, practically empty, and I quickly found a seat by a window while Eddie got himself a coffee, and a small glass of wine for me. I needed to be able to see the car at all times, just in case. Just in case what? Yes, just in case a burglar with a swag bag and black eye mask happened to stumble across the parking lot of a remote country pub, and break into our locked car to steal a blackened cardboard box from the backseat.
Eddie was right. I needed to let it go.
He was patient while I finished my wine, but we both knew we should get to the beach before it got dark.
* * *
WE DROVE ON a little farther, and for a short while I wondered if we were lost, maybe we wouldn’t find the place. Was I glad of a last-minute reprieve, a stay of execution? Maybe it would be better to get it over and done with; hanging on to the box for a day or two longer wasn’t a good idea. I needed to do it now, so I could begin to grieve.
Eddie pulled over, switched off the engine, and turned to me. “Ready?”
“Yes,” I said.
When I made no move to get out of the car, he came around and opened the door for me and held out his hand. Then he opened the back door and moved to one side, letting me lean in to get the box. I insisted on carrying it, and Eddie was fine with that. He led the way and I trailed behind in the narrow parts, and when we could walk side by side he slowed to keep pace with me, his hand touching the small of my back now and then.
I hope it doesn’t sound ridiculous, but this box was what made me feel closest to my mother now, and before I let her go, I needed to hold it. Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind to put the box on the ground and jump into it before Eddie could stop me. I visualized myself leaping in and disappearing as if there were an endless hole underneath the box.
* * *
WE WERE IN a place that required us to park in a little lane and walk past a field full of pigs and their curved silver shelters, then on through a wooded area, where the trees formed an arch overhead. Going through there felt like getting married, when the guests all join hands and cheer as you squeeze through the tunnel from the party to the car that takes you to the honeymoon. It wasn’t going to be like that today. It was a departure I was reluctant to be a part of, and yet I had come to agree with Eddie that it was the right thing to do. The archway would take us to a steep path down to the beach, where the cliff would stand high, yellow and crumbling, behind us.
* * *
WHEN WE REACHED the path that led down to the beach, the terrain below our feet was suddenly ocher and stony. From here you could see out over a billowing sea, and I felt sick. It was windier here and our hair was whipped about; the end of my scarf flapped in my face. I held on tight to the box. Nothing was going to take it from me until I let it. It would be my choice, and in my time.
* * *
WE WALKED ONTO the shore and looked out at the ocean. The sky was still blue but darkening; the water looked gray and menacing, with myriad white peaks. Choppy.
“Do you want to say a few words?” Eddie asked.
“A funeral?” I said.
“In a way,” he said. “Just another way of saying good-bye.”
“Could you say something?” I asked him. “Haven’t you trained for this yet?”
He laughed a humble laugh. “I’ll say something if you want.”
“It’s okay, I’ll do it.” And I thought for a bit before deciding it didn’t really matter what I said, but I needed to say something, and then I said this. “I will never see you again or touch you again, but you will live inside me forever. You will always be in my heart and I will never, ever forget you. For every shell on this beach that once held a life, each one left something beautiful behind, just as you have done. And so, to my wonderful mother, I say good-bye, and I pray to God”—I looked at Eddie and smiled sadly—“that whatever it is you went looking for that day, somehow you find it, and find peace, wherever you may be.”
“Amen,” Eddie said, and looked at me and held out his arms. I gave the box to him, and took my shoes off, rolling my trousers up to my knees. He gave the box back to me and did the same with his own shoes and jeans. We left our things on the sand and walked toward the water. It touched my toes and was so cold, it almost felt scalding. I crouched and held the box into a wave that lapped the shore. And then I let go.
The water took the box, and I watched as it drifted away a few feet, then came slightly back to shore, as though uncertain whether to leave or not. The orange of the box, once so bright, was mostly gone since the fire damage, and from being knocked about so much when I landed in it. But I could just see the face of the girl riding a Space Hopper on the front, and I focused on her smile for a few moments. Suddenly the box was much farther out, beyond arm’s reach. The ocean had lulled me into thinking it would be gentle and take its time, but it had grabbed the box and dragged it a long way out. I watched as it started to sink, and I cried out, turning my head to Eddie’s chest and clutching his sweater with both hands. I couldn’t watch anymore. I felt instant warmth and protection as Eddie stood like a windbreak between me and my surroundings, muffling the sounds, the rumble of wind and waves.
I held on to him until I felt his body stiffen unexpectedly and pull away from me. I heard him gasp, and I turned to look out to sea once more. The box was still visible, just, but the water around it appeared to be churning, as though a bomb had hit it. There was magic in the box, I knew that, and perhaps it was resisting being extinguished.
Before I could stop him, Eddie ran into the sea, like a greyhound out of a starting box.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Leave it.” But he carried on running, knees raised high to battle the waves that wanted to hold him back. The water around the box was still frothing and Eddie must have realized that there was something enchanted about it, because now he was as desperate to rescue it from the water as I had been to rescue it from the fire. His body obscured it from my view as he plunged on, and just before he got to the box, he dived to get himself closer to it. I screamed out, “No.” He was a good swimmer, but the waves looked unforgiving. What if I lost him now? What if he drowned? It would be all my own fault: first my mother, and now Eddie. I ran a little way into the water, until it was above my knees, the power of the water dragging at my legs, making me dig my feet into the wet sand to stay vertical.
Eddie wasn’t going any farther. He seemed to be wrestling with the box, as though it were a large thrashing fish. I saw his arms held wide and then he went under again, but finally he turned, the waves colliding against him, trying to pull him under.
Ultimately he found his footing and managed to force himself upright, heaving with the weight in his arms. And there, half-drowned but alive, with wet hair hanging down and her arms around Eddie’s neck as he carried her toward me, was my mother.
* * *
EDDIE STUMBLED BACK to shore, battling the waves to get a more solid footing and trying not to let her slip out of his arms. I ran into the water, feeling half as though I were in a dream, while the freezing water bit me into reality. My mother looked at me, shocked, just as a wave clapped against her face, and she closed her eyes against the stinging salt and reached up to get a better
grip on Eddie’s shoulder. By the time I got to them, Eddie was making strides, and I touched her arm, but I couldn’t help carry her; if I tried to take some of her weight, I would impede Eddie’s progress. So I trotted beside them as best I could, all the while attempting contact by touching some part of her with my bluish, outstretched fingers.
Eddie’s legs gave way not far from where the waves met the sand. He laid Jeanie down, and then lay next to her; his lips touched the ground, and when he looked at me, sand coated one side of his face. His wet hair was painted across his face and the whites of his eyes were pink. His teeth were chattering.
My mother’s teeth were chattering too, and there was a pale-blue line around her lips, her wide eyes staring up at me. I kneeled beside her, taking off my jacket to lay over her, even though it was soaking wet.
“Is this heaven?” she said, the words chopped into pieces by her involuntary shuddering. Her whole body shook.
“No,” I said. “Not heaven.” I looked into her gray eyes. Like Eddie, the sea had turned the whites of her eyes pinkish. Her lashes clumped together, dark and pretty.
“My guardian angel! Where am I?”
“You know this woman?” Eddie said.
Did I know her? Not well enough. All my life I had missed out on her face, her presence, her wisdom, her warmth. And yet here she was, barely older than the last time I’d seen her, still at least ten years younger than me. And so, ultimately, it would be the case that I had not really missed one moment of my mother’s life, while she had missed thirty years of mine.
I held Jeanie’s hand and kissed her cheek. I let my face rest against hers and then, when I was ready I lifted my head and looked at my husband.
“Yes, I know her,” I said.
He waited, the single, simple line between his brows a tiny sign of profound confusion. I looked down at my mother, and she smiled that smile that was as warm and easy as sun breaking through clouds.