Just Once

by Lori Handeland

  Charley knew he should tell her, but he didn’t know how. He stood with the phone to his ear listening to his wife call his name with varying degrees of fear and anger, until the red-headed cop took it gently from his hand, pushed him into a chair and told her for him.

  Charley heard Frankie’s scream all the way across the room.

  ‘Is there someone I can call for you?’ the officer asked when she’d wound down. He waited a few seconds. ‘Ma’am?’ He pulled the phone away from his ear. ‘She hung up.’

  Charley nodded.

  ‘She shouldn’t be alone,’ the young man said.

  He was right. Why hadn’t Charley thought of it?

  Because he was thoughtless, clueless – and because of that, now he was childless.

  Charley got to his feet. Picked up his keys, headed for the door.

  The officer put his hand on Charley’s chest. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘To my wife.’

  ‘You have to make a statement. There’ll be questions. A lot of them. Probably hours’ worth. I’m sorry.’ He took the keys out of Charley’s hand.

  ‘What about Fancy?’

  For an instant the young man’s face flickered confusion, then it cleared. ‘Your wife’s name is Fancy?’

  Charley nodded, too tired to explain.

  ‘Is there someone you can call? Someone who can go to your house and be with her until you can be?’

  Frankie would want Irene, but it would take Irene longer to get there than it would take Charley. Maybe. Depending on the questions, and probably his answers.

  ‘Does she have family?’ the officer prompted.

  Frankie’s mother had become thin and frail since her husband had died. Her skin paper fine, her voice whisper-soft, she was no longer the woman she had been. Frankie had said often enough that she now felt more the mother than the child.

  Would having her mother at her side only make things worse? Really, how could things get worse?

  He should have known better than to even think such a question.

  ‘Anyone right now is better than no one,’ the officer continued. ‘Trust me.’

  What choice did Charley have?

  He called Frankie’s mother, and then he called Irene. Neither conversation was one he cared to repeat in his lifetime. But, bright side, he wouldn’t have to since he was fresh out of children.

  The police did have questions. He didn’t have a lot of answers, or at least any worth giving.

  He didn’t know why she’d gone swimming without him. She knew better.

  Yes, she could swim. No, she didn’t have any medical conditions.

  He hadn’t left her alone near the water. He’d left her in the house.

  How long? Hard to say. How long did it take a seven-year-old to die?

  By the time the police were satisfied – or as satisfied as they’d get until the autopsy results came back – it was too late to drive home.

  Charley didn’t even try to sleep. He sat on the sofa, listened to the quiet. Couldn’t stand it, went outside.

  The lap of the water drew him down the stairs, across the dock. When the sun came up he still sat on the edge, staring at the water, trying to figure out how something so peaceful could be so deadly.

  Then he got in the car and drove home. Or he must have, because several hours later he pulled into the driveway. He had no memory of what he’d done between Fish Creek and Whitefish Bay. If only he could erase the memory of yesterday just the same.

  At the house, he paused with his hand on the doorknob. Would Frankie scream, rant, rave, throw things? Or had she curled up into a ball and gone silent? Which would be worse?

  He didn’t know.

  The temptation to get into the car and drive until he was anywhere but here was strong, but in the end he opened the door.

  Frankie’s mother slept on the couch.

  Frankie stood in the hall. She hadn’t slept. Her brilliant green eyes were dull; the auburn streaks in her hair appeared as faded as her face. Her T-shirt and pajama pants were rumpled and stained. Even her bare feet were dirty. She smelled stale; everything did.

  He had done that to her. He’d never forgive himself. He shouldn’t. He did not deserve forgiveness, though he wanted it very badly.

  ‘She—’ he began.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Don’t?’ he repeated.

  ‘She’s gone. We lost her.’

  I lost her.

  ‘I can’t … I don’t …’ She swallowed. ‘I don’t want to hear how, or why, or when. I just want … I just want …’ Her eyes filled.

  ‘What do you want, Fancy?’

  She closed her eyes. One tear shimmered on the edge of her eyelashes, then fell, tumbling through the air like a sunbeam in slow motion until it hit the floor and disappeared.

  ‘I just want her back,’ Frankie said, then she walked past him up the stairs, went into their room and closed the door.

  If he’d thought he’d been alone the night before, in that damp, dark cottage that still smelled of Lisa, or sitting on the dock, staring into the water that had taken her life, he’d been wrong. Alone was standing in your own home as the love of your life walked away, never once touching you at all.

  Over the next week, the non-touching continued. Frankie made it into an art.

  Handing him a plate of food, or a cup of coffee, avoiding even a brush of fingertips. Passing in the hall or on the stairs, dancing sideways to avoid even the most casual touch. Where once they’d slept in each other’s arms, now the invisible divide between them was cavernous. If he attempted to cross it, he would fall and fall and fall.

  He dreamed sometimes of just that – reaching for her, his arms closing on nothing, his foot slipping, his body glancing off one side of a cliff, then the other as he hurtled toward the sharp rocks that lay beneath. Most mornings he would have welcomed it.

  Because in the mornings when they awoke, for just an instant, Frankie would stare at him the way she always used to. Like the world lay in his eyes, like he’d made the sun shine, the birds sing, the flowers bloom. Then she would remember and the Frankie he adored would be gone. He had no idea what to say to the stranger that peered out at him through her eyes.

  If it hadn’t been for Irene, who’d arrived an hour after Charley and taken over, he had no idea what they would have done. Perhaps sat in the house and not-touched each other for the rest of their lives.

  Irene appeared exactly the same as she had the first day they’d met, on a visit to New York not long after Frankie’s college graduation. Irene was short, maybe five-one, but straight and slim and ballsy. Whenever Charley saw her it took him several minutes to adjust to the fact that she wasn’t the five-eleven he imagined her to be. She had the same haircut – short and to the point.

  Irene had never married. Probably good because didn’t sharks eat their mates, or maybe it was their young? And Irene was a shark – from the tips of her no-doubt hooved heels to the top of her too-black-to-be-natural head. The only softness in Irene Pasternak could be found in her brown eyes when she saw her best friend.

  Irene walked in and folded Frankie into a hug that made Charley so jealous he could taste it, even stronger than the acid he’d been tasting at the back of his throat since he’d seen that purple swimming suit just floating, floating, floating …

  There were so many things to attend to and neither Frankie nor Charley had a clue. Irene did everything. All they had to do was show up.

  Unfortunately, what they had to show up to was Lisa’s funeral.

  ‘I don’t want one.’ Frankie sat at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee – all that seemed to pass her lips lately – between her hands.

  ‘One what?’ Irene had her head in the refrigerator, moving the casseroles already inside around so she could fit today’s neighborhood offerings in too.

  Frankie’s mother had gone home once Irene had arrived. The silent tears that had run down her face nearly every waking hour had be
en too much for any of them to take. Irene had called a cousin to stay with her.

  ‘A funeral,’ Frankie continued. ‘I don’t think I can …’

  Charley, also at the table, tried to take her hand.

  She picked up her coffee and leaned back in her chair, out of his reach. ‘I don’t think I can manage a funeral.’

  ‘You don’t have to, bubala. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘I mean I don’t think I can manage to sit in a room with her. I can’t look at … I can’t see her like …’

  ‘You want the casket closed?’ Irene shut the refrigerator. ‘Just let me know what you want.’

  ‘I want her here. Breathing.’

  Irene cast Charley a quick, concerned glance. Not concern for him. While Irene hadn’t castrated him yet, he knew it was only a matter of time.

  ‘Fancy,’ he began, and she stood and walked out of the room.

  When she wasn’t not-touching him, she was not-seeing him by leaving wherever he was. He deserved it, but that didn’t make it any easier to take.

  Irene sighed. ‘Do you think cremation would upset her less or more?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He had no idea what Frankie wanted besides the one thing she could not have.

  The autopsy results had come back. Lisa had died from water in her lungs. No explanation as to why she had drowned in a place she had swum without any problem three-dozen times before. No bump on the head, no stray rope tangled around her legs or weeds tangled around her feet. Maybe she’d had a cramp. Probably she’d had a cramp, but they’d never know, and what did it matter?

  Shit happened, and this week it had happened to them.

  ‘Do we have to have a funeral?’ Charley asked. He didn’t see the point either.

  ‘I don’t think it would be good for Frankie not to,’ Irene said. ‘She’s having a hard enough time accepting this as it is.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have to accept the death of her child.’

  ‘She shouldn’t,’ Irene agreed. ‘But she has to or else she’ll never move on. Funerals are the end of the end. Without one, I worry she’ll just keep waiting for Lisa to come back.’

  ‘That’s nuts.’

  ‘Is it? What mother wouldn’t grasp at any and all possibilities?’

  ‘Even when the possibility that Lisa isn’t dead is an impossibility?’

  ‘Even when.’ Irene crossed her arms over her chest.

  ‘She needs to see the body,’ Charley said.

  Irene flinched.

  ‘Or not.’

  ‘No.’ Irene’s brow crinkled, her painted peach lips tightened. ‘You might be right.’

  Or he might not be. Who knew?

  ‘I’ll talk to her.’ Irene left the room.

  Charley listened to their voices rise and fall.

  Eventually Irene came back downstairs. ‘She’ll go.’

  Hope flickered. Would seeing Lisa allow Frankie to heal? Once she healed, could he? Right now he felt as if he’d have a hole in his chest that ached and bled every second for the rest of his life. He couldn’t imagine what Frankie felt like. He wished she’d talk to him like she used to, but she wasn’t talking to anyone, even Irene.

  ‘You want me to drive you?’ Charley asked.

  ‘Oh, I’m not going.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘This is your responsibility,’ Irene said, and he knew she wasn’t just talking about driving Frankie to see Lisa.

  Two hours later, Frankie and Charley stood in the preparation room at the funeral home.

  ‘Whenever you’re ready, Mrs Blackwell.’ Josiah Duval, funeral director, laid his hand on the sheet that covered the Lisa-shaped lump on the table.

  Frankie swallowed, nodded.

  Duval glanced at Charley, perhaps waiting for him to put his arm around his wife, at the least take her hand, but he didn’t. He’d tried so many times over the past week and been rebuffed. He’d give her the space she seemed to need. It was the least he could do.

  The man frowned, waited a little longer, and when Charley didn’t move, he lifted the sheet.

  Frankie let out a small sound, not a cry, more of a moan.

  Lisa looked better than she had the last time Charley had seen her. Her lips were no longer blue but she still appeared very dead.

  Frankie touched their daughter’s cheek gently, the way Charley wanted her to touch him. Then her eyes rolled back and her knees buckled.

  Charley caught her before she hit the floor.

  When she came around a few seconds later, she said in a completely rational voice, ‘I wanna be sedated.’

  ‘I’ll make it happen,’ Charley promised.

  It wasn’t as difficult as he thought. One call to her doctor, and the Valium was waiting an hour later.

  Frankie started popping them as soon as she got them in her hand.

  ‘Don’t you think she should be present for this?’ Irene asked as they stood in the receiving line a few days later.

  At the front of a room stuffed with flowers sat the purple urn that held Lisa. Charley had made the executive decision on cremation almost immediately after the fainting.

  ‘I think she should do whatever she has to do to get through this. We all should.’

  Irene narrowed her eyes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, but he caught her studying him at odd moments for the rest of that day.

  Hundreds attended the funeral. The parents and grandparents of Lisa’s classmates. The staff and administration at her school. Frankie’s colleagues from the Journal. Their neighbors. The Waz and his wife flew in from Minnesota. So many flowers arrived that the attendants at the funeral home rotated the displays every hour.

  Charley thought he might gag on the sweet scent of chrysanthemums. Ever after it would make him remember a day he immediately and always wanted to forget.

  Irene had managed to scare up a pastor to perform the eulogy. The priest who’d performed Peter Sicari’s funeral service had refused to come. Not only had Frankie and Charley not been married in the church, but Lisa had not been baptized Catholic. Lisa had not been baptized at all.

  ‘Do you think she’s in hell?’ Frankie asked, her voice robotic.

  The first-grade teacher whose hand she’d just shaken cast a wide-eyed glance at Charley and scurried on.

  ‘There is no hell, honey.’ Irene patted Frankie’s arm.

  ‘Just because the Jews don’t believe in hell doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’ Frankie’s mom sniffed. ‘I told you to raise her in the Church.’

  Charley’s fingers curled into his palms. But he couldn’t punch a frail old woman.

  ‘Just because the Catholics believe in hell doesn’t mean it does exist,’ Irene countered.

  Lately, Charley liked Irene a whole lot better than he ever thought he could.

  ‘Purgatory?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Irene said cheerfully.

  ‘Then where is she?’ Frankie cried out.

  Everyone in the room froze, staring at her as if they were afraid she’d throw herself into the coffin with her child. Luckily there wasn’t one.

  Charley approved of the urn decision more and more as time went on.

  The pastor came over and led Frankie off, murmuring words only Frankie could hear. Whatever they were, they seemed to work. Frankie sat in the front row and stopped asking questions.

  The day was interminable. After the long, winding line of mourners came the service. Considering the pastor hadn’t known Lisa, he did an admirable job eulogizing her.

  ‘Lisa loved sunshine, peaches, purple, her mommy, her daddy and Black Kitty. Though those of us left behind mourn, she is in a better place.’

  Frankie raised her hand.

  Irene drew her arm back down.

  The pastor continued as if he hadn’t seen. Everyone pretended they hadn’t either.

  The luncheon at a nearby restaurant was packed. Both Charley and Irene tried to get Frankie
to consume something other than coffee. She accepted the plate he brought her with a vague smile, moved her food around it, then appeared confused when he pointed out she hadn’t eaten anything.

  ‘I did. See?’ She indicated the hole in the center of the plate.

  Charley’s eyes burned. That was Lisa’s classic trick for avoiding anything she didn’t want to eat – mostly green beans or rice of any type.

  At last it was over and they went home. All three of them fell into bed.

  Days passed, weeks, though he wasn’t sure how. Time blended together. Charley was exhausted. Every time he closed his eyes he heard Lisa, saw Lisa. He would jerk awake and swear he could smell Lisa. Would that ever end? Did he want it to? When there came a day that he couldn’t remember the sound of his daughter’s voice, the tilt of her smile, would she be truly and forever dead?

  She was truly and forever dead. Because of him.

  Frankie breathed in and then out, slow and steady. She was asleep.

  Charley slid his hand across the great divide, linking their fingers together.

  She pulled them apart. Even in sleep she could not bear to touch him.

  The bright light of the moon illuminated her face, the silver track of a single tear traced downward from her eye, across her cheek before disappearing into her hair.

  He watched her all night; he couldn’t help himself. He was afraid he might not have another chance.

  She woke with the dawn, turning toward him with a smile. Then her eyes opened, the green so bright he was dazzled by it. An instant later they dulled and she sat up, reaching for the Valium on the nightstand.

  ‘Don’t,’ Charley said.

  ‘Do.’ She picked up the bottle.

  ‘Shouldn’t you …?’ he began.

  ‘No.’ She swallowed the pill dry.

  ‘You can’t take those forever, Fancy.’

  ‘Wanna bet?’

  The doctor would cut her off, eventually. Why didn’t he just let the doctor do so?

  Because she was his wife. He should take care of her. Or at least try.

  She sat on the side of the bed, shoulders slumped, hair tangled around her face. ‘I need them.’

  ‘Why can’t you need me?’ He hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but too late now.

  ‘I did.’

  Past tense. That hole in his heart seemed to tear deeper, wider; it bled faster. He even put his hand to his chest, half expecting his palm to come away red.