by John Everson
Ceili stirred and shifted her arm across the pillow.
Austin bent down and kissed her. He held his hand on her head until she settled. No reason for her to start crying now.
There’d be plenty of time for that in the morning.
But for him…there was only shock and fear and hurt. He started to leave the room to go back downstairs but realized he couldn’t leave her up here alone. Not because she needed him, but because he needed her. He needed to hold her even if it woke her up.
Austin reached down and lifted Ceili from the mattress. Her tiny arms reached out and clutched for him. And as her tiny fingers made him smile, he remembered her mother at the foot of the stairs.
He had to call the police. Life for Ceili and him was about to change.
Drastically.
Chapter Six
The night lasted forever. There were paramedics and policemen and, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, the fire department. They didn’t move the body, but they moved around it for what seemed like forever. Pointing and marking and consulting with each other in half-finished phrases and side-handed whispers.
Those people didn’t talk to him. Noise and lights and people filled his house as he tried to keep Ceili calm and answer what he could to the people who did talk to him. He held the baby close, patting her back and stroking her head, trying to keep her quiet as the police asked him questions. At some point, Regina came walking through the front door, and without even asking what was going on, she patted his shoulder and took the baby out of his arms. Moments later, she was sitting across the room with Ceili on the couch. He smiled sadly at her, trying to express his thanks with just a look, and went back to talking. Eventually, he lost track of both of them and walked outside with the officers and paramedics when they finally decided it was time to move the body.
The whole event was surreal. Austin couldn’t have described what he said or what was asked but the words went on and on as the people looked at and prodded the body of his dead wife. And then they lifted her on a stretcher and moved outside and the red and blue lights echoed weirdly off his face on his driveway as he watched the men in uniforms load her corpse into the ambulance…without urgency.
There was no urgency anymore…she was dead.
Dead.
The word kept echoing in his head. The girl he’d made out with in a movie theater once….
Dead.
The girl he’d tried pot with for the first time in a back alley behind Allen Harpstrom’s house….
Dead.
The girl who had told him he was going to be a daddy….
Dead.
The girl who had turned into a nagging, carping woman who had ultimately made him wish that she would die.
Dead.
* * *
At a certain point, nothing really registered anymore. The night became a blur of strange voices and flashing emergency lights. And then the rear doors of the ambulance closed and the engine audibly powered up and it began to creep out of his driveway before turning right to go down the block toward the main road out to town.
And the cop cars along the curb slipped away one by one until the last officer said he was sorry and walked back to his car, leaving Austin alone on the white concrete of his driveway.
Two hands suddenly slipped over his shoulders and squeezed.
“How are you doing?” Regina asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” he said.
“Come on,” she said, and pulled his arm to move him back toward the front door of the house. He followed without thinking. There was no thinking at this point…he was numb.
When they stepped across the threshold, something in him sparked. He saw the empty stairs leading up and the empty couch in his living room. And the empty floor where his wife’s body had been.
“Where’s Ceili?” he asked.
“I put her to bed,” Regina said. “I didn’t think you’d mind. She just wanted to sleep.”
He nodded. “Okay, good, thank you,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you helping with her…I don’t know what I would have done…”
“You would have done what you had to do,” Regina said. “But I’m glad I was able to be here to help you do it.”
She reached up and touched his cheek. “I’ll be around if you need me,” she said.
And before he could answer, she’d turned and started to walk back out of his front door.
Austin followed but stopped at the threshold. When she disappeared around the hedge, he closed the door and turned the lock.
Then he walked like a zombie up the stairs to check on Ceili. She was tiny and peaceful in her crib, blissfully unaware that her mother was gone. What would it be like tomorrow when she looked for Angie and couldn’t find her momma? Austin tried to put that from his mind. But Ceili wasn’t the only one who would struggle with that painful reality soon.
Moments later, he lay down in his own bed, but unlike the baby, he didn’t fall easily asleep. Instead, he stared for hours at the empty pillow where nobody lay next to him.
Chapter Seven
Life doesn’t sit still for death. If anything, it moves faster.
The next few days were a whirlwind of unfamiliar business for Austin – contacting the funeral home, reaching out to the newspaper for the obituary, tearful conversations on the phone and in person with both Angie’s family and his own. The hours of every day slipped by quickly. There were moments when the silences in the house reminded him that Angie was gone forever, but most of the time seemed to be taken up with simply taking care of the mundane details that needed to be done.
Whenever it got too much, when Ceili was crying uncontrollably and his cell phone ringing for the fourth time in a half-hour, Regina seemed to turn up. She’d knock three times on the front screen door and then let herself in, usually catching Austin struggling in the kitchen with a bottle, a phone and the baby all at the same time.
She’d raise one eyebrow, hold out her hands, and he’d hand over the baby, who would stop crying almost instantly. Some things just took a woman’s touch.
On the morning of Angie’s funeral, Regina came to the door, but this time didn’t knock; Austin was already standing right there at the foot of the stairs. He’d been straightening his tie in the mirror on the wall in the foyer.
“Looking sharp,” she said through the screen.
Austin looked up and stifled a grin.
“Mind if I come in?” she asked.
“Never,” he said, turning away from the mirror.
Regina stepped inside, the hem of a now-familiar indigo paisley dress swirling in the breeze of the closing door.
“Are you all ready for this?” she asked.
Austin shrugged. “As ready as I can be, I guess.”
She reached up and adjusted the knot of his tie. “I can help with Ceili today if you want. But I know it’s a private thing, if you’d rather I didn’t come.”
Austin considered for a moment, and then shook his head. “No, it’s fine for you to come, if you want. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to. You’ve done so much for me already this week.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I did know Angie, after all, and I love taking care of Ceili. I always wanted to have a baby of my own but….”
He opened his mouth to ask why she hadn’t but then stopped himself. Whether it was because she was sterile or had never found a man to have one with, it probably wouldn’t be a ‘happy’ story. And it was none of his business.
She broke his silence with an unexpected question.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking,” she began. “You’re going to need someone to watch Ceili when you go back to work. What if I did that for you, instead of her going into some daycare place?”
Austin shook his head instinctively, though the idea was instan
tly attractive. It would solve a huge problem for him. “I couldn’t ask that of you,” he said. “You’ve been such a big help this week but….”
“Well, I wouldn’t do it for free,” she said, cocking her head. “You’re going to have to pay someone to watch her, and I don’t have a job right now. I’ve had a nice little nest egg saved up, so I was able to pay my rent way in advance, but I’m eventually going to need to get a paycheck. So…why not pay me? I could even come over and do it right here in her own house. How easy is that?”
“I…I guess that could be all right,” he said. “I’ve already called a couple of daycare places but I hadn’t settled anything yet. They’re all so expensive and some have waiting lists.”
“Then it’s a deal,” she said. “We can figure out what you’ll pay me later, but I promise I’ll work cheaper than your standard daycare center.”
Austin felt a weight lift off his chest. He knew he had to find at least a temporary situation for Ceili before going back to work next week, and he’d poked at the problem, but getting through the funeral had been his first priority.
“You’re a life saver,” he said. “Thank you. I…just…thank you.”
“You can thank me later,” she said. “Right now, we need to get the two of you out of the house. Where is she?”
As if on cue, Ceili began to cry in the nursery. Regina patted Austin’s shoulder and moved past him to walk up the stairs.
A few minutes later, she walked into the kitchen with the baby. Ceili was bright-eyed and sucking on a pacifier. Regina had dressed her in a onesie covered in cartoon bees and daisies.
“I hope this is okay,” she said. “I found it in her drawer. I didn’t think you wanted her to go in a diaper and stained T-shirt.”
Austin snorted. “No, but that would be the look Angie’s mother probably expects from me. So, thanks.” He took Ceili from Regina’s arms and held her up to appraise her. “Looking good, kid.”
“Do you need me to make up a bottle?” Regina asked, moving toward the fridge.
“Nope,” he said. “That’s one thing I actually managed to do on my own. But thanks.”
“Amazing,” she said, pulling the bottle out of the refrigerator. “What about diapers?”
He pointed at the blue canvas bag on the table. “Believe it or not, we’re packed and ready to go. I have learned a few things these past few months. Do you want to ride with us or follow? I don’t want you to be stuck there if you need to leave.”
“No worries,” Regina said, taking the baby back from him. “I’m yours for as long as you want me. I’ve got nothing going on.”
“You do now,” he said, raising his fist in the air in mock excitement. “We’re going to a funeral!” He tried to make his voice sound psyched, but the humor fell flat. He shook his head and scowled, admitting his real sentiment. “I just want this day to be done.”
Regina nodded sympathetically and followed him to the car.
* * *
The funeral was actually a beautiful, moving thing. Angie’s two brothers, along with her friends from college, served as pallbearers, and when Linnea, her best friend from high school, talked about the time she had stayed up with her in college until five a.m. after drinking too much and watching a scary movie, even Austin had to laugh. He remembered that girl. Angie had been so high-strung and sensitive and easily affected. She had clung to him for strength and love and support in a way he had never experienced before. He had been so happy to be her roots, her rock. And she had given him her heart and soul and body with an energy and desire he couldn’t refuse. The girl he’d asked to marry him was so unlike the woman she had eventually become, who seemed to spend half of her waking hours complaining about Austin’s inadequacies and the rest of the time simply not speaking to him at all.
He had fallen in love with the girl who Linnea talked about. He didn’t really know the woman she’d become…who lay still inside the coffin now.
Which made no sense.
But it was how life was sometimes. People grew and changed in ways you could never foresee. If there was one thing that Austin knew, it was that you could never keep things the way they were.
Certainly, that was more than true now, as he stood in the front pew of a church listening to people tell heartbreakingly warm stories about his wife, as they prepared to put her wooden-shrouded body in the ground.
Austin cried during the service, and his dad put a strong hand on his shoulder when he did. The strength of his father was palpable in that touch, and it truly helped him make it through the rest of the day. His dad never said much, but in his father’s silent, solid grip, he knew he wasn’t alone.
And when he looked to his right, he found Regina at his side, holding Ceili in her arms. Angie’s child. His child. The baby stayed strangely quiet through the service, which was a blessing.
There were people around him who cared for and supported him. If Angie’s life had ended, during the priest’s homily and the remembrances that people told, he realized somehow that his had not.
At one point, he had to go to the pulpit and say a few words of his own about his wife. He had written some things down and pledged that he wouldn’t cry in front of the whole congregation.
His friend Bill had held his arm and led him partly up the aisle. Once at the podium, Austin had said things about meeting Angie at the bookstore in college. And taking her to the student union afterward. And proposing to her in a college bar (he maybe could have improved his romanticism a bit).
“I only know one thing for sure,” he’d told the small congregation. “She was the only girl I ever met that I truly wanted to spend my life with. I guess I’m lucky that she let me spend part of it with her.”
When he’d returned to his seat, his cheeks were wet. He’d stepped over Regina to reach his seat, and when he did, she held out Ceili for him to hold. The sweet scent of his baby made some of the ache in his heart slip away, and he pulled her cheek close to his.
Regina put a comforting hand on his right shoulder, as his father did the same to his left. With Ceili in his arms, and their support on his arms…Austin felt as if he could actually get through this.
Chapter Eight
A new rhythm soon began to transform his life.
On Monday, Regina met him at the door in the morning and slipped past him into the house when he opened it, instantly moving toward the kitchen, where Ceili cried.
“Where do you keep the bottles?” she asked before he’d even reached the room. He pointed and she was filling one before he could blink twice.
By the end of the week, she was letting herself into the house in the mornings with the key he’d given her. It had only seemed right that she have a way to get in on her own in case she stepped outside during the day and accidentally locked herself out. He couldn’t risk a situation where Ceili got locked inside with no way for anyone to get to her.
And so, on Thursday, he walked down the stairs for the first time in the morning, still buttoning his shirt for work, and there she was, already in his house, barefoot in a knee-length cotton sundress moving about in his kitchen.
“Morning,” he said simply, heading toward the coffee maker. Regina turned and smiled, her eyes shining bright as the sun.
“It is,” she agreed.
He opened the ceramic coffee-bean container and dropped a handful of scoops into the grinder.
“I wasn’t sure how much you used, or I would have started it for you,” Regina said.
“Oh geez,” he said. “You don’t have to do that. But thanks.”
“So, five?” she noted.
“You’re observant.” He grinned and poured the water into the coffee maker.
“I like to know how things work around me,” she said. “So I pay attention.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I’m ever opening a safe near you,” he said.
She smirked but said nothing.
Austin shook his head and poured himself a bowl of cereal. It felt a little strange to be feeding himself while another woman was moving about in his house taking care of his baby, but he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t a relief. And Regina didn’t complain constantly while doing it. He missed Angie, but he did not miss those tense, frustrating mornings in the kitchen before leaving for a nice long tense, frustrating day at work. Regina was so good with Ceili; the baby quieted almost instantly when Regina picked her up and rocked her. And the colic she’d been fighting lately seemed to have stopped over the past couple days. The baby was as happy as she’d ever been, despite the absence of her mother.
He had a hard time not feeling guilty about it, but he couldn’t deny that he felt more upbeat than he had in a long while as well.
* * *
That positive feeling was still with him when he pulled into his driveway on Friday night. Before Angie died, Austin had begun to dread the long weekends at home with a sullen wife and crying baby. He’d buried himself in work from Monday through Friday to avoid it, actually. But tonight, as he put the car in park, he realized he’d been looking forward to getting home for the weekend for hours to see what Regina and Ceili had been up to.
When he walked into the house, there was music playing, something exotic and atmospheric, with a woman singing almost incomprehensible lyrics in a plaintive voice. The music of a dream.
Regina was sitting on the couch with her legs crooked, her feet tucked underneath her butt as she wrote in the same small journal he’d seen her writing in the night he’d met her at the Secret Room.
Ceili lay on her belly on a blanket on the floor, surrounded by small toys. Her eyes were bright and she slapped at a red ball with one chubby, tiny hand.
“Happy Friday,” Regina greeted him, looking up from her writing.
“That it is,” he agreed. “Especially now that I’m home.”
“Ah,” Regina smiled. “Did you miss us?”