It Happened to Us

by François Houle

  “She’s gone but this poem is captured forever. So weird.”

  “That’s a day I wish had never happened.”

  They both stared at the computer screen, saying nothing.

  “Our little girl was in love with a jerk, apparently,” Mathieu said to break the silence. “She had a broken heart. Could be why she’d become so moody.”

  “I guess.”

  “Whoever he was didn’t return her love. It’s obvious by her words.”

  “Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing,” she said. “Not like we were going to let her date at fourteen.”

  “I know,” he said. “But she was hurt.”

  “For all we know he was a senior who didn’t even know her.”

  “True.”

  Lori-Anne sat on the edge of the bed, her shoulders caving in. Nadia’s absence was so overwhelming in her room. Now more than ever, she wanted to clean it.

  “So what do we do now?” she said in a voice that had no energy.

  “Print it,” he said. “This is the very last moment on earth our daughter had.”

  “No, not about that. About us.” She ran a hand across her forehead.

  “She died while posting this,” he said. “It’s almost like being with her.”

  “NO!” she said, getting to her feet. “It’s not. I was there and it was horrible. When the car got sandwiched, it sounded like a thousand pop cans being crushed. Glass exploded and I heard Nadia scream. I’ll never get those sounds out of my head. I’ll never get the guilt out of my soul.”

  Lori-Anne stopped. She wanted to tell him what Nadia had said just before the crash, but he wasn’t listening, he wasn’t getting it, he wasn’t trying to comfort her. Instead, he stared at the computer.

  She felt like spitting in his face.

  Lori-Anne left the room without saying a word and hurried to her bedroom where she threw herself on the bed like a child.

  That’s how small she felt.

  Or how big the situation had become.

  She curled up, looking for some sort of comfort that might chase away the hopelessness and helplessness that consumed her. She didn’t know what to do, how to reach him. She had lost a daughter and was now losing a husband.

  Her husband.

  Who was he? Who had he become? What exactly did they share now? Seemed like nothing. So how could she share the last moment of Nadia’s life with him?

  God, she needed to. The burden of carrying Nadia’s words had become too much. Those words, Nadia’s last words, were just too difficult to voice. Children often said things they didn’t mean, and parents could dismiss what they said and move on, but Lori-Anne couldn’t do that. Her daughter was gone. Nadia would never say another thing to her mother that would amend her dying words. Lori-Anne had to live with the sting of those words, a dirty secret that burned like an eternal punishment.

  * * *

  “Nadia, I’m talking to you. Can you please put your phone away? Are you listening to me?”

  Silence.

  “Gimme the phone.”

  “No, I’m doing something.”

  “This is the attitude I want to discuss with you. And your poor grades.”

  “They’re fine.”

  “No, they’re not. Gimme the phone.”

  “It’s my phone.”

  “That we pay for so if I want to take it away, I will. Are you doing drugs?”

  “I’m just a kid having fun. I know growing up with Granddad you didn’t get to have fun, but that’s not my problem. I’m not like you, work, work, work.”

  “School is important.”

  “I’m only fourteen.”

  “Nadia, gimme the phone.”

  “No.”

  Nadia types really fast on her phone.

  “Damnit, Nad. Gimme the phone so you can pay attention to what I’m saying.”

  Lori-Anne grabs it.

  “Hey, give it back. I wasn’t done posting—”

  “Posting what?”

  “Never mind. I hate you.”

  * * *

  Those words, cold and spoken with a sharp tongue, slashed Lori-Anne’s heart. No matter how hard she tried to tell herself that Nadia had needed to lash out at someone, anyone (because she’d been in love with a boy who hadn’t returned her feelings, Lori-Anne now knew), those words, the very last words her daughter had spoken to her, hurt almost as much as missing her did.

  That’s what she’d wanted to tell Mathieu. She needed to hear him say that Nadia hadn’t meant it, that she’d apologize if she could. She needed Mathieu to be her strength so that, for once, she could put aside her bravado and be comforted.

  Was that so much to ask?

  Why couldn’t he do that, be the strong one?

  Why was he punishing her?

  Yes, punishing her.

  She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d just wanted to talk to their daughter because she was concerned and worried. Any good parent would have done the same. Any caring mother would have done the same. She knew that Mathieu would have done the same.

  It was an accident. A dumb, stupid car accident.

  Lori-Anne curled into a ball. She was tired, so tired. Physically and emotionally. But mostly, she was tired of being alone.

  FOURTEEN

  July 2, 2012

  11:33 a.m.

  Lori-Anne woke feeling groggy. She turned and glanced at the clock. Crap! It was after eleven. She was late for work! No, wait a minute. Since Canada Day, yesterday, had fallen on a Sunday, she didn’t have to work today. Good. Perfect. She was in no shape for that anyway.

  She rolled over and closed her eyes. The confrontation with Mathieu came back to her. All its ugliness, all its pain, all its unsolved issues. It was giving her a headache. He was giving her a headache. And that room, Nadia’s bedroom, she had to do something about that. It creeped her out being in there and feeling so much of her daughter. No wonder Mathieu couldn’t let go and move forward.

  Lori-Anne bounced out of bed and went to find Mathieu. She’d had enough. Nothing about their situation was healthy. Since he was unwilling to get help, like her mother had said to her, she should do things to help him along and the way she saw it, Nadia’s room wasn’t going to be a shrine another day.

  She couldn’t find him, not in his office, not in their daughter’s room, not in the workshop. She finally found a note on the kitchen counter, beside the empty fruit bowl: Gone to Grandpa’s.

  Lori-Anne’s shoulders sagged. How could she have forgotten? Poor Grandpa. She should call him. Make sure he was okay. No. Not right now. She needed to stick to her plan, especially since Mathieu was out of the house. He was with his grandfather so Lori-Anne didn’t need to worry that Grandpa was alone. She’d do what she needed to do and then call Grandpa.

  She made a pot of coffee, filled the biggest mug she could find and headed up to Nadia’s room. She crossed the threshold and instantly her daughter’s presence wrapped itself around her, like a warm hug. Her legs turned to water and for a moment she second-guessed herself. But instead of leaving, she shut her eyes and waited for the moment to pass. Then she put her cup on the desk, opened the window to let all the bad vibes escape, shoved the stuffed animals off the bed, and stripped it.

  She threw the sheets out into the hallway. Next, Lori-Anne attacked the closet. She pulled out a skirt Nadia hadn’t worn in three years. It was purple and too small. She chucked it on the bed.

  A white blouse.

  Chuck.

  Old sweatpants with frayed hems.

  Chuck.

  Sweatshirts from the dance studio that Nadia didn’t wear.

  Chuck.

  Skinny jeans that showed way too much.

  Chuck.

  T-shirts with Justin Bieber on them.

  Chuck.

  Long-sleeved T-shirts from West 49.

  Chuck.

  A fall jacket that Nadia had barely worn. Lori-Anne r
ecalled going from store to store at the mall before finding that jacket. Nadia had been thrilled, but then only wore it a few times. Maybe someone at school had made fun of it and Nadia’s feelings had been hurt. Kids could be mean.

  Chuck.

  She went through the entire closet, throwing everything onto the bed. Some of her things were good enough to donate to the Diabetes Association or the Salvation Army. The real old and worn things were going in the trash.

  Next she tackled the dresser. Old undies, socks, pajamas, shorts, and tired-looking T-shirts of different sizes and colours piled up on the bed. There were clothes here from when she was eight or nine, things she couldn’t fit into even if she’d still wanted to wear them. That task had gotten away from them. They kept buying new but never tossed out the old. Today everything was going.

  Chuck, chuck, chuck.

  Lori-Anne was on a roll. Over an hour had passed and she had a mountain on the bed. She ran down to the garage to grab a few green garbage bags. She put the good stuff into a separate pile and filled three bags, trying to keep the clothes somewhat folded so they wouldn’t look all frumpy later. She got some masking tape and a marker from the kitchen drawer and wrote D.A. on two bags and S.A. on the third and brought them down to the basement. She would call for a pickup date tomorrow. Another two bags she jammed full of clothes labelled as garbage.

  When that was done, she looked at what else she could get rid of. Nadia had thirty or forty books on her bookshelves, posters all over her walls, CDs that she hadn’t listened to since ripping them to her iPod.

  She went looking for boxes. They usually had a few in the garage. All she found were two filled with Mathieu’s supplies which she emptied and left on his workbench. He could sort that out later. Back in Nadia’s room, she filled the boxes with books. Maybe she could donate them to the library. They were all in great shape. She pulled Kurt Cobain’s poster off the wall, rolled it and squeezed it between books in the box. She did the same with the three Jacob posters.

  She stopped and took a breath. She undid her ponytail, ran both hands through her hair, and redid her ponytail. A lose strand bothered her so she did the whole thing again.

  Lori-Anne surveyed the room. It didn’t look like a shrine anymore, didn’t feel like one either. It just looked like a room no one lived in. She felt tired. The time on the clock radio told her she’d been at it for two hours. Enough for now. The rest would have to wait. She looked at the boxes but they were heavy and she didn’t feel like carting them down to the garage. She left them where they were, by the half-empty bookcase.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and ran the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead. When Mathieu came home, he’d freak. She was in so much trouble. She’d let her momentum carry her, acting without thinking. It had seemed like the right thing to do. No, it was the right thing to do. If not for him, then for her. All these months, she’d been unable to come into Nadia’s room, walking by the closed door day after day like it was some forbidden place. In way, it had been. Her denial had kept her out. If she didn’t go in Nadia’s room, then she could pretend that Nadia wasn’t completely gone. In so many ways, she’d been no better than her husband. But no more. Today, finally, her healing could begin.

  And she hoped that Mathieu’s could begin too.

  She turned, thinking she’d heard the front door open. She waited, holding her breath, steeling herself for the fight that was sure to come. She’d done this for his own good. She needed to remember that.

  But she didn’t hear any footsteps coming up the stairs. She exhaled but her breath caught in her throat when she heard a car door slam. She hurried to the window but it was just the neighbour across the street.

  She needed to take a shower. She needed a glass of wine. She needed to unwind.

  Lori-Anne walked away from the window and stopped. It was gone. Nadia’s aura was gone. Once again, she reasoned that she’d had no other choice, that for them to survive this tragedy, they had to let go of their daughter. But it wasn’t easy and she felt her heart close like a little girl’s hand.

  FIFTEEN

  July 2, 2012

  4:41 p.m.

  The house Mathieu had lived in growing up, his grandparents’ house, was in Orleans, on the east side of Ottawa. He remembered coming here after the death of his parents and feeling uncomfortable at first, not really knowing his grandparents except for the short visits a few times a year. He hadn’t wanted to be there. But his grandmother had been so good and loving, helping him through those horrible first few months, and what he remembered most now was that his childhood had been filled with warmth, love, and plenty of fun times. He could almost hear his grandmother puttering in the kitchen, humming while she baked pies and made wonderful meals, or calling out to him to come and get the garbage bag and take it to the garage. He could hear her throaty laugh filling the house when she was watching one of her TV shows. The small bungalow had always felt just a bit too small, but today it felt big and empty without her.

  Mathieu went to the kitchen and took an apple from the crisper and devoured it. Then he cracked open a can of Coke and downed half of it. He heard his grandfather, who had fallen asleep on the sofa chair a while back, stir.

  “Mathieu? You still here?”

  “Yeah, in the kitchen,” he said and walked back to the living room at the front of the house. “I thought I’d let you catch a few winks. You probably didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “I did have a hard time settling down without your grandmother here. That’ll take getting used to.”

  Mathieu drank his Coke. “Will you be all right?”

  Grandpa stood and stretched. “I’ll miss her. I’m sure some nights will be harder than others. But I’ll be fine.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I don’t have a choice, now do I? Your grandmother, God rest her soul, is with the good Lord now and not much I can do about it.”

  “Aren’t you angry, even a bit?”

  “I’m angry that I won’t see her every day, sure, but angry at God? No. He gave her, us, a good long life.”

  “He took so much from you though.”

  Grandpa looked at his grandson. “I know where you’re trying to get to, but you won’t get there with me. For every test that He put in front of us, we did our best, we kept our faith. In the end, that’s what He’s testing us on. Our love and our faith.”

  Mathieu frowned. “I don’t see it that way.”

  “I know you don’t, son. Can’t make you believe something you’ve closed your mind to.”

  “He took my parents and my little girl. Not sure what sort of faith I’m supposed to show Him. Not a big fan of His methods.”

  “Maybe you should come to church with me on Sunday.”

  Mathieu shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

  “It might help you let go of your anger.”

  “Maybe my anger is what keeps me going.”

  “And maybe it’s holding you back.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sometimes, we just have to accept what is and go on. Your grandmother is gone but I’ll always have sixty years of memories to keep me company.”

  “You can’t hold memories, tell them you love them, have them tell you they love you too.”

  “No, you can’t. But torturing yourself isn’t going to bring your daughter back. Her memories can guide you forward but they shouldn’t keep you hostage. And you shouldn’t keep Lori-Anne hostage either.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Nothing that I can’t figure out for myself. Your marriage is in trouble, anyone can see that. It’s time to let Nadia rest in peace, like I’ll be doing with your grandmother, and pick up your life. You lost your daughter and if you don’t smarten up, you’ll lose your wife too.”

  Mathieu put his empty Coke can on the coffee table. “Sorry, Grandpa, I don’t want to pick a fight with you. Certainly not after
Grandma just died, but maybe that’s my business.”

  “You’re my only grandchild, and I love you but I see a man who needs help, in the worst way. I see a wife who keeps trying but is looking rather beaten. You need to talk to her. If you can’t talk to her, then the two of you need to see someone who can help.”

  “So now you’re ganging up on me too about the stupid counselling?”

  “I’m just trying to make you see what you can’t see. Son, I don’t like where you’re headed. I think it’s time to get help.”

  * * *

  Mathieu kept to the speed limit and took the long way home, stopping for gas even though he had half a tank left. He was trying to digest his grandfather’s words before he got home and faced Lori-Anne, words that wouldn’t leave him alone because he knew there was a lot of truth to them. The one thing his grandfather couldn’t know though was how hard it had become to forgive Lori-Anne.

  They wouldn’t be in this predicament if it wasn’t for her careless driving. It’s not like he was looking for just any reason to blame her. He really didn’t want to blame her. But no matter how he looked at what had happened, it was hard not to blame her.

  But he wasn’t without blame either. Maybe if he’d paid attention that day he would have noticed the snow beginning to fall and told her to take the Pathfinder instead of his car. Things like that he was usually right on top of, but he’d been so into his work that he hadn’t noticed the weather. He’d just been thankful Lori-Anne had come home early to take Nadia so that he could get another couple of hours work done. So, he was partially to blame, but he hadn’t been the one behind the wheel.

  Mathieu pulled into the driveway and saw that Lori-Anne’s car was gone. Relief made him exhale the breath he’d been holding. He still wasn’t sure what he would say to her but for now he needn’t worry. Maybe by the time she came home things would be clearer.

  He stepped out of the truck and glanced at the overgrown shrubs. The lawn could also use a cut. Chores he’d tended to like clockwork in the past had slipped his mind lately. The day wasn’t too far along, maybe he’d go change into his work clothes and spend a couple of hours doing yard work. Didn’t sound like a bad idea.