Collide

by Megan Hart

  And that was all. I watched him walk down the sidewalk to his own house. He didn’t look back. Not once.

  Chapter 12

  So it wasn’t a marriage proposal. I still went to bed with my head and heart buzzing. I slept hard, no dreams, and woke refreshed. No strange smells, nothing shifting around. I felt better than I had in weeks, the difference subtle and unnoticeable if I hadn’t been so focused on every small twinge of my body.

  After work I found the dress my mom wanted and decided on a whim to drive it down to her. Harrisburg was only a forty-minute drive to Annville and it wasn’t like I had anything better to do. Or worse. And…I wanted to see my mom. With everything that had been happening, I needed to sit at the old kitchen table, drink some chocolate milk. Be babied, just a little.

  But when I got there, the house was dark and quiet. No car in the drive. I let myself in the front door, feeling like a guest even though I used my own key. “Hello?”

  No answer. I checked my watch. It was just after 7:00 p.m, by no means late at night, but for my parents it was the equivalent of one in the morning. I put my keys in my bag and set it on the chair just inside the front door out of habit, though my mom had always yelled at me to put my stuff away. I had no place to put it now.

  I didn’t live there anymore.

  “Mom? Dad?” I hung the black dress, still covered in plastic from the last time I’d had it dry-cleaned, on the coatrack. “Hello?”

  The crunch of car tires alerted me to someone pulling into the drive, and the next minute the electric garage door opener rattled the decorative plates hung on the dining room wall. I stepped through into the kitchen just as my mom came through the door from the garage.

  She screamed. Loud. I screamed, too.

  “Emmaline!”

  “Mom!” I started laughing. “Didn’t you see my car out front?”

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” my mom said, a hand over her heart. She was puffing. “You scared the breath out of me!”

  “Sorry.” Chagrined, I moved forward to hug her as my dad came through the door. “Hi, Dad.”

  My dad greeted me with an absentminded kiss and a hug. He pushed past us and down the hallway toward their bedroom as though my visit were nothing special. God, I love my dad.

  My mom held me at arm’s length and looked me up and down. “You look thinner.”

  “I wish. But you definitely do.” I’d seen her only a month or so ago, but she’d lost weight. She wore a tracksuit and had dropped a gym bag at her feet when she screamed. “Were you at the gym?”

  My mom looked at the bag, then her clothes, then at me. “Yes. Your dad and I figured we’d better get in shape.”

  My mom had never been fat. Just pleasantly rounded, thick in the thighs and full in the chest. It was strange to see her cheeks more hollowed. I’d brought the dress thinking there was little chance she’d fit in it, but now it looked as though it might actually be too big.

  “Wow,” I said. “I should take a page from your book.”

  It was her pet phrase, and I sounded just like her. My mom laughed and hugged me tight. I closed my eyes and hugged her back just as hard.

  “Oh, my baby girl. I’ve missed you.”

  “Mom,” I said out of habit, not because I really minded.

  “What are you doing here?” she said when we pulled apart.

  “I brought the dress.”

  “Oh, right. Good!” My mom beamed. “Let me just take a quick shower and I’ll try it on. Have you eaten yet? I’m going to throw together a salad for Dad and me, but there’s some leftovers in the fridge.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  I did pull open the fridge to get some milk, but when I opened the cupboard to look for the chocolate milk mix, it wasn’t there. And the table itself, I realized when I looked it over, was new. The same shape and size as the other one, but definitely different. I put the milk back and sat down heavily in a chair that was different, too.

  “So, what do you think?” My mom came into the kitchen almost shyly, wearing the dress. It fit her perfectly, only a little baggy in the chest. She twirled slowly.

  “It looks great.”

  “You think so?” She tugged at the neckline, which was way lower than anything she usually wore. “It’s not too revealing?”

  “No. Not at all. With your hair up and a pretty necklace, it will be great. You’ll need different shoes.” I pointed to her thick ankle socks, and we both smiled.

  “Good. Well, that’s taken care of, then.” She smoothed the dress over her belly and turned from side to side to catch her reflection in the mirror hung on the back of the basement door. “Saves me having to buy one.”

  “What are you wearing it for?” I thought she’d say a wedding or something.

  “Oh…” My mom chewed her lower lip for a second before looking at me with shining eyes. “Your dad’s taking me on a cruise for our anniversary.”

  “What?” My jaw dropped.

  “Yep. And there’s a formal dinner night. This will be perfect.”

  Could. Not. Process. “A cruise. You and Dad?”

  “Yes,” she said. “An Alaskan cruise!”

  Not even to the Caribbean, which was at least closer. “Wow. That’s great, Mom.”

  “We haven’t taken a trip together, just the two of us…well…probably not since our honeymoon.”

  Because of me. She’d never say it, and I knew lots of parents who’d never taken a vacation without their kids when the children were small, but my parents had stuck close to home for long years after their friends had all started hopping off on weekend getaways. And cruises.

  Suddenly I was choked up, on the verge of tears I didn’t want my mom to see. “Sounds like fun. When do you leave?”

  “Oh, not until March. That’s why we joined the gym. Marianne Jarvis, you remember her, right? Well, she said that cruises stuff you so full you come back ten pounds heavier. I thought we should get rid of at least ten before going.” My mom smoothed the front of the dress again.

  “I’m sure you’ll have a great time. And you look great, too.”

  She studied me then. “Emm? Are you okay?”

  No chocolate milk. A new table. My mother in a black cocktail dress, looking younger and prettier than I could ever remember. These were the changes that had happened since I’d moved out, and I didn’t want to ruin her excitement with my own fears.

  “You always ask me that. And what do I always say?”

  “You always say you’re fine,” my mom answered.

  “So, I’m fine.”

  “Okay, let me go get changed out of this. Are you staying for long? I can heat up something for you.”

  “I have some things to get out of the basement, if that’s okay.”

  She gave me a funny look. “Of course it’s okay, honey, this is still your house. It will always be your house.”

  I made it to the basement before bursting into tears I stifled with my fist. The battered love seat I’d left behind was still there and I sank onto it with both hands clapped over my mouth to keep even the tiniest sound from escaping. I rocked, weeping for reasons I couldn’t really understand. I’d wanted to be independent. So why did I feel abandoned instead?

  I forced myself to stop before I disintegrated entirely. The breakdown was mawkish and self-serving, not to mention selfish. And stupid. It was also dishonest, because I knew very well if I’d told Mom flat out that I’d been having fugues again she’d have hog-tied me to a kitchen chair and refused to let me leave until I made a doctor’s appointment, and maybe not even then.

  I wanted to tell her so she could pet and pamper me. I didn’t want to tell her because I knew she would. I couldn’t really have it both ways; that was my burden to deal with, not hers. I was almost thirty-two years old, and it was time to stand up on my own.

  I hadn’t left a whole lot behind, but there were a few plastic bins full of miscellaneous crap in the crawl space. Old yearbooks and photo albums, some treasure
d dolls, that sort of thing. Stuff I hadn’t thought I’d want to look at again and yet found myself thinking of as I unpacked the boxes in my new place. Okay, so it was silly to want to see my old My Friend Mandy doll sitting on the bookshelf the way she had for all the years I’d lived at home. I’d left those things behind precisely because I wanted to have a grown-up house, but it felt too bare without those pieces of my childhood.

  I pulled the bins out of the crawl space and opened each to make sure they were the right ones. I didn’t want to drag my mom’s Christmas decorations by mistake. Everything was there, just as I’d left it when I packed it all up months ago. And on the top of the third and final bin…

  “Hey, Mom?” I asked on the way up the stairs. She appeared at the top in her regular outfit of jeans and a sweatshirt, an oven mitt on her hand. “Did you put this in my bin?”

  “Georgette? Yes. I found her behind the love seat when I was doing some cleaning down there. I figured you’d want her.”

  I held up the stuffed koala bear that fit just right in the palm of my hand. Her fur had worn off in places, and one eye had been carefully glued back on after being lost for an entire day. My grandpa had bought her for me while I was in the hospital after falling off the jungle gym. I could still remember waking up to find her tucked against my side, a new and unfamiliar toy I’d quickly grown to love more than anything else.

  “I can’t believe I forgot her.” I pressed her to my heart.

  “Now you can take her along,” Mom said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m going to.”

  I took her home sitting on the seat beside me. When I got out of the car, I put her in the pocket of my coat, an old one I’d picked up from my parents’ house since I still hadn’t found my other one. Then I took one bin from my trunk and heaved it up the sidewalk to my front door.

  Someone had left me a package. Well, a brown paper grocery bag. I set down the bin and fumbled for my keys while I nudged the bag with my toe. I’d forgotten to replace the bulb in the light fixture over my door, so the bag’s contents were shadowy and mysterious. I shoved open my door, set the bin inside on the rug so it wouldn’t get snow on my clean(ish) floor. Then I brought in the grocery bag.

  It was my coat.

  More than that, it was my clothing, folded neatly. Bra, panties, socks, T-shirt. My favorite jeans. Only my boots were missing. I searched the bag for a note and found nothing.

  “Shit,” I breathed. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Someone had taken pity on me, but who? Where had I gone wandering, naked and dark, and what had I done? I found myself feeling my body all over, as though I’d be able to tell what misadventures I’d gotten up to now. I had a friend in college who would always put a tampon in before she went out, even if she didn’t have her period. She said that way, if it went missing, she’d know she’d been up to something even if she couldn’t remember. I’d never tried that trick, but my womb twinged, anyway, as I remembered what my mind had told me I was doing during that time.

  The clothes smelled of cedar as I shook them out. A small piece of paper fell from inside the folds of my shirt. It fluttered to the floor, sawing and drifting on the current of air coming in through my still-open front door, which I closed before bending to pick up the paper. It was a receipt for dry cleaning, pretty tattered and yellowed, looking old.

  There was a name on the receipt.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” This I said aloud and closed my eyes tight, hoping to open them and discover I was imagining this. I opened them. “Shit!”

  The name on the receipt was, fuck my life, Johnny’s. I groaned and crumpled it, then thought better of it and smoothed it into my palm. I put it in my pocket.

  My cell phone rang. Jen. “Hey, girl.”

  “Hey,” she said. “Listen, would you mind if I bagged on our date night? I feel like a major douche about it, but, well…I have a real date. Not that a date night with you isn’t real,” she added hastily.

  I laughed. “Of course I don’t mind. Who’s the date with?”

  “His name’s Jared,” she said. “Get this, he’s a funeral director.”

  “Whoa. Well, at least he has a job, which is more than I can say for my last lame-ass boyfriend.”

  She giggled. “Yeah. Anyway, we were supposed to go out on Friday night, but he’s on call at weird times and asked if I minded going out on Thursday instead.”

  “How’d you meet this guy?” I shoved my clothes back in the grocery bag, glad to have them back but not ready to face what they meant. “I never heard you talk about him before.”

  “I’m almost embarrassed to say it.”

  “Girl, when are you almost embarrassed to say anything?” I laughed.

  “I met him at a funeral. My grandma’s sister Hettie died a couple months ago. Jared took care of her.”

  “He asked you out at your great-aunt’s funeral? Whoa.” I couldn’t carry the bin and talk on the phone at the same time, so I went to the kitchen to put the kettle on, Georgette in my other hand. I set her on the table.

  “No. Not then. I made a connection with him on Connex. The funeral home has a fan page.”

  “What?” This stopped me dead, no pun intended. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Girl, I am not even. It’s actually not as bad as you’d think. It’s more like an information page, though it is sort of weird to become a fan of a funeral home. But we started talking that way, and then he asked me out.”

  “Maybe I need to hang out more often on Connex.” I didn’t mean it. Connex was such a time suck, even for someone with my currently slow social calendar.

  “He’s so cute, Emm. And really funny, too.”

  “Good for you! Have fun on Thursday, and don’t worry. Really. I told you, the movie’s not that good.”

  “Awww, any movie with Johnny in it’s got to be good,” she said, but without the conviction she used to have.

  Jared must be really, really cute, I thought, but didn’t begrudge her.

  “You sure you don’t mind? Sistahs before mistahs and all that?”

  “Hell, no,” I told her. “At least one of us should be getting some action.”

  “It’s just a date,” Jen said, but I heard excitement in her voice.

  “Have fun,” I told her again. “I’ll expect a full report on Friday.”

  “You got it.”

  We hung up just as my kettle started whistling. I poured the hot water over some loose tea in a tea ball, then went out to bring in the rest of my bins while it steeped. On the street, a car passed me and pulled up in front of Johnny’s house. I busied myself with rearranging my trunk while I peeked to see who got out.

  Johnny did, of course. So did the woman I’d seen him with at the coffee shop. He waited to help her over the ice, a solicitous hand on her elbow. Jealousy, irrational and useless, reared up inside me, and I slammed the trunk lid so hard the sound of metal-on-metal rang out clearly all the way down the street. They both turned. I pretended to be busy with my bin.

  I didn’t own him. My pieced-together fantasies didn’t give me a single right to any feelings whatsoever about what Johnny did with his life or his time. We weren’t really lovers. Hell, we weren’t even friends.

  Even so, I muttered a string of curses as I unpacked the stuff I’d brought from home and spread it around my house. A few Little Golden Books on a bookshelf and a framed drawing I’d done as a kid on the wall in the living room. I paused to look at it. It wasn’t half-bad, which was probably why my mom had framed it. I was more artistic than I thought.

  I’d signed my initials in the lower right corner—E.M.M. for Emmaline Marie Moser—and I smiled the way I always did when I saw my name that way. I had clever parents.

  I’d drawn a house, along with a man and a woman in front. The woman was a princess or a bride, or maybe both. It was hard to tell by the fluffy pink dress and veil, and the flowers in her hand might’ve suited either. She and the man next to her were holding hands, their smiles single-lin
e curves stretching from ear to ear. He looked more like a prince than a bridegroom, since he wasn’t wearing a tux but a long black coat with a long, striped scarf.

  I looked again, closer. Long black coat. Long striped scarf. My stomach flip-flopped. I reached for the picture, the glass dusty and spotted, the wooden frame loose at the corners.

  That was my house. This one. Tall and narrow, three windows on one side of the front door, one on the other. Okay, so it could’ve been any house, but it looked like mine.

  And then, I saw the TARDIS. I’d missed it the first time, the blue shape partially obscured by the out-of-perspective trees. Oh.

  “Hello, Doctor.” I touched the figure again. Mystery revealed. I’d been a huge Doctor Who freak as a kid. No disrespect to any who came after him, but Tom Baker would always be my doctor.

  The Doctor, not Johnny.

  “Freak,” I said fondly to my eight-year-old self, and hung the picture up again.

  There was still the matter of my clothes to figure out, and it ate away at me all day at work until I could do nothing but conjure up all the worse scenarios. At least whatever I’d done hadn’t been illegal. Or I hadn’t been caught. I hadn’t ended up on the evening news or, so far as I could tell, YouTube. Or YouPorn, thank God.

  Though if any of that had happened, at least I’d know what I’d done.

  There was no way around it. I had to talk to Johnny about it. He’d returned the clothes; it wasn’t like he was pretending it hadn’t happened. Whatever it was.

  Fuck my life.

  I didn’t go to his house with a plate of cookies this time. I had no idea if a peace offering would be appropriate, and I didn’t want to intrude any more than I’d apparently already done. I went to his gallery instead.

  The Tin Angel on Front Street took up most of one of the grand old mansions that had been split up into offices. It wasn’t empty when I went in, which was something of a surprise for a Thursday night. I shouldn’t have assumed that just because I had no appreciation of art that nobody else would, either. Couples carrying glasses of wine and plates of cheese and grapes wandered the rooms and murmured over the prints hung on the walls and sculptures displayed on pedestals. Soft music played.