by Mina Hardy
AFTER ALL I’VE DONE
A Novel
MINA HARDY
To Lori, my best friend, who is in no way an inspiration for anything that happens in this book. Thanks for the decades of friendship and support! Here’s to many more!
For Robert, my best husband, who also is in no way an inspiration for the circumstances in this story.
CHAPTER ONE
Diana
Imagine yourself in a dark room.
The difference between closing your eyes and keeping them open is the flicker of lashes on your own cheeks, and that’s all. You keep your eyes open, trying to see, because you haven’t yet given up the hope that somewhere, somehow, you’ll catch a glimmer of light. That you are not a prisoner here in this endless night.
Wait long enough, try hard enough, and you’ll see hints of light, maybe around a door frame. Maybe it’s the end of a hall or a tunnel. It could be the pressure of your own eyes, straining so hard that the blood vessels burst. Then the light is gone, and you’re back to staring at nothing but darkness.
That’s my mind.
Laundry
Groceries
Transfer money
Cancel dentist
New phone
Pay RC
The yellow legal pad I just found in my nightstand features a list, written in my own handwriting. It’s my own list, the items crossed off or circled to remind myself of the minutiae of my life, but I don’t remember writing it. I don’t remember completing any of those tasks.
New phone. My phone was lost in the accident, but I wrote this list before that happened. Who—or what—is RC, and why did I need a reminder to pay? Did I ever visit the dentist, or do I need to reschedule?
“Babe, I can’t find my red tie,” Jonathan says from behind me. “The one with the polka dots?”
Quickly, I shut the nightstand drawer and turn to face him. My husband used to laugh at me when I walked into a room and looked around, perplexed, before walking out without whatever it was I’d gone in there to find. We joked it was old age, although at forty-five, I’m nowhere close to old. We used to joke a lot. We don’t anymore.
The days of walking out of a room without remembering why I went into it have now become a real joke, laughable. That’s normal forgetfulness. What I have is deeper, more pervasive. Darker.
“Have you seen it?” he asks when I don’t reply at once with the location of his missing tie.
“I haven’t. It’s not in the drawer?” Already I’m crossing to the walk-in closet so I can help him search. “Where did you take it off?”
“Uh …”
“Never mind. I’ll look around for it.” I force fake cheer in my voice so that neither of us has to address his awkward silence.
“Thanks, babe. You’re the best,” my husband says. “I gotta run. Oh … yeah, in case you forgot, I have that board meeting tonight. Don’t wait up.”
That word forgot hangs between us, more uncomfortable even than a few minutes ago when he couldn’t own up to where he’d probably left his tie. Jonathan has always thought he was a better liar than he really is. There’s no board meeting, but he doesn’t realize that I’ve already figured out what he’s really doing all the nights he’s “working late.”
I accept his kiss and wave him off to work the way I’ve done for the last ten years of our marriage. Like nothing’s wrong. Like we are fine, or at least as though I am.
I am not fine.
About five weeks ago, on the last day of September, on a dark and stormy night, my car hit a deer. I lost control and ended up in a ditch—or so I was told. I can’t, perhaps thankfully, remember the car accident. The car, my baby, a cherry red Camaro that was flashy and ridiculous and utterly, completely mine, was totaled and hauled off to the junkyard before I woke up. Me? I opened my eyes in the hospital to find multiple incisions in my abdomen from an emergency surgery to rip out my gloriously infected gallbladder, both my arms immobilized in slings from two broken collarbones, and a lot of pain. I still hurt like hell when I get up in the morning, mostly throughout the day and always, always when I try to go to sleep. There’s still a vague, persistent ache in the space below my ribs that hits me when I’m not expecting it. My digestion’s a wreck. I don’t miss my gallbladder at all, but the two broken collarbones have really messed me up.
When your collarbones break, you lose the use of your arms.
Without the use of your arms, you basically become an invalid.
It’s much better now, but for the past month it’s been rough. I’ve barely been able to feed myself. Forget about personal hygiene. The last time I needed someone to wipe my butt for me, I was four years old. This sucks.
I was lucky, though. I could have gone head-on with the eighteen-wheeler coming at me, the one that stopped to make sure I was all right after I ran into the ditch. I learned later that the driver called the ambulance for me. He stayed with me until it arrived. For all that, I don’t know his name. Can’t thank him. And of course, I don’t remember him at all.
I don’t remember anything after Memorial Day weekend five months ago. Driving to the beach with my best friend, Val, the windows of my sexy car rolled down and the summer’s pop hits cycling through the radio stations that changed from town to town. It’s called anesthesia-induced amnesia, and there’s no cure.
I might, one day, spontaneously recall what happened between the end of May and the first week in October, but it’s more likely that I’ll never get that time back. Instead, I have pain and lists I can’t remember writing and a husband who lies to me every day. I have a brand-new reality, and nothing in it makes sense. The accident didn’t kill me, but I’m not sure how I’m going to survive it.
CHAPTER TWO
Valerie
Jonathan tastes like chocolate when I kiss him. His mouth is warm. Hot, even. I breathe him in and pull him close, and I hold him next to me until he rolls away and tosses off the covers so he can leave the bed.
Don’t, I want to say. Don’t go.
Of course I don’t say that, no matter how much I want to. It would sound desperate and grasping, and even if that’s how I feel about him and this situation, it’s not how I want him to think of me. I watch as he gets out of bed and walks naked to the bathroom. I listen as he takes a long hard piss, the water in the toilet splashing. He doesn’t close the door. I guess we’ve been together long enough to feel comfortable with an open bathroom door, long enough that we don’t have to pretend that we don’t have bodily functions. With someone else, this would be irritating. I’d want to keep the “magic,” whatever that means. With him, it’s intimate. I want to make it permanent.
When he comes back to the bedroom, he looks me over. I haven’t pulled up the covers. I want him to see me naked. I want him to crawl back into bed with me, to cover me with his body, to put his mouth on mine. To kiss me there, and in lower places. I want to make him cry out my name the way he does every single time.
There’ve been other men. So many of them. But none of them ever made me feel as beautiful as they told me they thought I was.
I don’t want him to go back to her.
“I’ll call you later,” he says. “After she goes to bed.”
She goes to bed early now because of the pills. Jonathan and I will get a few hours of phone time, giggling in the dark like teenagers up past curfew. If I’m lucky, that is. Lately the phone calls have been cut short by yawns and complaints of having to get up early for work. It’s not like it was in the beginning, but then I guess nothing ever really is.
I love you, I think but don’t say. I never say it, but he has to know it’s true. Does he love me? His eyes say he does. The way he kisses me says so too. But Jonathan never says it with words.
&n
bsp; He pauses to kiss me, bending over the bed. I don’t grab him by the neck to pull him down, even though I imagine myself doing that. I guess I do have a little pride after all. It doesn’t last. I leap out of the bed and catch him at the bedroom door. I’m still naked. He’s fully clothed. Sometimes being naked is a weakness. Sometimes it’s a weapon.
His hands roam over my bare skin. His breathing quickens. His kiss is fierce, but fast.
“I wish you could stay,” I tell him.
I don’t want to cry. I know he doesn’t want me to. The tears I can no longer hold back make him uncomfortable. I never used to be that sort of woman. The kind to cling or chase or beg.
Funny how things can change.
He grips me gently by the upper arms to put some distance between us. He looks into my eyes. He’s got lines at the corners of his, new since we started this … whatever it is. More lines bracket the corners of his mouth. It used to be that we laughed together all the time. We haven’t laughed about much of anything lately, and there are times, like now, that I worry we never will again.
“Soon.” He says it like a promise, an answer to a question I didn’t ask. Not aloud, anyway. Not this time. “Soon.”
Then he’s gone, and I’m here alone in a room that still smells of him, and even though I never used to be the sort of woman to cry herself to sleep, that’s what I end up doing.
CHAPTER THREE
Diana
“Hallooooo!” My mother-in-law’s familiar trill rings through the hallway. She’s let herself in through the garage, the way she usually does, and I hear the click-clack of her heels heading away from me, toward the kitchen.
Not for the first time, I consider changing the code for the garage door’s keypad lock. It would at least give me a warning that I’m about to be … well, invaded seems like a harsh description, especially since I’m not sure what I would have done without her in those first weeks after the accident.
Jonathan has never been the sort to fuss and coo, so he didn’t take vacation time to stay home with me. Harriett was the one who helped me use the toilet and take a shower. I couldn’t even brush my own teeth. The first time I tried to wash my hair, I threw up from the pain. I’m able to do most of it by myself now, but the embarrassment of it all, the shame of being so vulnerable, is a memory I definitely wish I could forget. I’ll never be able to, though, because Harriett will always be around to remind me.
Invaded might be harsh, but it’s how it feels. Ten years ago, when I moved into this house with Jonathan, Harriett moved out of it and into the in-law quarters above the detached garage. She’d promised then that even though she’d be just steps across the yard, she would respect our privacy. She’s kept her word, mostly, until the accident. She’s been over here every day since I came home from the hospital, sometimes at all hours. Eventually, tired of being woken up at dawn every time Harriett let herself in to start the coffee, I turned off the phone notifications from my camera security system. I appreciate the coffee. I hate being woken up. Still, I wish she’d at least text before she came over—but how can I ask her to do that when, without her help these past six weeks, I’d have been lost?
After all, she’s the only one I really have left.
“Diana?”
“I’m in the den.” I’m out of breath as I slowly, carefully, move through the set of daily mobility exercises I’m supposed to do.
My left arm hurts the tiniest bit less because the clavicle on that side is only broken in one place, not three. I lift it slowly to chest height. The agony in my collarbone, sternum, and shoulder slices and dices me, stabs like an ice pick, way down deep. It’s a hum like a tuning fork, vibrating nonstop. At the faint feeling of the bones grinding together, my body runs hot and cold. My stomach twists, and I make a weird, strangled sort of combination groan of relief, frustration, and agony. The pain doesn’t stop right away, but it fades. Every day, a little more, it fades.
“Diana? Are you upstairs?”
I find enough air to answer more loudly this time. “In the den!”
I slip my arm back into the sling. I’m not supposed to be out of the slings for too long. It can take six to eight weeks or longer, even up to twelve, they’ve told me, for the bones to heal well enough to allow for full use of my arms. I can expect it to be some more weeks after that before it won’t hurt at all. I might always have residual pain there, but I didn’t hear that from the doctors. I found that out on the internet.
The only good thing about all of this is the meds. It turns out that anesthesia-induced amnesia is considered enough of a psychiatric burden that there’s reasonable justification for me to have weekly therapy sessions with my psychiatrist, Dr. Levitt. I also get to take the good stuff. A pastel rainbow of opioids, anti-depressants, and anti-anxiety tablets, capsules, and pills. Put them on my tongue, I go flying.
“I just had your prescriptions refilled—oh, Diana. What are you doing?” In the doorway between the den and the hallway, Harriett sighs and shakes her head.
I taste sweat on my upper lip, and I hope my mascara hasn’t run. It was hard enough to get it on once already today. I’m going out with my friend Trina in a bit, and I’d rather not look like a toddler with a fistful of markers helped me do my makeup. It’ll be the first time I’ve gone anywhere except a doctor’s appointment since I’ve been home from the hospital.
“Just doing my exercises.”
“Your face is practically gray, and you’re sweating like a pig. Here. Take your medicine.”
She opens the bottle and tips some pills into her palm. Pale green-blue oblong pills. I have a few different prescriptions, so without reading the label, I’m not sure exactly what they are. I think they’re the pain pills. They upset my stomach, which requires more pills to offset the random nausea. Dr. Levitt says these random bouts of sickness could also be my body’s reaction to the stress of my mind missing so much time. Either way, I’ve lost close to fifteen pounds since the last time I can remember weighing myself, and I was never in need of a diet.
“I’m okay.” I shake my head when she thrusts her hand in my direction. There’s no way I’m going to let Harriett see how much I’m hurting. I want her to think I’m healing, even if I’m not convinced of it myself. The sooner she thinks I don’t need her help, the better. “I’m trying not to take so many.”
“There’s no sense being in pain. You’ve had some serious injuries. Your doctors wouldn’t renew your prescriptions if they didn’t think you needed the pills.” Harriett proffers the pills again.
“I’m okay, Harriett. Really.”
Truthfully, the dull ache in my collarbones has ramped up from doing those exercises, and I do want those pills. I want a glass of wine with Trina even more, though, and I’m not about to mix pain meds and alcohol. My last dose was last night before I went to bed. Since then, I’ve thought about taking more meds about every fifteen minutes or so, but the promise of a perfectly chilled glass of chardonnay, maybe even two, has held me off. I can’t remember the last time I relaxed with a glass of wine and a good friend. Literally cannot recall.
Her frown knits her brows together. “You’re going to end up hurting yourself even more. I wish you’d just let me help you.”
Why do you have to be so stubborn, so ungrateful? is the thought that comes to my mind. Harriett doesn’t say that, of course. That’s my mother’s voice talking, the voice I have not quite learned to ignore, even after all these years.
“You do too much for me,” I tell her.
Harriett flutters and blushes as though I’ve paid her a compliment, which was not my intent. “Oh, hush. I’m happy to do it. You know I am.”
Oh yes. I know how Harriett is. I knew it before I married her son a decade ago. Back then, I thought she was exactly the sort of mother I’d always wanted. Now … not so much.
Guilt overwhelms me. I used to love Harriett more than my own mother. Somewhere along the way, everything I used to think was so great has become irritating. Smoth
ering.
My husband has always taken this motherly love for granted, but I never have. Because of that, I’m the one who makes sure “he” remembers to order her flowers for Mother’s Day, to make dinner reservations on her birthday, to pick up exactly the sort of flannel nightgown she adores for Christmas. My husband does not appreciate having a mother who cares, so I do it for him. Harriet is probably the only reason I’m still here. If I’m going to be honest, she’s the only reason I’m here at all.
I wish I could remember why I hate her so much now.
“What time is Jonathan going to be home? I’m going to start dinner.” Harriett tosses this over her shoulder as she heads down the hallway toward the kitchen.
I follow. “I don’t know. He’s working late tonight.”
She whirls to face me, her eyes wide. Harriett literally wears pearls, and she literally clutches them. “Again? That’s the third time this week.”
“Again,” I agree mildly.
Harriett keeps closer track of my husband’s schedule than I do. I stopped paying attention to it a long time ago. I mean, up until about six months ago, I had my own career. My own late working nights to worry about. What I know, though, that she obviously does not, is that her son is not at the office all those nights he says he’s working late. He’s sleeping with another woman, that old cliché. Worse than that, it’s my best friend.
“He works too hard,” Harriett says with a frown as she putters with something in the cupboard. Pill bottles rattle. She closes the door and turns. “I’m going to message him. I really wanted him to be home for dinner. It feels like ages since we’ve all been around the same table, like a real family. I’m making pot roast. It used to be his favorite.”
Jonathan has been a vegetarian for as long as I’ve known him. He’s even been leaning toward becoming totally vegan. If pot roast used to be his favorite, it’s far from it now. I do love pot roast, though, especially the way my mother-in-law makes it. All that rich gravy served over mashed potatoes that are swimming in butter. Mushrooms and carrots. A side of peas, cooked just enough so they’re still crisp. I’m a terrible cook. I learned, out of desperation and necessity, the bare minimum required to feed myself so I didn’t starve, but it’s never been one of my accomplishments. I can’t compete with the divine expertise of Harriett’s pot roast.