“If?”
“Yes, who knows, you might change your mind. But either way, nothing has to change between us.”
“Too late, Carsten. It’s already changed. Fuck it. It was never what I thought it was, anyway.” Her voice cracked. “You said you loved me!”
“And I do. But,” and here he had the good grace to look slightly ashamed, “perhaps there are more ways to love than just one and —”
“Get out of my way!” She thumped his shoulder.
“You cannot leave, Angela, you have had too much to drink, for one thing.”
“Get out of my way! Move! ”
He simply stood there and so she turned and ran through the hall, into the kitchen and out the back door. She was in her car. He stood in the now-open doorway, his hands in his pockets. She started the engine and pulled away into the darkness.
Where would she go? Where would she go?
Not back to Carsten.
Not back to Philip.
Not to Deedee.
A hotel. She could go to the Westin. It was outside of town on the highway. No one would know her there. Staying in Princeton would mean bumping into people she knew. Staying in Trenton was unthinkable. Maybe Philadelphia? She didn’t even know hotels in Trenton and envisioned human trafficking and drug deals. There were the long-term stay places on Route 1, but they scared her for the same reasons. She had her own credit card, and a bank account with enough money in it for now, her sham nod to a woman’s independence. Oh, sure, she was going to live the bohemian life, was she? She wiped away tears.
She screamed, banging her palms on the steering wheel. It needed to be released, this scream. It would explode inside her if she didn’t let it out. She screamed and screamed. A right turn … a one-way street … another turn. All that mattered was she keep driving, keep moving, keep putting distance between her and …
She didn’t see the man. She didn’t see him until it was too late.
His eyes. Wide eyes. Open mouth. Hands up.
Hands up, it flashed through Angela’s mind. The gesture, the chant of protestors. Michael Brown. Hands up. Don’t shoot. The spark of metal against metal as … what? A shopping cart hit the grill? Things flying through the air. A running shoe. The man’s body, strangely limp, as though disarticulated, dislocated. And her foot on the brake, but it meant nothing, her effort, and nothing stopped. Oh, but it wasn’t a shopping cart, was it? No, not unless the man was sitting in it. It registered in Angela’s mind that time had stopped working because she shouldn’t have had enough time in the midst of this horror to think about time at all. But here she was. Wheels in the air now. A wheelchair? A man in a wheelchair? She’d hit a man in a wheelchair? Bang. SCREEEE …
Silence.
Her fists clutched the wheel, her arms out straight, pushed into the shoulder sockets. She blinked. And just like that, whatever had happened was no longer happening. Whatever had been happening had happened. Was over. Done. Unchangeable. Absolute. Immutable. All creation held its breath with her. She did not want to breathe again. Ever. She did not want to see anything. Did not want to hear anything. And her wish was granted. Only the huffing of the car engine. And she then thought that hearing screams would be better than this silence. She sucked in air. She looked.
The man was on the ground, between a grocery store and a small white church, with his head against the curb. His legs were grotesquely bent. His wheelchair, for a wheelchair it was, lay some feet away.
She thought, where on earth was he going at this time of night? In a wheelchair? Why was he here at all? Her fist went to her mouth. She wasn’t blaming him. She wasn’t, was she? The street was commercial on one side, houses with chain-link fences on the other. Lights were on, but no one was coming out. There were no faces in windows. The sound of televisions and the bass of rap music leaking from somewhere.
She was going to vomit. She might have wet herself. It seemed she had. Dark stains along the inside of her jeans. She got out of the car. As she stepped to the weeds by the sidewalk, she noticed a movement. The man. His arm moved. She swallowed back the bile that had risen in her throat and walked closer to him.
He had sunken, stubbled cheeks, white hairs against the brown skin, and his hair was speckled with grey and his mouth was loose, and she realized his dentures had been knocked askew. She reached out and, with one hand on his forehead, used the other hand to reposition the plates between his gums. The man’s eyes flicked and opened and again she cried out. He looked at her as though he had never seen a human face before, and she could not tell if his expression held hope or horror. She understood that whatever happened to her from this moment on, this man’s brown eyes would be the first thing she saw when she woke in the morning and the last thing she saw when she fell asleep at night (if ever she was to sleep again) and they would haunt her dreams.
But he was alive. Thank you, God. Oh, thank you for that.
She ran back to the car to get her phone. She would call an ambulance. She saw the dents in the front and the hood of the car. But no blood on the car. She didn’t think so. Hard to tell in the dark. But no, nothing. She got into the car. Looked through her purse. Found her phone. She would call an ambulance.
She meant to. It had been her intention. The phone was in her hand. Just three small numbers to press: 9-1-1. And then so many things would happen. Police and handcuffs and jail and Philip and Carsten and, oh, God, Connor would know what she had done. A drunk madwoman mowing down innocent people. Princeton woman, charged with drunk driving causing … what? He might still die, the man. She would go to prison. She couldn’t do that.
There is no one else here, she thought. There is no one on this street. No one to help. No one to hinder. No one has seen me.
A security camera hung off the back of the grocery store, but it was pointed to the parking lot, not to the street.
And then she was driving. But would anyone find him? In time? Whatever that meant. She hit the horn. A long, loud blast. Again. Again. In the rear-view mirror she saw lights come on at two houses. Doors opened. She was gone, though. Just a car on a street. She was turning down a street. It was a one-way street, going the wrong way. She turned onto another and another, her heart erratic in its cage of bones, panicked now that she would somehow end up driving past the man again, and people would be there now, and they would drag her out of the car and kill her, which she might well deserve, or maybe this was some Twilight Zone loop where she would just keep hitting the man over and over again. And then, another turn, and yes, there was the way out … onto Route 1. She was signalling. She was moving into traffic. She was not sober. Not exactly. Not close. But enough adrenaline pumped through her veins to keep her more or less alert. She was going where? She was going to Philadelphia.
TO DRIVE ALONG A HIGHWAY at night after having committed a hit and run was a tricky business. First, there was the problem of shaking hands. Second, there was the problem of the mind, which refused to be where it needed to be. The windshield was not broken, and yet it no longer functioned as a windshield, or more precisely, it now insisted on a dual function; the first being a normal pane of glass allowing Angela to see what was in front of her, the second being a dream screen, showing her a repetitive and grisly loop of what was behind her, of what she had done.
Within a few minutes, as her heart began to slow, and her cheeks became wet with tears, she understood she would not be able to drive for long. Shock might be setting in. She was trembling. Her teeth were chattering. She smelled of urine and alcohol. She had to get off the road. She had to find a place to think, to hide, until she could figure out what to do. She looked at the signs as she drove. That little bed with a roof over it. A hotel. Any kind. Yes, there. Remembering to turn on her blinker, she took the exit to Langhorne. She would change her pants in the car. She would get a room. She would find a cave to crawl into.
Sister Eileen
Later, Eileen would wonder if she’d been expecting the call. At the time it seemed to come out
of the blue, but of course these things never come out of the blue and she had felt the nagging twinges of fear for Angela for months, hadn’t she? Nevertheless, the aforementioned notwithstanding (a silly phrase her mother used to say when she was arguing with Eileen’s father, meant to downgrade the seriousness of whatever it was), when the phone rang and she heard Angela’s choked gargle of a cry she had the wind knocked out of her. It was just before her alarm was set to go off at five-thirty. The room was barely light, just a wash of pale not-darkness. No phone call received at such an hour meant good news. Angela, barely coherent, something about an accident, and help, she needed help. Eileen hadn’t heard from Angela since the day she’d called from Carsten’s, the day she left her husband, which was what? The day before yesterday? It took some minutes for Eileen to understand Angela wasn’t at Carsten’s, and wasn’t at home, but was at a hotel over the river in Langhorne.
Sweet Jesus, prayed Eileen, guide me through this. Another mess made by someone else that she would now be expected to clean up. Really, God? Really? Really.
It was a short drive and at this time of the morning no one was on the roads. She arrived before she really had time to wake up. She had prayed all the way but felt as though she could use another hour or two. And coffee. She needed coffee. She parked and walked into the garish lobby. Turquoise carpet, fuchsia curved couches, a daffodil-coloured medallion on the ceiling, beyond that a bar area with high black stools and a good deal of chrome on the walls. Blue tables and chairs. Meant to be cheerful, probably. A man sat reading the paper and eating eggs at one table, and at another a woman was texting with one hand, drinking orange juice with the other. Thankfully, the coffee service was set up. She grabbed two large paper cups and filled them with the Breakfast Blend, stuffing little creamers and sugar packets in her pockets. She smiled good morning to the young woman behind the reception desk and headed to the elevators.
Angela opened the door. Oh, dear. Her face was bloated, her eyes red and a little wild. Her hair was in tangles. She wore jeans, a black T-shirt. Her feet were bare. She reached for Eileen’s embrace, and as the two women stood holding each other — Eileen still holding the coffee cups — Eileen couldn’t ignore the smell of alcohol seeping from Angela’s pores.
“All right, all right,” said Eileen, herding her into the room and closing the door behind them.
Angela pulled away and began pacing the room, which was clearly designed for the business traveller. A tiny pantry area with a little refrigerator and microwave, cluttered now with evidence of room service — a couple of plates with remnants of wilted salad greens and a half-eaten sandwich. Two wine bottles and a glass. A desk acted as a partition between the entry and the bedroom. Dark green carpet, pale green curtains, white walls, a mirrored armoire in the corner, the wood a cheap veneer. Angela had walked around the bed and stood looking out the window for a moment and then turned and backed herself into the corner. The only chair in the room was the one at the desk, a black thing with wheels. It looked like a metallic spider in this otherwise washed-out room.
Eileen walked over and put the coffee in Angela’s hands, wrapping Angela’s fingers around the cup with her own. She then rolled the chair around the partition, near the bed. She gestured toward the bed. “Sit,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Angela sat, and put the coffee on the bedside table. She hid her face in her hands. She sobbed.
Oh, thought, Eileen, if she slides into hysteria this will go very poorly indeed. “Come on now,” she said. “That’s not going to help. Sit. Speak.” She used her teaching-teenagers voice, perfected from years of doing exactly that. I can’t help if you don’t calm down and tell me what’s happened.
Angela emitted a strangled sound, pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, then dropped her hands and sighed with a deep shudder. She sat at the end of the bed. She looked hollowed-out, faintly green. Eileen had seen it often enough on her father to know the signs. Hungover. She rolled her chair closer. “Come on. Let’s have it.”
The story began to trickle out. Rage at Carsten, the need to escape, the impact … and then Angela went stock-still, her mouth open, eyes wide, seeing something not in the room. She convulsed, clapped her hand over her mouth and ran to the bathroom, retching. Eileen followed her, lips moving in prayer, and stroked the woman’s back while she vomited thin strings of bile and little else. The nun shut her eyes, begging God to tamp down the fires of her disapproval. Selfish Angela. Selfish. Childish. Selfish woman. So careless.
Would there never be an end to the ways one must learn to love? Would there never be a time when she might arrive at that place of peace, the vantage point from which all things were seen through the shield of Christ’s love? The shield, the light, that transformed one’s personal distaste to healing? No, of course not, no more than there would be an end to broken people, difficult people, to love, just as they are. Right now. Right here. Angela. Angela, who was only going to feel God’s love in this terrible moment if Eileen let Christ work through her.
“All right, dear. It’s going to be all right. Everything will be all right. You are not alone.”
Angela slumped onto the floor, her back against the tub. Drops of vomit stained the front of her T-shirt. She held her head in her hands.
“Oh, Eileen. What have I done? What if I’ve killed a man? What if he’s dead?”
“What man?” Eileen sat on the floor so she would be eye to eye with Angela. She felt a warmth course through her, which was surely love, but she felt something else, as well, something like a held breath. The air had become still and the silence tangible.
As she raised her head, Angela let out a shuddering sigh. Her eyes were less wild, but now they revealed a sort of blankness. “I hit a man, with my car. I hit a man in a wheelchair. When I left Carsten’s the other night.”
“You hit a man in a wheelchair with your car.”
“Yes.” Angela paused, but her eyes held Eileen’s. “And then …”
“And then?”
“I drove away.” Her hands flew to her mouth as though trying to catch whatever bloody, vile thing was trying to exit. “I left him there. On the ground.”
“Oh, Angela.”
This was bad. It was worse that Eileen had imagined. She had thought of Angela’s husband, of her son. She had envisioned arguments and accusations and dreadful shame and self-loathing. But this? No.
Angela was talking. “He was alive then. I know he was. I saw him move. And I honked my horn really long, so people would come out and help him. Somebody came. I saw. I’m sure I did. I panicked. I was drunk. I was. Oh, shit. There is that. I was drunk, drunk, drunk.” Her voice rose with each repetition.
Fat, oily tears glazed her cheeks and she wiped them away so harshly Eileen feared Angela would begin slapping herself. She reached out and took the younger woman’s hands.
“And you’ve been holed up here since then?”
Angela nodded.
“You will get through this. Yes. Yes, you will. Even this. But now, I want you to get up, can you do that? Good. I want you to get up and clean yourself up. Wash your face. Brush your teeth. I am going to order some food. And more coffee. And then you and I will sit down and talk about all of this and determine what you want to do.”
Eileen left her in the bathroom and called the Pantry, leaving a message on the machine. They could get along without her for a day.
By the time the food arrived, Angela was sitting on the end of the bed. She had changed into a clean T-shirt and with her teeth brushed and her face washed she still looked drawn and exhausted. She had been shivering, although the room wasn’t cold, and Eileen had found a sweatshirt for her to put on, and socks. It was shock. And a hangover. And grief. And fear. So many things that all reinforced the knowledge that what Angela had done she could not now undo, no matter how much she might wish it to be different. She was quiet and defeated. Her hands lay like dead birds in her lap. Telling Eileen what she had done had calmed her,
but also made it real in a different way. This was a dangerous moment, and Eileen, well-trained, well-educated in not only the ways of the soul, but the ways of the heart and mind, understood thoughts of suicide probably swept across Angela’s mind like snow clouds. She understood that if Angela was to survive this, there needed to be not only reality, but acceptance, and the peace that comes from surrender, unconditional and complete. But first …
The food was on a tray on the desk. Poached eggs and toast. Orange juice. Eileen brought them to Angela. “Come on. You have to eat.”
“I don’t want any.”
“That doesn’t matter. You will eat. The coming days are going to be difficult, to say the least. You’re going to need your strength. Eat. Do as you’re told.” Eileen rolled the black chair over and sat down, watching.
Mechanically, Angela nibbled the toast. She ate the egg.
It was a start. “Have you talked to your husband since you left?”
“No. I haven’t talked to anyone. No one. I don’t ever want to talk to Carsten again, and Philip? No. I couldn’t think of anyone to call. Except you.” All those acquaintances she had, and yet so few friends.
“I’m glad you called.”
Finally, her hands around a large cup of hot coffee with plenty of sugar in it, Angela looked up at Eileen and said, “I have to know if he’s dead or not.” Tears filled her eyes again.
“Yes, you do.” Eileen held her hands out, palms up, as though willing Angela to receive what was being offered. You realize whether or not this man died —”
“You think I don’t know I left the scene of an accident? Of course, I know that. You think I don’t know that?”
A flare of anger there. Well, of course there would be. Angela was still Angela.
Angela frowned. “Are you going to turn me in? Are you bound, like, is there a rule about this sort of thing?”
“I am not required to report. And I won’t. I will hold this with you. That’s a promise, but it depends on this: you can’t hurt yourself and you can’t go out and hurt anyone else. That’s the bottom line.”
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