by Paula Garner
Instead, I latched on to what she’d said about stuff she needed to do. That was pretty common for people who planned to kill themselves, right? To take some time to get their affairs in order? Leave a note or whatever? My stomach twisted at the thought, but I just hoped and prayed that whatever Dara needed to do, it took her at least three hours to do it.
Night morphed into dawn — a time of day that reminded me of Dara like none other. I had seen dawn with almost no one but her, and with her hundreds of times. All those mornings I’d groused and complained about crack-of-dawn practices with her . . . Right now I’d do anything to make sure they’d continue.
I drove at exactly the speed limit — if I got stopped for speeding on top of driving without a license, I’d never get to her — and took deep breaths to fight down the nausea that rose up in me. I shook all over. And I was so thirsty I drank from a half-full bottle of warm water that had been sitting in the car for weeks.
I argued with myself about whether I should stop to text her and tell her I was on my way. If she knew I was coming, she might wait for me. Or she might see it as a deadline.
No. I was being ridiculous. This was just a bad day. A terrible day. I wasn’t there for her. She was alone and upset. She’d gotten her hopes up — this thing with Abby had given her a new lease on life, and now it was gone and everything looked bleak. I couldn’t imagine Dara dying — impossible. She was too huge, too powerful, to just disappear.
But I kept thinking back to her car wreck. It was never entirely clear to me if that crash was an accident. I hadn’t pushed very hard for an answer. With a sinking feeling, I realized it was because I didn’t want to know.
Hard to ignore where that life strategy had gotten me.
I stepped on the gas a little.
My phone rang an hour into the trip. It was my dad. I didn’t answer. My parents continued to ring every few minutes. Abby called, too. I ignored my phone.
Instead I concentrated on the scenery that the rising sun illuminated, the barns and silos and road signs I had seen from the opposite direction a few days before.
But three hours was a long time not to think about Meg, especially with that damn navigation lady reminding me of her every time she piped up with directions. I thought about the kissing, the touching, the things we were doing just hours before. I thought about all that had transpired between us, all the years. Why had I never gotten over her? We had a history — a comfort and a familiarity that I couldn’t imagine ever having with someone else. But it was more than that. On some level, I recognized it was about Mason — because Meg was a living link to him. I had never wanted to think about being with someone who’d never known Mason; it seemed an insurmountable gap to bridge. But it occurred to me that it wasn’t a good enough reason to cling to Meg — especially because, as it turned out, it was not something we could share. Meg needed to put Mason behind her. And I needed to keep him close. We were at an impasse. I’d spent three years thinking Mason was the bonding point. I never dreamed he was the breaking point.
It was time for me to learn how to let go — and maybe Meg was just another example of that, of my reluctance to move on in life. She had built a new life somewhere else. She’d formed new relationships. She still had a lot of baggage where I was concerned, obviously. Maybe coming back would have been a bad idea — maybe it would have been just too much. For both of us.
I tried to sort through it as I made my way back to Chicago. The nearer I got, the more my stomach hurt. My mouth tasted like tin — probably a combination of the stale water and fear. I finally made my way through the city, where I hit some patches of maddening traffic, and up north to Willow Grove.
As I guided the car down Dara’s street, all was quiet. No police or ambulance, no signs of trouble.
I jumped out of the car and ran up to the house, ignoring the pain in my knee. I rang the bell and pounded on the door, rang and pounded.
I called Dara, but she didn’t pick up. I texted her to let her know I was at her front door. Nothing.
Four-seven-six-three, a voice in my head said. I punched in the code, opened the door, and went inside.
I ran up the stairs, which was agony on my knee, and to the end of the hall. I pounded on her bedroom door. “Open the door, Dara. It’s me.”
Nothing.
I tried the knob. It was unlocked. I pushed the door open, my heart in my throat.
She wasn’t there.
The rush of relief made me weak. I realized I’d been afraid of what I might find. But where was she?
And what was different? Things looked tidier somehow. My eye was drawn to a place on the floor that seemed oddly empty. And then it hit me: That’s where all her swim medals and trophies had sat, heaped in a cardboard box. What had she done with them?
“What are you doing here?”
I jumped. Dara stood in the doorway.
“Jesus!” I clutched my heart. “You scared me.” I glanced down. She held three bottles of pills in her hand. “What are you doing?” I asked, my voice weak.
I expected her to yell at me for disobeying orders not to worry about her. Instead, she closed her eyes. “Why did you have to come?” she whispered.
“Dara?” I walked over to her, and she collapsed into me, limp. I pulled her to the bed and cradled her in my arms, my heart starting to pound. She reeked of booze. Gently, I pulled the bottles out of her hand.
“Dara?” I asked. “Did you take any of these?” I shook her a little. “Dara! Did you take pills?”
“I always take pills,” she mumbled back.
“How many?” When she didn’t answer, I asked again, louder. “How many pills, Dara?”
“I’m tired, Mueller. Let me sleep.”
What to do? Call 911 or a suicide hotline? Take her to the ER? I was in way over my head. I scrabbled about in my mind, trying to figure out what someone with a clue would do.
And then I remembered she had a shrink. Surely her shrink would know what to do!
I spotted her purse near the door. As I eased Dara off me and laid her head on her pillow, I noticed that something else was missing. The picture of her mom still sat on her bedside table, but the prayer beads were gone. Where were they? What had she done with her stuff?
I picked up the bottles of pills and hurried into the hall, taking Dara’s purse with me. I found her phone in it, with a long stream of worried texts from Abby, and I felt uncomfortable seeing them — they were so personal. I scrolled through her contacts and found a Dr. Singh. The name rang a bell. I dialed, my heart pounding.
Dr. Singh answered. She heard me out and asked a few questions. She sounded calm and competent and in control. Basically everything I wasn’t. She said if Dara was suicidal, she had to be admitted to the hospital. “You need to call nine-one-one,” she told me. “I’ll meet you at the hospital. Don’t leave her alone.”
I wouldn’t.
While I waited for the ambulance, I packed a bag of stuff for Dara to take to the hospital — clothes and her toothbrush and a hairbrush. I tried to find plain shirts, figuring her message tees — “You must be mistaking me for someone who gives a shit” and “Sorry for what happens later” and the like — might not go over well on a psych ward. I wasn’t sure what else she needed; it would have to get worked out later.
But there was one thing I knew she might need. I slipped the folding mirror box into her bag, hoping when she found it, she would realize there was someone out there rooting for her, someone who was on her side. Someone who loved her.
I sat on the edge of her bed, checking to make sure she was still breathing, just like the night of her accident. She looked small, fragile. The hair around her scar was growing in, short and choppy. The scar, raised and still red, curved from her forehead into her hairline. More permanent damage. I thought of Meg’s words: the walking wounded. Yes. That was us. That was all of us.
I tried to prepare myself for what was coming, but when I heard the sirens, a jolt of terror ran through me
. I hoped I was doing the right thing. I scooped Dara up in my arms to carry her downstairs so I wouldn’t have to leave her alone to answer the door.
“You’re gonna be okay,” I whispered as I carried her out, my knee screaming at me. “You have to be okay. Please be okay.”
“What’s happening?” she asked as I hobbled down the stairs. Her voice was groggy. She blinked, as if waking up from a dream and trying to remember where she was. “Why are you crying?”
I turned my face away and pressed my cheek to her head. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
When I got home, it was of course to an empty house. It was eerily silent, especially with the central air turned off to save energy during our vacation. I went to the thermostat on the living-room wall and switched it on, then went into the kitchen to get some ice for my poor knee. Then I turned on my phone. It was time to face the music.
I called my parents and gave them the short version of the last five hours of my life. My mother’s reaction was something I had coming; I had been unable to let myself contemplate how frantic she must have been, how frightened. She shrieked at me, totally out of control, and I cringed at the thought of the others at the house, hearing everything. Especially Meg. The last thing she should ever have to hear again was the sound of my mother’s hysteria.
I hung up and called Abby, who sounded nearly as frantic as my mom had. I hated having to tell her the truth, to put that burden on her, but I knew she’d find out anyway. And I couldn’t answer her many questions about what Dara actually did, whether she was okay, whether she could have visitors, whether she would want to see Abby . . .
“I don’t know,” I kept saying. And I didn’t — I didn’t know anything anymore.
I thought about reaching out to Meg. My parents had probably filled her in by now. What could I add? Sorry for putting Dara before you again? Sorry you’re stuck there with my shrieking mother and your ex-boyfriend? Sorry “Operation Willow Grove” was a fail? Sorry you’re leaving so soon?
And what would she even say back? No worries, maybe I’ll see you at Christmas when I come visit my dad?
Fuck that.
So I did nothing. I didn’t have room inside me for any more pain.
As it turned out, though, I was wrong about that. When I limped up the stairs and to my room, I stopped short in the doorway. In the middle of my bedroom floor stood a box.
I tossed the ice pack on my bed and went to investigate. It dawned on me that I’d seen the box before; I recognized the brand of vodka printed on the side. I bent over and pulled the weathered flaps back. When I saw the contents, my heart cracked wide open.
Dara.
I tumbled to the floor, ignoring my screaming knee, and pulled out one of the medals.
CENTRAL ZONE AGE GROUP CHAMPIONSHIPS 13–14 200IM CHAMPION.
ZONE CHAMPION. Jesus. That must have been right before the accident. I held the medal, aching inside. Everything that had ever mattered to Dara was inside this box.
Almost everything. When I pulled myself up into bed to sleep, I found the prayer beads.
They were draped over my picture of Mason.
My parents came home that afternoon in a rental car. I was still sleeping when they came in. I awakened to my mom kneeling by my bed, her hand on my head. I couldn’t read her face — it could have been anger, relief, love . . . Maybe all those things.
“Not now,” I said. A plea.
She nodded. “I love you, Otis.” She kissed me and left.
I slept until dinnertime. When I woke up, I had messages on my phone. None from Dara; they had taken away her cell phone. She would be permitted to call me at designated times, if she chose to.
There were a bunch of messages from Abby.
And I had a message from Meg: I hope Dara will be okay. I hope we all will be someday. Whatever “okay” is . . . I’m headed back to California today. I’ll be thinking of you. I’m sorry we didn’t get to say a proper goodbye.
Maybe it wasn’t a proper goodbye, but it was a goodbye all the same. I stared at her message a long time before finally texting back, I’ll be thinking of you, too. I always am.
It would still take some time to process what I should have figured out long ago: that Meg and I weren’t bulletproof after all.
And that maybe our best futures were ones without each other.
To my parents’ credit, I never got any harassment about my illegal road trip. They also didn’t bring up Meg, and I didn’t, either. I didn’t know how much they knew — though clearly they knew enough not to raise the subject.
My dad took me to get my license on July 7, the day before Meg’s birthday. As much as I’d been looking forward to that event, it was kind of astonishingly anticlimactic.
The next day I sent Meg a brief happy birthday message. I couldn’t ignore her birthday, but I also wasn’t ready to talk, not that I imagined she’d want to. But she replied.
Otis. My birthday is kind of terrible. All I can do is reflect on my failings, especially in Willow Grove. I had a list of things I meant to accomplish, some of which I managed, and some of which proved too hard. This was going to be my redemption trip, my chance to reclaim WG and maybe even reclaim you in some way. But I failed. And maybe it’s best, because you deserve better. You told me recently that you had always wanted to be everything to me. I wanted to be that to you, too. But you deserve a girl who can see a smudge on a window and not freak out. A girl who can visit the cemetery with you and listen while you talk about the brother you will always love. A girl who isn’t broken.
I will always wish the best for you, Otis.
I read it several times. And I could have written back, You’re not broken, but to what end? What point was there to a dialogue? I had no interest in doing a postmortem with her. So I left it alone. Even though I could think about little else but her.
She was an unabating ache. Out of nowhere I’d find myself thinking about the things that had happened to her: Finding Mason, too late. Seeing those wrappers. Sitting with me at his grave all those times, trying to bear her grief and my grief, all the while feeling responsible for what had happened. The awful loss of her virginity. The awful loss, in some ways, of her own mother. How alone she had been.
But there was another kind of ache, too: The feeling of being the center of the universe when she tilted her head at me. The incomprehensible splendor of kissing her. The way she took care of Dara the day of the River Park meet.
That bushel of peaches.
I didn’t know how I’d ever extricate her from myself. It would take somewhere between a long time and never. And really, if her dad was going to live here and she was going to visit, it leaned more toward never.
She might always be my phantom limb. She might always hurt.
THAT PIERCING TWO-FINGER WHISTLE — IT still made me cringe. A metal whistle hung around Dara’s neck now, but she preferred to go old-school.
“Out of the pool!” she yelled. “Clearly we need to go over a few things.”
I leaned against the wall and smiled as fourteen little swimmers clambered out of the pool and gathered around Dara. She called them the little monkeys.
They called her Coach.
I stood near the door of the high school pool, now reopened after the renovations. I had just finished my own practice, and I was going to run out of time to get some lunch before work if I didn’t get out of there soon. But seeing Dara with those kids was something else.
She was doing okay. She was working with a new neurologist on the phantom limb pain. She was in therapy. Some days were harder than others, but she was trying.
She carried my mirror box in her bag.
She said I saved her life, and maybe that was true. But she saved mine first. It was hard to imagine what would have become of me if she hadn’t showed up in my life when Meg left. She picked me up, dusted me off, and kicked my ass. Maybe we all need that from time to time. If we’re lucky, there’s someone there who cares enough to do it.
/> “Mueller!” She waved me over.
I sighed and walked toward her.
Dara spoke to the kids. “You guys are looking at our club’s record holder in the hundred breast.”
A couple of them actually gasped. I blushed, even though it was just a bunch of kids. But I shouldn’t have been surprised, because there was no mistaking how pleased Dara was about my swim at Senior Champs. It had been good. The whole meet had been good.
“Mueller,” she said. “Show us what arms should be doing in breaststroke.”
I demonstrated while Dara pointed out the details of the stroke. “You have to finish the stroke, scoop that water. You guys try it.” She watched as her swimmers imitated my stroke. “Much better! Remember that frog kick. And where do our eyes look when our head is in the water?”
“Down!” a few of them called out.
“That’s right, down. Now go kick some ass — I mean, butt.” They giggled and scurried back to the pool, some of them practicing the arm motions as they went.
“Any Olympic material here?” I asked Dara.
She squinted. “I have my eye on that Hannah Swanson kid. She’s a fast learner, and she’s wicked tough.”
“Tough is good.”
“Tough is important.”
Dara had finally let go of her Olympic dreams for me. We modified my goals to qualifying for State in the hundred breast as well as the medley relay. I was happy with that. And Dara — well, she might not have been happy about it, but she accepted it. That was all the victory I could ask for. I knew better than anyone that sometimes just letting something go can be a victory in itself.
“Look at her.” She pointed to the head bobbing down the lane, yards ahead of the others. “See that? She could be a winner.”