by Unger, Lisa
Then a voice, stern and cutting above the others, told her to exhale, as hard as she could. She obeyed. It was like the worst fire, the deepest most uncontrollable gag, as they pulled the feeding tube from her. What a violation, to shove something hard and unyielding down a soft and tender place. The body revolts, rejects. She couldn’t even cough, just gasped and wheezed while someone spoke to her in soothing tones.
Just try to relax. You’re okay. It’s okay now. But, of course, it wasn’t okay. Not at all. She knew that; she could feel it. The world had bent and broken in two. It would never be whole again.
• • •
Slowly, over the next day, Gus reluctantly fed her bits and pieces of the enormous, indigestible tragedy that had taken Emily and Alfie from her. Following the collision with the semi, which had sideswiped the driver’s side of the car, Alfie and Emily had been killed instantly. Eloise had been in a coma for six weeks while her husband and daughter were buried without her. The accident had left Amanda physically unscathed, but so deep in a state of PTSD that she hadn’t spoken a word since the accident. Her younger daughter hadn’t shed a tear, had barely eaten enough to keep herself alive. Gus wasn’t even sure she was sleeping, since every time he looked in on his granddaughter at night, she lay as stock-still as when he’d tucked her in, with her eyes wide open. He and Alfie’s mother, Ruth, were taking turns; when Gus was with Eloise, Ruth was with Amanda, and vice versa. They, too, were staggering under an unbearable burden of grief.
But who? But how?
A truck driver, high on the methamphetamines that he had taken so that he could drive his rig longer and faster to make more runs, to make more money, to buy more meth supposedly, had finally exhausted the limits of his wakefulness and fallen asleep behind the wheel of his semi. He had simply drifted into their path.
Maybe they’d have missed him altogether if Eloise hadn’t overslept, if she hadn’t forgotten about needing the car. But it was a pointless thought, a useless one. And Eloise immediately decided that she wouldn’t keep it. Otherwise, there was a black, sucking, downward spiral inside. She could easily travel down with it into nothingness. And there was Amanda to live for; Eloise didn’t have the luxury of giving into dark temptations.
She was in the hospital, then in rehab for another four weeks. Time passed in a blur of misery. There was a solemn parade of well-meaning family and friends, a cavalcade of flowers and gifts and cards. But Eloise was buried deep inside her grief. Everything happened on the other side of a gray field of white noise, while she worked herself to exhaustion and beyond trying to get strong enough to go visit the graves of her husband and daughter, to go home and help Amanda get well.
• • •
The night before she was finally scheduled to leave the rehab hospital, Alfie came to see her. She awoke to find him sitting in the chair beside her, holding a stunning bouquet of calla lilies, her absolute favorite. She pushed herself up. She wasn’t surprised at all, just deeply relieved and blissfully happy to lay her eyes on him.
“I thought we’d have so much more time, El,” he said. But he didn’t seem sad. His eyes glittered, and he had that silly smile, the one he wore only for her.
“Me, too,” she said.
“But you know it doesn’t matter, right?”
She felt a sob climb up her throat. No, she didn’t know that. She wasn’t sad either, not really. Sadness was petty, weak, passive. It passed. What she felt wasn’t going to pass. It didn’t have a name—it pulled on the back of her eyes, and lived in her gullet, and screamed inside her head when she tried to sleep. It was ugly. It raged, tossed around memories like china cups that smashed against the walls of her psyche. Her doctor had said to her of her back injury, You’ll probably always have pain, Eloise. You’ll have to learn how to manage it. He was young. He didn’t seem to pick up on the larger implications of his statement.
And she was angry, so deeply, totally angry that she figured it would eat an ulcer in her belly at some point. Maybe if she were lucky, it would even kill her.
“I can’t live without you, Alfie,” she said. “I don’t want to.”
He rose and put the flowers down on the chair, came to sit beside her on the bed. She didn’t reach out for him. She knew if she did that, he would go away.
“You can and you will,” he said. “None of us is promised anything. We don’t get to keep the things we love, not forever. And it’s okay. Like those flowers. Put them in a vase and they’ll last a few days. Then they’ll wilt and turn brown, and you’ll have to let them go. That’s life.”
“No,” she said stubbornly. “No.”
“Take care of our girl,” he said. “And remember how lucky we were to have loved each other so well for so long. It’s a gift some people never have.”
And then he was gone, and so were the flowers. But the air still smelled like lilies as she drifted back to sleep. Even then, when she looked back, she knew that it wasn’t a dream. There was something odd about it. Something just more. But of course she told no one. It’s your grief talking, they’d say. If she insisted that it was something else, they’d put her on the psych ward. And she had to get home to Amanda.
• • •
The silent princess, beautiful and ruined. Amanda’s skin was pale, her eyes dull and empty. Ten weeks after the accident, and her days still consisted only of a silent shuffle from bedroom to living room to bathroom. She drifted around in Emily’s nightshirt, a ratty old thing with a picture of Queen Elizabeth with a safety pin through her nose. She took it off only when she was forced to wash it; she waited in bed in her underpants, buried under the covers, until it was clean.
About a week after Ruth and Gus brought Eloise home and assured themselves that she could manage the house, the meals, the shopping, her in-laws announced worriedly that it was time for them to go back to Florida. Of course, Eloise told them, of course they should go home and—what? Grieve, move forward, take care of themselves a little. Eloise found the idea of their departure terrifying—and a big relief. How could she and Amanda find a new life with Ruth and Gus living in their basement? How could Amanda and Eloise get by without them?
“We’re never far,” Gus promised, holding her. “We’re just a phone call away.”
• • •
Then there was the business of “moving on with life.” This was expected, apparently, even after the worst possible thing had happened. The river of life kept flowing, and one must swim or drown.
The house was a maze of memories. Alfie’s slippers still sat by his nightstand. Emily’s jacket hung over the banister. It’s just lazy to leave it there, Emily. The closet is two feet away. Eloise couldn’t bear to move any of it.
Eloise went through the motions. She didn’t know any other way. “It’s just going to be one foot in front of the other for a while, Eloise,” Ruth had said, obviously speaking from personal experience. “Just keep moving, don’t think too much.”
Eloise made breakfast each morning, careful to set two plates even though she wanted to set four. She woke Amanda, who was nowhere near being able to go back to school. But someday she would go back. And until then, Eloise would continue to plan for every day to be the day that Amanda would open her mouth and speak.
Eloise got herself dressed each morning. She did the dishes, the laundry—now gargantuan tasks that took all her will and her energy. Sometimes she let herself be lured into Emily’s room, which was nothing so much as it was a black hole that drew her in and kept her among the dolls and rock posters and overflowing drawers and stuffed closet. Sometimes she spent hours in there, just lying on Emily’s bed, which still smelled (less every day) like Emily.
And she talked. She talked to Amanda about her feelings, all of them. She’d cry, she’d rage, she’d rant. She wanted Amanda to see her experience all of it, so maybe Amanda would let herself experience her grief, as well.
Eloise le
t her memories of Emily and Alfie free flow—how Alfie botched his speech at their wedding, how Emily smashed her first birthday cake (with absolute delight), how Alfie killed a scorpion on their trip to the Grand Canyon while Eloise screamed in terror, waking the whole campground. She knew her daughter was listening, even though the girl was utterly stone-faced. Eloise could tell; Amanda wanted to remember them. Otherwise she wouldn’t be wearing Emily’s nightshirt. Sometimes Eloise’s throat ached from talking all day. But she kept on. She’d talk until maybe Amanda said something just to shut her mother up.
• • •
It was a Friday when the first one came.
Silent Amanda had decided to go back to school earlier that week, and Eloise was alone. Her daughter still hadn’t said a word. She had just gotten up that Monday, dressed, eaten breakfast, and then waited by the door with her backpack. Eloise drove her to school, met briefly with her teachers, who were all aware of her condition. They would all support her return, not pressure her to talk, and see how things progressed. Her two best friends rallied at her side, promising to stay with her during the day as much as they could. When Eloise called the family therapist they’d been seeing, Dr. Ben, he thought that this was a promising step.
Eloise, naturally, wasn’t sleeping well at night. She couldn’t stand to lie down in the dark and try to close her eyes. So she kept the television on, her eyes plastered to the screen until she fell asleep. She didn’t want one moment alone in the dark with her thoughts. As a result, she woke up many times in the night.
On the Thursday after Amanda started school again, Eloise had a strange dream. She awoke with the television filling the room with its glow, Amanda sleeping deeply beside her (as was her habit since the accident). Her daughter’s breathing was soft and measured, like waves lapping on the shore. Over that, Eloise heard the sound of sobbing. She froze, listening—afraid but somehow not afraid. Then the sound had stopped. After a moment, she wasn’t sure she’d heard it at all.
But that Friday afternoon, the house so quiet, so lonely that Eloise decided she would sleep rather than be aware of the gaping emptiness inside her and out. So she was dozing on her bed when she awoke to hear the sound again. It didn’t stop, so Eloise had no choice but to go downstairs, from where the crying seemed to originate. Was she dreaming again? She felt floaty as she reached the bottom landing and moved into the living room.
The girl, not more than thirteen, sat on the floor of the living room, huddling her small body into the tight right angle where the fireplace hearth jutted out from the wall. Her hair hung in limp, dirty ropes, her shirt with some kind of writing on it, and jeans wet and filthy. She shivered, sobbing weakly. Her stare was blank. It looked like shock.
It was like it was with Alfie. Not a dream. Something else.
“Why didn’t I listen to her?” the girl asked. “I wasn’t even supposed to be out here.”
“Where are you?” Eloise asked.
The girl looked up, startled, as if she’d heard something. But she looked right through Eloise.
“Oh God,” the girl said. Then she started yelling, startling Eloise terribly. “Help! Please help me!”
Then Eloise was there with her—wherever it was—sitting in waist-deep, foul-smelling water. Eloise started shivering with wet and cold, her body aching all over as if she’d taken a terrible fall. The stone walls all around her were slick with algae. She waded over to the girl, who was not aware of Eloise at all. She wrapped herself around the child. She was as fragile as a skeleton, so tiny.
“Mommy,” the girl whimpered. “Mommy.”
“I’ll help you,” Eloise said. She had no idea why she said it. She didn’t know who this girl was or where she was. Eloise had no way of helping her. Still, what else was there to say?
Eloise awoke on the carpet of her living room, afternoon sun washing in through the sheer drapes, dappling on the floral chintz sofa that badly needed replacing. How long had she been lying there? Amanda was standing over her, her backpack slung over her shoulder.
“Mom?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
It took a moment to register, and then Eloise was whooping with delight. She leaped off the ground and took Amanda into her arms. What a joy to hear the sound of her voice! The rush of happiness and relief that washed through her felt like a drug. She’d experienced nothing but grief and anger and fear and pain for months. Eloise quickly forgot the strange dream she had. Well, not really. But she pushed it away. Hard.
“What’s the big deal?” said Amanda. She wore a shy and sad smile. “I just lost my words for a while.”
Eloise found that funny and terribly sad. There were no words for what had happened to them. None at all. She started to laugh, then cry. And then, finally, Amanda started to cry. Eloise led her over to the couch where Amanda cried and cried and cried, then took a break and cried some more. And Eloise sat, with her daughter sobbing in her lap. The sound of it was beautiful. Anything was better than silence. Eloise felt as if someone had opened a window and let the air in again. She could almost breathe.
• • •
Eloise had forced herself to buy a used Volkswagen with the car insurance money. There had also been a large life insurance payout, which gave them a little bit of time before she figured out what she was going to do to support them moving forward. Eloise had started driving again as soon as the doctor said it was okay, because she wanted Amanda to see her doing it. She needed her daughter to know that they were strong enough to get through this—even if Eloise wasn’t totally convinced of it herself. Fake it until you make it. It worked.
That afternoon of the dream and Amanda talking, they drove to the family therapist they’d been seeing for an emergency session. Amanda had been coming with Eloise all along, though naturally Eloise had done all the talking. Eloise and the doctor had agreed that it would be healing for Amanda to sit in on the sessions, even if she didn’t say anything right away.
“Why today?” Dr. Ben asked Amanda.
She offered a lazy teenager shrug. “My mom needs me,” said Amanda. “She’s been so strong. But I think it’s getting to her.”
“Why do you say that?”
Amanda told him that Eloise had started sleepwalking, that she had found her mother on the living room floor this afternoon.
“Is that true?” asked Dr. Ben.
Now it was Eloise’s turn to shrug. She really didn’t want to get into this. “I suppose I had some kind of dream today.” She did not say that there was a girl sitting in her living room. And that it didn’t seem like a dream at all. That she had this gnawing sense that there was something she was supposed to do but had no idea what. She wasn’t going to say any of that.
“It’s not the first time,” said Amanda.
“Isn’t it?” said Eloise, surprised.
“She walks around at night, talking to people who aren’t there.”
Eloise shook her head at the doctor to indicate that this was news to her.
“No awareness of this, Eloise?” he asked. He pushed his glasses back, wore a concerned frown.
“None,” she said.
He jotted down some notes. He didn’t seem especially concerned with the content of her dreams, just that she was dreaming and moving about.
“Sleepwalking can be a side effect of the medication you’re taking.”
She had been prescribed Ambien, but she’d never taken it. She told him as much.
“Well, dreams and nightmares are to be expected in cases like this. It’s your psyche’s way of working through the trauma you’ve experienced.”
She wanted to argue that what she’d experienced wasn’t precisely a dream. But she wasn’t going to open that can of worms, so she just nodded solemnly and said she understood. Which she did, because it seemed like Psychology 101. She promised that she’d bring it up again next session if the sleepwalking continued.
• • •
Eloise and Amanda had taken to watching dinner with the television on, something not allowed before. But the nighttime was the hardest, just after the sun set, when they would usually have all been home together—the girls doing their homework, Alfie grading papers, Eloise cooking dinner. It was always her favorite time of the day. Now she dreaded it.
But on Friday night, Amanda talked—she talked and talked. And Eloise listened as if her daughter’s voice were a song she loved but hadn’t heard in too long. Amanda talked about what she remembered about that day, how she’d been so mad at Emily who called her Marion the Librarian, and how she was always so mad at Emily who always seemed smarter and cooler, and more just knowing somehow. And how she thought that Emily was their father’s favorite and how she hated her sister a little for that. Amanda had often wished that she were an only child, like her friend Bethany.
“But now that she’s gone, it seems like the world can never be right again. I don’t even know who I am without being different from her,” said Amanda. “And I loved her. I didn’t even know it, but I did. And I’m sure I never told her, not once.”
“You didn’t have to tell her,” Eloise said. “Everyone in this family always knew that love was the first feeling, the foundation. Everything else was second and temporary. Emily knew you loved her.”
“How?” asked Amanda. “We only ever fought.”
“Did you know she loved you?”
Amanda thought about this, then nodded an uncertain yes.
“How?” asked Eloise.
“Because she let me sleep with her in her bed when I was scared at night.”
“And she knew you loved her because you wanted to sleep in her bed,” said Eloise. “And that’s what real love is. You don’t always have to say it, even though it’s nice if you do.”
And they talked until late, until Amanda fell asleep in Eloise’s bed. And later, after midnight, Eloise heard the sobbing again. She put on her robe and went downstairs to find the girl in the same spot. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, the girl just kept saying. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. And Eloise ached to help her, her own uselessness a notch in her throat.