What Remains True

by Thomas, Janis

  I used to sit with Carlee Rhodes and Ava Landou, but they turn their backs to me and start being all jokey with Ryan Anderson and Matt Boyles, like they don’t even know me, like they didn’t come to my tenth birthday sleepover and eat pizza till midnight, like we didn’t do a whole singing dancing routine to “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” for the talent show last year where we all dressed up like Beyoncé. I feel my cheeks get hot and I know they’re probably all pink because they always get pink when I’m embarrassed. Even Ryan, who I thought was different, even he’s being all jokey, and that really hurts my feelings.

  Aimee Joyce smiles up at me, then scooches over to give me space. I almost want to hug her for being so nice to me. But then I look down at my lunch tray and there’s a shiny red apple on it and I think of Jonah and I get this weird kind of choking feeling in my throat and I know I’m going to start crying, and I can’t let that happen in front of all my classmates, ’cause even though I have a good reason to be crying, I’ll still be the crybaby until I get to middle school, and maybe even after that.

  So I turn around and throw my tray in the trash, and I hear the lunch lady behind me calling to me about wasting food, and I just run and run, out of the lunch area and into the building and down the hall to the activity room. No one’s allowed in at lunch ’cause there’s no teacher or anyone to watch you, and it was dark, but I went in anyway and I just sort of sat in the corner on the carpet and hugged my knees into my chest and just sat there for a while, crying and hiccuping and trying not to think about the very bad day and the thing I did, because when I think about it my stomach hurts.

  I thought about going to the nurse and telling her I didn’t feel well and having her call home for someone to pick me up. But I didn’t think being home would be much better than being here. And I knew that after lunch there was only PE, and I figured that being outside and playing kickball would make me feel better, but then Ross Llewelyn, this total weenie, said that I couldn’t play because I was grieving and that would make me suck. And the PE teacher, Miss Wells, didn’t even tell him not to say bad words like suck. She just nodded with a sad face and said I could sit this one out.

  So now school’s finally over and I’m standing out in front of the school, waiting. No one told me they’d pick me up from school today, but I guess I thought maybe Aunt Ruth would come. I watch all the cars come and go until there’s nobody left to pick up except me. Mrs. P steps out from the front office and turns and looks at me. She takes a step toward me, that creepy smile coming back to her lips, and I hustle down to the sidewalk away from her.

  “Eden, are your parents picking you up?” she calls to me.

  I don’t answer, don’t slow down, just head down the street toward the next block.

  My friends, the ones I usually walk with, are nowhere in sight.

  I can’t help myself. I keep looking behind me, expecting to see Jonah.

  Worst day of my life.

  I start to run.

  NINE

  SAMUEL

  When I pull up to the house, I see Ruth’s Nissan at the curb. My relief is tempered by an irrational feeling of resentment. I’m glad Rachel is not alone, that her sister is taking care of her. But when Ruth is around, which is all the time now, I have to be on guard. I’m not allowed to be the grieving father. I’m not allowed to express what I’m going through, because it might upset Rachel further. I don’t want to upset my wife. I’ve done that enough. But a part of me rails against the injustice. Rachel gets to fall apart, but Sam has to hold it together. Sometimes I don’t want to hold it together. Sometimes I can’t.

  I went to the park on my lunch hour today. Not a wise move. Greta offered to get sandwiches and come with me. I politely declined. I told her I needed to be alone. I refrained from telling her that keeping on my game face was exhausting. That accepting other people’s ministrations of sympathy was akin to being burned at the stake. I needed to be away from the solemn stares and the downturned glances and the shaking heads of regret.

  Greta nodded and told me she understood, but she doesn’t. How can she? She’s young, single. Her parents and grandparents are still alive, for Christ’s sake. She doesn’t have children to love and care for and make dreams for and grieve over. I’m glad she doesn’t understand. I wouldn’t wish that kind of understanding on anyone.

  The park was empty when I first arrived. I found a bench not far from the playground, and as I sat, I watched, with mounting dismay, the onrush of toddlers and tykes and their mothers or nannies, with their strollers and diaper bags and coolers full of snacks.

  I thought I could handle it. I thought I could sit there and watch the children play and laugh and climb and slide. But then I saw him, a little boy, four or five, with dark ringlets framing his face and skin like porcelain and a wide grin, and I thought, Jonah.

  I pictured myself rising from the bench and crossing the rubber floor tiles and grabbing that child and running, holding him under my arm like a football while I fumbled with my cell phone, calling Rachel and telling her to go to the school and get Eden, that I’d found Jonah, that he wasn’t dead, and we could all be together as a family, but we’d have to run far, far away to be that family—the four of us, Sam, Rachel, Eden, and Jonah, who was not Jonah but could be if we made him so.

  And then I realized that I was thinking the thoughts of a fucking madman, and with the nannies and mothers and children looking on, I buried my head in my hands and sobbed.

  I can’t sob, here in my home. I can’t bury my face or slouch or falter. I have to pretend that everything is okay. Not good, not great, but okay, moving forward, moving on. What bullshit.

  As I alight from my car, I see the neighbor woman, Beatrice Martin, dump a sack of trash into her bin. She eyes me nervously then tries on a smile. It looks like a grimace.

  “Sam,” she says, and I nod to her and try a smile of my own, but I can’t quite get my mouth to obey.

  “Hello, Bea.”

  “How’s it going?” Her words are measured and sincere. I’ve heard them countless times in the past month from countless people—Carson Gregson, my business partner; Greta; Sal at the dry cleaner’s; Phil at the diner; Hugo Escalante in his thick Ecuadorean accent—just to name a few.

  “It’s going,” I tell her.

  “You want I should bring over another chicken casserole?” she asks. “I’m happy to do it.”

  Her casserole is good. She made it for us when we first moved in. We scraped the pan clean and raved over the cream sauce, Rachel and I, congratulating ourselves for our good fortune to live next door to a bona fide casserole goddess.

  The last casserole she made, the day after the accident, went from the oven to the trash.

  “That’s okay,” I tell her. “Don’t go to any trouble.”

  “You know me,” she says. “I like to be of service.”

  You like to tell Escalante how to trim the hedges and cut the rosebushes, I think, then chide myself for the ungenerous thought. Beatrice has been a good neighbor. She cares about my family. She has cared for my children when Rachel and I needed her. She is a busybody and a know-it-all when it comes to gardening, but she is not a bad person. Her casserole is her way of coping. I only wish I had as simplistic a way of coping.

  “That would be very nice,” I tell her. Then I turn away from her and trudge to my front porch. I don’t know what awaits me on the other side of the door. But I will face it, whatever it is. I have no choice.

  When I walk into the living room, I’m surprised to see that the curtains have been pulled back and the windows are open. The smell of cleaning solutions fills the air, and every surface—the hardwood floors, the tabletops, the mantel—is freshly wiped. The house is cleaner than it’s been since the day of the funeral.

  Even more surprising is that Rachel is seated on the couch, her legs crossed beneath her, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair is curly, spilling down her back, and she wears clean clothes, sweats and the yellow sweate
r with the unicorn on the front. She holds a cup and saucer in her hands, and she gazes into the cup as though trying to read tea leaves on the bottom.

  I set down my briefcase and walk toward her, slowly so as not to startle her. She doesn’t look up, but I see her body tense slightly. Beneath the shawl, I see the stuffed monkey, its arms spanning Rachel’s waist. My own shoulders tighten.

  “Hello, Sam.” Ruth’s voice comes from behind me. I turn to see my sister-in-law walk through the dining room. She wears her usual expression—the slightly-disappointed-that-I’m-not-someone-else look, which she quickly covers with a smile. Her smile is like my neighbor’s—pained.

  “Hi, Ruth.” I turn back to Rachel. “Hi, Rach. How are you feeling?”

  She still doesn’t look up at me. “Hi, Sam,” she says softly.

  “She’s feeling much better, aren’t you, Rachel?” Ruth takes the seat next to Rachel and pats her knee. “Much better. She’s had a bath, and she even managed a piece of toast with honey.”

  “That’s terrific,” I say with a little too much enthusiasm. Rachel shrinks into the couch. I lower my volume. “I’m glad.”

  I stand awkwardly for a moment. It would be nice to sit next to my wife, but there isn’t room for me with Ruth there. There isn’t room for me in my bedroom, either. Rachel’s grief has taken my place. I glance at the bedding folded neatly and stacked on the easy chair. Ruth has laundered it—the sheets have that crisp, clean look about them. Ruth has been sleeping in the guest room at the back of the house. It’s only right that she has her own bed, that’s what I keep telling myself, even though the couch is horrible for sleeping and I hardly manage to get an hour or two at a stretch and I wake each morning to searing back pain that only a handful of Advil can touch.

  “I’ve made tea, if you’d like some,” Ruth says. What I’d like is two fingers of bourbon, neat. That will have to wait.

  “I’ll get it.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Ruth says, and I feel my jaw clench.

  She doesn’t say anything until we are safely in the kitchen, out of Rachel’s earshot. Shadow lies on his bed in the corner. His tail thumps enthusiastically when he sees me. He starts to get up to greet me but freezes when Ruth enters. He lies down and tucks his head into his chest.

  I cross to the far counter where the teapot sits, lean against the counter, and wait for Ruth to speak.

  “She had another bad day, Sam. I went to the market—I wasn’t gone for more than forty-five minutes. When I came back, she was screaming. She’d been sick. I think she took too many pills at once on an empty stomach.”

  I remember retching into my trash bin at work. No pills necessary.

  I tell Ruth the same thing I tell her every day, because she needs to hear it, to feel validated. “Thank you for being here, Ruth. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  She nods as if she agrees. And she does. My sister-in-law is grieving. She loved Jonah. But I think she secretly likes the fact that my family would be completely fucked without her help. Our need gives her power. She has none in any other area of her life.

  “She looks . . . better. Better than she has in weeks,” I say, pouring some tea into a waiting mug.

  “She’s clean, Sam. That’s all. And medicated. Which I’m worried about. We can’t leave the pills with her anymore. We have to start doling them out. She can’t be trusted to stick to the dosage.”

  “I know Rachel is in bad shape, but I think you’re being a little dramatic.”

  This wouldn’t be the first time my sister-in-law has created a nonexistent issue. It’s happened frequently over the course of my marriage.

  Ruth withdraws the bottle of meds from her pocket and hands them to me. “I have to go home and get some things, Sam. You keep these for now.”

  Worry blanches her features. I try to reassure her.

  “Ruth, Rachel would never go overboard. You know that. She’s grieving, she’s devastated. But she’s not going to do anything stupid.” As I say the words, I realize that I’m not completely sure if they’re true. I don’t know the woman sitting on the couch in the next room, the woman who won’t look at me and barely speaks to me and banished me from my bedroom. What is that expression? The one about how dealing with challenges and tragedies reveals the character of the person? If that’s true, then I’m screwed. And so is Rachel. And God help Eden, because her mother is totally gone.

  Ruth sniffs, then gives me a pointed look. An I-told-you-so look even before she tells me. “She thinks she saw Jonah.”

  “What?” I stare at her. “She dreamed about him?”

  “No, she says she saw him. Sitting on the end of her bed. Uh, your bed. Floating on the end of your bed. And then he disappeared.”

  “The meds, right? She was hallucinating.” Even as I say the words, some deeper part of me wonders—hopes, prays—if it’s possible that Jonah could still be here. Ridiculous, I know. Absurd. Again with the fucking madman business. I focus on Ruth.

  “Of course she was hallucinating, Sam. But that’s not the point. If she continues to hallucinate and see Jonah, and she thinks he’s a visiting spirit, and then she thinks the only way she’ll get to him is by becoming a spirit herself, well . . . I called her GP, and she’s worried, too. She suggests we start cutting back, start the weaning process.”

  A fist of tension forms in my gut. “Right now, Rachel needs those pills.”

  “She needs counseling, Sam. For crying out loud, it would be good for all of you. The three of you need to talk to someone, or get into a group.”

  “We’ve been through this before, Ruth. Now isn’t the time. We’re not ready.”

  “Now is exactly the time. How long are you going to wait? Until my sister goes completely insane or winds up an addict?”

  The fist tightens. I don’t want to see a counselor. Things might come up. Things I’m not prepared to explain. Things I need to discuss with my wife first. I can’t say this to Ruth. So I placate her instead.

  “I’ll think about it. I really will.”

  “You should do more than think about it, Sam. This is serious.”

  Indignation swells inside me. “You think I don’t know that? My son is dead. It doesn’t get any more serious than that.”

  She looks stricken, but I don’t apologize. I’m too angry. Not just at Ruth for her presumptuousness, for thinking she has the right to tell me what I need, what my family needs. But angry at the world, at Rachel, at God, at Jonah for leaving us, at myself for my part in his death. I want to lash out more, to rail against her, to tell her to get the hell out of my house. But I can’t. Of course, I can’t. I take a deep breath instead and gaze at my mug, at the amber liquid that has long since cooled. I set the mug down, then glance at my watch. Ruth stares out the kitchen window, and I can only assume she is trying to think of something to say to me, some biting retaliation for my outburst. Uncharacteristically, she remains silent.

  I keep my tone even. “Can you please try to get that fucking thing away from her?”

  She turns to me. “The monkey?” She shakes her head with disdain. “I think you should focus on more important issues, Sam. And I’ll ask you not to use that kind of language with me.”

  I bite down on a scathing comeback, close my eyes, open them when I stop seeing red. “I’m going to go pick Eden up from school.”

  Ruth takes a breath and sighs. “Doesn’t she usually walk?”

  “Yes,” I reply. “With Jonah.”

  “You’re too late,” she says. “She’ll be walking through the door any minute.” She doesn’t meet my eye, just swipes my mug from beneath my fingers and dumps the contents into the sink. “You didn’t want that, right, Sam? Too cold.” She turns on her heels and stomps out of the kitchen.

  After a moment, when I hear her murmur to Rachel, and I can tell she has taken her seat next to her sister, I cross to the refrigerator and reach for the cupboard door above it. I pull out the Maker’s Mark, then grab a highball glass from t
he adjacent cupboard.

  For a while I stare at the bottle, thinking of the curly-haired boy on the playground.

  I pour out three fingers and down them in one gulp.

  TEN

  RACHEL

  The ticking of the clock on the mantel echoes through my brain. The sound is unpleasant. I’d like to smash the clock into pieces, but I don’t have the energy to get up from the couch. I can’t smash it anyway. I don’t have a hammer. And it’s my mother’s clock. Was my mother’s clock. She bequeathed it to me. Bequeathed. I want to say the word bequeathed aloud, just to see how my mouth feels when I say it, but I don’t want to sound crazy. Ruth is right next to me, pretending not to watch me.

  I’m not crazy. Just so tired. So very, very tired. My thoughts shift back and forth, in and out and around. I try to hold one for a moment. It disappears, just like Jonah.

  I reach beneath the shawl for the monkey, just to make sure it’s still there.

  I want to go back to bed, but Ruth won’t let me. She has become my mom. My mom. What was I thinking about?

  The clock. Bequeathed. Mom bequeathed the clock to me. That’s right. We found the Post-it note with my name written in broad strokes on the back of it. And that really pissed Ruth off, finding that Post-it, but I was there, too, so she couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there. Ruth really wanted that damn clock. I should have let her have it. It’s ugly and loud and any minute that dumb little cuckoo bird is going to pop out and make that annoying cuckoo sound. Cuckoo, cuckoo.

  Jonah loved the clock. Don’t think about Jonah. When he was three, he used to sit on the floor in the middle of the room for hours at a time and just watch for the bird. No no no. And when it popped out, he would giggle and giggle and giggle.