The Things We Keep

by Sally Hepworth

  45

  Eve

  I follow the screaming all the way to Luke’s room. I’m vaguely aware of Andrea behind me—she’s never one to miss out on something interesting happening—but in the moment, I cannot find the will to care. What has happened?

  When I get to Luke’s room, Anna is crouched in a corner. The vase is upturned, and flowers and broken glass litter the floor.

  “Hi,” I say, entering the room as fast as I can without being threatening. “It’s me, Eve. The cook.”

  Anna looks up, her green eyes wide. I notice her palm is bleeding. Luke stands over her protectively. “You’ve cut yourself, Anna.”

  Anna looks at her hand as if this is news to her. Dark red blood rushes from the gash and drips from the crevices between her fingers. I realize, with a sinking heart, that she’s going to need stitches.

  “Is it okay if I take a look?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “Good. Why don’t you sit on the bed? Luke—you, too.”

  Anna sits, but Luke remains standing where he is. “Okay,” I say, “Anna, I’ll just get something for your—”

  “Eve? What on earth is going on?”

  Eric appears in the doorway and my heart clenches like a fist. Behind him, in the hallway, Clementine and Andrea look on.

  “Eric, I—”

  “What were Anna and Luke doing in here alone?” he asks, incredulous.

  I’m saved from responding by Rosie who appears from nowhere, shoving her way past Eric. She surveys the room and swears quietly. “Eric, I need a towel,” she says. “Two, if you have them. Quickly, we have to stop this bleeding.”

  It takes Eric a few seconds to change his focus, but he finally grabs the towels. Rosie wraps Anna’s hand in it. “Point it up, Anna,” she says. “It will stop the bleeding.”

  Anna, it seems, cannot fathom these instructions, so Rosie does it for her.

  “She’ll need stitches,” Rosie says, confirming my initial thought. “I can drive her to the hospital—”

  “I’ll do it,” Eric says. “We need you here, Rosie.”

  He looks at me, then jerks his head in the direction of Luke and Anna. “So you still think they are better off together? That they’re in love?” He adds a nasty, monosyllabic scoff. I look at Anna and Luke, who are gazing vacantly into separate quadrants of the room, and I have to admit—right now, it’s hard to believe they’re in love.

  And yet.

  “I think you’d better go home, Eve,” he says.

  “No. I’ll go with you to the hospital. Or I can stay here with Luke. I’d rather wait until I know Anna’s all right.”

  “No.” Eric’s voice leaves no room for doubt. “You’re going home.”

  Rosie lets go of Anna’s hand to grab some gauze, and immediately Anna’s hand drops back to her side. I pick it up again for her, start to tell her I’ll see her in the morning.

  “No, you won’t, Eve.”

  I glance at Eric. He watches me for a moment, then throws up his hands. “You can’t honestly think you still have a job here?”

  I stare at him, not comprehending.

  “Wow,” he says. “I’m sorry. But as of this moment, your employment is terminated.” Eric sounds mad and frustrated but also a little sad. This is how I know he means it. He walks over to Rosie’s side, and she starts giving him instructions about Anna’s cut—to keep the pressure on it, to keep it held up. It’s as if I’m not even there.

  After a moment, I feel a little hand pump mine. “I think we should go, Mom.”

  I blink at Clem. “Yes,” I say after a moment. “Yes. Okay.”

  With a tug, Clem guides me out of the room. Andrea stands in the doorway, equal parts thrilled and perplexed. Her hands tremble, and suddenly I see her for exactly what she is. A frightened woman trying to take control wherever she can. Perhaps that’s what we all are?

  As Clem and I slope out of there, something that had been sitting in my subconscious finally filters through. As they sat side by side on the bed, Luke was holding Anna’s (non-bleeding) hand.

  46

  Anna

  Seven months ago …

  “The patient has a displaced hip fracture and three cracked left-posterior ribs. No damage to the lungs. She has a broken clavicle, and she has sustained a mild concussion. The hip will make walking difficult, but her injuries are non-life-threatening. I understand she has dementia?”

  “Younger-onset Alzheimer’s, Doctor.”

  Silence. “And she was pregnant?”

  “Eighteen weeks’ gestation. Fetal death in utero.”

  More silence. Then a sigh. “Has the family been informed about the fetal death?”

  The conversation lobs back and forth. I listen hard but I can’t make much sense of it. All I can figure is that someone has been hurt pretty badly. I hope they’re going to be okay. I also hope they’ll leave my room. I’m tired and I want to sleep.

  “The patient’s brother has, Doctor. Unfortunately, the baby’s father also has dementia.”

  “A blessing in disguise?” the man’s voice ponders. But no one answers.

  * * *

  Jack keeps telling me that I am at his house, but he’s lying. I know what his house looks like, and this isn’t it. For one thing, there are children everywhere. Not only that but it’s also full of small plastic things that children play with. Jack doesn’t really like kids, and he definitely wouldn’t encourage them to go near his stuff. Besides that, the place is huge and made of marble. We’re more likely to be in a shopping mall than we are at his house. I may have Alzheimer’s, but I’m not completely nuts.

  “Say something, Anna,” he says.

  I keep staring out the hole in the wall.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I never should have gone to speak to Eric. I never should have left you alone. This is all my fault.”

  Jack is crying. I don’t understand what he’s talking about.

  “Why would you do that? Nothing is ever so bad that you have to do that,” he says. “Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again?”

  I don’t say anything and Jack doesn’t wait for me to.

  “Now, on top of everything else, you can’t walk. I should have figured out what was going on earlier. I should have stopped this before it got to this point.”

  I stare beyond Jack because he’s confusing me. But he doesn’t go away.

  “Are you not feeling well? Can you not talk? Blink once for yes, and twice for no.”

  I close my eyes and keep them closed. It’s a blessed relief.

  * * *

  “She hasn’t said a word since she arrived. It’s been over two weeks.”

  No one other than Jack and I are in the room, so I can only assume Jack is on the phone. That, or I’m hallucinating. Which, I guess, is also possible.

  “I have no idea.… Nope.… And she’s regressed with her … bathroom habits, too. Yep. I’ve put her in Depends, but … yeah … yeah. I don’t know what to do.”

  He glances over at me. I look away.

  It’s strange, having someone speak about you while you are there. It happens a lot these days. It would be nice, I realize, to overhear nice things.

  “Not much. She’ll sit at the table during meals and pick at it, but … it’s the not talking that is worrying me. Yeah. Nothing at all. She just sits in her chair, staring at the door.”

  And what do you think that means, Jack? I silently ask him. I want to go home.

  “Before the accident, she talked. Not so much as she used to, but she talked. Coherently. Now … nothing.” There was a long silence. “Yes. Yes, okay. Tuesday at nine thirty? We’ll be there.”

  * * *

  Jack pushes me into a room and sits beside me. Another person, a woman with black hair, sits behind a desk, puts her hands in her lap, and says, “It’s good to see you, Anna.”

  “Thank you,” I say, the first words I’ve said in God knows how long.

  Jack turns to face me,
slack-jawed. I see betrayal in his eyes. You spoke!

  Yeah, I want to say, but I can’t be bothered. I can talk. I’m just not speaking to YOU.

  “This is Dr. Li, Anna,” Jack says.

  “I know,” I say, even though I didn’t know that.

  The woman, Dr. Li, scribbles something on a white square, then looks at me. “I hear you had an accident, Anna. How are you feeling now? Better?”

  I nod.

  “Good. And your injuries. Your—” She glances down. “—ribs and your ankle … they’re healing okay?”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about, so I just say yes. I want to keep talking to this woman. She looks at me and talks right to me.

  “She can walk short distances,” Jack says, “hobble from the couch to her chair or stand up in the shower. But the doctor said she’ll spend most of her time in a wheelchair now.”

  The woman nods. “Have you been taking your medication, Anna?”

  “Every day,” Jack says. “I administer it.”

  The woman nods. Then says to me, “And you’re living with Jack now?”

  I shake my head. This, I know, is not right. “I’m living at a huge place filled with people that feels like a shopping mall. Jack is there all the time. And I want to go home.”

  “Home where?” the woman asks. “To the residential care facility?”

  I blink.

  “Home where, Anna?” she asks again.

  “To my … place.” It is beyond frustrating that I can’t remember where home is. Here I am, being given the opportunity to say what I want, and I can’t fucking remember. “Jack knows.” I jab a thumb at Jack, but I don’t look at him. The sight of him is enough to make me angry.

  “Rosalind House,” he mutters. Even his mutter sounds irritated. I get the feeling he is as angry at me as I am at him.

  “Rosalind House,” the woman repeats. “Is that home?”

  Rosalind House. I wait for a bell to ding or something to happen in my brain to tell me that, yes, Rosalind House is home. Is that home? I wait some more. Still no ding.

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Jack says. “I can’t take her back there. Not after what happened.”

  The woman takes the square things off her eyes and sighs. “Have you discussed … the other thing?” she asks Jack. “Does she have any memory of it?”

  “I have no idea,” Jack says. “As I told you, she hasn’t said a word since she came back to live with us.”

  “And the guy, the … father … has she seen him?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  The woman nods and is quiet for quite some time. Her expression is still—like she’s worried or concentrating. I can’t really tell which. “Can I be frank?”

  “I wish you would,” Jack says.

  “I tend to share your worries about Anna’s quick regression. She’s had a trauma, so some regression is to be expected, but even to look at, she seems severely depressed. I can’t help but wonder if she’s missing her home. And, perhaps, missing this friend of hers.”

  Jack makes a noise and shakes his head.

  “You have her best interests in mind, I know that. What happened … all of it … must have given you quite the fright. But … if Anna were my sister … and she seemed happy there … I’d be trying to think of a scenario where I could get her there again.”

  “You’re not serious? Take her back to a place where she was impregnated, then tried to kill herself?”

  “She doesn’t have a lot of time left, Jack. A year, if that. If that’s where she’ll be happiest, why not?”

  “Because it isn’t safe!”

  The woman nods. “Obviously her safety is paramount, and you’d need to come to some sort of arrangement with the center to ensure that nothing like that would ever happen again. But, Jack, it’s obviously what she wants.”

  He looks at me. “Is this what you want, Anna?”

  “Yes,” I say, and this time, it’s not just something I’m going along with. “I want to go home.”

  47

  Eve

  They say time gives perspective, and in a way it does. Christmas goes by. Clem and I spend it with Mother and Dad at their apartment. It’s different from past holidays—sadder, because of the empty space where Richard should have been—but it was surprisingly nice, all of us tucked up in one little room, eating and drinking and being together. Clem didn’t even seem to notice that she had only a few gifts. I’d been living paycheck to paycheck while working at Rosalind House, and now I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. A lot of places were closed for the Christmas break, so I was banking on finding a job in the New Year. In the meantime, Mother and Dad wrote me a modest check for a Christmas present, which I hoped would tide me over.

  Angus and I stay in touch, mostly via text message. He understands that Clem is my focus. Sometimes after she’s asleep, I lie on the couch and just talk to him on the phone. No matter what Clem is going through, I don’t think she would mind us talking. Mother and Dad are wonderful, offering to cook, clean, look after Clem. I accept all offers, with the exception of Clem. The best thing to come out of my forced sabbatical is time with her.

  I withdrew her from school before Andrea could launch an investigation, and the timing allowed us to have Christmas break and then start her new school afresh in the New Year. At the news she was leaving Legs, she’d kept it together quite well. In fact, when I told her we were going to have some time at home together, just the two of us, she actually seemed happy.

  “Why did Daddy have to be a bad man?” she asks on New Year’s morning, when I’m still yawning and stretching awake. Outside, fresh snow pats down for the third day in a row. We’d stayed up late to see in the New Year, watching movies and eating popcorn. Judging from the divots in my back, a few kernels still roam between the sheets.

  “Sometimes I really hate him,” she says.

  I think of my call to Dr. Felder. This is it, I realize. She’s having her moment. I roll to my side, then sit up. “Sometimes I hate him, too.”

  “You do?”

  “I do. Sometimes I want to slap his face and scream at him, and other times I want to hug him and tell him how much I miss him.”

  “Me, too.” Her face starts to crumple. “I just … I don’t know how to remember him, Mom.”

  I pull her into my arms and kiss her forehead. “You should remember all of him. All the memories you have are still true, no matter what he did.”

  “But—”

  “They’re all true,” I say firmly, almost as if I believe it. Maybe I do. I think of my conversation with Angus, about good things coming from bad. I think about Clara and Laurie, and the things we keep. “Daddy hurt a lot of people, Clem. But Daddy did good things, too. He was thoughtful and kind. And he was a good daddy, don’t you think?”

  Through tears, she nods.

  “So it’s okay to remember that. Our memories are ours to remember any way we want.”

  In Clem’s eyes, the tears continue to fill and fall.

  “Daddy loved you so much,” I say, and my voice cracks. “If there is only one thing you remember about him, make sure it’s that.”

  Clem looks up at me. “Can you tell me some stories of him? Some that I don’t know?”

  I wipe away a tear. “Actually, I have a good one.” I sniff. “About when you were a baby and I found you in the bath with Daddy. He was singing ‘I’m a Little Teapot’ to you.…”

  Clem’s mouth starts to upturn cautiously, as though she’s not sure it’s allowed. But after I’ve told the story three times, she’s smiling properly. We stay there awhile, wrapped in each other, telling stories, laughing and crying. It’s sad and it’s horrible. But it’s also nice, being together in our grief.

  * * *

  The next day, Clem and I walk to Buttwell Road Elementary. As the building appears in my line of sight, my heart is in my throat. Visually, it’s not as appealing as her old s
chool—it’s a plain, single-level, redbrick building—but by and large, the kids look the same. As we walk into the playground, Clem squeezes my hand a little tighter. It’ll be tough for her, starting halfway through the school year. A year ago, I wouldn’t have worried, knowing Clem would be the most popular kid in the class by the end of the day, but now I’m not so sure.

  We meet her teacher, a grandmotherly sort called Mrs. Hubble, who puts her arm around Clem and instantly makes both of us feel better. She introduces Clem to a bouncy little girl called Billie with wild red hair, who will be Clem’s special friend for the day. The two girls start talking right away. When it’s time for me to go, I actually have to tap Clem on the shoulder. I half expect her to tell me, Yeah, okay—you can go, Mom, but she throws her arms around me and kisses my cheek.

  I have to turn away so she doesn’t see me cry.

  Later that morning, Rosie calls to tell me that Clara is nearing the end. She says Clara was at the hospital but has returned to Rosalind House. To die, she doesn’t say. She says she’s spoken to Laurie, and he wanted to know if I’d like to say good-bye. I head straight over.

  Rosalind House looks different under snow. Prettier, if that’s possible. As I squeak along the snow toward the front steps, I remember Clara’s pact to reconcile Laurie and her sister. And I hope that, as Rosie suggested, she hasn’t had the chance.

  I ring the doorbell and hold my breath, waiting for Eric. The last time I saw him, he was firing me. What would I say to him? But when the door swings open, an unfamiliar person stands there. A woman in her mid-forties with a bright smile and teased brown bob.

  She smiles warmly. “Hello,” she says. “I’m Denise, the new manager.”

  “The new…” I take this in for a second. “What happened to Eric?”

  “Come in out of the cold,” she says, and I do. She shuts the door and takes my coat. “It’s my second day,” she tells me. “Do you have a family member here? We did send a letter explaining the change—”

  “Oh no, I’m not family. I used to be the cook here. And the cleaner.”

  Her expression becomes more guarded. “Oh. Well, Eric is … no longer with the business.”

  “No longer with the business? What happened?”