by Susan Perabo
She filled the tooth and wheeled the wheelchair back into the hallway. It was almost lunchtime and the wheelchairs were lined up along the wall.
A hand reached out from the wheelchair and grabbed her lab coat.
“Thomas? Tommy?”
Claire removed the hand from her coat and walked down the corridor. This was where it ended for you, she thought, and you could pretend all you wanted, but the chairs that lined these halls waiting for lunch were where you were headed. Maybe you were lucky to be Lisa Bellow, struck down at your most ignorant, never to know the pain of lost parents and lost children and lost lives. But that wasn’t fair—even Lisa Bellow, at fourteen, knew what it was to lose a parent, or to never have one, which was in many ways the same thing. And yet there were so many agonies she would never encounter, never have to face, chief among them the realization that every day had the potential to be its own little individual agony because you never knew what the hell you were doing, or why you were doing it, or what was going to happen to you or the people you loved. Perhaps life itself was no great loss, depending on the life you led. Perhaps Colleen Bellow, having lost her only child, would be better off with no life at all than the one that awaited her.
Grief and hope were cruel bedfellows, incompatible. There was no chance that grief would ever run its course, Claire knew from experience, and thus in cases of the missing there should be a statute of limitation on hope. It was only fair, only just, that after one year or three years or five years you could wake up on the assigned date and know, with absolute certainty, that the waiting was over, that the window of possibility had closed, that there was no chance your lost girl would return. What horrible stories, those few miracles of women kicking through doors into the sunlit neighborhoods they’d only ever seen from nailed-shut windows. Better for those stories to be kept secret, for the tales of joyous homecomings to be censored. How cruel that such a statute did not exist, that fifty years from now Colleen Bellow could be sitting in a wheelchair in this stuffy hall waiting to have her tooth filled, could hear footsteps approaching and believe, if only for a moment, that the footsteps belonged not to the mobile dentist but to her beloved daughter. It was not right and it was not fair and Claire resented the system of inequalities that existed, dictating who would be waiting forever for the chosen footsteps and who would be rewarded on Sunday afternoons with their sound. Here was her darling Evan! Here was her clever Meredith! Better if no one’s children came. Better if all were equally lost. Better if you knew well in advance that the footsteps you heard would never be the footsteps you were waiting for.
•
“Can I please go to Becca’s for a sleepover?” Meredith asked.
They were eating Thanksgiving leftovers. There was talking. Evan said something. Mark said something. They were all talking at once. Meredith was scowling. As a baby she’d scowled all the time. Hoarded her best smiles for Evan, given them out sparingly, grudgingly, to everyone else. Of course she was just a baby, so it was absurd to assume she had done this consciously, with hostile intent, though maybe it was even worse if it hadn’t been deliberate but genuinely the way she’d felt.
The turkey on Claire’s plate was dry. Had it been dry yesterday and she just hadn’t noticed? Had she overcooked it? She had forgotten to be thankful, was the thing. She had broken the Thanksgiving rule and not taken a minute out of her day to be thankful, not for a single thing. And now it was the day after Thanksgiving and obviously too late for anything like thankfulness.
“Fine,” she said. “It’s fine.”
They were looking at her. Mark said something. Meredith said something, probably something snotty, but Claire couldn’t be sure because she had stopped listening.
“Go,” Claire said. “Please. Just go.”
Meredith got up from the table. The food on her plate was hardly touched.
“Mom,” Evan said. “Are you okay?”
It wasn’t a joke, the way he said it, her half-blind boy. She couldn’t think of how to respond. She couldn’t even imagine the words.
•
She woke Saturday morning to the phone ringing, the landline, which almost never rang anymore. She looked at the clock. It was 7:25. The bed was empty beside her. She picked up the phone and said hello.
“Mrs. Oliver?”
“Yes?” She sat up. She felt hungover, or like she’d been asleep for eighteen hours, her senses simultaneously sharp and dull.
“Is Meredith there?”
She thought for a moment, then remembered. “No,” she said. “She’s spending the night at a friend’s house.”
“This is the friend.” A pause. “This is Becca. Becca Nichols.”
Claire swung her legs out of the bed. The carpet was cold under her bare feet. For a moment she couldn’t even remember what month it was.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” the girl on the phone said. “I . . . she spent the night somewhere else.”
Claire stood up. The phone felt strange and bulky against her ear. Why did news so often come this way, plastic boxes pressed against our temples? Half the things that mattered in her life had come through this box. Why was she never where the thing was happening?
“She what?”
“It’s okay,” the friend said. “It’s . . . I just . . . I’m sure she’s fine. She spent the night at Lisa’s house. We went over there for a while last night and then I came home and she stayed.”
Claire’s racing heart slowed. Meredith was in a known location. She was in a house. An adult was present. “Why did she stay?” she asked.
“Mrs. Bellow wanted us to. Both of us. She said it was because it was snowing, but I think she was just lonely. She was acting kind of weird. I tried to get Meredith to leave but Meredith said she wanted to stay. I think she was just trying to be nice. But I wanted to let you know and—”
“Thank you,” Claire said. “You were right to let me know. Thank you.”
“I think she was just trying to be nice,” Becca said again. “I think Mrs. Bellow just really needed someone to talk to, you know.”
“Of course,” she said. “Thank you for telling me. I’m sure it’s fine. I’ll have Meredith let you know when she gets home. I’ll text her right now.”
“I already texted her and she didn’t answer,” Becca said. “That was kinda why I called.”
“Okay,” Claire said. “Okay. I’m sure it’s fine. I’m certain it’s fine.”
She hung up the phone and immediately tried Meredith’s cell. She was bumped to voice mail before the first ring, which meant the phone was dead, which only meant it had gone uncharged, which only meant Meredith had forgotten to take the charger, which happened all the time. She found the Bellows’ number on her own cell and called their house phone. It rang four times before the machine picked up. It was a girl’s voice on the machine—Lisa’s voice, she assumed:
“Hey there! Nobody’s home right now, but—”
She hung up and got out of bed and walked into the hall. Evan’s door was open, his room empty but for the intolerant cat sleeping on his pillow. She went downstairs. The house was silent. They were gone. Where were they? She found a note, scrawled from Mark, on the kitchen table:
at the park
The park, yes. The baseball field at the park, the rocky, uneven diamond where Evan and his friends had played as little kids, before it really mattered, before it meant anything. Mark was hitting him pop flies. Evan needed them off the bat, was what he’d said, she remembered now. Not tossed from his own hand or rolled off the roof. He needed them off the bat. The bat was unpredictable. Sometimes a ball off a bat went in a straight line, as evidenced by the dark lens of his glasses. But more often the connection of ball and bat created something unpredictable, unique. Every time was different. Every single time, a new line.
She tried Evan’s cell. Evan should definitely be the one to go get Meredith. If she was upset, if Colleen Bellow was upset . .
. Evan could handle it. This was his specialty, rescuing sisters. He and Mark could swing by there on their way home from the park. Mark could stay in the van and Evan could just go to the door and say—
“Hey, it’s Evan. Leave me a message.”
She frowned, picturing the phone sitting on the weathered bench beside the rocky field, its buzzing unheard or ignored.
“Evan,” she said. “Evan, I need you to go get your sister. Please.” She was struck by the pointless urgency of an unheard message, the way it lay in the box like every other message, carrying no extra weight until it was heard. “Evan. Call me as soon as you get this.”
She hung up. She stood for a moment in the kitchen. The intolerant cat, apparently roused by her visit to Evan’s room, was standing at the back door.
“What?” she asked it. “What do you want?”
She did not like the sound of her voice in the empty house. Her voice, alone, was a hollow thing, as pointless as the message she’d just left for her son. She was not going to wait around for him to pick up his voicemail. She went to get dressed.
•
In the Bellows’ neighborhood only a few dog walkers were out, and even the dogs looked sleepy. It was a cold morning and the holiday was over and the shopping day was over and, miraculously, it was still the beginning of the weekend, and most of the world was celebrating this fact by staying in bed. Which was where she should be, and really where everyone in her family should be, relishing the sleep. But Meredith was in another girl’s bed in another family’s house.
She thought she understood why Meredith had stayed at the Bellows’ while the friend—Becca, it was—had left. She was even a little bit proud of Meredith, or impressed by her, or both. Meredith felt bad that Lisa’s bed was empty, and she saw herself as a body who could fill it. Claire might have even approved the choice, given the chance. If Meredith had called and asked her advice (as if!), she might have said yes, stay there, sleep in her bed, wear her pajamas, if it will allow her mother one moment of peace, one moment of relief, we can take that hit, we can give you to her for a night, for a day and night, every so often, if that helps even the score, if that helps balance the loss. Not share you, no, but let that mother have a share in you. She deserves that; it’s fairer than the all or nothing we are left with, the all of you and the nothing of Lisa, the all of our family and the nothing of hers. Give her that: sleep in her daughter’s bed, eat her daughter’s cereal, use her daughter’s hairbrush. If it helps. If it helps, we can give her that. We can give her you.
She pulled into the driveway but did not shut off the engine. What was it but a sleepover, really? Maybe she shouldn’t even go knock. Maybe she should wait a few minutes and see if Meredith emerged, headed back to Becca’s house, or if Evan called the cell. But who knew when he would call? She imagined them on that chilly field, Mark trying to hit the ball straight up, missing half the time, connecting, and then the ball dropping just out of Evan’s reach. Who knew how long they would be? They might be there forever trying to get it right. They might be there forever and never get it right, but stay anyway.
She got out of the car and walked to the front door, then gave a tentative, light knock. The dogs inside exploded into fits of barking. Well, so much for the quiet knock, the gentle awakening. The dogs were right on the other side of the door, whimpering, their tails slapping the wall. She prepared her apology face.
But no one opened the door. Had they really slept through the barking? Maybe Becca was wrong. Maybe Meredith had not spent the night here. Maybe Colleen Bellow was at her boyfriend’s house . . . but if this was the case, then where was Meredith?
She rang the bell, propelling the dogs into further hysterics. Then she pounded on the door, first with her knuckles and then, in some imperceptible shift caused by the lack of response, as seconds passed, with the side of her closed fist. Probably she was waking up a neighbor. Probably she—
The door opened, leaving her fist suspended, almost comically, mid-pound. Colleen Bellow stood there in black sweatpants and a gray American Eagle T-shirt, her face expressionless, her eyes heavy with sleep. Or with something. She stared at Claire for a moment as if she didn’t recognize her.
“Is Meredith here?” Claire blurted out.
“Meredith?” Colleen said sleepily. “Um . . . ”
Claire pushed past the dogs and into the living room. One of the dogs bolted out the door and sprinted across the front lawn.
“Shit,” Colleen said.
“Where is she? Is she here?”
“What? Who?”
“Meredith,” Claire said. “Is Meredith here?” Then she called to the house, in a voice she did not recognize, “Meredith?”
“She’s in the bathtub,” Colleen said.
Claire turned. “What?”
“She’s . . . she’s in the bathtub. I’m sorry.”
Claire saw her then, her little girl. She saw the unseeable image on the other side of the door. The door opened and the sight of her dead daughter came at her with the rush of water, a wave that was remarkable mostly for its sound as it crashed over her and she could hear nothing, not the dogs nor Colleen nor the sound of her own feet pounding up the carpeted stairs to the hallway that seemed to have a thousand different doors, opening the door first to a bedroom, then spinning and opening another to a towel-packed closet, then spinning again and opening finally to a sink and mirrortoothbrushsoapdish, knowing already what she would see in the next moment, what she had lost sometime in the night as she slept unaware, what she had already, already, already, already, impossibly, impossibly lost.
Meredith was asleep in the bathtub. There was no water in the bathtub. The sound of the wave ceased and Claire felt her legs give out under her and she was kneeling beside the tub and her hands were shaking.
“Meredith,” she said. “Meredith . . . ”
And now again a moment, when she did not stir—but no, she was breathing, her chest rising and falling under the unfamiliar pajamas. On the tile wall above her daughter were criss-crossed lines drawn in red marker.
“She’s asleep,” Colleen said.
Claire turned.
“She’s sleeping,” Colleen said. “I gave her something to sleep.”
Claire stood up, still trembling. “You what?”
“I gave her something to help her sleep. She was upset. I—”
“What did you give her?”
“Just what they gave to me,” she said. “The same thing I take.”
“How many?”
“What?”
Claire could have shaken her, struck her. “How many did you give her?”
“Just one,” Colleen said. “That’s what I—”
“Are you sure it was just one?”
“Of course I’m sure.” She was angry now. “What do you think I am? I’m not crazy.”
“How long has—”
“She was upset and I wanted to help. But then afterward she came in here and I thought she was just going to the bathroom but then I came in and she was like this. I woke her up and asked if she wanted to get into bed but she said she just wanted to stay here. But she was okay. She is okay. She’s just . . . sleepy.”
“Meredith,” Claire said. She crouched down and put her hand on her daughter’s arm. “Meredith, wake up.”
A small stir.
“What exactly did you give her?” she asked Colleen. “And when? What time?”
Colleen took a pill bottle from the pocket of her sweat pants. Claire snatched it from her hand and looked at it.
“Meredith,” she said firmly.
Meredith opened her eyes for a moment, then closed them again.
“I just thought it would help her sleep,” Colleen said. “It helps me. She was upset.”
“Of course she was upset,” Claire said.
“I just—”
“This is wrong,” Claire said, standing, turning to face her fully. In her sweats and T-shirt Colleen looked somehow tinier than ever, so slim
and fragile and young, not like a parent at all. “You have to see that. You have to know this is not okay.”
“She said it—”
“No,” Claire said. “She’s a child. She’s just a child.”
“Lisa was a child,” Colleen said.
“Yes,” Claire said. “Yes. I know. She was.”
Claire crouched down again. “Meredith,” she said. She looked once more at the red lines on the tile wall. Was it a graph? Some kind of math problem? There were dots, marking a curve.
“We’re going to stand up now,” Claire said. “I’m going to take you home.”
Meredith opened her eyes. “What?” she said.
“We’re going to go home,” Claire said. “I’m going to take you home.”
“No,” Meredith said.
And there was a moment, even then, assessing the momentous task that lay in the tub before her, when Claire thought maybe it would make sense, right now, to leave her daughter where she was, just for a little while longer, to let her sleep it off, to sit downstairs with a cup of coffee and come back up in a couple hours with reinforcements—the brother whom she worshipped, the father who could lighten the mood—come back when Meredith could stand without assistance, when both she and Colleen had overcome their sedation, to heed her disoriented child’s simple request, her dazed “no,” to let her make this decision for herself. Meredith was not going to die in this bathtub. She was not going to be abducted from it. She was in no imminent peril. She was, Claire thought, in no greater danger than the danger posed by a mother who would make the choice, for whatever reason, to not carry her daughter to safety.
She slid one arm under Meredith’s shoulders and another under her thighs.
“You can’t lift her,” Colleen said.
Claire half-lifted, half-slid Meredith from the confines of the bathtub, then fell backward onto the bathroom floor with Meredith sideways across her lap. Something rolled from Meredith’s hand onto the bathroom floor, an uncapped Magic Marker.
“Come on, sweetheart,” she said. “We have to go home.”
“You can’t carry her,” Colleen said.
Meredith opened her eyes again. “Mom,” she said.