Take Me Back

by Sally Mandel

  Soon, they were forced to a crawl. Simon leaned forward to squint out the windshield. “It’s like driving underwater,” he murmured.

  “I can’t even see if anything’s coming,” Mrs. Adams said. “We could easily hit somebody or get rammed from behind.”

  Simon was quiet, but he did that thing with his jaw where the muscles clenched into a knot. Suddenly, there was a brilliant flash of light, and in that moment of eerie illumination, Simon spotted the tree that lay across the road just ahead. Thunder boomed and rolled around them even as he swerved, the car spiraling out of control. Mrs. Adams continued to cling to her door handle. Even as her brain told her that they were in peril, she found herself simultaneously experiencing a thrill of excitement that set her heart to pounding as they spun around and around on the drowning road. She could have sworn that she actually laughed out loud, thinking, What a way to go!

  After what seemed several minutes of this wild ride, the vehicle catapulted headlong into the ditch. Miraculously, they landed only slightly atilt. They sat in stunned silence for a moment, shaken by the impact.

  “Not quite the sort of adventure I had in mind,” Mrs. Adams commented, the percussion of rain on the metal roof nearly shouting her down. She touched Simon’s arm. “I’m just glad you’re not up there in that plane,” she said. The sad smile he gave her by way of response was not entirely a comfort. She wanted to embrace him, wanted to hold him on her lap and rock him as if he were a little boy. That pain in his eyes was something she recognized, though no one in the world knew of her own long-ago descent into the hell of depression, of her own yearning for release—really, for death.

  It had been about a year since her baby died. Now Stella was four, and into simply everything. The little girl thought it a great joke to run right out into the street, and loved climbing things, the higher the better. She even crawled out her bedroom window sometimes, to perch on the narrow ledge. The physical and emotional toll of keeping such a child safe simply exhausted Mrs. Adams. And on top of it, William was in nearly daily conflict with his father. He came home ready to tear things apart in frustration. One night he flung a stewpot clear across the kitchen. Beef ragout slid in a gooey mess down the wall as Mrs. Adams and Stella cowered beside the refrigerator. William was instantly mortified, as always, and cleaned everything up, but his violence terrified Mrs. Adams. What was to prevent him from unleashing it on her some day—or worse, on Stella? That night, she had slept on the daybed in Stella’s room. Actually, not really slept, just stared up at the ceiling William had decorated with little stars that glowed in the dark. She wished they were real and that she could float up into the infinite black sky and be delivered into oblivion. It felt cowardly to long for death, but her despair was that suffocating, as if she were buried alive in cement with no prayer of escape. Her heart thudded, taunting her with its sturdy beat. She was young and strong and it was going to be a long wait for death to, mercifully, claim her. In the meantime, she could not possibly turn her back on her obligations. She had made a vow to William, and vows were sacred. She would not flee with this child whose gentle breathing she could hear across the room and who so idolized her father, for all of his rages.

  Sleep had found her, finally, but only as the sun began to rise. Soon afterwards, she woke to the smell of the pancakes William was concocting downstairs, his way of making amends. And when she and Stella stepped into the kitchen, William came over to put his arms around Mrs. Adams. “I don’t deserve you,” he said. “Such a damn fool.” He looked so miserable that once again, her heart warmed to him. Not just you, she had thought.

  She looked into Simon’s face now and saw the torment there. He was trapped in that dark place from where she knew it must seem there was only one way out. Unless you have been flung into that airless dungeon, Mrs. Adams knew, and heard the door clang shut against the light, you could not possibly understand the horror of it.

  “I know,” she wanted to tell him, but they had never spoken about such things. Their friendship was based on their connection to the other people in their lives. Both Mrs. Adams and Simon were naturally reticent anyway, so discussing other people came far more easily than revealing anything about themselves. She knew from Grace that when Simon had lost his twin brother at fifteen, he had withdrawn to his room and stayed there for a month, speaking to no one. When he finally did come out, he announced that he would not talk about the event nor mention Jeremy’s name ever again. As far as she knew he had kept his word. His face reminded Mrs. Adams of her grandfather’s as he lay in his coffin at the funeral—a simulation of a human face but there was nobody actually behind the waxen mask, nobody home.

  As they sat encapsulated in the wild and perilous night, she began to feel light-headed. “Strange,” she said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen so much lightning, yet there’s not much thunder now.”

  “It’s probably moving off until another cell comes by,” Simon said. The fallen tree, he noticed, had downed a live power line, which was now arcing on the road too close to the car for comfort. Their safest option was probably to stay put in the ditch until the storm passed, though, if anything, it seemed to him to have intensified. He glanced at Mrs. Adams. Her face, in the flickering light of the sparking wires, looked sickly. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

  “Bit woozy,” she said, and slumped sideways. Simon twisted to reach for her. Awkwardly, he tried to position her so that her head might get some blood flow.

  “Oh, silly,” she murmured. “Such a nuisance …”

  “When was the last time you had something to drink?” Simon asked.

  “Cup of decaf,” she murmured. She sat back and closed her eyes.

  Simon peered out the window. “Water, water, everywhere …” he said. “You wouldn’t have any water in the car, would you?”

  “Just Heineken, I’m afraid,” she replied.

  “Beer!” In all these years, he had never seen his mother-in-law with a beer in her hand.

  “For Angelo, the gardener. He won’t buy that kind for himself because it’s more expensive, so I picked up a case or two for his birthday.”

  Simon stretched over the seat. “Tell me it’s not in the trunk. Ahah!” He pulled a six-pack into the front seat. The next challenge would be opening the bottle.

  Mrs. Adams reached into her bag and handed him a Swiss Army knife. “This ought to do it.”

  “Lily!” he exclaimed. “And I thought I was beyond being surprised by you.”

  “Amy gave it to me years ago, in my stocking. In case I got marooned on a desert island, I guess, and needed a corkscrew.”

  “Well, she got the marooned part right,” Simon said, prying the top off a bottle. “Here. Drink this.”

  She took a swallow, grimaced a bit and took another before handing it back to him. “Keep me company, why don’t you. The car suddenly lifted, surging forward a few feet. They could hear the water churning outside. “My goodness!” she cried. “What was that?”

  “Ditch is flooding,” Simon said.

  They sat rock still, as if they might prevent catastrophe by not moving. But there was a rumbling beneath them as the waters passed through and they were forced into motion again, this time with the front end of the car left pointed skyward. The seatbelts constricted their shoulders uncomfortably.

  “Do you suppose there’s more deluge on its way?” Mrs. Adams asked. Her voice trembled.

  Simon chose not to answer. He ran his hand along the side of his seat. “I take back every derogatory thing I ever said about this car. I don’t believe it’s leaking at all.” He handed the beer back to Mrs. Adams and opened one for himself. She guzzled at it gratefully until it was half empty. Simon had to smile at the sight of his ladylike mother-in-law knocking back a brew. As always, her silver hair was pulled back into a braided coil at the nape of her neck.

  Mrs. Adams heaved a contented sigh, pointed her index finger at Simon’s chest and prodded it lightly. “You k
now,” she said, as if a significant and original thought had just occurred to her. “I almost left my husband.”

  Simon gaped at her. “William?”

  She laughed. “Did I misplace another one somewhere? Of course, William. I was just thinking, what a coincidence. You’re divorced and I wanted to be divorced.”

  “Lily, are you just a little drunk?” he asked.

  “Mm,” she answered thoughtfully. “Probably more than a little bit,” she said. “Doesn’t take much, you know, for a skinny old chicken like me. Quite pleasant, actually.” She took another dainty pull from the bottle. “He drank, of course,” she said. “Tried to keep it away from Stella and me, but he would come home reeking of it, and after one of those bouts he’d be in a black mood for days. He had a terrible temper, lost it all the time.”

  “I saw a few of those,” Simon said. “Once, he broke his golf club. I didn’t even know it was possible.”

  “I was not prepared for a person like William,” she said. “In my family, there was nary a raised voice. If my parents were having what they called a ‘debate,’ they would speak German so my brother and I wouldn’t understand. William’s house. Like a cage of wild animals. His mother drank too much, his father was always ranting about something at the top of his lungs, and he and William always at loggerheads ….”

  The wind shook the car as if for emphasis. She ran her hand across her forehead.

  “Are you all right, Lily?” Simon asked.

  “My,” she murmured. “I don’t think I’ve strung so many words together at one time in my entire life. What’s gotten into me?”

  “A pint of Heineken,” Simon said.

  “What a boring old toot.”

  “On the contrary,” Simon remarked. “Why didn’t you divorce him?”

  “I suppose I was afraid. Women were so helpless back then, at least women like me. I can count to ten in Arabic. That wasn’t exactly going to help me get a job in Indian Wells, and I’d never have taken Stella away from her father. She adored him.”

  “You certainly didn’t let it show,” Simon said. “I remember a lot of laughter.”

  “Oh, hells bells,” she said. “Anyway, I suppose he was the love of my life.”

  Simon laughed, but Lily blinked as if startled by the statement.

  “I’ve never considered myself a romantic,” she said. “But there was … certainly, there was … gratitude.”

  Mrs. Adams closed her eyes. Simon waited quietly, long enough for him to suppose she might have fallen asleep.

  “And then, there was Jed.” He could barely hear her.

  “Jed?”

  “The baby. The one who died,” she said.

  Stella had mentioned something, but it had been just the vaguest fragment of family history, something no one ever spoke about. Again, he waited.

  “Stella was three,” she continued. We brought Jed home from the hospital but he’d picked something up, some sort of infection.” She stopped for another sip of beer.

  “Lily, you don’t have to ….”

  She shook her head. “We phoned the doctor in the middle of the night. He was annoyed, thought we were being overly anxious. Anyway, the baby didn’t improve and by the time we got him to the hospital, it was too late. It was entirely my fault.”

  “How do you figure that?” Simon asked.

  “William wanted to phone again, but Jed didn’t seem that sick … and I was, oh, embarrassed, I guess. It went against my grain, to disturb anybody in the middle of the night like that. Stella’d had fevers, too, and she always recovered.”

  A single tear slid down her cheek. Simon reached for her hand.

  “Anyway, he never blamed me, not once.”

  They listened to the rain for a moment, more of a steady patter now.

  “Loss is so particular,” she said. “I think of how Jed had a little cowlick at the back of his head, a little Iroquois feather that stuck straight up ….” She pointed to a spot below her left breast. “There’s a bruise here that’s never going away, as long as I live.”

  Simon kissed her hand and replaced it on her lap.

  “The thing is,” she said, “your relationship with somebody doesn’t stop changing just because one of you died.”

  They both sat staring out at the blackness and odd flickering light. After a while, Simon made a noise like a cough.

  “Jeremy was pigeon-toed,” he said. The words came out half strangled.

  Mrs. Adams felt the world come to a dead halt. She sucked in her breath.

  “He toed in,” Simon pushed on. “Jeremy did.”

  “Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Adams said. She felt reverent, a witness to some sacred dawning.

  Simon leaned forward, bracing his head against the steering wheel. “It made him self-conscious,” Simon said, so softly that Mrs. Adams had to strain to hear him.

  “He had this muscular build he was so proud of,” Simon went on, “but his feet, he thought they made him look ridiculous. He used to practice walking but of course it didn’t work, though maybe over time … well, he’d be forty-seven now, like me.”

  Grace Vanderwall had told Mrs. Adams about Jeremy’s death, the cruelty of it as he slipped down into the bog on the moors, about Simon’s desperate futile attempts to save him. It had taken two days of complicated digging to retrieve the boy’s body.

  Mrs. Adams stroked his back. It felt steamy, the way Stella’s had when she cried her heart out—Simon, now, like a little boy beside her. He sat up and stared into the black night.

  “All right, dear?” Mrs. Adams asked.

  He looked at her as if he didn’t know who she was. She watched his face slowly regain the present. “Where in the hell did that come from?” he said. “I’m sorry, Lily.”

  “Well, no,” she said. She wanted in the worst way to pet him, to run her fingers through his damp hair.

  “I’m stuck in the mud, Lily,” Simon said.

  “Why, yes,” Mrs. Adams said. “We’re well and truly mired.”

  “No. On the moors, I meant, with Jeremy.”

  Mrs. Adams laid her hand against his check. “Ah,” she said.

  And there they sat, holding hands and waiting for rescue, which came at last as morning broke over the exhausted, resilient old forest.

  The List

  Stella & Simon: 1987

  Once every month or so, Lily and Stella alternated visiting one another. When it was Lily’s turn, she would get on the train and take the trip down to Hudson. This time, in a gesture of independence, she had forbidden Stella to pick her up at the train station, so Stella paced at the front gate until she saw the cab headed up the street.

  “Woo hoo!” Lily called, leaning her head out the window, fluttering her hand like a white handkerchief.

  Stella paid the driver and helped Lily out of the taxi. “You know you don’t have to come down here, Ma,” Stella said. “I’m perfectly happy to drive up to see you.” She reached for the vintage ‘60s purse that served as Lily’s suitcase. She always traveled light, a practice that she had passed along to Stella, certainly a boon for international globe-trotting. Lily simply brought along a nightgown, an extra sweater and a toothbrush. And, of course, a good detective story. As for underwear, she simply washed it out each night in the bathroom sink. Somehow she always managed to look well put together, like today in a denim skirt, a thick cable cardigan and low heels. Stella had never seen Lily in a pair of sneakers or slacks in her entire life.

  Lily tucked a twenty-dollar bill into Stella’s pocket for the cab fare. Having learned that there was no point in trying to refuse it, Stella simply held out her arm for her mother to hang onto.

  “Good for me to have an outing,” Lily said. “I wish you could have seen the rivers out the window. The canals, too. They made the whole world watery, like a French painting.”

  But Stella didn’t answer. She was trying to adjust to the fact that her mother had somehow sh
runk since her last visit. They had been the same height when Stella was growing up; now Lily barely reached Stella’s ear. Stella felt a sudden cold breath against the back of her neck and shivered.

  “Look at that,” Lily said. “Your tulips are much further along than ours.”

  Stella covered her mother’s hand with her own. “Come in. You’re freezing. Those tulips will be there all weekend.” She tugged gently at her mother, shaking off the vague sense of foreboding and held the door open.

  “I don’t mind the bus,” Lily said. “Although I have to say it’s a waste of money buying a ticket when I could be driving.”

  “Don’t start, Ma,” Stella said.

  “It’s just foolish, that’s all. I have plenty of good driving years ahead of me. Now I have to hire a taxi to do my grocery shopping or get a haircut half a mile up the road.”

  Stella opted not to engage. It had been a nightmare getting rid of that old monster car. Lily had driven it into a snowdrift that winter on her way to the post office. Then, as if that hadn’t been enough warning, Stella got a phone call from Fritz Jenovyk, her mother’s state trooper friend. He’d begun tailing Lily. Her driving was erratic to say the least, and he was afraid she’d kill herself or somebody else.

  “She drives through town at sixty, and not always on her side of the road,” Fritz said. “I’ve pulled her over for speeding a couple of times, but I really just can’t bring myself to give her a ticket. That’s not going to help anything.”

  “Are you saying she needs to give up her license?” Stella had asked.

  “Afraid so,” Fritz said. “And soon.”

  There had been a lot of resistance. Lily continued to drive until finally Fritz was forced to take away her keys.

  “She almost cried,” Fritz had reported, heartbroken himself.

  At this point there were merely the occasional mild complaints from Lily, mainly because they were expected. Recently she had even told Stella that it was a relief to be driven around town “like the Queen of the May.”