SURVIVAL KIT

by Donna Freitas

  I’d still have Will.

  Life was fragile and love was, too. At any moment, even our happiest ones, our world could shatter and we wouldn’t see it coming. There was only more loss ahead, showing its ugly face when we least expected it. The Rose I became when my mother died, the girl who didn’t want to see people, who couldn’t have fun, who didn’t want to be touched, who refused her friends’ help—the Rose I was before Will—was pulling me down again, an anchor tied to my legs, permanent and unforgiving, denying any effort I made to get away. I thought I had lost her, but I was mistaken.

  This was the lesson my father’s accident forced on me.

  Then one afternoon the doorbell rang, and after a while it rang again. I was lying in bed reading a book, and I yelled for Jim to answer, then for Grandma. The sun peeked through the waning March clouds, brightening the gap between the shades of my room. When the bell sounded a third time, I concluded I was home alone and waited for silence to tell me the visitors had given up and left.

  They were persistent.

  Eventually the chimes became too much so I got up. I was still in my pajamas, barefoot, my hair in a sloppy ponytail, strands falling around my face and trailing down my back. When I opened the door, Krupa, Kecia, Tamika, and Mary were standing on the front porch.

  “We’ve missed you,” Krupa said, walking past me without waiting for an invitation.

  “We won’t take no for an answer,” Kecia said as Mary and Tamika followed her inside. I watched them disappear around the corner into the kitchen. Then I shut the door and went to join them, feeling like a zombie. Chairs scraped against the tiled floor and a flurry of activity ensued, opening and unpacking and whispering. Dangling from Kecia’s fingertips was a giant bag of chocolate bars, and Tamika poured the contents of her bulky purse onto the kitchen table. Eye shadows, eyeliners, compacts, bottles of nail polish and remover, lipsticks, and hair clips spilled across the wooden surface, clacking as they spread out and rolled to a stop. Mary took out a series of old, battered DVD cases. They looked at me, waiting for my reaction, but I didn’t have the heart for this today. A tear rolled down my cheek and then another. I opened my mouth to protest, but Krupa spoke before I could tell them to go.

  “We’ll only stay an hour,” she said. “Today is just getting out of bed and sitting with friends in your house, nothing more.”

  I knew they were right, that I had to start somewhere. “Okay,” I said after a long silence. “For just a little while.” I let them lead me into the living room, where they consoled me with chocolate, lipstick, movies, and most of all, their friendship.

  Every afternoon that followed, my house filled with friends. I was surrounded by people and activity, but still I felt lost. My father would be coming home soon, and I wasn’t sure how to begin again or who was at fault anymore—him for being so reckless, or me for my refusal to forgive. With the end of March came warmer weather. Tiny green buds began to dot the bare branches of the trees, the ground began its spring thaw, and the plants in my mother’s gardens poked up from the soil, drinking the sun and stretching toward the sky. Every morning I watched from the windows to see if Will had returned to work—I knew it would happen eventually and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss him.

  Then one day he appeared in the yard.

  He was out back, next to the peony bed, tearing open a bag of compost. My breath stopped when I saw him through the living room windows, my heart quickened and I put a hand out to steady myself on the sill. I wanted him to turn my way, but he didn’t, as if he purposely avoided looking at the house. Now was my chance to thaw this frost between us, to go outside and meet Will at the very spot where he and I began and where little red shoots were about to push up from the soil, soon to be the peonies that he’d promised me would grow. He crouched down for a moment, studying the bed, then suddenly he turned and looked at the exact spot where I stood at the window.

  Our eyes met.

  Quickly, I turned away.

  Krupa was standing behind me. “You should go and talk to him.”

  “I miss him,” I whispered. “But he just dropped me without a word, or any explanation.”

  “Why don’t you ask him what happened? His reasons may not even be about you.”

  More than anything, I wanted my mother back. I wanted her to take care of me, to tell me what to do about Will, to show me how to fix everything with my father. I wanted her to take away this endless grief and complication and more emotion than I knew how to handle. Without consulting my brain, my feet began to move, carrying my body across the house, past Krupa and everyone else in the kitchen until I reached a door I hadn’t opened in almost a year, and grasping the knob, I turned it, went inside, and closed it behind me.

  I was in my mother’s office.

  Stacks of construction paper were piled high on the shelves, sparkly pipe cleaners poked up from mugs like pencils, mobiles hung from the ceiling, and paintings by Mom’s kids covered every inch of available wall space. Bright markers and scissors and colored cotton balls were strewn across the desk, as if Mom was still here, working on a project she was planning to teach tomorrow. Her office had always been like a miniature version of her classroom. The experience of taking in these possessions that were once my mother’s evoked the memory of another, similar moment, when I’d gone into Mom’s closet after the funeral and discovered the Survival Kit she had left for me.

  I’d let myself off the hook for too long, ignoring the tasks that remained. I remembered the box of crayons, and suddenly I knew what came next. From Mom’s shelves, I gathered as many pairs of scissors as I could fit in one hand, wedged a thick stack of construction paper under my arm, grabbed a mug of pipe cleaners, and brought everything out to the kitchen. I went back and forth shuttling the things from Mom’s office, setting up piles on the table and the countertops: markers, pipe cleaners, glitter glue and finger paint, colored pencils, tissue paper and silvery, metallic paper and paper plates, and about a dozen other things.

  Plus an enormous stack of brown paper lunch bags.

  Because crayons, of course, were meant to be shared.

  I’d kept the Survival Kit a secret long enough.

  34

  BETTER

  I gathered everyone into the kitchen. Krupa, Kecia, Tamika, and Mary. Grandma Madison, too. “First of all, I wanted to say that I know I haven’t been the best company lately, or the best friend or the best granddaughter,” I began, “but I really appreciate you guys sticking by me. I hope I can make up for how I’ve been acting, at least a little bit.” I held up my Survival Kit, the thin blue ribbon dangling from my fingers, the side with my name in my mother’s hand facing out. “I think you already know about my mother’s Survival Kits—the ones she made for the parents of her children at school. On the day of her funeral, I found this waiting for me. I think it was my mother’s way of offering wisdom for how I might”—I stopped, taking my time and another deep breath—“for how I might begin to figure out life without her in it.”

  Krupa’s eyes widened.

  “With my dad coming home from the hospital,” I went on, “I thought a Survival Kit might do him some good, and maybe help us mend fences, so I brought out these materials from Mom’s office to make him one. Since you are here, I thought you might want to make a Survival Kit of your own for someone in your life or even for yourself. I suppose most of us could use one at some point in our lives,” I said with a small laugh, and once the words were out I knew they were true. “Take whatever you want,” I said, pointing to the materials I’d set up everywhere. “Mom wouldn’t have wanted all this fun stuff to go to waste. She loved her projects and I’m sure she’d be happy to share.”

  “Oh, Rose,” Grandma said, breaking the silence that followed. A tear spilled down her cheek. “What a special thing for Ellie to give you.”

  I nodded. “I know. It is.”

  Kecia picked up a pair of scissors and waited for others to follow suit. “Rose, I love this idea. I alrea
dy know who I want to make a Survival Kit for.”

  I smiled. This had been the right thing to do.

  “I’m going to begin mine, too,” Tamika said, and went straight for a piece of shiny gold paper.

  The mood in the room—the mood in the entire house—began to lift. It felt like the sun peeking just over the horizon to begin a new day after a long, endless night. Everyone got to work. Scissors scraped along construction paper, pipe cleaners quivered in the air as they were plucked from the table, glitter shimmered from its vials onto puffy lines of glue, shiny flecks drifting away onto the table and the floor. The kitchen filled with life and chatter and chaos, but this time I was the one who had invited it in.

  The Survival Kit, my Survival Kit, sat at the center of the kitchen table. No one asked to look inside or pressed me about its contents, a fact for which I was grateful. I leaned between Mary and Tamika to grab the bag and take it back to my room, but when I turned the corner from the kitchen I froze.

  Jim was standing there, staring at the Survival Kit in my hand, his face drained of color. “Mom made this for you?” His voice cracked, his tone was disbelieving. “You didn’t even bother to tell me?”

  My mouth opened wide and I stared at him, not knowing what to say. All the good feeling that had begun to rise up inside me dissolved in an instant. I hadn’t even known he was home. I felt terrible. Horrible. I was an awful sister.

  “Answer me, Rosey,” he whispered.

  “I don’t know what to say. It occurred to me, but—”

  “What occurred to you? That I would be upset? Jealous? That Mom cared about you more than me? That she worried about what would happen to you but not me? That’s what? She thought I would somehow handle her death better than you so she left me with nothing.”

  “You know that’s not true—”

  “What if it is, though? You’re not the only one who’s sad about Mom. You’re not the only one who’s having a difficult year. You’re not the only one who got stuck taking care of Dad.”

  “But—”

  “Oh, and I love how you’re making one for Dad after not talking to him for a month. You’re so virtuous and so thoughtful, Rose. What a great idea, Rose. How sweet of you.”

  “I didn’t even think—” I kept trying but Jim wouldn’t let me finish.

  “Exactly. That’s exactly it. You didn’t think. You didn’t think to involve me. You didn’t think I would care that you went through Mom’s office without me, that you decided to give her things away. You didn’t think that maybe I wasn’t ready to see Mom’s stuff all over the kitchen. And you didn’t think that maybe Mom making you something so special, Mom choosing you to have a Survival Kit and not me, would hurt me. It didn’t occur to you because you’re so wrapped up in your own dramas that you haven’t even gotten a glimpse of mine.”

  “Please, Jim”—I took a step toward him, reached out, and he responded by taking a step back—“maybe she did make you one,” I tried. “Maybe you just haven’t found it yet,” I said, but my words fell on emptiness. Jim turned away and stormed out the front door and slammed it shut behind him. The sound of a car engine roared in the driveway, rattled there for a moment, and then was gone.

  I hung my head. I’d been so thoughtless. How stupid to keep something like this from my brother, and careless to allow him to find out by overhearing me tell other people. Dejected, I placed the Survival Kit on the coffee table in the living room and sank into the couch.

  Quietly, Krupa approached and sat down next to me. “Let him go, Rose. He needs some time.” She put a hand on my arm. “I bet it took a lot of courage for your mom to plan that Survival Kit. She wanted to be there for you even after she was gone.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I kept it from you. I didn’t mean to hurt Jim, or anyone, I just …” My fingers pinched folds in the afghan draped over the armrest. “I wasn’t ready to share.”

  “It’s okay with me,” she said. “I hope you realize that. I can’t imagine what it’s been like to go through what you’ve dealt with this year. The thing with Jim, though,” she trailed off. “That’s going to be more complicated.”

  “God.” I shifted so I could lie back. “The worst part is, I thought about this exact possibility. I actually wondered at different points if Mom had made one for Jim, but then I never said anything to him about it because I was afraid she hadn’t. How am I going to fix this?”

  Krupa sighed. “I don’t know. But he’ll calm down eventually and then you guys will just have to talk it through.” The expression on her face said she was debating something.

  “What? Tell me what you are thinking.”

  She reached out, her hand hovering above the Survival Kit. “Can I see it?” she asked in a small voice, then immediately retracted her arm. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. Actually, forget it. You don’t have to show me—”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m ready. I wouldn’t have told everyone about it otherwise.” I picked it up and placed it between us on the couch.

  “So where did you find it?”

  “My mother’s closet,” I explained. “With her favorite dress.”

  Krupa gasped. “The dress made of night—I remember how you always begged her to wear it.”

  “She knew I’d go looking for it and find the Survival Kit there.” I emptied the bag’s remaining contents onto the cushion: the box of crayons, the shiny paper star, and the kite. Then I ran to my room to retrieve the photograph of the peonies and the iPod. When I returned, the silver star was resting delicately in Krupa’s palm. I added the two remaining items to the others.

  The only thing missing was the crystal heart.

  Krupa looked at each one, picked it up, turned it over, examining it from different angles. “The peonies in the backyard,” she said with a knowing smile when she saw the photograph. “This wasn’t your mother’s,” she exclaimed when she scrolled through the songs on the iPod. “She made it for you,” she said, and I nodded. “And the crayons?” she asked, the slim box held out in her hand.

  “Are for sharing with others. Like, sharing the Survival Kit with you guys,” I explained. “You know my mother—I mean, you knew her—how she was about this kind of stuff. I thought that maybe, even though she’s gone, that some of the traditions she had started could, well, maybe, continue on through other people.”

  Krupa’s eyes were sad but she smiled. “Your mother would have loved seeing us here at the house, making Survival Kits, just like you guys did as a family every year.”

  “Except for the part where I forgot my brother,” I said with regret.

  There was one item Krupa hadn’t yet touched. “What about the kite?”

  “I’m nowhere near ready to deal with it,” I said. “To be honest, I can’t even imagine when I will.” I picked up the star, turning it over in my hand. “Next is the star, I think.”

  “What is the star for?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I admitted.

  “Is this everything?”

  I shook my head. “There was a crystal heart, too.”

  Understanding dawned on Krupa’s face. “From the Valentine’s party—it’s so pretty! Why isn’t it here?”

  “Will has it,” I answered simply.

  “Oh,” Krupa said, but didn’t press me further about it. Then she went on. “You know, you said your mom left your Survival Kit with her dress.”

  “The ribbon was tied to the hanger.”

  “She obviously wanted you to wear it, Rose,” she said softly. “You always wanted to. And now it’s yours.”

  “Really?” It wasn’t that wearing the dress hadn’t crossed my mind, but more that I hadn’t let myself think ahead to a moment when I might have a reason to.

  “You’ll know when the occasion is right,” she added.

  My throat tightened as my eyes welled. I knew what Krupa said was true, that there would come a time when I would slip that beautiful gown over my body and wear it just like my mother had onc
e worn it. Somewhere deep I’d known this all along, that there would be a night that was special enough.

  Because I was finally old enough.

  It wasn’t until after dinner that I managed an audience with Jim. I noticed his car was back in the driveway and I found him in his room lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

  “Mom made you a Survival Kit, too. I’m sure of it,” I said from the doorway.

  He stirred and raised his head from the pillow. “No, she didn’t and I don’t want to talk about it. Or to you.”

  But I wasn’t going away that easily. I walked over and sat down. “She made them for both of us. She did, I promise.”

  Jim rubbed his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows once he realized I wasn’t going anywhere. He glared at me. “Rosey, just stop. You’re making me feel worse than I already do.”

  “Listen, it’s not like Mom handed the Survival Kit to me. She hid it in the house where she knew I’d find it, with that dress I was always bothering her about. We just need to figure out where she left yours.”

  The expression on Jim’s face was sad and vulnerable. “Rosey, if it’s not true, if you’re not right, I don’t want to be disappointed.” Hope entered his voice like a scared child, and he sat up so that both our legs hung off the side of the bed, except that his reached all the way to the floor.

  “You won’t be.” I was trusting in my mother that he wouldn’t.

  “You’ve really had it since the funeral? All this time?”

  I nodded, avoiding his eyes, choosing instead to focus on the rhododendron outside pushing its leaves against the bottom half of the window. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I really am.”

  Jim drummed his thumbs against his knees. “So let’s assume you’re right for a minute,” he said, his fingers tapping away. “If Mom left yours with the dress …” Suddenly, he sprang from the bed, grabbed a sweatshirt from a chair, and pulled it over his head. “Then mine has to be somewhere in the house.” He began pacing back and forth. “Where would she have put it?” Jim darted from one corner of his room to the other, digging under piles of clothing, opening and shutting his closet door, tearing into everything. “Rosey, what if she made me one and I never find it?” He left the room but returned not more than thirty seconds later. He opened his mouth to say something, then disappeared again without a word.