51
A Dream
All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
- Havelock Ellis
Now
Becca stood at the end of a long white tunnel. She could see Emmy at the far side and heard herself calling her sister’s name over and over again. But Emmy could not hear her. She kept walking, never turning to look back, just walking, moving farther and farther away until Becca could barely make out her silhouette. And then she disappeared altogether, as if she’d stepped out into nothingness and was simply gone.
“Emmy!” Becca called out, starting to run after her. “Wait! Emmy! Come back!”
Becca woke with a start, her dress damp with sweat, her chest tight with its own inability to pull in enough air.
Matt’s arm dropped from her shoulders. He made a sound and then sat up, opening his eyes and saying, “What is it, Becca? What’s wrong?”
“I—a dream. It was a dream.”
Matt reached for her hand and said, “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” she said, overcome by the sudden feeling that something was wrong, that she had to get home. “I have to go.”
“It’s late. Let me drive you.”
“No,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll walk you out then.”
Becca grabbed her purse and the white bonnet and hairpins where they lay on the small table at the edge of the couch. Matt took her hand and led her from the room back to the main part of the house and then to the front door where they took the steps to her truck.
“I don’t feel right letting you leave like this. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes,” she said.
“When will I see you again?”
She shook her head, feeling in that moment a too familiar wrenching in the center of her heart. “I don’t know.”
He pulled her to him, kissed the top of her head. Becca squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that instantly welled up. She got in the truck and backed away, not letting herself look at him as she drove off.
The few stoplights she encountered seemed to take forever, and she pushed the speed limit along the Route 40 stretch leading away from town.
The farther she drove, the more real her dream seemed, the more real the sense of foreboding hanging over her. Something was wrong. She couldn’t describe it other than as a bone-deep awareness that something monumental had changed, shifted like the very particles in the air, so that she had to consciously think about how to breathe against the panic inexplicably escalating inside her.
She brought the truck to a quick stop in the driveway, jumping out and leaving the door open. She let herself in the house and then took the stairs two at a time, her shoes loud on the wood steps. She went straight to Emmy’s room, turned the knob quietly and stepped inside. The bed was neatly made, the lamp on the nightstand throwing a circle of light on the rag rug in the center of the floor.
“Emmy?” she said.
No answer.
She looked in the bathroom down the hall, her heart racing now. She flew down the stairs to the kitchen but found no sign of her sister.
And then she noticed that the back door had been left ajar.
She stepped outside, the dark penetrating beneath the cloud that had settled over the moon. She called her sister’s name again and again. She looked at the barn, and her heart started to race. She walked across the dew-damp grass and then began to run, frantically calling as she went.
She opened one of the sliding doors, stepping in and blinking as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. From a stall at the back, a cow mooed, her calf echoing the complaint.
“Emmy?” Becca said again.
Still no answer. Becca walked to the center of the barn, glancing into the alcove where a wooden staircase led to the hayloft.
And then she saw her. Suspended from the rafter at the end of the aisle like a broken doll, her neck and head bent at an odd angle. A ladder lay on the floor beneath her.
Becca screamed then, a high, piercing wail that she did not recognize as coming from herself. “Oh, Emmy, no. No. Emmy. No!”
Sobbing, she ran to the storage room a few yards away and grabbed a knife from the toolbox sitting on the floor. She struggled with the ladder, righting it beneath her sister and then climbing up to try to cut the rope from which she hung suspended. Great, heaving cries of rage and anguish engulfed her, echoing within the otherwise silent barn. Her hands couldn’t go fast enough, and in her hurry, she sliced a finger on her left hand, the pain failing to register even as blood spurted out and dripped onto her dress.
When the rope gave, Emmy’s body fell into Becca, knocking her to the ground. She lay for a moment under her sister’s weight, her lungs refusing to take in air. She forced herself up, rolling Emmy gently onto her back.
Her blue eyes stared up at Becca, wide and clear.
Becca pulled her sister’s head into her lap and draped herself across her.
She began to cry then, a great ocean of tears, the pain so deep and horrible that all she could do was give in and let the waves take her where they would.
52
A Keening
“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.”
― Helen Keller
Now
The rooster woke Martha at just after four o’clock.
She sat up, stretching and then wincing when a pain nipped at the ridge of her shoulder.
She got out of bed, walked stiffly to the bedroom window and saw that the truck was in the driveway, the driver’s door open, the interior light shining dimly.
Martha raised the window and called out, “Becca?”
When there was no answer, she left her room and walked down the hall to Emmy’s door. It stood ajar, and the lamp was on. A feeling of unease rippled through her, and she turned for Becca’s room on the other end of the hall.
The door was closed, so she knocked.
“Come in,” Aaron called out.
She stuck her head inside. “Is Becca here?”
He came out of the bathroom, fastening the top button of his shirt. “I haven’t seen her,” he said, his voice hard.
“Something’s wrong,” Martha said. “Emmy isn’t in the house. I’m going outside to look for them.”
Martha took the stairs down as quickly as she dared, slipping through the front door and stopping for a moment on the porch to search the yard in the darkness.
One of the barn cats eased its way from beneath a boxwood and up the short steps to rub at her ankles, purring softly. She bent to smooth a hand across its fur and then straightened abruptly when she heard another sound.
It came from the barn, the kind of keening she’d heard animals make for lost babies. Alarm hit her in the center of her chest, and for a moment she had to grab the porch railing to keep herself from stumbling backwards. She hurried down the steps, running through the yard as fast as she could manage, the hitch in her hip instant.
The barn’s big sliding door was open. “Becca! Emmy!” she called out, fear nearly choking her now.
She ran down the aisle, following the sound, which she recognized as coming from her oldest daughter. Halfway down the concrete, she stopped at the alcove to her left.
Becca sat on the floor. Emmy lay across her lap, her head resting against Becca’s shoulder. Above them, part of a rope dangled.
It took a few moments for the image to process, for Martha’s mind to register as true what her eyes saw. Grief rose in her chest, an awful black curtain. She dropped to her knees and uttered. “Oh, Emmy. Dear, God, no. Emmy.”
53
A Letter
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein
Now
Becca had lived through difficult things. Or at least, she thought she had. But nothing had ever compared with sta
nding in the front yard of her house and watching the black funeral home hearse pull away with the body of her sister inside.
There in the middle of the green grass, she sank to her knees and wrapped her arms around herself, feeling as if her very insides were being ripped out. She dropped her head, while great, heaving sobs overtook her, draining her of every last ounce of energy.
“Becca.”
She glanced up to find Aaron standing next to her. He put a hand on her shoulder and said with compassion, “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
“How could this have happened?” she said. “How could she be gone?”
“Your sister was sick, Becca,” he said, his voice gentle. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“Why didn’t I see? How could I not have known she was going to do this?”
“We don’t know what Emmy felt all these years. God tells us to care for our brothers and sisters. That’s what you did, Becca. What else could you have done?”
“What about Abby? What am I going to tell Abby?”
Aaron didn’t say anything for several long moments. “I suspect it’s time you told her the truth,” he said, and then squeezing her shoulder once, walked inside the house.
Becca knew Aaron was right. She wanted to throw back the curtains and let every last beam of truth find its way into the crevices of their lives. And yet another part of her was simply terrified of the thought.
When she could force herself to do so, she got to her feet, so weak it was all she could manage to place one foot in front of the other and make her way up the steps of the front porch.
Once inside, she climbed the stairs to her sister’s room, standing in the doorway and staring at the empty bed. She forced herself to walk over and sit on the mattress. She lay down and pressed her face into Emmy’s pillow, breathing in the scent of her shampoo.
She cried quietly, soaking the white case with her tears until there were no more left to cry.
She sat up, finally, pulling the pillow with her and pressing it to her stomach. On the sheet-covered mattress where the pillow had been, lay an envelope addressed to her. She stared at it, not sure she wanted to know what was inside.
Finally, she reached for it, rubbing her thumb across the familiar handwriting. She turned it over and slipped the flap free from the back. She pulled out a single sheet of paper, along with a smaller envelope that had been sealed.
She unfolded the paper and began to read.
Dearest Becca,
Thank you. I don’t know any other words to say for what you’ve done for me. Please know that I’m not doing this for you. I know that’s the first thing you’ll think. That I wanted to set you free from the obligation you feel for me. But it’s not that. I’m really doing this for myself. I just don’t want to be here in this world anymore. I can’t be here anymore. And if you are the one to find me, I am sorry for that.
Please read the letter in the other envelope here to Abby. It gives me comfort to think that your voice would be attached to my words. Sweet Becca, please find a way to be happy, and know that I love you.
Emmy
Becca folded the letter and stared at the grass field visible through her sister’s window. How many days had Emmy stood before this very window and looked out at the view beyond, the colors and textures altering with each passing season while the pain inside her stayed the same, unchanging?
Becca began to shake as if the temperature in the room had dropped thirty degrees, while outside the day went on, beautiful and warm.
54
Awake
“A child said What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.”
― Walt Whitman
Now
Abby woke to a knock at her door. She propped herself up on one elbow to squint at the alarm clock. It was just after six, the rising sun slipping through the slats of her window blinds.
“Come in,” she said, her voice still groggy with sleep.
The door opened, and Becca stepped into the room, hesitating for a moment and then walking over to the bed. She said nothing, but sat on the corner of the mattress, one hand smoothing across Abby’s hair.
Abby looked up into her mother’s face. “You’ve been crying. What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Abby,” she said, her voice breaking, “I don’t know how to tell you this, except to just say it.”
“Mama, you’re scaring me,” Abby said, sudden fear sitting tight and hard in her chest. “What is it?”
In a painful stretch of silence, her mother glanced away, and then looked back at Abby before saying, “It’s Emmy, honey. She died this morning.”
As if she had been struck, Abby sat up on the bed, shock draining all feeling from her face and hands. “What?”
Becca put her arm around Abby’s shoulders and pulled her close. “There’s more,” she said, the words breaking in half. “She took her own life.”
“No,” Abby said, placing a hand over her mouth to keep the scream from coming out. “No!”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, Mama,” Abby said, starting to cry. “Oh, no.”
Becca put her arms around her again while Abby sobbed against her chest, her shoulders shaking with grief. They sat this way for a very long time, until Abby could finally speak again. “How? How did she do it?”
“In the barn,” Becca said so softly Abby could barely hear her.
Abby started to ask how, but stopped herself. Somehow, she already knew. “Oh, Mama,” she said, starting to cry again. “Mama.”
55
Son
“Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.”
― Emily Brontë
Now
Martha stood in the center of the kitchen floor, listening to the sound of her granddaughter’s heartbroken sobs.
Becca had said she would go to see Jacob once she had told Abby, but Martha wanted to tell him herself, needed to tell him herself. She forced movement into her arms and legs, the effort taking every ounce of her mental, as well as physical, strength. She climbed the stairs and changed her clothes, a heaviness in the center of her chest that she knew would be with her for the rest of her life.
She drove the old black Impala along the winding roads that connected to Route 40 and led to Jacob’s home in Ferrum. The drive was only twenty minutes or so, but felt as if it took days.
While she’d never paid an official visit to her son’s house, she knew exactly where it was, having driven by many times over the years. But she’d never once been able to loosen the iron apron of righteousness behind which she justified her estrangement from Jacob and his family long enough to stop.
Today, though, it had been removed for her.
A white mailbox stood at the entrance to the farm, a neat gravel road leading to the plain, two-story house, similar in appearance to her own and the one where Jacob had grown up.
Martha stopped the car just short of the maple tree in the front yard. The boy, Michael, came out of the house, waved once and then ran back inside.
She got out of the car, her hand clutching the door for support. Jacob came out onto the porch, staring without words, as if certain he must be imagining the sight of her.
“Mama?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
Linda walked out of the house to stand beside Jacob.
Martha started to answer her son’s question, tried to force the words from her mouth. But they wouldn’t come. She pressed a hand to her throat and shook her head.
Jacob ran down the steps and took her hands. “What is it?” he said, alarm in his face now.
“It’s Emmy,” she said, the words breaking under a wash of sorrow. “Oh, Jacob. She’s gone.”
With that, she let herself step into her son’s open arms. And for the first time that morning, she allowed herself to cry.
56
S
orrowful News
Every wall is a door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now
At just after eight a.m., Matt walked into the cafe and sat down at a table near the cash register. He’d gone for an early run and then decided to come here for breakfast because the house was now infused with Becca’s presence, and he couldn’t stand being there without her.
“What can I get you?”
Matt looked up to find the same waitress he’d talked with the last time he’d been in standing next to the table. Her face was drawn this morning, her eyes troubled.
“Some coffee, please,” Matt said.
“I’ll be right back with it.”
She turned to go, but he reached for her arm and stopped her. “Are you all right?”
“No, actually,” she said. “I guess I’m not. You haven’t heard the news then?”
He shook his head. “What news?”
“A volunteer for the rescue squad was in a little bit ago. They’d just finished a call out to the Miller farm.” She hesitated, her face a sudden cloud of sadness, then said, “Emmy hung herself sometime last night.”
Matt blinked, the words registering but not penetrating. “What?”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, shaking her head and exhaling a weary sigh. “We were just talking about her the other day. You wonder how a person can get to such a place. How things can get so bad that trying is just impossible.”
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