She Wouldn't Change a Thing

by Sarah Adlakha

  “Asked you about who?”

  “Your grandchildren. Why haven’t you asked about your grandchildren?”

  “My grandchildren?” The skin of her mother’s hand was so warm when she pressed it against Maria’s forehead and ran it down her cheek, that Maria could almost believe there was real blood pumping through her veins. “Your nightgown is drenched,” her mother said. “You must have a fever.”

  “It’s not sweat.” Maria patted her hand over the dampness. “I just splashed some water on my face before I woke you up.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I had a bad dream the other night, and I thought this was going to be the same thing, but now…” Maria’s words drifted away as Sylvia reached back into her mind, pulling her back to the graveyard where Beth’s body was drowning in the earth.

  “Is that what this is about?” her mother said, tucking the blankets around Maria’s slender frame. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “I don’t know,” Maria whispered. She’d never imagined this moment. She’d never wondered what her mother would look like if she met her in a dream, or how she would act, or if she would even recognize her. She’d never envisioned herself on a bed, in a room that was a part of their history, having a conversation as mundane and ordinary as this. She’d once been daring enough to imagine them meeting in heaven, though. And when they met in that heaven, her mother would wear a warm smile and yearn to hear all about her grandchildren. She was never like the woman who sat beside her today.

  “You’ll feel better in the morning,” her mother said. “Get some sleep now.”

  She pressed her lips to Maria’s forehead and, like a ghost, rose from the bed, drifted across the floor, and had almost slipped from the room before Maria bolted upright.

  “Mom, wait!”

  Her mother slid the door shut and retraced her footsteps back to Maria’s bed before she sank down beside her again and smoothed her hair back. “What is going on, sweetie?”

  “Please don’t go,” Maria begged. “Don’t you want to spend more time together? To talk about everything that’s happened since you left?”

  “I haven’t gone anywhere.” Her mother fluffed the pillow one last time and with a firm insistence assured Maria that they’d spend the following day together, and the weekend, and every moment thereafter. “I promise,” she said, tucking the covers even more tightly around Maria’s body, as if she could secure her to the bed. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  The clock read 4:52 A.M. when Maria forced her eyes shut, but the residue of adrenaline that trickled through her veins was potent, and sleep was elusive. It wasn’t what she expected it to be, this rendezvous with her mother, but Maria couldn’t wait to share her experience with Will, to apologize for the years of doubt. His face was all she could see as she slipped away into sleep, searching for him on the other side of her dream.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “WILL, YOUR ALARM CLOCK.”

  Even with her eyes clenched shut and her head buried beneath the pillow, the incessant, nagging beep that pierced the air still managed to leach its way into Maria’s ears.

  “Will!”

  Her arm struck the nightstand when she reached to shake him, and when she peeled her head from the mattress, the Sony cube alarm clock from her dream glowed back at her.

  7:01 A.M.

  Her fingers fumbled with the controls, pressing buttons and turning dials until there was silence, and when her eyes were finally able to focus, she was forced into the realization that she had never made it home.

  The textbooks were still balanced on the nightstand where her mother had piled them, the teddy bear still watched her suspiciously from the desk, and the photos that had drifted so carelessly from the corkboard to the floor still rested where they had fallen. The one of her mother and her, with the thumbtack holes and rolled-up edges, lay by her side.

  The bathroom hadn’t changed overnight, either, and the girl, looking much more forlorn in the light of day, watched Maria from the same hazy mirror, with the same radiant black hair and the same moon-shaped doe eyes. She wore her confusion without shame, and Maria was almost tempted to apologize to her, though she couldn’t imagine why.

  The hallway that had brought her to her mother the previous night, the one she had thought might lead to a thicketed graveyard with ghastly corpses, was nothing more in the light of day than an ordinary corridor with outdated wallpaper, and the portraits that she swore had been tracking her movements seemed to take less interest in her. They were just the dusty, still images of her family that had hung on that wall for years: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.

  Her footsteps were delicate and deliberate as she padded over the plush carpet, feeling like an intruder in a house that had once been her home, as she snuck toward the kitchen to watch her mother from the shadows. How could a dream be so bland and tedious? Everything in that house, including her mother, was like a page out of the life of an ordinary American family. It wasn’t until the footsteps coming from the bedroom found her that things started to get interesting.

  “Good morning, Maria.” Her father’s words crashed through the stillness around them, but she barely recognized the man who spoke them. The gray wisps of hair that had managed to cling to his scalp since her mother’s death were now thick and black, and the kyphosis that had been stealing his height by the day was noticeably absent. He stood as strong and proud as a pharaoh’s staff, and Maria was speechless at the sight of him.

  “Maria?” Her mother was hovering behind them, wearing the same youthful and benevolent smile she’d worn the previous night. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  Maria didn’t bother answering. It seemed an unfair question, and she couldn’t peel her eyes from her father.

  “You can’t be here, Dad.” Her voice was hoarse and cracked, and her words were barely decipherable, but she expected more of a response than the silent stares and bewildered expressions on both of her parents’ faces. She cleared her throat before she tried again. “You can’t be here. This can’t be possible.”

  “What do you mean? Of course I’m here.”

  “Everyone else is dead,” she said. “Everyone who’s visited me in my dreams has been dead. Sylvia, Beth, Mom.”

  It was the gasp that came from behind her, from her mother’s mouth, that finally forced Maria to see the obvious. Her mother didn’t know she was dead. She didn’t know that her only daughter was grown and married, with children of her own, that her husband’s booming voice and black hair had both faded, or that her body was buried next to her parents, just a few miles away.

  “That’s enough, Maria.”

  Her father stepped between them, as if he could stop Maria’s words from assaulting her mother, as if his presence alone would limit the damage that cancer had done to her.

  “But she doesn’t know what’s going on. She doesn’t even remember Charlotte and Emily, or even Will. He was like a son to you, Mom. How could you forget them?”

  “Stop it,” her father said. “I don’t know who any of those people are, either. Just stop this nonsense.”

  “‘Those people’?” A tight band worked its way across her forehead, compressing like a boa constrictor as it inched its way around her skull. “They’re not just some people. They’re my family. My daughters and my husband. You were there when they were born. And don’t you remember my wedding day, Mom? You gave me that pearl necklace that Grandma left you when she died?”

  “Grandma’s not dead.” Her mother’s words lacked their usual confidence, but she carried on as if she meant to convince Maria of the impossible: that they were all alive and healthy, that Grandma was coming to visit over the summer, that she wasn’t buried down the street. “Why don’t you go lie down?” she said. “You’ve been studying so hard for that AP test, I think you’ve just worn yourself out.”

  The look that flashed between her parents was one she recognized well. It was the same one she and Will u
sed when they didn’t want to speak in front of the children. The same one all parents used, she supposed. It was a look that signified the gravity of a situation.

  “I don’t need to lie down,” she said, her words falling on deaf ears as her parents carried on with a conversation that was worlds away.

  We can’t send her to school like this.

  She’ll miss her AP test if she doesn’t go.

  She’ll just have to reschedule it.

  It was a conversation about choices and consequences that would seem dire to any high-achieving teenager, but as she listened to it play out before her, nothing had ever felt so meaningless. She wanted it to end. This dream that she believed was the most magical of gifts the previous night was turning into a nightmare of sorts, and she just wanted to wake up. As her parents droned on, Maria picked up the newspaper from the counter and scanned the front page. She didn’t recognize the headline, “Operation Praying Mantis: Success,” but there was no mistaking the date in the top right corner: April 19, 1988. She was seventeen years old.

  “Please,” Maria said, her voice bringing her parents’ debate to a halt, dissolving between them, the air thickened by the sudden silence around them. “Please listen to me. This isn’t what you think it is. This isn’t real life.”

  The stillness was absolute, like a photo behind a glass frame. No breaths. No twitches. No words. She waited for the image to crack, for a thin line to spread through them before they shattered to pieces. She flinched when her mother reached out for her hand.

  “I think you should get some rest,” she said. “Maybe you can go back to school tomorrow if you’re feeling better.”

  “There is no tomorrow.” Maria stumbled back into the stool at the counter, her hand resting over the gentle curve of her stomach. “I’ll wake up before then. I have to. My son will be born any day now.”

  A subtle gasp escaped her father’s lips, followed by a whisper that could have come from either of them. “Are you pregnant?”

  “No … I mean … I’m not pregnant now. But in real life I’m nine months pregnant and I already have two daughters and a husband and…”

  As the blood drained from her mother’s face, Maria’s eyes drifted back to her father. Disappointment. Embarrassment. Regret. Everything she would expect from the father of a pregnant seventeen-year-old was etched across his face, but before she could explain herself to him, her mother was dragging her back down the hallway. Maria’s eyes followed the textured wallpaper with the giant blue flowers they’d once picked out together, her fingertips grazing over its scratchy fibers and sending a signal to her brain through the tiny nerve endings that she was, perhaps, not dreaming.

  Her mother shut the door behind them as Maria slid onto the edge of the bed she’d woken up in that morning, the one with the pink comforter. “Are you pregnant?”

  “I don’t know,” Maria replied. “I mean, I never got pregnant in high school. Will’s the only person who ever got me pregnant, and obviously I haven’t met him yet since you have no idea who he is.”

  “Stop it, Maria.” Her mother stood against the far wall by the door, as if entering any farther might negate the possibility that this was all just a misunderstanding. “What is going on with you?”

  “I don’t know,” Maria whispered. “But none of this is real.”

  “I’m taking you to see Dr. Warner today. I’ll call his office and let them know it’s an emergency.” Her mother reached for the handle of the door but turned back before she pulled it open. “And don’t talk like this in front of Dad. I’ll tell him you were just confused from a nightmare you had last night. It would kill him if he found out you were pregnant.”

  Maria stared at the door long after her mother disappeared, her limited options flickering before her like a burned-out marquee sign fighting to stay alive. She dug her nails into her arm as deeply as they would go, waiting for the pain to pull her from sleep, before she finally released her grip and watched the indentations that were left behind fade into four red splotches. When she slapped herself across her face, the throbbing in the palm of her hand almost matched the sting across her cheek, but there she sat, staring into a wall of pictures that had been lost to time many years back.

  Maybe her doctor would know what to do. Or maybe he would just think she’d lost her mind. The latter seemed more likely. She reached for the pink phone on the nightstand, the one she’d gotten all those years ago to match the pink comforter, and dialed Will’s cell phone number. The call wouldn’t go through, so she tried her own number, even though she knew it was useless. She had to get back to Bienville. If she could get to her house, back to the bed where she’d fallen asleep, maybe she could somehow force herself awake.

  Her closet shelf was scattered with neon shirts and acid-washed jeans, but the pair she grabbed were tapered so tightly at the ankles it was a battle to get them on, and she’d barely gotten a sweatshirt pulled over her head by the time her mother was back at her door.

  “Is that what you’re wearing?” Maria followed her mother’s eyes as they both took in the grease-smeared sweatshirt she’d pulled from the floor of her closet and the dingy white socks dotted with holes around the toes. “Are you at least going to brush your hair?”

  She ran her fingers through the tangles in her hair as her thoughts pulled her back to her home in Bienville and one of the last memories she had before waking up in this strange world. Had Will gotten a brush through Charlotte’s hair? Had he tried? She needed to get back, because her daughters were both due for a haircut and Will didn’t know the number or the address of the salon they used.

  “I’m not ready yet,” she said, looking up at her mother. “I need to take a shower.”

  “Twenty minutes,” her mother replied. “Then we have to get going.”

  Twenty minutes didn’t seem long enough, once the clock started ticking, and since there was no time for hesitation, Maria got the water running in the shower and the radio turned up before she started in on her plan. The hallway was empty when she slipped from her room, no voices hailing from either direction. Before she eased the door shut behind her, she pushed in the button lock on the inside handle. She slipped through the den and crouched behind the kitchen counter, scurrying across the linoleum floor on her hands and knees, not resting until she reached the laundry room.

  Her father’s car was already gone, but her mother’s blue Toyota sat just twenty feet away. The keys dangled on the hook above her head. Maria couldn’t force herself to move. Sweat beaded on her forehead and trickled down the front of her shirt, and when she leaned back into the cool metal of the dryer, she felt the sudden urge to vomit. It was all so foreign to her. She’d never snuck out of a house before, and her pulse was thundering so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t think straight. She hadn’t even thought to grab herself a pair of shoes from her room and had to slip on her father’s old grass-stained Adidas, the ones he wore to mow the lawn. They were ridiculously big, but Maria pulled them on and tightened the laces as she recited the same words over and over in her head.

  This can’t be real. This can’t be real. This can’t be real.

  Her head was spinning with nonsensical thoughts as she sat crouched in the corner of the laundry room, her legs unwilling to carry her out the door, and she couldn’t seem to force enough air into her lungs as she tried to imagine various scenarios.

  What would she do if her mother found her there preparing to run? What would she do if Will wasn’t there when she got back to Bienville? What would she do if she never woke up?

  The cold metal of the dryer against her skin was like a grounding wire, a safety check, harnessing all the energy and chaos that was vibrating through her body and forcing her to remain present. Will would be there. Everything would be fine, if she could just get herself to Bienville. When the knock on her bedroom door echoed down the hallway sooner than she expected, she knew she was out of time.

  “Maria? Are you just about ready?”

&nbs
p; Before she could reflect on what she’d done, Maria had the engine of the blue Toyota running. Then she was backing over the bushes that had once meticulously lined their driveway and was careering out of her childhood home in the middle of Alabama.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MARIA CHECKED THE REARVIEW MIRROR ONLY once on her way out of town, and as the miles ticked by, she paid no heed to the sixty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit signs, flying past them at eighty miles an hour. Traffic seemed to crawl along beside her as she sped past Pontiac station wagons and Oldsmobile sedans as if they’d swallowed up all the SUVs that frequented those roads. She tried not to think about her mother’s frantic words to her father, or the call they’d make to the principal’s office, or the questions the police would ask them about the outfit their daughter was wearing when she left home that morning. Or if any of that would happen. It didn’t matter. She was going home.

  Hours passed in a blur as Maria spun the radio dial through station after station of songs she hadn’t heard in years, catching herself humming along to George Michael as she steered her car off the interstate at the Bienville exit.

  The scenery was scarcely what she expected. What would one day be a four-lane highway, with traffic lights and housing developments, was a two-lane country road without another car in sight. Acres of farmland stretched around her, speckled with cows and horses; miles of sky expanded in every direction; and thickets of wild spruce, magnolia, and cypress trees dotted the horizon. It was beautiful, breathtaking really, but it wasn’t home.

  As she rolled into the center of town, the signs posted on the side of the road assured her that she was home, but the sights resembled little of the speck-on-the-map town that she and her husband had picked to raise their family. As if by instinct, her car rolled up to the entrance of what would one day be her neighborhood and cruised slowly past the dilapidated trailers lining the red dirt road. It ended in a copse of trees too thick to traverse. The hum of the car engine rumbled through the silence as Maria climbed through the brush, fighting through the foliage. The road that would eventually lead to her house had yet to be paved, and even if she could force her way through the vines and thistles, there was no way she’d be able to reach the spot where her home would one day stand.