Heartbeat

by Elizabeth Scott

  I’d told Mom about the dance too, and she’d rubbed my back and told me she loved me and it had been nice. But Dan really made me feel like everything was okay. Like I was okay. Like I was special.

  I miss him. I hate that.

  I grit my teeth and go out onto the roof just in time to see someone—Caleb?—walking toward the edge of it.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey.”

  “Olivia?”

  “Hi,” she says, turning around and coming back. “I was up here when you came in. Should I go?”

  “Why?”

  “You got out of a moving car, Emma. You looked pissed as hell and you ran into the house and I figured you and Dan would be talking.”

  “We’re not.”

  “Oh,” she says. “So, do you want me to stay?”

  “Yeah. You know you don’t even have to ask that.”

  Olivia sits down. “You sounded like maybe you wanted someone else to be out here.”

  I clear my throat. “Did I?”

  She looks at me. I rub one foot along the shingles, hear the scrape against the bottom of my shoe. “All right. I saw Caleb at the hospital and I thought for a second that he was here. But I am glad to see you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and she bumps her foot with mine. “What happened today at the hospital?”

  “Mom’s...well. You know. But there are some problems with the baby and Dan wasn’t even going to let me see her by myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Stress. As if she can be stressed. It’s like he forgets she’s gone, and yesterday I realized I have too. I mean, I know she is, but I can see her, and...” I wipe my eyes. “I’m so tired of crying. Tell me something. Talk about you. Please.”

  “But—”

  “Olivia, I need normal. You don’t know how much I need it.”

  “Well my parents are both working, of course, and both coming home late—server problems again. Or something. I try not to absorb the tech talk. Oh, and Roger and I made out after school.” She says the last bit with so much glee she’s practically vibrating with it.

  “Where?”

  She blushes. “My car.”

  “Your car? What happened?”

  “Well, we were talking after the last bell rang and he said he was going to get a ride home with his friend Ivan and I said, ‘Oh, I can give you a ride home,’ and he smiled at me like I was the last day of school and once we got in the car, stuff just happened.”

  “In the parking lot?”

  “A little bit,” she says, blushing. “And then I drove him to his house and we might have made out some more. Until his little brother came home and found us.”

  “He didn’t!”

  “Yeah, he did. But Roger was so great about it. He was nice to his brother but also got him to, you know, go, and then he said he’d call me and that he wanted to see my phone. I’ve told him about it.”

  “So, he wants to see your room.”

  “He said phone,” Olivia says, but she’s grinning. “It was just the most amazing afternoon.” She looks at me. “You can’t really want to hear this. I sound so shallow.”

  “You sound happy. Normal, remember?”

  “But—”

  “Nope. You sound happy and I’m glad you are and that you told me about it. And I want more updates, especially if room viewing is involved.”

  “You sure?”

  “I need this. I don’t want to forget that people have actual lives.” It’s what I don’t have, and hearing about Olivia washes over me like rain, covering the thing I limp through every day, the thing that passes for a life but isn’t one.

  “Well, then I promise you’ll hear if there’s any room viewing. Which there won’t be because I want more than just a thing, you know? I’d like an actual boyfriend. Not that I’m ruling out room viewing, but it’s way down the line and...okay, now I’m totally wondering what he’d think of my room. And what it would be like to have him in it.”

  She leans back, shaking her head. “How am I supposed to be picking out which colleges I’m going to apply to when I just want to see if Roger is willing to go out with me this weekend. And next weekend. And also make out with me. Argh! I need to do something to get my mind off him.”

  “No haircuts. Or dying of hair.”

  “I wasn’t going to do that. I could get bangs though, right? Bangs aren’t a haircut.”

  “No bangs! You so need a different stress outlet, and no, I don’t mean new eyeliner.”

  “I already bought some,” she says and when I give her a look says, “What? I was a little wound up after I left Roger’s house. Do you think he’ll call tonight?”

  “If he looked at you like you’re the last day of school, then yeah, he’ll call.”

  “I thought getting a guy to like you was the hard part,” she mutters. “But it’s just as hard after that. How come no one ever tells you that?”

  “I think there’s a lot of things that no one ever tells you,” I say, and Olivia puts an arm around me, pulling me close.

  We sit in silence until she says she has to go.

  “Thank you,” I say when she gets up, and she says, “Oh yeah, you thank me. I haven’t shut up, and all I’ve talked about is Roger.”

  “Thank you,” I say again and she hugs me, hard, before she starts to climb off the roof. I watch until she’s gone.

  Until I can’t see anything.

  34

  Dan doesn’t come back to my room and I go through the motions of getting ready for bed—the face washing, the teeth brushing—before I give up and crawl into bed, pissed-off. I know I won’t sleep. I felt okay when Olivia was here, when I could hear about her life and not think about mine, but now I’m just hungry and still angry.

  And lonely.

  I always thought of grief as a blow that took everything out of you. And it is like that. But it stays, past that first hard hit. It stays and blows its breath into you.

  It is always there, reminding you of what you’ve lost. What’s gone.

  I sit up for a while, reading a book Mom got me last year at Christmas, a huge story about a girl and a dragon and a prince that she ends up having to save. “You can’t read school stuff all the time,” she’d said, and I’d thanked her for the book and never opened it. I didn’t want stories. I wanted grades, and good ones at that. I wanted a future.

  Inside she’d written, A story can take you anywhere. XO Forever, Mom.

  I didn’t see it until I opened the book just a few minutes ago and I wish my story wasn’t—

  I wish it wasn’t this one, and that’s grief blowing softly over me again. Reminding me all over again.

  I missed so many things with Mom.

  I drop the book on my bed. I won’t do this, I won’t cry, I will just be glad I saw what she wrote now.

  And I am. But I still wish I’d seen it before. That I’d known I needed to treasure every second I had, that I should focus on everything she said and did so I could always remember.

  My stomach rumbles and I look at my door. Past it is the house. Past it is Dan.

  When my stomach rumbles again, I get up. It’s after midnight now. Dan will be asleep, on the sofa or in his office or in the nursery. I don’t know why he doesn’t sleep in Mom’s bedroom anymore. I’m just glad there’s something of Mom he’s left alone. That he hasn’t used for what he wants.

  I open my door and go out into the hall. I go because I’m hungry and because I want to prove I can. I’m not afraid of anything Dan might say, because I’ve heard it all before and it’s just words. Syllables and letters adding up to his choice and nothing more.

  And I don’t miss him that much. Not really.

  Then I hear t
he humming.

  I freeze, sure I’m hearing things; a ghost, a dream, that I’m asleep and back in a different time, back in a different me.

  But I’m not hearing things. I’m in the hallway, in the dark, and my mother is dead and Dan is in the nursery, humming.

  Dan used to hum a lot. All the time, in fact. I noticed it when he and Mom first started going out, the weird thing he did, how he hummed sometimes, and then I realized when he did it.

  He hummed when he was doing something that made him happy.

  He hummed when he was happy, and so he was always humming around Mom. And even me. Mom made him happy. We made him happy, and I used to love to hear him hum, loved waking up and going downstairs to Mom blinking sleep from her eyes as she rushed off to work, Dan humming as he urged her to eat something and talked about what he’d be working on that day, in his office in the house. “I like working at home,” he’d say. “It’s quiet, I get a lot done, and whenever I want, I can just step out into the hall and see signs of my family.”

  He made Mom’s habit of dropping things—shoes, suit jackets, towels—sound like it was beautiful. He picked up after her. He picked up after me. He never told me to clean my room like Mom did. He just...he hummed, and was happy, and I knew it meant he loved us.

  I lean against the wall now, my head spinning, my insides twisting, and yes, he really is humming.

  I creep down the hall, one step, two steps, silent as can be.

  He’s in the nursery.

  There is one light on, the light Dan put in by the changing table. It casts shadows everywhere, up and down the walls, dark lines and shapes, but it shows Dan clearly.

  It shows Dan, and he is putting a crib together.

  He’s putting it together and he looks happy and he’s humming.

  He is happy. I know what his humming means because I know him. I spent years loving him, trusting him, and now he is humming and then he whispers something.

  Whispers, “Lisa.”

  He whispers Mom’s name and he isn’t humming anymore. His voice is soft, sad, sorry, and no, no, no, no. NO.

  He said her name like he loves her, like he’s sorry, and I am gone now, I am slipping away, quietly heading downstairs and out of the house, into the garage, my chest so tight I can’t breathe.

  I am seeing spots, I am dying, this is what happened to Mom and now it’s happening to me. You walk downstairs and you’re fine, everything’s fine except maybe you know something is wrong, maybe you’ve said something to your daughter but you’ve been smiling and trying and you reach for the toast and then you die.

  Just like that.

  Except I don’t.

  I stand in the garage, and the tightness in my chest passes.

  The memory of Dan humming doesn’t, and neither does the sadness with which he said Mom’s name.

  I pace around the garage and find myself in front of the fridge where Mom kept all the things she wasn’t allowed to have after she got pregnant. Dan, who could never resist a sale at the grocery store, used to have it stocked with things he’d gotten “for practically free!” Mom and I made him stop that after eating pea soup two weeks in a row, but the fridge stayed.

  It was from Dan’s old apartment and Mom would stash tiny chocolate bars in it, and Dan would store leftovers, let them sit in the freezer till he’d eat them for lunch.

  Mom cleaned the kitchen out after the first official week of pregnancy, sighing as she put things into bags and had me take them out here.

  I never looked inside the bags. I didn’t think about what pregnant women shouldn’t eat. I didn’t care. I just saw Mom, and she was there like she always was, doing what she always did, which was organizing things the way she wanted and I—

  I never thought about what she gave up. Not until after she gave up her life.

  I stare at the fridge, almost shaking, which is weird because it’s food, just food, how could she have thought that would hurt her?

  And then I open it.

  I want to know what she was afraid of besides the baby.

  And it’s...it’s cheese. A wheel of Brie, frozen and inedible. Some lunch meat. A piece of lamb all wrapped up and marked SMELLS HORRIBLE.

  I don’t feel better seeing this. She put away cheese and lunch meat and lamb? I see coffee too, but I remember that, suffered through two weeks of Mom switching to decaf and growling in the mornings.

  I used to hide out in my room, wait until she was gone or just about to leave. I missed her on purpose.

  I stand there, staring at this food, and it is just food, there are no secrets here, there is nothing of Mom here, and Dan was putting the crib together, I saw him, I saw it.

  And then I see the bottle of wine.

  35

  Mom wasn’t much of a drinker. She liked sweet drinks, the ones that come in frosted glasses and are tinted blue or green. Once Dan was around, he found her true weakness, which was for wine that smelled like fruit punch. I still remember the faces he’d make when he’d bring a bottle home, how he’d mock grimace when he’d open it and pour her a glass, shaking his head when she’d offer him one.

  “Too sweet,” he’d say. “Wine shouldn’t taste like sugar.”

  Mom would shake her head and say, “Why would I want to drink something that is supposed to taste like oak or peat? I like what I like.”

  “I know you do,” Dan would say and Mom smelled sweet, like fruit, when she kissed me after drinking her wine, and her smile would be softer somehow, as if all the things she worried about had been lifted away.

  She drank a wine that came in a bottle with a picture of strawberries on it, and I pick it up now and stare at the top, think of how Dan used to say wine should have corks and Mom would say, “Okay for you, not okay for me.” And they’d look at each other and there was so much love there.

  At least, I thought there was.

  The bottle isn’t full. Mom must have had a glass, back before my bro—the baby—swam inside her. She came home from work and Dan opened the bottle and she drank a glass and maybe kissed me and smelled sweet and I don’t remember it at all.

  I was probably doing homework and was annoyed by the distraction. Annoyed by my mother wanting to see me. To pay attention to me.

  I was so stupid.

  I pick up the bottle. I open it, unscrewing the top, and take a sip. It is sweet, just like fruit punch, just like Dan always said, and Mom drank from this bottle. I have another sip and another and another until I am loose-limbed, breathing easy and the air smells like fake strawberries and Dan’s humming seems far away. It doesn’t hurt so bad.

  I look at the bottle. It’s almost empty, and I lift it up and swallow the last sip. The world is light now, I am light, and things are bad—they are—but I don’t feel so bad. I feel like I could float up out of the house and into the sky. Up into Mom.

  I wish Caleb was here. He’d know how it feels to want to float up. And he’s so pretty, those cheekbones, those eyes, the hair he hides behind that I touched but not like I wanted to.

  I can admit it now, it’s easy. I want to have his hair in my hands while he holds me.

  I should go see him. It’s not that far. I can walk there. I can leave through the garage side door and Dan doesn’t keep me prisoner here. I spend more time worrying that he’ll decide he doesn’t want me than I want to think about and...

  No.

  I don’t want to think.

  I look at the strawberries on the wine bottle again. They are happy-looking. I didn’t know strawberries could look happy.

  I want to be happy. That would be so nice, to be happy.

  I’d feel happier if I left the house, so I go outside, and there I am, just me and the night. Well, and the bottle, but it is so light in my hands and I am so light, I’m almost flying, sort
of. I don’t even have to walk down the street, my feet are just going, going, going and they know where to go.

  Caleb’s house is even bigger in the night, all huge and dark and I was there, I went in there, and I held his hand and he is so alone and I am so alone. I look at the garage with my feet on the ground but not really on it because I feel so free, I am just me, I am not—

  I am not sad.

  And I see things too. I see a door on the side of the garage, just like on mine, and I open it. It’s dark inside and there are cars and I bet one of them replaced the one Caleb drove into the lake because his parents don’t know it’s not about the cars. They don’t see, but then adults never see anything, it’s like you get old and you don’t see how things are, you just see how you want them to be. Dan does that, he did that, and I don’t want to think about Dan.

  So I won’t. I’ll just be here, in this garage, and I am walking up Caleb’s stairs which are so tall and deep I don’t quite know how to place my feet.

  I think I’m drunk, but the thought passes through and floats away like all the others. Like how I’m sad and I miss Mom and Dan. Just thoughts, and it’s hard to get up the stairs and I wish there was more wine. I wish I could taste strawberries and feel like I do now forever, plus I am going to see Caleb sleeping. He will have his eyes closed and he’ll be surprised except I’ll be quiet, so quiet he’ll never know I am here and—

  “Emma?” Light, bright light, making me blink.

  It’s Caleb. And he’s awake.

  36

  “You’re supposed to be asleep,” I say, and Caleb stares at me.

  “Are you—Emma, are you drunk?” he says and I shake my head because I don’t drink, and how could a few sips of wine that tasted like fruit really make me drunk? To get drunk you have to drink beer or smelly liquor and lots of it. Standing in a garage with a bottle of wine can’t get you drunk. Not that drunk, anyway.