Heartbeat (10 page)

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 the 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.

“Yeah,” Caleb says, “It can,” and I say, “Wait, did I just say all that?” and he nods. He isn’t wearing a shirt and he has nice chest muscles and he’s nice and I like him.

“Okay, Emma, okay, stop and drink this,” Caleb says and I take the glass of water that is suddenly right in front of me. I’m thirsty, but not super thirsty, but somehow the water is all gone and then there is another glass and I drink that too.

“You put a shirt on,” I say to Caleb, who runs a hand through his hair and looks at me like he hasn’t ever done before, like I’ve made him happy and angry at the same time.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he says and that is such a stupid thing to say that I tell him that and add, “Where else would I go? Who else understands? And besides, I wanted to see you,” and he blinks and his eyes are closed and he has a shirt on but under it is skin—I know that—and I can feel it—yes, there it is, warm under my hand and he jerks back like I’ve hit him and says, “Emma, please.”

“What?” I say, and I don’t get it, doesn’t he know how this feels? Doesn’t he want to feel this way too?

Someone groans. It’s not me. Is he sick? I look at him, but he looks okay. He looks great.

“I feel great,” I say, and he shakes his head like he knows something I don’t. I move toward him and he backs up but not fast, he backs up slow and I see his eyes and I’m not stupid.

“I never said you were stupid,” he says and I guess I’m still talking but that’s okay. I don’t talk much, I keep so much inside, I am so full of things that hurt but they don’t hurt now. I rest my head on his shoulder, brush my lips over his neck.

He tastes like salt, like tears. He tastes like pizza and grief and love and fear. He tastes like Caleb and I want more and there is a noise and it isn’t me I am not saying anything now, I know I’m not, and I pull away and it’s Caleb, he is making that noise, a broken, almost animal sound, his head thrown back and I can see a pulse beating in his neck. It’s his heart and it is beating and I can make it beat fast and I like that and I move in again.

“Emma,” he says, and he sounds so strange, so serious, and I poke his chest because he must get this, I know the things he used to do, he must have felt like this.

“Emma, you’ll be sorry when you’re sober,” he says, and I look at him and say this—I know I say this—I say, “Why would I ever be sorry for you?” and his mouth brushes across my forehead, my cheek, my neck and I am turning toward him.

He is so close, he just needs to be a little closer, and my head hurts a little but not so bad. I still feel good and he feels good and I like that. I want it to keep going forever and ever.

“I can’t,” he says. “I don’t—Emma, I don’t want you to be sorry over me,” and then we are lying down and he is closing his eyes and making soft, desperate noises as I press my face into his neck, his shoulder, and he is turning his mouth away from mine. When I say, “Why?” he says, “Just sleep, okay? Just sleep.”

“I wanted the baby,” I tell him, and I never meant to say that. I like to pretend I never thought that but I did, and I have said it now and I don’t like this, I don’t like it at all, and he says, “Hey, hey,” his voice soft and I close my eyes and say, “Do you think that’s why she died? Because I wanted the baby too?”

“No,” he whispers. “No, it wasn’t because of you. Don’t ever think that.”

“You won’t kiss me,” I whisper because I can and my eyes are heavy and the room is spinning and I don’t feel bad but it’s not like before. I am not floating. I remember things. I remember Dan and the crib and why I had to go.

“You don’t want to kiss me,” I say, and right before darkness falls he says, “I do. I really, really do,” and I want to think about that but I can’t, I can’t focus like I want to.

But he said it.