Authors: Laura Wiess
And he just smiled and slowly unbuckled his crossing guard vest and watched as I gathered up the food for the cats and for the deer’s last feast and stomped out, and when I was halfway across the yard, he came out onto the porch and called, “Good night, Hanna.” I stopped,
still mad and caught up in all the infuriating, unanswered questions the stupid book had left me with, yelled, “See you tomorrow,” and just kept going.
“That book?” I said to my mother at supper. “Forget it. It has no ending.”
“It has to have an ending,” she said, looking puzzled. “Everything has an ending.”
“Yeah, well, not this,” I said crankily. “It’s a stalemate, okay? It leaves you in total limbo with no answers, and what am I supposed to do,
imagine
what happens? Just…” I scowled down at my burrito and felt myself cracking.
“Hanna?” she said worriedly.
“Just don’t read it,” I managed to say and waved her away and went on scowling down at my refried beans because I had a pounding headache, and I started wishing Crystal’s brother was still throwing parties because all I wanted to do was wipe my mind clean and just be happy with Seth and not caught in this horrible, bleak cycle where death was coming as soon as the sun rose again.
I googled
Louise Bell Closson
and got nothing. Went to Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble and Borders and Books-a-Million and every indie bookstore I could think of, looking for her or, in case I spelled her name wrong,
How It Ends
and got so mad even typing in the title that I just shut the computer down and went to bed.
I didn’t sleep for a long time that night.
Sounds: the finches squabbling in the
pine tree, made anxious by the empty bird feeders. Lon whispering a promise. The constant, rhythmic swish of dry skin sliding across worn satin sheets.
Sights: the deer grazing out back along the path, their rich, tawny summer coats faded to the gray-brown of dead foliage. A prescription bottle marked
NO REFILLS.
The truth, confessed and titled
How It Ends
in its case on the table.
Smells: the comforting drift of Evening in Paris furled in grief. Lon’s dependable Lipton-tea-with-honey-and-lemon exhales. The earthy, sun-baked straw scent of the shy, scrawny stray cats in for a visit.
Sensations: Lon’s callused hands fumbling the damp nylon nightgown up over my head and the cool wash of air that follows. A thigh muscle seized in a rigid, trembling cramp. Choking, trying to swallow the lukewarm trickle pooled at the back of my throat.
Emotions: relief, like a silver ribbon of promise wending through a razor-thorn maze of despair. A merciless yearning for what was, and never will be again. Terror, a smothering, black hood stitched to a body bag, zipped up, locked down, and nearly sewn shut.
My alarm goes off before sunrise
and I roll over, wincing as the remnants of last night’s headache throb to life.
“God,” I whisper, peeling back the covers and stumbling out of bed. I feel awful, thick and foggy, grim with a vague, low-level dread like a lingering nightmare, and I pause, frowning, trying to figure out why, and then remember. “Ugh. It’s opening day.” I plod into the bathroom to get ready for school.
The dull throb stays with me as I go downstairs. My stomach is roiling and something’s wrong, something past the headache and the tension of hunting season, but I can’t pull it out of the fog so I grab two aspirins and sit down at the table across from my mother, who’s already well into her second cup of coffee.
“Happy days are here again,” she says grimly and hands me the ugly pink fluorescent knit hat we’ll both wear from now on whenever we go outside.
“Joy,” I say, pull it on, and go over to the counter to pour a bowl of cereal. Pause, gazing out the window over the sink because there’s a light on over at Gran’s, and the ribbon of dawn is just beginning to thread through the trees.
Lon Schoenmaker finishes the first cup of caffeinated coffee he’s had since his original heart attack so many years ago and rises, wincing at his arthritis. He sets the cup in the sink and goes to the table in the living room, where a thick envelope of documents awaits.
He withdraws his will and then Helen’s and lays them out on the table. Next the deed to the house, a life insurance policy, their birth certificates, and last, a Post-It note.
He picks up
How It Ends,
fastens the Post-It note to the front of the shiny red CD case, and sets it out on the back porch. Straightens, a hand at his back, and stands a moment breathing in the crisp air, the faint scent of wood smoke, the rich beauty of all he loves. Looks at the thin strip of daylight glowing through the bare tree branches, turns, goes in, and locks the door behind him.
I don’t know why I’m pouring cereal, because I’m not even hungry, but I need something in my stomach to take these aspirin, so I pour the milk, and my stomach is sick, my head is pounding, and out of the corner of the window, over on the land next door, I see a hunter, flashlight and fluorescent hat bobbing as he weaves through the trees, and I could just cry because dawn is coming and the does are out there like they always are, grazing, living, standing with their yearlings, just trying to make it through, and they don’t even know that death is on the march.
Lon walks into the bedroom and stops at the edge of the bed. Looks down at Helen, wide awake, trembling, twitching, head and neck, hands and arms, legs and feet twisting and writhing, unable to stop, her mouth moving without words, and he leans over, touches her face, strokes her cheek, and she sees him, she knows him, because her eyes fill
with tears and her gaze clings to his, terrified but trusting him the way she’s always trusted him to be there, to never leave her, and he won’t.
He takes the Ciro’s nightclub souvenir picture from the end table, shows it to her and, when he’s sure she’s seen it, smiles and lays it on the pillow beside her.
“Your medication is gone, Helen. There is no more.” He says this quietly and watches her closely, sees the awareness in her gaze, the fear and the acceptance and finally the relief. He strokes her hair back as best he can because she’s moving so violently and says, “No more, I promise. I’ll be right behind you…”
And then he rises and goes to the closet and pulls out the shotgun that has never been fired, and like the gunsmith’s son he began as, he opens the box of shells and loads it.
“The hunter’s in the field next door,” I say to my mother, dropping into my seat and toying with the now soggy cereal. I force myself to eat a spoonful because otherwise the aspirin will kill my stomach. “It’s going to be an ambush.”
Lon shuts poor bewildered Serepta in the bathroom and stands at the side of the bed gazing at Helen, seeing not the wreckage Parkinson’s has wrought but the woman he’s loved most of his life, a sweet, strong, doe-eyed sixteen-year-old girl, a graceful young woman who went off to waitress and who would turn, cheeks pink and gaze shining, as he stood on the porch singing her away, wooing her back, and so he tries to sing as the memories come, tries to sing her one last love song, but the only one he can think of is “All Things Must Pass” and sees the tears slip from her eyes, sees her in his memory, dancing light and lovely in her slip, luring him with a smile like sunshine and unashamed, unreserved love into her arms, a woman who sprayed him with the hose and ran shrieking when he chased her straight into the pond, a woman
who held his hands to her lips when he said he would never stay without her, that he would take a bullet for her, that he would never ever leave her, and he whispers the words,
I will always love you,
and lays a hand on her cheek and she gazes at him, trusting, waiting—
I get up to put my bowl in the sink.
It’s almost dawn.
I stare into the dark field but don’t see the hat…no, there it is, settled in the branches of a tree stand. Oh God, my head.
Lon takes a steadying breath because he has no fear now, he has always done what had to be done to love her and save her, to save himself the way he couldn’t save his parents, and the memory of all that came before this moment mixes with the sweet life that is almost over, and he draws one more ragged breath, stiffening his resolve, and puts the barrel to her forehead, but her forehead keeps moving, jerking and shaking, and he can’t get a clean shot, he can’t pull the trigger with her moving, because if he misses, if he misses…no, he can’t miss because this is their agreement, they would not be put away to die long and slow and ugly, they would go as they lived, their own way in their own home, so he
can’t
miss, but he can’t get a good shot if she won’t stop moving, and so he turns the shotgun, lifts it high, and smashes it down on her forehead, and she stops moving then, and sobbing, he turns the shotgun and presses it to her forehead and pulls the trigger
The deer lift their heads.
The shot explodes in the silence and I jump, dropping my bowl into the sink.
My mother snorts and says, “Well, somebody just jumped the gun
and scared all the deer away. There’s going to be a lot of pissed-off hunters out there this morning.”
And my heart surges and my brain pounds and all of a sudden I know,
I know,
and I make a high, desperate noise and scramble across the kitchen, fumble with the door, fling it wide, and bolt out into the burning cold. I’m running and it’s almost dawn but not yet, not yet, and the light is murky gray mixed with pink and I hear my mother behind me yelling, “Hanna! No! What are you doing?”
Lon Schoenmaker’s legs give out and he sinks to the edge of the bed next to his wife’s still form, turns the shotgun on himself and, closing his eyes, fires.
The second shot explodes and it’s here, right here, echoing in my ears and my heart, and I stumble, ragged with terror and running as hard as I can through the break in the little woods, and I can hear the deer running, too, crashing into the woods all around me, and the guy in the tree yells, “What the fuck?”
I run past the empty bird feeders and the cats streaking everywhere and finally, panting and half-blind with tears, take the back porch steps on my hands and knees. See a CD near the door with a Post-It with my name on it and grab it.
Hanna,
This is how, and why.
All our love,
Helen Louise Bell Closson Schoenmaker
Lon Peter Schoenmaker
I stare at it, incredulous, and then a wordless wail grates from my throat like a rush of ground glass, leaving a thousand little cuts in
its wake. I shove the CD into my hoodie pocket, push myself up, and grab the doorknob, but it’s locked, so I stumble to the window and the shade is down but the light is on inside, and frantic, I smear my cloudy breath from the glass and look harder, squint harder, and
…no no oh no…
and back away keening, holding my stomach, and clutching at the railing, and my mother runs up in her bedroom slippers and I cry, “Mom, Mom,” and I reach for her and she’s there.
The police and ambulance come with sirens wailing, and the sun rises, and the deer run on, scattered to the winds, and no does or yearlings die here today, the only day in her life that Gran has finally been able to save them.
One faces the future with one’s past.
—Pearl S. Buck
I didn’t tell anyone about
How It Ends.
I don’t know whether I actually forgot about it amid the shock or what.
I really don’t.
The newspapers screamed
SENIOR CITIZEN MURDER/SUICIDE,
and all these people who didn’t even know Gran and Grandpa spoke to the press, presenting all kinds of stupid, half-assed theories, and the papers printed them, and people went online and asked,
How could this happen in our community???
like being private was an unforgivable sin and they should have advertised their intentions so they could have been deemed incompetent and put in a nursing home or under immediate psychiatric evaluation.
Others tsked about how Gran just hadn’t believed in God strongly enough or decided there must have been abuse in the home because otherwise she would have been in a care facility like she should have been, and on and on.
Only one person was brave enough to say that if, like Oregon, the state allowed for physician-assisted suicides, then instead of being forced to resort to extreme measures for lack of options, Gran would
have been able to pass away with dignity, to go gently and peacefully surrounded by loved ones, not miserable, desperate, and smashed to pieces.
The person who suggested it was roundly condemned and never returned to the newspaper’s message board to respond, because really, what would have been the point?
Everyone believes what they want to believe.
The police had to keep watch on the house because there were actually ghouls who came out to stare at it, people who wanted to see where the murderer and his helpless victim had spent their days, trespassers who tried to walk the grounds and peer in the windows and see if they could identify what caused the snap so they could avoid it themselves, but I knew they would never find it because they were only looking on the
outside,
and the answers, all of them, came from the inside, the past, present, and future, the imprints, decisions, and experiences, the parts of us that we hold secret and dear, the pieces that no one will ever know unless we make a point of revealing them.
Someday, when all of this is over, I’m going to give my mother the audiobook so she’ll have the real answers, too.
Three times so far my mother has opened the front door and stood behind the glass storm door watching me, eyes red and lids swollen from crying, fingers knotted together, and the pain of the last two days forever stamped in the lines of her face.
Three times she’s slipped out of the house, crossed the porch to the railing, where I’m sitting with my back against the post, touched my jacketed arm, and said, “Hanna? Are you sure you don’t want to come inside and wait? It’s so cold and you’re not even sure he’s coming….”
And three times I’ve shaken my head, short, quick, full-body,
trembling shakes that are an extension of the bone-deep shuddering that hasn’t stopped ever since I raced through the predawn chaos. “He’ll come.” I clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering, curl my fingers up tight inside the thick white crocheted mittens, and gaze down across the acre of flattened, frozen grass toward the road beyond, watching.
Because he
will
come, I know it.
All I have to do is wait long enough.
“Have you called him?” my mother asked this last time.
“No,” I said, because it’s important, somehow, that I don’t have to. It’s important that he finds Sammi in the halls and asks how I am, and when he hears the truth, all else falls away and he comes.
It’s important that I don’t have to ask.
He has to do it soon, though, simply because he loves me and I need him, because I’m huddled here, wrecked and broken, and the wake is tonight and people will come to stare and question and whisper, and he’ll know that standing beside me will mean everything.
So I wait for him because I always have, because out of all the moments that went wrong, I think there were just as many that went right, just as much love and heat and want as hurt, disappointment, and cruelty. I want to believe there’s a balance here, that out of this tragedy will come some good, and there
will
be a happy ending.
And most of all, for all the times he’s told me,
Get your head out of a book, Hanna. You don’t live in a novel,
I want to show him that,
yes, yes,
I know all too well that real life is not fiction.
My parents stand together at the front of the crowded wake. My father looks weary, defeated, and my mother, eyes red, lashes wet and spiky, is like a wounded sentinel, dazed by the sudden ferocity of death and the deluge of unanswered questions but still standing with chin up and
gaze fierce, determined to protect Gran and Grandpa from the flood of bright-eyed, stale-breathed mourners who cheaped out on flowers but still came to feed on the shocking tragedy, gossip, and judge.
I heard he had an arsenal in the cellar.
Do you think he really kept her tied to the bed?
I want to know what they were doing with all those cats.
I can’t believe no one knew.
And then they turn and look at me, but I keep my gaze fixed on the sparse scattering of floral arrangements standing behind the urns and give them nothing, because this bone-deep ache is mine.
The only thing I say when people bait me with comments like, “I can’t believe this happened…” is, “Anybody who really knew them knew he would never stay without her,” but it’s like they don’t want to believe in a love that strong, in a happily ever after that deviates from the fairy tale, and so they keep fishing for answers they will never get.
Sammi, Crystal, and their families come, Grandpa’s old supervisor from the railroad comes and so does an elderly lady named Coral. People from my parents’ work come and Mr. Sung from school comes.
Seth does not.
And it’s in the last half hour when I’m exhausted and close to tears, heart sore from gazing at the urns and wishing, oh God,
praying
this is all just a terrible nightmare that I glance up and see Jesse standing in the back looking solemn, dreads in a ponytail, carrying a jacket over his arm, and wearing a long-sleeved white dress shirt so new that it still has the fold lines down the front.
I almost break then, I do, but instead I meet his dark, steady gaze and make my way to him, take his hand, bring him forward, and introduce him to my parents, and in that space surrounded by loss and sadness and the passing of something real and good and true, something else real and good and true is passed on, too, seeded with a moment of pain that could someday become a pearl.