As attempts to make conversation go, it was . . .
‘I never knew that,’ I said.
Another dead zone of silence.
‘Where are we going exactly?’ I asked.
‘Let me surprise you.’
Silence. Then, around three minutes later . . .
‘Good weekend?’ he asked.
‘Low key. And you?’
‘Wrote an article for the
Gramophone
.’
‘On what?’
‘A new recording of Handel’s
Esther
.’
‘You mean this recording . . . the one we’re hearing now?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Ah.’
Another silence. We turned off on the ramp leading to 16th Avenue NW, marked ‘Banff’.
‘We’re not heading out of town, are we?’ I asked.
‘You’ll see,’ he said.
More silence. We continued along a gasoline alley, then past an artificial ski slope, marked ‘Canada Ski Park’.
‘That was the site of the ski jump when Calgary hosted the ’84 Olympics.’
‘I see.’
‘Now there’s skiing there around eight months a year . . . if you ski, that is.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Nor do I.’
We pressed on. Within moments the city literally fell away. We were in open prairie – vast, endless plains, stretching to the limits of the horizon.
I suddenly felt a chill hit me; a chill that was undercut by a growing panic. It was the same panic that seized me on the bus ride north out of Montana when I made the mistake of looking up at all that epic grandeur and felt as if I was about to come unstuck.
I turned my eyes away from all that oceanic space laid out before us. I kneaded my hands together with such force that I felt as if I was trying to strangle my fingers. I felt my breathing become irregular. Next to me Vern could tell that something was seriously wrong.
‘Jane, are you OK?’
‘Where the hell are we going, Vern?’
‘A nice place. A real nice place. But if, for some reason, all this is making you uncomfortable . . .’
I looked up in front of me and saw what we were heading for: the Rockies, now silhouetted on the horizon. Their fierce beauty – all jagged peaks, cliffed with snow that gleamed under harsh winter sunlight – was impossible to endure. I let out a stifled cry, put my head in my hands and started to weep. Immediately Vern pulled the car off the road. As soon as we reached a full stop, I threw open the door and began to bolt. I didn’t run far – the cold put a quick end to my crazed reverie of escape. But after maybe twenty yards I did buckle down on my knees into the thick snow and pressed my gloved hands into my eyes and willed the world to go away.
Then I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders. Vern kept them there for a few moments, steadying me. Without saying a word, he slid them down to the sides of my arms and lifted me to my feet – and then got me back into the car.
‘I’ll take you home,’ he said in a near-whisper.
‘I don’t want to go home. I want to . . .’
I fell silent. The motor hummed, the heater blasted warm air. I hung my head.
‘Talk,’ I said, finally completing the sentence. ‘I want to talk. About what happened. That day.’
I stared up at Vern. He said nothing. He just nodded to me.
And I began to talk.
Seven
‘I
WAS FURIOUS
at the world. I hadn’t slept for several nights because Theo, my alleged “partner” – I hate that word, it’s so PC, but what else to call him? – was on the verge of bankrupting me. And he’d run off with this absurd freak of a woman. I had several of their creditors chasing me for money. I was being threatened daily. I was talking to lawyers – and Theo was nowhere to be found. The thing was, my lawyer kept telling me to try to ignore all the vicious phone calls and my obsession that Theo’s creditors would seize my apartment. My best friend Christy also said that I sounded seriously depressed and that I had to find something to help me sleep.
‘She was right, of course. But I wouldn’t accept that I was in a bad place. I kept telling myself:
I can handle it
, even though it was so apparent that I was coming apart.
‘The next day . . . the day before it happened . . . the staff doctor at New England State actually called me. I’ve never admitted that to anyone until now. It seems that my department chairman had spoken with him and stated that he was worried about my mental health. Several colleagues and students had mentioned to him that I seemed to be tottering on the brink of something. The doctor was very direct with me and asked if I was overly anxious, suffering panic attacks, or not sleeping. The answer was “yes” to all the above. But I refused to admit this. Just as I told him, in a stupid knee-jerk sort of way, that I was just under a bit of strain due to “domestic difficulties” and that it was manageable.
‘“Well, if your students and colleagues are making noises to the contrary,” he said, “then the outward signs are showing that you aren’t handling things terribly well. Lack of sleep due to stress is a key cause of depression and also can lead to bad coordination which can put yourself and others in danger.” He actually said that to me: “
put yourself and others in danger
”. He then told me that he had a free appointment at the end of the afternoon.
‘“There’s nothing to be ashamed about here, Professor,” he told me. “You’re obviously in a dark wood. I would just like to help you out of it before it gets far darker.”
‘What was my reply to this? “I’ll get back to you if I need you, sir.” What complete arrogance on my part. Had I seen him that afternoon he would have given me something stronger that would truly knock me out. And I would have taken the pills that night and would have had the first eight hours of sleep in weeks. Which meant that my responses would have been far sharper than . . .’
I broke off and said nothing for what seemed like a few minutes. Vern just sat there, not making eye contact with me, staring out the windshield at the endless snow-covered prairie and the mountains to the west which I could not bear to lay eyes on.
‘That will haunt me till the day I die . . . the fact that I was offered medical help which would have avoided the accident, but I turned it down. The next day, while making Emily breakfast, I actually had a five-second blackout – which my daughter registered, as she turned to me and said: “Mommy’s tired. Mommy needs to go to bed.”
‘But instead of following my daughter’s advice and spending the day with the covers over my head – advice that would have saved her life – I got us both dressed and dropped Emily at nursery school, then nodded off on the T and almost missed the stop for New England State. Once I had dragged myself off the train and into my office, I glanced at myself in the mirror and saw just how strained and netherworldly I looked. So I drank three large mugs of coffee and got through my lectures, constantly sensing that I was a bad actor inhabiting the body of this alleged professor of English, trying to sound erudite and engaged with her subject matter while simultaneously knowing that I was nothing less than a sham . . .
‘And yes, at that moment I did realize just how depressed I was, how fast I was sinking. The faculty doctor was back on duty that afternoon – I know this because he phoned me again that day to see how I was. That’s something I’ve also not told anybody, not even admitted to myself until now . . . the fact that he called me again and said I really needed to come in and see him.
‘“I have to pick my daughter up at school now,” I informed him. Know what his reply was? “Not in your current state. Call a parent you know whose child is also at the nursery. Tell him or her that you’ve got an emergency at work and get them to bring your daughter home. Then come in and see me straight away.”
‘Did I heed this advice? No. I just said: “I’m fine, Doctor.” Then I put down the phone and grabbed my coat and hat and jumped the T back to Cambridge to pick up Emily.
‘That was the other insane variable in that afternoon. I never picked my daughter up at school during the week, as I had office hours until five. But on this one day, the nanny had asked if she could have the afternoon off, as she had some appointment at a podiatrist about her bad feet.
‘Had Julia been there that day . . . had I not given her the time off . . .’
I stopped speaking again and put my hand on the door handle of the car and was about to press it and throw the door open and run off into the absolute nothingness of the Alberta plains. But I found myself thinking:
And then what? The story can’t be avoided.
I started speaking again.
‘“Mommy, Mommy!” Emily said as she saw me in the doorway of the nursery. “Can we go get a treat?”
‘“No problem, my love.”
‘“You tired, Mommy?”
‘“Don’t worry about it.”
‘And I helped her on with her coat and led her by the hand out the door.
‘“I think there’s a coffee shop near here that does great sundaes,” I said. “But first you’ll have to eat something nutritious . . . like a hamburger.”
‘“Are hamburgers good for you?”
‘“They’re better than ice-cream sundaes.”
‘Suddenly, in front of us, there was this commotion. An elderly woman – fat, heavy make-up, a stupid cigarette between her lips – was walking her terrier. The lead had broken and the terrier was running free, heading towards us. The woman was yelling its name. And then . . .
‘What I told the police afterwards was that Emily, all wide-eyed, broke free of my grip and chased right after it. I lunged for my daughter, screaming at her to stop. But she was already off the curb . . .
‘That’s not the precise truth. Just as we saw the woman with the dog, I had another of those momentary blackouts I’d been suffering. It couldn’t have been more than two seconds. But in that time, Emily went off the curb and . . .
‘Suddenly I came to. And saw my daughter two steps behind the dog, and a taxi barreling around the corner. The cabbie was going too fast and didn’t see Emily until . . .
‘That’s when I screamed my daughter’s name. That’s when I lunged for her.
‘But the cab hit her directly – and the impact sent her flying.’
I put my fists in my eyes.
Black it out. Black it out.
Eventually I pulled my fists away. I steadied myself. Vern sat there, hushed, silent.
‘What happened next . . . I was screaming and scooping up my daughter from the ground where she lay crumpled, and the woman with the fucking dog was screaming, and the cabbie – who turned out to be Armenian – was hovering over us, hysterical, saying it wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t seen her . . . “
She suddenly there! She there! She there! She there!
” He kept repeating that, along with: “
No chance! No chance! I have no chance!
”
‘Someone dialed 911. The cops came. The cabbie by this point was screaming at me to let him save her. “
I bring her back . . . I bring her back.
” But I kept holding her against me, my head buried in her still-warm body, her neck totally limp, no breathing, no reaction to all this madness around her. Nothing . . .
‘One of the cops gently tried to get me to let go of her. But I shrieked at him to go away. Then there were more sirens. An ambulance. The paramedic somehow managed to separate me from Emily. When I was coerced into letting her go and I saw one of the ambulance guys checking for vital signs and looking up at one of the cops and shaking his head . . . that’s when I lunged for the driver, screaming at him, calling him a murderer and . . .
‘Two cops had to pull me off him. The cabbie was now so distraught that one of the paramedics had to hold him down. And then . . .
then
. . . I don’t remember much of
then
. Emily was placed on a stretcher and put into the ambulance. One of the cops – a woman – sat in the back of the cop car with me as we raced after it. She had her arm around me so tightly I couldn’t move, and told her colleague in the front seat to call for back-up when we reached the hospital.
‘“Back-up” was a huge male nurse. He was waiting for me with a white-coated doctor. The doctor – a young guy – spoke quietly to me, and said they were going to give me something that would calm me down for a few hours. I somehow managed to promise I would stay calm. But as the woman cop helped me out of the car I made a break for it, screaming that I had to see Emily. That’s when the male nurse grabbed me and got me into a wrestler’s grip, and the doctor approached with a hypodermic and . . .
‘When I awoke I discovered it was the next morning. I was in a bed – and I was being held down by restraints. A young nurse was on duty. She looked visibly pained when she saw I had come out of whatever they’d hit me with.
‘“I’ll be right back in a couple of minutes,” she whispered. I sat there, staring up at the ceiling, telling myself:
This is not happening
. . . and knowing simultaneously that my world had just collapsed. When she returned some minutes later she was accompanied by a doctor – a quiet man in his mid-fifties – and a very sensible-looking woman also around the same age. He introduced himself as Dr Martin and said that the woman standing next to him was Mrs Potholm, and she would be my “social worker”.
Social worker
. Thinking back on it, they must have a very strict protocol drawn up for breaking the news to people . . . especially parents. And they must have decided that mentioning the fact that you have been assigned a social worker before delivering the body blow will, in some way, prepare you for the horror of the news. It’s like being told: “
In a moment you’re about to be pushed off the ledge on the thirty-second floor
” – and then the shove happening. It’s still a grotesque free-fall . . . but at least you’re ready for it.
‘“Ms Howard . . . Jane . . .’ the doctor began, his voice just above a whisper. ‘Emily was admitted here dead on arrival yesterday evening. An autopsy was carried out very early this morning – and the cause of death was severance of the spinal cord and massive cranial injury. I mention this to let you know that Emily died instantly. I doubt she suffered. I doubt . . .”