Once Upon a Day (25 page)

“A normal fear of small kids,” he said, giving in and putting his arm around her. The night was pitch-black; there was nothing to see, though Dorothea insisted he keep looking out the window.

“Thank you,” she said, “though I was still afraid when I wasn’t that small. I was nine when Jimmy finally cured me, as I’m about to tell you.” She leaned into him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Then he kissed her lips until she stepped back, smiling. “Don’t you want to hear the rest?”

“Okay,” he said, holding up his palms, smiling back. “Hands off until you’re finished.”

“As I said, when I was nine, there was a bad storm one afternoon that knocked the power out. By night, it still hadn’t returned. This
had happened before many times, usually from the mountain winds, and Father had a generator, but it only lit part of the downstairs. Normally, Jimmy and I would sleep down there with Father, while Grandma used a candle to get to her room. But on that particular night, I wanted to sleep in my own bed because I had an elaborate pretend game in progress with my dolls and my stuffed animals, and it was very important that I be with them.”

“Couldn’t you move the dolls and animals downstairs?”

“They were carefully arranged for the game,” she said. “Also, as excessive as this must sound, I had over four hundred of them. With some things, Father was overly generous.”

“What the hell, he had the money.”

“True, but I think his motive was to make up for the many things we couldn’t have because he considered them too dangerous.” She paused. “But back to that night. When I told Jimmy of my problem, he insisted that I step out onto the porch with him. The storm had passed, and in its place was the unusual moon with the ring, the one we called the angel moon. He asked me to stare into that moon until I saw the angel herself as clearly as I saw her halo.”

“And you did,” he said. “And then you could go to your room and sleep because an angel was watching out for you.”

“No, not at all. I stared at the moon until I saw the angel, yes, but I found her quite frightening. Her face was as blank as death and her eyes seemed to be laughing at me. When I asked Jimmy if she looked this way to him too, he nodded and said the angel in the moon was absolutely hideous.”

“What?” Stephen burst out in a laugh. “So now you had the moon and the dark to fear?”

“No again, because Jimmy convinced me that the truly hideous thing about this angel was what he called her ‘blinding, boring, arrogant and most of all creepy light.’ ‘The dark isn’t frightening,’ Jimmy said, as he stood behind me, covering my eyes with his hands. ‘In the dark all you have are the pictures in your mind. And your mind is sweet and innocent, Thea, just like you.’”

She was quiet for a moment before she whispered, “Oh my poor brother.” Stephen heard her gulping like she was trying not to cry. “I still can’t believe what’s happened to him.”

“It’s okay,” he said, pulling her against his chest. He only meant to comfort her, but then she was kissing him. He put his arms around her and she was kissing him with an urgency that he didn’t understand, though, admittedly, he didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Within a few minutes, they were stumbling into the bedroom, undressing as they went. She was so incredibly into everything he did to her, this moment, right now: he couldn’t remember ever being this excited from the excitement of the woman he was with. It was so intense, the way their bodies moved together, the way she touched him so freely, the way she kept her eyes open this time, those gorgeous eyes shining in the light from the hall, telling him how much she wanted him. It was the best sex they’d ever had, and afterward, he fell back on the bed feeling nothing but calm and satisfied.

They were lying on their backs, holding hands, still a little out of breath, when Dorothea laughed. “I just thought of something. I never finished my story.”

“Right,” he said. “Tell me the rest.”

“The reason we were at the window is that I was going to show you the dark, moonless sky, and ask you if it was a friendly dark or a frightening dark. The idea being that the essence of things is also in the way they appear. It’s even more true in life that what you believe is often as important as what’s real.”

“Maybe so,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything to disagree with. Nothing Dorothea said could be disagreeable to him now. “But how did this come up with my mom?”

“Of course I didn’t tell her the entire story. We were talking about the eleven days I’d been here. I think she was a bit shocked that it was such a short span of time, especially as she seemed to suspect the thing you advised me not to tell my father about. Which I would not have told your parents about either, and so I pretended
not to notice her hints on the matter, remembering your point about parents being upset that their children are growing up.”

He laughed. “I don’t think that applies to my parents.”

“I don’t know,” Dorothea said seriously. “Your mother seemed very alive to the possibility that I would hurt you, considering I’d only known you eleven days. But I told her I believed it to be much longer, and in fact, I believed I’d known you for many years.” Dorothea’s voice became shy. “I only realized the reason for this as I was talking to your mother. I didn’t tell her this part, but when I was fourteen, I had a daydream about a Civil War soldier who came to my door to ask me to marry him. He was a man in one of my encyclopedias, a very attractive man. He had brown hair and a face very similar to yours. In the daydream, he smiled like you and even had a slight limp as you do.”

She squeezed his hand. “I realize how strange it must sound: that we met via one of my daydreams nine years ago. I don’t expect you to have shared that daydream. I would imagine you were far too busy in medical school to conjure up the Dorothea O’Brien of your future.”

The gloom was creeping back again, but he said something about medical school being difficult. Something that would have been unsatisfying if Dorothea hadn’t been chatting so happily she didn’t notice.

“Getting back to your mother. She told me she liked my idea about beliefs being as important as reality. She also said—” Dorothea was still talking, but he couldn’t concentrate. He was listening to the rain against the window, wondering why his after-sex good mood had already evaporated. It wasn’t just in his mind either: his whole body was starting to feel tense. He could feel it across his shoulders and down his arms and in his calves and hamstrings. He could feel it pushing inside his chest, like something had a hold of his heart muscle, even though he knew that was ridiculous.

“She was so intimate with me. It was really very unexpected.” Dorothea turned over and put her hands on his face. “She even
asked if I would share my thoughts about the future with you. Want to know what I said?”

“Sure,” he said, but he was wondering how to get away for a minute without hurting her feelings. If only he could go out driving with the radio blasting or run around the block until he was too exhausted to think. Or just stare at the ceiling until his mind went blank. He knew he could handle whatever this was; he’d handled a hell of a lot worse.

“I couldn’t tell her the entire truth because, well, I hadn’t told you yet. But I told her I was very happy here and hoped there would be a future, and I think she suspected that I was in love with her son, because she seemed to feel much better then.” Dorothea laughed. “Oh, now I have told you. I hope you don’t feel you have to reciprocate, although I think you’d better or I may have to tickle you.”

“I do,” he said, though he honestly wasn’t sure what he was agreeing with. He had to get out of here, now, before he lost it.

“I’ll be right back,” he managed, before he went into the bathroom and crouched down on the floor, trying to calm down, think. But he couldn’t think because he kept feeling an incredible urge to break something. He was scared shitless he might cry.

Even her soft knock startled him. No wonder she was at the door. He’d already been in there for what felt like a very long time.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“Yes.”

She waited a minute. “Would you like to have some pickles together?”

They’d done this almost every night after sex: sit on the bed and eat from a plate of the several kinds of pickles she’d brought back to his house so far. It was a goofy kind of fun, but now it seemed as ludicrous as if she’d suggested eating pickles at a funeral.

“No thanks.”

“Are you sure? I’d be glad to get them ready.”

“I said no.” His voice was harsh. Shit, he didn’t mean for it to
come out that way. He told her he was sorry. “It’s nothing you did,” he threw in, but his tone didn’t change.

She continued to wait at the door for a while before she said, “Stephen, please tell me what’s wrong. I want to try to help you.”

“You can’t.” He was banging his fist on his forehead because he finally got what was happening, though he didn’t understand it at all. It seemed so unfair that this was happening again. Jesus, why had that image of Lizzie’s car seat come back into his mind now?

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Dorothea said softly.

He couldn’t respond.

When the medics had lifted his daughter out, her pacifier was stuck at the bottom of the seat, covered in blood. She was too old for a pacifier, but Ellen had said not to push her, she’d give it up when she was ready. He tried to lunge back into the car to grab it. The police were holding him back, and he was shouting, “She needs that! She won’t be able to sleep!”

“Fuck,” he yelled, and he heard Dorothea start to cry. But he couldn’t do a thing about it because now he was remembering when the car finally skidded to a stop and he’d reached over to touch Ellen. She was already dead, and he knew it, but he couldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t accept it. He took Ellen’s hand and said, “Now this is what I call seriously screwed up.” It was something she always said when things went wrong. Like the toilet overflowing. Like the time their Visa got charged twice for their bedroom furniture. Like Lizzie melting a crayon in the radiator.

He was crying too now, but he was also cursing because he was so pissed. He could handle the constant throbbing in his foot and the slivers of glass that still worked their way out of the flesh of his arm, but this was too fucking much. And he’d been so sure it was over. It had been over for months and months. Why had it suddenly come back now? Was this the price of letting himself pretend he was a human being for not even two weeks?

He sniffed hard, stood up and stuck a towel around his waist. He had to get out of this bathroom. He needed a drink.

As he walked, he heard Ellen’s voice: “I really think we should go on the highway.”

“This will be quicker.”

“You always say that, but it never turns out to be true.” She turned around and smiled at Lizzie. “Daddy always says, ‘I discovered a shortcut.’ Discovered, like he’s Lewis and Clark.”

The accident was only seconds later. There was no choice to torture himself with—different road, different result—because they weren’t even to the highway entrance yet. The torture was much simpler. That was the last thing his wife would ever have a chance to say. That was her last smile.

He walked into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of scotch and drank until he choked. Then he waited until the coughing died down and drank again. He heard Dorothea go into the bathroom, the flushing of the toilet, then the sound of the bedroom door closing behind her. He already knew he would have to make this up to her, but right now, he couldn’t deal with it.

He was back on the couch, still crying a little, but at least he was getting drunk too. The pictures were fading, though it was different than it used to be. In the past, when the accident images stopped coming, they were always followed by the usual memories: Christmases and birthdays and ordinary days that were somehow just good. He used to worry that if those normal memories ever left, it would mean he’d stopped caring, but now he knew that wasn’t true. This was what he thought about, as he sat on the couch in the dark, watching the shadow of headlights pass across his window. He would never stop caring as long as he fucking lived. He would always, always, always miss his baby girl and his beautiful wife, Ellen, and the family they had been.

He drank until he couldn’t hold the bottle anymore. He heard it drop and he knew it was spilling on the rug, but he didn’t give a shit. The last thing he remembered thinking was that Dorothea would find him passed out like this, half naked. He wanted to get up and cover himself, but he couldn’t move.

When he woke up the next morning, he felt like the back of his head had been nailed to the couch. He closed his eyes, but he could still feel the sun streaming in the window, so he pulled the blanket over his face. And that’s when he realized Dorothea had covered him. “She deserves better,” he muttered. He tried to think about something really nice he could do for her today, but he couldn’t think yet. He had to sleep a while longer.

The next time he woke up it was afternoon; he could tell because the sun wasn’t beating on him anymore. He sat up and the headache was still there, but he had to get going. Dorothea would be anxious to get to the hospital to see Jimmy.

He stood up with the blanket around his shoulders and went into the kitchen to get some Tylenol. He’d already swallowed two with a handful of water from the faucet when he turned around and saw the piece of paper sitting on the kitchen table.

He’d never seen her handwriting before, and he just stared at the letters themselves for a moment, thinking that her handwriting was like everything else about her. Elegant, understated, humble, very pretty.

Dear Stephen,

I am very grateful for your help and your kind attentions. Please do not interpret my leaving as meaning anything about your essential goodness, which I have been the beneficiary of on so many occasions since we met. Even last night, I know that your goodness kept you from telling me that the sentiments I was expressing were making you so very uncomfortable. I don’t have words to express how sorry I am. Because of my lack of experience, I’d convinced myself that you felt as I did. It was wishful thinking, the silly dream of an ignorant and often silly person.