Be Not Afraid (4 page)

“Well, the whole thing sounds dreadful,” Nan said. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

I let my head fall back against the seat rest, overcome with weariness. “I’m just glad they let me go home. If I had to stay in that place for another five minutes, I don’t know what I would have done.”

We didn’t say any more for the rest of the drive. I checked my phone, my eyes scanning Lucy’s message:
It’s okay. Call me when you get home.
I was relieved, and a little
bit annoyed. I didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. Maybe not for a good while. Thankfully, when I told Nan that I didn’t want to lie down just yet, that I wanted to walk around in the backyard for a while, she didn’t object. “Just not too long,” she said, rubbing her thumb along the inside of my hand. The little pink shape beneath her shirt glowed an electric fuchsia. “I don’t want to worry.”

“You don’t have to worry.” I kissed her cheek. “I just need some air. Thanks for coming to get me.”

Nan’s farmhouse was set on three acres of lush land on the outskirts of town, prime real estate in dinky Fairfield, Connecticut, where most houses had been built over collapsed coal mines. To the right of the house, a small pond was edged with cattails, pussy willows, and giant swaths of honeysuckle vines. A single, enormous oak on the north end dangled its limbs over the water like a wide umbrella. Beyond the pond was a tangle of woods, through which Nan had long ago cut a path, leading to an empty greenhouse she was trying to restore. Sometimes, if I was really bored, I wandered back there, poking around at the empty terra-cotta pots and barren shelves, as if I might find some kind of hidden secret Nan kept from the rest of us. Now, though, I went around to the back of the farmhouse and sat down next to the garden.

The garden was not really a garden. Or rather, it was the beginnings of one, a ten-foot by fourteen-foot plot of dirt Dad had dug out last fall for the sole purpose of
transplanting all of Mom’s flower bulbs. He’d gotten as far as creating a border around the edge and removing a few of the really deep rocks along the right-hand side before putting the shovel and pickax away for good. It didn’t take me long to realize that the whole thing had been just another one of his “grieving ideas,” something he had momentarily gotten into his head to remember Mom by, only to abandon without explanation a few weeks later. The cardboard box filled with her bulbs was still sitting on the other side like an afterthought, collecting dust.

I walked over to examine the contents of the box. It was more than half full, most of the bulbs withered and frayed around the edges. They made a dry rustling sound when I picked them up, and chunks of dried dirt fell off the bottoms. The majority of them were the size and shape of small onions, but there were some rhizomes in there, too, a type of iris root, which were shaped like thin, lopsided carrots. They were rotted at the bottom, the wet, fibrous material emanating a kind of mushroom smell, and I wrinkled my nose. It would have been nice if Dad had actually gone and planted them, even just a few, but he didn’t know anything at all about these bulbs; he had never even been able to differentiate between the types of flowers they produced.

I was the one Mom had given her flower knowledge to, pointing out the bearded iris in her garden with their telltale whiskery strands inside the petals, the colors ranging from a soft, watery lavender to a buttery yellow. She’d
planted allium, too, purple and pink puffballs perched like little globes on the ends of stiff stems, and dinner plate dahlias, their cranberry-colored faces adorned with rows of circular petals. To the right of the dahlias had been rows of
Nerine,
long, curly petals flush with pink and orange hues; next to them had been the begonia and the hyacinth, the gladiolas and the lilies, and finally, the endless rows of red and orange and white tulips.

Mom loved each of the flower species with an intensity that sometimes aggravated me, and she’d tended to them as dutifully as she might other children in the family. And as much as I sometimes resented the time she spent in the garden, when the tiny buds finally opened and the flowers bloomed, even I found it hard to feel anything but awe. Once, all the crested irises on the right-hand side of Mom’s garden bloomed at the same time as the allium and the tulips, so that every morning for an entire week, as the light began to creep up into the sky, the tips of the flowers would gleam, creating such a swath of multihued brilliance that it looked as if a rainbow had caught fire.

I sat there for a minute, fingering a mangled rhizome root, and then pushed it into the soil. It was a pointless gesture; none of them were any good. The rotting fungus would prevent them from ever reaching their full bloom potential. But it belonged there, in the dirt instead of inside an old, dusty box. In the soil at least, it could die a dignified death. I stood back up, regarding the remaining bulbs that I knew would never grow. And then I reached down
and grabbed a handful. One by one I hurled them into the wooded thicket beyond, listening to the soft plunk they made as they hit the ground.

Over and over and over again, until every last one was gone.

A little over a year ago, back in Maine, I had run home from my friend Janine’s house, something gnawing at me inside, tapping me on the shoulder:
Go, go faster, move, MOVE.
My pace had increased with each step until I was running so hard that I couldn’t breathe without feeling pain. Dad’s earlier instructions echoed in my head, his simple request keeping time with the smack of my sneakers against the pavement:
Just stick around with Mom for the afternoon, okay, honey? I’ll be home early.
Except that I hadn’t stuck around. When Janine had called at two o’clock, squealing about the new CD she’d just bought, the one I absolutely had to come over and listen to, I’d gone. Janine and I were good friends, but I probably spent more time at her house than I needed to. For as much fun as we had together, the real truth was that I jumped at any excuse to get out of
the house, especially when Mom started spending whole afternoons in bed or not getting out of bed at all. Janine’s mother was having an affair with her boss, so Janine understood the whole concept of crazy moms. Sort of.

I’d knocked on Mom’s door first, pressing my lips against the cool wood in case she couldn’t hear me. I hadn’t seen her since the night before, when I’d poked my head in to say good night. “Mom?” No answer. “Mom?” I’d said again, louder that time.

“Hmmm?” The sleepiness in her voice was unmistakable. But that was because all she did those days was sleep; it was all she ever seemed to do anymore. A flare of annoyance had risen inside me. She’d done this exact thing last year, just after Christmas, and then snapped out of it a few months later when it came time to plant her bulbs. It was so unfair. Why did
I
have to be forced to hang around the house doing nothing all day, just because
she
wanted to waste her time sleeping? I had friends to see, places to go, music to hear!

“Mom,” I said again. “Janine called. I’m gonna go over and hang out for a little bit. I’ll be back soon.”

Through the door, I heard the rustle of sheets, the sound of a body shifting. “Where are you going?” Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been crying. Or screaming.

“Janine’s!” I said again, impatient this time. “Dad’s at work, and I’m going to Janine’s house. But I’ll be back soon.” I paused. “Okay?”

“Okay, honey.” She sounded frightened. Or had I imagined that?

I headed for the stairs. But a muffled sound coming from behind the door stopped me. I went back. “Mom? Did you say something?”

There was a pause. Then: “I love you, Marin.” The frightened tone was gone, replaced with something I did not recognize.

“I love you, too, Mom.” I rolled my eyes. She was always so dramatic. Everything was always so end-of-the-world-like. Even leaving for school every morning was an ordeal; she’d always rush over just as I stepped through the door, grab me around the wrist, and say, “Goodbye, sweetheart,” as if she’d never see me again. It was weird. And annoying. I was going a little more than a quarter mile down the road now; it was hardly anything to start getting theatrical about. “Okay, bye!”

Janine and I were on the sixth song when the gnawing sensation in my belly reached a fever pitch. I sat up as the hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I have to go. I’ll call you later.” I made it home in less than five minutes, a record. My eyes raced over the inside of the house as I burst through the front door. The chair in front of the wide bay window—where Mom sometimes sat reading a book, or arranging a vase of irises, or more and more these days, just staring out at the ocean view behind the glass—was empty.
Okay,
I told myself.
When I left, she was in her room. And that’s where she probably still is.

I raced up the steps, two at a time. Her room was empty, the blue cotton sheets still wrinkled and mussed. A cry escaped my lips, and I bit down on the back of my wrist to quell it. I was jumping to conclusions, already thinking the worst, which was what I always did when I was unsure of something. I had to relax. Try not to panic. There was still any number of places where she could be.

I raced out to the garden, half expecting to see the brim of Mom’s straw hat bobbing in and among the green, but there was no sign of it. Still, I tore through the swaths of irises, pushing them aside as if she might be hidden among them, the white and yellow and purple petals fluttering behind me like pieces of candy-colored velvet. Nothing. She wasn’t in the tool shed or in the garage, either. Maybe we were out of the cranberry juice she liked to drink and she’d gone to the store. I flew into the kitchen, looking for an envelope, a scrap of anything that Mom always found to write on whenever she had to leave. Once, she’d even scribbled a note on the side of a sneaker,
BACK IN TEN MINUTES
, and left it on the kitchen counter for me to find. But there was no note.

I went outside and cupped my hands around my moth. “Mom!” I shouted. “Mom, please! Where are you?” My voice cracked on the last word, a glass shattering in the distance.

There was nothing else to do except call Dad. My heart hammered like a snare drum in my ears, and the faint taste
of bile pooled along my gums. “Dad, it’s me. Do you know where Mom is?”

“What do you mean, ‘where Mom is’?” His voice was tinged with alarm. “She’s home. With you.”

“She’s not home. I looked everywhere.”

“She left? Without telling you?”

“I left.” I closed my eyes at the weight of my words. “I know you told me not to, but Janine called and …” My voice wobbled. “Mom said I could go, and I did.”

“
Mom
said you could go?” He sounded incredulous. “What did
I
tell you?” There was a pause on the other end of the line as he waited for me to answer. But the only thing that came out of my mouth was a tiny sob, which escaped my throat so suddenly that it startled me. I pressed my fist against my lips, but not fast enough.

“All right.” Dad’s voice was tight. I could hear the fear behind it. “Don’t move. I’ll be right home.”

I did as he said, sitting in Mom’s chair with my knees together, my feet pressed tiptoe against the floor. And I did not move. Not when Dad came through the door, his dark hair askew, his blue eyes shifting back and forth as he took the stairs two by two, shouting Mom’s name, and then down again, faster this time, when she did not answer. I did not move when Alice, Mom’s best friend, came over a little while later, having been summoned by Dad, and joined him on the beach, hollering Mom’s name. And I did not move when they found her, in the one place I had not been able to make myself go look, her neck broken, the
police said, against the enormous boulders by the sea, the waves licking her bare feet and calves in vague consolation. In fact, I did not move for the rest of the night, not when the ambulance came, and then the police, who asked me at least ten times what Mom had said behind the closed door before I left, not when Janine materialized suddenly, her face white and peaked as she stared at me across the kitchen before disappearing again without a word, not even when Dad came over and put his arms around me and carried me upstairs.

Neither of us said anything as he put me in bed and pulled up the covers. For a moment, he just stood there looking down at me, and I remember thinking that because of me, he was never going to be the same. The thought frightened me even more than the dead look in his eyes. I wondered if he wanted to scream at me. Or hit me. Maybe it would have been better if he had. Maybe it would have let something out, dislodged the small, dark thing that he still kept buried deep inside, a stone locked in cement. But he did nothing. I did nothing. And after a while, I felt nothing, either. I wondered if this was what Mom had felt, just before taking that last step.

After a few seconds, I closed my eyes and I did not open them again until the sound of Dad’s footsteps trailed down the hallway. Staring into the darkness, I let the absence of light fill my pores, enveloping me like a physical thing, until morning.

Two weeks later, I saw pain for the first time.

I didn’t know it was a pain shape, of course, but by then I didn’t know much of anything anymore, having hibernated in my room since the day Mom jumped. I was sleeping, ironically, in much the same way she had those last days. No one could convince me to go to the funeral, and the urge to use the bathroom was the only thing that dragged me once or twice a day from my bed. I smelled gross, an odor that either came from my mouth or my armpits; I didn’t know or care. The bedsheets were ripe with stink, the air in my room stale from a lack of oxygen. Nan, who had driven down from Connecticut the day after it happened, knocked incessantly on the door at first, and then left plastic-wrapped plates of food in the hallway, which I ate at night when I knew everyone was asleep and my hunger got the best of me. I did not see or hear a word from Dad.

Until the day I was roused by a strange noise coming from one end of my door. I sat up groggily, my vision obscured by sleep crust, and peered at the flakes of sawdust fluttering down along the copper hinges. The screws seemed to be moving, too, and every few seconds the bottom of the door slid to one side, as if it might topple over altogether.