The Accident Season (12 page)

I breathe in too sharply and the smoke scratches the back of my throat. “Hold on—
what?
”

“He went out to buy smokes,” she says. “He went out to buy smokes and he left her tied up so tightly that she couldn’t get free no matter how hard she tried.” My mouth is open. “Three hours later—she could tell by the alarm clock sitting on his chest of drawers—he came back.” I blink hard a few times to get the image out of my head.

“He said
Oh,
and he was smiling. He said
I forgot
.”

“But how—?” I say. “Why didn’t—? How long has he—? Why is she still with him? She’s with him right now. Why did we let her—?” I have to stop and catch my breath. “Why didn’t she tell me?” My voice comes out louder and more pleading than I’d meant.

Bea doesn’t answer. Instead, she takes out her cards. She spreads them out on the picnic table in front of us.

“She’s attracted to trouble,” Bea says. “Because at least that way she knows it’s right in front of her and not hidden away. Not like you.”

“Like me?”

“That’s what this means, here.” She points to one of the cards. “You only let yourself see the good things, but that’s . . . You only see what’s safe, what you want to see.”

“What do you mean?” Her words are like a smack. “No I
don’t,” I say faintly. I can’t tell if I feel ashamed or indignant. “That’s not true. Bea. Why would you even say that?”

“It’s not me.” Bea shakes her head. “It’s the cards.”

“Right.” I can feel my mouth pucker up like I’ve tasted something bad, or like I’m going to cry. I don’t know when Bea suddenly became best friends with Alice and knew all her secrets. I don’t know why that’s bothering me after what Bea’s just said about my sister. There’s a lump in my throat that doesn’t budge no matter how hard I swallow. We both drop our cigarette butts on the ground and I stamp them out with the toes of my boots. Bea’s lipstick stains the grass like blood.

W
hen I get home, my mother is sitting in the dark in the kitchen (Bea is not the only person in my life with a penchant for the dramatic). I flick the light on and she looks surprised to see me back. She tries to act normal, but I can see that she’s added an extra rug to the kitchen floor, and when I go to boil some water for tea, I see that the kettle’s gone. I also notice the date on the calendar that hangs on the back of the garden door.

Between the weirdness of last night, and finding out that Sam kissed Bea this summer, and Alice’s accident, and what Bea told me about Alice and Nick, I had completely forgotten what day it is. I stop in the middle of the kitchen and turn to face my mother.

“Are you okay?” I ask. It’s a stupid question; I know she’s not okay.

My mother tries to smile, but it looks like a grimace. “I just have a headache,” she says. “I’m going to go to bed. Don’t forget to unplug everything before you go upstairs, okay? And be careful opening that cupboard—I think its hinges are loose. And don’t go near the window in the bathroom.”

I just nod my head sadly and let her go upstairs, and I wonder where the person who was so excited about a walk in the mountains this morning has gone, but I suppose I know the answer. She’s gone back in time, in her mind, to another unseasonably warm October four years ago, and to the last of the tragedies.

My eyes fill with tears suddenly, and my heart tries to jump at my teeth and my throat closes before it can leap from my chest. I take a few deep breaths like my mother always tells me helps when you’re in crisis—in through the nose, all the way from the diaphragm, as if you’re about to sing opera. Not that I’ve ever sung opera. I wonder who is telling my mother to breathe deep tonight.

I call Gracie. She is eating when she answers, and the chewing sounds are loud and distorted. Her earrings clack against the side of the phone.

“It’s the thirtieth,” I tell her. She doesn’t say
Cara?
because she already knows it’s me, and she doesn’t say
What?
because she knows what I mean.

“Oh God,” she says instead. “I completely forgot. She was acting so normal earlier. She seemed happy.”

“Maybe she forgot too, for a while.” Maybe she feels like forgetting makes it worse. I know I do.

My father died in the first week of the accident season when I was eight years old. Like us, my mother broke down and slowly got back up and mourned, and many years later she stopped hiding from the world that one day in early October, and instead every year she takes us to our father’s grave and tells us stories about him so we’ll never forget. My uncle Seth died four years ago today and my mother still hides from the world on that day. But we don’t talk about that. We talk about Seth when he was alive but we never mention how he died. It’s like my mother still refuses to believe he’s gone.

Gracie sighs over the line. “I’ll give her a call,” she says. “Talk to you soon, Cara.” When I hang up, I feel a little better. That’s what best friends are for, I think. Then I think about everything Bea said about me earlier (
It’s not me, it’s the cards
) and I don’t feel so much better again.

Alice comes home before Sam. It’s close to midnight, but I wasn’t expecting her home at all; she’s supposed to be staying at Nick’s. I am in the sitting room in my pajamas with one of Bea’s mixes on for company, trying to lose myself in my book. Then Alice comes through the door and my mouth drops open and my heart hits the floor.

Her lip is cut and her eyes are red. One of her cheeks is turning the dark pink of a new bruise. I jump up from the
couch and run to her, and she drops her bag where she stands and just sort of sways on the spot as I hug her tightly. Something tells me these new bruises weren’t accidents, but I don’t know how to ask.

Alice isn’t saying anything and I don’t really know what to do, so I sit her on the couch and go into the kitchen and microwave a mug of water because I don’t know where my mother’s hidden the kettle. I make up two improvised hot whiskeys with my mother’s Scotch and generous hunks of lemon studded with cloves. I make them very sweet, and the sugar looks like glitter at the bottom of the glass.

We sit on the couch in silence and drink, and when we’re finished I know I’ve waited long enough to say something, so I say, “Alice, did Nick . . . ?” but suddenly I find that I can’t finish the sentence. I’m not sure what I’m trying to ask. I can’t even really look at Alice after everything Bea told me. Instead I go into the kitchen and make another couple of hot whiskeys.

When I come back into the living room I try saying it in a different way. “Bea told me something, after you left for the hospital.” I put the tall glasses down on coasters on the wrapped-up table. Alice takes hers immediately. “About Nick.” I pick my glass up more slowly and sip, savoring the warmth.

Alice is shaking her head, her hair making curtains over her face, shutting her off from me.

My throat is trying to close, but I have to ask her anyway. “Nick,” I say again. It’s the closest I can get to the question.

“I should probably finish with him.”

I open and close my mouth a few times before I can speak. “What happened tonight?”

“They said the shoulder was relocated properly, although apparently you’re not supposed to fix it yourself. Or get your little brother to fix it for you.” She sort of laughs. Before I can interrupt, she goes on. “Also, ten stitches . . .” She points at her right arm, the one that had the cut all down it. “Five here.” She shows me the thick padding on her right knee. “I feel like a rag doll, all sewn up.” She smiles crookedly.

“What about that?” I point at the cut on her lip. Alice sighs.

I whisper so low I’m not sure she hears: “Was it Nick?”

Alice is quiet for so long I’m almost sure she didn’t hear me. “I don’t know what Bea told you,” she says finally, “but it’s not like . . .” She pauses for a few beats. “We just fight sometimes. I mean, I hit him back. Sometimes I hit him first. I wanted to come home after the hospital, he wanted me to stay with him—he blocked the door, so I hit him. I started it.”

Now I can’t stay silent. “Because he wouldn’t let you leave. And whatever about hitting him first, he clearly hits you harder. Alice”—I say her name like a plea—“he
hit
you. Alice, this is serious. This is so, so serious.”

“It’s not like that. He’s not . . . It’s not like that. It was a mistake,” she says. “We have a . . . tempestuous relationship.” She smiles wryly. It’s another term my mother uses for their shouting matches over the phone.

“But why do you let him treat you like that? Do you love him?” I don’t know where that second question came from, but suddenly I need to know.

Alice takes a while before answering, and when she does, it isn’t the answer I was expecting. “I think so,” she says slowly.

Frustration builds up with the lump in my throat. “But why—? How—?” I want to ask how she could possibly even think she loves him after all this, but instead I ask a slightly easier question. “What does that even mean,
I think so
? How can you not know?”

“It’s complicated, Cara.” She touches my hair like she’s the one who’s comforting me. “I probably should just break up with him. But we have all this history, you know? And he gets me. Maybe that’s why we fight so much. I get him too, more than anyone. He has this fascinating soul. His darkness is part of that.” Then she sort of laughs at herself. “I sound like Bea.” She leans away from me and tilts her head slightly to one side. “You want to know a secret?”

I’m not sure how many more secrets I can take, but I nod my head anyway.

“There’s someone else.” Alice’s smile plays at the corners of her mouth. We are maybe a little bit drunk. The darkness
is close around us and it’s almost like it’s listening. This house is taking lessons from the ghosts. “Someone new. Or rather,” she corrects herself, “someone old. Someone who’s always been there and I think I’ve always known is just right for me, but I’ve never let myself believe it, or even think it.”

The darkness shivers over my skin like little needles. I think about a warm hand in mine as I walked barefoot across a river that couldn’t possibly have been frozen. I think about riverbed eyes. Without really realizing that I’m thinking out loud, I say: “I know exactly what you mean.” I say it faintly, and my breath mists before me. I can see the words exit my body. I can see them right in front of me.

Alice hasn’t noticed. “But I’m scared,” she’s saying. “Isn’t that crazy? I’m scared to admit things. To admit that I was wrong.” She puts her empty glass down and twists her hair forward over her shoulders and fans out the ends on her sling. “I’m scared of being happy.”

That’s when I realize that Alice has never been happy, not for a very long time. The knowledge shakes me. She must have told me, shown me in a million ways for years, but I never really realized. I lean forward and take her good hand in mine. I whisper, “I’m sorry,” because there’s nothing else I can think of to say.

Alice turns her hand so she’s the one holding me. “It’s okay, little sister,” she says. “It’s going to be okay.” But it doesn’t feel like it’ll ever be okay.

I can’t hear my mother upstairs anymore. I wonder if Gracie’s phone call made her feel better or if that’s even possible. Not for the first time, I think about what it must be like to lose a sibling. I cling to Alice like I’m drowning, or like she is, and I don’t want to let go.
The worst one yet
. Bea’s words buzz in my brain.

“It’s the thirtieth,” I whisper into Alice’s hair.

Alice pulls away and looks at me. She nods. “I know. How is she?”

“Bad.” I pick at some fluff on one of the couch’s cushions. “I’d forgotten,” I say quietly. “Is that really selfish and horrible?”

Alice rubs my arm. “Not at all,” she says. “It’s normal. Life goes on.”

Not for everyone,
I think. “I miss Seth more than I miss Dad,” I tell Alice. If I were at school I’d type it up on Elsie’s typewriter and it’d be put up with the other secrets on the clotheslines through the halls, but I’m not at school, and telling secrets to a sister-friend is almost as good.

Alice’s voice is a whisper. “Me too.” Secrets are even better when they’re shared. I look down at Alice’s bandaged legs. I want to tell her what Bea’s cards said, warn her to be careful, but I am too afraid.

“The accident season leaves its marks,” I say instead. I think about my father, I think about Seth. I think about all the near misses, about the car driver slamming on the brakes
today, about how fast she would have been going if she hadn’t seen Alice at the last minute. I think about Alice hitting her head on the banister rail as she fell down the stairs the other night. No one in the house. She might not have woken up from her concussion or been able to call the ambulance. Sometimes it seems like more than luck when we survive the accidents.

“I didn’t fall down the stairs,” Alice says suddenly, as if she has read my mind. I look up at her face. “I wasn’t even here. In the house, I mean.” I remember getting my mother’s call that night, taking a bus to the hospital and walking a concussed Alice around and around.

“But you hit your head—”

“On Nick’s mantelpiece.”

My heart drops down into my stomach. “Alice,” I say, because it’s the only thing I can think of to say.

“We were having a fight. He pushed me, I fell—he didn’t mean it, it was nobody’s fault. It was an accident,” she says, “but it wasn’t because of the accident season. It isn’t always about that.”

I wince. It feels like my whole body is wincing. “I think it is.” Alice tries to cross her legs, but the padding on her knees won’t let her. Her tights are still stained with blood. She grimaces. “I can’t believe I didn’t see that car coming,” she says.

“None of us did.” I shake my head. Then, remembering,
I say, “You said something, before the car hit you. When I bumped into that street performer statue guy.”

Alice shrugs and drags herself backward so she’s sitting more comfortably against the back of the couch. “The guy in the Tin Man costume? I just thought he looked like somebody,” she says. “That’s all.”

I pull some fluff away from the cushions. “I thought I heard you say
Christopher,
” I say, remembering Sam’s expression, wondering if he heard what I heard.

“I was wrong,” Alice says, and she gets up off the couch. “Obviously.” She picks up our empty whiskey glasses one-handed to take them back to the kitchen. “It was one of those weird resemblances that disappears with a trick of the light.” She turns at the door to the hall and hitches a little sigh. “I’m going to go check on Mom.”

The padding on every surface feels oppressive, like there isn’t enough room to breathe. It feels like there’s a lot not being said. I think my whole family is like that: We bite back the things we can’t say and we cushion every surface for the inevitable moment when they all come fighting out.

***

Sam comes home some time later. Alice and I are back in the living room together with the television on low in the background. The sound of it is muffled in the over-padded room. My mother is upstairs with the tea we brought her. We suspect she won’t sleep much tonight.

The first thing Sam does when he comes in is ask what happened to Alice’s face and she tells him the same thing she told our mother: It was an accident. I avoid Sam’s eyes. He stares at Alice for a long time.

“Okay,” he says, but it doesn’t sound like he believes her. “How’s Melanie?” he asks, sitting down on the coffee table beside us. “Today’s—”

“The thirtieth, yeah,” says Alice. “She’s upstairs. She’s okay, I guess. As okay as she can be.” She gazes up at the ceiling like she can see through it to our mother’s room. She has a funny look on her face. “She’s keeping her secrets,” she says.

I frown. Alice’s cheek is turning purple. Her lip has stopped bleeding, but it’s swollen and looks sore. I glance over at Sam and think that Alice is hardly one to talk about keeping secrets.

Sam seems to think so too. His face gets cloudy. “Yeah, that’s how we do things,” he says. “Isn’t it?” His voice is sharp. He stands up and then sits down again. “I
hate
this!” he says loudly. I look up at the ceiling like Alice just did and hug my arms to my chest.