The Rules of Inheritance (20 page)

Authors: Claire Bidwell Smith

BOOK: The Rules of Inheritance

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I have to go to her, I think to myself. One night, a few months ago, Julie and I stayed up late, talking on the phone. Colin was at work and I had the house to myself. He had been particularly sullen, particularly controlling that week. I was crying to Julie. She was one of the few people with whom I actually talked about my relationship.

Sometimes she felt a little fearful of her boyfriend too.

Let's make a pact, she said.

I nodded, sniffling into the phone.

If one of us ever breaks up, we'll drop everything and be there. That way it won't be so scary.

I nodded again. Okay. Yes. Definitely. Drop everything.

I think about that phone call as I sit on the couch next to Colin, Julie's news sinking into me.

She's going to die, I say.

The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

In the months ahead I will retract this prophecy. I will remain positive, along with the rest of our friends, that Julie will in fact not die.

But she does. Of course she does.

Of course Julie dies.

OVER THE NEXT YEAR I fly to Atlanta on five separate occasions to be with Julie as she undergoes chemo, radiation, and an experimental stem cell transplant.

I sit with our friends for long hours in waiting rooms as we while away the time before we are allotted a brief and plastic-gloved visit to our beautiful friend who has lost all of her hair.

Julie lies pale in her hospital bed, and I hold one of her hands in mine. It is near the end, January again, and the stem cell transplant did not work.

I don't know anyone who's died, she says.

I am crying, but Julie is calm. There is a sense of wonder in her voice.

The next day when I return to her room she is unconscious, her breath raspy and shallow.

She dies the next night.

Her death leaves me both depleted and emboldened. That's what tragedy does to you, I am learning. The sadness and the wild freedom of it all impart a strange durability. I feel weathered and detached, tucking my head against the winds and trudging forward into life.

After Julie's death I return to New York with an empty feeling, and I go about my days with dead eyes.

Work and school, then home again to the apartment with Colin. Julie's illness had provided a brief respite from my relationship woes. In the face of so much fragility I once again felt grateful for Colin's firm grip.

But now she is gone and nothing seems to matter. Winter slides into spring and then into summer again. I am on break from my classes, picking up extra shifts at Republic and tilting my head to the soft breeze that pushes through the screens in the living room windows.

THE MONTHS SLIP by and nothing changes. Not the East Village apartment I inhabit. Not my job at Republic or my classes at the New School. Not Julie's absence or my fear of Colin.

At night he thrashes in his sleep. Some nights he flings himself out of bed, attacking phantoms rushing forth in the darkness, destroying the alarm clock, knocking over a lamp.

Other nights are more predictable. He puts on Bob Dylan and just sits in front of the stereo for hours, a glass in his hand, his body rigid.

Sometimes there is nothing. Sometimes there is punching, kicking, breaking.

He never hits me. Not once.

But I am still afraid.

Daytime always brings peace. We wake close to noon, sunshine skimming across the hardwood floors, lighting all the darkest corners and warming the bottles by the door.

I start going to Cape Cod regularly. I take the Peter Pan bus from Port Authority, through Connecticut and Rhode Island and into Massachusetts, where it crosses the Sagamore Bridge onto the Cape.

My aunt picks me up at the bus station, my grandmother sitting up front in the car, and they drive me back home with them to the old Victorian house on the beach in Harwichport. I've learned how to be close with them, even though in the beginning it felt like a betrayal of my mother.

I sleep for long hours upstairs, under the cranberry quilt, the salty ocean air soft on my skin. At night I sit next to my grandmother in her reclining chair, and we watch
Jeopardy!
and hold hands.

I've been thinking about you, she says, and pats my arm. Her hands are cool and dry, the skin soft like paper.

I take long walks out on the jetty, stepping carefully over the rocks, and remember when I used to do this with my mother.

Mom, can you see me?

I wish I could talk to her about Colin. I know she would help me leave him.

Back in New York I sit up late trying to figure it out. Colin is at work, and I think about what it would be like to just leave, to disappear out the door and never come back.

But then I think about my cat and my trunk full of journals and letters from my mom. I think about the streets of the East Village at two in the morning and about my bank account, which is almost always empty.

I think about just telling him that I want to leave, and then I shudder with the thought. I imagine him throwing my belongings out the window; picture him hurling my cat against a wall.

I'm not sure he would really do these things, but I'm also not sure he wouldn't.

One night I dream that it was really him who killed his sister. I wake up, sobbing, gasping, and, before I can reconsider, I tell him about the dream.

He is quiet for days after that, but I'll never again be able to shake the tiny seed of doubt about his innocence.

I call my aunt on Cape Cod one afternoon, and when she answers the phone I break down crying. I want to tell her about Colin, want to ask her to help me, but I don't know what to say.

School is overwhelming this year, I say instead.

Oh, she says, I wish I could crawl through the phone line and put my arms around you.

When she says this, I am struck dumb with the memory of my mother saying the same thing to me once when I was seventeen and on an overnight trip, with some friends, visiting colleges. I had called her, sick and tired and wishing I was home.

Oh, she had said, I wish I could crawl through the phone line and put my arms around you.

A FEW NIGHTS LATER I come home from work. I have stayed out later than usual, drinking with my coworkers after Republic has closed, something that Colin usually disapproves of, but I've been pushing the limits lately.

Haynes had been part of the group, and it was the first time we were ever together outside of work. We sat next to each other in the booth, our knees touching, and I greedily consumed the thrill of it, not realizing how thirsty I was for something so sweet.

I am tipsy when I stumble out of the cab on Fifth Street and clomp my way up the stairs. I fumble with my keys, struggling drunkenly to fit them into the proper locks. My efforts make a scraping sound, metallic and grating. Finally the lock turns and I begin to push the door open.

Before I can even cross the threshold the door is slammed back in my face. A man yells loudly, flooding me with fear.

I'M GOING TO KILL YOU! The words are garbled, forceful things.

Someone is inside. Someone has broken into our apartment.

I start to back away down the hall, the fluorescent lights illuminating the grimy walls, the filthy staircase.

I'm panicking. Where should I go?

In a split second I run through different scenarios, all with the same ending: I see myself stumbling down the stairs, being slain halfway down by whoever is in our apartment right now. I see my body slumping to the floor.

Before I can take another step, the door opens. Colin steps out, rubbing his eyes.

I am frozen, halfway down the hallway. The yellow light bathes us both in the sad place we are in.

He was the one yelling. He was drunk and asleep. He thought I was an intruder.

I am the phantom.

A WEEK LATER I curl up on a friend's bed, crying myself to sleep. I am house-sitting while she is away and I have been spending long hours in her apartment, trying to figure out a way to leave Colin.

I write a long letter to an unborn, imaginary daughter.

Don't ever find yourself in this place, I write, tears streaming down my face. Even if I am gone and you are alone, be a stronger woman than I am.

I go home and sit on the couch, waiting for Colin to get out of the shower. I am finally going to do it.

I am going to leave him.

I am shaking as I stare out at the Chrysler Building.

He walks through the kitchen on the way to his closet.

Colin, I call out. We need to talk.

He stands in the doorway, pulling on pants, a shirt.

I'm leaving, I say.

I pause, bracing myself. But nothing comes.