The Fragile World. Paula DeBoard Treick
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I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t. Everything inside me felt liquid all of a sudden, as if my organs and bones had disappeared and I had become a child’s squishy toy. I wanted to unlock the door and bolt from the car, but I couldn’t move.
Dad was staring at me curiously.
Mom put a hand on my forehead. “Are you sick?”
“I—don’t know,” I stammered, sinking back into my seat.
Mom slid the gearshift to Drive and maneuvered us into the parking space we had just vacated. “Do you need a bag or something?”
I took a deep breath, trying for calm. My body was turning solid again, but slowly. I didn’t trust it. I reached out a hand, surprised I could still move. My leg bone was connected to my thigh bone and so on—which meant my parts were still in working order.
“You okay now?” Dad asked, and I nodded numbly.
You’re not dying. You’re okay, I reassured myself. But it felt as if something were gripping me around my insides and squeezing.
“Better use a plastic bag in case,” Mom said, and Dad began digging around under his seat. He came up empty-handed.
“No, I’m okay,” I mumbled, although it must have been obvious that I wasn’t.
“Look, I’m just going to get us home.” Mom backed up again, slower this time.
“Talk to me, Olivia,” Dad said, unbuckling his seat belt to reach around. With one hand, he dug into the backseat pocket and came up, victorious, with a crumpled paper bag from Starbucks.
Mom exited the parking lot, took one turn and then another, merged onto a busy street. All the other cars seemed far too close to ours, mere feet away, hurtling along at unsafe speeds. What was keeping them in their own lanes, exactly? What was a lane except a painted line, a mere suggestion for social order?
I gripped the door handle more tightly, leaning into the turns. I was braced for it; I was ready. If Mom’s Volvo slid off the road, I was going to see it coming. And if Dad and Mom and I all died in a sudden, fiery crash, I was going to see that coming, too.
My breathing sounded funny, like the time I fell in soccer practice and had the wind knocked out of me. I picked up the Starbucks bag Dad had given me and blew into it weakly. It smelled like a pumpkin scone.
“What’s going on, Liv? Talk to me,” Mom demanded, looking at me again in the rearview mirror.
“Watch the road,” I croaked weakly, but my words were trapped in the paper bag.
Dad, who still hadn’t refastened his seat belt, turned again, examining me like a specimen pinned to the wall. Hadn’t he seen a gazillion public service announcements about buckling up? Didn’t he know that buckling up saved lives?
“You’re okay, Liv. We’re almost home,” Mom called.
“She’s not okay,” Dad said sharply. “She’s a mess back here.” He gripped my knee with his hand. “Just take it slowly, Olivia. Concentrate on taking a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds and then exhaling.”
I glanced out the window and saw the row of utility poles lining the street. My vision blurred, and my thoughts began racing again. How long had those poles been there? What was the average life expectancy of a city utility pole before, one day, it just crashed to the ground?
Breathe, I ordered myself. The bag inflated and deflated, fast at first and then more slowly. It helped if I closed my eyes, imagined myself safe in my room. By the time we arrived home, I was exhausted. It was hard work trying not to be terrified.
We sat in the driveway for a long moment. Dad and Mom exchanged a glance, and then I felt Mom’s eyes on me in the rearview mirror. Her irises were bright blue from crying, the whites of her eyes streaked a veiny red.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked, balling up the paper bag in my hand. I didn’t want to be a problem, especially since we were in the midst of other, bigger problems. As we walked into the house, my fears began to dissolve like magic, like a bit of dandelion fluff in a breeze. But somehow I knew they’d be waiting for me the moment I was expected to step outside again.
How stupid I’d been before, how naive I’d been to walk through my life unaware of the dangers that were everywhere, around every single corner. I would notice them now, I promised myself. For Daniel’s sake, I would always be on the alert.
Time passed, more slowly than I could have imagined, faster than I would have dreamed. Every time I walked through the living room I saw the little box on top of our fireplace mantel. Kathleen had mentioned buying an urn, and we’d each promised to look online, but hadn’t. Add Daniel’s cremains to the list of things we didn’t discuss.
It was a relief to go back to work, to slide back into my regular school schedule—the bells ringing, students shuffling in and hurrying out, meetings before and after school, the emails and paperwork, the endless, reassuring cycle of lessons to be planned and papers to be graded.
I began leaving for school earlier and earlier, while Kathleen and Olivia were still asleep. I was the second car in the lot, behind the janitor. Somehow it was easier to think there, when my classroom was quiet and there was work to be done. At home, I couldn’t escape the way things had changed. Olivia had panic attacks that could be brought on, seemingly, by nothing—the paperboy passing on his bike, the coffee grinder running in the kitchen. Kathleen, determined not to mope at home, was attempting to fill our lives with fun things. She actually used this word, as if Olivia and I were two-year-olds who had to be coaxed into a trip to the grocery store. “Come on, it will be fun!” She made big, elaborate meals, found movies for us to watch together, proposed a family night that fell flat when Olivia realized all of our board games required four players.
At night when we lay in bed, staring at opposite sides of the room, she would dive into the pep talks that I’d begun to dread.
“Please, try, Curtis.”
And: “You need to do this for me. You need to make an effort.”
Her concern soon changed to disappointment, and eventually, to disgust.
“I can’t believe you won’t do this for me.”
“I’m not there yet,” I admitted.
We slept in the same bed, but it might as well have been split in two—her side, mine, like Lucy and Ricky Ricardo in their twin beds, a nightstand between them. The truth was that I wanted to reach for her, that night and the next and the next, but I couldn’t make myself cross the invisible barrier between us. The days and nights became a meaningless blur, as if some anesthesiologist had forgotten to let up on the ether, and, beneath its fog, we lay deadened and numb. We slept less than three feet apart, curled on our separate sides. I could hear her quiet breaths, the occasional sniffle, a stifled sob held back even in sleep. In my mind, I reached out a hand, touching her shoulder, her waist, the ridge of spine, the skin I knew better than my own. But in actuality, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bridge the gulf. I didn’t want to open up to her, or have her open up to me. Wouldn’t the doubling of misery have been more than we could bear, collectively?
In my saner moments I realized we were running some kind of course, and Kathleen was way ahead, flying through those stages of grief. I heard her on the phone with her friends, referring to what had happened to Daniel as “the accident,” as if it were a completely random thing, a hard fact of life that she had accepted.
But I couldn’t accept it. A lightning strike on a clear day—that was a random thing. In my mind there was a deliberateness to Daniel’s death, a reckless calculation in the act of getting behind the wheel, in taking a corner too fast, clipping a sign, driving away and crawling into bed as if nothing had happened. It didn’t feel random. It felt purposeful.