“I bought you a present yesterday.” I could practically hear the smile in his voice; nobody loved a surprise like my Alex. A terrible pang of guilt nagged at my heart for having been irritable, even if he hadn’t known it. He’d been gone for days and I’d begun to miss him a whole damn lot.
“Let’s bring Andrea here for her birthday in the fall,” he continued. “Wouldn’t that be great? To really do the city together, all three of us?”
“Definitely.”
“We could take her ice skating at Rockefeller Center.” I had a momentary vision of holding Andie’s small hand in mine, leading her in an awkward circle around the rink while Alex videoed us together. But then my boss stood from his desk, clipboard in hand, making a beeline right for me.
“Let’s talk about it when you get back.” I wanted to hurry Al off the phone before my boss realized I was on a personal call. After we said goodbye, I wondered what I’d missed when the siren had silenced his words. It seemed like something critical, something I needed to know. In fact, I almost called him back to ask, but then with the day’s usual hectic tension, I forgot about it completely. Never even thought about it again—or about him sitting there on those cold steps, phoning me just to hear the bells. Not until he was dead, and by then I could hardly think of anything else.
God, Alex loved me.
He truly did. I just hadn’t learned yet that time is elastic: it stretches and gives, far more graciously than it probably should, and then one day, when you least expect it, something simply ruptures, and your sheltered life is done.
No, I couldn’t have imagined then that Alex would be stone dead nearly three months from that very day. Long before the fall or Andrea’s birthday arrived, or even before we could accomplish a fraction of our dreams.
Hard to believe that only those cathedral bells would remain, haunting me like the refrain of some long-forgotten hymn from my childhood.
***
Not sure how long I’ve been on this sofa, but I must’ve drifted off because the living room is completely dark except for the glow of the television. My head feels like someone’s been pounding a dagger into the center of the thing. A big, gauzy swollen melon of a head, thanks to the five beers I’ve already tossed back. Thank God it’s Friday night.
I feel around on the floor beside the sofa, and find a sixth bottle still open. The ceiling spins a little; the blue, artificial light from the television flickers above me in melancholy shades, like some eerie heavenly host watching to make sure I’m still alive.
My eyes drift closed as the warm beer slides down my throat, cloying, but at least I find some release.
Used to be I’d sit outside on nights like this one. Go out on the deck and inhale the spring night air. Maybe smoke a cigar, read the paper. Wait for Alex to come home from the hospital so we could unwind together over a glass of wine. Used to be I treasured putting Andrea to bed; it was something precious, and if Alex got home in time, we did it together. It always felt like the three of us had really formed a family then. Now I only want to close up shop at night. I can barely focus on her bedtime story anymore, much less enjoy reading it to her.
She knows it, too. She knows it, but I don’t think she even cares at this point. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d rather live with anyone else but me.
My eyes drift shut and I imagine that I can hear the garage door opening, Alex home for the night. My heart beats faster in expectation, because through the hazy beer scrim, I half-believe it’s a possibility. There’d be the familiar jangle of his keys dropping on the kitchen counter, then maybe Andrea’s feet slapping exuberantly across the hardwoods. “Daddy!” she’d cry, flinging herself into his arms. The love of both our lives, come home once again.
Tears sting my eyes; I blink them back and take a long swig of the beer again. Anything to numb the pain. I maneuver the bottle onto the floor carefully, rubbing at my temples, when I’m jolted back to reality by Andrea’s whispery voice. “Rebecca has a scar like mine,” she says, and my eyes snap wide open.
I’ve spent a year trying to get to this place with her, to get her to talk about the accident. All my efforts to this point have met with nothing but stony silence.
When I jerk upright on the sofa, planting both feet squarely on the floor, the near-empty bottle of beer clatters over, a sticky puddle forming beneath my socked foot. But I don’t even notice, not really. My attention’s trained only on her.
She stares at the floor, tugging on the sleeve of her long cotton nightgown self-consciously. She wants to say more; I sense it. God, I want to help her do this, too, but I just don’t want to spook her. I don’t want to do a thing to chase my little girl away. I regulate my breathing, remembering what our counselor has said: it has to be on her terms, her timetable.
Andrea shifts her weight from foot to foot, looking up at me through her dusty auburn lashes. She’s waiting for something.