The sirens are blaring, but everything drifts away from me. The noise and the blood, the hands tugging at my body; the light they shine in my eyes and the shock of pure oxygen from the mask strapped over my face.
We’re all strangers, in the end.
I remember something, from a book Oliver gave me months ago. It said that we’re all irrevocably trapped inside our own minds: just as it’s impossible for anyone to truly know us, we can’t begin to hope to know anyone else.
I understand it now.
You can be a part of someone’s life for years, your parent or brother or friend, and then one day they turn around and do something so unconscionable, a crime so great, that suddenly, they’re a stranger to you. You think that their goodness is innate, embedded in their DNA, so you take it for granted, right up until the terrible moment when everything changes. Only then do you realize, those good deeds were actions. Actions that can stop, change on a dime at any time.
You don’t know what’s behind that smile. You can’t imagine who someone will turn out to be. We assume the sun will rise every morning just because it has done every other day, but what happens when you wake up to darkness? When you open your eyes and find, today is the one different day?
I watch them fix the paddles in place on his chest, yell out, and stand clear. I watch the shock jerk through him, the flatline stretching on and on and on.
You can never know anyone at all.
I cycled home from the diner, looping slowly through the quiet streets of the neighbourhood. Our house was at the end of the block, sitting in the shadow of one of the old maple trees that slanted more precariously every year. My father had always threatened to get it taken down, lest another storm send it crashing through their roof, but me and Mom would protest about history and preservation until he let the subject drop. It was ironic that. in the end, he’d been the one to wreak destruction, more thoroughly than any freak storm could have managed.
The car was still in the drive, not moved an inch from when I left that morning.
I felt it hit me all at once: the heavy resignation, and bitterness too. I took a breath and braced myself as I unlocked the door and stepped into the house.
It was silent.
On the good days – the days I hadn’t even realized were good, until they were gone – the house had echoed with sound. The moment I arrived home from school, I would step into bustle and warmth, my mother in the kitchen keeping one eye on the stove, talking on the phone or singing along to country music on the radio. Now I could only hope for the sound of the TV, if any hint of life at all.
‘Mom?’ I called out, walking slowly down the hall, checking the living room. Nothing. ‘I’m home.’
The house was still, my cereal bowl still in the sink and the trash I’d bagged by the back door, waiting to be taken out.
I climbed the stairs, then paused outside my mother’s bedroom door. ‘Mom?’ I tapped lightly.
No reply.
I longed to keep walking, down the hall to my room. I would make dinner and spend the night watching TV, pretending as if I was really alone in the house instead of just alone in every way that really mattered.
But the door had been closed that morning, and all of the day before.
I pushed it open and stepped into the room.
The drapes were drawn, heavy. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim. There were spaces on the dresser and bookshelves where Dad’s things had been, the closet door open, half empty.
And Mom, curled under the covers, staring blankly at the wall.
‘Are you hungry?’ I strode over to the windows, my voice ringing out, bright and false. I yanked back the drapes, even though it would be dark in an hour. Clothing was scattered on the floor, so I picked it up, dropping it in the laundry hamper. ‘I can fix you something for dinner. Some soup, we’re running low on everything else. Maybe you can run to the store tomorrow?’
Still, silence.
I felt fear bloom in my chest, the metallic edge I’d been keeping at bay all summer long.
‘Mom?’ My voice wavered, cracking. Mom finally turned her head, as if it took all the effort she could muster.
‘I’m not hungry, sweetie.’
‘You need to eat.’
‘I’m fine.’ Mom turned her head again, slowly closing her eyes. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all. You make whatever you want.’
She lay there, motionless. The conversation was over.
I slipped out of the room, walking slowly down the hall to my room. I sat on the very edge of my bed and took a breath. My hands were shaking, and I clenched them into two small fists, looking around the room. I’d started packing already, as if that would make the time pass faster. My books were in boxes, my favourites carefully selected to make the trip out to the East Coast. I’d deliberated for hours, weighing each of my collection like favoured children, leaving the remainders stacked, lonely on the shelf.
It looked like my mother’s room now. Like the whole fucking house. Abandoned.
What would she do once I was at college?
Fear drove me to pick up my cellphone and make the call I’d been avoiding.
It took eight rings for Dad to answer. I almost hung up when, suddenly, his voice came, flustered on the other end of the line. ‘Pumpkin, hi – just give me a moment.’
There was silence, muffled voices in the background and then he was there again. ‘Sorry, we’re just heading out the door.’
I felt the ache in my chest tighten. ‘I can call back later.’
‘No, no, I’ve got time. I’m glad you called. What’s up?’
I took a breath. ‘It’s Mom,’ I said carefully. ‘I’m . . . worried about her.’
It felt wrong, to talk about her like this, behind her back, but I didn’t know what else to do. All summer, I’d been telling myself it would pass, this depression, but instead, Mom was sinking lower, disappearing from sight into that bundle of bedcovers and listless grief. ‘She’s not doing so good, Daddy.’ My voice caught, but I pressed on. ‘I’m really worried.’
‘Chloe . . .’ Dad’s voice changed, impatience replacing his earlier enthusiasm. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you expect me to do. Your mother’s her own woman, she has to make her own choices now.’
‘But . . .’ My protest died on my lips.
‘I know this hasn’t been easy for her,’ Dad sighed. ‘And with you going off to college now . . .’
I froze. ‘Are you saying this is my fault?’
‘No, of course not, sweetie,’ he replied quickly. ‘Nobody’s to blame. We’re all just trying to make the best of the situation.’
I let the words sit there, too tired to even be angry. I often wondered, could he hear himself? Or did he believe the lies, even now?
He told me first.
That was the one thing I couldn’t forgive him for, even as it all unfolded, one unforgivable crime after the next. He’d sat down to dinner one night, splitting a pizza with me while Mom worked late at the hospital, and he’d told me, his eyes fixed on some point just beyond my head. He was leaving. There was a woman in California, they’d met on a business trip. They’d fallen in love. He was leaving to be with her.
‘I was going to wait until you left for college,’ he’d said apologetically, as if the timing was the problem, and not the fact of his betrayal. ‘But it’s not fair on Rochelle, to keep going on like this. I can’t pretend any more.’
I sat there, sick to my stomach with guilt. Because he’d made a liar of me too. For those next few awful hours, Mom was out there, oblivious. She was processing paperwork and going to get coffee; chatting with her co-workers on a break. And all the while, her life was about to fall apart, and I was the one who knew it. I was complicit in my father’s crimes now, and oh, how I hated him for it.
After that, there were tears and yelling and recrimination, back and forth for days on end. Mom, furious then wretched then terrified, and my father, strangely resolute. I clo
sed the door on them, not sure which disgusted me most: the unwavering insistence of Dad that he was leaving, or the naked panic in Mom’s voice as she begged him to stay, try counselling, do anything do make it work again.
And then it came out, the real reason for his urgency. This woman was pregnant. He wanted to go and marry her, and raise this other child.
‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,’ he told me, looking weary but self-righteous. He’d pulled his shirts from the closet to fill the cases on the bed, neatly folding them even in the midst of the chaos. ‘Now I’m just trying to do the right thing.’
It still chilled me, that to Dad, this was the noble choice. To switch one wife for another; trade a daughter for his future son.
‘But, about Mom . . . ’ I tried again now, needing him to understand. ‘She’s not going in to work. She’s not doing anything these days. She just lays there, or watches TV.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be fine,’ Dad insisted, as if he hadn’t heard a word. ‘You just focus on your own plans, you must have a lot to get ready. Did you find out your dorm assignment yet?’ he segued smoothly, suddenly upbeat again. ‘We were looking at the brochure again, just the other night. The campus looks great. And if you can’t make it out for Thanksgiving, we’ll come visit in the spring, after the baby comes. You’ll want to meet your brother. Rochelle can’t wait.’
I listened to him chatter happily about college courses and their latest pre-natal visit, and wondered how he could be so oblivious. It seemed cruel, callous even, to go from dismissing Mom’s agony to sharing news about his own new life without even pausing for breath. But if there was one thing I’d learned in the months since his leaving, it was that my father was gifted with a breathtaking ability for denial. It was as if he’d created a shield around himself, and all the damage and hurt and pain simply slid off, never piercing him the way it sliced through the rest of us.
‘I should go.’ I cut him off, unable to listen any more. ‘I don’t want to keep you.’
‘It was great talking to you, sweetie,’ Dad said, unaware of the crushing emptiness that settled around me, the empty house, and the fear of that closed bedroom door. ‘Don’t worry so much about your mom, I’m sure she’ll be fine.’
There was a voice in the background, her voice, and then the line went dead and he was gone.
I sat, not moving, for another minute. Then I forced myself to change clothes and head back down the stairs to the kitchen. I turned on all the lights in the house, until the rooms were filled with a warm golden glow; twisting the old-fashioned dial on the radio until I found the country station again, playing songs I recognized from years ago. I took out the trash, and ran the dishwasher; fixed soup, and a plate of buttered toast, and a pot of hot tea.
I left a tray by Mom’s bed and then ate alone in front of the TV, flipping through stations of endless noise and laughter, quiz shows and reality scandals. None of it distracted me from the silence upstairs, or the life that my father was living in a house a thousand miles away.
Ethan’s face rose up in my mind: the eagerness of his smile. The curiosity in his gaze.
I felt a restless itch and bounced up again. I found my work jeans, crumpled in the laundry – the napkin folded up in my pocket.
I smoothed it out. Ethan’s handwriting was firm and sure: his phone number dark on the page.
I hesitated another moment, and then I dialled.
I waited on the front porch, a little nervous, and wishing I wasn’t. Ethan arrived on the stroke of seven, just as promised. He pulled up to the kerb in his pick-up truck, but when I got up to climb in, he shut off the engine and came down to open my door.
‘Thanks,’ I murmured, surprised by the old-fashioned gesture.
‘Always.’ Ethan grinned. He’d changed his shirt and taken a shower, his hair still pressed damp against his scalp. ‘You look nice.’
I was only wearing a top and jeans, but I still felt a tiny rush at his compliment. I blushed, climbing up into the cab of the truck and letting Ethan close the door behind me. I looked around, taking stock as he crossed back around to the driver’s side. The front seats were swept clean, but behind me, there was a crumple of fast-food wrappers, spare sweaters, loose change.
It struck me suddenly just how little I knew about this guy. He’d breezed into town, an outsider, and now I was sitting in his truck, trusting him to take me where he said we would go. Everyone here knew everyone else, but he was a stranger. A blank slate.
And I was one too.
The thought was strangely reassuring, after months of ducking questions and avoiding the sympathy on everyone’s faces. Ethan wouldn’t know a thing about my family’s history, or the sadness lurking behind my front door. I could be anyone I wanted with him tonight.
I might not even have to lie to him at all.
‘Hartley OK?’ he asked, naming the nearest town with a movie theatre, about thirty minutes away. He started the engine and casually reached to rest his hand on the back of my seat as he turned and reversed out of the drive.
‘Sure.’ I reached for the stereo tuner, but then saw it was hooked up to his iPod with a snaking wire.
‘Here, take your pick,’ Ethan passed me the handset. I scrolled through, glad of the ice-breaker. Now we would chat about music, talk about our favourite bands and confess the weird, uncool songs lurking in our collections. I could do that, easy and inconsequential.
‘But you’ve got to promise not to judge me,’ he added with a grin.
‘You’ve got some guilty secrets?’ I teased.
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
I glanced across and saw a dark, solemn glint in his eyes. Then Ethan laughed. ‘No, I’m just messing with you. I’m an open book, nothing much to hide.’
‘Not even your love for Blakely Ray?’ I smirked, landing on a list of songs by the latest teen pop star craze.
‘What? She’s crazy catchy.’ Ethan protested. Other guys might have gotruffled, but he just laughed when I set one of the songs to play, lip-synching along with faux sincerity. ‘C’mon girl, get into it!’
‘OK, OK, you win!’ I laughed and changed the track, and then guitar chords were drifting, light and gentle, out through the open windows into the crisp evening air. I turned my head to watch the world slide past, Haverford quickly receding behind us as the highway snaked past the modern development on the outskirts of town, then into the wide open bleed of woods and fields, ramshackle ranch houses dotted behind overgrown hedgerows.
I breathed in, and felt the sharp knot in my chest ease, just a little.
‘Where did you move from?’ I turned my head back to Ethan, finding him idly tapping the steering wheel in time with the music. He drove with an ease I envied, his broad shoulders relaxed, one elbow resting out the window.
‘Columbus,’ he replied, shooting me a brief, rueful grin. ‘Then before that, Chicago, Atlanta, we did a few months in Nashville my junior year . . . Dad moves around a lot for the business, and Mom doesn’t like us all to be apart for too long.’
‘How was it, moving around so much?’ I studied him carefully, looking for some sign of conflict beneath the casual smile.
Ethan shrugged. ‘It sucked to begin with, but I got the hang of it after a while. I’d join the basketball team, or go out for whatever sport was in season, and things would settle down pretty quick.’
‘Guys don’t know how lucky they are,’ I shook my head, thinking of my own high school life: the cliques and strange, shifting hierarchies that I’d barely managed to get a handle on before we were tossing our graduation caps in the air, suddenly free.
‘What do you mean?’ Ethan looked over.
‘Just . . . girls are different.’ I explained. ‘You guys can shoot some hoops and swing by a kegger, and suddenly you’re in. But, I’ve lived in that town my whole life, and I still don’t know if I fit in.’
‘Sure you do.’ Ethan corrected me. ‘I’ve seen you at the diner, chatting with all the regulars. P
eople love you.’
I didn’t reply. It was easy to think of Haverford as a picture postcard town, but nowhere was perfect. Sure, I could see the same people, day in, day out; exchange pleasantries, chat about the weather and the high school football game, but I’d often wondered, how quickly that friendly charm could slip. Last year, there’d been an accident: a car full of kids from the next town over, two dead on an icy stretch of highway at night. First came the platitudes, flowers on the side of the road and a tearful memorial service at the chapel out past Thompsett Falls, but then the whispers started, curling around morning coffee as the town mothers sat, chatting in the front booth; snaking louder across the street, in line at the post office, then finally scrawled in red paint across the lockers of the survivors in school.
Drunk. Slut. Killer.
It didn’t take much, in a town like this. I’d seen it for myself, the way even my mother’s friends took a half-step back after Dad left. As if the scandal were contagious, Mom somehow to blame for her own trust and ignorance.
I shook off the memories. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t think about it tonight. ‘So, I don’t know much about you, aside from your thing for tuna melts,’ I said.
‘Fire away,’ Ethan laughed. ‘Like I said, open book.’
‘Parents?’ I asked, thinking of my own tangled family.
‘Together, all good as far as I can tell.’
‘Siblings?’ I asked, quickly, to stop him repeating the question back at me. I didn’t talk about Mom with anyone. Not even my best friend, Alisha, knew.
‘A brother, older,’ Ethan replied, tapping on the steering wheel. ‘He’s at Yale,’ he added, with a wry note in his voice.
‘What about you, did you not think about college?’
‘Nah.’ Ethan made a face. ‘School was never my thing. I’ve been helping Dad out for years, and business is good again, so I figure, why not? I’ll learn more on site than I would sitting in a classroom somewhere, taking notes.’ He paused, ‘What about you? What’s the big plan?’