How had I lost all of it? All of that brightness, and Brooke too?
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket then, though it took me a long moment to recognize the sound and vibration and haul myself out of the past long enough to dig it out. It was a text from Carolyn – who had finally accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to answer her calls.
Come to the hospital right now!! 911!!!!
it read.
I went completely cold.
This was it, I thought through the iciness that spread through me. It had finally happened. Tim must have taken a turn for the worse.
I held the phone in my hand and stared at it, realizing as I did that I was too much of a coward to text Carolyn back for clarification. I didn’t want to know. I would find out soon enough whether I wanted to or not, wouldn’t I?
I climbed to my feet and lurched for the door. As I staggered through the house, our house, I knew I should have been replaying all the scenes of Tim’s and my time together, of this life of ours. I should have been telling myself something comforting – like that it didn’t matter that parts of our life weren’t what they should have been. That we’d built something good. That just because it had ended horribly and now tragically, that didn’t erase all that had gone before.
But I didn’t really feel any of that.
I just felt numb. All the way through.
I stood in the corridor outside the ICU waiting room and stared at my sister without comprehension, as if I could somehow make sense of what had just happened through the force of my glare alone.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said again, hearing the strain in my own voice. ‘Why did you text me at all? Why didn’t you just talk to the doctor yourself?’
Carolyn actually rolled her eyes, as if this were a wholly unreasonable question. She leaned back against the wall in the hallway and wrapped her arms around her middle.
‘I really can’t,’ she murmured, her voice hinting at a wealth of untold tragedies, so very much in the style of our mother. It made my shoulders creep up to a place right below my ears. ‘I told you. It gives me horrible anxiety and it certainly can’t be good for the baby.’
‘I just want to make sure I’m fully understanding what happened here,’ I said, aware that my tone was shifting into what my mother called my Lawyer Mode. I didn’t try to modify it. Some things called for a little cross-examination, and this was one of them. ‘You texted me, indicating it was an emergency, because you didn’t feel like having a conversation with a doctor. That can’t be what you’re telling me, Carolyn. Can it?’
‘I can do without the sarcastic tone, Sarah,’ she replied, with another dramatic roll of her eyes.
‘I thought Tim was dead,’ I snapped back at her. ‘Or dying. I drove down here preparing myself for impending widowhood. I was thinking about how to go about setting up his funeral service.’ I forced myself to stop. To inhale. ‘But he’s actually fine. Better, the doctors wanted to tell you, even if he isn’t awake yet – but you couldn’t have that conversation.’ I pressed my fingertips to my temples to keep my head from exploding. ‘When did you become such a delicate, hothouse flower?’
Carolyn pushed herself away from the wall. ‘I’m not
going to fight with you about this,’ she muttered. She shoved her jet-black hair back from her face. ‘And I’m not going to compete with you for terminology here. Is that why you’re so angry? It’s like you would take some kind of sick pleasure in getting to be Tim’s widow because I’m not – and I get it. I really do.’
‘What are you talking about?’ My voice was absurdly, almost frighteningly calm. I shoved my hands deep in the pockets of the parka I hadn’t had time to do more than unzip, and rocked back on the comfy heels of my winter boots. Anything to keep the drumbeat of potential violence at a low level I could control, rather than expressing it all over Carolyn’s pretty face.
‘I heard the way you said that,’ she said, her voice shaking then, her eyes filling with tears. Crocodile tears, I was almost certain, although with her level of melodrama I could never be sure. ‘Believe me, Sarah, I know you’re still his wife. I know you’re getting off on getting to play the role here. Still, despite everything.
I know
.’
The way she said that made my whole body fill with what felt like some kind of howling wind. Probably because there was that uncomfortable edge of truth to what she was saying, and I couldn’t help but hate her more for it. For recognizing it and calling attention to it, so I couldn’t pretend any more. I had to stand there for a moment until the tornado subsided to some kind of dull roar. Until I could be sure that I wouldn’t unleash it if I opened up my mouth.
Carolyn, as ever, was completely blind to the danger. She pushed her hair back again and kept her hands there, on top of her head, making her face seem starker, somehow. The bones of it more delicate. For a moment she looked almost haunted, and I was struck by that. What ghosts made Carolyn’s life a misery? What regrets? But maybe I was projecting. Maybe I wanted to imagine that she could feel those things. It made her less of a monster, didn’t it? It made her my sister again. Maybe I wanted that more than I’d admitted to myself before.
‘I know this hurts you to hear,’ she said in that same wounded tone of voice, so much like our mother’s it set my teeth on edge and made my heart pound in that familiar way I hated, ‘but if he woke up, he’d want me. Not you. On some level you have to know that.’
So much for ghosts and regrets. And tornado control.
I let it rip.
‘What do you think being a wife
is
?’ I snapped at her, not even trying to modify my volume or my tone. ‘You think it’s all doggy-style in the afternoon and sneaking away to a bed and breakfast to play out some romantic fantasies? Dream on, Carolyn. Marriage is a lot more work than that.’
‘I’m not going to compare relationships with you,’ she said primly, as if from some high horse.
‘You want to be his wife?’ I threw at her. ‘Then act like his wife. Feel free to take this over. I give you my blessing. I don’t even know why I bothered. Other women in my
position would have lit the both of you on fire weeks ago.’
‘What?’ She studied my face, blinking as if I’d surprised her, and as if she were not at all comfortable with putting that particular shoe on the other foot. ‘What are you …?’
‘I’m sitting here keeping watch, keeping some insane vigil, and for what?’ I realized at that point that I was talking to myself. That in no way slowed me down. ‘Who am I proving myself to? You? Tim? What’s the fucking point?’
‘Are you okay?’ she asked, and I thought it was cute, really, that she sounded like she cared. But I wouldn’t make the mistake of believing those little flickers of humanity again. They were nothing more than shooting stars – rocks and debris combusting and pretending to be stars on the way down.
‘As his wife, Carolyn, you don’t get to have too much anxiety to deal with his medical care,’ I told her matter-of-factly. ‘You don’t get to
opt out
. You have to sit by his bed and talk about it all, in detail, with every nurse and doctor who wanders by and glances at his chart. You don’t get to lounge around in the waiting room like a pampered mistress. They put that shit right in the wedding vows, for exactly this kind of situation.
Sickness and health
.’ I spread out my arms like I was taking in the whole hallway. Or about to take flight. ‘And since you want all that so badly, have at it.’
She looked nervous. Or maybe that was just her version of confused.
‘I didn’t mean that I wanted you to—’
‘Disappear?’ I threw the word at her. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Look,’ she said, frowning – and, I thought, uncertain for the first time in memory. ‘I’m just really tired. And crazy emotional, okay?’
‘I don’t care,’ I said, and it was delightfully, encompassingly true. It was like freedom, finally. ‘That’s his problem. And he’s yours.’ I even laughed. ‘Text me if he wakes up.’
And just like that, I emancipated myself from what remained of my marriage. I didn’t even think twice. If Carolyn wanted it that badly, she could have it. Him.
After all, I had other things to do. Like figure out what the hell had happened to me, and my life. And then work out how I was going to fix it.
And that, I told myself fiercely as I headed for the door and the me I’d left by the side of the road somewhere without even knowing it, had nothing to do with either one of them.
Of course, the reality of my supposedly epic journey into my own lost past started off somewhat more prosaically than I might have imagined when I threw those words at Carolyn and stormed off into the night, my righteousness all about me like a great cape.
As these things often did.
That didn’t mean it wouldn’t turn out to be appropriately epic
eventually
, I assured myself as some kind of pep talk the next morning, clutching a cardboard cup of coffee between my cold hands as I waited in the local train station. It just meant that like most things, this particular journey was starting off small, any epic qualities hidden under a barrage of tiny, insignificant and, frankly, irritating details. Like the annoyingly loud and boisterous conversation two splendidly suited young executive types were having in anticipation of the morning train, forcing the rest of us to listen to their breakdown of some sports event they’d both watched the night before whether we wanted to or
not. Or the woman standing next to me on the freezing cold platform whose perfume, even under all of those winter layers, made me think I might either sneeze or vomit. Or both.
Life never allowed any graceful sinking into a convenient montage scene, did it?
I took the train into the city as I had a million times before, packed tightly and resentfully onto the Metro North commuter line all the way south through the pretty and not-so-pretty New York state Manhattan suburbs and then on into Grand Central station. All the black-clad, stone-faced commuters surged from the train the moment we pulled in, scattering into the frenetic December energy of mid-week Manhattan. They had jobs to go to, careers to tend,
very important things to do
. This was evident in every frown, every carefully blank expression, every impassive stare. I followed behind at a much slower pace, unwilling to admit to myself how hard it was to breathe through all the memories.
I stopped for a moment in the middle of the famous main concourse – taking my life in my hands by obstructing the flow of foot traffic, like all the tourists I’d once despised for getting in my way right here – and soaked it in. The morning light flowing in through the high windows. The restaurants, the famous stairs, the
magnitude
of it all. I wanted to go and sit in the Oyster Bar again or wander through the Market Hall for hours. I wanted to stand still until the terminal emptied out entirely, then filled up
again, to experience the great tide of it. It was beautiful, crowded, wholly impersonal, and somehow welcoming all the same. It made something inside of me swell, then ache.
Tim and I had been commuters like the ones streaming all around me after we’d moved to Rivermark, for almost a whole year before we’d finally opened up our own practice. I’d rushed through this glorious, iconic space every morning, and had so rarely stopped to look around. I’d so rarely stopped at all. Sometimes I’d simply been focused on the day ahead of me. Other times I’d already been embroiled in some or other inevitably stressful conversation on my cell phone as I’d strode down the Lexington Passage and then outside for the quick, brisk walk to the firm over on Lexington Avenue. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. As if that had been someone else entirely.
Today, I had no particular agenda. No meetings to get to, no calls to return, no reason at all to join in with the rest as they charged toward the high-powered and hectic day ahead of them. I walked, slowly, through the passage, past the shops, and then out into the city.
Here I come, past
, I thought as I pushed through the doors.
It’s high time to fix what went wrong!
But the first thing that hit me was the cold. It was
so cold
. Bitterly, viciously cold with that special, brutal wind that cut you in half whenever you turned a corner. Or stood still. Or did anything at all. Manhattan in December was an exercise in deep chill. And a blisteringly freezing
wind chill, too. I wrapped my scarf more tightly around my neck and pulled the wool hat I was no longer too vain to wear down over my ears. I wiggled my fingers in my gloves and then shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my parka. The good news was I didn’t have to appear in any sort of office today. No one would care if I looked windblown, or if the only shoes I planned to wear were my comfortable winter boots. I wouldn’t have to worry about the effect of the salted sidewalks on a pair of prettier boots, or the necessity of carting around cute shoes to put on once I reached the safety of an office. I could simply walk the city I’d once loved so much it was like it was a person instead of a place, and try to remember why on earth I’d left it for the one town I’d always vowed I’d never live in. Voluntarily, anyway.
I kind of thought there should be something to mark this moment. Trumpets? A choir? Even a Salvation Army bell-ringer would have done the trick. But there was only the screech of brakes and the clatter of trucks, and another stream of invective behind me because I wasn’t moving. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but it was too cold to stand still on a busy sidewalk in Midtown and wait to figure out why I wasn’t getting it. Also, someone might actually bodily remove me from their path if I didn’t remove myself. So I started walking south, toward the part of my past I remembered best.
It was a long, slow walk, along the sometimes slippery and not always well-shovelled sidewalks, and around the
piles of snow packed high at every kerb after the last big snowfall. I realized quickly that I’d lost that New York street rhythm that had used to come so naturally to me; that strong walking pace I’d automatically defaulted to whenever I found myself on a city street, charging toward the next WALK sign. I told myself this was different, that I was a tourist today like all the rest who clogged up Manhattan in the run-up to Christmas and that I had no need to fall into any old rhythms, but I felt the lack of that automatic, confident stride. Oh, how I felt it inside of me. It heated me up like shame.