30 Time Passes. Then One Day You Wake Up.
30
Time Passes. Then One Day You Wake Up.
I felt like a lit candle just about to go out, when the flame loses intensity, shrinks, and writhes, trying to avoid the inevitable end.
For days, I’d been moving in the shadows, with no light, no color. My routine had become a series of mechanical acts, my voice a whisper I barely used.
One by one, I picked up my thoughts and memories and locked them in a little box in the most secret part of myself. I ran from the chaos into the arms of self-control.
And like that, without light, without color, spring came.
The first Sunday in April was a clear day after weeks of rain. The sun was bright and warm through the windows. I got out of bed and pressed my nose to the glass and saw birds flitting around and boats on the lake drifting away from the coast.
It was a beautiful day for an occasion as sweet as it was sad.
There was a knock at my door, and my brother slipped in before I could even say hi. He gave me a tight hug, then examined me with a worried look.
“Is it just me, or are you skinnier?”
“I’m the same as I’ve always been.”
I sat back on the bed and Hoyt sat down beside me.
“Don’t do this to me,” I said.
“What?”
“Stare at me. It makes me nervous.”
“I see someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
I forced a smile and lay back on the mattress. He was right. I was in a bad mood. I had been for a long time.
Out of nowhere, he started tickling me like a crazy person until I shook and rolled back and forth, trying to get away from him. Since we were kids, he’d always known how to get under my skin.
“Come on, Pumpkin, give your Uncle Gilbert some sugar. Just a teeny tiny kiss.” Again with the Anne of Green Gables references.
“Stop!”
“No.”
“Hoyt!”
“I’m not stopping.”
My stomach hurt from laughing so hard.
“Fine, fine, I give up.”
Hoyt stopped and pointed at his cheek, and I gave him a little peck.
“I always hated you tickling me when I was little, and I still do,” I said.
“You love it.”
“What I liked was you playing with me.”
“Not me.”
“Liar.”
We both lay back and stared up at the ceiling.
“Today’s her birthday,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“I’m going to the cemetery. You want to come with?”
I grew tense. I hadn’t been back there since I’d learned the truth about her death from my father. I had tried, but I’d never managed to make it past the gate.
“Sure.”
I don’t know where I found the strength to do it. Maybe I was just resisting giving up completely and saw it as a challenge I could face.
“We should tell Hayley, too,” I said.
“I already called her, but she wouldn’t pick up. It’s always a hard day for her. She usually struggles to get through it.”
Guilt ate into my heart. A guilt inseparable from my father’s words, attacking my weaknesses, making me feel insignificant, blaming me for tearing the family apart. I was playing a dangerous game, thinking that going there with Hoyt and Hayley might help, but I had no other choice. The bitter memories were chasing me like ghosts, and I was afraid they would catch up to me.
Hoyt patted me on the leg and got up.
“See you downstairs, okay?”
“Sure,” I said.
Hoyt drummed his fingers on the wheel. I realized he was anxious, but it was getting on my nerves. We had been stuck in the lot for a while, in a long line of cars at a standstill behind a bus full of tourists that had gotten stuck between two other vehicles.
“I don’t get it,” my brother grumbled. “Why the hell would tourists come waste their time at a cemetery instead of going to a museum? It’s weird.”
I shrugged. I liked to visit cemeteries. At least, I used to.
“I mean, these places are kind of like museums,” I responded, to his evident skepticism. “Think about it, there are mausoleums here that are hundreds of years old, sculptures from the Victorian era, famous people with elaborate tombs that are basically works of art… You can see why people are interested.”
“There are no dead people in museums.”
“Yeah there are. What do you think a mummy is? Or those animals they have in natural history museums? You know those are real animals. Grandma only told you they weren’t because she didn’t want you to start crying.”
Hoyt waved me off. He hated being reminded of how sensitive he’d been as a little boy. He used to cry when he stepped on an ant. He was still that way, I thought. He just knew how to cover it up better. That was what our family did best: cover things up.
We bought some lilies at a flower stand, and Hoyt started walking over the paved path to the grave. I watched him, incapable of moving, and swallowed. When he noticed I wasn’t with him, he turned, his expression preoccupied.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I lied in a thin voice, faking a smile.
He walked back toward me, took my hand, and pulled me forward softly. We walked beneath trees whose branches cast shadows on the damp grass. Soon we were there. The bright spots of sunlight on the ground quivered when the wind shook the trees, and I could see bits of dust, pollen, and little insects hovering in the light. It was so pretty, we couldn’t help but stop and stare.
“Hello, Mom. Happy birthday,” Hoyt said, laying the flowers on the ground. Then we stood there in silence for a while, remembering her.
“You know when I was eight I decided to let my hair grow long because I was jealous of how Mom used to braid yours and Hayley’s?”
“Are you serious?” I said, grinning.
He nodded. “She would spend hours brushing your hair, sometimes until you fell asleep. And then she’d sing to you.”
“Yeah, I remember that.”
“She loved your curls. They were just like hers,” a voice behind me said. I turned and saw Hayley. She said hello and patted Hoyt on the arm. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you. I wasn’t sure if I could come. If I could take it, you know. Especially not with Grandma here, too.”
“Don’t worry,” Hoyt I said, taking her hand. “I’m glad you’re here. Maybe we both need each other to get through it.”
All at once, I felt like an intruder between the two of them, as if I shouldn’t have burst in on that moment that had always belonged to just the two of them. They were twins, they’d been together since before they were born, they had a connection I could never compete with. They shared feelings, memories, losses. A lonely childhood where the only thing they had was each other.
And it was my fault.
I was sad. Furious. I looked at the grave. She shouldn’t be there. She should be up here, and I down there. Fate had made a mistake, letting me live and her die.
And even that was a step too far. I simply shouldn’t ever have existed.
“I’m sorry.” The words came out of me of their own free will, cutting me in two. “I’m so sorry.”
I started hyperventilating. For months now, I’d been undergoing a slow, painful torture, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t keep it in. I couldn’t go on pretending that nothing was happening when it was.
I cried, sobbed, was beyond all consolation. Furious with myself. Desperate. Brokenhearted.
“Harper, what’s going on?”
My sister tried to make me look at her, but I couldn’t, and shoved her aside.
“What is it?” Hoyt asked.
“It looks like an anxiety attack,” Hayley said. “Harper, honey, relax. Everything’s all right. We’re here for you.”
I kept shaking my head and walking backward.
“It’s not all right, nothing’s all right, it’s all my fault.” I flailed around with my arms, then wiped my nose. “It’s my fault.”
“What is?” Hoyt asked with fear in his voice.
“Everything. Mom’s death. Dad being alone. You having to grow up without her. She couldn’t even be at your wedding, Hayley. I know how much you would have wanted that.”
“But, honey,” she said, coming closer, “she was there for me. I do wish she could have come, but she was there in spirit. I know that. Why are you saying all this now, though?”
“Because there’s something you don’t know.”
“What?” Hoyt asked.
I closed my eyes and let it all out.
“I came here to tell Mom I wanted to be a writer. And Dad was here, and we got in an argument about the bookstore, the house… I kept asking him to finally tell me why the hell he hated me so much. And he did. He told me it was my fault Mom had died. Her cancer… They could have cured it if she’d accepted treatment. But…she didn’t because she was pregnant with me. If…if she’d gotten an abortion, she could have recovered. She’d have been there for your birthdays, she’d have met Scott and Megan. She’d be a grandmother one day… And now, none of that will happen because I screwed it up.”
Between the hiccups, the panting, the tears, the trembling, I could barely speak. Hoyt and Hayley just stood there and stared, eyes wide.
“Dad told you that?” Hoyt said. “What else did he say?”
“That he would never forgive me.”
“That son of a bitch.”
“He said…I owed him, I owed you. I said sorry, I asked him to forgive me, I really am sorry, I said, but it wasn’t enough for him. He wanted me to show it.”
“Show it? How?” Hayley asked.
“By being the person he always wanted me to be. And I tried. I went home, I took a job at the company, I forgot my dreams, writing, the bookstore… I broke up with Trey, and now he’s with another girl. I don’t matter to him anymore. All I want is to disappear.”
“Trey?” they asked in unison.
“What does Trey have to do with this?” Hayley asked.
My brother didn’t even blink. So many emotions were running through him that he was in a daze, but then a moment came when he understood. He brought his hands to his head.
“I’m going to kill him. I’m going to string him up by his balls and…”
“Hoyt! You’re standing at your mother’s grave!” Hayley reproached him.
“No!” I shouted, rushing to Trey’s defense. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He helped me. A lot. He wanted to tell you, he wanted to tell both of you, but he didn’t have time. I broke up with him first and made him promise he wouldn’t tell.”
“Did he sleep with you?”
“Hoyt!” Hayley shouted.
“What? I need to know. I can’t believe that bastard was doing it with my little sister and didn’t tell me. My best friend! Fuck!”
Hayley ignored him—to her, he was acting like a child—and she concentrated on me. “So you’re telling me you and Trey…?” I nodded. “For how long?”
As I tried to pull myself together, I realized how strange the situation was. I had opened my heart to them, and the only thing they actually seemed to care about was me going out with Trey. I turned around and walked away. And then I understood. It was as predictable as the ending of a story. How could I have failed to see it?
I turned back to them. “Why weren’t you surprised when I told you about Mom?” They looked at each other, clueless as to how to respond. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew. And you never said anything.”
“Harper, we couldn’t. We promised we never would. It was a secret. You were never supposed to know,” Hayley said.
“Why?”
“Because of this!” she shouted. “Because you’d blame yourself when you’d never done anything. You deserved to live without that burden.”
“Yeah, Pumpkin,” Hoyt interrupted her. “This isn’t your burden to bear. There is no guilty party here. It’s just a tragedy, and that’s that.”
“You knew,” I repeated, more for me than for them. “Since when?”
Hayley looked at Mom’s grave, as though asking forgiveness or seeking permission. Then she looked at me wearily.
“Mom told us not long before she died. She knew Dad would blame you, he already did before you were born, and she was scared he would turn us against you. But we understood, and we promised her we’d take care of you just as she would.”
“But it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to you, having to deal with that responsibility when you were so little.”
“What about you, though, Harper? You were the youngest one, the most sensitive, the most vulnerable, and you didn’t have a mother or a father. Even Grandma couldn’t see us as much as she’d like.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you dare tell us you’re sorry again. You didn’t do anything,” Hoyt reminded me. “You should have come to us and told us what was going on before you made a decision. Not just about Dad, about everything. And everything includes…”
“Hoyt, drop the thing with Trey, okay?” Hayley said. Hoyt scowled at her and murmured something I didn’t hear.
“Fine, I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything this time. The whole truth.”
Hayley came close and hugged me. I leaned against her and closed my eyes, trying not to cry again.
“How about we go to my place and order some food?” she said. “We can talk there. Anyway…” She parted my hair to look me in the eyes. “I have something for you.”
“What?”
“You’ll see.”