45. Nicola
Nicola
I’m stuck in a permanent loop. Time speeds up and slows down in strange intervals.
Walking, holding hands.
A sun-lit, pure blue.
The quiet of the morning.
Road clear.
The crow overhead—bare branches.
Emmy pulling.
Ben’s joke.
The slow steps toward death I cannot ever undo.
It is that day.
In the road now, tires squealing. Emmy screaming. Slam. Asphalt. Bones and ligaments. Blood.
I wait for the moment his shoe hits the ground. Black and too shiny, too large, like a cartoon. Something is wrong. Out of place. I look up, and I see him—the driver—but I cannot ever glimpse his face. Like a bad dream, his head is there but missing. No details, eyes, or expression. Just a blur.
Then the car door. Slam. Engine. Reverse. The white monster disappears behind us. Ben lies dying. I go to him and hold his hand. Blood curdles. He takes a final breath. There is nothing I can do. The sirens are miles away.
Pure darkness. The scene collapses. Do you see it now?
No. I don’t. I was distracted. I was looking for the driver.
Stop trying to see what you don’t need to see.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat. I’m falling again.
Walking. Holding hands. Sunlight. The purest day. Blue? The quietest of mornings. Clear road. Crow. Branches. Emmy leading me. Ben making her laugh. Slow steps and death. The thought transpires like it always does: I cannot stop this …
Tires. Scream. Asphalt. Bones. Blood.
There’s the shoe, so big and black that I think I see my own face in it. Glancing up, and he’s there.
“Stop!” I shout, and this breaks up the image like shattered glass.
I know I’m not supposed to talk out of turn, but I can’t help it.
His face is there, right there. If only I could see it.
Particles blurring. Features shifting, like Play-Doh in Emmy’s tiny hands.
It moves and swirls now, coming into focus.
I strain to see it, like a murky picture clearing before my eyes. Push through the fog. Get to the nub of things. Concentrate. Ignore your husband choking beside you in the road, his life expiring. See it. See him.
The face crystallizes, but not enough to be sure. A moment to register it before everything goes dark and the cycle starts again.
Are you getting it now? the darkness asks, its voice inside my ear.
“I don’t think so.”
You are not supposed to see the driver. He doesn’t matter. She does.
“She?”
Yes. She.
“I don’t understand.”
Then let’s go again.
The vision slows. Details emerge, as if the film reel of my life is playing at half speed.
Sunshine. The cool, tepid air of winter in California, the crisp scent of distant fireplaces alight.
We’re walking—the three of us—hand in hand toward Beverly Boulevard.
Overhead, the trees are bare, their branches, like curled fingers, hold on to a smattering of brown leaves.
Ben is up ahead on his phone, head bowed in concentration as he follows the GPS to the swanky Beverly Hills breakfast spot just ten minutes from where we parked the car.
Behind him, Emmy holds his hand, a smile plastered on her face as she glances back at me, hair bouncing in long, silky black braids. They were beautiful in that moment, flowing and whipping around her as she trotted after Ben, a lift in her step. Everything was beautiful for just a moment.
Ben makes a joke that I can’t quite hear, and Emmy laughs. Ben turns, the curb just steps from us now, the empty road waiting.
Overhead, a dark shadow flutters, and I glance up. The dark wings of a crow catch my eyes, its flight path veering into the bare-branched trees. It lands, quivers, and gazes down at me, its eyes two empty pools wherein I swear I can see myself reflected.
The pull of Emmy’s hand in mine breaks the chain, and I see Ben stepping off the curb now, the road still clear.
The crow releases a long, lilting caw in my direction, and then Emmy turns to glance at me over her shoulder.
I hurry after them as a bright flash of white emerges from nowhere.
Brakes squeal. Emmy screams long and loud as the front of the Rolls-Royce screeches toward her, the speed unfathomable, the hit slow yet unavoidable, the drag of uncanny inevitability.
First, Ben, and then Emmy. I pull back, but it is too late.
Before I can stop, I’m in front of the front grill.
It careens into my left leg and sends me up into the air, tumbling, tumbling.
All sound stops, a silent pause as I land—asphalt, numbness, blood.
Paralysis takes over; my left side disappears.
I turn my head at the sound of Emmy’s scream, her sobs cutting through the silence. “Mom!” she screams. “I’m hit! I’m hit.”
My focus shifts past her to Ben, collapsing as blood sputters from his lips, his final breath unleashed.
Everything blackens. The loop reverses, and I’m still there on the ground, but my body is smaller, and the tears being cried are mine, not Emmy’s.
A hand is above me, a short distance away, hitting, hitting.
Every time I resist, every time I try to scream, to tell him to stop, I can’t do it.
I have no voice. My mouth freezes open, and no sound escapes.
Then my jaw unhinges, and the crow’s lilting cry escapes through my lips, thin and birdlike, without any words.
I’m counting sixty-seven loops now of this sequence.
Like traipsing over the same muddy road, each time sinking further and further, I return to that day.
The details become no less unbearable. The darkness pulls in at the corners, focusing my attention on the little things now, the things I might have missed before.
The shoelace of Emmy’s left sneaker, fraying at the edges.
Ben’s pants pocket, missing a button at the rear.
The small fragments of broken glass in the road that wink and glitter when I land, like shells on hot sand.
The roundness of the crow’s eye overhead, a perfect vacant little bead.
Loop sixty-eight, and I realize something. I don’t have to look at the crow. Looking at the crow is just a choice.
Loop sixty-nine. I feel it coming. The great black wings are overhead now. The long caw emerges, pulling me toward the inevitable ending.
“Don’t look up,” I hear my own voice say in the darkness. “Ignore it. It isn’t there.”
Not looking up at that crow feels unnatural, like resisting the urge to breathe. It’s wrong, but after a second, it feels like survival. If I look up, I drown. So, I focus my attention on the thing I want to save this time. Emmy.
She tugs my hand toward the curb, and the pressure of the great black wings above bears down on me, but I resist. Emmy turns around, her voice a soft echo forming new words that weren’t there before. “Mom? What’s wrong?”
I point toward the street and tighten my grip on her hand, stopping her.
She resists because she doesn’t see it yet, but I know it is coming.
The car swerves as I yank her back from the road to pull her toward me.
Her left arm pulls on Ben’s, but it isn’t fast enough to stop him.
He takes my place, the car hitting him head-on, landing in the middle of the road.
I stand still, holding Emmy while she pants at my side.
She breaks free and runs into the street.
Ben sits up and turns, rubbing his head like nothing happened.
My chest tightens, and I try to move, to go to him, but I can’t.
The darkness holds me back. In a single instance, everything collapses, and I’m alone again.
“Ben? Emmy?”
They aren’t here, Nicola. You know that. It’s just you and us.
“Why did you show me that?”
You created the loop, Nicola. You have something you need to work out. So, how did you do?
“I didn’t work anything out. I’m still trapped in here with you!”
Yes, but it’s better this way, isn’t it? You get to think about things while Martha handles the other side.
“The other side?”
Yes, Nicola. The other side of your lives. You’ve made a mess of things there.
“None of this is my fault!”
Oh, Nicola. Weren’t you paying attention?
A small sob escapes me. “I want to go home.”
Yes. And this is your home, too. Haven’t we taught you anything?
“You think I could have saved Emmy and spared Ben’s life? Is that it? Because life doesn’t work that way. You can’t look back and see what could have been.”
That’s right. But consider this: the crow isn’t real. It was never even there.
“What are you talking about? Of course it was there.”
There was no crow. There was only you, Emmy, Ben, and us.
“But I saw it!”
You saw what you needed to see for it to make sense. She was talking to you, so you saw the crow.
“No! There was a bird. I watched it land.”
Try and remember, Nicola. Remember the day.
The truth is, I’ve forged a memory out of pieces and fragments of a broken recollection, out of things Emmy has told me, and out of the whispers I’ve gathered here in the darkness.
But the crow, I am certain I saw it. It’s been locked in my mind, harnessed there and holding on, vivid, as if I were not even in my own body at the time.
Try and remember what really happened when you looked up.
“I can’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Think, Nicola. Try to remember.
“I can’t. I can’t.”
Then let us help you.
The breeze of the day—that day—hits my skin.
I open my eyes. I’m outside under the dappled light of the trees.
The sun behaves as if it has risen only to shine on us.
Everything in the road is clear. Ben walks up ahead, head bowed, the steady shuffle of his gait that indicates he is staring at his phone.
Missing button. Emmy’s frayed shoelace.
Emmy turns, her smile soft, but also sad this time, the slight glimpse of wanting in her eyes. Ben’s hands are quivering as he tries to work his phone through the shattered screen.
Emmy said the night before that we probably should get a divorce if we were going to argue like this. She was right.
I look at Ben, and I see it: the bills piling up at home, his shuffling, uncertain gait, him sitting in the kitchen working on one of his various creative projects, the house needing to be cleaned, the dishes needing to be done.
I see myself coming home from work and doing all the laundry, the dishes, the cooking, the grocery shopping, and then starting again the next week, getting up, going to the office, holding meetings, running my team, keeping clients happy, keeping my boss happy, answering emails at all hours, being sleep-deprived and earning less than I should, never being allowed to finish my complete thought, always waiting for the underhanded compliment, the backbiting, the man who will take the promotion instead of me, the younger, prettier, less bedraggled version of me that will soon take my job.
It grows inside me like a full picture coming into focus. Why couldn’t I see it before? The colors, the depth of it grows darker at the center.
We were going to lose the house. At long last, that’s what everything had come to. And it was Ben’s fault.
Back to the night before, I see him sitting there, hatred for what he had done spewing from me, uncontrollable anger.
What did you do, Ben? Forge my signature or something?
He sighed, a long, frustrated release. I told you. I had no choice.
Bullshit! There is always a choice!
There is always a choice, isn’t there?
Flashes crowd my vision. I see Ben. Good Ben.
Kind Ben. Smart but not intellectual Ben, who did pizza nights for Emmy and her friends and let them stay up late and watch scary movies.
Ben who knew how to make a crazy amount of friendship bracelets, or do Emmy’s hair when it got frizzy, or expertly carve a pumpkin.
Ben who everyone liked best and noticed first because of his smile.
Ben who everyone found funnier and a lot more charismatic than I’d ever be.
I see it all like a whirlwind, circling, circling around me.
That’s when I swear I hear it. The caw of the crow.
I look up, and I see the smooth wings and shiny black body, the crow’s darkness so much like my own.
I stop, transfixed there, and wonder for a split second.
An atom-sized thought passes through me and into oblivion, too small to notice, too microscopic to be considered real, but there passing through me, nonetheless.
And it’s not mine at all. It’s hers. It arrives like a microscopic glitch in the movie reel. So faint, so fast, but there as clear as day.
I hear it now. At last. And the darkness is pleased with me. The truth unfolds like a blanket all around me.
Martha’s voice rings now in my ears, as it did that day.
What if Ben were gone, Nicola, just like your Daddy?