And perhaps, too, she was afraid of what she might uncover—what the therapeutic process might reveal. Perhaps she wasn’t prepared to learn how deep her unhappiness went. Maybe if she started talking about the ways she felt like a failure, how she’d burrowed into a life in which she sometimes didn’t even recognize the person she’d become, she would see things she didn’t want to face. Articulating the unspoken would make it real.
The drugs did what they were supposed to do. They made her numb. She didn’t feel better, exactly; she just didn’t feel as much. It didn’t help that the late winter sky was gray, opaque; the trees were bare, the streets damp with melting snow and intermittent rain.
In the mornings, after waving good-bye to Annie at the bus stop and dropping Noah at preschool, she’d often go to a nearby coffee shop. Leafing through the communal newspaper basket she’d find a Times Living section, then buy a four-dollar latte and sit at a small round table by the window, watching other people get on with their lives: a college kid at the next table, sketching a strange-looking bicycle on graph paper with a pencil, making a few strokes and stopping, resting his chin in his hand. A blind man in a hooded sweatshirt, carrying a gym bag, led by a Seeing Eye dog. An expressionless woman with kohl-rimmed eyes who nodded slightly as the man across from her made an emphatic point. A blond woman in a shiny red Jeep, parallel parking in front of the café. Picketers wearing sandwich-board signs standing on the corner, protesting labor practices at the gourmet grocery on the next block. Everyone appeared to be in a hurry, moving with purpose, except for an old man who wandered aimlessly down the sidewalk, as if he couldn’t decide which way to go.
Alison felt alone in a way that she couldn’t ever remember having felt, a sense of aloneness so profound that she couldn’t breathe. I have done this, she thought—I deserve this. I deserve to feel this way.
At night, after everyone else was in bed, Alison wandered from room to room without turning on any lights, pausing at the windows to gaze out at the quiet street. In the dim glow of a streetlight the bare branches of the tree in their front yard looked like the afterimage of a photograph, tangled in relief against the sky. She walked around the silent house and looked at the framed photographs that lined the mantelpiece and cluttered the bookshelves, wondering, Is this really my life? This collage of perfect moments, frozen in time? Every photograph seemed to her now a memento mori—a futile attempt to hold on to the past, a staged declaration of permanence in an impermanent world. They made her queasy.
When she did lie down, Alison replayed the accident over and over in her mind. She thought of the boy in the other car: his skin as soft as a ripe peach, his body solid on his mother’s lap. Though Alison had only seen him with his eyes closed, she imagined them wide open, a bittersweet brown. His breath warm and tangy, apple juice and graham crackers, fingers sticky with the lollipop bribe he’d been given to stay in his seat, the bribe that didn’t work. His dark, straight hair smelling of baby shampoo, as soft and fine as eyelashes against his mother’s cheek.
Alison imagined him leaning back against his mother, her arms enveloping him, offering comfort in the darkness. Squirming now, tired and cranky. He tries to stand and his mother scolds him—“Sit, Marco, stop moving around.” His father, distracted, just wants to get home. He has an early day tomorrow; he needs to get up at four-thirty to be at the building site by six. It’s a good job and he can’t afford to lose it—he needs it, they need it, after that hernia from the last job and no disability. There’s a decent foreman on this job; he’s a union man and always wanting to sign up the workers. Maybe so, the father thinks, maybe it’s time. If the papers come through in the next few months he’ll be legal and can get health insurance. It would be nice not to have to worry for a change.
The boy is moving around on the front seat. “Sit still, Marco,” the father says sternly. He looks over at his wife with annoyance. Why can’t she keep him down? And then his son catches his eye and reaches out, his plump, soft-nailed fingers splayed toward him—“Papa, Pa-pa,” he says sweetly, his voice a chiming singsong—and the father’s gaze lingers on him with affection. My boy, my only son.
In her mind Alison sees it clearly: the front of the car crumpling like foil, the boy moving forward, slipping from his mother’s grasp as she tries to hold on. The mother screams, the father cries out, but the boy is too startled to make a sound. There is just the sickening thud against the windshield, the smashing glass. For a moment there is silence. And then there is a keening wail, the only sound in all of this that Alison actually heard.
The boy hears the impact, feels himself being pulled forward, his mother’s hands tightening around his middle and then spreading open as he moves forward, closer to the raindrops on the windshield, the lights of the other car, the streetlights above and the darkness. He sees, out of the corner of his eye, his father turn toward him, and suddenly he is laughing. Daddy is home from work and freshly showered, damp and smelling of soap and toothpaste, wearing a clean, white T-shirt, throwing Marco into the air and letting him fall heavily into his arms, laughing and teasing, throwing him higher. The boy knows that he is in the air now, and he is safe; his daddy will catch him as he always does; the boy will fall into the warm cradle of his father’s arms.
part three
That’s the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they’ve been all along.
—MADELEINE L’ENGLE, The Arm of the Starfish
Chapter One
The morning that Alison’s parents were scheduled to arrive on a plane from North Carolina, Charlie woke up flooded with relief. He fed the kids breakfast and got Annie ready for school while Alison stayed in bed, flipping channels between talk shows on the tiny television they used for videos in the Volvo on long-distance trips. Noah was sick, with a double ear infection, and at the bus stop Annie threw a screaming fit and refused to get on the school bus—she flung herself on the wet sidewalk and wouldn’t get up. In a panic Charlie scraped her off the pavement and tried to shove her up the steps, but she was hysterical, and under the glare of the bus driver he quickly backed down.
Ed and June had planned to take a car service from the airport, but since Charlie had to stay home from work that morning anyway, he strapped the kids into their car seats and drove to Newark.
“What’s wrong with this poor child?” was the first thing June said as she got into the front passenger seat. Reaching between the bucket seats, she anxiously touched different parts of Noah’s face with the back of her hand.
“I’m thick, Dramma,” Noah said.
“Yes, you are. Poor baby. You have a fever. You shouldn’t be out in this weather.”
“He’s on antibiotics,” Charlie said, trying not to sound defensive. “It’s just an ear infection.”
“You know, antibiotics aren’t necessarily the best way to treat an ear infection. I sent Alison some information about homeopathic remedies that are less invasive. Maybe you haven’t had a chance to look at it. We still don’t really know what antibiotics do to young children.”
“Yes, we do,” Charlie said. “They cure ear infections.” Easy, he told himself; let it go.
“Hello, precious,” June was saying to Annie over her other shoulder. “Don’t you have school today?”
“I hate school. I’m never going to school again!”
“Nonsense. School is very important. Don’t you want to be a smart girl?”
“No,” Annie said.
June rose slightly and turned around in her seat. “Well, you may not,” she said, smiling determinedly at Annie, “but you are six years old. And last I checked, six-year-olds do not get to decide whether or not they want to go to school.”
“Listen to your grandma, Anna-banana,” Charlie said. “There’s been a lot going on, as you know,” he said quietly to June.
“Even more reason to stick to routine,” she murmured. “Children crave structure.”
“June,” Ed said from the backseat, ??
?I think you’ve made your point. Anyway, I seem to recall that we weren’t so big on structure ourselves when Alison was a little girl.”
“Yeah,” June snorted, “and look at what happened.”
“June, please,” Charlie said, motioning toward the kids.
“No blaming,” Ed said. “We said we weren’t going to do that. Remember?”
“I remember. I remember. This is not about blame. This is about helping this family get back to normal—if that’s even possible.”
Charlie shot her an annoyed glance. Did she have to do this in front of the kids?
“I’m thick! I’m thick!” Noah wailed, flailing in his car seat.
When they arrived home, Alison had gotten dressed and was in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher with cereal bowls from breakfast. Her parents dropped their bags and went over to hug her, and she collapsed into their arms. Charlie shuffled the children into the living room and put on a Shrek DVD; he knew that June would remark on it, but he didn’t care. He looked at his watch: 12:20. If he didn’t take the next train into the city his entire workday would be lost. Already the client on his biggest account, the paper conglomerate PMRG, was leaving passive-aggressive messages on his voice mail: “Charles, I’m sure you’re a busy man with other things to do, but the clock is ticking on this campaign. We need to hear from you. I tried to reach you by e-mail, but perhaps you haven’t gotten my messages. If you can fit me into your schedule, I’d appreciate a call by the end of day today, thanks.” When Charlie thought about it, his stomach clenched.
“I need to catch the next train,” he said, coming into the kitchen.
“What?” said June. “You’re leaving? Is it even worth it at this hour?”
“I’ve got a three o’clock meeting,” he lied, then was immediately irritated at himself. Why should he lie? He had to go to work—he earned the money around here. It was as simple as that. Why did he suddenly feel like he was the one who’d done something wrong?
Alison looked at him blankly. Noah had come in and was whining for juice, sidling through her legs like a cat, but Alison didn’t seem to notice. “When will you be home?” she asked.
Charlie looked at his watch. The gesture was a visual signifier; he knew what time it was. “Well, I may need to stay a few hours later,” he said, calculating that he might be able to talk to Claire if he had some flexibility. Where was she? Somewhere in the South. All he wanted was to hear her voice, feel a brief connection. That would be enough for now. “I’m dealing with a major account.” He turned to Ed, his only potential ally in the room, to explain. “As you might imagine, things have been—difficult here. I’ve had to take quite a bit of time off.”
“I’m sure your colleagues are understanding, given the circumstances,” June said.
In fact, Charlie hadn’t told his colleagues. They might know about it, but the story hadn’t come from him. On Wednesday, having taken off Monday and Tuesday with a supposed stomach flu, Charlie had gone into the office of the senior partner and shut the door. “My wife was in a bad accident,” he said. “Someone ran a stop sign and plowed into her car. She’s all right, but a person in the other car didn’t make it.” He didn’t reveal that that person was a child. He omitted mention of the police station, the blood-alcohol content, the question of culpability.
“That’s terrible, Charles,” Bill Trieste had gasped, coming around his desk and putting a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Alison is all right, though?”
“All right. Shaken up.”
“Of course, of course. My God. I’m sure she’s needing your support right now.”
“We’ll get through it,” Charlie said automatically. Later he would reflect on his bland responses to expressions of sympathy. We’ll get through it. Would they? He wasn’t at all sure.
“If you need to take some time off, just let me know,” Bill said. “We can make arrangements for your accounts, if it comes to that.”
“No, no,” Charlie said hastily. The last thing he wanted was to be in the house all day, every day, with Alison. It was hard enough going home at night to face her—the weepy desperation in her eyes, her unspoken need for his absolution, as if he alone had the power to assuage her guilt. And the children, sensing her disconnection from them, were clingy and frantic. No, he didn’t want to take time off. He would hire Dolores for more hours; Alison’s parents would pitch in. The thought of becoming more enmeshed, just as he was beginning to disengage, made him flush with panic.
“She might want to talk to a grief counselor,” Bill said. “I can get you a name, if you want it. When my wife’s brother died, she saw this woman for a year, and I believe it helped her tremendously.”
“Thanks. That’s a good suggestion,” Charlie said. He looked at Bill, a trim, handsome man in his late forties, and wondered what he and his wife had been through. As far as Charlie could remember, this was the first time Bill had ever even mentioned a wife.
“Well, listen, take all the time you need,” Bill said, patting him on the back as he walked him to the door of his office.
“Thanks,” Charlie said. “Bill, I’d appreciate it if you don’t share this with anyone. Alison is a pretty private person, and I think she’d prefer to keep this quiet.”
“Of course. I understand,” Bill assured him.
Actually, Alison hadn’t said anything to Charlie about keeping it quiet. He was the one who didn’t want people to know. His wife had been drinking, and a small boy had died. A child—a boy like his boy—someone else’s son: dead. It was inconceivable. If he had been driving, this wouldn’t have happened, he was sure of it. He was more confident on the road, not to mention heavier; he would have absorbed the alcohol differently. Anyway, he wouldn’t have drunk two gimmicky blue martinis.
But to go to Claire’s party with Alison would have been unbearable.
Before the accident Charlie had wondered if it might be possible for things to continue as they were indefinitely; he and Claire could lead their separate lives and come together in a kind of biospheric space, outside the constraints of real life. Their relationship would exist beyond the realm of everyday concerns. Even at the time Charlie had known that this conceit was foolish; the delicate balance required to sustain such a precarious arrangement was bound to become upset. Either he or Claire would come to feel that it wasn’t enough; Alison or Ben would find out. Eventually things would have to change. But now he felt like those prisoners of war he’d read about who were strapped, alive, to the dead bodies of their fallen comrades and thrown into the river. He was bound to Alison in a way that he hadn’t been before—he was, or would have to be, the stalwart husband.
STANDING ON THE platform an hour later, waiting for the 1:17 train, Charlie pulled out his cell phone.
“Hey there, you,” Claire said in a groggy voice.
“Oh God, did I wake you?”
“It’s okay. I was napping,” she said. “I had to get up at the crack of dawn for a morning show.”
“Sorry. Where are you?”
He could hear the rustle of sheets, and he pictured her sitting up, turning on the bedside lamp in the hotel room. “Nashville. The weather is downright balmy. Flowers are blooming.”
“How’d the reading go last night?”
“Fine. An old friend from college lives here, so she rustled up a crowd. Otherwise it would’ve been a homeless man and three old ladies who heard me on Tennessee Public Radio yesterday afternoon.”
“How are you?” he asked, impatient with the details.
“Charlie, I’m fine. Fine, fine—it doesn’t matter. The question is, how are you?”
He inhaled quietly, filling his lungs with the cool spring air. A mile or so away, at the other end of town, the warning horn of the train sounded as it pulled into the station. He should’ve called her sooner. In a minute the train would be here.
“Ahh. Not so great,” he said. Leaving the house, he’d run into Alison’s father in the kitchen, sitting at the table eating a tuna sand
wich and reading the Times. Charlie had said a quick hello and ducked back into the hall to get his laptop bag, but Ed got up and stood in the doorway with his glass of milk.
“I know this is tough,” Ed said. “Maybe as tough as it gets.”
Charlie had nodded, gathering his keys, BlackBerry, silver iPod from the bowl on the hall table and putting them in various pockets in his bag. “I’m glad you’re here, Ed,” he said, and he meant it. Charlie liked Ed, liked his quirky sensibility and mild good humor. Ed was the one who constructed elaborate train tracks for Noah, using every odd piece of the Thomas the Tank Engine track that had been collected over the years. During his previous visit, he had made Annie a set of fairy wings out of coat hangers and pink mesh, and took both children to the local museum and ice cream shop for the afternoon. Ed was curious about Charlie’s work, in an anthropological way, and sent him books on Thomas Jefferson, in whom they shared an interest—books that Charlie rarely got a chance to finish, but still. Charlie, in turn, had walked Ed through his first computer purchase and set up his e-mail account, and then periodically e-mailed him newsworthy tidbits from the Internet he thought Ed might appreciate.
Charlie’s feelings about Alison’s mother were more complicated. He didn’t like her much, and it wasn’t just because he found her self-absorbed and grandiose. June was tuned in to him in a way that made him uncomfortable. She, alone among her husband and daughter, seemed to have sensed from the beginning that Charlie was not entirely engaged, that he had always been, on some level, distracted, even when he didn’t yet know it himself. She seemed to be constantly watching him. For a long time he thought it was unfair. He complained to Alison that he didn’t think he’d ever be able to please her mother, that she expected the worst from him. “That’s nonsense, she thinks you’re wonderful,” Alison had said (smoothing things over as usual, ignoring the obvious, making peace). Now it occurred to Charlie that June’s suspicions—that he was not devoted enough, involved enough with his fledging family—were in fact dead-on. Perhaps she understood him in a way that no one else did. Ed’s generous spirit and Alison’s willful denial had kept both of them in the dark. June alone saw him as he really was.