"You have to stop."
"I can"t stop!" I screamed. "My children are dead and I don"t know what happened to them!"
"We can"t keep going over this. It doesn"t help."
"I need to talk about it!"
"There"s nothing more to say. We"ve said it all."
"Why won"t you talk to me, Warren?" I yelled, my anger and anxiety spinning out of control. "Is it because you know your sister did this to us?"
"I"m not my sister!" he roared. "I"m not responsible for this!"
"Then, who is? What happened? They"re dead, Warren. They"re dead."
I sobbed hysterically and trembled and screamed, and Warren hollered in frustration and pain. I was consumed with reliving every torturous moment, while Warren wanted to block out the torment and not think about the horrifying details.
We had plummeted into a black, ugly place so oppressive that neither of us could imagine there would ever be sunshine again. When Warren couldn"t take the hammering argument and emotional hysteria anymore, he stormed out of the house.
"Where are you going?" I screamed, charging after him. However crazed I might be, I had a sudden flash of fear. His bolting in a deranged state after midnight didn"t bode well. We had made a pact early in our marriage that if either of us headed out fuming after a fight, we couldn"t take the car. If you want to kill yourself, okay-but you couldn"t hurt anyone else.
Now Warren raced down the driveway on foot, his flip-flops slapping against the blacktop like shots in the night.
"I"ve had it!" he shouted. "Enough! I"m going to go jump in front of a train!"
Warren didn"t threaten or say things he didn"t mean. Would he really do it? If Warren quit on life, his dad and brothers would fall like dominoes right behind him. I had believed Warren when he said he didn"t want to make this story any worse. But maybe he didn"t care anymore.
I tried to follow him. "Come back," I called, the intensity of his despair somehow penetrating my own blackness. "Don"t do that, please! Please!"
"Good-bye, Jackie."
b.l.o.o.d.y images flashed into my head. I pictured Warren on the tracks, a train bearing down. I could almost hear the whistle, the screams, the end of the father of my children.
He fled down the dark road, and I followed but couldn"t keep up. I was in better physical shape, but tonight he was the more desperate one, and the adrenaline seemed to give him Olympic speed. Turning around, I staggered back to the house, shivering in fear.
Normally, I called friends when things got bad, but this time I just crawled into bed, shaking and sobbing. I had done this to Warren and n.o.body could change that. I talked about dying all the time, but Warren couldn"t be the one who finally quit. Sadness and guilt overwhelmed me. I was supposed to love him, but I had driven him away.
I don"t know how much time went by. Much, much later, I heard the front door opening and footsteps on the staircase. Warren came silently into the room and lay down in the bed next to me.
We didn"t talk about what happened or where Warren had gone for so long. We knew that confronting such depths of despair could only bring more pain.
Ten
One day when the girls were little, we sat together, talking about their futures. I wanted them to have careers and be moms, too. Although I had given up my career to be a mother and didn"t regret it, I realized that their lives might be better with some balance.
"You could be doctors or teachers or lawyers," I suggested.
"I want to be an art teacher," Alyson said firmly. "I love art. Anything with art."
"Good plan," I told her. "As long as you love what you do."
Emma thought she wanted to be an actress or singer, since her pa.s.sion was performing.
Katie, only four at the time, had the firmest plan. "I"m never leaving you and Daddy," she said. "I"ll be with you forever."
"You still need a career when you grow up," I told her, smiling as she climbed into my lap.
"Then I"ll help you make cupcakes, Mommy," she said. "Nothing else."
We all laughed. Maybe it was a little early for Katie to make a plan, but as a devoted full-time mom, I tried to stay on top of everything in my children"s lives. I plotted birthday parties months in advance and family vacations years before they happened. I envisaged proms and weddings and talked to the girls about what lay ahead. Or what I imagined lay ahead. I had confidence in the power of our orderly, organized life. The future wouldn"t surprise us because we prepared for it.
After the accident, I understood that all those preparations didn"t add up to much. Control is just an illusion. The children had been my whole life, and now that whole life was gone.
Warren and I had always been careful about money, but now part of me felt like I might as well spend on anything I wanted. What reason did we possibly have to buy bonds or stash money into a retirement account? Warren and I had put money in college savings accounts and never considered a world where the girls wouldn"t head happily off to freshman year with new clothes and dorm furnishings from Target. But all those college savings had gone to pay for a funeral.
Our moods swung dramatically, but Warren, n.o.bly, still wanted to be a good husband. He kept looking for things that would give me some pa.s.sing glimpse of pleasure. My car had been smashed in the accident, but for a long time, I didn"t need a new one because I wouldn"t get behind a wheel. Warren drove or friends took me wherever I needed to go-which was just as well, because I was too fragile to face the world on my own, anyway.
But eventually I realized I would have to drive again. However generous my friends were with their time, I needed to start taking some first tentative steps back to independence. I didn"t really care what kind of car I got. I didn"t need an SUV or a minivan anymore. A fancy car felt meaningless-even tasteless. But then I remembered that my stylish girls had always wanted me to have a convertible.
"You"d look so great driving with a top down," Alyson had said one day when a neighbor drove by with her hair blowing in the breeze.
"And you"d have fun," Emma agreed. "What do you think, Mommy?"
I thought they were right. But who puts kids in a convertible? Practicality won out and we stuck with a minivan.
Sometime in the late fall, almost as a joke, I suggested a convertible to Warren.
"The girls wanted me to have it," I said. "They used to tell me how pretty I"d look sitting in the front seat."
"Then that"s what you should get," he said simply.
I told him the car had to have a retractable hardtop and a full backseat. I never even thought about price-because I didn"t really expect him to buy it-and we dropped the subject. But, eager to prove that life could still have its bright moments, Warren asked his friend Chris to visit car dealers for him. Like me, Warren still felt awkward going out in public where people might recognize him. Our pictures had been in the newspapers a lot, and he felt safer having a good-natured friend make the rounds for him. Chris had my dream requirements tucked into his front pocket as he did his test drives. Finally, he brought Warren to see what he thought was the nicest car with the best price.
Unaware of all that had gone on, I was out with Melissa one day when Warren called my cell phone to ask what time I"d be back.
"I don"t know, we won"t be too long," I told him. "Why?"
"Oh, just wondering," he said. He sounded slightly odd, but I didn"t pay much attention.
When Melissa and I got home, Warren stood in the driveway waiting for us. Rain swirled around him, but he didn"t seem to care. He wanted to see my face when I got the first glimpse of what he had driven home-a light blue Volvo convertible with a cream interior.
I jumped out of Melissa"s car and ran over to it.
"Really? For me?" I asked, a huge smile plastered on my face. Warren broke into a genuine grin. This was the Warren I had first fallen in love with-always surprising me with something special and making the extra-thoughtful gesture that most men wouldn"t try. I felt a brief flash of the giddiness I used to experience when we were dating and I knew I had found a man who loved to make me happy.