THE BOOK OF ONLYS (sample)

 

August 2006

Ben wakes late and leaves for work without making coffee. He doesn't say goodbye. 

I think I have it figured out. Wendi took off her swimsuit bottoms, fell, hit her head, and passed out. Then I remembered the comforter and the towel the police found in the tub, and I started all over. When the dog begins whining, I get up and wander outside with him. The yard looks worse than usual. Slowly, I realize why. The wind storm had blown the clothes off the clothesline. Instead of collecting them, I lay down in the dirt on the pile of spoiled laundry, wondering how Wendi's comforter and towel ended up in the tub. 

The voices whisper in my head, 'Your sister is dead,' as the wind plays with the weak morning light filtering through the leaves. The raft of fabric beneath me is an amalgamation of sisters. A careless load containing the rain-soaked clothes I wore to the funeral and the dresses, saturated with the smell of Wendi's death, I took from her closet. A cat passes by. The dog chases it off. I turn my head and see the toppled basket containing the shoes that walked through her blood, leaving greasy brown footprints on the floor. Maybe she would want to be absorbed into my life, seamlessly consumed, a diluted haunting. I don't know. That doesn't seem like Wendi. 

I get up and find a Sharpie in the mudroom. I pick up the basketball sitting out of place on the dryer that Ben won't let us use because he thinks it's too expensive to run and the sunlight is free. I write: THIS BELONGED TO WENDI M. BROWN, MAY 2, 1970 to—then I stop. I don't know what day she died. They never told us. I set the ball down. 

I move around the house, picking things up and setting them down. I touch the glass I rescued from her apartment with the two cuttings. I should have thrown out the weaker, anemic-looking plant, but I don't. They will slowly die together on my windowsill.

Beach appears in the kitchen. One side of her shoulder-length blond hair is matted from sleeping. Fiercely independent from birth, she has dressed herself, wearing jeans under a sundress. She stands with the wisdom of a grown woman trapped in the body and mind of a near-sighted toddler. We greet each other in silence. I've become so quiet, listening to the flies buzzing around Wendi's rotting body, that I barely speak. I make Beach macaroni for breakfast. I think someone should come and get her, but there is no one to ask. This is the elevator moment all over again. The difference is that even if I managed to scrape the words from my mouth, 'I need help,' there would be no one around to hear them.

I take Beach for a walk because I know I should be doing something. To the outside world, I am a typical mother pushing her child in a stroller on a summer walk. The cars drive by in a sheen of amorphous ribbons of heat rising from the asphalt. I feel nothing but the bass of the words stomping through my head, 'Your sister is dead.' The flies buzz. We stopped at a park to play, but I suddenly panicked and needed to go home. Back inside the house, the phone is ringing. I don't answer it because I know if I pick it up, it will be Wendi screaming for help. Trapped in this mirage of life, I don't know which one of us is dead.

I felt it again yesterday after the wind died—that feeling of having accidentally survived.

I put on my snowshoes and disappeared upfield with the dogs in tow.

Down in the valley, the men of Clear Creek nodded and spit, 

'Well, I'll be damned. She did better here than we thought she'd do.' 

Now, I belong to a place where I shouldn't even be.