Diane M. Sullivan

THE OTHERS

            It had been less than two days since my husband and I had left our son’s remains lying on a stainless-steel hospital table to make arrangements for his funeral. Since then, our house had been a center of activity with people calling, stopping over to put another pot roast, lasagna, or deli platter in our already overflowing refrigerator. And now I had a state trooper sitting at my dining room table.

            He thanked us for seeing him and expressed his condolences before explaining that he was the investigator assigned to this case. He had come to establish what my son’s activities had been 24 hours prior to the accident. The questions were often intrusive, sometimes accusatory, and always painful. He pushed me to try to remember the smallest details, a Herculean task for me, as my thinking process was stunned with shock and overwhelmed with the tasks associated with arranging two memorial services: one in New Hampshire where we were living, and another in Massachusetts where our families were from and my son was to be buried.

            I thought the trooper looked so young as I watched him across the table. His immaculate appearance with a starched shirt, tie knotted snugly at the neck, shiny brass buttons on his jacket, and a closely shorn haircut plastered into submission, was in stark contrast to my husband’s and mine. My mouth had a sour taste to it and I wondered whether I had remembered to brush my teeth. In fact, I couldn’t recall when I last took a shower. Running my hand through my hair, I found it unsnarled and it reasonably clean. Glancing at my husband, I noted that his hair was uncombed and his face had several days’ growth on it. I looked down at my clothes; I wasn’t sure about them, but they didn’t seem too rumpled. Covertly, I did a quick smell check, and they seemed fresh enough

            The trooper remained cool, his perfectly pressed uniform remained starched, and not one trickle of sweat ran down his smooth cheek, despite the afternoon heat. When he finished, he closed his notebook, rose from the table, thanked us, and gave his condolences once again. He left a business card and then rattled off something about official reports and when results should be available. I barely heard him. I was upset and exhausted and just wanted him to leave. My husband remained at the table while I showed the trooper to the front door. I stood, my hand on the knob with the door wide open while the trooper carefully replaced his hat, pulling the brim down to the center of his forehead. The neighbor across the street paused during her lawn mowing to look at us. When she realized she was caught staring, she continued with her chores, making the droning buzz of the mower background noise.

            Even in the direct, unforgiving sunlight, the trooper looked no more than a boy to me. He couldn’t have been much older than my son. He cast his eyes down then slowly raised them up towards my face as if he was taking a moment to collect his thoughts. He then said something to me that if at the time I had been right state of mind I may have understood, but through the fog of pain it was just like the droning background noise of the lawn mower.

            “Mrs. Sullivan,” he began, “again, I’m so sorry for your loss. I know all those questions were difficult, but procedures must be followed to properly investigate a case where a death has occurred.” Trying to look anywhere but at him, I began watching my neighbor as she maneuvered the lawn mover around a copse of birch trees. “The fact that Alex Moody was behind the wheel when the accident occurred puts him at fault.” The trooper paused and I saw from the corner of my eye that he was joining me in the observation of my neighbor’s yard work. “If Alex Moody had lived, he would have been charged, and I’m sure convicted, of vehicular manslaughter.” The trooper, who to this point had been standing stock still with military rigidness, shifted his weight. “But he didn’t, he died. But still, according to the law, the fault lies with him. And he paid a terrible price for it.”

***

            The tires crunched on the gravel as I pulled into the driveway, stopping at the mouth with the rear tires and bumpers sticking out in the street positioned for a quick getaway. I may have done this because of the fear of a cool reception, or because my own discomfort might make this an abbreviated visit. Sitting behind the wheel, I contemplated putting the car in reverse and nonchalantly driving off, hoping no one noticed me. But I didn’t; I stayed, and tried to screw up the courage to get out of the car.

            While I fortified myself, I thought of one of the last times I had seen Robin, three years prior. It was the day following the accident. She had come to my house, and when I went to greet her in the living room she said, “You must hate me.”

            I had looked at her haggard appearance: her face was drawn and her eyes rimmed with red. She looked liked hell. “Of course not; you lost your little boy, too,” I reached for her and wrapped my arms around her as she began to sob. We spoke briefly and she expressed her guilt and pain about the fact that her son was behind the wheel when the crash occurred. “It was an accident,” I had said. “No one is to blame.”

            But time passes, the initial shocks lifts, and in the solitary hours, in the time when it’s only you and your grief, the thoughts tumble about in your head: things that people have said, what the police report concluded, and all whispers and rumors of suicide pacts that reach you. In spite of your resolve to cling to your better nature, you find yourself trying to attach blame.

            After the passage of time, how did she view me? Did she still think of me as the victim of her son’s foolhardy behavior? Or did she now see me as the negligent mother who carelessly left her car keys dangling from a hook in the kitchen where her own reckless son could easily snatch them while she slept? Then, that reckless son casually tossed the keys to her unlicensed child, letting him drive down a mountain road in the black of the night causing both their deaths, and severely injuring a girl in the car with them.

            Emerging from the car, I stood behind the open door and surveyed the house. It was typical in many respects: the rambling antique farmhouse was predictably white as were most houses on Main Street. It had the requisite covered porch that ran across the front and down the right side with a driveway that ran the length of the house.

            I should have taken comfort in what once was familiar. I had seen a thousand houses like this while I had lived here. But after only three years of living elsewhere, New Hampshire, the structures, the scent of the air, the places of absolute stillness and the culture that’s peculiarly its own seemed nearly as foreign to me as if I stepped from my car onto the Serengeti. When we left, the trauma of the circumstances had dropped a veil through which I viewed my former life. It was as though I hadn’t really lived it, like it had been a story from my childhood told to me each night as I drifted off to sleep.

            I was still sheltered behind my open car door when a figure that had been working in the garden, situated between the driveway and the side porch, unfolded from her crouched position. She raised her right hand to shade her eyes from the July sun, her other hand resting on her hip as she peered down to the unfamiliar vehicle at the end of her driveway.

            “Robin?” I said. When she nodded I continued. “You probably don’t remember me.” She squinted and craned her neck forward slightly, trying to get a better look at me.

            “No, I’m sorry, I don’t,” she said.

            I gripped the frame of the car door before speaking. “I’m Diane Sullivan—Tim’s mother.”

            Robin stood looking for a moment before dropping her hands to her sides.

            “Of course, Diane,” she said. “I didn’t recognize you!” She brushed the dirt off her clothes and legs as she emerged from the garden. I relaxed my grip on the door frame and stepped away, closing it. We approached each other on the driveway and embraced briefly, quickly pulling back.

            “I’m sorry to interrupt you; I hope this is not an inconvenient time for a visit. I just was in the area, so I thought I’d stop by.”

            Robin insisted that it wasn’t, and we both asked the usual questions on the state of each other’s health and the activities of our families.

            “I heard you moved to Massachusetts. How do you like it?” Robin asked.

            “Oh, it was an adjustment at first. Difficult,” I said looking into her eyes. “But, you know, those were difficult circumstances.” Robin held my gaze and acknowledged what I said with a quick nod.

            “What brings you back? Just a visit?”

            “Well, it’s that time. The anniversary of the accident. I was up on Kearsarge. Visiting the crash site.”

            Robin turned her head, and she looked off into her garden as she absently rubbed her arm. “I don’t go there,” she said.

            I looked around trying to think of something to say. I felt awkward enough, and then I blundered mentioning the place where both of our sons died.

            “I probably shouldn’t, either. I don’t know why I do it. It accomplishes nothing,” I said. “Sorry I brought it up. I can see it upsets you.”

            Robin gave her head a little shake as if to dislodge her mood. “Don’t worry; it’s okay,” she said. “You go there because you need to.” She looked up at the sun. “We’re going to burn up. Let’s go in for some iced tea. But first, let me show you my garden.”

            I followed Robin down the narrow path that wound through the garden toward the side porch. She pointed at various plantings and chatted away about the evolution of the project. She stopped in the center and pointed to a rock.

            “I had the boys’ names inscribed on it,” she said. With trepidation, I stepped closer. When I saw my son’s name written there, I felt a hardening in my chest. I can recall telling Robin in the sincerest voice I could muster how nice I thought it was, and then I turned away quickly. I can’t even clearly remember the wording on the stone. Along with the names of our sons, there was also the date of death, and there may have been some quote meant to be uplifting. Something you’d find on a Hallmark card or a bumper sticker.

            Robin was waiting for me on the porch. I turned back to get a view of the garden. She seemed to get a great deal of pleasure working on it. I scanned it with the eyes of someone whom in the past had done a fair amount of gardening. It was new; the plantings immature. Some of the plants may not do well or even survive. The light wasn’t right for them, and the soil seemed a bit poor. But those elements aside, the arrangement seemed haphazard; the colors and textures didn’t blend compatibly.

            I jerked my train of thoughts to a halt. What an incredible ass I was. This woman had poured her whole heart into this little memorial garden. She had the goodness to not only remember her loss, but mine also. And I stood on her porch judging. What had I done? In three years I had not even dedicated the smallest corner of my yard to the memory of my child, not to mention hers. Even his grave site is tended to by my sister.

            Turning to her, I smiled. “This is so lovely, Robin. Thank you for remembering Tim, too.”

            As we entered the house, I couldn’t remember whether I had been here before, but I had a vague recollection of visiting here after the funerals. She had given me a framed picture of the three kids relaxing in chairs on her porch; our two boys and Amelia, the one that survived because she wisely had worn her seatbelt. Robin’s copy of the picture was displayed on her fireplace mantel.

            We sat across from each other at her kitchen table, our sweating glasses of tea with lemon slices in floating on the ice sitting untouched in front of us. We had things to say to each other, but starting the conversation was difficult. I was the first to step on the soft, unstable ground of the accident.

            “Do you ever hear from Amelia?” I asked.

            “She called at the first anniversary and we talked for awhile,” she replied. “Do you ever hear from her?”

            “She called the first anniversary and last year, but we were out. She didn’t leave a number.” I said. “I doubt if I’d have called back if she did.” There was a brief uneasy silence. I thought she was put off by what I said, so I tried to find something to counterbalance. “My kids ran into her one day when they were at the mall in Concord. They said that she looked good, and that she was going to college.”

            “Yes, I heard that,” Robin said. “Going to New England College over in Henniker.”

            “That’s good, I suppose,” I replied. “But don’t you think it’s a little odd? She had that traumatic brain injury which severely damaged her short-term memory. I was told that she wasn’t able to retain much new information. Don’t you think that would make going to college difficult? After all, that’s what it’s about—learning new things.”

            Robin shrugged and took a sip of her iced tea. “She’s managing somehow, I guess.”

            Her brief answers made me wonder whether she wasn’t interested in the subject matter, or whether she was simply a person not inclined to gossip. But what else would we have to talk about? We had no other common history besides this. When I had lived here, even as small as the town was, our paths rarely crossed. I had come that day only because of our terrible link. I needed to know what she knew and felt and to discuss our shared experience.

            Robin surprised me by continuing. “I never heard from her mother.”

            “Oh,” I said, “Megan contacted us once the day after the accident. I think she sent a card.”

            “That’s right. I think she sent a card to us, too.”

            “Well, she must have had her hands full. Dealing with Amelia.”

            “They divorced, you know. Amelia’s parents.”

            “I heard that,” I said. I watched the sweat drip down the side of my glass as I contemplated the wisdom of continuing the conversation down this path. Not being sure whether I should, but then realized I had to; it was where I needed to go. “But it wasn’t surprising. I heard they were in the process of breaking up at the time of the accident. Amelia’s condition just delayed it.”

            There was a moment of silence and my eyes scanned Robin’s house. The living area was open-concept, not traditional in the way of old New England homes. From my seat in the dining area, I could see several pictures of Alex at various ages displayed prominently.  More guilt settled on me. There were no pictures of my son displayed anywhere in our house. After he died we had quite a few, but after our last move none were put up. I thought it might be too painful for my husband, but truth be told, it may have been to save me from the constant reminder of his absence.

            “Megan adopted a couple of boys from Africa, too,” I said.

            “Yes, I know. That happened a few years back.”

            “Yeah, when I went into the hospital to visit Amelia after the accident they were there,” I said, and then after a pause, I continued: “Don’t you think it a little odd that she adopted children when her marriage was on the rocks? She also was having such trouble with Amelia, from what I heard anyway. Megan was sending Amelia down south to some special school for problem teenagers. That’s the reason they went out that night. Amelia wanted to run off. She was pissed that her parents were shipping her away,” I said.

            Robin nodded. “Yes, I know that.”

            “Well, it seems to me that you shouldn’t be bringing more children into a house where there were so many problems to begin with.”

            “I think they’re better off here than where they were. Weren’t they from the Sudan? The place where all those boys were wandering around after their families were slaughtered?”

            “I suppose.” I had had contact with Megan over the years when I worked with her on several fundraisers and field trips connected to the school. Rumor had it that she was a trust fund baby from some wealthy family.  She struck me as being a phony, liberal do-gooder, and I was put off by her air of noblesse oblique.

            “I hear those boys are doing well.”

            “That’s good,” I said.

            The conversation suddenly ran dry. After another swallow of my drink, I made my excuses to Robin saying that I had to head home or be stuck in the misery of Boston rush hour traffic. Robin walked me to the porch where we said our good-byes, and as I went through the garden, I kept my eyes trained to the path to avoid seeing the stone again. Reaching my car, I turned for a final wave, but Robin had disappeared from the porch.

            The visit made me more unsettled than I had been previously. Robin and I were not of like minds. She, from my viewpoint, seemed to have accepted the loss of her son and had found some peace with it. She had made her little garden and scattered his pictures around. I wondered whether Robin was resigned to her son’s culpability in the matter of the accident. It seemed so, as she did not seem to want to question anything, didn’t want turn over any rocks or muddy the water. I envied her peace.

* * *

            “Diane?”

            I stopped in my tracks, squeezing the receiver of the phone, pressing it to my ear. I thought I might hear from Amelia today. It was the fifth anniversary after all, a milestone, but no, it was her mother instead. My eyes became riveted to the telephone attached to the kitchen wall. While staring at the button pad I could see my blurry reflection in the chrome on the phone’s casing. My eyes appeared to be two brown orbs with no discernable pupils like a zombie in a horror flick. I did not want to talk to this woman. For a second I contemplated hanging up; just the sound of her voice spiked my blood pressure, but I was curious as to what she had to say.

            “Do you know who this is?” she continued.

            “Yes,” I said. “Megan. How are you? How is Amelia?”

            She didn’t bother with pleasantries launching immediately into a request.             “Terrible. Amelia is terrible. You must come to New Hampshire and talk to her.”

            “Oh,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

            She huffed. “What’s wrong? Amelia is all messed up. She has questions she needs to ask, she needs to talk to you about the accident. You need to come up.”

            “I see,” I replied. But I really didn’t. I felt like I was being issued an edict for a command performance. I was appalled at her audacity. Not a single inquiry to our well-being in five years, and in seconds she is not asking, but insisting, I drive over one hundred miles to attend to her daughter.

            There was silence for a moment, and when Megan didn’t comment, I continued. “Amelia needs to talk? She has questions? It’s been five years and she never contacted me. She called, yes, when we weren’t home. But never a note or a card in all this time.”

            “Do you think it’s been easy? I’ve had a terrible time dealing with her disability.”

            “Megan, my son is dead. At least your daughter is alive.”

            That set her off on a rant in which she listed all the physical and emotional difficulties Amelia has had. How they got her an apartment near her college and she had a fit one day and tore it apart.

            “Small wonder she did that,” I said. “Weren’t you just setting her up for failure? Sending her to college when she had short term memory loss? And didn’t she have behavioral problems before the accident? Did you think those issues would magically disappear when she enrolled in college?” I felt a wave of sympathy for Amelia. Every time her mother opened her mouth, she was confirming the low opinion I had of her. “Did you really think it would work? Or were you just trying to unburden yourself from the daily care of your daughter?”

            Megan continued her rant about the amount of therapy Amelia required and how she consumed all of her time for the year or so after the accident. I was silent for a moment after she finally finished her tirade.

            “Well, would you have rather she died?”

            There was a sharp intake of breath from the other end of the phone line. “Of course not!” she said.

            “Then deal with your daughter’s problems and stop trying to slough off them on others.”

            Megan either didn’t hear what I said or didn’t care, because she circled back to her insistence that I drive to New Hampshire and speak with Amelia. I really felt sorry for Amelia. She was, after all, young, and had gone through a horrible experience. But I also had sympathy for myself. Facing her and discussing the accident would be more than I could bear at this time. I had spent five years propping up a devastated husband and trying to help my three daughters navigate the choppy waters of the teenage years while they shouldered the terrible loss of a brother.

            With my patience spent, what I wanted to do was interrupt Megan’s harangue and tell her just what I thought. Tell her that if she had been paying more attention to her daughter’s needs maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe her daughter wouldn’t have cried to my son about the injustice of being shipped off to a boarding school. Maybe my son, with misplaced chivalry, wouldn’t have taken my car to rescue a friend in distress. Maybe no one would be dead or damaged. Perhaps I would have felt better if I did unload on her. But there was enough of my mother’s good training left that I clamped down on my tongue.

            “Megan, I will not come up,” I said, speaking carefully in a measured tone. “But if Amelia would like to write me a letter telling me what’s on her mind, I’d be happy to read it and write back. Maybe sometime in the future we could meet and talk. However, not at this time.”

            Megan protested, insisting that letter writing wouldn’t do.

            “Well, that’s all I have to offer.” I said goodbye, and hung up.

            Every day after that, I flipped through the mail looking for a letter postmarked from New Hampshire. A week went by, then two, and after a month I stopped expecting that one would ever come.

 

 

 

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Diane M. Sullivan is an undergraduate student at Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.  She is majoring in English with a writing concentration.  Another creative non-fction story of hers was published last year in The Bridge, the fine arts magazine of Bridgewater State. She lives in Hull, Massachusetts with her family.