Acceptance

They Are Waiting

Rob and Isaac were standing side by side, looking at her. Isaac held out his hand. “We’re waiting for you,” he said.

Alice jerked awake. She looked at the glowing green numerals on the clock beside the bed: 2:53.

She sensed something behind her, and turned a little, looking over her shoulder. Kalyn was lying with her back to her, breathing deeply in sleep.

They weren’t waiting for Kalyn. She had to go on and live her own life; her people were here. But her people—Alice’s people—had all gone on. Everyone was there but her. Everyone was waiting.

Alice eased out of the bed, but Kalyn never stirred. She has always slept so soundly, Alice thought to herself.

She picked up her shoes and slipped silently out of the bedroom. She put them on in the kitchen, then went out the back door and walked through the darkness towards Isaac’s house. She stayed to the shadows, avoiding the orange glow of the street lights whenever possible. She knew if the others found her, they’d know where she was going—and why—and would stop her. But she wasn’t going to be stopped. Isaac was waiting for her, and she never made Isaac wait.

Alice made it to the back door of Isaac’s house without anyone noticing, and slipped into the kitchen. She pulled out a toolbox from under the sink and took a utility knife from it. She knew it would be there because she was the one who had bought Isaac the box and put all of his tools in it. He had always left organization to Alice.

She had a sudden memory of a crisp fall day. Rob had been contentedly ensconced in his recliner for a Saturday of college football, Kalyn tucked in the crook of his arm. She was only about eighteen months old. He was trying to teach her to say “Alabama sucks.”

She went to Isaac’s house. The windows were open and the breeze was soft and sweet—as only it could be in the fall. The sun outside was bright, the sky so very blue.

She sat on the living room floor with three banker’s boxes full of loose papers, Isaac looking deeply ashamed of himself. It was all the records for the group, going back decades—no order or sense to any of it. She plowed through it, though, and by the time it was dark, and the air coming through the windows was chilly, everything was in a filing cabinet. She could remember lying on the floor at one point, laughing until she cried, but she couldn’t remember now what the joke was.

Alice moved like a ghost through the house. Isaac had, for the most part, been fairly tidy, but here and there something was out of place: a magazine casually tossed on the sofa; a post-it note stuck to his computer monitor; a sock half-hidden under a chair. It looked as though he had just left—as if he was coming back. But no one was coming back. There was nothing but decades of yawning emptiness staring Alice in the face.

She hesitated for a moment at the threshold of Isaac’s bedroom, then she stepped in. She sat down on the unmade bed and looked around. It had been a long time since she had been in it. Isaac had painted it a different color and changed the carpet sometime in the last twenty-five years, but other than that, it looked pretty much the same—down to the clothes hamper, which looked as if it had just belched a few stray pieces of clothing onto the floor.

She reached for the notepad and pen laying on the bedside table and wrote a quick note. When she sat them down again, she noticed a picture in a silver frame next to the telephone. She picked it up and looked at it. She was surprised to see her nineteen-year-old self in it. Isaac was standing beside her, their arms around each other. They both had on sunglasses and were smiling happily.

She remembered it: they had gone out to an amusement park for the day. They were careful when they were at home—secretive—but when they were alone, they could be open and not care. A guy working one of the carnival games had snapped it for them.

Tears rolled down Alice’s face as she looked at it. Despite Isaac’s reassurance that he felt everything had turned out for the best, she knew he had hurt more than he ever let on. Why on earth had he kept this picture beside his bed? Why had he tormented himself with it every time he woke up and went to sleep?

Maybe for the same reason she couldn’t bring herself to leave the group when she decided to marry Rob: she just couldn’t let go of him.

She picked up the utility knife and clicked the razor blade up a couple of notches. She held her left arm out and with a deep, slow cut, she opened the vein in her arm at the elbow. She watched as her blood—so thick it was almost black—ran down her arm and dripped off her elbow onto the bed. It didn’t hurt at all. If she ever needed proof she was doing the right thing, that was it. Isaac never let her hurt.

She switched hands and did the same thing to her right arm. She tossed the knife aside and laid down, then she picked up the picture, looking at it again.

Isaac had often smiled and laughed over the past twenty-five years, but there was something different about him in the picture; it was a different kind of happiness. He looked… proud—proud to be with her.

She closed her eyes, feeling light-headed. Her hand—with the picture still in it—fell to her side. But she kept the image of the two of them in her mind. She willed herself to be that person again… back there, again, with him.