You, Me and Nobody

Ch. 9-The Night The World Moved

Exactly one week later, with my ankle still tender but well enough to get around on, and my nightly routine adjusted to Skyler's regular visits, everything came to a screeching halt. Or, maybe, things started moving again, as since I thought everything with the accident was all buttoned up, the world ceased rotation.

I didn't expect it. My parents didn't expect it. All the same, I should have known.

Nothing stayed gone forever.

"Shit."

It was the first thing I heard that night, coming from the kitchen. Not my parent's usual enthusiastic discussion. Just the word. Short. Clipped. Succinct.

Scared.

I opened my door and hobbled out, standing at the banister, gazing down at the foyer. Shadows split the wedge of light spilling from the kitchen. Dad rushed into the kitchen and said something to Mom. She followed him into the living room. Atop their voices mingled the buzz of the TV.

"Shit," Dad said again. "Shit, Elsie."

In a way, I guess, I understood before I actually knew the crushing truth. Sometimes you just knew those things. Felt them. Anyway, it came to my attention later in life that people touched by grief navigated a different course. Became sensitive to potential tragedies and mishaps and the like. Standing at the banister with my injured foot in the air, only my big toe brushing the off-white carpet, I knew.

For the longest time, I didn't know what to do.

I mean, how could you, when the largest ink stain of your past suddenly resurfaces, hungry for attention? Thirsty for more blood? Maybe it even had its fangs in me, deep and penetrating, all this time.

"Okay," Mom said. "Okay, okay, okay. We're prepared for this, right?"

But they were only words. Lies, really. Because, how could she be prepared? We'd brushed the whole thing under the rug. Nothing but moving on. We were never supposed to go backwards.

She was never supposed to come back.

I floated down the stairs, more elegant than I thought possible with a gimpy leg. Mom and Dad resumed a different kind of enthusiastic discussion, not about my declining mental-emotional state, but of the thing which put me in the spiral in the first place.

"She can't come back into our lives," Mom said. I imagined them standing in front of the TV, eyes wide and confused, fumbling for the remote to mute the newscast before I heard anything. "Sam, we can't go through this again."

Dad didn't respond. Pinching his nose, probably. Scrubbing his stubble. Jamming the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Jesus Christ, Elsie."

"Sam."

"I don't know what you want me to say. I don't know what I'm—" he stopped, sentence careening to an abrupt halt, like a car slamming into a tree.

When both appeared effectually out of words, they switched the TV back on but lowered the volume. I paused outside the kitchen. Macaroni sat on the stove, forgotten and burning. The table was half set, one chair pushed out. A pile of roles stood the victor of the dinner as the only part of the meal successfully allocated to the dinner table. Even the salad was still in the bag. Without croutons. Mom knew I hated croutons. I used to pitch fits when she left them in there, only a couple, hoping I wouldn't notice.