Everything I Never Told You(36)

Some days, though, even these talismans lost their power. Two weeks after she left home, she woke in her rented twin bed, her body one sharp ache. Suddenly she felt drowned in the incredible wrongness of the moment, that she should be here, so far away from them. At last, caped in a blanket, she tiptoed to the telephone in the kitchen. It was six forty-one in the morning, but it took only two rings. “Hello?” James had said. A long pause. “Hello?” She said nothing, not daring to speak, just letting that voice soak into her heart. He had sounded hoarse—just static, she told herself, though she did not truly believe this. At last, she pressed the hook down with one finger and held it there, a long time, before replacing the receiver again. All day she listened to that voice in her head, like a familiar and loved lullaby.

From then on, she called every few days, when the yearning for home became too much. No matter what time it was, James picked up the phone, and she worried, imagining him sleeping at the kitchen table, or in his study beside the extension. Yet the one time she received no answer—James and the children, out of food, had been forced to the grocery store at last—she had panicked, imagining house fires or earthquakes or meteor strikes, and called again and again, every five minutes, then every two, until James’s voice had come across the line at last. Another time, when she called in the middle of the morning, James, exhausted, had fallen asleep at his desk, and Nath had picked up instead. “Lee residence,” he had answered dutifully, just as she’d trained him, and Marilyn wanted to say, Are you all right? Are you being good? but found her throat swollen shut with longing. Nath, to her surprise, didn’t hang up at the silence. He had knelt on the kitchen chair, which he’d climbed to reach the phone, listening. After a moment, Lydia had tiptoed in from the doorway and crouched beside him, the handset sandwiched between their ears, for two minutes, three minutes, four, as if they could hear everything their mother was feeling and wishing in the gentle hiss on the line. They had been the ones to hang up first, and after the click, Marilyn had cradled the phone for a long time, hands trembling.

Nath and Lydia never mentioned this to their father, and James never reported the calls to the police. He had already begun to suspect that they were not much interested in helping him, and deep inside, where his old fears lay coiled, he thought he understood their reasoning: it had only been a matter of time before a wife like Marilyn left a husband like him. Officer Fiske continued to be very kind, but James resented this even more; the politeness made it even harder to bear. For her part, Marilyn told herself each time she put down the receiver that it was the last time, that she would not call again, that this was proof her family was fine, that she had begun a new life. She told herself this so firmly that she believed it completely, until the next time she found herself dialing their number.

She told herself that everything was possible now, in this new life. She subsisted on cereal and sandwiches and spaghetti from the pizza joint down the street; she had not known it was possible to live without owning a single pot. Eight more credits, she calculated, and she would finish her degree. She tried to forget everything else. She rolled Nath’s marble between her fingers as she wrote away for medical school brochures. She snapped the clip of Lydia’s barrette—one-two, one-two—as she penned tiny notes in the margins of her textbook. She concentrated so hard that her head ached.

That third day of July, Marilyn flipped a page in her textbook and black cotton clouded her view. Her head went heavy as a melon, pulling her off balance, buckling her knees, dragging her toward the floor. In a moment, her vision cleared, then her mind. She discovered a spilled glass of water trickling off the tabletop, her notes scattered across the tiles, her blouse clammy and damp. Only when her own handwriting came back into focus did she stand again.

She had never fainted before, never even come close, even during the hottest days of summer. Now she was tired, almost too tired to stand up. Easing herself onto the sofa cushions, Marilyn thought, Maybe I’m sick, maybe I caught a bug from someone. Then another thought arrived and her whole body went cold. It was the third; she was sure of this; she had been counting down the days to this exam. That meant she was nearly—she counted on her fingers, alert now, as if she’d been doused with icy water—three weeks late. No. She thought back. Since before she left home almost nine weeks ago. She hadn’t realized it had been so long.

She wiped her hands on her jeans and tried to stay calm. After all, she had been late before. When she’d been stressed, or sick, as if her body hadn’t enough attention to keep everything running, as if something had to be put on hold. Working as hard as she was, perhaps her body could not keep up. You’re just hungry, Marilyn told herself. She hadn’t eaten all day and it was nearly two o’clock. There was nothing in the cupboard, but she would go to the store. She would get food and eat it and then she would feel much better. Then she would get back to studying.

In the end, Marilyn would never take that exam. At the store, she put cheese and bologna and mustard and soda into her cart. She lifted a loaf of bread from the shelf. It’s nothing, she told herself again. You’re fine. With the grocery sack under her arm and the six-pack of bottles in her hand, she headed to her car, and without warning the parking lot spiraled around her. Knees, then elbows, slammed into asphalt. The paper sack tumbled to the ground. Soda bottles shattered on the pavement, exploding in a spray of fizz and glass.

Marilyn sat up slowly. Her groceries lay scattered around her, the loaf of bread in a puddle, the jar of mustard slowly rolling away toward a green VW van. Cola dripped down her shins. She had cut herself on the glass: a deep gash right across the center of her palm, straight as a ruler’s edge. It did not hurt at all. She turned her hand from side to side, letting the light play on the layers of skin like sandstone strata: clearish pink, like watermelon, with flecks of snowy white. At the bottom, a river of rich red welled up.