In an Instant(53)

Only I know how miserable her life is, how alone and lonely she has become, how her marriage has disintegrated to the point where if she walks into a room, Bob walks out. In public, they appear united. Bob, a talented actor, will wrap his arm around Karen’s shoulders and regale whoever is listening with tales of his brave family as Karen politely smiles along, no one but me noticing the distress in her eyes from the toll it takes for her to keep up the charade.

Her stomach constantly bothers her now, and when Bob talks about that day, it acts up. Sometimes it’s too much, and she needs to excuse herself and go to the restroom, where she locks herself in a stall and pops Tums, hoping it will pass. Normally this is something she would talk to my mom about, but my mom is no longer her friend.

At around three, I begin to feel sorry for her.

Until the accident, I loved Karen. She was like a real aunt, my closest aunt, the first call I made if I was in trouble because I knew she’d do anything for me, the last call I made if I had good news to share because I knew she’d want all the details and that I’d never get to the other calls.

Now, after the accident, I hate her.

Mostly because I feel so betrayed. My whole life Karen has billed herself as a do-gooder, a champion of causes, the first to volunteer for bake sales and to lead the charge for putting shoes on children in Africa or food on the tables of the poor. Self-righteous and pious to the point of sainthood—that is who I believed her to be.

She was supposed to be good, do good, be selfless, and care about others, and she failed. When things got tough, her concern was solely for Natalie and herself. It’s like pulling back the curtain on the great and powerful Oz to discover an old man with a bunch of levers and strings and no magic at all. She has no right to claim she’s a good person because she’s not.

But my conviction wavers because, try as I might to only hate her, the sixteen years we shared before that day still exist, along with all the things I loved about her, and I find myself still caring for her and feeling sorry for her. She’s so utterly alone and miserable, and Karen is not a woman designed for loneliness or sadness. She is a woman made for laughter and hugs—buxom and soft, ditzy and fun, loving and good . . . yes, good. Until that day, she was good, and discovering she isn’t is very sad.

I grapple with this. Is goodness only true if it is at a personal cost? Anyone can be generous when they are rich; anyone can be selfless when they have plenty. My mom is not known as overly compassionate—some might even say she’s a bitch—yet using her bare hands, she closed the window of the camper. She undressed her dead daughter and didn’t keep a shred of warmth for herself. Bravely she left her son and husband and hiked out for help. All while Karen sat in the back of the camper with Natalie.

Can I blame Karen for her cowardice? For being selfish because she was scared? Are we born with our strength? If so, then should we condemn those who don’t have it?

I watch her shuffle into the kitchen, where she pulls the knobs from the stove so she can scrub them in the sink, and I decide I do not feel sorry for her. Fear is not an excuse. My mom was scared. Kyle was scared. Mo was terrified. Because of Karen, Oz is dead.

She is putting the knobs back on the stove when the door opens and Bob walks in.

She hurries out to greet him. “Late night at the office?” she says.

He looks like death, his hair disheveled, his clothes rumpled, his face red from perhaps still being drunk. He lifts his head to look at her holding a stove knob in her rubber glove and, with a sigh, nods to the charade and then stumbles up the stairs to their room.

Karen stands where she is, her compulsiveness momentarily paused as she watches him go, the reality blindsiding her and causing her to drop the knob as she catches herself on a chair. Because no matter how busy you keep yourself, no matter how much you refuse to talk about the past or face it, no matter how many times you change the channel if the weatherman is predicting snow, there are moments, inevitable lapses and gaps in time, when the past floods into the present with such fury it sucks the wind from your lungs and knocks you off your feet.

Crumbling to the floor, she curls into a ball and sobs.





64

My mom creeps into the house like a burglar. Any other night this might work, but tonight she is caught red handed as soon as she steps through the door.

“Mom,” Chloe says from the couch.

“Chloe?” Guilt laces my mom’s tone, though it doesn’t need to. Chloe is the last one to cast stones. She is also ironclad with secrets.

Chloe still wears the ridiculous getup she had on earlier. Dirt stains the skirt from where she knelt on the grass, and her eye makeup is smudged.

My mom pretends not to notice the oddness. “What do you have there?” she says, stepping closer. “Oh my. They’re so tiny.”

The four kittens sleep on Chloe’s lap. Finn meows and yawns with the disruption, then curls tighter against her brother and two sisters to return to sleep.

Bingo, who lies at Chloe’s feet, lifts his head at the yowl and then flops back to the floor.

Chloe nods. “The mom left them.”

My mom sits beside Chloe and strokes the back of the gray one. “She probably couldn’t take care of them. Are you going to bring them to the shelter?”

“I can’t. Mo found them and called the shelter, and they told her that they can’t take them until they can drink on their own.”