Paris by the Book(16)
I did not want Robert to have died. But I also did not know what else would explain the way I felt, which felt so similar to what I’d experienced after losing my parents: achy, antsy, haunted.
Prepare for life without him. Practice. I did. It helped. I determined I would privately pretend Robert was dead, then, until proven otherwise. And knowing I was pretending would stave off the larger, harder questions.
But what about my daughters’ questions?
* * *
—
Ellie and Daphne had held it together until the crosswalk and to a degree afterward, comforted that the police were on the case. But as days passed and Dad did not appear, things began happening. They acted out. Slammed doors. Fought. I asked the pediatrician for advice. This is normal, he said, which almost made me laugh, because nothing was. Still: I was to watch for “self-harm”—cutting—or eating disorders—or detailed discussions of suicide.
What I saw was none of this; the only self they were trying to harm was Mom. Suicidal thoughts? No. Homicidal, yes. Their eyes tracked me like I was prey. My jury-rigged survival approach—dead Robert as placeholder, receptacle for my grief-in-waiting—I could see that it would not work for them. Indeed, to declare him dead without producing his body—it would be as if I had killed him.
And so death stalked us, made somehow more powerful, more omnipresent, by our not discussing it. For example: one soft summer evening, walking our neighborhood’s shopping strip, salving our sorrows with ice cream, Daphne managed to smear chocolate on Ellie’s new top (its purchase an earlier salve). An accident, but Ellie screamed a soul-tearing scream. Daphne screamed a lesser scream, but in it rang the simmering anger of days upon days: at her father for disappearing, at her mother for not finding him, and especially at her sister, Ellie, for taking out all of her anger and despair and hurt on Daphne in a dozen different ways. And then Ellie smashed her cone in Daphne’s shirt.
Daphne plucked Ellie’s phone from her back pocket and threw it into the street.
At this point, the film goes silent for a full minute. Or it does when it plays in my mind. I know that, in real life, the next sixty seconds were particularly noisy, but I couldn’t hear them then. I couldn’t hear my own screaming, which eyewitnesses told me was even louder than my daughters’.
Ellie’s phone was her portal, her jet pack, her favorite toy. Something to be chased without hesitation, a ball bouncing into the street. One southbound car screeched and missed her, a northbound pickup ground her phone into the pavement. At this point, my film regained sound, just in time for me to think I was hearing Ellie’s bones crunch like kindling.
They didn’t; the pickup, after destroying the phone, had stopped just short of Ellie. Hip did meet bumper, but the driver had stopped so miraculously, precisely, shy of her that all his truck really did was tip her to the ground. She never hit her head. Someone ran up with a lawyer’s business card, insisted we go to the hospital. The paramedic said it was our choice. The driver was relieved when Ellie chose not to. I was relieved when Ellie, perhaps because she was so shaken by the experience, perhaps because she was certain I would now buy her a new and fancier phone, hugged Daphne and apologized for yelling at her. Daphne mumbled her own apology, incoherent.
We staggered home. We changed and brushed our teeth. We apologized to each other. Ellie told me what kind of new phone she wanted. Daphne said nothing, stayed bent over a diary Eleanor had given her, scribbling entries Eleanor said I shouldn’t read but which I of course did. I later woke Daphne when I saw that day’s final line:
Whoever you take next, let it be me.
Whom was Daphne addressing? I didn’t know, and so I hovered over her, wondering how to let her know she was loved, she was safe, she must never, ever wish for death—sweet girl!—
And studying her in those brief seconds before I saw she saw it was me, when I was still just some strange dark figure looming, I saw her eyes brighten with fear, and relief, that her prayer was being answered.
* * *
—
I heard a quiet, insistent knock at the front door minutes later.
Though it was almost midnight, I didn’t even bother with the peephole. Was it—?
Eleanor.
I’d made the discovery earlier that evening. The note. But not Robert’s usual kind, and not in the usual place. Before I shared it with the police—much less the girls—I wanted to discuss it with her, especially as it required some of her expertise, very close textual analysis. I’d suggested we meet the next morning, but Eleanor had said this called for a meeting, wine, immediately. Now that she was here, I tried to wave her off; I told her about Ellie, Daphne, the cones, the phone, the street. Now was not the time, I said.
After Eleanor confirmed everyone was physically okay, she said that this was exactly the time. More to the point, past time.
“So again,” Eleanor said. “This was where?”
We were in the kitchen. She’d brought a paper-bagged bottle but ignored it as soon as I gave her the “note.” Not the usual three words, be back soon, but, as I said, just six letters: CWTCCJ.
“In the granola,” I said. I went to get the box, but she flicked an impatient wrist. I returned and continued. “The weird organic shit that he was forever buying but never ate. Certainly no one’s touched it in the four weeks since he’s been gone.”