Unbury Carol(103)

“The chest, Carol,” Hattie said. “I’m telling you to climb into the toy chest.”

Carol had long loved and trusted her mother. She crossed the playroom, avoiding the wooden toys and wooden wheels, and stepped into the open red toy chest.

She stood that way, knee-deep, waiting.

“Now lie down in it, Carol.”

At five, Carol had no concept of death and therefore had no way of knowing what Mother was asking her to do.

Play dead.

Carol got to her knees in the box. She held the edge with her small white fingers.

“Lie down, Carol. All the way now.”

From where Carol knelt, Hattie looked a bit crazy. The second-story hall fanned out behind her, along which were the closed doors of the home’s many bedrooms. Carol wondered if Bess the maid might show up in that hall, might peek into the playroom, might ask Hattie what she was thinking to do.

But Hattie had sent Bess home early that day. And this, Carol understood vaguely, was why.

“Lie down now. On your back.”

Carol did as Mother said. And from her back she saw the powder-blue ceiling as though it were the sky. Then mother’s face eclipsed the sky.

Hattie took hold of the toy chest’s lid.

“Don’t be afraid,” she told her daughter.

Then Hattie closed the lid.

And locked it…



* * *



—

…By ten years old Carol was able to complete her studies, lying on her back, as Hattie tinkered with the Box, the idea she’d had for five years but had yet to perfect. Carol lit a small candle and brought it into the large box (much larger than her toy chest; Carol was glad those days were behind them) and she read the classics as Mother hammered against the wooden sides that made it so dark in there in the first place. Often the lid would pop open and Mother would reach inside, adjusting a knob, a lever, attempting to make final changes before what she called the test run.

“Put the book down, Carol.”

“Hang on, Mother.”

Because Carol liked to read. And she wasn’t going to put the book down in the middle of a paragraph.

Hattie waited.

“Okay.” Then Carol would do as she was told and Hattie would explain what to do, how the box worked this time.

“Spring-loaded,” Hattie said once as Carol looked up into her mother’s intelligent, focused eyes. “So when you press this button here, the lid should fly right off the box.”

“Even if it’s nailed shut, Mother?”

“Even if it’s nailed shut.”

Carol imagined it would have to be a very powerful spring, to do something like that.

Hattie shut the lid.

Carol, in the box, heard her mother’s muffled command.

“Press it, Carol.”

Carol pressed it.

Nothing happened. Just the loud sound of mangled metal. As if the springs had nowhere to go but back into themselves.

Hattie pried open the lid. She was frowning.

Carol picked up her book and started reading again.

Hattie tinkered some more…



* * *



—

…At fifteen Carol had long since joined in with the tinkering, though it was clearly always Mother’s project. The Box. Carol’s interest came from a more scientific place. Hattie’s was obviously born of grave concern. It wasn’t that Carol wasn’t afraid of her condition or the fact that she fell into deep multiple-day comas, but she was still only fifteen, and mortality felt assured.

“If I die,” Hattie said one evening, as the pair greased the gears of a strong steel wheel, “there may be nobody to say you’re still alive. Do you understand?”

“Of course.”

But Carol didn’t like talking like this. Let’s figure this out, yes, let’s build the Box already, yes, but do we have to talk about being buried alive?

“Even if everybody in town knows you have this condition, Carol, they might mistake it for the real thing. But a mother knows. Always. A mother knows. So we need to be sure you’ve got a…plan B. Just in case.”

“I won’t be buried alive,” Carol said, her face the campaign button of youthful confidence. But she was scared of it. “That would be just too…awful a thing.”

“Yes, well, the world can be unfair. And all the money in Harrows cannot correct that.”

Once the gears were greased, Hattie reached into the Box and began turning the crank of the wheel. The lid slowly lifted above it.

Carol clapped.

But Hattie’s enthusiasm was reserved.

“Now the dirt,” she said.

Carol and her mother carried four forty-pound sacks of dirt across what was once the playroom but had become the workroom long ago.

“Get in, dear.”

Carol got in.

Hattie closed the lid and then Carol listened patiently as Mother dumped 160 pounds of dirt onto the lid.

“All right,” Mother called.

Carol turned the crank.

The lid did move. But hardly any at all.

Once Hattie had cleared the lid again and Carol was up and out of the Box, Hattie said, “We’re close. Whether we think we are or not. We’re close.”…



* * *