Grief
By
Ariel Custer
Janice stirs brown sugar into her husband’s oatmeal. She
reaches for the small, sealed, shaker of ground peanuts. She bought it for this
purpose, remembering his fatal allergy, but cannot bring herself to mix it in.
Phantom memories of their happiness in the earlier days halt her hand. She puts
the container in her jacket pocket instead.
Janice sits in the passenger seat as they drive silently
to the hospital, he in his doctor’s coat and she in her nurse’s scrubs. She
glances at his coffee. She pops the lid of the peanut container in her jacket
pocket. It would be easy to drop a few pieces in at the stop sign up ahead.
They stop. He looks right. He looks left. The timing couldn’t be more perfect.
But she can’t. He is especially careful around cars now – always responsible
and attentive. They go.
They arrive at the hospital and walk through the parking
lot toward the doors. They are silent, with three feet of space between them.
Enough space for their baby girl. Janice’s blood pressure rises; she can feel
her heart pound as she clenches her fists. She feels as though she could
strangle him with her bare hands. She steals a glance at him and cannot help
but notice the wrinkles around the corners of his eyes and mouth that were not
there only four years ago. Those four agonizing years have aged him as much as
fifteen years would age any other man. She relaxes her hands with concentrated
effort.
Janice has a bad morning. She checks on her assigned
patients and has to correct three nurses-in-training. Some doctor almost kills
a patient by prescribing a medication to which he’s allergic. She checks the
doctor’s name, but it is not her husband. No, he is much too skilled to make
that kind of mistake. Still, his skill wasn’t enough to save their precious
Annabelle. She pockets some potassium chloride. She will put it in his leftover
spaghetti when they eat lunch.
The
ritual of the lunch break began the day they met, nearly 20 years ago. Even
after the accident, they continued the ritual. But now they never talk, never
make eye contact. They only eat their food in silence, barely acknowledging
each other’s presence. Every moment his eyes are not on his food presents an
opportunity for the sinister placement of the peanuts. But the accident wasn’t
his fault, not really, and Janice can’t forget that fact, no matter how hard
she tries. He walks away, unharmed.
A car accident victim comes in with a broken collarbone
and shattered humerus. Janice assists her husband all through emergency
surgery. He asks for a scalpel. For a moment she holds it in her tightly closed
fist, thinking about plunging it into his heart. She could make his heart bleed
like her heart bleeds every day. But the way he said it, with an infinitely
tired sigh, and the sheer exhaustion in his face makes her pause. The angry red
haze is blinked away from her eyes and pushed from her mind. She hands the
scalpel over.
Another patient. She needs air, needs an escape. All this
inner battling has left her breathless and shaky. She switches with another
nurse. Before having a quick break, she checks on one of her husband’s
patients. He happens to be in the room when she gets there. Janice wants to
kick herself, but she decides to check the patient’s vitals anyway. The elderly
woman with failing kidneys pats her on the arm – what a good doctor he is; she
must love working with him. It is the first time she has seen his eyes all
week. His eyes are duller than she remembers. He averts his gaze and quietly
leaves the room.
She must return the potassium chloride before anyone
notices. She walks in the room just as the nurse taking inventory asks her if
she’s seen it. Janice checks her pockets. Here
it is; I thought I would need it. The younger nurse looks suspicious but
says nothing. She is blonde with blue eyes; a beautiful girl with a beautiful
smile. Like Annabelle. She reaches into her jacket pocket, feeling the peanut
container. This time, she thinks. This time I will do it, no matter what he
says or does. No matter what I remember.
She stares at him from across the hallway. She sees the
stooped shoulders, the dull gray eyes. She notices the wrinkles again, the white
flecks in his hair. She winces at the evidence of the sorrow that has plagued
him since that awful day when he backed over their toddler. She can still
imagine the frantic crawl beneath the vehicle, his cries, the blood all over
his shirt. All she sees is a grieving father, but all she can feel is a
motherly ache.
It
is five o’clock. Her shift is over. She waits in the lobby. He walks in, looks
at her, and they walk out the doors. No words. She does not return his gaze.
She cannot. She will follow through this time. No matter what she sees or
remembers.
The silence is heavy in the car as they drive home. Why
is it so hard to kill her child’s killer? Why does she not dump the peanuts in
his coffee? Why can’t she finally finish him? She mulls over the mystery in her
mind, trying to make sense of her conflict of interests. On the one hand,
Annabelle deserves justice. On the other, to take that justice would mean
destroying the only link Janice still has with Annabelle – her father. The
predicament weighs heavier and heavier on her mind and makes Janice feel
nauseated.
When they get home he reheats leftovers and even asks
Janice if she wants some, but she isn’t hungry. She goes to her room and
changes into her workout clothes. She spends some time in their basement gym.
She runs two miles and benches 100 pounds. She can hear him upstairs, watching
the news. For a minute she considers going up there, seething and raging,
indulging every last animal reaction any mother would have toward the killer of
her offspring. She could bash him in the head with a dumbbell. She could drop a
bar on his neck. She could pour peanuts all over his head, just in case. His
screams would be therapy. But that thought reminds her again of the wailing,
mourning, weeping screams that burst from him when he realized Annabelle might
be gone. She remembers the way he gripped the bloody body closer to his chest,
willing breath into her, shouting for his little girl to come back. Janice
remembers the way he yelled for her, telling her to call 911. But it was too
late. She runs another mile.
She finishes her workout and showers. He can hear her in
the basement. He knows that she hates him. He hates himself. He wants to talk
with her, but her icy stare locks his jaw every time he tries. He could go down
there. He stands up from the couch, but his knees and resolve weaken, and he sinks
back down. Again. If only he could bring himself to do it. For her sake and
even Annabelle’s sake. He has it all set up in the spare bedroom. The rope, the
rig, the chair – he would just have to jump. He sighs and closes his eyes, but
cannot keep them closed for long. His daughter’s face greets him from the back
of his eyelids. Not the bloody face, nor the peaceful face he remembers lying
in the casket, but her smiling face; the one that greeted him every day when he
came home from work. The images are accompanied by sounds – her ringing
laughter, her squeals of delight when they played, her soft and steady
breathing when she fell asleep watching sports with him. Those memories keep
him going, keep him believing. They keep him from indulging the coward inside
him that wants to use the rope. And every day he hopes that one day they give
him the strength to reach out to his wife.
They haven’t
shared a room since the accident. When she left, she hoped he would follow her
and tell her that they would get through it together. But he didn’t. She moved to
the basement, and he stayed upstairs. Now, Janice sits on her bed, leaning
forward with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She could go up
there. Ask that they talk. Scream and yell all of the things she thinks about
him, and then cry in his shoulder all of the tears that claw her throat and
fuel her agony. She stands up, but her knees and resolve weaken. Again. She
stretches out on the bed, the tears leaking from her eyes, her head buried in
her pillow. She remembers moments in their lives: their first date, his
proposal, the wedding, Annabelle’s arrival and her four wonderful years of life
with them. The years that were so unlike this living death. She doesn’t want it
to be like this forever.
Janice sits up suddenly, swinging her legs over the edge
of the bed. She doesn’t want it to be like this forever! She begins to pace
across the room. What does she want,
then? Divorce? Would that bring peace? She doesn’t really interact with her
husband anyway. Their unusual arrangement allowed them privacy while they
grieved their loss, but now it is just the way they live. She stops pacing when
it occurs to her that neither she nor he separated their joint bank accounts.
Is that proof of some subconscious desire to remain together? Even in the
hellish throes of her grief and pain and utter misery, Janice never wanted to
leave him. He is what connects her to Annabelle. No, divorce would only leave her
deeper in the black muck of grief.
Okay, so not
divorce and not…whatever this is. Janice’s knees tremble when she realizes
the only option left. She has to go up there. She has to talk with him. For Annabelle.
He hears the stairs creak. He slowly rises from the couch
and turns to face the figure rising up from the basement. When she finally
steps from the last step to the ground floor, she raises her gaze from the
carpet to his face.
“Charles. I’m ready to talk.”
