Vital Sign (5 page)

Ellen and Terry smile back at me. I turn on the spot and carry myself to the rental car. I can’t be strong for another moment. I need the privacy that my hotel room o
ffers to cry and get pissed and eventually pass out after I make that call. I have to call Jake. I have to hear his voice. I need to. I have to. I know I shouldn’t. If anyone else knew about my fucked up little addiction, they’d admit me to the nearest psych ward.

April 21, 2013

The house is the same. For the most part.
I step in front of the bathroom sink and drag my ragged gaze up to the mirror. Without much intention, I end up meeting my reflection. My brown eyes are staring back at me and I’m struck by just how plain I am. Other than the misery that tends to lurk in them, my eyes aren’t anything noteworthy. My mouth is forgettable, which happens to be a good thing since I fight to keep a sarcastic smirk at bay in the presence of others. My lips are pink and free of gloss or lipstick. My hair is straight, medium brown and long, mostly because I haven’t been to a salon of any sort to pamper myself in what seems like an eternity. I could use a trim. My face is thin and it’s easier for me to see the weight that I’ve lost when I actually
look
instead of just
see
.

My skin is pale but clear. A tan would look nice on me.
I remember stretching out beside Mom and Dad’s pool in the summer to soak up the rays. I haven’t even seen the pool in two summers. My height is average. My frame is average. My breasts, hips and ass are all pretty average. I’m average. The only notable thing about me is the sorrow that has become an integral part of my identity. It’s who I’ve become—I’m pretty sure my photo would be next to the dictionary entry. I look like sorrow. I feel like sorrow. I
am
sorrow. With my palms pressed to the countertop, my elbows are locked, bracing myself in place, the weight of my own stare far too much to withstand.

I pull
my small suitcase into my bedroom and breathe deeply. I close my eyes and pretend Jake is lying in bed, smiling his crooked smile that he always reserved just for me. My nose draws in the air around me, seeking out his scent.

I don’t know why I do this. It’s the worst kind of torture
, but it’s reflex at this point. I know he isn’t here and I know that his scent has long since faded, but I seek it nonetheless.

I open my eyes and look to the picture of him on my nightstand. It’s the photo of him
right after he graduated from the Police Academy. He’s dressed in his uniform and smiling proudly with me under his arm. I remember him tugging me to him as Jenna held up her cell phone to snap the picture. Jake turned his head right after she took the first picture and kissed my forehead. Jenna managed to catch that moment too. She emailed me both pictures right then and there. I printed both candid photos the next day.

I framed one and had meant to fr
ame the other, but somehow it has always ended up staying in my purse. I love that photo of his lips pressed to my forehead, my smile spread wide, exposing the straight white teeth that my parents paid a fortune for. My nose is crinkled up and my eyes are shut, reveling in his affection.

I carry the other
photo with me everywhere. It’s tucked into my purse right along with the letter.

The letter.

Jeff, his partner, came over three days after the funeral and handed me an envelope with my name written in Jake’s handwriting on the front. I never even knew Jake had written me a letter. I haven’t opened it yet.

Two miserable years have passed and I still don’t have the courage to open the
damn letter. It feels entirely too final and I don’t know that I’m strong enough to read whatever it is he’s written. I don’t know if I’ll ever have what it takes to open that envelope and face that brand of heartbreak.

*
**

My cell phone rings from inside my purse and I already know who it is.

Mom.

Another ringtone assignment to make screening calls that much easier. She’d be unimpressed with me if she ever heard the ringtone I assigned to her contact. Every time she decides to call, which is entirely too often for my liking, a shrill nuclear warning emanates from the speakers of my phone. What sounds like a barrage of horns starts low, slowly climbing in pitch and volume, peaks, then slowly descends back to where it
started, just to repeat the ominous sounding alarm. I set my purse on the bed and dig for my phone, sliding my finger over the screen and holding it up to my ear.

“Hello.”

“Hey, darling. Me and Dad were going to swing by, is that okay?”

No.

As if I could ever say that to my mother. She’d croak and I’d win the Bitch of the Millennia award.

That’s rich, Sadie. Real rich.

“Sure, Mom. I’m just getting packed for the drive to Tybee tomorrow.”

“Okay. We
’ll be there in a bit.”

Oh
, joy.

“Okay, Mom. Bye.” I wander into the closet
, trying to decide if I really have to do any laundry before I leave for Tybee Island in the morning. It’s only a four hour drive down to the coast, so taking my own car is a much cheaper option over flying and renting a car once I get there. I peruse the clothes on my side of the closet. I’ve got enough clean outfits to make the trip.

Involuntarily, I turn to face Jake’s side of the closet. His clothes are still in place, hanging right where he left them.
They’re relics from a history that seems just out of reach, but it might as well be light years away. Sometimes it seems like a thousand lifetimes have come and gone since that night. Then again, sometimes it seems as if I can close my eyes, breathe deeply, and slip right back in time as long as I try hard enough. But my eyes always open, bringing me back to the present, and I find myself wondering if I ever really had him in the first place. I find myself wondering if I really had my perfect, simple little life or if I had dreamed it up and hallucinated the whole thing.

His uniform shirts are still in the ticketed plastic wardrobe bags from the cleaners. A fine
layer of dust has blanketed his clothes and it’s just more proof that he’s gone. He’s been gone for some time, but the ache in me hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s intact, deep in my chest, and seems to grow more every day.

I peer down to the basket on the floor beneath Jake’s clothes. I cover my mouth with my hands
, trying hard to choke back my tears. I try to ignore the last outfit he wore sitting in the dirty clothes hamper. It hurts looking at them just laying there, waiting to be washed and worn again. They’ll wait there forever in vain. Just like I’ll wait forever. I hate seeing them there, but I can’t bring myself to wash them, or throw them out, or give them away.

I’m not sure what the hell I’m
supposed
to do with these cargo shorts and department softball team jersey. There’s no manual with instructions for this type of thing. There’s no rule of thumb or guideline or even suggested course of action for handling your deceased husband’s dirty clothes, so I do what I’ve done for the last two years. I flip off the closet light and walk away from it. At least, for another day.

*
**

I’m standing in the kitchen, sipping soda
, when the doorbell rings.

“Sadie, we’re here,”
Mom drawls as she opens my front door.

I turn and set my soda on the counter and head to the door.
“Hey,” I say softly as I hug my mom then my dad.

“So how was Charlotte?”
she asks, wasting no time in pushing me to discuss the trip.

“Wow,
Mom. Cut right to it, huh?” I shake my head, one of my typical dry smirks working across my lips. Turning on my heels, I head back down the hall to my room, knowing that Mom and Dad will follow me.

“I’m sorry, I’m just curious how it went.” Her tone tells me that she’s
two seconds from getting ass hurt and crying if I snap at her again.

I drag in a ragged breath and decide to just tell her what she wants to hear and get it over with.
“It was okay. Terry and Ellen met me for dinner and everything went fine.” I shrug as I sum up the visit in two sentences while dumping the contents of my suitcase on my bed.

Mom is standing in front of my dresser
with wide eyes, waiting expectantly for more than that vague synopsis of my trip. “Just okay? Did you ask about the transplant? Are the drugs working to keep his body from rejecting?”

I sigh heavily and roll my eyes. “No
, Mom, I didn’t ask about his medication. I didn’t ask how he’s enjoying his second chance at life. And I didn’t ask how often he thanks God that Jake died so that he might live. Okay?!” I snap in my usual manner.

It’s behavior that I’ve come to expect from myself. That doesn’t mean that I’m proud of being a raging bitch when provoked, it just means that I know how I can be when someone pushes the wrong buttons. Mom not only pushes my buttons
, she jabs them over and over with her overbearing, insufferable hovering. It’s a game of Hunt and Peck gone terribly awry.

“Sadie!”
she scolds, clearly affronted by my response.

“June, don’t pry,” my dad warns from his spot at the door.

Mom scoffs…or chokes. The strangled noise that just came out of her mouth could have been either one.
I turn to face her with one hand propped up on my hip. She turns to face Dad with
both
hands propped on her hips. And we both end up looking to him to play referee like he has on so many occasions. He’s the voice of reason. He always has been.

“Well, excuse me, if I’d like—to know—” her voice begins to crack and I know that the theatrics I’m so accustomed to are coming. “—that my son-in-law’s organs have saved someone’s life.” She covers her mouth with her hand and storms right past my dad.

On cue, he and I both sigh deeply. He shakes his head and looks down to his feet then back up to me. “You know how your mama is, Sade,” his gravelly, low voice declares on another sigh.

“Yeah
, I know, but acting like a bully doesn’t get her anywhere with me,” I rebut, holding up one finger.

“I know. I know.”
Dad nods.

A long pause passes before I end up feeling guilty for snapping at her. I hate feeling guilty.

“I’ll go talk to her,” I mutter begrudgingly. I drop the shirt I had just picked up and shoulder past Dad out into the hall in search of Mom, who has likely retreated to the car.

I don’t know why I bother even coming home. Maybe an extended stay someplace
else is a damn fine idea. I need room to breathe. I need room to be angry. I need room to be irrational. I need room to be whatever my grief dictates without my mother or anyone else dropping in to smother me into a fit of rage.

As I anticipated,
Mom is sitting in the front seat of the car, examining her reflection in the vanity mirror. She lifts a tissue and blots her eyes.

Wonder
ful. Made Mom cry. Again.

She catches sight of me from the corner of her eye
when she flips the sun visor up. She averts her eyes forward, ignoring me. I round the car to get in the driver’s seat.

“Mom, you know I don’t mean to snap at you.”
My confession sounds pretty sincere but she doesn’t acknowledge it.

She folds her hands in her lap and keeps her eyes facing forward.

“Come on, Mom, I’m trying, okay? It’s hard for me and it’s no excuse but just know that I don’t like my behavior either.”

She glances over to me then out the window. She’s thinking. I see the speech forming in her head. “You know,
” she says wistfully, “when you were born, I looked at you all wrapped up in that receiving blanket and I knew I’d always do anything in my power to keep you happy and safe. I was tired.
God
, how I was tired. Twenty-three hours of labor wasn’t easy and I was ready to give up. The doctors said they were prepared to take me in for a C-section but I told them no. I said, ‘Just hold out. Just wait.’” Mom holds her hands up, reliving the ordeal. I’ve never heard her speak so candidly about my birth. I know it was tough on her but she’s never told me much about it. “I knew my girl even back then. Even before you were born. I knew that you were stubborn and you may take the long route, but you’d always show up in the end.” She smiles dryly. A lone tear slips down my mother’s troubled face, making me feel even smaller than I already feel. “So I hung in there. I thought, this can’t be fun for her, either. She’s in there being pushed, and squeezed, and cornered. So I told myself to hang on. Wait it out. To let you come when you were ready. Four hours later, it was finally time to push and even though I didn’t have an ounce of energy left, I did it. I did it for you and I did it for me. Your tiny shoulder had been sort of stuck and the doctor had to help us out with the forceps, but we did it. Seeing you wrapped up and pissed off, screaming at the top of your lungs, was the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.
You
are the most perfect thing that I’ve ever done. Even bruised and a little beaten from delivery, you fought. You made your presence known. You screamed loud and told the world that you had made it. You were here. My nurse even said you were the loudest little thing she’d ever heard in fifteen years of delivering babies.” She brings a wad of tissues to her nose, wiping away her emotion. “I knew that you and I would always fight against each other. I knew that you would bring me to the edge of giving in, but I’d hang on because you’re my baby and you’re worth it,” she croaks tearfully. “So that’s where I am, Sadie. I’m tired, and I’m scared, and I’m on the edge of giving in, but I’ll hold on because I know that you’ll come through this. If I could take this from you, I would. I’d take that hurt in a heartbeat. But I can’t. All I can do is push, and squeeze, and corner you until you give in and come out of this to scream to the world that you’re still here, dammit. You may be worse for the wear, but you’re still my baby girl and you
made it
.”