After life, p.13
After Life, page 13
Idiotic. That was the word that went through my head. Even Sam seemed to recognize he had somehow overestimated my enthusiasm for this part of the trip. What on earth did he think would happen? We would knock on this woman’s door, tell her that the soul of her murdered son had found itself a home inside of my baby brother and call it a day? I stewed on these thoughts as Sam fearlessly drove forward, unwavering from the plan. He said he didn’t know what we’d do when we got there, but it didn’t hurt to look. To see. To try.
When we pulled up to her house, I felt my stomach seize and clench, like I’d been hit with a pitch in the gut.
The Sullivan home sat back off the street and was surrounded by a three-foot chain-link fence. There was a tall oak tree in the front yard casting a shadow on the cemented front porch, and a wreath on the front door boasted green shamrocks and a leprechaun hat, even though St. Patrick’s Day was a month or so ago. All the blinds and curtains were shut tight, and it was difficult to ascertain if anyone was inside the house. It was Garsten, so I didn’t know what I was expecting, but boring normalcy was not it. This could have been anyone’s house, and I think I assumed the yard would be a graveyard of debris, the paint chipped, a tangle of weeds along the driveway. I thought it would look haunted and decayed, but it looked average, mundane, even.
“Okay, we’ve seen it,” I said. “Am I supposed to just go up and ring the doorbell?”
As he stared at the house, Sam suddenly seemed unsure of himself. He left the car idling and turned to me. “We can do anything you want.” Anything I wanted, as if this had been my idea to start with.
I couldn’t tell you what possessed me to hop out of that car and march my way up that shamrocked wreath and knock on the door with so much enthusiasm that my knuckles hurt. My chest pounded wildly, and I thought I might die of a heart attack, and when no one answered for a solid minute, I was both relieved and disappointed. Sam followed me, but he hung back. Somewhere between the cemetery and the house, he’d lost his bravado. It didn’t matter. Insanity picked up where common sense had bailed: I wanted to see if Hannah would open that door. I just wanted to look at her and then I’d go.
When I turned to leave, I heard the door unlock and screech open, and I spun. A girl my own age with a messy head of hair and bottomless brown eyes peered outward. It was probably our similar age, or maybe the look of terror on my face, but she opened the door wider and crossed her arms over his chest. She was wearing a t-shirt with no bra, and her breasts hung low and loose. Youthfulness must have skipped her entirely. It was clear she couldn’t be older than twenty, but there was something rugged about her appearance. Some people just look like life gave them a beating.
“Yes?” she asked. Her voice was small, whiny, like she was imitating a baby; not a match for her wrecking ball looks. “Can I help you?”
Sam was no use. He froze on the spot. Instant shame and guilt flooded me: this was a situation for Carlie, and I regretted her absence. My best friend was born to infiltrate houses and lives with unrehearsed charm and white lies. She would have known what to say to save us and coordinated our run-in with the Sullivans to appear serendipitous, and worked her magic to keep us above suspicion. I’d left her feeling upset with me for doubting her and skipped school without even a text message of explanation. She’d miss me in English. If she didn’t text me to find out where I’d gone, then I knew her ire ran deep.
It was in that second, where I stood crafting my story, that the frizzy girl saved me.
“Are you guys the tutors? I called Mrs. James and told her that I didn’t need anyone. My mom is hiring private ones. Sorry you wasted your time. Peace.” Then without formality she began to shut the door on us and out of instinct, I put my hand out against the door and stopped it.
Tutors.
“Please don’t make us go back…we’d rather just waste our time here than have to sit around at school,” I said. And I waited.
There is a moment, when you are lying blindly, where you watch the scene around you with careful attention to see if you have misstepped. Was that an eyebrow raise? Did she look incredulous? What did the flicker in her eyes mean—was I caught? Good liars are constantly on their toes, ready with their rebuttal like a loaded gun. Feet poised to backpedal.
Sam looked at the ground and then the trees, and then he looked up to the second story windows. He had a blank expression on his face, dumbfounded, as if he understood that speaking could ruin everything. We hadn’t known each other long, but already he sensed that he should leave the talking to me. Good boy.
She looked like she was going to turn us down, but at the last second she changed her mind.
“Whatever. Sure,” the girl said and opened her door and walked away. The door swung outward on its own while our hostess disappeared into the back part of the house. Unsure if that was a true invitation, we stalked forward cautiously.
The house smelled like a mixture between lavender and stale coffee. The living room was conspicuously absent of light—natural and artificial—and above the mantle there was a shrine to four children: three frozen from the decade before, their school pictures, the same ones I was seeing everywhere, in chipped wooden frames.
I nudged Sam and nodded to the pictures.
Up until then, we could have been in anyone’s house, but the photos of Colton, David, and Brick corroborated Sam’s research. We were inside Hannah Sullivan’s house, and the girl who left us unattended must have been the baby sister. I suppose that fifteen years would put her around my age—although it took until that moment to make the connection. In that instant, I felt sorry for the braless teen. Nothing about her life had ever been normal. Every day she woke up and had to share mantle space with her dead and missing brothers, and I couldn’t imagine what else haunted her.
Sam wandered over to the kitchen table to the right of the door and tapped a name on the top of a journal. I peered over his shoulder. Abby. At least now we had a name. Abby Sullivan. Survivor.
“That’s not even the science or the math,” Abby said as she walked around the corner. She was wearing a sweatshirt and had run a comb through her hair. Her lips were newly shiny with clear gloss. “That’s what they sent you for, I’m assuming. So, did the Garsten peer tutors import some brains into their ranks? It’s a small school, you know. I don’t recognize you…”
“Oh,” I said and I stuck out my hand. “Bridgett and that’s…” I paused long enough to let Sam come up with his own alias, but he didn’t say a thing, so I turned back to Abby and added, “Carl.”
“Bridgett and Carl,” Abby repeated. “And where did you come from?”
“Garsten. We moved here.” I tried to sound like her question was stupid. Another trick. Make them question their own sanity.
“You’re new to Garsten? Who moves to Garsten?” she asked, and I thought for a moment she was going to make me answer, but she continued and let me off the hook. “Whatever, I’ve been homeschooled since seventh grade, so if you’re new within the last few years, then I wouldn’t know, would I?” She walked over to a china cabinet and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the front drawer. Standing right in the middle of the dining room, she lit up and began to exhale the smoke through her nose. Without an escape, the smoke lingered in the air and created a yellow haze between us. She sucked on the cigarette again and blew the smoke upward.
Sam coughed. I must have looked stricken with disgust. Abby rolled her eyes at us and kept smoking.
“Asthma,” Sam said and took a step back toward the living room. “I’ll just…” he pointed back toward the living room.
I almost laughed at him, trying to play it coy, but I kept my composure. His admission didn’t deter Abby from puffing away, but she did open up a side window and make an effort to blow the smoke outward. The house hadn’t smelled like smoke when we entered, and I wondered how much of this was for show—so, we’d go back to her Garsten friends and convey that she was some brazen bad-ass, as if anyone there would care. Maybe they would, what did I know?
“Look, if you wanted to just skip school, be my guest. I’ll tell anyone you were here and I’ll sign off on your little timesheets.” Abby put out the cigarette in a teacup and walked over to where I was standing. She held her hand out as though I could procure the timesheet from thin air. I saw her look at my shoulder for a purse or a backpack—a messenger bag with school worksheets—and when she realized I was empty-handed she raised her eyebrows and dropped her hand. I didn’t have the means to fake this charade any further, and Sam was no help.
Upstairs, something creaked. And then a phone buzzed. Abby’s hand went to the pocket in her sweatshirt and pulled out a worn, outdated cellphone. She flipped her phone open and picked up the call, eyeing us with great disdain. “What?” she asked the person on the other end with formalities. It wasn’t harsh, or rude, just casual—as though she had been cut off mid-conversation and was picking up where she left off.
Someone said something. The voice was female. I couldn’t hear the details. I looked down, so she didn’t think I was eavesdropping.
“The tutors from the high school….no….no….that’s fine, I’ll take care of it,” she said to the person on the other line. Then she sighed and rolled her eyes, “Mom, no. I’m not going to do that. I’ll just call the home again….I said no. Please no….”
From upstairs I heard a distinct pounding. It was repetitive and loud. From what I could tell, someone upstairs was methodically banging a large stick into the floor and making the ceiling shake.
Abby flipped the phone off and shook a fist toward the sound. Then tossed her phone to the table with a thud and crossed her arms over her chest. She ignored the banging as if it would just go away, but it didn’t. Sam wandered back over and he made a point to stare at the ceiling, but Abby cleared her throat and so he looked at me instead.
“Maybe you should just go,” she said. “Tutors.”
“Is there someone else here?” he asked. I wanted to punch him in the arm. No shit, Sam.
“No,” Abby replied, her tone terse. “There’s a ghost upstairs trying to scare you out of my house. Did it work?”
Ha, I thought, in my most cutting inner-voice.
Then we heard the calling, “Abby—”
The girl went from brash and ballsy, to world-weary. When she looked at us, she seemed angry that we were there intruding on her space and time. But instead of kicking us to the curb, leading us away from her dark house, her dead brothers watching us from the other room, their smiling faces out-of-place among the stale air, she held herself up straight and ran her tongue over her teeth, and said, “Fine. You want something you can take back to all the haters?”
I couldn’t tell what was making her the angriest: our presence or the incessant banging.
“You want a story to tell all my friends.” She spat the word. “Follow me.” Abby began to march off without us; her bare feet slapped against the tiled floor. She opened a door and exposed a staircase to the second level, and turned to wait for us to follow with a hand on the frame, her hip jutting out, every muscle tuned for defiance.
Sam and I froze. We had uttered fewer maybe ten words since we stepped inside the house, and everything about the moment felt like a trap. It was like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Do you follow Abby up the stairs to find out what is making the noise? Or do you hightail it out of the house and head back to the school you’ve been skipping all day?
Abby poked her head down from the stairwell and motioned for us to follow. Like morons, we did.
“What is going on?” Sam whispered as we inched upward toward the noise.
“If she tries anything silly, you run and I’ll find something to throw at her face.” I spun halfway to make eye contact with Sam, who was bringing up the rear, to make sure he knew I was serious. My bravery had its limits, but I wouldn’t hesitate to put my softball skills to violent use if needed.
We rounded a landing and Abby was waiting for us—a tightly pursed smile plastered on her lips, but it lacked humor and mirth. As a matter of fact, the girl looked like she was about to burst into sudden tears. She turned and opened the closest bedroom door, and I swear the sweat and the stench poured outward and rushed down the hallway like a wave. The moment she opened the door, the banging stopped. From beyond our view, we heard a raspy voice.
“You know I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t an emergency,” the voice said.
“I told you I had people over, Mom,” Abby said from the doorway.
“Please, Abby…”
“This is unfair. I could call the home,” she said. “The nurses said to call anytime.”
“Just help me into the chair and then you can go.”
Abby turned her head and said, “Come on. Good deed for the day.” And we wandered into the room, swallowed into its humidity and suffocating smell. Sam and I tiptoed and followed her, and when we entered, I had to take stock of my facial expressions to ensure that I did not gasp or look disgusted.
Despite the view, I was cognizant that it was Hannah Sullivan on that bed—the mother of Cole, the object of Soren’s homesick cries. At least that’s what I kept saying to myself because it made it better for me.
There was a window air conditioner running on low in the background and a small space heater running on full blast on a side table. The space heater was winning: the room was at least ten degrees hotter than the rest of the house. The walls of the room were painted a deep green, and every inch of available space was dedicated to pictures of kids: Brick, David, Colton, and Abby—together and alone, playful and stoic, at birthday parties and at the park. There were family portraits in matching denim and baby pictures and school photos. It was a veritable gallery, and the effect was stunning. There was not a single place to look where your eye was not drawn instead to a photograph.
On the bed, Hannah sat with her legs over the side. She was wearing a housedress, her bare legs exposed—unshaven with black wiry hairs sprouting off in different directions, deep purple veins spread along the glaring whiteness. Her breathing was labored and when she exhaled in and out, we could hear the wheezing from across the room. While the old photographs of Hannah Sullivan portrayed her as a young, normal looking mom, that Hannah no longer existed.
The Hannah who sat before us on that bed weighed over four hundred pounds. Her upper arms had rolls that caused her elbows to disappear entirely and her belly distended into her lap. Sam stared, with mouth agape, and I nudged him. He checked himself and sheepishly stared at the floor.
“How can we help?” I asked Abby, who waited by her mom’s dresser.
“Get her into the chair with me,” the girl said. “We’ve installed an elevator in the back…once she’s in the chair, she can get around on her own. Although,” the daughter continued, her eyes narrowing, “her doctor would like her to try to climb the stairs…”
“I can’t get through the narrow doorway at the end of the staircase, Abby,” Hannah replied. “Shaming me won’t make me healthier.”
“You haven’t tried. You have to at least try,” Abby said, and I couldn’t help but hear the softness in her encouragement. All her annoyance from downstairs was gone, all her pretenses vanished the moment she stepped into the humid room. This was her life—no friends, no school: just a mother who pounded for her attention when the girl was needed to play nurse.
Together, the two of us aided Abby in assisting her mother into a large wheelchair. I took one arm and was amazed at the softness of Hannah’s skin. It was like I had grabbed a big pile of bread dough. Hannah wobbled into the chair, but she didn’t make eye contact with me. Then Abby hooked up an oxygen tank and turned to go.
“See you downstairs, Mom,” she said and walked to the door. “I’ll get a breakfast going. Yogurt and granola. A black coffee. Okay?” We followed her.
“You’re tutors?” Hannah asked before we could make an exit. I froze.
I turned, drank in her assessment of me, and nodded.
Hannah was not convinced. I could read it on her face—her incredulity was evident, even as she took labored breaths.
“I talked to the school twice last week. We cancelled school tutoring for Abby. I made it abundantly clear…and they said that it wasn’t an issue because they hadn’t scheduled anyone.”
“Miscommunication, I guess,” Sam said and he raised his hands as a mea culpa.
Hannah remained dour. I wanted to be righteously indignant about this and protest, but then I remembered that we were not in fact tutors from Garsten, and we were imposters. She knew the moment she looked at us that we had sneaked into her home, and she wasn’t willing to let us go quietly back into our morning.
“A miscommunication from whom?” Hannah asked us. She wheeled forward in her chair and it buzzed as it zipped forward and then came to a stop. Abby watched the conversation unfold; she looked simultaneously embarrassed and intrigued. Her sweatshirt slipped off her shoulder and exposed a ratty looking flesh colored bra with black and white lint stuck to the strap. She saw my glance and tugged upward at the collar with a glare. Selective modesty.
Sam hesitated and he looked to me. Names. She wanted names. We were piss-poor spies.
“Mrs. Thompson…the biology teacher…” I said. Mrs. Thompson was my freshmen biology teacher at Ivy Falls. She had long blonde hair that she parted in the middle and wore a lab coat with a collection of buttons on it.
“Abby needs tutoring in chemistry.”
“Mrs. Thompson,” Sam said with a shrug, as if just saying the name again absolved us from wrongdoing.
We were closest to the door; it would have been easy to run. I glanced up at the wall one last time and my eyes locked into a picture of Colton inches from where I was standing. His smile was huge and bright as he hovered over a birthday cake with three candles burning brightly. If Soren was telling the truth, if he could remember Cole’s life, then that little boy was missing this life—this mother: with her oxygen tank and mechanized wheelchair, and a ratty haired sister with a smoking problem. There were pictures of Hannah around the room, too – with bigger hair, floral print dresses. She was different then. And not just because she was thinner, although she’d always been heavier from the looks of it, but because she had a spark to her. Each picture on the wall featured Hannah Sullivan laughing. She had a big toothy smile and her eyes flashed with joy—robust, full of a genuine love for life and the people she shared it with. Now her sadness was so evident that the house even smelled like loss. The death of her boys wasn’t the only bad thing to happen in her life.
