When You Are Gone

Chapter 17

"Who?" Gina asked me with her brow furrowed. She looked at my mother like I was insane.

"Francie, Gina." I yelled feeling like I was trying to scream with no lungs.

"It's okay honey." My other said holding my hand in her lap and then slowly sitting down at the sofa beside me. "Do you know her?" she whispered loudly to Gina.

Gina shook her head. "Maybe you can describe her to us," she said.

"You know her. You both do," I said. They both just stared at me. Glancing at each other, Gina shaking her head. "You think I'm crazy?"

"No, no honey I..." my mother stammered unable to voice he right words. "Maybe you should get some rest. You travelled quite a long distance last night."

I drove by her house that night. As a way of reassuring myself that my head was still intact although it felt disintegrated like debris floating in an anti-gravity zone. The house still domineered, even at night. I sat in the car at the end of the driveway, the engine still running, feeling as though I had a decision to make. But when I looked up, the house looked different, older. Like it had been uninhabited for decades. The paint on the wall was faded, duller. Some parts even peeling off exposing the red bricks. Stubs of stone remained where the angel sculptures used to stand. Some balancing on one leg, yet headless or missing an arm or torso altogether. The short neatly pruned hedges were now overgrown, uneven, without the green. A few golden leaves were still clinging onto the dead branches that now served as homes for bird nests. The multicolored marigolds and petunias lining the edge of the house – nonexistent. Instead, knee-high weeds sprawled around the house, everywhere they could, even between cracks in the driveway and on the concrete pavement and porch. I looked at the mailbox that still stood triumphantly among the tufted grass. It still had, Stanford's engraved on it, the gold overcoat fading.

Had the Daniel nightmares been replaced by this? The lack of life and unsettling silence quietly taunting me felt worse. I was convinced that I was going insane and then I saw it. Its colors still bright, glowing in the dark. It was still attached to the reddish soil in the moss green pot. The orchid – the only sign of life in a sea of lifelessness. My only assurance that I wasn't going crazy, a sign from Francie.



I took it home with me. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Just like I'd let Francie go. I was at the kitchen table, watering it from one of mom's cans when mom left for work, Gina for school. They didn't laugh at the comic section of the newspaper like they used to every other morning. They just left. Mom switched off all the appliances. Removed them from the sockets. If she could wrap my up in bubble wrap and stack me somewhere for the day, she would.

"Are you sure we can leave him like this?" Gina asked mom when they were both standing at the door staring at me like I was a freak-show.

"I'll call grandma to come check on him later." She put her arm around Gina and they left.

That's all I remember. The last day I was sane, or felt sane. For the rest, I'd lost my mind. Sitting on the lawn, watering the orchid while grandma read me a book. She used to read Shakespeare – Macbeth, Measure for Measure. All the books they said I used to like. But now she reads me fairytales. The kind of books with happy endings, that involve a prince and a princess flying off into the sunset. The same place I am sure Francie ran off to. The same place I belong. She'd erased herself from the phonebook, her house in Heathrow, in everyone else's memory but mine. She'd fallen off the face of the earth, gone like she'd never existed – like Daniel. Only, she came back in dreams – fantasies and daydreams. Infrequently. They never did show my painting in an exhibition or display it at the gallery. They said I couldn't sign the contract, not in my condition. I didn't have zeal anymore. For anything. They tried to force me to paint. I refused. The last piece of art I did was a finger painting of a turkey with grandma on the piazza, she hung it up on her fridge. Little kids in Ninja Mutant Turtle t-shirts would come on their bicycles and laugh making ridiculous comments, calling me mad. Grandma would snap.

"Go to your homes you filthy little rascals!" she'd scream.

One time, the younger of Douglas's nieces came over to our yard looking for her tennis ball. Grandma had gone inside to prepare lunch.

"Do you want to play?" she asked holding out the ball in her hand. The ball was bigger than her palm.

"Cassy!" the older girl yelled peering through the fence. "Come back. He's insane, he won't talk to you."

She didn't listen. She moved closer and threw the ball on my lap.

"Cassy!" the older one yelled again.

I threw the ball back at Cassy. She smiled and she threw it back again. I smiled, at least I almost did.

"Where are your friends?" she asked on the spur of the moment.

I threw the ball at her.

"You don't have friends?" she asked. "I can play with you if you don't have friends."

I smiled at her. We kept throwing the ball back and forth.

"Cassy!" the older girl was in our yard. She grabbed Cassy's wrist and dragged her.

"No!" she screamed, almost in tears, "he's my friend!"

I could hear her screaming all the way to their gate. I still had the tennis ball in my hand. I kept it. Like how I keep all the reminders of the life I used to live – Francie, the orchid.