Reborn

the/call

CHAPTER TWO

Elise took the elevator from the parking garage up to her floor, violin, box, and letter on hand. All the way up she thought of the irony regarding her wish to start driving safely, ignoring any incoming texts and calls from her phone yet still getting distracted by her own thoughts. 'You are a hazard to yourself!' is a phrase Elise has heard too often growing up. Some things can't be changed perhaps.

She tossed her keys at the table by the entrance, closed her eyes, and let out a heavy sigh. Exhaustion had taken over the second she stepped inside. Slowly, she set down her new belongings. She stood still as she opened her eyes and deliberately scanned the dark place, thinking of its hollow and unpleasant presence with its minimalist furnishing and lack of color. It was suffocating.

Not bothering to switch on the lights or disable the tint in the large wall of windows, Elise started leaving a trail of clothes as she made her way to the bathroom. She turned the spray of water to a cold temperature and stepped in past the glass door. She hoped the coldness would disable her thoughts for even a few minutes. No luck.

She couldn't stop herself from thinking of her grandmother again, of the radiance of her smile, the warmth in her hugs, her boisterous laughter, her off-hand character, her devotion, her beauty...her terrible, almost inedible cooking but delicious baking. How can she be good at one and not the other? She laughed. And then she remembered the time she made her cookies instead of scolding her for running away from her parent's house. Or the time she did not yell at her like her mother for having crashed another car and instead paid for her medical bill and stayed by her side until she recovered.

She is--was...she was a treasure—laughter ceased, biting her bottom lip—and I should have treated her as such. Elise didn't care to stop her tears as she curled into herself, her heart constricting, her lungs shrinking as she choked out muffled cries. She was always by my side, I should have been there by hers.

The sky, seen through the floor-to-ceiling window, had turned from a vibrant, cloudless blue to a navy dusk. Elise's crying had died down into silence, the only sound was the still gushing water echoing against the marble tiling. Her body had hardly moved an inch, her mind was finally blank. She felt peacefully uncomfortable in her shivering, nude body.

Turning the water off and without consciously thinking, Elise wrapped a bath robe around herself, not caring for the droplets of water dripping from the ends of her hair. She made it to her king bed and lay down to stare aimlessly at the perfectly square, decorative ceiling tiles. She started counting them. One...

Moments passed until the faint sound of her phone ringing brought her back from nothingness. She didn't get up immediately, rather contemplated the probability that the call was truly important. The ringing stopped.

Then began again.

Begrudgingly, Elise shuffled to where her pants were to yank out her phone to stare at the caller ID. Annabelle, her sister. Now she knew the call was without a doubt not important. She answered anyway but didn't bother with greetings.

"What do you want?" She hated how weak her voice sounded.

"Hello to you, too, dear sister." Annabelle's sickly sweet voice almost physically pained her ears. When no response from Elise ensued, she said: "Mom wants to see you."

Elise burst out an incredulous laugh, in her head; If that were true, she'd call me her own damn self. On the exterior, she remained silently apathetic as she always was around her sister. As if she would ever let Raggedy Ann know what she was truly feeling.

"Are you gonna answer or have you finally met your untimely end?" She giggled, giggled.

Slowly, threateningly, Elise whispered through clenched teeth, "That's not funny."

The urge to hang up on her was strong only to dissipate with a glance to Nana's letter lying next to Elise's keys. Family is important, she had written and even said on several past occasions. Clearly, Eleanor had a wish for her granddaughter to reconcile with those she had detached from, but at this point for Elise it was unquestionable in her mind that the relationship with her next of kin was irremediable. That was before the death of Eleanor. Now her sureness deterred from a once one-hundred-thousand percent.

"Killjoy." The possessed doll grumbled.

Family is important, family is important, family is—Elise's new mantra. "Tell her to call me to decide when and where."

"She already told me where—"

"She calls me or we don't meet." Finally, she hung up.

Elise's mother called three weeks later.