The Moment Before

Chapter Five

FIVE

 

This is Sabine. Have a great day.

            Her greeting sounds more tentative, distant, as if the greeting has been re-recorded by someone pretending to be my sister. “Everything’s going to shit,” I say into my little speaker of my cell, into the voicemail void. The tree that falls in the forest that no one will hear.

            The black of my room is lit up only by the pinprick light from my phone. A violent rain beats against my window, but other than that, there’s the no sound of 2:00 a.m. “Where are you?” I ask Sabine.

            I’m still wearing her Juicy Couture, the soft cotton blend of it hugging my ribs. Nona’s blanket is a cocoon over the dress and I’m hoping I’ll wake up as a butterfly tomorrow. Or one of those spectacular moths that spins silk. Don’t be such a drama queen, says Sabine in my ear like a bullet. And, as if she orchestrated an accompaniment, a branch from the azalea bush outside my window scrapes against the glass.

            If I was a moth, I could flutter around light bulbs all night then collapse my wings together into a wafer come daylight. Tuck myself into a closet. Eat some wool. Contemplate the layers of betrayal that the human heart is capable of. I dial Sabine again. The immediate voicemail, her greeting This is Sabine. The bossy demand, Have a great day. And into the vacuum I say, “Martha is dating Nick, Sabine. What the hell is up with that?”

            Thank God Mom and Dad were asleep by the time I got home. After the embarrassment of the art show, the last thing I wanted was to process the whole thing with them. I’m sure it’ll come up in the grief counseling session next week. The counselor will ask us all how we feel. Mom will be furious. Dad will be sad. We’ll use I-statements like the quick-study grief clients we are. We’ll yank the Kleenexes from his lacquered tissue box and dab at the corners of our eyes. On Dad’s insurance we have eight free sessions, and so far we’ve used three. As the hole of time opens wider and wider between Sabine’s death and our continuing lives, we’ll fit in five more grief counseling sessions. A season. A summer. Christmas. If I were a moth, I’d chew that hole bigger, feeding on the things that keep me going. But I’m not a moth. I’ll never be a moth. “I’m going to skip school tomorrow,” I tell Sabine’s voicemail.

           

 I wake up with the phone in my hand and Nona’s blanket corded around my neck. It’s morning, and too late for me to get to school on time, so there’s no hurry. Rain drains down the gutter outside sounding like a toilet running. My phone’s on silent and I see I’ve missed three calls and eleven texts. The texts are mostly from Martha and I delete them without reading. The ones from Mom say, Hope you get up in time for school, and Sorry about last night. Let’s debrief later. One from Dad says, Beach house bound after work. Pack a bag.

            We haven’t been to the beach house yet. Our last trip was Thanksgiving, when we were still two parents and two kids. One big unhappy, yet intact, family. What would we have done differently had we known that one of us would be dead in a few months? Maybe Dad wouldn’t have spent the whole weekend watching football. Maybe I would have been less snarky about playing endless games of hearts with Nona and Nono. Maybe I would have been kinder about Nick being part of the weekend. Nick and his sly feeling-up-my-sister-under-the-blanket-in-the-living-room moves. Her giggling and squeaking in that girl way. I wish I could take back my eye-rolling. Nick. Martha. And what does seeing mean, anyway? Are they doing it? Is Martha, Patron Saint of Pity Favors, giving my dead sister’s boyfriend hand jobs in the front seat of her car?