Linwood Barclay: The Accident

“What I’m worried about,” I’d said, “is if I built you an airplane hangar you could fill it, too. Your stuff expands to the space allotted for it. Honest to God, Sheila, how many purses does one person need?”

“How many power tools does one man need that do the same job?”

“Just tell me, right now, there’ll be no spillover. That you’ll never, ever, put anything of yours in my closet, even if it is no bigger than a minibar.”

Instead of answering directly, she’d slipped her arms around me, pushed me up against the wall, and said, “You know what I think this closet is big enough for?”

“I’m not sure. If you tell me, I could get out my measuring tape and check.”

“Oh, there’s definitely something I want to measure.”

Another time.

I stood, now, looking into the closet, wondering what to do with all these things. Maybe it was too soon to think about this. These blouses and sweaters and dresses and skirts and shoes and purses and shoeboxes stuffed with letters and mementos, and all of them carrying her scent, the essence of her that she had left behind.

It made me mournful. And it made me sick.

“Goddamn you,” I said under my breath.

I could remember studying, back in my college days, something about the stages of grief. Bargaining, denial, acceptance, anger, depression, and not necessarily in that order. What I couldn’t recall now was whether these were the stages you supposedly went through upon learning you were going to die yourself, or when someone close to you had passed away. It all seemed like horseshit to me back then, and pretty much did now. But I couldn’t deny there was one overwhelming feeling I’d been having these last few days since we’d put Sheila in the ground.

Anger.

I was devastated, of course. I couldn’t believe Sheila was gone, and I was shattered without her. She’d been the love of my life, and now I’d lost her. Sure, I was in grief. When I could find a moment to myself, certain that Kelly would not walk in on me, I gave myself the luxury of falling apart. I was in shock, I felt empty, I was depressed.

But what I really was, was furious. Seething. I’d never felt this kind of anger before. Pure, undiluted rage. And there was no place for it to go.

I needed to talk to Sheila. I had a few questions I wanted to bounce off her.

What in the goddamn hell were you thinking? How could you do this to me? How could you do this to Kelly? What on earth possessed you to do something so monumentally fucking stupid? Who the hell are you, anyway? Where the hell did the smart, head-screwed-on-right girl I married go? Because she sure as hell didn’t get in that car.

The questions kept running through my head. And not just occasionally. They were there every single waking moment.

What made my wife get behind the wheel drunk out of her mind? Why would she have done something so completely out of character? What was going on in her head? What kind of demons had she been keeping from me? When she got into her car that night, totally under the influence, did she have enough sense to know what she was doing? Did she know she could get herself killed, that she could end up killing others?

Were her actions in some way deliberate? Had she wanted to die? Had she secretly been harboring some kind of death wish?

I needed to know. I ached to know. And there was no way to make that ache go away.

Maybe I should have felt sorry for Sheila. Pitied her because, for reasons I couldn’t begin to comprehend, she’d done this astonishingly stupid thing and paid the ultimate price for her bad judgment.

But I didn’t have it in me. All I felt was frustration and rage over what she’d done to those she’d left behind.

“It’s unforgivable,” I whispered to her things. “Absolutely un-”

“Dad?”

I spun around.

Kelly was standing by the bed in a pair of jeans and sneakers and a pink jacket, a backpack slung over one shoulder. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, secured with a red scrunchie thing.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“Didn’t you hear me? I called you, like, a hundred times.”

“Sorry.”

She looked past me into her mother’s closet and frowned accusingly. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Just standing here.”

“You’re not thinking about throwing out Mom’s things, are you?”

“I wasn’t really thinking anything. But, yeah, I’ll have to decide what to do with her clothes at some point. I mean, by the time you could wear them they’ll be out of fashion.”

“I don’t want to wear them. I want to keep them.”

“Okay, then,” I said gently.

That seemed to satisfy her. She stood there a moment and then said, “Can you take me now?”

“You’re sure you want to go?” I asked. “You’re ready for this?”

Kelly nodded. “I don’t want to sit around the house with you all the time.” She bit her lower lip, and added, “No offense.”

“I’ll get my coat.”

I went downstairs and grabbed my jacket from the hall closet. She followed me. “You got everything?”

“Yup,” Kelly said. “Pajamas?”

“Yes.”

“Toothbrush?”

“Yes.”

“Slippers?”

“Yes.”

“Hoppy?” The furry stuffed bunny she still took to bed with her.

“ Daaad. I have everything I need. When you and Mom went away, she was always reminding you what to bring. And it’s not the first time I’ve ever gone on a sleepover.”

That was true. It was just the first time she’d been away overnight since her mother had gotten herself killed in a stupid DUI accident.

It would be a good thing for her to get out, be with her friends. Hanging around me, that couldn’t be good for anyone.

I forced a smile. “Your mom would say to me, have you got this, have you got that, and I’d say, yeah, of course, you think I’m an idiot? And half the things she said, I’d forgotten, and I’d sneak back into the bedroom and get them. One time, we went away and I forgot to pack any extra underwear. How dumb, huh?”

I thought she might return the smile, but no dice. The corners of her mouth hadn’t gone up much in the last sixteen days. Sometimes, when we were snuggled up on the couch watching TV, something funny would happen, she’d start to laugh. But then she’d catch herself, as though she didn’t have the right to laugh anymore, that nothing could ever be funny again. It was as though when something made her start to feel happy, she felt ashamed.

“Got your phone?” I asked once we were in the truck. I’d bought her a cell phone since her mother’s death so she could call me anytime. It also meant I could keep tabs on her, too. I’d thought, when I got it, what an extravagance a phone was for a kid her age, but soon realized she was far from unique. This was Connecticut, after all, where by age eight some kids already had their own shrink, let alone a phone. And a cell phone wasn’t just a phone these days. Kelly had loaded it with songs, taken photos with it, even shot short stretches of video. My phone probably did some of these things, too, but mostly I used it for talking, and taking pictures at job sites.

“I have it,” she said, not looking at me.

“Just checking,” I said. “If you’re uncomfortable, if you want to come home, it doesn’t matter what time it is, you can call me. Even if it’s three in the morning, if you’re not happy with how things are going I’ll come over and-”

“I want to go to a different school,” Kelly said, looking at me hopefully.

“What?”

“I hate my school. I want to go someplace else.”

“Why?”

“Everyone there sucks.”

“I need more than that, honey.”