Russell Banks - The Sweet Hereafter

The first thing I noticed, when Daddy opened the car door and pushed the wheelchair up next to it, was the ramp he’d built. It was made of wood and way too wide and sloped from the ground up to the front porch beside the regular people’s steps. My very own entrance, like for a circus elephant. I pictured Daddy out there evenings after work, whistling like he does when he’s got himself a new carpentry project, hammering and sawing in porchlight, feeling proud of himself — a good daddy.

“How do you like it, Babes?” he said.

“The ramp?” I swung myself out of the car seat and lurched into the wheelchair. No way anybody was going to lift me up and set me down. Especially him.

“Yeah. Pretty slick, eh?” He got behind the chair and pushed me over to the bottom of the ramp and stopped so we could examine it more closely. Mom came along behind, lugging my suitcase and stuff. There was still a bunch more in the trunk, mostly presents from strangers but some from people in town and Mom’s and Daddy’s church friends and kids in school. The usual dumb things — handmade get-well cards, stuffed animals, and pictures of Jesus and other inspirational items.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Rudy and Skip can use it for skateboarding.”

“They better not,” Daddy said. “I made it for you.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“I had to widen a few doors too. You’ll see,” he said proudly, and he pushed me up his ramp and into the living room, like I was a new piece of furniture. Then he didn’t know what to do with me, where to park me. Put me by the window, I wanted to tell him, next to the plants. But I said nothing. He was confused, and I guess I felt sorry for him.

The phone rang, and Mom went off to the kitchen to answer it. Rudy and Skip came down from their bedroom and said hi and all, looking self-conscious and like they wished they weren’t there, as if I was some old relative they had to be polite to. Jennie came along behind them, sucking her thumb as always, and she stared at the wheelchair for a minute and then decided it wouldn’t explode or anything and came over and hugged me.

She’s the one, she’s the family to me, the whole family; the rest of them, including Rudy and Skip, even though I love them the way you’re supposed to, make me feel like I have to protect myself against them.

“You want to see your new room, Babes?” Daddy asked.

“My new room? What’s wrong with the old one?” I knew what was wrong with it — it was upstairs, with all the other bedrooms and the big bathroom, and I couldn’t get to it anymore. But it was mine, mine and Jennie’s since she was a baby, and we were safe there, because there were two of us, and he never dared to come in there. Nothing bad had ever happened in that dark little room with the bunk beds and the clutter of all our clothes and her toys and my school stuff and pictures and posters on the walls. From that room we could hear the boys squabbling and playing late at night in their room next door, and we could hear Daddy and Mom on the other side and know to pretend we were asleep if they were arguing. There were places that weren’t safe: the car at night with Daddy alone, the living room couch, the bathroom unless the door was locked, the toolshed out back — and, now, my new room?

Well, he said it was new, didn’t he? And I was a wheelchair girl now, a cripple. Maybe everywhere was safe now. The whole house. Everywhere. A fresh start.

“Come along, come along,” Daddy said. “I’ll show you.”

“You’re lucky,” Rudy said. “I still gotta sleep with him ,” he said, and he punched Skip on the shoulder, and Skip punched him back.

Mom came in from the kitchen, smiling like she’d just eaten something sweet and light. “People are so kind,” she said. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook with people wanting to welcome you home. That was Edith Dillinger, the principal’s wife. She sent her love.”

“Show me my room, Daddy,” I said, and he pushed me through the door and across the kitchen to where the sun porch was. We’d always used it in summers as a kind of playroom, setting up electric trains and Barbie doll villages and stuff that no one wanted to pick up and put away afterwards. But now it was a bedroom. My room. Daddy had walled most of it in and installed baseboard heating units, had even built a small closet in one corner, and had carpeted it nicely. One whole wall was still windows, and I could see the yard and the woods beyond. Mom had made white chintz curtains. There was a single bed and a new dresser and a worktable Daddy’d made from a door. My New Kids on the Block poster had been tacked on one wall, and a whole bunch of my other favorite things were there — pictures of kids from school, the cheerleaders’ team photograph, with me front and center, looking grinny and dumb, my Albert Einstein picture, my books, and on the bed Fergus the Bear. There was a new picture of Jesus over the dresser that I knew Mom had put up; she’d no doubt left the old one upstairs to keep track of Jennie.

“And you’ve got your own private bathroom,” Daddy said, swinging open the door of what used to be a washroom. He had enlarged it by cutting into the hallway and had installed a small tub with a shower and a sink with a big mirror above it. Hung too high, I noticed, but I didn’t say anything.

It was all very nice. Like my own little apartment.

“You are really lucky,” Rudy said again.

“Shut up, Rudy,” I heard myself say.

“Yeah,” Skip said, and he whacked Rudy on the back. That’s all they do now, hit.

“You boys, get outside,” Daddy said, and they left, happy to be relieved of duty.

“Can I come and visit you in your room?” Jennie asked.

“You better. And you can sleep in my new bed with me sometimes too. I’ll get lonely way off here by myself,” I said, and I grabbed her hand, and she moved in close to me. The phone rang again, and Mom went to answer it.

“So whaddaya think, Babes?”

“It’s really very nice, Daddy,” I said, and I meant it. But it was strange too. The room made me feel like I was suddenly a tenant, like I had been eased out of the family somehow. I wanted that, though. In a way, being a tenant was perfect. Except for Jennie, I didn’t want to be a member of the same family as the rest of them, and I was glad that we could never go back to being the family we had been before the accident. Glad; not happy.

I wheeled my chair into the room and looked at the back of the door. “It needs a lock on the door,” I said.

“It does. Sure it does. A girl needs her privacy and all, right? I’ll fix that up now,” he said briskly, and he left the room to get his tools and a lock from his shop in the basement.

“You got to keep the boys out,” Jennie said. “I need a lock too. Mommy says I don’t need one because I’m only six. But the boys’re always barging in when I’m undressing and stuff.”

“That’s right. A girl needs her privacy,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get Daddy to do it for you,” I said, and she grinned and pinched me on the cheek like she was the grownup and I was the baby.

Then Daddy was back with an awl and a hook and eye. He made a hole in the door with the awl and started screwing in the hook part, and I said, “That’s too high. I’ll never reach it.”

“Oh, right, yes, of course,” he said, all flustered. He studied the hole he’d made in his newly painted door. Now he’d have to fill it in and sand it and paint it over. Daddy’s like that. “I better get some spackle,” he said, and he left the room again. I saw him look at the bathroom mirror as he passed it and knew what he was thinking.

I heard Mom say goodbye on the phone, and then she talked in a low voice for a minute to Daddy. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but when they both came back I knew they had some kind of pronouncement to make. Mom sat down on the bed and crossed her legs at the ankles, like she does, and Daddy went to work filling the tiny hole in the door with spackle.