Chrissy Kolaya - Charmed Particles

She imagined herself saying, “I think he’s probably dead.” But she did not say this, for by saying it aloud, wasn’t she calling that very possibility into being? She felt like a traitor for even allowing herself to think it. She was meant to be a better wife than that, a better mother, the kind who kept faith, who believed in his survival.

She imagined herself saying, “I think he’s alive.” But she did not say this either. It felt dangerous to admit, as though acknowledging any small chance of hope would only irritate fate into snatching him away.

Still her heart raced. Lily would be damaged beyond repair —the thought passed through her consciousness, and her heart beat faster. This is your fault for allowing him to go, for permitting such a life . Pressed against Lily’s back, she wondered if her daughter could feel her heart thumping so furiously inside her. It felt as though it were trying to escape the confines of her body. Rose took a deep breath, hoping to calm her racing thoughts.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” she said finally. And although — or perhaps because — it was as unsatisfying an answer as she could have given, Lily did not ask again.

Rose counted slowly to ten. She listened to Lily’s breathing and tried to breathe in tandem with her, slowly, deep, long breaths. She could tell the moment Lily slipped off into sleep, and Rose thought of all of the times when Lily was a baby that she’d watched for that moment, laying her down gently in her crib, tiptoeing quietly from the room, afraid of waking her.

When she was sure Lily had fallen into sleep, Rose slid from the bed and padded downstairs to Randolph’s study. In his office, she sank into the large wing chair before the bookshelves and opened the tin box of his letters — line after line of his small, cramped handwriting (economical, he would argue, she thought with a smile), sketches, here and there a memento tucked between the pages.

She had always been keenly aware of how Randolph had chafed against his overprotective parents, and in their marriage, she had taken great pride in her willingness to tolerate, her enthusiasm, even, for his wanderings, for his work.

The moonlight shone in through the windows, reflected in the glass of the display case. She thought of how it had all once seemed so thrilling, but now — now it seemed so futile, such an unnecessary risk.

And what if he didn’t return? She and Lily would continue on without him. What else could they do? Break down entirely? Let their lives come to a standstill? No — Lily would go to the Academy as planned. Rose would continue on with the election. Her day-to-day life would look much the same. But, she thought, holding the tin box in her hands, she would have no more letters to add to it. She ran her fingertips over his handwriting on the page. For so long, he’d been her dearest friend, her closest confidant, her greatest love next to Lily.

Meena brought Lily her books and assignments from school, and in the evenings sat with her in front of the television, though Lily hardly spoke, and her schoolwork remained untouched.

Sarala prepared a large stack of casseroles and filled the Winchesters’ freezer. Before she left, she put one in the oven and reminded Rose to take it out in forty minutes, but neither Rose nor Lily remembered or even thought of it until they began to smell it burning.

In the kitchen, Rose kept the radio on and tried to work, listening for each time they cycled back to the story.

“Mrs. Winchester is so calm,” Meena had said to her mother. But Sarala suspected that, while on the surface the waters appeared still, below it was a rolling boil.

Lily tried to prepare herself for the worst. “He’s dead,” she told herself over and over again, imagining that, somehow, anticipating this possibility, preparing herself for it in advance, might offer her some sort of protection once the news arrived, might somehow make it less painful.

Then, finally, on the third day, a scratchy phone call, and, like a miracle, his voice on the other end. He would be home within a few days, courtesy of an empty seat on an NGO’s return aid flight.

At the airport, Lily rushed for Randolph the moment she caught sight of him.

Rose stood where she was and watched him approach, afraid, almost to believe it, to believe in their good fortune. It was a trick of the world, she thought, to visit upon you such bad fortune that you were reminded every now and then of how lucky you were — a builtin guarantee that no one should ever become complacent or begin to feel entitled to one’s happiness.

Back at home, Rose put a plate of food in front of him, but Randolph showed little interest in it. Lily sat with her chair pulled close to his, every now and then her hand snatching at him as though to reassure herself that he was there in the flesh. They looked exhausted, Rose thought. She bundled them both off to bed, to little protest from either, and then the house was quiet and dark.

Rose made her way downstairs to Randolph’s study. Filling the bookshelves were his travel journals in which he’d recorded the details of so many places, so many ways of understanding the world, so many other ways of living. She thought of the rituals of these cultures. What was the ritual, she wondered, for overwhelming relief, for giving thanks, for burying fear? For being reminded, by almost losing something, of how important it was to you?

The moonlight shone on the framed maps that hung along the walls. She put her fingertips against the cool, smooth glass of one and a wave of grief rolled over her. There had been no preamble — just a sudden sob, as though it had broken free and escaped. She sank down onto the floor in front of the bookcases, pulled her knees to her chest as tears came. Why now? It made no sense. He was home and safe. She held her hand over her mouth to keep from waking them.

This time he returned with nothing. Randolph imagined his trunk, his travel journals, swallowed by the ocean and sinking, finally, to its bottom. He’d been so tired of the clothes he’d arrived in — having lived in them for nearly a week — that instead of handing them over to Rose to be laundered, he had thrown them into the garbage, happy to be rid of them and their smell of mud and sweat and dark, stagnant water.

He had survived, he explained, by climbing into a tree from which he watched possessions, entire cars, splintered pieces of wood, hunks of metal, and people being carried away by the torrent below him.

And in telling it, he is again rolling with the water, rushing toward a tree he counts himself fortunate to have caught hold of. Catching his breath, he begins to climb, pulling himself through the fragile branches he wouldn’t have gambled would hold him. But it is his only hope, the water below him rising, black as charcoal and filled with the detritus of what it has already encountered, splintered boards, concrete blocks, a bicycle, a woman.

“What happened to those people?” Lily asks.

“I don’t know,” Randolph says — though he can still hear them calling out for help, some rushing past atop an island of debris. He’d had nothing — not even a rope to throw down to them.

Cars against cars, an ocean of steel and tin and wood filling what had once been the streets. And what to do? He had found himself praying.

“Then what?”

After a long while, the waters shifted, began to recede, returning to the sea. All around were still, shallow pools of dark water containing who knew what. He had climbed down then, out of the safety of the tree’s embrace.