Chapter 80

80

I’d thought about going back to the corner for years. The idea would come to me as effortlessly as the thought to go see a movie on an empty Sunday afternoon. Well, there’s always that. I could do that today. And then I’d talk myself into cleaning the bathroom or organizing the kitchen cupboards instead.

The day I’m speaking of, though, was different. I’d grown sleepless again and milled about the house without purpose, unable to do much more than stare at things: the saltshaker that needed refilling, the time on the stove that was still an hour ahead, the pile of junk mail that sat inches away from the recycling bin. I heard Gemma’s voice over and over for months, a muffled echo, like someone had wrapped my head in aluminum foil. She had spoken to me as though she knew something I didn’t. As though she had been there the day he died. How do you know what happened? I wanted to scream into the phone. How could you possibly know?

But I have to admit, I began to doubt myself more as time passed. The conviction I’d carried for years was losing its weight somehow. I was having a harder time seeing that day clearly in my mind. Sometimes I woke up in the morning and it was the first thing I did—search my memory for the replay. Had it faded? Was it further away than it was the day before?

I could have walked—we didn’t live that far away. But driving made it feel as far away as I needed it to be. I circled the neighborhood a few times and then parked my car one block from where it happened. I closed my eyes and leaned back into the headrest. I stayed there for a while.

And then I walked. I looked up from under my hood and saw the sign for Joe’s coffee shop. The letters were a glossy new black where they’d once been faded and chipped. I put my hand on my chest to see if I could feel my heartbeat through my coat. Each pump of blood felt like a weep.

I turned around and faced the intersection.

Everything about it looked different than it had in my memory. And yet how different could one intersection look from another? The gray cracked and faded asphalt with soft tar lines like veins, yellow iridescent paint marking the crosswalk people might not use. The stoplights rocked in the wind and the walk signal chimed as the traffic rumbled up from behind me.

I scanned the pavement, looking for a mark. Blood. Debris. And then remembered that time was real, that 2,442 long, empty days had passed. I waited for a break in traffic. I walked onto the road and crouched in the spot where he had died—just left of center in the right-hand lane, a few yards ahead of the crosswalk. I ran my hand over the asphalt and then pressed it against my cold cheek.

I looked over at the curb and imagined the stroller rolling off. The grooved dip at the edge that I had remembered so clearly was not there. The edge of the cement was smooth and tipped to the street; I could see the elevation from where I crouched, and it wasn’t as slight as I’d remembered. I walked over to the sidewalk and took a cylinder of lip balm from my pocket. I put it on its side and I watched it roll from the tip of my boot, slowly at first but then with more speed, until it came to a rest in the middle of the road. The light turned green and the tube bounced away under the bellies of passing cars. A middle-aged man in a suit slowed down to eye me as he walked by. I looked away and stood up.

My mind replayed the scene again. Coming out of the coffee shop. Standing on the sidewalk. Holding the tea in my left hand. The handle of the stroller in my right hand. Touching his head for the last time. The feeling of the hot steam rising up to my face. Violet beside me. The yank on my arm. The scorch on my skin. Violet’s pink mittens on the black handle. The back of Sam’s head moving farther away. How fast did he go? Did it have momentum? Could it have rolled so far without a push? Had she touched that handle?

I watched the scene play out in every possible way, over and over, right there in front of me. It could have. It could have happened.

Someone bumped my elbow passing by, and then someone else, and I suddenly found myself standing there in a stream of people, their hands clutching take-out containers and coffees. I felt invisible among these human beings who had real lives and jobs and went places that mattered and were expected to arrive by other people who needed them. Fuck you all, I thought and wanted to scream at them. My son is dead! He died right here! You walk by here every day like it’s nothing! I was angry and exhausted. I turned around and stared at the coffee shop.

It was the last place I had looked into Sam’s eyes while he was alive. Everything about it was different now. Through the window I saw the wood floors had been replaced with white herringbone ceramic tiles and the walls were framed with panels of chalkboard paint where plaid wallpaper had once been. I tried to remember what the tables had been like before the tall stainless-steel ones. It was quiet for lunchtime—it used to be such a busy place.

I walked inside and noticed that the door chime Violet and Sam had loved was gone. Joe was still there, his back turned to me as he fiddled with an espresso machine.

I took a deep breath. “Joe,” I said, and he looked up slowly. His shoulders fell. He came around the counter and held his hands out for mine. He squeezed them.

“I always hoped you’d come back in.”

“Things look different,” I said, looking around.

Joe rolled his eyes. “My son. He’s taking over the place—my back is bad and there’s too much standing around here.” He smiled at me. “How are you?”

I looked out the window to the intersection.

“What do you remember about it?” I swallowed. I hadn’t planned to go in there, I hadn’t planned on talking to him.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said and put his hands on mine again. He looked out the window with me. “I just remember how distraught you were. You were in shock. Your daughter clung to your waist and wanted to be held, but you couldn’t bend down. You couldn’t move.”

Violet had never done that before—she had never clung to me, never turned to me for comfort in the way other children did with their mothers. Gripping, wanting.

We sat together at a table overlooking the window and watched the traffic lights change and the cars go by. The sky was white.

“Did you see it happen?”

He winced, but didn’t look away from the street. He was thinking about what to say to me. I turned away and then saw him shake his head in my periphery.

“Did you see how the stroller got there?” I tried again and closed my eyes.

“Just one of those terrible, freak accidents.”

I opened my eyes and looked down at his hands folded on the table. He squeezed them together, like he was getting through a shot of pain.

“I’ve thought about you a lot over the years, how you could possibly move on after that.” His eyes became glassy. “I’ve always thanked God you had that little girl to live for.”

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•   •   •When I got home, the door slammed shut behind me in the gusty November wind and nearly caught my fingers. I sank to the floor and threw my keys against the wall. I thought of Sam, of how his face was just starting to change from the generic pudge of a baby to who he would one day be, of the smell of my sweet milk that was always in the crevice of his neck, of the last tug of my nipple in his mouth when he was finished. Of the way he searched for my face in the dark while he nursed.

I closed my eyes and tried to feel the weight of his body on my lap. I could get there; I could be there. The morning television show playing in the background, the steam of the kettle from the kitchen. The faint sound of Violet’s bare feet upstairs. The running water in the bathroom sink while you shaved for work. The feel of my unwashed hair. The ascending cry from the other room. That life, banal and stifling. But comforting. It was everything. I’d let it all go.

Maybe I’d let him go, too.