In the Stillness Read online

  “Do you go to Amherst?” he asked.

  “What, I can’t go to UMass?” I teased while tugging playfully at his t-shirt.

  “With those clothes?” He smirked at my knee-length skirt and polo. No, I wasn’t wearing a mini skirt and Uggs, I suppose. “You’re Amherst material . . . or . . .” He looked at me with a cautious grin.

  I chuckled. “Yep. Mount Holyoke. I’m Natalie, by the way.” I stuck out my hand. Apparently, we both had presumptions about students in the Five-College area.

  “Eric Johnson.” He flashed me a huge smile as he tightly gripped my hand. “So, Mount Holyoke. When do you graduate?”

  “Actually, next month.”

  His smile seemed to fade for a second before he brightened with a follow-up question. “Plans for after?”

  A foolish grin captivated me. I was suddenly even more excited to be attending UMass in the fall.

  “Yeah,” I smiled wider, “I’m starting my master’s in anthropology in the fall.” I pointed in the direction of the massive campus behind his shoulder.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, smile still on his face. We were flirting. Eric was the first guy I’d flirted with since I broke up with Ryker.

  No. Don’t ruin this. Don’t think about Ryker. Ever.

  “Listen, Natalie with no last name, I’ve gotta get going. It was great meeting you. I’ll see you around.” He stuck out his hand, and we shook again before he turned and strutted down the sidewalk. It didn’t look like the strut was planned, but it was nice.

  “Collins!” I stood and shouted without thinking.

  Eric stopped dead in his tracks and turned on his heels.

  “What?” He chuckled when he got back to the bench.

  I smirked and spotted Tosha heading out of Starbucks out of the corner of my eye. “My last name is Collins.”

  “Well, Natalie Collins, it was great to meet you.” And, just like that, he disappeared into the busy crowd down the sidewalk.

  “Who was that?” Tosha asked, handing me her coffee so she could light a cigarette.

  “Eric Johnson.” I bit the inside of my cheek to keep the foolish smile at bay.

  “Fluid Mechanics boy is a looker, huh? Told you he was staring.” She took her coffee back and we headed the opposite direction from where Eric went.

  * * *

  Usually I wander around Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s when the boys are at preschool. I amble up and down the aisles and remember the days I could afford to exclusively shop here. I always buy something—a scone or a drink—just to feel like I still belong.

  Today, however, I find myself back at our apartment. Just down from the Jones Library, we’re mere feet from where Eric and I first met. If I tilt my head just right in our bathroom I can see the sidewalk where we spoke and walked in different directions when we said goodbye. Sometimes I fight the urge to scream out the window at that girl—the one I once was—not to look over her shoulder. But she does, every time. And she always finds Eric running up the sidewalk toward her with his number in his hand.

  Today in the bathroom, I ignore the window. I’m staring at a tampon box full of razors. I need to empty the trash. A frustrated growl escapes my throat as I dump the tampon box into the bin. You’re better than this. I tie off the bag and take it to the dumpster; the echo of the lid slamming against the metal sounds like the telltale heart. I’m suddenly thankful that tomorrow is garbage day, and I just have to make it through the night without thinking about those tiny metal teeth laying in waste at the bottom of the dumpster.

  I race back up to our apartment and call Eric. Despite how I feel about him these days, his voice will remind me that this isn’t 2002, and I’m not about to make one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

  “Hello? Everything okay?”

  I never call Eric at work these days, it’s my fault he thinks something’s wrong.

  “Just,” I clear my throat, “checking in to see what time you’ll be home tonight . . . since you went in so early.”

  Silence.

  “Eric?” I press.

  “I’ll try to be home for dinner, Nat.”

  “Jesus, Eric, you didn’t see the boys after breakfast yesterday and you haven’t seen them yet today. When do they get you?”

  When do I get a break?

  He sighs. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I’ll be home before dinner.”

  “Thank you.”

  “They’re at school this morning, right?” He says this like, why are you so stressed? You have four hours to yourself, lady.

  “Yes, they are. Now I get to go grocery shopping and clean the apartment.” I hope he can hear my eye-roll. “What do you want for dinner?”

  “Surprise me. You’re a great mom, you know that?” He says things like this when he feels bad that my entire identity has morphed into something he knows damn well I never wanted. He’s assuring me that I’m doing it well—this thing I hate doing.

  Mom—the most four-letter three-letter word I know.

  Chapter 3

  Eric never made it home for dinner last night. The fight was epic, and I made him sleep on the couch. It scared me how much I thought about those razors in the dumpster. Just two times and it’s become the first thing I think about when the dark side takes over. I sobbed into my pillow all night while Eric snoozed down the hall.

  “Baby, wake up.” Eric kisses my forehead. I grumble. “Listen, I’m really sorry about last night. I took today off. I want you to get out of the house and do something for yourself today.”

  Silently, I resent the implication that he’s “allowing” me to go off by myself for the day. I sit up, smile, and kiss him on the lips. He wraps his hand around the back of my neck in an attempt to deepen the kiss. I let him. It’s been so long since I’ve had a day alone—a whole day.

  After I shower, I find him and the boys in the kitchen, dumping sprinkles onto bubbling pancakes.

  “Mommy look! Daddy let us put sprinkles on our pancakes!” Max points excitedly to the griddle.

  “Mmm,” I kiss his little cheek, “those look delicious. Have fun today, boys.” I kiss them all on the head, Eric included, before heading to the door.

  “Where you off to today?” Eric puts plates on the table, situates the boys, and meets me at the door.

  I shrug. “I’m going to drive around for a while. Maybe grab some lunch.”

  He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Are you gonna call Tosha?”

  “She’s still at a conference in L.A., I think. I’ll keep myself occupied, don’t worry.”

  Ten minutes later I’m on my knees in front of Lucas Fisher’s grave at the edge of the huge Catholic cemetery with tears pouring down my face.

  I shouldn’t be here. At all. The last time I was here was about three days before my parents pulled me out of school for a year. I screamed at him—I screamed at a grave. Today, I’m not screaming. I’m just . . . remembering. Remembering how this all really started.

  * * *

  Ryker and I had been together for about four months by September of 2001. He was enrolled at Amherst College and we met at a concert on the Amherst common at the end of our freshman year. He was wearing a grey t-shirt with “National Guard” in black block letters across his toned chest. At a height I placed around 6’5”, he was so striking, I had to sway my tipsy self over to him and say “hi.” He had a blonde buzz-cut that let me see the tight muscles in his neck each time he tilted his head.

  “I’m Natalie,” I giggled, “you’re cute.”

  I watched the heat wrap around the back of his neck and up to his cheeks. “Thanks. I’m Ryker Manning. You’re hot.”

  “National Guard, huh?” I pressed my palms onto his pecs. I was more forward, then.

  “National Guard.” He grinned, grabbed my wrists, and pulled me into a kiss. Just like that. Four seconds after meeting Ryker Manning, I was standing on the common kissing him.

  “Who’s your friend, dude?” A slightly shorter guy
stepped to Ryker’s side.

  “This is my new friend, Natalie.” Ryker laughed, “Natalie, this is my best friend, Lucas.”

  Lucas was a childhood friend of Ryker’s who went to Westfield State. He was also in the National Guard, which seemed like a really good idea in June of 2000 when they graduated high school.

  In all honesty, all “National Guard” meant to me, as far as Ryker was concerned, was it forced us to have one sexless weekend a month. That summer, I stayed in South Hadley, rather than returning home to Pennsylvania, because I’d gotten an internship. That’s what I told my parents anyway. In reality, I took enough classes to keep my dorm room for the summer, and I busted ass tending bar at Rafter’s Sports Bar. All in the name of Ryker Manning.

  He was taking classes, too. He was a poly-sci major at Amherst and wanted to go into legislation. He spent that summer interning for the local government. I was able to sneak him away at the beginning of August for a Dave Matthews Band concert in Hartford, CT. Tosha and Lucas outright refused to go—they hated DMB. Ryker wasn’t crazy about them, either. But, he was crazy enough about me to go.

  He kind of stood with his hands in his pockets and nodded along to most of the songs, but when they played “The Space Between”—a new song of theirs at the time—and I went nuts, he laughed.

  “Shh!” I scolded playfully. “Just listen.”

  By the end of the song he was standing behind me with his arms wrapped around my shoulders, and I was swallowed up in his massive arms. We swayed to the music as his lips rested on the top of my head. It’s my favorite memory of Ryker Manning, August 3, 2001.

  In the two weeks leading up to September 11th, Ryker and I hadn’t seen much of each other, as classes were getting underway and we were both workaholics. It was a gorgeous Tuesday morning. I was putting in some work study time at the campus library when someone said, “A plane crashed between the Twin Towers.” We all kind of looked around with a wow, that sucks look on our faces.

  The next thirty minutes are seared into my brain in snippets as people ran in and out of the library.

  “Was it a passenger plane?”

  “Oh, it was a plane in one of the towers, not between them. Shit, another plane just crashed into the second tower.”

  “This is no accident.”

  “Guys, a plane just hit the Pentagon, and apparently one has gone down somewhere else.”

  “This is an attack.”

  “We’re going to war.”

  “Holy shit! One of the towers fell!”

  Without permission, I grabbed my bag and ran from the library, got into my car, and sped along the curves of 116 straight to Ryker’s dorm. I didn’t even have a cell phone yet. I didn’t call my parents, I didn’t call my friends; I just drove straight to Ryker.

  Amherst was a total shitshow, as usual when anything even mildly political happens. People were crying on the sidewalk, asking questions and clutching cell phones. I sprinted up the steps to Ryker’s dorm building. I ran down the hallway, and before heading up the stairs I saw him; he was with his friends and suite mates in the common area watching the news.

  “Ryker,” I said just a hair above a whisper.

  He’d been sitting with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped together, staring intently at the TV. When he heard my voice, his head whipped around and he sprang to his feet and jogged toward me. As soon as our bodies connected, I started crying. I’d listened to the news on the car radio the whole drive over. There were millions more questions than answers still, but all the answers were bad. Really bad. I saw Lucas out of the corner of my eye, which struck me as odd since his school was a half hour away.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Nat,” he whispered in my ear.

  Up until that moment we’d been having great sex, laughing at Lucas’s lame attempts to pick up women, and having a genuine good time together. That moment sealed us together in ways I still can’t describe. At the time, I thought he was telling me I’d be okay. That we would collectively be okay. It wasn’t until he was over there that I realized he had been preparing me for what was to come.

  * * *

  My cell phone rings, cosmically protecting me from the rest of that memory. For now.

  “Hello?” I sniff and run a finger under my eye.

  “Nat? You okay? You sound like you’re crying.”

  “Eric, please don’t call me Nat.”

  Especially not today.

  “Sorry. Just checking in.”

  Seriously? I get a whole day to myself and he has to call me? The war-cries of 4-year-old boys in the background are the real reason for the call.

  “It’s gorgeous out, Eric, why don’t you take the boys to a playground. Let them run that out. Hell, take them down to the football field for all I care. I gotta go.” Annoyed, I click the phone off and stare at the polished granite.

  Lucas J. Fisher

  “I wish you hadn’t died, you know.” I sit cross-legged six feet above his body. “I haven’t been here in a long time, and I’m sorry. I just . . . you know . . . well, you don’t because you weren’t here.” A sound just above a mew leaves my throat as tears roll down my neck. “Ryker lost it when you died, Lucas. Anyone else, it could have been anyone else and none of this would have happened! Why’d he have to see it all?” I slam my palms into the warm grass and dig my nails into the dirt.

  Ryker watched as Lucas’s Humvee exploded under firefight right before his eyes in Afghanistan. By the time Ryker got to him, it was too late; the boy I loved held the charred body of his best friend—then got shot in the back. That was his ticket home. His body came home, but his soul had been devoured in the firefight of a godless desert.

  I sigh and run my hand over the information on Lucas’s headstone. His name, his rank, and the dates he laughed and lived are all there.

  Loving Son.

  Best Friend.

  My eyes focus on the date of his death, causing me to check my cell phone.

  “You’re kidding,” I half-yell into the grass. “Ten years? Yesterday? You died ten years ago yesterday?”

  A chill shoots up my spine as the wind picks up, an answer from Lucas perhaps. I can’t believe it’s been ten years since Ryker’s mom called me for the first time.

  I’ve gotta get out of here.

  I carefully time my return home for after I know the boys are in bed. The apartment is in shambles, as to be expected when Eric’s at the helm. My eyes survey the mess, and I decide to start picking up the toys off the living room floor while Eric stands with his back to the counter.

  “Don’t worry about it, hon. Just go read or take a bath or something; I’ll clean up.”

  “K.” I sigh.

  As I walk past Eric, he sticks out his arms for a hug. He does this a lot, just opens up and expects me to fall into him. When I look up at him, about to blow him off, I suddenly see the twenty-three-year-old on the sidewalk wearing a tattered Redskins hat. I walk into his hug and he seems to sigh in relief.

  He rests his chin on my head. “You look like you’ve been crying.”

  I can’t lie to the boy on the sidewalk. “I went to Lucas’s grave today.”

  Eric’s muscles tighten as he pulls away and holds me at arms-length. I swear I see his eyes dart to my left arm for a split second, but I don’t pull it away in defense, just in case. There’s no way he made that connection.

  “Why?” His eyebrows sink in question.

  I clear my throat. “I haven’t been since before I met you. It’s been too long . . . he died ten years ago yesterday.” Fresh tears cloud my vision.

  “I’m sorry.” He pulls me back into a hug and I cry some more.

  It’s not for Lucas that I’m crying right now—as awful as that seems. It’s for every fucking thing that happened after. Eric knows. And that’s why he’s squeezing me so tightly; he doesn’t want me to go back down the path. The one where I alone control how I feel. At all times.

  As we crawl into bed and Eric wraps his arm around
my waist, I realize I’ve made a fatal error. I don’t cry—not anymore—but I did just now in front of Eric. He knows those tears belong to the girl I was on September 10, 2001. The girl who never knew what a panic attack was, or what true fear felt like.

  I’ll have to be more careful, now. I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin and wish I could make just a small cut to release some of the pressure, some of the pain. My heart races as I realize I’ve opened Pandora’s Jar. I have to cut, now. That’s all there is to it. I’ll feel better tomorrow when I do, because the adrenaline high numbs the pain. It will help me from making stupid mistakes like visiting Lucas’s grave, or crying in front of Eric. Soon I fall asleep, playing over the look on Eric’s face the first time I told him about the scars.

  Chapter 4

  “Morning,” Eric whispers as he kisses my forehead. He places coffee on the table next to my bed.

  “Hey.” I sit up and immediately panic at the brightness outside my window. “Shit! I overslept! I’m sorry. Where are the boys?”

  Eric laughs and sits at the foot of the bed. “I took them to school. My mom’s going to pick them up and they’re going to stay over at her house tonight.”

  Wait, what?

  “Wait, what? She’s had them overnight, like, two times, Eric, why now?”

  What did you tell her?

  “I told her we needed a night out to celebrate my almost finishing up my Ph.D. and she happily agreed.”

  “Of course. Anything for you.” I roll my eyes and sit up.

  “Jesus, Natalie, don’t be happy that I planned for you to have another day—” he stops and winces a little as my jaw drops, “God, this is frustrating!” He stands and runs his hands through his hair, tucking it behind his ears when he’s done. “What is it, Natalie, huh? What is it? We haven’t had sex in three weeks, you’re moody as hell, and yesterday you go to the grave of someone you barely knew who died ten years ago? What’s going on?” He closes his eyes and takes a careful breath. That’s Eric, always trying to regain control.