Blue Stars (17 page)

One day, visiting her mother in the nursing home out in Maple Grove, Ellen stood up to get a glass of water and the next thing she knew she was flat on her back in the common room, staring up at the faces of aides crowding around. Smelling salts had brought her around; she wanted to get up, but they insisted she lie down until the doctor came. Luckily—in a way—her mother was having a bad day, clarity-wise. Someone had wheeled her back to her room so at least Ellen didn’t have to worry about what she might think, seeing her daughter tended to. As it was, several residents clustered close by, excited by the sudden collapse, calling and agitated. The young doctor frowned at her low blood pressure, grilled her on her medications, made her drink two cups of watery orange juice.
I’m fine,
Ellen repeated. She was embarrassed and just wanted to go home.

Dear Michael,

I’ve been wondering what it is like for you when you are afraid. Hesitating as I write this—not because I know I’m not “supposed” to bring this up, but because I don’t want to cause you any more fear by thinking about it. And yet, it seems like it would be an essential aspect of your experience. I wonder if you are allowed to talk much about being afraid, with your friends and fellow soldiers. (I know, I know, “Marines.”) Maybe it’s a given, and doesn’t need to be verbally expressed. Maybe it’s something you need to hide, in order to get through your days or to sustain strength. Probably the more highly ranked would never discuss fear in war, or admit to feeling afraid, in—well, in fear of causing doubt in younger men who need to be certain of their commanding officers. But I hope there is a friend there for you, with whom you can be honest, with whom you can share the worst feelings of fear. I think that would make it easier to bear.

It’s not shameful to feel afraid. I typed that, deleted it, and typed it again. Who am I to tell you this? How easy for me to offer these pronouncements on your inner state as you undergo an experience that I can never fully understand. And yet, I too am afraid. (Again, I type and delete and type.) So there’s that.

Fear. What to write about this. The night I nearly choked to death on a bite of steak while the kids were upstairs asleep, ages nine and six. I staggered around the kitchen, airway blocked, in a panic. Terror—the idea they might come downstairs in the morning to find me dead. To have both parents die on them. I aimed my stomach at a chairback corner and flung myself down on it: that piece of steak shot out and I gasped for a long time. (I also broke two rib bones and had to drive myself to the ER the next morning after dropping the kids at school.) It can give you incredible strength, to be flooded with fright. But at what cost? For years I never ate after they went to bed.

Here’s what I’m thinking about tonight, though. Isn’t it the case that being afraid—not the self-directed kind about me choking, but the fear we have of other people, or of ourselves—does involve some measure of shame? And this is why it’s such a painful experience, hard to recover fully once you’ve felt it? Yes, I know that goes against what I wrote above.

About two months after we’d signed those guardian forms, a girl in the class below Wesley’s was raped. I don’t know if you remember this; I know you and I never discussed it. It happened on the Northside, in that Londonderry apartment complex. A group of kids from our school had gone over to a party there, probably as some kind of rebel move to hang out with the “tougher” kids out by the low-income housing. Where you lived last, where I know your old friends still were. Anyway, I found out about it on a Saturday morning that fall when this woman called me. A neighbor, once a friend. I won’t say who she is, except that I stopped speaking to her that day and haven’t since. She said the girl had been drinking, flirting with “townie boys” and went into a bedroom with one of them, although her friends tried to stop her. Then the boy brought one of his friends into the room too. This woman said, “There were lots of guys there, laughing about it, guarding the room. They were all in it together.” I closed my eyes, full of horror and sadness, thinking of Janey—moping around the house in her pajamas, thank God—thinking about all the children in our community. Then she said, and I’ll never forget her singsongy tone, “You’re sure Mike wasn’t there, right?”

That weekend I fell down into a terrible state of fear. Wesley was out of town for a cross-country training trip. All day Saturday I waited for you to show up, but you didn’t come, and you weren’t home for dinner. Jane heard about what happened from friends, and was on the phone a lot, hushed and crying. I tried to get her to talk to me about her feelings, but we were both pretty out of it. I didn’t let her go out that night, I remember, and she yelled some but eventually went up to her room and at some point went to sleep. I roamed the house late into the night. Many, many times I fought the urge to call you. But we had an understanding about your freedom, that you wouldn’t always be around. Still, why were you gone
this
weekend? I was tormented. I knew you couldn’t have been part of what had happened in Londonderry. I knew you, I told myself. But then—maybe you’ve noticed this—fear has a way of insinuating thoughts that seem true. My neighbor’s lilting question set off a sliding chain of doubts, I’m sorry to say.
But what if he had been there? What if those were his friends? What if he’d gone along, what if he thought it was funny …

I know. Maybe you have torn this up by now, disgusted by me. Maybe I won’t even mail this one. But it’s true. I was scared shitless by the possibility that you had been involved. And by the fact that I was now tied to you, legally and emotionally. That we all were. I berated myself, I barely slept. You didn’t show up on Sunday morning and by now even Janey was noticing. Maybe you were hiding. Maybe you couldn’t face us, once this news was out.
Had you been there when it happened?
I hid too, stayed in the house all weekend, afraid to face anyone in town. Rumors swirled and news kept coming; there were arrests, with more planned. Each piece of information fed my fears and my shame simultaneously. It’s hard to explain why I had to fight so hard to hold on to what I knew: That you were a good person who’d had it tough. That I believed in you. I can blame my sheltered life, snobbery, a failure of character. All I know is how the fear of what
you
might have done rebounded onto me, the fear of what
I
had done. Fear of who you might be. Fear of who I might.

Then Sunday night around ten I heard a noisy car pull up outside, a lot of shouting and laughter. Both you and Wes banged loudly into the house, dropping backpacks and jackets and giant shoes everywhere, pulling open the fridge and cabinets, arguing over who got what food. I just stood and stared.
What?
you asked, glancing up from making a sandwich.
Where were you?
I managed. Cross-country nerds can’t time themselves, now, can they? you said. Mom, I told you, Wes said, pouring a second bowl of cereal. Coach said Mike could come on retreat since they needed another assistant manager for the trip. Fifty bucks and a busload of stinky socks, you said. And then, again, seeing my expression: what? I sat down at the kitchen table with you two, who didn’t know yet what had happened to the girl from school, watching you eat and eat, and joke.

Had Wes told me you were going with him all weekend? And was it possible I’d forgotten? I wouldn’t have thought so, but that’s what happened. Not my best mothering on display in any part of that weekend.

And no, it wasn’t a “happy ending,” discovering that you hadn’t been involved. Once you’ve been touched by that kind of fear, it changes you. I was ashamed of myself. I still am. Partly I write this to ask your forgiveness for imagining who you could have been.

How about some good news? I’m letting you off the hook for this week’s reading assignment. I got a little obsessed about finding a text on fear. I had copied Flannery O’Connor’s short story masterpiece “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”—which is terrifying on its own, of course, because of the serial killer impeccably named the Misfit—but after writing all this, above, I don’t want to add any more. Though someday I need you to read this story, if only for what the grandmother does, in her utter fear, before she is taken into the woods to be killed.

Next time, though, I have a great essay for you. I just learned how to photocopy on both sides so these envelopes won’t be as ridiculously thick. I can only guess the mockery I get when you are at mail call.

With love, Ellen

PS: here’s a photo of Maisie. Doesn’t she look unhappy about the new haircut? I keep telling her it will grow in tangled and shaggy soon enough.

Nine days later, Ellen was on I-88 east to Chicago. Friday late-afternoon traffic was thick, stop and start, giving her lots of time to remember the things she had forgotten to do: arrange for Maisie’s care (she left messages with the two neighbors who had keys and prayed that they would be home this weekend); shut down her computer or turn off any lights or radios that were on upstairs; clean the sink of dishes or pick up the living room or maybe even lock the side door. More messages for the neighbors. One thing Ellen didn’t think about, though it hovered on the edge of consciousness, was the two-day mandatory department start-of-semester meeting she hadn’t gone to, either yesterday or today. At this point, she had—as undergrads put it—blown off just about every possible requisite, short of not showing up for her classes, which would begin next week. Vaguely, she wondered what would happen to her job, her career. With tenure, what could they do? Censure her or put her on some kind of probation, most likely. There had been that case of the Spanish professor who refused to use voice mail; the department had taken a vote.

Serena:
You must make some calls, people are getting worried. Ask for a medical leave.
Ellen:
What kind of medical condition would I claim? Oh, you mean a nervous breakdown. What does HR call that these days?
Serena
,
gently:
What would you call it?
Ellen, long pause:
Existential malaise.

The irony, Ellen thought, slowed to a crawl on the two-lane—or rather the paradox—was that for a person slacking off on her job, she was working harder than ever before. That heightened sense of awareness to all forms of meaning, written and otherwise, was one she’d had during the high point of writing her Wharton books. When connections leaped to mind at all hours of the day and night, books open and nested on her desk four and five high, a thousand yellow sticky notes, etc.

A few days ago she’d let Paul West come up (a mistake), when he stopped by to pick her up for a concert date she had meant to get out of. “All this…” he said, looking around her study in frank astonishment, “for letters to Michael? Oh, Ellen. Maybe we should—”

“What?” she’d snapped. “I’m ready, let’s—”

“But I had no idea. This is…”

She steered him out of the study, changing the subject. And after that evening, she hadn’t returned his calls.

His expression in her study had startled her into a brief glimpse of what it looked like, her life now, to others. And if she really thought about things, Ellen knew that the fact that she was writing many more letters than she actually mailed to Michael could be considered … of concern. But she wasn’t thinking about it too much. Ellen felt like she was hanging on in a hurricane wind; if she shifted focus, if she lifted her head even briefly from the work, something bad would happen.

Except Wesley’s phone call this morning, almost two weeks since she’d fled Jane’s house, startled her into action. He’d been sick, he said, his voice not much above a hoarse whisper. Some kind of infection. He’d been to the doctor twice now, had taken three courses of antibiotics but still wasn’t getting better. They wanted to run some new tests.
I didn’t want to bother you,
her son said. Ellen almost hung up on Wesley in her urge to get in the car.
Three hours,
she said.
Hang tight.

But it was going to be four, even four and a half, at this rate. Approaching I-94 the Chicago skyline came into view on her left, which Ellen glanced at frequently, as if it could pull her there faster. One time she had to hit the brakes, just in time; bumper sticker on the SUV she ran up on read
MAKE LEVEES NOT WAR.

As she took the stairs up three flights in Wes’s Hyde Park apartment, Ellen was thinking hard.
Mononucleosis? Walking pneumonia?
She’d drive him home in the morning, for the appointment Dr. Sherman had shoehorned in as a favor.
Bacterial flu? Allergies?
She was so preoccupied that when Wes opened the door to her it took more time than it should have to see that he was upright, normal color, not wheezing or whispering. Dressed normally. Smiling, but a bit tense.

“Wesley,” she puffed. “What are you doing? Are you all right?” Then as he ushered her in, with a one-armed hug, Ellen understood. Jane was in the living room, wearing a UC hoodie of Wes’s. She was on the futon, one leg tucked underneath; she gave her mother a sharp little sarcastic wave.

“Don’t blame me,” Jane said. “I found this out, like, an hour ago.”

Ellen shoved her bag at Wesley. “Are you kidding me,” she said, still out of breath. “What if I’d gotten in an accident?”

“I told him it was sick. Way to go running to Mom, Wes. Thanks a lot.”

“What happened? Are
you
sick? Someone better be in need of medical attention here.” Ellen dropped onto the futon. “I can’t believe you lied to me. And why are you here, anyway?”

“Because I
thought
I had a place to crash while the house is fumigated for bedbugs. But apparently I signed up for a family intervention so you all can tell me what to do with my preggo self or my—”