Die Before I Wake (6 page)

I wondered why this made me uneasy. It seemed odd that a man who’d loved his wife, a man who’d spent years with her and made babies with her, would keep no physical reminders of her after she was gone. No little personal objects, no mementos of any kind. It was as if the moment Elizabeth was gone, Tom had tried to pretend she’d never existed.

Had their marriage been unhappy? Tom hadn’t mentioned any problems with his first marriage, so I’d simply assumed theirs had been a satisfactory union. On the other hand, I hadn’t bothered to ask.

For all I knew, they could have been on the verge of divorce when Elizabeth died. If there were problems, that might explain why all trace of her was gone from the house.

Trying to rationalize away my unease, I told myself I was probably just identifying too closely with Tom’s late wife. More than likely, my subconscious was wondering what would happen if I died.

Whether I, too, would be erased from this house as though I’d never set foot inside it.

Because that thought bothered me more than I cared to admit, I distracted myself with unpacking.

It didn’t take long; I’d traveled light. Most of my clothes were packed away on that moving van. Until they arrived, I’d manage quite nicely with the jeans and casual shirts I’d brought with me. I’d packed only one “serious” dress, and I doubted I’d be need-ing it here; I couldn’t imagine that, as the wife of a small-town Maine doctor, I’d have many formal social engagements.

I managed to fill one bureau drawer, and I hung the rest of my clothes in the closet. They looked pathetic hanging in all that empty space, as did my toiletries, lined up on one end of the massive white marble bathroom counter. I sneaked a peek in one of the medicine cabinets. Empty. I opened the other and found Tom’s toiletries—razor, toothbrush, deodor-ant, aftershave—all shelved neatly, again carefully spaced so that no two objects touched. I closed the cabinet, looked at my cluster of mismatched items cluttering up the counter, and decided to move them to the empty medicine cabinet, where my neatnik husband wouldn’t be forced to look at them every time he walked into the room.

It was an improvement. I closed the mirrored door on my hair care products and perfumes, returning the powder room to its formerly immaculate state. Because I had no excuse to kill any more time up here, I headed back down to the kitchen. I still had the whole house all to myself. Except for Riley, but he was still outside, wielding the chain saw with its fe-rocious growl.

I took the keys to the Land Rover from the hook in the kitchen, let myself out the screen door, and marched over to where my brother-in-law was working. He shut down the saw and watched me approach.

“Can you give me directions? I need to go to Tom’s bank, the DMV, and the social security office.” He swiped at his brow with a shirtsleeve, picked up a bottle of water, and took a long swig. “The bank’s downtown,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “First National Bank on Main Street. You can’t miss it. Social security office is in the federal building across the street from the bank.

Second floor, above the post office. The nearest DMV office is in Portland.”

I thanked him and headed across the lawn to the driveway. It wasn’t until I got into the Land Rover that I discovered it was a stick shift.
Crap on a
cracker.
My Miata had been an automatic. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Bright yellow, automatic, four-cylinder convertible. You’re thinking,
chick car.
I plead guilty as charged. But I liked driving an automatic, and I was a disaster with a stick.

Jeffrey had tried once to teach me how to drive his five-speed Corolla, but the lesson had been a catas-trophe I didn’t want to repeat. The shifting part I got down without much trouble. It was the clutch, the dreaded clutch, that was my downfall.

In theory, I understood how it worked. The clutch goes to the floor, the car starts, the clutch comes up slowly as the gas pedal goes down. When it catches, you give it more gas and ease the clutch the rest of the way up. It sounds so simple, but a crucial piece of the puzzle, the kinetic understanding of when to ease up on the clutch and when to press down on the gas, had thus far eluded me. I could probably manage to drive the damn thing, but it would be a herky-jerky, humiliating experience.

My options ran the gamut from A to B. A, I could stay home, tell Tom that I couldn’t drive a standard shift, and see what happened. Or, B, I could teach myself to drive the car, no matter how humiliating it might be.

I thought about my determination not to let life defeat me. Thought about my dad, who had. Thought about how I’d survived the death of my newborn, and the subsequent death of my marriage. I was a strong woman. An intelligent woman. A determined woman. I’d survived the loss of everyone I loved, then moved on and started life over with Tom. I’d moved three thousand miles away from home to be with him. If I could do all that, I could drive this damn car.

I took a breath, pressed the clutch to the floor, and turned the key. The engine roared to life. So far, so good. I locked the seat belt into place, made sure the shifter was in first gear, then slowly, smoothly, eased up on the clutch with my left foot while stepping on the accelerator with the right.

The car lurched forward and came to a rocking, shuddering halt.

A trickle of sweat ran down my spine. I started the engine again. Concentrating hard, again I eased up on the clutch. This time, I gave it a little more gas than I had the first time. When I felt the car begin to roll, I stepped down hard on the gas pedal and let up on the clutch. The engine roared, and I actually managed to move forward a couple of feet before coming to a stop so abrupt that if I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt, the windshield and I would have experienced a close personal encounter.

I was not having fun. I wiped sweat from my eyes and bit down on my lower lip.
Concentrate,
I told myself silently.
Just concentrate. You can DO

this.
I let up on the clutch and pressed the gas, and the car jerked and shuddered so hard my teeth clacked together.

“Fuck,” I said, thumping the palms of my hands against the steering wheel. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Having a little trouble?”

I flushed crimson when I saw Riley standing there.

“Go away,” I said. “I really don’t need a witness to my mortification.”

“You’re thinking too hard. You don’t drive a car by thinking. You drive by feel.”

Slumped over the steering wheel like a beach ball with a puncture wound, I said, “Then I believe my feeling apparatus is faulty.”

“No, it isn’t. Slide over.”

“I thought you had work to do.”

“It’ll still be there when I get back. Go ahead.

Scoot over.”

I climbed awkwardly over the gearshift and plunked down hard on the passenger seat. Riley slid in behind the wheel, started the car, and together we listened to the purr of the engine.

“You can’t think your way through it,” he said.

“You have to turn off your brain and tune into the vehicle. Become one with the car. Feel what it’s feeling.”

“How new age-y. Will we be hearing Yanni playing in the background anytime soon?”

“It has nothing to do with any new age bullshit.

Close your eyes.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t worry, I’m not a serial killer. Just do it.”

“You know, your family might be a little unusual…

but you certainly aren’t boring people.” I closed my eyes and waited for what would happen next.

“Instead of thinking,” he said, “I want you to use your other senses. Hear the sound of the engine.

Feel the vibrations. Let the car tell you what it wants.”

“Whatever you say, Yoda.”

“Stop being a wiseass and pay attention. We’re going to take a little spin around the block, and you’re going to feel how I drive the car. Without filtering it through your left brain thinking mechanism.

No talking. Just feel.”

Eyes squeezed tightly shut, I gamely settled back against the passenger seat. This little experiment was doomed to failure, but I was a good sport, and it wasn’t as though I had anything to do that wouldn’t wait.

But a funny thing happened on the way to failure.

As we cruised the suburban streets of Newmarket, Maine, population 8,931, I began to get a sense of what he’d been trying to tell me. Experiencing the motions of the car, listening to the up-and-down hum of the rpm’s, I thought I understood. Just a little.

Until he pulled over. “Your turn,” he said.

He left the shifter in neutral and the parking brake on, and we swapped places. “Remember what I said,” he told me. “Don’t think. Just feel.”

“Do I get to keep my eyes closed while I drive?” He reached around behind him, found the seat belt, locked and tightened it. “No.”

“I sort of figured you’d say that.” I made a couple of false starts. “When you feel it start to catch,” he instructed, “synchronize your left and right foot. Don’t think about it. Feel it catch, feel the car start to move, feel how much gas it needs, and follow through.”

Right. Like that was going to happen. But this time, I actually got the car moving. No shuddering, no jerking. Just a smooth ride down the street. I shifted at the proper time, with a minimum of disturbance, and Riley nodded.

“You’re a good student,” he said.

“I do all right once I’m moving. It’s the stopping and starting that bother me the most. Where to?”

“Keep going straight.” Apparently without fear of imminent death, he slumped comfortably on his tailbone and stretched out his legs. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”

“All righty then.” I upshifted until I reached cruis-ing speed, then sneaked a glance at him from the corner of my eye. “So,” I said. “What’s the story with you and Tom?”

I could feel his eyes on me, but I kept mine on the road. “What story?” he said.

“Don’t be oblique. It’s obvious to anybody who isn’t deaf, dumb and blind that there’s some kind of bad blood between the two of you.”

“Maybe you should be asking Tom.”

“Tom’s not here,” I said brightly. “So I’m asking you.”

Riley casually pressed the button for the car window. A little too casually, I thought. The window lowered with a soft hiss and he turned his face to the fresh air. “There’s no bad blood,” he said, scrutiniz-ing the passing scenery. “We just don’t always see eye to eye. Maybe you’ve noticed that we don’t have a lot in common.”

Looking at him, with his torn T-shirt, wrinkled jeans and shaggy hair, I thought of my husband.

Thought of his buttoned-down neatness, his trim haircut, his meticulously clean fingernails with the cuticles pushed back to reveal the white half-moons.

Thought of his closet, the clothes hung with such precision that he could have measured the distance between them with a ruler. “Yes,” I agreed, “I think it’s safe to say that your styles don’t quite mesh.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“What’s another way?”

He thrust his arm out the window and held it there, his palm open to deflect the wind as we drove.

“Tom,” he said, waggling his fingers, “was always the golden boy. Star quarterback, class president, head of the debate club. National Honor Society.

Prom king. Everybody loved him. Everybody knew he’d go far. He played basketball. Soccer. Golf, for Christ’s sake.”

“Golf?” I said skeptically.

“Stupidest game ever invented.”

“And what did you play?”

“The Doors and Kurt Cobain, for the most part.” It explained a lot. “So you were one of those anti-establishment types.”

Riley drew his arm back into the car. “I was a loser. That was my assigned role in the family. While Tom was out running touchdowns and winning awards and getting laid by every blue-eyed blond cheerleader in sight, I was sitting in my room with the curtains closed, smoking weed, contemplating my teenage angst, and plucking minor chords on my Gibson.”

“It must’ve been hard,” I said, “growing up in his shadow.”

“It was torture. Everyone thought he was God.

That he could do no wrong. I was always being compared to him, and always falling short. I wasn’t perfect like he was. I was actually capable of making mistakes. I wasn’t interested in the same things Tom was. Athletics bored me to tears. I was into music. I wasn’t a clone of my brother, and it made people un-comfortable. They didn’t understand me. Because I wasn’t like Tom, I must be defective in some way.” His voice held no bitterness; he was simply stating facts. “It never occurred to anybody that there was nothing wrong with me, that I just needed to be me.”

“So you rebelled.”

“I smoked and drank and raised hell. I totaled a couple of cars, got into fights, got kicked out of school two or three times. I didn’t go looking for trouble, it just seemed to follow me around. Which, of course, made my faultless older brother look even better. If they’d only known.” When he smiled, his eyes crinkled the way Tom’s did. “Tommy wasn’t anywhere near as perfect as Mom wanted to believe.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t a bad kid. Just a normal one. He did his share of wild and crazy things, only he was smarter than me. He never got caught.

But everybody—the entire town—had him on a pedestal. It wasn’t any easier on Tommy, growing up here, than it was on me. That’s the big drawback to living in a small town. Everybody knows you, or at least they think they do. You get a certain reputation, a label, and it sticks.
The perfect kid. The trouble-maker.
In a small town like Newmarket, those labels are the kiss of death, because people wear blinders.

They see exactly what they expect to see, and nothing more. Most of them wouldn’t know the truth if it hit

’em upside the head.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why should you be? You had nothing to do with it. It all happened a long time ago.”

“Maybe so. But a lousy childhood sucks, no matter who or where you are. How did Tom deal with it?”

“He played the game, the same as I did. Except that it was a different game he played. After Dad died, as far as Mom was concerned, it was Tommy who’d be our savior. He was the good son, the one who always did exactly what was expected of him.