The Wreck (5 page)

“Mom?”

“Oh, hi, honey. I ironed your shirt and
hung it in your closet. Are you going to wear the maroon tie?”

“I guess so. Whatever you want.”

“That would look nice with the black
gown.”

“You know, Mom, I’d understand if it was
too much for you to go tomorrow night.”

She pushed herself into a sitting
position. “Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Brian. I’m so
very proud of you. Number
four
in your class.” She shook her head with
amazement and patted the cushion next to her.

He sat with her. “I’ve been thinking
about deferring Michigan for a year and staying closer to home next year. I’m
sure one of the state schools would take me in light of everything that’s
happened—”

“No,” she said firmly. “Absolutely not.”

“How am I supposed to leave you and Dad
and go halfway across the country? It won’t matter if I wait a year. I’ll still
get the degree from Michigan.”

“I won’t have you changing your plans so
you can babysit me. That’s not going to happen. You’re going to Michigan, and I
don’t want to hear another word about it.”

“What about Carly, Mom? What’s going to
happen to her?”

Mary Ann reached for his hand. “I don’t
know, honey. But you can’t put your life on hold until she bounces back. The
two of you saw the same things, but for some reason it hit her harder. I wish I
knew why.”

“We were going to get married.”

“
What?
Married?”

“I asked her the night of the accident.”

“Oh, Brian.”

“We used the money you guys and her
parents gave us to rent an off-campus apartment in Ann Arbor so we could live
together.”

“I wondered if you would.”

“Really?” Brian asked, amazed.

“I may be old, but I wasn’t born
yesterday,” she said dryly.

“Wow,” he said with a smile. “I really
thought I was getting away with something, but I should’ve known you’d figure
it out. Anyway, she was kind of freaking out about living together, and since
we were going to get married someday anyhow, I just figured why not now?”

Mary Ann held his hand between both of
hers.

He rested his head on her shoulder. “I
don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Mom. She’s my fiancée. Do I leave her here
and go to school? How do I do that? I love her.”

“Maybe she’ll be better by the time
August rolls around. It’s only been a month. She might just need some more
time.”

“I’m not so sure. The Carly I know and
love would never have let me go through the last month by myself, you know?”

“I know what you mean.” She sniffed and
wiped away the stray tear that rolled down her cheek. “Are you worried her
condition might be permanent?”

“I’m starting to wonder,” he said, giving
voice to his greatest fear. “What am I supposed to
do
, Mom? This is
killing
me. I miss her so much. I miss them all, but having her here and unavailable is
somehow worse. Is that awful for me to say?”

“No, baby, it isn’t.” She cradled his head
on her chest. “It’s not awful. All you can do is hope she’ll come around.”

He looked up at her. “And if she
doesn’t?”

“Then you have to find a way to go on.
That’s all you can do. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, Brian, and you
have to live every minute of it to the best of your ability. If you’ve learned
nothing else from all this, I hope you’ve learned that.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ve been thinking about getting a job.”

“For real?” He had never known her to
work.

“I’ve got to do something. I can’t sit
here drinking whiskey forever. It’s time to pick myself up and figure out
what’s next.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that. I’ve been
worried about you.”

She kissed his forehead. “I’m sorry you
were worried.”

“You’ll really be okay if I go to
Michigan?”

“I’ll miss you like crazy, but I’ll be
fine. I promise.”

Brian
made two trips to the stage at graduation—one to collect the diploma the school
board had voted to give Carly, even though she hadn’t taken her final exams, and
the other to pick up his own diploma. Both times his classmates stood and
cheered. He’d declined the invitation to narrate a tribute to the five members
of their class who had died in the accident. Their empty chairs, as well as
Carly’s, were decorated with photos, flowers, and balloons.

As he listened to the class president
talk about each of his fallen friends, he felt all eyes on him as he struggled
to maintain his composure. He managed to hold it together until they mentioned
Sam. Tina West, a talented soprano in their class, concluded the tribute by
singing “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” Brian quit trying to control his tears
when he realized there wasn’t a dry eye in the big tent on the high school
lawn.

After commencement, his parents invited
his extended family back to the house for cake, and everyone made a tremendous
effort to keep the mood celebratory. Brian opened gifts and ate the chocolate
cake his mother had baked for him, but the forced sense of merriment was
stifling. He kept waiting for Sam to appear, making wisecracks that Granville
High would give a diploma to anyone. As soon as Brian could escape, he picked
up Carly’s diploma and walked over to her house.

She was sitting on the front porch,
almost as if she had been waiting for him.

With a kiss to her cheek, he handed her
the leather-bound piece of paper that declared her a high school graduate.
“Congratulations.”

She brushed a hand over the black
leather.

“They did a nice tribute to the gang, and
they included Sam, too, which was cool. Tina sang that song from
Beaches
.
I bawled my head off, but everyone did.”

Reaching for his hand, she brought him
down next to her on the porch swing.

After swinging in silence for several
minutes, Brian said, “I can’t believe we’re high school graduates.”

She replied with a small, sad smile.

Unable to resist the urge, he leaned in
and kissed her. When she didn’t pull back like he expected her to, he wrapped a
hand around her neck and nudged at her lips with his tongue.

She turned her face away.

“Carly, honey,
please
. I miss you.
I miss
us
. I miss making love with you. If you love me the way you
always said you did, you’ll talk to me. I
need
you.”

Clutching his hand, she wept quietly as
if even making the noise it took to cry was too much for her.

He pulled his hand free and stood up. “I
can’t do this anymore. I don’t know how to help you, and you won’t tell me. I’m
not coming back again. When you’re ready to talk to me, you know where to find
me.”

Her eyes beseeched him to stay, but he
forced himself to turn away from her. He went down the stairs and out through
gate, letting it slam closed behind him.

The
week after Brian left her was the worst of Carly’s life, even worse than the
week that followed the accident. Without his visits to look forward to, there
was nothing left to live for. Except for occasional trips to the bathroom, she
never got out of bed and refused to eat or shower.

“This is
bullshit!”
Her father’s
voice broke the silence one morning.

“Be quiet, Steve,” her mother said.
“She’ll hear you.”

“I don’t care if she hears me! I’ve had
enough of this! Apparently so has Brian.”

“She’s traumatized. She just needs some
time to get over it.”

“It’s been five weeks, Carol! Brian saw
the same things she did, but he’s not refusing to talk or eat or get out of
bed.”

As Carly heard her mother speaking
quietly in an attempt to pacify her father, she rolled her face into her pillow
to keep from hearing any more.
Does he really think I
want
to live
like this?
What she
wanted was to be going to work at the coffee
shop like she had every summer for years. She wanted to be meeting Brian after
work to swim in the lake and make love under the willow. She wanted everything
to be the way it used to be.

Carly heard her sisters talking as they
got ready for work.

“She’s doing it for attention,” Caren
said. She had recently finished her freshman year at the University of
Connecticut.

“Why would she do that?” asked Cate,
who’d just graduated from Boston College. “Brian’s furious with her and so is
Dad. Why would she be stirring up all this trouble on purpose? That’s not
Carly. Besides, you know how much she loves Brian. She’d never want to drive
him away.”

Thanks, Cate
. Carly heard her father’s car start and
was relieved to realize he was leaving for work. Because they’d always been so
close, Carly hated that she was upsetting him. As the youngest of the four
Holbrook kids, she had loved being her daddy’s little girl. The two most
important men in her life were mad at her. She knew it was because they loved
her so much and were frightened by her withdrawal from life, but knowing that
didn’t make it any easier.

Her mother came into the room and opened
the drapes. “I drew you a bubble bath.”

Carly winced from the sudden onset of
light but didn’t resist when her mother pulled back the covers, tugged her out
of bed, led her into the bathroom, and undressed her like she would a baby.
Carly slipped into the tub and let the fragrant bubbles envelop her in their
warmth.

As she worked the shampoo through Carly’s
long curls, her mother said, “Here’s how this is going to go. You can have as
much time as you need to get past what’s happened, but you’re going to get up
every day, you’re going to bathe, you’re going to eat, and you’re going to help
out around here. Your father’s right. This has gone on long enough. I know
you’re terribly sad. We all are, but enough is enough, Carly. Do you understand
me?”

With tears rolling down her cheeks, Carly
replied with a small nod.

Carol wiped away her daughter’s tears.
“Brian called to check on you.”

Carly looked up at her mother to see if
it was true.

“He loves you very much, but of course
you know that. He told me you two got engaged the night of the accident. You
never even got a chance to tell us, did you? You probably thought we’d be upset
to see you getting married so young, right? Well, we probably would’ve been,
but now…” As Carol rinsed Carly’s hair she brushed at her own tears. “Don’t you
want to marry Brian and go to Michigan the way you planned? Isn’t that what you
want, honey?”

Again, Carly nodded.

“Then you have to talk to us. All those
feelings you’ve got locked inside must be eating you up. You’ll feel so much
better if you let them out.” She grasped Carly’s chin, forcing her to make eye
contact. “Will you try? Please?”

Carly opened her mouth, but nothing came
out.

Carol kissed her cheek. “That’s okay,
love. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Carly’s
mother invited Brian to their annual Fourth of July cookout. For days before
the holiday, Carly was on pins and needles while she waited to see if he would
come. She hadn’t seen him in two weeks, the longest they’d ever gone without
seeing each other in more than four years of dating. Every day without him had
felt like a year to her.

On the morning of the Fourth, she spent
extra time getting ready. She wore the white shorts she knew he loved and a red
halter that made her feel sexy. For the first time since the accident, she felt
a spark of interest in something and hoped that maybe she was finally beginning
to recover.

Standing in front of the mirror, she was
shocked by her pale face. Her once-vibrant brown eyes were now flat and sunken
into her face.

Seeing herself looking so sickly spurred
her to try to speak.
Just one word
, she thought.
Come on, no one will
hear.
When nothing happened, she cleared her throat and tried again.
Nothing.
I’m not doing it on purpose
. She was startled to realize it was
true. Until that moment, she hadn’t been entirely sure
. I want to talk, but
I can’t. I don’t know why
.

Still absorbing the discovery she’d made
in the bathroom, she spent the rest of the morning helping her mother in the
kitchen. Her sisters were in and out with their friends, and her brother Craig
was home from Boston with his wife Allison. The house was a beehive of
activity, and for once Carly’s father seemed to be relaxed. Perhaps he’d
decided to take the day off from ranting.

Carly put the finishing touches on a huge
bowl of potato salad and handed it to her mother.

With a grateful smile, Carol took the
bowl from her and covered it with foil. “Thanks for the help, honey.” In years
past, Carly would have spent the morning at the lake with Brian and their
friends, returning home just in time to eat.