Ophelia, Alive Read online

  Face.

  I scream.

  I’m instantly embarrassed, because the face I’m looking at is my mother’s. It’s poking in through the curtains and looking confused to see me here. She honestly doesn’t even look that much like Sara, more like me, really, maybe halfway between us, if that. Her eyes are still blue, like mine used to be, before the pills hollowed them out.

  “Hi, Mom. Sorry.”

  “You all right, Ophie?”

  “Yeah, I just—I wasn’t expecting to see you there. Sorry.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I—” I stammer because I’m still trying to decide what I am doing here. The preceding night is a blur of cold faces, cold pizza, cold blood, and something about rats, or was it mice? Gray blood all down my front and icy gravel all over my back, half-naked in front of my mom, strangling a stuffed unicorn till it vomits rainbows. And those boxes from a week (a year?) ago are still sitting on the floor, half-full of books, and it’s hard to even remember who I was back then. A bitter college girl whose biggest worry was paying the bills, and now here I am, an animal quivering in the corner and licking the last bits of blood from my teeth. She’s wondering why I haven’t been back to pick up the rest of my stuff; I’m wondering why I’m still not locked in a cage somewhere. How do you bridge that gap? “Sara brought me here.”

  “Sara?” There’s a dumbfounded look on her face, utterly confused and maybe even a little bit offended at hearing the name. And then I remember that she still doesn’t even know Sara’s alive—still doesn’t think Sara’s alive—wait. Is Sara alive? I saw her last night, but my memory of last night is a pile of weirdness, and the more that I poke at it, the more it unravels into a mass of bewildering black goo.

  “Uh—yeah—she picked me up at the playground around midnight, and—” This is making even less sense than I thought it would.

  “Ophie, are you all right?”

  “I...think so.” I’m trying to hide my torn, dirty wifebeater and my blackish-tasting mouth. She pulls the curtains aside and sits on the bed.

  “Sara’s not here,” she tells me, and I think, No, she has to be. I can still see the white of her teeth and the gray of her eyes, burned into the backs of my eyelids, like the cat’s face in the back of Alice’s woods. I stared at them all night till the sun melted them away, and they were the realest thing I’d ever seen. But I know that doesn’t make any sense.

  “I saw her last night. I talked to her.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I think...” What was it she said, about there being advantages to faking your own death? “Maybe I’m a little confused.”

  “It’s your car that’s out in the driveway, Ophie.”

  “She said—” she said that it was closer. That she still had a key. Does any of this make even a little sense?

  “She said what?” My mom’s looking really concerned now, like she’s wondering if maybe she should find me some friends in white lab coats. She puts her hand on my knee and I wince. It feels cold against my snow-soaked legs, even through the blankets.

  I shrink deeper into the corner. Breathe deep and squeeze my unicorn. I say, “I guess you never did hear from her, then.”

  She sighs—a sigh weighed down by years that I only partially understand. “I stood outside the wreckage for hours yesterday,” she tells me. “I watched as they dug out body after body.”

  “No Sara?”

  “No Sara. And she hasn’t called, either. If she were alive, she would have at least called, right?” She clears her throat. “I just—”

  She’s crying. My mother is crying, and I can’t remember the last time I saw her cry (maybe never?), and now she’s not even trying to hide it, she’s just hunched over her knees, shaking, head in her hands, making new wrinkles on her face. And here I am in the corner, still trying to hide, still trying to make my blood-soaked near-nudity invisible.

  Some of this blood on me might be Sara’s.

  It’s awkward. Embarrassing. Strange and distracting, to see her hunched over and shaking like this, with a quivering nakedness pulsing in her veins. For years I’ve been coming here, week after week, holding it as symbol of things that I hate. A vast, empty shell made of brick and wood, ten or twenty times bigger than it ever should have been, huge and foreboding and smothered in money. Angry, defensive. A monument unto itself. But the shell was distracting me, up until now, from the kernel of humanness hiding inside.

  I see her there now, in the light from the snow, in pajamas, no makeup, no heels and no dress, just a body (of flesh and of skin and of bone), and she’s staring at death, looking right in its face, and she’s seeing what I’ve seen (but closer, with age). She’s scared, she’s upset, and she’s sifting through feelings she’s known that she has, but ignored for so long, beaten down by a thousand and one disappointments, with no one who knows what it feels like to be her, unable to cope with the hollow inside, except dressing up, smiling, pretending as hard as she can that most things are okay. Long nights in the dark, carving wrinkles in flesh in deep solitude, wishing that things had been different—I see all that now, behind wrinkles and glasses, her blue eyes and brown hair, her wide hips and short, stubby fingers.

  She’s me.

  Older and sadder, more stretch marks, regrets, but she’s shaking with feelings I know well. The deep, indescribable sorrow of death’s endless hunger. The knowledge that pure inky blackness lies waiting for all of us. First it claims people you love, and then, finally, you. She’s staring in death’s eyes and hearing it tell her, Yeah, I took your marriage, and I took your daughter, and soon I’ll take you, and have fun doing jack-shit about it.

  Does she even know?

  Does she even realize she’s sitting right next to death’s angel? That I am the death that she’s shaking her fist at? That death’s not a demon with black wings and fangs, it’s a burnt-out coed wearing shorts and a tank top? See, death’s claimed me too, Mom. It’s got both your daughters. We’re deep in its claws, and we’ve been there forever, since long before the hospital fire. The blackness you’re staring at waits for us all, but I’m halfway down into it, graciously being allowed to help pull others down till it sucks me deep into its nothingness, too. Lucky enough to be used till it’s done with me.

  This whole situation feels so familiar, though.

  Crying on the edge of the bed. Pajamas and tears. Life and death.

  I was caught in this same space just three days ago, when I sat on the bed next to Kate and I cried and she held me. She told me about making choices, or something, how she had this theory—I think she was right—that our actions are always in favor of life or in favor of death. That even if, in the end, death wins, regardless, that life is still something that’s worth fighting for. That the choice to create or build up is a meaningful one, maybe even if all your attempts fail or nobody notices. That the ones who bring death are the ones who make history, but the ones who bring life are the ones who taste sweat from God’s face.

  I sit up.

  “What are you doing?” she says, as I wrap my arms around her. I’m holding my breath, and I’m gritting my teeth, thinking This might be wrong, since it’s been several years since I hugged my own mother, but the hell with it, right? She’s rigid, confused, but the shock soon wears off—she relaxes, leans in, and we’re both so, so cold, but somehow our shared heat feels warmer. Two small flames alight under mountains of snow, and the (real) threat of being extinguished seems lessened, somehow.

  I don’t know how long we stay sitting like this, with my head on her shoulder, her tears in my hair, but it’s just long enough to melt some of the snow (just a bit). And the fog on the window pulls back, and the sun sneaks back into the room. It’s still gray, but it’s brighter.

  She whispers, “Thank you,” and hugs me back, and her arm around me is alien and familiar. She swallows, relaxes, chokes back a few more tears, and says, “It’s been years since you did that. Maybe decades.”


  “I not sure I can remember doing this, ever.”

  She says, “You used to run up to me and say, Mommy, hugs! when you were really little. It was cute.” She squeezes me again, wipes away a tear. “But everything was happier back then.” She snorts. “God, listen to me. I sound like a damn Lifetime movie.” She holds me closer, and I collapse into her. “You’re all I have now, Ophie.”

  I laugh.

  “Don’t laugh, I’m serious. Promise me nothing will ever happen to you.”

  “I—Mom, how could I possibly promise that?”

  “Just—please.”

  “Okay, I—I promise.” Because, what else can I say? I’m sorry, Mom, I’ve already sealed my fate? I’ve already signed a Faustian pact with the Reaper (except not really even Faustian, because I’m getting exactly jack-shit out of this deal)? There’s nothing for me to do but just burrow deeper into the folds of her pajamas and say, “I’m sorry about Sara.”

  She sighs. “It’s not your fault. It’s just the way things are.”

  I know what I did. “But I know she was your favorite.” Damn it—why do I always say the wrong thing? But I can’t take it back now.

  But she just laughs. “Are you kidding? She was never my favorite. Ophie, you were my favorite.”

  “Uh—” And what can I say in response to that? I’m completely disarmed by the casual way she tossed it off, like we’re a couple of middle-aged women knocking back martinis over lunch. I laugh at her. “You’re not supposed to say stuff like that to your kids.”

  “But what difference does it make now?” she says, and I have to concede the point. “She’s gone, you’re an adult, I don’t have to play parenting games anymore. I don’t want to—I was always terrible at them, anyway. I want to be honest. God, for once in my life, I want to be honest.”

  “You do? Like, really?”

  She winces a little. “Yeah,” she says. “I do.”

  “Then can I ask you something serious?

  “Okay.”

  I bite my lip. Hesitate. But I have to know. “Why are you kicking me out?”

  She laughs. Rolls her eyes. “I’m not, Ophie. You haven’t lived here in years. I just asked you to clean out the room you used to live in. Is that really so bad?”

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  She says, “I understand how you feel. This is a great room. I know you worked hard at making it perfect.”

  “Wait, you like my room?”

  She laughs. “Yeah.”

  “I think teenaged me just rolled over in her grave.”

  She laughs again and she says, “Well, maybe that’s the point. Adolescence can’t last forever.” Wind kicks up snow and beats on the window, and she adds, quietly, “I’m case-in-point on that one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is the really embarrassing part,” she sighs. “Turns out I’m broke. I thought if I cleaned your room up a little, maybe I could rent it out, or something.”

  “Oh.” And she’s right that that was the embarrassing part, but it’s embarrassing for me, not for her. I’ve been worrying about my perfectly mounted posters and perfectly calibrated carpet color, and she’s freaking out over how she’s going to pay the bills. It hurts to be told I’m so selfish, especially since she doesn’t even have to say it.

  She says, “I’ve been so stupid. Did I ever tell you why I kicked your father out in the first place?”

  “You never talk about that.”

  She sighs. “I wanted to write.”

  “You what?”

  “I wanted to write. Like, to be a writer. Or whatever. Embarrassing, right? He wasn’t supportive enough of my writing for me, and things went south from there, and then I kicked him out. It was so stupid. And here I am, fifteen years later, with nothing to show for it. A bunch of pages in a drawer.” She lets go of me now, drops her head into her hands, rubs her temples the way only menopausal women ever do.

  I say, “Mom, I didn’t realize, I—I never knew. Writing, huh?”

  “Naming you after a Shakespearean character wasn’t enough of a clue for you?”

  “I—”

  “I guess it says a lot about me that I named you after someone so self-destructive,” she says. “I could’ve named you Regan or Portia, but no. I went with the one who goes crazy and kills herself. God damn it.”

  (All these years, I’ve been thinking of her as a woman who only exists to collect alimony checks and buy shoes.)

  “I kicked him out because I knew he was wrong, that if I had more time, more space, I could write something great. If I’d kept him around, he could have at least kept tabs on whatever I was spending so much money on every month, but no, he wasn’t supportive enough for me. So I just took his alimony and shut myself in a room and banged away on a keyboard for a decade and a half and came up with jack-shit.”

  “Mom, why haven’t you ever mentioned this before?”

  She reaches out into the air, like she’s going to find an answer there, but obviously she doesn’t, and finally she shrugs and says—“I was embarrassed, I guess. I mean, how embarrassing is it to say to someone, I want to be a writer? I didn’t tell anyone because I was scared of being scrutinized. It doesn’t even make sense. I mean—who was I writing for, myself?” She chokes. “But that completely cut me off from people—from reality. You see what I mean? Self-destructive. It’s a streak all the women in our family have.”

  My thoughts dart for a moment to Sara, who might be dead, or maybe-possibly alive. And also might be here, or maybe-possibly somewhere else. But they don’t linger on her for long, because I see that my mother is crying again. Shaking, pouring out regret in front of me, for the first time in years, and I wonder what I could possibly do to help. There are voices in my head saying, She’s just whining and She did this to herself, but I see something now that I never saw before: she’s trapped in her own skin. A victim of her former self, with no easy way out.

  Like me.

  I don’t know what to do, but I know I should do something. And I feel like even knowing that is a step in the right direction. “Mom,” I say, “about those pages in the drawer...”

  I catch myself trailing off, and she’s obviously waiting for me to finish the thought, because she says nothing.

  “I...I’d be happy to read them, if you’d like me to.”

  “But they’re not any good,” she tells me.

  “Why don’t you let me decide that?”

  She glances at me sideways with a look that says I can’t believe you’re not laughing at me, and she says, “You actually want to read my stuff?”

  I tell her, “Why not? You wrote it so people could read it, right? Unless you’d rather leave it in a drawer.”

  She rubs her eyes and says, “Well—I guess that’s a good point,” and she stands up, as if she just remembered how. “Let me show them to you.” Takes my hand, pulls me to my feet.

  “Right now?”

  “Why not? It’s not like we’re going to accomplish much else today, buried under four feet of snow.”

  I say, “Okay,” and I’m thinking how weird it is that I’m about to spend a day with my mom, and the sun is peeking through the clouds for the first time in days, and the ice on the window shatters the beam into a million yellow gems, filling the room. And in the corner of my eye, I see the girl with the Uggs.

  Wait. No. Not now.

  She’s at my left, and the boy’s at my right, the one with the beard and the flannel and jeans, and the fat man’s behind me, and Rachel’s behind my mother (who fades in and out). The walls are dripping, and the windows are jagged, and the whole room is beating in time with my heart—everything in the universe, tied to my pulse, pulling in, pushing out. I taste blood on my lips, and I reach for the pills.

  No.

  Not now.

  Are you all right? I hear a voice say, drowned out by the rushing of blood, and I can’t tell who said it, and the room fills with bodies. A thousand eyes shrouded behind ye
llow sun, staring at me and licking their lips, and I say to myself that I have get out, have to leave, get away from my mother before something happens to her. I swallow and choke.

  “I, uh—need to shower—” somehow I said it, I pushed the words out, and I feel the surprise on her face and say, Sorry, I smell, and I push on the floor with my feet, which like water slips under them, struggling through thick air and trying to push past the dead, veiny hands reaching out for me as mine shoots toward the doorframe. I push into the bathroom and slam the door shut, pressing hard with my back to make sure it stays closed, while I choke on my breath. And in the next room, I hear my mother hesitate before shuffling sadly downstairs.

  wed. jan. 19.

  3:36 pm.

  fog

  I’m standing in the shower now, blasting my closed eyelids with almost-scalding water while plumes of steam rise around me and tease at the goose bumps that never go away. I’m trying to wash the day-old filth of corpse off of me, but somehow the steam just amplifies it all, and the smell is like rancid meat that’s been warming all day in a Crock-Pot. My mouth is dry and no matter how much hot water I swallow it still has that metallic blood taste stuck to it. But as long as I keep the water blasting into my eyes, they glow red, and the faces almost disappear. I collapse into the wall and let it hold me up because there’s no strength in my knees. I gasp quick breaths of the hot, filmy air, and it sticks to my lungs like glue in a tube, and I listen to the sounds in the walls. Feet. Echoing. In the walls. I won’t open my eyes, because if I do, I’ll see faces again. Will it always be like this, from now on? The faces that won’t go away, the urges to swallow the pills and drink blood? Addiction’s not something I’ve dealt with before, so I don’t even know where to start thinking through it. And the more I think about how deep I’ve sunk into helplessness, the heavier my lungs get, and then my eyes snap open and I realize I’m sliding down the wall. I reach out to stop myself but the tub faucet rushes up to meet my face. My lip’s bleeding when I hit the wet floor, and I watch the red spiral around the drain in a twisted, nauseous bullseye. I have to look away. My eyes follow the grimy water spots that never wash off up the length of the shower curtain, looking for light to center my spinning brain like a moth’s, but behind the curtain all I can see are silhouettes. The ghosts that follow me everywhere, won’t leave me alone, won’t let me go, won’t let me look away. They used to not be real. I used to see them only sometimes, and I knew they were imaginary. But now I see them everywhere, and they never disappear, and I wonder if maybe they’re imagining me.