Epilogue to a Vanishing
"Everything dies, baby, that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back." –Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City
"In a nightmare I am falling from the ceiling into bed beside you. You're asleep, and I'm screaming, shoving, trying to wake you up." –Antlers, Epilogue
Somehow, the holiday season ran them down like a train.
"Thank you, Jean," Peter murmurs as he takes the sweet potatoes and chicken she made, the Christmas dinner that tomorrow will make a very poor replacement for his missing wife. With no enthusiasm or inflection, he says "this looks nice."
Peter smells like a night of cold sweats and chain-smoking and he can't remember if he showered yesterday or not. He's been sleeping in his clothes for a while now, reluctant to leave the telephone, in case, just in case he gets a call with news of Eva. He knows it's irrational. He knows that if the phone rings, he can walk from the bedroom to the phone in the living room.
He can tell Jean is trying to look compassionate and not just sad.
"Peter," Jean says kindly, gently, "you know you can call if you need anything. Steve's working Christmas day this year, so we'll be in town until the twenty-seventh."
"Mm," Peter responds, putting the food next to Jake's present to Marco on the table by the door.
"Peter?"
He blinks at her through smudged glasses and bleary eyes. "Yeah?"
"It's been more than a month. You should maybe," she swallows hard and bites her lip, thinking of the right words for a subject that will always be all wrong to bring up, "maybe you should consider funeral arrangements. I could help you do that, if you need someone to do that."
He gapes for a moment, his mind taking so much longer than usual to process anything. "You're saying you think she's dead."
Jean sighs and blinks back some sudden tears. "It's been more than a month," she repeats.
"If you're just ready to give up on her, you can go," he growls, reaching to close the door. She catches and stays his hand.
"I was her friend, Peter. I don't want to give up on her any more than you do. But you're not doing yourself any favors by waiting by the phone all day, and this," she gestures at him, "this isn't healthy. And it's not going to make that phone ring."
"You're just her friend. I'm her husband. I'm not giving up on her."
A strange look crosses Jean's sad face, one of sadness and anger at the same time. "You aren't the only one who lost someone."
"Don't even start comparing-"
"I'm not talking about me," she says, eyes narrowed, jerking her head towards the side of the house Marco's bedroom is on. She zips up her light jacket and descends the steps. "You're welcome for the dinner."
He slams the door in her wake.
The emptiness of the house creeps into his body. He feels it in his joints, in the muscles that have stiffened from nights in awkward positions on the couch, the eyes that strain to adjust to and from the television. The silence is garish and hot like a neon sign lighting up everything that isn't right with this situation.
Peter takes a deep breath and feels the exhaustion and hopelessness fill his lungs. He can't remember the last full eight hours he slept. He's been catching a few hours here and there on the couch, one hand next to the telephone, the other on the remote to turn the volume down, down, down when the headache gets to be too much, up and up and up when he's crying, so Marco doesn't hear.
He should sleep. Or make the bed, so Eva comes home to a tidy bedroom.
He picks up his wallet from the coffee table. On the back of a Post-It, he writes Get yourself anything for Xmas, no more than $75, use BoA card, PIN is your birthdate, also order takeout. He puts the wallet and note on top of the chicken and potatoes and gaudily-wrapped present, which Marco is sure to inspect upon his return, and finally, reluctantly, enters the bedroom.
He hasn't slept here in weeks. The sheets lie kicked down to the foot of the bed. One of the pillows is on the floor. The curtains are half-opened, the slit of sun a little bit off-center and casting a long dividing line down the bed. Peter lies down on his side of the bed with the full intent to sleep.
The pillows still smell like the lotion she used, the spicy scent with pepper and tangerines and black cherry, her favorite one that stung his eyes after she just applied it. A fantastically appropriate smell for his sometimes caustic wife, who could sink her needle-teeth right into his wounds, who could cut down to the quick and marrow of his soft bones with her incisive, sarcastic mouth and still be pleasantness incarnate a minute later.
Peter presses his face into the pillowcase, sucking in the smell of her through the fabric, residual lotion and hairspray and sweat. The bridge of his glasses jams red marks into his nose. He wraps himself around the pillow, eyes closed, and in his arms it could be her soft body, the cool cotton could be her smooth skin. His hips press up against her, his hands discover her that isn't her, her that is only some sad figment of his desperate imagination.
He doesn't know which Eva she is. Is she the impatient Eva who's sickened by indulging in sadness and false hopes, who will come home and set about to peevishly fixing everything that fell apart in her absence? Or is she the persecuted, paranoid Eva who'll be insulted at being relegated to the past, who'll nurse this insistent wound and let it fester until one day the hurt pours out in a flurry of cutting words and exasperation? Or is she just the Eva that exists in his head, superimposed on the light blue fabric of a pillowcase?
Peter falls asleep with his glasses on, with his shoes on, and with images of the ocean in his head.
In his dreams, Eva lies still and silent beside him, staring slack-jawed at the ceiling, her open mouth full of saltwater. He reaches to push her, to shake her and wake her up, but can't find the strength, so he lays an arm around her and rests his head on her shoulder. Saltwater slips down her face into his hair and mouth. He wakes up tasting tears.
No Eva. Nothing but the pillow and the scent of her, faded as it is. Outside it's been raining, and the slit of night through the curtains is sparkling. The alarm clock reads that it's past midnight. Peter heaves his body up off the bed and leaves the bedroom behind, maybe forever, because if she's still alive somewhere sleeping with ghosts might be as bad as infidelity.
Marco must be home, because the Christmas present is conspicuously missing. Peter cracks open the door to his son's room and sees Marco sprawled against the side of the bed, playing some Nintendo game, headphones on. But what catches his eye isn't the boy, but the light pink blanket laying incongruously on the superhero bedspread.
It came from the master bedroom, and it suddenly pummels Peter with the realization that his son is mourning. Somehow this brutally obvious fact has eluded him for the last month. Somehow he's been ignoring that his son's eyes have been perpetually red for weeks. Maybe he hoped Marco would cling to hope long enough for Eva to get home, maybe he hoped he wouldn't notice that everyone else was writing her off as dead.
Peter realizes that his sense of denial shouldn't outlast that of an eleven year-old.
He knocks at the door, and Marco pulls off his headphones and turns off the Nintendo game. "Did you get takeout?"
"In the fridge," Marco says. "Chinese. I saw the stuff Jake's mom brought over too."
Peter nods, and they go to the kitchen that hasn't been cleaned or sorted in well over a month. Marco nukes the Chinese food until the grease and soy sauce are bubbling, and they sit across from each other at the counter eating it straight out of the containers. Neither of them mentions that it's technically Christmas now.
Marco pokes at the extra soy sauce packets with his chopsticks. "Jerry called when you were sleeping. He says he's giving you the rest of the holiday to decide if you're going back."
Peter stares blankly at the red-on-white letters of the takeout box for a moment, then nods his head almost imperceptibly. "Did you get yourself anything?"
"Sega 32X," Marco says, throwing a soy packet at the trashcan. It misses, and Marco stares at it a moment, then back at his father, and shrugs.
They crack open their fortune cookies and crumple up the paper fortunes inside without looking at them. Peter shoves the empty takeout containers into the trashcan, making a mental note to take it out, at some point, filing that note in a part of his head he doesn't visit much these days.
"I know it's past bedtime, Dad, but I'm really not tired," says Marco. "No school till next year anyway."
"Can't say I'm tired either." Peter resumes his vigil at the couch, even though now the hopelessness is so heavy he barely makes it that far, can barely lift his arms to rest one anticipatory hand on the telephone.
Without asking permission, Marco puts a tape in the VHS player, switching the television screen from Frasier to Batman recordings. He grabs his pillowcase of leftover Halloween candy from the pantry and sits next to his father on the couch, rummaging his hand through Jolly Ranchers and pretzels for something to snack on.
As the Joker attempts villainous plots many times over, Peter affords Marco some dignity and doesn't comment on the tears and mucus that work their way down his son's face. As the heroic rescues begin to blend together, Marco eventually drifts off to sleep, head resting on his father's thigh.
The VHS ends, leaving nothing but a wavering horizontal division on the television, black and white. Peter watches it for a long while, then finally removes his hand from the telephone and goes to bring the light pink blanket back for whom he's just accepted as his last living family.