* * *
—
William knew he had one more thing to say before Dr. Dembia would allow him to leave the hospital. She kept saying, “Just a few more days,” and he understood that he hadn’t said everything. He didn’t understand why he had to say everything, but there were rules to getting well, and he had to follow the rules. The doctor was pleased with the medication levels, and William no longer felt like he was hanging off the fender of a car that sped across town and then hurtled to a stop. His hands were no longer clammy, he could sleep at night, and there were moments of calm. He was learning the difference between calm and disconnected and was working to make his days more the former than the latter.
Arash visited and gave William a stern look. “Remember how I told you we keep tabs on our players?”
William nodded.
“Not everyone has good news to share when we follow up, and we try to help out when we can. You think you’re the first one who got in trouble? The coaching staff had a meeting about you.”
“Oh God,” William said, horrified.
“You brought value to our program when you interviewed the players this summer. I can’t guarantee you a job on staff. Obviously being here”—Arash frowned—“is a hurdle to overcome. But the university always needs resident advisers, and your doctor said you could handle the responsibility, so we’re going to get you a room in a dorm. That will cover your living expenses. We’ll see what happens from there.”
William found himself unable to speak. He’d been worrying about where he would sleep when he left here. He had very little money in the bank and no possibilities. The only option he’d been able to think of was to travel to Milwaukee and sleep on Kent’s floor, but that was problematic too, because Kent had a new girlfriend, a fellow medical student. She would understandably not be thrilled to have her boyfriend’s depressed former teammate taking up her space in the room.
“You pity me,” William said finally, and the words were sour in his mouth.
Arash shook his head, hard. “You’re depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world. It’s more sane than being happy. I never trust those upbeat individuals who grin no matter what’s going on. Those are the ones with a screw loose, if you ask me. Also, I’m not offering you a job. I’m offering a room.”
William’s brain clung to a new refrain, after the weeks in the hospital: No bullshit and no secrets. He could recognize both now, and when he reviewed what Arash had said, he knew it wasn’t bullshit. The coaches did track their players, and he had given value to the team in the past. The hours he’d spent listening to the boys explain how they’d been hurt meant something—to William, perhaps to the boys, and to Arash, in his mission to keep all the players strong and undamaged. The memory of those hours in the stuffy room—when so much else in his brain was water-damaged or frayed—remained intact, and it was a place William didn’t mind revisiting. When he considered this further, he realized it might be the only memory he had that didn’t cause feelings of regret or dismay. He had been helpful.
“Thank you,” William said.
When he walked the halls that day, he realized that he’d stopped feeling lake water against his skin. The cool liquid no longer tickled up his spine. He had a room to sleep in, which allowed him to believe, for the first time, that there would be a next step.
William wasn’t surprised that afternoon when Dr. Dembia said, “You never mention Alice.”
He was standing; he turned away to look out the window. This was what he needed to speak about. This was what he had to say in order to leave. This was what he had to know in order to start over. This was the last secret, which he could no longer keep.
He said, “I started getting darker—everything was getting darker—before she was born. It wasn’t because of her, but she showed up when nothing made sense anymore, and I had to keep turning off lights in my head to make it through the days. The thing was—” He stopped, looking for the right language.
“Yes?” the doctor said.
“Alice is a lamp. A bright lamp, from the moment she was born. She kind of shines. Looking at her hurt my eyes, and I was afraid to touch her.”
“You were afraid of her light?”
“No. I was afraid I was going to put her light out. That my darkness would swamp her light.”
“So you felt like you had to stay away from her, to keep her safe.”
“I have to stay away from her, yes.”
Julia
August 1983–October 1983
When the phone rang on that hot August morning, William had been gone for a day and a half. Julia was sitting on the couch with Alice in her lap. She was tickling the baby’s stomach. Alice gurgled when she laughed, and it was the best sound Julia had ever heard. It made Julia laugh too, every time. Julia carried Alice to the colorful blanket on the floor and laid the baby down. Then she picked up the phone next to the armchair, and everything changed.
Something inside Julia froze while she listened to Sylvie talk. The news that William had tried to kill himself was so enormous, she couldn’t take it in. Her hands went cold, and when she hung up the phone, she blew on them as if it were the middle of winter. She carried Alice from room to room, even though the baby hadn’t asked to be picked up. She visited each of the four windows in the apartment; she appeared to be looking for something, and yet she wouldn’t have been able to relay the weather outside or the time of day.
Cecelia and Emeline came to her apartment, and Julia told them that she needed time alone to think. They nodded, their faces grave. They’d all been shaken by the idea that William had wanted to leave them, to leave everything. His choice made them feel vulnerable; they’d never considered anything other than a natural death, and he’d pointed out another exit. The world felt scarier in the wake of what had almost happened.
The three women stood by Julia’s door for several minutes.
“How could he have done that?” Cecelia’s voice was hard.
Emeline rubbed her sister’s arm. “I don’t think it makes sense to be angry at him.”
“But,” Cecelia said, “I literally don’t understand how he could give all of this up. He was going to abandon Alice? There’s nothing more wrong in the universe.”
Julia listened to the twins talk the same way she’d listened to Sylvie on the phone. Everything was new to her now; it felt like her prior understanding of the world had been wiped away. She considered each sentence as if she were hearing words for the first time.
She said, “How could I not have known William was so unhappy?” Her husband’s lack of ambition, his unreliability, had turned out to be small symptoms in an ocean of darkness. Julia remained cold with fear. She had scared herself—how clueless she’d been—and William’s darkness terrified her. She had lain in bed, night after night, beside a man who didn’t want to live. Now, when she looked back at even the recent past, the memories were covered by shadows. Her own experience was a lie.
“He’s sick.” Emeline looked miserable. “Sylvie said he’ll probably need to be in the hospital for a long time.”