Excerpt from one Simple Text...(Shaw & Brown): Chapter 1, Saturday, April 7, 2012


Saturday, April 7, 2012

The morning before Easter I stood in front of the kitchen window in my pajamas with a cup of hot coffee in my hand, gazing at the cloudless sky and watching the pesky squirrels in the backyard eat all of the birdseed out of the birdfeeder. No matter how many times I chased them off, they came back. I loved watching the birds so I put up with the thieves. Such a perfect day—except for one thing: my daughter Elizabeth still wasn’t home.
She had spent the night at a friend’s house, and I had expected her to return before now. She knew the rules—she had to check in with us in person the next morning after staying the night away from home—but she hated to follow them. A typical teenager, rebellious and stubborn, she thought her parents didn’t understand her, that we had no idea what it was like to be a teenager.
Lord knows, I was well aware of the trouble a teenager could get into by spending the night away from home, not only from her older half-brother Logan but also from being a young foolish teenager myself. I sometimes picked up her clothes, smelling for that all-too-familiar, illegal aroma, or leaned in casually to smell her breath for lingering traces of alcohol.
            At 10:45, I finally pulled myself away from the window and started to make breakfast, 
for my husband, Jim, and me: eggs sunny side up. The cooking made me anticipate with more
than a little pleasure the annual Easter holiday get-together at our house, a lift I sorely needed
after losing my father just a few months prior to colon cancer and then coming face-to-face with my 50th birthday.
Just then, my cell phone beeped with a text message. In 2012, texting was fairly new but had quickly become the norm. Everyone, from teenagers to parents, had a cell phone. Texting was quick, easy and convenient—with no backtalk from your teenager—but could be dangerous if used while driving. The local paper overflowed with stories about the rise in car accidents due to distracted teenage drivers so I made sure that Elizabeth never used her phone when she was driving. She knew the risks and assured me she would never so stupidly use her phone behind the wheel.
The beep signaled a text from Elizabeth about running late for work at a pizzeria where she cut slices for college tuition and spare change and therefore could not check in at home. A bolt of angry disappointment raced through me—she knew the rules and was breaking them once again. We’d been arguing about things like this a lot lately, and I missed our sunnier years less marred by conflict.
“OK,” I texted back. Nothing more. No “I love you” like we normally ended our text messages. I wanted her to feel my frustration. Figuring she had already arrived at work, I told myself that I would confront her later when she got home. I waited for her to text me back “I love you” to clear the air, but she never did.
            I put the frying pan on the stove, turned on the burner, and sprayed the pan with oil. While the frying pan warmed, I reached into the refrigerator for the egg carton and felt a wave of dizziness and nausea wash over me. I grabbed the counter to keep from falling; it felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. Jim walked into the kitchen at that moment, and I told him that I felt sick to my stomach.  
 “Really, what brought that on?” he asked.
            “I don’t know,” I said, “but I am going to lie down.” 
            In our bedroom, I covered my head with the blanket to block out the sunlight, which was making my head pound. Soon, I drifted off to sleep. 
I don’t know how long I slept, only that the sound of our front doorbell startled me awake. I heard my husband’s footsteps heading toward the front door, but after that I could not make out anything—just a voice, mumbling, and then the sound of someone running down the hallway toward the bedroom. Pulling the covers off my head, I saw Jim’s body filling the doorway and instinctively riveted my eyes on his ashen face. His sky-blue eyes, suddenly saucer-sized, dripped tears.
“Who is it?” I screamed. “Who is it?”  
            In a soft, whimpering voice, he replied, “It’s Elizabeth.”  
            I remember running down the hallway, no longer inside my body but rather outside it. I watched myself run and stumble to the front door. I watched myself turn the corner and see a Maryland state trooper standing in the doorway. I stopped in a void of total silence, a kind of silence I had never experienced before. Then, a huge gust of air pushed me back into my body, and I began to tremble.
The state trooper held a walkie-talkie close to his mouth.  I have no memory of what he looked like, but I remember he had on a big brown hat and a tan uniform. When he saw me, he stopped talking and looked straight into my eyes.
 “Is she alive?! Is she alive?!” I shouted at him.
             “Yes,” he said, and for a moment I felt relief. Then, he added, “But it doesn’t look good.”  
He bowed his head so all I saw was the top of that big, brown, wide-brimmed hat.  The bowing of his head said it all.
            “My life is over,” I screamed. Then I screamed it again. I raised my arms into the air. I felt a heavy weight pressing down on me. I could not breathe. 
            Jim put his arms around me, and I calmed down enough to hear what the state trooper had to say. He wanted me to sit down on our couch, but I resisted. I wanted to yell and lose control. I hit my husband a few times in his chest. He grabbed my arms and forced me to sit down on the couch.  He sat next to me, as close as he could, and pulled me in so tightly I couldn’t move. His body was shaking, but he told me to be still and calm so the officer could speak.
            The trooper spoke, but I couldn’t listen. He spoke some more. Then, Jim stood up, walked with the officer to the door, and thanked him. I heard the sound of our front door closing. I cannot believe this is happening, I thought. I am only having a nightmare.

 

Read more about Betty Shaw, Dave Brown, and this book on this blog.

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