Chapter Thirty-One

From Helene Bright’s Journal

July 20, 1970

 

Life marches on, twisting and turning, sickening me with its surprises. I don’t even know how to begin to describe this day and what’s happened. I don’t know if I can commit it to paper without tears turning the ink into one huge smudge. I don’t know what kind of person I am, writing this horror down. What kind of ghoul chronicles such ugly occurrences in a journal?

But if I don’t write it down, it may never become real for me. Even now, numbness is the main emotion I feel. Numbness is what I’ve felt since three o’clock this afternoon, when the state highway patrolman arrived at our door. It’s almost alarming, this lack of feeling. It’s not quite the kind of feeling one has from day to day when nothing in particular is happening. It’s more as if all of my feelings have been wrapped in gauze or cotton, buffered from the outside world and its events. It’s a sick numbness, undesirable. I wish I could scream. I wish I could wail. Instead, there is only this blankness.

Perhaps writing it down will help.

The state highway patrolman arrived at three o’clock today. No, no, wait; let me start at the beginning.

Today was the day Father had decided to take Lanta and Daniel up to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, or more precisely, Fontana. There, Father owns two coach houses that were once part of an estate. He had them both remodeled into apartments, one up, one down. Rental income, a good investment, the kind of thing Father is always looking to sink his surplus of money into. He retained the nicest apartment for our family. In other days, when things were different, the whole family spent many happy summer weekends at the apartment, which was just a short walk from the lake, the pier, and our Chris-Craft.

Lanta and Daniel needed someplace to live with their two little imps. The one quiet, the other always wailing, his little face red and balled up into something resembling a prune. Father offered them the apartment at Lake Geneva to use throughout the winter. Lanta wants to paint, and Daniel thinks—I guess I should say thought—he had the great American novel in him. The idea seemed a good one. It would give everyone some space, some sorely needed space.

But Lanta wanted to see the place first before she gave her final okay on the situation. Such gratitude! Oh God, forgive me for writing that.

They asked me if I would watch the babies while they drove up. “It won’t be for long,” Mother told me, her hand reaching out warily to touch my arm. She was still stinging from my plans to move out. I’d been looking at apartments in the city. She knew I couldn’t abide the babies or abide the way they were being raised: Lanta with her “natural” childbirth at home, breastfeeding, and so far, no official registry of their birth. They might as well not exist. I wish, now more than ever, they didn’t. “But the trip will be so much easier and quicker if we can just go without them. The crying gets on your father’s nerves.”

Reluctantly, I agreed to stay home and take care of them. I prayed they would sleep the entire time their parents were gone. Having anything to do with them is always most unpleasant. I have no maternal need to feed them, rock them, or worse, change their smelly diapers.

“I’ve pumped some milk for them,” Lanta said to me before heading out the door. “It’s in the fridge. Just heat it up if they get hungry.”

“Right,” I said and tried to smile. Her grimace in return told me I didn’t succeed very well.

And right now, that milk, like some weird lifeblood living on after she died, is in the refrigerator. It will be her babies’ last living link with their mother.

This is hard to write. Some of the numbness is fading, like an anesthetic wearing off. My hands tremble, and there is an uncomfortable swelling in the back of my throat.

Please let the babies sleep until I finish this. If I can just get it down here, perhaps I can begin to deal with it.

I watched them from the window as they took off in the station wagon, watched until the car dwindled out of sight, until the trees in the driveway swallowed them up. I felt a mixture of anger and resignation.

If I had only known it was the last glimpse I’d have of any of them.

The state highway patrolman knocked at the door at three o’clock. I’m ashamed to say I was beginning to get angry at my family. I had thought they’d be back much sooner, and I was beginning to picture them all going in for a dip off the pier or a quick cruise around the lake in the boat. All while I was stuck at home with the children. I imagined Daniel urging my mother and father to stay, telling them something like, “Helene’s with the kids. She can hold down the fort.”

The knock surprised me. Timothy was in his crib, screaming. I had tried rocking him, feeding him, had even checked his diaper. Nothing would stop the screaming. Theodore lay in the crib next door, eyes wide and staring at nothing. He was silent.

I left the squalling baby to go and answer the door. I was expecting no one and wished that no one was calling right now. My nerves were beginning to fray from the onslaught of Timothy’s tantrum.

I opened the door and was taken aback at the sight of the officer in uniform. A sick feeling rose up in my stomach when I saw him, the nervous expression on his face, the way he avoided my eyes, staring down at the brick porch after he’d removed his hat.

“Yes?” I said, hoping against hope he was here for some reason other than the wild thoughts that were running through my mind.

“Are you Helene Bright?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Miss Bright, I’m afraid I have some very bad news.”

I wanted to faint. Things got a little dizzy when he spoke the words, and it suddenly seemed too hot, the flush rising to my face and burning. I didn’t want to hear any more. I knew what was coming, and yet I blotted it out. If I just closed the door, I thought, it wouldn’t be so, and my life could return to what it was before he knocked.

I gasped. “Is something wrong?”

“On Route 41, there was an accident.”

“Are they hurt?” I didn’t want to accept that it could be something worse.

“I’m afraid they were killed.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. I’m afraid so, ma’am.”

“It can’t be,” I whispered. Everything was spinning. I felt drunk. I began to close the door, even though the officer was speaking. He was asking me if there was someone who could stay with me or would I like him to stay.

I closed the door in his face and ignored his knocking until he went away.

Upstairs, Timothy continued to scream.