Every surface in my Greenfield house gleamed. After only two weeks on the market, it had sold. The walls were freshly painted, the furniture arranged just so. It hardly looked like the house I had lived in for the past five years. With Jack and Maggie’s help, I’d managed to complete the long to-do list and now it was time for me to go. But I lingered, walking through the rooms, as if I’d forgotten something.
The new owners would take possession in a few days and I now had a new, furnished home in the city.
In the cleaned-out kitchen I sighed. I didn’t feel a connection with this sparkling-clean room. The sound of the refrigerator humming seemed loud. How had I not heard such a loud sound all those years?
I opened the back door and stepped outside. I had raked the last of the autumn leaves only a few days ago. The air was crisp with the promise of winter. I had wanted to be in my new home before Christmas, and I’d managed that, with six weeks to spare.
So much change, so quickly. Dr. Alexander had told me to take things slowly, not to rush. Once again I hadn’t listened. But it wasn’t rebellion. I was simply doing what I knew had to be done. I couldn’t stay in Greenfield any longer. Couldn’t wrestle my past anymore. With one last look at the yard, I headed back into the house.
In the kitchen I picked up the sponge and bucket, planning to put them in my car, when I remembered I hadn’t pulled out the stove and washed behind it.
Would the new owners even think to look behind the stove? Would it really matter if I left it dirty? I pulled the stove out and leaned forward, looking at the floor. It was disgusting.
I filled the bucket with water, added a cap of yellow cleaner, and got down on my knees. I started with the sides of the stove, then ran a sponge over the floor, and grazed something as I wiped. I thought it was a dried shard of pasta, or a shriveled pea, but, upon examination, I saw it was a pill. A painkiller from the bottle I’d spilled on the floor when Kevin’s voice had screamed at me.
I held it up, rolling it between my fingers, remembering that horrible day, the day I spiraled into full-blown mental health crisis. The hinge on which my mental health had swung.
I sat on the floor, behind the stove, and rested my head against the wall. Kevin’s voice. The answer seemed to be that I had manufactured it, created in my grieving mind—not to haunt me, but in an effort to save myself—to reassemble the pieces of my past, burying the terrible truth and creating instead the life I had wanted to live. That was the official explanation, the one Dr. Alexander and I had put together over the past weeks. And it seemed to fit, seemed to make sense—only …
If I had made Kevin’s voice up in my own mind, that meant that I had been speaking for him—using my words and his voice. So why would I have screamed at myself? Why would I have called myself names, said hateful things, berated and abused myself?
I rolled the white pill between two fingers. And what about the more recent event, when I mistook Jack for Kevin? It would have been obvious to anyone that it was Jack who had been standing there in his jeans and black shirt. But I had seen Kevin—not just seen him, but yearned for him. For a moment I had been completely convinced it was him standing there. What did that mean to my mental health? A simple mistake? A … what had Dr. Alexander called it? A psychotic break?
I pushed myself up and stepped out from behind the stove. No guarantees—that’s another thing Dr. Alexander had said.
I finished cleaning the floor, pushed the stove against the wall, and gathered up the cleaning supplies. I felt oddly self-conscious in the spotless, picture-perfect house, an intruder. I laid a set of house keys on the small table by the door.
Tears streamed down my face as I stood, hand on the doorknob, ready to leave, but not ready to leave. I walked back into the living room and sat on the floor, my back to the sofa. I let the grief of the past pour out of me onto the floor.
Random images began to drift through my exhausted mind, just like they had when I was still in the psychiatric ward. But these were different, more complete; they spanned my whole life, from my earliest childhood memory forward. Words, memories, hopes floated together through my consciousness: strange images, unrelated to anything, even to each other. Just pictures and words, fragments of thoughts, shards of ideas. The dress I’d worn to senior prom; my mother baking cookies on a rainy day; Jack’s face; my father’s funeral; Christmas presents.
I hugged my knees to my chest. “Kevin?” I didn’t expect him to answer, knew he wouldn’t—couldn’t—but I had to speak to him one last time. I pushed myself up from the floor and stood in the middle of the living room. “I’m leaving this place. Going to the city just like you wanted to. And I think I understand now how you felt suffocated in this house.” My throat burned and clenched as emotion rose and I pushed it down again. “I understand the desire to move on, to reach for something bigger than this town.” I turned a slow circle and spoke to the ceiling as if he might be floating there. “But what you did was horrible, Kevin. You didn’t just reach for a new life, you ruined the one you had. And we didn’t deserve that. Not me, and not our child.” I moved to the front door. “I’m still grieving my baby,” I whispered. “But I can no longer grieve for her father. Good-bye, Kevin.”
I knew he wouldn’t answer.