Six years ago, I was riding in the backseat of a car. My dad was driving. My mom was in the front passenger seat. It was snowing as we drove down the highway, but the road wasn’t covered yet. One or two inches stood in the grass of the median and the shoulders. The fall semester of my senior year at Loyola had just ended, and my parents had come to the school to pick me up and bring me home for Christmas break. I was bored with the college experience, in general and with Loyola specifically. I had already registered for my spring classes, but what I really wanted to do was study abroad for that semester, then take an extra semester to finish any requirements that had been pushed aside for my semester abroad. My parents were trying to talk me out of it. I kept telling them that I didn’t feel like I was getting the most out of my college years, stuck at a private Midwestern university that hardly seemed any different, socially, from my high school. The whole point of my discipline of study was to learn about other cultures, yet I had never been further than 200 miles away from my hometown. Everything I knew was from books, not from real-life experience. Over-protective, Mom and Dad told me I could always travel after graduation.
The closer we got to home, the more intensely we argued. I felt like I had to get them to agree before we pulled into the driveway or I’d never get them to agree at all. I unbuckled my seatbelt and sat in the middle of the backseat, leaning forward between the two of them. They both told me to put a seatbelt on, but I ignored them, too focused on the next part of my argument to listen to what they were telling me.
When I kept talking, Dad half-turned, taking his eyes off the road for a second, if that, to see if I was buckled in, like he had asked. The semi next to us fish-tailed. Dad overcorrected, and we skidded off the deceptively slick highway into the median. I remember turning upside down at least twice, but I obviously lost count, because the Highway Patrol report later said the car flipped four or five times, based on eyewitness accounts. Every window in the car shattered. Not wearing a seatbelt, I was thrown through the back window. Then it was black.
I don’t know how long it was before I woke up, but when I did, I was lying on my side, face down in the frozen grass, and it was just… silent… all around me. I felt nothing. I couldn’t even think clearly enough to process what I was doing or where my parents were. It wasn’t until I was being loaded into the back of an ambulance that I saw the white sheets on the ground, almost camouflaged by the snow.
With no adult family members (besides me) to take him in, Hank (who had been at a sleepover at a friend’s house), was put in a foster home until I could heal up, graduate, get a job, and support both of us. I wanted to quit school and get a job right away, but my academic advisor convinced me my parents would want me to finish.
First, though, I had to undergo several surgeries over the next few months. But as soon as I was healed, physically, I completed my degree. A week after graduation, I got the job that I still currently hold, and Hank and I moved into a two-bedroom walk-up close to our old house, so he wouldn’t have to change schools. When Hank graduated from high school and took off for the University of Florida, I moved to a completely different part of the city, where I live now. I’m in charge of my parents’ estate, which is probably the only thing that keeps Hank and me in touch with each other. He insists it’s not true, but I think he blames me for their deaths. I know I do.
I’m sorry for not telling you this sooner. My therapist, Dr. Marsh, has been urging me to tell you for months. But it’s something I never talk about, not even with Hank. I also want you to forgive me for reacting the way I did when you didn’t respond to my original revelation the way I imagined you would. It’s nothing you did or said, really. I’m hopelessly damaged, and it all happened way before we ever met.
Now I add, my fingers flying over the keyboard:
Soon an ocean will separate us, and maybe then things will get easier.
I wish you the best.
Thank you. For everything. You were a bright spot in an otherwise-bleak life.
Love,
Libby
I print it, fold it, stuff the pages into an envelope, and seal it before I can think better of it. It’s going to be close, I realize as I look at the clock on the microwave, but I think I can get to his place, slide it under the door, and get out of there before he gets home from work.
When I arrive, I’m relieved to see his parking space is empty. I park on the street around the corner, shove a quarter into the meter, and slip-slide up the slushy sidewalk and the front steps of his building.
I buzz the landlord, Mr. Feingold, who knows me and lets me in, saying, “It’s been a while since I seen you around here, pretty lady. Thought maybe you finally wised up and found yourself a nice American guy, maybe even a White Sox fan. I have a grandson, you know.” He says all this with a wink, keeping alive our friendly ongoing disagreement about hometown baseball teams.
Smiling easily, playing the part of the young, carefree ex-girlfriend, I say,
