Penelope might have seemed like a rag doll without command of her limbs but her brain was working just fine. There were so many questions rattling around in her head. She wanted to ask her father what could I have done differently? But there was that look in his eyes. And she wanted to ask her mother do you still love me, even now? But none of that escaped her mouth, none of that her lips and tongue managed to verbalize.
Every time Penelope’s thoughts raced, she told herself, slow down, and focus. She’d make her mother understand if she just listened.
In the end it took everything she had in her, and she managed to whisper in her mother’s ear, “Do you think I’ll get better one day?”
* * *
• • •
That chandelier. She could see if from her room, the very tip of it hanging from the ceiling. Those shiny crystals on the highest beam of the prettiest house on the most exclusive street, under a slate roof. Maybe that’s what her mother had fought all along, the fact that nothing was special about any of them and so she had to wrap everything up just right to make it all beautiful, to make them somehow worthy to live in this house, on this street, in this abundance. Otherwise, what would be the point of it all?
Penelope allowed her parents to talk, and talk, and talk. Talk her out of turning herself in, talk her into going along with the cover-up, but then everything in her mind slowed. That’s a thing backed by science, she thought, that slow-motion feeling when individual seconds expand and brief flashes turn into decades lived, a film reel of transgressions with all terrors reimagined. That’s when Penelope got it.
Do you think I’ll get better one day?
Penelope finally had an answer. Yes, yes, she would get better, and that dawned on her when her body hit the ground with such force it propelled the life out of her and saved her mother’s in return.
And when Penelope asked herself the million-dollar question, as she held on to her mother—how far do you go to atone for your sins?—for the first time she had an answer: down, down, down, all the way down.
61
DONNA
I stuff my confession in with Penelope’s letters inside the plastic bag and tuck it all in the bottom of the garbage bin, underneath the liner. For both our acknowledgments to be in such close proximity gives me peace.
I’m tired and I close my eyes. I don’t know how much time passes but one day, I hear Marleen’s square heels click on the marble floor, the front door closes, and I tell myself the ankle isn’t as bad as it was before. I’ve been taking my medication, lulling in and out for what seemed days on end. The anti-inflammatory medication and ice packs hopefully have done wonders.
I get out of bed but I can hardly put any pressure on my ankle without gasping. In the bathroom I slip my hand underneath the liner. Nothing. Not the bloody towel, not the bag with the letters. I drop to my knees, rip out the liner, and turn the bin upside down. I shake it. I can hear my rapid breathing, the thumping of my heart. I make an attempt to get up but I can’t put any weight on my foot. I will need a cast and I won’t be able to go anywhere or do anything, and I know what happens when I’m forced to lie in bed all day every day. I know what happened last time, when I hurt my hip. I lost it. I utterly and completely lost it. The memory of it knocks all other thoughts aside. Maybe I’m confused—it isn’t Wednesday, today isn’t garbage day at all—and maybe I put it under the liner in the kitchen? I’ve lost track of time. Maybe I’m mixing things up. I’ve been known to do that.
I hop on my left leg into the kitchen, I reach for the bin, about to dump the coffee filters and eggshells and tea bags on the kitchen floor when I look at the calendar on the wall. Sunday is crossed out. Monday is crossed out. Tuesday, too. It’s Wednesday. I step on the pedal and the lid lifts up and it’s empty. All I can think of is to go and run after the garbage truck and maybe it’s not too late, it can’t be too late, it just can’t.
Outside, to the right, where the dumpsters sit behind a brick wall, that’s where the letters are. Without them . . . I don’t finish the thought, no, finish it: without the letters I’ll make up another story and Penelope’s death will be in vain.
I stagger toward the front door. I no longer feel my ankle, it seems fine, magically healed. I run toward the garbage truck, as much as you can call my staggering running. I fan my arms as if I’m attempting to paint a picture in the air. Swaying my arms like a dervish. I hear screams. They sound chilling.
* * *
• • •
Later, they tell me what I did. Like a drunk after a night of binging, in the morning people tell me I stood in front of the garbage truck. I wasn’t moving, my hands were resting firmly on the truck’s forklift. Screaming. No one could tell me what I was screaming and I don’t know either since I don’t remember. The packer packed and the tailgate rose and the dumpster flipped into the compress box.
I know none of those words but there is an official report of what I did. Marleen read it to me. No one would know those words but the truck operator. Lift bucket and blade slide and ejector push-out, inside and outside packer. Compressor box.
The report said I mounted the truck and that I acted “desperate.” The driver veered to the left when I stepped in front of him and the truck hit the brick wall constructed to keep the view of the dumpster hidden.
They tell me I hoisted myself into it. I doubt it, honestly. A woman my age? With that ankle? All I wanted was a small white plastic bag with papers smeared with my blood. My daughter’s letters. My confession. If it wasn’t for Edward and his weakness in carrying the burden, I might—
Wait.
The story of my family. The fall of my family. What will happen to it?
I can already feel myself slipping, committing to another narrative altogether. When I have to face that stain again, will I change my account, will I assign fault to someone else? I fear I will forget, I will forget all of it, I will tatter about this place twenty years from now, I will continue to ask for Penelope. That’s what I can’t take, the thought of every day before me being just like the days behind me.
My confession. The letters. What happens tomorrow, or the day after? When I don’t recall how and why my daughter plunged to her death. Will I do this all over again? Look for the truth? Should I put a sticky note on a mirror?
But they are shrouded. I don’t recall why.
* * *
• • •
I wake and for a second, I don’t know where I am. The silence is peculiar. I’m alone in the apartment and the only sounds are the birds and their carefree song outside my window.
My mind wanders, trying to make sense of all the pieces that attempt to click into place. A pillow beneath my head, a duvet on top of me. Light seeps through the slits between the blinds, everything is defined and interpretable in the light of day. There are telltale signs that my brain is waking, it gains momentum like an engine that warms, springing to life. There are residues of moments grasping for significance above all others.