After She Left

Claire Amarti

AFTER SHE LEFT

CLAIRE AMARTI

Author’s note:

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Chapter One

Dinah arrives on my doorstep with a massive bouquet of flowers, which actually isn’t so unusual when your sister-in-law is a florist. But today, they’re sympathy flowers. She’s gone to trouble not to make them seem like sympathy flowers—they’re an explosion of gold and saffron and russet, flame colors designed to raise my spirits—so I manage a smile and take them from her as she kicks off her shoes in our hallway. It’s the day after Christmas and cold outside, and I’m home alone. Oliver’s out working at the brewery—the new normal these days. I turn back to Dinah.

“How do you feel about mimosas? I’m drinking again.”

She looks at me and I know what she’s thinking: do I take this at face value, or just start showering her with sympathy? But one of the reasons I’ve come to love Dinah is that she tends to take people at their word, and she trusts them to handle what they say they can handle.

“Mimosas sound great,” she says.

“Excellent.”

They say you can’t drown sorrows, but I’m sure as hell going to give it a go today. It’s been a rough Christmas this year—Oliver and I really had our hopes up this time.

We go into the kitchen and I get the sparkling wine and orange juice from the fridge, and take down a vase from the high shelf.

“I’ll take care of the drinks, you do the flowers?”

Dinah nods. It’s a given that she’ll do the flowers, she always says she can’t bear to watch me butcher them. Apparently I lop off the stems at exactly the wrong place or something, not to mention I have no eye for arranging them and tend to just plunk them in the nearest vessel I can find. She always makes them look special.

We do our little tasks in silence though I can feel her solicitousness, the unasked how are yous, in the air. She sets the vase down on the kitchen island just as I top off the second mimosa. With the pale winter light streaming in, it looks like something you’d find on Instagram—the bright flowers, the sparkling gold of the mimosas, and the kitchen pristine for once. But I don’t do Instagram anymore. It’s too hard—all those pictures of happy women, happy moms, happy children.

Dinah picks up her mimosa and looks at me, her eyes soft. She gives me a small salute with her glass, but there’s no cheers-ing today.

I have much to be thankful for and I know it: my health, a good home, a stable marriage, a secure job that I mostly enjoy. But there’s something else I’ve been wanting—yearning for—for what feels like an impossibly long time now. And this time I thought, I really thought, that maybe, finally, I was going to have it.

I’ve more or less gotten my head around the false pregnancy thing by now but I’ll just say this: it didn’t feel false. It felt like something. Like…like a spark of sorts. Like it wasn’t just me in here anymore. I could have sworn I felt someone else, the glimmer of someone else, finally here with me.

“I’m so sorry, Gillian,” Dinah says. “I was rooting for you, you know that.”

“I know,” I say. I do know. Dinah’s a good friend.

She and I haven’t always been close, though we’ve known each other since grade school. We ran in different groups back then—I thought she was trouble and she thought I was a priss—but her family went through hard times a couple of years back and I think we both started to see each other in a new light since then. And then, the fact that her on-again off-again relationship with my husband’s brother finally cemented into something rock-solid was the clincher. These days Jeff and Dinah live just around the corner from Oliver and me, and I teach their daughter Josie at Birch Bend Elementary. As it happened, Dinah came into my life at exactly the right time—with most of my friends suddenly swallowed up by motherhood over the last few years, I hadn’t realized how lonely I’d become—and now I can’t imagine how the days would look without our friendship.

“I really believe it’ll happen for you, you know,” she goes on. “I’m not just saying that. You hear so many stories—people trying for ages and then, out of the blue…”

I nod. You do hear a lot of stories like that: people doing everything to get pregnant and then, the minute they stop actually trying—bingo. The ironic thing is, that actually is my family story. Mom and Dad had basically given up after years of trying, when suddenly in Mom’s mid-thirties she had my sister Abigail and then me within a year of each other. Looking back, I probably should have taken it as a warning, the fact that Mom had so much trouble getting pregnant to begin with, but to be honest I’d always kind of taken it as a sign that these things do work out in the end. Which now that I think about it is absurd. Of course things don’t always work out in the end. If I’m honest, I guess what I meant was that they would work out for me. How delusional is that?

“Thanks, Di,” I say. “I hear you.”

Maybe next month, I think to myself, trying to keep the inner voice from sounding bitter. Because maybe next month is what I’ve been saying to myself for about two years now. My sister Abigail got pregnant the month after her wedding. I just never imagined it would be like this for me.

“You know…” Dinah takes a sip of her drink and gives me a cautious look. “I saw this clinic that opened up on the road to Rockport a while back.” She glances at me again. “A, uh, fertility clinic.”

I nod. “Yeah. I’ve noticed it.”

More than noticed, actually. Every time I pass it, it seems to pull my eyes magnetically, like one of those accidents you try not to look at but can’t help. It has some cheesy motto emblazoned over the entryway like Bringing You the Family You Deserve, which is so insincere it just makes me want to scream. How do they know what kind of family I deserve? For all they know I’d be a lousy mother.

Maybe I would be.

Maybe the universe knows something I don’t.

I sigh and look down at my mimosa. I thought it would feel like a pick-me-up, but I guess I’m not really in the mood.

Dinah’s looking at me, waiting for my thoughts. She and I talked about IVF once before, although back then Oliver and I hadn’t been trying for quite so long and I didn’t feel so desperate.

I shrug. “Oliver’s still pretty…you know.”

“Ah,” Dinah sighs.

We both know why my husband’s so leery when it comes to any kind of medical “intervention.” Dinah’s husband Jeff is a bit like that too, although not as much as Oliver. Their mom struggled with depression for decades and it affected them a lot, growing up. Oliver’s terrified of putting anything into your body that could upset its fragile, “delicate” balance. I’ve tried to convey to him that although I appreciate his concerns, it’s my body and I’m willing to take the risk, but he seems to think the hormones will turn me into some kind of monster and will put everything in jeopardy—my mental health, general wellbeing, and maybe even our relationship. The thing is, he’s not being totally paranoid: we saw it happen to a couple we knew. They went through years of unsuccessful fertility treatments that left them in a mountain of debt, and ultimately divorced.

I look down at the bubbles in my glass. “Plus, you know…it’s expensive. And we’ve had expenses this year already that we didn’t exactly budget for.” Like the burst pipe in April, and Oliver’s surprise root canal in July. Yep, it’s not been a great year. But here’s the other thing I don’t say to Dinah: that it would feel like failure. It would feel like failure and humiliation to me, to sit there in front of some shiny, white-coated professional and say please can you help me, my body won’t do what a woman’s body is supposed to do.

I know I shouldn’t feel this way. I know if I said all this out loud, Dinah would remind me that this is in no way my fault; that this isn’t failure, it’s just life. But there’s a voice in my head that says otherwise.

“I hear you.” Dinah sips her drink, then gives me a tentative look. Dinah’s pretty forthright; she’ll say things others wouldn’t. But even she’s aware how sensitive this particular ground is.

“What about”—she clears her throat—“just, you know, getting tests done? Have you and Oliver ever had that stuff, um, checked out?” She flushes, and I probably do too. But I know she’s being helpful. She likes to find solutions, it’s her way.

I hesitate.

“Not exactly.” I mean, my OB-GYN has checked out the usual stuff, but that’s not the same as the tests I know they can run in these fertility clinics. I lighten my voice, trying to joke. “Oliver would likely freak out at that too, though. You know how he thinks all genetic testing is basically the government trying to steal our DNA.”

Dinah gives me a half-smile. She’s aware of Oliver’s somewhat paranoid tendencies from when she and Jeff did an Ancestry.com thing a few months back and tried to get us on board.

“You never did use those discount vouchers we got for you, huh?”

I shrug apologetically. “Unlike you, I won’t be able to go around telling everyone I’m 5 percent Portuguese now.”

She laughs at that and lets me off the hook—I guess she can tell I’m about ready to get off the subject. The thing is, if I’m being honest, it’s not all about Oliver. I just don’t know what I’d do if they ran those tests and then came back with the worst kind of news. What if they confirmed that the reason I’m not pregnant yet is because I never will be; that there’s something fundamentally wrong?

Dinah swirls the last of her mimosa around her glass.

“Do you have time for another?” I check.

She nods.

“Jeff’s taken Josie to the ice rink. I’m all yours.”

I top up our glasses and get some snacks from the refrigerator, and we settle into our usual topics of conversation. I ask her about her family and how the holidays have been so far; if both her sisters were home for Christmas and what weird gifts her stepmother managed to find for everyone this year. She fills me in and asks about Oliver and the brewery.

My husband quit his job last year to co-found a brewery with his friend Dev, which is a dream the two of them have had for years now. I’m proud of him—it’s not just a dream, it seems to be a sound business plan, too—but I have to say it’s taking its toll. They’re still just in the process of getting things off the ground, and his hours are longer than ever. And right now, while a busy day at work might be exactly what he needs to take his mind off our recent disappointment, I don’t have that option. For once, I can hardly wait for school to start up again and provide a distraction.

“It’s going well, I think,” I say, and hand her my phone with the selfie Oliver sent me earlier: him pulling a pint of their first winter ale.

Dinah smiles, hands me back the phone.

“Cute,” she says. “They’re going to be a real success, those two.”

I wish I could be as confident about that as she sounds.

Then as I’m about to put my phone away it starts ringing in my hand, so startlingly loud that I accidentally drop it. Dinah’s mimosa topples in a gush of foam and she jumps up, pulling her now-wet top away from her.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry. Let me get you a towel…”

She fishes my phone from the puddle forming around it on the countertop.

“Answer it. It’s your mother.”

I take the dripping phone from her and steel myself. I’m not in the mood right now, but I know if I don’t pick up she’ll leave me one of those rambling, ten-minute voicemails which I still have to listen to, because sometimes she buries the one important thing right at the end like some kind of test.

I guess this is what happens when you’re the reliable daughter. Sometimes I can’t help but think how much easier it would be to be my sister.

I hit Accept.

“Mom?”

She doesn’t answer right away. There’s something about the pause, something about the way the air seems to crackle around me, that makes my stomach turn over and takes me back to fourteen months ago, when Mom rang to tell me about Dad. That same molasses, slow-motion feeling of reality slowing down. I steady myself. I’m just imagining it, I must be.

“Gillian,” she says finally, her voice clear but taut as a wire. “It’s your sister. She’s…” Mom inhales. “She’s gone.”

Gone? My mind whirls.

“What do you mean, gone? Gone where?”

Mom’s words come slowly, like she has to line them up in her head before she can speak them.

“Well, that’s just it, Gillian. We don’t know. She’s just…gone.”

Chapter Two

I fire off questions to Mom that deep down I know won’t get answers. I’m backed up against the fridge door, leaning against its cold, hulking mass as though it can cool my suddenly overheated brain. Dinah frowns at me from her bar stool, looking concerned.

“I don’t know, Gillian,” Mom repeats. “All I know it what Dennis told me. Apparently your sister left the house this morning and hasn’t come home. Dennis says she left a note on the kitchen table.”

“Saying what?” I demand.

“Well, I don’t have it word for word, Gillian, but it sounded very odd to me. Something about ‘needing to do something.’ That there was somewhere she needed to go, and she couldn’t explain right now, but she’d be back.” She hesitates. “Dennis read it out to me. It sounded a bit, well, hyper, if you ask me. I’m not sure she was in the best state when she wrote it.”

Is Mom implying my sister was on some kind of medication, or drugs?

Was she?

I can’t say I really know much about how Abigail’s been doing lately. Now I wish I’d asked—but would she have told me if I had?

“What time this morning?” I say. “Why is Dennis only calling you now?”

I hear the crack of Mom’s lips parting and I realize how dry my own lips are, how parched my throat is. My brain seems to have dried out too—all I can feel is a faint whirring up there like a badly wired connection.

“Well, Gillian, you know how your sister is. He probably thought…”

She lets the sentence hang, because of course I know what she means. Abigail’s the impulsive one. Erratic. Unpredictable.

Selfish, my brain adds: you forgot selfish.

“I didn’t think she did this kind of thing anymore,” I say limply. It’s true, my sister has changed over the years—she’s one of the wealthy wives of Westchester now, not some wayward kid—but apparently, she hasn’t changed quite as much as we thought.

“I know,” Mom sighs. I shake my head.

“Have you tried calling her?”

“Well, of course we’ve tried calling her,” Mom says. “Dennis has been calling her the whole time. I tried her just before I phoned you.”

“I’ll call her now,” I say, even though if she hasn’t picked up for Mom or Dennis, there’s no way she’s picking up for me.

She’d have picked up for Dad, an unhelpful inner voice says. No doubt it’s true. But Dad isn’t around anymore to untangle my older sister’s chaos.

Across the kitchen, Dinah’s still frowning at me, looking concerned.

“I’ll call you back, Mom.”

I hang up.

“Is this about your sister?” Dinah says, all agog.

“Who else.” I shake my head and explain what little I know to Dinah as I scroll through my recent calls for Abigail’s number. It gives me an uncomfortable feeling, seeing how very far down the list it is. We haven’t really been close for years, to be honest, and things have only been worse since Dad died. Abigail did stop by on a kind of surprise visit a couple of months ago, though, which in itself was a bit odd. Westchester’s more than a two-hour drive from Birch Bend so it’s hardly the kind of visit you make on impulse, and I basically spent the forty-five minutes of her visit waiting for her to tell me why she had come, until she got back in the car and drove away again with me none the wiser. It was around the week of Dad’s anniversary, so at the time I put it down to that. Now, though, I wonder if there was more going on beneath the surface.

Dinah glances at me as I wait, the dial tone whirring against my ear. I think back to what Mom said about this note my sister apparently left. “Somewhere she needed to be”? Where could she possibly need to be—a woman who hasn’t had a job since her ten-year-old son was born and who so far as I know barely even goes to the grocery store anymore, now that she has everything delivered?

One more ring and the call times out.

I slump onto the stool beside Dinah.

“This isn’t exactly the first time she’s done something like this,” I say. “But it’s the first time since she had Sam.”

Dinah grimaces.

“Right, she has a kid. How old is he?”

“Ten, I think. I haven’t seen him in a while.” No answer, I text Mom, and drop my phone back onto the counter with a slightly shaky hand. I’m thinking about Sam now, and what must be going on in his head.

Back when my sister and Dennis lived on the West Coast, she’d usually bring Sam back in the summers to spend a couple of weeks with our parents. But the last few years, she and Dennis started sending him to some expensive summer camp instead. I conjure up Sam as I last saw him—a bright-eyed kid with my sister’s striking, almost Scandinavian looks. His hesitant laugh and wide eyes.

“That poor kid,” I say aloud. I think of my sister, casually conceiving him a mere month after her wedding, and now casually walking out of their home, apparently without a backward glance.

And meanwhile, me with my bathroom drawer full of pregnancy tests and my kitchen cabinet full of overpriced prenatal vitamins.

She’ll come back, I tell myself. Of course she will. She always comes back.

Right?

“Here.” Dinah pushes a re-filled glass my way. “I think you’re going to need it.”

My sister was eighteen when she disappeared the first time. It wasn’t like we thought she’d been kidnapped: she’d taken a duffle bag and all her favorite sweaters and CDs. She left just a few days after graduation.

It was a pretty bad time for my parents. It seemed to age my father by years, and my mother barely spoke to either of us during that time. As for me, all I felt was guilt, like I’d wished this on us. Because I had, really.

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