I'll See You Again Part 12

I looked at Warren, and we both grinned. For the first time since the accident, we were having a good time. We wanted the night to go on and on. When the ball game ended, we hung out with our friends awhile, letting the high spirits linger. Several of our friends offered to come home with us, but we said we were fine. Not just fine, happy for once! We could go home by ourselves, no problem.

Still slightly euphoric from the excitement of the ballpark, we arrived back in Floral Park after midnight. When we had the girls at home, we always rushed back from an evening out so we could pay the babysitter and drive her home. And maybe we had that image in our heads as we went inside. But of course there was no babysitter to greet us.

n.o.body. Nothing. Emptiness.

Just that sledgehammer of silence.

The pain smacked against me and I ran to the girls' room, crying and wailing and unable to talk. Going from being so happy and light at the ballpark to such misery at home was almost unbearable. Was it worth going out if we had so much pain when we returned?

Warren tried to stay positive.

"At least we had one good evening," he said, following me upstairs. "Aren't you glad we went?"

"No!" I screamed, sitting on Alyson's empty bed and rocking back and forth in agony. "This is much worse than if we had just stayed home alone."

We began to fight-vicious, horrible accusations thrown back and forth. The pain morphed to anger that we couldn't contain, and we screamed and raged at each other.

Isabelle and Mark came over to alleviate the tension and wisely stayed on, seeing how our spirits, which had soared so high, inevitably dropped so low. Yes, the emotional swing was almost unbearable, and so was the penetrating guilt. How did we dare allow ourselves to laugh and be happy and enjoy a ball game when our children would never have fun again?

After that outing, I once again resisted leaving the house. Big excursions didn't end well and small ones produced their own kind of torment. Even going out for simple errands was fraught. The girls had so often been at my side for jaunts around town that every store I walked into evoked ghostly images. Looking in a window one day, I saw a shoe display and suddenly Emma stood next to me, pointing out the clogs she wanted as we laughed together about how cute they'd look on her. She wanted them right then, but instead I promised to buy them next week.

What was I waiting for?

As I stared at the clogs, my heart began pounding and I felt my throat closing up and the air squeezing out of my chest.

Should I buy them for her?

Unable to tell reality from fantasy, I started gasping and clutching at my chest. A woman called out to me to see if I needed help, but I ran away, arms flailing, and escaped down the street.

Yes, I need help, I thought. I need my daughters. I want to die and be with them.

I knew the symptoms of a panic attack-the pounding heart and the closed throat-because I'd had them before. Hyperventilating makes you feel like you'll have a heart attack or die. For most people, that's frightening and they breathe into a paper bag to get the oxygen flow under control. But I had no paper bag and I wanted to die, anyway.

Take me right now and I'll see the girls!

I already felt like a freak, and panic attacks like this one just aggravated my sense of not belonging in normal society. Better to stay home and avoid the embarra.s.sment.

Also better not to bother eating meals than to risk going into a grocery store, where every aisle was a minefield of memories that could blow up in my face. The girls and I had always shopped, cooked, and baked together; the joy of that had been so central to our lives that I couldn't bear getting anywhere near the kitchen now. Right after the accident, I packed up my Cuisinart and KitchenAid and mixing bowls and gave them all away. I'd cook only for the dog. Friends still brought over dinner for us-opening the door to the baskets and ca.s.seroles that were left was a nightly treat-but our cupboards were bare. One night at about eleven o'clock, I heard Warren call Isabelle, our next-door neighbor, and ask if he could come over and get a snack.

"There's nothing to eat here," he moaned. "I'll take any junk food you have."

The next day, I thought about going to the small, local grocery so he'd have fruit or cookies. Then I flashed back to the Sunday afternoon just a few months earlier when I'd asked Warren to stay with the girls so I could make a quick trip to the market. He'd agreed, but as I headed out the door, I heard Emma's little voice.

"Mommy, can I go with you?" she asked.

"Sure," I said, smiling to myself. The trip would take longer, but it would be more fun with her along.

"Mommy, can I go, too?" Alyson asked, jumping up from the sofa.

And before I could say yes, Katie had piped in, "Mommy, me, too!"

So we'd all headed out together and left Warren in peace to enjoy a baseball game on TV. At our favorite market, the girls had grabbed for one of the portable scanners. They liked the high-tech shopping method of selecting a product off the shelf, scanning it, and then dropping it in the bag. The personal devices were meant to make shopping quicker, but with Emma, Alyson, and Katie each clamoring "My turn to scan!" at every item, a jaunt through the aisles took forever.

But how could I complain? The grocery store was like a giant playground for us. Sometimes Katie liked to ride on the end of the shopping cart, but generally the girls wanted to help. That day, as usual, I gave them little tasks.

"Can you go to that case and get milk?" I asked-and then watched as they raced off together to decide on the perfect carton.

At some point, Alyson and Emma dashed to the end of the aisle to pick out the spaghetti they wanted. I got distracted with something else, and when I rolled the cart to where they should be, they had disappeared.

"Emma? Aly?"

No answer. I panicked.

"Emma and Aly? Where are you?"

Fright ripped through me like a thunderbolt. I searched frantically but no little girls were playing by the pasta. I was just about to raise an alarm for help when they veered back around the corner of the aisle, giggling at the surprise treat they'd found for me.

"There you are," I said, my voice shaking.

"Did we do something wrong?" Emma asked, worried.

"Only that I couldn't see you," I said weakly, pulling them close in a double hug. My heart had been pounding so hard at the fear of losing them that I could hardly breathe. It had taken me a few minutes to recover my high spirits.

Now I knew that if I stepped into the supermarket again, I would be looking for the girls to reappear around every corner. And they never would. It wasn't worth steeling myself against the haunting memories just to buy a loaf of bread.

Going into any public place also meant worrying about the stares and whispers of strangers and casual acquaintances. I'm still not sure it really happened, but I imagined that people who recognized me from TV news reports gaped at me in shock and curiosity. Did they hope I'd cry? Did they want me to be courageous? Maybe they just wondered what somebody looks like when everything that matters has been ripped away. Some people would come over and touch my arm.

"Oooh, Jackie. How are you?" they'd ask, with that look of sadness.

I appreciated the sympathy, but I always wondered whether people thought poorly of me as a mom. I didn't want to have to defend myself to strangers or offer an explanation to try to counter what they'd read in the newspapers. In an odd way, I was embarra.s.sed, horrified at being linked to the sordid events of the "Taconic Mom." I wanted people to acknowledge the girls and remember them, but I didn't want anyone to focus on me.

"I'm praying for you," people often said.

"Don't pray for me. Pray for the girls," I always replied, rus.h.i.+ng away.

Still, I understood the fascination. The worst had happened to me. For years, I had been just like every other mom in our town das.h.i.+ng around with her kids, and now I was the walking embodiment of every parent's bleakest nightmare. From being an ordinary woman, I had become a marked woman, with a metaphoric scarlet letter: T for Tragic, or L for Lost Everything.

When a tragedy of this magnitude occurs, people instinctively scramble for reasons why it could never happen to them. If someone whose very existence has been devastated by disaster is really no different from you, that means you're vulnerable, too. Finding an explanation (however false) for what the other person did wrong makes you feel more in control of your own destiny.

One day when I was out walking the dog, a woman I barely knew walked by and stopped in her tracks on seeing me.

"I don't know how you do it," she said, bursting into tears. "If I were you, I couldn't go on."

Never had admiration been so misplaced. She saw me as some hard-sh.e.l.led other who had been chosen for tragedy because I could cope with it. But I was just another mom, exactly like her. I didn't want to go on. I still thought of killing myself every day, but that took courage, too. I had no maps or guideposts. n.o.body had written a book I could read on how to behave. I was simply an ordinary woman thrust into a situation far outside what any of us expect or imagine.

You are me, I wanted to tell her. I am you. This could happen to any of us.