The Holding Place

Chapter Thirteen

“Today we are going to focus on the subject of loss,” Todd, the young and enthusiastic counselor tells the group I’m sitting in. “Everyone sitting here has experienced loss in some form or another. It is good to take the loss we have experienced and understand and learn from it.”


Reggie has ended up in my group today and she is sitting directly across from me in the semi-circle the group has shaped. She is looking down directly at the ground trying to pretend that she is anywhere from here. The past week I have observed her more closely and have taken note on some of her mannerisms. The attention I unwillingly pay her enrages me on the inside but I quickly learned how to not let it bubble up inside of me. I must have sketched her profile half a dozen times in the past week. I have tried to sketch Abby but somewhere in the middle my sketch turns into one of Reggie.


Realizing that I will never get out of here I started to open up a little more to Dr. Leahy, just superficial things like my relationship with my family, not daring to touch the subject of my late wife, but I think that Dr. Leahy thinks that it is progress all of the same. The other day she finally downgraded me to the blue and I welcomed the powerful drag of fresh air and nicotine for the first time in over a month. I must not have noticed when Reggie’s status changed but this morning she was on her way outside to the patio as I was coming inside. The peculiar amber of her eyes stopped me again in my tracks for the umpteenth time.


“It was my brother,” Reggie whispers, barely audible.


I almost fall out of my seat in surprise, as does almost everyone else, including Todd. Her voice sounds rusty, almost as if she has never used it before. Her hair is swept back in a low ponytail and she is wearing sweats provided to her from the hospital. She looks almost like a teenager but I know that her true age must fall somewhere in the twenties.


“What about your brother?” Todd prompts carefully, trying not to scare her back into her shell.


“I lost him,” she whispers, a little more quietly this time.


Todd nods sympathetically. This is his first mistake. Reggie’s eyes narrow at him and then turns back to the ground. She is lost to the group again and no amount of prodding from Todd is going to bring her back. Reggie hasn’t tuned out, she is still here with us, but she won’t engage anymore for the duration of the group session. Todd is about to go in for the kill and prod Reggie to say a little more. He doesn’t understand her the way that I have come to in the past couple of weeks.


“I lost my wife four years ago,” I pipe up quickly. For the first time in many years I have mentioned the loss of Abby to somebody else besides my reflection or Claire in a heated argument. There is a pressure somewhere inside me that I cannot quite put my finger on that releases and I’m breathing for the first time in four years.


Reggie lifts her head to me slightly in acknowledgement of my jumping to her rescue. I suddenly want to take her by the hand and go with her alone to a place that is far away. I want her to know her story as much as I want to tell her mine. I don’t know how I know this but she would sit there and listen to me, possibly even stroke my hand gently as everything would pour out. I might not even be ashamed to let my tears fall in front of her.


These thoughts shock and terrify me at the same time. This girl, barely a woman, who has said nothing to me and perhaps only ten words since she has been here, has me terrified. As broken on the inside as I am I’m yearning to nullify the pain that exists within her. Even with Abby I never wanted to do that, she would never have let me even if I tried.


“It was in a car accident. It was dark outside and it was raining. We were arguing about the dress she chose to wear to a business party that night,” I begin.


From a place inside of me that I didn’t know existed anymore poured out the scene from a night that I have tried to forget but have lived over and over at least a thousand times. I tell the group that I was the once driving, berating her the whole way and not giving her a chance to speak. Abby must have wanted to say something to me but she continued to say nothing while I shouted at her, at times taking my hands off of the wheel to gesture how great my anger was at her.


The widening of her expression while my eyes were off the road signaled that she had seen the headlights first. It only took five or ten seconds for the crunching of the metal to overtake my senses and her life. The car came to a halt somewhere on the other side of the highway. I was still secure in my seat but my wife lay a few feet in front of me on the crumpled hood of the car. My mind was so clouded that for several minutes at least it didn’t register to me that I had been in a car accident. I didn’t think about anything I was seeing. I concentrated on the rain that mingled with the blood oozing from a cut on the top of my head, wondering if Abby might have a clean towel or gauze to clean up so that we could make our way home.


“It didn’t hit me that I was facing a life without her until I buried her five days later,” I finish to a group that was giving me their rapt attention, with Todd scribbling away furiously on a notepad.


“Thank-you for sharing Michael,” Todd says, “We are out of time everyone for today but we will pick this subject back up for tomorrow.”


I sit in my chair for long moments after the group disperses. Something that has resided in me dark and heavy for the past four years is suddenly gone. These strangers know more about my memory of the accident than does my own sister. Strangely, I am wishing that Claire were here beside me so that I could tell her of these ambiguous feelings of liberation.


I am expecting tears to well up at the corners of my eyes as they always do when my thoughts turn to Abby. I fluidly told my story to the group without stopping every other line to question what went horribly wrong and what I could have done differently. How are telling these strangers who know absolutely nothing about me any different than me or my family whom I have failed to be honest with for the past for years?


Strangers are what they are. They do not know that I am failing to be a father to my daughter, a brother to my sister and a son to my parents. They don’t know the toll of my wife’s memory has taken on me and the perpetual price I pay for failing her. They only know that I am here for the same reasons that they are: someone thought I was not competent enough to solve my own problems and now someone will solve them for me.


In the midst of my harrowing thoughts I fail to notice that Reggie has also not left the semi-circle. She is looking at me with a curious stare and for a few seconds I allow my eyes to connect with hers. There is a deepness there that I could get lost in if I allow myself to look onward for too long. Her amber eyes tell me that she is hiding a truth just as tragic as my own with her silence. I wish that I was brave enough to be a hypocrite for a moment and tell her that silence is why I am here and that it will not make whatever she is going through any easier.


That is just it. For days I have been telling myself that these people who surround me in this place are here because they do not know their own minds. I listen to the rants that they give in the common room day in and day out and I pity them. There is only one difference between them and I. They speak aloud what keeps them here and I keep it all inside. Reggie and I share this difference with one another against the others. Our silence is what keeps us here. The doctors and nurses must know that we are not crazy but them within the confines of these walls will doubt drive us to it.


I give Reggie a weak smile and surprisingly she gives me one back. On some level she is telling me that she understands why we are here and knows what must be done for our freedom. The fear is still her in eyes, just as it has been since the first time I looked at her, but beside it is a slight glimmer of hope. It is what will follow after the silence is broken that terrifies her. It is what terrifies me also.


Later this afternoon I will be permitted to go along with a few other patients on a trip to a local grocery store for some amenities now that my status has been downgraded to blue and I have been deemed safe enough by Dr. Leahy to return back to my normal regimen of daily hygiene. I run my hand over the rough beard that has grown in the past few weeks and contemplate how I must appear as unkempt as everyone else here. Usually I do not look forward to going out into public and interacting with others but I and finding the thought of going to the grocery store oddly enjoyable.


Claire left a suitcase full of my clothes from home at the nurse’s station on one of the first nights that I was here. I haven’t traveled very much in the past few years and Claire mistakenly brought the suitcase that I had given Abby as part of a set for her birthday one year. She always admired the fine luggage that people traveled with when we went through the airports and I was never able to miss the gleam in her eye when it caught onto rich cream-colored suitcases constructed out of the finest Italian leather.


The fine suitcase was left carelessly in the middle of my room by an orderly sometime this morning when I was out of my room. The ruminations of frustration trickle covertly up the back of my neck. I move the heavy case into a small closet in the corner of my room. My fingers enjoy the sensations of the cool leather as I inspect it for the first time in years. It is as fine of condition as the day I bought it. Abby always took meticulous care of the things I bought for her. It was one of her characteristics that I loved most about her, knowing that she appreciated everything I provided for her.


My heart catches in my chest at that thought. Negative memories are crawling back slowly. I close my eyes briefly and try to fight them from my mind. Every single time I think of her in any type of positive light the memories of our darkest days forces their way in to overshadow the few moments where I can enjoy remembering my wife. There has not been a time in over four years when I have shared a happy memory of Abby in conversation with either myself or anyone else.


The person who has suffered the greatest cost is my daughter Norah. I backtrack to my bed to prevent my knees from sinking to the ground. Thinking about the pain I have caused her brings wave after wave of nauseating heartache coursing through my stomach. I clench my eyes together tightly and try to force the tears to come. My tears have been for nobody else but me. The salt of a single tear stings at the corner of my eye as it escapes.


The announcement that the transport is to leave in 20 minutes makes it way down the hall and into my bedroom. I quickly run through the suitcase to see what my sister bothered to pack for me and am surprised to see that she took the time to make sure that everything was matched and coordinated. The last time I saw her at the hospital left me with the impression that she didn’t much care to bother with me any longer.  As I get dressed I start to think about everything that I need at the store and my mind floats to my sister and daughter and all of the damage I have dealt to them.


There has been no retribution on my part towards them and my heart sinks over it. I have never been a man who has let himself fill his life with regrets but at this moment I can list more that I have than I do fingers and toes. My cheeks flush with shame as I stand in front of the mirror to run a comb and gel through my hair and I take a moment to consider my reflection.


If Abby were standing right beside me she would tell me that more sleep would help with the dark circles under my eyes and a better diet would give me the boost of energy that I have desperately been searching for. She would come up behind me and wind her small arms around me, whispering in my ear that everyone should take a day off every once in a while. I would laugh, remind her that a day off doesn’t keep the roof over her head paid for and gently untangle myself from her and make my way out the door to work. I know that she would be disappointed in me that I couldn’t make more time to spend with her but it would all be forgotten the moment that I pulled into my parking lot.


I pause with the razor against my chin and tilt my head to another angle to examine the rough beard on my face. On impulse I rinse the shave cream from my face and towel it dry. I draw the tie away from my collar and toss it back into the suitcase. A small smile creases over my mouth as I make my way out of my room and down the hallway to meet the transport to take me to the store.