Louise

I looked down at my watch, surprised to find that it was only five o’clock. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, and the wind picked up. It was cold enough that I had to wrap my coat around my shoulders a little tighter, tucking my hands in the sleeves and crossing my arms. I tensed in an effort to avoid shivering, but it came all the same and my teeth chattered as I walked. Maybe I was in Brooklyn, but I could hear the electrical buzz from the streetlights, so I think it must have been Pittsburgh. My eyes drifted over the numbers on the buildings as I passed them until they settled on the ones I was looking for, gleaming silver in the moonlight. I was surprised it looked that way. This squat, brick thing. I thought that it seemed very 80s.

I walked up the path to the entrance and stepped through swinging glass doors, through a blast of warm air, onto grey carpet. The walls were beige. There was a framed print of some colorful three-dimensional shapes hanging up. A phone rang from the receptionist's desk, and I looked over just as a young woman brought it to her ear. It was quiet except for shuffling paper and the sound of her voice, the carpet like a sponge soaking up the noise, leaving too much space for the static sound of the HVAC.

“Pseudo Enterprises, this is Jill speaking, how may I help you?” she asked, deadpan. I don’t know why, but all of this felt too overwhelming. I stood in front of the counter, which was curved like a wave, and waited for her to hang up. Why couldn’t it be a straight line? Or at least a curve like half of a circle.

“Can I help you?” she murmured. She looked up at me through her eyelashes, like she was afraid of me.

“Yes. I’m here to see my son, his name is Graham Cole.” She looked uneasy.

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No. It’s kind of supposed to be a surprise.” I tried to smile, but I imagine it looked more painful than I intended. She looked uneasy, but like she believed me.

“Okay... I’ll page him. His office is on the second floor, hard to miss,” she said, and kind of trailed off before gesturing toward the stairs. As I walked away, I decided I hated her.

“Stupid woman,” I muttered, “Just letting people in.” I let my shoes echo loudly in the stairwell, and I hoped it bothered her.

When I reached the top of the stairs and opened the door, I closed my eyes, hoping that it would be all glass and stainless steel, like Northwestern University, because that’s what I thought it would be, so that’s kind of how I needed it to be, but when I opened them, it was more grey carpet, beige walls, majesty palms in every corner, and there was a lounge area with forest green Saarenin Womb chairs, and I just about lost it because right at that moment he walked out of an office wearing tweed, and he matched the blinds. I fit right in with this place, and so did he, and that made me nauseous.

He didn’t see me. He was carrying a manila folder and a Styrofoam cup in the same hand, and he leaned over the top of a cubicle and made someone laugh before taking three large strides and entering a back room. Coffee? It was almost evening. I stepped out of the stairwell, and walked into his office. The whole back wall was covered in windows, and cold air seeped through the panes. It was really dark now, and the sky was so clear I could hear the stars through the thin glass. One like the sheathing and unsheathing of a sword, another like a collection of tinkling bells. One sounded like an opera singer. There was a fluorescent light on his ceiling, but it was off, and instead there was a green glass lamp on his desk, emitting a soft yellow light. He didn’t have any pictures, just a lot of sticky notes covered with scribbled notes, and there was a caged rabbit in the corner. I sat in his chair and stared at that rabbit as he walked into the room, and stopped so short he almost tripped.

He stared at me. I wondered what I looked like to him. Probably old. I was wearing my hair in a braid, and I was painfully aware how gray it was. I was also wearing a poncho, like a hippie. I thought he must hate that.

“Mom.” He said, he didn’t ask. I thought he would ask.

“Yeah.” He closed the door,

“Are you alright?” He asked.

“Yeah, I’m just in town. I mean. I’m not just in town, I, um,” I tugged on my braid and my eyes slid back to the corner, but there wasn’t anything there, and I couldn’t remember what I was looking for, “I’ve been here, sleeping in my car. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” I think he was disgusted with me. I was practically homeless. Living in my car. I couldn’t stand it.

“I mean, it’s fine. you didn’t have to tell me you’ve been in town, but you could have tried to contact me before showing up at my office.”

“You should hire a better receptionist,” I whispered.

He squinted at me. “She told me you were coming up. So. How is Louise?”

“She’s, um. Not around anymore” My voice broke, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell him the reason she wasn’t around anymore, yet. Not here.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” He said. There was a dismissive edge to his voice.

“It’s alright,” I wanted to change the subject. He looked uncomfortable and angry and like he wanted to want me there but he didn’t. He looked like a kid. Like an eight year old kid.

I used to love to have company, when he was little, and I did at least once a week back then. I’d make up a cheese board and he always wanted to help me, so I’d have him pull all of the grapes off the vines, and wash them, and arrange them on a plate. He clung to me as if afraid of the guests, and his cheeks glowed dark red when they complimented his work, but no matter how embarrassed he became, he would never leave. His father would leave on purpose. I never asked him where he was going, but now I think he wanted me to.

“Do you think it’s a genetic thing?” I wondered out loud.

“What?” he asked,

“That I haven’t been here for you, but you’re so much like me.”

He gave me an exacerbated look, “Okay, listen. I was going to stay late to get ahead on some things, but I can, uh. I can just do that tomorrow.” He ran his fingers through his hair, and sighed, “Will you give me five minutes? And then I’ll buy you a drink.” He didn’t wait for a response, just walked out of the office. I sat back down. Stared at the ceiling until he came back.

***

He walked me down the street, and at first it was just more office buildings, but we eventually turned a corner and were met with a row of bars adorned with neon lights. I could hear the buzzing hum of conversation leaking through the cracks in the walls, and it burst out every time a door was flung open. Graham walked past a whole row of them before turning and entering one of the smaller, dingier looking places. When he opened the door, instead of stepping up and going to the main bar, he turned to the right and went down a flight of stairs. They led to the basement, where there was another, much less crowded bar, and a row of billiards tables. The carpet was red, and there were tiffany lights hanging from the ceiling. ”Are you embarrassed?” I asked, looking around.

“About what?”

“Me?”

He laughed, “Should I be?”

“I don’t know.” I was embarrassed.

“No. I prefer it down here.” He was looking over my shoulder, and I turned around and saw an older man, chalking up the end of his cue. He had a cigarette resting on the edge of a crystal ashtray, and the smoke drifted up and was hovering just under the lights. It bothered me. Graham waved at him, and the man winked.

We sat down at the bar, and he looked at me. “So. What are you doing here?” he asked,

“I don’t know. I want to say sorry.” He was trying to figure me out, I could tell.

“It’s like you’re confessing to a crime you haven’t been caught for. I wasn’t going to yell at you, you know.”

“I know. But it’s on my conscience.”

“I’m happy you’re here, and that’s the truth. But I’m not going to pretend you have nothing to apologize for, but I don’t want to estrange you any more than you’ve already estranged yourself.” He let out a bitter laugh and then turned to talk to the bartender. I looked past him, into a dark corner. I didn’t know what he meant by that. I didn’t consider myself estranged. I didn’t have any siblings, and his father only had one sister who passed away when she was young. Graham didn’t have any aunts or uncles, so he didn’t have any cousins. I left, but I didn’t mean to leave both of them, and I didn’t really think I would be shut out. Graham was all I had, and I was here, wasn’t I? Didn’t estranged mean something more serious? I was thinking of an aunt I had who actually cut herself off. It was because she decided my family was toxic, and it went both ways, because my dad said he never liked her anyway. What was I estranged from? Am I estranged to every friend I’ve ever lost?

I started to see static. Like when it’s dark, and you can’t actually see the rain, but the air is shifting in such a way that you can tell that it’s raining. I found myself driving a car, on a curving entrance ramp. It was raining really hard, and I turned the wipers up so that I could see better, but it didn’t help much. It was all a blur of lights, running together as the water ran before my eyes, but then a pair of headlights moved in front of me, and I thought that seemed wrong, they must be on the wrong side of the road, but no, I was on the wrong side of the road, and I swerved but it was too late. Everything went dark, but the impact came from behind. That didn’t make sense because I was hit from the front, but then the sounds of traffic and rain drained from my ears, and I could hear Graham saying my name. He didn’t say mom, he said, “Rosie? Rose. Can you hear me?” and that’s when I realized my eyes were closed and I opened them, and there he was. I smiled because I was happy to see him, and I was happy that I was in a warm red room, and not wherever I just was, because here I was dry. He didn’t return my smile. The bartender was on the phone with someone.

***

I woke up in a hospital room. Graham was sitting beside my bed in a chair, dozing.

“Good morning,” I said, “what are we doing here.” He sat up, and looked at me, confused. And then I remembered. “Oh. I’m so sorry, honey. Can I call you that?”

“Yeah,” He said, “why are you sorry?”

“I’m sorry I blacked out in the bar. But I need to tell you why I’m here, because I think you deserve to know. I know you’re upset with me.”

“I’m not upset with you, is this about Louise?”

“Yeah, I-”

“I was never mad at you for falling in love with her, I was mad that you left, but I was a kid, I didn’t get it. But you’re here now, and I can do my best to get over it.”

There were tears welling up in my eyes. “I loved you, Graham. I shouldn’t have left. It was all for nothing, because Louise is dead.”

She fell asleep while driving, and hit a semi head on. The truck driver was fine, but her car was so crumpled they could hardly get her body out. By the time I got there, it was at least thirty minutes after the accident. They wouldn’t let me see her, so I just stared at the crumpled wreck, and listened to her opera pouring out of the broken windows at full volume. It was Donizetti. L’elisir D’amore. I watched as the police tried to turn off the radio, but the knobs were all broken. It was a miracle that it was even capable of making any sound at all. Eventually they just shot it with a gun. I can see how it was driving them crazy, but it broke whatever was left of my heart to hear her music stop.

“I can’t get rid of the image, I keep dreaming about it, and it’s always different. Last time I saw it from above. The little silver car, crumpled like a little ball of paper under a spotlight. At the bar, I think I saw it the way she saw it.”

“Oh.”

“That’s why I came here. I didn’t have anything left over there. The day after the accident I drove East, to find you. I just didn’t know quite where you were... but, look! I found you!”

“Didn’t you have to deal with her body, or the car? What about your house, and your job?”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I forgot about those things.”

“Are you crazy?” He asked,

“I think so.” He looked at me funny, like I didn’t understand what he just asked me,

“What if I wasn’t here?”

“I knew I was going to find you. Why are you angry?” He stood up.

“I’m not angry.” He rubbed his forehead. “You’re just-”

“Mentally unstable? Your dad would probably love to hear that.”

“You’re not mentally unstable” He said, “Nevermind. You should get some sleep. I’ll deal with everything.” I smiled, and closed my eyes.

***

Graham walked down a sterile hallway. White linoleum, white concrete bricks, fluorescent light. It was too cold. He went through a pair of doors labeled “long term inpatient”.

“Hi, Jill,” He said to the receptionist, “Can I borrow a key for my mom?” She was a wanderer, so they had to keep her door locked.

“Yeah” she whispered, smiling. She handed him the key, and he went down the hall to his mom’s room.

He cracked the door, there was an opera playing softly on her radio. “Mom?” he asked, before opening it the rest of the way. She sat in her bed and stared out the window, presumably at the stars. She turned her head, slowly, when she realized there was someone else there,

“Hey,” She said, sleepily, “I just remembered that Louise had a cat, and I feel awful about it. Could you try and figure out if he’s okay? I can’t believe I just left him there.”

“Yeah,” he smiled, “I’m sure he’s alright, mom, don’t worry about it.” She seemed better than usual, but she still didn’t seem to realize where she was. She smiled back, and then turned and continued to stare at the stars.

Graham didn’t know who Louise was.

It all really started when his father was forced to admit her to this facility, close to 15 years earlier. She had always seemed a little off, but then she started going missing for weeks at a time. One time, they found her because she used her credit card to eat at a restaurant 25 miles from their house. She had walked all the way there.

That was the final straw. Instead of bringing her home, the police turned her into the psych ward at the hospital. When her husband tried to pick her up, they suggested he admit her permanently. They said that she had gone too far, endangering herself and possibly others. She was present while he signed the papers, and the whole time she acted as if they were in the process of getting a divorce. She refused to see him after that. It broke his heart.

One day, while at the hospital, she walked out of her room, got into somebody’s car, and started to drive away. It was dark, and raining, and she drifted over the median into oncoming traffic. She was hit head on by a semi truck, and miraculously, she was okay, physically. But she seemed to think that it wasn’t her who got into an accident, but somebody named Louise. When she was dropped back off at the hospital, Graham was waiting in her room, and she acted like she hadn’t seen him in years. They went down to this fake bar in the basement, to “catch up” (he had to humor her, anything else felt cruel), and she blacked out. When she woke up, all she would talk about was this Louise, and how Rosie had married her after divorcing her husband, and how Louise died in a car accident, and how Rosie had left it all behind so that she could be with her son. She even elaborated on the troubled relationship she supposedly had with her “former” husband. But none of that had ever actually happened.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you. I can’t remember.” She said, “Do you have a rabbit in your office?”

“No, mom.” He looked into the corner, where her old rabbit lived, “you do.”