Our Souls at Night

11

You said you remember it, Addie said.

Some of it. This was in the summer, wasn’t it?

August seventeenth. A clear blue hot summer day.

They were playing out in the front yard. Connie had the hose running with an old-fashioned sprinkler head screwed onto the end, the kind that sprays up a cone of water, so they could run through it. She and Gene. He was five years old then. She was eleven, still just young enough to play with him. They had their swimming suits on and ran back and forth through the sprinkler and jumped over it, screaming, and she grabbed his hand and pulled him through it on his seat, and held him over the water. I watched all that, then he unscrewed the head and was chasing her around in the yard, spraying her, they were yelling and laughing, and I went back to the kitchen to check on dinner, I was cooking some soup, then I heard a squeal of car tires and a terrible scream. I ran out to the front door, a man was standing out of his car, and Gene was crying, wailing, looking at the street in front of the man’s car. I ran out. Connie was flung out in the street in her swimming suit, bleeding from her ears and mouth and the gash on her forehead, her legs wrenched up under her, her arms spread out at weird angles. Gene kept screaming and crying, the worst kind of desperate sound I’d ever heard.

The man who was driving the car — he’s moved away now — kept saying, Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

You don’t have to say any more, Louis said. You don somebody elseoun s.’t have to tell me. I remember now.

No. I’m going to say this. Somebody called the ambulance. I never did know who it was. They came and put her on a stretcher and I climbed in with them. Gene was still crying, I told him to get in with me. They didn’t want that, but I said, Goddamn it, he’s coming. Now go.

She had a terrible gash on her head, already swollen and dark, and blood kept running from her ears and mouth. They gave me towels to wipe at her. I held her bloody head in my lap and we drove, the terrible siren whining, and at the hospital they took her into the back entrance from the parking lot. The nurse said, In there, that way, but I don’t think it’s a good place for this little boy. I’ll get somebody to take him to the waiting room. He started screaming again, the receptionist took him away and we went into the emergency room. They laid her down on the bed and the doctor came. She was still alive then. But she was unconscious. Her eyes were closed and she was having trouble breathing. One of her arms was broken and she had broken ribs. They didn’t know what else yet. I told them to call Carl at his office.

I stayed with her. After a while Carl went home with Gene, to take care of him, and I stayed the night with her. About four in the morning she woke up for a few minutes and stared at me. I was crying and she just stared, she didn’t speak, then she took a couple of breaths and that was all. She was just gone. I cradled her in my arms and rocked her and cried and cried. The nurse came in. I told her to tell Carl.

The rest of that day is a confusion of things. We arranged for her burial and in the evening we went to the funeral home. After she was embalmed we let Gene come in and see her. He didn’t touch her. He was too afraid.

I don’t know why he wouldn’t be.

Yes. They’d put heavy makeup on her face to cover up the bad bruises and they’d closed the gash on her forehead and she was wearing one of her blue dresses. Two days later she was buried, I mean her body was buried, out at the cemetery. I sometimes feel I can still talk to her. Her spirit. Or her soul, if you want to say that. But she seems okay now. She once said to me, I’m all right. Don’t worry. I want to believe that.

Of course, Louis said.

Carl wanted us to move to a different house in town but I said I wouldn’t — I didn’t want to leave this place. It was right out in front of this house. This is where she died, I said. This is sacred to me. So we didn’t move. Maybe we should have, for Gene’s sake.

He never got over it.

None of us has. But he was the one who caused her to run out in the street ahead of the car. He was just a little boy chasing his sister with a water hose. Afterward, your wife came over a number of times to check on me. That was kind of her. I appreciated it. I was g" id="p59" aid