They found her at the bottom of the basement stairs, a steep, precipitous, treacherous fall. She was lying on the floor with one leg at an unnatural angle, her eyes staring blankly. One of the women screamed. Another had the presence of mind to call for an ambulance. When the EMTs arrived, they determined that Anna had broken her neck, probably in a couple of places and probably as the result of an accident, a “slip and fall.” She was wearing high-heeled shoes. She really loved heels. And apparently she’d gone up and down those stairs many times before, but it’s so easy for an accident to happen.
“A terrible, tragic accident, as I said.”
By this point, the woman on the other end of the line is quietly crying, the woman who had been tasked with calling to notify me. Then she pulls herself together and blows her nose. She says nothing can bring Anna back to life, but that it’s important to the family for everyone who knew her to be notified as soon as possible.
“We’ve all gathered over here now, those of us who were closest to her, at her place with her family. We think this is what she would have wanted.”
I mumble in agreement, and she wishes me well. I thank her, and we hang up. Afterward I sit for a long time with the phone in my hand, staring into space. When did I last see Anna? Or talk to her on the phone? Actually maybe it wasn’t that long ago, but it still feels that way. It feels like an eternity.
The distance between us grew quickly after we lay there in the bed and Anna said that stuff about my wife: She doesn’t seem normal. Afterward, I realized that something important happened at that moment, that it was as if an invisible force changed directions then and there, from having brought us closer to each other the whole time to now starting to pull us apart. What once appeared unabashedly obvious between us vanished and was replaced by Anna’s discomfort and anxious thoughts.
I started letting more time go by between phone calls. I canceled a date we had planned and then another one. Anna didn’t object, so I assumed we both felt the same way. We had filled some kind of emptiness in each other’s lives for a while, and now that was over. Our relationship was fading away on its own. That’s what I thought, but that’s not what happened. The end came in a completely different way, quickly and decisively.
A terrible, tragic accident.
I get up from the armchair on wobbly legs. The silence bounces between the walls while I survey what should have felt safe and familiar but didn’t at all. At one time, not very long ago, I viewed this as a home. Since the separation, it’s been reduced to a residence.
We’ve all gathered over here now, those of us who were closest to her, at her place with her family.
Anna had her family and her friends, people I don’t know, women and men I’ve never met. When they got together after her death, no one asked about me. And that was as it should have been.
I walk over to the window and peer out. I’m struck by an acute desire to call my wife, while at the same time realizing that this is out of the question. We weren’t supposed to have any contact at all for three months. That was our agreement, and I can’t break our silence for this, just to tell her that the woman I cheated on her with is dead.
The only thing that would give me the right to get in touch is if I’ve made a decision about how I want to proceed, by getting divorced or staying together as a couple. I close my eyes. When will I know? Then I look up again.
Maybe deep down inside I actually already do know?
49
I didn’t want to know anything about her, the other woman. I made that very clear to Peter, several times.
And yet I couldn’t help it. I had to find out who she was. With the help of his phone history and a few keystrokes on the computer, I learned her name and where she lived. When I decided to separate from Peter, I knew I wouldn’t be able to move forward without talking to Anna. I needed to ask her some questions and assess the look on her face when she talked about him. This way, I convinced myself, I would find out if there was any chance of our marriage having a future.
I took the bus to her neighborhood at a time when I figured she’d probably be home from work. I hadn’t called in advance. No one knew where I was or what I was planning to do. She lived in a small single-story house, and when I knocked on the front door, she was standing in the kitchen. I could see her through the window. She appeared to be checking on something in the oven. She had her frizzy hair down and was wearing an apron over her turquoise dress. She turned around and caught me looking in her window. She was beautiful. She looked puzzled when she opened the door, wondering if I was a friend of someone in the book club and perhaps they’d invited me. It wasn’t until after she’d let me in and shut the door that I managed to identify myself.
She’d already started walking back to the kitchen, but when I told her my name, she spun around, teetering on her high heels. Once she turned back around to face me, I clearly could see that she wasn’t just surprised, but rather afraid, terrified. What had Peter told her, actually? What had he said about me? I stepped closer to her.
“I kind of need to talk to you,” I said, trying to sound as calm as possible. “Do you think we could sit down for a moment?”
Anna’s eyes roved around the room, over my shoulder and back again. It seemed like she was looking for someone or something. Then I realized it was an expression of the discomfort she was feeling because I was between her and the door. She didn’t believe what I’d said about talking. She thought I was planning to hurt her.
I took another couple of steps forward and said, “I just—”
I didn’t get any further before she lunged for an open door somewhere between us. I hadn’t thought of this before now, but Anna disappeared through that doorway and tried to slam it shut behind her, presumably in an attempt to stop me from following her. Instead, she must have tripped, because I heard a terrible crash, a piercing scream, and a few heavy thuds. Then it was completely silent.
I stood there frozen at first, then crept closer to the doorway. Cool air rushed up at me along a steep, narrow set of stairs down into the basement. Anna was lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, and as soon as I saw her, I knew she was dead. Even so, I called her name several times. When she didn’t respond, I went down to her and put two fingers on her neck. There was no pulse beating under her skin anymore. Then I panicked. I raced back out the same way I’d come in, left the house and the neighborhood as fast as I could. The scope of what had happened didn’t seriously sink in until later. Dead. Anna was dead because of me. True, I had no intention of harming her, but the fact remained: If I hadn’t shown up unannounced on her doorstep, this irreversible event wouldn’t have happened.
My sister sits quietly as I say all this. At some point, she gets up to put away the leftover food. Then she sits back down across from me and keeps listening. Of course she’s aware of most of this from the last section of my manuscript. Still, I have the sense that it’s only just now becoming real to her. When I’m done, I cast a quick glance at her serious face. I can see the little muscles beneath one of her eyes, twitching.
“I can’t comprehend it,” I say, resting my head in my hands. “I can’t wrap my head around the fact that she’s dead and I’m… that I was the one who…”
My voice breaks. I wait for my sister to say something else, anything at all, but she’s quiet for a long time.