She is the one faking it because all is not well. It is not over. Is it? Why do I feel like I’m waiting? Waiting for what? Waiting for a dead man. I missed Jimmy’s A. I missed the goddamn ants and I cannot get that back.
Monday morning, Alison opens her eyes, pops out of bed, dresses for work and walks into the kitchen.
“How are my men?”
They look up from their cereal bowls, surprised. Hank has classical guitar music playing and seeing his wife there in the doorway accompanied by the soft honeyed chords is overwhelmingly beautiful to him. Music, Alison, Jimmy, he needs nothing else in the entire world.
“Mom! Are you coming to school?”
“Thought it was time I went back to work. Daddy shouldn’t have to do everything around here.”
“Sweet.” Jimmy turns back to his Cheerios.
“Yes.” Hank agrees.
Alison walks back into Harbor Hills Elementary School and heads for the teachers’ lounge to get a cup of coffee. This was her customary practice. Stepping inside the three-story building, she is acutely aware of the sights and sounds around her. Primitive systems in her brain that she never needed before have been activated: she scans rather than sees; she listens rather than hears, and the scents typically in the air hit her in the face: the smells of grass on the sneakers in the long grey locker as she passes, as well as the funky stench of the gym socks crammed inside of them. Her world is visually crisp, loud, and pungent. She has a new exacting attentiveness to every detail. The ceiling feels lower than she remembers. Although, she thinks, maybe I haven’t ever really noticed the ceiling before. Walking briskly down the hallway toward the lounge she makes a game of stepping on only the black floor tiles, which makes her feel a little like a child inside the child’s world and that feels good. Passing the open staircase to the next floor, she turns the hallway corner and enters the teacher’s lounge. She breathes in. Someone has dripped coffee onto the pad under the pot and it has burned there. She smells that, too. The bulletin board is crammed with reminders. She notices the semicircular ghost streaks left behind from the washcloth that wiped off the little red table hours ago. She has walked into this room a hundred times and never noticed those things. She decides to research the brain to learn what activated all of these detail systems. Must be in the brain stem, she speculates. It is a little fascinating to be in this new place, to see and hear the world in such detail. She grabs the coffee pot and a mug from the shelf. Denise and Gary enter behind her.
Denise cries delighted, “Alison!”
Alison spins around dropping the mug that shatters into large porcelain chunks when it hits the floor. Aggressively, she holds the hot glass of the coffee pot in both of her hands unaware of the burning in her palms. Denise and Gary are both startled by her reaction. A tense instant, and then Alison’s expression relaxes.
Denise says, “Alison, I’m so sorry.”
“Oh!” Alison puts down the hot pot and looks at her palms. Red but thankfully not burned.
“We shouldn’t have come up behind you like that.”
Fighting to regain her calm, “Completely my fault; seems I startle easily these days.”
Gary reaches down and picks up the pieces of the broken mug. “Are your hands okay?”
“Yeah, it’s nothing.” She thinks, really nothing. Pain is relative. It is true there are thresholds. She knows what her body can’t take. A little burn like that? Nothing.
Denise puts her arms around Alison, “We are so glad to have you back. It wasn’t the same around here.” Denise does this partially to hide her surprised expression at how different Alison looks. There are a few little scars on her face from where she was whipped and cut by tree branches and her complexion is sallow. That shimmer of light that used to come from her eyes is gone. She feels oddly stiff in Denise’s hug, because physically she hasn’t let go of it all, yet.
“Your class will be thrilled to see you,” Denise says and then pulls back and looks into her eyes. “You know, Alison, we’ve been friends a long time. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, but I’m here if you need to unload on someone.”
“Thank you, Denise.” Alison is touched by the genuine affection. There is a poignant pause that they both feel emotionally