Styron rests in my lap for a few minutes while I let my body rest and recover. Who knew it would require so much effort for such a trivial task as picking up a book? Reach, pick up object, retract arm. Each action saps my strength, and I have so little left.
I think I might be dying. No. Dying is a passive experience. Someone is killing me.
The rubber band, dry and brittle, snaps when I try to slide it off. No wonder, it’s been holding these pages between their covers for too many years now. I really should have replaced it and given Anne a fresh copy of her own when she told me she wanted to read it. I really should go back to sleep.
Oh no, you shouldn’t. It’s Mother Voice again. I’ve begun to hate her.
My book is not a book anymore. When the spine shifts at its weakest point, dividing it into two separate volumes, its guts are missing, sliced out clean to form a cavity in the middle, as if someone has carved out the heart of this story and replaced it with a new one.
Mother Voice speaks to me, urging me on.
Stay awake, El.
I read Anne’s note five times, and each time it brings fresh tears.
Mom,
Dad made me write that stuff. I’m sorry. I saw something on his computer. Hope you find this and bring Freddie back. I love you.
Anne
“Bastard” isn’t a good enough word for what my husband is.
Underneath her note is a slip of paper with a string of letters and numbers. That’s one key. My problem right now is that I need a different one, a metal key that will unlock my door and get me out of here. Also, I need a new body, a body that doesn’t hurt and vomit and sweat, but I’m stuck with a password to Malcolm’s laptop and a fucking bobby pin. So I start to work, hoping Malcolm’s car doesn’t come purring up the driveway.
This time, I last more than five minutes with the bobby pin, my ears straining for any foreign sound, anything other than the distant bark of a dog or the pealing of Sunday-morning bells. When I’m tired, that other voice, that Mother Voice, tells me to get up and start all over again. She’s like some sick cheering squad. One more try, one more wiggle of the straightened bobby pin and desperate turn of the door now. If it doesn’t open, I’ll rest. To hell with Mother Voice.
But the knob turns in one glorious, hallelujah-worthy twist. Expecting the resistance, I turn with it, slamming my shoulder into the wall as the door swings open.
I’m out of this room.
My house has none of me in it anymore. No wedding photographs, no pictures of me with the girls, no piles of mail or notepads or shopping lists, nothing that says Elena Fischer Fairchild. It’s an odd thing to realize I don’t exist. When I manage to climb the stairs and reach the office, everything of mine is gone. This is okay. I don’t want anything of mine; I want something of Malcolm’s.
I yank the power cord from his laptop and dash downstairs, tearing past Anne’s and Freddie’s rooms at the slow speed my limbs allow, stumbling back into my bedroom for the book and Lissa’s pen, which I stuffed into the downy insides of my pillow on Friday night. I wish the next stop could be this bed, this soft down pillow, but I ignore their temptation and race back to the kitchen, to the junk drawer in the corner where we keep spare keys.
Please let the Acura key be here. I’ll trade my soul if it’s here. I try not to think about the fact that I may have already traded said soul, that I have nothing left to bargain with.
The key is here.
There’s a thirty-second delay when I leave the house through the back door, the November cold hitting me like a punishing slap on my cheeks and bare arms and shoeless feet. I throw everything into the front