The Survival Kit

And to Frances Foster and Miriam Altshuler, two women whose presence, support, and encouragement these last years have been indispensable to my own survival

JUNE

The Dress Made of Night

CAN’T GO BACK NOW

I found it on the day of my mother’s funeral, tucked in a place she knew I would look. There it was, hanging with her favorite dress, the one I’d always wanted to wear.

��Someday when you are old enough,” she used to say.

Is sixteen old enough?

After the last mourners left the house, Dad, my brother, Jim, and I began arguing about Mom’s stuff—What were we going to do with it? Who got what? Dad wanted to get rid of everything and I wanted it kept exactly as she left it. After the yelling and the sad, alternating silences became too much, I ran off. Suddenly, I was at my mother’s closet door, grabbing the cold black metal knob, turning it and walking inside, pulling it shut behind me, hearing the hard slam as I was eclipsed by darkness. I fumbled for the string to turn on the light and when my fingers closed around the knot at the bottom, I pulled. Tears sprang to my eyes with the illumination of the bulb and a wave of dizziness passed over me, too, and I collapsed onto the footstool Mom uses—no,
used
—to reach the higher shelves.

That’s when I thought: this is a mistake.

Everything around me smelled of her—her perfume, her shampoo, her soap. Looking up from my crouch, knees pulled tight to my chest, I saw how her clothes were just
there
, as if she were still
here
, as if at any moment she might walk in, looking for a pair of jeans or one of her teacher smocks, splashed across the front with paint splotches. My gaze fell across skirts that would never be worn again, blouses and light cotton dresses that would likely be given away, her gardening hats in a big pile on a low shelf, everything colorful and bright, like the flowers in her garden and the wild, rainbow collages on the walls of her classroom—all except for one dress.

With my hands bracing the wall for balance, I stood up and waded through the shoes on the floor, shoving everything in my way aside, until I saw it: the dress made of night, in fabric that was the darkest of blues and dotted over with a million glittering specks of gold. My mother sometimes wore it for a walk on a summer’s night or to sit in the pretty wire chairs in the middle of her rose garden, where, when I was little, she would read to me under a flowered sky.

Tied to its hanger was a baby blue ribbon, done up neatly in a bow and pulled through a small, perfect circle punched into a brown paper lunch bag. Big, sloping letters in my mother’s hand marched across the front in blue marker strokes:
Rose’s Survival Kit
.

My heart began to pound. Mom made Survival Kits for so many people during her lifetime—she was famous for them,
but never before had she made one for
me
. I lifted the dress off the bar, the Survival Kit cradled in its midnight blue layers, and carried it out of her closet and down the hall to my room as if it were a body, gently laying it across the bed.

“Mom?” I whispered, first to the floor, then to the ceiling, then through the open window to the grass and the sky and the flowers in her gardens, as if she might be anywhere. A light summer’s breeze snuck up behind me and caressed my cheek and again the word
Mom
expanded inside me, my attention drawn back to the Survival Kit that was just sitting there, waiting. The top of the bag was creased with a flap so sharp it looked as though she’d ironed it. My fingers fumbled with the fold, the crackle of the paper loud in the silence, when suddenly I stopped. My breath caught and my body shivered, and before I even glimpsed what was inside, I gathered everything into my arms, pressing it against me, and went to my closet. Gowns for homecoming and the prom vied for room among the stacks of folded jeans and sweaters and the cheerleading jacket I’d never worn. Quickly, I shut the dress away with everything else.

I closed my eyes tight. Someday I would be ready to open my Survival Kit, but not yet. It was too soon.

“Rose? Where are you?” Dad’s voice rang through the now empty house, causing me to jump, startled. I’d forgotten I wasn’t alone, that my father and brother—what was left of my family—were just down the hall.

“Yeah, Dad?” I called back, taking a deep breath and trying to steady myself.

“We need you in the kitchen.”

“Okay! I’ll be right there!” I shouted, and did my best to shove all thoughts about the Survival Kit away from my mind.

At least for now.

SEPTEMBER & OCTOBER

The Promise of Peonies

ABOUT A GIRL

It was the morning of September 4. Summer was over, school had started again, and I was dreading the day. Exactly three months had passed since my mother’s death and already I’d learned to hate this date on the calendar, the way it relentlessly cycled around every few weeks, always looming ahead. I headed out the door to wait for my ride and I hadn’t gone two steps before I almost tripped over a body.

Will Doniger was rigging sprinklers along the edge of the front walk and he looked up when the toe of my boot met his back, his eyes barely visible through his wavy hair. He didn’t say a word.

“Sorry,” I told him, stepping aside.

He gave me a small nod but that was it.

Will was a senior at my high school and had been working in our yard as long as I could remember. He and I shared something important now, too: he lost his father to cancer, just like I lost Mom. But still, we never spoke to each other, so I walked around the rest of him and kept on going.

Before my mother died Will had only cut the grass, but afterward he became a daily fixture at our house. He ran his father’s
business, Doniger Landscaping—that’s what it said on the side of his truck—and we’d needed help with the gardens Mom left us. Everything would have died or become overgrown without Will’s help—though I don’t know that I’d have said this to him.

Before I reached the street, I glanced behind me. Will was staring off into the distance, every muscle in his body tense in the glaring sun. Words hovered on my lips, but my attention was caught by a bright red gerbera daisy that stood taller than the rest in a nearby garden. I reached out and picked it, raising it close to my nose, the long petals tickling my face. An image of my mother with a thick bunch gathered in her arms cut through my mind, and my fingers automatically released the sticky green stem as if it were covered in thorns. The flower fell to the ground, and I stared at it lying there. A car horn sounded. Chris Williams, my boyfriend of two years, pulled up in front of the house. I hurried to meet him, the sole of my boot crushing the red petals of the daisy against the brick.

“Hey, babe, you look gorgeous today,” Chris yelled over the song playing on the stereo. “I like your hair down. It’s about time you lost that ponytail you keep wearing.”

My hand hesitated at the door handle as I tried to call up a smile. Lately I shrank from comments about my appearance, and it took some work to remember that Chris was only trying to make me feel good. “Thanks,” I told him, taking a deep breath and getting inside. Before I had a chance to put on my seat belt, Chris stepped on the gas and launched into details about last
night’s football practice, not even noticing me turn off the music, at least not at first.

“Hey, I was listening to that,” he protested after a while.

I didn’t respond, just focused my attention straight ahead.

“Someday you’re going to have to start listening to music again,” he began, hesitating a moment. “Your mother wouldn’t want you to live the rest of your life in silence.”

“But it makes me so sad,” I whispered. “Let’s not do this today, okay? Please.”

Chris sighed. “Fine,” he said, and we continued on our way to school. He tapped the steering wheel lightly with his thumbs, as if a song still played and he was drumming to its beat, eventually getting back to his story. “So then I passed the ball to Jason—
forty
yards—it landed straight in his arms, and I was thinking, I just hope we can do this again at the game on Saturday. I wish you’d been there yesterday to see it.” He glanced over at me. “Babe?”

I nodded, pasting another smile to my lips, and he went on talking.

Football was a big deal in Lewis, and Chris Williams was the quarterback, so he was the center of it all. He was
that
guy at our school—the star athlete, the homecoming king, the boy every girl dreamed of dating. Chris was sweet, he was beautiful, he was the life of the party, but most important he was mine. When he picked me out of everybody else to be his girlfriend my freshman year, I just smiled and said “Absolutely, positively
yes.” Wearing a football player’s letter jacket was about the coolest thing a girl could wish for in a town like ours, and the fact that I was lucky enough to have the name Chris Williams stitched across mine made me
that
girl. I was even a cheerleader.

But that was before my mother died.

Since then I’d quit—the partying, the cheering, and much to Chris’s chagrin, having sex. My body felt soft, vulnerable, like one great wound all over. Sex would be wrong, impossible even, and it had become a huge source of tension in our relationship, this wall I’d put up between my body and his. I used to like it, but now I almost couldn’t bear to be touched. The only thing I’d managed to hang on to from my former life was my title as Chris Williams’s girlfriend. If I wasn’t careful, I’d lose that, too.

When Chris stopped at the next red light, he leaned toward me, his lips grazing my ear and traveling down my neck, and I shivered but not in a good way. I could tell he wanted me to kiss him, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn my face toward his. Instead, I stared straight ahead, frozen, as if I didn’t notice him there, until the signal turned green and he was forced to pay attention to the road again. The expression on his face was grim at first, and I felt awful for rejecting him, but then it softened.

“I’m sorry, Rose. I forgot it was the fourth today. How are you feeling?”

The fact that Chris remembered the anniversary hurt my heart. “I don’t know,” I said finally, and reached across the seat
for his hand, wanting to show I was grateful. “I’m okay. I guess. Thanks for asking.”

“Is it four months?”

“Three,” I corrected, and he wove his fingers through mine, squeezing tight. We spent the rest of the ride in silence and soon we were turning into the school parking lot. Chris drove down the long row of cars closest to the front entrance, and sure enough, the best spot was waiting for him. The star quarterback in Lewis got certain perks, and he pulled into the space like someone accustomed to special treatment. Chris got out immediately, but I just sat there, not moving, noticing how the sun gleamed a bright streak across the metal hood of his SUV and wishing I was one of those girls who could cut school without a care.

“You coming?” Chris bellowed from outside.

“Yup,” I mouthed, and turned the rearview mirror my way for a quick look. Sleep had eluded me again last night and I hoped the eyedrops erased enough of the red so that no one would comment. I pushed my arms through the sleeves of Chris’s jacket, so big it swallowed my body, appreciating how it made me feel covered up and hidden away.

Chris knocked on the windshield to hurry me, his blond hair almost white in the light. As a couple we were like a photo and its negative, his features bright and colorful, skin tanned and golden, and mine a series of dark and pale hues from head to toe. When I got out of the car, Chris immediately wrapped his arm around my shoulders, shielding me from the prying eyes
and sympathetic stares of others. When physical contact felt protective, I welcomed it, and only when it felt like an advance did I push it away.

We walked toward the entrance. In my peripheral vision I saw Kecia Alli, one of the cheerleaders, sitting on the trunk of her car, and immediately I felt guilty. We hadn’t spoken in months—not since I’d quit.

“Hi, guys,” called a melodious voice over the loud morning chatter, and for the first time today I smiled for real. Krupa Shakti fell into step with us, my best friend in the whole world.

“Hey, Krupa,” Chris said, holding the door open to let us both through. “You’ll be there on Saturday?” He meant his football game.

“Yes. For the first five minutes only,
as usual
,” she replied.

Krupa was not a sports fan. The school paid her to sing the national anthem during football season, which she did only for the money—she was saving for Juilliard and getting out of Lewis as fast as her vocal cords could carry her. Krupa was tiny, but she had the biggest, most powerful and insanely beautiful voice I’d ever heard, as if someone had placed the singing capacity of a three-hundred-pound woman in the body of a ninety-pound girl.

“Maybe you can convince Rose to come with you this time, even if it’s only a few minutes. That would be a start. Right, babe?” he said softly into my ear. “Five minutes?”

My heart sank. My moratorium on football games was the
other source of tension in my relationship with Chris lately. I had painful associations with the football stadium. The moment that split my life in two—when I found out Mom was in the hospital—I’d been at cheerleading practice.

Krupa must have read the panic in my eyes because she answered Chris before I could. “Maybe Rose will come with me another time,” she said. Then to me, “See you at lunch?”

“Always,” I agreed, and Krupa waved goodbye, turning left toward the locker we shared. Chris and I continued down the hall until we arrived at the door to my Spanish class. He looked down at me and smiled. Hard as I tried to pretend things were fine, every part of me felt stiff and uncomfortable and wrong, and so when he leaned down to kiss me, I wondered if my lips felt as cold and frozen to him as they did to me.

Other books

Siete años en el Tíbet by Heinrich Harrer

Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe by Lee Goldberg

Seduce Me All Over (Seduce #3) by E. J. Adams

In the Devil's Bed (Sins of the Duke Book 1) by Eva Devon

The Keeper of Dawn by Hickman, J.B.

The First Night by Sidda Lee Tate

Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

My Dangerous Pleasure by Carolyn Jewel

Straddling the Line by Jaci Burton