What Happens Now

by Elysia Rourke

Ten Minutes Ago.

I am becoming my mother, white-knuckling my way down a snow-laden gravel country road in search of you. The caterpillar I was has been cocooned in misplaced anxiety and it’s only a matter of time before I emerge from our shared chrysalis, a mirror image of the woman who preceded me. A butterfly; a moth.

Why else would I believe one of her premonitions?

Two Hours Earlier.

I tell Will I am going to the library. It’ll be closed — everything is closed when three feet of snow blanket the earth — and I know that, but I’m lying to him.

“Come back to bed,” Will says, accepting my untruth in the form of a kiss. He holds aloft the milky duvet, crisp with the sweet scent of him. A warm hollow awaits, but I eye the folded snow on the roof instead, sheets of it, fitted and fluffy.

Red lines.

“I’ve got to work on my thesis.”

He sighs and gives in, though his brow creases in that perfect playdough way, that kissable way.

I almost give in, but you need me.

Ten Minutes Before That.

I’m in the bathroom when the phone doesn’t vibrate, it rings. That shrill sound of panic screaming that this call is serious, serious, very serious.

ring.

Ring.

RING.

I grab it without thinking, if only to silence the hammering of my heart beating BA-THUM who died BA-THUM I can’t fix it, simultaneously desperate not to wake Will. I don’t want Will to know I’m waiting.

And there she is, grinding out the premonitions God sends her now that she’s clean like a rusted pepper mill. I can hear the worn pages of her Bible fluttering through the phone, almost feel the breeze as they turn, turn, turn. The halfway house gave her the Bible when she got out of prison, when she decided she was God’s vessel. If I was with her, she’d be pointing to lines upon lines of scribbled text and highlighter, blotches so thick they look like she’s redacting verses rather than adding to them.

And I’d ignore her. But today I can’t.

Today, her vision is about you.

Eight Minutes Ago.

I’m becoming my mother, out in the sideways snow despite the fact that every business and school and well-reputed institution for miles is locked down and waiting out the storm. They’re calling it the Storm of the Century, Storm of the Era. Even Noah didn’t face this kind of precipitation. The radio isn’t playing music, just the same alert over and over. Go home. Stay home.

Go to your room. Stay in your room.

We’d just come home from school. The cupboards were bare; my stomach growled. You’d take me to your friends’ houses with you; they always had snacks. But we would drop off my backpack first and most days Mom would be singing. She sang a lot.

Not that day.

Go to your room. Stay in your room.

The red and blue flashing lights made it impossible for my Barbies to work or sleep or change their clothes. But I stayed in my room, just like you asked. Drove their 1970s camper van back and forth on the bay window, pretending not to look past the dolls to the gurney outside.

That first time you found Mom. The first time…

Two Hours and Three Minutes Ago.

I promised you I’d cut her out years ago. Will too; another lie. And I have, I have, I have. Except sometimes she calls and tells me what God wants me to know and it’s usually about towers and snakes and bombs that didn’t go off and it feels harmless even when it hurts.

I’m sitting on the toilet. “I can’t talk right now, Mom,” I whisper. Rejection reverberates off the thrifted mirror Will hung when we moved in. “I’m busy.”

I’m not busy; I’m waiting. Peering at the reflection of myself; my mother’s eyes, my mother’s curls.

Mom doesn’t hear, doesn’t care. “Taylor, it’s your brother.”

I feel sick. Mom never talks about you, hates you. Hates how you don’t answer her calls and don’t visit and don’t want to be her son anymore.

“I had a vision, Taylor.” She’s still talking, rambling. “Taylor? Are you there? I had a vision.”

“I’m here.” Waiting; becoming my mother. Of course I care. I care, I care, I fucking care. “What about Matthew?” Speaking your name to her feels like a betrayal, but then again so does the knot in my stomach.

She makes a sound, a hacking cough like gargling flesh. “He’s going to die.”

Six Minutes Ago.

I am becoming my mother, cursing you for living so goddamned close and never closing the gap yourself. Miles crawl past and I’m half listening to the news and half thinking of how schizophrenia presents later in life. About how maybe you are, you are, I am.

But it’s normal to check on your estranged brother when someone says he’s in danger, isn’t it? Even if that person is your mother, the least reliable source on Earth. Your mother who hurts you on purpose sometimes because she can’t help it, can’t help it, can’t help but like it.

Your mother, who when you dream of her still has the voice of an angel. Still loves you, can love you, loves you more than…

I’d call, but you’ve cut the phone lines. I don’t blame you.

I should have done the same.

Two Hours and Two Minutes Ago.

Relief.

“I’m sure that’s not—”

“It’s true. I saw it. He’s got a gun and he’s going to use it like Cobain and Hemingway and Chelsea Redmond’s father. Do you remember him, Taylor? He ate a shotgun when you were in fourth grade. You used to play soccer with—”

She has a great memory for someone who never calls on Christmas or birthdays. “Mom, I really am busy.” I flush the toilet—a symbolic act, I haven’t used it—maybe she’ll hear it and leave me alone. Let this moment be private.

“Listen to me.” Another gag, Beelzebub writhing in her throat.

“No, Mom. I really have to go.”

She’s screaming as I end the call. I hear the names, let them roll off me. It isn’t the first time; not the last. In a few days, she’ll call back with a new premonition, a rigged election or something. She’ll call me the same names when I don’t agree to pick her up and take her to the Pentagon. Maybe next time, she’ll hang up on me.

It happens sometimes.

And now I’m sitting in silence in my bathroom, waiting…

But all I can think of is you. You and a shotgun in that lonely cabin outside Burlington, the city where we grew up. And either I’m a fool or I’m becoming her, morphing into the woman who unmade me, because I do not believe in visions. I believe in schizophrenic delusions, in the aftermath of years and years of drugs and alcohol…

But I’m also scared.

She’s gotten to me.

Four Minutes Ago.

When I finally arrive at the narrow hillside gravel road that leads to your house and turn from the hardly-plowed roads onto your never-plowed one, I realize how hard it’s snowing. Snowing and snowing and snowing, slowly and then all at once. It’s a dumping, the kind we got in 2001 when you were sixteen and I was six and you carried me on your shoulders and even six feet in the air, I wasn’t as tall as the snowbanks.

We were living with Aunt Barb. We didn’t know where mom was. And when I cried at night, you held me tight and told me over and over that she wasn’t dead, that I wasn’t dead, that she wasn’t dead.

And then when I turned 12; that Christmas Mom was in Chittenden and it snowed so hard that Norad forecasted even Santa Claus would be delayed. And under the tree, I told you I heard the voices too, told myself stories too, sang in the shower too, and you said Taylor, those are ideas. Taylor, that’s your creativity. Taylor, you’re special.

You told me that Christmas I was nothing like Mom. Mom who’d sung at Carnegie Hall and had blown it on some loser and a hit. Mom whose voice had fallen from the heavens faster than Lucifer, a morning star snuffed on hellish train tracks.

It was the best Christmas gift anyone ever got me.

Two Minutes Ago.

Mom didn’t prophesy how deep the snow would be. It’s grinding against the undercarriage. The tires slip and the wheel loosens like jelly, sliding too easily when the traction dissipates.

I’m in less control now than when I was on the phone with her.

And I’m not even sure I’m still on the gravel road I began on, wheels churning clots of turned earth, trees sinking away as the Jeep plows through the snow, a jagged brown scar across the white canvas.

The ice takes over and I’m only a passenger. I should knock the car into neutral, take my foot off the gas, steer into the skid. But instead, I close my eyes and think of you.

An Hour From Now.

You’ll approach like a bear, charging across the field in awkward zig-zags to avoid places where the wind has gathered the snow like scrunched tissues. “My God, Taylor.” You’ll pull me into a hug, bury me in between your thick winter coat and the trapper’s hat you’ve made yourself out of beaver or deer or raccoon fur from an animal you no doubt caught and killed. You will be breathing hard, chest heaving against my cheek.

I’ll have never felt safer.

“Are you hurt?” you’ll say. “Looks like you hit the old well.”

Sure enough, when I pull away from your warmth I’ll see ancient crumbled bricks dotting the snow. The bumper of my jeep will be scratched down to the black plastic but otherwise undamaged. The well was old, the grout threaded with lichen and moss. It’s a miracle it didn’t collapse under the snow.

“I can fix it,” I’ll say, leaning to pick up a brick.

You’ll stop me with the toe of your boot. “Leave it. The snow is coming down too hard. It’s a silly spot for a well anyway, a relic of when the big house was still standing. Come on, let’s get you warm.”

I won’t protest. I’ll get my gloves and hat from the car and follow you to your cabin in the woods.

My mind will be, mercifully, silent. Becoming your sister; forgetting our mother.

Another Hour Later.

“Do you want a drink?” you’ll say, emerging from the tiny galley kitchen with the neck of a bottle of Glenlivet strangled in your palm.

I’ll be admiring the duck, mid-flight, that peers down at us from the rafters with beady eyes. “No, thank you. Did you make this?”

You’ll nod. “Yeah.” You never elaborated before; I won’t expect it now. I know there’s a shed out back full of carcasses you’re preserving. You have to make a living out here somehow; I’ve seen your work in the bars in town. They chronicled your art in the paper a few years ago. I read every issue, even ordered a year subscription in case there was any follow-up.

“He looks so alive,” I’ll say, accepting the glass of water you’ve brought me instead. You’ll drop onto the worn armchair across from me. There will be a crackling fire that lights your face. Without your coat, I’ll be able to see how long and tangled you’ve let your beard grow.

In this lighting, I’ll be able to see the ways she’s hurt you too.

“She,” you’ll say, pointing to the duck. “I found her dead. Killed by a wolverine. I couldn’t leave her that way, you know? Not after…”

You’ll be finding Mom all over again, and I’ll choke back tears. It’s not about me, about me, about you. We’re selfish; that’s what Mom always told us. Spoiled and selfish and wrong.

“Why are you here, Tay?” you’ll ask, taking a long sip of your whiskey, closing your eyes a moment too long. It will hurt to see me, hurt to see her, hurt to see me. I’ll want to ask you, but I won’t.

I’ll purse my lips. “Mom called me.”

“I figured.”

“She said you’ve got a shotgun.”

Your brow will furrow and you’ll sink deeper into your chair. “All hermits have shotguns, Taylor. It’s a safety thing. What did that woman make you believe?”

“I can’t live without you,” I’ll say. “I can’t live if…” And I won’t have the words to tell you that even though we aren’t close, aren’t what we used to be, live close but don’t visit…that I can’t handle living in a world that doesn’t have you in it. That I need you and love you and know that I hurt you. That I’m becoming my mother and that when I sing in the shower, I hear her voice crackling over mine, swallowing mine, erasing mine.

And then, all at once, you’ll be holding me close again like you did that Christmas. You’ll bury your nose in my hair. “Taylor, she’s wrong,” you’ll say. “Taylor, I’m here.”

We lie to each other a lot, but this one I’ll accept. We’ll be here, for now. We’ll weather the storm.

“Stay,” you’ll order. Stay. “Text Will. You’re not going anywhere.” You’ll make a bed on the couch and show me your room, tell me to sleep as long as I like. We’ll dig out the car together in the morning.

And I’ll sleep like a baby, like a baby, knowing you’re downstairs. And if I hear you crying, I’ll know at least I’m not the only one she’s wrecked.

Tomorrow.

“Let’s get you out of here,” you’ll announce after I wolf down the eggs your chickens laid. You’ll tie your boots tight enough to cut off the circulation. “I’ll dig. You keep me company.”

We’ll trudge out to my jeep, shovel slung over your shoulder. You’ll make quick work of it. The truck didn’t hit hard; I was never in danger. The well will have taken the brunt of the damage. We’ll fix it next. Together.

Brick laying will be silent but for the huff of our breath. We’ll take turns, one by one, reconstructing the promise that is an empty well, the remains of a long-gone house.

“It looks good,” I’ll say, stepping back to admire our work.

You’ll look at me long and hard, sit on the stone you just laid. It will teeter and you’ll lift your legs, a little boy on a swing. You can’t expect a just-fixed well to be sturdy, I’ll think.

“I see Mom in you, you know.”

I’ll die a little inside then, won’t I? You’ll keep talking.

“But you aren’t her. You’re good, Taylor. It was wrong of me to block you out. I’m sorry that I couldn’t, didn’t…”

A sob will heave past my lips, uninvited. I’m not sad; it’s the flimsy new bricks of our fresh well creaking against each other. I’ll want to tell you the thing even Will doesn’t know, the thing I was waiting for yesterday, but you know me better than I know myself. You’ve already guessed.

“Congratulations, Tay.” You’ll whisper so I have to lean in to hear you, your words tangling with your moustache. “You’re going to be a great mom.”

You’ll pull me into a hug, sewing us back together one stitch at a time. Hot tears will stream down my cheeks and I’ll know from the way your shoulders quake that they stain yours too.

We’ll stand like that until a tow truck turns the corner onto the never-plowed road, Will at the wheel.

Two Hours and One Minute Ago.

No more waiting.

I grab my purse, jangling my keys to wake Will. “I’m going to the library,” I lie, becoming my mother.

Now.

You taught me how to drive and you taught me well. I spot the ice, the well. My sweaty palms leaving a glossy coat on the wheel. All it would take…and then you’ll come, won’t you?

You can’t repair what I don’t break.

I turn into the skid.