She stumbled around from the lawn to the driver’s side where James was standing. With the effort of raising a heavy dumbbell, she brought a hand up for the car keys and a voice she barely recognized scraped out, “I’m going to take the car back home.”
James looked in her direction, his heroic face etched with deep lines. He didn’t question her- he didn’t say anything. If he looked at her, she would sink into a hole in the earth. He shook his head imperceptibly, then turned to walk towards the house, to celebrate his girl.
She returned gradually to the surroundings, the crystalline sky, the stillness of the air, the fresh scent of mowed grass, a long line of cars, late arrivals of couples and parents, and the happy murmuring of the party filtering out from the backyard. All of it contrasted with the barren tundra in which her spirit was drowning, as she sat unmoving in the driver’s seat for an unknown amount of time, until she hoped she was composed enough to drive.
Anneliese despised herself. It was different from high school, when she felt worthless and wanted it all to end. It wasn’t like college either, when a lover’s abandonment plunged her into desperation. It wasn’t even like that other time she sat in the driver’s seat of her car, willing breath back into her chest, as she determined to bury the guilt of betrayal deep below hard layers. None of it could explain her stinginess to the two people who mattered most. She despised herself in a different way. Anguish over what she had held back from her own child, and the damage it wrought, cut deeply. A bleak understanding dawned that Ella would want nothing to do with her. The summer would fly by, and she would be off to college, she was losing her.
