After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away Read Online Free PDF
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
all this is hysteria. You’re fifteen, you’ve had a terrible, traumatic experience. Your mother nearly killed you, and you can’t accept that . You—”
“I said I don’t love you! I don’t want you as a father! It’s after the wreck now, Dad. You can’t hurt me.”
The shocked look in Dad’s eyes, for once he got it.
18.
Nobody wanted me to know. But I wanted to know.
Sure I was scared. Maybe it was a mistake. But once Devon had told me, I had to know all I could.
My fingers shook as I typed in crucial code words—LISBETH ABBOTT, TAPPAN ZEE, COLLISION—and on my laptop screen came
HEAD-ON COLLISION ON TAPPAN ZEE
LEAVES ONE DEAD, TWO CRITICALLY INJURED
T RAFFIC B ACKED U P 8 M ILES
TARRYTOWN WOMAN, DAUGHTER RESCUED FROM CAR
DANGLING 50 FEET ABOVE HUDSON RIVER
C AR , T RUCK IN H EAD -O N C OLLISION
RESCUE WORKERS PULL ACCIDENT VICTIMS TO SAFETY
MOTHER, DAUGHTER TRAPPED IN CAR 40 MINUTES
N O W ITNESSES TO T APPAN Z EE C OLLISION
I stared at the photographs. My eyes were watering badly. It took a while to make out the car grotesquely jutting through the broken railing, front wheels floating in space. It was a nightmare vision from which you couldn’t turn your eyes. TV viewers had stared, fascinated. The car was such a wreck, you could not have identified it as a car, let alone my mother’s car. You could not see anything beyond the smashed windows. You could not see human shapes inside. The photos had been taken from a police helicopter hovering only a few yards away from the wreck. There must have been a video camera as well. I wondered who the rescue workers were who’d managed to pull my mother and me out of the car in such circumstances, risking their own lives.
Should have died with Mom in the wreck. You know that.
I was staring at the screen when someone touched my shoulder and I looked up. It was Aunt Caroline.
She’d brought me my laptop from home. It had not occurred to her what use I would make of it.
“Oh, Jenna.”
Gently Aunt Caroline shut the laptop. I waited for her to reprimand me, but she said nothing, leaning over me to hug me. I guess she was crying. I don’t think that I was crying. From outside in the corridor came the voices of strangers.
It was my last day in rehab. From now on my injuries would be secret.
1
After the wreck my injuries would be secret, I was determined.
And I’d never be hurt again. I was determined.
2
September 5, 2004. Yarrow Lake, New Hampshire.
Driving into the town of Yarrow Lake (population 11,300), my aunt Caroline asks suddenly if I would like her to swing past the high school where I’ll be starting classes next week. My first panicky thought is No! Not yet , but Aunt Caroline doesn’t register this, like she hasn’t been registering most of what I haven’t been saying on the five-hour drive from Tarrytown, so we drive past Yarrow Consolidated High School. It’s a two-story dull redbrick building with weatherworn white trim and a bell tower set back from the street, playing fields behind it and tennis courts, a decent-looking dirt track, like small-town New England photographs you see on calendars except the foliage here hasn’t begun to change yet, early September is warm as summer. Miles away at the horizon are the White Mountains, which are beautiful to look at but not white, not yet anyway, covered in dense pine forests. Aunt Caroline is enthusiastic about the high school as she’s enthusiastic about most things, trying to be like Mom, like she remembers Mom , telling me that her husband, Dwight McCarty, graduated from Yarrow High in 1977, loved the school and was captain of the softball team. Why she’s telling me these things of long ago I don’t know. Why do adults feel they have to tell you every damn thing that floods into their heads on any damn subject, as if the quieter you are, no expression on your face, the more it means you WANT TO HEAR THIS! when in fact you’re NOT LISTENING! Except I
“I said I don’t love you! I don’t want you as a father! It’s after the wreck now, Dad. You can’t hurt me.”
The shocked look in Dad’s eyes, for once he got it.
18.
Nobody wanted me to know. But I wanted to know.
Sure I was scared. Maybe it was a mistake. But once Devon had told me, I had to know all I could.
My fingers shook as I typed in crucial code words—LISBETH ABBOTT, TAPPAN ZEE, COLLISION—and on my laptop screen came
HEAD-ON COLLISION ON TAPPAN ZEE
LEAVES ONE DEAD, TWO CRITICALLY INJURED
T RAFFIC B ACKED U P 8 M ILES
TARRYTOWN WOMAN, DAUGHTER RESCUED FROM CAR
DANGLING 50 FEET ABOVE HUDSON RIVER
C AR , T RUCK IN H EAD -O N C OLLISION
RESCUE WORKERS PULL ACCIDENT VICTIMS TO SAFETY
MOTHER, DAUGHTER TRAPPED IN CAR 40 MINUTES
N O W ITNESSES TO T APPAN Z EE C OLLISION
I stared at the photographs. My eyes were watering badly. It took a while to make out the car grotesquely jutting through the broken railing, front wheels floating in space. It was a nightmare vision from which you couldn’t turn your eyes. TV viewers had stared, fascinated. The car was such a wreck, you could not have identified it as a car, let alone my mother’s car. You could not see anything beyond the smashed windows. You could not see human shapes inside. The photos had been taken from a police helicopter hovering only a few yards away from the wreck. There must have been a video camera as well. I wondered who the rescue workers were who’d managed to pull my mother and me out of the car in such circumstances, risking their own lives.
Should have died with Mom in the wreck. You know that.
I was staring at the screen when someone touched my shoulder and I looked up. It was Aunt Caroline.
She’d brought me my laptop from home. It had not occurred to her what use I would make of it.
“Oh, Jenna.”
Gently Aunt Caroline shut the laptop. I waited for her to reprimand me, but she said nothing, leaning over me to hug me. I guess she was crying. I don’t think that I was crying. From outside in the corridor came the voices of strangers.
It was my last day in rehab. From now on my injuries would be secret.
1
After the wreck my injuries would be secret, I was determined.
And I’d never be hurt again. I was determined.
2
September 5, 2004. Yarrow Lake, New Hampshire.
Driving into the town of Yarrow Lake (population 11,300), my aunt Caroline asks suddenly if I would like her to swing past the high school where I’ll be starting classes next week. My first panicky thought is No! Not yet , but Aunt Caroline doesn’t register this, like she hasn’t been registering most of what I haven’t been saying on the five-hour drive from Tarrytown, so we drive past Yarrow Consolidated High School. It’s a two-story dull redbrick building with weatherworn white trim and a bell tower set back from the street, playing fields behind it and tennis courts, a decent-looking dirt track, like small-town New England photographs you see on calendars except the foliage here hasn’t begun to change yet, early September is warm as summer. Miles away at the horizon are the White Mountains, which are beautiful to look at but not white, not yet anyway, covered in dense pine forests. Aunt Caroline is enthusiastic about the high school as she’s enthusiastic about most things, trying to be like Mom, like she remembers Mom , telling me that her husband, Dwight McCarty, graduated from Yarrow High in 1977, loved the school and was captain of the softball team. Why she’s telling me these things of long ago I don’t know. Why do adults feel they have to tell you every damn thing that floods into their heads on any damn subject, as if the quieter you are, no expression on your face, the more it means you WANT TO HEAR THIS! when in fact you’re NOT LISTENING! Except I
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