Nineteen Winters

            She climbed into her bed and waited for him. The sky was dark and she felt faintly dizzy with fatigue. Some nights she tried to stay up as long as she could so that she would be gone as soon as she closed her eyes. But tonight she needed sleep. How she felt tomorrow would have to be worth their battle tonight.

            Beatrice rolled onto her back. Staring at the smooth blue surface of her ceiling, she wished there were cracks that she could trace to distraction. Anything, anything to keep him at bay.

            Beatrice felt his fingers run through her hair and she knew it was all over. He tucked a stray strand behind her ear and chills ran down her spine. Her stomach twisted and she felt sick with anticipation. She pulled her comforter over her head, and suddenly her bedroom couldn’t be dark enough.

            He ran his hand up her hip towards her belly button and then traced that with his index finger. “You need to stay awake,” Anxiety whispered in her ear.

            “Please,” she whispered back. She hated herself for how much it sounded like a whimper. “Please just leave me alone. Please just give me this one night.”

            As an answer, he placed his right hand over her heart and they both felt its beating quicken. Beatrice rolled onto her side and looked into his eyes.

            “Alright, what have you got for me?” she said. She knew he didn’t care whether or not she wanted to hear it. Still, it gave her a small sense of control.

            “Do you remember your junior year English class?” Anxiety said and leaned in closer until their noses were almost touching. Beatrice couldn’t help the dread that slipped down her kneecaps in response to his unnerving smile.

            “Of course I do,” she said. “That was what, four years ago? I’m not senile.”
            “Funny,” he said. “Do you remember that time you had to go up in front of the class? When your teacher made you divide your life up into eras and describe them?”
            “I . . . ummm . . . yeah,” Beatrice responded. She tried not to think about it, but it was too late. She would have to ride the memory out.

            “Everyone else was so confident,” Anxiety said. He began wrapping a strand of her hair around his finger. “Everyone was getting laughs. You thought you would be so clever. That this would be the way you made them love you. But that’s not what happened, was it?”

            “Stop,” Beatrice said under her breath, knowing that he wouldn’t.

            “You got up there and you tried to make jokes about your screwed up childhood. Nobody laughs at that shit, you dumb bitch. Your voice started quivering and everyone thought you were about to cry. You made them all so uncomfortable. You made them all wish they were anywhere but listening to your stupid fucking stories.”

            “Stop it,” she said again. “Why are you doing this? That was so long ago. It doesn’t matter now. I’m not that person anymore.”
            “Who told you that?” he said. “You’ll always be that person. You haven’t changed. You think that, just because you can look people in the eyes now, you’re suddenly all different? No one will ever enjoy being with you.”

            “Be quiet,” she hissed. “I don’t need to hear this anymore.” Beatrice flipped onto her other side and pulled her knees up to her chin.

            “And yet you can’t shut me out,” Anxiety said. “You say you want me to go away, and yet you continue to invite me in. It’s all right. I, at least, will always be your faithful companion.” He crept closer and slipped an arm around her waist. She could feel his breath on her neck and her body began to shiver.

            “I’m better than this,” she said.

            “Shhhhhh, quiet down, my love,” he said. “Close your eyes and try to make me leave. You can’t. Picture yourself on a plane. You have completely lost control, your life is in someone else’s hands. With every batch of turbulence your stomach tightens and you wonder if this is it. The statistics don’t matter. All you can think about is what it would feel like if that plane started to plummet down, down, down . . .”

            Beatrice’s lungs began to tighten and her breathing quickened. She made one last attempt to remove herself from these thoughts, but she knew she couldn’t do it. He had built a cage of her fears and trapped her in it. She threw herself against the bars over and over, struggling for freedom. Each attempt was weaker than the last. Finally, her resolve gave out and she lost the fight.

            She lay there, alone in her bed. Her body trembled as fear descended upon her and tears fell uselessly on her pillow. Helpless, Beatrice existed there until her mind emptied and she was given away to sleep.

~

            Peace found her during the night, a friend only to her unconscious brain. She awoke the next morning in a wonderful haze. Beatrice had twenty seconds of confusion and unconcerned bliss before she remembered where she was. But even when she did, things made much more sense than they had the night before.

            Sun streamed in from her window and warmed the back of her neck. Beatrice stretched her arms and legs. If only she could stay here longer, be sucked into something solid and rooted to the earth. She cracked her knuckles one by one and waited.

            Beatrice opened her eyes. Some days she forgot where she was and woke up expecting the stark white walls of her old dorm room. She woke up expecting to roll over and see her roommate sleeping dreamlessly across the carpeted expanse. Sometimes Beatrice was disappointed when she realized she was back in her old room. It was hard to remember that she had given up the clear, bright path for a much murkier future.

            This morning, however, Beatrice was just glad it was light outside again. Her thoughts wandered back to what had caused so much panic a few hours before. Her brain danced around the shape of an airplane and she could feel the knots return to her stomach. She pushed it all away. The best solution to controlling her fear, it seemed, was to try to think of nothing at all. It was much harder to worry about the future when you didn’t exist in the present.

            Her heart was heavy and angry as she shuffled around the house. Shower, make breakfast, get dressed, find something to keep her occupied. These tasks were simple and easy; the same things over and over, purposeless. She hadn’t wanted this to be her life, and yet it was what she needed to do to survive . . . Was this surviving?

            Beatrice finished getting ready before she realized she didn’t know where she was going. Her parents were away at their jobs and she was alone. She needed to distract herself before she lost it and jumped off the balcony of their third story apartment. She wondered if that would actually kill her, or if it would just maim her in new and exciting ways.

            Beatrice grabbed the car keys from one of the hooks by the door and let herself out.

~

            Beatrice drove for half an hour without a specific destination. Frustration began to seep into her brain. In moments like these, she missed her older sister. Usually, she didn’t. Usually, it didn’t occur to her that her life was any different when Marie was in it. But Marie loved adventures, even those that ended in nothing. She would know what to do right now. Then, thinking of her sister, Beatrice was met with inspiration and pulled off at the next exit.

            There was an amusement park not too far south of where she lived. Situated right along the beach, this park was unique in the fact that you didn’t have to pay to enter, but rather paid for each ride you went on. You could wander freely among the crowds or you could stake out a spot on the sand and no one would charge you for it. Beatrice knew she should be with people, and suddenly this was the only place she wanted to go.

            The road was windy and lined with trees. Beatrice fell into a sort of careful monotony that made time pass quickly. Soon, she pulled into the amusement park parking lot and found it almost half empty. It took her a moment to realize it was the middle of a weekday. She pushed down her embarrassment at seeing this place so exposed.

            She stepped out of her beat-up Honda Civic and stretched her arms. She began walking and the small patches of sand made a sharp, comforting sound under her shoes. It pulled her heart to the ground and made her realize she was alive. Then the feeling left as quickly as it had come.

            As Beatrice walked in, she was startled by the bright clown and animal decorations covering the rides. Did those horses always have garishly twisted features? The bright reds and yellows seemed incredibly out of place in such gloomy weather. She passed the old roller coaster, its wooden limbs angling out over the walkway. The ride worker at the entrance stared at her, a dull expression on his face. Beatrice wondered how long the park would stay open before they finally decided to call it on account of weather. It was California, but this was getting ridiculous.

            She made her way to the edge of the walk and climbed down the few stairs to the deserted beach. The wind blew and Beatrice remembered how cold she was. Just before she got to the place where the water reached and pulled back, she sat down. The top of the sand was cold, but then she dug her hands into it. The sensation of the sand against her bare skin, seeping into her clothes and leaving traces of itself there, drew her back.

            Beatrice sighed, then and now, “This is the way the weather always is back home,” she said as she stretched out her arms to feel the sun. It was mostly the truth and her friends would never know any differently. She had quickly learned that growing up east of Nevada often left people with delusions about what the west coast was really like. No, she wasn’t blonde and didn’t surf to school, but she liked how the mythical California weather could incite envy in even the most resistant.

            But Allison was used to this bragging. Instead of verbally responding, she grabbed a handful of the Pixie sticks they had stolen from the dining hall and threw them at Beatrice. Beatrice grabbed one, ripped off its top and poured the candy down her throat. She glanced at Allison and they both howled with laughter. The sugar was going straight to their heads.

            They were freshmen in college, but it was weird how often they were encouraged to act like children. Alongside the heightened level of schoolwork came sleepovers with their hall, the consumption of mass amounts of junk food, staying up late because no one was monitoring them, and making poor decisions because they knew they wouldn’t be able to later. Everyone embraced this life with the knowledge that it would soon end and the world would expect them to grow up.

            Beatrice heard Lauren sigh. She exchanged a glance with Allison and then looked away to stifle the laughter that was again bubbling up her throat. Beatrice put her arm through Allison’s and they skipped together towards their residence hall.

            Beatrice shivered as another wind blew past. Looking back was both difficult and involuntary.

            “What happened to Allison? Where is she now?” Depression asked from where she was sitting at Beatrice’s left.

            “Gone,” Beatrice replied. “I messed it up.”

            Depression crawled until she was in front of Beatrice. She put both arms around Beatrice’s knees and laid her head on top of them, “You always mess it up,” she said quietly.

            “I know.”

            “You’re never going to find another person who will know you the way Allison did,” Depression continued. “And she’s not coming back.”
            “I know,” Beatrice said, her fingers digging deeper into the sand.

            “She knows who you are. She saw you for real and she knows that you’re not good for her. You’re not, you know?”

            “I . . .” Beatrice hesitated. “Is that true? I mean, the hurt was pretty mutual. . .”
            Depression laughed her wild, insensitive laugh. “Do you really believe that?”

            Beatrice stared at her and was pulled into her memories.

            “We both made mistakes, but if I hadn’t made mine, we would probably still be friends,” Beatrice told Depression. She sighed. “I was so ridiculous.”

            Depression sat up and pulled herself over to sit beside Beatrice, “You broke it, you, yourself,” she said, “and there’s no way that you can ever make things completely right again.”

            Beatrice watched the waves silently. Then she stood up and headed back to the stairs.

            She felt stupid for having come so far when she didn’t really want to be here. This place was fun when you had friends to share it with, but Beatrice had no one. She could cry, but that seemed exhausting. She replayed those memories over and over until they were worn thin, and still she could not let them go.

            And then something made Beatrice stop. Something pulled her away, and she tried to grab at what it was. Then she became conscious of that odd funnel cake/cotton candy smell that was intimately linked with her childhood. She stood there for a few moments and felt the hopelessness retreat. There was something here. Something so fleeting that Beatrice was terrified of looking at it too hard. She hadn’t been truly happy for a long time, but she could remember what it felt like. It felt kind of like this.

            She walked farther and tried to stay buoyed to this small peace. But as she passed the carousel, she saw Depression sitting on a bench a hundred feet away. Distressed, Beatrice turned and ran back the way she had come. When she reached the park’s entrance, Beatrice slid on the sand and fell forward to her knees, ripping the left leg of her jeans. She got back up and bounded towards her car. When she reached it, Depression was waiting for her in the front seat.

~

            “Jesus, why do you always waste your time like that?” Depression asked as they flew down the highway towards home. “I mean, seriously, what did you accomplish? Why can’t you move forward like everyone else instead of spending your days doing these stupid, selfish things?”

            “I don’t know,” Beatrice whispered back. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

            “It’s okay,” Depression said. She reached out to pull a lock of hair out of Beatrice’s eyes and tuck it behind an ear. “Just stay here with me a little while. Anyways, there’s nothing you can do that’s actually worth doing. There’s no point. Just stay with me.”

            “I need something,” Beatrice responded. “This isn’t what I wanted my life to be like.”

            “Nobody gets what they truly want from life, especially not someone like you. Let it go.”

            “But I don’t . . .” Beatrice stopped. She knew if she tried to argue any further she would lose.

            Beatrice exited the highway, slowing the car a little. She watched as the fork in the road approached, a tree sitting solidly in the middle. She needed to go right to get home, but ambivalence stayed her hands. She watched as the tree grew closer. She didn’t go right or left. Beatrice drove straight until it was too late to change her mind.

~

            Years later, Beatrice would say that she didn’t remember the crash or being pulled from the vehicle. She would say the first thing she saw after she closed in on the tree was the hospital room and her parents standing over her bed, her dad crying. The truth was harder to explain. Her memories were weird.

            She distinctly remembered the face of the EMT who had been with her in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. His curly brown hair had fallen over his ears and his icy blue eyes were edged with concern. He had had a scar that ran from the end of his jawline to the side of his mouth. Of these things, Beatrice felt certain.

            She remembered waking up in her car and hearing the radio play, which seemed odd because she never listened to it anymore. The sound of it began to grate on her, so she reached over to turn it off, only to find herself stuck and unable to hit the button.

            She remembered the noise the small crowd had made when her body was removed from the vehicle. It was sort of like a muffled gasp. They hadn’t expected a whole person to be removed from the muddled, metal mess. And then she had briefly wondered what she might look like.

            She remembered being pinned to her steering wheel and being able to move her fingers and toes. They cracked and stung in pain, but they moved. Beatrice had felt vaguely disappointed, but she couldn’t say why.

            Two days after the accident, Beatrice lay in a hospital bed. Her mother sat in the chair beside it, frowning and wringing her hands. There was a brace on Beatrice’s right knee, but other than that she was just covered in bruises and scratches. The doctors said she was incredibly lucky.

            “Dr. Johnson said you could probably go home tomorrow morning, so I had your dad go back to the house and get things ready,” her mother said. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs.

            There was a short silence between them. “That’s good,” Beatrice finally said.

            “Mmhmm,” her mother responded absently. She looked around and considered the room. “If you want to go anywhere, you’re going to have to get a ride from one of us, I guess,” she said. “That’s going to be a hassle. I mean, not that that’s your fault or anything. But life’s going to be a little harder for all of us for a while.”

            Beatrice heard the door open, and looked over to see Anxiety walk in. He met her gaze, smiled, and went to sit down in the chair beside her mother.

            “I guess this also rules out you getting a job for the time being,” her mother continued. She sighed. “We really could have used the extra money.”

            “A moment’s decision made you a huge burden on your family,” Anxiety told Beatrice. “You’re going to be even more useless than you were before.”

            “I know, but I didn’t do it on purpose,” Beatrice said, although she wasn’t sure that was true.

            “Well, obviously,” her mother replied, “but that doesn’t really make a difference. Things are going to be tighter, that’s all I’m saying.”

            “At least now you have an excuse for your laziness,” Anxiety said. “What were you doing before? Just hanging out? How far do you think that will get you in life? How do you think you’ll feel two years from now when all your old friends start graduating and you’re still just here?”

            “I know,” Beatrice said. “I know I need to start thinking of legitimate ways of investing in my future, but I’m scared of making a mistake.”

            “Listen, I don’t care what you do as long as you do something,” her mother said. “You’ve been given all the freedom you need to figure out what you want to do. I’m starting to feel like you’re taking advantage of our hospitality.”

            “You’re becoming a waste of space with an unpromising future and everyone’s getting a little sick of you,” Anxiety said.

            “I’m doing my best,” Beatrice said weakly. She couldn’t explain the problem when she didn’t know what it was. She closed her eyes.

            “Well, at this point your best isn’t good enough.”

            “If this is the best you’ve been able to do under the circumstances, things are never going to get better.”

            “You’ve been given everything you could possibly need to be successful. You should be grateful, but instead you’re throwing it away.”

            “Everyone has problems, and yours are just that you’re sad and scared. Guess what? You’ll probably never stop being sad and scared. It’s become a part of who you are.”

            Their voices blurred together and it became difficult for Beatrice to tell which was which. Her head began to throb. “Stop,” she said, barely above a whisper.

            “What did you say to me?” her mother said, blinking.

            Beatrice suddenly felt dizzy and wished she had stayed quiet. Anxiety leaned in so close she could feel his breath on her face.

            “I’m only telling you these things because I think you need to hear them,” her mother said. “I’m just trying to be helpful. How else are you going to figure it out? It’s my job to let you know when I think something’s wrong, and I think something’s—“

            “Stop,” Beatrice said again, this time louder. “Do you really think this is the time or place? Please just stop talking at me. I’m really tired, and I’m not actually hearing anything you’re saying. Please just leave me alone for a little while.”

            Her mother made a disapproving noise and Beatrice knew her brow would be furrowed, her nostrils flared. But without saying another word, she stood up. Beatrice could hear her footsteps fade as she left the room.

            She opened her eyes to find that Anxiety had also gone.

~

            Beatrice lay in her hospital bed for half an hour and enjoyed the silence. For the first time in a long time she wasn’t being hounded by Anxiety or Depression and she figured she might as well appreciate it. One of the nurses came in.

            “Hey, how are you feeling?” he asked her.

            “Okay,” she said, a friendly smile coming easily.

            He was distracted and didn’t notice. “That’s good,” he said. “You’ve been recovering well. We’re hoping to send you home tomorrow. Won’t that be nice?”

            The thought of going back caught her and made her hesitate. “I guess,” she said.

            “Alright, well someone should be in with your lunch in an hour or so. If you experience any pain, please press the call button and let us know. Do you have any questions?”
            In spite of her recent resurfacing, Beatrice could feel herself being steadily pulled back down. She trained her eyes on her knees and kept them there as she slowly shook her head no. She looked back up to watch him leave.

            Beatrice closed her eyes and took a deep breath, “Stop stop stop stop stop stop stop,” she said aloud. “I’m not going back, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I haven’t had long enough, please . . .”

            She heard the door open again. She opened her eyes.

            “Hey,” Anxiety said, smiling. “How’s it going?”

            “Hey,” Beatrice muttered.

            “Now don’t be like that,” Anxiety said. “What would you do without me?”

            “Fuck you,” Beatrice said as she lifted a shaky hand and placed it on her stomach. “Why won’t you just leave?”

            Anxiety shrugged. “Don’t know, just can’t. Would you really want me to if I could?”

            “Yes. Yes, absolutely, things could be so different for me.”

            “You don’t really believe that. If I weren’t here, there would be something else here instead. There’s always something. But for now it seems you’re stuck with me.”

            Anxiety sat down in one of the chairs next to her bed. He gazed at her fondly and Beatrice found herself shivering. She sat up.

            “I can’t. . .” she started to say. “I don’t. . .” She found her body was convulsing uncontrollably. Suddenly, she ripped the IV from her arm and swung her legs over the side of her bed. She lowered her bare feet to the cold floor and felt a wave of calm run through her. It ran up from her ankles through to the back of her neck and the shaking stopped. She stood up and closed the distance between the two of them. Anxiety watched her the entire time, curious, but unsurprised.

            She lowered herself down into his lap and wound her arms around his neck. Beatrice felt the familiar madness return to her and was comforted.

            “If you must stay, then please don’t leave me,” she whispered.

            “No, I won’t, not like everyone else,” he said softly. “We can run together, you and I. Keep connecting, disconnecting, keep moving. We’ll escape, then return and escape again. I can whisper in your ear while you laugh wildly and scream until your lungs turn bloody. We will startle and confound, but yes, we will be together.” He ran his fingers through her hair. “We will always be together.”

            Beatrice grabbed the chunk of hair he had touched and pulled. She pulled until she felt the strands rip from her scalp and lay limply in her hand. She held them up to the light and examined them. Then she let them drop to the floor, oddly satisfied. Anxiety smiled.