The Anniversary Effect

It’s a hard day.

Somehow, Amy doesn’t see it coming. The season is in full swing. She’s busy with the onslaught of calls and emails from work that always pick up as the year winds down, and the towering heap of papers and midterms from school, and the lines at coffee shops for pumpkin-flavored drinks that get sweeter every autumn, and the department store lookout, shuffling her nephew down fabric aisles in search of a cape that’s the right shade of red for the superman costume he insists has to be homemade. It’s a busy time of year. She gets caught up.  

It’s all so startlingly familiar: the shadow settling over the old house, the oxygen pulled from the air. Like an echo. Autumn doesn’t feel so wonderful anymore. All at once, she remembers that the falling leaves are dead. All at once, she remembers that October was lovelier when her mother was still here with it.

It’s an ache that doesn’t ever fade, the losing. Even when her brother smiles for the first time in months and it feels like the sun is finally rising. Even when Amy looks at the family photo on the desk in her bedroom and doesn’t lose all the air in her lungs. Even when her father gets behind the wheel of a car again. Even when they all start to heal. The ache sticks around, like honey on their fingertips. They’ll never be as whole as they used to be.

There’s a longing that lives in her ribs, like a chirping bird, nestled beside her heart. It makes a child of her; she feels grief like a little girl. She misses her mother, helplessly. And all she can do about it is cry, pray that the hurt will go away.

But the hurt—cracking her spine and slumping her shoulders and salting the skin of her cheeks—the hurt means that the love won’t fade either. She thinks that’s something she can live with.

Even so, knowing it doesn’t make it any easier, and anniversaries are as terrible as ever. 

 Amy wakes up today with a lump in her throat and a text from her brother. Her chest is sore, like someone’s been knocking against it. She finds it sort of funny how a number on a calendar can make time so unsubstantial, can make the months feel like minutes. The grief sits behind her eyes as heavy as the first day she ever felt it.

She taps at her phone until it opens, the light blinding her in the darkness of her room, curtains drawn. The time is 8:28. The date taunts her in blocky letters. October 16^th makes her remember things she’d rather not. Gripping the porcelain edges of a sink so tightly her nails begin to crack and bleed. Her brother meeting her eyes with the sorriest expression she’d ever seen on him. The tightest hugs in the world. Streaks of makeup down flushed faces. A pair of ripped tights under the only black dress she owned. Her father’s weathered hands holding a bundle of lilies so delicately she would’ve believed it if you told her they were made of glass. 

October 16^th. Crying so hard she had to swallow bile. Her brother with his face in his hands. Her father with his brows bent in sorrow.

It’s a hard day.

She checks the message from her brother, trying to shake herself from her reverie, climbing out of memories like they’re quicksand.

 There are three texts on her notification screen, all from Ben. 

            Ben: amy

            Ben: have you talked to dad?

            Ben: it’s the sixteenth

She reads them slowly, already fatigued. Her phone beeps again. Another text.

            Ben: i love you

She clicks off her phone and drags herself out of bed. She feels too delicate for the harshness of the world. It’s all too weighty, her bones are thin like a bird’s. She stumbles to the door, tugging a sweater over her head.

All the lights in the house are off, like the color is hiding itself. She walks around like a ghost, floats to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She watches the tiles on the floor, not brave enough to glance at her mother’s smile in the photos that hang around the halls. When she looks in the mirror, Amy sees her mom in her eyes and her jawline. She ducks out of the room, texts her brother back.

            Amy: love you too

She drifts to the window in the kitchen, overlooking their front yard. She tugs at the blind until they crack open.

Her father is on his knees in the garden, like the curling tomato plant is an altar. His fingers are shaking in their rubber gloves and there is dirt up to his elbows, a smear of soil across the bone of his cheek. Behind him leaves fall like raindrops, heavy and swirling and beautiful orange. Autumn is the best time for growing tomatoes—no gnats or flies to swat away. The moderate cold is like fertilizer. 

Amy takes a deep breath, not bothering to check her phone again even as it buzzes in her pocket. She tosses it on the table, makes for the front door.

When she pulls it open, the smell of the season hits her like a wave—rotting leaves and dirt, wind that’s just chilly enough to warrant a sweater.

“Good morning,” she calls, taking a hesitant step out onto the grass. It’s overcast today, the sun is hiding behind half-darkened clouds. She forgot her shoes.

Her father doesn’t look up, it’s like he didn’t hear. He tugs at a leaf of the tomato plant, twists it with his thumb. She keeps walking until she stands before him, barefoot and shaky. 

“Bà?” She reaches for his attention, a branch to the sun, a daughter to her father. He startles in the weeds, dropping his shears in a pile of soil. He finds her eyes, almost surprised that she’s stood here.

There is a moment of silence. Not exactly acknowledgment, but something like it. She chews at the inside of her cheek. 

“Yes?” He says eventually, with a drag in his voice that she is unused to.

“Are you alright?” She says softly, afraid to speak too loud. Everything feels like it’s on the brink of shattering. She doesn’t want to push. “Ben was asking about you.”

He looks at her a long moment, and then shakes his head. “Not today, love,” he says plainly, picking his shears up. “Are you?”

She glances down. The ache is a bursting well within her. She flexes her hand. “No,” she answers. “No, I don’t think so.”

Her father nods again, silence and birdsong sitting in the air. The wind blows. The leaves fall.

“But I’m here,” she continues, like an afterthought. She drops her hands to her sides.

He gives a small smile, still on his knees like a man praying to tomatoes. “I know,” he looks like he’s going to cry, but he doesn’t. “And I thank you for that.”

Amy reaches out and puts her hand on top of his, feels the grit of the dirt against her palm. It’s a desperate gesture, built of longing and grieving and trying. Her father continues. “She loved you.” He says, simple as that.

“I know,” she replies, water in her eyes. 

“I love you,” he says.

And that’s not enough. But it’s what they have. 

“I love you too.”