By Emily Hampson
January in Wisconsin. No one will even see her bare legs.
Unless. Marcus.
In the shower, she slides a hand down one knee. The hair has grown long, almost rodent-like. A mangy, post-holiday fur. She swears, then shaves, lathering the Junior Mint-scented shower gel she got stuck with during the office white elephant exchange.
4 minutes.
Wrapped in an old Snoopy robe, she fixes dinner. A grilled cheese sandwich oozing with the dill Havarti that she buys at the corner market along with the expensive seed crackers that deliver endorphins of extravagance. She knows she can’t afford $10.99 crackers, not even close, and it sometimes scares her how much she relishes this small grocery rebellion.
Licking the grease from her fingertips, she remembers the last time she drank on an empty stomach and cringes. But she’s making good choices tonight. She will not sleep with Marcus. Regardless of how smooth her calves are.
12 minutes.
She blow-dries her hair. Indulgently. In sections as demonstrated by her salon stylist who always smells like Cherry Coke. Afterwards, she wrangles the flat iron, clips one side up, then decides to wear it down. To spite Marcus.
16 minutes.
She’s running late. A text from Jody.
But she can’t find her boots. The cute ones that zip up the back. She settles on the tasseled loafers, although Jody claims they make her look like a middle-aged math teacher prioritizing arch support. Maybe she should skip the party. Stream one of those intolerable romances where the couple fails to kiss until the final scene and then lives happily ever after on some pesticide-free boysenberry farm. But no. She bailed last time. Besides, she loathes boysenberries and Jody would kill her.
2 minutes.
In the foyer, she swears again before barreling down the hall to retrieve the cardigan that she’s certain she left on the bed—but, in actuality, has slipped off the console table onto the entry rug speckled with sidewalk salt.
28 seconds.
Dashing to the car, she snags her purse strap around the front doorknob, an obstacle that compels her entire body to lurch back like a hooked fish.
3 seconds.
At the curb, she sighs, her breath misting the dark as she laments the cloak of snow shrouding her Camry. Briefly considers an Uber. But she won’t drink tonight. One glass of Prosecco, max. Defiant, she snatches the scraper off the passenger seat and sets to work. The car will hold her accountable. She’s making good choices. Under fleece tights, her shaved legs turn to gooseflesh.
3 minutes.
Later, she will not register the impact. The sheer, deafening ferocity of it. The blinding streak of yellow light breaching the median. The sickening crunch of metal and bone. Her skull, limp against the airbag — a pillow for a final sleep.
*
When the mother arrives in the ER, she will collapse over the body. Wail like a newborn bungling breath — frantic to pump air into limp lungs. To incubate what is no longer warm.
From the hospital, the mother will drive on autopilot to the apartment. Shrivel against the wall and sob in the pre-dawn dark. There, she will suffer the vacuous void, rewinding the hours, seeking to elucidate the inexplicable. To return to the before.
After a while, she will bolt upright, galvanized to contrive a different outcome. For the driver of the SUV to swerve across the median a minute, thirty seconds, even ten after the Camry had passed. For her only daughter to be home. Sick with the flu. Navigating a different route. Stalled at a red light. Lost. Pulled over, consulting Siri for directions.
Like a sleuth obsessed, the mother will dissect the evening, the afternoon, the entire week, the last voicemail, the final text, the New Year’s lunch where the two of them split a Caesar salad and her daughter gagged at the anchovies like she was six.
The mother will painstakingly unravel each and every stitch in the yarn, as though she might reknit her child’s life, a new sweater with longer sleeves. She’ll scour the apartment for clues. Decipher faded receipts and rummage for bargaining chips that might accommodate some type of exchange, one that might allow her to trade places, a voluntary swap.
Instead, she’ll find the hairdryer. The plate of crusts in the sink. The Snoopy robe, a heap on the hardwood. She will never know to blame the dill or the doorknob. The missing boots or the blow-dry.
Eventually, the mother will crumple on the bathroom floor to nest inside her grief. Eviscerated by loss. Stupefied by absence. While her daughter’s damp hair congeals under the shower drain, cowering like a guilty offender, secreting faint whiffs of artificial mint.
* * *
Emily Hampson’s shorter work has appeared in Fractured Lit, Writer’s Digest, The Sunlight Press, Apricity Press, and WOW! Women On Writing. She resides outside of Chicago with her husband, two daughters, and a mischievous Bernedoodle whose collective antics supply her with endless narrative material.