Gone

Gingerly, Janie takes the photographs out of the envelopes and looks through them. Snapshots of Dorothea—tons of them. Photos of the two of them, laughing. Having fun. Kissing and lying together on the beach, blissful smiles on their faces. On the big gray rocks by Lake Michigan, a sign in the background that says “Navy Pier.” They look good together. Dorothea is pretty, especially when she smiles. Unbelievable.

Janie also recognizes the living room in the pictures. Henry with his feet propped up on the same coffee table, the same old curtains on the windows, Dorothea stretched out on the same old crappy couch, although it all looks nearly new in the photos. Everything’s the same. Janie looks again at the photos of the happy couple.

Well, maybe not everything is the same.

Janie puts the photos in chronological order according to the red digital time stamp marked on the corner of each picture, and she imagines the courtship. The whirlwind summer of 1986 where they worked together at Lou’s in Chicago, then there’s a break from photos in the fall—that must have been the time they were separated, Dottie in high school and Henry at U of M. Janie peeks at the letters in the shoe box from Dorothea and sees the mail stamps on each opened envelope—all were marked from August 27 through October of that year. Fourteen handwritten letters in two months, Janie thinks. That’s love.

The second group of photos begin in mid-November of 1986 and the last photo is stamped April 1, 1987. April Fool’s Day. Go figure. Janie does the math backward from her birthday, January 9, 1988. That’s about right, she thinks. Nine months before would have been April 9, 1987. Not much time went by after the last photo before they made a baby, and then it was splitsville.

She fingers the letters, extremely curious. Over-whelmingly curious. Dead freaking curious. She even picks up the first one and runs her index finger along the fold of the letter inside the envelope. But then she puts it down.

It’s like the letters are sacred or something.

That, and eww. There’s probably something gross written inside. It would be almost as bad as getting sucked into her mother’s sex dream. Ick and yuck. Blurgh. Once you read something, you can’t erase it from your brain.

Janie puts the letters and the photographs back into the box. She picks up the loonie and wonders how long it’s been since her father visited Canada. Smiling, she sets the loonie back down next to the silver dollar and picks up the cross-country medal. She turns it over in her fingers, holding it close to her face and squinting so she can see all the little nooks and crevasses. “I’m a runner too,” she says softly. “Just a different kind. The road kind.” She holds the medal close and then she pins it on her backpack.

Next, Janie looks at the driver’s license. It was his first one, expired long ago. His photo is hilarious and his signature is a boyish version of the one that Janie has seen around the house.

And then Janie picks up the class ring. 1985 is engraved on one side, and LHS is on the other. There’s a tiny engraving of a runner below the letters. The ring is gold with a ruby stone and it’s beautiful. Janie imagines it on Henry’s finger, and then she goes back to the photographs and spies it there, on his right hand. Janie slips it on her own finger. It’s way too big. But it fits her thumb. She takes it off and puts it back in the box.

Then picks it up again.

Puts it on her thumb.

Likes how it feels there.

11:10 p.m.

After going through everything but the letters once more, Janie finds the folded-up piece of paper with words printed on it. Opens it.

MORTON’S FORK

1889, in ref. to John Morton (c.1420–1500), archbishop of Canterbury, who levied forced loans under Henry VII by arguing the obviously rich could afford to pay and the obviously poor were obviously living frugally and thus had savings and could pay too.

Source: American Psychological Association (APA):

morton\’s fork. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/morton\’s fork

Janie reads it again. Remembers the bookmark in the book, and the one online. Remembers what the note from Miss Stubin said, about Henry wanting Janie to consider Morton’s Fork.

“Yeah, I get it already, Henry. You had a choice. I know.” She has considered it—about a million times. She’s known it since before she even knew Henry existed. Poor Henry didn’t have Miss Stubin’s green notebook. Didn’t even know the real choice. “I’m way ahead of you, man,” she says.

Janie knows which choice sounds like the better one to her. Or she wouldn’t be here.

She crumples up the paper and tosses it in the trash can.

She gives a last glance at the letters. And lets them be.

Turns out the light.

Tosses and turns, knowing that tomorrow, she’s got a lot of hard explaining to do.

6:11 a.m.

She dreams.

Henry stands on a giant rock in the middle of rapids at the top of waterfall.

His hair turns into a hive of hornets. They buzz around angrily.

If he falls in, the hornets might go away, but he’ll die falling down the waterfall.

If he stays on the rock, he’ll be stung to death.

Janie watches him. On one bank stands Death, his long black cloak unmoving in the breeze. On the other bank is old Martha Stubin in her wheelchair. Blind, gnarled.

Henry flattens himself on the rock and tries to wash the hornets out of his hair. That only makes them furious. They begin to sting him, and he cries out, slapping at them, futile to stop them. Finally, he falls off the rock and soars over the waterfall. Plunging to his death.