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By Stephen Coyne and Jill Wiese
She just wanted to get home. It was late, and she had said awful things at the party. Now she just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep, if she could. “I’m glad the bitch is gone,” she told her friend Stacey. It was supposed to be a joke—one of those bad, sad, healing kinds of jokes. But Stacy frowned and nodded. It was awful. The expression on Stacey’s face had revealed Jill to herself. She—the younger sister, the not-so-pretty one, the not-so-talented one, Jill the Pill, as her sister had sometimes call her—she was actually glad that Campbell had died.
Jill should have taken it easy through the big curve, but she had to get home. She wanted out of that car, out of those clothes. She wanted to crawl into the bed that had been hers since she was a girl, a little girl who idolized her big sister. The Buick’s tires slid sideways on the gravel as if they were on ball-bearings, and it only took a moment for the car to get sideways. When the wheels hit the embankment, the Buick rose into the air. The engine revved. Jill managed to get her foot off the gas and onto the brake as if she might be able to stop what had already been set in motion, but the car nosed downward, and Jill’s stomach rose into her throat. The impact was softer than she expected. Mud splattered the windshield, and the headlights must have been buried in it because by the time the car settled, everything was darkness except for the dashboard. Jill sat there blinking stupidly at the gauges.
Then she thought she heard water rushing in through the cracks around the door. Who knew where it would stop? She unhooked her seatbelt and pulled the handle, but the door would not move. She put her feet against it and pushed, but that just made her slide across the seat. She lay down and brace her hands against the other door. Then she pushed with everything she had, but it was as if she wasn’t even there.
She sat up. One red light on the dash said “Oil.” The other said, “Charge.” Panic seized her, and she pounded the window until she was exhausted. Then it occurred to her to roll it down.
Cold air struck her face, and the smell of mud was thick. She worked her way, feet first, through the window, but when she dropped for the ground, her legs sank into muck up to her thighs. Bubbles wriggled upward inside her pants’ legs.
As soon as she tried to take a step, she was falling. Her hands disappeared into the mud, and she wound up lying face down in the ditch. She had to crawl her way out, and she lost both shoes in the process. Finally, she got back to the road and stood there, barefoot in November, looking down at her parents’ best car.
They were going to be furious. They had let her use it and had even extended her curfew to two o’clock so she could go to the game and then to the party at a friend’s afterwards. But Jill got drunk. She said those awful things, and then she fell asleep. It was almost four when she woke up. Now this. She shook mud from her hands and tried to get the worst of it off her face. Then she set out walking down the gravel road toward home.
When she had gone a little way, she stopped and looked back. Somewhere along this stretch of road was the culvert where Campbell had died. Jill shivered. Her feet were freezing.
It had happened in March—after the first big rain. The road was soupy, and the ditches were full of water. Her sister must have lost it in the curve, and her car careened into the ditch where a culvert ran under an intersection. The car plowed up into the giant tube, not stopping until it had disappeared inside.
Her parents were angry when Campbell was not home on time. They were sure she was running around with that kid. Her, their best girl--star hitter on the volleyball team, tall, beautiful, blonde. Campbell, the model, the athlete, the honor student. It was just that boy who was the problem. But the boy showed up the next day looking for Campbell, and then everything became awful. They searched. They called. They put up posters, but there was no sign of Campbell. The weather turned dry and cold, and a week later, after the ditches had begun to dry down, Mr. Gabriel was mowing with the Bush Hog when he peered into the culvert and caught a glint of glass.
The police would not tell them much. The crushed dashboard had pinned Campbell’s legs. And all the questions that Jill and her parents had were too horrible to ask.
Jill’s mother stared vacantly through the days that led to the funeral. After all the guests were gone and the family had to start their lives again, that emptiness filled with fury. And Jill’s father--well, her father had no idea how to help anyone. There was nothing for his hands. He would look at them, sometimes, as if they belonged to someone else.
Jill tried to push hair from her face, but it was caked with mud. She could imagine how she must look, and she realized that there was no way she could show up at home like that. The security light at the Gabriel’s place shone in the distance, so Jill turned into their lane and walked the quarter mile to their house. When Mrs. Gabriel finally came to the door, she took one look at Jill and recoiled into her living room. Her hands went to her mouth. “It’s you!” she said. “How?”
Jill sank to the porch floor, shivering uncontrollably.
The storm door creaked, and a hand was on her shoulder. “I thought . . . for a second there . . . oh God,” Mrs. Gabriel said, “what happened?”
“I ran into the ditch.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Gabriel pulled her hand away as if it burned. “That ditch! Are you hurt?”
Jill shrugged.
Mrs. Gabriel helped her to her feet and took her inside. She sat her at the kitchen table and put a towel over her shoulders like a shawl. “I’ll call your folks,” she said. She picked up the phone but did not begin to dial. She stared at Jill. “No,” she said. And she hung up the phone. “We’ve got to clean you up first. Do you think you’re okay? No broken bones? No cuts?”
“I’m cold.”
Mrs. Gabriel helped her stand and took her upstairs to the bathroom. She turned on the shower and helped Jill out of her muddy clothes. The water felt wonderful. Jill stood under it watching mud flow down the drain. She washed her hair, and got a surprising amount of mud out of her left ear. After a while, she stopped shivering. She was drying off when Mrs. Gabriel tapped on the door and told her that she had put some clean clothes there for her. Jill wrapped herself in the towel and opened the door.
The clothes were on the floor--sweatpants and a sweatshirt. They must have belonged to Becky, the Gabriel’s only child, who was married now and living Out East. Jill could hear Mrs. Gabriel telling Mr. Gabriel to get the tractor and pull the car out of that ditch. She didn’t want Jill’s parents to see it there.
Jill got dressed. It felt strange not having underwear, but somehow warm and cozy, too, like pajamas. She went downstairs to the kitchen. Mrs. Gabriel had made coffee and was sitting at the table with a mug. She smiled when Jill sat across from her. “I haven’t seen that sweatshirt on anybody for years. Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Jill said. “Thank you. For everything.”
“It’s okay, honey. At least you’re not hurt. Everything else can be fixed. Sandy’s getting your car out. He’ll bring it back and we’ll see what it needs.”
“I feel so stupid.”
“It’s a bad road.” Mrs. Gabriel got up and gave her a cup. “Sugar?”
“Yes. But I know it’s bad,” Jill said. “I should know better than just about anybody how bad it is.”
Mrs. Gabriel nodded. She sat down and slid the sugar forward. She sipped coffee and gazed over her mug at Jill. “You look so much like her. It must be a comfort for your mom.”
When you took each piece by itself, she did look like Campbell—the nose, the chin, the eyes--they were Campbell’s but put together in a different way, a not-so-beautiful way, a horse-faced way. Her mother often slipped and called her by her sister’s name these days. She would frown, though, and shake her head. And Jill could always hear the disappointment when she corrected herself.
“I saw something about you in the paper,” Mrs. Gabriel said. “What was it, scoring points?”
No, that would have been Campbell. Jill played piccolo in the band. "I was on the B honor roll last term," shd said.
“Ah.” Mrs. Gabriel sipped coffee. “That must have been it.” She gazed at the window.
Jill had never failed anything, had never even gotten a “D.” But when it came to being as good as Campbell, her grade was always “needs improvement.” The closest she had ever come to being like her big sister was tonight when she had risen out of the ditch like a ghost to scare the neighbors.
Mrs. Gabriel drained the last of her coffee. The faintest hint of gray showed in the eastern sky. “Well,” she said. “I’ll call now. At least there’s a little light.”
Jill should have made the call herself, but she couldn’t face it.
Mrs. Gabriel had barely finished dialing when she said, “Well, you must have been right by the phone. This is Grace. Yes.” Mrs. Gabriel’s face was patience. “Yes,” she said. “Here. Yes. Here. She’s fine. Just a little mishap with the car. No. She’s fine. Wait. She needs shoes. Hello? Yes. Shoes. Good . . ,” Mrs. Gabriel hung up, “bye,” she said. She looked at Jill. “They’re coming.”
Jill was going to get it now. She had wrecked the car. She had not called right away, and her parents had worried for what must have seemed like forever. Why hadn’t she called? Why didn’t she think they would have worried when she didn’t make it home on time, or when she wasn’t there when they got up, if they had been able to sleep at all, that is? God, she was stupid. At least when Campbell didn’t come home she had a good reason, the best reason.
The Impala came racing up the Gabriels’ lane. It seemed that her mother was at the back door before the car had even come to a stop. She was dressed and her hair was dry, so Jill knew that she must have been up all night. “Where is she?” her mother said. There was no hello to Mrs. Gabriel when she opened the door. No thank you for calling. There was just fury. Jill understood. Her mother was furious at Campbell for dying, furious because Campbell was not there for her to be furious at, furious because others had lived, others who maybe had less of a right to it than Campbell.
Her father’s pickup came up the drive and stopped next to the Impala.
Jill got up from the kitchen table. “I’m here,” she said.
Her mother stepped around Mrs. Gabriel and into the room. She frowned and looked at Jill as if she could not place her. Her forehead wrinkled. “What are you wearing?”
“They’re Becky’s,” Mrs. Gabriel said. “Her clothes got muddy.”
“Muddy? How?”
Jill and Mrs. Gabriel looked at each other. Neither of them wanted to start, but Mr. Gabriel’s tractor was groaning up the lane, dragging the car behind it. They all turned and watched him stop by the shed. The front end of the car was packed with mud and cattails. The wheel wells were full of mud, too, and the tires had flung chunks of it all the way up the lane. Aside from that, though, it looked to be in good shape. The airbag had not even gone off.
Jill’s mother turned from the window. She looked more furious than ever. “What happened?”
“I lost it in the curve,” Jill said. “Hit the ditch.” Kids did that all the time in the county. The ditches were wide and gently sloped. Fences were set well off the road. It seemed sometimes that the ditches were like safety nets, and kids tried impossible things on the dirt roads because they thought there was nothing to worry about.
“But you,” her mother said, “are okay.” It sounded like an accusation. The one kid in the county who ought to have known better didn’t. She had done a stupid thing, but she was fine. The best die, her mother was probably thinking, but you couldn’t kill the worst with a sledgehammer. Her mother stood in front of her, squinting as if she was trying to bring her into focus. “And you are okay?” Her smile was like a wince.
No. Jill was not okay. She wanted to die. She wanted to get rid of the evil, horse-faced imitation that did nothing but make her mother miserable.
“Jill,” her mother said. “Are you okay?”
A millions times she had answered that question with a shrug and a “sure.” What else could she do? You couldn’t fix failure, stupidity, and ugliness by admitting to them.
Jill shrugged. “Sure,” she said, but the tears had started, and they would not stop.
Her mother frowned. Her eyes seemed to glaze over and she held out her arms and pulled Jill to her. She squeezed and squeezed. She leaned back and cradled Jill’s face in her hands. “We were so worried,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it.” Her eyes were full. She hugged Jill and rocked her back and forth. “Jill,” she said. “Jill, Jill.” And that name, that plain-Jane name, rang in Jill’s ears like a bell.
Her father was standing there holding a pair of women’s fur-lined women’s boots in his hand, pleasure and pain at war on his face. He put a hand on Jill’s head. “I love you,” he said. Then he lifted the hand and set the boots on the floor. He went back outside. Jill could see him talking to Mr. Gabriel. The two of them walked around the car surveying the mess. Her parents had sold Campbell’s car for salvage so they would never have to see it again. But her father would fix this car. He would take the ditch out of it and make it seem as if the accident had never happened. And he would be happy because there would be something useful for his hands.
“Sit,” her mother told her.
Jill sat in the kitchen chair, and her mother knelt down in front of her. She slipped the fur-lined boots onto Jill’s bare feet and looked up at her, eyes glistening.
They felt wonderful, those boots and those eyes. And Jill wondered if this was how it felt to be the most beautiful, the favorite, daughter.
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