An Unfortunate Accident

The day it happened was one of those days when I didn’t want to need her. It wasn’t because I was worried about showing up dumped, homeless, or both, as I had all those times before in my youth. That day, I just simply didn’t want to be where we were.

It had only been a month since Paul had died, and everything was still too close. I regularly woke in the morning thinking I’d heard him in the shower before realizing it was just the rattling sound of the neighbor’s plumbing.

I had stood in the spring air, wrapped up warmer than I needed to be in an attempt to further dull the world. Theresa was at the registration stand putting our names down for the day’s live-action roleplay. It was something she’d been doing for a year now. Her obsession with Twilight when we were teens had developed into a love for all types of fantasy and romance. As she was perpetually single, she’d taken LARPing up in the interest of meeting someone. Today, the purpose was to distract me from the burning loss tattooed in the bags under my eyes and attempt to bring me back to the bustling world around me.

I’d joked around when Theresa had first signed up, cracking wise about all the overweight dudes and whiny chicks dressed up attempting to live out a life that wasn’t theirs. I didn’t have those feelings on that day. I didn’t feel anything. At least, I don’t remember it that way.

“So …” Theresa said, wringing her hands. “We can’t be on the same team.”

“What?” I said, partially annoyed, partially relieved that we may not have to do it at all. My attention drawn by a guy trying to hold a hotdog in his gauntlet.

“Yeah, we got the last spots. But it’s cool, y’know? Everyone’s cool, and we’ll be out there together. So just go easy on me, ‘eh?” Theresa winked. A wink that I didn’t doubt masked the same pain that I was still reeling from.

I grumbled as we put on the stinky, borrowed tunics and faux armor, which were heavier than expected. Like I needed anything else to weigh me down right now. Before I knew it, we were out on the field. I mostly stood, leaning up against a tree. I tried to not make eye contact with anyone. When that failed, I instead conjured up a strong enough glare to scare off whichever middle-aged virgin was about to challenge me to battle. I never once raised my little wooden sword.

Eventually, Theresa found me. She was out of breath and sweating.

“Do you like it?” she said as two teens dramatically fake died on each other’s sword.

“It’s great,” I said, not trying to fake my indifference.

“Well, if you’re going to be like that, I challenge you to a duel!” Theresa said, clasping her wooden sword by its hilt.

“C’mon, Theresa, you know I don’t want to.”

“But I have sworn an oath, and ye have stolen me family’s potatoes, and for that, ye will die!”

I cracked a smile. The first in a month.

“Over there!” she cried. “On the grand bridge is where we shall settle this slight against God and country.”

The grand bridge was a wooden footbridge about six feet across. The railings didn’t look sturdy. It wasn’t particularly high, only four feet above the ground, and all the trees had been cleared around it. Theresa drew her sword, and begrudgingly, so did I.

It certainly wasn’t a battle of skill, strength, and resilience. Instead, it resembled two bored toddlers tapping sticks together, but Theresa wouldn’t give up, and she pressed more and more. Her strikes became snappier. She pirouetted and danced about me until one strike of her flimsy wooden sword wrapped against my knuckles.

“Ow!” I cried out, my knuckles red and my eyes watering.

“Oh my god! I’m sorry. Are you OK?” Theresa said, coming up to inspect the damage.

What happened next, I can barely recall. But I remember a sort of anger. Not at Theresa, at least not what I felt at the time, but maybe just anger at everything else, everyone else. Paul was gone. I was alone, without the one person in the world who’d managed to truly love me, and now I was back to square one. Regardless, everyone tried to make me feel better, to encourage me to enjoy life because I had so much left of it (I was never sure how they could be so confident of that, given that no one had bothered to tell me that Paul would die at the age of thirty-two). All of that, every drop, was condensed into the searing pain in my knuckles.

In that moment, my wooden sword became a flaming steel blade, cleansing me of the pain and the relentless chirpiness of it all. What I found was a moment of pure release, even joy, as I struck back at Theresa. Irrespective of how I felt, she smiled and fought back. As our swords clattered, again and again, I felt the damp patches under my arms grow, and my biceps burn with each successive blow.

“Whoa! Take it easy!” Theresa called out as I landed three consecutive strikes that threw splinters from the blades like sparks from an angle grinder. But I was tired of taking it easy. If Theresa wanted me to be here, then I was going to give it my all. It’s what she wanted and what she deserved.

Again. Again. Again.

All I remember is the clattering of wood, Theresa stumbling, and the rotten railing of the pedestrian bridge cracking as she tumbled through it. She came down with a thud in the dirt, and for the first time in over a month, I burst out laughing. Dopamine merged with adrenaline, and the burning in my arms and thighs spread to my gut as I doubled over and cried out, “I beat you!”

I didn’t stop until one of the teenage girls we’d seen fighting let out an ear-puncturing shriek. That’s when I looked at Theresa. I saw her there, motionless, impaled upon the shattered shaft of a tree. It was no more than three feet tall. It protruded from her chest, the blood pooling around it and dripping down to the dirt. I threw myself down beside her. The laughter and joy ripped away like an elevator plummeting to the ground. Her eyes didn’t move as I slumped over her. I only vaguely heard the muffled noise of someone yanking a cellphone from under their chain mail and calling for the ambulance. I just sat there. Confused and alone.

#

I’d lost both of them. My husband. My best friend. The police said it was clear it was an accident. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling responsible for regretting the joy I felt at that moment. No matter what anyone says, I killed my best friend.

The other mourners mingled around me in the gloom. The wind flowing over the graveyard stung my face, streaking my tears. People paid their condolences to the family, but not to me. They knew. Even if it was an accident. It was me that did it.

The cemetery slowly returned to its regular operation, still and longing, as everyone left. Paul wasn’t buried here. He was twenty miles away in his family plot, closer to his parents. I understood. They’d had him for longer than I had.

We’d met four years ago. Theresa had just helped me out of one of my infamous ruts, and I was set up in a new apartment with another one of her no-strings-attached loans. I always said I’d pay her back, but I rarely did, and even rarer in full. She said she never minded. She earned enough in her marketing job, and she wasn’t betrothed to any man, woman, or child.

I’ve got to say it was a bit of a cliché how I met Paul. I was sitting in the launderette aimlessly flicking through a tattered magazine when the ding of the doorbell rang out, followed by clattering, smashing, and cursing. Whoever had come in had fallen through the door rather than walking through it. They had lain on the floor, draped in polo shirts and casual pants, desperately trying to untangle themselves. In that moment, that single moment, I was in better control of things than Paul was. The owner was cursing him out as I walked over, chuckling to myself while also feeling sorry for the guy on the floor. Paul was staggering back to his feet and looking bewildered by the time I'd gotten over there. I can’t say I’ve ever been shy, not like Theresa, and so with him standing there bleary-eyed, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. We moved in together six months later.

Paul was successful. If you consider earning just under six figures and working sixty hours a week successful. I was successful in other ways. Ways that actually meant existing for the oxygen passing into your lungs. But none of that mattered. Paul took care of me, and I took care of him. Thankfully, Theresa approved, which was only the second time ever (the first being when eight-year-old me went out with Bobby Martinez for seventeen hours). We all got on so well that if Theresa and Paul hadn’t been earning the money they were, we’d all have probably lived together like in one of those quirky New York sitcoms.

We were all together when Theresa became VP of her dad’s company and when I completed my community college studies in English Literature. Naturally, Theresa was my Maid of Honor at the wedding. It was a small affair. Paul had wanted to go big, but I’d insisted on something small and meaningful. Of course, it didn’t mean that we didn’t have the best champagne going.

Then came Paul’s accident. Not the one that killed him. This was when he broke his leg playing hockey. He was in a wheelchair for a week and on crutches even longer. It took him six months of physio to get better, but I helped him through it, and so did Theresa. When I had to go out of town for a weekend to visit my ailing grandfather one last time, Theresa took care of Paul. Like I said, I’ve always been able to depend on her for everything.

For all that Theresa had done and continued to do for me, I wanted to do something for her. Where I’d not been lucky in love but had plenty of experience, she was destined to share her later years with at least six cats and two Corgis. So, I tried, repeatedly, to set her up. But it was tough to find guys that I thought lived up to her standards. There was one guy at community college, a friend of Paul’s here and there, and even a guy I met at a pastry shop that I thought would be good enough for a one-night stand. None of them worked out. In fact, I wasn’t sure if Theresa ever went to any of the dates. She always quickly closed the conversation. She had, however, taken up skating to support Paul in his rehabilitation. I watched them once, but it was so cold in there and my life had been enough of a balancing act already without adding ice skates into the equation. So, Theresa went with Paul, and I was glad for it.

Theresa’s mom tapped me on the shoulder in the cemetery. My umbrella had slipped, and I was drenched.

“Are you OK, dear?” she said stoically, like she wasn’t talking to the person who had, for all intents and purposes, killed her daughter. Her gaze didn’t shift from me when I looked up at her.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

God bless Theresa’s mom. She knew what I was like and what Theresa had done for me. Even after how I’d repaid their whole family, she still seemed concerned.

“OK, dear. We’re going back to my house for the wake if you want to join us.”

“Oh, OK.” It was the last thing I wanted at that moment.

“It’s OK, honey. You know that, right? We know it was an accident. The worst accident … but … but ….”

Theresa’s dad put his arm around her as she broke down and I glanced away, not wanting to catch their eyes. She heaved a few sobs into his chest and then gathered herself, wiping at her eyes and straightening herself up. She’d always been practical, and matter of fact, and even the death of her daughter would not stop her.

“Do you still have a key to Theresa’s apartment, dear?” she said.

“Yeah, yeah, I do.”

“Would you do me a favor? Would you stop by there on the way to the wake? It’s just that she has all the old photos of when she was growing up. I think she was putting them on the computer. Would you be kind enough to go get them? I’d love to look at them today.”

“OK, sure.” It was the least I could do, right?

#

I drove in my old Ford without music. The only sound was the incessant tapping of the rain on the windshield. There was a leak somewhere in the door seal that would occasionally let a drop through, splashing me on the cheek, not that you could tell.

I got to Intersection 412 and turned right. I’d driven this way a thousand times before to Theresa’s, but it was not a route I’d taken since Paul had died. It only occurred to me as I rounded the bend that I was coming up on where he’d crashed. By that point, it was too late. I couldn’t turn back. It was in my peripheral vision for a millisecond, and then it dominated my entire world.

They still hadn’t fixed the barriers. They were twisted and sheared. At the base of one, a few bouquets of dead flowers drowned in the rain. Why had he even come this way to work that day? It was the long way, after all.

I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal as far as it would go and forced myself to scrunch my eyes as much as I could until I was past it. I daren’t look in the rearview mirror for fear of seeing Paul sitting there, his head split open, his brains in his lap.

Five minutes later and I was at Theresa’s. A nice three-bed outside of town, constructed in the 1930s. Theresa may have had the money to fall into the trappings of elitism and snobbery, but she never did. I’d always admired her for that.

I turned the latch and went into Theresa’s now silent home. I couldn’t think of a time when I’d been inside and she hadn’t been there. There was always noise, distractions, something. Now nothing. The uncomfortable silence around me was growing larger by the day.

I took the time to linger. To trace my hands over Theresa’s drinks cabinet and record player. To picture us there, drunk in her living room, or in the kitchen the morning after, frying bacon. Theresa always made the bacon. She always took care of me.

After a short search downstairs, I resolved that the photo albums were probably upstairs in Theresa’s old dresser. She’d picked it up at the Salvation Army and rented a U-Haul specifically to get it back to her place. We got it upstairs together, piece by piece. We got drunk that night too.

I paused to use the restroom. Sitting there, I quietly hummed to myself, trying to stave off the encroaching silence.

As I washed my hands, I noticed Theresa’s toothbrush lying on the edge of the sink. If there was one thing Theresa splashed out on, it was toothbrushes. Thin, bendy necks and ridges all over. How long would it be until I could look at anything in my world and not be reminded of Paul or Theresa? The only two people who’d truly mattered to me, who’d cared about me.

I’d felt a headache coming on since I’d gotten past the crash site, so I cracked open the cabinet to search through Theresa’s stash. Inside, it surprised me to find another toothbrush in a small cup. Another one of Theresa’s waiting for its turn? Or maybe one of those dates had worked out after all? I took the pills and moved on to the bedroom.

Theresa’s bedroom. Where we’d sat and talked. Where I’d been comforted at some of my lowest points. When some jerk had cheated on me, or worse.

The curio did nothing to relieve the pain of my memories. All it contained were memories. They spread throughout the years: our teens, twenties, our damned thirties; the decade that we declared would be our best and turned out to be the collective worse. At least Paul and Theresa weren’t here to deal with that thought.

I found the photo album in a lower drawer. Hefting it over, I sat on the bed cross-legged and flicked through it, lingering on so many images that now seemed to have never happened. I don’t know how long I was there, but I know that the sun was setting when I found it. It was loose, sitting towards the pages at the back. A photo from a year ago at a friend’s birthday party. They’d had a photo booth at that party. There, suddenly staring back at me, were Theresa and Paul—together. But they weren’t looking at the camera, at me. Instead, they were looking at one another. There was a hand on a thigh, another on a face. Far too intimate for friends, even the closest friends. That’s when it all hit me, and I learned the truth, not about Theresa and Paul, but about myself.

Had I always known that they were sleeping together? Had I perhaps ignored it or just wished it away, certain that neither of them would do that to me?

Had I ignored the fact that when Paul was rehabilitating his broken leg, he only seemed to perk up when Theresa visited? Did I ignore the fact that sometimes when I was feeling down and didn’t want to venture out, my two best friends went out anyway, and Paul would sometimes crash at Theresa’s? Did I ignore the fact that there was an additional toothbrush in Theresa’s house? Did I overlook the fact that the alternative route that Paul took on the day of his death was the same route we always took to Theresa’s?

No. I always knew. And I knew that was the truth because Theresa was dead. What happened on the bridge five days ago was no accident. The swinging of my blade, blunt and splintered, was what I’d been craving for, sharpened with the pain of losing Paul. Knowing I was alone, and that was doubly true because he’d already chosen someone else before he checked out.

Was it also true that I saw the bridge was rotten? That off its edge lay some sharp splintered trunks and jagged rocks.

Yes.

Did I push her, hoping?

Yes.

Do I regret it?

END