Chapter One: The End of Ordinary

The papers were on the kitchen table where I had left them since Thursday, a stack of undergraduate essays on the political causes of the First World War, most of them wrong in the same way. It's possible to be so wrong that it's almost harder to correct than simple ignorance. I could tell the student had done the reading, absorbed the facts, and then arranged them into an argument that is technically accurate, but entirely beside the point.

What makes it worse is that this particular misunderstanding travels. Put thirty students in a lecture hall and the wrong idea spreads between them like a cold, so that by the time you are reading the twenty-third essay you are no longer surprised to find it there, only exhausted. I had been at it since two and still had eleven essays to go.

I had been reading through the same wrong answer for so long that the coffee had gone cold, a fact I realized when I went to take a sip and quickly spit it back into the mug and set it back down. I took it to the sink and looked out the window. The September afternoon light was starting to disappear earlier and earlier and for the first time since March I noticed the cold seeping in around the window frame. The oak at the end of the block had gone the color of old rust and was dropping leaves in batches whenever the wind gusted through it. I sat there watching for several minutes before realizing I had eleven more papers to suffer through. I sat back down at the table and picked up the pen again. I should have made a fresh pot of coffee, but I wanted to get these essays over with.

I had the radio on low in the other room, something classical that was more background than noise. Studies have shown that classical music improves focus and helps you relax. I must be a genetic anomaly because it wasn't working for me.

Vera had started that, years ago, the radio on in whatever room she wasn't in, so the apartment never felt entirely empty when she was working in her studio. I had kept the routine strictly out of habit. The music moved through the rooms, and I moved my red pen across someone's paragraph about the assassination at Sarajevo. The last of the afternoon light let go and the room went a shade darker without my quite registering it because I was trapped in another wrong essay answer.

The essay argued that Franz Ferdinand's death was the cause of the war rather than the occasion for it, a distinction the student hadn't grasped he was failing to make. This was the version of the error I found most difficult to be patient with, not because it was stupid but because it was so close to right. The student understood that the assassination mattered. He didn't yet understand that things can matter enormously without being the reason for anything. I wrote "a spark alone doesn't cause the fire" in the margin and turned the page.

I keep coming back to the irony of the trivial things that were occupying my mind in that moment. I was wondering if I could make it through the rest of the essays, twenty-two of them not quite landing the way I had hoped, and whether to make a fresh pot of coffee or just warm up what remained of the old one.

If I didn't complete the essays they'd sit on the table through dinner and into the evening. Vera tolerated it but the annoyance showed in her face and in the way she moved around them when she set the table. Small adjustments, moving a paper, making sure I could see her doing it, maybe making eye contact to be absolutely sure.

These are the inconsequential things that filled my mind when the phone rang.

I looked at the number on the screen. I didn't recognize it. A Connecticut area code but not one I knew. I thought briefly about not picking up the phone because I hate answering calls from numbers I don't recognize and I didn't have time for someone to try and sell me something. Ultimately, I gave in and picked up fully planning to hang up in two seconds.

The voice on the other end was a woman's, steady and professional, with a softness in it that I registered before anything else.

"Is this Daniel Mercier?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Mr. Mercier, my name is Carol Adkins. I'm calling from Hartford Hospital. Are you the husband of Vera Mercier?"

A lump immediately formed in my throat, and I struggled to get sound to come out, but somehow managed to screech, "Yes. What's going on?"

"Mr. Mercier, there has been an accident at the intersection of Vine and Alcott. A pedestrian was struck by a vehicle. We found identification and we believe the individual may be your wife."

"No, that's not possible. She went to a meeting. She'll be home by three." I looked at the clock on the microwave. It was four twenty-two.

"Can you tell me what your wife looks like, Mr. Mercier?"

"Dark hair, shoulder length. Five foot four. She would have been wearing a blue coat. She always wore it to meetings because she said it made her look like she knew what she was talking about. You must have someone with her ID."

There was a pause on the other end that lasted a few seconds and told me everything.

"Mr. Mercier, I'm very sorry. We need you to come to the hospital."

"Say that again."

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Mercier. We need you to come in."

"No. All of it. Can you say it again?"

She said it again, gently, in the same words, and I stood in the kitchen with the twenty-third essay face down on the table where I had put it. The apartment was exactly as it had been five minutes before, the mug on the counter, the pen on the table, the coat on the hook by the door. Nothing had moved. Nothing had changed. And yet the world I had been sitting in twenty minutes ago was gone and I was in a different one now with the leftover relics of the old world and I had no memory of crossing from one to the other.

"Thank you," I said, unsure why I had chosen those words.

She gave me a number to call and a name to ask for and said again that she was very sorry. I found a piece of paper on the counter and wrote the number down. I couldn't recall where I had found the paper or the pen and when I looked at the handwriting it didn't even look like my own.

I drove myself to the hospital even though I shouldn't have. I was aware of this in a distant way, all of it happening to someone else, or so it felt, until I pulled into the parking lot and sat in the car for a moment with my hands still on the wheel and could not remember the last three traffic lights.

A man in scrubs met me at the entrance and took me down a corridor and then another. I didn't ask where we were going because I didn't want to hear the answer. The hospital had the familiar smell of antiseptic and recycled air, and my shoes made a sound on the linoleum with every step that grew louder the further we walked, drowning out everything else.

Near the entrance, before we turned into the first corridor, a man was standing against the wall with two officers beside him. Long dark hair hanging across his face and a neck tattoo. A Motley Crue shirt, old and frayed at the collar, the kind of shirt that had been washed so many times the image had gone soft. His head was drooping slightly, the looseness of someone very drunk trying to hold himself upright. I probably wouldn't have even noticed him at all if it weren't for the presence of law enforcement.

The man guiding me stopped outside a door and said something to me in a low voice. Everything that came out of his mouth sounded like gibberish. I nodded as though I had understood him and then he opened the door.

She was lying very still. Her hair was across her face like it often did when she slept. She would always push it back without waking up. I took a step closer and saw her face properly and my legs went. I went down hard and the man in scrubs moved toward me and I put my hand up to stop him. I needed a moment. I needed a hundred years.

I got to my feet. My legs felt like they didn't belong to me. I walked to the bed and took both her hands in mine, and they were still warm and that was the worst thing. I stood there holding them and couldn't speak.

I don't know how long I stood there. I was inside something where time couldn't reach. At one point the man in scrubs stepped quietly out of the room and pulled the door behind him. However long it was it was long enough for everything I had been holding together since four twenty-two to come apart completely.

"You can't leave," I said, choking through it. My voice sounded foreign to me. "You can't do this. What am I supposed to do now? Vera. What am I supposed to do?"

There was no response. Of course there wasn't. There wouldn't be any more. I knew there wouldn't be and yet there I was asking anyway because I didn't know what else to do. Eleven years of marriage had taught me to bring every impossible thing to her, and she had always known what to do with it. This was the most impossible thing there had ever been and she wasn't able to help me with it.

I leaned down and pressed my lips to her forehead. Her skin was cool there, cooler than her hands, and I stayed with my forehead against hers for a long time. I said her name once, quietly, knowing she couldn't hear it but holding out hope anyway.

The next thing I remember was catching myself in the middle of a conversation, but I wasn't talking to Vera. I was talking to God, but it wasn't through prayer. It was closer to accusation.

"Why her?" My voice came out louder than I intended, raw and unsteady. "She was good. She loved us both. She didn't have an evil bone in her body, and you took her and you leave murderers, rapists and pedophiles. What kind of God does this to one of his children? I refuse to believe that a loving God would take someone like Vera. If you are real, give me something. Explain yourself!"

The room was silent. Nobody answered. I hadn't expected anyone to answer but the silence had a weight I felt in my chest. I felt betrayed in a way I wasn't sure I could come back from. I looked back down at her.

I thought about her studio at home, the canvases stacked against the wall, the brushes in their jars, the smell of linseed oil and turpentine that had lived in the apartment as long as we had. There would be no more painting. Whatever she had been working on when she left that morning would stay unfinished, and I would never know what it was going to be.

I straightened up. I was still holding her hand. I held it until I couldn't anymore and then I set it down carefully at her side and walked out of the room.

Two officers were waiting near the nurse's station. They introduced themselves and asked if I was Daniel Mercier. I said yes and one of them suggested we find somewhere to sit. We found a small family room off the main corridor.

"Mr. Mercier, I'm Officer Reyes. This is Officer Tate. Let me start by saying we're very sorry for your loss." He paused. "I need to ask you a few questions and give you some information about what happened this afternoon. Are you up for that?"

"Yes," I said.

"A vehicle ran a red light at the intersection of Vine and Alcott at approximately 3:47 this afternoon. Your wife was crossing with the signal. The driver traveling southbound ran the red light and struck your wife. He was taken into custody at the scene." He paused again. "He was brought into the hospital for a blood draw on suspicion of driving under the influence."

I looked at the wall. My mind immediately flashed to the moment near the entrance, the man in the Motley Crue shirt, obviously intoxicated. I wondered if that was him.

"There were a number of witnesses at the scene and all accounts were recorded. Your wife did have a few possessions on her person such as her phone and one ear bud that was recovered. Unfortunately, we will need to keep those through the conclusion of the investigation."

I didn't respond. I just thought about how much I couldn't care that I wouldn't have my wife's phone and ear bud. I wanted the owner of them back.

"Mr. Mercier, we also need to know where you'd like your wife transported for funeral preparation. There's no rush on that decision tonight if you need time."

"I don't know any funeral homes. I wasn't exactly planning on needing to have that kind of information." I paused. "I'm sorry. That wasn't -- I'm not myself right now."

"There's no need to apologize Mr. Mercier. As I said, take your time. It doesn't have to be decided tonight. Do you have any questions for us?"

"Where is he now."

"The driver has been treated. He's in a room. Minor injuries."

I didn't say anything. I was aware of a sound somewhere in the hospital, a cart being pushed down a hallway, and I focused on that while he kept talking.

"What will happen to him?" I finally asked.

"That is for the district attorney to decide. He will also be in contact with you."

I thanked the officers, stood up, shook their hands, and walked back out into the corridor.

I sat in my car and put my head on the steering wheel and wept in a way I hadn't done since I was a child, in great heaving waves that I could not have stopped if I had tried.

I don't know how long I sat in that parking lot. Long enough for the weeping to exhaust itself. When I stopped it left nothing behind but a flat and absolute silence.

I sat up and wiped my face with the back of my hand and looked through the windshield at the lights of the hospital entrance, people moving in and out through the glass doors, orderlies and visitors and a woman pushing a stroller. The ordinary business of a Tuesday night at Hartford Hospital continuing without interruption. For everyone but me the world hadn't stopped. It hadn't even slowed down. It had simply gone on without asking my permission, and at some point I was going to have to go on with it with half of me missing. I started the car and drove home.