There was nothing special about that particular night. Nothing at all. The TV was blaring in the living room and the dishes clattered in the kitchen with the promise of dinner.
My eldest son Jeremy was sitting cross-legged on the floor and mashing the controller buttons with a force that made me wonder whether the plastic knobs or his thumbs would give out first.
Grappling with the thought of a dislocated finger likely being cheaper to fix, I rattled the ice in my whiskey glass and cleared my throat for good measure, “Hey, lay off, Jer, remember what happened to the last one?”
The “last one” was still sitting on the garage table, waiting for me to do something about it. Jeremy had thrown one of his fits and smashed it to pieces against the wall. We didn’t bug him too much about it back then, as it had only been two weeks since the passing of our youngest child and we were all going through something similar.
It’s funny to think how much coping mechanisms can vary from person to person. Some turn to alcohol, drowning themselves in liquor every night until the consequences of their drunken behavior finally catch up to them. Others take to violence, gritting their teeth through every social interaction until the build-up is finally enough to punch a hole through the wall. Then, there’s the type that confines themselves to their room and refuses to come out under any circumstances.
The latter was our daughter, Maisie, by the way. She was only fourteen, and yet it somehow felt like she hadn’t been a part of our family for a while. When she wasn’t at school, she spent all of her time locked away in her room, on the computer, or with her head under the covers. We’d long since given up trying to coax her out and resorted to bringing her dinner plate upstairs and leaving it by her door.
I nursed my drink thoughtfully, watching Jeremy swing and miss at a giant orc.
“Fuck!” he screamed, his shoulders tensing visibly, as the frail elven creature he was playing as was lifted off its feet and slammed into the ground, “Fuck this stupid game!”
Not wanting to end up with another hole in the wall, I scrambled to my feet and pried the controller out of my son’s hands. He resisted at first, but my solemn expression seemed to ground him.
“Time out, Jer,” I said, “Go set the table. Dinner’s almost ready.”
I had no way of knowing this, of course, as my wife was doing the cooking that night, but I had to say something. Plus, I knew it would take a while to set the table just the way my wife liked it.
“Set an extra place tonight,” my wife Lily said, coming into the dining room, her cheeks flushed.
“Why?” Jeremy stared at her, “Is Maisie going to eat with us?”
My interest was piqued too, and I wondered if this meant we were going to take the first step towards being a family again.
“Yes,” Lily’s lips pursed into a thin line, “Yes, she is.”
We stared at her in disbelief. To my knowledge, Maisie hadn’t been downstairs in over three months. Aside from her quick disappearances out the front door, I never saw her at all. And most of the time I missed those altogether. How on earth had my wife convinced her to join us for dinner?
I suppose I’ve been putting off giving any details about my wife. You see, the loss has affected her in a…slightly different way. In a sense, I feel like talking about her “coping mechanism” could potentially drive a permanent rift between us and destroy what is left of our marriage.
That being said, I’m not entirely sure there’s anything left. Ever since the day our son died, she’s been…detached from reality. I suppose in a way, we all were, but my wife was different. She…couldn’t…or wouldn’t come to terms with the fact that Kendall was gone.
No, not in the way you’re thinking. She didn’t sit on the edge of her bed, crying for hours. Nor did she spend every waking moment surrounded by photo albums or toys or clothes. In fact, she didn’t cry or dwell on it at all.
Instead, she…well, she…she carried the urn around. She carried it around and talked to it as if it were a real person.
“Comfortable?” she cooed as she strapped it into the baby seat of our car just the other week. I watched her through the rear-view mirror, my skin prickling. Needless to say, I didn’t like going out with my wife. She turned heads wherever she went: the grocery store, the spa, the bank - she was undoubtedly known as the “crazy lady with the urn”.
She insisted we set a place for our son every time we sat down to eat. Instead of talking to the rest of the family, she’d have conversations with the urn over dinner. It’s a wonder she didn’t try to feed it as well.
At this point, I had no idea who Lily was. Our formerly prosperous marriage had quickly declined into one of convenience and I often found myself fantasizing about other women. Once my side of the bed had been occupied, I was banished to sleep on the downstairs couch, so I could use the TV to satisfy my own needs without judgment. I’m sure my wife wouldn’t have noticed if I’d started bringing dates home, but I never did, secretly hoping a day would come when things went back to normal.
“Maisie’s going to eat with us?” Jeremy repeated, his hand frozen in mid-air. His angry composure seemed to have vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
For a moment, the room was enveloped in stunned silence. Then, Lily spoke.
“Yes. She will be joining us from now on.”
My heart fluttered as hope filled my lungs. It was finally happening. I could almost feel the broken pieces of our family slithering towards the dining room table from every corner of the house, to form a long-lost family unit.
“Dinner is almost ready,” Lily blurted out, turning on her heel and heading towards the kitchen, “I’ll just get Kendall.”
I got up to pour myself another drink. Of course, she would get Kendall. Of course, things couldn’t just go back to normal instantly. It would take time. Even so, as she brought out the urn and sat it on top of the plate, followed by a light kiss on the lid, I knew I could never get used to this.
“Shall I call Maisie?” I asked, as my wife reappeared with a serving dish, “Or will you…?”
A strange expression crossed her face. She stood there, motionless, as though she was thinking long and hard about what to say. I swallowed, wondering if she hadn’t heard my question.
“No,” she retorted eventually, “She’ll join us when she’s ready.”
And that was that. Neither Jeremy nor I questioned it any further, instead tucking into the dinner Lily had prepared for us. We didn’t say a word throughout. My wife, on the other hand, said plenty.
“Enjoying your peas, Kenny?” she asked the urn amidst bites, “They’re fresh from the garden, just how you like them. Remember when we used to pick them together at grandma’s? She taught me how to plant them, too. Before she passed away last year.”
I stared at my plate, my stomach in knots. I needed another drink. Badly. But the bottle was in the living room. I wondered if I could slip away quietly to fetch it, when Jeremy piped up.
“When’s Maisie coming down?” he asked, arranging his peas in a straight line, “We’re almost done with dinner.”
My wife looked like she’d been jolted awake from a pleasant dream.
“I- uh-” she began, her cheeks flushing, “Oh, Maisie? Yeah, perhaps another day.”
We stared at her, bewildered, but she seemed totally oblivious to our change in demeanor, chatting away to Kendall about rhubarb and its benefits on the body.
“Mom?” Jeremy asked again, his voice quivering, “Why won’t Maisie come down?”
It was like she hadn’t even heard him. Either that, or she was doing her best to not pay attention. Clearly, it was a subject she didn’t want to address.
“What’s your favorite vegetable, hmm, sweetie?” she giggled, her tone suddenly cold, as if she didn’t mean a word of what she was saying.
“Mom!” Jeremy sat upright in his chair and waved a hand in front of her face, “Where the fuck’s Maisie?”
I tensed up, knowing full-well Jeremy wasn’t supposed to speak to his mother that way, but the situation seemed to be spiraling out of control before I could stop it.
“Why can’t you just talk to us every once in a while, huh?” he exploded, “If you spent half the time with us that you spend with that stupid thing, then maybe we would still be a family!”
Caught in a fit of rage, Jeremy grasped his end of the tablecloth and pulled it towards him, sending the dishes crashing to the floor. Kendall’s urn, sitting atop one of the plates, succumbed to the same fate.
Crash. Clatter. Crack.
“Kenny!” my wife screeched, leaping to her feet and dashing around the dining table, “Baby!”
I craned my neck to look over the damage. Amidst the porcelain shards and utensils, the urn lay cracked in half, its lid nowhere to be found.
It was…empty.
“Kendall!” Lily landed knees-first on the shards, the porcelain crunching under her weight.
Nothing could have prepared me for what she did next.
Jeremy and I watched in horror as my frantic wife snatched one half of the urn and stuck her tongue out to lick it, her fingers desperately searching for any remains left on the floor. She swept her hands across the ground, cutting her skin up in the process, and shoved the whole lot into her mouth, her eyes rolling back inside her head.
I wanted to vomit. No, I wanted to run. My heart was pounding at ten times its normal rate, threatening to leap out of my throat. My skin was clammy and my vision blurred, but not enough to stop me from seeing the monster that was my wife, stuffing ashes, blood, and porcelain shards down her throat.
Jeremy must have felt the same way, but I couldn’t see him, my tunnel vision only allowing the image of Lily and her feast.
“Mom!” I heard him cry, his voice a mixture of terror and disgust. He didn’t say anything else either, making do with only a gargled gasp and short, rapid pants.
There was nothing to say. Even now that I look back on it I cannot think of a single coherent sentence that would have befitted the circumstances. I knew instantly that my wife was gone and I’d never be able to see her the same way.
Grabbing Jeremy by the arm, I tugged him away from the table, leaving Lily scavenging the floor. I needed to save my children. I’d get Maisie out of her room whether she cooperated or not and take them both to my parents’ house. At least that way I’d know they were safe before I dealt with my wife - or what was left of her.
Jeremy was still in shock as I pulled him up the stairs, so he didn’t protest. He seemed to know exactly what we were about to do and I needed all the help I could get. Maisie had never been easy to deal with and I knew it would take some time to convince her we had to get out - now. Time we did not have.
But as we barged in through the door of her bedroom, I instantly knew my plan wasn’t going to work out.
The room was empty.
The bed was made without a single crease, the computer was off, and the desk was arranged neatly as if it were only there for show, rather than a part of someone’s living space. A large, maroon urn sat in the middle of it.
I didn’t need to ask. I already knew what happened.
She had run out.