Free Hold Still by Lynn Steger Strong Page B

his limbs over the top of her on the couch as they watched the same movies over and over, or they danced together to their mom’s records.
    Sometimes, after their mom had come out again, unlocking her office door and coming toward them slowly, seeming better somehow, seeming just barely willing to be their mom again, Ellie would put something fast and fun on the turntable and turn the music up loud. And she’d grab hold of Ben and her mom would sit and watch them until finally, sometimes, she’d dance with them. Her hair would fall from its bun, reaching down the middle of her back. They would all three swing their limbs and sing and dance. And those times, that fun, their mom free and careless, laughing with them after not even wanting them too close, all would have been because of Ellie. She’d known how to save all of them then.
    Her brother cups his coffee in one long-fingered hand and watches Ellie. She dips her finger, one more time, into his syrup, and keeps her eyes turned toward his plate.
    â€œI love you, you know?” she says.
    Her brother fingers the rim of the coffee with his free hand and looks down too into his empty plate.
    She passes him the rest of her omelet and sips her coffee. “I’m sorry, Benny,” she says.
    â€œI know, El,” her brother says. “Me too.”

Winter 2013
    W hen the phone rings, it’s the middle of the night, and every time, before she remembers, Maya thinks: Ellie . But then right after that she holds her breath, picks up the phone, and waits.
    Maya thinks later that she knew it was her even before she started speaking, the way she paused, the way she breathed in once, long, then spoke in one big rush.
    Annie gives no preamble. “I don’t sleep, right?” she says.
    This is the first that Maya’s heard from her since the day before it happened. She almost doesn’t know her voice.
    â€œI mean, I guess I must, because I’m still, vaguely, somehow functional. Restaurant to run. Responsibilities. I’m grateful for it, actually. Because then, at home, there’s Jack. And Jack. And Jack. And I can’t look away from it. I’m still such a mess and all to myself, it’s no good. But I don’t ever remember sleeping. I don’t remember waking up. I always have noise going, in the bedroom, in the living room. I keep the radio on all day. The other day therewas this story of this man who made a speech at a wedding about a friend of his from childhood who died. A kid, you know?”
    Maya digs her fingernails into her palms.
    â€œThey didn’t give much backstory, but he seemed like your average sort of best-man type, friend from college, lawyer or something at the time of the speech. The program was about people getting things wrong in some accidental, public way. I missed the first part. He gives this awful speech about his friend dying. About him being shot accidentally with a left-out hunting rifle when he was ten years old. Well, it was incredibly articulate and felt , you know? How he never really knew how to process it, how he thought about it still. But the groom was interviewed briefly and said the whole tent of people just went quiet. And when the guy was done, he was smiling through the tears he’d managed to evoke both in himself and nearly half the room. It was clear he either had no idea what he’d just said or somehow thought it’d done the job. Someone came on after that, an expert. He said sometimes people confuse the quality of their feelings. They’re too caught up in their weight. So this guy, he was just giving his friend and his new wife the thing so far in his life that felt as weighty as the thing that they’d just done.”
    Maya tries to keep her breathing quiet. She keeps the comforter close to her face and sits up with three pillows propped behind her. She is, luckily, in Ellie’s room, so she doesn’t have to worry about Stephen hearing,