Wendy Reed - An Accidental Memoir. How I Killed Someone and Other Stories

Reed and I were headed south to the dentists office on the interstate. It was his first appointment ever and he was excited about being a big boy. We werent late. We had time to spare. I put my windshield wipers on intermittent then checked and merged into the right lane.

Thats when the back of our Montero veered left and I turned into the direction of the swerve. For a second we were floating. Then everything went sideways. There was a whirring sound somewhere. And then we were moving faster.

Its odd to realize your car is out of control. Even though the median was across four lanes, on the other side of the freeway, I was suddenly there, in it. Mud was flying everywhere; my car was moving, but I couldnt be sure if it was in circles or what.

Then things slowed.

I remember thinking I cant believe Ive gone across the freeway in morning traffic and not been hit. I remember thinking that I would have to tell my husband about the mudhe would not be happy. Id get it washed before he saw it.

I reached back to touch Reed in his car seat when I heard a sound like something exploding. Motion began again. We were spinning. I tried to see where but I couldnt find anything to focus on. Then we were still again.

Maybe I tried to think. I do not remember unbuckling or getting out of my car. No one saw me get out of the car, so it is possible that I climbed over the seat to get to my son, but it seems I would remember doing such an unusual thing.

I saw the red lever to unbuckle his car seat. My eyes scanned him from head to toe and over and over I said, Youre all right. Its all right. Were all right. Reed wasnt crying but something in my manner or my words must have scared him because before he was out of the car seat, he started. Someone, a man or a woman, asked if we were okay. I think I said yes. It was several yards from the median to the shoulder but I dont remember walking there.

Cars were lined up as far as I could see. I knew those people would be late for work all because of me. Im sorry, I thought. I was so very sorry. Thats when I saw my Montero. The frame was broken in half, the passenger side caved completely in. No glass was left in the windows and a tire lay several feet away. I must have hit something. Another car. Somebody elses car. And then I saw the other car. The somebodys car.

Are they okay? I asked, and I know I said it out loud because a nice lady with blonde hair looked at me.

Theyre just having a hard time getting her out, a voice behind me explained. Someone was stroking my hair.

Maam, which hospital do you want to be taken to? A paramedic waited for my answer.

By reflex, I guess, Id managed to run down the checklist I used to teach CPR. I mentally ran it again. Reed was crying; I heard him. If he was crying, then he was breathing. If he was breathing, then he was fine. Were fine, just fine, thanks. See. Look. Were fine.

The air hung thick with humidity. But I could see through it. Lights. Red. Flashing. The lights of emergency vehicles, fire trucks, an ambulance. I could see them loading a bundle of white sheets onto a stretcher. A her, they had said.

The bundle was a her.

I wonder what her brain recorded, if she saw the Montero enter the median, if she saw it shoot into her lane facing the wrong direction, if, when she was thirty-five, thirty, twenty-five, twenty, fifteen feet away and still coming at us, she saw Reeds eyesclosed or maybe open wideif she thought anything at all as her Camry smashed head on into us below the passenger side mirror behind the right front tire, if she registered the binding of the seat belt as it held her, if she saw the spray of shattered windshieldor if by that time her brain was no longer recording sensations.

To live through a wreck is to wish you had a stop buttonand not just for the cascading memories. Even a pause button would have given me some relief.

I was not working then and had not worked full-time since getting married at seventeen. Teachers at my high school thought I must be pregnant. I wasnt. However by the next Mothers Dayand in spite of having been diagnosed with uterine polyps when I was 11according to three EPT sticks I was. I was also pulling an A in Psych 101, so it looked as though I might make it in pre-med after all. Spring is the season famous for fertility and apparently I was fertile, too.

I was nineteen and a half and had a 4.0 when Brittany was born. I was not a statistic, just a mother who happened to be a teenager.

For her first birthday I told her she was getting a sister.

Life came easy.

I didnt consider pregnancy the ultimate act of creation that culminated in a tiny work of art, but I worked at it as obsessively as any artist does. I measured every morsel that went into my mouth; I became a walking vitamin and talking encyclopedia; I documented every pound, stretch mark, and perinatal aerobics class. I even I finished out the season with my softball teamJust dont slide, my OB/GYN said. I documented the first time my daughter and I stole a base togethersecond base in the first inning and we scored. At that time, I thought all artists alien, impractical, neurotic, hoity-toity. Yet there I was, a Mommy-artist-cum-athlete.

In 1992, during Monday night football, my son was born. The next day my husband gave me a diamond ring.

Wed been divorced several years by the time I stood with my children before Michelangelos Piet staring at Marys youthful face. The intricate details of love are carved hard and sorrowful as she holds the dead body of her son. I marveled that life and death and love and sacrifice could appear out of a single block of marble. My son wasnt marveling. He was antsy. Theres too much art here, he said. I snapped a photograph with my disposable camera then bought us all gelato.

The wreck had happened in May 1996, when I was three months shy of thirty. I felt old because I was the oldest student entering graduate school, at least of the ones getting a degree in English.

Mommy has homework, I told Brittany and Brianne, then 10 and 8.

Other mothers dont, they said.

I had not meant to go back to school any more than Id meant to become a stay-at-home mom with a BS in education. Id spent so much time reading childrens books that I thought Id try my hand at writing one. I wound up in a fiction-writing class instead. It had wrapped up right before the wreck. My plan was to enjoy the break between terms before starting the Bibliography and Research Methods class in June. In May spring isnt over but it felt like summer had already begun.

This is not a story about seasons, though.

Seasons have a beginning and an end, a datecertainty.

Lifes not so sure.

Science says beginning isnt instinctual for us; we have to learn and then remember left before we can go rightreflection and direction. Memory also functions selectively. When the neural wiring seems faulty, and a past event comes in cloudy to us, we can focus on obscure details of an objects shape or coloring .