cassandra ann stage
beloved daughter of
michelle and clifford stage
Michelle felt like she’d been kicked in the chest. The date on the stone had Cassie dead for almost thirteen months. It was impossible. Michelle fought to evoke every sensation from the night Cliff had disappeared—the rain slashing white trails across the deck, the water dripping from the sheriff’s yellow slicker, the smell of mold and decaying leaves along the ground. She recalled the sting of the cut at her knee, the leaves and sticks tangled in her hair. She closed her eyes and made it all real, made it smell and taste and burn, felt the pain in her ribs where she’d hit the tree. She looked around at the trees in the cemetery, rows upon rows of headstones, flowers laid at the bases of some, others bare, the fresh dirt of recently dug graves. It was very convincing.
She looked over at Cliff and saw he was crying. How could they believe such different things? She was not about to bury Cassie, yet he believed their daughter already lay beneath six feet of earth. In her world there had been no car accident, no funeral, no grief and mourning, while Cliff’s world was marshaled by tragedy, loss, and sadness. He was crippled with remorse over something that, in Michelle’s mind, had never happened.
If she didn’t accept it, what was next? Photos of the wrecked Cherokee, a police report, stacks of insurance claims and hospital bills?
“I don’t know what you expect me to say, Cliff. I spoke to Cassie a few nights ago.”
“Michelle . . . that’s just not—”
“Stop, Cliff. Please, just stop. Why can’t you just listen?”
Michelle knelt on the grass, put her palms to the ground, feeling the moisture hidden in the soil. She closed her eyes and thumbed her wedding ring. The ceremony, the music, the reception rushed back to her. Certainly, they still shared all those things, all the days before now—Cassie’s birth, her first day of school, her chicken pox, the medal she won at her third swim meet—the ordinary marrow of life. They still shared the memory of buying the car dealership, the celebration they’d had that evening after putting Cassie to bed, making love out on the patio, Cliff excited over his plan for the pool, pacing it off in his robe, marking the corners with Budweiser bottles, laying the step ladder on the grass where the diving board would be. “Cassie will be an Olympic swimmer,” he had told her. “And you, well, you’ll just sit around the pool in your bikini looking gorgeous.”
“Do you remember the night you planned out the pool?” Michelle asked Cliff, raising her eyes toward him. He squatted down next to her on the grass.
After a moment, Cliff nodded. “Yeah. I do,” he said. “We were both really drunk that night. Cassie was five. I dug that stupid trench, remember? Ended up destroying half the backyard.”
The recollection was so clear in Michelle’s mind, Cliff filling the hole with water from the garden hose. “As I remember,” she said, “you weren’t content with ruining the yard. You turned the hose on me.”
Cliff laughed. “God, you were so beautiful that night, standing there dripping wet, your skin showing through the nightgown. When you pulled it over your head, I thought I would lose my mind. We made love on that rickety old chaise lounge on the patio, remember? I was scared the neighbors would hear and you were so drunk you didn’t care. That was a perfect night, Michelle.”
She sat back on her heels, confused by how clearly they both remembered the same thing. What if Cliff was right, what if there had been an accident? Would it mean she was delusional? Or worse, insane? Surely, she would have some recollection, she thought. But the alternative was even more disturbing. What if she had spoken to Cassie on the phone that night at the cabin? Where was Cassie now? Where was everything she remembered? Michelle felt as though she were being torn in two, stretched to the point of ripping. She threw her head back and drew a sharp breath. The clouds raced across the sky above her, the tiny leaves on the branches were a new, delicate green.
Michelle felt Cliff’s hands on her shoulders and heard his voice as if he were speaking from the other side of a wall.
When they returned from the cemetery, Michelle went upstairs for a nap. It surprised her when Cliff slid in behind her and caressed her shoulders. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t gone to the dealership. He never took naps. And after a few years of marriage, anytime he touched her it was only as a prelude to sex. She was almost asleep when he promised to drive her up to the cabin in a few weeks. She ignored his comment, too tired to fight in the moment.
Even though Cliff seemed like a changed man, Michelle wasn’t convinced his word was any good. Besides, she wasn’t about to wait “a few weeks” to return to Ardenwood.
*****
When Michelle woke, she rolled over to see Cliff asleep on top of the spread, still wearing his dress pants and white short-sleeved shirt, his tie slung over the alarm clock on the nightstand. He looked haggard and old. That wasn’t how he’d looked the day they’d driven to the cabin, Cliff shouting orders to his lead salesman over the cell phone, hanging up and complaining about how sluggish sales were. The man lying next to her looked like Cliff’s shed skin—dry and brittle and gray. Even so, something peaceful permeated his features, as if sleep gave him a release he’d never known before. He’d always fought sleep, staying up late to read or sitting out by the pool to nurse a highball, telling her he wasn’t “in the mood to sleep.”
She leaned over and put her lips to his, surprised by how soft they felt. He even smelled different, she thought, running her fingertips along his cheek. The side of his face was the first thing she’d fallen in love with. He’d been pinning a boy during a wrestling match, his body angled, his jaw frozen with determination. His cheeks were rosy now, the way they were when he wrestled, like he’d been sledding on a cold winter day. It gave him a boyish look that competitors often misjudged for frailty.
When she combed her fingers through his hair, his eyes opened and, for the first time in years, she desired him. Watching him wrestle, she had wondered what his hands would feel like on her skin, if his palms would be rough and hard, his touch a caress or a grip. After they married, he had been uncertain in bed, almost timid, as if he were discovering her body for the first time. It always excited her.
They had made love on their first date and almost every day thereafter for a month, as if they had invented sex and were trying to perfect it. It was at the end of their first month together when Cliff asked Michelle to marry him. She was seventeen, with braces, a junior in high school. She said no, and they ended up at a motel, her explaining why she couldn’t, him telling her why they should, then fighting, crying, and making love until morning. When Michelle got home, her parents were waiting in the living room, her father as solemn as a piece of furniture. Her parents grounded her for that stunt, but like she’d told Darcy, it was worth it. Cliff waved a red rose out the window of his Impala every afternoon when he cruised by.