“She wasn’t sad anymore
she was numb,
and numb,
she knew,
was somehow worse.”
~Atticus
The day after, Susan sat. She did nothing. Society kindly left her alone—though Clive called her. And James, though he dropped the phone in his nervousness. Susan didn’t flinch.
The day after, Susan sat.
She received visitors and loathed them. She hated the fumbling words, the compassionate looks of her friends, the inability of all humans to deal with a grief so heavy. She hated the way words weren’t enough, and hugs were worse. A centaur told her once that a human who lost all their family to a shipwreck was too wounded to be touched; any touch would press the wound. She knew him to be right, and endured the hugs with the little grace she had left, because she hated being alone more than anything else.
But visitors only came during visiting hours, and her aunt and uncle never came afterwards. When the door closed behind the last visitor, Susan sat.
As nights went by, she tried reading, to guard off the ghosts that filled the house, the ones that reached for the plates in the cupboard, that hung the drying cloth on the hook (she started crying when she used it), or reached blindly for the glasses that were always on top of the Bible (it was her father’s favorite book; she couldn’t even touch it now). Reading kept her eyes off the faces that vanished, eyes down and mind too occupied to see the ghosts.
Until she realised that most of the books were Edmund’s. The first time she found one of his scraps of paper with a handwritten observation on it she slammed the book and fled from the living room, from memories of the books stacked on his desk in Narnia with the same handwriting, from the unbearable reminders of him. She fled to her room, the only one that didn’t have their things filling it, their laughter and movement and life haunting it. The losses of that life she saw over and over as she saw each thing they loved. She sat at her vanity, with all the things she had loved, and looked in the mirror.
The Gentle Queen. She was gone. There was nothing of beauty or gentleness left in the weary reflection.
Even less was she the Belle of the Ball.
She was only Susan, and the people who had cared for Susan, just Susan, were gone. She ached for their love.
The next day she sat all morning, a slow resolve building in her to no longer be helpless. To shut grief out, to conquer it and tell it no, and start living again. An hour before the visitors arrived, she locked the front door, and started moving things. Everything they lived with and loved went into their rooms.
Then she locked their rooms, unlocked the front door, and started living.
But not laughing.
She went to tea with Aunt Alberta. Her aunt’s hands shook all the time, tremors that clattered teacup to plate, but her head was high and her glance rigid. Neither of them cried, but Aunt Alberta told her that Susan was young, and should smile more. People expected it.
How did she explain that the only things that made her smile were in the past, and the past was beyond touch but filling her eyes when people talked about it? When it haunted her house?
Susan came back only to sleep, walking right past those rooms with locked doors. She could almost—almost—breathe and she would believe—that her family were behind those doors, and she could hear Peter getting into bed, now that she was home. Pretend she heard Edmund’s quiet snores or scratching pen and low mutterings about the superiority of Narnian quills. Maybe even catch the sound of Lucy’s heavy, even breathing. For just a moment, she could believe they lived, and she hadn’t seen them because of her choice. That they lived and loved her. She could believe that, for just a moment.
She had to, or she wouldn’t make it through the hall. Once in her room, she locked it up, as securely as their doors, and lay staring at the ceiling, pushing heavy thoughts away with plans for the next day. And so she existed.
Clive saw through it but didn’t push. James hovered. And she tried to learn to smile. Only—beauty hurt to see (it was an empty promise, empty because beauty reminded her of good things, the good things in the world weren’t in this world anymore), laughter created aches, and there didn’t seem to be much else. People were afraid to praise the grief-stricken (her empty face probably didn’t help), and Lucy was gone.
She taught herself a glamorous smile, a patient smile, and a polite smile, and tried not to think what Edmund would have said about them.
Until one day someone complimented her, when she had her glamorous smile on. They told her she was beautiful. She’d loved that once. But now she went home and looked in the mirror, watching herself smile, watching her mouth twist in a faux imitation of life.
Edmund would have seen right through it, and still found something beautiful within her to show her. Peter would have smiled and drawn her close, keeping her safe. And Lucy would have made her laugh.
She broke down again, her resolution to live cracking, pieces beginning to fall, and she opened herself to the memories.
Edmund, what would you have found? What is in me that is worth loving, worth living again?
He didn’t answer. Not even his ghost. And she realised she had numbed herself so completely to their memories that she hadn’t seen or heard them in days.
“Peter? Edmund? Lucy? Dad? Mom?”
Silence and the dark answered her. She curled into a ball and cried, in an empty house that had just lost even its ghosts.
OOOOO
But not its God, the golden Lion who gave life and took it away. He was there still, through the dark nights and the numb days.
Come home, Susan. Your home and heart are locked, but I will be your home. Come and live with me; I will teach you how.