Joyce hugged her knees to her chest and listened intently. They passed Manchester and the road emptied, so that it seemed they were alone in the world.
Kathleen felt a little like she was in a confessional. As a child she hated the dark wooden booths in church. They always scared her, and after she saw her first Dracula movie, they reminded her of coffins. The car was an intimate space, too, a good place for telling secrets, but it held no threat. Maybe it was the changing light, or Joyce’s rapt attention.
“It’s twenty-five years this month,” Kathleen said, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. “Remember you asked me how long ago it was that Danny died? I didn’t want to tell you because, well, I didn’t want you making allowances for me.” She lowered her voice to a mock-reverent whisper. “Poor Kathleen. It’s twenty-five years since her little boy died. Poor woman.”
Joyce started to speak, but Kathleen cut her off. “I couldn’t stand that because, I . . .” She stopped, and Joyce waited.
“Remember I told you the phone rang, and I went into the house? Well, it was Stan on the phone.”
Joyce sat up straight in her seat.
“I ran inside just to see who it was. Just for a second, you know. I thought it might be Pat, who was due to visit that month. But it was him.
“I hadn’t seen him or even spoken to him for five months. He called and said his wife was kicking him out of the house. He said he loved me and wanted to marry me. He wanted to come to the house. He was sobbing.
“I told Hal, ‘Watch your brother.’ I said, ‘I’ll be just a second.’ But it wasn’t just a second. And then I heard Hal scream. Not Danny. Hal.
“It was . . . That was . . .” The car filled up with the noise of the engine, the tires on the road, the air rushing over the windows.
“What a horrible sound. I can’t begin to tell you. Like a siren. Louder than you’d ever think a child could scream. Screaming and screaming.
“And you know what I did? What ‘poor Kathleen’ did? I hung up the phone. I didn’t drop it when I heard Hal. I didn’t leave it dangling. I took the time to hang up the damn receiver.
“I don’t think I said anything to Stan. I don’t remember really. But I do remember replacing the phone on the hook before I went to see why my son was screaming. I never forgave myself that moment. I never will.”
“Why not?”
Joyce had been so quiet, Kathleen almost jumped at the sound of her voice.
“Why wouldn’t you forgive yourself for that half second? It was a reflex. It was nothing. You couldn’t have stopped the car. Even if the phone had never rung.
“Kathleen,” Joyce said firmly, “it wasn’t your fault. Hanging up the phone doesn’t make you a bad person. Or a bad mother. You didn’t kill Danny. The old man behind the wheel of that car killed Danny, by accident. It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have been there,” Kathleen whispered.
“You were there.”
The physical sensation of that morning returned to Kathleen. With her hands on the wheel of a car hurtling across New Hampshire, Kathleen felt herself back at the scene outside her house. Hal screaming. A lawn mower droning in the distance. The blood on the ambulance driver’s white shirt. The heat.
“It was blazing hot. My neighbors called the police. The ambulance came. Two ambulances. I got into one of them with Danny. Hal was still screaming. I got into the ambulance with Danny and tried not to scream myself.
“Buddy was at the hospital when we got there. Pat came that night. The days in the hospital were . . . I don’t remember them as days; it was a long blur of waiting and crying. But Danny couldn’t . . . He didn’t get better. And then we had to let him go.”
Joyce wiped her eyes and put her hand lightly on Kathleen’s shoulder.
“We donated his corneas and his organs.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t? I told my five-year-old son to watch my three-year-old while I was on the phone with my lover.” Kathleen spit out the words.
“It wasn’t your fault. And it isn’t your fault that you’re going to survive breast cancer and Pat died from it.”
“No?” Kathleen said sharply, then relented. “I suppose not.”
They drove in silence as the mountains grew greener in the afternoon light. Kathleen asked, “Do you know what absolution means?”
“I think so.” Joyce blew her nose. “Does Hal feel guilty?”
“Why would Hal feel guilty? He was five years old. There was nothing he could have done.”
“There was nothing you could have done, either. That didn’t stop you from making it into your fault.”
Kathleen shook her head. “We tried to protect Hal from Danny’s death. These days, the child psychologists tell you that’s the wrong thing to do. But back then, I didn’t want to frighten him all over again or make him relive it. Besides, I was too guilty.
“Oh, dear,” Kathleen said, her eyes filling with tears, “I think Hal must feel guilty.” She remembered what he had said the other day, about not being home with her.
“I was wondering when you’d finally spring a leak,” Joyce said, handing her a tissue.
They drove on for a few minutes. Kathleen pointed to a road sign for Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
“Oh, God,” Joyce said, almost moaning, thinking the worst. Permanent nerve damage? Suicide attempt? Brain injury?
“It’s going to be okay,” Kathleen said as they pulled up to the emergency room entrance. “Go ahead. I’ll park the car and be right in.”
JOYCE SPENT FIVE frantic minutes trying to locate Nina. The woman at the front desk couldn’t locate her name in the computer, then sent Joyce to the wrong room. When she finally opened the right door, she found Frank and Nina sitting on the bed, calmly watching TV. Nina’s arm was in a sling, her hair pulled into a neat bun. For a moment, she looked composed and grown-up, but the moment she caught sight of Joyce, she dissolved into tears. “Mommy.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Joyce said, sitting down on the bed. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m sorry it took me so long. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Nina said, snuffling.
“Just as long as you’re okay.” Joyce looked over Nina’s head and raised her eyebrows in a question mark. Frank nodded slowly, but without smiling, signaling that he’d give Joyce the full story later.
“No cast?” she asked.
“Not for the collarbone,” he said.
Nina clung to Joyce with her good arm, nestling against her chest like a baby. When a nurse came in to check her vital signs, Joyce signaled for Frank to move out into the hallway.
Frank hugged her close. “I’m so glad you’re here. She really wanted her mother.”
“I’m sorry, Frank,” Joyce whispered. “I got here as fast as I could.” She pulled back, tucked her hands into her armpits, and asked, “So what exactly did the doctors say?”
“She wasn’t groggy after she came to, and they don’t think the concussion will have any lasting effects. Since I couldn’t find a motel room close by, they’re going to let her stay here the night. We can stay with her. We have to wake her up every hour or so.”
“Mommy?” Nina called in an urgent voice. Joyce and Frank rushed back; Nina was pointing to the TV screen. The Simpsons was about to begin, a rerun of one of the show’s many Halloween specials. “Halloween in August?” Joyce asked.
“Why not?” Nina said with a flash of impatience.
Joyce and Frank sat on either side of the bed and the three of them watched as aliens devoured Bart. Frank reached for Joyce’s hand behind the pillow, and she held on tight.
Downstairs, Kathleen found a bathroom. Using Joyce’s hairbrush and some paper towels, she cleaned herself up as best she could before searching for Nina’s room. Waiting for the elevator, someone grabbed her elbow from behind.
“There you are,” Buddy said.
“What are you doing here?” Kathleen yelped.
“Buddy, how did you get here?”
“I flew,” he joked, but Kathleen wasn’t smiling.
“I had a delivery near home around two, so I stopped by. The car was gone, but when I went inside, your purse was sitting on the table, and drawers were open all over the place, so I got worried. But when I went to pick up the phone, I saw there was a message; it was Frank Tabachnik looking for Joyce because their daughter was hurt in an accident. Their number isn’t listed, so before I called the cops, I ran over to their house. The back door was wide open, and the phone machine was flashing away, so I listened to the messages and figured out you must have headed up here with Joyce.
“I got in the car and flew. Honest, Kath, you wouldn’t believe how fast I drove.”
Kathleen shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re here.” She opened the door to Nina’s room and announced, “The cavalry has arrived.”
When Joyce and Frank started settling in for the night with Nina, Buddy caught Kathleen’s eye and glanced at his watch. She nodded and said, “Give me a minute.”
Kathleen took Joyce into the hall and asked for her car keys. “I’ll drive with Buddy and get your car back to your house.” Handing over her own key, Kathleen added, “Bring mine whenever you get back.”
“There is no way I can thank you,” Joyce said as they hugged good-bye.
“Thanks returned, dear one.”
Buddy pulled onto the highway and Kathleen closed her eyes. She woke to see the sign welcoming them to Massachusetts.
“I guess you were pretty done in,” Buddy said, patting her knee.
“Buddy,” she said, sitting up and rubbing her stiff neck, “I have to ask you for a favor, no questions asked.”
“You want me to stop at the next rest stop?”
“It’s serious, Buddy. I need you to do something for me without asking me why, ever.”
He glanced at Kathleen, her eyes fixed on his face. “Of course.”
“We have to drive to Rockport. You’ll drop me off and then meet me back at the Tabachniks’ house.”
“Sure,” he said evenly.
“Okay.” Kathleen nodded. “Thanks.”
A piano concerto filled the car as they headed up the home stretch, passing the barely visible gates of the cemetery. “I’m going to ask Hal to come with us. And Jack, too,” Kathleen said softly.
“Good,” Buddy said.
“It’s twenty-five years.”
Buddy was quiet for a moment. “We never talk about him, do we, Kath?”
“You didn’t want to talk about him. You told me it hurt too much.”
“I said that?”
“Of course you did. You said that hearing his name felt like a knife in your heart.”
“When did I say that?”
“A month after he died. It was a Friday night, at temple. You said his name was like a knife in your heart.”
Buddy frowned. “It must have been a bad day. Or maybe it was all the people coming up to me and asking how I was doing. But, Kath, I didn’t mean forever. I didn’t mean I never wanted to talk about him ever again.”
Kathleen was quiet.
“Did you think I meant forever?”
“I guess I did.”
“All this time?” He shook his head. “I thought it was you who couldn’t stand to . . .”
Kathleen turned off the music. All those years of unspoken grief and unheard condolence. “Maybe it was me who couldn’t bear to talk about him, and I just laid not talking about it on you. I’m sorry, Buddy. I’m so sorry.”
“No need. No need.”
Kathleen put her fingertips to Buddy’s cheek. “I was talking about him to Joyce on the drive up. I told her about the trucks. Remember how much he loved trucks?”
“Trucks and coffee ice cream.”
“Coffee ice cream! I didn’t tell her about that. That was your father’s doing. Danny Levine was the only little boy in America who preferred coffee ice cream to chocolate, or vanilla or strawberry.
“We should talk to Hal about Danny, too,” Kathleen said softly.
“I do. Or I have.”
“What does he say?” Kathleen was crying.
“He used to feel terribly guilty, I think. Like he should have been able to protect Dan. But” — Buddy took a breath — “he says he worked through that in therapy. He worries about you, though. He thinks you’re still — oh, what did he call it? — unresolved. But he can’t understand what it means to lose a child. A baby. You don’t ever get resolved. You just get, I don’t know what, you just get older, and life goes on.”
“When did he tell you that?”
“He came by the store the other day. We had lunch.”
Kathleen looked at Buddy’s profile in the passing lights. “And Jack?”
“I haven’t talked to Jack about Danny,” Buddy said. “He never asked me. Did he ask you?”
“No,” Kathleen whispered, wondering how she’d taught him not to ask. “Never.”
Kathleen put her left hand over Buddy’s right on the wheel. He held her fingers between his as they made their way over the bridge, past the turn to their house, up the road to Rockport.
Buddy dropped Kathleen in front of the sub shop. The only sound was the hum of the streetlights, vibrating in the fog. “I’ll see you there,” he said, and pulled away. Kathleen followed Joyce’s directions to the tan Corolla, pocketed the parking ticket, and got in.
In the ten minutes it took to drive back to Gloucester, Kathleen felt her senses sharpen. It had rained earlier, so the road gleamed in the headlights. She opened the window and inhaled mulch, brine, tree sap, honeysuckle, grass, brine again, all of it sharpened by the darkness, heightened by the moisture in the air. Kathleen shivered with pleasure.
My husband is a better man than I knew, she thought. My sons have come home. I’m going back to school in September. I have a true friend. The cancer is gone.
Thank you for Buddy. Thank you for Hal and Jack. Thank you for Pat, and for Mae and Irv. For my gran, for my poor mother. Thank you for my health. And for Joyce.
Thank you for books and work and for kindergarten children and for my garden. For my life in this garden. For these trees. For this perfumed night. For this wind on my face.
Thank you for Danny. I haven’t counted him as a blessing for twenty-five years, have I? God forgive me, I must have wished he’d never been born.
Thank you for Danny. For letting me love him. For his love. For all my sons. Thank you.
“Amen,” she said, pulling into Joyce’s driveway, past Buddy’s truck, idling at the curb. “Amen and amen.”
SEPTEMBER
THE TABACHNIKS’ yard looked like a combination interfaith garden party and construction site. The priest, wearing a clerical collar, short-sleeved shirt, and dark pants, and the rabbi, in a navy suit and yarmulke, shook hands as a flatbed trailer truck hauling a backhoe pulled up.
“Steve!” Father Sherry called out. “Why the big rig?”
“Sorry, Father,” Steve said, “but I’ve got to move this thing today, and it’s on my way.”
“Sheesh,” said the priest.
Father Sherry had enlisted the contractor to cut the statue free and deliver it to the Lupos, who were glad to give it a home. When the priest had named the date — Sunday around three — Joyce had asked whether she should ask some of the neighbors for a little block party. “That would be lovely,” Father Sherry said, and offered to invite the Loquastos. Joyce was a little nervous at the thought of them seeing how much she’d changed their home, but she told Father Sherry to go ahead.
The lawn was cluttered with assorted plastic chairs, most of them owned by the Levines, who had arrived early to help set up. Buddy and Hal were arranging lawn furniture with Ben and Eric, from next door. Jack, in the kitchen with Ed, was assembling strawberry shortcake.
Kathleen followed Joyce to the front steps and whispered, “
Did you get the clippings?”
Joyce nodded. The police blotter from the Rockport paper had announced the arrest of seven men on drug charges. A story in the Gloucester Daily Times about drug running on Cape Ann noted the participation of “Russian and Irish nationals.”
“Well, look who’s here!” Father Sherry boomed as the Loquastos pulled up to the curb. He opened the car door for Mary, who clutched at a black patent-leather handbag, and escorted her into the yard for introductions. Joe, wiry and thin, trailed behind. He lit a cigarette and peered at the house as if it were an attraction at Disney World. Joyce invited Mary inside for a look, but she smiled shyly and said, “Maybe later.”
Both Loquastos perked up when Lou and Marge Bono walked across the street. The priest made the introductions. “All our kids grew up together,” Lou explained to Frank, who was offering drinks. “You should have seen the neighborhood back then,” he said, accepting a Diet Coke. “The children, all running in and out of each other’s house. We got the city to put up that sign Children at Play. It’s still there, isn’t it, Marge?”
Frank called Nina over for introductions. Nina, who’d been painting her toenails on the front step with her friend Sylvie, stood up reluctantly.
“Oh, that’s a hard age,” Mary Loquasto said when Frank started to apologize for Nina’s bad manners.
All conversation stopped with the arrival of the Lupos. Theresa, four feet ten inches at most, wore a black crepe dress with a crocheted white collar and a new pair of Nikes. She headed straight toward the statue and patted its cheek, as though it were a favorite niece.
Lena, a few inches taller and quite a bit wider than her mother, was in black leggings and a pink tunic. Her manicured nails splayed over her hips as she apologized to Joyce, again. “Burying all that stuff in your yard like that?” She rolled her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why do you say you’re sorry? It was not your fault,” Theresa exploded. “Not my fault, too. Don’t make no apologia for me. It was from the doctors, from the medicine. No old-heimer’s. La miseria.”
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