A Little Hope

by Ethan Joella

  “I don’t remember.” She fishes the car keys from her purse. “I’m sorry to have upset you. Really, I am.” She walks to the door and opens it.

  Hannah shrugs. “I’m sorry, too.” She puts her coffee cup down and clutches the back of the chair. “You would have liked me, I think. Luke said you’d be tough at first, but then you’d like me. I believed him. I thought one day I’d be at your home playing checkers or helping you dry dishes after dinner.”

  Mrs. Crowley keeps her hand on the doorknob. “Did he? I could hear him say that. I could hear his voice just then.” She covers her mouth with her handkerchief.

  Hannah stands over the bag. She reaches inside. She finds a small soccer trophy he kept by his bed. “To remind myself I’m a winner,” he said once, and laughed. She smiles at the trophy. She touches its gold name plate. Lucas Crowley. Most Valuable Player. “It was good of you to bring this stuff. And the coffee. I’m sorry.”

  Mrs. Crowley looks at her before she leaves. Her eyes behind her glasses look startled but kind. “At some point I’d like to hear about his songs.” She pauses. “I do hope to see you again.”

  Hannah nods. “Yeah.” She imagines for a second bringing two coffee cups to Mrs. Crowley’s house. Could she ever have the courage to go over there? Maybe. Outside in the hallway, she hears someone walking down the stairs. She hears a door slam shut above her. “It’s awful without him, isn’t it?”

  Mrs. Crowley nods thoughtfully. “Goodbye, dear.” She waves and shuts the door carefully. Hannah can still smell her good perfume. For some reason, she wants to yell to the woman that it’s her birthday. She can hear her make her way down the stairs. The sun is so bright on the dirty floors of her apartment, and the window that she opened a crack last night makes the sheer curtain flap back and forth. She is sorry. She is sorry about Luke, and that his mother is gone. Sorry about being another year older and not getting anywhere. She hears cars outside and the groaning of the street sweeper. She sees Luke’s trophy sitting by itself. Her coffee cup is empty and she is sorry.

  15. The Sound of Time

  A Saturday in mid-April and Kay Lionel stays at the window to watch the car drive away. The driver with her ponytail, the man beside her in the passenger seat leaning his head against the window for the long drive ahead of them. Their car is dark gray, and the tires shine. The daffodils are up now in flower beds beside the walkway, and the groups of white tulips and deep purple hyacinth make her sigh. “Fingers crossed,” she whispers as the couple pulls away, and she turns to their daughter, who she’s watching for two days. She wears a long-sleeved shirt with a sequined mermaid on the front. “So, Miss Addie, I wonder if you’ll help me bake some cookies?”

  The girl nods shyly. “Sure,” she says. There is worry on her face; her gaze is far away. Kay tries to smile, but Addie’s sweetly braided hair, her eyes that know more than a girl her age should, defeat her.

  Kay watched as Addie hugged her dad goodbye minutes ago. His face—his wrecked face. She had to look away. Goodbye.

  What if it’s the last goodbye? She looks toward the window again, wants to see their car still, to know that this second, they are okay, but the driveway is empty, the street in front of the house only has a mother pushing a stroller, the mail guy parking his truck and hoisting his bag over his shoulder.

  She puts her hand on the back of Addie’s neck and guides her into the kitchen. “And then maybe afterward, you can help me collect some of those flowers from outside. We could draw some pictures for Mommy and Daddy, for when they come back, right?” Why did she say that? Daddy. She doesn’t want to jinx it. Damn her well-meaning hopefulness. You can be this way with kids though, can’t you? Shouldn’t you? This whole procedure could be good, she thinks. It could go fine. Her dad could come home and be better, and they could forget all this and enjoy the rest of spring. An easy summer. Of course a stem cell transplant is a risk, a big one. The side effects alone could kill him, but there are no alternatives. “Otherwise,” Freddie said weeks ago with a vacant expression, “we’ll just be waiting for it to come back.”

  The cuckoo clock comes to life, and Addie looks up and stares at the small bird that pops out of the top to announce the time: eleven. After it goes back inside, the miniature dancers play music and twirl around. The water wheel spins. Addie doesn’t look away. The pinecone pendulums move up and down.

  “Neat, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh.” Addie smiles as the clock goes silent again except for the constant ticking sound. She will be here for another forty-eight hours. Dear lord, Kay thinks. Dear lord. This is hard already. What was I thinking? This feels impossible, suffocating. How long can I keep her busy? Will she nap? No, she doesn’t think, if she recalls correctly, that seven-year-olds nap.

  Maybe they can watch a movie. Maybe Addie will want to take a bath for a while in the garden tub in the master bedroom. She realizes then that she hasn’t been alone with a child like this in forever.

  She hopes she can do it.

  Addie stares up at her. Was Kay the best choice? After all these years, she has never healed completely. She seldom has to engage. She usually drifts away. She has not been right for so long. She has been absent. Her heart flutters. There is no choice—Greg’s parents dead, Freddie’s parents far away. Only one aunt (Freddie’s sister), but she’s in Europe. They need you. Stop this.

  She is glad Alex will be home this evening. He’ll at least keep Addie smiling while she gets dinner together. He’ll do that trick where he rolls his handkerchief and makes it look like sleeping twin babies. He’ll hold up the small hammock and sing rock-a-bye baby on the treetop. Then he’ll show her how to flip the handkerchief around and fold it herself. Maybe he’ll teach her a card trick. He’s good like that. She thinks of him doing it with Benny. She wonders for a second if he did it with Iris. The thought occurs to her then: her husband has more experience with children than she does. How odd, she thinks. Sometimes she feels cheated about Iris, feels he’s cheating on Benny, but then she shrugs and she’s mostly grateful for Iris. The whole thing is so different. They needed something different.

  Kay takes out the bag of chocolate chips, the canister of flour. She pokes the butter to see if it’s soft enough and she thinks of Alex many years ago blowing on Benny’s belly. How Alex would pause, raise his eyebrows, and furiously do a raspberry on Benny’s smooth skin. His tiny belly button, that small little freckle below his rib. How that boy laughed whenever his dad was home. How young and new they all were then. Her heart. Her heart. She forces a smile at Addie. Can she do this? She has to. Suck it up, toots. “Do you want to wear an apron? Because I have quite the collection, my dear.” Addie follows her over to the broom closet where there are five aprons hanging on small hooks.

  “Ooh,” she says. She reaches in and touches the different fabrics. There is a ruffled floral one, and one made of linen with Myrtilles written on the front underneath a picture of blueberries.

  “Pick any one you want.” She wishes now she had a small chef’s hat. She’d take a picture of Addie in apron and hat and text it to her mother. Then Freddie would know her child was okay. One less thing to worry about, right? She thinks of the two-hour drive Freddie and Greg are making to Boston. She thinks of the parking garage they will leave their car in, and the wind that will blow through it as they walk. Of Greg’s hope and worry, his hair a new fuzz on his head, his pale skin as he enters the hospital for the procedure. They are in for so much. Weeks and weeks. First, high doses of chemo (again), then radiation (again) to prime him for the transplant. After the transplant, a risk of infection, and then waiting and seeing. “Believe it or not, the transplant is the quickest and easiest part of this whole thing,” Freddie said. “Kind of anticlimactic.” Greg is so tough and determined in this fight, but this is his last good hand.

  Kay looks down at Addie. It has to work. Please, dear God, let it work. For this little girl. Don’t let him catch a cold. Don’t let him have one cut. Let nothing stand in their way
. She will say the rosary for them. Tonight. When Addie’s asleep, she will turn the lights low. She will sit still and say the rosary and pray for them.

  She learned these prayers after Benny, after all that time more than twenty-four years ago. She wonders as she has often wondered if she’d prayed more while Benny was alive could she have saved him? A counselor told her that’s a ridiculous thing to think, but she doesn’t know. She just doesn’t know. Maybe she wasn’t a good enough Catholic.

  She looks down at Addie, who has her hands on the aprons. Can Kay do this? Can she be okay with this child? She wants to lie down. She wants to go outside and sit on the bench she put under the tree that Benny used to climb. It’s been over twenty years, and she is still paralyzed in some ways. She has gotten used to it. She has been this way longer than she had Benny. How can that be? But she plays the part well of a woman getting by.

  “Um, this one,” Addie says, and pulls the red apron free. Plain red. Kay would have guessed one of the more ruffled or lacy ones. She holds her braids gently and loops the top around Addie’s small neck. The girl drowns in the fabric. It hangs to her feet.

  “Let’s get you tied up.” She carefully folds the bottom panel up and winds the tie two times around her waist. “Adorable,” she says, and Addie poses. “I have to take your picture,” she says.

  Soon she pulls the chair over to the kitchen island, and Addie helps her measure vanilla and brown sugar. She carefully cracks two eggs into a small bowl. Kay stands beside her, and something about this makes her grateful, makes her melt in a way. She had forgotten about children, which is odd to say because she has never forgotten about her son for a second. But she forgot about how fully attentive you have to be when a child is in the house. They make it more real that way. Without them, you can just go through the motions. But they will not let you phone it in.

  It used to be all about Benny. Benny letting the screen door slam. Benny getting their small dog riled up. Benny with his, “Hey, Mom,” and, “Uh-oh,” and, “Hang on.” Benny leaving his headphones and Walkman on the counter, or on the back of the toilet. “Benjamin,” she’d say. “Forget something?”

  Did she ever bake cookies with Benny? She doesn’t think so. Why hadn’t she? All she has thought about since he died are lists of things she didn’t do with him: let him do the Columbia House CD club, buy him the Super Soaker water gun he wanted, take him to that professional wrestling event a few towns away. And the regrets. So many regrets. She remembers shushing him when she was on the phone. She remembers sending him to his bedroom because he dropped a bottle of apple juice on the kitchen floor, and it made such a sticky mess. Once, as a baby, he wouldn’t stop crying, and she let him scream by himself in his crib for half an hour, so red and worked up and sad. Another time, as a toddler, she grabbed his arm too hard because he accidentally elbowed her in the mouth.

  God, she hates that she wasn’t perfect every single day with him, she hates how she sometimes ignored things he said. She hates that she used to feel a slight dread when the school day ended, interrupting the quiet peace of having the house to herself. But all parents must feel that way. If he had grown up and lived, it would be lost in a sea of a thousand other things, good and bad, and he could have forgiven her for any deficiency. She could have made it up to him. She hates other things, too: that he had clothes in his closet with the tags still on, that he never got to have a girlfriend, that the truck probably dragged him. She winces.

  But wait. The feeling of her hand on top of this child’s hand as they gently tap the egg against the rim of the bowl—this feeling is familiar. They did do something like this together, she and Benny. Was it French toast they used to make? Yes, yes, she remembers him in this kitchen, maybe on the same chair, cracking eggs.

  She savors the feeling of her hand on a child’s hand again, and the memory comes back like a paper airplane lazily gliding into a window. She feels a surge of warmth and familiarity. Benny standing beside her. Her body remembers, can feel him there. He loved to plunge the bread into the batter. Then he’d say, “Flip,” and he’d flip the bread with a fork before they carefully put it into the hot frying pan. He loved the sizzle of butter against the bread. He would sprinkle cinnamon over it when it was done. He’d say, “Kaboom.” Yes, they did that. Yes, yes. Tears rim her eyes, but Addie doesn’t see. Kay is thankful for this memory. She feels a release of something, a great relief.

  She can see his small hands dripping with egg batter. She can remember bringing him over to the sink and carefully wiping a wet paper towel over his fingers. Another memory comes then: the smell of the top of his head. His clean scalp: Benny smell, she used to call it. Like popcorn or bread. She relishes these thoughts returning, and she thinks in that second: I would do it all again. If I could go back, knowing what I know, I would do it again. God, he changed her in so many ways. He altered her DNA forever.

  She hands Addie a small wooden spoon that is the perfect size. “We need to mix this up,” she says, and pats her head. Addie is smiling and looking around. She is having fun. They are laughing together, oohing and ahhing as the batter spills occasionally onto the counter. She wishes Alex could see. Then he’d know that after all these years, maybe she was starting to be all right. Which isn’t to say she’d been one of those miserable, bitter people. She was fine, good enough. They could go out with friends of theirs or clients he was entertaining, and she could smile. She could talk about the bluebird at their bird feeder or a story about a hurricane on the news. They could go to Bermuda or to New York City on a mini vacation, and they could sip cocktails and go on day tours and play gin rummy in the hotel room and be okay. They were managing. She has been all right for a while, able to put on a smile and make it okay. But now she feels a difference—a level up, better than she’s felt in forever. She remembers how Benny’s toys would be sluggish but still work, but if she replaced the batteries, they’d move with a new life. She wants to kiss Addie’s head. She wants to hug her gratefully.

  How many years she just stared, stayed silent. Alex had his job, his big company to go back to. After Benny’s funeral, he stayed home with her for four or five days where he watched the news, the weather, Jeopardy, and they ate what people brought them, but then he slipped back to his work. She remembers how she’d whisper things to Benny in the empty house (Where are you? Are you okay?), how she looked at Toby, their small white dog, every time his stare went somewhere else. “Who do you see?” she’d say, hoping, hoping he was sensing Benny. She remembers walking outside and staring at the quiet fish pond, and when she couldn’t take it anymore, she remembers trudging back upstairs to bed. How the sheets welcomed her, how the pillow felt like the only thing that could save her. When someone called, she usually let the phone ring and ring, enjoying in some odd way its echo in the empty house.

  How many days Alex would come home and find her like that. He tried to bring her sister, Ruthie, over to help. He held the phone to her ear with her father on the line. He suggested she take a class in European history at the University of New Haven. Or a knitting workshop at the community college. He brought home brochures for aqua aerobics, for a creative writing group at the library. He’d sit at the foot of the bed and hold her ankle and suggest a trip to Hawaii, a drive to the casino. His sincere eyes. His patient face. How he wanted her to keep going the way he kept going. How he knew sadness could swallow people like them with no other children, with no nieces and nephews.

  The affair wasn’t her fault. Of course.

  It wasn’t her fault.

  Was it his?

  He did what he did. He was desperate, too. She never hated him for it. She hated what he did, but she didn’t want him to leave. She couldn’t bear losing another person. She sometimes was surprised she wasn’t angrier, but their circumstances were unlike anyone else’s. She knew he knew it was a mistake. In a way she enjoyed the hurt. It felt good to hold on to it, didn’t it?

  If her faith taught her anything, it taught forgiveness. She fo
cused on that.

  He told her everything: the woman he was with, the child he found out about years later. When she asked him to, he never mentioned it again. She didn’t want to rock the boat, she didn’t want to change how she felt about Alex. She could pretend it didn’t happen if there weren’t reminders. He did what he did: visited the girl, sent her money. Whatever. He kept it away from her. They buried all that, too. They could bury anything.

  Until months ago when he brought it all up again: the daughter had grown, and was having a baby of her own. He wanted Kay to give her a chance. He knew how it could help her, which seemed ridiculous at first. His love child. For years, Kay felt bitter that this new child got to live instead of Benny. Their lives were connected, she was an offshoot of Benny dying. “Trust me,” he said. “You’ll like her.”

  She wants to call him now and tell him something has shifted in her. After all this, after the world ripping their son away, she finally feels something about being alive that she hasn’t felt before. Life, this up and down life. What a gift, isn’t it? Maybe it’s the thought of poor Greg. Isn’t it what Greg is fighting so hard for? For life. For this small girl in the kitchen with flour on her hands. This day where Freddie and Greg are doing their best to win. This spring sun outside, the little wishing well in their side yard with the trickling fountain. Yes, she would definitely do it all over again. She and Alex had that boy for fourteen years.

  She thinks of Iris then, Alex’s daughter, whom she met in December—about Iris’s baby on the way. Alex was right, wasn’t he? The smart businessman, the risk-taker. He knew they were up for this again, and Addie here, even just for this brief moment, has reminded her of the possibilities. Won’t this baby stay with them sometimes the way Addie is here now? Won’t they keep stuff like a high chair in the kitchen? Won’t they put drawings on the fridge, fill a cupboard with special kid cups and plates. Won’t they welcome this child in a Halloween costume, won’t they want to start putting up a Christmas tree again? She feels a hint of excitement.