Falling

by Jane Green

  But she can’t do anything until she’s talked to Dominic.

  “Sleepovers can be fun,” she tells Jesse. “Nonna will probably make something delicious for you. I’ll talk to your dad today, and I’ll probably pick you up tomorrow.”

  “But I want to stay here with Gigi and Banpy.”

  Emma smiles. “They’ll still be here tomorrow. You’ll have lots and lots of time with them. Lucky you, that everyone wants a sleepover with you.”

  Jesse shrugs miserably, downcast. “I said I wanted to stay home but they said I can’t. I have to pick my five favorite toys to take with me, and anything I don’t have, they’ll buy me.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Emma lies as Jesse scuffs the carpet with his foot.

  “I really don’t want to go.” His voice is threatening to break.

  “I know,” she says, reaching out an arm as he snuggles up next to her, laying his head on her chest.

  “I want to stay with Hobbes, too,” he says.

  “It won’t be for long,” says Emma. “I promise I’ll look after Hobbes for you. And while you’re with your grandparents, your dad can get strong and healthy.”

  Jesse thinks about it for a while before nodding reluctantly.

  “I love you.” Emma kisses the top of his head, squeezing him tight.

  “I love you, too,” says Jesse, not seeing the single tear drip down her cheek, which she quickly wipes away.

  Emma jumps in the shower, but before she’s finished, Jesse bursts in. She yelps, and grabs the curtain to make sure she’s covered.

  “Bye!” he waves from the doorway. “They’re here!”

  “Wait. Don’t they want to speak to me?”

  Jesse shrugs, but before Emma has a chance to say anything else, he has disappeared from the doorway. By the time she’s thrown on a robe, they have gone.

  “Did you talk to them?” she asks her mother, who is cleaning up the kitchen.

  “I tried, but they weren’t very interested. They barely said hello.”

  “I’m sorry. They’re not my favorite people.”

  “No,” says her mother. “I thought they were terribly rude. And now Jesse’s gone. I was so enjoying him.” Her face is so downcast that Emma puts an arm around her shoulders to comfort her, in much the way she had been comforting Jesse earlier.

  “Probably it’s just for one night,” Emma says. “I’ll talk to Dominic about him coming back tomorrow.”

  “I do hope so,” says her mother sadly. “I have to say, I’m rather enamored with him.”

  “He clearly feels the same way about you,” Emma says with a smile.

  But already the house seems oddly quiet. Things feel strange, and wrong. She tries to convince herself that there is a silver lining to Jesse’s absence. She can focus on going to stay with Dominic at the hospital, and get a really good night’s sleep.

  Besides, she thinks wryly, surely it will motivate him to make a speedier recovery.

  Showering has made her feel more human. She throws in a load of laundry, pulls on sweats, and fills a tote bag with toiletries, clean clothes, and a pillow. Now that she doesn’t have to get home for Jesse, she can stay at the hospital all night. They may not find a bed for her, but she doesn’t care. She will stay all night. She will stay as long as she is able, until Dominic is better.

  Kissing her mother and father good-bye, she walks outside, grateful for the bracing cold air that instantly wakes her up.

  When she arrives, she finds the hospital quiet downstairs, but the ICU oddly busy for early evening. She is buzzed in and puts her tote bag down in the waiting room before heading over to the nurses’ station, stepping out of the way to avoid medical personnel walking quickly down the hallways, barely noticing they are about to run her over.

  “Dominic DiFranco? Is it okay to see him now?” she asks.

  The nurse looks at her blankly, as if she hasn’t spoken.

  “I’m here to see Dominic DiFranco,” she says again. “I know it’s not visiting hours but I’ve been home all day looking after”—she pauses—“our son. Can I go and see him? I can see you’re all very busy here, but I’ve been waiting a long time and I’m worried.”

  The nurse falters. “Take a seat in the waiting room,” she says eventually. “We’ll be right with you.”

  Emma considers pushing through the doors and going straight to Dominic, nurses be damned. But she has never been a rule-breaker, and finds herself meekly following orders.

  How odd, she thinks, that a hospital waiting room should feel familiar to her, should feel almost . . . homey. Better get used to it, she thinks with an ironic laugh. You may be here for a very long time.

  She gets out her book and her pillow, crosses her legs on the chair, pulls her phone from her bag, prepared to fill the next few minutes with mindless activity. She hasn’t checked her e-mail in ages.

  The door is pushed open just as her phone lights up. It is the neurosurgeon from yesterday, his face grave as he comes to sit down next to her. She smiles at him, relieved he is there; no one understands better than him what Dominic is dealing with.

  He doesn’t smile back. “I am so sorry,” he says softly, as the smile slides off Emma’s face and she stares at him in confusion.

  He is so sorry for what?

  He looks at her pillow, her book, her tote bag, closes his eyes for a second before looking back at her. “Has no one called you?” His voice is soft.

  “About what?”

  He takes a deep breath. “We don’t know why this happened, but in the early hours of this morning Dominic had another catastrophic bleed. This one, unfortunately, caused a herniation of the brain stem.”

  Emma looks at him blankly.

  “The brain stem controls heart rate and bleeding. When it is compromised, the damage is irreversible. This second bleed was fatal.”

  “I don’t understand. What are you saying?” The fog is rolling in, but it hasn’t reached her brain, not yet. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I don’t understand.”

  He reaches over and places a hand over hers. “We did everything we could. Dominic passed away this afternoon. I am so sorry for your loss.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Emma doesn’t remember getting home. She doesn’t remember being asked who should drive her home, doesn’t remember suggesting that her mother was the person to call. She has no idea that a nurse sat with her until both her parents showed up at the hospital. She has no idea that her mother cried all the way there, and all the way back, silent tears streaming down her face as she drove her daughter home.

  Emma has no idea that when they got home, her mother wrapped her in the cashmere throw she’d draped over Dominic’s sofa to hide the years of stains from Jesse’s TV dinners, and had poured all three of them big tumblers of scotch, which they downed in one.

  Emma has no idea that she couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t speak; that the only sounds coming out of her mouth were very quiet whimpers.

  She didn’t cry. Not then. Her parents managed to get her up to her bedroom, where she lay down between Teddy and Sophie, who gathered her in their arms and held her until she fell asleep.

  • • •

  She wakes up sobbing, but can’t remember why. She wakes up sobbing, and once she has started, she can’t stop. Her mother bursts into her room, and takes her in her arms as she wails, her whole body shaking.

  Two days later, she leaves her bed and comes downstairs. Her mother watches her anxiously, settles her on the sofa like a small child and makes her milky, sweet tea, just like the tea everyone drinks in England when they are cold, tired, or sad. Emma doesn’t speak for a while, merely sips the tea, staring at the floor.

  “Mummy?” Emma looks up at her. “What am I going to do?”

  Her parents cancel their flight home. They tell Emma they will stay as long as
necessary.

  Despite their presence, the house feels empty and sad. She can’t bear not having Jesse there, can’t bear the loneliness. She has written to Dominic’s parents, begging, pleading to see Jesse, but there has been no response.

  Emma hears from AJ that Stacy has returned to take custody of Jesse, that she is now planning to stay for good. She is Jesse’s mother. Surely she is the best person for Jesse to be with now that his father is gone. Given that no one seems to be allowing Emma to be with him.

  Emma’s life isn’t a life she recognizes, and isn’t a life she wants. She doesn’t shower, doesn’t eat, wanders around the house aimlessly, picking up things. Almost everything she touches, even the tiniest of objects she has never noticed before, contains memories of Dominic. She can’t believe she is never going to see him again.

  It doesn’t make sense. She sits at the kitchen table for hours, gazing out the window at nothing, vaguely aware of her mother’s attempts at conversation. But Emma can’t engage in conversation. Not yet. How can he have been here, how can her life, their life, have been fine? And now gone? How can he no longer be here?

  Six months ago her life was full, and busy, and happy. She had moved out to Westport to start afresh; how can it be that in a few short months everything about her life had changed so utterly, become so much more than she ever thought it could be, and now it’s gone? It’s so much worse than if she had simply stayed in New York, unhappy. Now she has even less than she had before, when she didn’t know what it was she was missing.

  As the funeral approaches, she has to pull herself together. AJ has kept in touch, made sure she knows when it is, where to go. She hasn’t been consulted about any of the arrangements. She probably wouldn’t have been any use, even if she had been asked. His parents have made all the decisions.

  On the morning of the service, Emma stands under the shower for forty minutes, letting the hot water wash over her, willing it to wash the grief away. But nothing helps. Looking at his bottle of shampoo, she finds herself sobbing. Anything can, and does, set her off.

  As she sits in the bathroom, looking at her wet hair in the mirror, her face is almost unrecognizable, her skin so pale it is almost gray. She has dark circles under her eyes, and however much she tries, she can’t see any life in them. She dries her hair and brushes it back into a chignon, slips on a black dress from her city days, wondering why it is so big.

  In one of the drawers downstairs is a huge pair of black sunglasses, left by someone once upon a time, long ago. Emma puts them on to hide her eyes, and stuffs her bag full of tissues from the boxes that Teddy has left on every surface.

  She feels completely cried out, but she isn’t. Every time she thinks the tears have run dry, they come again, in great racking sobs. While she is opening a can of cat food for Hobbes, or locking the front door, or in the shower, looking at a bottle of shampoo.

  She keeps hoping this nightmare will be over. It’s only the beginning, she knows, but if she thinks that, if she looks into the future and sees her life stretching out ahead of her, without Dominic, she may not have the strength to carry on.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The funeral is packed with people Emma has never seen before. Here and there she sees a few familiar faces, but she keeps her eyes down, too frightened to speak, too frightened that if anyone approaches her, all that will emerge will be a howl of pain. Her parents leave her to find seats, and she looks around, blinking, like a newborn child emerging into the world for the first time.

  There is a cloud of grief in the room. Emma has been to funerals before, of course. Her grandparents, several aged aunts, a business colleague who had been battling cancer for years. But their deaths had been expected. People were prepared; they gathered to celebrate lives well lived. Those funerals were filled with moments of solemnity and sorrow, but also lovely stories, sometimes levity, a recognition of the impermanence of life.

  But this? This is something completely different. She sees Dominic’s childhood friends, and his friends’ parents, his former teachers, many regulars from the Fat Hen, and all the bartenders in town. She sees Gina, AJ, and Joey, and in the front row, as if she has always belonged there, Stacy. There are so many faces, so many people, so much sadness.

  At the entrance there is a huge poster of Dominic, smiling his killer smile, a familiar twinkle in his eye. It looks to be a couple of years old, taken on a boat. Emma smiles when she sees his face, ten times bigger than life, immediately feeling the tears.

  Another easel holds a poem. During the eulogy, Dominic’s father tells the mourners it had been Dominic’s favorite when he was a child.

  Emma hadn’t known that.

  There was so much she hadn’t known. She had always thought of them creating their own world, in their own bubble. And they had done exactly that. They had had six months in which to build that world, and it had been special, glorious. It didn’t matter that so few of these people knew who she was and what she’d meant to him. It mattered only to the people they loved.

  She sits next to her parents, and they hold her hands. The tissues in her purse go untouched.

  AJ gets up to speak. He tells a story about meeting Dominic in kindergarten, on the playground slide. He pushed him off, and then Dominic returned the favor, and they’ve been best friends ever since. He recounts the trouble they got into when they were young. He shares stories about their drinking games, and how they played on the railway tracks when they were still too young to know better, and how Dominic always got away with everything because everybody just loved him so damn much.

  “Dominic was . . . Oh boy.” AJ shakes his head, blinking away his tears before going back to the notes he’s brought with him to read from. “I can’t even believe he’s not here,” he says softly. “Dominic was one of the greats. He was a really loyal friend, and he was an amazing dad, right, buddy?” He looks over to Jesse, sitting in the front row between Dominic’s parents and Stacy, heartbreakingly unlike himself in a tiny suit and tie, his little face devoid of all expression as he fidgets and squirms, staying still only when he hears his name.

  Jesse looks at AJ with a big nod and a sudden, unexpected grin. AJ gives him a double thumbs-up, and Jesse gives him one in return.

  “He loved that kid with all his heart. And he loved Emma.” AJ looks over to where Emma is sitting. “Emma was the great love of his life. Every time I saw him during these past few months, he said he finally had the family he always wanted.”

  AJ doesn’t take his eyes off Emma’s while he is speaking. He’s saying this for her, and he’s saying this to her. She can’t tear her eyes away from AJ’s, can’t see that everyone is leaning forward to see who she is.

  “Dominic loved bartending at the Fat Hen. He loved building shit even though he wasn’t very good at it.” There is a low murmur of laughter. “Oh, come on. Everyone knew he wasn’t very good.” AJ smiles at the memory, shaking his head as the crowd laughs. “He may no longer be with us, but these past six months were the happiest of his life. He left us too early, but he left us happy. I know he was happy.”

  Emma’s body shudders as she bites her lip, her whole body heaving in a bid to keep the sobs in. She didn’t expect this to happen, doesn’t want to embarrass herself in front of all these people she doesn’t know.

  The tears stream down her cheeks as she meets AJ’s eyes and nods her acknowledgment, understanding, and thanks.

  It is irrelevant that Dominic’s parents never thought to contact her on the day he died. That they showed up to whisk Jesse away, not giving a thought to her. It is irrelevant that Jesse is sitting between his grandparents and Stacy, three people he barely knows, three people who don’t know him nearly as well as she does, who haven’t tucked up behind him in bed and read him Roald Dahl. It is irrelevant that most of the people in this room have no idea who she is, or indeed that she ever existed.

  But they know who she is no
w, thanks to AJ. And they know that Dominic loved her. She just doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her now.

  After the service, Emma waits on the edge of the room while everyone lines up to pay their respects to Dominic’s parents. As the crowd shuffles and sways, she can just about see the top of their heads. She has to get in line and do the same herself. Her parents are waiting for her in the car. She has assured them she will be fine.

  She can see that Dominic’s parents are heartbroken. Broken. Their faces pulled down with grief. Although they smile and thank people, Dominic’s mother looks as if she is about to keel over. Whatever residual anger Emma was carrying about the way she’s been treated dissolves.

  When the crowd shuffles forward, Emma sees Jesse, standing between Dominic’s parents, scuffing his foot along the floor as he always does when he’s unhappy, or uncomfortable. Emma’s heart feels like it has a vise around it. She stares at him, and he looks up, straight into her eyes, and freezes.

  “Emma!” He races toward her, a six-year-old bullet, and jumps into her arms as he clutches her tight, sobbing into her neck, his arms and legs wrapped around her like a limpet.

  Emma carries him to a chair on the side of the room and sits him on her lap, his arms still tightly around her neck, as she rubs his back and kisses him all over.

  “I want to go home,” Jesse says, between the hiccups and sobs. “Take me home, Emma. I want to come home with you.”

  “I want you to come home, too,” Emma says. She didn’t even realize, until this moment, just how much she has missed him. It seems he hadn’t realized, either. “Maybe for a sleepover? Maybe for the weekend?”

  “No!” Jesse shouts, pulling back. “I want to come home. Forever.”

  “I want that, too, Jesse, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. I may not be living there anymore. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’ll try to find out, okay? I’ll try to figure this out for you. I’m sorry this is so hard, sweetie. Are you with your mom?”