Her father wakes; he looks at her dreamily, nervously, uncomfortably.
“It’s me—Betsy.”
Awake, he starts to shake involuntarily—his hands under the blanket, his head. She wants to hold him still.
“I can’t tell if I’m hot or cold,” he whispers.
“You have a fever.”
“You’re not my mother,” he says uncertainly.
“Your daughter.”
“I believe you.” He coughs violently, his face reddens; he has a hard time catching his breath.
Betsy rubs his back, watching his face closely.
“Throw me in a tub with some rubbing alcohol,” he says quietly.
“Mom used to do that when we had fevers.”
“I thought it was my mother who did that.”
“Maybe both our moms did.”
“I’m tired,” he whispers.
“You can sleep some more,” Betsy says. “You can sleep as long as you want.”
“Did you hear, I’m getting out soon.”
A knock at the door—one of the nurses. Warmly but not too cheerfully, she says to Betsy’s father, “How are we feeling?”
“Hot and cold.”
She wraps a thin blanket around his shoulders to go with the one on his legs, and then takes his temperature, inserting a thermometer into his ear.
It beeps, and she looks at it. “Still fighting that fever.”
“His breathing,” Betsy says.
“I do hear that,” the nurse says about the faint wheezing. “We’ll have the doctor in to take a listen.”
Five minutes after the nurse leaves, he is asleep again, his body no longer shaking. Betsy sits by the window, where her father will be able to see her as soon as he wakes. She listens to the violin of her father’s lungs.
*
At the end of the day, hungry but too exhausted to eat, her father’s fever not yet broken, Betsy drives near Buchanan College on her way to the hotel. Cal offered to bring her a change of clothes, to stay with her, but she said no, she wanted to be alone with her father, for now. Tomorrow she will have to buy clean underwear and socks. She can keep wearing the same jeans and sweater. Rows of campus lights, timed to come on at dark, illuminate walking paths from dorms to classroom buildings and to the library. She sees a student standing outside the bookstore, phone to her ear, a tall, pretty girl with long dark hair, and, certain it’s her, she almost stops the car.
What she would say, she’s not sure.
But as she drives slowly past the bookstore, Betsy sees that the girl is not her sister, after all.
The few times Cal has asked Betsy about her, she has said firmly that she doesn’t want to know her or meet her—in fact, she doesn’t even know what she looks like, wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a lineup.
That was true then, but now would be a lie. Despite her intention never to, recently she searched Avery online and knows what she looks like, that she changed her name, and that she’s a student at Buchanan. Which felt, to Betsy, when she found out, like the girl was stalking her family—or the ghost of her mother.
In her hotel room, she listens to three messages from Cal, offering again to come be with her. She texts him to say thank you, he’s very kind, she loves him and knows he loves her and wants to help, but she needs to do this alone.
She wonders, after sending the text, what this means. What she must do alone.
Sit with her father. Remind him as many times as necessary who she is.
She lies down, planning to get up in ten minutes to change for bed, but the next thing she knows it’s hours later and dark, that time between night and morning without a name.
MARCH 17, 2010
“Where is your daughter?”
Her father is in bed, covered with blankets. The nurse told Betsy when she arrived that her father’s fever has gone up and there’s still congestion in his lungs, and unless they can bring the fever down, he will need to go to the hospital.
“My daughter?” Betsy says.
“I haven’t seen her in a few days,” her father whispers.
“I don’t have a daughter,” she wants to say, but is afraid of confusing him, frightening him.
“It’s just me today.”
“I’m getting out soon,” he whispers.
She leans over the bed and listens: the wheezing has gotten louder.
He was fine a few days ago, she thinks. Not fine; he hasn’t been fine for years. But not this way. She looks closely at him but can’t find a trace of the boyishness. His face is beaded with sweat, his hair flat against his head.
When she steps outside to call Cal, she sees her, the girl, it’s definitely her this time, sitting on a bench outside the entrance.
*
Avoid her, Betsy tells herself. Ignore her. Pretend she isn’t here.
She goes back inside the nursing care facility, steals glances at the bench. She’s just a girl, Betsy thinks. I’m a grown woman. Why do I feel like the girl? A child who wishes her mother were here. Or her brother. A thirty-six-year-old woman seeking comfort from her sixteen-year-old “older” brother. She’s already lived more than twice as long as he did. She’s lived almost three times as long without him as she did with him. She’s heard some say that the dead fade away over time—not forgotten, but not as insistently present in their absence. Not Nick, who still feels near. She closes her eyes and waits. Only darkness. Such a silly gesture, she thinks, to close her eyes and wait for something—that gradual brightening beneath her eyelids.
She opens her eyes. Nothing around her has changed. Nothing seems to have moved. The same old or infirm people in the same chairs. She returns to her father’s room. He’s awake but doesn’t look up to acknowledge her. Again, she wishes her mother or brother could be here with her. She remembers, not for the first time, what her old college roommate said—that she wanted at least three kids, definitely more than one, so that they’d have each other. It would be a comfort to have a sibling now.
“Where is your daughter?”
Her father is awake, whispering to her. Again: “Where is your daughter?”
“I told you, Dad, it’s just me, okay? Just me—Betsy.”
Immediately she regrets her frustrated tone. Softly she says, “Do you know who I am?”
Her father opens his mouth. Betsy waits, but he doesn’t speak.
“I’m not Mom—do you know that?”
She can’t tell if her father is nodding yes or if it’s the shaking.
“I’m not Danielle.”
“The pretty girl who sits next to me in class.”
“That’s right,” Betsy says. “I’m her daughter, Betsy.”
“You look like her.” Her father closes his eyes and coughs, tries to clear his throat.
“Rest your voice,” Betsy says.
“Your daughter,” he says.
“Dad, I think you’re confused.”
“Let me be confused!” She’s so used to his whispering, she’s startled when he yells this.
“I’m sorry,” Betsy says.
“I’m confused—so what.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Your daughter, the girl who comes, she looks like your brother.”
“I haven’t noticed.”
“You should take a look.”
“Okay.”
“That’s all I was trying to say.”
Betsy wets a washcloth with cool water and wipes her father’s face and neck, then presses it against his forehead.
“So what time am I getting out?” he says.
“Soon.”
MARCH 18, 2010
Sometimes a mistake is just a mistake, but sometimes, Betsy thinks the next morning as she parks in the nursing care facility’s lot and sees the girl sitting cross-legged on the same bench, sometimes a mistake, like driving here when you forget that your father is in the hospital—she was with him there until late the previous night—is not quite a mistake. Maybe it’s a sign—but of what, sh
e’s not sure.
Did the girl sleep out here?
Either that or she went back to campus last night and returned early this morning wearing the same red-and-black flannel and the same dark blue jeans with a rip over the left knee and the same white Chuck Taylor high-tops.
She finds herself sliding down in the driver seat, not wanting to be seen, and this makes her ashamed, and being ashamed makes her angry—at the girl, at herself, it’s hard to tell—and this anger is what makes her get out of the car.
She walks to the bench. The girl looks up at her, looks down.
Betsy waits, and when the girl doesn’t look at her again, she sits beside her on the bench.
After a minute of silence, a long minute, Betsy says, “Would you like me to leave?”
“No,” the girl says. “Would you like me to leave?”
Betsy waits longer than is kind to wait after such a question.
“No,” she says.
Then Betsy says, “He’s not here.”
Avery turns toward Betsy, who is able to look at her then—really look at her face. She does see Nick; she sees him only when she’s not looking for him.
“He’s in the hospital,” Betsy says.
“Is it serious?” Avery says. “I mean, he already has something serious, but is it something else serious?”
Before Betsy can answer, Avery says, “I’m a little nervous.”
“He has pneumonia,” Betsy says.
“This is all my fault,” Avery says. “I shouldn’t have taken him out.”
“Being wet doesn’t cause pneumonia.”
“Even so, I’m sorry about the other day.”
It’s okay. Apology accepted. You’re forgiven.
Betsy wants to say these things, but can’t.
Instead she says, “I’m Betsy.”
“I know. I’m Avery.”
“I know,” Betsy says.
*
It’s hard not to stare. Avery tries to resist the temptation as she and Betsy sit on opposite sides of their father’s bed, listening to his uneven breathing, but she wants so badly to take in more of her sister’s face, in person, to see if she sees herself. Betsy looks like her mother, as far as Avery can determine from having seen Danielle only in photographs. Betsy has told Avery that she looks like Nick. “Like my brother,” she said. To which Avery wanted to say: “Mine too.” But they never existed in this world together, not one minute, eight years between his death and her birth. She’s wondered about him over the years, the Christie she knows the least about. She doesn’t feel that she can rightly claim much of him as her own. And so she doesn’t say, “Mine too.”
Betsy, because Avery reminds her of Nick, keeps talking about him—seemingly insignificant memories that for some reason are finding her now, bringing with them powerful feelings. Like how when they were little she’d knock on the wall separating their bedrooms and he’d knock back, how this would make her less afraid of the night. How one time—the memory’s foggy—there was a blackout, some kind of power outage, and a tree fell through the window, and for some reason she was naked—she was probably three or four—and in the dark her brother found her and told her everything was okay. A stupid little memory, she tells Avery, probably got it half wrong, but it’s one of the most vivid she has of Nick—the feeling that he would always be with her, would always protect her.
Maybe Nick’s the safest topic: the one who had nothing to do with any of it, what they can’t talk about.
David opens his eyes and looks at Avery. “Did you hear?” He takes a labored breath. “I’m getting out.”
“Where are you going?” Avery says.
“I’m finally retiring.” Pause for breath. “Just me and my dog.” Pause. “What’s my dog’s name?”
“Swish,” Betsy says.
Her father seems to notice her for the first time on the other side of his bed.
He didn’t ask, “What was my dog’s name?” He used present tense, and so he doesn’t remember, Betsy thinks, that Swish died a year ago. She will never tell him, she decides, not even if he asks. Maybe some things are better forgotten.
“Have you met my daughter?” he says.
“Yes,” Avery and Betsy say at the same time.
He looks from one to the other, confused.
“We’re both your daughters,” Betsy says.
“What did I do.” He pauses to breathe. “To deserve you.”
Later, when a pulmonologist is listening to David’s lungs, Avery and Betsy step out into the hall. “I have class,” Avery says.
“Let me give you a ride.”
“I have my bike.”
“Please, let me.”
“Thank you,” Avery says, “but biking clears my head.”
“What’s the class?”
“It’s a first-year seminar called The Lives of Others. One of those very liberal-artsy courses. Not the cheeriest material—Hiroshima, Chernobyl, Mumbai, Afghanistan, Sontag, Agee, Arbus. It should be called The Suffering of Others. It’s supposed to stretch us, the professor said.”
“Do you feel stretched?”
“Too much, maybe.”
“Our own lives stretch us plenty,” Betsy says.
“I don’t know,” Avery says. “That’s one thing I’m getting out of the course—confirmation that I don’t know much.”
“You should get to class,” Betsy says. “Go stretch.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Avery says. “If that’s okay.”
“One condition,” Betsy says. “Let me pick you up.”
MARCH 19, 2010
They see the ventilator before they speak to a doctor or nurse.
This is it, Betsy thinks—not in a dramatic, soap-opera way, and not in that way people have of overstating the gravity of a situation as a way of wishing for its opposite, but directly, truthfully, almost acceptingly.
David’s doctor explains to Betsy that the pneumonia hasn’t responded to the antibiotics they’ve tried and that her father still has a fever. She moves closer to Avery, and the doctor seems to understand that he is speaking to both of them: he looks at them alternately as he says that they plan to try another antibiotic.
Avery wants to ask questions but doesn’t feel it’s her place. Even though she’s David’s daughter, and even though Betsy has been making gestures to include her, she’s mindful of Betsy’s status as David’s oldest—not counting Nick. Betsy’s the one who knows their father best, who has spent the most time with him.
Betsy says to the doctor, a fiftyish man with a neatly trimmed beard and a soft voice she could listen to all day were he not saying the things he’s saying, “Is there a chance he won’t recover?”
The doctor pauses as if considering his words in a legal context. “It concerns me that the body has not responded to the antibiotics, but we will see what happens.”
“But there’s a chance.”
“Sometimes it takes three or four days to see the desired response.”
“But if he doesn’t respond,” Betsy says.
The doctor hasn’t changed his expression or tone of voice during this exchange; he maintains eye contact, speaks quietly, factually. “The ventilator is breathing for the body right now. If the lungs do not respond, the ventilator will remain necessary. Without the ventilator, you understand, the body would not breathe.”
MARCH 22–23, 2010
Three days later, David still hasn’t responded to antibiotics, his fever has not come down, and the ventilator is still breathing for him.
He has slipped into a coma.
He has fallen into a coma.
As if my father slipped and fell, Betsy thinks.
He did, she supposes.
“What should we do?” she says.
“If I were in your position,” Avery begins, with no idea what the second clause of her sentence will be.
“You are.”
“I mean, if I needed to make a decision.”
“You do,” Betsy
says. “We do.”
“I guess I’d ask the doctor,” Avery says. “I would straight-up ask him what we should do.”
“Doctors don’t tell you what to do.”
“I’d ask anyway—see what he says. Say, if this were your father. Put him in your shoes.”
“Our shoes,” Betsy says.
The doctor, as Betsy expected, says that he can’t tell them what to do.
“Not what we should do,” Avery says, “but what you would do.”
“I cannot know what I would do,” he says. “I can say what I think I would do, but I cannot know. Also, you are you, I am not you—do you understand? Your father is your father. If you ask me any medical questions about your father’s body, about his condition, I will give you a truthful answer.”
“Is he dying?” Betsy says.
“Without the ventilator—yes.”
“Are there other antibiotics to try?”
“We identified the bacterium and have treated with the proper antibiotic, but some bacteria resist. We have tried several that should have worked, but, I’m sorry to say, they have failed.”
*
She’s had the will since her father’s diagnosis, a hard copy in a firebox in the house on Delancey and an electronic copy in an e-mail folder, but has not read it before now. She opens the file on her phone and enlarges the type by spreading her thumb and index finger on the surface of her screen. She had been afraid to read it because she didn’t want to think about her father’s death and because she didn’t want to see Avery’s name. It wasn’t about money but rather a desire to further distance herself from what had happened, and from them, the girl and her mother, the other woman and the other woman’s child, to erase them even if only on paper.
But now, as she finally reads the will, Avery with her at their father’s bedside, unaware of what Betsy is looking at on her phone, she sees “shall be divided equally between my two living children, Betsy Christie and Avery Bautista-Christie” and feels relieved—for Avery, that her father made this gesture, but just as much for her father, who, despite his mistakes, including not being a father to Avery, did at least this. Not nearly enough, but something.
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