“Do not resuscitate.”
No ventilator or feeding tube “after all reasonable medical treatment has been administered and when no reasonable treatment remains or when such treatment would only serve to stay death.”
Stay death.
These two words, out of context, which Betsy keeps hearing in her mind with a comma dividing them, an imperative, bring tears to her eyes, but not out of them. She turns to face the window, just in case, so that Avery won’t see.
*
In the afternoon they meet with a hospice doctor who explains what will likely happen once David is taken off the ventilator.
They will begin the process of making him as comfortable as possible, including administering morphine, before discontinuing the ventilator. And then, as the doctor phrases it, her father will naturally pass.
It could be as brief as a few hours, or as long as several days.
He will not suffer, the doctor explains, though it might seem at moments as if he is. It will be “just the body working through its passing.”
“Not just,” Betsy tells Avery when the doctor has gone.
A few hours later, at dusk, she drops Avery off at her dorm. “I can pick you up the same time tomorrow—unless you have class.”
“It’s spring break.”
“So that’s why it’s so dead here.”
“I like it this way,” Avery says.
“Wouldn’t you rather be on some beach?”
“I’m not a beach person.”
“You don’t seem like one.”
“See you in the morning,” Avery says.
She gets out of the car, but before Betsy drives away, Avery knocks on the window. Betsy lowers the window, and Avery says, “Do you really want to be in a hotel tonight?”
“No,” Betsy says, and, imagining the long night ahead, she suddenly finally shyly quietly cries, just a little, in front of Avery.
“You should stay here with me.”
Betsy wipes her eyes, rests her head on the steering wheel.
“Seriously, you can,” Avery says. “There’s no one here.”
Without raising her head, Betsy says, “I’m so tired.”
She turns off the car and gets out. Her car is crooked, the front end jutting out into the street, but she doesn’t care.
In Avery’s room, Betsy says, “You actually make your bed. I didn’t think college students did that.”
“The only place I don’t mind a mess is on my desk.”
The desk is covered with papers and notebooks and books with yellow and pink Post-it notes sticking out of their fore edges.
They take off their jackets and shoes, let them fall to the floor. Still dressed, Betsy gets into Avery’s roommate’s bed, lies on top of the covers, and closes her eyes. “I could fall asleep right now,” she says.
“Me too,” Avery says.
“What time is it anyway?”
“Seven something.”
Avery lowers the blinds, further darkening the room, and then she gets into bed.
*
Betsy wakes confused. Someone is touching her shoulder, a figure barely visible in the dark.
“You’re okay,” a voice says.
And then she recognizes that it’s Avery, and remembers where she is. She’s happy to be here and not in a hotel.
“I think you were dreaming.”
“I don’t remember,” Betsy says.
“You were knocking on the wall.”
“I’m sorry I woke you,” Betsy says. “Is it tomorrow?”
Avery checks her phone and sees that it’s almost five o’clock. “Yes, technically.”
Betsy sits up suddenly—a sharp pain in her stomach.
“Are you all right?” Avery says.
“I don’t feel well.”
“Are you going to be sick?”
“Yes.”
“The bathroom’s right across the hall—come on.” Avery takes Betsy’s hand and helps her out of bed. The pain comes again, like being stabbed, another wave of nausea. In the dark she can hide the pain on her face.
“Stay here, please,” Betsy says. “I’ll be okay.”
The hallway light almost blinds her, but she makes it to the bathroom and into a stall. Let it not be that, she thinks. Not that. It would be a kind of punishment—for being so ambivalent, so afraid, for not telling Cal.
She vomits into the toilet, and the pain subsides. She catches her breath and thinks it’s over, but it comes again. She vomits twice more, then dry-heaves, and then the pain is gone.
She sits on the toilet, trying to catch her breath. Then she pulls down her pants and underwear and checks: no spotting.
Thank God—not that. Just morning sickness.
But the fear of what it could have been reminds her: she wished for a miscarriage years ago. It was the only thing that might have saved her parents’ marriage, and, she came to believe, foolishly, desperately, her mother’s life. The birth of that child, she convinced herself, would be the death of her mother. Her mother needed all her strength to fight cancer, but the pregnancy, even more than the shock of the affair, had sapped her of whatever fight was left; Betsy could see that. And so she hoped for a miracle—a miscarriage.
But here is that baby, now a young woman, knocking on the stall door, asking Betsy if she’s okay.
Betsy stands, unsteadily at first, and pulls up her pants. She flushes the toilet, then opens the door. She and Avery go back to Avery’s room and get into bed.
“I feel a little better,” Betsy says, looking across the room at her sister.
“My stomach is nervous too.”
“It’s morning sickness,” Betsy says. “I’m pregnant.”
“Wow,” Avery says. “That’s awesome.”
“You’re the first person I’ve told.”
“I’m sorry you feel sick, but, I mean, congratulations.”
“I don’t want it to be tomorrow,” Betsy says.
“Neither do I.”
“I mean, I don’t want it to be today.”
“Me neither.”
“I don’t want to go through this,” Betsy says.
“I’ll be with you,” Avery says.
“I’m not ready,” Betsy says. “Can we sleep just a little longer?”
“Of course,” Avery says. “We can pretend it’s still yesterday.”
“Let’s pretend it’s a long time ago,” Betsy says, and soon she and her sister fall asleep.
PART SEVEN
Long for This World
1977
OCTOBER 23, 1977
The wind wakes Nick. His room’s dark except for a thin line of light on the far wall, sun through an open slat in the blinds. He likes being first awake, but that’s happened rarely the past three years, now that he has a younger sister. She likes to hide under her blanket and call him to find her. Or to come into his room with Belly Bear—her stuffed bear with a big belly Betsy says a baby’s inside—and tell Nick in the bear’s imagined high-pitched voice, trying like a ventriloquist not to move her lips, “Wake up, sleepy, wake up.” He’s surprised she’s not up yet with this wind, almost enough to frighten him even though he’s nine and doesn’t scare easily. He lies still and watches the line of light on the wall brighten. He stretches from his bed to reach the blind and flips up another slat. A second band of light appears. He turns down the slat and the light disappears. Then he twirls the wand to open all the slats until lines of light in the shape of the blinds appear on the wall. Wind rattles the window glass. Through the openings in the blinds he sees tree branches bend and red and orange leaves lifted up and up before descending onto Delancey Place, where they lift and fall again. The streetlamp in front of the house is still lit. He stares, wanting to witness the moment it goes out. He tries not to blink, but blinks, and in that fraction of a second the light goes out.
*
As soon as Betsy wakes, she calls for Nick. In the dark under her blanket, she tries not to laugh. She hears him com
e into her room. “Wait a second, I just heard something,” he says. Then she feels his hands on the blanket. She squeezes Belly Bear’s big belly flat, and then the blanket lifts and she shrieks. “Silly bear,” Nick says. She and Belly Bear live in the Hundred Acre Wood with Pooh, her third-best friend in the world after number two, Belly Bear, and number one, her brother. Nick sleeps on the other side of the wall they share. If she wakes in the night, she knocks; he knocks back. If she knocks twice, he knocks back twice. Sometimes she knocks once and he knocks back ten times, and this makes her laugh, but what doesn’t make her laugh is when she knocks one or two or ten times and he doesn’t knock back at all. She will get out of bed when this happens to make sure he’s really there on the other side of the wall. But he’s right here, now, on her side of the wall. And with him here, the wind sounds nice, not scary—wind that could fly a kite, or lift you from the ground, then set you down again in front of your home on Delancey Place.
*
Danielle hears the kids, that game they play: Betsy hides and Nick finds her. It’s her favorite thing in the world: to watch or listen to her children without their knowing. She can’t make out what they’re saying as they come down the hall, this boy and girl who were not in the world a decade ago.
They push open the bedroom door slowly. First Nick’s face, then Betsy’s.
“The Big Bad Wolf,” Betsy says. “He’ll huff and he’ll puff.”
“Quiet, you’ll wake Dad.”
“Dad’s awake,” David says. He blinks, waits for his eyes to adjust to the light.
Betsy climbs into bed and sits beside him. Nick practices diving catches by lobbing himself one of David’s rolled-up socks found on the floor. Betsy hides her face behind her bear and says to David in her bear voice, “There’s a baby in my belly, are you the daddy?”
David widens his eyes. “Hold on now, Belly Bear.”
“David,” Danielle says, “is there something you need to tell me?”
“Two kids are just fine,” David says.
“I’m hungry,” Nick says.
“You’re always hungry,” David says.
“Can you make pancakes?”
“What day is this?” Betsy says.
“Sunday,” Nick says.
“No, it’s today!”
“Every day is today.”
“No,” Betsy says, “today is the only today.”
“Mom, tell her it’s Sunday.”
“It’s Sunday and it’s today,” Danielle says.
“I’m so hungry,” Nick says.
“I saw a little black rain cloud,” Betsy says.
*
After breakfast, David says, “Hey, an idea. Let’s take a drive to Valley Forge.” Danielle says, “But it’s so windy.” Nick says, “We’re reading about the Revolution in school. Did you know hundreds of horses died here that winter? And that the soldiers left bloody footprints and died from smallpox and pneumonia and exposure?” David says to Danielle, “And you’re complaining about a little wind.” Betsy says, “I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today,” a Piglet line she likes from Pooh.
*
Betsy, facing the window on her side of the back seat, closes her eyes and slowly rotates her head until the darkness beneath her eyelids lightens, and that’s how she knows she’s turned to the sun. She rotates her face the other way and the light dims again, and when she opens her eyes, there it is: her little black storm cloud.
*
Inside one of the log barracks Nick’s been reading about, he lies on a bunk bed—a wood plank, really—and closes his eyes. Betsy tells him to wake up, but he doesn’t open his eyes. She pulls his arm, his legs. She tries to pry open his eyes. She finally does, but his eyes stare straight up, expressionless. “Look at me,” she says. Louder she says, “Look at me!” She takes Belly Bear from her jacket pocket and in the bear’s voice says, “Please look at me,” and he looks.
*
Mount Misery’s about two miles up and back. Not too steep, more a large hill than a mountain. David and Danielle have hiked it many times, before the kids. Nick likes to lead. He finds a long stick, swings it against a tree until the stick cracks—home run. He finds another stick and stands in front of a maple tree. He swings against the tree twice without success and the third time the stick splinters—another home run.
*
“I’m tired,” Betsy says, and Danielle says, “We’re almost there,” even though they’re not quite halfway. Betsy says, “My feet hurt.” David lifts her onto his shoulders and they keep walking. He thinks: Someday I won’t be able to lift her like this, the way I can no longer lift Nick like this.
*
At the top, they can see the creek below, Mount Joy across the water. All the way up just to turn around, Nick thinks. Down’s much easier than up. He tries to find the exact trees he hit with rocks, the exact nicks the rocks made in the bark. He tries to find the exact trees he broke sticks against for home runs and the exact pieces of those sticks along the trail and in piles of autumn leaves.
*
At the base of Mount Misery—so quickly they’re back where they started—they walk across a wooden footbridge to the other side of Valley Creek. Water from recent storms has washed mowed grass off the floodplain, and the clippings are caught up in the roots of creek-side trees. The grass is brown and braided. A wig for a forest giant, Betsy thinks.
*
Hiking up Mount Joy is slower going because of the wind, but it makes no sense, Danielle thinks—maybe there’s some silly superstition in this—to hike all the way up Mount Misery and not hike all the way up Mount Joy, even though there’s nothing miserable about Mount Misery and nothing more joyful about Mount Joy, just the names. A silly, superstitious thought.
*
Nick looks for bloody footprints even though it’s been two hundred years and he knows better. He looks for the bones of horses.
*
Sunlight comes through the forest canopy so briefly that by the time Betsy looks up, having first felt it on her face, the sun is once again shrouded by a storm cloud.
*
A few drops, just felt them, Danielle thinks, should probably head back down, but we’re so close, might as well keep going. Besides, who cares if it’s raining?
And David thinks: Rain, but who cares?
And Nick sees the ruins and thinks: No one will know.
And Betsy looks where Nick just was, on the path in front of her, and thinks: Where is he?
*
They round a bend in the path, and Betsy says to David, “Nick’s gone.”
“He’s just ahead of us,” David says.
Then he sees the stone building, really just the shell of what used to be a building, stone steps leading up to an entrance to nothing. Looks like maybe it used to be a factory, but now there’s a small stream running through it. Tree branches reach through an otherwise empty window frame.
*
If I pull out a single stone, Betsy thinks, it will all come crashing down like blocks.
*
It’s raining hard now, and Betsy’s crying because Nick’s gone, and so Danielle calls his name, they wait, nothing, then David says, “Nick, game’s over,” still nothing, then David in a stern voice says, “Nick, knock it off,” and there he is in the empty doorframe looking like a ghost, Danielle thinks. “You’ve scared your sister,” she says. “Come out of there. It doesn’t look safe.”
*
At the peak, they pause to listen to the rain and to look down at Valley Creek and across at Mount Misery, before heading back down.
*
That night, at the movies with his father, Nick decides: the second time is better. Some things about the first time are better—not knowing what will happen next, the newness of it—but overall, Nick thinks, the second time seeing a movie is better. The first time, he didn’t know to close his eyes when Darth Vader choked a man with his mind, but this time he closes his eyes but can still hear Darth Vader
’s breathing behind his mask and the man’s choking. He knows that stormtroopers will burn Luke’s home and kill his aunt and uncle, and that Princess Leia will watch her home planet, Alderaan—and her parents, who live there—turned into space dust by the Death Star, and that Darth Vader will kill Obi-Wan Kenobi, Nick’s favorite character, in a lightsaber duel, but only this time does Nick catch that Obi-Wan lets Darth Vader kill him because he knows that in death he will make the Force more powerful, and this kind of blows Nick’s mind, how he could have missed that. When the movie ends, he emerges from the theater with the sensation that the real world is less real than the world of the movie. His father says, “Let’s race,” and Nick says, “Okay,” and his father says, “On your mark, get set . . . go!” and they run along Chestnut, dodging people, and just before they reach Delancey, Nick passes his father. Standing on the corner, catching his breath, his face wet with sweat and rain, Nick says, “You let me win,” and his father says, quoting Darth Vader, “Don’t underestimate the Force.”
*
Warm water running over her hand and into the tub reminds Danielle that red wine would warm her inside, would feel just right while Betsy plays with plastic mermaids and minnows and Nick’s old plastic boats and the small buckets they bring to the beach, so many toys floating in the tub or sunk to the bottom, each a favorite for a month or a day, forgotten, remembered, forgotten for good, and finally given or thrown away.
She turns off the water. “Mommy needs to get something, okay?”
Betsy, happy, doesn’t seem to hear or care.
“Honey, you remember what Mommy said about not putting your head under the water and not standing?”
Betsy, her face behind one of her mermaids, says yes in Belly Bear’s voice even though Belly Bear’s sitting on the closed toilet seat.
“Betsy, look at me.”
She peeks from behind the mermaid.
“Tell me you heard.”
“I heard,” she says.
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