by Andrew Roe
* * *
She had been at home, paging through one of the women’s magazines that she sometimes fell prey to in checkout lines, or maybe not even that: just sitting there doing nothing at all, perhaps contemplating housework and dishes and the Buns of Steel IV tape that someone had given her two Christmases ago (a hint?) and was still shrink-wrapped, or wondering which bills could be put off and which couldn’t, or vaguely deciding whether she was going to shower that night or wait until morning. Did she know something was wrong when it happened, the accident? Did she feel something deflate and die inside her at the moment of impact when her daughter crossed over from one existence into another? No: she was too immersed in her stupid reveries, too glad to have the house to herself for a while, enjoying the silence and peace and space and still wearing her slippers and absently scraping off the last of her Burnt Sienna nail polish. How she’d like to change that part of it. How she’d like to have intuited that her daughter was in danger right when the crushing of metal and flesh and skull occurred; that their lives were about to turn inside out. But she didn’t. Her motherly radar wasn’t motherly enough, apparently. She’d tried her best to be the kind of mother worthy of those sappy Mother’s Day greeting cards—the raised lettering, the elaborate cursive font, the couplets chronicling love and patience, understanding and sacrifice—but she knew that whatever she did or didn’t do, it would never be good enough; that it was her fate to fall short; that people have kids for all the wrong reasons or no reason at all, because that’s just what you do, and she was no different. They were no different. You bring a child into this world and you had better be prepared for the consequences. When he called, she almost didn’t even pick up the phone. Just let the machine get it. But she got up. His voice did not sound like his voice. It had a fear in it she’d never heard before, not once in eleven-plus up-and-down years of dating and breakups and makeups and marriage. John? she said.
* * *
At first he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Fuck. Then she did, right after the machine clicked on, the default computerized “Please leave a message” because he kept unplugging the damn thing by mistake. She uttered a sleepy-sounding “Hello.” (Had she been napping in front of a movie she’d already seen six times on cable?) He started rambling. He didn’t know what to say exactly, so he just dove in headfirst, rattling off details, hoping that if enough syllables spilled out of him, he’d be able to impart the necessary information. There’d been no time, no time at all to react. It all happened so fast. The fuck just pulled out right in front of us like we weren’t even there, like we were invisible. There was nothing I could do, I swear. Then he hit another car. The guy was obviously on something. How else could you explain? She’s in surgery right now. Surgery. They’re not saying much. They’re saying it’s too soon to make any kind of . . . what? . . . Prognosis. And we’ll know more after the surgery. We’ll know more later. My wrist . . . But Karen wasn’t saying anything back. She was quiet, absorbing, because that’s what she did: listen calmly, make the other person mistakenly think all is serene and swell and fine, and then explode once all the evidence had been gathered. He kept going because he was afraid of the silence on the other end. If he continued talking then everything would be all right. His seatbelt had been on. Anabelle’s, too. Secure in her booster seat. The car was too old to have airbags. But he ran out of words, sputtered to a stop. There was nothing left. He had said all he could say. He had done his best. He was ready for her response. Why wasn’t she saying anything? What kind of reaction was this? Then it sounded like something happened with the phone. The static got worse. Everything got very far away. He said her name: Karen?
* * *
There was that empty, cavernous phone echo when no one is speaking but they’re still there and you swear you can hear the lines and grids and all the technology you don’t know anything about swirling together, as if everything that makes telephones and telephone conversations possible were suddenly audible. He had been talking nonstop. Like a crackhead crazy man. Like she’d never heard him speak before. She pieced it together as best she could: they were not at the mall, there had been an accident on the way, some guy had pulled right out in front of them and there had been no time to react. John was fine except for something with his wrist, but Anabelle was not. She was not fine. She was the opposite of fine. She was in surgery and the doctors were saying things like massive head trauma and major blood loss and they’d had to use the Jaws of Life to pry her out of the car and a man had been on his knees praying. OK. Processing. This was the situation. How does a mother respond? How does anyone respond? This was one of those phone calls, the kind all parents dread, the kind that strip away your vague belief in a safe world, which is quickly replaced by the view that the universe is indifferent, especially when it comes to what happens to you and those you love and those you are supposed to love. Only, such phone calls usually come in the middle of the night, tearing you from womb-sleep and open-mouthed dreams. It was daylight, not night, so maybe it wasn’t one of those calls. Maybe it was going to be all right. She had all the curtains and blinds pulled, but she knew it was daytime—the sun asserting itself, a simmering yellow, that desert planet sci-fi glow common to Los Angeles—and it was Saturday and there’d been an accident and her hand that held the phone began to shake like her great aunt who had what’s-it-called—Parkinson’s—and then her entire body began to quake and quiver and turn fuzzy, and soon she was no longer vertical but horizontal, and the coolness of the kitchen tiles pressed hard against her face felt nice like a damp cloth on your forehead when you were a kid and sick and home from school, sipping 7Up with a straw and watching daytime TV shows you didn’t normally get to see. She decided it might have to be a while before she moved. Soon though. Her body was adjusting to something: a new weight, a brewing truth.
* * *
He waited in the waiting room. Doctors were paged; nurses slalomed by the door. Buzz, buzz. It was hard to keep up with it all. But he had to because one of them might know something about Anabelle. Every doctor or nurse or orderly potentially carried information that would change his life, their life. Somebody said, “Saturdays are the worst. Fuck me if I gotta work two Saturdays in a row. Fuck me right here, right now.” A man with dreadlocks assaulted a vending machine, which had consumed his dollar bill without dispensing the desired snack. Families held hands, congregated, hoping to defeat death with numbers: the more people assembled in the waiting room and hallway, the less of a chance of . . . He couldn’t even pace. Just stood there. Time? What was time? He was alone and he was the only one who was alone (even the dreadlocked man was there with somebody) and obviously this was hurting Anabelle’s chances. More people were needed. Bodies. Safety in numbers. Who else could he call? Karen’s sister, but she’d always hated him. Then Karen arrived and they waited together, two instead of one. Still not enough, he worried. Karen said she had fainted in the kitchen, but thank God she hadn’t been out for more than a few minutes and she’d called a cab because his car, of course, was in the shop. Any news yet? No, he said. No news. It could be hours still, they said. Just wait and try to relax. Yeah, right. And he touched her face, traced her cheek slowly, softly with his thumb, using his good hand, the one that wasn’t bandaged. He noticed the first inroads of lines around her eyes. He saw the sadness permanently etched there—and everywhere in her face, every centimeter of skin. He’d seen it before, but it had never seemed so poignant and real, this sadness, and he knew that he was responsible for it in ways he couldn’t even begin to fathom, because she hadn’t always been that way; that his desperation had become her desperation, and he wanted to rub it away like smudged lipstick, make it disappear so she would no longer be who she had become. And they were getting older, they had aged each other, he realized. It was true. Funny because they’d been thinking of possibly having another child, because that might be the salve they needed, the missing piece that could perhaps fill the ache that had afflicted
them both. Because things weren’t right, hadn’t been since—well, who knows? They were only getting worse, and after a while you reach that point: Let’s have another kid. Sometimes he thought, Yes, that would do it, but other times he thought, No, what the fuck are we thinking here? It would only make things worse. Another kid would double everything. Karen nuzzled closer, so close he could smell her tears. They wrapped themselves around each other tighter and tighter, rediscovering the fit of their bodies. What was happening? The fluorescent lights buzzed and the dreadlocked man launched a new series of improvised karate kicks at the uncooperative vending machine. And just like that they were a couple again. A real couple. How could they have ever doubted that? How could they have let themselves get to such a sorry-ass state, so distant and unknown to each other? One day you intimately know the curve of your wife’s back and the next you don’t. He stumbled through these snowy thoughts, groping. Anabelle would pull through. She would pull through because of what was happening here, their unspoken reunion, and they would become a family, a real family, not the cheap imitation they’d been before. And yes: they would have another child and they’d fix up the house and the yard and buy some new furniture and plates and sheets and then start to live the life where you lie down at night and reach out to touch the other person and they’re already reaching out to touch you. He held his wife even tighter and mapped out their newly bright future and told himself to remember this feeling and not give it up, not to let things go back to the way they’d been (only minutes ago, true, but how much had changed since then!). He would try. He would really try. If Anabelle came through this then they would begin again. Whispering in her ear, he said, “Everything’s going to be all right. Everything’s going to be all right. She’s going to be fine and we’re going to be fine. Shhhh. There now. Shhhh.” It felt good to say the words, to make the sounds. This was what a husband, what a father did.
* * *
How long did they hold each other in the waiting room? She couldn’t say for sure. A long time. Long enough for her to want to hold on for good, to be afraid of separating, of their bodies parting. Letting go would disrupt whatever was passing between them. Letting go would mean that soon a doctor would emerge from surgery and deliver the news. No, letting go was not an option. She remembered closing her eyes and telling herself to clutch him closer, if that was possible. She remembered burying herself in that silly Hawaiian shirt that he’d started wearing lately. He thought it was so uncool that it was cool. One hundred percent Rayon. Machine wash, tumble dry. But she couldn’t remember if they’d still been holding each other when yes finally a doctor did emerge from surgery and yes he did have news and it was the famous good-news-bad-news speech (although he did not offer a choice of which they would like to hear first), the good news being that Anabelle has pulled through so far. She was a fighter all right and they had managed to keep her alive throughout the surgery, which was a victory in and of itself. But there had been massive—again that word, massive, which had never seemed so harsh to her ear—massive head injury and massive blood loss, which meant that there was brain damage and they wouldn’t know how much or how little until later but for now she was in a coma, or not really a coma but more like a state that was similar to a coma, and he’d go into that more later, but there was one other fact that he’d be remiss if he didn’t tell them about and that was that, besides the accident, which had caused such significant trauma to the head (You mean “massive,” she’d wanted to correct him), there had been an initial discrepancy of sorts when Anabelle had first arrived at the hospital and she had been given too much of a particular drug, which had added a whole other layer to the mix, and they wouldn’t know the true repercussions of this until later, but he’s saying it right now, up front, so that they’d know he’s being totally and completely up front about everything because he’d be remiss if he wasn’t. Again she faced the question of how to react. Her daughter was alive, and for that there was relief. Alive. But then: brain damage, unlikely to ever speak or move again. And given too much of a drug. John was asking more about this, about what was the deal with the drug she’d been given too much of, the so-called discrepancy. “Are you saying that could make it worse?” The doctor said, “I’m not saying anything. I’m telling you the facts. I’m telling you the facts of what happened and what we know so far and what we don’t know so far.” The doctor wearing scrubs and glasses. A tight, compact barrel of a man. And for sure by this point she and John had peeled away from each other and the distance was returning. Of course she wasn’t thinking of that at the time. It was all Anabelle. It was all her daughter, who was in intensive care and would be for some time. And in the weeks and months ahead she would be tested as a mother like never before. She would discover a deeper level of motherhood, one of profound vigilance and exhausting purpose, caring for a child, another soul, in such a consuming manner: cleaning, feeding, wiping, monitoring, ministering around the clock. It was an altered state of being that exiled you from the rest of the world. John having trouble with this, John resisting the gravity pull that would become a permanent part of their lives. She would also blame herself for the accident and everything it wrought—after all, she was the one who’d suggested Anabelle go with John. Ordinarily Anabelle would have stayed home. Why don’t you go with your father? Mommy’s tired. Mommy needs a little downtime. That’s what she said. And of course Anabelle said all right even though she would rather have remained home and continued her coloring, and what do seven-year-olds understand about “downtime” anyway? What it came down to, though, was something else. What it came down to was that two people could love each other and this could happen. What it came down to was that two people could stop loving each other and this could still happen. She wanted to warn all mothers and fathers: Do not take a moment for granted. Even when they are too much, when you wish your children away, either temporarily or permanently. Hold them and then hold them a little longer. Smell their hair, breathe their essence, marvel at the beating of their tiny, beautiful hearts, because a second is all it takes for everything to change. The doctor then telling them they could see Anabelle and they followed him down corridor after corridor, left then right then left, the doctor walking his brisk doctor walk so that they had to move faster to keep up. When they arrived at her bed in the ICU, Anabelle was surrounded by people in masks and gowns, and the doctor said, The parents, and the people in masks and gowns parted so they could get closer. The machines and wires, the release and push of suction, of manufactured air. She touched Anabelle’s face, stared at her closed doll’s eyes and open, twisted mouth. This was her daughter now. She turned to John and tried to say something, but her voice was not there; it was gone, and she waited for John to say something, but he didn’t, he, too, was silent and slowly backing away from Anabelle’s bed, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, this girl, this still, foreign creature so elaborately bandaged and manacled, this new beginning that was upon them, and they had to figure out what could and couldn’t be fixed.
BELIEVERS
THERE’S THE TEN-YEAR-OLD with AIDS. There’s the thirty-nine-year-old with cancer and advanced arthritis and glaucoma. There’s the sixty-seven-year-old who’s as physically healthy as a thirty-nine-year-old but cannot recognize his children or remember his wife’s name. There’s the rape victim. There’s the sufferer of chronic allergies. There’s the drunk driver who killed a boy around the same age and who thinks of the fucked-up, unjust nature of the world (he should have died, not the boy) on a more or less hourly basis. There’s the homeless man who felt he had to come but didn’t know why. There’s the local politician who needs votes and a good photo opportunity to revitalize his flagging campaign. There’s the aide who works for said politician and had suggested the visit, and who himself is terribly lonely and can’t get this quote from Mother Teresa out of his head, which he’d read or heard somewhere, or maybe even dreamed (it’s hard to tell these days, everything cloudy and
part of the same general transmission), the quote that goes something like this: The world is dying of loneliness. There’s the unemployed single mom who saw it on TV and was just curious. There’s the woman who loves too little. There’s the woman who loves too much. There’s the woman who loves just the right amount but is not loved back in return. There’s the man who cannot be true to his wife. There’s the man who can be true to his wife but has big-time intimacy issues, and who, after decades of marriage and children, remains a mystery to his family. There’s the mother whose daughter had slit her wrists and survived. There’s the daughter whose mother had taken pills and succeeded. There’s the young man who wants to die. There’s the old man who wants to live. There’s the old man’s wife who doesn’t want him to die before she does.
They arrive and arrive and arrive, all with their reasons, all with their doubts and certainties and everything in between. Thank you, they tell the mother. Thank you for sharing this gift. Thank you for opening your door to the world. We need this. We need you.
PART TWO
COUNTING DOWN
10
| Father Jim |
NOBODY WALKS IN L.A. This is a well-known fact. Everything spread too distantly, too arrogantly—the city, the county, the Southland, however you want to categorize it all. The only connection the great roaring freeways, like clogged ancient rivers, carrying commerce and travelers, people making their way in the world, industrious and air-conditioned and unaware, but not walking, no, never.
Nonetheless, Father Jim Hinshaw isn’t going to let the limitations of his adopted hometown—still genuinely flummoxed to be among what he used to think of as the chosen of Southern California—ruin his lifelong love of a good, brisk walk. Growing up and living in a small liberal-arts college town in Ohio (as exotically foreign as France around here, he’d quickly discovered) for most of his life, he could walk anywhere, and did so, habitually, spending many a morning or afternoon or early evening on a leisurely stroll or therapeutic jaunt with no specific destination in mind, just a desire to cover ground and clear the head, and he’d never lost his attachment to the saintly idea of taking the more difficult yet ultimately more rewarding path/route/road/whatever (he had become a priest, after all) and to the practice of traversing streets and neighborhoods by foot and thus seeing and noticing things you couldn’t see and notice from a car. Life’s different when viewed from the sidewalk as opposed to the insularity of metal and glass, and given his vocation Father Jim believes it’s important to have as many vantage points as possible from which to contemplate, to understand, the human parade.