His eyelids fluttered then as if he’d heard her. She spoke his name, softly. “Jordy?”
“Mom?”
“Yes, honey, I’m here.” Bending over him, she tightened her hand around his.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and the words were heartbroken and hopeless.
“No, no. You mustn’t worry.” She smoothed his hair from his brow, taking care not to disturb the gauze lying over his eyes.
“Trav is—he’s hurt bad, Mom. I tried to help him.”
“Of course, I know you did. Everything you could,” Sandy added. “Dad’s here.” She glanced up at Emmett, her eyes intent on him; her message that he should speak was strong in her mind, and he did, but what he said appalled her.
“So, it’s true. You were driving drunk. Is that right?”
“Not now.” Sandy spoke over him.
“Wasn’t—” Jordy answered.
“Wasn’t what?” Emmett bent toward him. “Drinking and driving?”
But Jordy didn’t respond.
“Son?”
Sandy looked at Emmett. “He’s fallen asleep.”
“How could he? That quick?”
“Dr. Showalter said he would go in and out.” Sandy straightened. “How could you accuse him like that?” She kept her voice low, but she was furious.
“Do you have a clue what could happen to him, Sandy? To us?” Emmett’s whisper was equally heated. “If he was drinking and driving? Do you know the shit storm we’re facing?”
“You heard him say he wasn’t.”
“I heard him say the word wasn’t. What that was in reference to, I don’t know. Anyway, according to everything I’ve heard so far, the evidence says otherwise. He admitted himself that when he came to, he was in the driver’s seat, for fuck’s sake. What other proof do you need?”
“We’re not having this discussion here.” Sandy pushed her hair behind her ears. Fatigue bowed her shoulders, throbbed dully behind her eyes. “There’s only one thing that matters right now, and that’s for Jordy to get better.”
“And Trav? Michelle? If they don’t—”
Sandy locked Emmett’s gaze, and he had the good sense to stop and turn away.
“Aren’t you always pointing out to me that it’s ridiculous to speculate?” She spoke to his back.
He didn’t answer.
She looked down at her son, at the gauze hiding his eyes. She remembered when he was born, the nightlong hours of hard labor that had ended in a protracted and hazardous breech delivery. Don’t take his diaper off, the nurse who brought Jordy to her afterward had warned. You’ll cry, she’d said.
Sandy lifted a corner of the gauze that hid Jordy’s eyes now, the same as she had untaped his diaper then. He was her child. There was no possibility of blinding herself to the ways in which he was hurt. The damage was horrible. On seeing it, she lost her breath, and just as she had on the day of his birth, she fought a strong urge to avert her gaze. On the day of his birth, it had been his tiny lower torso that had been this severely bruised and battered. His scrotum had been the size of her fist, making it impossible to perform a circumcision until three days later. She still dreamed on occasion of his earsplitting screams, and her throat on waking would be packed with tears. She wanted to cry now at the hideousness of the injury confronting her—a radiant starburst of deep lacerations, centered at the outer corner of his right eye, gashed an arc across his brow and down to the bridge of his nose. Another network of cuts extended down across his right ear. A hunk of scalp at the hairline near his right temple was missing.
She could see the mangled edges of blood-crusted flesh had been sealed together, but it was impossible to detect how, whether with stitches or some type of glue. Both his eyes appeared swollen and were caked with blood and something yellowish. How could his vision be safe? Sandy couldn’t believe it was. Wouldn’t believe it until Jordy told her he could see.
Setting the gauze on a nearby cabinet, she carefully peeled back the sheet and blanket, exposing the shoulder sling. It was blue, a contraption composed of wide nylon bands and straps and Velcro. Jordy had worn a similar brace after his shoulder was dislocated during his sophomore football season, when he was broadsided by a monster lineman on the opposing team who had been built like a bull and looked thirty-five at the very least.
“It’ll be hell if he’s torn his rotator cuff again.” Emmett came back to Jordy’s bedside.
Sandy gently retucked the bed linen, not answering. A torn rotator cuff was nothing compared to the loss of one’s eyesight.
She was aware of the monitor at her elbow, the rhythmic registry of Jordy’s every breath and heartbeat. A call over the PA system summoned someone to the second-floor nurses’ station, stat. Footsteps passed. Voices rose and fell. Sandy leaned on the bed rail, feeling her eyelids shutter, feeling her mind go numb.
“How are we doing in here?” Claire crossed the room to stand next to Sandy. She picked up Jordy’s wrist, eyeing the monitor.
“Are you sure his vision is okay?” Sandy asked.
“Yes.” Claire glanced at Sandy. “I know it looks scary, but trust me, his vision is fine. He might need a bit of reconstructive surgery to minimize scarring, but other than that, there won’t be any bad effects. He was lucky.”
How many times would she hear that? Sandy wondered. What was lucky about being in a horrendous accident, especially if you caused it? Had he? A sudden urge to slap Jordan awake leaped from the floor of her mind. She wanted to shake him, to demand the truth. To shout: What were you thinking? She asked Claire about Travis instead.
“There’s no change, I’m afraid,” the nurse said.
“I should check on him and my sister.” Sandy glanced at Emmett, wanting him to come with her.
She didn’t think she could face Jenna alone. The sense of this was new and terrible.
“Actually, she and her husband—” Claire began.
“She and Troy aren’t married yet,” Sandy said. “They will be; they plan on it.”
“If Troy can ever get her to commit long enough to get her to plan the wedding.” Emmett smiled.
They all did, the way anyone does when the word wedding is mentioned.
Claire said, “They’ve gone to the waiting room, I think.”
Sandy looked down at Jordy. She smoothed his hair.
“Why don’t you join them?” Claire pushed buttons on the monitor. “You can come back at the next regular ICU visiting hour.”
“I want to stay,” Sandy said.
“I’m sorry, but visitation is over.” Claire was brisk. “You can come back at five for a half hour, and again at nine tonight. There’s a schedule up on the bulletin board in the waiting room.”
Emmett thanked her.
Claire, seeming to relent, said, “My guess? Your guy’ll be out of here and into a regular room by this time tomorrow. He’s doing really well. Barring something unforeseen,” she added.
The fine print, Sandy thought. The disclaimer. The thing that said, “I bear no responsibility for any promises.”
Sandy and Jenna’s parents arrived, white-faced and shaken, asking what had happened. Revisiting that awful question: Who was driving? Sandy wanted to scream. What does it matter? We’re all in this together. They’re our boys, and this terrible thing happened to both of them.
She was relieved when her folks offered to go to Wyatt and gather things from their homes, essentials like clean underwear and toothbrushes. After they left, Sandy and Emmett, and Jenna and Troy, followed a mostly silent routine, leaving the ICU waiting room at regular intervals to visit Jordy and Travis, then returning a half hour later to sit like strangers. The few times Emmett and Sandy found Jordy awake, he asked about Travis. Sandy was afraid to say much. Afraid of the effect it might have. She warned Emmett with her eyes. Don’t talk about the accident; don’t ask him again about driving. But once, Jordy himself brought it up. “I was in the driver’s seat,” he said, “but Travis was driving.”
“How
can that be, son?” Emmett was gentle.
“I don’t know, Dad. It’s hard—I got out somehow. I tried to help Trav.” Jordy’s eyes closed. Tears gathered at the corners. “He’s hurt, hurt so bad.” He spoke as if he were there, seeing it, Travis, the condition he was in. Suddenly his eyes opened wide, and he said, “I have to see him.” He lifted his head, made as if to get up, groaned and fell back.
Sandy bent over him. “Rest, honey. Just rest. It’s fine. Everything is fine.” She smoothed the hair on the crown of his head, thinking she had probably never told a bigger lie.
Sandy sat beside Jenna in the waiting room. “You should eat something.” She clasped Jenna’s hand. It was cold. “We should all go to the cafeteria, even if we don’t feel like eating.”
Emmett braced his elbows on his knees.
Troy wiped his face, blew out his breath.
Jenna said, “I’m not leaving. Not when Trav could go at any moment.”
“Go?”
“He isn’t going to make it, Sandy.”
“No! As long as he’s breathing—”
“He’s not. A machine is doing it for him. If you could see him—” Jenna stopped.
Sandy held on to her hand more tightly, but there was no response. It was as if Jenna were slipping away to a place Sandy couldn’t follow. It came to her then how they would never be the same. It was as if the sisters they had been had ceased to exist, and the reality couldn’t have struck Sandy more forcefully if Jenna had turned to her and slapped her across the face.
“He’s having these little strokes now because of all the pressure. His Glasgow Scale is less than three.”
“Glasgow—what is that? What does it mean?” Sandy wanted Jenna’s glance.
But Jenna took back her hand and bent over her knees. “It means he’s dying. There’s almost no brain activity. They’ve asked me about organ donation.”
“Holy Jesus Christ.” Emmett got up and paced a short distance away.
Sandy said, “Remember when Travis and Jordy rode the four-wheeler and Trav fell off? He lost consciousness—”
Jenna’s head came up. “How can you compare—” She paused. “Except—Jordy was driving then, too, wasn’t he? And once again he was going like a fucking maniac! He’d probably been drinking then, too.”
“He was only fourteen.”
“What about last summer? When he borrowed my car and backed it into a light pole?”
“That was an accident—”
“He was drinking, Sandy. Believe it or not, it wasn’t Santa Claus who left the empty pint of peppermint schnapps I found under the driver’s seat.”
“He swore to me it wasn’t his, that he hadn’t—”
“He lied to you. He lies all the time. You’re the only one who doesn’t see it, the world of hurt that kid is in.” Jenna’s voice pitched high. It bumped and slid. “You never stop him, discipline him, and now I’m going to lose my son, my only child, because you—”
“Jenna, Sandy.” Emmett was warning them. He was telling them this wasn’t the time or the place.
Troy crossed his arms and blinked at the ceiling.
“I want to see him.” Sandy spoke into the god-awful silence. “Jordy has asked to see him.”
Jenna sat up, ramrod straight. “I don’t want Jordy anywhere near Trav.”
“You don’t mean that.” Sandy was stunned. She waited, near breathless for several seconds, but Jenna didn’t take it back. And then out of nowhere, a voice came over the PA, toneless, yet somehow urgent.
“Code blue, ICU,” it announced. “Code blue, ICU.”
4
Beck came through the gate, looking somber, as if the weight of the world burdened his back.
Libby’s heart thumped. “What happened?”
“You won’t believe it,” he said, and he paused, then flashed her a grin full of mischief, and grabbing her, he whirled her in a circle. He was off the hook, he said. “We were dropped, severed, let go. No more lawsuit.” He set her on her feet—both of them half-breathless—then returned to his truck and pulled out a couple of grocery sacks. “I shopped at Whole Foods in Austin.”
In the kitchen he took items from the sacks, displaying for her inspection, her oohing and ahhing, a package of mahimahi, a box of wild rice, a rubber-banded bunch of fresh asparagus. Pulling out the final item, he grinned, pumping his brows suggestively as he held it up for her to see.
Peach ice cream. One pint. Some fancy brand.
She laughed. “Heaven knows what that cost.”
“Only the best for my sweetheart,” he said.
She snapped the towel at his leg, calling him an old fool.
“Watch out who you’re calling old, woman.” He stowed the ice cream in the freezer.
She loosened the asparagus from its tie and trimmed the ends. “What happened, exactly—with the suit, I mean?”
“The plaintiff’s attorneys finally admitted the whole thing about it being a flaw in the design was bullshit.”
“Thank God.”
“You can say that again. Between the firm’s legal fees and building the house, I was starting to get a bit worried.”
Libby looked at him over her shoulder. “You never said anything. You called it an inconvenience.”
“I didn’t want you to worry, too.” He unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt, rolled his sleeves to the elbow.
“You must have told Mia. She bit my head off when she called me last week.”
“You answered the phone?”
“Yes, it was ten o’clock in the morning. I didn’t expect her to be drunk.”
“Was she?”
“Probably. She accused me of pressuring you, making you move out here, forcing you to build a house you don’t want. Is that how it is?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He plowed his hands over his head, looking defeated, impatient. Defensive. Some combination. He didn’t want to answer her question. He wanted to make it about his sister, his sister’s drinking, her drama, rather than tell the truth about how he was feeling. Emotions were hard for him, the result of having been raised by neglectful parents. Sissy and Harold had loved their children, but only when they were sober, when they remembered Mia and Beck were around.
Libby had worked as a high school guidance counselor for most of their married life, and over the years she’d taken a lot of psychology courses. She’d worked with children like Beck and Mia, who’d grown up in troubled circumstances. He seldom spoke of the past, but he carried it. The boy he’d been—that frightened, brave, stalwart little boy, the one who had stood guard over baby Mia, who had harbored a fierce need to protect his little sister—still lived in the man he’d become.
But now Mia was a grown-up, and she drank. All the time. Beck didn’t know what to do with that. He didn’t know what to do with Mia’s bitter envy of him, his sobriety, his success. Libby didn’t know what to do with Mia, either. She couldn’t change her upbringing, couldn’t give Mia the moon or a million dollars to make it all right. She couldn’t drink with her or talk to her, although at times she would still try, even though Beck’s own advice was that Libby should ignore her. She’d been glad when Mia had moved with her boyfriend du jour to Las Vegas three years ago. Glad when after the boyfriend left, Mia had stayed out there.
Libby looked at Beck now, saying his name, prompting him, wanting his gaze, some reassurance that he hadn’t gone to Mia with his stress, his concern over money.
“Can we just make dinner and eat? I’m starving.” He handed her the package of fish. “I’ll do the rice,” he said.
“Okay,” she said, but it hurt that he had trusted Mia over her. How could you? She clenched her jaw to keep from firing what would amount to an accusation at him. She refused to put him in the position of choosing. That was Mia’s game.
He dumped the rice he had measured into the pan, and it sounded like rain. She rinsed the fish, scooting over a bit when he needed water from the tap. From the corner of her eye, she caught gl
impses of him, adding the water to the rice, settling a lid over the pan, adjusting the flame under it. She seasoned the fish with salt, pepper, and paprika, adding snipped bits of fresh parsley and dill before drizzling it with olive oil.
The tension between them softened as they worked. She and Beck often shared meal preparation. It was a favorite pastime for them both, a way to unwind and be together. Beck poured each of them a glass of sparkling water, to which he added a twist of lime. Handing Libby her glass, he brushed a tendril of hair from her cheek and asked about her day.
She told him about being stopped for speeding, and he laughed, as she’d known he would.
“Here’s to the ruination of your perfect driving record.” He raised his glass.
“He only gave me a warning,” she said.
“Yeah, but who knows what’s next? I mean, here we thought I might be the one to get tossed in the slammer. I was dreading it, too. Orange is so not my color.” He smirked.
Libby made a face. “Harris County inmates wear white, I think. And, anyway, the sergeant was just being diligent. There was an accident out that way earlier, a bad one.”
“I heard about it when I stopped for gas in town.” Beck leaned his backside against the counter. “Three kids lost control and hit a tree. Someone said they thought one of the boys died.”
“Augie knows them.”
“I guess as small as Wyatt is, everyone knows everyone.”
“Can you imagine?” Libby set down her glass. “How you would feel if you were driving and you killed one of your friends?”
Beck’s look was somber, probing.
She knew what he was thinking. “At least we never had that worry.”
“No,” he replied.
“There are some perks to not having children,” she said, and she could tell from the slight rise of his eyebrows that by adding that bit, she’d surprised him. He’d probably thought he’d never live to see the day she’d find one positive thing to say about being childless. Not after the hell she’d put him—put them both through.
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