When they got to the hospital, George did all the inquiring, shielding Sarah from the painful ordeal of having to find out where her husband was and what had happened to him. After what seemed like forever, a young resident named Dr. Taylor came into the small room where Sarah and her father were waiting and sat down on the arm of the sofa, directly across from the two chairs where father and daughter sat next to each other.
It took Dr. Taylor precisely forty-one seconds to tell the two of them that David had been brought in, blah, blah, blah; we pronounced him, blah, blah, blah; there was nothing we could do, blah, blah, blah; I’m very sorry for your, blah, blah, blah … before his beeper went off. He apologized, said I have to take this, and then excused himself from their presence.
Throughout the good doctor’s speech, Sarah had sat perfectly still, numbly staring at the cover of the beat-up People magazine on the table in front of her. The cover had a gorgeous photo of actress Molly Ringwald on it, and all Sarah could think of was, look at how red her hair is, I wonder if our baby will have red hair? Look at how red her hair is, I wonder if our baby will have red hair? Look at how red her hair is, I wonder if our baby will have red hair? Look at … look at … red hair … I wonder?
THE BLUE NOTEBOOK
Sarah and Annie’s ride to the hospital had been terrible.
Sarah’s ride home with her parents might have been worse.
Sarah sat huddled under a blanket in the corner of the backseat. She was barefoot, and her hand was painted with the blood from her torn finger. She refused to respond to either her mother or father, and she sobbed nonstop from the front door of the hospital until her mother put her to bed in the room she had grown up in.
A couple of hours later, Anna tried to get Sarah to come downstairs and eat a little something, but her daughter just lay there, under the quilt, in a fetal position. Anna saw that the pillowcase was drenched, but when she tried to move Sarah so she could change it, Sarah let out an anguished wail that sounded like something that might emanate from a wounded animal, so Anna just left the room and let Sarah lie in her own tears.
This day, the day Annie died, Anna and George had to handle all the arrangements for the funeral. A woman named Mrs. Tomkins from the hospital called around noon that day and asked for Sarah.
“This is her father, George. Sarah can’t come to the phone right now. Can I help you, please?”
“Yes, sir, this is Mrs. Tomkins from St. Stan’s. I am very sorry for your loss, and the reason I’m calling is to find out the name of the funeral home you’ve chosen for your granddaughter’s burial. Since the death occurred early in the day, it will be possible for the funeral director to pick up Annie’s remains sometime today and begin preparations for the funeral. Do you have that information for me?”
George was momentarily speechless. He and Anna hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the “arrangements,” as they are so delicately called. They had been grief-stricken, of course, at the loss of their precious Annie Bananny, but for the past several hours they had been more concerned with their Sarah, their darling little girl who now lay upstairs in her childhood bed in a dark room with dried blood on her hand, mute and emotionally paralyzed. They had also spent the morning calling the rest of the family and trying to contact Sarah’s doctor. Now, here it was, mere hours after their hearts had been gutted and filled with ice, and suddenly the practical demands that death unavoidably made on a family had reared up, insisting on being dealt with.
“To tell you the truth, Mrs.—what did you say your name was? Tomkins? Yes, I’m sorry—Mrs. Tomkins, we have not had a chance yet to make those arrangements. Would it be all right if I made some calls and got back to you as soon as I could?”
“Yes, that would be fine, sir, except that the morgue crew changes shifts at three and it would be better if your granddaughter’s body could be picked up before then. It would make things go a little smoother if the attendant that brought her down also turned her over. But whatever you need to do, you go ahead and do it, and I will wait for your call. If there is anything at all I can do to help, please do not hesitate to ask. And again, I am deeply sorry for your loss.”
George thanked her and hung up the phone. Anna stood leaning against the counter with her arms crossed. Her eyes were rheumy and red, and George saw that she had a stunned look on her face that instantly reminded him of the look some of his friends had gotten during the war when the stress of battle just completely overwhelmed them and their critical faculties essentially shut down.
“We have to call Neal at Saunders. Now.”
Anna looked at him and nodded. She then turned around and began rinsing out the coffee cups that had been lying in the sink. George noticed that her back heaved every few seconds and he reminded himself that he needed to put the trash and the recycling bin out tonight. Have to put out the trash, he thought, as he rummaged through some papers on the counter looking for the little blue spiral notebook where they kept all their important phone numbers.
IN SARAH’S ROOM
“No, she hasn’t gotten out of bed since we brought her home around eight this morning. No, I don’t think so. Anna? Has Sarah gotten up to go to the bathroom? No, Doctor, she hasn’t. No, I really don’t think we’ll be able to get her in to see you. She hasn’t even moved for the past ten hours, for heaven’s sake. How would we possibly get her up and into a car? No, I don’t know if she’s been sleeping or just laying there. Sometimes she has her eyes open but she just stares. Yes. Yes, I can get to a pharmacy. Are you sure it’s wise to try and give her tranquilizers? Yes, I know she can’t continue in this state. Okay. Okay. Greene’s Pharmacy on Main. Okay. Yes. One every four hours, even if we have to open her mouth and shove it down her throat manually. Jesus, Doc. Yes, I know. Yes. Okay. Yes, we will. Thank you. Okay. Bye.”
George hung up the phone and turned to his wife. “He says we have to sedate her, that she’s in a fugue state that’s primarily due to shock and that she has to get some deep sleep or she may end up so catatonic that it’ll take days, or even weeks, for her to snap out of it. He wants me to pick up a prescription for her at Greene’s.”
Anna nodded and went to get her husband’s jacket and keys.
Just as Anna was reaching for George’s blue Members Only windbreaker in the kitchen closet, Sarah, mother of the recently deceased Annie Bananny, daughter of Anna and George, widow of David, screamed from her childhood bedroom with such agony and horror in her voice that Anna dropped George’s jacket and then fainted dead away against the broom-closet door.
George ran to his wife, kneeled beside her, and gently slapped her pale cheeks. “Anna! Anna! Jesus Christ, wake up! Sarah needs us.” Upon hearing her daughter’s name, Anna’s eyes popped open and George helped her struggle to her feet. “Are you all right?” he asked her, and when she nodded yes, they ran upstairs, where Sarah was still screaming at the top of her lungs.
Upon entering the bedroom, they found Sarah sitting on the edge of the bed, holding her head in her hands, screaming so forcefully her face was a bright crimson.
She is going to have a goddamned stroke if she doesn’t stop right now, George thought to himself, and immediately ran to the bed, sat down next to his daughter, and embraced her with a hug that completely enveloped her in his big arms.
“Sarah!” he shouted.
The screaming continued.
“SARAH!” he barked even louder.
Sarah stopped screaming and allowed herself to be embraced by her father. George began rocking his sobbing little girl, and the memory of doing exactly the same thing with her when she was eight and terrified of the dark flashed into his mind.
Anna stood in the doorway and watched father and daughter each try to deal with the most horrible tragedy either of them had ever had to endure. Even the death of Sarah’s husband, David, from a cerebral aneurysm when Sarah was one month pregnant had not been as bad as the death of Annie.
Outside Sarah’s bedroom window there was an old oak tree
that had been there since before Anna and George had even bought the house. Its leafy branches had kept the sun out of Sarah’s eyes in the summer, and its wide trunk had protected her from storm winds and spitting snow in the winter. Tonight, all the leaves on the old tree were gone, and out of the corner of her eye, sheltered in her father’s arms, Sarah could see nothing but undulating black bones starkly silhouetted against the backdrop of a bloody red sunset sky.
SEEING THE ROCK IN THE WATER
One Easter Sunday, when Sarah was visiting her parents in Brookvale, she walked down to the beach and out onto a rock promontory that extended hundreds of yards into Long Island Sound. The day was cold and out on the craggy stones the wind was biting and annoying.
Sarah liked the place, though, and always tried to walk down there when she visited her parents.
On this chilly Easter, Sarah did something spontaneous while standing out on the bluff overlooking the dark gray sea. She impulsively picked up a large rock that looked like a basketball with a flat bottom, and hurled it into the sea.
Sarah watched, mesmerized, as the rock spun high through the air and hit the water with a loud kerplunk and a bigger splash than she had expected. The rock disappeared from her sight almost immediately in the dark water, but in her mind’s eye, Sarah watched as it floated slowly down to the sea bottom, gently buoyed by the water, until it landed in the sand, stirring up, Sarah imagined, a big cloud of greenish, muddy muck.
Years later, as Sarah lay in her childhood bed on the day Annie Bananny died, she could see the rock in the water as clearly as she could see the tree branches outside her window. The rock was still there, Sarah knew, and not a week had gone by that she had not thought of that rock sitting there at the bottom of Long Island Sound, passing winters and summers in the same immutable silence.
DR. SUNDERLAND
George pulled into the parking garage and drove up two levels. He stopped in front of the door leading to the hospital elevators and got out. He helped Sarah out of the backseat and held her arm until Anna came around to the driver’s side and took over. George got back in the car and drove off to find a parking space as Anna slowly walked Sarah into the parking-garage elevator lobby.
Dr. Sunderland practiced at the psychiatric clinic at St. Stanislau’s Hospital, and he had insisted on seeing Sarah as soon as she was capable of getting there. It had been eight days since Annie had died, and Sarah had stayed with her parents through the funeral and the burial and still had not been able to leave and go home to her own house. George had taken care of picking out the coffin and had made the decision on his own not to have a wake. He had felt it would be easier on Sarah to just have a Mass and then a ceremony at the cemetery instead of having to sit through four hours of staring at the tiny white casket propped up at the front of the room, surrounded by what he was certain would look like all the flowers in the whole world.
Today, Sarah had finally agreed to see Dr. Sunderland. The psychiatrist had been highly recommended by their family doctor, who had really been able to do nothing more than prescribe Valium and advise Anna and George to try to get Sarah to eat something.
Anna had been giving Sarah ten milligrams of Valium three times a day, and telling all the friends and family members who kept calling that she was not up to having visitors. Anna had also been taking Sarah to the bathroom, bathing her, dressing her, and trying to get her to take some soup and drink some fruit juice every day at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For the first few days after Annie’s death, Sarah had refused to eat or drink anything. Anna had put her in a black dress for the funeral and bathed her and washed her hair, but it really didn’t disguise the hollow eyes and her blank expression. Even the pearl earrings couldn’t help.
In the past couple of days, though, Sarah had been sipping the soup and there was an occasional glimmer of alertness in her eyes. This was a definite improvement, since most of the time she had just lain in her old bed and sobbed for hours at a time.
Finally, this morning, Sarah had given her father a small nod when he asked her yet again if she’d see Dr. Sunderland. George was relieved but he wasn’t quite convinced that even the highly recommended Dr. Sunderland would be able to do much of anything to help his daughter.
“I understand you lost your husband last year, Sarah. Is that correct?”
Sarah nodded.
“And now you’ve lost your daughter as well.”
A momentary flash of anger crossed Sarah’s face.
“Yes.”
“Your father tells me you haven’t been eating.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I see.”
Sarah stared at her hands.
“Do you want to talk about anything, Sarah?”
Sarah raised her head and looked directly into Dr. Sunderland’s eyes.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do I want to talk about anything? Is that what you asked me? What could I possibly want to talk about? How about we talk about how my thirty-one-year-old husband died instantly sitting at his desk at work when an artery in his brain exploded? Should I talk about that? That’s probably too depressing, don’t you think? I suppose you probably aren’t really interested in David’s death, right? You want me to talk about Annie, don’t you?”
Dr. Sunderland crossed his leg and shifted in his chair to find a more comfortable position. He said nothing.
“Well, I don’t want to talk about Annie. I can’t. I just can’t.”
Dr. Sunderland stared at Sarah’s grim face for a moment and then scribbled something on the pad he had in his lap and stood up.
“Sarah, I’d like you to call someone who I think can help you. Let’s face it. You don’t want to talk to me because you think I haven’t got a clue as to how you’re feeling. My professional pride makes me believe otherwise, but my feelings are not what’s important here. Getting you healthy is what I’m most concerned about.”
Dr. Sunderland handed her a slip of paper with a phone number on it.
“This is Catherine Connolly’s phone number. She’s a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping parents cope with the loss of a child. She has a lot of patients who have lost children to SIDS. She holds a support group meeting every Wednesday and I think you should attend at least one of them. It’s up to you, of course, but I would strongly recommend you go. Being with people who have already gone through what you are now experiencing could be extremely helpful.”
Sarah looked down at the paper with the number on it. She felt emotionally overwhelmed and ready to burst into tears at any moment. She felt guilty about the way she had snapped at the doctor and by the burden she knew she was being on her parents. She felt excruciatingly empty when she thought of Annie. She felt scars that still ached from David’s death. She felt all of these things at the same time and did not know how to handle any of them.
“Would you consider attending one of Catherine’s meetings, Sarah?”
Sarah nodded without looking up. From where he was standing, Dr. Sunderland could see two impossibly large tears sliding down Sarah’s cheeks in a perfectly straight line, leaving a line of wetness as they rolled toward her chin. The soft morning light through his high office windows made one of these tear streaks glisten brightly and, to Dr. Sunderland, the line of moisture on Sarah’s right cheek reminded him of the garish face paint of a circus clown—one of those sad clowns that kids are so afraid of, he thought to himself. Not the laughing ones. Dr. Sunderland wasn’t quite sure if funny clowns painted tears on their faces.
THE PRAYER
The cemetery had been flooded with bright sunlight on the day of Annie’s funeral. Sarah sat beside her daughter’s tiny coffin, wearing a black dress and pearl earrings. Throughout the service, she was completely still, just sitting there in the black folding chair on top of the garish fake grass that was always laid out for graveside ceremonies. After the service was over, but before the coffin was lowered into the ground,
Sarah’s family and friends passed by her and whispered their condolences. Sarah never even looked up at the parade of solemn faces that floated by, instead continuing to stare at the white casket covered from head to toe in tiny white roses. David’s friends from MedTech were there, as were Sarah’s high-school girlfriends. David’s parents, Donna and Frank, were so overcome with grief they could not even approach Sarah or her parents. As George helped Sarah to her feet, he could see the other two grieving grandparents being helped to their car by David’s two brothers.
As Sarah was walking to the limousine, her arm entwined tightly in her father’s, a woman friend of Sarah’s mother came up to Sarah and took her hand. “You need this,” she whispered in Sarah’s ear, as she slipped her a folded piece of paper. “It’s a very special prayer to St. Joseph. It can’t bring your daughter back, but it might bring you peace. I hope it helps, my dear, and I am so, so sorry.”
Sarah did not respond to the woman, who she later learned was Connie, the wife of her mother’s hairdresser, but she did place the paper in her pocket. Days later, she found it. At first she didn’t want to read it, but then her curiosity got the best of her and she opened the cream-colored sheet.
“PRAYER TO ST. JOSEPH”
Introduction
This Prayer to St. Joseph was found in the fiftieth year of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In 1505, it was sent from the Pope to Emperor Charles when he was going into battle. Whoever shall read this prayer, or hear it, or keep it about themselves, shall never die a sudden death, or be drowned, or shall poison take effect on them; neither shall they fall into the hands of the enemy, or shall be burned in any fire or shall be overpowered in battle. Say reverently for nine mornings for anything you may desire. It has never been known to fail, so be sure you really want what you ask for.
Oh, St. Joseph, whose protection is so great, so strong, so prompt before the throne of God, I place in you all my interests and desires.
Dialogues Page 14