What Remains

by Helene Dunbar

  Finding out there’s no chance of playing real ball should depress the hell out of me, but I don’t feel much of anything. Compared to Lizzie being dead, nothing seems important.

  There are visitors in and out of my room: some guys from the team, a few teachers, Spencer, his parents, my parents. I have nothing to say to any of them. I don’t know why they’re bothering. It’s like they won’t admit what I’ve done. I don’t deserve their friendship, or their concern, or their love. But still, they parade through my room like spectators at the zoo.

  All the time I try to keep a fake smile pasted on my face. I wait for the door to open and for a police officer to walk in and drag me off to jail for killing one of my best friends. It never happens and I don’t understand why.

  And then there’s the voice.

  It doesn’t tell me to hurt anyone else or myself. It’s more like a sarcastic running commentary to what’s going on. Sometimes I catch myself laughing in response, which gets me the kind of looks you’d imagine.

  It doesn’t matter what I do, I can’t get it to stop. I even tried not taking my pain meds one day to see if that helped, but all it made me do was cry like a little girl. I can’t tell anyone. They’ll think I’ve gone nuts on top of everything.

  Maybe I have.

  On my last day in the hospital, Dr. Collins says he has a surprise for me. I’m expecting him to say that maybe my medical record has been mixed up with someone else’s and I can go back to living my life. Or that Lizzie was found alive somewhere and has been playing a really sick joke on all of us.

  Instead, he opens the door to my room and waves a girl in. She’s a few years older than me, with pale red rings around her eyes and the look of someone who’s been through hell. She’s pretty in the same way that Lizzie was. The way that makes you sit up and take notice not because she’s so overly beautiful, but because it’s clear that she isn’t taking any shit from anybody.

  I try to cover myself up because I’m lying here in only a stupid hospital gown. Meeting a girl is the last thing on my mind, but still I’d rather not look like some invalid kid.

  You’d have thought that Dr. Collins might have given me some warning, but instead he ushers her in and makes the requisite introductions. He tells me that her name is Jessica and that she had a transplant four years ago when she was my age and that she’s part of some new program at the hospital for teen transplant patients. Then he leaves us like some misguided matchmaker.

  Jessica pulls up one of the plastic seats. “So what happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Were you sick or … ”

  “Car accident,” I sputter out. I look around, wondering how to get Dr. Collins to come back in here. I haven’t wanted to talk about the accident with the people I’m closest to. I certainly don’t want to talk about it with someone I don’t even know.

  “That sucks,” she says, but I get the feeling that she only means it to a point. “I was sick. I was on the registry for three years before my transplant.”

  “The registry?” It sounds like what people get on when they’re getting married and want to make sure that they get the plates with the red flowers on them instead of the blue, and that all of their silverware matches.

  Her eyes narrow. Suddenly she looks pissed off. “Yeah, the heart registry. I guess you skipped to the front of that line since you were in an accident.”

  The way she says this makes me feel like I should apologize to her, but I’m not really sure for what. So I whisper out a “sorry.” I’m still not really sure why she’s here. I mean, her story is sad and all, but what am I really meant to do about it? I don’t have anything left to give to anyone else.

  “I was at Hilly then,” she says, mentioning a high school a few towns over. “I had this … condition. I would have died without the operation.” While she talks, she examines her lavender-painted fingernails. She reminds me of Lizzie talking about her mom, the way that she sounded like it didn’t matter, which always meant that it mattered more than anything.

  It makes me miss Lizzie with an ache deep inside me in a place I didn’t even know existed. I haven’t cried since that first night with Spencer, but now I can feel the sting of tears behind my eyes. Jessica must think that my sudden sadness is for her because her voice softens a little bit.

  “After the transplant, I was doing okay. You know, it was hard. But I wasn’t tired all the time and I could do things I couldn’t before. But there are a lot of changes to make. Anyhow, I went off to Central State and that’s where my problems started.”

  I try to push through my thoughts of Lizzie to feel some sympathy for this girl. Normally, I’d want to hear her whole ordeal. I’d want to do something to help. But now I just feel like telling her that I have enough problems of my own, that there isn’t enough room in my head for hers too. Miraculously I manage to keep my mouth shut. She must be able to read the confusion on my face, though.

  “Look. Do you know why I’m here?” she finally gets around to asking.

  I shake my head, relieved to be getting somewhere. “No. Not really.”

  She looks at me like I’m five and just told her I wet the bed. “I’m your version of ‘Scared Straight.’”

  I still have no idea what she’s talking about, which must be clear from the expression on my face.

  “You know … that movie they used to show kids about how bad life in prison was so that they’d behave?”

  That doesn’t make it any clearer, but this time I decide to play along and fake it. “Right. So you’re … ”

  She’s really pretty. But not as pretty as Ally. Still, I bet you could pull her onto this bed and really make those machines go crazy.

  I reach up to block my ears from the voice and close my eyes. I’m sure I look like a nutcase sitting here like this, but I don’t know what to do to get it to stop.

  It isn’t even like I even find Jessica that attractive. Or that girls are anywhere on my mind at the moment.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Am I boring you?”

  “No.” I force my hands down. “It isn’t you. No.” I can feel my face getting red. It isn’t like I can tell her that some voice in my head just said she was pretty and that I should drag her into my bed.

  She turns away and starts looking through the cards that are taped up on the wall. Cards from everyone at school. She’s looking at one from Spencer that has a bunch of clouds on it and when you open it, it sings about gray clouds clearing up and putting on a happy face. It makes me feel odd to be watching this girl I don’t know going through my stuff. I’m relieved when she comes back over to sit in the chair near the bed.

  “Look, last year, I went to Florida for spring break with a bunch of friends. I spent a lot of time convincing my parents that I was healthy enough. And I was. But … ” Her hands ball into fists.

  I can’t help myself from being curious now. “But?”

  “But one thing led to another. I had a few beers and that was probably bad. But do you know what the worst thing was, Cal?”

  It’s strange to hear her say my name like she knows me. She’s angry. I don’t know if it’s with me, or herself, or with something else entirely.

  I shake my head. “No? What?”

  She’s pacing now. “We stayed up late every night. And I slept in every morning. I figured what the hell? An hour here or there, I’d be fine. I was sticking to the stupid diet for the most part. I was working out. I deserved a few leisurely mornings, right?”

  I nod because it seems reasonable the way she puts it.

  This makes her slam her fist on the tray table. The cups of green Jell-O I’ve been collecting for Spencer, who actually likes them, almost go flying.

  “No. Haven’t you listened to anything they’ve told you?”

  I feel like I’m taking some pop quiz in a language I’ve never stud
ied. “I … ”

  Her face stiffens. “Listen to me, and listen well because if you don’t pay attention to anything else, you need to get this. I slept in. I missed taking my meds on schedule. By the time I got back to Michigan, my body was starting to reject my heart. Do you understand what that means?”

  I only have an inkling. The doctors talked to me about the chances of my body rejecting my new heart. My mom said the word “rejection” the way that my grandma used to say the word “cancer,” in a whisper like if you didn’t say it out loud there was no chance of it happening.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” Jessica asks completely out of the blue. It isn’t any of her business, but I shake my head.

  She looks at me kind of funny and says, “That’s a shame, you’re kind of cute,” which makes me blush and have to look away. From somewhere far away I hear laughter. I have to sit on my hands to resist the urge to press on my temples again to try to get it to stop.

  “Anyhow, seriously, maybe you used to worry about being rejected by girls. Or boys. Whatever you’re into. But now your life is going to be about trying to prevent being rejected by this heart. Don’t fuck it up.”

  Jessica stands up and walks to the door, looking way more tired than she did when she came in. Before she steps out, she turns back. “They hate doing transplants on teens, you know. Kids they can train. Adults just resign themselves to following all the rules. But we always think we’re smarter than the doctors, smarter than our bodies. And you know what? We aren’t. Just remember that.”

  Eight

  I’m scrubbing the baseboards of the kitchen floor. Back and forth, back and forth. I can’t figure out why it’s taking me so damned long until I look down and see that I’m using a toothbrush. This is insane. My parents have a housekeeper who comes once a week. Why am I doing this?

  I stand up to ease my cramped muscles and a shower of dark hair falls down my shoulders.

  I lurch up in bed. These dreams I’ve been having since I got home are making me nuts. Stupid me for thinking everything would get back to normal.

  On the outside nothing has changed. Nothing, except that I’ve had to turn the page on my calendar and wipe the dust off my trophy shelf to make my room look normal, lived in. When I got home it looked like Pompeii, that city that was frozen when a volcano blew up and encased everything in dust. Frozen the day of the SATs. The day of the accident.

  But on the inside, everything is different. Some days, it’s hard for me to picture Lizzie’s face. On others, it feels like she’s here next to me. Neither is particularly comforting. I miss her. I don’t ever want to forget her. It’s just that thinking about her makes me feel like I’m going to puke. It reminds me that I’m the reason she isn’t here.

  I get dressed and head downstairs, massaging my hands, which are cramped from my dream.

  Please let Mom have left for work, I pray over and over, but like all of my other prayers these days, this one goes unanswered. Of course it does. No chance that she won’t be here on my first day back to school.

  When I get to the kitchen I can see that she’s already exasperated from the way her hands are wrapped tight around her coffee cup. It’s like she wants to turn back the clock and make me her perfect baseball-playing son with a secure future again. And she can’t. So instead, she’s trying to do the things she can. Only I don’t need her to. I don’t want her to.

  “I’ll drive you to school, Cal,” Mom says.

  “Spencer is picking me up,” I tell her for the tenth time since yesterday. “Not that I couldn’t have walked the five blocks like I’ve done just about every day for the past three years,” I add under my breath while I sort through the mountain of pills I need to take before I leave.

  She leans towards me on the counter and the smell of her coffee makes my mouth water. Caffeine is on my restricted list so I can only inhale the fumes. “You have to tell me what I can say here to get you to take this seriously. It isn’t like you’ve been out with the flu.”

  That makes me laugh, but it isn’t a real laugh. It sounds hollow and bounces around inside my head. I’m not sure I remember how to really laugh.

  “I think I know that.” I scratch around the incision. As it heals, it’s itching, which is one more thing on the list of what’s making me nuts. “But I’m supposed to be exercising, remember? Dr. Collins said so.” I play the doctor card because now his word is law and if my mom ignores everything I say, she at least listens to him.

  Mom sighs, puts her mug down, comes over, and cups my cheek in her hand. She’s become a different person since the accident. Someone who remembers she has a kid. But it’s too late. It feels like she’s suffocating me with her need to know the one thing I can’t tell her: that I’m all right.

  “I know,” she says. “It’s just difficult not to worry about you.”

  I wonder how hard it would be for her if she knew that I was hearing voices. But I don’t tell her. Instead, I do what I’ve always done. I follow the rules and all of the doctor’s instructions.

  The only thing I’ve taken a stand on is about going back to school because I have to get out of this house.

  My parents are making me prove I can handle all the new rules as a condition for going back, so I’ve made a big show of hanging a list of reminders over my desk: times to take my meds, things I can’t eat, a schedule for working out and how much I can do. I copiously copy each reminder and note onto my calendar in different colors. It looks like a crayon factory exploded in my room.

  In the meantime, my parents and the doctors have met with the school administrators. I guess they need to know what I should and shouldn’t do and to look out for any signs of my getting really sick. I don’t know why that surprises me, but it’s the only thing that makes me nervous about going back. All of those eyes watching me, studying me.

  “I’ll be okay,” I say with more confidence than I really feel. “I’ll call you at lunch or something.”

  She nods. “Cal … there’s one other thing.”

  “What?” I’m stuffing books into my backpack, which has sat unused for a month.

  “Linda and I,” she begins, and I wonder what occasion is prompting her to get together with Spencer’s mom. “We’re going to go out to the cemetery this afternoon. To plant some flowers on Lizzie’s grave.”

  She looks at me and I freeze, my chem book in one hand and my bag in the other. It isn’t like I haven’t spent hours thinking of going to school and passing Lizzie’s locker. Not seeing her there. Trying to prepare myself for her absence.

  I haven’t been very successful. It’s easier, I’ve found, to worry about something being added than something being taken away. How do you prepare for something to be missing?

  It’s funny. I loved Lizzie, but she was like a bomb and you never knew when it would go off or whether it would shoot confetti and streamers all over the place or blow up the building. She filled whatever room she was in. Like a carnival or circus.

  I can’t handle thinking about that energy being trapped inside a box, lying beneath six feet of dirt. I don’t get why my mom doesn’t understand that. Not like I was the kind of kid who was into horror films; more like I was the kid hiding under the bed during thunderstorms.

  “Mom, stop.” I’m on the verge of walking out of the room so I don’t have to listen to her talk about Lizzie and graves in the same breath.

  She puts her hand on my arm, and it’s clear that this conversation is going to happen whether I want it to or not. “I know, Cal. I know this is hard. But you should come with us. It will give you some closure.”

  I shake my head and pull my arm away as I start shoving things back into my bag. “I don’t want closure. I want her back and I can’t get that.” I pray that this once my mom will turn into one of those comforting TV moms that seem to understand everything. But really, there’s little hope of that.

&nbs
p; I want …

  “You need to find a way to try to accept this,” Mom says.

  She might as well be speaking Klingon for all the sense that it makes to me. “You don’t think I’ve accepted it? I miss her every second of every day. How much more real do you want it to get for me?” All of a sudden, I’m pissed off and I can hear my blood pounding in my ears. I stalk over to the window waiting for Spencer to show up, feeling like I need to escape.

  “Calvin, I could do without the tone.” Oh lord, I can’t believe she’s getting all parental right now. “I know that you miss her. And I know that it doesn’t make sense to you, but sometimes seeing someone’s grave makes you feel closer to them. It makes it easier to handle the fact that they’re gone.”

  “Really? You think that my going there and imagining her suffocating alone in a freaking box is going to make me feel close to her? You think that’s going to relax me and not give me nightmares for the rest of my life? Sorry,” I say ramping up the sarcasm. “You must be thinking of your other kid.”

  I hear Spencer honk, not a second too soon. The sound mingles with my mother’s sigh of resignation. As I grab my bag, she comes up and kisses me tentatively on the cheek. I grit my teeth and try not to pull away.

  “Some other time then,” she says. “Be careful today and call if you need anything.”

  I leave without saying a word. My head is full of thoughts—of things I want and things I need. None of which anyone can give me.

  I throw my bag into the backseat of Spencer’s black VW Golf, which he’s named “Sweeney” after the musical he did with Rob last summer, and then throw myself painfully and regrettably hard into the passenger’s seat.

  I kind of expect Spencer to chew me out because he treats Sweeney like it’s some piece of expensive artwork and not just a car. Instead he must see the pain that crosses my face because he takes one look at me and asks, “Do you want to talk or should I just shut up?”

  I glare at him with what’s left of my anger, then manage to relax enough to respond without being a jerk. “Sorry,” I say. “It isn’t you. My mom is out of control.”