All We Know of Heaven

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

  One night, lying in his bed with the warm October breeze stirring, Danny took stock: Maureen was just a girl again—a girl who struggled in math and needed help writing and organizing her English essays—but where she once had been Bridget’s little water carrier, now she and Molly were equals in their growing friendship. When she went to the Apple Creek Mall, it was with Molly; and Maureen drove. Molly stayed over; and, now, Maureen often slept over with Molly or Britney. She went to cheerleading practice sometimes and watched, a sweet, ironic smile on her face. She continued to help train the junior varsity squad and had learned to enjoy working with the younger girls. It was almost like cheering herself. Sometimes when Danny called, she wasn’t home; and Jeannie didn’t know when she’d be back.

  Most nights she texted Danny before she went to bed, but sometimes she didn’t. She still grinned so that her whole face bloomed whenever she saw him, but that eager grin no longer was for him alone. He saw other guys looking at her, and he minded, but did he mind enough to make a stand?

  Did she need him anymore?

  Was that what he wanted, for her to need him?

  Had he rushed into his thing with Maureen without ever having finished grieving for Bridget? Obviously. But was being with Maureen his way of grieving for Bridget? And why did Bridge seem such a distant, distant part of his past?

  He didn’t have ready answers.

  A mile away, Maureen was sifting through the same sort of thoughts.

  There was no doubt about how much she had missed Danny.

  But why?

  She had helped Danny through the most difficult part of his life to this point, helped him face a grief he would always remember.

  He had helped her, literally, to come back to life.

  There would always be a bond between them, but she honestly did not want her first love to be the only love she ever knew.

  She honestly didn’t want that.

  She was sure.

  What they’d done was crazy—now that she looked back at it. They’d had—what? Over a year together? A long time, but how much of it was just him helping her?

  On top of that, both sets of parents seemed so happy with the new tone in Maureen and Danny’s relationship. Why kick over the gates and start up what would be a touch-and-go relationship at best if they weren’t sure how much they loved each other?

  No one in the O’Malley household talked about the last, awful incident in the cemetery with Kitt. But Bill still thought about it; and when he did, he boiled.

  Apparently, Kitt Flannery had been hospitalized during the summer. She emerged looking much like her old self—refreshed, stronger, active in the business. She and Mike had taken up golf; and their friends from The Corners, where Dr. Collins and his wife lived, came to their house for dinner parties. Beyond the Colettes, the Carmodys, and a few other scattered families in the parish whom Kitt had told, no one had any idea of what had happened the previous winter. Kitt had become an active church member. Though she did not speak to the O’Malleys, she smiled at their house in a distracted way and raised a hand when she pulled out of her driveway—in her new BMW that matched Mike’s in every way except that Kitt’s was crystal blue.

  Bill snarled every time he saw Kitt’s car, thinking of Maury’s silver Honda, slashed and broken.

  He thought of both of Maury’s cars.

  And then he repented. Kitt and Mike had lost a daughter. What was the ache of a neighborhood range war that would fade with time compared with the lifelong agony of that grief?

  “Forget it, Daddy,” Maureen told him when she saw him staring at Kitt’s Euro taillights disappearing around the corner.

  And Maureen tried to follow her own advice. But when she woke from dreams that left her sweating and panting, they weren’t about her accident but about that day in the cemetery. It was then that Maureen hardened her resolve to make her way back into the sweet anonymity of her town’s life. She saw that the passage was clear but fragile. She walked it carefully.

  Maureen was grateful that her disability no longer was the hub of her family’s life, or the first thing people thought of when they saw her. She was glad to see her brothers and parents easing back into taking her for granted. As wrestling season approached, Bill grew more and more excited. Some of his best wrestlers, his hand-reared boys, were seniors this year. Amber Kresky’s young husband, Mitch, who had finished his degree and now taught social studies at the middle school, was Bill’s new assistant. Coach had a state champion for his team to model.

  When Sarah and Eliza Flannery sang the national anthem at the first football game, with Kitt and Mike beaming in the stands, Mr. Calabretti, the choirmaster, was all over Sarah in minutes. Although freshmen usually didn’t sing in the concert choir, Sarah was recruited. Her strong alto would make a lovely counterpoint to what Mr. Calabretti considered a squeaking nest of sopranos. Sarah, everyone admitted, had an exceptional voice.

  Maury hadn’t planned on going back to choir. She had planned to take art, to improve her hand-eye coordination, but missed choir too much. Before the two-week drop period was up, she dropped art and Mr. Calabretti enthusiastically welcomed Maury back.

  She was tentative, but her lessons had helped her get rid of some Minnesota nasality and had actually broadened and deepened her range. There was the added power of knowing she could read music now too. But beyond that, singing had helped her measure and modulate her speaking. Danny walked her to the choir room the first day because she had an eleventh-hour fit of nerves. It wasn’t until she’d taken her customary place in the first row with the first sopranos that Maureen spotted Sarah.

  She almost ducked out of the room.

  She almost smiled and waved.

  She did neither. She stood flat-footed while Sarah stared at her.

  Mr. Calabretti, in his doltish way, said, “Well, you two are neighbors, so you must already know each other…,” and then proudly introduced the choir’s only freshman member to the rest of the group. Everyone clapped politely, although from high above in the risers with the guy tenors, Evan kept shooting Maureen worried looks.

  That first week the teacher assigned solos for the Christmas concert—which was still called exactly that, instead of the “winter” concert, because no one in Bigelow celebrated Hanukkah, the solstice, or Kwanzaa. One selection was the ancient “Coventry Carol.” Sarah was assigned the first solo. And because the song, in Mr. Calabretti’s arrangement, proceeded into higher ranges, Maureen was assigned the third.

  She almost refused.

  But she stopped when she heard Sarah’s muffled snicker.

  “Thanks,” Maureen said loudly. “I’d like that.”

  And then she wanted to run to Danny. But she’d heard Danny was spending time with Emily Hay, a fellow senior, who’d come back from vacation with physical attributes she seemed to have purchased from a hot-girl shop in Southern California. So Maureen cried into her pillow one night until she fell asleep and told herself that this was all in the nature of growing up.

  Which was, in her case especially, better than the alternative.

  That Saturday she drove to Danny’s house. Sitting in the car, she planned carefully what she wanted to say. Her feelings for him were probably more complex than the feelings she had for anyone else. And yet, perhaps because of that, she thought it must be right that she see other people for a while. She had no idea what she’d answer if he said they were already doing that.

  They would part when he went to college anyhow. Molly would be gone, too. Silently Maury cursed the time she’d lost to her recovery that left her only a junior now, when her former classmates were seniors.

  When Danny stuck his head in at the passenger-side window, she was concentrating so hard that she gave out a sharp little scream.

  “Hey, since when am I that scary?” he said. He sat down in the car, smelling oniony from his five-mile weight-cutting run, and turned up the high beams on his smile. “To what do I owe the honor? You’ve been avoiding me latel
y.”

  “You’re seeing Emily Hay.”

  “Get to the point, why don’t you? And I am not,” Danny said, but he blushed. He wasn’t seeing Emily Hay. He had kept her crushed against the side of the greenhouse for a half-hour makeout session just two nights ago. Since then he had been able to think about no one but Maureen. Seeing her car parked in front of his house, exhausted as he was, he had broken into a sprint. “We just hung around.”

  “Hung around or got together?”

  “I kissed her,” Danny admitted.

  “And that’s why I came,” Maureen told him, biting her lip so hard that she tasted blood. “I was thinking, we shouldn’t feel like we can’t see other people. We had a time when we needed each other….”

  Danny felt as though the seat were sinking, but he nodded and said, “Makes sense.”

  “And it ended up causing everybody to go crazy. I mean our parents and stuff. So, I was thinking, Danny; you know I’ll always be there if you want to talk or you need me. But as for the rest of it…”

  “You’d like to try to be with somebody else.”

  “No!” Maureen said. The tears at the corners of her eyes spilled over. “Actually, I thought I’d go back to thinking of myself as not ready for that. I want to start thinking that…that’s for when I’m older. I’d never do that with anyone…with anyone I didn’t…”

  “What?” Danny pressed her.

  “With anyone but you. Okay? No, I didn’t meant that. I don’t know what I mean. Now, please, get out of my car and let’s end this as friends.”

  “That works for me,” Danny told her, giving her a quick peck.

  It didn’t work for him.

  Now that it was real, it completely didn’t work for him.

  What the hell was he saying?

  All he wanted was to feel her heart beating, fluttering against his chest; for her to marvel at his biceps; for her to guess the tune while he strummed the guitar and start to sing the words.

  He was getting out of the car. She was starting the engine.

  “Have a good one!” he called.

  She gave him a cheerful wave.

  He went into the house, got into the shower, and turned it on so hot that he wanted to scream.

  She went for a swim at the indoor pool. Her face was wet and nobody noticed. It would have been wet anyway.

  Neither of them slept that night until the moon set.

  The Christmas concert was on Bridget’s birthday, December 10. When Mr. Calabretti introduced the “Coventry Carol,” he said it was a lullaby and that Sarah Flannery had asked that it be dedicated to the memory of her sister Bridget.

  Maury felt her throat close.

  The song was short.

  By the time Sarah had sung the first few measures, Carolyn Tiske was up. Maureen was walking down the risers to the mike. At the last moment, she looked up at Evan and gave her head the slightest shake. As if it were planned, Ev stepped down and stood beside her. When she began to sing, he improvised the harmony so that instead of a hideous botch, they ended sounding bittersweet and perfect.

  Before Mr. Calabretti led them into “Sleigh Ride,” he said, “For Bridget. We all miss you.”

  And at last they were filing off the stage to their parents’s applause. Maureen took a deep breath—another disaster averted. Then a low voice at her shoulder said, “Killer.”

  She turned slightly to see Sarah, her hazel eyes pits of pure hatred.

  “What?” Maureen asked. Little Sarah. Sarah who had played with her and Bridget’s pom-poms and said she wanted to be a cheerleader when she grew up. The first time Maureen had seen Sarah was in a baby pack on Kitt’s shoulders.

  “You heard me,” said this new, grown Sarah. “Why did you let her drive your wreck of a car? My mother’s right. You should be dead, not my sister.”

  “Your mother doesn’t really think that. It was when she had problems, Sarah. Stop,” Maureen begged. The rest of the choir members had drifted away, pulling off their robes to return them to the massive closets, rushing out for cookies and hugs. Maureen was uncomfortably aware that she and Sarah were alone in the long hall. This could not be happening. “Sarah, she offered. Sarah, she offered to drive because my leg was hurt. It was nobody’s fault.”

  “It was your fault, Muh…muh…muh…Maureen,” Sarah said. “You think someone’s always going to rescue you, the way Evan did just now. But it’s not like that. You know, I think about my sister every day…. I miss my big sister every day.”

  “And so do I.”

  “Oh, sure! I’m sure you thought about her when you were on your personal TV special!”

  “That’s so over, Sarah. This is over. It was nobody’s fault.” Maureen said, but her mind prodded: Say it. Bridget crossed over the line. You can’t pretend forever that it didn’t happen.

  “It will never be over for us.”

  “You have to go on living.”

  “You did. You got her boyfriend. You got her friends. Molly and Bridget were this close, Muh-muh…Maureen.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t make fun of me. You’re just a kid.”

  “What? Was? Where? What?” Sarah mocked her.

  “Girls, stop chattering! Time to put the robes away,” Mr. Calabretti called.

  Maureen slipped her robe over her head, arranging the cowl in back the way Mr. Calabretti insisted they do. She said, “Stop this. We both have to go to school here. And Danny and I aren’t together anymore.”

  “Are you surprised about that? Did you think he would stay with you? Did you think he wanted skanky-girl germs?”

  “She used to say that,” Maureen said softly.

  “What?”

  “She used to say, ‘Skanky-girl alarm!’ Your sister. She could be one of the sweetest and one of the meanest people I ever knew. Except she was never mean to me. She was so brave and tough and beautiful, and she picked me when she could have had anybody else for a friend. And I wanted to keep it that way. I would do anything she said just so she didn’t turn on me…. She wanted to get home that night. Home to Danny. They were going to be apart for a week. Your family was going to Disney World. Remember? Bridget had no patience. She said that I’d drive like an old grandma, especially with a pulled muscle. She wanted to drive faster.”

  “Stop it! How can you say that!”

  “She thought she was so much better than everyone else, and that’s because she was so much better than anyone else. No one wanted to cross her. She lived in the nicest house in town. She had clothes the rest of us only saw in magazines. Everyone wanted to be with Bridget. Your mother is like that. She shines like a diamond. But she cuts like one, too, Sarah. Don’t you be that way.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I’m so sure I’m going to take it. Maybe I can end up living with my mama and dada for the rest of my life in my teeny-weeny little poor people’s house….”

  “Bridget crossed the yellow line, Sarah.” Sarah stopped in the act of zipping up her robe. Oh please, no. What had she said? She had said it.

  “Say that again.”

  “No, I won’t,” Maureen answered, rushing now, dropping her robe on its hanger, struggling to pick it up.

  “Say it again!”

  “No!”

  “You said it was her fault! You said my sister drove over the line, and that’s why she got killed. You don’t know that.”

  “I’ve always known it. I never wanted to remember it or say…even say it.” Maureen intended to say, But I didn’t mean that. I got angry and it slipped out. Instead, she said, “It’s true. You can’t blame me forever. It was probably my fault for goofing around with her when she should have been paying attention to her driving. But Bridge drove over the line and the truck hit us. I know because people saw the marks. The police report says it. I read it after I woke up. You know it, too. You have to stop looking for someone to blame. It was bad luck. I’m sure she couldn’t even see the line in the snow….”

  Sarah reached up and clawed a line of
welts along Maureen’s cheek.

  “That’s from Bridget,” she said. “I hope she haunts you.”

  Maureen was so shaken, she nearly wrapped her errant right foot around a pole making her way into the washroom. She ran brown paper towels under cold water and then pressed them to her face until the bleeding stopped.

  Then she looked in the mirror. Her hair had grown back. Her scars didn’t show on the outside.

  She had survived, and dared to thrive.

  And because of that she would always be a target as long as she lived in Bigelow.

  At home, Maureen rummaged through her desk until she found the number of the Iowa Liberal Arts Academy in Fall Creek, Iowa, sent to her by Rosemary Bishop, the director of admissions. The following morning, from school, she phoned Miss Bishop—who was delighted to send Maureen forms for possible admission as a scholarship student. And would Maureen travel to ILAA or send a disc? A disc? They would need her to sing a traditional ballad, an up-tempo song but nothing from the pop charts; and she would also need to include a piano piece.

  Maureen asked Evan if he would accompany her on a couple of songs she was recording. She told him it was for a joke gift. He agreed gladly, if he could take her out afterward to Tintoretti’s in St. Paul. It was, he reminded her, their one-month anniversary of hanging out together.

  Maureen began practicing Mozart.

  far and away

  Evan and Maury had finished the recording in a booth Maureen rented for a half hour with her savings. She sang a song she’d found in an old book of solos, about a town called Mira, so small that everyone knew her name. And then she sang the song she knew from her mother’s music box: “Love Makes the World Go Round.” Maureen loved the way Jeannie used to sing along whenever she wound up the box. It was in the same old song book as the one about Mira.