Within Arm's Reach

by Ann Napolitano

  I tell Gram that the baby has started kicking, and that some days I think she is on the verge of breaking through the wall of my uterus. When I’m sure Gram is sleeping, I tell her that this kicking makes me feel even more alone. It makes me feel that my body is just a big, ever-growing shell, and that the only life in it is concentrated in this baby. I also tell Gram that each morning I give the baby a little pep talk about focusing all her energy on growing different organs and limbs. I recommend to the baby that she grow up to be stronger than me. To be more open and accessible than Lila. To be less difficult than my mother. To be more communicative than my father. To be a person who knows herself completely, like Gram.

  I tell Gram that I worry over this baby, a little more every day. The worry grows with the size of my belly. I think of Gram’s missing children, the twins and the little girl, and I know I could never survive that kind of loss. I can’t help but notice Meggy eyeing me every day at the hospital. The worry grows until it is the size of a full-grown person sitting beside me. How will I manage to hold on to anything, how can I hold on to this tiny future person?

  Lila says, “Gracie, you smell. Will you please go home and take a shower?”

  My mother says, “Your grandmother doesn’t need you here every single minute. You’ll feel better if you change out of those clothes. How about if I take you girls out to dinner?”

  Meggy makes whispered comments to Angel that I am meant to hear. “Gracie is losing it. She sits there in Daddy’s sweater and mutters under her breath. She acts more and more like Ryan every day, don’t you think? Does she look like she has the makings of a good mother to you?”

  I try to ignore them. Meggy is wrong. They are all wrong. What they don’t understand is that I will be fine as soon as Gram is better. When she is herself, I will cease to worry. When she is herself, I can go back to being myself. The problem is, after a few days at Gram’s bedside, I cannot for the life of me recall who that was. Which makes me worry for the baby, too.

  When I return home one afternoon, there is another message on the machine from Grayson. “You need to do your work.” An annoyed pause. “You need to call me.”

  GRAM SHOWS signs of life the day before she is to be moved to the rehab hospital. She notices the nurses gathering her things, and my mother filling out paperwork. She says, “Kelly.”

  My mother crosses the room to her bedside. “What is it, Mother?”

  My father and I, the only other people in the room, pay close attention. The hazy quality to Gram’s voice is gone. She sounds like herself.

  “Promise me I won’t have to move into the other building at the old-age home. I don’t want to leave my room.”

  My mother leans over Gram and speaks in a slow voice. “You’re not going anywhere for a few more weeks, Mother. You’re going to the rehab hospital first. We have to get you comfortable on your feet, moving around. The doctor says you’ll be back to doing the fox-trot and running up the stairs really soon.”

  “Don’t waste my time,” Gram says. “I know all that. After this other hospital, I want to go back to my room. It’s very important to me. I want you to promise me that you’ll make that happen.”

  “Mother, you need to be in a safe and supportive environment. It’s possible that you’ll need more care from now on, and the other building has more advanced medical care available. I want you to be realistic about that possibility. I am not going to make false promises. We’ll just have to wait and see what kind of progress you make.”

  When my mother finishes talking, Gram turns her face away and closes her eyes.

  “Did you hear me, Mother? You shouldn’t be concerned. No matter what room you have, we’ll decorate it however you like. We’ll hang the pictures in the exact same formation on the walls, if that makes you feel better.”

  Gram has slipped away again, to sleep or to unconsciousness. She does not answer.

  LATER THAT afternoon, in the hall, I say to my mother, “You should have told Gram that she could go home to her room.”

  My mother has trouble making eye contact with me, which has been the case since Easter. She looks over my shoulder, or down at her hands. She likes to rotate her left hand while she talks, making the diamond on her engagement ring flash under the lights.

  “Your grandmother is failing,” she says. “It’s my job as her oldest child to take care of her. I can’t give in to her whims, Gracie. I have to do what is right.”

  The ring flashes, and the fact that my mother won’t look at me makes me feel a little nuts. I have so few conversations these days. I am so often alone. I say, “You’re not really the oldest child.”

  “What?”

  Now I feel mean, and guilty. “You had an older sister, didn’t you?”

  I can feel my mother’s eyes on me, poring over my dirty hair, my ill-fitting clothes. She says, “Why would you talk about that? You’ve always let yourself get caught up in those old stories. What’s past is past. I don’t see the point. What is the point?”

  Maybe she’s right. Maybe I don’t put enough stock in the present, in what is real. The most recent phone message from Grayson said, “Snap out of it, Gracie. It’s time to get back to living your life.”

  But I can’t really agree with the narrow vision my mother and Grayson fix on the world. The past and the present are each important. They share equal weight, don’t they? That’s why it is so hard to make decisions. There is always so much to consider. I say, “They’re not just stories, Mother. They’re our family’s history.”

  She blinks a few times rapidly. “I have been the oldest, the one my parents depended on, forever. And now that my mother is sick, I have to make choices for her. Do you think Pat is going to step up to the plate? Or Meggy? No. That doesn’t mean I like playing this role, Gracie, and it doesn’t mean it’s fair. Life is not fair. But I am a person who takes my responsibilities seriously.”

  This is a dig at my pregnancy. Any person who takes her responsibilities seriously would not let herself become a single parent. My mother is telling me that she would have done it differently, better. Hell, she did do it better, at least in her own mind.

  I wish that Lila were here, so we could share a look and roll our eyes. She has barely shown up at the hospital. We spend a lot of time together at home, though, each in our pajamas. I don’t ask her why she stopped going to school, and I don’t ask her about Weber. I know about him because I ran into him one afternoon at the supermarket and he told me that he was hot and heavy with my sister. I think she’s crazy to get involved with that jerk, but I keep my opinion to myself. I have been keeping everything to myself lately.

  I take a deep breath and say, “Well then, as the head of the family you must know that Meggy and Angel came to my house a few weeks ago and asked me to give my baby to Angel and Johnny to raise.”

  The look on my mother’s face confirms that she didn’t know anything about it. She clasps her hands, and the diamond ring is covered. “They wouldn’t have—”

  “They did. They told me a story about a family on your street growing up. They told me that handing off your baby is part of Irish heritage, part of how Irish families take care of each other.”

  My mother shakes her head slowly, as if a hinge in her neck has suddenly gone loose. “They wouldn’t dare . . . I should go in and check on your grandmother.”

  I think, Everyone wants to get away from me.

  “I have an idea how you can make that promise to Catharine,” my father says.

  We both turn. Coming toward us in khaki pants and denim shirt, my father appears even bigger than usual. He looks over my head at my mother. I feel myself dwindle into invisibility.

  My mother says, “I thought you were going back to work.”

  “I know how we can help your mother.”

  “I don’t appreciate everyone attacking me,” my mother says, her voice on the edge of hysterical. “I am doing the best I can for my mother. I don’t need to be second-guessed.”

&nbs
p; “No one is attacking you.”

  She gestures with her hands, palms upturned. “Then why do I feel like I’m being attacked?”

  “Please,” my father says, “just listen for one minute. I know you’re exhausted, and I’m trying to help.”

  My mother stares at him. I can see that she is seething.

  My father smiles and crosses his arms over his chest. “I think we should hire a private nurse to sit with your mother every day at the home. I spoke to the director there, and as long as your mother’s not seriously ill and we provide outside medical care, she can stay in her current room. They have no problem with that as long as she doesn’t require any medical apparatus like oxygen or an IV, which she doesn’t. After all, what she really needs is an aide who will keep an eye on her, and make it easier for her as she readjusts to her old life.”

  My mother nods, thinking. “Well, we could talk to some agencies and do some interviewing. It’s not a bad idea, Louis. It might work. Let’s just see how my mother does at the rehab hospital and play it by ear.”

  “Sure,” he says, “but I actually already spoke to someone about the job.”

  Her eyes widen. “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “She’s a wonderful nurse, and she already has a relationship with your mother, and it turns out she’s looking for a more regular schedule that will allow her to be home with her kids.”

  My mother looks at my father as if he’s nuts.

  “Who?” I say. “Nurse Ballen?”

  He nods. “I just spoke to her, Kelly. Nothing is definite. I knew I had to talk to you first.”

  “She’s my mother, Louis. I should hope you would talk to me first. For God’s sake.”

  I walk away from their voices, into Gram’s room. She is lying on her back, eyes closed, skin ashy. I close the door, but I can still hear the rise and fall of my mother speaking, the steady murmur from my father.

  “Gram,” I say, “I have great news. It looks like you’ll be able to stay in your room at the home. Mom and Dad are working it out now. You’ll be able to go back to your old life. Everything will be exactly the same as before. Just like you wanted.”

  There is no response from the old woman, the stranger, lying on the bed.

  “Gram,” I say, a little louder.

  “Visiting hours are over,” a nurse says, from somewhere behind me.

  WHEN I arrive home Lila is there. I’m surprised, pulling into the driveway through the twilight, to see a light in the kitchen window. She usually spends the evenings at Weber’s place. When I walk through the back door I find Lila sitting at the table flipping through the newspaper, drinking peppermint tea. I can smell the peppermint from across the room.

  I put my purse down on the counter and try to order the thoughts that have rattled through my head these last few days in the hospital. There is so much I want to talk to her about. I try to think of what to say first. I want to tell my sister that I have pictured her, us, in the future. I’ve seen her as an adult with wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and a streak of gray in her hair. I’ve seen her playing games with my baby on the kitchen’s linoleum floor. I’ve seen the two of us growing older, side by side. Finding ways to make use of each other, to depend on each other.

  I am wondering if she will laugh, or maybe say something mean, when Lila speaks.

  “Your advice this week is really odd,” she says, rattling the newspaper with both hands. “It’s incredibly practical and you answer three letters from guys, which isn’t like you. This advice to the man who really wants to work on his car at night but doesn’t want to hurt his wife’s feelings cracked me up.” Lila smiles down at the paper.

  “Oh God.” I had forgotten it was Thursday. Column day. “I didn’t write that,” I say. “I was too upset, what with Gram . . . Grayson must have written it to cover for me. Let me see.”

  Lila pulls out the Lifestyles section and hands it to me. “There’s another message from him on the machine. Editor Boy is a little obsessive compulsive.”

  “Oh God, oh God.” I sink down into a chair. “He must be furious.”

  “Who cares,” Lila says. “You care too much about what other people think.”

  Oh sure, I want to say. You care so little about what other people think that you can’t even tell your sister that you’re sleeping with a beer-swilling firefighter? I know now that I’m not going to tell her about my glimpse into our mutual future. We would both think I was crazy. “He’s my boss, Lila. I’m paid to care what Grayson thinks.”

  I skim the column. Grayson is a news writer and his sentences are short and to the point, very different from my more conversational style of writing. His advice is much more specific than mine usually is. He tells the man who is more in love with his car than his wife to bring home flowers and candy on the nights he plans to spend working in the garage. He tells a mother whose teenage son doesn’t want to talk to her to make a list of topics she would like to discuss and to give her son a copy, too. Then they’re to set a meeting time and neither mother nor son is allowed to leave the table until all topics have been touched on. Grayson tells a man who feels that his receding hairline is diminishing his chances with women to wear more hats and try to walk with more of a confident swagger.

  I lay the paper down on the table. “He gave them hopeless advice,” I say. “I’m going to get hate letters. The teenage son is going to laugh in his mother’s face. The guy with the car is in huge trouble if he tries to buy his wife off with chocolates. And the man with the receding hairline needs to know that women don’t care about that kind of thing. That’s not why he’s alone.” I put my hands over my face.

  “You’re right,” Lila says. “I wouldn’t have thought about it like that, but that makes sense.”

  With my eyes closed behind my fingers, all I see are shadows and darkness. “I miss my good advice. I miss having the knack for it. I miss drinking cold beer. I miss everything,” I say. “I miss having sex. I really miss having sex. You’re so lucky that you get to have sex.”

  I hear Lila push her chair back. “So go pick some guy up. What’s stopping you?”

  “Have you looked at me lately?” I take my hands away from my eyes and the kitchen is bathed with neon spots and bright light. After a minute, I say, “Have you not been visiting Gram because you don’t want to see people from medical school?”

  “I stop by every day, just not during visiting hours. I know my way around the rules there. I’m not scared of them.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m due back to school next week. My sick leave is up.”

  “At least you’re having sex on a regular basis,” I say. “The world is magical when you’re having sex, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you’re doing it wrong.”

  “You’re delusional.” Lila looks at me with tired eyes. “You always have been. There’s no such thing as magic.”

  AFTER LILA leaves for Weber’s, I heat up a frozen dinner and eat all of it plus two bananas and half of a McDonald’s chocolate shake I had forgotten was in the refrigerator. Then I put my cardigan back on and sit outside on the front steps. I keep forgetting it is summertime. Every time I leave the house, or the hospital, I brace myself for a cold wind and am surprised to find myself sweating in the humidity. New Jersey is brutal in the summer. The high temperatures make the pavement steam. The density of the air makes it difficult to breathe. The heat slows your mind, and people rush from one air-conditioned space to another. From car to house to business to mall.

  With the baby heavy in front of me, I sweat more than I ever have. My sweat is smellier now, too. I don’t smell like the person I used to be before this pregnancy. My body emits a salty, earthy odor that I don’t recognize. Several times I have walked into a room and thought, What is that smell? only to realize that it’s me. There are other changes in my body that I didn’t expect. A moss of pale hair has grown across the stretched skin of
my belly. And not only have my breasts grown enormous, but the nipples are the width of one of my fingers and stained a deep wine color. They are amazing and a complete departure from the breasts I used to have. I go for days on end without looking at myself naked in the mirror because the sight is so alarming.

  A car slows in front of the house and then turns into the driveway. I can tell from the sound of the engine that it’s not Lila’s car. It is hard for me to see through the darkness, and I am immediately nervous. Maybe it’s Meggy, sensing my vulnerability and circling in for another attack. I would like to declare this house a no-visiting zone. The last welcome unexpected guest we had was Gram, and she gave up her driver’s license months ago. Since then, everyone who has shown up has wanted something.

  The car door slams and I see a man walking across the lawn.

  I stand up. “Hello?” I say. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me,” he says.

  I sit back down on the step. “You couldn’t wait to yell at me until tomorrow?”

  “You aren’t returning my calls, so I decided to take action.”

  I had been feeling guilty about skipping work, but now that I’m looking at Grayson, I’m nothing but annoyed. “You know,” I say, “you could have skipped the column this week altogether, or run an old column, or a ‘best of’ compilation. You didn’t have to do the work yourself.”

  He doesn’t even have a chance to respond before I start to cry. This pisses me off even more. I hate for anyone to see me cry. I don’t cry the way a girl is supposed to; my tears are a messy, choking affair. My face gets red and puffy and my nose makes noises. Grayson, Mr. Unemotional, is the last person I want to cry in front of. He doesn’t even have the common decency to look away while my eyes and my nose run. He stares at me through the whole thing.