Within Arm's Reach

by Ann Napolitano

  “Everyone step off the lawn, please.” A policeman waves his arms at us to move back. “All pedestrians off the grass. Step back, it’s for your own safety. Step back. That’s right. There you go.”

  Dad wheels Uncle Ryan toward the street, and Gracie and I follow. Just before I reach the road, I turn back for a last look, and that’s when I see him. Weber is walking away from the burning building, his face and his uniform covered with soot and dirt. He has an axe in his hand. He sees me at the same moment, and he grins. His teeth are a shock of whiteness. I hadn’t thought that Weber could be hurt, but still, I am deeply relieved at the sight of him.

  I watch him walk toward me. I watch his face with the same clarity I’d had running across the lawn toward Uncle Ryan and my father. Weber looks so happy. I have seen him happy before, but this is different. Something in him, beyond the dirt, is shining.

  When he reaches me he talks fast, like a little boy. “This is our biggest fire in years. It was amazing, Lila. Fucking amazing. We got everyone out. It was awesome in there! We played chess with the fire and we fucking won.” He touches my arm. “Your uncle’s okay, right? I saw your dad take him out.”

  “Yes,” I say. Weber is looking toward the fire, which is slowing now. It seems to be under control.

  “You love this,” I say. “Don’t you.”

  “Fuck yes,” Weber says. “I love it.”

  In that moment, with what’s left of Uncle Ryan’s building still smoldering and his three birds dead on the ground and Gracie waiting by the car holding her round stomach, I am again changed, and changing. I am filled up by what I have seen. By the expression on Weber’s face. By his notion of love. There is no room left inside me for anything else; my former decisions are fighting for ground, wanting for traction.

  I fight, too. I try to stop myself. I try to be rational. For God’s sake, this is no time to crumble. And why am I crumbling, because of a handsome fireman? How pathetic can I be? After all, I had just figured everything out. I knew what I was doing. I was going to return to battle with Belinda. I was going to rent my own apartment and lock myself inside with my books. I was going to work hard at the hospital—but now I can’t help but stop myself.

  Why would I be working hard? And for what? For Gram? That isn’t enough of a reason. Life isn’t supposed to be hard. Fuck that. Gram’s wrong. I’ll end up like Uncle Pat, sitting like a Popsicle on the edge of a folding chair, feeling nothing. And Gram wouldn’t want that. I picture Weber’s face, bright with happiness. The three birds tumble, one after another, past the closed windows of the apartment building. A man shouts into a cell phone a few feet away from me. He is telling someone that he’s all right. I know, with total conviction, that I want to feel what Weber was feeling while he fought the fire.

  “Why are you breathing like that? Lila? Slow down,” Weber says. “This air is no good for you.”

  My mind is spinning from point to point, truth to truth. I have not been wrong all my life; I haven’t been weak. I don’t love medicine the way Weber loves his work. And I should, if I’m going to keep on doing it. I don’t know what would make me light up the way he is lit up now. I haven’t found my thing, my passion, but I want to. I want to search for what makes me happy and then work hard. I want what is shining out of Weber’s face. I will not go back to medical school. I will drop out officially. It is over.

  “If you’re okay, I’ve got to go,” Weber says. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  His voice is cool. The adrenaline has dropped away. I look at him, confused. It takes a second for me to remember that a few hours earlier I hurt him badly. I remember dimly, as if through a long camera lens, the scene I made at Dairy Queen.

  The anger and the ice are no longer resolute—they’re melting. I almost laugh at myself. I am falling apart into someone Lila Leary wouldn’t talk to, much less inhabit. I might as well be Belinda, sobbing over a banana split, or Gracie, waiting in the car, talking to her unborn child.

  Weber is looking at me with mild expectation. I can’t speak; I don’t think I can string words into a sentence. A massive metal ladder passes to one side of us, rung after rung. There is a tired-looking fireman carrying each distant end.

  I smile at Weber, trying to communicate something. But he’s turned away. He’s watching the men prop the massive ladder against the side of the building with the least damage. I am warm and whirling from head to toe, and I crane for another glimpse at the look on Weber’s face. I want another glimpse of my future. But it’s too late. With a short wave over his shoulder, he’s headed back toward the fire.

  NOREEN BALLEN

  I spend most of my day sitting on a hard-backed chair next to Mrs. McLaughlin’s bed. She has been home from the rehab hospital for three days, but the move exhausted her. She works with the physical therapist downstairs in the morning, and then in the afternoon she and I take a short walk around the grounds. For the moment, I leave it at that. As she gets her strength back, I will ask for more from her.

  I suspect that the sleep she has gotten over the last seventy-two hours is the first good rest she has allowed herself in weeks. At Valley Hospital, she would ask me to wake her up if I saw one of her children approaching because she wanted to be conscious during their visits. She was afraid they would try to move her to the nursing facility while she slept.

  From what I saw, her children were not much of a threat. Even Kelly, the oldest, was too flustered to initiate such a drastic step. All of Mrs. McLaughlin’s children are worried about her. I can see that they are in for a terrible shock when they finally realize that Catharine McLaughlin is dying. She fought so hard to come back to this room because it was home, because she wants to die at home. I have seen old men and women make this decision before, and I have watched them fade until they’ve carried out their wish.

  When I brought Mrs. McLaughlin here from the rehab facility, the first thing she told me was the meaning behind every piece in the room. The single bed with the wooden frame was her marriage bed. Her husband had slept in an identical bed to her right. The classics on the bookshelf had been her father’s. The huge ashtray on the coffee table shaped like a golf course with a golfer poised on the edge with his club raised had belonged to her husband. The pictures on the walls were of her children. The half-knitted blanket on the couch was something she had been working on for her first great-grandchild.

  WHILE SHE SLEEPS, I read the newspaper, or look at the photographs on the walls. I try to entertain her various guests until she wakes. After years in the hospital with erratic shifts and unpredictable days, this is the easiest and best-paid job I’ve ever had. If I hadn’t stopped believing in God after Eddie’s accident, I would have sworn this had fallen straight from heaven. Instead, I add this job to my running list of things that have happened over the last nine months that I think must have been organized by Eddie. For instance, the gutters on the roof somehow remain clear of leaves, the contractor shows up at my door at the perfect moment and offers a low estimate to repaint the house, the lawn stays neat in spite of the fact that I never once cut it, and Eddie’s old white car never breaks down.

  I used to be a very committed Catholic, and for me giving thanks to God is the hardest habit to shake. Now I get around that by thanking my husband when good things fall into my lap. It is a way for me to feel close to Eddie, and to feel that our lives are still intertwined. And it is easy for me to believe that Eddie sent Louis to offer me this job. The timing of his offer was perfect, since I needed the extra money and the regular hours. Eddie Jr. really wants to go to baseball camp for the month of August, and now I will be able to send him. Jessie, as always, wants everything she lays her eyes on: dolls, clothes, a brand-new bicycle, a computer. I am thinking of giving in about the computer, as both kids could use it for school.

  When I first ran into Louis Leary in the hospital, it was a shock. I had not thought of Louis since the funeral, although Eddie had spoken of him all the time. Eddie had thought very highly of hi
s boss, and hoped to perhaps partner with him someday. The few times I’d met Louis I had been uncomfortable with him. He was so big physically that I felt towered over, even though I am also quite tall. And I could never figure out what was appropriate conversation to make with my husband’s employer. But then at the funeral, having not shed a single tear since the accident, I had for some reason fallen apart at the sight of Louis. To my great embarrassment, I had sobbed all over his nice shirt, drenching the sleeve. I hadn’t been able to stop crying, even after his wife led him away.

  When I saw Louis at the hospital, I remembered the sensation at the funeral when something inside me cracked and broke loose. I had wanted to walk away from him then; I had wanted my shift to be over. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to hug my kids. I wanted to cry with all my might, but those feelings quickly passed. I was almost used to them sweeping over me. Regularly, whenever I think I am getting better, stronger, missing Eddie will kick me in the gut. When the sensation is gone I am left worn and emptied out.

  I arrived at this job and into this room with Mrs. McLaughlin, exhausted but grateful. I watch her sound sleep with jealousy. I watch her chest rise and fall and hope that this job is a gift from my husband. I hope he is still watching out for me and trying to meet my needs. I sit by her bedside until the feeling deepens into a kind of prayer.

  When her family visits and she’s awake, I try to disappear into the background, but as Mrs. McLaughlin lives in a small room, that is sometimes difficult. The most frequent visitor is poor Gracie. I know she’s in her late twenties, but she always looks so young and lost when she shows up at the door. And the way she looks at her grandmother— my goodness. It’s as if the tiny woman lying on the bed is powerful enough to raise the sun into the sky.

  When Gracie finds out that I have two young children, she starts asking questions about childbirth. She seems to know astoundingly little for a woman well into her seventh month of pregnancy. I get the feeling even when she asks the questions that she is not ready for the answers. She is speaking to me because her grandmother is too tired to give her any attention. Her eyes are a mixture of fear and vacancy while we talk.

  I tell her, “You should get an epidural when you can’t bear the pain anymore. There’s no reason to be a martyr. You’ll be able to enjoy the birth of your child much more if you’ve had some relief.”

  “Gram says the McLaughlin women give birth easily.” Gracie glances at the bed, where Mrs. McLaughlin is lying asleep. “But then Gram doesn’t feel pain like normal people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s lost three children and a husband.” Gracie sighs. “She’s unbelievably strong.”

  Three children. I look over at the woman on the bed. I think of Jessie’s toothy smile and Eddie Jr.’s curls. I wonder if there isn’t a limit to how much pain can be borne.

  Gracie says, “I know that you lost your husband, because he was one of my father’s men, and I’m sorry.”

  He was my man. “Thank you.”

  She gazes downward and seems to notice her round belly. She says, “Which part of the birth hurts the most?”

  I pull myself upright in the hard-backed chair. Be professional, Noreen. “It all hurts,” I say. “But when the doctor puts your baby into your arms for the first time, it will be worth it. You’ll be filled with so much love, you won’t believe it. The feeling is different, and more, than you’ve ever had with any man. You’ll want to change the world so it’s a better place for your baby to live in. You’ll feel like your heart is going to explode.”

  “Really?” Gracie says, looking doubtful.

  “Really.”

  Each time Gracie leaves at the end of a visit, she does an odd thing. She opens up the top drawer to Mrs. McLaughlin’s desk, peers inside without touching anything, and then shuts the drawer without a word.

  ALL THE family members I met in the hospital visit here, too. Louis and Kelly come separately. Mrs. McLaughlin’s other two daughters and daughter-in-law drive up from South Jersey together and eat turkey sandwiches in the room while Mrs. McLaughlin rests. Her other grandchildren come as well. A young girl named Mary prays out loud over Mrs. McLaughlin’s bed until her cousin Dina tells her to shut up. Mary keeps praying then, her lips moving without a sound. The only grandson, John, stays close to the door, a hazy look in his eyes that tells me he is stoned. Kelly brings Ryan for a visit, an event that seems to make Catharine, Kelly, and Ryan very anxious. Mrs. McLaughlin’s oldest son, the one who never showed up at the hospital, calls twice a week.

  After a nursing career during which I was always working in a different department, on a different floor, surrounded by different kinds of illness and doctors of different specialties, it is odd to sit still in this room and get to know this one woman and this one family. It was always my choice to move about in the hospital. Most nurses with my seniority had long since chosen a department to work in. Those who like old people pick geriatrics. The tough ones choose oncology, or worse, pediatric oncology. Those who wanted to do less hand-holding and more medicine became skilled surgical nurses. Many of my colleagues returned to school to earn advanced nursing qualifications in their field of choice so that they could become indispensable to the patients and the doctors they are devoted to.

  I, on the other hand, never wanted to settle down. I liked the change and the movement as I switched from one part of the hospital to the other. I didn’t want to get too friendly with anyone, or become too essential in one place. I wanted to feel that I belonged only at home. Only there did I want to feel the pull of loyalty. I had my family: my husband and son and daughter, and then, for the past nine months, I have had my son and my daughter. Long before I came to Valley Hospital I had narrowed my heart so that there was room only for them. Still, I was an excellent nurse, liked by everyone, and the medical staff came to appreciate the fact that I was happy to be assigned anywhere in the hospital that nursing was needed.

  Even now, this job is a temporary change. I will return to the hospital when Mrs. McLaughlin no longer needs me. I have taken a leave of absence from my position at Valley; I have not quit. I remind myself that this, too, will end.

  Lila says, “I would think this job would be boring as hell for you.” She is standing by the window, looking out. Mrs. McLaughlin is asleep.

  “No,” I say. “I read the paper or my book when she sleeps. I have two young children, so this is a nice rest actually. And I enjoy doing all kinds of nursing work. I never wanted to be anything other than a nurse, since I was a small girl.” This makes me think of Jessie, and I wonder what she will grow up to be. At the age of six, she said she wanted to be a princess. I always saw myself in a white uniform helping people, and my daughter saw herself in pink tulle giving orders to her subjects. How could this child have come from my body?

  “I didn’t want to be a doctor,” I add, because Lila looks like she is about to ask me another question, and this is the answer to the usual one. People assume that every nurse is yearning to become a doctor. I was never interested in taking on the great weight of knowledge every doctor must have. I prefer to help people more simply, and attend to their comfort. Comfort is a much underrated commodity in general, and it means everything to the sick.

  Lila seems less nervous in the room than her relatives, perhaps because she’s in medical school and is more comfortable around illness. She looks the most like her grandmother, and I tell her so. She smiles with what looks like a combination of pleasure and suspicion.

  “No one’s ever said that to me.”

  “Maybe I can see it because I’m an outsider. There’s no doubt, though, that you resemble her. Your face is the same shape, and your eyes.”

  Lila touches the curtain, which looks like it is made of lace doilies. “Can I ask you a question?”

  I wonder why answering questions and making conversation seem to be the real work I do in this job, while Catharine McLaughlin peacefully rests. “Of course.”

  “Has a boy n
amed Weber been here to visit my grandmother?”

  “Not while I’ve been here,” I say. “If you want, I can find out if he’s stopped by during the evenings.”

  “No,” Lila says.

  “I like him,” Mrs. McLaughlin says.

  We both turn. She is sitting up in bed, her hands folded in her lap. She looks perfectly awake, as if she weren’t just lying down, her face to the wall.

  “I wouldn’t have liked him if we’d met thirty years ago, or maybe even ten. But I like him very much now. I don’t want you to be as much of an idiot as everyone else in this family, Lila. When it comes to matters of the heart, every single person in this family is hopeless.”

  I look from grandmother to granddaughter. Lila’s face appears bruised by Mrs. McLaughlin’s words, and I can tell from years of nursing experience that Lila is not getting enough rest these days, either.

  “He doesn’t like me anymore,” Lila says.

  “That’s a pity,” Mrs. McLaughlin says.

  The old woman doesn’t look surprised or even sympathetic when she says that, and I find myself thinking, not for the first time, Boy, she’s a hard one.

  AFTER TWO WEEKS, I am ready to climb the walls. Mrs. McLaughlin is slightly better, and I have revised my initial diagnosis. Not changed, but revised. I still believe that she has decided to die, but that it is not going to happen any day soon. There is something she is waiting for that is making her linger between recovery and death. She is fighting just hard enough to hold on, and no harder. She still sleeps a lot, but when awake she is more alert. Sometimes, though, she fakes unconsciousness when her family visits. One afternoon, after Theresa has left the room, I call her on this.

  She gives a sheepish smile, like a child who has been caught stealing cookies from the jar. “I don’t have the strength to reassure Theresa that she is all right and I’m all right and that the world isn’t about to end. She worries too much. I prefer to lie still and listen to her talk to you.”