by Lynne Hugo
When she and Bill formally identify and claim Brian’s body, Bill obsessively asks the policeman exactly what happened. “But what happened? How did it happen? No other car…what happened? Was there any alcohol…or what?”
“No alcohol. Looks like the driver was going a little fast and went off the road just a little on the right. It was out on Route 34, they were taking the back way from the restaurant to the dance. You know, that road’s narrow, and where it happened, it has a fair lip on the pavement and no shoulder, just the culvert there. We think he felt the tires hook on the lip, the girl with the cut-up knee said she felt a bump, and he overcorrected, just went right across the road and into the utility pole on the driver’s side. The car grazed the pole and flipped at least once, maybe twice. We’ll measure, and we’ll talk to the kids that made it. “
Madalaine hears him say the kids that made it, and feels a quick red hope that Kevin will die. She does not understand how she could want such a thing, and squeezes the notion from her mind.
Bill insists on driving Madalaine and Jennifer home. Ellie, who has huddled miserably over her hands and wept since she arrived, has the sense to offer to take Melody home, and then to come stay with Madalaine, but Madalaine takes her up on only the first part when Ellie adds she’d have to stop home and pick up Presley because he can’t be by himself at a time like this.
“You go take care of Presley and Mama and Daddy,” Madalaine says gently, though before she spoke a flame had spiked from her brain to her mouth and threatened to leap off her tongue. But Madalaine had doused it, not with compassion, but with the pointlessness of it. Nothing is changeable anymore; she sees that.
Madalaine follows Bill into his former home through the garage door. Neither of them switches on a light. Bill carries Jennifer into her room where he and Madalaine sit on her bed to hold her hands, and rub her back and pale hair, until she falls into a bloodless, tearless sleep. In the darkness, Jennifer’s room looks as it did through the nights when the house was new to them, furnished with their hopes and not much else. In the way parents do, Bill and Madalaine know when it is all right to leave Jennifer. They signal and rise at the same time in an old, silent communication. Once they are out in the hall, they still do not say anything. The last of their words are gone, drained out with the first day’s tears before they finally left the hospital. Now they just go to their bedroom and lie down on their marriage bed to hold one another until morning.
CHAPTER 9
Ellie has no place anymore. Mama and Daddy have taken over her sadness as though they had been the ones to go to the hospital and be with Maddie. Charles keeps saying, “Brian’s dead, Brian’s dead,” in a cheerful, parrot voice, and she thinks she will lose her mind if she cannot stop him.
“Shut up,” she snaps at him like Presley does if you reach toward him when he’s eating. “Just shut up.” Charles is on the couch surrounded by pieces of yarn. He is latch hooking a small rug. Ellie or Mama match the colors for him when he gets to a new section; other than that part, he can do it pretty well. He has three hung on the walls of his room, their mistakes obvious to anyone but him. Still, Ellie is considering having him do an Elvis rug for her. She could pull out the mistakes and fix them herself. Charles would never know the difference.
“Shut yourself up,” Mama says wearily from her recliner. Ellie paces between the kitchen and the living room.
“I just cannot take this another minute,” Ellie says, “not another minute. How can you let him go on? I have to get out of here.”
“Go,” Mama says.
“I mean, it’s just so insensitive. None of you were there. You think you’re upset, I mean, none of you had to deal with it at the hospital. You didn’t even know what was going on. You were just here watching Hard Copy, or…well, the point is, you were spared. I just can’t take any more.”
“Go,” Mama says.
Ellie picks up her purse from a chair in the kitchen. “Maybe I just will. Maybe I just will go.”
“Good.”
Ellie gets to the back door where, out of sight from Mama and Charles, she stands with her hand on the knob. She opens the door, then, a moment later, slams it in front of herself and tiptoes back into the kitchen. Noiselessly, she sits on the chair where her purse had been. The table is littered with advertising flyers, a few dirty plates and crumbs. The light falls so as to throw into relief the swipes that were last taken over it with a sponge; swirls of greasy residue remain like opaque clouds on a muddy sky. How is she going to get through the funeral? How? She begins to cry but holds the sound of it inside her head and chest.
“Bring a Coke in here to me,” Mama calls. Ellie doesn’t move a muscle of her body, they just tighten up, like cords binding her in this position to this chair.
“I know you’re in there. Bring me a Coke.” Now Mama’s voice frays all around the edges. “Please, Ellie. I’m hurting all over.”
The wake part is the worst. There’s Brian, laid out in his basketball warm-up suit, looking like he belongs in a bad wax museum the way they’ve fixed him up. Madalaine is by the coffin all the time, her face like the papier-mâché masks they used to make in school, white and unmoving. Bill is crying by the other side of the coffin while Melody hunches over her big stomach in a stuffed chair in one corner of the funeral parlor’s room, all somber forest-green and mahogany. Ellie is supposed to make sure that everyone signs the book. That had been her job at Madalaine’s wedding, too, and the irony isn’t lost on Ellie. She thinks Maddie is doing this on purpose.
Mama and Daddy are there, Daddy wearing a tie, which also hasn’t happened since Maddie’s wedding. Mama is wearing The Dress, the tent that makes her look like a blue polyester blimp, her attire for weddings, baptisms, graduations and funerals. She is crying. Even though her face is pale and waxy, without its usual flush today, Ellie thinks it’s for show. Brian had been irritating Mama for a couple of years because he didn’t come over much anymore and when he did, he didn’t make a big deal of it the way she liked for him to. Teenagers, except for Claire of course, weren’t at the top of Mama’s all-time favorites. Ellie felt bad for Daddy, though. He looked so out of place, the red wattles of his neck showing up over the collar of his white shirt, and the sports coat, borrowed from Bill, just plain too big. Lydie put in some quick face time, but she’s hardly been here at all, which couldn’t be sitting too well with Maddie. In fact, Maddie didn’t really speak to Lydie when Lydie was here. Ellie tucks that observation away for future examination.
Claire isn’t on the critical list anymore, but her good kidney got damaged, along with her spleen. Lydie, crying, said her creatine was twelve point one, and her bun was one-twenty, as if that explained something to Ellie. But they put an emergency shunt in Claire’s arm and started hemodialysis, so Ellie doesn’t see why Lydie set up camp in Claire’s room. Doesn’t she know what her sisters are going through? Even Wayne is here, though he’s keeping to himself, down-shouldered and miserable-looking. He did say that Lydia was talking with Claire’s doctor this afternoon, and that’s why she left so early.
Kevin is still in the hospital, like Claire, only he’s unconscious. Ellie wonders if he’ll be one of those human vegetables people whisper about. Christy is here, dressed to kill and spilling crocodile tears all over Brian, who can’t defend himself. Ellie can see Maddie stiffen when Christy touches Brian’s hand. Ellie thought for a minute that Christy was going to plant one on Brian’s lips, and she would have liked to see how Maddie took that, but evidently, Christy read Maddie’s face and managed to restrain herself.
When Ellie actually thinks about Brian, which she tries not to do, she cannot believe that he is really gone. She tries to make her mind bend around that idea, but it is adamant in its refusal. Fortunately, she has the book to keep track of, and Charles to watch. She’s hit on how to keep him from singsonging Brian’s dead, Brian’s dead: her purse is crammed with red jawbreakers. Before Charles finishes one, she hands him another which he can’t resist st
uffing in his mouth in overlapping succession. He couldn’t possibly say a word.
Madalaine startles, her attention shocked away from Brian, who sleeps farther and farther away from her in his coffin: across the room, Charles has blood and saliva oozing from his mouth. Ellie is sitting by the visitor registry as if nothing is happening, though Charles is easily in her vision. Madalaine knows she should run to help him, but her feet and legs are paralyzed. There was blood around Brian’s mouth when they’d finally taken her to him at St. Francis. She begins to cry, doubling over, and, of all people, it’s Melody who heaves herself out of the corner chair and makes it to Madalaine, putting an arm out to support her as she sinks to the floor, calling to some people clustered in muted conversation to come help her. Then Bill’s face appears above her.
“Let me get you out of here,” he says, an emotion too thick and layered to identify, thorns on the soft flower of his voice. He kneels to get his arms between the floor and her, begins to lift her head. “Did someone say something to you?” Madalaine tries to point toward Charles, but as Bill raises her head and draws it toward his chest, his cologne reaches Madalaine and it is as real and immediate as the scent of her son when she had her arms around him to adjust his pink bow tie. Right now, she sees him in the car, just before the accident, craning his neck, trying to loosen the grip of the tie on his throat. Christy has told him he smells good and he is laughing to cover his equal pleasure and discomfort.
“Hey, Kevin, slow down, huh?” Madalaine hears him say to the driver, the arrogant boy who is so sure of himself. Claire says something, too, but what it is does not come to Madalaine clearly, nor can she tell if Claire is speaking to Brian or Kevin. It is lost in a blur of movement and a sharp intake of breath, disbelieving as the car tilts a little, its wheels lower on one side where they’ve gone off pavement onto the weeds and gravel. Madalaine senses the moment when Kevin jerks the wheel, too much, too far, and the car rocks again as all four wheels are briefly on the pavement, but crossing it diagonally. Madalaine feels herself scream, the skin around her mouth stretching, her throat aching with the rasp of it, and then the sound of it mingles with the girls’ screams and her son’s hoarse shout. The car careens wildly and she is dizzy, sick, and then there is a suffocating, jolting crash searing into darkness.
CHAPTER 10
I should be at Brian’s wake, I know that, not sitting here watching Claire sleep. She even said, “Mom, I’ll be all right, please go for me,” but this morning Dr. Douglas said she wanted to talk with me privately, and when I went to the funeral home at the beginning of the calling hours, Maddie hardly spoke to me. I could have sworn she stiffened up and pulled away when I hugged her, but I stayed as long as I could bear it anyway, then slipped out, leaving Charles to Ellie and Wayne to himself, so I could get back here to Claire. My Claire. I don’t think I’ve yet drawn a full breath since the accident; my lungs want to pant in time with my heart’s hammering. It’s as though it is happening over and over. I’m afraid that if I let go, some nurse will come up to me like doom and say, “Mrs. Merrill, I’m so sorry,” like they did to Maddie. Poor Maddie. My poor, poor Maddie. How is she surviving?
I sit in this chair and focus all my energy on keeping Claire alive, even though I know she’s not in danger. Not today, I mean. She’s going to have to be on dialysis unless she can get a kidney transplant, but Dr. Douglas says transplants are almost routine now, we just need a good match. I was tested yesterday—so was Wayne—but I intend to give her one of mine. It’s only right, and it’s what I want. She’s mine. I think that all the time, although I’d never say it out loud to hurt Wayne, or make Claire feel I thought she was an object I could save in a drawer. But it’s the way I think of her, mine, and my responsibility and privilege in the end.
This is not a pretty room. Too tiny, and too many machines, a step-down unit from intensive care. They won’t let her have the flowers she’s gotten, but I’ve put up some pictures on the wall and brought two of her old stuffed animals from her room, and her radio. I need to get a sun catcher for the window, for the afternoon sun to make a rainbow for her. Her friends have left cards and letters at the nurses’ desk. I read them to her and look up too often hoping to catch a smile flickering. Not yet. She’s cried so much about Brian, and Kevin, too. I think she cannot tell who or what she’s crying over sometimes, her sorrow like patches sewn together into an enormous whole cloth that envelops her body. I feel such pain when she cries, but I am glad for the chance to hang on to her. I weave myself between the tubes and bags and wires, careful not to disturb anything while I work my arms around her so she can put her face into my chest and sob. She is mourning while the dialysis machine keeps my secret, hums its own hymn of praise while it saves her. Claire keeps asking me to call again about Kevin, and I am afraid to. What can I tell her if it’s not good news? She cannot take any more. None of us can.
Dr. Douglas sticks her head in the door and gestures to me. I follow her down the hall, catching up as we walk. My heels click on the tile, but Dr. Douglas is soundless as death in the night, a notion that pops into my head to panic me. “She looks better today, don’t you think? More color in her face and her eyes not so dull?” I say, demanding the answer I want in the way I put the question. I am always doing that; everyone here must be sick of me.
But Dr. Douglas smiles and says, “Yes, I do think she looks better. She’s stabilized nicely.” Then she touches my arm. “Is your nephew’s funeral today?”
“At 3:00,” I answer. “I was there. I just couldn’t stay. I’ll go back…when it’s time.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says, though she has told me this several times already. “And I’m sorry to have to burden you with anything else to think about right now, but I do need to talk with you.” She points toward a small lounge, big enough for just four or five people, but empty now. There’s a coffeepot plugged in, with a jar of instant coffee and a box of tea bags next to it. Dr. Douglas puts a tea bag in a paper cup, pours hot water onto it and hands it to me without asking if I’d like any. Then she fixes a cup for herself. “Sit down,” she says. “This isn’t an easy one.”
“Claire? It’s not…”
“Nothing I haven’t told you about Claire. It’s what you haven’t told me,” she says evenly, but with a thin edgy border between me and her usual kindness. She’s been Claire’s urologist since we first knew about the kidneys.
“What?” I say, and honestly don’t know what she’s talking about.
“Lydia,” she says, “do you and your husband know that he’s not Claire’s father?”
I’ve never prepared for this, and it takes a minute for me to even bring a word into my mouth. “No,” I whisper. “Not anymore. I think we’ve both forgotten that.”
After that first lunch with John at Kathy’s Kafe, I flew back to work ten minutes late, and tried to concentrate on the billing. I kept thinking about how he’d asked me questions and listened to the answer, as though he were interested. Looking back, it seems so obvious what was in both our hearts, but the truth is that no matter how obvious, I didn’t know.
Still, I should have. Since when had I paid particular attention to my clothes, and spent extra time putting my hair in hot rollers in the morning? The next day I wore my red sweater, a white blouse and my black skirt. I put gold earrings on, and a gold bangle bracelet. I have always looked good in red, everyone says so, because my hair is so dark. It had just been a lucky coincidence that I’d worn blue, the color I like best to bring out my eyes, the day before. And since when did I not pack my lunch any day when I had plenty of time to do it? I should have known what I was thinking, but I kept it from myself so I wouldn’t have to stop.
Of course, I went back to Kathy’s the next day. John did, too, both of us acting as though we had no idea the other would be there. And the truth was that neither of us had mentioned it. We just knew. And for quite a while, that was all there was to it, a bright place like a flower in the middle of each weedy day that ma
de me eager to go to work in the morning, packing anticipation instead of a sandwich.
In January, there was a beautiful first snow, the flakes enormous and heavy, falling with increasing speed. Maysfield people make time out of snow; Kentucky doesn’t get much, and the rural areas pretty well shut down. It’s not for sport— Maysfield’s sports are drinking and suicide, same in winter and summer—but for the novelty of it, the break from gray sheer dreariness. In town, serious business doesn’t happen; appointments and events and shops that don’t really need to be canceled or closed are, so that people can watch it snow, as if the outdoors had become a giant, free drive-in movie. The snow began at about ten in the morning and by noon, when John and I were at Kathy’s for lunch, better than an inch had accumulated, and the town was beginning to seal itself in.
“You should see yourself,” he said, grinning. “Wow!’
I know I blushed. “A mess, right?” Of course, my hair was full of snow, which meant my careful styling had collapsed.
“Nope. Absolutely gorgeous. Your cheeks are pink and your eyes are the bluest blue I’ve ever seen. I’ll have to think what the word is for that color.” He brushed the snow from the top of my head. “Are you cold? We could take a walk after lunch…want to? I am not in the mood to go back to my brief right away. There is no precedent that really fits.”
“My shoes, though…” I pointed down to my black low-heeled pumps. My feet were cold and wet just from getting to and from the car.
“Yeah. I see. Well, look, you’ve got to change those shoes anyway. You can’t work like that all afternoon. I’ll drive you by your house and you can grab your boots along with a dry pair of shoes. Can you be late getting back to work? We could eat fast and get out and enjoy this stuff a little.” He gestured to Kathy, mouthed, “What’s the soup?” While he wasn’t looking, I studied him. I was always doing that, trying to get hold of something. Other than the high, wide forehead broken on one side with a wave of hair—damp now from the snow he’d missed brushing from it—and expensive teeth, no single feature stood out, yet I found him handsome in a way that made me uneasy. I liked his eyes, though, a deep, earthy brown under eyebrows that looked brushed. All of him was groomed, even his fingernails. Not sissified, even though that’s what the men at the plant would think.