“It helps to be with the twins.”
How can I argue with this? “I’ll talk to you later, Mom. Kiss the boys for me. Love you.”
I let myself into Arden’s dark room, and in that flash of hallway light I see it.
A new bag dangles from the metal stand beside Arden’s bed. This one is aluminum foil, small and dense. “What’s that?” I ask Theo, going over to pick up the flashlight. The words printed on the label mean nothing.
“An antibiotic.” He shuts his laptop. “The nurse says it’s routine.”
“It looks scary. Why is it in that bag?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s one of those new antibiotics that’s light-sensitive.”
“She doesn’t have an infection, does she?”
“No. They’re just being careful.”
But is he sure about that? Has he asked?
A rap on the glass, and the door slides open. Then a hand reaches up to draw the curtain aside from the entrance, and Gabrielle steps through. She’s wearing the camel-colored skirt and black knit top she’d worn all night, her auburn hair smoothly waved back, pearl earrings clipped to her earlobes. But there are magenta smudges beneath her eyes and her cheekbones rise sharply, newly hollowed. “Hello. I’m coming to check on you all. How’s Arden? Has there been any change?” She looks to the thin flexible tube hanging from Arden’s skull and snaking over to the thermometer-looking instrument on the wall. It makes me want to stand and protect it from view. I don’t know why.
“Not yet,” Theo says.
Gabrielle comes closer. “It’s so terrible, isn’t it? I keep waiting for Rory to wake up and tell us she wants the television on, or that her leg hurts. Anything.”
“I know.” It’s okay to talk like this in front of Arden. It’s neutral. She’s asleep. She knows we’re here, waiting for her.
“What does Dr. Morris say?” Gabrielle asks. “When does she think Arden will wake up?”
“That it’s just a matter of time,” Theo says with a forced cheerfulness aimed at Arden. He’s not quite telling the truth. Dr. Morris hasn’t said this. She’s been far more circumspect. Her actual words had been We should know more in a few days. Every time we draw close to a deadline, she moves it forward. A few hours, a few more hours. Now it’s been two days, edging into three. Christine has to keep assuring me that this is nothing to be worried about, that it really is a waiting game.
I pick up my purse. “I’m on my way down to the cafeteria, Gabrielle. Want to come?”
“Yes. All right.”
“Want anything, Theo?”
“I’m okay.”
The cafeteria’s noisy and bright, tables filled with people in green scrubs and white lab coats, and ordinary people like Gabrielle and me. My stomach rumbles, reminding me I’d missed breakfast. Lunch, too? We head for the trio of coffee urns.
Gabrielle tears open a packet of sweetener and sprinkles white powder over the surface of her tea. Her long nails are polished a demure apricot, impeccable. For my birthday one year, she gave me a gift certificate for a manicure and pedicure, a thoughtful gift I knew was her way of commenting on how short and plain I keep my nails. But a manicurist could have done nothing for the burns on the pads of my palms from gripping too many hot pots, the scars on my fingers from when the knife blade slipped, the ropy scars along the side of my right hand where the pasta machine had caught hold of my latex glove and pulled my fingers into its maw. I had given the certificate to Arden.
“I looked up Dr. Morris,” Gabrielle says, crumpling the sweetener packet. “Did you know she’s Harvard-trained?”
Harvard again. Gabrielle had confided once that Harvard was the only American school she’d heard about growing up. Rory had been destined to be a Harvard girl before she’d even been born.
Is your family coming over from France? I’d asked Gabrielle, and she’d looked down at her hands and spread her fingers wide. She didn’t know. There’s been no sign of her family, not even now. She’s mentioned a brother and a sister, but long ago, as though out of memory. Twenty years and they’ve made no appearance at all. I wonder if they even exist. We’re her family, Vince once told me, and it’s true. Gabrielle would watch Arden so I could work; I would ferry Rory to piano lessons so Gabrielle could meet with clients. The first time Gabrielle and I met—Theo and I going to the airport to pick up Vince and his new girlfriend from Paris—she had fastened her cinnamon-colored eyes on mine and extended a cool, slim hand. You are Natalie, she’d said, and I’d wondered how much she knew.
Gabrielle tosses the wooden stirrer into the trash. “Do you think he knows what he’s doing? Detective Gallagher?”
“I think so.”
“You haven’t heard from him, have you?”
I shake my head.
“Neither have we. Not a word.”
“He said he was going to talk to Hunter’s parents. Maybe they’ll be able to help him.”
“Maybe.”
“I feel so sad for them.”
“Yes. We are the lucky ones.”
Nothing about this feels lucky.
“Do you think he’s telling us everything he knows?” she asks.
“I think so. Why wouldn’t he?”
“I don’t know. This is a homicide investigation, is it not? There are things he’s going to keep to himself, certainly.”
“Perhaps in the short term, but we’ll have to know everything eventually. Our daughters are victims, too. We have a right to know.”
“I suppose. But what if we never do?”
“We will,” I say with a confidence I don’t feel. “The girls will wake up and…”
“What if they don’t? What if they never wake up?”
“Don’t,” I say, alarmed. I’m not a superstitious person. My feet are firmly planted but this feels dangerous. Saying this out loud lets in the monsters.
“Oh, Natalie.” She looks at me. Even now, her makeup is smoothly applied and beautifully shaded to appear invisible. “We’re both thinking it. Every time the doctor comes in, every time a nurse stops by, you say to yourself, Are they going to tell me it’s over? Don’t tell me you don’t.”
I set down my cup and take her small hand in mine. “Rory’s going to be okay. You’ll see. She’s going to be just fine.”
“Maybe,” she replies, her eyes sliding away from mine.
We’re walking past the information desk toward the elevator when someone calls out. “Mrs. Falcone?” We both turn.
A girl in denim cutoffs and a T-shirt darts toward us, her pixie hair dyed bright pink. I recognize her as the girl who’d introduced herself the day we’d moved Arden and Rory into the dorm. She seems like fun, I’d commented to Arden later, and Arden had merely grunted. She thought I was referring to the girl’s wild hair, but it was more than that. It was her open friendliness, the way she had smiled at all of us. She’s not alone today. She’s got other kids with her, a little crowd of college students. I feel a surge of envy. They are still going about their lives while Arden’s has been stopped.
“Hi,” the girl says to Gabrielle. “I’m D.D. You probably don’t remember me.”
“Of course I do.”
Gabrielle probably does. She keeps track of all the kids going in and out of Rory’s life, and even Arden’s. There have been times when Gabrielle will mention a Bishop classmate casually and the name will stump me. I’ll have to think hard to figure out whether she’s the short blond girl who sings or the brunette who plays lacrosse.
“You must be Arden’s mom,” D.D. tells me.
She’s forgotten that we’ve already met. I’m just one of the many parents in and out of the dorm that first day, a busy blur to her, but I’d been alert to whether Arden would like her room, the kids on her hall, if she would find a way to fit in at a school that she had never wanted to attend.
“How are Rory and Arden?” D.D. asks.
“They’ve been very badly injured,” Gabrielle says.
D.D. bites her lower li
p and one of the boys slings his arm around her shoulders. “Can we see them?” he asks. “Just to say hello?”
“I’m sorry,” Gabrielle says. “It’s not possible. Only family is allowed.”
“But they’ll be happy to have visitors later,” I say, “when they’re up to it.”
One of the girls nods. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her cheeks blotchy. “It’s just so awful. I can’t believe…” She dabs her eyes with the edge of her sleeve.
“I had lunch with Hunter just the other day,” another girl says.
“He was in my econ class,” a boy says. “He sat right next to me.”
“Are there counselors at school for you to talk to?” I ask gently, and he nods. Arden would be horrified to hear me talk like this to her friends. They’re not babies, Mom, she’d scold. My throat tightens. I take a sip of hot coffee. It burns going down. The pain chides me to get a grip.
“We saw it,” D.D. says. “We were at the pep rally and people started standing in the bleachers and pointing. The sky looked like it was on fire. We all started running. But…”
But it was too late. There was nothing anyone could do. Gabrielle and I are alone waiting for the elevator when she says to me, “I don’t trust that girl.”
I’ve been thinking how nice it is to know that Arden has a close circle of friends who care about her, and now I turn to Gabrielle with surprise. She’s watching the elevator numbers light up. “Who? D.D.?”
She nods. “Her posts on Facebook are quite odd. I don’t understand half of them.”
I’m astonished. “You check Rory’s Facebook page?”
“Well, yes, now and then.” A ding and the elevator doors slide open. We step inside. Gabrielle punches the button for the second floor. “Don’t you check Arden’s?”
—
Hunter’s parents are tall. His mother’s face is dusted with freckles and her curly brown hair hangs loose and long over her shoulders. She wears layers of drooping beige clothes—a knitted vest over a sweater and a collared blouse. She’d gone to the effort to apply lipstick at some point during the day, but now it’s worn away, leaving behind a fuchsia echo on her wide, thin lips. Hunter had taken after his father; the shape of their chins is just the same, and their eyes the same aqua color. Hunter’s photograph had been on the front page of the newspapers stacked in the machine in the cafeteria. The headlines ask if we know how safe our kids’ college dorms are.
First Vince shakes Phil’s hand and then Theo does. I’d been worried that Theo might be confrontational with Hunter’s parents, given that he suspects their son of having set the fire, though why I would wonder this of my eternally circumspect husband, I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything right now.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to Janet, and hug her tight. Her body is bony beneath all those layers. She hugs me back and I realize I’ll never have a chance to meet her son. They have come to the hospital to check on the girls who had been Hunter’s friends, and I understand this is a small way of feeling close to the child they’d lost.
“How are the girls?” Phil asks.
“They’re in critical condition,” Gabrielle says, and I see Janet and Phil react to Gabrielle’s accent, so flowing and lush.
“Could we see them?” Janet asks, and I’m surprised. My own mother hasn’t been able to visit Arden, but how can I possibly deny this woman this request? The six of us go down the hall and into the ICU. We are a silent parade and we stop first in Arden’s room, a brief pause where Hunter’s parents stand in the doorway and peer through the darkness to Arden’s bed. And then we move on to Rory’s room, which is where Janet and Phil cross the threshold and go right up to Rory’s bedside.
—
Arden’s room is full of shadows. “They didn’t even come in,” I grumble to Theo after Janet and Phil have left. “I don’t think they knew Arden’s name.”
“They just lost their son.”
“I know. But he and Arden were such good friends. Isn’t it strange they didn’t seem to know anything about her?”
“Well, maybe they didn’t. You’re always saying you wished Arden would talk to you more.”
Maybe I’m being too sensitive, a result of all those years Arden had been eclipsed by her more confident cousin. I’d been worried, sending the two of them to college together. I’d suggested to Arden that she room with someone new, for a fresh start. But Gabrielle had wanted the girls together. Don’t make a big deal about it, Mom, Arden had said. Let Aunt Gabrielle be weird. Besides, Rory needs me. And I’d thought sadly, Oh, honey. You have it all backward.
But my daughter had gotten a tattoo, without ever mentioning wanting one. She’d lost weight since she started college. I couldn’t help but notice it when she’d visited the weekend before, the way her jawline started to emerge and her eyes glowed against her skin. She’d only picked at her dinner, excused herself early to go to bed.
“I’d better get going,” Theo says. “You sure you’ll be all right?”
He’ll be gone only six or so hours, just long enough to see the twins and pack some clothes, but all of a sudden I’m not certain I will. “Drive safely. Don’t break any speed limits.”
“I could bring the boys back with me, you know. It wouldn’t be such a big deal for them to skip a few days of school. We could get a couple hotel rooms. Your mom could help.”
I’m tempted. I miss my sons. I’ve never spent the night away from them and I’m about to do it for the third night in a row. But the ICU’s no place for small boys, and I won’t leave Arden. What if something happens while I’m gone? She could emerge from her coma terrified and in pain. More fluid could seep into her skull and another emergency procedure might need to be performed. The boys will have a million questions. They’ll be frightened. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not now. They need their routine.”
“They’re old enough to understand more than we give them credit for. Better not let their imaginations have free rein.”
He’s the psych major and the one who works with kids, so maybe he’s right. But these are my kids and my instinct tells me it’s a bad idea. “Maybe in a few days. After things settle.” After we get some good news. After Arden has opened her eyes and can turn her head to smile at her brothers.
“Bring Is Your Mama a Llama?” I say impulsively. “Bring all her favorite books.” They’re the worse for wear, having endured the twins and, before that, all those years of reading to Arden and Rory, one little girl cuddled in on each side of me: Arden with her stuffed bunny clutched in the crook of her arm and her head drooping as she drowsed to the sound of my voice and Rory sitting fully alert with her legs sticking straight out and her thumb obstinately in her mouth. When kindergarten came around and Rory showed no signs of giving up her thumb, Gabrielle had resorted to all sorts of trickery, reasoning, prizes, noxious ointments, and outright threats. She’d been so afraid the other children would make fun of Rory. “The books are in the storage room.”
Theo’s standing by Arden’s bedside, looking down at her.
“Hey,” I say, softly. “It’s going to be okay.” I slide my arms around him, rest my head against his chest. His arms come up and I close my eyes, listen to his heart beat. “We’ve been here before. Remember? When Oliver was born, all the times Henry had croup? You said they should name the pediatric wing after him, we were there so much.” I smile at the memory. “Arden’s got great doctors. She’s in a top-notch hospital. She’s healthy and strong and she’s going to come out of this just fine. Right?” He’s silent. “Right?” He has to answer. I can’t do this alone.
Finally, finally, he tightens his arms around me. “Right.”
Arden
TIME SLIDES PAST like Dalí’s melting clocks step into the painting, and I try to pick one up. I hear something. My mom’s voice. I stop to listen. I’ll paint her a picture—the fireworks over the lake, the water indigo and the sky an explosion of yellow and orange. I swirl the paintbrush in the can of water.
&n
bsp; “Your friends came by to say hello. They’ll come back as soon as you’re feeling better.”
Which friends is she talking about? Doesn’t she know I lost all of them, one by one? Doesn’t she know I never really had them to begin with? Mackenzie says she’s Rory’s best friend, but Rory never hears from her anymore. Who are Rory’s friends? Aunt Gabrielle wanted to know. She leaned close, softening her face so I’d tell her. She thought she knew all the secrets. She thought she coaxed them out of me, one by one.
“Grandma and Grandpa will be by after their trip.”
Mom must mean Grandma Sugar and Grandpa George. She never talks about my other grandma and grandpa in the same sentence like that.
“I bet they’ll bring you girls all sorts of crazy things. You’d better be prepared.”
She’s trying to make me smile. Why can’t I? I lift the paintbrush and dab it in midair. The soft pink of her cheeks, the blue of her eyes, the messy brown waves that stick up on top of her head first thing in the morning before she’s brushed her hair. After Uncle Vince lost our money, she’d come home from Double, tie on her apron, and start cooking. Whenever she’s upset or worried, that’s what she does—heads straight to the kitchen. Once it was beef vegetable soup, another time dim sum. This time it was croissants, and this phase lasted for weeks. She set out a dish of malt and flour and sugar to draw the yeast straight out of the air—magic! Layering and buttering, rolling with the heavy wooden pin, proofing in the big plastic bin. In the early-morning hours, I’d come downstairs and find her pulling another pan from the oven. We’d sit, just the two of us, with sweet butter and homemade apricot preserves, a jar of Nutella. We’ll figure it out, she told me, over and over again.
All the things I want to tell her. She loves me, I know. But she’s always moving; her mind is always somewhere else. She’ll be looking at me and nodding, but then I’ll see her eyes drift and I’ll know she’s suddenly remembered the linen order’s got to be picked up, or she needs to call the VIP guests before they leave their offices. The twins need new shin guards, and why is the car making that weird noise?
The Good Goodbye Page 8