“If you let us,” Adam said, giving her an evil look. He was just adolescent enough to hate her. And Heather was in the depths of despair. She jumped up from the table then, ran to her room, and slammed the door. Adam did the same a minute later, and Jimmy sat at the table, looking confused, and he reached out and patted his mother’s hand.
“They’ll get over it, Mom,” he said kindly, and she put her arms around him.
“Why aren’t you mad too?” He was the angel in her life.
“Because everybody can’t be mad at you. That wouldn’t be fair.” He was always the sweet spot in the group.
“Thank you for being so nice about it. I think you’re really going to like the school and the new house, and we’ll come back here to visit,” she reassured him. He nodded and then went up to his room too. It killed her to see how sad he looked going up the stairs.
Heather as good as declared war on her that day, and from then on. For the next month Jessie got the cold shoulder from Heather, was insulted by Adam, and Jimmy just looked despondent. She felt like the worst mother in the world. And she called Carole to whine about it. Carole had already found an apartment she loved in Denver, and her attitude was great. She was packing up in Boston, and excited about the move. And she insisted that she and Joe were just friends when Jessie asked again. But for now Jessie was more concerned about her kids than Carole’s move.
“My kids are going to kill me, literally or figuratively. Heather hates me, Adam is pissed, and Jimmy looks depressed.”
“They’ll be fine when you get to Denver,” Carole said confidently. “I saw Chris the other night, by the way.”
“You did? Where? Was he playing hooky?”
“No, he was having dinner. At Bill’s. With Lily. I think he likes her.”
“I think he does too.” Jessie smiled. When she told him about the move, he was shocked, but less upset than the others, as long as she wasn’t selling the house.
“They went to the movies afterward. And Bill says he’s been over several times. He took Lily on a date.”
“Well, that’s one piece of good news. I approve. She’s the nicest kid in the world. She’s got every reason to be a spoiled brat, and she isn’t. She’s a great girl.” Jessie hadn’t seen her since she won her medal, and she was due to go back to Denver very soon, once her kids settled down. “What am I going to do with this bunch, other than shoot myself or change my mind?” She was discouraged by how distressed they were about the move.
“You’d be wrong to change your mind. Just hang in. They’ll get over it. Give them time,” Carole encouraged her.
“Wonderful, you try living with them. Heather says she won’t go. She stays at her best friend’s house almost every night and says she wants to move in with them and go to school here next year. I can’t let her do that.” Jessie sounded stressed at the idea.
“She won’t do it,” Carole reassured her. “She just has to express herself. Better that than hidden aggression. She wants to punish you.”
“Well, she is. Actually, I’d like hidden aggression a lot better—hers is a little too overt.” Jessie sighed, and Carole assured her that Heather would relent eventually, but the war continued week after week. If anything, Heather got angrier and more hostile with her mother. Even though Jessie had expected it, it was painful to live with.
When Jessie went to Denver two weeks later, Carole proudly showed her her new apartment. She loved it. And all Jessie could talk or think about were her battles with Heather.
When she went to see Bill, she discovered that all was not smooth sailing between him and Lily either. It was the spring of the young people’s discontent. Bill had said that he was having a problem with her. Jessie hoped it wasn’t Chris, and that he didn’t object to his seeing Lily. But she was eighteen, and a very sensible girl. And her son was a good boy and wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. Before her father got home, Lily came downstairs and asked for Jessie’s help.
“I can’t reason with my dad,” she said as she pulled up to the kitchen table with a look of despair, while Jessie wondered if Heather said the same thing to her best friend’s mother. Jessie had talked to Lily and Lily was sympathetic about Heather’s fury about the move. She said Heather would get over it, but Jessie was beginning to wonder if that was true. “I’m still waiting to hear from all the colleges I applied to, and Dad says he won’t let me go away,” Lily explained to Jessie with intense frustration.
“Why not?” He had said as much to Jessie, but she wanted to hear what he was saying to Lily.
“I don’t know. He’s ridiculous. Something about he doesn’t want me to get hurt. It makes no sense. Why would I get hurt going to school?” They both knew how protective he was, and he wasn’t ready to let his little girl go away, particularly in a wheelchair.
“Did he always say that?” Jessie asked carefully.
“He never really liked the idea before, but he would have let me. He had no excuse not to. Now he won’t, because of my SCI. It’s such bullshit.” Jessie could tell how worried and angry Lily was. They had been arguing about it for months. “I’ve got good grades and scores. What’s the point if he won’t let me go to a decent school?”
“And you don’t want to stay home?” Jessie wanted to be sure.
“No, I want to go away to school. Jessie, will you talk to him, and try to get him to be reasonable?” She looked at her with pleading eyes.
“I’ll try, but he’s a pretty stubborn man, especially about you. My kids aren’t too happy with me these days either,” she volunteered, and Lily looked sorry for her. She liked Jessie a lot, and thought her kids were lucky to have her. Chris said nothing but good things about her. He loved his mom a lot. “Except for Chris, they’re all furious with me about the move. Well, Jimmy isn’t, but he’s looked heartbroken since I told them,” which almost seemed worse to her.
“Heather hates me at the moment. She thinks I’m ruining her life.”
“Yeah,” Lily nodded sympathetically, “moving away for senior year would be tough. But Denver is pretty cool. She’ll like it here. It’s too bad we won’t be in school at the same time.” She looked unhappy again, then, “I hope I’ll be away, in college back east. Will you talk to my dad?”
“I’ll try.”
And she did that afternoon. Bill was adamant about it. He felt that Lily had been through enough. She was too vulnerable on a campus in a wheelchair with drunk boys all over the place, and he wanted her at home. He wanted her to go to DU.
“She didn’t even apply there,” Jessie said sensibly. “She’s going to lose the year entirely if she doesn’t go to one of the schools she applied to,” all of which were in the east.
“Then she can go to City College or take a year off. I am not letting her go east.” He looked determined when he said it, and Jessie remembered that look of the fierce protector from Squaw a year before.
“Bill,” Jessie said quietly, “you’ve done everything possible to integrate her back into the world. You sent her back to her school—you didn’t have her tutored at home. You sent her to Craig to learn all those skills so she could go out in the world and go away to school. And you let her compete in the Paralympics, and let’s face it, downhill racing is a dangerous sport, for anyone. And you won’t let her go away to college? What are you afraid of, really?”
“That she’ll never come back,” he said with sad eyes. “I lost her mother. I don’t want to lose her. What if she moves to Boston or New York?” Jessie smiled at what he said.
“Look at what you’ve given her, and done for her. Look at this house, the life she has here, the rehab center you’re starting that she’s excited about. The skiing she does here. Do you really think she won’t come back? Trust me, she will. She just wants to try her wings a little, and get a good education. You can’t blame her for that. And besides, she loves you. She’ll come home.”
“I never went back after I went to college,” he said somberly.
“This isn’t
a coal mine. And she adores you. She’ll come back like a homing pigeon after college, and every chance she gets.”
“I wish she’d just stay here,” he said unhappily.
“You’re better off letting her go, then she’ll want to come back. This way she may really rebel,” Jessie warned him. She was afraid of it with Heather too.
“I don’t know. How are you doing with yours?”
“They hate me,” she said matter-of-factly. “Well, no, Jimmy doesn’t, but the other two think I’m public enemy number one. It’s not a lot of fun.”
“Lily is pissed at me too,” he said with a sigh. “Besides, I’d miss her so damned much. She’s my whole life,” he admitted mournfully, but Jessie already knew that about him.
“No, she isn’t. You have The Lily Pad now to keep you busy, and friends, and work, and you’re not going to lose her. She loves you too much to stay away for long. You’re her hero,” Jessie reassured him.
“Not at the moment,” he said with a wry smile.
“Why don’t you see where she gets accepted, and decide how you feel about it then? But try to keep an open mind.” He nodded, and she knew she had done the best she could for Lily, but Bill wasn’t an easy man to convince, and he was terrified to lose his daughter.
Jessie had dinner with Carole that evening, at her new apartment. It was a nice girls’ evening, which they hadn’t had in a long time. Jessie brought up the subject of Joe again, and Carole was still firm in her decision about not dating, but she sounded as though she had softened a little.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be so different. I feel disfigured,” she said quietly, referring to the mastectomy. “I don’t feel like a woman anymore.” Jessie knew that was the crux of it for her.
“If he loves you, he won’t care.”
“I don’t want to go through a bunch of painful surgeries for a guy.”
“You don’t have to. There have to be ways around it—sexy nightgowns, wear a bra with your prosthetics. You don’t have to pose for the centerfold of Playboy. Look at Lily, it’s about finding new ways to do old things and not letting an injury ruin your life. Lily has set one hell of an example for all of us. There has to be an easier solution than reconstructive surgery if you like the guy, and I’m beginning to think you do.”
“Maybe I do,” she conceded cautiously, “but I also don’t want to get hurt again. I got pretty badly burned by Dylan.”
“That’s a chance we all have to take. Even if you find a great one, he could die.” They both thought of Tim as she said it, and Jessie’s eyes were sad.
“What about you?” Carole asked her. Tim had been gone for fourteen months and the last thing Jessie wanted was another man. All she wanted was peace with her daughter. That was hard enough to achieve at the moment and her main concern.
“It’s too soon,” Jessie said simply. “Tim is a tough act to follow. He was the best.”
“You can’t win. Either they’re shits and you’re afraid the next one will be too, or they’re fabulous and no one else will ever measure up,” Carole said ruefully, and Jessie laughed.
“That pretty much sums it up.”
“What about Bill? He’s a good man, and I never see him with any woman.”
“He doesn’t want one. He’s got Lily. And we’re friends. I like it like that, and now he’s my boss. That’s too complicated for me.” Carole agreed. And Jessie clearly had no interest in Bill or anyone else. She was still sleeping in Tim’s pajamas and hadn’t packed up his clothes. She was starting to face the fact that it would be a good time to do it when she moved. She wasn’t going to send his wardrobe to Denver. It was time to let go, at least of his clothes.
Jessie didn’t see Lily again before she left, but she texted her that she had talked to her dad but couldn’t guarantee the results.
Three weeks later she got an ecstatic call from Lily. She had gotten into Brown, Princeton, and NYU. She had the choice of three great schools, all on the East Coast. “My dad is having a fit,” she reported to Jessie.
“Where do you want to go?” Jessie asked her.
“Princeton. Hands down.”
“What if you take a trip there with him and look around? Maybe he’ll feel better.” It was the only thing Jessie could think of to suggest.
“He went there with me on my college tour before I got hurt. He thought it was fine then. Now he doesn’t. And they even have handicapped services on campus. I checked. What now?”
“I don’t know. Try to talk to him and tell him how much it means to you.”
Lily talked to Carole about it too, and she said to give him time. But she had two weeks to accept or decline, and Bill hadn’t budged an inch. And she didn’t want to accept a place at college without his permission. He had to pay for it, after all. And what if he wouldn’t?
And then Teddy got the news that he had gotten into DU. He called his parents about it, and they were shocked that he had applied to college. And they were so relieved that he wasn’t asking to come home, or them to come out, that they said he could go. He had been accepted in the fine arts program, which was what he had wanted. And he said he was going to try for a master’s after that. He had big dreams. Craig had fostered that in him. And so had Phil and Lily.
Lily took him out to dinner that night to celebrate, and told him her woes about her father.
“Now you’re going to college,” she said mournfully, “and it looks like I won’t.”
“He’ll give in,” Teddy predicted. “If not, you can come to DU with me.”
“That’s what he wants. He wants me to be a baby forever.” She looked unhappy as she said it, and she took Teddy back to Craig after dinner. “Did you ask your parents about moving to The Lily Pad?” she asked when she dropped him off.
“That’s my next call. I figured one thing at a time. They consider me this vegetable they left out here, who can’t function on his own. They were totally shocked when I said I wanted to go to college. They think of me as Stephen Hawking, without the brain.” It hurt her to hear him say it, but it seemed to be true. They had no idea who he was, or what he was capable of, nor what his dreams were, and didn’t seem to care. She thought they were cowardly, selfish people. Teddy deserved so much more.
“They’d really freak out if they knew you play rugby,” she said, laughing. “Vegetables don’t play rugby. You kick ass out there,” she added, and he laughed too.
“Yeah, I do, don’t I,” he said proudly. Lily got out of the van then, and the attendant took Teddy into the building, and Lily went to get her car and drive home.
Her father was waiting up for her when she got there, and he walked into her bedroom as she got into bed. He had just watched a DVD of her winning the silver medal in Aspen, and he had been proud of her all over again.
“You’d better get to work on that sports program you told me you’d set up for us at The Lily Pad,” he said gruffly.
“Why now? I was going to start this summer after I graduate.”
“You may not have time.”
“Why not?” She looked confused.
“Because you won’t be here after the summer, if you’re going to Princeton.”
She looked at him carefully, as their eyes met. “Am I?”
“I guess you are,” he said with a sad smile. “I watched you tonight in that Alpine race that won you the silver medal. You’ve got wings, Lily. It’s time for you to fly.”
She threw her arms around his neck then and hugged him, with her eyes closed, as he fought a lump in his throat. “Thank you, Daddy … thank you … I promise I’ll make you proud of me.”
“You don’t have to,” he said with tears in his eyes. “You already did.”
Chapter 25
AND DON’T FORGET Jimmy’s backpack!” Jessie shouted to Heather up the stairs, and then looked around the living room in Squaw for a last time. All of the furniture was already gone. It had left for Denver two weeks before and was arriving in two days. The only thin
g left were their beds and a few cartons from the kitchen. She had stripped the beds that morning, she had used ancient sheets that she had just thrown away, and the beds were being picked up and donated to Goodwill. Ben had promised to come by when they picked them up. And she had bought new beds for them in Denver that were already there, in their rooms. Their bags were packed and waiting in the front hall. She had sold her car to Kazuko. She had just bought a new one in Denver, thanks to Bill, and the generous salary he was paying her as medical director.
The shuttle to take them to Reno was due any minute, as the kids trooped down the stairs carrying their bags for the plane. Heather had Jimmy’s backpack, and he was carrying the stuffed dog he slept with. They acted like they were leaving the Titanic with all their treasures. And Heather hadn’t spoken to her mother in two weeks. So far nothing about the move had been easy, except the house waiting for them there and her job. But she could understand how they were feeling. Even to her, leaving this house felt like losing Tim all over again. It had been so interwoven with him, and he had loved their place so much. The people who had rented it were moving in on the first of July, and it was strange and sad to think of strangers living in their home. She hoped they’d be happy there. She and her children had been, until Tim’s death.
The only thing that cheered her as she looked at their faces was knowing how much they would love the new house. She had tried to tell them about it, but they didn’t want to hear. They would just have to see it now to understand. It was much nicer than the one in Squaw. And everything was beautiful and clean and fresh. A whole new world.
They were silent on the ride to the airport, and when they got there, Heather bought magazines, and she was texting frantically all the way to the plane. Right up to the day before they left, she had threatened not to come. And Jessie had been seriously afraid she would refuse to, but she didn’t. In the end, she packed her suitcases, although she had cried for the last week, with each goodbye.
Adam was listening to his iPod, and Jimmy was holding his mother’s hand. And they were all going to watch movies on the plane. All Jessie wanted to do was sleep—it had been an exhausting few weeks, and emotionally draining.
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