Catching Heaven

by Sands Hall

  Jake headed for his coat. “I’ll go.”

  Lizzie wanted to stop him. The ache in the middle of her chest had to do with a confused need to handle this all by herself, while being grateful—horribly, terribly grateful—that Jake was there to handle it with her.

  “I’m coming too,” Summer said, but Jake was gone.

  “No. You need to stay here,” Lizzie said. “Watch Theo.” She carried Theo into the den and explained things to Hannah.

  “You shouldn’t leave us by ourselves,” Hannah said, her lower lip trembling. “You stay. Or make Jake stay.”

  “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

  She pulled her parka from its hook by the door and ran up the trail that had been made by Summer’s small steps through snow. No light burned in the dark hump of caboose. A rustler’s moon, a fingernail clipping of silver, rested just to the left of Fable Mountain’s white hump. The mournful tune from one of Jake’s songs snaked through her mind. Someone’s going to lose something tonight.

  Jake crouched by the bricks that served as steps outside Sam’s door. Lizzie sank to her knees beside him. Sam was a collapsed scarecrow, a bundle of cloth and bone. “Oh, Sam.” Lizzie pressed an ear to his chest.

  Sam moaned.

  “What should I do?” Lizzie whispered. “What do we do?”

  “Door’s stuck.” She felt the breath of Sam’s words against her cheek.

  Jake fiddled with the latch, then stopped. “There’s no point in taking him in there. He should go to a hospital.”

  “No hospital.”

  Again Lizzie felt rather than heard the words. She slid an arm around him. He felt like a sack of bones, as small as, and far more frail than, Summer. “Not unless we have to.”

  “No hospital.”

  “Could you find a blanket?” Jake said. He’d gotten the door open.

  Summer was right. The trailer smelled of rotting vegetables, of beans or milk gone sour. Lizzie fetched a blanket off the bed and took it out to Jake, then rifled through Sam’s closet and drawers to find a sweater, shirt, some socks, some ragged underwear, a pair of ratty overalls. Nothing seemed clean, but she could wash it. In the mildew-encrusted bathroom she picked up his toothbrush. The bristles were worn almost down to the plastic. She put it back in the dirty glass beside the sink. She had plenty in the upstairs bathroom. She found a plastic bag in the kitchen and stuffed the clothes into it. The sink and counter were filled to overflowing with dishes. In a million years no one would call Sam fastidious, but it had been a point of pride to keep his dishes clean, his kitchen tidy. Something was terribly wrong. And where had she been? What had she been thinking?

  Jake had managed to work the blanket underneath Sam. Together they maneuvered him into Jake’s arms. “He’s so light,” Jake whispered, to which Sam said, “No trouble.”

  Lizzie ran ahead of them down the hill. In the living room she swiped the throw pillows off the couch. “Girls?” she called. “Hannah. Summer.”

  Jake carried Sam through the front door, kicking it closed with his heel, and into the living room, tracking snow. He lowered Sam onto the sofa. “No trouble,” Sam muttered.

  Hannah and Summer stood in the doorway of the den. Summer had fingers in her mouth, a habit she’d finally lost six months ago. “Fingers!” Lizzie said, too harshly.

  Summer took them out of her mouth to ask, “Is he dead?” and put them there again.

  “He’s sick,” Lizzie said. “We don’t know how sick.” She fetched the afghan that was kept over the back of the couch in the den. “All right, girls. Time to get to bed.”

  Summer shook her head and watched Lizzie drape Sam with the afghan. “Is he going to die?”

  Jake put a finger against his lips and beckoned to her. He hoisted her onto a hip. Lizzie watched her grab on to his shirt and hitch herself into a firmer position. He took Hannah by the hand and on the way up the stairs said in a low voice, “Let’s not talk like that. He might be able to hear.”

  Lizzie picked up Sam’s limp hand and tried to check for a pulse. If Jake weren’t here, she asked herself sternly, what would you do? You would know what to do. Sam’s hand was spotted with age and with purple bruising caused, Lizzie guessed, by skin that had no fat beneath it, skin that pressed right up next to the bone. She put her cheek against the cold, bruised skin. When had he gotten old? “Sam,” she said. “Sam.”

  The fingers moved beneath her cheek. The hand trembled. “Goodbye,” he said. “Okay. Go home.”

  “You are home, Sam. But we have to get you a checkup. We have to see if you’re okay.”

  An expression crossed his face. Irritation at not being understood, at his predicament. She pressed his hand again. She checked on Theo, asleep in the den, and picked up the phone, stood holding the receiver until the nasal recording told her, over and over again, “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial your operator.” She hung up when she heard Jake coming downstairs.

  “If he doesn’t want to go the hospital—” she whispered. “He’s always been so clear about that. But what do we do?”

  Jake took the phone. “I’m calling Sue.”

  Lizzie carried Theo upstairs and put him in his crib, then went in to kiss the girls. “Jake remembered where we keep our nighties!” Summer told her.

  Hannah reached for Lizzie’s hand. “Don’t be mad.”

  “Why would I be mad? Of all things.” Lizzie tucked their sheets and blankets in around them firmly. “Sam may go to the hospital. Think good thoughts.”

  She detoured into her bedroom and fetched the down comforter. As she came downstairs she could hear Jake on the phone in the kitchen. She covered Sam, stared down at the face, such a well-known face, the skin sinking in against the beautiful bones beneath.

  It took her a moment to realize that there was another voice in the kitchen. Lizzie went around the corner. Maud stood just inside the door, coat buttoned up. The high collar and muffler made her look like a Victorian woodcut.

  “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “Hannah called her,” Jake said.

  “She made it sound like you guys would be gone a while and would I come over,” Maud said. “She said she didn’t think they should be all alone.”

  “Alone? They’ve been alone a zillion times.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  Lizzie shook her head. Maud began to take off her coat. Jake stepped forward to help. His hands were long and shapely against its dark fabric.

  “You get hold of Sue?” Lizzie asked him.

  “She’s on her way. The place will be scuzzy with sisters. Including the two upstairs, we’ll have a swarm.”

  “A gaggle,” Maud said. “A school, a pride.”

  This was clearly some joke they shared. Lizzie went back to Sam. Maud and Jake followed. Maud knelt beside the couch and took Sam’s hand. Her long skirt fanned out perfectly on the floor behind her. The pose reminded Lizzie of an illustration from Little Women, or Little House on the Prairie. It seemed to Lizzie that Maud must know what she looked like, must create, on purpose, these pictures, illustrations in the saga of her life.

  Jake watched from the same chair in which he’d sat earlier that evening. “Some normalizing time,” Lizzie said, using her most dismissive tone. But Jake only nodded.

  “Sam?” Maud said.

  Sam’s eyelids flickered.

  “Sam. Jake’s sister, Sue—she’s an RN?—Sue is coming out here to take a look at you.”

  “You remember Sue?” Jake said.

  “Enough,” Sam muttered. “Okay, goodbye.”

  Maud gave Lizzie an agonized look. Lizzie looked away, watched for the faint rise and fall of Sam’s breath in the mound of comforter. The silence was unbearable. She wondered how soon Jake and Maud would fall into bed with each other. She was tempted to say this out loud, try it out as a joke. It was a joke, wasn’t it? She wondered how she could think of such a thing at such a moment.

  Into the long silence Jake
said, “So both you and Jeep are working at the Red Garter.”

  Maud nodded. “I like her so much. She makes working there bearable. Although they’re all a good bunch.”

  “Maud’s boffing Jeep’s ex,” Lizzie said.

  Maud looked faintly, comically dismayed. Jake’s eyebrows managed to convey both surprise and disapproval.

  “Thanks,” Maud said. “Boffing.”

  “Well.” Lizzie tried to fix things. “He’s Jake’s tenant.”

  “So he said. Actually, I’ve been looking for a word like that.” Maud was making a determined effort to be cheerful, and Lizzie saw what all those L.A. studio executives must have seen during the auditions Maud had told her about, when she knew she was trying too hard. Skin stretched tight, eyes in a panic, neck muscles protruding, voice high, her excruciating thinness ramified by the tiny space into which she seemed to huddle.

  “I’ve been wondering what on earth the word is. When fuck is too harsh and making love not—” Maud paused. “Not what’s it’s about.” Now, suddenly, with her dancer’s posture—the angle of her defiant torso, the skirt draped over her legs, the length of calf emphasized by a pointed toe—she was a figure of elegance. Maud the chameleon. Crone, goddess, little girl. What turned it on, what turned it off?

  “Boff.” Jake nodded. “Certainly beats screw for a sense of the casual.”

  “Right. Somehow ‘You feel like fornicating?’ doesn’t sound exactly nonchalant.”

  “Or ‘Let’s copulate’?” Jake tried. “And there’s bang.” He didn’t meet Lizzie’s eye. “As in ‘bang away.’ ”

  “Or bonk. Roger.”

  “Roger!” Jake grimaced. “Now that’s descriptive.”

  Lizzie twitched at the comforter. Why didn’t they just go do it and get it over with?

  “Did. . . ,” Sam said.

  Jake moved closer. “What’s that? What’d he say?”

  “D-diddl . . .”

  Jake looked at Lizzie, puzzled. She chuckled and squeezed Sam’s thin ankle.

  “What?” Jake said. “Do you know what he’s saying?”

  Lizzie rocked back and forth, smiling, shaking her head. The first time Sam had used the word diddle, she’d been insulted. They had been lying on a mattress on the floor of what was now the studio, a fire roaring in the woodstove. “Did you have a nice diddle?” he’d asked. She thought he’d said piddle. But eventually it became a code word: “Feel like staying over and diddling?” she’d ask. Or he’d say, “Want a little diddle?” It described more accurately what his finger or tongue did before he entered her, rather than the act itself, but the word had its sweet connotations.

  At the sound of Sue’s car, Jake headed outside. Lizzie followed, running down the porch stairs. Sue’s ponytail, worn high on her head, was tidy, even at this hour of the night, and her hug was long and hard. She smelled of soap, or bleach. “It sure is good to see you,” she said, “though I’m sorry it has to be like this. It’s been far too long.”

  “Good to see you too.” Lizzie found herself light-headed, even nauseated by the faint aroma associated with hospital corridors. It was as if she breathed in the smell of the aftermath of the night Jeep had tried to kill herself, post Rich—all that seeming cleanliness and control masking the chaotic messes life can deal. She took a deep breath of the cold night air. “Sam’s inside.”

  Maud, balanced on the arm of the couch, looked like some black-draped gargoyle. Sue hugged her. “We meet again.”

  When had all this happened? Lizzie wondered. When had Maud met Sue, or spent enough time with Jake to share a joke?

  Sue bent over Sam and folded back the blanket. With deft hands she checked his pulse at both neck and wrist, lifted an eyelid with a thumb, held a palm along his cheek, neck, forehead. Lizzie folded her arms, wishing for an iota of the expertise implied by those practiced, efficient gestures.

  “Ma?” It was Summer, at the top of the stairs. She whispered, extradramatically, “Is he going to die?”

  “Hello, Summer,” Sue said, “remember me?”

  “Hey, Aunt Sue!” Hannah’s voice this time. The two girls descended the stairs.

  “Up, up.” Lizzie waved both hands. “Back you go.”

  “Ma.”

  Upstairs, Theo began to wail.

  “Oh great,” Lizzie said. “Thanks a lot, girls.”

  “Want me to get him?” Jake asked. “I’d be happy to.”

  Lizzie ran up the stairs before he could move. When she came back down, carrying Theo, Summer and Hannah were on the floor beside Maud, who had her arms around them. Jake had put his coat on.

  “We’d better take him in for a look-see.” Sue folded a stethoscope back into her purse. Her face looked pinched, a line etched between her eyebrows. “I’d feel better about it.”

  “No doctor.” Fretful, Sam moved on the sofa. “Home.”

  Sue took his hand. “We need to take you where some tests can be run. We’ll find out what’s best. If it’s best for you to be home, we’ll bring you back.”

  Again that look of irritated disgust took hold of Sam’s face. He used Sue’s hand to pull himself towards her. The darkness visible in the slit between upper and lower eyelid made Lizzie think of the bottom of a canyon at midnight.

  “I know, Sam,” Sue said. “We’ll get you back as fast as we can.”

  Sam sank back in exasperation, face clenched in pain.

  “Is this the best thing?” Maud asked. Tears loomed in her eyes. “Would a doctor come here?”

  “He wants to stay home,” Summer said. “Maybe he wants to do like Luna did.”

  Sam pointed a shaking forefinger in Summer’s direction.

  “You called me here,” Sue said. The look she gave Lizzie seemed to ask for permission, or even forgiveness. Her nostrils were edged in white.

  “Of course,” Lizzie said. Theo tugged at her blouse. “Not now, Theo. You need my car?”

  “You’re not going with him?” Maud asked, clearly shocked.

  “We’d best take mine,” Sue said. “We bought it for precisely these kinds of—adventures. Would you carry him out, Jake? And Maud, would you run out and lower the passenger seat as flat as it will go?”

  “Me too,” Summer said, running after Maud. Hannah stared at Lizzie. “You aren’t going with him?”

  Lizzie thought of fluorescent lights, shiny corridors. Syringes. Tubes. Sam. “No,” she said, “Jake is. I have to stay here. With you. And Theo.”

  “We should all go.”

  Sue helped Jake lift Sam. Carrying Theo, Lizzie followed them outside. A light snow had begun to fall. The windshield wipers of Sue’s van pulsed. The heater blew hot air. A combination of exhaust and mist swirled around the car.

  “May I come along?” Maud said to Sue. “I’ll just get my coat.” She sprinted across the driveway and up the stairs as Jake lowered Sam carefully into the passenger seat. “I’ll have Sue drop me off at home,” she told Lizzie as she came back out. “I’ll get my car tomorrow.”

  “Can I go?” Summer pleaded. “Can I go with him, Ma?”

  Lizzie shook her head. “Call as soon as you know anything. No matter how late.”

  “We will,” Maud said, climbing into the back seat.

  “I’ll meet you there,” Jake said.

  Sue backed the van and headed down the drive, brake lights flashing, avoiding the worst of the potholes.

  “Well,” Jake said.

  “Well,” Lizzie said back. It didn’t come out nastily. She shivered. “We need to put the girls back to bed. I need to. Hannah!”

  “Why didn’t you go?” Hannah said. “Why didn’t we all go?”

  Lizzie stared after the red flash of brake lights wondering if here too Maud would be better than she was. Summer, Luna. Now Sam.

  “Sam needs her, but you need her, too,” Jake said. “C’mon. Bedtime.” Again Summer went to him, willingly hoisted herself up into his arms. He put out his hand for Hannah’s.

  Lizzie sat in Theo’s d
arkened room and nursed him, listening to Jake in the bathroom exhorting the girls to brush their teeth.

  “We haven’t eaten anything since last time.” Summer’s voice was high and plaintive, ready to dissolve into either tears or anger any second.

  “It’s a good ritual before going to sleep. You’ll feel better, promise.”

  Lizzie listened to the squeaky spigots, the sound of brushing, of spitting, the murmurs of good night from the bedroom. As she lowered Theo into his crib Jake appeared in the doorway. Lizzie beckoned him closer.

  “It wasn’t so bad, was it, Liz?” Jake said, staring down at Theo. “My being here?”

  Lizzie adjusted a fold of blanket. “But you have to decide if you want to be a father to Theo because you want to do that, or if your wanting to be a father has to do with being around me. There’s a big difference.”

  He raised his face to hers. White and shocked. Those dark eyes. But before he could say anything the girls peeked around the corner, ghostly in their long, pale nightgowns.

  “You were all tucked in,” Jake said.

  “Will Sam be okay?”

  “We won’t know until Sue calls,” Lizzie said.

  “Wake me up. As soon as you know.”

  Hannah tugged on Jake’s sleeve. “I want to tell you something.”

  He leaned down. She whispered in his ear. “Me too,” he said.

  Summer pointed at Jake. “Is he staying?”

  “Are you?” Hannah said.

  “You, young lady”—Lizzie pointed—“are to tell me why you called your Aunt Maudie to come all the way out here when you are perfectly capable of looking after yourself and your siblings. And why Maud? Why not Jeep? She even lives closer.”

  “I knew you’d be mad.” Hannah had her head down.

  “Maybe this isn’t the time, Liz,” Jake said.

  Lizzie flared. “So all of a sudden you know all about raising children?”

  “I’ll be downstairs.”

  “Night, Jake-o,” Summer said.

  He left the room. Hannah concentrated on balancing on one foot. “We didn’t call Jeep because she’s always working.”

  Summer said, “She wants to go to school!”