Catching Heaven

by Sands Hall

  Into Lizzie’s silence she said, “Pills, they think.”

  “But she was doing fine.” Last time it had been Seconal. What would she have used this time?

  “We all thought so. But when I got home from rehearsal tonight there was a message from Ginger. She didn’t come in to work and didn’t call. Rich came in later. Said he’d talked to her and she’d sounded very weird and stoned and would Ginger go with him to her apartment. So Ginger called me. We went and—” Maud’s swallow was loud. “They say we found her in time. They took her to Emergency—”

  “Thanks,” Lizzie said.

  “She’ll lose the baby, they said.”

  Lizzie looked at the phone after she’d replaced the receiver. Such a small physical action to pick it back up—but it felt as if she were about to drive the Indianapolis 500.

  “I’ll be there,” Jake said.

  For the second time that day she felt her knees give. She sat on the edge of her bed, face in her hands. And then she went to rouse the children.

  CHAPTER 30

  JAKE

  driving into Vegas

  when dawn had cracked the sky

  you said you’d never gambled

  i said it’s time you tried

  Jake was back from rehearsal, beer opened, working on the new song, when the call came in. He let the phone ring, using the back of his guitar to hold his notepad.

  I’ll wait you out

  I’ll hope you out

  I’ll smoke you out of your cave of loneliness

  He hadn’t expected Lizzie. Voice high and tight. Talking fast, as if she could keep something from unraveling.

  Halfway down the sidewalk to his car he stopped, went back inside. He’d slid the Button Up! bag with its corny T-shirt so far under the bed he had to kneel to pull it out. The paper sack rode on the passenger seat beside him. He eyed it from time to time. In the hospital parking lot he got out, locked the car, started across the tarmac. Then he went back, opened the car door, shoved the bag under the seat.

  Inside the Emergency waiting room Lizzie and the kids sprawled on a row of bright orange chairs. Summer was pulling pages from a magazine, balling them up, tossing them, with success, into a wastebasket across the room. Theo cruised from chair to chair. Hannah sat beside Lizzie. Lizzie stayed where she was when he came through the door, but her eyes flashed green. When he sat beside her she gripped his knee, once. They watched Summer destroy Family Circle and most of Time. When Jake tried, “Whatcha doing there, Summer?” she pitched one of the paper balls at him, hard.

  Maud came through the double doors that led from the waiting room into the hospital, accompanied by a large-boned, red-haired woman she introduced as Ginger. “They say she’ll be fine. She vomited up most of the pills.” There was obviously more to this. Maud’s eyes flashed what could not be said in front of the kids. Hair pulled back, eyes limned with black, beautiful in an austere, almost European way. Her face had a sheen to it. Startled Jake into a memory of his mother, that residue of whatever she’d used to remove makeup after an evening out glistening along cheekbone and forehead.

  “She’ll have one hell of a hangover,” the red-haired woman drawled.

  “She’s staying with us.” Lizzie said this with so much antagonism that Ginger raised her eyebrows.

  Theo held out a Reader’s Digest to Maud. “Read!”

  Maud lifted him onto a hip. “Lizard, you need to get your car and bring it up out front.”

  “I’ll get mine,” Jake offered. But Lizzie was already on her feet, out the door.

  “Read!” Theo shook the magazine. “Goonite Moon!”

  “Tomorrow, Theo. It’s time to go home.”

  An orderly pushed a gurney through the double doors. Jeep. White-faced. Eyes closed. Summer stood on a chair to look. Accepted help from Jake to carry her closer. “Will she die too?”

  He shook his head, hoping this time he was right.

  The orderly rolled the gurney out to the end of the hospital’s cement walkway. Maud followed, carrying Theo, holding Hannah’s hand. Summer allowed Jake to carry her. Her finger-sucking habit was back. She stared around with bright, glittering eyes, an arm clenched so tightly around Jake’s neck that it hurt.

  “I’ve gotta split,” Ginger said. She kissed Jeep, whose face glowed a pale violet under the fluorescent lights, and whispered something in her ear. Jeep didn’t respond. “I told Rich I’d call him,” Ginger told Maud. “Bastard actually seems to give a shit. Phone me tomorrow, Maud, tell me how she’s doing.”

  Summer was heavy in his arms, almost asleep. Hannah leaned against Maud’s thigh, Theo asleep against her shoulder. He held out a stick of conversation. “Rehearsal go well?”

  She nodded. “First time in costume. That’s always exciting.”

  Lizzie arrived with the car. Jake lowered the passenger seat. Summer and Hannah argued halfheartedly about who would ride home with Jeep until Lizzie told them they’d both ride with Jake. Maud buckled Theo into his car seat. She had an early lesson to teach, too late to cancel. She’d be by as soon as she could in the morning.

  Jake let Summer sit in front. Surreptitiously checked to make sure the paper sack was pushed well out of the way of her swinging feet. Through these arrangements and decisions, he knew, as clearly as if Lizzie had told him, that he would be spending the night. He’d be in the queen-sized bed again. He followed the red now-and-again-flashing taillights of Lizzie’s car, awed, nervous, aroused. In the back seat, Hannah chattered about school and her favorite CDs. Halfway home, Summer turned to him, interrupting Hannah. “If Jeep dies too then I’m going to make Ma have a funeral where we all dress in black and sing and throw earth on the coffin and cry all over the place.”

  “Ma doesn’t believe in funerals,” Hannah said.

  “Well, I’ll make her,” Summer said. “How else do I get to say goodbye? I never get to say goodbye.”

  Lizzie had left the porch light on, but dawn already pulsed, a gray-white outline, along the peak and long shoulders of Fable Mountain. “No school for you today,” Lizzie said as the girls stumbled up the front steps.

  “Good,” Summer said. “Will he be here when we wake up?”

  Lizzie, carrying Theo into the house, either pretended not to hear this or ignored it. “Would you mind sleeping in the study, Hannah-hoo? So Jeep can be close to us upstairs.”

  Us.

  He lifted Jeep from the car. She smelled both medicinal and slightly stale. The gray light turned the pouches under her eyes into enormous black commas. Her eyes slitted open. “Hey, Jeep,” he said.

  She moved her lips in something too small to be called a smile. Uncomfortable, moved, he kissed her forehead. Carried her into the house, up the stairs, lowered her onto Hannah’s bed. The sheets had been pulled back. Lizzie came in and handed him the purple comforter. “Will you tuck Hannah in?” She crouched beside the bed, smoothing Jeep’s hair, murmuring.

  Hannah had spread sheets on the couch in the den. “Jeep’s in my bed, and I’m in hers,” she said as Jake covered her with the comforter. “Summer gets to sleep in the room with her, but that’s okay.”

  “You’re a good and thoughtful girl.” Jake fought the swell of salted emotion inside his chest, talked with Hannah until her eyes drifted closed. He made tea, carried the steaming mugs up to the bedroom. Lizzie was in bed. A high-necked nightgown made her look unexpectedly Victorian.

  “My parents are coming.”

  He handed her a mug.

  “To see Maud, really. In her play.”

  “To see both of you.”

  “No.” She sipped her tea.

  He walked around the bed, put his cup on the night stand. A bird called. It was light outside the window. They were behaving as if they’d last gone to bed together just the night before. He sat on the edge of the bed. Moved one foot to push at the heel of the opposite boot. Waited.

  “I forced her, Jake.” Lizzie stared at her cup. “She didn’t want it. You were there, you saw
it. This is all because of me. She lost the baby. We almost lost her. And then there’s Sam.” Her voice broke, eyes flying up to meet his—green, bright, horrified.

  He reached for his cup to keep from reaching for her. This would not be a good time to hold her. The tea was too hot. He put his cup back.

  “I hate this herbal shit. What is this, Sleepytime?”

  He nodded.

  “Maud bought it. She drinks it double-bagged.” She sipped again. “And then The Parents have to show up. With all their condescension and judgment. It makes me feel so, so—what’s the word?”

  “Defensive?”

  “Fuck you.” This was not said in anger.

  He didn’t know how he was to proceed. I will smoke you out. “I love you, Liz,” he said.

  She looked at him, nodded, looked away. Her eyes filled with tears. “I keep doing it wrong,” she said. “Everything.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  She came to him then. Put her cup down, slid across the bed, put a hand on his chest. He picked it up and kissed its palm. She did not laugh. The tears brimmed over, ran down her cheeks. She lowered her face against his neck. Tears hot against his skin. Burrowed in beside him, one leg thrown over one of his still booted ones. He lay face up, stroking her, eyes open, gentle as he knew how to be.

  Breakfast the next morning—brunch, really—felt like a holiday. Christmas. Easter. Maud arrived, long before they were downstairs, and made coffee. When he and Lizzie stumbled into the kitchen Hannah proudly showed off some eggy thing baked in the cast-iron frying pan. “It’s a Finnish pancake.” Maud dusted it with powdered sugar, cut it into wedges, gave them syrup. When that one disappeared she made another.

  Summer crept up and down the stairs, checking on Jeep, finally running into the kitchen, whispering loudly, “She’s awake. No, I was quiet as a mouse, Ma.”

  Jeep had propped herself up against some pillows, still very pale. “I hate to be such a problem.” Blue eyes awash with tears. “Oh, Lizzie, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t.” Lizzie went down on her knees beside the bed. “We’ll talk, but not now.”

  Jake carried Jeep to the kitchen. Once again reminded how he could be her father. The comforter was spread over the rocking chair next to the woodstove. Hannah and Lizzie folded it around her.

  “I got up about fifty times,” Summer said, “and put my face real close to yours so I could feel your breath blowing out. You didn’t die.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Jeep said, with only the faintest emphasis on the I.

  “Hungry?” Maud asked, but Jeep shook her head. “Not yet. I’m sure I will be, I think I threw up everything.”

  “Threw up everything,” Summer cackled. Climbed on the table next to Jake. “She looks like a purple cocoon.”

  “It feels wonderful,” Jeep said. “Snuggly and warm. Where’s that Theo?”

  They put Theo in her lap. Maud got a picture book for them. Hannah said, in a reproving tone, “Summer thinks we should have a funeral. For Sam.”

  “No, I don’t. I said we should have a funeral if Jeep died too. Jake! Isn’t that what I said?”

  Jake watched Jeep, but she didn’t seem to mind this. He nodded. “You’d wear a long black dress and throw earth on the coffin and sing and cry.”

  Summer nodded. “Could we do that, Ma? For Sam?”

  “And for Luna,” Hannah said.

  Jeep picked at the comforter. Lizzie began to stack plates. “Summer, get down from the table. You’re not a monkey.”

  “Tell them the bury-me story,” Jeep said to Maud, who was pouring a round of coffee.

  Maud looked startled, shook her head. “You want coffee?”

  “I like that story. No coffee. I’ll have some of that ‘herbal shit.’ ”

  Summer cackled again, looking at Lizzie, who shrugged. Maud put the kettle on. Hannah and Summer drenched their already drenched pieces of pancake in syrup. Lizzie caught Jake’s eye. “You only live once,” she said. Flinched.

  “Stop worrying about it,” Jeep said. “It only makes it worse.”

  “What makes what worse?” Summer asked.

  “So these friends of mine in L.A. had gone camping,” Maud began, sliding into a chair. She aimed this story in the direction of the girls. “They were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they’d been seeing each other for a while. They lit a fire and got into their sleeping bags. They stared up at the stars. You know how it is when you’re camping out. They’re looking at the big sky above them and talking about how big the universe is and how insignificant they are. They talk about eternity and heaven. Then they say good night and snuggle into their sleeping bags. And you know how the nylon of sleeping bags and parkas makes a kind of loud sliding, shooshing noise when you settle in? Anyway, the girl—her name is Trish—hears her boyfriend say, ‘Will you bury me?’ ”

  Summer gave a hoot of laughter. She had slipped almost onto Jake’s lap, chin on her hands, elbows on the table. Hannah was also rapt. Jeep rocked, listening. Lizzie sat with her head on one side, watching Maud with an expression made up of equal parts of enjoyment and resentment.

  “Trish thinks, this is pretty weird, but after a pause says, ‘Well, okay, if that’s what you want.’ And he says, ‘It sure is what I want.’ There’s another pause and he says, ‘How about you?’ And she tells him, ‘I don’t want to think about it too much. It’s so far ahead.’ Then after a really long pause, when things feel pretty tense, he says, “It’d be nice if you were just a little more enthusiastic.’ ”

  Jake began to smile.

  “So Trish says, ‘Enthusiastic about what?’ And he sits up and says, ‘I ask you to marry me, and this is the response I get?’ ”

  Amidst the laughter Summer asked, “Then what’d she say?”

  “They had to sort it out for a while. But now they’re married, they’re happy, they have two beautiful kids. And with any luck at all one of them will bury the other.”

  “That’s what it’s about,” Lizzie said, suddenly moody.

  Jake knew he had to do it now or he would never get up the nerve again.

  “Where’re you going?” said Hannah.

  “Back in a sec.”

  Outside a fresh wind blew, smelling of wet earth. Clouds roared across the sky. As he sprinted across the driveway he was dismayed to see a huge yellow car lumbering up the road. Sara and Driver. He waved, got the bag from under the seat. “You’re just in time to watch me make a fool of myself,” he told them. “Come on in.”

  He waited until everyone had greeted Sara, then Driver. Waited through Driver’s taciturn nonreplies. Waited until Sara hugged and comforted Jeep, and Driver was introduced, until they were given coffee and the remains of pancake. Then, with a smile at Maud, he handed the bag across the table to Lizzie.

  “A present?” She took it from him as if it were something that might bite her.

  Summer was up on the table again, squirming with excitement. Lizzie held the T-shirt up by the shoulders. It fell open with the letters facing out. White block letters against red cloth:

  MARRY ME

  He’d struggled between using the wimpish uncertainty of a question mark—MARRY ME?—or the more demanding exclamation point: MARRY ME! But she would be the one deciding the punctuation.

  She stared down, squinting, as if it were hard to decipher the upside-down letters. He was suddenly terrified. It was all wrong to have done it in front of her family. Sara. Driver. He should have taken her out for champagne after all. Or out for a walk. But every other way seemed sentimental. She would have laughed. So he’d had a T-shirt made at Button Up! Mistake. Error. Dolt.

  Sara smiled. Driver broke the silence. “Wow, man.”

  Hannah clasped both hands to one cheek. “Will you, Ma?”

  Summer was still sounding it out, sounding it out again. Then she shrieked.

  Lizzie, face flushed, turned the shirt to face her. Examined the letters as if they were indecipherable.

  “Ma!�
� Summer said. “Are you going to?”

  “Why?” Lizzie said. “What would be the point?”

  The queer elation that had inspired him to do this, the devil-may-care bravado that had propelled him through the last few days, that had made him sneak into Button Up!—burglar in a comic strip, Pink Panther on exaggerated tiptoe—continued to work on him. “Because I love you,” he said. “Because I already lost you once, even though I’m old enough to know you don’t ever have anyone enough to lose them. Because I’d like us to keep company.”

  “He’d like to bury you,” Hannah said. She and Summer shrieked with laughter. “Put it on, Ma!”

  Lizzie refolded the shirt. She did this very precisely. Put it back in its bag, sat with her hands loosely folded upon it. Her eyes were warm when she looked at Jake, and she smiled. But she said, “I don’t see the point.”

  “Because,” Summer said. “Because.”

  Jake felt his insides turn a slow somersault. Felt the heat of Maud’s eyes, of Jeep’s. Lizzie gave him another long, gauging look. Turned to Driver. “What are you doing here, anyway? You come to rifle through some more of Sam’s stuff?”

  T H E

  S P R I N G

  CHAPTER 31

  LIZZIE

  NOTES FROM BENEATH THE MAGNETS ON LIZZIE’S FRIDGE

  Lizard—

  Thought of you when I read this:

  Living is a form of not being sure. . . . The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. An artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

  —AGNES DE MILLE

  Love you.

  M.

  Jeep slept at Lizzie’s. As did Jake, most nights. They’d carried the old single futon up to Theo’s room, where there was plenty of room in the closet for Jeep’s clothes. Her textbooks and her collection of music—new joys for Hannah—were piled on shelves that Lizzie pressed Jake into building. Jeep also brought along an assortment of candles, as well as various odd items from her apartment that looked faintly and ridiculously religious, of the Higher Power sort.