“Whatever . . . just look at you. This is serious. You’re barely listed as stable. I know it’s ten years, and that is . . . well, it’s ten years, but you’re really sick. Mum, you’re a nurse. Back me up. You know what this means. His liver is basically a lump of coal. He’ll be lucky if he gets out of here by New Year’s. You know this.”
“Bathsheba, let your mother finish, please,” he says.
“No, I’m not being rude, Dad, I’m being realistic. We can do everything at the cemetery as usual, later, after you get out of here and have some strength back. That’s all I’m saying. Maybe it’s just us this time, private, we can tell the others that you’re recovering from this and it’ll only be us. And if you’re still not better when the time comes, we have our ceremony here in the room. Or we can ask about wheeling you into the chapel.”
“Bathsheba,” my mother says, and nothing else. She lets her eyes rest on me. It’s kind, her gaze, and there’s more softness and affection living inside her saying my name right now than in all of the compact exchanges we’ve had over the last nine months.
I’m trembling and lean on the bed to stop the shiver in my knees. My mother is fixed on me. I don’t know where else to look but back at her.
“Mum, you know it. You see it”—I shake my head, whimpering—“You see it. He’s really sick. He can’t—”
“He’s all right,” she says. “It’s nothing fatal, but it is nothing light, either. He knew it was bad before the bleeding ever started. The doctor says it might be cirrhosis, but they want to rule out cancer.” She takes a few slow, measured steps away from my father’s side, moving around the bed toward me. “But we wanted to talk to you about tomorrow, even before this happened to your father, before you left for your work trip.” More steps. “We want to go back there this time. For the ceremony, we want to go back to the water, to the ice.”
“No. No! I can’t do that. You can’t ask me to do that. I can’t go back there, Mum. Dad. I can’t. I’m not doing that.”
My father’s gray face droops even further. He’s sweaty and slimy and looks like he’s about to pass out any second now. “You need to,” he says from the pit of his stomach. “We all do, or we gonna be stuck like this forever.”
“We got to go back there,” my mother says, as she continues slinking her way to me, determined. “It’s ten years we’ve been carrying them. It’s time to let them go, let those brave, sweet boys rest in the Lord’s peace.” She takes her final few steps and is standing next to me, close enough that I hear her heavy breath. “Your behavior is not your character. You can let go too.”
The second her arm settles around my shoulder it sends a jolt everywhere and I shrug her off.
“You don’t get it. You don’t know what it’s like. I can’t go back there.” I’m shouting and sobbing and can’t do a damn thing about it. “I can’t do this . . . I need some air.”
My mother steps in my path, like she used to when I was younger and about to do something stupid. “This is not nature, a parent living beyond their child,” she says. “But what you’re doing isn’t right either.”
I push past her, just as I used to back then too, and head for the door.
“Don’t run,” I hear him say, but I’m already gone.
Like your average coward, I kept running. I got my bag from the car and left the car key at the front lobby with a blond woman at the circle desk. I added a note for my mother and took a cab back to the house. I was about to grab the rest of my things and bounce, when a drop of good sense—as Mum likes to say—landed on me. Decided to stay here, at least through tomorrow. It’s time I face them, get clean with them before I leave for real, and for good. I can’t keep coming back here. Not like this. And my poor parents, with their cracked-open hearts, they’ve suffered enough for nine lifetimes. They don’t need me ringing these horrible bells in their ears.
They want to know what happened that night. Jesus, they already know. They have to know. My father is a crime reporter, a really good one. They probably just want to hear me say it. And I should, I should say it, even though I’ve never told anyone. Dr. Monfries brought me to the edge of it once, but that was back when I was conflicted about leaving Montreal for university. I thought that coming clean with Dr. Monfries might somehow help me close the door on all of it, leave it in my dust. But there’s no shirking that kind of thing. It follows you everywhere. It lives with you, in your dreams, in your quiet corners. It’s part of you. Then you look up one day and it’s swallowed you up, it becomes all of you.
I’ve known for a while that I’m an animal; a scared, feral animal. And everything that’s happening to me, I deserve it. I really do. Chickens coming home, karma playing the bitch, whatever you want to call it, it’s justified. I think I’m ready for it.
Fatima’s been on my mind, obviously, but I’ve also been thinking a lot about Lana today, on the train ride here. Wondering about her state of mind at the end, when she made the decision to leave. Was she relieved? Did she think that all the ugly and horrible would finally be gone? She’d be free, like Fatima is now.
I used to think about checking out like Lana did. But those thoughts only popped up in the very beginning. I couldn’t bring that kind of pain to my parents. Soon I was okay with waking up the next day and the next one after that. The pills went back to their respective bottles and uses. Dr. Monfries called it progress. I called it acceptance: This was who I was, who I am. And I do things like step on my sinking brother’s back and neck, claw into his bloated arm, into the side of his face, kick in his jaw and head so that I can drag my own body out of the raw ice to save myself. I can look into his eyes, filling with blood and fear, and not instantly reach for him, grab him, pull him up, get him out too. Instead, I roll to my broken side and watch his stiffening trunk—his soaked, slack leather arm first, his lopsided shoulders next, and his neck, face, top of his head—dip under and be gone.
I saw it and did nothing. When they came in their thick, dark parkas with neon stripes and badges and white faces and they saw what was left—me sprawled out, half-naked and in shock—I told them nothing. I don’t know how. I can’t remember. I don’t know. They stopped asking and just called me lucky. Lucky to be the last one in. Lucky to be a girl. Lucky to weigh under 45 kilograms. Lucky to be wearing thin, light clothing. And my parents, they were lucky to not lose all three. They had a survivor, a lucky, brave survivor, and for that they should be grateful.
It was all luck. It saved me from drowning in that frozen pit. But now, it’s run out. All of that glowing, special golden luck—it’s gone. I need to face the unpleasant payback that’s been accruing over the years. And this is it. Right now. It’s Nik and the Fatima story, the Robot, JK, Kendra, and Lindee hating me, the magazine, the fraud, the grasping, the selfish everything. This is what I’m owed. It’s time I stand still, no running, and accept it.
CHAPTER 22
Mum slept at the hospital. I knew this only because when I arrived, she was still slouched on the cheap leather chair-bed in my father’s room, wearing yesterday’s crinkled clothes, asleep. He was resting too. His eyes were closed, head tilted back and mouth ajar. His machines were awake, though, chirping and clicking along while the scent of sickness filled every corner of the room.
It’s creepy, watching them like this from the edge of the door, but if anyone in this family deserves some sleep, it’s these two. I knew it wasn’t going to happen for me, so last night I just stayed up watching old episodes of ER—of all things. They had been airing a straight run of the entire series, from pilot to finale, 331 episodes, which started last month. I tuned in at the top of season 6, but shut it all down after watching one of the most haunting episodes: a yet-to-be-diagnosed schizophrenic patient, in the midst of a psychotic break, stabs two hospital workers. Two young, beloved physicians, on Valentine’s Day, no less. The last scene is a disturbing overhead shot of med student Lucy Knight and Dr. John Carter lying in deep red pools of their own blood on the floor of an
exam room, looking at each from under a hospital bed, unable to move, unable to call for help because the rest of the ER staff is having a Valentine’s Day party with music, goodness, and laughter. Even watching with a throw covering my head and barely able to see the TV screen properly, it was still too much for me. I retreated to my dad’s office—with the blanket still draped over me—looking for a visual palate cleanser. He always has interesting books and old international newspapers, and is incapable of tossing anything away. I didn’t want to disturb his stuff too much, because he’ll know. Yes, it looks like a file cabinet exploded in here, but the man will know if that specific piece of paper dangling from the windowsill actually belongs on the floor next to the shelf. There’s a definite system to his mess madness.
The cracked snow globe was still sitting slanted on his desk. I picked it up, nice and easy, trying hard not to shake its remaining white flecks around. That’s when it clicked. I remembered where he got the thing. It was a souvenir from a work trip he took to Niagara Falls. It was for Bryant. Benjamin and I got other things; fleeting, flimsy things that slipped from our attention as easily as they’ve slipped my memory now. The snow globe was actually a thin veil of an apology for what happened with Mother and Bryant while he was gone. My parents ran that house on a straight line. Pity the fool who decided to come in with some sideways bullshit. They never beat us, but the threat was real, like a third rail. My father had this broad white-and-brown belt—I’m sure it still lives in a box somewhere. The thing was wide and breathing hot disco-ugly. It stayed in the back of their bedroom closet on a failed belt-hanger contraption. My father never pulled it out or used it, but we all knew that he was fully capable of doing both. Ben showed me the belt when I was six, like it was a ghost story. All quiet and tiptoeing and spooky whispers.
I don’t think my father ever mentioned the belt, but it became the star of most of my mother’s threats during this stretch when Dad was pulled deep into this spate of gruesome home invasions in Westmount. He would stay out late, working. It’s what sent him off to Niagara Falls, if I remember it right. I was eight or freshly nine. Ben was eleven and Bryant was ten. We were mini-terrorists, constantly pushing Mum’s buttons, testing the clear boundaries. Mum took the belt out every other week, waving it around while growling warnings at us. Once she rushed at me with it. I said some smart shit about not being allowed to go to a sleepover or some other simple preteen right revoked. My mother did not tolerate lip from children. Being mouthy and staring up in her face when she was setting us straight about bad behavior, that was the height of disrespect in her book.
I think I said it was unfair or that she had us locked up in the house like animals or something equally dramatic, and that’s when she came at me with the belt. She would have gotten me good too, but Ben being Ben, he threw his body over mine. It shocked her, put a stutter in her step, and when she drew her arm back to reverse the sure cruelty coming toward me, the belt slipped from her hand. The heavy metal buckle landed to the top of Bryant’s head, cutting it wide open. He had been coming up behind her, about to lunge for her arm. That’s what he told Ben and me after he got back from the hospital. We were both rather impressed with his action-hero plan—such a departure for that peaceful kid. Seven stiches and a ludicrous cover story about falling out a tree: those were Bryant’s takeaways from the bloody ordeal. But Ben and I knew he was proud of the whole thing, in his quiet way. My mother never so much as raised her voice at any of us after that. Cool and deadly. That became her way and it was truly effective.
As I slid the globe back into its teetering spot, I saw that folder again, but this time it was open and the papers are fully exposed. Death certificates—Benjamin and Bryant’s—and beneath them, a short stack of photocopies: the coroner’s reports, their files from our old pediatrician, studies from medical journals on hypothermia, a piece from the International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education called “Drowning Survival in Icy Water,” magazine stories and newspaper clippings on how people have survived a fall through the ice, plus pages and pages of his scrappy, handwritten notes torn from a yellow legal pad. I couldn’t read anything clearly, but I did recognize my name as well as my brothers’ names and the name of the horrible lake. There were also loads of numbers, data: times, temperatures, and weight stats.
And another click, this one more like a punch to the gut: It’s me. My father was investigating me, trying to crack the case of the girl who watched her brothers die.
I fell back against the chair, knocking the snow globe from its perch. I heard the heavy thud against the matted carpet along with the swish of papers drifting to the floor behind it. I sat there in his chair, sickened and still, replaying that scene from ER over in my mind: Lucy and Carter splayed on the cold tile, locked in on each other’s petrified eyes. No one reaches out. No one screams. They can only let what’s happening, happen. I finally got up from the squeaky swivel chair and spread the throw on the carpet by its wheels and waited there for someone to come find me.
CHAPTER 23
My mother started to stir first. She slept through two different nurses sidling up to my father’s side to check this pouch and that pump keeping him metabolized and functioning. When the third one came, she sat up straight in the chair as if startled out of a bad dream. If only it were that simple.
The nurse—she said to call her Ellie—apologized to my mother for waking her. That’s when Mum noticed me sitting in the corner skimming one of her daily meditation books. It wasn’t for show; I was legit looking through it.
“Oh, how long have you been there?” Mum said in a whisper.
“Not too long. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Yes, I didn’t realize I was so tired. I didn’t mean to stay here last night.”
“You were wiped out, Mrs. Lightburn,” Ellie said. “The ward nurse told everyone to leave you be. I just wish there was a better place for you to sleep than in those awful chairs.”
Ellie was quite plump and waddled around the room. With each step there was a symphony of sounds coming from different parts of her: a squish from her white shoes; a light wheezing from her nose and heavy breath; a hissing shoosh from her stockings and pants rubbing together. She was pleasant and so gentle with my father, like when she caressed the side of his face and shoulder to wake him up for a vitals check. And every time she caught my eye, she’d wink at me.
“I’m gonna be out of your hair in just a minute, Mr. Lightburn. Then I’ll let you get back to your lovely family here.”
My father nodded and tried to orient himself in this new reality.
“Helen, the overnight nurse, she mentioned your two sons. Are they coming by later?” Ellie said, her voice high-pitched and sweet.
We all stayed quiet, not even blinking, as if someone told us to make like statues. Ellie sensed that she had plucked at something raw and sore. It was obvious by the shift in the room. Ellie folded up her smile, tucking it under her chin in an instant. “Let me get out of your hair, sir,” she said through clenched teeth and quickened her steps. Her face was flushed and the whooshing sounds from her pantyhose picked up the tempo. I felt bad for Ellie. When she finds out from the other veteran nurses—the ones who knew the Lightburns before and now, after—how inelegant the simple question was, she’s going to feel horrible. I even predict tears from Ellie because of it. She’s still the sweetest.
I decide to jump right into the rigid silence, not let it settle in.
“Are you feeling a little better today, Dad?”
He nods and props his lips up into a drowsy grin.
“And you, Mum, did the rest help?”
“Yeah, you could say so.”
They’re both looking at me with strange, incredulous expressions on their faces, bordering on scared.
“I was thinking, maybe we should do a little ceremony here, just the three of us. If your doctors say it’s okay.”
Mum stands up ramrod-straight. She’s awake, her eyes bulging and watery. She�
�s flustered in a way I’ve never witnessed. “I—I—I don’t have my prayer book nor nothin’ so,” she sputters, waving her hands around.
“It’s okay. I brought it for you, Mum. It’s in my bag, along with some other things for us, from home.” I look over at my dad, nodding. “This is going to help us, just like you said.”
When I hand my mother her worn book, she doesn’t look up at me, but I see her chin trembling, her lips pulled tight. It’s all on the surface, but she doesn’t want to let it out. Not yet.
I move over to my father and place the folder with all of the notes and evidence at the foot of his bed. His face crumbles. A scratchy seal-like bark falls out of his mouth as he sobs quietly in his stiff bed. I touch his foot and then his knee and last his shoulder. I’m looking at him through our tears, keeping my face as pleasant and open as possible. “It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay. I’m ready.”
My mother always starts these ceremonies with a long prayer. She’s been able to make it through it without breaking down these last three or four years.
“Mum, are you ready to begin?” She looks at the room door that was quietly closed without her noticing. “It’s okay. I spoke to the ward nurse, Phyllis, already. She knows to leave us alone for a short while. It’s just us. It’s okay, Mum.”
Her prayer is short this time. She’s overcome and can’t finish. Saying their names is a struggle and she keeps pausing to wipe away the wetness from the pages in her thick book. She fills these spaces with a Jesus, Jesus, Father God, Praise Him singsong refrain. I feel my stomach lurch watching her; it physically hurts. So protective of her little birds. My mother was the only one allowed to speak a single sour word about any of her kids. All of our teachers and coaches and friends’ parents knew not to mess around with the Lightburn children. Each one of us born “by the grace of God,” she said, fighting our way through fibroids, preeclampsia and prolapsed umbilical cords, nothing was going to happen to us once we took that first breath. Not an arrow or sling, no harm, no scorn would ever come, she liked to say. Not while she was taking in the same air. But that’s what broke her. She wasn’t able to keep her birds afloat that night, and it broke her.
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