Family Tree

by Susan Wiggs

  “I need you to hear me, Mom.” Annie tried again. “I’ve already checked with the office of admissions. They’ll let me keep my spot and my grant if I elect to take a gap year.”

  “And why on earth would you want to do that? You can’t wait to leave Switchback.”

  Annie knew there was no point in hiding the truth from her mother. “I can’t handle the idea of leaving Fletcher.”

  Her mother pursed her lips, but her eyes softened. “Oh, sweetie,” she said. “Everybody feels that way about their first love.”

  Annie believed with all her heart that she and Fletcher were not everybody. Their connection was one of a kind, but she had no words to explain this to her mom. “I won’t be able to focus on school if all I’m doing is missing Fletcher the whole time I’m away.”

  “If he truly loves you, then he’ll want you to go for your dreams.”

  “Mom, he is my dream.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you, because believe it or not, I understand what you’re saying. I might even remember what it feels like to fall in love and never want to be apart. I just want to know . . . What will your life look like if you stay here? How will your days go? You get up in the morning, and . . . do what?”

  “I’ll work on my projects. Reading and studying. Cooking and developing recipes. Photography and videography. That’s what got me into college in the first place.”

  “What will happen at this time next year?” asked her mother. “Are you going to be any more willing to be apart next year?”

  Annie bit her lip. Her eyes skated away from Mom’s knowing look.

  “I’m not trying to be mean,” said her mother. “I want to make sure you’ve thought this through.”

  “I think about it all the time. Fletcher and college are not mutually exclusive.”

  “Then go to college. Don’t let someone else—even someone you love—pull you away from that.”

  Annie stared at her mother, who looked almost panicked. “It’s my life. My choice.”

  “Blowing off college is a choice you can’t take back.”

  “I’m eighteen,” Annie protested.

  “Exactly. Show me an eighteen-year-old who makes good choices.” Mom sighed. “Listen. When I was your age, I was in the same place you are.”

  “With Dad.”

  Mom nodded. “Don’t you think I had dreams, too?”

  “Sure, I guess. Like what?” Annie felt slightly guilty that she didn’t really know what her mom’s dreams were. She’d just assumed it was to marry Dad and raise a family on the farm.

  “I was accepted to art school in New York. The Pratt Institute.”

  It was one of the top art schools in the country. Maybe in the world. “Seriously? You never told me that.”

  “Because I never pursued it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was in love. I thought I’d found something I wanted more than art school. I couldn’t bear the thought of us being apart.”

  “You stayed in Switchback because of Dad.” Annie felt a tightness in her chest.

  Her mother lined up the plates in the dishwasher. “My folks wanted us to live here to help out and grow a nest egg. They had plenty of room and we were broke, so the plan seemed to make perfect sense at the time. I put off my future. Temporary arrangements have a way of growing roots when a baby comes along. I had Kyle, and don’t get me wrong—I wouldn’t trade being a mom for anything. But it meant that for me, school and the big-city dream just got farther and farther away. With a new baby and husband, I couldn’t put my life on hold to go to school.”

  “So you’re saying Dad held you back?”

  “Yes. No. Everything held me back. I just don’t want to see that happen to you.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way. I’m not going to get married and have a kid, like—” Annie stopped herself.

  “Like I did?”

  Annie felt bad for her mother. “You still did your art,” she pointed out, gesturing around the kitchen. “Dad and Granddad made the loft over the garage into a studio for you. And your pictures are everywhere.”

  Her mom thumped the dishwasher shut and hit power scrub. “They are. But where’s my husband?”

  “I won’t survive without you,” she told Fletcher in despair as summer slid toward fall, and the start of school loomed.

  He gathered her gently in his arms, his wordless affection so sweet it felt like pain.

  “I don’t want to go,” she whispered.

  “I don’t want you to go,” he said.

  “I can’t stand the idea of missing a single day with you. I’ll stay. Who cares what my mom says? I’ll get work, same as you, and we can both do night school and online classes.”

  “That sounds awesome,” he said. “I think you should just turn your back on your amazing scholarship to one of the best colleges in the country, and get a crappy hourly job here in town.”

  “You know it wouldn’t be like that.”

  “Shh.” He touched his finger to her lips. “No way you’re doing that.”

  “Fletcher—”

  “Shut up. Don’t be stupid.”

  Much to her mother’s relief, Annie started her freshman year as planned. It was the opportunity of a lifetime and he wouldn’t let her pass it up. But he was the love of a lifetime, and she didn’t want to ruin it.

  The owner of a busy Piaggio works in Brooklyn had offered Fletcher a room over the shop, and he was going to work on the scooters there. The place was in Brooklyn, just a bridge across from NYU.

  Annie counted the days until Fletcher made his move. She fantasized about how they would walk around the city hand in hand, eat at sidewalk cafés, get takeout to share on a sunny park bench, and talk about everything in the world. The city was so busy and vibrant, its energy irresistible. She felt swept up in a storm of excitement, and the only thing missing was Fletcher.

  Classes started, and Fletcher was still in Vermont. The garage was busy. He couldn’t just ditch his dad. Annie tried to be patient. She tried to focus on school.

  She already knew her favorite class this fall would be her photography and imaging class. One of the first assignments was to capture light and shadow in black and white. One afternoon, she went to Washington Square Park, right near campus, and took pictures of the wrought-iron railing with a tangle of locked bikes, a dog walker surrounded by his furry charges, kids playing on a climbing frame. Her best shot was of a food cart, where a guy in faded jeans and a chef’s apron was making Cuban sandwiches. A bloom of steam filled the work area, and a tree branch arched over him in a natural frame, echoing the shape of his long, muscular arms. Perfect.

  Annie bought a sandwich from him, even though she couldn’t afford to eat outside the dining hall. He handed her the sandwich wrapped in parchment, giving her a smile so arresting that she dropped all her change in the tip jar. Then she hurried back to her dorm, a suite she shared with three other women who were impossibly messy and artistic, and called Fletcher to tell him about her day. “I can’t wait for you to get here. When can you come?” she asked.

  “I’m working on it.”

  “The when? Or the how?”

  He laughed. “Both. We’ll figure this out,” he said.

  “And once we do,” she said, full of hope, “we’ll get to be together forever.”

  Their forever lasted less than two weeks.

  Her mobile phone rang as she was finishing a day of lectures and a photo critique. She was walking to a restaurant where she hoped to get part-time work. “Everything’s so incredible,” she said. “I don’t even know where to start exploring. Little Italy, I suppose, would be logical. I already found a family market where they get daily deliveries from Naples. And then—”

  “Annie, hey, slow down.”

  There was a note in his voice. Serious. Strange. She stopped walking in front of a corner fruit stand. Bees buzzed over a display of early-harvest apples.

  “Something’s wrong,” she
said, feeling a sting of worry.

  “My dad had an accident. He’s in the hospital. He—I’m here with him now.”

  “Where? What happened? Is he going to be all right?”

  “He . . . They brought him by helicopter to the trauma center in Burlington. His leg was crushed when a power jack failed at the garage.”

  “My God,” she whispered. The buzzing bees and the busy street with its rushing crowds fell away. She flashed on a memory of her grandfather, crushed when his tractor rolled. The expression on Gran’s face that day haunted Annie. Did Fletcher have that face now? “You must be so scared.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice thready with exhaustion. “I’m glad they brought him here. He’s going to need . . . ah, shit, Annie, I can’t even think straight.”

  “What can I do?” she asked. “How can I help? Should I come home?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I mean, there’s nothing to do but wait. This hospital . . . It’s on the UV campus. They gave me a place to stay. You know, while he’s here.”

  “Fletcher, I’m so sorry. How’s your dad? Can you talk to him?”

  “He’s really out of it due to the painkillers. They have to . . . His leg isn’t just broken. When the jack failed, a Jeep Wagoneer came down on him. His leg was crushed from the knee down, and he was trapped. Stuck . . . He couldn’t reach the phone and he kept passing out. I was at the salvage yard when it happened, looking for a tailgate. When I got back, I heard him yelling.”

  “Oh, Fletcher. I want to help.”

  “There’s nothing . . . Shit. Nobody but the doctors can help him.” He paused, and she could hear him draw in a long breath. “They have to cut off his leg.”

  She felt ill. She leaned against the building for support. Focused on the precise pyramids of apples on display. “Oh, no.”

  “He was trapped in the garage for six hours. They call it prolonged ischemia. They said trying to keep his leg would mean tons more operations and stays in the hospital with no guarantee of fixing it. There could be serious complications, and he’ll never be able to use it again. He won’t have any sensation and won’t be able to put his weight on it.”

  “So . . . they’re cutting it off?” She brushed her hand down over her leg.

  “Yeah. He has to have something called a through-the-knee guillotine amputation.”

  “You can’t leave him,” she said.

  “I can’t leave him,” he agreed.

  She felt dizzy with grief and fear. There was a lot she didn’t understand. But in this moment, she knew fully and completely that nothing she and Fletcher had planned on was going to happen.

  11

  Now

  Tree is to acorn as sheep is to what?”

  “Cheese.”

  The therapist marked something on her clipboard.

  “The correct answer is probably wool, but sheep’s-milk cheese is underrated,” Annie said. “Plus it tastes better. I think about food all the time.”

  “Water is to ice as apple is to what?” The therapist was all business.

  “Apple pie.” The questions today made her feel defensive. Worried. Sometimes she had the feeling that her brain was hovering on the very edge of something big, as if it might explode at any moment.

  “Can you say why you came up with that answer?” the therapist asked. She was a black woman with half-moon glasses perched on her nose, her hair done in shiny curls. Unlike a lot of the other caregivers here, she didn’t wear scrubs or a lab coat, but a plum-colored skirt and sweater, and a badge with her name—Binnie Johnson, MSW, PhD.

  “Because it’s the correct one? And if it’s not, then whoever made up this test has obviously never had my apple pie.”

  “So you like making pie? You’re good at it?”

  “I’ve won prizes for my pies. Seriously. Prizes.”

  “A sail is to a ship as a goal is to . . . ?”

  “A football.”

  Dr. Johnson’s mouth twitched a bit.

  “What?” asked Annie.

  “You’re supposed to say to a person.”

  “That was actually the first thing that occurred to me, but I didn’t think it was right.”

  “Try listening to yourself.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you know more than you think you know. Listen to your inner voice instead of someone else.”

  “My inner voice sounds like the announcer on Sábado Gigante.”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “A Latino pop music show. Frantic and incomprehensible.”

  Dr. Johnson wrote something on a sticky note. She posted it on the whiteboard on the wall opposite the bed. The note said Quiet Mind.

  After the session, Annie lay back in the bed, trying to quiet her mind. But she was bombarded with a barrage of loud, frantic voices, along with images and memories scattered like pieces of a puzzle she didn’t understand. The world had shrunk to this room. Hand-sanitizer dispenser on the wall as if she were toxic. Impossible-to-open packets of lotion, which did her no good at all. Water in a cheap plastic pitcher that tasted like, well, plastic. A curved puke tray on the rolling bed table because sometimes her swallows went in the wrong direction.

  She stared up at the ceiling. How could she be exhausted when all she had accomplished was a set of word-association games?

  She’d been subjected to a battery of tests—physical, psychological, cognitive, neurological, and many that seemed to measure nothing but her sense of the absurd. She was considered a remarkable patient due to the duration of her coma and her level of functioning. She didn’t feel remarkable. She felt weak and confused.

  Thinking made her head hurt, and everything tired her out. She dozed for a few minutes or forever. An OT and an aide in scrubs showed up.

  “How would you like to have a shower?” asked the OT.

  Annie sighed. Until now, she’d been allowed only sponge baths. “How would you like to marry me?”

  The therapist grinned. “I figured you were ready.”

  The room-size shower was equipped with a plastic bench and grab bars, stacks of rough-looking towels, and pump bottles of soap and shampoo. She surrendered the johnny gown without protest; all dignity had gone out the window long ago. Her weirdly pale skin bore gray, gummy outlines of old glue from IVs and monitors.

  Annie pictured herself sleeping, held together by glue and medical tape. Where had she gone for that whole year? What had she lost? What was she hiding from herself?

  With the aide hovering nearby, she let the water sluice down over her, and the warm stream flowing over her had made her cry.

  Crying was exhausting, too, so she tried not to do it.

  She tipped her face up to the shower head and wished the cleansing could go on forever. Afterward, the OT helped her dry off and put on a fresh gown. She was mortified to realize that while they’d cut off all of her hair and kept her nails trimmed, they hadn’t done much about her grooming. Her armpits looked like she’d been living in a cave. Her legs—even worse. White flaccid dough covered in dark hair.

  “I should have stayed asleep,” she said, and they helped her back to bed.

  She lay back in exhaustion and counted the ceiling tiles. Twenty-eight going one way. Forty going the other; 1,120 in all. She could do math. Her third-grade teacher was Mrs. Marge Green. She had taught the class to find the area of a rectangle by bringing in a large chocolate sheet cake and cutting it into six squares one way and five the other. The thing about sheet cake was that you had to use fresh buttermilk in both the cake and the frosting. Its tart flavor and smooth texture created a perfect balance with the bittersweet chocolate and the creamy layer of icing.

  See, I do remember things, she thought. Just not everything. She wanted to have a quiet mind. She wanted to figure out who she was, not ten years ago, but right now. Or a year ago, before the long sleep. She could ask her family, but a gut-level impulse prevented this. The lost memories were hers to recover. She did not want th
em filtered through her mother, who tended to put her own twist on things. The staff psychologist supported this. He said the memories would return in their own time, when Annie was ready.

  Dr. Johnson came back with more questions and mental tasks. “I want you to count backward from one hundred, by sevens.”

  “Sure,” Annie said. “I’ll get right on that.”

  “No, I really want you to do it as quickly as you can. Start with one hundred. Then go back seven—”

  “Is this something non-brain-injured people can do?” Annie asked. “Hey, Raven,” she called to the book-cart girl passing in the hallway, “count backward from a hundred by sevens.”

  The girl paused outside the door. “Huh?”

  “See,” Annie said to Dr. Johnson. “Nobody can do that. Let’s move on.”

  “One hundred,” said a male voice. “Ninety-three, eighty-six, seventy-nine . . .”

  “Looks like you have a visitor,” Dr. Johnson said. “And a smart-alecky one at that.”

  Annie’s thumb found the sitting-up button, something she hadn’t been able to do only yesterday. Progress, not perfection. One of the therapists suggested that could be her mantra. Annie had pointed out that it wasn’t a mantra, but a slogan. Precision in language was the key to clarity. Specificity resulted in disambiguation.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “I love visitors.” Sarcasm was easy, and not as exhausting as actual feeling. She pushed herself straighter on noodly arms. They didn’t even feel like her arms, but like floppy appendages that belonged to someone else. Another Annie, maybe. The Annie from another time. The Annie she couldn’t remember.

  Her real name was Anastasia, like her grandmother. She loved having Gran’s name. She missed Gran, and had no trouble remembering her. Why were her memories strongest of the people she missed the most, like Gran and—

  “Seventy-two, sixty-five,” said the voice from the doorway.

  Annie looked over at her visitor.

  She forgot to breathe. Her breath had been stolen by shock. Fletcher Wyndham had always had that effect on her.

  “Mind if I come in?” he asked.