by Maria Padian
In less than five minutes, it had become winter.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The first call that night was from Myla.
My cell vibrated on the nightstand, waking me. I could tell right away that the power had gone off: my face felt cold. The house was silent, empty of the usual background hum from the furnace and the fridge. At the window I heard the soft, bristly sound of sleet brushing the glass. I snapped the phone open.
“Hello?”
“Tom, it’s Myla. You awake?”
“Sort of. What time is it?”
“Twelve-thirty. I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you live in real-people time, not college time.”
Real-people time versus college time was one of the odd little hurdles we’d had to negotiate in our new in-a-relationship status. Myla, and everyone else at Mumford, it seemed, lived like a skunk. Nocturnal. It wasn’t unusual to find her and the rest of her dorm studying at one in the morning. Updating her Facebook at two. Popping Orville Redenbacher at three. In real-people time, aka living in the Bouchard home with parents who went to work and a kid in high school, the lights were usually out by eleven.
“What’s happening, College?” I asked.
“Have you heard from Saeed?” she said.
The question was so totally out of the blue that I was a little disoriented at first. Saeed. Right. Soccer. I was conscious, I could respond …
“Heard from him … when? Tonight?”
“Yes.” Myla sounded rushed.
“No. Now that I think of it, I didn’t see him at school today. I mean yesterday. Yeah, that was yesterday … this is tomorrow.” Wow. I was so not awake. I heard her breathe impatiently.
“I’m sorry. Is something wrong?” I asked. I sat up. The air in my bedroom felt really cold.
“He’s missing. Samira just called me and they are really worried about him.”
Missing. What the hell did that mean? Just not home and didn’t call in? Or wandering outside in a storm?
“Did anyone try calling him?” I asked.
“Yeah, but he’s got one of those crappy Tracfones they all use. It’s the end of the month, so he’s out of minutes. Do you have any idea where he might be? His mother is pretty upset.”
“Jeez, Myla, I don’t know who he hangs with outside the soccer team. Have they called Ismail, Double … er, Muhammad Muhammad, or Ibrahim?”
“I don’t know. Do you have their numbers? Not that they have any minutes left, either.”
“Yeah, sure, hold on. It’s in my phone.” I scrolled through my contacts, found the guys’ numbers, and read them to her.
“Thanks, Tom,” she said when I was done. “You can go back to sleep.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Don’t wake me up, drop the I’m-freaking-out bomb, then sign off. What’s going on?”
“I’m not freaking out. I’m just in a hurry to get them these numbers.”
“You sound sort of … freaking.”
She sighed.
“They depend on me for a lot, you know? They don’t really know what to do and I think this storm is adding to their panic.”
I sighed. Definitely freaking.
“I hate to break it to you, College, but these are competent people who have survived civil war and a transatlantic migration. And that was before they met you, so take a deep breath. Now, don’t you think he’s just at a friend’s house and can’t call them ’cause his phone’s out of minutes?”
“Probably. I don’t know. They’re worried he’s been in an accident.”
“Has anyone called the police to see if there’s been an accident?” I asked.
She didn’t answer right away.
“Somali people don’t call the cops,” she finally said in her I-can’t-believe-what-an-idiot-you-are voice.
“Uh … why the hell not?” I asked her. She wasn’t making sense.
“Okay, you know what? I don’t have time to explain the whole post-9/11 universe to you, but when the lights go back on, we’ll talk. Good night, Cap.”
“Myla,” I said, but she’d hung up. Great. I obviously said something that bugged her. Whatever. I was just trying to be helpful. I pulled the comforter over my head and drifted off.
The second time I woke up because someone was banging around downstairs. Chopping wood, sounded like. At—I flipped my phone open to check the time—2:00 a.m.? Seriously? I tossed the covers off and swung my feet over the side of the bed. Cold air enveloped me. Like it was January in my bedroom. I pulled on a sweatshirt and some socks, then made my way to the stairs, hands brushing the walls, searching for the railing in the dark.
A halogen glimmer came from the living room, where I found my dad wearing an L.L. Bean headlamp and wielding a hatchet. He balanced a fat log, end up, on the hearth, and attempted to drive the blade into the cracks. He was making a terrific noise, and there were wood chips scattered on the carpet.
“Whatever you’re trying to do, Mr. Bouchard, is not working,” I said.
He startled. He hadn’t heard me walk in.
“Tom! I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
I didn’t bother to respond. Instead, I threw myself into an armchair and surveyed the mess.
“It’s freezing,” I said.
He nodded.
“I’m trying to get the stove going but we didn’t have any kindling. Stupid. I brought wood in for just this reason, but forgot kindling.”
“I’m beginning to understand why you never made Eagle Scout,” I told him. He shook his head ruefully. My father is not a hands-on guy. Before he could aim another whack at the log, I got up and took the hatchet from his hands.
“I’ll cut kindling if you find matches and newspaper,” I told him.
Before long a small fire popped in the open grate of the woodstove. Dad fed the flames with the thin, dry sticks I had shaved from the log, and I handed him the slightly larger pieces of wood. Once we got it roaring, we closed the iron door and let the heat pulse through the room and up the stairs.
I love fires. I love the smell of woodsmoke that permeates our house each winter, love the way my face feels hot from sitting near the stove. I could stare for hours watching the orange-yellow-blue flames lick the edges of the logs and softly dissolve them. I can so get why we’ve been gathering around fires together since caveman days. Why we form a circle and tell stories or toast marshmallows or chuck pieces of dry pine branches in the middle to make sparks.
So it made sense that sitting here with my dad, feeding the stove and warming the house, I would finally tell him everything that’d been going on with Saeed and the soccer. With Alex and my incredibly stupid attempt to fix things.
His face was still in the firelight as I spoke, and he never interrupted. When he did finally break his silence, his words surprised me.
“I still remember how disappointed you were when your mother and I didn’t let you play on that club soccer team,” he said.
“Uh, that was a while ago, Dad. I’m pretty much over it.”
He looked up.
“Are you, Tom? Or was it the first step along a path that’s made you bitter? I worry about that. I worried about that when you went after their rock. Donnie, God bless him, is a goofball. But you? You know better. What motivated you?”
Good question. And hard to answer. Because in hindsight, it looked so incredibly boneheaded, while back then it seemed so incredibly funny. Badass. Eff you, Maquoit—that sort of thing. Which was … yeah. Bitter.
“Maybe I am,” I told him. “But not about soccer. About everything. These people suck, and they always win. Why does a jerk like Alex go to Amherst while a guy like Saeed gets kicked off his high school team? Why does it feel like half the kids at my school have parents out of work, while everyone in Maquoit drives a Lexus?”
“Everyone in Maquoit doesn’t drive a Lexus, Tom.”
“Okay. A Hummer, then,” I said. He laughed. But I was only half kidding.
“Do you know,” he said, “that right before you we
re born, when your mom and I were looking to buy our first house, we almost bought in Maquoit?”
“Seriously?” I said. He nodded.
“And do you have any idea why we chose Enniston?” he continued.
“Because you didn’t want me to grow up to be an asshole?”
He laughed again.
“Because Enniston is where we wanted you to grow up,” he said. “Let me ask you something: Why did Alex Rhodes tell his father what you said about Saeed? He told you himself that he wanted to play you guys straight up. So why was he willing to go along with this plan to have Saeed kicked off?”
Pressure. Desire to win. Can’t think for himself. Basically a jerk.
Those were the obvious answers, and probably all true, to a certain extent. But I knew the real reason.
“He doesn’t know Saeed,” I told him. “He doesn’t know any of our guys, and what playing on this team means to them. So it was easy.”
Dad nodded.
“Things get a little more complicated when you know somebody’s story,” he said. “Yeah, it’s messy. People get mad when Somalis parked outside the mosque block their driveways. Folks get nervous when a bunch of black men gather to play soccer every evening on fields near their houses. White supremacists show up trying to start a fight … it’s a mess. But then some Somali lady teaches Maddie how to make sambusas. You teach Abdi his ABC’s. Saeed teaches you how to kick a goal from midfield.”
“I wish,” I muttered.
“But you understand,” he said. “It’s hard to fear someone, or be cruel to them, when you know their story. And aren’t you lucky? Knowing all these stories that Alex never hears? Tom, the fact is, life isn’t fair and bad things happen to good people. But there are angels in this world, and sometimes the good guys win.”
“You were with me until the angels part, Dad,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Don’t you think that Myla friend of yours is Samira’s angel?” he said.
I gave a short laugh.
“I don’t think Myla’d appreciate hearing that,” I told him. “She’s not much into the religion thing.”
“Won’t she be surprised,” he said, more to himself than to me. He got up to put another log in the stove.
A blast of hot air washed over us when he opened the metal door. I was actually starting to feel a little sleepy again, and thought maybe I’d just crash on the couch. One question still nagged at me, however.
“Did you ever regret it?” I asked him when he sat.
“Regret what?”
“Buying the house in Enniston.” He smiled.
“Never. Although sometimes I do worry.”
“About?”
“You. And how I don’t want you to wind up like your uncle.”
“What? Not rich? Working with his hands instead of going to college? That sounds awfully snobby, Dad.”
He shook his head.
“Bitter,” he said.
That’s when my cell went off for the second time that night. It vibrated in my sweatshirt pocket … yeah, I’m that guy, the one who’s always within reach of his phone … and when I pulled it out I saw it was Donnie.
“Dude,” I said when I flipped it open.
“Hello?” Woman’s voice. Hesitant.
“Who’s this?” I asked.
“I’m looking for Tom Bouchard,” she said.
“Speaking.”
“Oh, good. Tommy.” The voice broke. Whoever it was, she was crying. “This is Ruth Plourde.”
Donnie’s mom.
“Hey, Mrs. Plourde. Is everything all right?” I looked across at Dad. When he realized who I was speaking to, he sat up straight.
“We’re at St. Anthony’s Hospital,” she said. “There’s been an accident.”
No. No. C’mon, please, no.
“How bad?” I didn’t need to ask any other questions. I knew what he’d planned.
She didn’t answer right away. I heard her breathing hard, as if she were trying to calm herself.
“Can you get over here? I think he’d want you to be here,” she finally said.
“Is Donnie dead?” I asked. Dull sound to my voice. Surreal. I couldn’t believe I was saying the words. Asking the question.
“He’s in surgery right now,” she said. “The phones are out everywhere. I tried calling your house, but the phones are out. I finally asked them if they found Don’s phone, because I knew he’d have his numbers in it.…” That was it. Mrs. Plourde dissolved.
“We’re on our way,” I said, not sure she even heard me at that point. Not sure how we’d get across town to St. Tony’s in the middle of an ice storm, but I saw that my father was already standing. I snapped my phone shut.
“Oh Jesus, Dad,” I said, my own voice catching. “He’s finally done it.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mrs. Plourde sat in a corner of the waiting room, hunched over, as if she wanted to disappear. Dad strode right to her, put his hands on her shoulders. She looked up, her red face puffy and damp. Dad sat, held her as she wept. I stood three feet away, frozen, feeling my hands form these tight, balled fists.
How could something so predictable feel like such a shock?
He’d shattered bones; that much we knew. Especially in the places where the bone actually poked out through the skin. Like a snapped chopstick jutting from his arm.
“Only it was sharp at the top,” George Morin explained.
George Morin, the driver. The survivor, who somehow managed to stay in the spinning car after it crashed into a retaining wall, and escape with nothing but spectacular bruising from the airbags. While Don, whose door flew open, inexplicably, even though his airbag inflated? He didn’t stay in the car.
“Don’t. Don’t even speak. You stoner asshole,” I said to him, but too late. He’d seen us arrive. He’d come right up to me and started talking. Polluting my imagination with visions of a broken Donnie.
Thrown from a fast-moving car. How do you have any skin left after something like that?
“Why hasn’t someone arrested you? Who let you past security?” I demanded, loudly, to his startled face. Heads turned. The entrance to the Emergency Center is flanked by an intake window on one side and a glassed-in cubicle with a security officer on the other. The Sisters of Charity founded the place. God help me, but I didn’t feel very charitable at that moment. My father looked up, Mrs. Plourde’s face buried in his chest. He frowned and shook his head: Stop.
I walked away from George Morin, my father, and Mrs. Plourde and found a seat at the opposite end of the waiting room. I willed my imagination away from those closed double doors that led to the operating rooms. I tried to focus on the past, good times when we were growing up, but even in my memories, Donnie had no luck.
“I’ve got a lot of uncles, Tom-boy,” he used to say about the parade of boyfriends trooping through his mother’s house after his dad moved out. “Mom lost her watch again,” he’d comment when she was late or a no-show for school concerts and baseball games. “Cleaning lady’s on vacation,” he’d say with a grin when you’d walk into his kitchen to find an empty vodka bottle in the sink and stale pizza crusts on the counter.
When we were little, my parents usually insisted Donnie come to our house, rather than the other way around. I can count on one hand the number of playdates I had at the Plourdes’. When I did go, Mrs. Plourde would feed us a lot of stuff I wasn’t allowed at home, like Twinkies and Milk Duds. She smoked cigarettes, and there were butt-filled ashtrays throughout their house, but she always took her smokes outside when I came over. And no matter where we were—in Donnie’s room, or in the yard, or curled on the couch watching television—she’d come over unexpectedly and snatch him up in her arms, swing him around, and squeeze him. “Boys are the best,” she’d say, laughing.
If my mother’d done that, I’d have blushed beet red. I’d have wriggled away, told her to stop, I’m playing. But not Donnie. He’d squeeze her right back.
; She’d let go before he did.
A nurse at the hospital had called her. After they’d cut away Donnie’s clothes, someone found his wallet and ID’d him. Enniston’s a small city—hell, the whole state of Maine is a small town—so it was no surprise that a nurse knew his mother and how to reach her.
She’d sat alone while they worked on him. She’d called his dad, but no answer there so she left a message. She’d called her sister in Thomaston, but the sister couldn’t head over until the storm stopped. At some point, as she’d told me, she thought to call us, but the phones were out. She’d asked if anyone had recovered Donnie’s cell phone, because she knew she could track me down through his contacts.
She’d been holding it together pretty well, but now, as she sat collapsed against my father, sobbing, she was losing it. For a moment I wondered if they could sedate her or something, but then realized that wouldn’t work because she was the only relative on hand if … decisions needed to be made.
What can you say about waiting?
I guess if it’s a new baby on the way and you’re hanging out with a bunch of relatives holding balloons and chocolates and little stuffed bears, pacing and impatient to get their hands on the new member of the family, it’s pretty cool. That’s probably the best sort of waiting there is.
But emergency room waiting? The worst. Time is a lunging dog on a leash when you’re in an emergency room. It yanks you forward in ways you can’t control, and even though you want to haul it back an hour, two, and change the direction of … everything … you can’t. You can’t control it. You can’t control anything.
In the limbo, while you wait, you pray anyway. What the hell, right?
Please. Please please please please.
Hours passed. I remember my father pacing. I think Morin left—a rare sign of intelligence. He knew it wasn’t a good idea to be in the same room as me. I don’t remember talking. At least not out loud. But a steady, one-sided conversation kept going in my head.
Please. God, if you’re there, please.
The barest suggestion of morning light penetrated the windows when the doctor walked in. It had stopped snowing and raining. It looked still and cold outside. Frozen. Typical nor’easter. Rips through your town and leaves an icy calling card. The doctor wore scrubs and his eyes darted to the corner of the room where Donnie’s mom dozed. He walked over to us.