“I’m sorry, Dr. Pearson. But where would you like Rose’s remains sent?”
Each finger—pinkie, ring, middle, index, and then thumb—tap on his green scrubs. He does the same thing again but the other way, beginning with his thumb. And back again.
“To 160 Lily Lane, Harpers Avenue, Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, HU8 26P,” he says, his voice unbroken. As if he’s giving a food order at Happy Doughnuts or something. As if his wife didn’t just pass, and he doesn’t have his son to help. “Thank you, Eve.”
Dr. Pearson bursts past me, just the way he did in the hallway, not noticing my presence. I’ll ask Eve where Daniel is. Tell her I’m a friend. She’ll ask why because of HIPAA guidelines that protect the privacy of others. Eve knows me. But I’ll tell the truth this time.
Take your finger out of your mouth and stop chewing on your nails, Poppy would say.
I especially don’t think she’d pay me a visit here, as she used to hate hospitals. Loathed them. In fact, just days before she died, when we knew it was time for hospice, we took her home to die. I think she appreciated it, though she never said anything about it.
I take my finger out of my mouth, tip my chin up, and allow it to lead me to the counter.
“Can I help you?” comes out of Eve’s mouth, not looking up, almost too busy for my question.
I know they’re overworked at Redwood and always understaffed.
At the last minute, she looks up and cocks her head to the right. “Oh, hey, Livie.”
She’s called me Livie since as far back as I can remember. Jasie and Livie. Used to drive Jasper crazy as we got older. Me? Not so much. She’s a warm and fuzzy type, and for a nurse, that might be rare. But the only thing I have to compare her to is Tracy, and Tracy isn’t the warm and fuzzy type. Eve ends almost everything with and IE when she can. I mean, I don’t think she uses that type of language with patients. Well, maybe.
“Hey, Eve.”
Eve is a Have. She came to Jasper’s funeral. Made sure we had meals. Made sure Tracy and I ate. Made sure Tracy only came back to work when she was ready. Cleaned our house while we were down in LA. But I guess Tracy did the same for her when Eve gave birth to a stillborn named Lane. Jasper and I were only two at the time. But I remember the haunted look that followed her around for years. Still, I get a glimpse of it every once in a while, usually at Christmastime.
“Hang on a second. I’ll page your mom and see if she’s here yet.”
“Actually, I was, uh, just”—I motion with my thumb in the direction I just came from—“wondering—”
Eve curves her back upward, like a string is pulling on her neck, her eyes passing mine. “Hello again, Dr. Pearson,” Eve says. “What can I help you with?”
Uh-oh.
“Hello, Eve. One more question. Sorry to interrupt.” His voice is cold.
I know he isn’t talking to me, and I don’t dare turn around.
Does he know it’s me?
Would he even recognize me? I’ve only met him once.
Don’t breathe, Liv.
“My son will be here about four thirty p.m. to pick up his phone. I told him I’d leave it here with you. He left the hospital right after Rose died.”
Please, pick up eggs from the store after work, could you? Dr. Pearson, so frank. Matter of fact. No emotion.
“Yes, Dr. Pearson.” Eve extends her hand and takes Daniel’s phone. “You’re sure you want to finish your rounds today, Dr. Pearson?”
He doesn’t answer Eve’s question because he’s already halfway down the hallway.
Eve’s known me since birth. She and Tracy went to high school together, and they’ve been close friends since.
Eve sets Daniel’s lifeline on the desk behind the counter. “So, you were saying? You don’t need your mom?”
I can’t conjure up enough truth to validate a good, believable story, so here I go again. “Daniel and I are study partners.” That could be the truth, the future truth. “I can take his phone to him. I’m heading to his house right now for a study group.”
“Oh, could you?” Eve hands over Daniel’s phone.
I grab it from her, praying she doesn’t change her mind. “No problem.” I grip the phone in my hand, trying to act casual.
“What was it you needed, Livie?”
I look up, still wondering how hijacking Daniel’s phone became so easy. “Hmm?”
“What did you need?” Eve asks again.
“Oh.” Come on, lying comes natural to you now, Liv. You can’t talk your way out of this one with the truth. “I’ll just ask my mom after her shift.”
“You sure?” Eve picks up a big stack of files.
I rock back on my heels and question if running away would be suitable for this situation. Skipping? “Yes. Completely sure.”
“Oh, how are college applications going?”
Ouch. They aren’t. “Good.” I pause. Is that believable? “Really good.” More enthusiasm. That’s it.
“And how are you?” Her eyes narrow.
I know she has my best interests at heart.
“Fine.” Fucked up. Insecure. Narcotic. Emotional. There, not lying now.
I don’t think Eve buys it either.
“Are you still seeing Dr. Elizabeth?”
You mean Holy Moly? “Yes.”
Eve is the one who recommended Dr. Elizabeth to Tracy. How Eve and Dr. Elizabeth ever got along, I’ll never know. Dr. Elizabeth is drab. Boring. A monotone voice that asks after every sentence, How does that make you feel? Just the thought of her voice makes me cringe.
“All right. I’ll tell your mom you stopped in.”
I freeze.
Why? Why tell her I stopped by? She’ll have questions. Ones I don’t want to answer.
I panic, pick up my phone, and pretend to call Tracy. “Calling her now. You don’t have to do that.”
Eve waves.
I wave.
I leave as quickly as possible and head up to Daniel’s. On the way up there, I give myself questions.
What’ll I say to him?
Will he even want to see me?
What will he need?
I’ll hand him his phone.
The sun sets as I descend into the Gulch and turn into Rockwell Lane.
I text Tracy this time even though she won’t be home.
Me: Be home by curfew. Have stuff to take care of.
Tracy: Where are you going? What are you doing?
Tracy never asks questions about my whereabouts. She’s always trusted me to make the right decisions. And I guess that’s why Beth allows Cao to ride with me to school, too. But, now, she’s asking—probably because I’ve given her reason to.
Me: Don’t worry, Mom. I’m fine. Just need some alone time.
Simon texts me.
Simon: How are you? Can we talk?
My stomach twists into knots.
Tracy: Your dad cooked dinner. I’m leaving for the hospital now. See you tomorrow afternoon. Be safe, please, Liv.
I walk up to the well-lit castle. Dr. Pearson can’t be home; he couldn’t have beaten me here. He was doing rounds. I’ll just be a few minutes. Check on Daniel and make sure he’s all right. Give him his phone. Go.
I knock on the gigantic door made of solid wood.
My heart begins to pick up pace.
Silence.
I know I’m meeting grief in its early stages, at the door, where I’m not sure I want in.
I knock.
I wait.
Silence.
My heart is fluttering.
What if he doesn’t want to see me? It’d be acceptable and perfectly normal.
Self-doubt consumes me.
With a deep breath, feeling as though my annoying factor is in full gear, I ring the doorbell that sounds more like a tower bell.
Dong.
Dong.
Dong.
I wait.
Still, nothing.
Don’t go, stalker.
Don’t go, stalker.
I check the door to see if it’s unlocked, and it slowly eases open without a single sound.
“Hello?” I call out, not to be heard. Quietly and with effort, I close the heavy door behind me. “Daniel?” I say louder this time.
Looking through the entryway and to the living room, the lamps that are turned on by the sofas in the living room give the house an orange hue, calming. Not the melancholy someone-just-died LED lights. LED lights are the death lights. Like the overhead fluorescent lights, the ones in dated doctors’ offices, like at Dr. McGoldrick’s office, the only pediatrician in town. Those are death lights.
The house smells like suede and lilies. I try not to creep or tiptoe—because that’s too stalkerish—into the kitchen.
“Daniel?”
On the vast dining room table, just off the living room, is a table full of lilies. Just lilies. Rose’s favorite type of flower?
I turn around and go back toward the entryway and head up the staircase. Daniel’s phone begins to vibrate in my hand, and the name Sienna flashes across the screen.
Sienna.
Sienna.
Sienna.
I try to place the name, one I know he hasn’t mentioned because I would have remembered a Sienna. It looks like a mess of numbers, no hyphens—+44793551212 .
A pod of nerves seep into my stomach as my heart speaks with fast, uneven beats.
I hit Ignore, and the phone stops vibrating. Only to vibrate once more to indicate a message left.
I want to check the message. Tell Sienna not to call back. Tell Sienna that Daniel is off-limits. But he’s not. Nor is he taken. Nor are we dating. We aren’t a we at all. We are Livia and Daniel. Two separate lives. Two separate people, only connected through a shared interest of each other.
When I’m standing in front of Daniel’s closed bedroom door, the nerves reach up into my lungs.
I think twice about knocking, so instead, I slowly push open the heavy door and peek in.
His room, just like the house, is big and impeccably decorated with grays and dark blues, probably done by an interior designer, as I highly doubt Daniel is into decor, and it matches the motif of the house. The light in the room is the same light outside—dusk when the birds burrow down in their nests and finish their final tune. Where the outside becomes quiet, awaiting the coyotes that will call tonight for lost loves.
Daniel’s room is a loft. Downstairs, there’s a dark leather sofa, a simple banker’s light with a green shade, and a desk. Framed pictures on the wall, but with the lack of light that fills the bedroom, they’re hard to make out. I walk to the big bay window that opens up to the forest of trees, the same view Rose had.
I cover my elbows with the opposite hands as I cross my arms and stare into the beckoning night sky.
This is the perfect time of day. When the day welcomes night. When creatures begin to settle in their homes. When our side of the world begins to prepare for the next twelve hours. When loneliness is at its best. When life seems to take on its stride and prepares the drab of the sunrise, like a baker prepares bread.
The morning, the awful, dreaded morning, comes when fear floods back into the conscious mind like a bucket full of cold water. Like a set change, the stage hands move and brace for the change from light to dark. I imagine people tugging at a shade, pulling the tiny loop from the dark shade to the light shade. Arranging the birds and assembling them on trees, calling for morning wake-up. The roosters, the turkeys, the wild hogs take their places in the play among the meadow.
I imagine, What if morning doesn’t come? Like for my brother. And Rose.
I release my elbows, my hands falling to my sides.
“Hey.”
I hear the dents in his tone, the broken ones, the less broken ones, but I also hear satisfaction. And my heart rate picks up pace and slows at the same time. Just the sound of his voice makes me forgot about Sienna. About Jasper. Like I’m supposed to be here, in this exact moment, and I wonder when this feeling started with Daniel.
I don’t turn around because I don’t want him to see the ache in my eyes for his loss. For the things I’ve done that he doesn’t know about yet.
Tears for his loss.
My loss.
Our separate brokenness.
My addiction to something I can’t explain.
Daniel. The alcohol. Pills. Simon.
Our riddled future of defeat.
“Hey,” I say, still staring out the window, hoping my gratitude is loud and clear, that there’s no place I’d rather be. But I don’t dare say that. Not yet.
I feel his fingers trickle down my arms and the firmness of his chest against my back. His breath is on my neck, and his next words are in my heart.
“You’re here.”
I turn around now because the need to see Daniel’s face and read the lines that curve around his mouth when he frowns or smiles far outweigh any need I’ve needed to fulfill before. His eyes tell a million stories all at once—comedy, tragedy, love.
Crimson and pink, bloodshot, swollen from death, and plagued with mourning, regret, and pain, his eyes find mine. We share the same pain. A look I feel too well, tears that don’t fall because it’s too much effort and the body simply cannot produce the amount of water required when someone dies. A condition perhaps when death falls upon the living.
His hands slide to the small of my back, attach themselves, pulling our bodies together so that there’s nothing between us but cells and organisms. I feel him—not in a sexual way, but in the way of commitment, obligation, and rightfulness. Beneath the plastic of his smile, his doting eyes, and a broken heart that only two people in grief would understand. My eyes meet his collarbone because I’m not sure I can face the death of his mother, his own path of mourning, and in turn, allow him to face the death of my brother.
Daniel’s bare chest rises and falls. His breath is the sweet scent of mint. I want to tell him I’ll most likely break his heart because of the alcohol. Just like my father did to my mother. My brother. And me.
I’ve seen what addiction can do. But, in this moment, I know he needs me, and I, him. I tell myself I’ll allow our bodies to coil around each other in order to mask his sadness. Let him feel me the way he needs to—with his hands, his legs, his chest, the shell of a boy who won’t ever be the same.
The poor, poor boy whose mother died too young, people will say.
I try to push my heart out of this, not let it connect with his, so I don’t look into his eyes.
How did this happen so quickly?
My head resting on his bare chest, his arms tighten around my body, and I feel a drop of his sadness land on my cheek.
And I allow one of my own to fall, too.
Telling Daniel about his father asking me to stay away wouldn’t be appropriate now. Neither would asking about Sienna.
So, we stand here as the sky welcomes the moon and the hour count to morning begins. The days of loss. Where the days turn into nights and the nights into days without so much of a blink of an eye. Where dates blend and months blur. And life seems to unravel.
Standing here with Daniel, I’ve never felt this way about Simon as he pushed inside me. Nor did I feel the tremble that went along with Simon’s when he finished. I forced the bad feelings away through touch and allowed an unspoken need on both parts to be filled. An escape, a getaway, only to be met with the demoralization once I awoke from my momentary state of euphoria.
But this?
This is something so much more. Nothing like the feeling I got when Ben Novak, my first boyfriend, rammed his tongue down my throat. Or the time Lee Cunningham touched my boob on accident at Whitney’s pool party during the summer of our freshman year. I didn’t feel it between my legs, like I do now.
This isn’t Simon.
Or Ben.
Or Lee.
Or any other boy for that matter.
This is Daniel.
“Promise me something, Daniel?”
>
His head rests on me, and it might as well be the weight of the world.
Daniel’s bedroom door flies open, and there, in the doorway, is Dr. Pearson.
Daniel doesn’t let go of me, but instead, he turns toward his father. “What do you want?” Daniel asks, pulling on the back of my top, his fingers brushing against the small of my back in a protective way. He grabs a T-shirt that’s draped over the chair at his desk and slides it over his head.
“Miss Stone”—again, like ordering eggs at a restaurant—“perhaps I wasn’t clear when I said Daniel needed space to process what happened today.” Dr. Pearson pronounces process like prow-cess.
“What?” Daniel jerks his head back. “What did you tell her?” He drops my shirt and steps in front of me. Clearly bigger, broader than his father, Daniel points to his door. “I will never be the man you are. I will never be the father, the husband”—his voice cracks—“the cheater that you are. Mark my words,” he spits with both poise and reason. “You put on a facade that you want others to believe. You run from any little thing that might cause a disruption in your life. What about Mum? I took care of her the last year of her life. AND YOU,” he yells now, “were too busy banging your nurses to see that Mum needed you. Fucking bastard.” Daniel runs his hands through his hair, staring down at the floor, his eyes wide with craze.
“You’d best hold your tongue, Daniel.” His voice is barely a whisper. “I moved your mum here because that’s where she wanted to die. I left my teaching, my hospital, everything for her.”
Daniel laughs. His words are chosen and slow. “No, your fuck buddies just got too old. You needed new pieces of arse.”
I’ve never heard Daniel talk like this. Gently, I touch his arm, and he’s shaking. My fingers slowly slide around his wrist in the silence the conversation has offered the room.
“Daniel, walk me to my car. Come on.” Barely recognizing my own hoarse whisper, I pull his wrist behind me as I step in front of him and approach Dr. Pearson, whose lack of emotion scares me more than someone who’d have any reaction at all.
Standing Sideways Page 19