Five Days Left

by Julie Lawson Timmer

  Mara bit her lip.

  Harry went on. “The idea that I might never see her again, never get a chance ta tell her how sorry I am, makes me wanna get drunk enough so I don’t know my own name. Leastways what I done ta her, ta her mother, with my foolishness.” He sniffed and she saw a tear roll a thin, shining track down his face. To her surprise, he took a carefully folded cloth handkerchief out of the pocket of his plaid shirt and touched it to his cheeks, then the corners of his eyes. He took a long look at Caroline’s picture, then gently closed the visor.

  Mara felt the sting of her own tears and quickly turned to the window. She found Laks again and took deep breaths as she followed her around the playground. “Yesterday was my last day to help in the library,” she said. She put a hand on the window, wishing she could touch Laks through the glass. Stroke her hair. Tell her again how sorry she was. “She’s so ashamed of me. Tom thinks she’ll get over it,” she said. “I don’t think she should have to.”

  She spread her fingers wide on the glass. Goodbye.

  • • •

  At her front door, Mara fumbled in her purse for her keys and Harry turned to study the planter, pretending to be too intrigued by the flowers to notice the trouble she was having. But a minute later, when she was still trying to force her key into the lock, Harry’s big hand covered hers.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Not long enough.” She regarded her left arm, which was moving slightly, and remembered what had happened in the shower. “Or too long. Depends how you look at it.”

  “And how do ya look at it?”

  She let out a long breath. “I’m forty-two years old and I’m already retired. I thought I’d work till seventy. I can’t drive anymore. I can’t remember anything unless it’s written on a sticky note. And when I want to watch my daughter play with her friends, I have to do it on the sly from behind the tinted windows of a cab so I won’t humiliate her. In a year, maybe less, I’ll be in a wheelchair.

  “I’ll have to take one of those special vans to spy on her at school. If I even have my wits about me enough to remember when recess is. Or the fact that I have a daughter. I might not even live here anymore.” She jerked her head toward the house. “I might be in a nursing home by then, sitting in a corner, staring at the ceiling, blissfully unaware of this house, my family inside it and the fact that you and I ever had this conversation.”

  “I’d visit ya there.”

  She put a hand on his cheek. “I wouldn’t want you to.”

  “Yuh, I guess I knew that. Don’t want anyone seein’ ya . . . like that.”

  “Don’t want to be like that. All those people doing all the things I should be doing for myself? Feeding me? Brushing my hair? Giving me a bath?” She shuddered. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “Not ta pry, but I gotta say. You’ve relaxed so much around me, don’tcha think? And in a couple days only. Lettin’ me help ya into the car, lettin’ me get yer wallet that one day? And today . . . with the, ya know . . . dishes. Don’tcha think ya could keep doin’ that, a little more at a time, until it didn’t bother ya so much for other people ta do that stuff for ya? Yer parents even? Yer husband? People at a . . . nursin’ home?”

  “Honestly, Harry, I think you must have some kind of super power. I’ve been thinking that exact thing, how being around you this week has . . . changed me so much. But I’m not sure it’s enough. I’m afraid what you’ve seen may be about the limit of what I can allow.”

  “Too old a dog for those kinda new tricks?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Something like that.”

  “Right.”

  “So let me ask you a question,” she said. “You know, to even the score a little.”

  He laughed. “Fair enough.”

  “What about writing Caroline a letter, letting her know how you feel? How sorry you are, how badly you want to make things up to her. I’m not sure someone in her position will reach out to you first, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to hear from you. She may be waiting for you to make the first move.”

  “Yuh, I’ve thoughta that. Even tried writin’ a time or two, but ended up tearin’ up the pages. I ain’t got yer gift for words, not that it ain’t obvious by now. My heart knows what I wanna say but my head can’t order the words right.”

  “I see. If you could write a letter, would you say anything more to her than what you told me in the car?”

  He thought for a second. “Nope. I think what I told ya about sums it up. Not a lot ta say other than I messed up and I’m sorry and I’d love ta see her if she’d let me. Love ta make it up ta her if she’d give me another chance. I mean, I’d say it in a longer, better way than that if I could. But that’s the basic message.”

  They stood quietly for a few minutes, and then Harry spoke. “So when ya called me on Tuesday, ya said ya needed someone for the week. And now the week’s over. But you’ll still call me, whenever ya need me.” He said the last part as more of a command than a question.

  “I will,” she said. “In fact, I have a few errands to run tomorrow, and then a lunch date with my girlfriends, while Tom’s at ballet with Laks. I usually take her, but . . .”

  “So you’ll do errands instead,” he said. “With me. And then I’ll take ya to yer lunch.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. Before she could react, he turned and headed down the walk, sticking an arm up in a high salute as he went.

  34.

  Scott

  Having Scott, Laurie and Bray come to his school in the middle of the day couldn’t mean anything good. Curtis’s lips were quivering before he even got the words out.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He folded to the hallway floor in a crumpled heap of limbs and tears when he heard the answer.

  LaDania hadn’t been a great mother. She left Curtis with Bray more often than she should have. She let him go hungry, dirty. She sold half the contents of his home to support her on-again, off-again habit. She had only responded to a fraction of the letters and artwork he sent her in jail, her responses not usually longer than one or two sentences. But she was his mother. And he had been counting on her to keep herself together, for his sake.

  When he finally stopped crying long enough to look up at them, Bray held his arms out. But Curtis reached up to Scott, who lifted him into his arms and held him, Curtis clinging around Scott’s neck as though he were drowning and Scott was a life buoy. Scott looked at Bray apologetically and started to hand Curtis to him, but Bray shook his head. “He counts on you more than anyone,” Bray said quietly. “You should feel good about that, not bad.”

  At home, Curtis lay on the family room couch in the fetal position, a throw pillow clutched tightly to his chest. Bray sat beside him, murmuring to him softly and stroking his head. After a while, the little boy edged his way closer to the big one until his small head was on his brother’s legs. When Scott went in to tell them dinner was ready, the boy’s entire body was curled in Bray’s lap. He was facing Bray now and had his arms wrapped around his waist.

  “Do you want to?” Bray asked him.

  The small head lifted, moved from side to side, then lowered.

  Bray looked up at Scott helplessly and shrugged. “Think we’ll sit here a while longer, Coach, if that’s okay with you.”

  “No problem.”

  They were still in the same position an hour later, when Scott and Laurie had finished dinner and cleaned up.

  “You’ve gotta be starved,” Scott said to Bray.

  Bray nodded, then gestured to his lap and shrugged.

  “Curtis,” Scott said, “what do you say we get you to bed? I’ll take you up—unless you want your brother.”

  Wordlessly, Curtis slid off the couch and went to Scott, a hand out. “No Stuart tonight,” he said.

  “No,” Scott said, squeezing the
small hand. “This isn’t a night for Stuart, is it?” Looking at Bray, he said, “Laurie put a plate for you in the fridge. Help yourself.”

  “Should I come upstairs after? You know, to check on him?”

  Scott looked at Curtis, who was listing a little as he stood, his eyelids half closed with exhaustion. He reached down and lifted the boy into his arms. “Don’t think there’ll be anyone awake for you to check on.”

  Upstairs, Scott found an old T-shirt for Curtis to wear to bed and got him settled under the covers. Being tucked in seemed to rouse the boy a little and he started to sob big, gasping sobs that shook his entire body. Scott felt his own tears start to come and he stretched himself out on the bed, wrapping his arms tightly around the heaving little body. This was not how he’d imagined his first reunion with the boy would go. “I know, Little Man,” he whispered. “I know. It’s a raw deal. I’m so sorry.”

  He stayed long after the boy’s sobs gave way to rhythmic breathing and the sky through the windows turned from the light bluish gray of early evening to darker gray and then finally to the deep black of nighttime. A little after ten, Laurie peeked in on her way to bed and said she had set Bray up to sleep on the family room couch. “I wish we had one of the other spare rooms set up for him to stay in,” she said. “He’s about three feet longer than the couch.”

  But they had put off outfitting the other upstairs rooms with beds in an effort to spare their limited decorating funds for the rooms they had a regular use for.

  “He’s fine,” Scott told her. “I’ve offered to get one of those blow-up mattresses for him a million times and he always says he’d rather be on the couch. I think he likes being near all the action.”

  After twelve lonely years living with an often-gone mother, followed by another six with a brother who needed comfort more than he provided, Bray seemed to migrate toward people. He had laughed at Scott and Pete’s suggestion that he live in a private dorm at Michigan so he could focus on schoolwork when he wasn’t on the court. “I feel better in a crowd,” he told them, and accepted the invitation to live in tight quarters with a handful of teammates who went everywhere he did, and not quietly.

  Life in LaDania’s old apartment, with no one but a child for company, would kill him. Long fingers of dread spread through Scott’s chest.

  “Come to bed,” his wife said gently.

  He raised himself to sitting and stole another glance at the sleeping boy. He was about to stand when Curtis flinched suddenly and let out a small whimper.

  “He’s only dreaming,” Laurie said.

  But Scott had already lain down again, edging his body close to the boy and draping an arm around him. “I know. But I’ll stay a few more minutes. Just in case.”

  Later, Scott eased himself into bed beside his sleeping wife. He turned onto his stomach, head in his arms. Lying motionless in the quiet darkness, he became acutely aware that the hard knot of tension that had formed in the bottom of his stomach earlier in the day hadn’t gone away. Neither had the dull throbbing below his skull. He had taken something for his headache after dinner, but it hadn’t worked. And the glass of scotch Laurie had poured for him hadn’t untied the knot.

  He tried taking deep breaths, but it didn’t help and he wondered if the knot in his stomach, the throbbing in his head, would ever go away. He felt Laurie shift beside him, and a second later her warm hand was on the back of his neck, her thumb and fingers massaging below his skull in exactly the right spot. He closed his eyes and tried to let the gentle pressure lull him to sleep, or at least relieve the tension in his neck.

  Neither happened, and finally he turned to face her. “I can’t stand this.”

  She moved her head closer until they were sharing his pillow, their foreheads almost touching. She stroked his cheek. “I know.” Her voice was low, soothing.

  “He has no idea what he’s getting himself into.”

  “I’d give him more credit than that.” Her thumb rubbed his temple. “You promised you’d support him.”

  “But this is crazy. How do I stand by and let him do this when it’s so crazy?”

  “I don’t know that you have a choice. Not if you want to keep them in our lives. If you’re planning on telling him every time you see him that what he’s doing is crazy, he’s not going to come around much.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” he said. He took a breath and asked himself if he should go on. But if not now, when? “I meant . . . what if . . . we stop it from happening in the first place?”

  She drew her hand away. “What do you mean?”

  But he could hear the strain in her voice, and her eyes were suddenly flitting everywhere.

  “I mean, maybe we should offer to keep him?”

  She rolled onto her back, letting out a long breath, and stared at the ceiling. He reached for her hand but she folded her arms across her chest and tucked her hands underneath, out of his reach. “Offer to keep Curtis,” she said.

  Propping himself on an elbow, he tried meeting her gaze but she took another long breath and tilted her face away from his, toward the bathroom door. The skin around her mouth was taut; it wasn’t a good sign, he knew, and he prepared himself for a lecture on all the reasons he was wrong to ask this of her, after everything. But when she turned to face him again, her mouth was soft. For a second, he thought she was going to say yes.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little, I don’t know, insulting?” she asked. “For you to suggest he’s not capable, so we need to do this for him?”

  “It’s not about him being capable. It’s not about him at all. I’d say the same thing to anyone his age. He’s twenty years old. How can he raise a kid? He’s only a kid himself.”

  “He’s not, though. He’s a twenty-year-old man. People become parents at that age all the time. Kids you know—friends of his—already have kids. Do you want to tell him he can’t handle what they’re doing? After he asked you to stop challenging him and stand behind him?”

  She had a point. He couldn’t sweep in, cape flying behind him, and rescue someone who didn’t want to be rescued. He flopped onto his back, and now it was his wife who propped herself on an elbow, leaning over him. She kissed his temple. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I’m only saying you promised him you’d do it.”

  “What about his future?” he said. “His degree, the draft. Everything.”

  “This is his future,” she said. “This is what he wants.”

  “But—”

  “He asked for your support, Scott. You promised to give it.”

  He felt her shift beside him, edging closer, pressing against him. She put a hand on his chest and moved it in slow circles and her touch calmed him a little. But after a while, the hand on his chest slowed, then stopped, and her breathing grew deep and steady. He lay still for a few minutes more, talking himself into falling asleep. It didn’t work and he lifted himself out of bed, crept into the hall and eased the bedroom door closed behind him.

  35.

  Mara

  Mara’s parents appeared at the front door minutes before Laks’s afternoon bus was scheduled to arrive. A pale yellow silk dress for her mother today, light green shirt with pale yellow stripes for her father. Phone against her ear, Mara smiled and gestured for them to come in, raising an index finger to tell them she’d only be another second. She was in the middle of convincing the second of her two best friends that she didn’t need a ride to the restaurant the next day.

  “Yes, Gina, I’m positive. Like I told Steph, I’ve got some errands downtown and I’d rather get them done and not have to go out again. I’ve already arranged for the cab. He’ll drop me at the restaurant and come back and get me after . . . Yes, the same guy . . . Yes, I am, a torrid affair in the back of the car. Look, my parents are here. Can we talk tomorrow? . . . Great, see you then. Love you, too.”

  It wasn’t until she’d hu
ng up the phone and started in on an apology to her parents that she realized only her mother had walked inside. She poked her head out. “Dad? You coming?”

  “Why don’t we let your father wait for Lakshmi while you and I put these things away?” Neerja held up another Agarwal’s bag.

  “Did Tom ask you to come?” Mara directed her question at her father, knowing her mother would never confess.

  “I’m going to pull up a few weeds while I wait,” he said, walking away. “You know how I can’t stand to sit here with nothing to do.”

  “I’m going to wring his neck when he gets home,” Mara said. “I don’t need him arranging things for me like this. Interfering. Protecting me.”

  But it hit her: she wasn’t the one he was trying to protect. It was Laks who said she didn’t want her mother outside the house.

  “What’s that?” Neerja asked.

  “Nothing, it’s fine. It was a misunderstanding.” Her mother of all people would never understand, she thought, frowning. And then she caught herself—no more than forty-eight hours ago she had chastised herself for unfairly criticizing her parents and here she was, doing it again. She turned to her mother and put a hand on her arm. “Stay for dinner.”

  Neerja clapped her hands, holding them under her chin. “We’d love to!”

  Soon, Laks arrived home and cajoled her grandfather into pushing her on the swing set in the backyard. “Mama does a big push for every year I am,” she told him as she led him by the hand out the back door. “That’s five big pushes. I’m lucky, because Susan’s mom won’t even do one anymore. She says it’s too much work, and sometimes Susan smacks right into her when the swing comes back, and her mom doesn’t like that.” Mara heard her father tsking about Susan’s misfortune in having such a mother, and promising he wouldn’t hear of his granddaughter suffering such an injustice.

  She watched them through the sliding glass door for a few minutes and when she turned away, she found her mother in the family room, examining a photo on the wall: the five of them, last Halloween. Laks was dressed like the Tin Man because Tom had been in charge of the costume, and he was in the garage one day, putting gas in the lawn mower through a funnel, when Laks asked what she should dress up as. He spray-painted the funnel silver, and he and Pori spent an hour wrapping the girl in foil on Halloween night, then rewrapping her each time she bent a limb and ripped their handiwork. They finally deemed her costume good enough to head outside, but even then, they sent the women a few paces in front while they followed behind, each carrying a roll of foil and carefully examining the child after every step. She spent more time being repaired than asking for candy.