“Your family is fine, Jess. They can’t lean on you forever. You need to live your life. You need to think about yourself for once.”
Jess didn’t answer. He just looked straight ahead at the lights on the road. I too remained silent. Why was I so upset at the idea of him leaving? Why did it even matter? We weren’t friends, and we obviously weren’t anything more than friends. So why was it crushing me to think about him leaving? The rest of the trip was silent as we exited the highway, made a right turn and then a left, and entered the hospital parking lot. Jess dropped Bridget and me off at the door while he went to park. A nurse directed us to my dad’s room, and when we opened the door, it took me a second to recognize the person in the bed as my dad. His eyes were closed, and he had tubes running up into his nose and needles stuck in his arms, leaving heavy blue bruises where he had been poked and prodded. He looked so skinny and frail. It had only been a few hours since we were last playing Monopoly, and he was happily counting the money he had taken from me when I landed on Boardwalk. Now he looked lifeless, though upon close examination I could see that his chest was slowing moving. He was still breathing, that was all that mattered.
Bridget left to go find mom, and I took a seat on the red couch that was located at the foot of Dad’s bed. I watched him carefully as he breathed slowly in and out, the machines calculating every movement. He seemed to be resting peacefully though the expression on his face as he slept was pained.
Moments later his eyes fluttered open. They caught hold of mine, and he attempted a wincing smile. “Gemma,” he said without moving his lips. He took in a deep breath and smiled again.
I stood up and walked to the side of his bed. I sat down on the edge and rested my hand on his. I was surprised how wrinkly it felt between my fingers. “What happened, Dad? Why are you in here?”
I didn’t know if he was capable of telling me that, or even if he knew that much, but I had to try to find out how bad it was.
Dad laughed slightly before coughing into his limp hand. “I really don’t know. I was standing at the reception desk next to your mother. The nurse was going through our paperwork. The next thing I remember, I was lying flat on my back with three paramedics standing over me, getting ready to lift me onto a gurney.”
“You passed out.”
“I guess.” Dad smiled again as though he was amused by it.
“How long do you have to be in here?”
“I just talked to the doctor,” Mom’s voice echoed in the room as she stepped through the door with Bridget and Jesse following closely behind her. “He wants to keep you here at least until tomorrow.”
“But he’s going to be okay.” I wasn’t asking it, I was demanding it.
“He’s stable,” Mom said, but I wasn’t convinced. “His kidneys aren’t working the way that they should, but the medication is helping.” She smiled, but it was forced. Behind her eyes was anxiety and fear that we were all feeling in the pit of our stomachs. Mom looked at me with distant eyes. “I’m sorry now that I told you to come here. You might as well head back home and get some sleep.”
“Why did you tell us to come here?” Bridget stepped further into the small room and folded her arms tightly around her ribs. “I mean, why are you sorry that you asked us to come? What changed?” Bridget’s accusatory tone made my hair stand on end. I came here expecting the worst, but she seemed surprised, somehow, that the situation could be this bad. I realized then how much worse my dad had gotten over the past three months since she’d left for college. I saw him every day. I watched him grow weaker and more pale every morning that we woke up. I think subconsciously I was accepting what was happening. Bridget didn’t have that luxury.
“Well, he’s stable now.” Mom seemed to be in a daze as she spoke. She was watching Dad tenderly as though he were her little boy. “When I called you…” her words trailed off as her eyes scanned my dad’s bruises and withered skin. She looked up at me still sitting on the opposite side of the bed. “When I called you, we weren’t sure. I wanted you to be able to see him.”
“One last time.” I completed the sentence I knew she meant to say.
Tears began forming in her eyes as she shook her head. “No,” she spoke defiantly. “Your father is too strong for that.” She looked back at Dad and spoke with fierceness in her voice, “You’re too strong for that. You won’t leave me here, will you?”
My dad gently rubbed her hand that was gripping the bar lining his bed. “I’ll always be here, honey. Always.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, but I knew what my dad meant. He meant that even if he did die, he would be here in his heart or her heart or however it worked. His were words of comfort and hope but not of concrete fact. They weren’t something you could hold on to and trust and understand. They weren’t words that made you sleep better at night. They were just words that a husband tells his wife when she’s begging him not to die, and he knows that he has no choice on the matter. I knew my mom knew that; she was too clever not to, but she held onto those words the same way she would hold on to a lifejacket in the middle of a dark, stormy ocean. The only problem was that her life jacket couldn’t save Dad from drowning.
Chapter 11
“Do you think mom will remarry?” Bridget picked a marshmallow out of her hot chocolate and licked the chocolate off her finger, then she added, “I mean she’d have to, right?”
If she would have asked the question any other time, I would have been shocked. I would have ordered her to not talk like that, to not even imagine life without Dad. But tonight was different. Since Mom was staying overnight at the hospital with Dad, Bridget and I had decided to sleep in the living room in sleeping bags in front of the fireplace like we were camping. She had set up the beds, and I had made the hot chocolate. We had been laying there on our stomachs, watching the fire popping and talking for over two hours. It felt strange at first, to be talking and almost bonding with Bridget. In my entire life, we had never said more to each other than what was absolutely necessary. But as time went on, I forgot about our usual relationship, and we fell into a comfortable pace. It had been a deep conversation about what life would be like if or when Dad died. We talked about what it must be like for him and for Mom and what it would be like for us over the next few years. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime conversations that consisted of topics much too deep, much too difficult to be discussed in any other setting. So when Bridget asked the question, it seemed appropriate to sigh and say, “I guess so. I wouldn’t want her to be lonely for the rest of her life. It’s a strange thought though—Mom with some other guy.”
“It would change things for us, that’s for sure.”
I looked at the side of her face for an explanation.
“I mean, if Mom never marries again, one of us is going to have to stick around Franklin for the rest of our lives to keep her company. We can’t just leave her here all alone.”
“Why are you trying so hard to get away from this place?” I asked. I just couldn’t see why she hated it so badly. I loved it here. It was beautiful and fresh. It was where my home was and my family and my entire world. Even if Mom did get married again, I would never want to leave Franklin if I didn’t have to.
“I’d probably like it here too if I had a Jess living across the street.” She took a sip from her mug.
I never told Bridget about Jess and me—not about my feelings for him, the kiss, or the breakup. For all she should know he was just a friend. “Jess doesn’t have anything to do with it. Franklin is just a great place to live.”
“Mmhmm,” she said before swallowing. “I’m sure you’ve never even noticed how good-looking and smart and perfect he is.” She was watching me now with a sincere smile and curious eyes completely oblivious to the aching in my heart. “Come on, Gemma,” she urged when I stared silently at the fire. “He’s two years younger than me, but even I can’t
help notice how amazing he is.”
The fire felt hot on my face, but I couldn’t force myself to look away. “Things with Jess aren’t like they used to be.”
She nodded her head slowly. “I sensed a little friction in the car tonight. What happened?”
I took in a deep breath. Thinking about the past few months was exhausting. So much had changed so fast. To talk about it again just drove the knife further into my chest. “Well, for starters, we kissed last summer.”
Bridget’s eyes widened. “You and Jess kissed?”
“Don’t act so surprised,” I said smugly.
Bridget wiped at her mouth and set her mug on the carpet. “I’m not surprised. I always thought you two would get together someday, but I never thought it would happen so soon.”
“Yeah well, I wish it never would have happened at all.”
“Really?” Bridget seemed to be picturing it in her mind. “What was so terrible about it? I can’t imagine Jess being a bad kisser.”
“The kiss wasn’t the problem. The kiss was perfect.” I felt my mind wandering toward the memory of it all. How had something so wonderful turned into something so horrible? “The problem came three months later…when he dumped me.”
I expected Bridget to burst into laughter. Surely she would find pleasure in hearing about the rejection I had felt. But she didn’t laugh at all. She didn’t even smile. She watched me quietly with sad eyes. “Jess would never do that,” she finally whispered. “You must have misunderstood him.”
I shook my head. “I tried telling myself that too. It’s been almost three months since he broke up with me. There’s not a whole lot you can misunderstand about that.” Bridget rested her chin on her folded arms and stared into the popping logs. It was strange for me to be having a conversation with her this long without any sarcastic or derogatory comments. There was something different about her, about us. “It doesn’t matter though,” I added. “I still have two months of being grounded so the only people I have any sort of relationship with are Mom and Dad.”
Bridget twisted her mug in her hands. “I’m not going back to Yale next semester.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m going to go back on Monday for the last couple weeks of classes and finals and then I’m moving home.”
“What about school? What about all that stuff you said to Jess about getting out of Franklin?”
“I’m still going to be a student at Yale. I can do some of my course work online for a while, and if I need to, I think can take a leave of absence, I’m not really sure. It’s all pretty new, I just decided today.” She breathed deeply, and I could tell it hadn’t been an easy decision for her. “I want to be home while Dad is still alive. I want to spend as much time with him as I can. I can’t believe how sick he looks. It just doesn’t feel right to be away right now.” She took one more deep breath before turning her head toward me, her cheek now rested on the back of her hands. “I’m sorry that I’ve been a horrible big sister.”
There was no denying that we hadn’t had the best sisterly relationship. We had spent more time ignoring each other over the past ten years than going shopping together or any of those other girly things that some sisters did. “It’s okay,” I replied. “I haven’t been the best little sister either.”
Bridget frowned. “Did you know that before you were born, all I wanted in the world was a baby sister? For the first couple years after you were born, I hauled you around like you were my Cabbage Patch doll.” Bridget shrugged her shoulder and stared into the fire for an answer. “But then you grew up. And you stopped doing everything I wanted you to do. It wasn’t much fun having a doll with an opinion of her own. I still remember the day you learned to say no.” She shook her head and laughed sadly. “I hated that word.”
“And you hated me.”
“No, I never hated you. I just didn’t get you. I didn’t know how to be a big sister if I couldn’t order you around. I guess I just distanced myself from you. I didn’t know what else to do. You kind of intimidated me.”
I watched Bridget silently and full of awe at what she was saying. All these years, all this time, I thought she despised me and wished I was never born. But in the end, it was all just a misunderstanding. The logs in the fireplace were still popping, but the light was beginning to dim, and my eyelids were growing heavy. Bridget’s were already lightly closed, and I thought she might be asleep until she added one more thing. “I always thought Mom and Dad liked you best.” She smiled sadly. “I guess it’s kind of hard to like the person that puts you in second place.”
“I’m sorry, but we’re not taking any volunteers.”
I looked around me at a dozen or so elderly people lining the walls of the assisted living center. They looked hopeless, drained of life, and withered like brown leaves in the fall. “But I’ll work for free. How can you not be taking someone who will work for free?”
The women at reception, whose badge indicated that her name was Mary (though I definitely would have guessed Mildred or Glenn Close) looked at me beneath her stern eyebrows and slightly balding head, “I run a very tight system here at Brookwood Assisted Living, and I don’t have time to be finding things for you to do.”
“I could just read to the people. Books. About Christmas. Or maybe the Bible or the Quran if that’s what they’d like. Or we could just sit and talk. I’ll be their friend. You won’t even know I’m here.” I couldn’t exactly put into words the reason I wanted to do my community service in that place full of old, dying people. But there was something about facing death, facing the reality of it head on that made everything with my dad feel slightly less painful. Besides that, I was desperate. It had been two months since I told Trace I’d do community service, and I knew if I didn’t get it in while I was still grounded it would probably never happen.
Mary peered over my head at the line of residents sitting hunched over in their wheel chairs. They looked like old, abandoned string puppets left limp in a dusty storage closet. Mary took in a deep breath and shifted all two hundred pounds of herself to the other hip. “All right, you can read to them. But only if they want you to, and you better not get in the way of my staff.” She bent over and reached into a file drawer, then flopped a packet of papers in front of me. “You need to fill these out in order to fraternize with the residents.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You won’t be sorry.”
I spent the next forty-five minutes filling out eight pages of paperwork, answering questions about everything from my family history to the number of runny noses I’d had; then I made my way around the halls of the center, trying to get acquainted with the people who lived there. Most of them were too out of it to even notice that I was there, a few of them thought I was their daughter or granddaughter or wife, and the rest smiled and watched me with bright, wondering eyes that said, “I remember when I was your age. That was such a long time ago.”
I didn’t have any books or magazines with me, and I couldn’t find any around the center so I sat and talked for a while with anyone who seemed mildly interested or coherent enough to follow a conversation. Just when I was about to leave, I made eye contact with an elderly man in a red Christmas sweater and brown moccasin slippers.
“Hi,” I said, watching him carefully. I stepped toward him and reached out my hand, “I’m Gemma. I’m a new volunteer here.”
The man smiled back and took my hand in his. His teeth were straight and white and big. Really big. They had to be fake. “I’m Tag.”
I leaned closer. “Excuse me? Did you say Tag?”
His belly jiggled softly with a chuckle. “Yes, like the game. But it’s only a nickname. And who did you say you are?”
“I’m Gemma.”
“Ah, yes, a very appropriate name for these parts. I used to mine for gems over in Cowee Mountain. ‘Course that was years ago. Ba
ck then we had to bring our own tools. They make it too easy these days. “How old are you, Gemma?”
“Sixteen.”
Tag whistled. “I met the love of my life when I was sixteen years old.”
I sat down on a chair next to Tag, relieved to know I wouldn’t have to keep up this conversation like so many of the others I’d had that afternoon. “What was her name?”
“Angelina Fae Montrose.” His eyes sparkled as he stared off into the distance at her memory. “Everyone called her Fae though. And everyone loved her.”
“And she loved you?”
“Kind of surprising isn’t it?” Tag chuckled louder this time. “Even more surprising that she married me and bore all five of our children.”
I settled into my chair. “She’s your wife?”
Tag nodded. “She passed away last summer, but yes, she is my wife.”
“I’m sorry. You must miss her.”
“I couldn’t take care of myself without her. My kids came to visit on Thanksgiving and found me sleeping with the vacuum still running. I knew she was amazing, but I never realized how much I needed her.”
“Do your kids live nearby?”
“Yes, most of them. But I have a son in Florida and another one up in New York.”
“They must miss you.”
“Eh.” Tag stuck out his bottom lip and shrugged. “They call once a week on Sunday. They’re good boys like that.”
“My dad has cancer,” I offered, and I wasn’t sure why.
Tag watched me carefully. “Doctors sure know a lot about fixing cancer these days. Thirty years ago, it would have been a death sentence. But not anymore.”
“Yeah,” I said to my lap. “He’s doing okay with it all, I guess.”
“So what are you studying in school?”
“Oh, um. Everything I guess. My favorite class right now is photography.”
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