He’s talking about the nursery—the secret shrine in the third bedroom. He’ll want to box it up and put it in the storage unit in the basement of the building and all my hope will be in the dark and damp of that forgotten nowhere where people dump old grills and camping equipment and bicycles with flat tires and boxes of things from their childhood that they can’t throw away but don’t really need and when the baby finally gets here, I’ll have to explain to people that the nursery is in the basement.
How will you hear him crying way down there? they will ask.
“I don’t know if I can either,” I say. “I don’t know how.”
“Do you want us back?” Jack asks.
“I want Cassie back,” I say, honestly.
“Is this about Elliot?” Jack says.
“Oliver,” I correct him. “And no, it isn’t. He and I aren’t together. I don’t know that we ever were, really. Not like that. I know I’m not going to have another baby. I know I neglected Cassie, and I ran you off. I know all the things are my fault. I just don’t know that I can forgive you. I don’t know that you can forgive me.”
“Maybe not,” Jack says and lowers his head.
“I have to go,” I say. “Good-bye, Jack.”
Desperate to get out of the restaurant, I hurry past the people waiting in the foyer and fling myself out into crisp night air. The heat from the restaurant gives way to the chill of early November.
I remember Lola and me as teenagers in the grocery store, staring at the ice cream. Lola couldn’t remember what any of it tasted like.
What does mint taste like with chocolate? What is fudge? Black cherry? Toffee?
She opened up the cooler and cold air fell out as she reached in and picked a pint.
You don’t like cherries.
I put it back and handed her a different pint.
This is your favorite one—cookie dough. She took the container and looked at it, then back at me, as if waiting for instructions. You always save two little balls of dough for the very end. You pick around them and save them for last.
She had no idea if what I said was true. This wasn’t forgetting Aunt Rose’s name or the words to the birthday song. It wasn’t about remembering the past. It was about living in the present and knowing what mint chocolate chip ice cream tasted like.
I remember Mom found us by the ice cream coolers.
Everything ok?
She picked cookie dough. Just like always.
Lola looked scared.
Everything’s fine, I said to her. Everything is fine.
Are you sure? the genie I had hoped for says to me, straightening out his cummerbund and righting his hat.
I don’t know.
“Nina,” I hear Jack calling me, and I turn around to meet his frightened eyes. He’s out of breath like he’s been running, even though we’re just outside the restaurant door. “Cassie. She’s hurt.”
◆ ◆ ◆
A doctor relays all the details of the accident as told to him by the father of Cassie’s “boyfriend.”
“A simple case of running around the pool,” he says as if our daughter isn’t lying there with all manner of tubes and wires protruding from her, with monitors timing the rhythm of her heart, her breath.
I try to piece together the story. Apparently, Cassie was running around at the edge of the pool playing tag with this boy, Zach, and she slipped. Her feet came out from under her, and she fell directly onto the back of her head. She slipped off the pool deck and under the water. It took a few moments for Zach to drag her out.
I hear it, but it doesn’t seem real. I feel like I’m underneath the water, drowning.
“All her organs are functioning,” the doctor is saying, still talking at a fast clip as if he thinks there is any way I could be keeping up with this. “Watching for brain swelling . . .”
I’m sinking, sinking down to the bottom of the pool with Cassie.
“. . . will be critical. We’ll have to see if there is any lasting damage.”
I look up from beneath the water and see fireworks.
Not again. Please, not again.
Jack puts his arm around me, and I don’t shrug it off. I’m too stunned to cling to him, to fall to my knees, to cry out, or any other dramatic thing I’ve seen in the movies. I just stand there, tears burning silent trails down my face, looking at Cassie lying still and quiet except for the beeping of the monitors which are all I have that tells me she’s still in there somewhere.
Jack has my phone and calls Mom and Lola and Ray. He asks me if I want to talk to them, but I shake my head. So long as I don’t have to speak about it, this might not actually be happening.
While Jack stands by the window talking on the phone, nurses and doctors and people whose purpose I’m unsure of come and go on an invisible tide. I sit, holding Cassie’s hand, and say nothing to anyone. I’m reminded of watching the waves at the beach. Seeing them roll up in sets. Sudden and furious, one on top of the other and then nothing—while another set builds in the far-off distance, waiting its turn to reach the shore.
There’s a frenzy when the waves wash in, all bustle and white water and chatter like the noise of seagulls. Then silence for long stretches of time as the next sets builds.
“Your mother and Lola are on their way,” Jack says from somewhere behind me on the dunes. “I left Ray a message. I’m sure he’ll come too.”
Neither of us has compared this to Lola’s accident, but Jack’s eyes tells me what he fears. He comes around to the other side of the bed to hold Cassie’s needle-punctured hand.
“You don’t have to be here when they arrive.” He knows that I can’t handle someone else’s initial shock, that I can’t relay the story without breaking apart against it. “I can let them know what’s going on. Why don’t you take a break?”
I nod and let go of Cassie’s hand, still feeling the cool of her skin against the heat of mine. Jack hands me my phone and says he will call when it’s ok to come back or if something changes.
I leave the ICU and wander the halls of the hospital until I see a sign directing me to the chapel. I take out my phone and make a call.
I hear the whoosh of the chapel door opening behind me. I don’t need to turn around to know that it’s Oliver. An aura of peace surrounds him like the sweet incense from the censers in the basilica. I stand up and step into the aisle. He doesn’t stop when he reaches me; he just folds me into a hug. I rest in his arms for a moment and then pull myself free.
“Thank you for wearing jeans,” I say in greeting.
“I don’t often go out in public without pants,” Oliver says. “Sometimes, but not often.”
He smiles at me, and I know he knows what I mean.
He motions to the pew, and we sit down. It’s nice to be close to him again. I thought it would be awkward, but it’s just easy.
“Tell me what’s happening,” he says, his voice soft and soothing. He holds my hand between both of his. He doesn’t speak; he just listens.
“I let Cassie go to the Teen Swim without me, and she slipped on the pool deck and hit her head. She fell into the water and took fluid into her lungs.” I try to say it very clinically so that emotion doesn’t find me. “They’re worried about the fluid, but they’re more worried about the head trauma. She hit really hard.”
Oliver nods at me and squeezes my hand. Go on, he says with his eyes.
“I wasn’t there,” I say, emotion finding me anyway. My heart is beating so hard it chokes my breath, making my words come out like strangled whispers. “I wasn’t there. I let her go on her own, and I went into town to have dinner with Jack. We were talking about patching things up, maybe. I don’t know—I think we were just fighting again.”
“About what?” Oliver asks, coaxing the confession out of me.
“About everything that wen
t wrong.” I sigh heavily as the truth makes its way to the surface. “A while ago, I lost a baby in a late-term miscarriage. Nineteen weeks. A boy. I never got over it. I forgot the family I already had and set out to have another baby like some crazy person on a mission. I drove Jack away, and I made Cassie feel like she wasn’t the sun around which I orbited. She was, they were—both of them—but I got lost in space, I guess.”
I chuckle at my bad analogy to keep from crying, but my voice is shaking so I stop talking.
Oliver presses his hands tighter around mine. “I know telling you that this accident isn’t your fault doesn’t help you in this moment, that your being there would not have stopped it, but guilt and worry are evil cousins. For now, we focus on Cassie getting better.”
“Ok,” I say, nodding my head pitifully.
“Do you want to do something you and I have never done together?”
I look up at him and see a peace in his eyes that stills me. “What’s that?” I ask, apprehensively.
“Pray,” he says.
Yes, please. My throat tightens, and I want to answer him, but I can’t speak. He doesn’t need my words though. He leans over and runs his thumb over my cheek where tears have slipped from my eyes.
He prays. His voice falls across his lips in a low timbre so soothing it slows my heart and breath, and I am calm.
When he is finished, he pats my hand, and I look up at him.
“Can I confess something to you?” I ask.
“I’m not technically able to receive confession,” Oliver says and winks. “But we are always able to confess ourselves to each other.”
“Ray, Lola, and I tried to contact my father with a Magic 8-Ball on Halloween,” I say quickly and sigh out the guilt of it.
Oliver chuckles and then covers his mouth. “I’m going to have to work on my reactions, aren’t I? Did you get ahold of him?”
I shake my head.
“You know what you need?” Oliver pulls something from his back pocket. “It’s not as spectral as a Magic 8-Ball, but it’s a whole lot more effective. And it fits into your pocket.”
In his hands, he holds a small, black Bible. It looks like the little book I saw him buy at the bookstore. Already it’s worn from reading.
“It’s just the New Testament,” he says and cocks his head a bit. “Well, not ‘just,’” he clarifies. “You should read the rest of it, too, but it’s not so bad to start this particular book further in.”
He hands it to me. I look at him, suspiciously, as if he’s handing me a snake—but I guess that’s the other guy.
Oliver nods at me to go ahead and take it. “You called me, after all. I don’t believe in coincidences, but I do believe in divine intervention. There’s a reason we met, Nina. Perhaps many. And God knows what He’s doing.”
“But this looks like yours,” I say. “I don’t want to take your Bible.”
“I’ll get another one. And with any luck, I’ll give that one away too. I’m sort of like an encyclopedia salesman, but I’ve just got the one book and it’s free.”
“Good thing you don’t work on commission.”
“There she is,” he says and winks at me again.
I smile—it hurts, but it’s real underneath the strain.
“Is Jack here?” Oliver asks, and I nod. “You should sit with him. He needs you.”
I know Oliver is right. Jack is a wreck even though he’s putting on a brave face for me. This is our chance to come together for each other like we should have after we lost the baby. This is my chance to accept the comfort and support from Jack that I couldn’t let myself accept before.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Always,” Oliver says. “Keep me posted. Please.”
“I will. I’m going to rest here a minute.”
“Would you like me to stay?”
“I could use a moment alone,” I say, and when he raises his eyebrow I add, “Yeah, I know, I’m not alone in here.”
We stand up, and I start to hug him and then hesitate, unsure if I’m allowed to touch him really. He laughs that amazing and magical laugh of his and opens his arms to me. We embrace tightly, and he whispers into my ear words of peace and love. I don’t know that I hear them all, my mind as addled as it is, but I feel them and that’s all that matters.
A few minutes later, I round the corner from the chapel and run into Jack.
“What’s happened?” I say frantically.
“Was that him?” he says, pointing down the hallway—jabbing his finger angrily.
“Who?”
“Oliver,” Jack spits out. “Did you call that guy to come here?”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” I say and try to push past Jack. I get around him, but he grabs my wrist and pulls me back around to face him.
“Why? I’m right here, Nina. I’m right here at the hospital, going through all this with you, talking to the doctors and your family and being just as scared as you are and you go and call your boyfriend. I don’t get it.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” I yank free. “He’s a priest.”
Jack’s mouth is open to fling some comeback at me, but my words smack his cheek and he falls silent.
“What?” he asks.
“Never mind. Can we just go back to the room? Are Mom and Lola there? Did Ray get your message?”
We argue all the way down the hallway, but in the limbo of the elevator, we’re silent.
“Why weren’t Cassie and I enough for you?” Jack asks suddenly, pointedly, as the doors open onto the fifth floor. This is where we take another elevator to the ICU. It’s a secret transport that only goes to that floor, a portal into the waiting room of devastation.
“I can’t do this with you right now, Jack. It’s not a good time.”
I try to walk toward the second elevator, but he stops me again. Pulling me closer to him than I’ve been in a long time.
“It’s never a good time for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
And I do. I know exactly what he means. I just didn’t know he felt that way. I didn’t feel that way, but that’s not the point when you’re faced with the evidence of the message you sent. I know this is what he had wanted to ask earlier in the restaurant when steak and rosemary fingerling potatoes still made sense. I know this is what he wanted to ask every day for years.
“I just wanted more children,” I finally say. “Is that so awful?”
“Did you ever think the reason I didn’t want to try again after we lost him was that I didn’t want to get my heart broken?” Jack asks, holding us in place in front of the elevators—people coming and going around us. “Did you ever think I desperately needed to feel wanted for just a moment?”
I duck away from him and hurry through the hall to the other elevator, as if getting there first will accomplish anything. He catches up to me and steps between me and the silver door of doom.
“Don’t even try it,” I say, letting my fear bubble out as anger. “You wanted something easier than what we had. You wanted someone you didn’t feel obligated to when things got dark.”
“I wanted someone I didn’t care about,” Jack says, circling his hands tight on my wrists.
“That’s awful,” I say and yank free of him.
“You don’t understand. I didn’t want to care about her, and I didn’t want her to care about me. I didn’t want to get my heart broken. I didn’t want to fall in love. It wasn’t about that. It was about—”
“Sex.”
Jack lets go of my wrists and rubs his hands down the sides of his temples like he’s trying to explain a complicated concept to a toddler.
“No,” he says. “I wanted warmth and kissing and touching and connection. I wanted you—but you didn’t want me.”
The s
ecret door opens, and we enter. It takes us up half a flight and into the waiting room.
“That’s not a reason to sleep with someone else,” I whisper harshly as we pass by all the people waiting for the next round of visiting hours.
“It is for a lot of people,” Jack says. “But—”
I push him aside and tell the attendant at the door who we are and why we’re there. She calls someone on the other side of the ICU entrance door, and we’re buzzed through. The automated doors slowly start to open.
“But not me. I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” I say, scooting through as soon as there’s an opening big enough for me to pass through.
“I didn’t sleep with anyone else,” he says, clipping my heel, he’s so close behind me. “Just because I said I wanted someone else doesn’t mean there was someone else.”
“I saw you.” I stop in the hallway, rounding on him. “With that girl from your work. She was hanging all over you.”
“Yeah, she was,” Jack says, glancing at the nurses behind the desk, but continuing to talk. “We kissed; it was nice. I’m not going to lie to you. The affection and attention were pretty intoxicating if you want the ugly truth, and I almost let myself give into it. But I didn’t. I never did.”
Everything in me stops. My feet. My breath. My heart. I’m surrounded by glass doors and windows of the ICU, but I feel like I’ve run into a brick wall.
Jack stops too, perhaps assuming there’s something I want to say. There is, but I’m not sure where to start.
“I didn’t want the attention from her,” Jack says quietly. “I wanted it from you. I still do. I didn’t sleep with her or anyone else. I just wanted to be wanted. You just thought I did more, and I didn’t tell you different. I let you think what you wanted to think.”
This is not the first time Jack has said these words to me, but it is the first time they make me think of Oliver. We kissed, and it was nice. It was nice to be wanted. His affection and attention had been tempting, and I could have let myself give into it. But I didn’t. And even if Oliver had wanted to, I know that I wouldn’t have.
I finally believe the words Jack has told me over and over.
The Lemonade Year Page 29