by Lisa Duffy
She gets as far as the sidewalk before she realizes she doesn’t know where to go. She’s not ready to see Agnes. They’ve managed to avoid each other for weeks now. Anger boils up when she thinks of the picture Agnes sent to the newspaper.
No, she’s not ready to forgive. Perhaps she never will be.
It’s sort of freeing, this thought. As though a weight has lifted off her. This past year, she’s agonized over her marriage. Pete and the secretary always in the back of her mind. And Agnes, with her judgment.
Who knew she could simply stop? Stop agonizing. Stop worrying. Stop all of it!
She hears her name and looks up.
Joe is standing in his garden, waving her over. She crosses the street, walks onto his lawn, and joins him in the side yard.
“Look,” he says, pointing to the ground. “They’re ready.”
“What are?” she asks, scanning the garden. “You know I don’t have a green thumb.”
“Beets. I planted them for you.”
“For me?”
He nods. “You like them, right?”
“Well, yeah. I like them a lot. That was nice of you.”
“You said they were your favorite. Right after I said I can’t stand them. So, I figured, maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks. Maybe I just haven’t given them a fair shot.”
She tilts her head at him, her eyes suddenly wet. You’re a remarkably kind person is what she wants to tell him.
“No time like the present,” she says instead.
* * *
They’re sitting at the outdoor table on Joe’s patio under a large umbrella.
Maggie has prepared the beets the way she likes them. Roasted, with a drizzle of olive oil. Salt and pepper. Joe also had a block of hard cheese in his refrigerator, and she shaved some off and added it to the bowl with some lettuce from the garden. She topped it off with a light dressing and chunks of a baguette she found on the counter.
She watches him take a bite and chew. He doesn’t wince, and she considers this a success.
“Delicious?” she asks.
“How about not bad? Delicious I save for things that can be delivered to my door. Chinese. Pizza. Subs.”
“Come on. You’ve got a pretty well-stocked kitchen for a single guy. And this garden is impressive.”
“Growing I can do. It’s the cooking that’s out of my league. Suzy did all of that. After she passed, I stuck to grilling and takeout. I end up giving most of this stuff away.” He gestures to the garden. “It’s just a hobby.”
Maggie was never close to Suzy, but she remembers her well. A quiet, dark-haired woman who worked part-time in the school library, always quick with a smile. She seemed to be healthy one minute and gone the next.
Joe doesn’t talk about her very often, other than a passing remark. His son, David, had died six months after Suzy passed, and Maggie remembers sitting with him after the services. She hadn’t known what to say, so she was making small talk about something when he looked over at her.
“It’s probably awful that I’m relieved that if this was going to happen, that it did now,” he said.
She nodded slowly, even though she had no idea what he was talking about.
“It would have killed Suzy. I’m glad she went first. She had enough pain. She didn’t need this on top of it.”
He said it with such care that it had stuck with her.
“You must miss her,” she says now. “David too.”
She doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but it feels rude not to acknowledge her death now that he’s brought it up.
If he’s uncomfortable, he doesn’t show it. He just nods, as though missing them is a fact of his life.
“The first year was awful. Then little by little, it was less raw. I used to go to a group,” he offers. “Bunch of guys who lost someone. A kid or a wife. That helped for a while, and then it just got old. Or I stopped feeling so awful. Not sure which.”
“Maybe both.” She pauses. “I started seeing a therapist too.” She doesn’t know why this pops out. But it does. She spears a beet with her fork, pops it in her mouth, and chews.
“Oh?”
“I’m not really through the feeling-awful part though.”
He looks at her, sits back in his chair, and waits. She knows that he knows something is going on. Pete hasn’t been parked in the driveway all week. Hadn’t been home until just last night.
“You know, Suzy and I had a good marriage. Doesn’t mean we didn’t fight. Marriage is—”
“Over. Mine is, at least. My marriage is over.” She sits up straighter, breathes.
This is the first time she’s said it out loud.
“Don’t say that. You and Pete will work—”
“Joe. Look at me. Are you my friend?”
His eyes go wide. “Of course I’m your friend.”
“I know you like Pete. But if I’m going to sit here as your friend and talk about my marriage—how I want to leave—then I need to know—” She stops. She doesn’t even know what she’s trying to say.
“You want me to pick a side,” Joe says after a moment.
“Yes.” She meets his eyes.
He smiles, winks at her. “I don’t grow beets for just anyone, you know.”
32
The girls have fun camping in the backyard, but Leo can barely walk when an old back injury from his days playing basketball flares up. Most likely because he’d slept on the hard ground, the air mattress underneath him flat when he woke up in the middle of the night from a dull pain radiating from his tailbone to his shoulders.
It’s the last thing he needs right now, with Xavier coming to the island for the Labor Day weekend. He’d dropped Sky at Frankie’s house earlier in the day, planning to go to the grocery store, the liquor store, the butcher, and the fish shop all before noon.
But it’s after three in the afternoon, and he’s just now pulling in the driveway, his back throbbing, as though someone has taken a sledgehammer to his spine. Getting out of the car seems daunting—he’s already done it a handful of times with all his errands, and each time was progressively worse.
He rests his head against the steering wheel, trying to summon the courage to get out of the car and unload the grocery bags and bottles of wine piled in the trunk. He wants this weekend to be perfect.
He hasn’t spoken to Xavier since the night of the cookout, when he’d called after everyone had left.
“How’d it go?” Xavier asked. “Did you get the casual Don’t be freaked out your estranged grandmother is here vibe you were going for?”
“I did, wiseass. But that’s because Lillian decided to show up with a dog. And not just any dog. The type that wears a barrel around its neck. Like some dog model in a commercial about the Swiss Alps. Such an obvious bribe. I’m surprised she didn’t show up with a truckload of presents. Why not buy Sky’s affection!”
Xavier was quiet. “You sound nuts,” he said finally.
“I sound nuts? She didn’t even ask if she could bring it!”
“How gauche. A dog at a backyard cookout. The nerve.”
“All right. Knock it off. You get my point.”
“What I get is that you have a grandmother who is offering to be involved. Why are you so against this? Don’t you think you should at least consider that Sky might be better off with her? She’s her grandmother!”
“A grandmother who Sky doesn’t even know—”
“Who she can get to know!”
Leo sighed into the phone. “I don’t want to argue. Let’s talk about something else.”
They stayed on the phone another five minutes or so. But they never got back on track. And they hung up annoyed with each other.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting with the AC blowing cold air at him when there’s a knock on the window. He opens his eyes to see Joe and Maggie standing outside the car, looking at him with concerned expressions.
He turns off the engine and opens the door. The
y shuffle back when he swings his legs out and tries to stand, one arm gripping the steering wheel and the other pressed to his back, praying it doesn’t give out.
“I thought it was a strange place to take a nap. Guess you were right,” Joe says to Maggie, who puts her hand on Leo’s arm.
“I knew something was wrong. We were having lunch outside and saw you pull in, and then you just sat here.” She peers around to where his hand is jammed against his lower back, a frightened look on her face, as though she isn’t sure what she might find.
“It’s fine—just a strain. I let the girls talk me into camping in the backyard and I’m paying for it.” He takes a small step, pain exploding up his spine and into his head. He lets out a string of curses and grabs the door again.
“Definitely seems fine,” Joe says. “You need to get yourself to the emergency room before you do more damage and end up in bed for weeks. I say this from personal experience.”
“I have to get Xavier at the ferry. There’s groceries to unload. And wine to chill. A dinner to cook—” He slumps back against the seat, lowering himself as gently as he can. His face is damp with sweat. He feels disoriented, nauseous.
When he looks up again, Joe has the trunk open, his arms loaded with bags.
“I’m taking you to the hospital,” Maggie declares, in the teacher voice he remembers from when he was a child in her class.
“Stay right here,” she tells him, and walks down the driveaway.
“I’m fine, really,” he calls after her.
Joe chuckles from behind the car. “We can tell. Sit tight. I’ll get this stuff put away.”
He wants to argue, but he’s bent over, hands on his knees, unable to straighten. A minute later, Maggie pulls up to where he’s standing. She gets out from behind the wheel, walks to where he is hunched over, and opens the back door of her car.
“How do you want to do this?” she asks. “Maybe just shuffle over and put a knee in, and just… lie down.”
The thought of moving makes him tense up. But Xavier will be at the dock in fifteen minutes. He doesn’t have time for this.
“Maybe it’s just a spasm,” he offers. “I could take something. See if it goes away.”
He tries to straighten. A stabbing pain rips through him. He winces and Maggie folds her arms across her body.
“Ready?” she asks, and he nods, defeated.
Somehow, he manages to slide headfirst into the car, preparing for the pain to worsen with the movement, but when he’s on the seat, curled with his knees to his chest, it somehow soothes the ache.
He feels ridiculous, childlike, but the relief is so overwhelming, he just closes his eyes and breathes.
“I’d drop you off and get Xavier, but we’re probably better off getting him first and then going to the hospital,” Maggie says when she’s back in the car. She reverses and pulls onto the street, the slight shift making his breath catch.
“Or not,” she says, glancing in the mirror. “Let’s take you first. I’ll call Xavier and ask him to wait.”
“No! The last thing he said to me was ‘Don’t make me do these cobblestones on crutches!’ ”
Leo thinks about the surf-and-turf dinner he was going to make. The hours he and Xavier would have had stretching out in front of them. Alone. Sky not due back from camping until the end of Labor Day weekend. Three whole nights to talk. Go to bed. Make love. Wake up and do it all over again.
And now he’s ruined it.
“Okay, here’s the plan. I’m going to pull in one of the handicapped spaces. Leave the car running and find Xavier. Then we’ll go to the emergency room. I’m sure Xavier will want to stay with you. Then I’ll follow Joe over with your car.”
“He’s mad at me already. He might take one look at this mess and get on the next ferry home.”
Maggie adjusts the mirror, straightening in the seat to meet his eyes with the way he’s lying down. “Well, that will be his loss,” she says gently. “You know, Leo, a lot of men would have simply walked away. Given someone else the job of raising her.”
“Yeah, well. I’m stubborn. If there’s a job I can do poorly, I’ll at least make sure I screw it up to the end.”
“Stop it. I’ve been working with kids Sky’s age for the last thirty years. Through awful situations. A parent dying. Or a sibling. You can tell when these kids have nobody to talk to—no one to help them.” She holds his gaze in the mirror. “She’s happy with you, Leo. I see it. Anyone who knows her can see it.”
“Xavier thinks I should let Lillian raise her.”
“I think the only one who gets a say in who raises Sky is Sky. Have you asked her what she wants?”
He shakes his head. What if she got to know Lillian and said yes to living with her? What then? The thought of it makes his chest tight.
Maggie pulls into the space, puts the hazards on, and scans the crowded pier. “Hold tight,” she says. “I’m off to get invalid number two.”
He closes his eyes again. He’d give anything to sit up so he doesn’t look so pathetic, but it’s not an option.
Minutes later, there’s a light tapping noise outside of the car. He opens one eye to see raindrops dot the windshield, then the sky opens, and a torrent of rain slams down around him.
He pushes up on an elbow, trying to see out the window, when the car doors open and Maggie and Xavier pile in. Xavier wrestles his crutches into the car, and frantically slams the door, but his backpack is wedged in between. When he finally shoves it to his feet and manages to click the door shut, he’s drenched. He turns, a wild look on his face.
“What is wrong with this place? It was just eighty and sunny!”
Maggie is running her hands through her wet hair in the driver’s seat. “They knew the rain was coming. But it was supposed to be later tonight.”
The crutches have landed awkwardly between the seats, now partially blocking his view of Xavier. Which is fine because he’s not at all sure he wants to see Xavier’s expression.
He’s come all this way on crutches because Leo asked him to—and now Leo will spend the weekend in a hospital bed, hopped up on meds. This happened once before, and it was three days before he could sit up straight.
His disappointment is a crushing weight, making it difficult to breathe.
Xavier shifts the crutches and turns in his seat. Leo expects to see him frowning down at him. Instead, Xavier reaches out and takes Leo’s hand. “Squeeze my hand if we hit a bump,” he says while Maggie reverses out of the space.
It’s the first time they’ve touched in what feels like an eternity. Leo holds on as tight as he can.
Afraid to let go.
* * *
They spend the night in a private room in the hospital. Lucky for Leo, it was a slow afternoon in the ER, the holiday just kicking off. The nurses assured him it was only temporary. That by the morning, potential disasters still on the distant horizon would have struck and beds would be full and he’d most likely be transferred to a smaller, shared room.
But when he opens his eyes for the first time, it’s already midmorning and he’s still in his corner room with a private bathroom and a distant view of the water.
Or so Leo is told.
He hasn’t moved from being flat on his back since he arrived. Xavier slept in the recliner chair and positioned it next to him so they could at least see each other. Talking was more difficult because of the drugs. He slipped in and out of consciousness while Xavier watched television and ate some sort of concoction from the cafeteria.
Then he simply fell into a deep sleep, and the night passed in a blink.
Now, Xavier is sipping a cup of coffee, looking as though he didn’t sleep at all. Leo shifts slightly, feels a tightening in his back but not the sharp stabs he felt last night.
“I’m going to try to sit up a little,” he announces.
Xavier puts his coffee on the side table, digs the hospital bed remote from under the blankets. “Are you sure? Maybe we should wait fo
r the nurse.”
“No—go ahead. Just slow though.”
“I don’t think it has speeds. It’s up or down.”
“Don’t be a wiseass. Just do a little at a time. You know what I mean.”
“Ready?”
He nods, and the bed rises slightly. He feels a twinge, but it passes.
“More,” he says, and Xavier presses the button again.
Leo raises his head when he’s at a slight incline, just enough that he can actually see the room.
“Good?” Xavier asks.
Leo waits for his back to complain, but all he feels is a small ache. “Better. Definitely better.”
“Joanie said to let her know when you wanted breakfast.”
“Joanie?”
“The day nurse. Barb’s shift ended while you were sleeping. She said to tell you that your husband is wickedly handsome.”
“Good old Barb.” Leo shifts, winces when his back spasms. He doesn’t remember who Barb is. “Such a joker,” he chokes out.
Xavier’s smile fades. “Maybe you should lie back down again.”
Leo nods, presses his eyes shut. He listens to the noise while Xavier presses the remote, and then he’s lying flat again.
“Well that was fun for a minute.” He sighs, gritting his teeth through the pain. When the spasm passes, he opens his eyes, but Xavier is gone.
A minute later, he returns, a young girl in blue scrubs by his side. She looks as though she’s in high school, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail off her freckled face.
“Joanie,” Xavier says, pointing to the girl. “She’s just recently received her driver’s license.”
“He knows I’m twenty-six.” Joanie grins, and rolls her eyes. “Is he always this fresh?”
“Yes. But some might use a different word.”
Joanie checks the monitor above his bed. “Well, he took good care of you last night. Barb said she was going to offer him a job.”
“You guys can’t afford me,” Xavier jokes.
“Feel free to kick him out. You have my permission.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Xavier says. “It’s the drugs talking.”