“She’ll steadily decline. Coma, then death.”
“How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
He felt sick to his stomach. “It’s hard to believe.”
“We’ve hired a nurse who’ll come by every day, see to her medical needs. There won’t be many.”
“There’s a good hospital in Christiansted.”
Janice shook her head. “That’s not what April wants. And it wouldn’t make any difference anyway. Her father and I want her to have things exactly her way.”
A clap of thunder startled them both.
Brandon turned. “Can I … do you mind if I sort of hang around with her?”
Janice studied him. “Why?”
“Because I care about her. Because I want to say goodbye.” He thought about his mother. He’d never been able to tell her goodbye. “I know I’m not family. But I won’t get in your way, and it will mean everything to me if I can be with her until … well, you know.”
“Will your father mind?”
“I think he’ll understand.” Watching April’s mother, seeing her sadness, her helplessness, helped Brandon realize that his mother had abandoned both him and his father. April had told him his father hadn’t been to blame, but he’d fought with her about it. Brandon swept his fingers through his hair. “Please, let me be with her.”
“Her dying won’t be easy to watch.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“Yes … I suppose you do.”
They said nothing more, only sat and watched the storm hurl its fury at the garden outside.
16
Later that night, when Brandon told his father about April, Bill Benedict stared in disbelief. “Are you serious? Why, that’s terrible. Terrible! She’s so young and pretty and with her whole life in front of her. How can this be?”
Brandon had figured that the news would affect his father but was surprised by the intensity of his reaction. “I didn’t believe it at first, but I talked to her mother and there’s nothing more the doctors can do.”
“I know this girl is special to you, son. I’m sorry for your sake too.”
A surge of emotion clogged Brandon’s throat. He cleared it away. “Yes … she’s pretty special to me.”
His father began to pace the floor. “Her poor parents. They must be devastated. I liked the whole family. The way they came to your graduation and all—well, that was really nice of them. Hugh and I talked business for more than an hour. Listen, if there’s anything they need or want, you let me know. I’d like to help out.”
“You would?”
He stopped his restless pacing. “Of course I would. They’re strangers here. They have no one to support them.”
Until then, Brandon hadn’t thought about April’s parents’ position. He’d been concentrating on April, and on his own feelings. But his father was correct; the Lancasters didn’t have anyone in St. Croix to call on. “I’ll tell them you’d like to help.”
“I might have thought that April would have wanted to be in her home back in the States. Why did she want her last days to be in St. Croix?”
“She’s always loved it here,” Brandon said. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because choosing your place to die might be the only thing a person has control over. Sort of like Mom did, I guess.” The comment had simply spilled out of Brandon. He hadn’t meant anything mean or cruel by it. He was really discussing April, not his mother.
His father measured him carefully with a look. “She did pick her time to die, all right.”
“I didn’t mean—”
His father waved him off. “Forget it. No matter what you think, Brandon, I couldn’t have stopped your mother from doing what she did. She’d been clinically depressed for years, but she wouldn’t go get help for it.”
Clinically depressed? It was the first time he’d heard the term used in conjunction with his mother. “She was?”
“Surely you noticed that she was different, that she wasn’t like your friends’ mothers.” His father’s tone sounded acidic.
It was true. Sometimes she’d slept away entire days, then stayed up, wandering around the house all night. And of course, there’d been her drinking. “I—I always knew she wasn’t happy.”
“And you figured it was my fault, or perhaps even your fault.”
Brandon felt his face color but didn’t comment.
“It was her fault, son. She drank booze and popped pills to escape from real life. I couldn’t stop her. Don’t you think I tried?”
His father’s words echoed what Brandon had said to April when they’d talked about his mother’s suicide—that Brandon had tried to help her but couldn’t. “You were gone most of the time,” Brandon said stubbornly, feeling as if he needed to somehow defend his mother’s actions. “She was always alone. That depressed her.”
“We’ve been over that before.” His father’s voice grew cool. “She was the same whether I was around or not.”
Brandon sighed. He didn’t want to rehash the past or any of its old arguments. Tonight shouldn’t be about his mother’s death. Or his and his father’s problems. Tonight should be about April, the girl he loved, who was dying. “Look, Dad, I don’t want to argue with you. Right now, it means a lot to me that you want to help April and her parents through this bad time. I appreciate it, and they will too.”
His father offered a tentative smile. “Good. I don’t want to argue with you either. But I really meant what I said earlier. Have her family call me if they want anything. I know plenty of people in the islands, and they’d be happy to pitch in.”
“I don’t think I’d spread around too much information about them. I mean, they’re private people and they wouldn’t like a lot of attention. At least, not for April’s sake.”
“I know what you’re saying. Don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. Nobody wants a bunch of strangers in their faces no matter how well-intentioned their motives.”
In his father’s statement, Brandon recognized the man’s own philosophy—after the suicide, he’d shut everybody out, even Brandon. “I may want to quit my job to be with April,” Brandon said. “Not right away, but as she gets worse. So that means that I won’t be saving as much money for college and all as I told you I would.”
“It doesn’t matter. The job, the money—they were for your sake, not mine. I always found work to be therapeutic. I’d hoped you might find it to be the same.”
Brandon’s father escaped into work to distract himself, but Brandon knew that he couldn’t do things that way. He wanted to saturate himself in April’s presence, hold on to her for as long as he could. He told his father good night and went to his room, walking down the long hall that led past what had once been his parents’ bedroom, where he paused. He resisted the urge to open the door and look inside. Throughout his life, he’d come home many an afternoon to find his mother holed up inside that bedroom. She would be lying on the bed, the room darkened, the pillows propped to elevate her head and shoulders. The TV would be on at low volume in the corner, a glass and a bottle of whiskey on the nightstand. She might wave him inside, she might not. If he came in, she would cling to him, her breath smelling of whiskey, and she would cry and dump her misery on him.
Yet right now, despite all her shortcomings, Brandon longed to see his mother, tell her about April and hear words of sympathy. He inched past the room, then walked rapidly around the corner and into his own room, the ghost of his mother’s memory following along behind.
Over the following weeks, Brandon grew respectful of his father for the things he did to help April’s parents. He often had dinner sent up for them from the best restaurants in Christiansted. A ring of the doorbell and a delivery-truck driver would be on the front steps with packages of hot food. “How kind and thoughtful,” Janice always told Brandon.
His father insisted that April’s father go golfing with him. “You’re a phone call away on our cell phones,” Bill would reason. “The golf course is less than
twenty minutes from the house. Plus, Brandon’s here. He can handle any emergency until we get back.”
It pleased Brandon that his father considered him capable of handling any emergency, even though he hoped he wouldn’t have to handle one. He loved April and respected her parents immensely; he didn’t want to ever let them down.
On her good days, Brandon helped April down to the beach, where she’d lie in the beach chair, facing the sea, holding his hand and drifting in and out of sleep. She slept a lot. But sometimes she’d have better days, when she was more alert, not nauseated, and able to concentrate. He waited patiently for those days, praying for them, enjoying them when they came to her.
One afternoon while they were together on the patio under a canopy, out of the heat of the sun, April in a lounge chair, Brandon beside her in another, she awoke, stretched, and asked, “Are you still here?”
“Where else would I be?”
“Sailing? Out having fun?”
“I want to be here. With you.”
“This is very kind of you, Brandon.”
“I don’t do it to be kind. I’m not into good deeds, and you’re not a charity case.”
“Still, you don’t have to spend all your free time with me.”
“Says who?” He pulled his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and peered over them at her. “You getting tired of me? You trying to let me down easy? Get rid of me?”
She giggled, and the sound pleased him immensely. “You’re silly. I’d never want to get rid of you.”
“Same here,” he told her softly.
She turned her face away. “You never told me why you didn’t go away to school the way you were planning to.”
He repositioned his sunglasses to cover his eyes. “I’m not sure myself. There was just so much to think about—packing up most everything I owned, trading living in my house for a dorm room. I just wasn’t ready. I’ll go in January.” After you’re gone, he told himself.
“Where will you go? Did you pick a place where it snows?”
He shook his head. “No snow. I’ve decided on Texas A&M. Maybe I’ll major in landscape architecture. I like working outside. And I like to make plants grow.”
She reached over and squeezed his hand. “You’ll be good at it. But for right now, I’m glad you’re here, and so is my mom. I think she really likes having you around.”
“Seriously? I don’t want to be in the way.”
“You aren’t in anybody’s way.”
“Your mom’s a great mom,” he said. “She talks to me like I’m a person, not some dopey kid.”
“Is that the way your mom talked to you? Like you were dumb?”
He shook his head sadly. “We’d talk sometimes, but mostly she cried.”
“So does mine. I hear her at night sometimes.”
“Your mom has a reason to cry. Mine just cried.” Remembering was painful because it made him feel so helpless. “Some days I’d come home from school and she’d be locked in her room. Some days I’d come home and she’d almost pounce on me and ask a million questions. It wasn’t so much that she was interested in my life, but that her life was so horrible that mine seemed great by comparison. It’s like she got her excitement through me. What’s that called?”
“Vicariousness,” April supplied.
“Except for when we all went sailing. She really loved that.”
“I love sailing too.”
He thought about his mother’s choice of a place to die. If only she hadn’t chosen their boat. If only she hadn’t done it at all. “Is it as much fun as car racing?”
“It’s quieter.”
He smiled. Now she was careful not to mention Mark around him. Not that he would have minded anymore. Brandon was certain that she had feelings only for him. He knew he loved her and always would. He would go on living, and every day of his life he would remember her.
He reached over and laced his fingers through hers. “If you were strong enough to go sailing, I’d take you.”
She shook her head. “I’d like to go, but I know I’d get sick.”
“Do you hurt?”
“Not really.” She repeated what Dr. Sorenson had told her about the brain and its inability to feel pain. “It’s not much comfort, really. The dizzy spells make my stomach queasy, sort of like a permanent case of seasickness. That’s why I stay in one position so much—to keep the dizziness away. I’ve been told that throwing up on a guy isn’t very romantic.”
He laughed out loud, amazed at her ability to make jokes. “Probably not.”
She drifted off to sleep, and Brandon raised their joined hands and pressed his lips to her fingers. I love you, April, he said silently. I love you so much.
17
April hated the days when she could barely keep her eyes open. Sometimes she felt tangled in a thick clinging fog that clogged her memory and sapped her strength. It worried her that the stupor of perpetual drowsiness would push her into oblivion. She wasn’t ready for oblivion yet. Some nights she set her alarm clock and put it under her pillow just so that she could hear it and struggle to the surface of sleep. As long as she could hear it ringing, turn it off, and listen to its ticking, she knew she hadn’t passed into timelessness, into eternity.
She was rarely alone anymore. Her parents took turns sitting beside her bed. Her mother read, her father arranged a makeshift desk and did paperwork. Their presence brought her comfort. She’d wake and sense that one of them was there. The flutter of papers meant her father. The occasional turning of a book’s page meant her mother. When April was unable to come to the table for meals, they brought their meals into her room. She didn’t eat much—no appetite. At some point, the nurse (whom she recognized by her quick, efficient movements) inserted an IV into April’s arm.
“For hydration,” she heard the woman tell her parents.
I’m drinking through a needle, she told herself. Yummy.
Brandon often came to be with her too. She liked that. He usually held her hand and watched TV or videotapes, which her father kept in good supply. The drone of the television almost always meant that Brandon was with her. On the days when she felt more alert, she wanted to be taken down to the beach, or at least outside to sit by the pool. She found the sight of sunlight on water very comforting. She didn’t know why. And she liked to talk, although her speech was often slurred. Talking connected her with those she loved. She recalled Mark’s struggle to talk during his last days, how he had fought to say everything that was in his heart. She felt the same way. If only she could push the contents of her mind into those surrounding her. If only she were telepathic.
One evening, when her parents were with her in the sickroom, she said, “I don’t know how much longer I can stay awake.”
“Don’t try,” her father said, easing onto the bed and touching her cheek. “You just sleep. Your mom and I’ll be right here.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Her mother and father glanced at each other questioningly. April tried again to express what she wanted to say. “I know I won’t be waking up one of these times.”
Her father’s hand tightened on hers, and her mother shook her head. “Don’t say such things. You’ve got plenty of time.”
“No,” April said. “No, I don’t.”
Neither one of them contradicted her.
“I want you to know,” April said, every word a struggle, “that you’re the best parents in the world. And I’m lucky to have had you for mine.”
“And you’re the best daughter,” her father said, smoothing her thick red hair.
“We’ve been the lucky ones,” her mother added.
“Would you rather have had a son?”
Her father drew back, a look of disdain on his face. “Are you joking? I always wanted a girl. From the time your mother and I were first married, I told her I wanted to be surrounded by beautiful women.” He glanced at his wife. “Isn’t that right, Janice? Didn’t I always tell you I wanted a girl?”
“It’s the truth,” April’s mother said. “Scout’s honor.”
“That’s nice.” April didn’t know why she’d asked such a dumb question, but she appreciated their answer. “I wanted a boy,” she said. “Even though Mark couldn’t have children, I still would have wanted a son.”
“You’ve given us all we ever wanted,” her mother said. “Just not for long enough.”
It was breaking April’s heart to see her parents so sad. She asked, “Do you know, some of the best times I ever had were when I was growing up and we’d all go out to eat at those fancy restaurants. I felt so grown up sitting at the table with you both. I had my own wineglass filled with ginger ale. And you let me order peanut butter and jelly. It wasn’t ever on the menu, but you made them fix it for me.”
“The first time we took you out to dinner, you were two years old.” Her father smiled, remembering. “You knocked over a water glass, then crawled beneath the table and played in the puddle.”
Her mother shook her head in dismay. “I was embarrassed, but then I got the giggles and couldn’t stop laughing. The maître d’ looked as if he would have a heart attack. The very idea of our bringing a child into such a fancy place almost made him faint.”
Seeing them smile over the shared memory made April feel good. They’d been sad for so long on her account. She didn’t want them sad. “I guess we didn’t go back there to eat again.”
Her father snorted. “They acted as if a child were a parasite instead of a pleasure. No, I would never have taken you back to such a place.”
Her mother patted April’s arm. “We waited until you were a bit more mature before we ventured into four-star dining again with you, however.”
“I remember my birthday party when I was six. You took me to some restaurant that had a dance floor and one of those balls that spun overhead and sparkled all over us.” She looked at her father. “You danced with me.” She’d stood on his shoes and he’d twirled her around the dance floor while a band played a song she could still hear inside her head and speckles of light spilled across them.
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