by Cameron Lowe
She laughed, a soft, sweet, honest sound he realized he hadn’t heard in far too long. “The ukulele. God… we were just kids.”
“What the heck was I thinking?” Malcolm asked, chuckling. “A broken old ukulele.” She laughed again too, and rested her head against his shoulder. “I returned the bikes. Or I will, anyways. I called the guy and it’s okay, he’ll give us the money back.”
“It’s not just the bikes, honey. We’re… we’re in a lot of trouble.”
“I know,” he said, and kissed the side of her head gently. “Gwen, do you trust me?”
“With all my heart.”
“There was a reason I left tonight. A couple of them. I should have told you so you didn’t think I was still mad. But, ah, I called Calvin. And I asked him for a job.” He didn’t know what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t Gwen nestling her head tighter against him. “He hasn’t said yes or no yet. But if he agrees, it’s a big step in the right direction. And… he’s not the only one I asked for help.”
She shuddered as she cried, still not speaking, but her hand gripped his harder and she needed no words to convey the gratitude and guilt swirling in her.
“Your dad and mom are going to put us up for a while. I know it’s not perfect and I was angry about talking to them when we fought. But… baby, I want our future together. If that means we have to live with Daphne and Elliot for a while, there’s far worse places we could wind up.”
“Malcolm, I… there’s another way. It’s why I came out tonight.”
“I know,” he murmured, his own tears sliding down his face.
“You do?”
“Yeah. Winnie called me after you talked to them. She said you sounded like… l-like you were saying goodbye.” His voice thinned, and he cleared it, still not staring at her. “That’s when I figured it out.”
“Everything I do, everything I am feels like a burden anymore. It’s not just about the money. It’s about your time, your energy. I feel like I’m draining the life out of you and the kids.”
“I don’t believe that. And I’m sure the kids don’t either.”
“I don’t think it matters if you do. I live, you suffer.”
“You’ve helped hold me up throughout the years, baby. Let me help you walk through this.”
She studied him with eyes so deeply wounded he wondered if they could ever heal. “I don’t get better, Malcolm. This doesn’t end like a fairy tale for the two of us. You’re going to have to keep propping me up time and time and time again.”
“That’s my choice to make.”
“Not if I can take it away from you.”
He answered her with two fingers under her chin, pushing her face up so he could kiss her more easily. Her lips were so cold. He let his breath linger there a moment, hoping it warmed her at least a little. “Do you want to hear what Calvin said to me? That people really in love mold each other. I liked that.”
“I do too,” she whispered.
“Stay with me. Please. What I’d be without you… it’s not enough.”
“The kids need this.”
“The kids need a mom. The girls need someone in their life who can tell them no and not bend over two seconds later when they give them the doe eyes.”
Gwen smiled.
“And Marley, well… you’ve gotta help me with Marley, because that kid of ours is probably going to prison someday just like Nic and I really, really need someone with me when we’ve gotta go visit him on weekends.”
Even as tears flowed down her cheeks, she laughed. It was a meager sound, so diminished it might have been a puppy’s chuff.
“I want to be here for you, Gwen. I swear to you, nothing apart from me telling you I love you has ever been more true. But I can’t force you to choose us. That has to be something you decide. I just hope you’ll take some time and we’ll talk it over.”
Gwen shivered against him, but her words were fond and warm. “I knew if you found me, this wouldn’t be easy.”
“Then let’s do this. One more time. A thousand more times.”
“I… I…” Gwen stopped and thought. Really thought. Such strange, wonderful images flicked through her mind of the mundane and sweet. Malcolm stepping out of the shower, squinting at her because he never rinsed enough and the shampoo always got in his eyes. Marley toting his sisters’ backpacks in each hand, trailing along behind them kicking rocks in either direction. Giving Roslyn a raspberry on her tiny little stomach and the squeals of laughter it brought out from her. Winnifred glancing up from her history homework, blinking as though she were just coming awake. Family dinners with her parents, the lot of them gathered around the living room to play board games or watch the kids play with their toys. Sunlight splaying across the crack in the lower right of the van’s window as she and Malcolm snuck away from the house to make love in a parking lot of a vacant store. His eyes. His smile. Her children napping together in the living room, Marley with his head resting on Winnie’s lap, her head back against the corner of the couch, and Roslyn squeezed into the other corner, one hand on her brother’s leg.
The depression, the doubt, it didn’t flee her. But it gave way to need, to simple desire and love and the tiniest flicker of hope.
“I want us too,” Gwendolyn finally said. She stared down at her trembling body. “But I d-don’t know if I have a choice anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m so tired. It’s all going d-dark around the edges. And my lungs… hurt. It feels like the world’s slipping away.”
Malcolm shot up. “No. You’re not going now.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay…”
“Not when I’ve found you.”
“I can’t… stand up.”
Malcolm leaned over and slid a hand under her butt and back. She was so light. God, when had she lost so much weight? Her head lolled back, her hair falling towards the floor, and Malcolm lurched back up the aisle.
“Hold on, baby,” he said. “Just a while longer.”
At the door, he settled her down to fumble with the knob, keeping one arm wrapped around her. She nearly collapsed, but managed to grip him around the waist just long enough that he could pick her up again, hustling outside into the snow and the wind and the bitter cold again. She chattered his name, and they took the sidewalk fast, her fingers tracing small patterns into his neck so he knew she was still with him. He loaded her into the passenger’s seat, grabbed her seatbelt, and jammed it home, more to keep her upright than safe. As he crossed around the other side, he dug out his cell phone and called Elliot.
“I’ve got her,” Malcolm shouted. “Meet me at the emergency room.”
“She’s alive?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
Malcolm shut his door and looked over. Maybe that night miracles were possible, because Gwen was smiling at him, and her hand inched over to take his. “Not as bad as it could have been,” he said.
* * *
Gwen slept all the way through Christmas.
She didn’t mean to, and the children, even Marley, didn’t care. Like Malcolm, they refused to leave the room with her, despite the collection of terrifying machines keeping her alive. It was touch-and-go at first, and the doctors still feared her susceptibility to infections might cause problems before she was one hundred percent, but every hour she clung to life fostered hope that Gwen could and would come through this.
They had to amputate several of her toes. The foot on her bad leg took the brunt of it, and she’d need specially padded shoes when she walked for better balance, but that was something they could learn to deal with. There was a smattering of other gangrenous patches of skin the doctors wouldn’t operate on until they knew the extent of the necrotic tissue. That might take weeks, the doctor told Malcolm, but all in all, Gwen was extremely lucky.
She – and their family – had a number of visitors while she slept, but she was not aware of them. For Gwen, for a while, there was nothing but the longest, deepest rest
of her life.
And it was life.
Malcolm apologized profusely to Nina, the security guard, and everyone on staff when they brought her into the ICU from the emergency room. The initial first few hours he was a jittery mess. His caginess was no longer driven by anger, but worry. Elliot stayed with him the first night long enough to hear the doctor’s initial prognosis before ducking out to call Daphne. Gwen’s mother and their children came the next morning, all of them in a somber line until they saw Malcolm, and then the kids rushed him, even Marley.
Especially Marley. His little man thought his mom’s state was his fault somehow, that because he’d gotten angry about the pasta she’d somehow become sicker, and Malcolm held him and calmed him. Reassurances did not help, but Marley fell eventually into silence, his nose running and his eyes a furious red.
When Gwen finally came up out of her near-coma like state, it was gradual and subtle. A padded bench along one wall had been brought in for Marley and Roslyn. They slept head to head under a pair of their favorite blankets, her hair tucked slightly under his. Malcolm and Winnie slumped over in armchairs, both covered with throws brought by Daphne. For a while, it was all Gwen could do to blink at them, smiling through the oxygen mask she wore. After a solid ten minutes, she finally found the call button at her side, and another five minutes later, a middle-aged nurse with a nest of curly hair bustled into the room, her mouth widening to a smile when she saw it was Gwen who punched the button, not one of the kids by mistake.
Malcolm wasn’t the first to wake, but he was the first to realize what was going on and slid out of his chair to rush to his wife’s side, kissing her forehead, grabbing as much of her hand as he could without disrupting the oxygen meter on the end of one of her fingers.
“Mom?” Winnie asked, and the other two kids were up in a flash, asking the same word.
Much to the nurse’s disapproval, Gwen lifted her own oxygen mask, and murmured, “My babies.” She reached a hand out, and Winnie rushed to take it. Malcolm scooted his chair closer and lifted first Marley, then Roslyn so they could hold onto her hand too.
“I’m sorry, Momma,” Marley wailed.
“Shh, it’s all right, baby,” Gwen whispered. “It’s all okay now.”
The mask fell back into place, and she smiled at Malcolm before her eyelids slid shut again.
Chapter 42
Gwen woke to a changed world.
Malcolm stayed by her side. Whatever financial troubles they were in had to wait for another day. He lived out of a small gym bag brought by Daphne, using Gwen’s shower to freshen up on the rare occasion he remembered to take care of himself. He only ate when food was pressed on him, usually by Daphne, Alicia, or Juliet, all of whom took shifts at the hospital along with him. His back would hurt for weeks afterward from sleeping on the bench once his kids started going back to Daphne and Elliot’s in the evening. It was a price he was happy to pay.
Gwen’s pneumonia clung to her lungs, but she began to inch closer and closer to healing. In those initial days, she slept more than she was awake, and she could barely hold down broth and crackers. But she was determined to live now, and slowly she began to fight against her condition, eventually taking on real soup and soon solid foods again. Her first bite of a chicken parmesan sandwich left her moaning in a way that made Malcolm very glad to be her husband.
The kids had to go back to school eventually, but Juliet took some vacation time in the mornings and afternoons to see to it the little ones made it to and from elementary school and kindergarten. Daphne and Elliot took over in the evenings, driving them to see their mom and dad, and then back to their home again for dinner and plenty of games and movies to keep them occupied. Every time they stepped into the room, Gwen felt a double pang of happiness – that she was alive to see them grow, and that she hadn’t left a scar on their lives where she used to be. There was doubt there too, serious, terrible doubt, but she began her recovery by talking the darkness over with Malcolm, and on the phone, Hugh, who had a better understanding than anyone she knew.
Nic, too, became something of a priestly figure in her life. He came by often with Alicia, usually staying quiet while the two friends chatted. But at one point, the two of them alone and watching game shows, Nic said to Gwen, “I thought about it. My first week in prison.”
There was no need to ask what “it” was. “Did Malcolm tell you that’s what I meant to do?”
“No. But I’m not stupid. From what I’ve overheard and what you two told us, I kinda put things together.”
She glanced over, and held out her hand. “I’m glad we stuck around.”
“Me too.” He took hers, and squeezed. “The good days sometimes seem so far away, but… they’re there. And they’re always the best surprise.”
Gwen smiled. “I like that.”
“Think I stole it from a poet or something.”
She laughed softly. “I know I wasn’t the kindest to you for a long time.”
“I deserved what I got.”
“Maybe. But you also deserve friends. I hope you’ll come around more often.”
Nic squeezed her hand again and let go. “I hope you and Malcolm do the same.”
* * *
With their eviction imminent, Nic, Elliot, Juliet, and Winnie packaged up what little stuff Gwen and Malcolm wanted to take from their apartment and drove it to the Caplans’ place. Mostly it was clothing and the kids’ toys, but Winnie made sure to grab the photo albums and pictures off the walls, most of which had been printed off in the library. Their old landlord made a rare appearance on the day they were scheduled to move out, watching the group hawkishly and simultaneously updating them on how little time they had left and complaining nonstop about how much cleaning he’d need to do once they were gone. Winnie cried at his dickheadedness, and Elliot nearly knocked the man on his ass. Instead, he growled at his granddaughter, “Remember this man. Remember his type. Then spend the rest of your life becoming the complete opposite.”
“Screw you,” the landlord muttered, but Winnie’s tears disappeared and she blew him a raspberry when they grabbed the last boxes of stuff and walked past him.
When Malcolm heard that story, he laughed and laughed and held Winnie close. “My girl.”
A third of the way into January, the doctors gave Gwen the okay to head home. She had to walk those first few months with her old cane, trying to get used to the new lack of balance her missing toes provided her. It wasn’t so bad, though more than a few times she caught herself standing like they were still there and nearly toppled. She fully expected to break something by February, March at the latest. She even halfheartedly joked about making a betting pool on when she’d do it, but no one took her up on it.
With Winnie in the middle seats of the van entertaining Roslyn and Marley by reading to them from a Dr. Seuss book, they finally left the hospital. Gwen fought off sleep, leaning against the door and alternating between staring at her husband and her children in the back. Lately she couldn’t take them in enough. When Winnie finished with one book, Marley said he wanted his mom to read the next one, and so Gwen did. She was still getting her strength back and her words were faint, but she read to them anyways, her fingers trembling as she flipped through the pages. She didn’t notice when Malcolm took the wrong roads and started back in the general rough direction they’d come from, grinning to himself as he managed to keep the secret from her.
Finally, a block away from the old church where she’d taken refuge and he’d found her, Gwen glanced up, surprised. “This is the old neighborhood,” she said.
“Yep.”
Gwen glanced back at the kids, then to Malcolm. “What are we doing here?”
“Thought I’d show the kids the old place while we’re in the area. Maybe we’ll pop into the church, just to say hi and poke around.”
“That sounds nice,” Gwen said. She began to explain to the kids that this was where they used to live way back when in the days of dinosaurs and the pyr
amids. That got Roslyn giggling, which set Marley off. Winnie just shook her head, smiling.
They stopped first at the church, but the door was locked this time. Oh well. Malcolm and Gwen stood outside and took a moment to themselves, wrapped up in each other’s arms. Malcolm whispered to her, “I’m glad you picked us.”
“Me too,” she murmured back. “I love you, Malcolm.”
“I love you too.”
As they headed back to the van, an old GMC Jimmy rolled up to the curb. Its exhaust was shot, and the thing rumbled like a tank. A middle-aged brunette rolled down the passenger window and leaned out. “Can we help you with something?” she called.
Malcolm and Gwen stepped over. Gwen said, “I… kind of came by the other day needing to get out of the cold. No one was around but the door was unlocked. I just wanted to say thank you to the pastor.”
The woman glanced at the driver, a gray-capped man with a scar on his chin. Both of them seemed confused. “Ma’am, that church has been closed for years,” he said
“What?” Malcolm asked.
“We were friends with the pastor,” the man said. “Once he and his wife left for Mississippi, they couldn’t get anybody to take over so they shut it down.”
“Are they maybe reopening it or something?” Gwen asked.
“Don’t think so. There was asbestos in the walls, and lots of electrical problems if I remember right. Couldn’t get the lights to work.”
“But they worked just fine the other day,” Gwen said, glancing at Malcolm who shrugged.
The man splayed out his hands on the steering wheel. ‘Don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you got the wrong church? There’s another non-denominational just a couple blocks away. That’s where the wife and I go now. “
“Hey, if you’re interested, you should come on Sunday,” the woman said, chipper and eyes wide. They rattled off an address and set off, the window rolling back up as they went.
Gwen stared at Malcolm, then at the church, then at her husband again. Neither of them was able to find the right words, and they walked back to the van, trying to process all of that. When they got in, Winnie glanced at their pale cheeks and gobsmacked looks and asked, “What? Is everything okay?”