All We Know of Heaven (20 page)

“I stand here because I was loved,” she said. “I am not a hero. The doctors are heroes. The nurses are more he roes.” A ripple of laughter widened in the room. Lorelei felt her eyes well up. “But I owed it to my parents to be as good as I could be. I left this place thinking I would never walk unaided again, or live alone or go to school. And I will do those things. I wanted to give up. I can’t tell you the times I told my parents I hated them for pushing me. But they never felt sorry for me or themselves. My boyfriend and my friends didn’t feel sorry for me. And so how could I?”

After she finished, Maureen sat down at the grand piano

on the stage.

She had never touched such a beautiful instrument. But she was able to play “Clair de Lune,” the simple version, as she’d practiced, with only two mistakes.

The check was for four thousand dollars.

After she hugged Lorelei and Dr. Park and Dr. Daater— she remembered nothing of any of them except Lorelei’s red hair—she handed the check to Bill, sure he would give it back. Instead, her father smiled and thanked her. Miffed, Maureen kept Danny out past one that night and got both of them grounded for the weekend.

The next morning Bill and Jeannie walked her to the door, each holding one of her elbows, insisting she keep her eyes squeezed shut.

It was a Honda, a cute little silver box with four-wheel drive and an upgraded stereo that Tommy had installed. Maureen’s jaw dropped.

“And you just paid it off,” Bill told her, “with your speech. Now I guess you’ve got to get your adaptive license and learn how to use those hand controls. The seat belts work great.”

She hugged them, trying to disregard the voices in her head that told her,
No, no, no, never, never drive again!

But it wasn’t until
This Story, This Week
called and asked to do a documentary on her recovery that Maureen realized how bad life could really be for a girl with a cute boyfriend and a new car.

The story aired on the first anniversary of the day Mau

reen awakened, February 23.

The next morning Maureen found the tires on her car slashed and all the windows smashed.

No one on the street had heard a thing.

stone tears
‌

At Bill’s request there was no investigation, except the one required for the insurance. Kitt Flannery hinted—to almost anyone who would listen—that she had done the damage herself. When friends mentioned it to Bill, he simply shook his head and said he was sure it had been kids from another town.

The little silver car was repaired. It looked pristine. But privately, Bill was angry that it wasn’t “new” anymore— even when Maureen joked that it was now a repair job, as she was.

Jeannie had other fears.

When Maureen triumphantly passed her adaptive driv er’s test, which included a grueling interview and a long

written exam, on the second try, Jeannie refused to let her drive alone. Maureen threw a fit, this time impulsively throwing all her shoes down the stairs like a seven-year old. The display only sealed Jeannie’s resolve. Maury was better, but her judgment was to be trusted even less than that of most seventeen-year-olds. Maureen had no mem ory of ever having driven. She might take chances, despite her history. She might miss cues from other drivers or panic if she saw snow. Finally, grudgingly, Maury had to hand over her keys to Jeannie.

“Indulge me,” Jeannie said. “I’m a poor old mom who almost lost her baby chick.”

“Now that I want to do it, you won’t let me!” Maureen snapped.

It wasn’t just fear of other drivers and road conditions, or even Maureen’s perforated consciousness, that plucked at Jeannie’s nerves.

To Jeannie’s shock, it became clear to her at church that the Flannerys weren’t the only people in town who thought it was in poor taste to let the story about Maury’s recovery be aired on the anniversary of the day they learned that it was Bridget who had died in the accident. But she and Bill hadn’t chosen the date. It was the anniversary of Maureen’s rebirth as well!

“Let’s just say that some people think it wasn’t really fair to put the Flannerys through that,” Kathy Bohack told Jeannie one day during coffee hour.

“Through that! We . . . we’re just proud of Maureen, and

we didn’t go to the show! They came to us! She’s worked hard, Kathy,” Jeannie objected. “I thought her speech was sweet and inspiring to other kids who suffer losses in their lives.” Part of a video recording of Maureen’s speech had been played on the show.

“I wasn’t the one who said it was wrong,” Kathy an swered. “I know how hard she has worked. But, Jeannie, I do see the Flannerys’ point. That was the anniversary of their learning of their child’s death, and you let it be a cele bration of Maury instead. I don’t know that I wouldn’t have been hurt. The whole town saw that show.”

Jeannie relented. She spent fifteen minutes the next af ternoon knocking on the Flannerys’ door and finally left a note of apology, explaining their ignorance of the show’s air date, and saying how much they still wished that Kitt and Mike would see them, how much they still missed Bridget.

The next day Jeannie found the card, trampled and torn, on her welcome mat. Farther down in the yard, someone had dumped bags of garbage and slit them open. Sauce and bones and crusts of bread splashed over the previously unblemished snow.

Jeannie didn’t try to approach the Flannerys again.

But she did notice the looks, and heard the comments that might have seemed complimentary if not for the thorn in them: “Quite a star, your girl, eh?” “Nothing but the best for Maureen, hey . . . Hard to imagine it was just a year ago, must seem like yesterday to Kitt and Mike.” “I

think it was wonderful you let her go on that show. I just wouldn’t want to put my child out there in front of so many people that way.”

It was in March, during a thaw, that Maureen finally begged and teased enough that her parents allowed her to take her first solo drive.

In fact, Jeannie wasn’t the only one who was afraid. Maureen had begged to drive alone only because she felt she needed to get out there now or she never would. But she was terrified. After repeated nightmares, she spoke over the phone to the hospital therapist. She told him that she dreamed of driving off a bridge and drowning, of for getting where the hand-operated controls were on the car, of being stuck on tracks with the lights of a train bearing down on her, of spinning around and around on ice until she careened off a cliff.

Understandable, the therapist told her. Perfectly ap propriate anxiety dreams. After all, she was setting sail in the very ship that almost destroyed her. Getting back on the horse. Getting back on a ship after having sailed on the
Titanic.
If she was anything but anxious, she’d be insane. If the dreams didn’t taper off after driving became second nature, she would need more sessions. He advised Mau reen to keep her first forays predictable, well planned, and brief.

And so Maureen did that.

She printed out MapGo directions that would take her

to two places: Apple Creek Mall, where she was to meet Danny after morning practice on Saturday to help him buy a new suit for the wrestling banquet.

And Bridget’s grave.

The flowers she bought were daisies. But she tied them with one of the silver wires from her prom corsage— extracting it carefully from her memory book. At the cemetery, Maureen knelt to pray. It wasn’t a formal prayer; it was more a conversation with Bridget about Danny and about how she hoped that Bridget was happy for them and not jealous.

Then she heard something behind her.

A voice, almost a growl, asked, “What are you doing here, Miss Goody-Goody?”

Maureen didn’t open her eyes.

“Kitt,” she said. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m here because I loved Bridget.”

“That’s crap,” Kitt said.

What she actually said sounded like what Maureen used to hear on tape recordings of her own voice when she was learning to talk again: “Thassss crap.”

Maureen could smell her now—a hot tang of cigarette smoke and something else, overlaid with way too much cologne.

“I’ll go. I’m sorry.”

“Why haven’t you come over to see us?” “I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

“No, you were scared to. Scared!”

“I didn’t think you wanted me to.” Maureen opened her eyes. In a white tracksuit that dragged in the mud, Kitt stood with her legs planted, behind the headstone.

“Did you think we didn’t want you to because you got hold of Danny Carmody? Because Bridget died and he had to settle for second best? Do you think he really cares about you? Or that it’s just easy for him, and everyone thinks he’s a big hero for taking you out in public?”

Holding on to the edge of the monument for support, Maureen began to pull herself to her feet. Kitt slapped her hands.

“Don’t you touch that!’

Maureen dropped back onto her knees.

“Are you supposed to get some kind of award just for liv ing? A new car? Maybe a scholarship? You and your Holy Roller parents? Do you know what people say about you, Maureen? Do you really want to know?”

“No,” Maureen said, reaching for her cane and standing up. Kitt’s face was terrifying. Her skin hung over bones that jutted out beneath her enormous, wild eyes. She looked not just old, but like a victim of a fire. Her tan was grotesque, unhealthy. Maureen began slowly to back toward her car. It was only ten feet to the gravel road. Her cell phone was in the pocket of her jeans. Should she call 911? “I don’t want to know. I just want to leave.”

“They say that you’re a pig for sleeping with Danny. Oh, everybody knows. Don’t you think he tells everyone? He jokes about it. They say you tried to have sex with the mail

man. They say you lied about Bridget in your big speech at the hospital and made yourself sound like a big hero. And they hate you for it. Why were you so weak? Why didn’t you drive your own car? Why didn’t you just stay dead?”

“I’m so sorry,” said Maureen. She tried to run for her car but stumbled and fell. Kitt loomed over her, quick as a cat, grabbing the back of her hair.

“You stay here and listen to me! You should be dead. You shouldn’t be in school. You disgust people. The sight of you disgusts me. You couldn’t be Bridget in a million years! The sight of Danny coming to your house disgusts me!”

“So move!” Maureen shouted. Finally angry, she strug gled to her feet again. “Move! We haven’t done anything wrong. You trashed my car! You threw garbage on our lawn. You’re the one who’s craze. Daisy. Daisy. Crazy!”

“Blub blib blug blig blah blah. Bridget put up with you because you always did what she wanted. Do you know that? You were the only one who always, always did what she wanted. You’re not fit to stand in the same room.”

Maureen reached out and pushed, firmly but gently, to get Kitt out of the way. Kitt stumbled, and Maureen made a last desperate push to reach the car.

She clicked the button on her car door and got in before Kitt could catch her. She locked the door; and when Kitt spat on the windshield, she turned on the washers. When Kitt stood in front of the car, she started the engine, then, using the hand brakes, she drove carefully around her.

When Maureen got out to the main road, she was crying

so hard that she needed to pull over. She thought of calling her father, but she didn’t want trouble with Mr. Flannery. So she called Danny instead. He told her to wait for him, that he would come to get her. Maureen told him no: She couldn’t wait for him. Kitt might come out of the cemetery and try to do something really nuts, like push her off the road. Slowly, so slowly that she got stopped by a county po lice officer for driving thirty miles per hour in a fifty-mile per-hour zone, Maureen made her way home.

Danny was in the driveway. Maureen crumpled in his arms.

“I have to get out of her. Hear. Here,” she said.

“Don’t let her scare you. It’s depression or whatever.

She’s out of her mind.”

“If half of what she said is true, if people think that . . . you feel sorry for me . . .” Maureen hiccupped and gasped. “And that I tried to sex. Sex. Have sex with the Martian. The mailman . . . and that you laugh at me behind my back . . .” “No one thinks that. How could you believe that?” Dan ny said, but he couldn’t help but wonder how many people

laughed at him.

“But they are mad about you and me.”

“Some are,” said Danny, and he shrugged. “Do you care?”

“Sort of. Everyone thought you and Bridget were the perfect couple. Danny, there’s a . . . I’m never going to think of the word . . . that goes with going out with a girl people think is retarded.”

“Stigma,” he said. “It’s their problem.”

“Not if it lasts forever!” Maureen cried. “Not if people think it as long as you’re together!”

Neither of them noticed the squad car that slid silently up to the curb. Henry Colette got out, rubbed his hands together as if to wash them, and approached Danny and Maureen.

“Hi Dan,” he said. “Good morning, honey.”

“Hi,” said Maureen, quickly using the heels of her palms to wipe away her tears and streaks of makeup. “My dad’s inside, Mr. Colette.”

“Okay.” But Colette stood there. “Let’s go inside and talk to him. Dan, this concerns Maureen.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Maybe nothing,” said Colette. “Maybe nothing at all.” “Maury, do you want me to come in?”

“Is it okay if he comes in, Mr. Colette?”

“Ah, I’d rather he stay outside, or come back a little later.” Defiantly, Danny kissed Maureen and said, “I’ll pick you up in an hour. We’ll still go to the mall.” As he got into

his car and slammed the door, Colette smiled. “He’s a good boy.”

“Yes. He’s a nice boy,” Maureen agreed. “Why? What? What are? What do you are want? I’m sorry. I’m all upset.”

“I see that. Let’s get your pop.”

Bill and Jeannie were sitting down to lunch with Patrick when Maureen opened the door. Henry Colette stepped in behind her.

“Henry?” Bill said, half rising from his chair.

“She’s not hurt. Even a little,” said Colette. “A little dirty maybe.”

“What happened?” Jeannie asked, automatically start ing a pot of coffee, as if her hands required her to offer something. “Did you fall, Maury?”