At the sink, his mother-in-law, Margie, put down the pitcher she’d been filling with
water. It hit the counter with a clank. Smoothing the hair away from her worry-lined
face, she moved toward him. Women stepped aside to let her through. She paused at
the bar, poured him a scotch and water over ice, and handed it to him.
“I couldn’t find a glass,” he said. Stupidly. The glasses were right beside him. “Where’s
Bud?”
“Watching TV with Sean and the boys. This isn’t exactly something he can deal with.
Sharing his daughter’s death with all these strangers, I mean.”
Johnny nodded. His father-in-law had always been a quiet man, and the death of his
only daughter had broken him. Even Margie, who had remained vital and dark-haired
and laughing well past her last birthday, had aged immeasurably since the diagnosis.
She had rounded forward, as if expecting another blow from God at any second. She’d
stopped dyeing her hair and white flowed along her part like a frozen river. Rimless
glasses magnified her watery eyes.
“Go to your kids,” Margie said, pressing her pale, blue-veined hand into the crook
of his arm.
“I should stay here and help you.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “But I’m worried about Marah. Sixteen is a tough age to lose
a mother, and I think she regrets how much she and Kate fought before Kate got sick.
Words stay with you sometimes, especially angry ones.”
He took a long sip of his drink, watched the ice rattle in his glass when he was done.
“I don’t know what to say to them.”
“Words aren’t what matter.” Margie tightened her hold on his arm and led him out of
the kitchen.
The house was full of people, but even in a crowd of mourners, Tully Hart was noticeable.
The center of attention. In a black sheath dress that probably cost as much as some
of the cars parked in the driveway, she managed to look beautiful in grief. Her shoulder-length
hair was auburn these days, and she must have redone her makeup since the funeral.
In the living room, surrounded by people, she gestured dramatically, obviously telling
a story, and when she finished, everyone around her laughed.
“How can she smile?”
“Tully knows a thing or two about heartbreak, don’t forget. She’s spent a lifetime
hiding her pain. I remember the first time I ever saw her. I walked across Firefly
Lane to her house because she’d befriended Kate and I wanted to check her out. Inside
that run-down old house across the street, I met her mom, Cloud. Well, I didn’t
meet
her. Cloud was lying on the sofa spread-eagled, with a mound of marijuana on her
stomach. She tried to sit up, and when she couldn’t, she said,
F–– me, I’m stoned,
and flopped back down. When I looked at Tully, who was maybe fourteen, I saw the
kind of shame that marks you forever.”
“You had an alcoholic dad and you overcame it.”
“I fell in love and had babies. A family. Tully thinks no one can love her except
Kate. I don’t think the loss has really hit her yet, but when it does, it’s going
to be ugly.”
Tully put a CD into the stereo and cranked the music.
Born to be w-iiii-ld
blared through the speakers.
The people in the living room backed away from her, looking offended.
“Come on,” Tully said, “who wants a straight shot?”
Johnny knew he should stop her, but he couldn’t get that close. Not now, not yet.
Every time he looked at Tully, he thought,
Kate’s gone,
and the wound cracked open again. Turning away, he went up to comfort his children
instead.
It took everything he had to climb the stairs.
Outside the twins’ bedroom, he paused, trying to gather strength.
You can do this
.
He
could
do it. He had to. The children beyond this door had just learned that life was unfair
and that death ripped hearts and families apart. It was his job to make them understand,
to hold them together and heal them.
He drew in a sharp breath and opened the door.
The first thing he saw were the beds—unmade, rumpled, the
Star Wars
bedding in a tangled heap. The navy-blue walls—hand-painted by Kate to show clouds
and stars and moons—had been covered over the years with the boys’ artwork and some
of their favorite movie posters. Golden T-ball and soccer trophies stood proudly on
the dresser top.
His father-in-law, Bud, sat in the big papasan chair that easily held both boys when
they played video games, and Sean, Kate’s younger brother, lay asleep on Wills’s bed.
Marah sat on the rug in front of the TV, with Lucas beside her. Wills was in the corner,
watching the movie with his arms crossed, looking angry and isolated.
“Hey,” Johnny said quietly, closing the door behind him.
“Dad!” Lucas lurched to his feet. Johnny scooped his son into his arms and held him
tightly.
Bud climbed awkwardly out of the cushy papasan chair and got to his feet. He looked
rumpled in his out-of-date black suit with a white shirt and wide polyester tie. His
pale face, marked by age spots, seemed to have added creases and folds in the past
weeks. Beneath bushy gray eyebrows, his eyes looked sad. “I’ll give you some time.”
He went to the bed, thumped Sean on the shoulder, and said, “Wake up.”
Sean came awake with a start and sat up sharply. He looked confused until he saw Johnny.
“Oh, right.” He followed his dad out of the room.
Johnny heard the door click shut behind him. On-screen, brightly colored superheroes
ran through the jungle. Lucas slid out of Johnny’s arms and stood beside him.
Johnny looked at his grieving children, and they looked at him. Their reactions to
their mother’s death were as different as they were, as unique. Lucas, the tenderhearted,
was undone by missing his mom and confused about where exactly she’d gone. His twin,
Wills, was a kid who relied on athleticism and popularity. Already he was a jock and
well liked. This loss had offended and scared him. He didn’t like being afraid, so
he got angry instead.
And then there was Marah; beautiful sixteen-year-old Marah, for whom everything had
always come easily. In the cancer year, she had closed up, become contained and quiet,
as if she thought that if she made no noise at all, caused no disruption, the inevitability
of this day could be avoided. He knew how deeply she regretted the way she’d treated
Kate before she got sick.
The need in all of their eyes was the same, though. They looked to him to put their
destroyed world back together, to ease this unimaginable pain.
But Kate was the heart and soul of this family, the glue that held them all together.
Hers was the voice that knew what to say. Anything he said would be a lie. How would
they heal? How would things get better? How would more time without Kate soothe them?
Marah rose suddenly, unfolding with the kind of grace that most girls would never
know. She looked sylphlike in her grief, pale and almost ethereal, with her long black
hair, black dress, and nearly translucent skin. He heard the hitch in her breathing,
the way she seemed hard-pressed to inhale this new air.
“I’ll put the boys to bed,” she said, reaching out for Lucas. “Come on, rug rat. I’ll
read you a story.”
“Way to make us feel better, Dad,” Wills said, his mouth tightening. It was a dark,
sadly adult expression on an eight-year-old face.
“It will get better,” Johnny said, hating his weakness.
“Will it?” Wills said. “How?”
Lucas looked up at him. “Yeah, how, Dad?”
He looked at Marah, who looked so cold and pale she might have been carved of ice.
“Sleep will help,” she said dully, and Johnny was pathetically grateful to her. He
knew he was losing it,
failing,
that he was supposed to provide support, not accept it, but he was empty inside.
Just empty.
Tomorrow he’d be better. Do better.
But when he saw the sad disappointment on his children’s faces, he knew what a lie
that was.
I’m sorry, Katie
.
“Good night,” he said in a thick voice.
Lucas looked up at him. “I love you, Daddy.”
Johnny dropped slowly to his knees and opened his arms. His sons pushed into his embrace
and he held them tightly. “I love you, too.” Over their heads, he stared up at Marah,
who appeared unmoved. She stood straight and tall, her shoulders back.
“Marah?”
“Don’t bother,” she said softly.
“Your mom made us promise to be strong. Together.”
“Yeah,” she said, her lower lip trembling just a little. “I know.”
“We can do it,” he said, although he heard the unsteadiness of his voice.
“Yeah. Sure we can,” Marah said with a sigh. Then: “Come on, boys, let’s get ready
for bed.”
Johnny knew he should stay, comfort Marah, but he had no words.
Instead, he took the coward’s route and left the room, closing the door behind him.
He went downstairs, and ignoring everyone, pushed through the crowd. He grabbed his
coat from the laundry room and went outside.
It was full-on night now, and there wasn’t a star in the sky. A thin layer of clouds
obscured them. A cool breeze ruffled through the trees on his property line, made
the skirtlike boughs dance.
In the tree limbs overhead, Mason jars hung from strands of ropy twine, their insides
full of black stones and votive candles. How many nights had he and Kate sat out here
beneath a tiara of candlelight, listening to the waves hitting their beach and talking
about their dreams?
He grabbed the porch rail to steady himself.
“Hey.”
Her voice surprised and irritated him. He wanted to be alone.
“You left me dancing all by myself,” Tully said, coming up beside him. She had a blue
wool blanket wrapped around her; its end dragged on the ground at her bare feet.
“It must be intermission,” he said, turning to her.
“What do you mean?”
He could smell tequila on her breath and wondered how drunk she was. “The Tully Hart
center-of-attention show. It must be intermission.”
“Kate asked me to make tonight fun,” she said, drawing back. She was shaking.
“I can’t believe you didn’t come to her funeral,” he said. “It would have broken her
heart.”
“She
knew
I wouldn’t come. She even—”
“And that makes it okay? Don’t you think Marah would have liked to see you in there?
Or don’t you care about your goddaughter?”
Before she could answer—and what could she say?—he pushed away from her and went back
inside, tossing his coat on the washing machine as he passed through the laundry room.
He knew he’d lashed out unfairly. In another time, in another world, he’d care enough
to apologize. Kate would want him to, but right now he couldn’t manage the effort.
It took everything he had inside just to keep standing. His wife had been gone for
forty-eight hours and already he was a worse version of himself.
Three
That night, at four
A.M.
, Johnny gave up on the idea of sleep. How had he thought it would be possible to
find peace on the night of his wife’s funeral?
He pushed the comforter back and climbed out of bed. Rain hammered the shake roof,
echoed through the house. At the fireplace in the bedroom, he touched the switch and
after a
thump-whiz
of sound, blue and orange flames burst to life, skating along the fake log. The faint
smell of gas floated to him. He lost a few minutes standing there, staring into the
fire.
After that, he found himself drifting. It was the only word he could come up with
to describe the wandering that took him from room to room. More than once, he found
himself standing somewhere, staring at something with no clear memory of how he’d
come to be there or why he’d begun that particular journey.
Somehow, he ended up back in his bedroom. Her water glass was still on the nightstand.
So were her reading glasses and the mittens she’d worn to bed at the end, when she’d
always been cold. As clear as the sound of his own breathing, he heard her say,
You were the one for me, John Ryan. I loved you with every breath I took for two decades.
It was what she’d said to him on her last night. They’d lain in bed together, with
him holding her because she was too weak to hold on to him. He remembered burying
his face in the crook of her neck, saying,
Don’t leave me, Katie. Not yet.
Even then, as she lay dying, he had failed her.
He got dressed and went downstairs.
The living room was filled with watery gray light. Rain dropped from the eaves outside
and softened the view. In the kitchen, he found the counter covered in carefully washed
and dried dishes that had been placed on dish towels and a garbage can full of paper
plates and brightly colored napkins. The refrigerator and freezer were both filled
with foil-covered containers. His mother-in-law had done what needed to be done, while
he had hidden outside in the dark, alone.
As he made a pot of coffee, he tried to imagine the new version of his life. All he
saw were empty spaces at the dining room table, a car pool with the wrong driver,
a breakfast made by the wrong hands.
Be a good dad. Help them deal with this.
He leaned against the counter, drinking coffee. As he poured the third cup, he felt
an adrenaline spike of caffeine. His hands started to shake, so he got himself some
orange juice instead.
Sugar on top of caffeine. What was next, tequila? He didn’t really make a decision
to move. Rather, he just drifted away from the kitchen, where every square inch held
a reminder of his wife—the lavender hand lotion she loved, the
YOU ARE SPECIAL
plate she pulled out at the smallest of their children’s achievements, the water
pitcher she’d inherited from her grandmother and used on special occasions.
He felt someone touch his shoulder and he flinched.
Margie, his mother-in-law, stood beside him. She was dressed for the day in high-waisted
jeans, tennis shoes, and a black turtleneck. She smiled tiredly.