Heartbeat (5 page)

14

Caleb Harrison stares at me again at lunch.

I don’t see him at first. I’m sitting with Olivia, picking at the fried rice in front of me, which is basically rice and limp broccoli, and then I...I don’t know.

I feel it. Him.

I look up and there, across the cafeteria, in a corner by himself, is Caleb Harrison. And he’s looking at me.

I elbow Olivia who says, “Oof!” and then follows my eyes.

“Wait, you said nothing happened yesterday.”

“Nothing did.”

“But he’s—oh, never mind. He’s looking out the window now. Remember how popular he was in middle school? And then he was all freaky drug guy and then stealing cars guy and now he’s really screwed-up loner guy who puts cars into lakes. Scary.”

No,
I think.
Sad.

Caleb Harrison is sad.

I don’t know why he is, or how I know it. I just do.

I look at him.

He’s looking at me again and I feel it, actually feel him looking at me, like from all the way across the cafeteria he’s somehow able to see into me. That there’s something in me he wants to see.

I take a sip of my soda and he’s watching. I am hyperaware of it, of him, of how I suck a drop that’s clung to my lower lip off, pulling it into my mouth for a moment and how I open my lips a little to breathe, because it’s strangely airless in here and I want to ask him why but when I picture that, my walking up to him and saying, “Yeah, hi, I think you have a problem,” he’s standing up too and moving in, so close his hair brushes my face, so close his mouth is right next to mine and we’re touching without saying a word, just standing there, close enough to kiss with his hands cupped around my waist, one sliding up, the other down and my hands are doing the same and he’s breathing into me and I’m breathing into him and—

“Hey,” Olivia says, waving a hand in front of my face. “Bell rang. What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” At least, that’s what I wish I’d been doing. Thinking.

“Your face is red.”

“It’s hot in here.” He’s gone now. Thank goodness.

“Not really. You sure you’re okay?”

I nod and get up. I tell her that I’m fine. I go to class. I meet Dan after school. I go to the hospital.

I am not okay. I am not thinking about just Mom, like I have been for days, weeks.

I am thinking about something else. Someone else. Someone I don’t even know and I pictured—

“Are you all right?” Dan says as we’re heading to where Mom is. “Your face is a little red.”

“It’s from all the sex I’m having at school instead of going to class. It’s tiring, but way more fun than trying to conjugate the past perfect tense of ‘I see my dead mother every day.’”

“Emma!” Dan looks shocked and a little scared.

“Oh, relax. I won’t do it in your bed when you’re in Florida ruining someone else’s life. When is that, by the way? I’ll need to stock up on condoms.”

“I’ve been worried and now I’m really concerned. I think you need help.”

“Really? Well, talk it over with Mom and see how she feels about it. Oh, wait, she can’t talk. You were concerned about her too, right? So maybe you can see why I’m not all that interested in your so-called concern.”

“Emma,” he says, sputters really, but I ignore him and head into the waiting room.

Where Caleb Harrison is standing with a magazine cart, having just heard everything I said.

15

Caleb sits down when I come in, sprawls on a chair with the cart in front of him, moving it back and forth with his feet. He doesn’t look at me but then he doesn’t need to, does he?

We both know what he just heard.

I know my face is red—it’s so hot I can feel it—and I brace for another stare or a snarl like yesterday or something even worse, something crude that will make me feel just as bad as Dan sounded. (And looked too, but I don’t trust Dan anymore. I wish I’d never trusted him.)

“Your mom’s dead, right?” is what he says instead and it’s so not what I expected and so blunt, so not covered in all the softness of
I’m sorry
and
terrible to hear
that now I just stare at him.

“I couldn’t really tell yesterday,” he says. “But that’s what I figured. I remember hearing something about it. About how there’s a ba—”

“She’s dead,” I say before he can finish his sentence. “But she’s pregnant. So they’re keeping her breathing and feeding her and everything else until she’s twenty-five weeks along.”

“They can do that? I mean, if she’s dead—”

“Yes,” I say, the word bitten off, sour and angry. “My stepfather wanted...it’s what he wants. So it’s happened. You can be brain-dead and kept alive on machines. It just doesn’t usually happen when there’s...there’s no hope for her.”

He pushes the cart with his foot again. I find looking at it easier than looking at him, but when I dare a glance he’s looking at the floor.

“How many weeks is she now?” he says after a moment where the only noise is the cart squeaking.

I swallow. “Almost sixteen.” A little past twelve that final morning, the morning she went to get toast and fell down and didn’t get back up. A little past twelve weeks pregnant the morning she died and that was it, should have been it except it wasn’t, isn’t.

“So she’ll just...” He trails off. The cart squeaks again. He’s frowning, but not like he’s angry. Like he’s thinking.

If he’s thinking about my mother—just my mother—that would make, as far as I can tell, two of us who do that. Who’ve really done that.

“Yeah,” I say, my voice tight. “If she makes it to thirty days the way she is now she’ll just lie there, dead, for another ten weeks. Then Dan gets what he wants.”

“Dan?”

“The guy in the hall. My stepfather.”

“Oh,” he says, and pushes the cart again. “That’s pretty screwed up.”

I sit down then, not facing him but not turned away either. High school teaches you lots of stuff, but one of the most important things is that you don’t ever act like what someone’s said has gotten to you, even if it has.

That’s pretty screwed up.

Yeah, it is. It really is, and I know Olivia gets it, and I love her for it, but no one else has said it. No one.
Sorry
is all apologies but it isn’t what this is about. No one’s said the truth, the raw wound of what happened. What is happening.

Not until now, when I’m sitting here with Caleb Harrison who takes drugs and steals cars and who gets that what’s happened to the family I used to have has exploded into something huge and very, very screwed up.

I miss Mom all over again then, wish she was here, that I could know I’d be able to walk into the house and it would be home. That I’d see her. The real her. I’d see her smile, push her hair back. Rub her forehead if she’s had a bad day and asks for an aspirin, kicking her shoes off. She’d always ask what was for dinner, kissing my forehead before she’d turn to Dan and say, “Well, Chef, what’s on tap?”

“You don’t talk much,” Caleb says.

I look at him, and I see that understanding in his eyes again. I don’t get it, and I don’t know if I like it. It’s scarier than pity or Dan’s beseeching stares. Pity I get. Dan wanting me to want what he does—it’s Dan, so I get that too. But what do Caleb Harrison and I have in common? What could he understand about this? His parents are both alive and apparently dedicated to keeping him out of jail in spite of everything he does.

If there’s one thing I learned from Anthony, it’s the power of questions. I swallow, and hope my face isn’t still as red as I’m afraid it is. “Why were you staring at me today?”

“Because I saw you with your mom yesterday.” A magazine starts to fall off the cart and he reaches up, pushes it back in place. “Do you miss her?”

I look at the ceiling. My eyes are burning. I wish I knew how to make things better. Or even bearable. I’d settle for that. For just being able to breathe without feeling like it hurts.

“I get that. Missing someone, I mean,” Caleb says, his voice quiet.

He
knows
and now I don’t get it, I don’t get it at all, and when I look at him I can’t see how he understands. I just see him, so blond and pretty, so safe from everything he does because he has his parents. He has them doing everything for him.

“Oh, so you know what it’s like to have a dead mother being kept alive so her so-called husband can get what he wants more than anything else?”

“No, but I know what it’s like to live with a dead person.”

“Your parents are both still...” I say and trail off as I remember that there is a dead person in Caleb’s life.

His sister.

And then we just look at each other and I don’t care that he’s screwed up and gorgeous. I care that someone really does get what’s going on. Sees it.

And I think he feels the same. Although I don’t fall into the gorgeous category.

“I—” I say, and then Dan comes in and looks at Caleb, then at me. “Emma, you can go in now.”

I get up, glancing at Caleb.

Dan sees it. “I’ll just talk to your friend....” he says and Caleb snorts, gets up and pulls the magazine cart past both of us, out into the hall.

“Who is he?” Dan says. “I’m not sure how to ask this, but—?”

“Then don’t, because even if there was something to tell, I wouldn’t want to say it to you.”

He looks at me, hurt all over his face, and I wish I could believe in it. In him.

But I don’t, and I go see Mom. I sit with her. I hold her hand.

It’s not enough today. I don’t just want to sit here with her hand lying still in mine. I wish I could curl up next to her. That I could lie with my head on her shoulder. But I can’t because she’s in a hospital bed and it’s filled with taped tubes and wires and IVs.

It’s filled with her stomach, with what’s in it, and when I look at her face I can’t see her, I just see the tubes going into her mouth and down her throat and up her nose and that’s all she is now. That’s what she is.

“Mom,” I whisper, and pull away, wrap my arms around myself. I can’t talk to her. I can’t tell stories about school, about anything. I can’t pretend that life is normal except for this. Not now. Not today. I can’t find her under what’s in front of me.

I can’t see anything of Mom. I just see a dead woman.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, hard, over and over until I know I won’t cry.

When Dan comes to get me he tries to put a hand on my shoulder. I move away from it, from him.

“Emma, please,” he says, his voice breaking, and I stare at him. He flinches and I know it’s from the hate in my eyes.

He turns to Mom and I walk out, leave the hospital and go wait by the car. I see an ambulance come in, sirens wailing, before Dan comes out and gets in the car. I wonder what will happen to the person inside. I hope they are all right.

I don’t see Caleb. I’m not exactly looking for him, but I am thinking about him. About what he said, about living with a dead person.

16

During the ride home, I think about Caleb.

I think about his sister, Minnie.

She died three years ago, when Caleb and I were both fourteen. She was seven, I think, or maybe only six. I know she was riding her bicycle and fell off.

That was it. That was how she died. That simply. There she was, on her bike, and then she was gone. Like getting up and going to get toast. Just a moment and then...gone.

I guess, now that I think about it, that’s when Caleb started doing drugs. He must have really loved his little sister. Maybe everything Caleb’s done is how he gets through it.

What would it be like, to live with that loss for three years? I can barely stand it, and it’s been less than a month. How could anything be left inside you at all?

“Emma,” Dan says, and I notice the car’s stopped, that we’re outside the house. I get out before he can say anything else, head up to my room and lock the door.

He knocks, but I pretend not to hear him. It gets easier every day. I go over to the window and open it.

I know eventually Olivia will come in.

17

She does, a while later, and frowns as soon as she sees me.

“What happened?”

“The usual.”

“Uh-huh. You saw Caleb, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he say something?”

I shrug.

“Emma!”

“Not really. Sort of.”

“Sort of? Like he sort of spoke? Or he sort of said something that upset you?”

“No, he didn’t—I just saw him again and he knew about Mom. He did see me with her yesterday.”

“Oh.” Even Olivia hasn’t seen that. “What did he say?”

“That it was screwed up.”

“Emma—”

I shake my head. “Do you remember his sister?”

“His—oh, yeah,” Olivia says. “Minnie. Fell off her bike and didn’t have her helmet on, right? My parents were all, ‘That’s why we made you wear a helmet, Olivia.’” She shakes her head. “Remember how awful it was? I wanted a pink one, like yours, and had that weird-shaped silver one.”

I nod, and she shakes her head. “Parents.” She blushes, looks at me. “Sorry.”

“Don’t. You can’t be weird on me. For real, not now, okay?”

“It was bad today, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I say and she hugs me and says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” and I cry like I always seem to be doing. I cry and when I’m done my eyes hurt and I have a headache and nothing’s changed. You’d think I’d have learned that by now, that tears don’t change anything.

You’d think I’d have run out of them.

But I haven’t.

18

Mom did it. Well, she didn’t. Her body did it, because today is day thirty.

Thirty days of Mom being dead but kept alive and at the start of week sixteen it was okay, it was in the distance.

That distance is closed today.

I have missed school or a weekend or maybe both. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

Olivia came by a few times, but aside from, “Emma, eat. EAT,” I can’t remember another thing she’s said. I’ve just felt empty inside, silent, and the one time Dan knocked on my door and said, “Emma?” I said, “Do you miss her at all?” and listened to the drone of his voice, words buzzing over me.

I know I can’t stay in my room forever. The thing about Mom dying is that the world didn’t stop. It didn’t even slow down. It’s flowers and cards and everyone understands but no one does because Mom wasn’t Mom to them. Without her it’s like I’m living inside a mirror. I see things, I do things, but they are just surfaces and nothing more.

I’m numb, so numb, because thirty days is here but when I’m in the shower staring at the water, I wonder if Caleb feels like that about Minnie. Is loss this constant pain, not mental, but actual pain? It’s like even my teeth hurt, but there’s a fog over it, one that makes the pain hurt and yet leaves me carved out too.

Is grief this forever wishing for what was even though I know I shouldn’t?

I shake my head, water splashing everywhere.

Mom loved to take baths. She actually took one the night before she died. I sat on the floor next to her tub, smelling the “calming” bath beads, oily bubbles, she’d put in. She’d put her hair up, stuck it in a half-knot that was already falling down and pushed the bubbles around as we sat there.

“You don’t have to start on that paper now,” she said. “You can relax. Watch some TV. Hang out with your old pregnant mother.”

“But—”

“You don’t have to try so hard,” she said, reaching one hand out and touching mine, her skin hot and slick. “I love you no matter what.”

“I know,” I said and she squeezed my hand.

“So then let yourself breathe once in a while. Smell the roses. Go for it. Other inspiring things I can’t remember now and so on.” She grinned at me. “You do know what I mean, right?”

“Dan’s going to come up and make you get out of the tub soon.”

“You two.” She sighed. “Am I allowed to brush my hair?”

“I don’t know. Dan’s got the pregnancy book. I’m going to read it after I get half of my New Deal paper done.”

“Don’t work on it tonight, okay? Watch
Covert Ops
with me.”

I didn’t. I worked on my homework and started pulling together ideas for my paper, blew a kiss at Mom when she stuck her head in and said, “Okay, I guess that’s a no on the TV. Don’t stay up too late.”

“I won’t,” I said, half glancing at her as I read about FDR and his plans.

Her hair was down and dry. The lamp in my room cast a shadow on her face.

That was the last time I ever saw her.

Thirty days ago today, and I turn off the shower and watch the water run down the drain, circling, circling until it’s gone.

I get dressed, putting on clothes from the pile scattered around my bed. I realize, for the first time, that the rest of my room is boxed off to me. I could pick up the books piled on my desk. The earrings on my dresser I’d bought shopping with Mom the week before she took that last bath.

But I can’t.

I unlock my door, the reminder of putting in the lock—of Mom—almost bringing me to my knees and then I go downstairs.

It’s early—I woke up before the sun rose and watched it come up, light tearing up the dark, and just thought
thirty thirty thirty thirty.
Thirty days. Mom’s gone but still here and that’s how it will be for another—

I can’t. I just can’t think it. I walk into the kitchen and Dan is there, looking like he hasn’t slept. He’s reading a book and I see it’s the pregnancy book, the one he was reading the night before Mom died. The one I was going to read.

He sees me and puts the book down, pages up so I can’t see the cover, the serene portrait of a woman holding her belly. A woman, alive.

“Do you want some breakfast?” he says. “I could make something.”

“It’s thirty days today,” I say and he nods, his eyes filling with tears. I wish I could take all of my own back now. I don’t want to be anything like Dan.

“I thought that might be you—well, why you were in your room,” he says. “I asked one of the doctors at the hospital about it. She says she’d like to meet you. Talk to you. She thought it was interesting that you didn’t come with me to see your mother during this period.”

Interesting?
Really?
All because I sat in my room and thought about her. The real her, not the one I have to see.

Not that one who breaks me over and over again.

“I’d like a waffle,” I say, and Dan looks at me, surprised, and then smiles, huge, bright, and gets up, moving around the kitchen. He gets out bowls and boxes, eggs and spoons, and plugs in the waffle iron I bought for him two Christmases ago.

“Here,” he says a few minutes later and I look up from the table—where did Mom touch it before she fell? I’ve never asked. Was it here? Over there? Did she not touch it at all, just walk straight to the toaster? Was Dan looking when she fell?

When did he know what he would do? After the ambulance came? After the doctor said she was gone?

Or did he know all along? Deep in his heart, had he made his choice the moment two years of drugs and testing and waiting brought Mom home to tell him what he so longed to hear?

He puts a waffle on the table. I hold on to the chair in front of me. I smell flour and eggs and milk and chocolate, which Dan always puts in waffles for me.

Mom would say, “Dan, you shouldn’t spoil her,” and Dan would say, “Chocolate isn’t spoiling. Love isn’t spoiling.”

“You went shopping.”

He nods. “We didn’t have much to eat.”

No, we didn’t. Food goes bad. It spoils.

I swallow.

“I’m not hungry.”

“But you said—Emma, I can hear your stomach!”

Dan is standing with his hands pressed together like he’s praying and in the silence of the kitchen I hear a slight gurgle, a churning. It is my stomach, awake and moving.

Inside my dead mother there is a baby. It needs to eat. I suppose it has a stomach. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.

Thirty thirty thirty thirty.

“I’m going to the car,” I say.

“You have to stop this,” Dan says. “She wouldn’t want you to punish yourself like this. It’s not your fault that she died.”

“I know it’s not my fault. Are you going to take me to school?”

“Emma, I lost her too. We both lost her. I miss—”

I leave then. I walk outside, past the car and down the driveway. I cannot be here. I cannot see him, not now. I can’t say anything else and I’m afraid that if I do he will find a way to make it so I can’t see her. That he will—he could do anything to me because he’s my guardian now. He could even have me committed.

I feel sick.

Mom wanted him to be my guardian. I wanted him to be my guardian too.

We both thought he was good at taking care of things.

And then she died.

I hear the car, hear Dan. “Emma, get in.”

I look at the car. “Are you going to send me away?”

“What?” There’s silence for a moment and then he sighs, a battered sound, and then I hear the horn beep over and over, the sound muffled, start-stop-start-stop.

I look over and see he is hitting it. Dan is smacking his hands into the horn, face red, wet with tears.

He stops. “I would never send you away,” he says. “You’re my family.”

Thirty thirty thirty thirty.

I don’t believe him, but I want to be here. I have to be here. Mom doesn’t need me like I want her to, but I am all she has.

I get in the car.

“Emma, please know I wanted your mother and you, I wanted
our
family. That hasn’t changed a bit. I wish that we were all—”

“Yes,” I say so he won’t say anything more. He does, he’s wishing and wishing, but I don’t listen.

I don’t believe in wishes anymore.