My Heart Can't Tell You No (16 page)

Joe looked at her a long moment. There was actually pain showing in her face at the thought of depriving a father of his son. “All right. But stay with me. I may be holding onto his hand—but I’ll need you to hold onto my other one. No one should ever have to
watch
someone die alone, either.”

Dan McNier regained consciousness only twice. The first time Joe didn’t notice right away. He had slipped his arm around Maddie’s waist and pulled her against him as he sat at his father’s side. As she stood next to him, her grasp on his hand wasn’t enough, he suddenly felt very cold. He held her against him tightly, leaning the side of his head against her stomach when he felt his father’s grip tighten slightly. The words Dan McNier spoke were too quiet and strained for Joe to make out, but the look on his face was clear. Maddie tried to pull away from Joe. Within the next second the man was again unconscious.

“What did he say?” Joe pulled her back as he looked up at her. Dan McNier hadn’t minded seeing them like this; as a matter of fact, the gentle smile that entered his eyes had shown his approval.

“Never mind.” She wouldn’t look at him and seemed embarrassed.

“No. What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Don’t let this one go, Joe.’”

Joe looked back at his father. Not once had Dan ever mentioned Maddie Baker to Joe, except for the rare letters he received while in Nam—then it was only a brief sentence mingled inside the rest of the letter that said she had visited him that day. But verbally, the girl’s name never came up. Yet, all the while he’d known. Dan McNier had paid more attention to his boy than Joe had suspected.

It was another two hours until Dan’s eyes opened again. This time they were the eyes of a dead man. Joe had seen it enough in Nam and then in his job. He knew that look. This time he wasn’t looking at Maddie or Joe, but to a distant corner of the room as he gently called his wife’s name. His face filled with a peace Joe had never seen in his father. The battle was over. Dan McNier was gone.

“Mr. McNier?” Maddie tried, a little louder the next time as she moved quickly to the older man and clutched his hand. “Mr. McNier? Mr. McNier?” Tears started rolling down her face as the realization of his death hit her.

Joe got to his feet as the buzzer on the heart monitor told him his father was really gone and a troop of nurses came into the room. He watched Maddie’s fingers move up to the older man’s face as she bent and kissed him gently on the forehead, her tears now falling onto his father’s brow. Joe took Maddie’s hand and walked her out of the room to a chair across the hall. He glanced back toward the room once. His father was gone. Dan was where he wanted to be. It seemed to Joe that Dan McNier had been only filling out his time for the past twenty-five years, waiting to join the wife who had left him prematurely. He glanced down at Maddie and saw her rocking herself in the chair he had seated her in, the tears still falling. He stooped in front of her and pushed her hair back from her face.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she whispered as she finally looked up at him.

“
Shh
.” He wiped her tears with his thumbs.

A nurse re-entered the hall, telling him that nothing more could be done for his father and asking if Joe would please come to the desk to sign some papers. Joe had the idea that, under different circumstances, members of the deceased’s family would be left to their grief until they were able to deal with the reality of funeral arrangements, but these weren’t normal circumstances. Joe felt very little grief. Dan was right when he said they had never been close. He was only the man who had supported him financially. Any emotional support he needed growing up was never there, so he had taken what he could get from the Bakers and Lew.

“Are you all right?” Joe asked Maddie, receiving an affirmative nod as her tears slowly subsided.

“I should be asking you that,” she said quietly.

“No. I don’t think so. You were the one who would visit him. You would go and talk with him while he was alive. And don’t get the stupid idea that you were stealing my time. I’m glad he had you. You gave him something I couldn’t.”

“But he was your father!”

“I know. I’ll miss knowing he’ll be at home. But . . . .” He dropped his eyes, then looked toward the nurse’s station. “I have to go sign some papers. I’ll be right back. Will you be okay?” After receiving another affirmative nod, he walked several feet to the desk. He signed several documents and indicated the appropriate funeral home before returning to Maddie several minutes later. “Do you want to go back in with him for a minute?”

Maddie stood slowly and started back toward the room. Joe stayed in the doorway and watched as she went back to Dan’s side. All the equipment had been removed and he looked a little more like the father Joe had known, but not much. As he watched Maddie gently stroking the man’s face he heard voices from the past.

“Mommy’s
not
coming
home
Joe.
Your
little
brother
went
on
a
trip
with
her.
They’re
in
Heaven
waiting
for
us
to
join
them
someday.
”

Joe jerked with surprise—Christ, how could he have remembered that? He was barely two years old when his mother had died! Maddie came back and he took her hand and started for the exit. He would stop at the funeral home that had buried Jackie Baker six years earlier. They would take care of everything, including the newspaper obituary. He would give them all the information they needed. His father wouldn’t have wanted a big write-up anyway. The only other living relative was a nephew living in town. Dan’s older brother had died almost ten years ago. The obituary was mainly for Dan’s friends at work who might like to attend the funeral.

By seven o’clock that night he and Maddie were on their way back to the Baker house. He would drop her off, pick up a suit of his father’s, take it to the funeral home, then drive back home. Communication between them was practically nil during their rides to the funeral home and then back home; she only nodded to confirm any information she might have to add to the obituary.

“Will you be staying down at your father’s until the funeral?” Maddie asked quietly as she sat in Joe’s car and watched her own father carrying into the house a small motor he planned to work on.

“Probably. I’m going home first though. I have to get some things done up there.” His gaze stayed focused through the windshield.

“If you need any help with anything, I’ll be here. Mom will be here on and off, but Aunt Mae isn’t doing very well either. Sometimes Mom spends the whole night in the hospital with her. I’ll stop in at the viewing, but I don’t think I’ll make it to the funeral.”

Joe glanced over at her. He knew she hadn’t forgiven him since the football game the previous fall when he made it clear to her that he was married. “I understand.”

“I’d better get up to the house now. Dad’s probably hungry.” And with that she opened the door and went up the lane to her house, leaving him to his trip forty miles north.

“Where were you?!” Lena looked frazzled when Joe returned at ten o’clock. “You just up and leave me here with these two. Christ, they’ve been bawling ever since you left!”

“I was down home.” He looked at the children, now twenty-four months and twelve months. “Come here Ollie.”

“Down home?! Down at the Bakers you mean?”

“Yes,” he said simply as he picked up a diaper and started drying Oliver.

“Well that’s great! You just hop in your car and go off joy riding and leave me saddled down with these two.”

“Lena, shut up.” He was tired and didn’t want to put up with her.

“What?” He couldn’t have stunned her more if he had struck her. “Where do you get off telling me to . . . .”

“
LENA
!” His roar sent both children off into screaming seizures. “WOULD YOU KNOCK IT OFF! LEAVE ME ALONE! I watched a man die today—now just leave me alone!”

“Jack Baker died today?” she asked, confused.

“No.” She seemed absurd to him.

“Then who?”

“My dad.”

“Oh. Well. The way you were carrying on I thought it was someone you cared about.” She picked up a nail file and sat down. “Are you having a funeral?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not leaving these two here with me again, are you?”

“Does that mean you’re
not
going?” He knew Lena didn’t care for his father, but the fact she wouldn’t accompany him to the funeral irritated him.

“What for? I hardly knew him.”

“I’ll have to be away for a few days. I have to clear out the house and do something about it.” He put Ollie on the floor as he sat on the couch.

“We could . . . .” Excitement filled her eyes then turned to disgust. Joe knew she was struck with the thought of inheriting a house, but, realized who their neighbors would be. “Never mind. Go ahead. I’ll get a sitter in if I need one.”

“You do that. Can you manage to put these two in bed, or do I have to?”

“How long will you be away?” Her pleasant tone annoyed him.

“Probably until Monday.”

“No, go to bed. I’ll see to them.”

The funeral home wasn’t busy so Joe managed to have the viewing the next night and the funeral on Friday afternoon. Maddie was true to her word and came the night of the viewing, but stayed out of his way. He couldn’t see it that way. His eyes searched for her at the funeral home. He needed to see her. He hadn’t seen her all day Thursday, until nearly five o’clock when he saw her walking from her home to John’s house. She didn’t make any attempt to acknowledge him as he watched her from his father’s lawn, barely looking in his direction as she mounted the steps that led inside the small structure. At his father’s viewing he saw why. She looked exhausted; much too tired for a girl who had just turned seventeen.

“What’s wrong with Maddie? Is she sick again?” Joe pulled Bob aside.

“Not yet. She’s tired. She’s been going to school, then coming home to fix supper and clean house for the past week and a half. Since last Monday she’s been fitting your father into her schedule as well.”

“Why? What’s wrong with Sarah?” Joe looked at the woman who hadn’t been seen around the Baker home either. She looked as exhausted as her daughter.

“She’s been going to work at five in the morning and staying with her sister until ten at night when Lew takes over. Then she comes home and gets her things ready for work again before she can get some sleep. Her sister’s dying.”

“That’s right, you mentioned it.”

“Maddie’s been taking care of their house after sitting with your dad until nearly nine every night. She hasn’t been getting much sleep.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” Joe asked.

“Would Mom have complained?”

“No.” Joe knew Sarah would work until she nearly dropped dead and still try to comfort the ones who needed it.

“Well, Maddie wouldn’t either.”

Neither Maddie nor Sarah came to the funeral the next day and Joe could now understand why. It was nearly nine that evening when Lew, John and Tom finally called it a night and decided Joe could be on his own. They had stayed with him at his house, watching television and just passing time with him, but, after they had gone, the house felt empty and cold. He didn’t like the idea of staying there either. He found a few bottles of beer in the refrigerator, then went to his father’s bedroom to busy himself until he would be tired enough for sleep to find him. The job of boxing up his father’s clothes went quickly. They would be taken to charity that weekend. He came across a scrapbook and opened it to find the front page had a tiny article pasted to it reading “A son was born today to Daniel and Kathleen McNier . . . .” Moving out of the bedroom with a bottle of beer in one hand and the old scrapbook in the other, he opened the front door to relieve some of the unnatural heat of April before going to a chair in the living room and turning on a lamp.

He had finished three more bottles of beer by the time he closed the book. It was a book about Joe McNier’s life. Scraps of paper from his birth to his mother’s death. More clippings on his high school football career, with all his final report cards in between, and finally his enlistment announcement and a notice that he was one of the heroes accompanying the body of Corp. Jonas Baker home.

He leaned his head back on the seat. He wished he could grieve for this man who had cared enough about him to keep a record of his life. If only once he had shown Joe a little of what he kept hidden in this book, maybe Joe could have felt something more than simply having been associated with him. If he could have just once laughed with him, or cried with him. But he never did. Joe knew there were only two men who ever treated him with love and friendship, and they were Jack Baker and Lew Cressinger. But between the two, Jack was the father he always yearned for, whereas Lew was the older brother and friend rolled into one. Thank God Jack was only approaching fifty-one and Lew was only forty. Joe would have them to rely on for many years.