For a minute I seriously consider ducking out a window. Then I stop
abruptly, turn, and offer up my most engaging smile. “Technically
speaking, you said you needed to talk to me. If you'd said you wanted
to talk to me, I might have waited around.” Judge sinks his teeth
into the corner of my suit, my expensive Armani suit, and tugs.
“Right now, though, I have a meeting to get to.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she says. "You told me you
talked to Anna about her mother and that we were all on the same page.'
“I did, and we were—Sara was coercing her, and Anna
wanted that to stop. I explained the alternatives.”
"Alternatives? She's a thirteen-year-old girl. Do you know how
many kids I see whose take on a trial is completely different from their
parents'? A mother comes in and promises that her child will testify against a
child molester, because she wants the perp put away for life. But the child
doesn't care what happens to the perp, as long as he never has to be in the
same room as the guy again. Or he thinks that maybe the perp should get another
chance, just like his parents give him when he's bad. You
can't expect Anna to be like a normal adult client. She doesn't have the
emotional capability to make decisions independent of her home situation.”
“Well, that's the point of this whole petition,“ I say. ”As a
matter of fact, Anna told me, not a half hour ago, that she's changed her mind
about this whole petition.“ Julia raises a brow. ”Didn't know that,
did you?"
“She hasn't talked to me about it.”
“That's because you're talking about the wrong things. You had a
conversation with her about a legal way to keep her from being pressured to
call off the lawsuit. Of course she jumped all over that. But do you
really think she was considering what it might truly mean—that there would be
one less parent home to cook or drive or help her with homework, that she
wouldn't be able to kiss her mother good night, that the rest of her family
would most likely be very upset with her? All she heard, when you talked, were
the words no pressure. She never heard separation.”
Judge begins to whine in earnest. “I have to go.” She follows me.
“Where?”
“I told you, I have an appointment.” The corridor is
lined with rooms, all locked. Finally I find a knob that turns in my hand. I
walk inside and bolt the door behind me. “Gentlemen,” I say heartily.
Julia rattles the knob. She bangs on the smoky postage-stamp square of
glass. I feel sweat break out on my forehead. “You're not getting away
this time,” she yells through the door at me. “I'm still waiting
right here.”
“I'm still busy,” I yell back. When Judge pushes his snout in
front of me, I sink my fingers into the thick fur at his neck. “It's
okay,” I tell him, and then I turn around to face the empty room.
JESSE
EVERY NOW AND THEN I have to contradict myself and believe in God, such as
at this very moment when I come home to find a bodacious babe on my doorstep,
one who gets to her feet and asks me if I know Jesse Fitzgerald. “Who's
asking?” I say. “Me.”
I give her my most charming smile. “Then here I am.” Let me just
step back for a moment and tell you that she's older than me, but with every
glance that makes less and less of a difference—she's got hair I could get lost
in, and a mouth so soft and full I have a hard time tearing my eyes away to
check out the rest of her. I'm itching to get my hands on her skin—even the
ordinary parts—just to see if it feels as smooth as it looks.
“I'm Julia Romano,” she says. “I'm a guardian ad litem.”
All the violins soaring in my veins screech to a stop. “Is that like a cop?”
“No, I'm an attorney, and I'm working with a judge to help
your sister.”
“You mean Kate?”
Something in her face tightens. “I mean Anna. She filed a lawsuit for
medical emancipation from your parents.”
“Oh, yeah. I know about that.”
“Really?” This seems to surprise her, as if defiance is something Anna's
cornered the market on. “Do you happen to know where she is?”
I glance at the house, dark and empty. “Am I my sister's keeper?”
I say. Then I grin at her. “If you feel like waiting, you can come up and
see my etchings.”
To my shock, she agrees. “Actually, that's not a bad idea. I'd like to
talk to you.”
I lean against the door again and cross my arms, so that my biceps flex. I
give her the grin that's stopped half the female population of Roger Williams
University in their tracks. “You got plans for tonight?”
She stares at me like I've just spoken Greek. No, damn, she'd probably
understand Greek. Martian. Or freaking Vulcan. “Are you asking me out on a
date?”
“I'm sure as hell trying,” I say.
“You're sure as hell failing,” she responds flatly. “I'm old
enough to be your mother.”
“You have the most fantastic eyes.” By eyes, I mean tits,
but whatever.
Julia Romano chooses that moment to button her suit jacket, which makes me
laugh out loud. “Why don't we just talk here?”
“Whatever,” I say, and I lead her up to my apartment.
Given what it usually looks like, the place isn't so bad. The dishes on the
counter are only a day or two old; and spilled cereal isn't nearly as bad to
come home to after a full day as spilled milk. On the middle of the floor is a
bucket and rag and container of gas; I'm working up some flresticks. There are
clothes all over the floor, some artfully arranged to minimize the effect of a
leak in my moonshine still.
“What do you think?” I smile at her. “Martha Stewart would
love it, huh?”
“Martha Stewart would make you her life project,” Julia murmurs.
She sits down on the couch, leaps up, and removes a handful of potato chips
that have, holy God, already left a grease print in the shape of a heart on her
sweet ass.
“You want a drink?” Don't let it be said my mother never taught me
manners.
She glances around, then shakes her head. “I'll pass.”
Shrugging, I pull a Labatt's out of the fridge. “So there's been a
little fallout along the home front?”
“Wouldn't you know?”
“I try not to.”
“How come?”
“Because it's what I do best.” Grinning, I take a nice long pull
of my beer. “Although this is one blowout I would've loved to see.”
“Tell me about Kate and Anna.”
“What am I supposed to tell you?” I swing down next to her on the
couch, way too close. On purpose.
“How do you get along with them?”
I lean forward. “Why, Ms. Romano. Are you asking me if I play nice?”
When she doesn't as much as blink, I knock off the act. “They survive
me,” I answer. “Like everyone else.”
This answer must interest her, because she writes something down on her
little white pad. “What was it like, growing up in this family?”
A dozen flip responses work their way up my throat, but the one that comes
out Is a totally dark horse. “When I was twelve, there was this time Kate
got sick—not even big sick, just an infection, but she couldn't seem to get rid
of it by herself. So they took Anna in to give granulocytes—white blood cells.
It wasn't like Kate planned it or anything, but it happened to be Christmas
Eve. We were supposed to all go out as a family, you know, and get a
tree.” I pull a pack of smokes from my pocket. “You mind?” I
ask, but I never give her a chance to answer before I light up. “I was
shuttled over to some neighbor's house last minute, which sucked, because they
were having a nice Christmas Eve with their relatives and kept whispering about
me like I was a charity case and deaf to boot. Anyway, that all got lame pretty
fast, so I said I had to pee and I snuck out. I walked home and took one of my
dad's axes and a handsaw and chopped down this little spruce in the middle of
the front yard. By the time the neighbor figured out I was gone, I had the
whole thing set up in our living room in the tree stand, garland, ornaments,
you name it.”
In my mind, I can still see those lights—red and blue and yellow, blinking
over and over on a tree as overdressed as an Eskimo in Bali. “So Christmas
morning, my parents come to the neighbors to collect me. They look like hell,
the both of them, but when they bring me home there are presents under the
tree. I'm all excited and I find one with my name on it, and it turns out to be
this little windup car—something that would have been great for a
three-year-old, but not me, and that I happened to know was for sale in the
hospital gift shop. As was every single other present I got that year. Go
freaking figure.” I stab my cigarette butt out on the thigh of my jeans.
“They never even said anything about the tree,” I tell her.
“That's what it's like growing up in this family.”
“Do you think it's the same for Anna?”
“No. Anna's on their radar, because she plays into their grand plan for
Kate.”
“How do your parents decide when Anna will help Kate medically?”
she asks.
“You make it sound like there's some process involved. Like there's
actually a choice.”
She lifts her head. “Isn't there?”
I ignore her, because that's a rhetorical question if I've ever heard one,
and stare out the window. In the front yard, you can still see the stump from
that spruce. No one in this family ever covers up their mistakes.
When I was seven I got it in my head to dig to China. How hard could it be,
I figured—a straight shot, a tunnel? I took a shovel out of the garage and I
started a hole just wide enough for me to slip into. Every night I would drag
the old plastic sandbox cover across it, just in case of rain.
For four weeks I worked at this, as the rocks bit into my arms to make
battle scars, and roots grabbed at my ankles.
What I didn't count on were the tall walls that grew around me, or the belly
of the planet, hot under my sneakers. Digging straight down, I'd gotten
hopelessly lost. In a tunnel, you have to light your own way, and I've never
been very good at that.
When I yelled out, my father found me in seconds, although I'm sure I waited
through several lives. He crawled into the pit, torn between my hard work and
my stupidity. “This could have collapsed on you!” he said, and lifted
me onto solid ground.
From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after
all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to
his chest.
Darkness, you know, is relative.
BRIAN
IT TAKES ANNA LESS THAN TEN MINUTES to move into my room at the station.
While she puts her clothes into a drawer and sets her hairbrush next to mine on
the dresser, I go out to the kitchen where Paulie is chefing up dinner. The
guys are all waiting for an explanation.
“She's going to stay with me here for a while,” I say. “We're
working some things out.”
Caesar looks up from a magazine. “Is she gonna ride with us?”
I haven't thought of this. Maybe it will take her mind off things, to feel
like she's an apprentice of sorts. “You know, she just might.”
Paulie turns around. He's making fajitas tonight, beef. “Everything
okay, Cap?”
'Yeah, Paulie, thanks for asking."
“If there's anyone upsetting her,” Red says, “they'll have to
go through all four of us now.”
The others nod. I wonder what they would think if I told them that the
people upsetting Anna are Sara and me.
I leave the guys finishing up dinner preparations and go back to my room,
where Anna sits on the second twin bed with her feet pretzeled beneath her.
“Hey,” I say, but she doesn't respond. It takes me a moment to see
that she's wearing headphones, blasting God knows what into her ears.
She sees me and shuts off the music, pulling the phones to rest on her neck
like a choker. “Hey.”
I sit down on the edge of the bed and look at her. “So. You, uh, want
to do something?”
“Like what?”
I shrug. “I don't know. Play cards?” 'You mean like poker?"
“Poker, Go Fish. Whatever.” She looks at me carefully. "Go Fish?”
“Want to braid your hair?"
“Dad,” Anna asks, “are you feeling all right?”
I am more comfortable rushing into a building that is going to pieces around
me than I am trying to make her feel at ease. “I just-l want you to know
you can do anything you want here.”
“Is it okay to leave a box of tampons in the bathroom?” Immediately,
my face goes red, and as if it's catching, so does Anna's. There is only one
female firefighter, a part-timer, and the women's room is on the lower level of
the station. But still.
Anna's hair swings over her face. “I didn't mean… I can just keep them—”
“You can put them in the bathroom,” I announce. Then I add with
authority, “If anyone complains, we'll say they're mine.”
“I'm not sure they'll believe you, Dad.”
I wrap an arm around her. “I may not do this right at first. I've never
bunked with a thirteen-year-old girl.”
“I don't shack up with forty-two-year-old guys too often, either.”
“Good, because I'd have to kill them.”
Her smile is a stamp against my neck. Maybe this will not be as hard as I
think. Maybe I can convince myself that this move will ultimately keep my
family together, even though the first step involves breaking it apart.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“Just so you know: no one plays Go Fish after they're
potty-trained.” She hugs me extra tight, the way she used to when she was
small. I remember, in that instant, the last time I carried Anna. We were
hiking across a field, the five of us—and the cattails and wild daisies were
taller than her head. I swung her up into my arms, and together we parted a sea
of reeds. But for the first time we both noticed how far down her legs dangled,
how she was too big to sit on my hip, and before long she was struggling to get
down and walk on her own.
Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees
twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They
outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.
It seems remarkable that while one of our daughters is leading us into a
legal crisis, the other is in the throes of a medical one-but then again, we
have known for quite some time that Kate's at the end stages of renal failure.
It is Anna, this time, who's thrown us for a loop. And yet-like always-you
figure it out; you manage to deal with both. The human capacity for burden is
like bamboo—far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.
While Anna was packing up her things that afternoon, I went to the hospital.
Kate was having her dialysis done when I came into the room. She was asleep
with her CD headphones on; Sara rose from a chair with one finger pressed to
her lips, a warning.
She led me into the hallway. “How's Kate?” I asked. “About
the same,” she answered. “How's Anna?” We traded the status of
our children like baseball cards that we'd flash for a peek, but didn't want to
give up just yet. I looked at Sara, wondering how I was supposed to tell her
what I'd done.
“Where did you two run off to while I was fending off the judge?”
she said. Well. If you sit around and think about how hot the fire's going to
be, you'll never get into the thick of it. “I took Anna to the
station.”
“Something going on at work?”
I took a deep breath and leaped off the cliff that my marriage had become.
“No. Anna's going to stay with me there for a few days. I think maybe she
needs a little time by herself.”
Sara stared at me. “But Anna's not going to be by herself.
She's going to be with you.”
The hallway seemed too bright and too wide all of a sudden. “Is that a
bad thing?”
“Yes,” she said. “Do you really think that buying into Anna's
tantrum is going to help her any in the long run?”
“I'm not buying into her tantrum; I'm giving her space to come to the
right conclusions by herself. You're not the one who's been sitting outside
with her while you're in the judge's chambers. I'm worried about her.”
“Well, that's where we're different,” Sara argued. “I'm
worried about both our daughters.”
I looked at her, and for just a splinter of a minute saw the woman she used
to be—one who knew where to find her smile, instead of having to rummage for
it; one who always messed up punch lines and still got a laugh; one who could
reel me in without even trying. I put my hands on her cheeks. Oh,
there you are, I thought, and I leaned down to kiss her on the
forehead. “You know where to find us,” I said, and walked away.
Shortly after midnight we get an ambulance call. Anna blinks from her bed as
the bells go off and light automatically floods the room. “You can
stay,” I tell her, but she's already up and putting on her shoes.
I've given her old turnout gear from our part-time female firefighter: a
pair of boots, a hard hat. She shrugs into the coat and climbs into the rear of
the ambulance, strapping herself to the rear-facing seat behind Red, who's
driving.
We scream down the streets of Upper Darby to the Sunshine Gates Nursing
Home, an anteroom for meeting St. Peter. Red grabs the stretcher from the
ambulance while I carry in the paramedic's bag. A nurse meets us at the front
doors. “She fell down and lost consciousness for a while. And she's got an
altered mental state.”
We are led to one of the rooms. Inside, an elderly woman lies on the floor,
tiny and fine-boned as a bird, blood oozing from the top of her head. It smells
like she's lost control of her bowels. “Hi, hon,” I say, leaning down
immediately. I reach for her hand, the skin thin as crepe. “Can you squeeze
my fingers?” And to the nurse: “What's her name?”
“Eldie Briggs. She's eighty-seven.”
“Eldie, we're going to help you,” I say, continuing to assess her.
“She's got a lac on the occipital area. I'm going to need the
backboard.” While Red runs out to the ambulance to get it, I take Eldie's
blood pressure and pulse—irregular. “Do you have any pain in your
chest?” The woman moans, but shakes her head and then winces. “I'm
going to have to put you in a collar, hon, all right? It looks like you hit
your head pretty hard.” Red returns, bearing the board. Lifting my head, I
look at the nurse again. “Do we know if her change in consciousness was
the result of the fall, or did it cause the fall?”
She shakes her head. “No one saw it happen.”
“Of course,” I mutter under my breath. “I need a
blanket.”
The hand that offers it is tiny and shaking. Until that moment, I've
completely forgotten Anna is with us. “Thanks, baby,” I say, taking
the time to smile at her. 'You want to help me here? Can you get down to Mrs. Briggs's
feet?"
She nods, white-faced, and crouches down. Red aligns the backboard.
“We're going to roll you, Eldie … on three…” We count, shift, strap
her on. The motion makes her scalp wound gush again.
We load her into the ambulance. Red hauls off to the hospital as I move
around the cramped quarters of the cabin, hooking up the oxygen tank,
ministering. “Anna, grab me an IV start kit?” I begin to cut Eldie's
clothes off her. 'You still with us, Mrs. Briggs? Little needle stick
coming,“ I say. I position her arm and try to get a vein, but they are
like the faintest tracings of pencil, blueprint shadings. Sweat beads on my
forehead. ”I can't get in with a twenty. Anna, can you find a
twenty-two?"
It doesn't help that the patient is moaning, crying. That the ambulance is
swaying back and forth, turning corners, braking, as I try to insert the
smaller needle. “Dammit,” I say, throwing the second line on the
floor.
I do a quick cardiac strip and then pick up the radio and dial into the
hospital to tell them we're incoming. “Eighty-seven-year-old patient, had
a fall. She's alert and answering questions, BP 136 over 83, pulse 130 and
irregular. I tried to get IV access for you but haven't had a lot of luck with
that. She does have a lac on the back of her head but it's pretty well
controlled by now. I've got her on oxygen. Any questions?”
In the beam of an approaching truck, I see Anna's face. The truck turns, the
light falls, and I realize that my daughter is holding this stranger's hand.
At the emergency entrance of the hospital, we pull the stretcher out of the
cabin and wheel into the automatic doors. A team of doctors and nurses is
already waiting. “She's still talking to us,” I say.
A male nurse taps her thin wrists. “Jesus.”
'Yeah, that's why I couldn't get a line. I needed pedi cuffs to get her
pressure."
Suddenly I remember Anna, who's standing wide-eyed in the doorway.
“Daddy? Is that lady going to die?”
“I think she might have had a stroke… but she's going to make it.
Listen, why don't you just go wait over there, in a chair? I'll be out in five
minutes, tops.”
“Dad?” she says, and I pause at the threshold. “Wouldn't it
be cool if they were all that way?”
She doesn't see it the way I do—that Eldie Briggs is a paramedic's
nightmare, that her veins are shot and her condition's waffling and that this
has not been a good call at all. What Anna means is that whatever is wrong with
Eldie Briggs can be fixed.
I go inside and continue to feed information to the ER staff as needed.
About ten minutes later, I finish up my Run Form and look for my daughter in
the waiting area, but she's gone missing. I find Red smoothing fresh sheets
onto the stretcher, strapping a pillow under its belt. “Where's
Anna?”
“1 figured she was with you.”
Glancing down one hallway and then the other, all I see are weary
physicians, other paramedics, small scatterings of dazed people sipping coffee
and hoping for the best. “I'll be right back.”
Compared to the frenzy of the ER, the eighth floor is all tucked tight. The
nurses all greet me by name as I head for Kate's room and gently push open the
door.
Anna is too big for Sara's lap, but that's where she's sitting. She and Kate
are both asleep. Over the crown of Anna's head, Sara watches me approach.
I kneel in front of my wife and brush Anna's hair off her temples.
“Baby,” I whisper, “it's time to go home.”
Anna sits up slowly. She lets me take her hand and draw her
upright, Sara's palm trailing down her spine. “It's not home,” Anna
says, but she follows me out of the room all the same.
Past midnight, I lean down beside Anna and balance my words on the edge of
her ear. “Come see this,” I coax. She sits up, grabs a sweatshirt,
stuffs her feet into her sneakers. Together, we climb to the station's roof.
The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips
in the seam of the dark. “Oh!” Anna exclaims, and she lies down so
that she can see better.
“It's the Perseids,” I tell her. “A meteor shower.”
“It's incredible.”
Shooting stars are not stars at all. They're just rocks that enter the
atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on, when we see one, is
only a trail of debris.
In the upper left quadrant of the sky, a radiant bursts in a new stream of
sparks. “Is it like this every night, while we're asleep?” Anna asks.
It is a remarkable question—Do all the wonderful things happen when we
are not aware of them? I shake my head. Technically, the earth's path
crosses this comet's gritty tail once a year. But a show as dynamic as this one
might be once in a lifetime.
“Wouldn't it be cool if a star landed in the backyard? If we could find
it when the sun came up and put it into a fishbowl and use it as a night-light
or a camping lantern?” I can almost see her doing it, combing the lawn for
the mark of burned grass. “Do you think Kate can see these, out her
window?”
“I'm not sure.” I come up on an elbow and look at her carefully.
But Anna keeps her eyes glued to the upended bowl of the heavens. “I
know you want to ask me why I'm doing all this.”
'You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."
Anna lies down, her head pillowed against my shoulder. Every second, another
streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas-a whole grammar
made of light, for words too hard to speak.
FRIDAY
Doubt thou that the stars are fire;
Doubt thou that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt that I love.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
CAMPBELL
THE MINUTE I WALK INTO THE HOSPITAL with Judge at my side, I know I'm in
trouble. A security officer—think Hitler in drag with a very bad perm—crosses
her arms and blocks my entry at the elevator bank. “No dogs,” she
orders.
“This is a service dog.”
“You're not blind.”
“I have an irregular heartbeat and he's CPR certified.”
I head up to the office of Dr. Peter Bergen, a psychiatrist who happens to
be the chairman of the medical ethics board at Providence Hospital. I'm here by
default: I can't seem to find my client, who may or may not still be pursuing
her lawsuit. Frankly, after the hearing yesterday I was pissed off—I wanted her
to come to me. When she didn't, I went so far as to sit on her
doorstep last night for an hour, but no one showed up at her home; this
morning, assuming Anna was with her sister, I came to the hospital—only to be
told I couldn't go in to see Kate. I can't find Julia, either, although I fully
expected to see her still waiting yesterday on the other side of the door when
Judge and I left after the incident at the courthouse. I asked her sister for a
cell number, at least, but something tells me that 401-GO2-HELL is out of
service.