“You okay?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Feel like telling me where you were?”
She met his eyes. “I went to the Candlelight and got the samovar.”
“You
stole
the samovar?”
“I asked Mrs. DiFalco and she gave it to me.”
“Rose doesn't own the samovar. Maddy does.”
“Maddy was upstairs taking care of Hannah.”
He registered the information about Hannah and Maddy and tucked it away for later.
Kelly grabbed the shopping bag and put it on her lap. “You're not going to say I can't do it, are you?”
“No,” he said, “but I'm going to remind you that she probably doesn't even know we're in the room with her, much less recognize an old teapot.”
“But I have to try,” she whispered. “You know that, right?”
“I know,” he said, “and I'm not going to try and stop you.”
Her shoulders began to shake and she lowered her head. Seventeen years and Aidan still didn't have a handle on tears. He placed an arm around her and gave her a hug.
“I just want Grandma to know she's not alone.” She rested her head against his shoulder. “It seems like the least we can do for her.”
“You make me proud, Kel.” His voice was choked with emotion. “Your mother would have been proud, too.”
“I love you, Daddy.” For a moment he thought he saw the little girl she used to be, but then he blinked and she was almost grown.
Â
The Candlelight
Aidan called a little after three o'clock to see how Hannah was faring.
“There's still no fever,” she said, “but I can't shake the feeling something's very wrong.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“âWait until six o'clock, then call me back.' She was polite and kind and all of that, but I think she has me pegged as a hysterical single mother of an only child.”
“Call her back now.”
“She told me to wait until six.”
“Go with your gut,” he said. “Nobody loves Hannah more than you do, and nobody knows her better.”
“I don't want to alienate her pediatrician.”
“Screw the pediatrician. There are other doctors out there, but there's only one Hannah.”
She was silent, thinking about his words. Rocking the boat had never been one of her favorite pastimes.
“I'm right on this,” he persisted. “You know you won't rest until the doctor sees Hannah, and she won't see her unless you push hard.”
He was right and she knew it. She promised to call him back with the outcome, then hung up and dialed Hannah's doctor.
Â
THANK GOD FOR cell phones.
Rose almost cried with relief when Bill's booming voice leaped through the wires into her heart.
“Talk to me, Rosie,” he said. “Is something wrong?”
“No . . . yesâoh, God, Bill, I just don't know. It's just a feeling I have thatâ” She stopped. There were some fears that were better off remaining unspoken.
“It's not your cancer, is it?” Bless him for not beating around the bush.
“No,” she said, although she would rather bear anything than see Maddy or Hannah unwell. “It's the little one.”
She tried to explain the situation to him, but it sounded so ridiculous in the telling that she ended up apologizing.
“I sound crazy, don't I? No fever. No nausea. Nothing I can point to and say, âAha! That's the culprit!' But something's wrong, Bill, I can feel it in my gut.” She told him how Maddy had been the first to suspect something wasn't right and how her suspicions had seemed more and more on target as the day progressed.
“What did the doctor say?”
“She's going to drive over on her way home and take a look at Hannah.” Which must be the first house call made in Paradise Point since the Korean War.
“I'm on my way,” he said.
“Bill, that's not necessary. You'll be here for Christmas. Don't cut yourâ”
“Rosie, don't you know by now there's no point to arguing with me when it comes to family? Sit tight. I'll be there before long.”
She hung up the phone, then lowered her head and started to cry.
Â
I'm not sure there's any reason for you to worry, but Hannah isn't feeling very well and I can't pinpoint why. It started around three A.M.âshe's not feverish or vomiting, but she's also not very responsive, either. Everyone thinks it's a head cold, but where are the sneezes? The sniffles? Just a sore throat. She's been asleep most of the day; no appetite, no conversation. And you know that's not at all like our daughter. I called the pediatrician twiceâfinally got her to agree to stop by and see Hannah. Like I said, there doesn't seem to be any reason for worry, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling very uneasy about this.
Hence this e-mail.
I'll keep you posted.
Maddy
Â
PS: I'm attaching two photos taken last night of H. playing in the snow with Priscilla. God, how I wish I'd kept her inside watching TV.âM.
Â
Good Samaritan Hospital
It came as no surprise when Irene failed to respond to the samovar. Aidan had tried his best to prepare Kelly for the total lack of response, but nothing could prepare her for the sight of her great-grandmother lying still as a corpse in the hospital bed.
They rested the samovar on the bed next to Irene and lifted her hand to touch its sleek and shiny surface, but there wasn't so much as a flicker of recognition or even curiosity from the old woman.
“You tried, Kel,” he said as they slid the samovar back into the shopping bag and placed it on the chair in the corner of the room. “That's more than most people would have done.”
“She doesn't even know we're here,” Kelly said, her voice breaking. “It's like we're in different worlds.”
Pretty much the way it's always been
.
But he didn't say it. His kid had made it this far without cynicism and bitterness. He'd like to see her stay that way a little longer.
“It's part of the process,” he said softly, turning away from Irene. “I read one of those booklets they have near the nurses' station, and it explained the stages a person goes through in a natural death.”
The O'Malleys knew a lot about death, but none of it had ever been natural. The gift of old age, of dying in your sleep, had been denied to them. Grandpa Michael. His first son. Aidan's wife, Sandy. His parents. Billy. A long, sad list of lives cut short for no good reason other than the fates were bored and needed something to amuse themselves with.
Only Irene had lived out her span and more, and he wondered if maybe that wasn't her own taste of hell.
Irene stirred and both he and Kelly turned to look at her. The old woman's eyelids fluttered, and for a moment he thought they might open wide and she would see them, really see them, for the first time.
Those poor O'Malleys. What terrible luck they have
. Those words had followed him like the tail on a kite throughout his life. Irene had caught him staring at his face in the mirror once not long after his parents were killed in the accident.
There's nothing to see
, she had told him, understanding instantly what he was all about,
but it's there just the same
.
Which, if you thought about it, was a hell of a thing to lay on a fourteen-year-old boy who had just buried his parents.
She had always viewed the world through the darkest lens. At least in the years he'd known her she had. But how could he blame her? By the time Aidan and Billy were born, Irene had already lost her firstborn to war and her husband to the sea. She had earned the right to be bitter, but how much happier their lives might have been if she had been able to offer them the hope of something better.
Kelly left the room to make a phone call. He sat down on the edge of Irene's bed and took her hand in his, a gesture he would have been unable to make if she were conscious, and held it tight. She wasn't a toucher, not at all the cuddly, cookie-baking grandparent immortalized in movies and TV shows. She had always been distant, quick to criticize, steadfast in her belief in family, but loyalty seemed to matter more to her than love.
He wished he knew how she had come to be that way. It wasn't as if her past was shrouded in some deep, dark mystery that the family had been trying for years to unravel; it was more that her past didn't exist at all. Who had she been before she married Michael O'Malley? She had been born in a time when birth certificates were often afterthoughts, if they were thought of at all. Born on the other side of the ocean, of that he was sure. Irene Taylor O'Malley. Carved in granite, immutable, unknowable.
He had known old people like her before, met them in the crazed aftermath of a fire or false alarm. Some spilled their histories at your feet before the flames were extinguished. Others claimed no history at all; they simply sprang to life at eighty-five or eighty-six with arthritis, no teeth, and a subscription to
Modern Maturity
.
The booklet he'd found near the nurses' station talked about the stages a patient went through in the hours or days before death. The restless picking at the bedcovers. The deep, almost drugged sleep. The occasional nonsense syllables Irene muttered without opening her eyes. Names he had never heard her mention before. The booklet called it “The Life Journey,” where the dying man or woman somersaulted back into his or her own life and relived events at random, met up with old friends and foes and family, maybe worked through issues or redefined them as sand spilled through that metaphorical hourglass at an alarming rate.
Was that what was happening with Irene right now? Was she standing in front of the original O'Malley's with Grandpa Michael by her side and her youngest son beaming into the camera? Or maybe it was in those days between the worst of the Depression and the start of World War II, back when she had two healthy, strapping sons and a popular restaurant and a husband who adored her.
“Were you ever happy?” he asked his sleeping grandmother. “Did any of it ever make you happy?”
She didn't answer him. He hadn't expected her to. Why should today be any different than a thousand other days?
He leaned closer. “We love you.” He had never said it that way to her before. She wouldn't have allowed it. “You took Billy and me in when nobody else would.” He swallowed hard against the memories. “Kelly tries so hard toâ” No more. He'd gone as far as thirty-five years of conditioning would let him go.
Tell me how to make it better for Kelly. Tell me how to put an end to all the years of unhappiness and build something fine for at least one of the O'Malleys
.
Irene, as usual, had nothing to say.
Â
The Candlelight
The pediatrician didn't mince words. “We're taking her to Good Sam,” Dr. Romanelli said as she washed her hands at the bathroom sink.
“Oh, God.” Maddy felt her legs slip out from under her. She grabbed her mother's arm for support. “What is it? What did you find?”
Dr. Romanelli dried her hands on a guest towel. “I don't know what it is,” she said bluntly, “but I don't like what I'm seeing. I think we'd all rest easier if we get Hannah admitted so we can run some tests.”
“Good Sam,” Rose said, sounding as terrified as Maddy felt. “Isn't that out of the way? Especially with the roads the way they are.”
“Good Sam has the best diagnostic facilities in South Jersey,” the doctor said, eyeing Rose with fleeting curiosity. “No question that's where Hannah should go.”
“Of course,” Maddy said with a quick glance at her mother. Rose had aged ten years in the last five minutes. “Wherever you think she'll get the best care.”
The doctor nodded, then pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her jacket. She punched in a number, waited, then fired off a rapid series of instructions, only some of which penetrated the icy burst of terror in Maddy's brain.
“An ambulance?” Maddy started to shake. “She needs an ambulance?”
“You have medical, don't you?”
Maddy nodded. Thank God she had kept it up on her own after losing her job. “I don't care about the money. Is Hannah that sick?”
“I'm being cautious,” the doctor said. “The roads are bad . . . why not take advantage of what's available, right?”
She wanted to cry. She wanted to throw herself in her mother's arms and sob until she woke up and found out this was only a bad dream.
“She'll be fine,” Rose said as they walked back down the hall toward Hannah's room. “This is all precautionary.”
“Of course it is,” Maddy said. “They think they can make a few extra bucks by calling for an ambulance.”
“It's all about money,” Rose agreed. “Isn't that always the case?”
But it wasn't. Not this time. And they both knew it.
Chapter Twenty-six
KELLY HAD JUST tossed her empty plastic coffee cup into the trash when she saw them.
At first she thought she was hallucinating. That couldn't be Rose DiFalco and Maddy Bainbridge standing near the admin desk at the entrance to the emergency room. She blinked her eyes. It couldn't possibly be. She'd just seen them a few hours ago.
Her glance drifted toward a tiny figure on a stretcher who was being hustled quickly through the double doors and into the great unknowable bowels of the ER.