The Stories We Tell (3 page)

I stare at him, stunned into silence, knowing this is Cooper because of the eyes and voice, but everything is distorted in a globulelike mash of blood, bandages, and bloated flesh. I try to say his name but only a groan on an exhaled breath comes out. Then I find my voice. “I'm here. Right here.”

He closes his eyes. “God, it hurts like hell.” His voice is full of swollen pain. He raises his hand to touch his head but then drops it again, as if it weighs too much.

I bend over my husband, reaching for him, scanning his body for injury or missing parts. I kiss him once on the forehead. “What happened?”

Dr. Lewis appears at my side. “Broken glass cut your husband's face and scalp,” she states, as if this is the most obvious thing in all the world.

“Are you okay?” A stupid question if ever there was one.

“Other than this?” Cooper lifts his hand to his head one more time, a single finger pointing at the bandages.

“No other injuries?” I ask softly, hopefully.

“No,” Dr. Lewis says. “All else is clear.”

“Clear?” Cooper tries to sit, but he falls back down. “I'm missing half my face.”

“You are not missing half your face,” I say. I don't know if this fact is true, because a bandage soaked in blood covers the left side of his face, and the tape yanks the skin tight up and around his head. I don't want to, but I look away, turning to Dr. Lewis. “Is he missing half his face?”

“No.” She readjusts the tape at his scalp. “But it is a severe gash.” She motions to his cheek. “This will require plastic surgery later. There's also a shearing injury on his scalp.”

“A bald spot,” Cooper says, and his voice is slow, slurred.

“Pain medicine?” I ask Dr. Lewis, referring to his speech.

She nods.

I kiss Cooper's right cheek, which gives no indication of an accident or injury of any kind. “His eye?” I ask her.

“It's fine.”

“What happened?” I ask again.

His right eye flashes open, murky and faded. “Is Willa okay?”

“It's her brain,” I say. “It's swollen … bleeding.” My hand rests at the base of my throat, where the grief and panic form a cotton-clogging lump.

“She wasn't wearing her seat belt,” he says, as if this one fact explains everything.

“Cooper.” I lean close, uttering gentle words. “Who was driving?”

“I was,” he says. And then, as if everything is normal, he asks, “Where's Gwen?”

“She should be on her way.”

“Where is she, Eve?”

“She sneaked out again. I think she's with Dylan.”

“This has to stop,” he whispers, his eyes shut.

“I know.”

He brushes his hand through the air. “Were you at the studio?” This question an accusation.

“Yes.”

I think he's slipping into painkiller oblivion, when he speaks again. “I'm sorry I couldn't help your sister. I wanted to help, Eve. All we've done is try to help her, and it only gets worse.” Angry furrows on his forehead smooth, and then he is asleep, snoring softly.

It isn't true, what he's just said. We have helped Willa; she's been doing great—working at the studio with me, writing songs, securing singing gigs downtown. Like I've always wished, my sister and my daughter are close, and they spend every afternoon together. Willa hasn't been getting worse at all. I thought she was getting better and better—until now.

I look to Dr. Lewis. “This is terrible,” I say, which is the truth.

The doctor leaves, promising to check in shortly. That's when the tears start. They well up quickly—fat, ugly tears that won't stop. I touch Cooper's cheek, and even in his medicine-induced sleep, he flinches. And just as I sit in the cracked vinyl reclining chair, Gwen bursts through the curtain.

“Gwen.” I jump up to hug her, hold her close, as if to make sure that she's safe, that she wasn't in the car with them. “Where have you been?”

“Doesn't matter,” she says.

“Yes, it matters.” I look past my daughter to the boy standing behind her. “Dylan, you can leave now.”

Gwen reaches her hand behind her. “No, stay.” Holding Dylan's hand, she walks toward her dad and pulls Dylan along like a towline. “Oh my God, is he okay?” She reaches toward the bloodied bandages but doesn't touch them.

“Yes,” I say. “Except for a terrible gash on his face.”

Gwen stands next to her dad in too-short cutoff jeans, cowboy boots, and a white tank top.

I step forward and place my hand on Dylan's arm. “You need to leave.”

He drops Gwen's hand and nods. “Okay, Mrs. Morrison.” He holds his palms up in mock surrender. “Okay, whatever.”

Gwen glares at me. “God, Mom, relax.”

“Relax?” I ask as the curtain sways shut with Dylan's exit.

“It's no big deal, Mom. We were just at his house, watching movies.” She takes a breath and then sees her chance. “Seriously … I mean, Dad and Aunt Willa are in the hospital and you're worried about what
I've
been doing?” Her nose stud—a tiny sparkle—glints in the harsh overhead lights. “Can you at least tell me what happened?”

“I don't know yet. All I know is that they were in a wreck.”

“Can I see her?”

“Yes,” I say. “She's asleep right there.” I motion to the half-open curtain at our left.

Together, we walk to Willa's bedside and I repeat the information I was given from Dr. Lewis. Gwen drops into the chair next to Willa, taking her hand. “If something happens to her, I'll die,” she says, all melodrama and raw emotion.

I touch the top of Gwen's soft hair. “I'll go sit with your dad until he wakes up.”

Gwen looks up at me. “Can I stay here?” she asks.

“Yes.”

I return to Cooper and lean back in the chair, closing my eyes for a moment. Just one moment.

*   *   *

The raw light needles its way through my eyelids, penetrating my deep sleep. I open one eye—my left one—and for a thin sliver of a minute, I don't know where I am. Somewhere far off, there's a beeping noise, and it's this sound, this monotonous rhythm, that awakens me fully, and I know. I don't want to remember, but I do, one by one: Cooper, Willa, Gwen. I stand up to stretch, rub at my face, and drink from the lukewarm glass of water at Cooper's bedside. A clock on the back wall reads 6:00
A.M.

“Eve.” Cooper's voice cracks my name in half, and I look back to him, take his hand. “Where is Gwen?” he asks.

“With Willa, right here.” I open the curtain.

Gwen is awake, brushing Willa's hair across the pillow with her fingers. She turns to us, and I motion for her to come to me. Cooper flinches when he looks up at us with his one eye, and he reaches his hand up to take his daughter's hand.

Gwen repeats my plea from hours before. “What happened, Dad?”

Cooper looks directly at me. “Please tell the nurse I need another pain pill.”

I push the buzzer on the wall and speak into an intercom to inform the bodyless voice that Cooper Morrison needs a nurse and meds.

“I was coming home from Charleston,” he says as I finish my request. “But the clients wanted to stop for a drink at the Bohemian. They'd heard about the rooftop bar, and we stopped there for a late dinner.”

He pauses to touch the uninjured side of his face. “Willa was there, at the bar. Drunk as crazy. Bobbing around. She fell off the bar stool. I was praying she wouldn't see me, but she did, and then started to walk toward us. I was with the Berns, clients I've been courting for months. They run a charter business called the Anglers. Willa had that look, that weird look she gets when you know she will say or do something embarrassing. I got nervous, so I went to her before she could get to us.”

“No way,” Gwen interjects. “She doesn't drink like that anymore.”

“That's what I thought at first, too, darling. I thought no way was she messing up now, when she'd just started to get it together. But it was obvious.”

I don't realize I'm crying until I taste salt at the corner of my lips.

“So,” Cooper continues, “I talked her into going outside, and then getting into my car. But she was angry as hell. We were driving in that torrential rain behind Martin Luther King Boulevard and then up Twenty-fourth Street to Preston. She grabbed the wheel to make me turn around. The brakes seized up, we slid sideways, and the car slammed into a tree—a huge oak. She wasn't wearing a seat belt. OnStar called nine one one.” His voice breaks. “That's it.”

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“What for?” Gwen asks, shooting me a terrible look, her eyebrows drawn down, her mouth pouted into a scowl.

“For everyone.” I take Cooper's hand and wind my fingers through his as if knitting us together. “You didn't have to do that. You didn't have to take her home. You aren't responsible for her.”

“It seems I am,” he says.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I really am. I'm sorry I let her stay. I'm sorry she's been such a…”

“God, Mom, whatever,” Gwen says, and plops onto a metal chair. “She's the one who's hurt so bad. I mean, is she in a coma? What
is
going on?” Panic pushes at Gwen's voice, giving it a strangled sound. “Is she going to be okay or not?”

Gwen loves her aunt. She loves walking down to the cottage and sitting on the porch with her, loves hearing about Colorado and camping and mountain climbing. She clings to Willa as the only person who “understands what it's like to be a grown-up without being a jerk”—Gwen's words, of course.

“Someone answer me. Is she going to be okay?” Gwen holds out her hands for an answer.

“If you mean will she live, yes,” I say. “Her injuries aren't on the outside.… It's what's inside her head they're worried about.” I walk behind Gwen and touch her hair, which is pulled back into a messy ponytail at the base of her neck, riding down her back in tangles. She leans back into my hand, a gesture of childhood. I rest my head on top of hers.

“This sucks,” Gwen says.

“Yes, it does.”

 

three

It was only a month ago that we were featured in
The South Magazine.
Cooper and Eve Morrison, Savannah's power couple. The beautiful people. The lucky ones. Cooper is from an old Savannah family. Cooper Morrison IV, the fourth generation of Morrison men to live on the family property with his wife and daughter. The article talked of how he broke free of the family business that built the family fortune to start out on his own creative project. Cooper launched
Southern Tastes,
an e-magazine featuring all things southern gentlemen. There's the section on guns and hunting dogs, one on handcrafted lodge furniture, another on vintage accouterments. Each month, there's a short story by a southern author. Of course there's the obligatory cooking section, usually featuring a grill and large tools. Oh, and how lovely that his wife, meanwhile, owns and operates a letterpress studio specializing in the handmade. A juxtaposition that the journalist described as “romantic and interesting.”

That day of the photo shoot, I learned this: Magazine articles are part fact, part fiction. And they are oh so carefully calibrated. One shot, one picture, takes hours of adjusting and reframing. For every casual moment the reader sees, there are hours of posing. Cooper was thrilled that his schmoozing had resulted in a four-page article about
Southern Tastes,
about our family and the Morrison history in the city. He was out to prove that starting an e-magazine in 2009 had been a brilliant idea. I tried, by deflecting and disappearing, to keep the Fine Line, Ink out of the article. I didn't need the publicity; I didn't want it. This needed to be all about Cooper, about how successful the magazine was and could be. But the final product ended up missing Cooper's target.

The Fine Line, Ink has far surpassed even my wishes for its success. The magazine editor picked up on this and had me talk about the specifics. So I told him how last month both Barneys and Neiman Marcus requested a first look at our next card line. I told him that we were voted the best letterpress in Georgia two years in a row. He asked more questions. Yes, we were thinking of hiring another employee. And, yes, we had thought of using satellite printers to get the orders finished. I stopped there. I didn't tell him that we have money stashed in our back account, ready to make use of when we know exactly what we're going to do. And I didn't mention our plans for teaching, printing, expanding, and creating.

The magazine spread portrayed our family on the front porch: Eve, Cooper, and Gwen Morrison. I'm wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt with my favorite Golden Goose leather boots. My brown hair, the hair I can't get to bend or curl, falls straight to my shoulders, and the sun offers a lopsided halo. Cooper wears khakis and a dark blue sweater. He smiles and has one arm on my shoulder and the other curved around his daughter's waist. His blond hair is turning gray at the temples—a dignified southern gentlemen for sure. Gwen is as fashionable as she is pretty, her jeans disappearing into cowboy boots, and her black shirt absorbing the light. Off-camera, Willa stands behind the photographer, trying to make a sullen Gwen laugh, and she succeeds.

Cooper had the article framed, in dark wood and a cream mat, to present to his parents. Averitt nodded and offered the perfunctory “I'm proud of you, son.” Louise quietly asked how I had possibly thought it was a good idea to be photographed wearing jeans.

*   *   *

Louise and Averitt were the parents I wanted. Well, that's what I thought the first time I met them, that they were the parents I had somehow been denied in the cosmic joke that was my life at nineteen. I was living at home in my adolescent bedroom, working more hours a week than most do in two. I hardly slept, and when I did, it was fitful and worried. My parents, Willa, and I were cramped in the small house we'd lived in our entire lives, all of us growing out of it, or maybe into it, becoming one with its slanted floors and peeling shingles.