Ties That Bind (13 page)

P
hilippa, who was making her own rounds at the hospital, walked me to Olivia's room before going to look in on Waldo Smitherton. “You can do this. Just remember what I said about keeping it simple, okay?”

“Okay.”

Philippa smiled and patted me on the shoulder before heading down the hall. I paused and took in a deep breath before gingerly pushing the door of Olivia's room, half-hoping to find her asleep. But when I stepped inside, Olivia turned to look at me. Her eyes were so big in her little face, so much like Mari's.

Nurse Trina looked up and smiled as I entered. “Looks like you've got a visitor,” she said cheerfully as she adjusted the drip on Olivia's intravenous tube. “And she's brought you another present.”

Trina put her hands on her hips and shook her head, pretending to scold. “Olivia Matthews, you are entirely too popular. If your grandparents and auntie keep bringing you presents every day, we're going to have to get an extra room just to store them.”

Olivia looked at the nurse, but remained silent. She still wasn't talking much. Dr. Bledsoe said that wasn't surprising. She tired easily and was still in pain. However, the doctor assured me that, cognitively, Olivia was doing well. In a few days, assuming she continued to progress, Olivia would be moved to the pediatric ward. It would be good for her to be around other children.

Trina smiled and patted Olivia's arm above the tape that secured the IV needle. “I'll be back later, sweetie. Hey, guess what? You're going to get some ice cream for dessert tonight.”

“She's swallowing just fine now,” Trina said, addressing me before turning back to Olivia. “What kind do you want, sweetie? Vanilla or chocolate?”

“Chocolate,” Olivia said.

“Then chocolate it shall be,” Trina replied brightly. She walked toward the door, giving me an encouraging pat as she passed. She knew why I'd come that day.

“I like chocolate ice cream too,” I said. “But chocolate mint is my favorite.” I pulled up a chair next to the bed and put my present, a stuffed orange and white striped cat with a big white bow around its neck, on Olivia's stomach.

She reached out her needle-free arm and stroked the chenille fur. “He has a squashy tummy.”

“That's what I like about him. He'll be nice to sleep with.”

Olivia nodded. “Do you have a cat?”

“I used to when I lived in New York. Her name was Gracious, but I called her Gracie. She was black with four white socks and a little patch of white right here,” I said, pointing to my forehead. “She liked knocking things down. I used to come home from work and Gracie would have pushed all the pencils off my desk. Once, she even pushed a vase full of flowers off the table.”

“Did it break?”

“No, but there was water everywhere. Gracie jumped down and started lapping it up.”

“Maybe she was thirsty,” Olivia said practically. “What happened to her?”

“She died and went to heaven. She was pretty old.”

Olivia nodded acceptingly. “I always wanted a cat, a real one,” she said, tipping her head toward the toy while she continued stroking it. “Mommy is allergic.”

“I remember,” I said. “We couldn't have cats when your mommy and I were little. That's why I got Gracie when I grew up and got my own place, because I couldn't have a cat when I was a girl.”

“You should get another,” Olivia said.

“Think so? Maybe I will.”

She smiled. It was the first real smile I'd seen from her since the accident, and it melted my heart. She was too little to have lost so much. I couldn't tell her. I just couldn't. But I had to.

“Olivia … we need to talk about Mommy.”

She stopped petting the stuffed cat and looked up, her saucer-wide eyes riveted to mine. “When is she coming to see me?”

Don't cry,
I told myself.
Whatever you do, don't cry.

I took a deep breath. “Olivia, do you remember the accident?”

Olivia turned her head away and put her hand up to her mouth, sucking on her little finger a moment before answering. “I remember the car sliding and that my head hurt. There was blood and I was cold. Mommy was in the front seat and I was in the back. I wanted her to come to me, but she couldn't. She told me not to cry. She promised everything would be all right.”

“Do you remember coming to the hospital?”

She shook her head. “I remember the ambulance. The men put Mommy in another ambulance. I wanted to talk to her, but I couldn't because they had that thing …” She cupped her hand over her mouth, pantomiming what she didn't have words for.

“The oxygen mask,” I said.

“They had it over my face. But I saw Mommy. She was asleep. The man said they were going to bring us both to the hospital.”

She rolled on her side to face me, clutching the cat to her chest with one hand and grabbing the bedrail with the other.

“When can I see her?”

“Olivia, I have to tell you something. Something sad. Mommy was hurt very badly in the accident, even worse than you were.”

She let go of the bedrail and put her little finger back in her mouth. She stared at me with cautious eyes, as though a part of her sensed what I was leading up to but was warning me not to say it.

“Do you remember what I said about my Gracie? How she died and went to heaven?”

“She was old,” Olivia replied in a slightly impatient voice, leaving the extension of that thought, that her mother was
not
old, unsaid.

“Usually, people and animals don't die and go to heaven until they get old. But sometimes, if a person is very sick or is very hurt, they can die before they are old.” I paused for a moment, looking at Olivia, hoping to see a flicker of understanding in her eyes, hoping I would not have to say the words out loud. There was none there, just that same cautious gaze.

“And that's what happened to your mommy. She was hurt very badly, Olivia, so badly that the doctors couldn't make her better and so she died and went to heaven.”

Olivia's brown eyes filled with tears and she frowned. Her pale complexion flushed red. I couldn't tell if she was sad or angry or both.

“Well, when is she coming back?” Olivia asked in that same impatient tone.

“Heaven is forever,” I said, feeling my own eyes begin to tear. “People don't come back from heaven, sweetheart. But someday you'll go to heaven. So will I. Grandma and Grandpa too. And we'll all be there with Mommy and we'll be so happy. And we'll be together always.”

“Let's go now. I want to see Mommy
now,
” Olivia demanded, her face flushing brighter as the volume of her voice increased. “Now!”

Philippa had warned me not to say too much, to keep it simple and wait for Olivia to ask me questions rather than supplying her with answers she was not ready to hear or capable of understanding. I tried, but I don't know how well I succeeded. Whether you're six or one hundred and six, it is hard to make sense of the senseless, the unfair, the early death of a woman who, after so many years of drifting, was finally getting her life under control, leaving behind an orphaned daughter who hadn't done anything wrong.

“Livie,” I said gently, using Mari's pet name for her, “you can't go to heaven yet. Not now, sweetheart. You won't die for a long time.” I reached out, trying to take her hand, but she slapped it away.

“I want to see Mommy now. Make her come back!” She glared at me as if I was the enemy, as if I had kidnapped Mari and was holding her hostage.

“I know, honey. I know. I wish I could. I miss her too. But when people die they don't come back. Not ever,” I said firmly.

Philippa had been very clear on this, telling me that I must use the word “die,” not euphemisms like “passed away” or “lost,” and that I must make it clear that the dead never return. I understood why I had to say it, but I felt so cruel.

“You're lying,” she insisted, glaring at me.

I shook my head, ever so slightly. Olivia grabbed the toy cat around the throat and flung it across the room.

“You're lying!” she shouted. “She
is
coming back! She is! She wouldn't leave without saying good-bye! She would never, ever leave me! You're lying!”

Olivia's shouts became hysterical screams. She grabbed the bedrail and shook it hard, as though trying to break it down, but she was so small and weak that the best she could manage was a metallic rattle. Furious and frustrated, she began clawing at her arm, trying to rip off the white tape and pull out the needles while she screamed, not words, just screams, high-pitched and hysterical, a howl of animal rage.

“Livie!” I jumped up and pushed the red call button that hung on the bedrail, then leaned across the bed, covering her body with mine to try and stop her from ripping out the IVs. Barely a moment later, the door pushed open and a nurse rushed in. She must have heard Olivia's screams even before I pushed the button.

Quickly and expertly, murmuring soothing sounds even as she pinned Olivia's little arms to the bed, the nurse immobilized my sobbing niece. “It's all right, honey. Everything is all right.”

A moment later, Trina strode into the room carrying a syringe, as though she'd been prepared for this, far more prepared than I. Tears I had expected, and questions, and even denial, but not this rage.

I barely knew my niece. Before the accident, our cumulative contact could be measured in days. But this was Mari's child, an image of my sister, the sister that I had always loved but never really understood.

All my doubts and insecurities came rushing back. What had Mari been thinking when she wrote my name on that scrap of paper? What made her think I would know how to raise her daughter? This was the first conversation I'd had with Olivia since the accident. Look how I had bungled it.

“Olivia,” Trina said calmly as she injected the contents of the syringe into Olivia's intravenous tube, “it's going to be all right, sweetheart. You need to calm down, okay? We're giving you something to help you sleep a little while.”

Soon, Olivia's little limbs relaxed. Her sobs subsided, becoming a series of choked hiccups. Her eyes closed, but tears still tracked down her cheeks.

I stood at the side of her bed, my fingers curled around the railing as I gazed down at her little face, matching her tear for tear. “I'm sorry.”

Trina stood next to me and moved her hand in comforting circles between my shoulder blades.

“I should have found a better way to tell her.”

“There wasn't a better way. It's tragic and it's not fair, but someone had to tell her. The job fell to you. There was no way to sugar-coat it. Don't blame yourself.”

“She blames me,” I whispered, glancing down at Olivia, who was twitching in her sleep.

Trina nodded. “It won't be the last time. I've got three daughters. Getting blamed for things that aren't your fault sort of comes with the territory.”

I
knocked on the door softly, thinking he might be sleeping.

“Come in!”
Waldo bellowed.

He was sitting up in his hospital bed, looking thinner but alert. He squinted when I approached, as if trying to bring me into focus.

“It's you!” he exclaimed in cheerful surprise, then coughed a few times before grabbing a pink kidney-shaped basin from the bedside table and spitting into it. My stomach lurched and I looked away.

“Sorry, Reverend.”

I lifted my hand, waving off his apology. “You're looking much better, Mr. Smitherton. How do you feel today?”

“In pretty good shape for the shape I'm in. Kind of surprised to find myself still here. Think the docs are too.”

True enough. This bout with pneumonia would surely have felled most men his age, but Waldo Smitherton wasn't most men. Standing on heaven's doorstep, he had rallied, made a sharp about-face and returned to the land of the living.

“If it's a surprise, then it's a good one.”

“Hmm,” he murmured and reached up to adjust his hearing aid. “You know what they say: Only the good die young. Heaven knows I'm ready anytime. I've done everything I ever wanted to and then some. At this point I'm just taking up space. Hey, did Sylvia give you that file yet?”

Sylvia was the youngest of Mr. Smitherton's four daughters, a spry sixty-nine-year-old with her father's blue eyes and fatalistic sense of humor. Following his instructions, she had delivered a blue accordion file folder marked “Obituary” to my office earlier in the week. It was filled with newspaper clippings, three medals for cross-country skiing (Waldo had been quite an athlete before a crash and a torn ligament ended his skiing career), a copy of his honorable discharge from the Army Air Corps, a letter of commendation for his role in helping capture a German artillery battery, two yellowed résumés, professional and volunteer, the latter longer than the former, a self-published family history of the Smithertons penned by Waldo several years before, and pictures of Waldo and his late wife, Rachel, on trips to many foreign countries, including Russia, Sweden, Italy, China, Thailand, the Galapagos, and even Bhutan. The date on that photo, the last trip he'd taken before Rachel died, was ten years ago.

Think of it. I doubt most people could locate Bhutan on a map, but Waldo Smitherton had traveled there at the age of eighty-six. What an amazing man.

“Sylvia brought it by on Tuesday.”

“Good. If it comes to it, I want you to give me a good send-off.”

I nodded. There was no point in arguing with him. Waldo had accepted the fact of his mortality and wanted everyone else to do the same. He wanted his eulogy to remind his daughters, particularly the older three, Gloria, Cynthia, and Rose, who did not share their father and younger sister's Yankee practicality, that he'd lived well and had no regrets. He didn't want them wallowing in grief when he died.

“You'd think the girls would have made their peace with it by now,” Waldo had confided to me on my previous visit. “But they're sentimental, all three of them. Can't think where they got it. Their mother wasn't like that. Thank heaven for Sylvia. You can talk sense to her.”

In spite of the fact that his three eldest were septuagenarians, Waldo still referred to his daughters as “girls” and displayed a touching, fatherly concern for them. He was one of the kindest men I'd ever met. If Tim had lived to old age, I bet he would have been a lot like Waldo.

Waldo squinted again, looking me up and down. “Reverend,” he said flatly, “you look awful. Are you coming down with something?”

“I'm fine. Just a little tired. I was up late working last night.”

Waldo shook his head. “And then you had to get up early today and visit some old codger in the hospital.”

“I like visiting you,” I said. “You're one of the most interesting people I know.”

“Then you should get to know some more people,” he said. “Besides being older than dirt, there's nothing all that special about me. Now you listen to me, Reverend. You're trying to do too much. Bob Tucker's just the same, and look what happened to him. Pull up that chair and rest yourself,” he commanded, nodding toward a straight-backed metal chair near the door. “Take a load off.”

I did as I was told, and gratefully. I really was tired.

“Say, how are things with Margot's niece?” he asked. Waldo kept himself well appraised about the lives of his fellow church congregants. “Terrible thing for a child that age to lose a parent. I lost my father when I was twelve. Did you know that?”

“I did,” I said. I'd read about that in Waldo's family history. His father had died of an infection, before the invention of antibiotics. Waldo stepped into his father's shoes, dropping out of school at fifteen to take a job as an errand boy at a newspaper so his siblings could continue their education. Later, Waldo learned to set type. He worked as a printer at the same paper for fifty-five years, retiring at seventy.

“Olivia is getting stronger every day,” I continued. “You might pray for Margot, though. She's going to have to tell Olivia what happened to her mother today.”

“That's a tough one.” He shook his head sorrowfully.

“Mr. Smitherton, I've been meaning to ask you something. Looking through that file, I was simply amazed to see how well-traveled you are ….”

“Oh yeah, Rachel and I were real globe-trotters. Visited thirty-three different countries on six of the seven continents. We skipped Antarctica. Rachel said that New Bern in January had enough ice and snow. She didn't need to travel thousands of miles to see more.”

“I hope you don't think I'm prying, but how were you able to afford it? I mean, I didn't think that printers made all that much money. You helped your mother financially while she was alive and you had four daughters to raise.”

“And they all went to college,” Waldo said proudly. “Every one of them. As soon as the girls were old enough to work, they did. All that money went into their educational fund and we supplied the rest, though some of the girls had scholarships too. But we were always savers; that helps. And we lived within our means. Drove used cars, had a nice house but not a big one, didn't buy things we didn't need, fixed old things rather than bought new. Rachel always kept a garden.” He smiled, as he always did when speaking of his late wife.

“She knew how to stretch a dollar. The woman could get three good meals out of one chicken. And we were all blessed with good health. That helps. Costs more to spend three days in the hospital than a month in South America. Nothing against these doctors,” he said, “but given the choice, I choose South America.”

I laughed. “Me too.”

“Now let me ask you something,” Waldo said. “Next time you come to see me, could you bring me communion? I missed it this month.”

I opened my big black handbag. “Way ahead of you,” I said and pulled out my portable communion kit. “And I brought you some DVDs of the Sunday services you've missed. Also a couple of John Wayne movies,
Fort Apache
and
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
. I'm sure they've got a video player around here somewhere.”

“Well! Isn't that something? Now this is what I call service.” Waldo shifted himself a little higher on his pillow and winked at me. “Keep this up, Reverend, and I'll remember you in my will.”

 

After my visit with Waldo, what I really wanted to do was go home and sneak in a nap before my next appointment. Instead, I rode the elevator down two floors to check on Margot, but when I got there, Trina told me Margot had already left.

“Oh? How did it go with Olivia?”

“Not well. Olivia got hysterical and Margot left in tears.” Trina frowned and shook her head.

“I just can't see why such bad things have to happen to such nice people. If I get to heaven, I'd like to sit down and have a long talk with the good Lord, because as far as I'm concerned, he's got some explaining to do.” She paused, letting a small smile come to her lips. “On the other hand, I'm sure he thinks the same thing about me.”

“And all the rest of us,” I said.

“I suppose. But don't you sometimes wonder why the world is so messed up? I mean, one minute everything is fine and the next minute …”

Trina snapped her fingers and the sound echoed in my head. Without warning, the room started to spin. I closed my eyes. A groan, and the remains of my breakfast, rose to my lips. I tried to swallow them both back.

“Reverend Clarkson? Philippa? Are you all right?”

Eyes still closed, I shook my head. “Sick,” I mumbled, reaching my hand out to the wall in an attempt to steady myself.

In an instant, Trina transformed from amateur theologian to practical nurse. She grabbed a nearby plastic wastepaper basket and held it under my chin, patting my back as I vomited into it.

“Do you feel faint?” she asked when I was done emptying my stomach. I nodded and she guided me to a chair, instructing me to put my head between my knees. It didn't help. Even with my eyes closed, it felt like the room was spinning.

“Wait right there,” she commanded. “I'm going to get the doctor.”