“Well, shoot,” the woman said. She pushed the door open a little farther. “You might as well come in and tell me where they took her,” she said. “I suppose we’re gonna have to go there. Who are you people anyway?”
Twenty-Six
Just sign your name on the sullied line
Grandma Loey stood with one hand clutching the robe closed at her throat as DeMarco explained that he and Jayme had stopped at the hospital to speak with Jennifer but were informed that she had been transferred to another facility, that the desk nurse had been trying all morning to reach the trailer by phone. Emma stood watching from the far end of the hallway, hands flat and crossed at the base of her neck.
Loey asked, “What did you want to see her about? Are you two from that collection agency that’s always calling here? None of her bills are my responsibility. I told you people that time and again.”
“No, ma’am,” DeMarco said, and cut a quick look down the hall at Emma, and wondered only briefly if he should speak in front of her. “It was about a different matter.”
Jayme listened to the conversation from a half step behind and to the side of DeMarco, who spoke softly and deliberately, careful to avoid the judge’s name and other distinguishing words. She also took in the interior of the trailer and the measure of Grandma Loey looking hungover and prematurely aged. The woman was small but unyielding, unafraid, a tough little bird, Jayme thought. And Emma standing there some twenty feet away watching and listening outside an open doorway, which must have opened onto her bedroom, her sanctuary. On the opposite side the hallway opened onto another small room, probably the bathroom, with the master bedroom taking up the rear of the trailer. The trailer was longer than their RV but barely as wide, its worn furnishings and décor from the previous century. It even smelled and sounded old, the scent of old fried food and decades of poverty and a leaky roof and dirty carpets and the dry air blowing from the rumbling oil burner and the too-loud humming from the ancient Frigidaire and the vaguely musty scent common to homes surrounded by trees.
But it was Emma who commanded most of Jayme’s attention. The girl stood with one foot pressed atop the other, shoulders hunched and body tensed though shivering perceptibly as she sniffed back her tears.
“What kind of different matter?” Loey asked.
And Emma said, “Is it about the letter I sent?”
DeMarco didn’t reply. He turned briefly to Jayme.
“Hunh,” Loey said. “I suppose he’s trying to deny it ever happened.”
“Doesn’t he want to know about me?” Emma asked.
The girl’s voice so innocent and small, it gripped the heart. Jayme stepped forward. “Ryan, we can drive these good people to the other facility, right? Then hang around until they’re ready to come back?”
“Sure,” he said. “We can all grab some breakfast while we’re at it.”
Loey said, “I don’t have no money to pay for any of that.”
“Our treat,” Jayme told her. She squeezed past DeMarco and Loey and started down the hall. “How about if I help you pick out something nice to wear, Emma, while Ryan and your grandma talk? I would love to see how you’ve decorated your bedroom.”
“Is my mom going to be okay?” Emma asked.
Jayme said nothing until close enough to swing an arm around the girl’s thin shoulders and sweep her into the bedroom. “Everybody’s working real hard on that,” she said, and eased the door shut behind them.
Loey squinted at DeMarco. “I’m not in the business of trusting people offering something for nothing.”
“Nor should you be,” he told her. “We have been asked to collect a sample of DNA from Emma. To prove paternity.”
“Hunh. I told Jennie he’d never admit to it without a fight. Here today, gone tomorrow.”
“He is more than willing to take responsibility. With proof of paternity. And, ma’am, the man does have the right to know for certain, one way or the other.”
She thought for a few moments. “What do they have to do to get that sample? Take some blood from her?”
“No, nothing like that. I run a little swab around in her mouth. That’s all there is to it.”
“And then what? Once he finds out it’s him to blame?”
“Then he mans up and does what’s right. And I promise you, right here and now, that I will make certain he does.”
“Why? What’s any of this to you?”
He wondered what to tell her. Not some platitude, some useless cliché. No, nothing but the truth would suffice. “I had a baby boy once,” he told her. “He was my whole world. And then I lost him. But I will love him forever.” He paused, choked down the lump rising in his throat. “We need to take better care of our children, ma’am. That’s all Jayme and I are here to do.”
She inhaled through her nose. Nodded. And then her face became pinched. “Is my Jennie going to die today?”
What to say? Probably? Soon? Today or tomorrow? Then a phrase came into his head. He smiled and repeated it. “Death cannot kill what never dies.”
“Hmpf,” she said. “I figured you for one of them Bible thumpers.”
He almost laughed out loud.
“You’re not going to charge me for driving us around?”
“I just need the mouth swab, that’s all. Then we’re square. I have the kit in my car.”
“Don’t I need to sign something? I don’t particularly like putting my name to paper.”
“It’s a very simple form. You sign it, I get a mouth swab, Jayme and I are your chauffeurs for the rest of the morning. Free of charge.”
Her gaze lingered on his face a few moments longer. “You said something about getting some breakfast too. That little girl hasn’t ate nothing yet.”
“We’ll take care of that.”
“Yeah? Well…if you wasn’t a man, I might believe you.”
His smile cracked open. “Ask Jayme. She’s the boss here.”
“Famous last words,” the old woman said, and turned away.
Twenty-Seven
From playland to the longhouse of loss
“Is he a nice man?” Emma asked. “Do you think he would like me?”
“You’re kind of likable,” DeMarco answered, and gave her a wink that made her blush.
They were seated at a small round table in the enclosed Playland at McDonald’s, Emma’s choice, with Highway 10 at DeMarco’s back, Emma directly across from him and flanked by her grandmother and Jayme, each with a cardboard tray loaded with scrambled eggs, a sausage patty, hash browns, hotcakes and a biscuit. Emma had a cup of hot chocolate beside her tray, coffee for the adults. The only other customers in the area were a two-year-old boy and his mother. The boy ran from one piece of equipment to the next, slapping each with his little hand as he ran. His mother followed wearily, alternately sipping from a caramel latte and telling the boy, to no avail, to “slow down, bubby. Slow down before you fall down.”
To Emma, Jayme said, “Ryan tends to underestimate everything. Everybody knows you’re adorable.”
She and Emma had bonded quickly that morning. In the trailer, while Emma had washed her face and brushed her teeth with the bathroom door open, Jayme had sat at the foot of the bed, speaking across the hallway, and explained what was happening. “So your mom is being transferred to another place where she will be more comfortable. We’re going to take you and your grandma there to spend some time with her, okay? We’ll either stay there too, or, if there’s a taxi service available, or Lyft or Uber or something like that, we’ll make arrangements for that. Either way we’ll make sure you get back home safe and sound.”
“How long do we get to stay?” the girl asked.
“As long as you want.”
“Grandma doesn’t like to stay very long. Never long enough for me anyway.”
“I know. You love your mom a lot,
don’t you?”
Emma nodded, looked as if she might cry. “I love you big as the sky, she always says. As big as the sky and twice as wide.”
“That’s pretty darn big,” Jayme said.
When Emma returned to her bedroom, she laid out her clothes atop her bed for inspection. The skinny jeans that Emma now wore rolled above her ankles were pronounced “perfect,” the pink Old Navy long-sleeved T-shirt with a logo that read We Are the Future elicited an “I love that!” from Jayme, and the pink mesh sneakers from Walmart brought a “You really know how to dress, girl! I bet you have all the boys gaga, don’t you?” that made Emma giggle and hide her face behind both hands.
Then Emma had snatched up the jeans and shirt, run back into the bathroom and closed the door, and returned two minutes later fully dressed. “A vision to behold,” Jayme had said. She held up the girl’s hairbrush. “May I?”
Emma nodded and sat on the bed while Jayme, standing beside her, smoothed out the girl’s hair. “So what we need to do,” Jayme told her, “is to get a sample of your DNA. Do you know what that is?”
“Like on CSI. Where you put a Q-tip in my mouth.”
“Exactly. What I will be doing is collecting some saliva from the inside of your cheek. Do you know why?”
“To find out if one of them is my father or not.”
“Righto.”
“Were they happy to know about me? Or were they mad?”
“Happy,” Jayme told her after a beat. “Surprised, but mostly happy.” She leaned back, looked at Emma’s hair, patted down a couple of staticky hairs that had followed the brush as it moved away, and said, “Perfection, my dear. Absolute perfection.” She returned the brush to its place on the dresser and said, “Okay if I get the DNA kit from the car and we take care of it now?”
“Okay,” Emma said.
And now they were finishing their breakfasts, only minutes from the Great Heart Hospice. Nobody had mentioned the word hospice in front of Emma, and neither DeMarco nor Jayme had any idea if Emma understood the severity of her mother’s condition. It wasn’t their place to mention it. They were strangers, interlopers—despite the tenderness and concern both felt for the girl.
Eventually they stood at their table in McDonald’s, ready to leave. DeMarco gathered up the trays and empty cups and carried them to a waste bin. Then they drove in relative silence to a long one-story building a block from Lake Michigan, the wood siding painted a pale yellow with blue trim, the building designed with a slightly rounded roof peak to simulate an Ottawa longhouse.
They emerged from the parked car and gazed down the intersecting street to the gray expanse of water beneath a brightening sky. Jayme took Emma’s hand. “Big, isn’t it?” Jayme said.
“I’m glad we’re so close to the beach,” Emma told her. “Mommy loves the beach.” She looked up at Jayme. “Maybe we can go down there today?”
So, she didn’t know. Didn’t know that her mother was in an induced coma. That her life would now be measured in hours rather than days. Jayme felt all the breath go from her lungs, felt her breakfast rising in her stomach.
“We’ll see,” Jayme said, and turned the girl away and led her inside.
Emma’s grandmother stopped at the front desk and flashed a scowl at the smiling young blond woman in dark-blue scrubs seated there. “Jennie Barrie’s my daughter,” Loey said. “Where you people keeping her?”
The young woman turned her soft brown eyes to Emma, then back to the grandmother. Slid the visitor’s register, an attractive journal bound in maroon leather, to Loey and said, “We’ll need your names and addresses. Thank you. I’ll fill in the time.”
As Loey scrawled the information, the young woman said, “She’s in suite 119. I’ll let Dr. Bissett know you’re here. She will be in to speak with you soon.”
Grandma Loey turned to Emma and said, “Let’s go if we’re going,” then proceeded down the hall on her own. Jayme and Emma, still holding hands, followed, with DeMarco speaking to the front desk nurse for a moment before trailing behind.
At the door to Jennifer Barrie’s room, Jayme drew the girl aside, knelt and took her other hand too. “Sweetie,” she said, “your mommy is sleeping now. The doctors gave her something to make her sleep so that she’s more comfortable. Okay?”
“Can I wake her up?” Emma asked.
“Mmm, it’s probably best if you don’t. She’s in a lot of pain when she’s awake. But I bet she will still hear you if you talk to her.”
“She’ll hear me in her sleep?”
“I bet she will.”
“She told me last time that she sometimes visits me when I’m sleeping. In her dreams, I mean.”
“You see?” said Jayme. “So you go ahead and talk to her all you want. She’ll hear you.”
“Are you coming in?”
“Visiting hours are just for family. If Ryan and I aren’t still here when you and your grandma are ready to leave, I want you to stop at the desk and pick up my phone number and email address. I’m going to leave it there for you, okay?”
“Okay,” Emma said, and cut a glance toward her mother’s door.
“I want you to call me or text me if you have any questions about anything. Or if you just need a friend to talk to sometime. Don’t forget to pick up my number, okay?”
“Can’t you come in just to say hello?”
“Not right now, sweetie. Maybe later if we’re still here. But I want you to have my number so that you can call me anytime you want. For any reason whatever. Okay?”
Emma nodded. She looked at DeMarco standing against the opposite wall. “Thank you for breakfast,” she said. “And for letting me pick the place.”
He smiled. “Any time, sunshine.”
Jayme said, “Can I get a hug?”
Emma stepped into her arms, stayed for a long squeeze, then was released, turned and went into her mother’s room.
Jayme remained on her knees, unable to rise. DeMarco stepped close and slipped a hand under her arm, lifted her up, and held her when she fell against him. “I’m going to lose it, baby,” she said.
He said, “No you’re not,” and walked with her back up the hallway.
At the front desk she pulled away and spoke to the nurse. “I told Emma that I would leave my contact information with you. Would you make sure that she gets it when she leaves?”
“Of course,” the young woman said. She slid a pad of white Post-it Notes and a pen toward Jayme, who wrote on the top sheet, tore it off and handed it to the nurse. Then she started crying and turned away and headed quickly for the door.
DeMarco lingered behind. He wanted to rush after Jayme, but some business remained. To the desk nurse he said, “Do you have any kind of taxi service up here?”
She smiled. Used to dealing with angry, fearful, grieving people. “We do, yes. Would you like me to contact one for you?”
He reached for his wallet, pulled it out and opened it. “For the Barries,” he said. “Jennifer’s mother and daughter. Whenever they’re ready to go home. Do you mind?”
“Not in the least.”
He took out a twenty, asked, “Will this be enough?”
She looked at the address Loey had scrawled. “Hmm, maybe not quite. That’s what, about twenty miles away?”
He took out another twenty and laid both bills on the counter. “Thank you so much.” He turned and headed for the door, then stopped midway, turned and asked, “Would you happen to know of a grocery store out that way? Cell service is a bit sporadic out there.”
“Sure. That would be Jensen’s Market. On Highway 10.”
“Great, thanks. I probably passed it on the way here.”
“No problem. Have a blessed day, sir.”
A blessed day, how nice. And the way she smiled, so serene. He walked away wondering if she knew things or only believed them
. Belief was good, of course, a grand substitute, but knowing was so much better. Knowing was not as susceptible to erosion, to chipping and cracking and growing brittle with age. Someday he would know it all again, 98 percent of everything there was to know. The last 2 percent would remain beyond the ken of anybody anywhere, even beyond the source of the other 98 percent. And he found that knowledge pleasing, that there would always be a mystery, always a tantalizing something that could never be known.
He was smiling as he approached the rental car, then saw Jayme doubled over inside, weeping, and his smile faded. She had so much compassion in her heart, so much empathy. Too much for a pleasant passage through this unpredictable journey. He needed to remain mindful of the fact that she didn’t know what he knew, and that her grief was real. That even in a three-dimensional illusion, every second of the pain experienced by the players within that illusion is all too real.
Twenty-Eight
A theory of the general and special relativity of stupid
Boyd asked himself, Why is it that you always look forward to your days off, but when they come around you never do anything with them?
He wasn’t a man who rested easily. A restless man. Here it was April already and how many of his days off had he put to good use? Question was, what would be good use? Going to a movie? Taking a hike? Cleaning the house? Those were the things he typically did, but none appealed to him this time. He sat in his Jeep in the driveway with the engine off and tried to think of somewhere interesting to go. All of the interesting stuff was hours away, and he had already been to all of them. Cleveland Zoo. Pittsburgh Zoo. The Strip District. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Nothing was new anymore. He always drove home tired, wishing he hadn’t wasted the gas.
He thought of Flores then because she had the day off too. For some reason he had noticed that on the schedule. A rare day off at the same time. Not that it mattered. Why would it?
He had tried to be a good friend to her, spent time with her after work, watched Netflix with her, was her designated driver a couple of times, sometimes stopped by her desk with a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Once—it happened when they were watching Better Call Saul, when Jimmy was rattling on about something while making a cup of tea for Chuck—she had leaned up against him, her head on his shoulder. And when he’d turned to look down at her, she had lifted her mouth to his, and he’d pulled away. He hadn’t done it on purpose, it had just happened. He still didn’t know why. She had stiffened and sat there until the episode ended, her eyes locked on the screen, then had shut off the TV and told him she was tired. That was the last time he had spent any time with her. Oh, he’d stopped by her desk at work from time to time, never failed to say hello when their paths crossed, but nothing had been the same after that. She hadn’t been the same. He couldn’t blame her, really. She felt insulted, rejected. He’d been thinking of her as a little sister, and had tried to explain that to her. But what had she said in return? She’d said, “You’re too white to be my brother.” He had no idea what she’d meant by that.
When All Light Fails Page 10
