by Geeta Anand
His mother was right, he thought. Money brought power—the power to include or exclude others. Grabbing the remote control from the side table, he hurled it across the room, where it ricocheted off the wall and knocked the top of the ice bucket onto the floor. Swearing, he picked up the remote and clicked on the television set, remembering a quote he’d read somewhere and saying it out loud, in an admonishing tone: “Life isn’t fair—get used to it.”
9
The Marriage
Winter–Spring 1999
Pennington, New Jersey; Long Branch, New Jersey
It was 1 A.M. when John finished writing a letter to the Harvard Business School classmates who were in his same Section J, asking each of them for a $500 donation to his new foundation. He e-mailed drafts to his three close friends and study group mates at Harvard who had offered to send it to members of their sections. He was counting on the generosity and means of the legendary Harvard old boy’s network to get his nascent organization off to a start.
He turned off the computer in his study, climbed up the stairs, and took a left into Megan’s bedroom for the final check he made every night. In the pale yellow glow of the nightlight, he saw her sleeping on her left side, her favorite stuffed dog, Pinky, in her arms. “Goodnight, Megs,” he whispered, kissing her cheek. She stirred and opened her eyes, lifting her right arm and raising her pinky finger, pointer, and thumb in the air, the middle finger and ring fingers down—sign language for “I love you.” A tutor had been teaching her sign language, and she communicated using a combination of spoken words and signs.
John smiled, bent over, and kissed her one more time, and then looked over at the night nurse, a big woman, who sat at the desk in the corner, her head in her hands. He did a double-take, realizing the nurse was asleep.
“Excuse me,” he said, tapping her lightly on her shoulder.
She jerked awake, looked up at him with bloodshot eyes and mumbled an apology. “So tired. Bad night, bad night last night with the children.” She stood up from the chair unsteadily and took a few steps toward him. He recognized the smell on her breath with a shock.
“You’re drunk,” John said.
“No, I’m not,” she said, stepping backward.
“Yes, you are. I can smell the alcohol,” John said, incredulous. “Get out. Get the hell out of this house.”
He watched her leave, then stomped down the hallway to his bedroom and stood beside Aileen, who was sleeping.1
“Aileen, you’ll never believe it,” he said. “The nurse the agency sent tonight is drunk.”
“What?” she said, sleepily.
“The goddamn nurse is drunk. I can smell it on her breath.”
“She’s not drunk. She’s just weird and tired. They’re all weird and tired. At least she’s awake,” Aileen said, waving him away. “Go to bed, honey.”
“Aileen, don’t you have any standards at all?” he said, anger building. “The nurse was slurring her words. I told her to leave.”
“Jesus, John,” Aileen said, sitting up in bed, fully awake. “Now what are we going to do?”
“How can you allow someone like that to take care of Megan?” he exploded.
“You’re screaming, John. Calm down,” she said in a loud, angry whisper. “You’re going to wake the kids. And I wish you’d stop blaming me. You’ve fired ten nurses in ten weeks.”
“We need to get better nurses,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m going to call the nursing agency tomorrow and tell them to stop sending us this crap.”
“We’ve both called the friggin’ nursing agency ten times to complain that the nurses suck,” Aileen said, exasperation flooding her voice. “There’s a friggin’ nursing shortage, John. I’m just grateful when someone shows up to help.”
“We can’t have people like that taking care of Megan and Patrick,” John said, with a sharp intake of breath, trying to calm himself.
“They’ve got nobody else to send,” Aileen said. “I need the extra pair of hands to play with Megan while I feed Patrick. I never leave Megan alone with any of the bad nurses, so don’t give me crap.”
Staring at Aileen coldly, John shook his head and said, “I’ll sleep in Megan’s room for the first half of the night. You can do the second shift.” He rummaged in his closet for his sleeping bag, grabbed his pillow from the bed and stomped down the corridor toward Megan’s bedroom.
Aileen heard a car starting up outside. She stood at the window, watching as the nurse’s old Buick Skylark lurched out of the driveway.
* * *
The next morning, as John left for work at 6:45, he reminded Aileen to call the nursing agency to complain about the drunken nurse and ask for a replacement. “I’ll handle it,” she said, not looking up as she tied John Jr.’s shoes.
This morning, Aileen drove John Jr. to Hopewell Presbyterian Elementary School instead of letting their au pair take him as she did most mornings. John’s teacher had asked Aileen to come in to talk to her about her son. Their best nurse was on duty today, so Aileen left Megan at home.
The teacher, a gentle soul, smiled ruefully as she told Aileen about the trouble with her son. He was a sweet boy, she said, but he couldn’t follow instructions. With eighteen students and only one assistant, she needed her students to be able to perform simple consecutive tasks. “I can’t ask your son to put on an apron, sit down, and paint without him getting lost somewhere along the way,” she said. He needed a teacher by his side to participate in any activity.
“I’m sorry—I’ll work with him at home,” Aileen said grimly. “It’s been a difficult year and he hasn’t always gotten enough attention. His sister has been very sick.” The teacher nodded sympathetically, having heard about Megan being in the hospital during the first few weeks little John was in school.
As she drove home, Aileen allowed herself to cry, having fought hard not to let the tears flow in school. She knew John Jr. had trouble focusing, but she had hoped the problem would somehow disappear when he was at school. She just couldn’t face another problem. Over the past eleven months, the children’s illness had begun to eat at their marriage. John thought Aileen was lazy; she felt unappreciated. The night before, battling over the nurses, had made both of them wonder if their marriage would survive.
At home, Aileen found Megan and Patrick on the couch in the den, side by side, watching Barney on TV. The nurse sat in between them and their au pair was in the kitchen making macaroni and cheese. “Hi, honey,” Aileen greeted each of them brightly, crouching in front of the couch and kissing each child.
“And whose birthday is it tomorrow?” she asked. Megan looked at Patrick, who pointed at himself.
“And how old are you going to be?” she asked.
Patrick smiled up at her and raised one finger.
“That’s right, honey,” she told him. “What a big boy you’re going to be!”
In the kitchen, Aileen swung into action. She dialed her mother to ask her to pick up a birthday cake for Patrick at the bakery near her house, which was famous for excellent desserts. She took a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough out of the refrigerator and divided it into bowls.
“Who wants to make cookies?” she asked, returning to the den. Two pairs of eyes lit up. She lifted Megan, asking the nurse to follow with the ventilator—a big box, at fifty pounds about as heavy as a first-generation microwave oven. They put the child and the machine on the kitchen counter beside one bowl of cookie dough. Then Aileen sat Patrick beside his sister with his own bowl of dough.
The children grabbed handfuls of dough, squished them into balls, and flattened them onto the pan. Aileen dumped a bag of M&Ms on the counter for the kids to add to the mixture. Megan grabbed a handful and threw them on the floor.
“Those are for the cookies, Megan, not to throw on the floor,” Aileen said sternly.
Megan reached into the bowl again and flung another handful on the floor.
“If you do that one more time, Megan, you’re going in a ti
me-out,” Aileen said.
Her eyes on her mother, Megan cupped her hands, filled them to the brim with M&Ms, and threw them up in the air, where they pelted to the ground around her mother’s feet.
Wordlessly, Aileen scooped up her daughter, still connected to her ventilator on the counter, and strapped her into the booster seat attached to a kitchen chair. Arms crossed, lower lip jutting outward in a pout, Megan sat in the booster, staring straight ahead while her mother and brother added the remaining M&Ms to the cookie dough. Even in punishment, Megan was defiant. She would not cry.
In the late morning, John called to check in.
“How are the troops?” he asked, sounding like his old upbeat self.
“Great. We’re making cookies,” Aileen said, matching his chipper tone. “You should see them licking the cookie dough off their hands.”
“Have you called the nursing agency?” he asked.
“I’ll call them as soon as we finish the cookies,” Aileen said quickly.
“Ai-leen,” he said, stretching her name into a long drawl of irritation. “Could you please do something? Can’t I rely on you to do anything?”
“Yes, yes. Fine. I’m sorry, John. I’ll do it right away,” she replied, biting her lip.
Aileen hung up and helped the nurse wash off the children’s hands in the kitchen sink. “Ugh—they have cookie dough in their hair and on their clothes. We’re going to have to give them both baths,” she sighed. Aileen led the way up the stairs with Megan, the nurse following with the ventilator. Then she made a second trip to carry Patrick. As the nurse played peekaboo with Patrick, Aileen bathed Megan, standing her in a plastic ring that attached to the bottom of the tub with suction cups. Megan splashed happily, filling and refilling her set of plastic cups. Her ventilator sat on the floor beside the tub, pumping twenty-two breaths per minute into her lungs as always, indifferent as to whether she was in time-out or in her bath.
At noon, Aileen returned to school to pick up John Jr. From his teacher’s strained smile, she could tell it had been another bad day at Hopewell Elementary. She had forgotten to tell John about the teacher’s complaint. She would discuss it with him tonight if she could squeeze in a conversation in between the children’s bedtime and his nightly fund-raising marathon on the phone and computer.
On the drive home, she and John Jr. stopped to buy party supplies at Pennington Market. She strapped him into the grocery cart and pushed him around the store gathering candles, balloons, party plates, and napkins.
“Do you know who’s coming to the party tomorrow?” she asked him.
He shook his head, still not a big talker.
“Nana and Poppy are coming,” she said, referring to her parents. “And Barley and Big Poppy are coming”—the kids’ names for John’s mother and stepfather. “And Uncle Marty and Great Grandma and Aunt Michele. We’re going to have a big party for Patrick.”
John came home around six as Aileen was feeding little John and Patrick. Megan couldn’t swallow food anymore, and got all her nutrition now from stomach feedings at naptime and during the night. She sat in front of the TV while Aileen spooned apple sauce into the mouths of other two.
“How are Archie and Edith?” John asked, looking over at Megan in her usual spot on the couch and Patrick in his booster seat in the kitchen.
“We’re not Archie and Edith,” Megan said in her muffled voice, dark eyes looking at her father, adamant.
“Now I get it,” he said, chuckling. “You’re Frick and Frack.”
She shook her head, shouting, “Uh-uh.” Patrick smiled, revealing a mouth full of applesauce, and waved his favorite Barney spoon at his dad.
“How could I forget?” he asked. “Gertrude and Stanley. You’re Gertrude and you’re Stanley.”
“He’s Stanley,” Megan said. “I’m the Little Mermaid. I’m a princess.”
Then Megan remembered her project that day. “Daddy, come here,” she said. “Look.” She pointed to the plate of M&M cookies wrapped in plastic on the kitchen counter.
“Megan, did you make those for me?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“Who did you make those for?” John asked.
She pointed at herself.
“You can have one—just one,” she said.
“That’s my girl,” John laughed. “She’s always thinking about Number One.”
“Megan had her first time-out today,” Aileen chimed in from the kitchen chair, still feeding the boys.
“No,” Megan shouted.
“Should I tell Daddy what you did?” Aileen asked.
“No,” Megan shouted again, this time waving her arms.
“All right, I won’t,” Aileen said. “All I’ll say is that because of Megan, we nearly didn’t have enough M&Ms to make those cookies.”
The evening passed in bedtime stories for the children. John read Megan her new favorite book, The Little Mermaid; Aileen read a Barney board book to Patrick while John Jr. watched TV. Then she put her oldest boy to bed, reading him an extra story. Somehow, she told herself, she had to find the time and energy to give her eldest son more attention.
As she and John sat down to eat the take-out pasta dinner he had picked up on the way home, he asked, “Did you call the nursing agency?”
“Oh no, honey. I was so busy,” she said, picking up her fork. “I’m sorry. I’ll call tomorrow.”
“Aileen,” he barked, slamming his fork and knife down on the table. “Can’t you do one damn thing? Come on. I’m working all freakin’ day. I’m up half the night fund-raising for the foundation. Can’t you at least manage the nurses?”
“Well, it’s your fault if you work so hard. Don’t blame me, John,” she said, her temper flaring at last. “Things were really busy around here. You try taking care of three children in diapers. And what’s the point of even calling the nursing agency to complain? It’s not like the nursing agency has any better frigging nurses to give us. How many different ways do you need them to say the same thing—they don’t have any other nurses.”
There was a tense moment while they stared at each other, then John backed down. “Well, do we at least have a nurse tonight?” he asked, his tone pointedly helpful.
“We don’t have anyone tonight because you fired her, John,” Aileen said, coldly.
They ate the rest of the meal in silence.
Patrick woke up with a bad cold on his birthday. His eyes were red and listless. Aileen and John were both tired from having split the night shift for two consecutive nights, sleeping on the floor in Megan’s room. Aileen dressed Patrick in a new blue and green striped one-piece outfit and carried him downstairs where Megan sat on her daddy’s lap, John Jr. beside them.
“Happy birthday, baby Patrick!” John Jr. shouted. Patrick smiled, showing his new front tooth. Megan held up both arms and waved for Aileen to bring her baby brother over. She kissed him on his cheek and said, “Happy birthday.”
An hour later, the relatives began to arrive. Aileen’s parents were first, followed by her brother Marty. Soon John’s side of the family had joined in—his mother, grandmother, stepfather, stepbrother Jason, and Aunt Michele.
Patrick, tired from his cold, fussed for much of the party. But when he saw the cake, the white icing top decorated with red, blue, and green balloons, he squealed and clapped. As the relatives sang “Happy Birthday,” Patrick grinned and blew out his candle.
John looked at Patrick’s cherubic face—at his brown eyes, which had changed in the past few months from their original blue, at the wisps of light brown hair around his face—and wondered how long they had before he got really sick. He looked at Aileen’s smiling face, makeup disguising her exhaustion, leading everyone in “Happy Birthday” a second time so Megan had a chance to blow out the candle, too. Aileen had such a beautiful soprano voice, he thought. She had been the leader of her college choir, and everyone who heard her thought she could have a career as a professional singer. But she refused to even consider th
e idea. “I just want to be a mom,” she had said then, shaking her head, and repeated many times since.
John Jr. began to cry, protesting that he needed a chance to blow out the candle, too. Aileen, giggling, lit the candle a third time and made everyone sing the whole thing one more time. Looking at her, John knew that in this moment, the children’s disease didn’t figure in her consciousness at all. She was happy just being with her kids, surrounded by her family. John wished he could let go of Megan and Patrick’s prognosis and enjoy the good days as much as she did, but he felt weighted down. He couldn’t stop thinking for even an instant that they would die before age five unless a new treatment intervened.
Now it was present time. Patrick, on Aileen’s lap, helped tear open the wrapping paper. Out came a stuffed Barney that sang, “I love you, you love me,” when its tummy was pressed, a Barney puzzle, and a pile of Barney books. Megan grabbed the singing Barney from Patrick, shouting, “Mine!” Aileen gently unclasped her fingers and handed it back to the birthday boy. The little girl fell into a full-fledged tantrum, the alarms on her ventilator shrieking as her crying disrupted the airflow. “Mine!” she screamed.
“Megan, let’s take a special walk,” John said, standing up immediately. Carrying Megan in one arm and her ventilator in the other, he took her into his study and sat her on his lap. Megan stopped crying and reached for the two closest framed pictures, handing them to her dad. She liked hearing him tell stories about the people in the pictures that filled the tables and walls.
“This is my dad wearing his Marine uniform,” John said. “You know, Megs, when you grow up, you can be a Marine like your grandpa. And you and I both know you’d be tougher than any boy Marine,” he chuckled, thinking about how she refused to die that morning at Monmouth Medical Center six months ago. Megan looked up at him, nodding seriously, believing with all her heart that one day she would be the bravest girl Marine ever, and then pointed to the next picture.
