Ties That Bind

by Marie Bostwick

“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.”

  23

  Philippa

  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.”

  24

  Philippa

  I sat with my bare feet dangling over the edge of the examining table, wearing one of those stiff, crinkly paper jobs that have replaced traditional cotton hospital gowns, and tried to absorb the diagnosis.

  Dr. Mandel, who said I could call her Rhea if she could call me Philippa, stood about five foot one, had reddish hair that was giving way to gray, a well-padded frame, and a grandmotherly manner. At the moment, she was just what I needed.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” she said and scribbled on her prescription pad. “Unless your fertility doctor in Boston performed the procedure while you were under anesthesia and without your consent, you had to know this could happen. Artificial insemination does have a tendency to result in pregnancy. Didn’t they explain that part to you?”

  She ripped the top sheet of paper off the pad and handed it to me. “Here’s a prescription for prenatal vitamins. Congratulations, Philippa. You’re going to be a mom.”

  “A mom …” I held the prescription in my hands, each corner pinched between my fingers, and stared at it. “A mom.”

  “Are you all right?” the doctor asked, her smile fading. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

  I blinked quickly and shook my head. “No. Absolutely not. It’s just … We’d done the procedure so many times. I’d kind of stopped believing it would ever work.”

  “Fortunately,” the doctor said as she opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of latex gloves, “it only takes once. We’ll do an ultrasound in a few weeks, but for now, I’d like to give you an internal exam. Don’t worry, it’ll be quick and it won’t hurt the baby. Just lie back and put your feet up. Scoot a down a little, please. That’s right. Good girl.”

  She snapped on a gooseneck exam lamp and adjusted it so she could see better.

  “Sorry my hands are so cold. Just try to relax,” she said. “Think lovely thoughts, dear. Think about holding your baby.”

  I tried to follow her instructions, but the idea of a baby, my baby, our baby, mine and Tim’s, was still a thing beyond imagini
ng. It seemed like a dream. For so many years, it had been.

  Tim and I always planned on having children, but we decided to wait a few years before starting a family. I was a social worker, later a seminary student, and Tim was a special education teacher, so we weren’t exactly rolling in dough. We decided to build up our bank account before having a baby. We had plenty of time, or so we thought.

  Every month, we gave 10 percent of our income to the church, used 80 percent for our living expenses, and put the remaining 10 percent into a special bank account for our someday baby—the “junior fund,” we called it.

  We were just seventeen hundred dollars away from our twenty-five-thousand-dollar goal when Tim was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer.

  With aggressive treatment, including chemotherapy, we were told that Tim’s chance of survival would be close to 60 percent. Tim was always an optimist, always figured that everything would turn out and so, initially, he wasn’t nearly as worried about the success of his treatment as he was about what it would do to our plans for having a baby.

  Before the chemotherapy, we visited a fertility clinic and had Tim’s sperm frozen. Tim painted an amusing portrait of a grim-faced nurse with no eyebrows and man hands who pointed to a stack of magazines, gave him a plastic cup, and told him to “ring if he needed anything”—but as far as Tim was concerned, this was just a blip on the radar screen of life. Once he was done with the surgery and chemo, he assured me that everything would return to normal and we would spend the rest of our lives together, growing old and wrinkly in tandem. “After all, I’ve got a better than fifty-fifty chance.”

  In time we came to realize that those odds weren’t good enough. The cancer spread and the chemo treatments weren’t working. In the last weeks of his life, one of the things that brought Tim comfort, aside from his faith, was the thought of our someday baby. He talked about that a lot. He made me promise that, boy or girl, I’d raise our child to be a Red Sox fan.