by Lee Woodruff
“Your mom and I arrre doing great. She’s terrific, she really iss.”
Roger tilted his head to smile at her with genuine warmth. As she reached to take her father’s hand in an unspoken thank-you, they both heard the sudden rattle of the garage door opening and exchanged the tacit look of accomplices. Margaret was home.
39
Maura pulled into one of the car pickup lanes at the elementary school and was startled by a rap at the driver’s side window. Celia Murphy’s straightened blond mane and melon lip gloss smiled at her from outside the glass, and Maura rolled down the window.
“Hi, Celia.”
“Maura. I’m so happy to catch you. I was going to call you this afternoon.” Celia leaned into the car, her pink form-fitting yoga top and air-freshener-strength perfume invading the interior. Sarah rhythmically kicked the back of Maura’s seat from behind, and she glanced in the rear-view mirror, scanning for Ryan. Maybe Celia would get the message that she was in a hurry, but the dismissal bell still hadn’t rung yet. She was trapped until the line began to move.
“I … I know this month is the one-year anniversary … of … James.” Celia was struggling for the right tone, and Maura decided to let her finish.
“Yes, thank you. It was last week.”
“Well, our thoughts and prayers are with you all, I wanted you to know that,” said Celia, inserting herself even farther into the window. “And I thought this might be a good time to circle back, since we’re all thinking about James. Last year, you know, we held that fund-raiser at the elementary school. Henry had wanted to do something after the … tragedy, he was so devastated. I think I spoke to your mother back then on the phone, or maybe it was your sister? Anyhow, I know you weren’t in a frame of mind to attend. We are planning to hold it again this year in the fall. It was such a success, and kids these days all want to do something to give back, you know? You may have seen the flyer that just went home in the backpacks for people to save the date. Anyhooo, we were hoping that your family would come. So I wanted to get to you ahead of time so you could put it on the calendar.” She stepped back from her perch in the window and straightened, narrowing her eyes at Maura, her head cocked. “We’d love to have the Corrigans there.”
“Well, I …” Maura felt blindsided. She heard the bell ring loudly on the outside of the brick school building, relieved that the kids would come pouring out soon. Ryan had a dental appointment in fifteen minutes, and it was at least a ten-minute drive.
Celia didn’t give her an inch. “I saw Ryan the other day after school, and he told me how much he wanted to be there. It’s a car wash and bake sale. And we are collecting old bikes and used helmets for inner-city kids. The money we raise goes to—”
“Sure, Celia,” Maura blurted out. She was annoyed at her use of Ryan as a kind of collateral. “Of course we’ll be there. It’s wonderful that Henry wants to remember his friend. I’ll get the details from the flyer and talk to you a little later. I’ve got to get the kids to the dentist, OK?”
“That’s terrific, I’ll speak with you soon.” Celia pulled away with a toodle-loo wave, and Maura studied her aerobic walk, her tight butt in slim dark jeans and the ballet slipper flats that easily cost triple digits. She loathed and loved this woman in ever-shifting ratios.
They would all go to the fund-raiser, thought Maura decisively. The whole family would wash cars and sell cookies. If nothing else it would be a good activity for Sarah and Ryan to honor their brother and witness how sometimes good things could blossom out of horrific tragedies.
“Your turn, Daddy,” said Sarah. She was already in her pajamas, flopped on the rug, studying Maura’s hand of cards. Pete had been the one to bathe her and get the bedtime routine going. This was ordinarily a boy’s night out for him, but he had elected to stay in. And now here they were after a roast chicken dinner and homemade apple pie, playing cards as a family. Maura took it all in and allowed herself a secret smile.
“Do you have any fours?” Pete asked Ryan.
“Go fish,” said Ryan as Sarah peered over his shoulder.
“Pick up a card for Daddy,” urged Maura, pointing at the pile.
Although it was only early fall, the last two nights had grown cool, and this evening Pete had built a fire at Ryan’s request. The wood crackled and popped loudly. It was cheap pine, too green and full of sap, but she had bought it from a man with a truckload going door to door.
After the children were in bed, they sat together by the fire. Pete was sipping a glass of orange juice, and Maura realized suddenly that he hadn’t had a drink all night. In fact she tried to remember now if he’d even had a beer last night.
“I was thinking about the Hulburd kid today. Have you heard anything about him?” Pete asked drowsily.
“Not since he called that one time,” said Maura.
“Right before he went to basic training?
“Yup, and he told me he wouldn’t be allowed any contact there. He can write a letter but he doesn’t get e-mail or a cell phone. They take all that stuff away.”
“Sounds like heaven,” chuckled Pete, and she laughed.
“I’m worried about him,” mused Maura. “I hope he makes it. That picture he gave us, with his uniform and his shaved head, something about it breaks my heart. It makes him look so young.”
“He is young. All these guys are young. But you know, he looks really proud,” said Pete. She agreed. As scary as it was that he was headed overseas, she wanted him to find a place somewhere, his own sense of peace. The picture in uniform made it feel as if he had. Maura had tacked his photo on the kitchen bulletin board and explained to Ryan it was the boy who had hit James by accident. Her son had solemnly studied the portrait, asking a few questions, and then had seemed to accept it all.
A log suddenly burned through and the two pieces fell, one rolling toward the fireplace screen. Pete jumped up to push it back with the poker.
“Hey, I’ve got something to tell you,” he said with forced casualness. She knew this tone, and she braced herself for the moment, not sure which way it would break.
“Yeah? Am I going to hate this?” She tried to keep her voice light and quizzical.
“I went to a meeting today with Billy.” He paused. “An AA meeting.” Pete’s voice was soft, and Maura felt her heart flip-flop and balloon out again. She took a breath and weighed her response. Her heart rate rocketed as she waited for him to continue.
“I’ve been going this week, but I was afraid to say anything to you too soon. I just, I guess I just wanted to make sure it was going to be for me.”
Maura couldn’t move and then all at once she pushed her face into Pete’s chest, feeling warm tears springing up, unbidden. This was fragile territory. He was offering her the potential for a huge transformation, and she hadn’t been in that position for many months.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m going to try. I’m going to give it my best shot, not going to be easy every day. You OK? I figured you’d be thrilled.”
“Yeah … I’m … just … happy,” Maura said simply. Pete was quiet for a while, and they fitted easily into the silence. She was afraid to interrupt, to probe further or meet his eyes, as if that kind of directness would drive him in the opposite direction.
“I scared myself.”
“Yeah?”
“Last week, on Monday, remember I met some of the guys to watch the game in the city? Well, I was driving home after a few beers. Corner of Hubbard and State. There was a streetlight out, bad visibility, but it was me. I blamed it on the light. But I’d had more than my limit, and some old guy, a bum, probably homeless, just shot out of the dark.” Pete’s voice was clipped. “Maybe he was on the crosswalk and I just didn’t see him … it happened so fast, and—” Pete stopped for a moment, remembering it afresh. “I sort of wasn’t there in that car and then all of a sudden I was, my reflexes kicked in. It was all OK, but I freaked myself out. I kept thinking, what if I’d really hurt him, you know?” Pete paused for a
moment and let out a long breath, bringing his hands to his hair and running them through it in a quick scalp-scrubbing motion that she had always found endearing.
“The guy ended up with his hands on my hood, screaming and slamming his fists, cursing the hell out of me. He was fine. I mean, he was pretty loaded. His hands were cut, I guess, from hitting the ground. So the blood made it look worse than it really was. I got out and he shook me off, pushed me away. Didn’t want me to take him to the hospital, didn’t want to give me his name.” Pete picked up Maura’s hand and laid it in his lap.
“I was so goddamned scared, Maura. It could have ended so different.” He paused for a second and his composure broke.
She sat there for a moment, lying on his shoulder in the flicker of the firelight, taking in what he was saying. Here was this new Pete, hurting over his loss and his mistakes, this vulnerable, confessing, intimate Pete whom she had craved for so long.
“I thought about … well … I thought about …” And then he was silent. She ran her hands over the sides of his head, smoothing his hair by the temples, feeling for the tears in the dark and gently wiping them away. “You thought about James,” she finished in a whisper.
These early days of working on Pete’s sobriety would be tenuous, Maura knew, too tentative to expect a sudden happy ending. But in the absence of anything else in the quicksand world that had been reshaped after their son’s death, Maura figured hope was at least something. As they fell asleep that night, like spoons, she could feel Pete’s strong heartbeat through the back of her ribs, overpowering the vibration of her own. For the first time in a long time, Maura felt an emberlike sense of hope flare higher.
“Mom, look at all of this money.” Ryan held up a fist of dollar bills.
“Wow, honey, that’s amazing,” said Maura.
“Look, Mom, one man gave us a hundred-dollar bill!” Ryan waved the money excitedly over his head and then placed it reverentially back in the cash box.
“That’s a big tip,” she called.
“James would love this,” said Ryan breathlessly, waving the stack of bills and then fanning them out to organize into piles of tens, fives, and ones.
In the days leading up to the car wash and bake sale, they had all trekked around town to staple photocopied signs in the local stores and on telephone poles.
The school had turned over the front parking lot, and people had donated hoses and brought buckets and brushes. Teams descended on the cars, scrubbing in a furious mass of bubbles, punctuated by screams of delight when the hoses were sprayed. There was no one present who wasn’t wet to some degree, and Maura was touched by how many of her friends and acquaintances had shown up. One of the volunteers had told her they’d washed well over a hundred cars.
“You keep counting, sweetie. I’m going to get a drink of water.” Maura headed for the entryway of the elementary school.
It was a sunny day, and the season had doubled back for a rare stretch of Indian summer. Some of the baked goods on the table in the school parking lot were beginning to wilt. Chocolate chips bled onto the cellophane of the individually wrapped cookies. The supply of brownies and cupcakes was dwindling.
Pete had been spraying and soaping the cars with Ryan, and they were both completely soaked, giggling and laughing when the water from the hose inadvertently hit them. Even Sarah had gotten into the act, sponging cars and floating back and forth between her parents. Ryan had a palpable sense of pride in being connected to the event, and Henry, Celia’s son, was especially solicitous of him in a way that made Maura’s heart ache. It was hard to see how much her son’s best friend had shot up in a year and a half, hard to believe this would have been James’s eleventh birthday, his first year at the middle school.
Henry and the other sixth-grade boys who had turned out to work the fund-raiser seemed so mature, so much older in such a relatively short span. Observing them working the event, Maura beat back a complex mixture of longing and jealousy. Her mouth was dry and she was deep in thought as she entered the front of the school to find the restroom.
As she washed her hands and splashed water on her face, Maura heard the bathroom door creak open and saw Celia Murphy in the reflection from the sink mirror.
“What a day,” Celia said, smiling broadly. She had little patches of sweat under the arms of her tangerine shirt, and she appeared to have been sprayed from the back.
“A big success,” said Maura. “Ryan couldn’t wait to count the money. I really am so touched that Henry started all of this. It’s … it’s … a very generous thing to do.”
“Well, it really was Henry’s idea. Truly. I mean, I think all of the kids were so stunned, so shocked, really that one of their friends could … that something like that could happen to their friend. Just crossing the street.”
Maura nodded. When was the last time she had taken a sip of water? She felt dehydrated all of a sudden, light-headed.
“I mean it really could have been any of us, right?” said Celia, nattering on. “After it happened I decided I had to be more vigilant, and I made a real rule with myself. It’s so easy for me to get distracted, to get caught up on my cell phone or whatever. We can’t be watching every second.”
Maura moved back toward the sink to try to cup some water into her hands.
“Our worst fears as a mother,” Celia added more softly.
“I guess it could happen to anyone,” offered Maura. “It was so fast, you know? I just glanced down for a second.”
Celia trained a sympathetic expression on Maura, and Maura fought the urge that sometimes overtook her in public places to run out the bathroom door, gather up her family, and go. “Well, I mean, and the texting thing has just gotten out of control too, hasn’t it? I’m on my kids about it all the time. Maura? Are you OK? I didn’t mean to bring all this up. I hope I didn’t upset you talking about James.”
“I’m fine. I should probably get back to Sarah,” Maura offered weakly, and she swung the door open and turned the corner in the cool stone corridor of the elementary school, leaning her back against the wall for relief, out of Celia’s sight. Maura could hear the door of the girls’ bathroom close with a slam and the brisk clickety clack of Celia’s sandals receding. When she walked back out to the bright sunlight and the remains of the car wash, she was amused to see Henry turning the hose on his mother. Celia’s dark jeans were completely soaked and the seams of her lacey bra showed through her wet V-necked T-shirt. As Celia shrieked good-naturedly, her blond hair shellacked to her head by the spray, Maura smiled and then tried to suppress a giggle, and because it was impossible not to, she erupted into peals of outright laughter.
40
They’d watched the local 6:00 P.M. news in the kitchen over dinner and now they were in the family room with bowls of sherbet, taking in the national broadcast. There had been a school shooting in California, and heavy rains had overflowed riverbanks in the South, upending homes and wreaking havoc. Margaret was sick of the carnage on the news. Where were the positive stories?
“Those poor families,” said Margaret. Roger nodded. She took a spoonful of raspberry sherbet and then bent to wipe a small trickle of it from Roger’s mouth, almost without thinking. He waved her away.
“Economy’s comin baaack,” said Roger, catching on the final word. He pored over the Wall Street Journal daily, and Margaret had grown accustomed to bringing him his coffee and papers in the den each morning. More often now, he walked out and retrieved them himself. They had found a comfortable routine, and although he was still unable to drive, Roger had been more interested in getting out with her, accompanying her on errands sometimes. His mobility with the cane had improved, and he hadn’t used the walker in months.
“How about a movie?” Margaret offered. “There are a couple on cable that I’ve heard the kids talk about.” She scrolled through the TV guide section of the Sun-Times, squinting through her reading glasses.
Their children had been so attentive through all of this, she
thought, coming over to help with meals, playing cards, and staying with him when she had to run out. Maura and Erin had even run through some of the speech therapies with their father in the earlier days. They were blessed to have such a close-knit family. It was difficult times that let you understand good fortune; you could take an accounting of what you had in a way you weren’t able to when life ran smoothly. Margaret had reminded Roger of that fact when he needed to be bucked up.
A few months after the stroke, Roger had gone through plenty of days when he seemed in despair, and Margaret had been concerned. She’d mentioned it to Father Durkee, and he’d come by to visit Roger. She wasn’t privy to anything they’d discussed, and she had made a point of not probing Roger afterward. She was merely thrilled that he’d been receptive to the idea. But there were days, she knew, when the realization of his disabilities coalesced into a terrible sadness and frustration.
Rummaging through drawers in the bedroom around that time, Margaret had come across an old prescription bottle of sleeping pills, stuffed in a sock, of all strange things. The disturbing thought occurred to her that maybe he had been hoarding them, that perhaps he was contemplating taking his own life, and then she dismissed that as foolhardy. Looking at the label, she could see they were left over from the days when Roger had traveled more extensively for work. And they were three years old, past their expiration date by months. If anything, Roger slept too much, nodding off in the chair in front of the TV and passing out nightly almost the minute his head touched the pillow. She had pitched the prescription bottle into the trash.
One afternoon, exhausted and short-fused, Margaret grew tired of his moping around, his taciturn moods and unwillingness to say much, and she’d really let him have it, just unleashed her frustration on him like a drill sergeant. Margaret told him he was being a sad sack when he had all of this family under his nose, Maura, Erin, and Stu. All those beloved grandkids. Most people didn’t get that lucky in a lifetime. He was a survivor, she had screamed at him, a blessed survivor. After that, he had seemed to make more of an effort and it had pleased her. He was still working hard to come to terms with the person he was now. Maybe he would always be in some way, she reasoned, and she’d have to accept that.
