Beneath the Night Tree

by Nicole Baart

  My blood was pounding in my temples, so I looked away and didn’t bother to answer. We drove in silence, and I stared out the dark windshield at the straight stretch of deserted highway, mesmerized by the way the wind whipped the inch or so of new snow across the road. What had fallen so softly was now lashed in shallow drifts with severe peaks and chasms. It seemed that I could drag my fingertip along the edge and split my skin like the flesh of a ripe peach. Everything felt violent. Harsh.

  The world was a very different place than it had been only hours before.

  I can’t do this alone, I prayed without saying a word. You have to be with me. You have to show me that You’re here.

  God didn’t answer, but as soon as my heart said amen, Parker broke the stillness with a tentative ahem. “So . . . tell me about your grandmother.”

  I squinted at him in the dim interior of the car, uncertain about his motivations. It was a strange thing to ask. But even as I contemplated ignoring him, I found that I wanted to talk about Grandma. Memories bloomed over me, a rush of sudden remembrances that stirred my soul in spite of everything. She was so beautiful. So good and kind and loving. What would she do to bridge the space between? How had she comforted me when Dad was diagnosed with cancer?

  Grandma prayed. She smiled. She filled my life with story.

  “My grandma raised me,” I said.

  Parker seemed to relax a bit. “Go on,” he prompted.

  “Really, she’s more like the mother I never had. . . .”

  Autobiographies

  Grandma pulled through surgery with flying colors. At least, that’s what the doctors said. To me, flying colors was a bit of an exaggeration, for in the days following her double-bypass operation, my usually vibrant grandmother seemed as insubstantial as mist. Her hair, which had been the color of silvered granite for as long as I could recall, had turned white overnight. It was as fine and weightless as duckling down, and it feathered across her bleached hospital pillow like a translucent vapor. I smoothed the gauzy strands from her forehead with the barest of touches, my fingertips tracing wrinkles in skin the color of bone and eggshells.

  Everything about her seemed white and light and tenuous. Her breathing was so shallow that sometimes I would put my cheek next to her lips just so I could feel the slight puff when she exhaled. It shocked me that even her breath was cool and wispy, weightless—like the frosty air that emanated from the frames of our ancient windows.

  Grandma was a winter queen, a sleeping angel, a sweet and fleeting dream.

  “She’s going to make it,” the doctors told me.

  But I couldn’t help feeling like the woman I had known for nearly twenty-five years was already gone.

  The Saturday after Grandma’s heart attack, Michael drove up from Iowa City and surprised me with a quick visit. I was sitting by Grandma’s bedside as she slept, and when I felt the burden of his hand on my shoulder, I knew who he was without turning around. The sob that swelled inside of me was a savage, uncontainable thing, and I flew to my feet and yanked him into the hall, where I could hold him and weep without waking her.

  It was so good to feel his arms around me, to inhale the familiarity of his scent and savor the sound of my name on his lips. I never wanted to let go. I could have climbed inside of Michael in that moment. I wanted to peel back his skin and step in, to become a part of something other than myself so that I didn’t have to carry the weight of all my worries alone.

  But Michael extracted himself from my desperate grip after a few gulping, gasping moments and led me to the cafeteria. He sat me down at a tiny round table and gave me a handful of napkins to clean myself up. Then he disappeared, mumbling about how I was becoming downright scrawny, and returned with a tray filled with food.

  “Chicken soup,” he said, pointing to a bowl of unappetizing yellow liquid. “And a hamburger and fries if that sounds better. Or pie and ice cream.”

  “What kind of pie?” I muttered thickly. My tongue felt too big for my mouth, my throat lined with sandpaper.

  “Cherry.”

  “I’ll take the coffee.” I reached for one of the mugs of oily coffee, but Michael batted my hand away.

  “You have to eat something first.”

  When I didn’t respond, he lifted the bowl of soup off the tray and placed it in front of me. “Start with this,” he instructed. “We’ll see where we go from there.”

  Michael ate the hamburger and fries while I spooned watery chicken broth into my mouth with methodical concentration. Every time he took a bite, I tried to follow suit. But the soup tasted funny to me, metallic and fake, like I was eating reconstituted noodles and imitation chicken. I gave up after a while and soothed my stomach with the mug of lukewarm coffee that he had denied me earlier. It was terrible, but I had grown used to it in a week of eating and drinking little else.

  Our conversation was sporadic at best, for what was there to say with my grandmother languishing in a hospital room? We could hardly gab about wedding plans. Or discuss what we wanted to get the boys for Christmas. Thanksgiving was just over a week away, but that seemed completely irrelevant to me. Nothing mattered but the woman in white, my matchless, ailing grandmother.

  “How’s she doing?” Michael asked when it became obvious that I had eaten all I could stomach.

  “Good, they say.”

  “What do you mean, they say?”

  I bit my lower lip and traced the rim of my coffee cup with my finger. “She’s recovering as well as can be expected. She walks to therapy every day, and her appetite is starting to pick up.”

  “Those are all good things.”

  “I know.”

  “And she’s out of the ICU,” Michael reminded me.

  “Yeah. I don’t have to scrub up to visit her.”

  “So why so glum?” Michael reached over and stopped my hand from tracing its squeaky path along the cheap hospital porcelain. He laced his fingers through mine and pulled my hand to the table between us, where he held it fast.

  “She’s . . .” I gulped, suddenly afraid I would cry. Not again. I didn’t want to break down again. “She’s just not herself,” I managed in a whisper. Offering Michael a little smile, I sniffed and tried to pull my hand away. He wouldn’t let go.

  “What do you mean, she’s not herself?”

  I didn’t feel like talking about it, so I used my free hand to lift the dessert plate that contained the uneaten piece of cherry pie. “Want to split this with me?” I asked.

  Michael gave me a knowing look, but he seemed willing enough to let me keep my secrets until I was ready to share. Rather than forcing the issue, he abandoned his attempt to get me to talk and gathered two forks from the messy tray. He happily ate more than his portion of the mediocre pie. I swallowed because I had to.

  Michael spent the rest of the day by my side. He held my hand, chatted with Grandma when she woke, and even talked shop with the doctor who made rounds in the late afternoon. My fiancé seemed perfectly at ease, and it struck me that he would be an excellent doctor someday. Calm and confident. His very presence a quiet comfort. Pride rose in me like bread baking, but there was a certain maternal quality to my delight that made me realize we hadn’t spent nearly enough time alone lately. Where was the passion? the ache at my center when Michael was nearby? But obviously the hospital was hardly the place for romance. It was nothing but a fleeting thought.

  I was grateful that he came and sorry when he went.

  Toward the end of Grandma’s second week in the heart hospital, her surgeon informed me that she was almost ready to be discharged.

  Although her stay had been a nightmare of uncertainty, of driving back and forth, passing off Daniel and Simon for days at a time, and relying on the goodness of the Walkers, the boys’ teachers, and even Parker to help pick up the slack, I was shocked to think of taking her home.

  “Already?”

  “There’s nothing we can do for her here that you can’t do for her at home. She’ll have to continue ca
rdiac rehabilitation, of course, and you’ll be in charge of her medications. The nutritionist has drawn up a loose meal plan for the first few weeks, and one of our nurses will be in contact about follow-up visits.”

  My mind whirled with the implications of everything he said. Therapy, medications, special meals, more appointments . . . Of course, I would gladly follow each instruction to the letter and do everything in my power to aid in my grandmother’s recovery. But standing in the hallway outside her room, I couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed.

  And scared.

  When he walked away, I whispered, “Lord, help me.”

  I hadn’t heard Grandma’s favorite nurse come up behind me, and I jumped when she wrapped an arm around my shoulders. She smiled a little and gave me a quick, tight hug. “He will,” she told me, her eyes holding mine in a gaze that was both serious and soothing. Then she breezed into the room and left me to wonder how she knew just what to say.

  * * *

  With discharge only days away, I was forced to focus on my home life. Grandma assured me that she would be fine in the heart hospital alone, and I used the opportunity to throw myself at the responsibilities I had neglected since her heart attack.

  My desk at Value Foods was an uncharacteristic clutter of mail and documents and Post-it notes with scribbled pleas from my coworkers. I took the boys along with me one evening and worked until nearly ten o’clock, allowing them to play Uno online while I tried to make sense of my rat’s nest of responsibilities. By the time I left, I only felt more tangled.

  But work wasn’t the only thing clamoring for my attention. Though I had e-mailed my professor at the tech school and explained my grandmother’s situation, I still had to complete the coursework. He had gladly granted me an extension, but I knew that if I didn’t get caught up before Grandma came home, it might never happen. The biggest obstacle I faced was my fifth activity: an autobiography.

  I was supposed to disclose important family interactions and relationships, as well as analyze my most memorable grade school year and other major life events. It was an easy enough task, but complicated by the fact that nothing about my life seemed simple. What could I say about my early family interactions? Through the lens of my adulthood I could clearly see that my mom was a drifter, a deadbeat. When I was really honest with myself, I was able to admit that she was what the older ladies at our church would call a floozy. And as much as I worshiped my dad, he was an enabler. He loved her, for better or worse, and he put up with things that should have never gone unchecked.

  So what was I to write? that I grew up in a family fraught with dysfunction? that I was abandoned and ignored by the woman who was supposed to love me best? that all of my major life events seemed to revolve around the loss of something or someone?

  It was too depressing to consider. Instead of examining both sides of the coin that was my youth, I took out the polished side—the surface that played back the shiny memories, the ones I cherished. I spent two evenings admiring the pretty things, the times my dad took me fishing or when my grandma taught me how to bake her secret-recipe peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. I smiled as I wrote the paper because I pretended that the flip side didn’t exist. It was all I could do when the best part of my past and present was two hours away in a hospital gown.

  What did my future hold?

  Simon seemed to be pondering the same question because Grandma’s hospitalization ratcheted him to a new level of angst. It felt more like there was a temperamental teenager in our midst than a fifth grader. He was sullen and petulant, quiet but angry. I hated it. But I didn’t know what to do about it.

  “Do you miss her?” I asked Simon one night as we sat watching TV. Daniel was long in bed, and my brother and I were supposed to be enjoying a little time alone. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be enjoying anything. His arms were crossed over his chest, his features frozen in a grimace that would ensure he had crow’s-feet by twenty. He didn’t even glance up at me when I spoke.

  “Who?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Grandma.”

  He shrugged, but I suspected he felt her absence even more acutely than I did. Ever since he came to live with us nearly six years ago, he’d adored her with a devotion that betrayed his need for a mother figure—for someone to love him unconditionally. When Janice abandoned me, I at least still had my dad.

  Simon didn’t bother to respond to my question, so I filled in the silence for him. “She’ll be home in two days. It’ll be nice to have her around again, won’t it?”

  Still no answer.

  “It’s okay to miss her, Si. It’s okay to be sad. And confused.” At least, I hoped it was okay to be sad and confused. I sure was.

  “I’m fine,” Simon muttered.

  I watched him for a moment, torn between stomping out of the room and rushing over so I could wrap him in a bear hug. Neither option seemed quite right. Finally I rose from the rocking chair I had been sitting in and joined him on the couch. I kept my distance, but he seemed to shrink away from me as if he feared my touch.

  “Hey,” I said softly. “Look at me.”

  Simon didn’t turn his head, but he peered at me out of the corners of his eyes. His hair was getting long, and it flopped over his forehead so far, it brushed the line of his dark brows. I had to resist the urge to smooth it away from his skin, to press my lips to the curve of his temple.

  “Simon, I know you’re hurting,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully. “You don’t have to pretend that everything is okay. It’s not. But it’s going to be. You’ll see. Grandma will be home soon and everything will go back to the way it was.”

  “Until June,” Simon grunted.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. With two words, my brother had conjured up every fear and uncertainty I faced. What would happen now? With Grandma diminished by her illness and my wedding on the horizon, what would become of our family? Simon’s options had been taken away from him. He had to come with us whether he wanted to or not—Grandma couldn’t care for him on her own. And what would she do? join an assisted-living community? go into a nursing home? The thought made me ill.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said again, realizing how lame and deceitful the words sounded even in my own ears.

  Simon acted as if my assurances were meaningless. He pushed himself up from the couch and disappeared into the refuge of his messy room. As I watched him vanish from sight, I wondered what his autobiography would look like someday. If he found himself faced with an assignment to recount his childhood, would there be a shiny side? memories he could treasure in spite of it all?

  I found myself dialing the number for the triage station on Grandma’s floor before I even realized what I was doing. It was a daily ritual for me to check in with her nurses, but I had already made my customary call for the day. Besides, it was nine o’clock, past the time she usually fell asleep for the night, and I doubted that they would have any news to relay. All the same, I was desperate for some connection with her. For some indication that I wasn’t in this completely alone.

  “Nurses’ station. Lindy speaking.”

  “Hi, Lindy,” I said, clutching the phone tighter as I appreciated how silly it was for me to be bothering her again. But she had already picked up. I couldn’t just sever the connection. “It’s me, Julia DeSmit.”

  “Oh, hi! I didn’t expect to hear from you again today.”

  “I know; I’m sorry to bother you. I just had this strange urge to . . .” I faltered, not entirely sure what I wanted from her.

  “Would you like me to put you through to Nellie’s room?” Lindy asked, her voice cheerful and accommodating. She probably got calls from concerned family members all day long.

  “No, I don’t want to wake her up.”

  “She’s not asleep. In fact, she has a visitor.”

  “A visitor?” Mrs. Walker hadn’t told me that she planned to make the trek to the heart hospital. Normally she called if she was going to go so I
could send along something for Grandma. “It’s kind of late for that, don’t you think?”

  “Your grandma is doing very well, but you’re right. Visiting hours are over at nine. I’ll go tell him it’s time to wrap things up.”

  “Him?” I repeated, dazed. In a flash, all of my worries about Simon, our shared lives, and the broken stories of our youth evaporated. They were replaced by a new, more urgent concern. “Who’s there?”

  “A nice young gentleman,” Lindy said, sounding pleased. “Very handsome, if you ask me.”

  “Could you put me through?” I asked thickly.

  “Sure thing.”

  There was a click and then the phone rang twice in Grandma’s room. I could picture her there, propped up in the bed, but it disturbed me that I didn’t know who occupied the chair beside her.

  “Hello?”

  “Grandma?”

  “Hi, Julia. It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  “You too,” I told her. And she did sound good. Tired but content. Happy even. I knew her hair was still white, her frame still slight, but she sounded more like herself than the last time I had seen her a couple of days ago. “I just called to see how you were doing tonight, and the nurse told me that you were awake.”

  Grandma gave a quiet little laugh. “Shocking, isn’t it? I’m up past my bedtime. Do you think I’ll get in trouble?”

  In the background I could hear a man chuckle. His voice was deep and rich, resonant, even over the phone line.

  “Who’s that?” I tried to make the query light, even disinterested. But the suspense was killing me.

  “It’s Patrick, honey. He came to visit me.”

  Parker? I nearly choked. Why in the world was Parker visiting my grandmother? And why did she sound so pleased about it? “Excuse me?”

  “Just a minute, Julia,” Grandma said. “Patrick is leaving, and I’m going to say good-bye. Would you like me to call you back in a minute?”