by Jim Bouton
“Oh, no,” I heard her say. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
A jolt of terror shot through my body. I had never heard Paula sound like that before. I just hoped it wasn’t one of the kids.
“What is it?” I said, my heart hammering. “Who?”
“Laurie’s been in a terrible accident,” said Paula, who was shaking now and gasping for breath.
“How bad?” I moaned, terrified of the answer.
“Very bad,” said Paula, still on the phone, trying to learn more.
“Is she dead?” I heard myself say, not believing I was saying it.
“No… but it’s very bad.…”
I fell on my knees and vomited.
“No, no, no, no…” I wailed. “Not my Laurie… not my Laurie.”
I pounded the floor in my helplessness. Laurie was in danger and there was nothing I could do to fix it. And she was so far away.
“We have to go to the hospital right now…” said Paula.
I couldn’t think straight. How could we get to the hospital in Newark? That’s four hours away. Neither one of us could possibly drive in this condition.
Now David was on the car phone with Paula. He and Lee and Lee’s fiancée, Elaine Wood, were driving to the hospital from Manhattan and would be there in twenty minutes. Bobbie and her husband, Phil Goldberg, were already at the hospital. Michael and his then fiancée, Melanie Knapper, were being driven from Brooklyn by a friend, Tom Lanier. Hollis was in Europe and couldn’t be reached.
“I have to take care of your dad,” said Paula, hanging up the phone. “We’ll get there somehow.”
Somebody has to take charge when things are falling apart, and nobody’s better at that than Paula. In minutes she was on the phone to the driver service that takes me to and from airports when I have to fly. It was now after eleven, but a driver showed up in twenty minutes. Just enough time for us to throw some things in a suitcase if we needed to stay over.
It was the longest ride of our lives. We held each other and cried and talked. David had said Laurie was in a coma and would probably never walk again. This was inconceivable for someone like Laurie, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” girl daredevil. We knew they were doing everything possible to save her. Evidently, a helicopter had flown her to the hospital from the crash scene.
We called the hospital during a pit stop. The news was not any better. Just get there as quickly as possible. The accident had occurred about seven-thirty that night. We wouldn’t be there until three in the morning. I didn’t want her to go without me being there. If she was still alive, I’d want to hold her hand and try to comfort her. But I didn’t want that to be my last memory of her either. We numbed ourselves against the possibilities. The full moon followed us all the way. It’s only been recently that I can even look at a full moon.
University Hospital has about a dozen entrances. David had said we should go around to the back, but we didn’t know where that was, and we didn’t have time to drive all around. So close and yet so far. Then we saw Michael in the distance, waving at our black sedan. Probably waving at any black cars that came along.
The three of us hugged on the run, and Michael led the way through a series of hallways, walking fast, toward the Intensive Care Unit. Laurie was still alive, Michael said, but in a coma, hooked up to monitors. He and David and Bobbie had been taking turns holding her hand. Michael said he’d been singing songs to Laurie—nonsense songs with funny rhymes—that they’d sung together as children. He said the only reaction was a few blips on one of the machines, but he believed she could hear him. Michael had told her I was coming and would be there soon.
I pictured Laurie lying there. I wanted to see her, yet I couldn’t stand the thought. I had a flash memory of her as a little girl in a wet bathing suit, returning from lunch to a fenced-in swimming pool, with halves of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in each hand. Rather than walk around to the gate, which would have taken all of twenty seconds, she chose to climb the chain-link fence using no hands, just elbows, feet and knees, so as not to drop her sandwiches. That was funny enough, but the best part came when she was halfway over, teetering on the balance point, two elbows and a foot straddling the metal pipe, and suddenly discovered a sandwich-half directly in front of her face. Not one to waste an opportunity, Laurie took a bite and proceeded over the fence.
The double doors of the Intensive Care Unit were just ahead. Through the glass windows I could see the distraught faces of Lee and Elaine. Someone from the hospital pushed open the doors and we entered the main room.
“He’s here!” I heard someone say.
The room was crowded with mixed-family members, and friends. The last time I’d seen this group together, ironically, was at Laurie’s graduation from college. It was eerily silent except for the beeping of machines. Half the faces turned to us, the rest stayed riveted on a smaller room off to our right. But before I could even glance in that direction, I heard the words that ripped my heart out.
“She’s gone.”
It was Bobbie, face streaked with tears, emerging from the small room. The group of family and friends exploded in a deluge of cries and wails. I rushed over to hug Bobbie and hold her close. This was our little girl and only we could share that particular pain. Then Paula and Phil moved in quickly to hold us both, and the others followed suit, forming a huddle of devastated souls.
“She waited for you, Jim,” everyone said. “She waited for you.” And I believe she did. Her incredible spirit lived nearly eight hours in a body with no viable organs, according to the surgeons who later declined our offer to donate them. What’s more, Laurie chose the precise moment—the very split second—that would make it easiest on me.
I never went in to see her. I relied on what others said later. That she looked beautiful without her make-up. That she looked peaceful.
I’m sure it’s been difficult to read this, but I thought you should know. If you’ve come this far, thirty years’ worth, you’re practically family.
The only person who would enjoy reading this is Laurie. “You best be writing something good about me, Dad,” I can hear her say, chin jutting from side to side, in that Jersey Girl way of speaking she shared with her friends. And her friends were legion, because she was loyal and caring and extraordinary fun to be around. At the funeral, half a dozen girls claimed “best friend” status with Laurie, who was godmother to several of their children. Laurie herself had no children, and she had never married, but it wasn’t for lack of boyfriends, several of whom showed up at the funeral and eyed each other with interest.
Laurie would also want you to know that the accident wasn’t her fault. She was the only innocent party, and the only fatality, in a multivehicle collision on a New Jersey highway. The police report said she braked to a complete stop, a few feet short of an accident that had just occurred over the crest of a hill, and was hit from behind by another driver who didn’t even touch the brakes. “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” never had a chance.
She always liked that nickname. Her other favorite was “Laurie the Great.” She liked the recognition that came with Ball Four. Even more than her brothers, Laurie loved the baseball life, the travel, adventures, hanging out with the players. And she had fun with the connection to her infamous father. She even enjoyed the fact that she looked like me. “You must be Jim Bouton’s daughter,” people would say. “That’s right,” she’d shoot back. “You want my autograph?” She was only half kidding.
Hundreds of people crowded the little funeral parlor. Some of them spoke, those who were able, about special times with Laurie and of her endearing quirks. She seemed to be everywhere in all of their lives. Where did she find the time? Now I understood about the parking tickets, which always got mailed to me because Laurie had never changed the registration on the car I gave her. The reason she couldn’t take time to find a parking space, I explained, was that she was always in a hurry to make people happy. So many people, so little time. Everyone nodded in agreement.<
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But the one who captured Laurie best was her stepsister Hollis, who read a letter she had written on the plane from Amsterdam.
Dear Laurie,
I have decided to write you a letter, not only because it is still an impossibility for me to think of you in the past—but also because letter writing was always one of our favorite fours of communication. Your wonderfully rambling, stream-of-consciousness letters… were peppered with the same expressions (“Oh my God.” “soooo.” “messed up.” etc.) as yours conversation.
And it is your voice which surrounds me now. I have a sense of your fidgety, high-energy form near me, but it’s mostly your voice. As if you, too, are sitting with me in pain and disbelief… I could use some of your toughness now, your edge. It occurs to me that I may never have seen you cry, although I have seen you hurt. And I have seen you be heartbreakingly tender and kind.
Then there is the spontaneous Laurie. The one who climbs into a sand trench at the beach to be buried up to the neck. Maybe even just for the photo opportunity… The one who dons spike heels and a mini-skirt to attend an afternoon brunch down a cobblestone Amsterdam street… The one who energetically bumps into a police car… in a parking lot. And the one who volunteers to be by her grandfather’s side when he most needs her. No questions asked. No juggling priorities. Just go.
Laurie. Laurie, it was not supposed to happen like this. You were supposed to be the one who always got away. You had so much left to do yet. There was so much we all wanted for you. And still do.
It sounds absurd, but I found myself looking for a gift to bring you from Amsterdam… A chance to hear you say, at least one more time. “Oh my God… it’s just what I’ve always wanted.” And to have you throw your arms around my neck before trotting off to a mirror with your new prize. You bring the pleasures of gift-giving to new heights.
My clearest, fondest memories are of vacations or visits where we shared a room and stayed up talking late into the night. You where a one-women slumber party and I was so much looking forward to having you visit [Gert Jan and me] in our new home.
As you can tell from my own rambling letter. I’m afraid to stop writing, to end this exchange, this time with you. It’s like not wanting to hang up the phone, to hear the cold click and the dial tone.
I wish I could have been there to hold your hand, or to sweep you away. I hope you didn’t have time to be hurt or to be frightened. I’m flying all this way now to tell you that I will always love you… my beautiful, wild thing of a little sister, my bridesmaid and my confidante. Your fire burns so bright that it lights and warms us all. And nothing, not even the cruel bleak injustice of the road, can ever extinguish it.
With very much love and an aching heart, your sister, Hollis
Those early days were horrendous. I didn’t know I could feel such pain—an aching, empty agony. And I couldn’t escape it. Sleep was no help because waking only brought the awful news again, as if for the first time. An early-morning sucker punch to a defenseless heart; my God, that’s right, it really did happen.
It was too big a blow. I couldn’t absorb it. I had to take it in smaller pieces. Spend some time in denial. Force myself to look away, try to occupy my mind, throw myself into some project.
Like my stonework.
It was a hobby I had stumbled into about seven years ago, when Paula and I were still living in New Jersey. An old wooden fence in our yard had fallen down and I decided to replace it with a stone wall that I’d build myself. I’d never built a stone wall before, but I always liked the way they looked. How hard could it be?
I searched the yellow pages, found a local stone yard, and went down to check it out. They had acres of stones, all different kinds, stacked on pallets held together with chicken wire. I liked what they called “mountain fieldstone” because it looked the most natural—irregular shapes and sizes with a nice mix of colors. I tagged three pallets with my name and walked into the office. “You ever build a stone wall before?” asked the guy behind the counter. I told him no. “Good luck,” he said, as he ran my credit card through the machine.
I decided to build a freestanding, dry-laid (no cement) wall about four feet high, two feet wide, and sixty feet, six inches long because the distance felt familiar. A book I got from the library said dry-laid was harder to build because the stones had to fit snugly to keep it from falling down. On the other hand, it wouldn’t crack when the ground heaved because it was flexible. I bought some work gloves and a mason’s hammer to chip any stones that might not fit.
After a boom truck deposited the pallets in front of our house, I unloaded the stones and spread them out on the lawn so I could see what I was working with. This took me half a day. “How long are those stones going to be out there?” asked Paula. “Just a few weeks, Babe,” I said. “As soon as I’m finished with the wall.”
I learned a lot about stones that first day. The next morning I bought a weight belt, steel-toed boots, goggles, and some aspirin.
It certainly was a challenge. The trick was choosing the right stone the first time so you didn’t have to pick up a stone more than once. Or twice. Or six, or a dozen times, when it looked like the damn thing ought to fit somewhere, but never did. Some of the stones weighed more than a hundred pounds. And they didn’t have handles. I soon wore large holes in my work gloves and had to buy more. Three pallets became fifteen. A few weeks turned into six months.
But to my surprise, I discovered it was tremendously satisfying. Big rocks sliding into place with the thud of a bank vault door. A giant jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box. And I was the artist. The work was Zen-like. I’d fall into a trance, looking for a certain stone to fill a particular space, only to spot another stone for a different space I’d been looking to fill earlier. After about a month, I could carry a dozen configurations in my head as I wandered my field of stones.
To give the wall a starting point, I began by building a large pillar, which looked pretty decent until I got going on the wall itself. Then as the wall proceeded, my skills improved and now the pillar didn’t look as good as the wall. In fact, the wall looked fantastic and the pillar didn’t seem to go with it anymore. Of course, I did the only thing I could do. I tore the pillar down. “What are you doing!?” Paula inquired from an upstairs window. “Don’t worry, Babe,” I said. “I’ll have it rebuilt in a week.”
Paula called a lot from the upstairs window that summer. Her favorite was “Do you know what time it is?” Not wearing a watch, I’d squint up at the sun if it wasn’t raining. But before I could answer, she’d say, “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon; you haven’t even had lunch yet!” If it was raining, she’d say, “Do you know that it’s raining?” If it was nine o’clock at night, she’d say, “It’s too dark to work out there!” Paula is a master of the understatement.
I became a nut about it. Not content with just fitting the stones, I had to make designs. I’d stand flat stones on edge to make feathers if the preceding stone looked like a bird. I built Indian totems and other symbols into that wall. There’s a fish in there somewhere if you know where to look. Of course, I don’t see the wall that often, since we moved. I only drop by once in a while for a visit just to make sure it’s still there. It always is.
Leaving my wall behind wasn’t easy. I had seriously considered numbering each stone and reassembling the whole thing at the new home we were building in Massachusetts, but cooler heads prevailed. Instead, I elevated my game. Using cement this time, I built a stone veneer foundation, a stone front entrance, and a stone facing on the back of the house. That took four summers. I also built a stone retaining wall and matching pillars at the bottom of the driveway. I have to say it all looks pretty good. The stones fit so tightly you can’t see the cement. As the building inspector, Dante Testa, said to me, “You should have been Italian.”
It was during the time I was finishing the back of the house that Laurie died.
A few weeks after the funeral, I had placed a large stone in
a small grove of trees behind our house, in memory of Laurie. This would be a place I could go to be with her, since her grave in New Jersey was so far away. I remember looking out the window at Laurie’s stone, and noticing the debris of my uncompleted work near the house: all the stones spread around, the blue plastic tarp that covered the cement bags, my wheelbarrow, the tree loader I used to cart the bigger stones, the bucket of trowels, my hammers, the metal wall-ties, the sand pile, the scaffolding, and I wondered how I could ever clean up that mess in the state I was in.
It wasn’t any better inside the house. The death of a child puts tremendous stress on a marriage. The frequency of divorce is well documented, but it’s no help to even be aware of that because fear of the statistic simply adds to the woe. And in a mixed family like ours, it’s even worse. I was the father and no suffering could match mine. But in many ways it was harder for Paula. She had to postpone her own grieving to take care of me. And as wonderful a mother as Paula always tried to be for Laurie, she was still just the stepmother. Well-meaning people would stop her on the street and ask, “How’s Jim?” as if her pain didn’t count.
The house was filled with jagged edges. We grieved at different times, in different ways, and it was hard to be together. When I was crying I wanted Paula to hold me; when I could push it down I wanted to be left alone. When Paula cried, I sometimes saw her as if she was at the end of a long tunnel. “Why can’t you hold me when I’m crying?” she once asked. “I have nothing left to give,” I said. My heart had ceased to function. We walked a tightrope of emotions, and the slightest breeze would topple us into the abyss, where nothing mattered anymore.
It was during this nowhere time that I decided that rather than clean up the mess outside, I would just finish the job. It was a tricky section that remained, with lots of windows to work around, lots of chipping and fitting. I roamed the yard, measuring the stones through my tears, and talked to Laurie. It was stone therapy, and Paula was glad to have the help. I think it saved us.
