I sat next to her, unsure whether I should just sit or put an arm around her. She fell against me and buried her face in my chest.
"Reese," she said through the sobs, "I don't care about my stuff, I really don't. I don't have anything anyway. But that little girl up there is barely clinging to life ..." She sat upright. "Why? God knows what's going on down here. He's not unaware. But why all this? Huh? Why?"
I didn't attempt to answer.
Ten minutes later, my shirt soaked and her tear ducts empty, she sat upright and shook her head. "I have tried to be so strong for so long. First my sister, then Annie. Now the house. I just don't know how much more I can take."
Cindy was starting to show the signs classic of all family members who endure alongside the patient waiting a transplant. I'd seen it before. Only difference was, Cindy was right. She had borne this burden alone and for a long time. She'd worked two jobs, sometimes three, sacrificed anything she'd wanted to provide for Annie and now, at the end of it, she felt as though she'd failed. Or was failing. She was also looking at the possibility of being left alone.
We walked out onto the dock, where Charlie sat soaking wet with Georgia lying just as wet, sprawled across his lap.
"Hey, buddy," I said.
He waved. "Sorry to barge in on you, but I heard some noise that I hadn't heard over here ... at least in a long time ... and I guess I got a little panicky."
I turned to Cindy. "How long's it been since you've been more than a hundred feet from Annie?"
Cindy looked at me, a little unsure, but said, "Long time. Why?"
"Would you be okay if Charlie babysat for an hour or so?"
Cindy looked up at the house, then down at Charlie, then over at me. "No offense, but what if-"
I broke in. "She'll be fine. Nothing's going to happen to her today, and I'd like to show you something. We won't be gone either long or far."
Cindy looked back up at the house and said, "Well ..."
"Wait here," I said. I walked upstairs, pulled Annie off the couch where she was awake and reading, and brought her down to my hammock.
So, while Charlie and Georgia entertained Annie atop the boathouse, I slid the shell into the water and helped Cindy into her seat. We eased out of the creek and into the Tallulah. Cindy's shoulders tensed up as the boathouse fell out of sight. I tapped her on the back and said, "Okay, no free rides."
She grabbed the oars, sank them in rhythm with me, and the two of us rowed upriver against the smooth and slow-rolling current. Ten minutes in, and some of the tension had eased. Another five and Cindy was sweating. Five more and she was smiling and beginning to see the world around her.
We slid under the bridge, steered up the smaller creeks, and after half an hour she turned, looked around, and waved her hand across the landscape. "I had no idea."
"You ought to see it at sunup."
She looked behind the boat, at the perfect circles appearing and then disappearing behind the boat. "I'd like that."
After an hour she said, "Reese, this is great. Really, but ..."
I nodded. "I know." I turned us around and said, "We'll get there a lot faster if you help."
She smiled and dug in her oars, and I watched her row. When we arrived at the boathouse, Charlie was doing his best blind-man routine and Annie was laughing so hard she was holding her stomach.
I fixed some soup and cold tuna salad and spread dinner across the porch for the four of us while Annie showered.
Cindy hollered down from upstairs. "Reese? You mind if I borrow your tub?"
The question stopped me. Charlie, standing next to me and slowly stirring the soup, turned toward me and nodded. And I guessed, as I thought about it, he was right. Emma would have wanted that.
"Sure!" I said. "Towels are in the cabinet behind."
An hour later, after Annie, Charlie, and I had finished supper, Cindy walked down the stairs, jelly-legged and pruny. Her hair was pulled up in a bun, sweat still beaded around her temples, and her cheeks were flushed. "That," she said, pointing upstairs, "is the best tub I've ever sat in."
Charlie smiled, and I brought Cindy a plate.
The four of us watched the sun go down, then Charlie and Georgia swam home. When Annie fell asleep on the couch around ten, I carried her upstairs, and Cindy pulled down the sheets in my guest bedroom. I walked to the door, and she followed.
She stood leaning against the half-closed door and stopped me just before I walked back downstairs. "Reese."
I looked up.
"Thanks for today. For listening. I'll be better tomorrow."
I nodded. "I know. Get some rest."
I sat on the porch, hovering above a cup of cold tea and listening to Cindy shuffle around and turn out the lights.
At midnight I unlocked the office, grabbed the letter from the top drawer of my desk, and walked out into the moonlight. It was getting cooler. A light breeze filtered off the lake and rattled the leaves, which were starting to turn varying shades of red and yellow. The stars were many, and the moon cast my shadow along the steps. I grabbed a candle from the woodshed, climbed into my hammock, and lit the wick.
I held the letter up to the stars, up to the moon, and then over the candle. Unable to make out anything, I slid my finger inside the tab and held it there. Caught once again.
Upstairs, coming from the window of the guest room, I heard Annie cough. She coughed once, then twice, then almost twenty times in a row. I saw a light turn on, heard the bathroom sink running. Annie quit coughing, the light clicked off, and it was quiet once again.
A moment later, Charlie and Georgia appeared on his dock across the way. He stood listening, then looked up to where he knew I was swinging.
He called softly, "You hear that?"
I looked up at the house, then down at Charlie. "Yes."
He waited a long moment, then spoke. "You doing what I think you're doing?"
I looked at the letter. Next to me the candle flickered and wax spilled around me on the wood. "Yeah."
Charlie nodded and waited another long, pregnant moment. Just about the time I thought he was going to turn and walk into his house, he looked up again and said, "Stitch?"
I didn't answer. I knew what he wanted.
Charlie waited, then spoke again. `Donny?"
It'd been a long time since Charlie had called me that. I stood and walked to the railing, the water shining black below me.
"Yeah, Charlie."
"Please . . . please read the letter." Charlie turned, patted Georgia, who ran ahead of him, and then climbed the stairs, holding the rope railing to guide him.
I sat in the hammock, placed my finger beneath the flap, and pushed against the glue that had held fast for so long. Finally I pushed, and the paper tore open. I pulled out the letter and held the candle close. A gentle breeze ushered itself up off the lake and blew out my candle. I didn't bother to relight it. The moon was all I needed.
Dear Reese ...
After Emma's death, I had started going by my middle name because, one-it allowed me to hide, and two-it was the name she used for me when we were alone.
Remember, I am not the only one. There are others. And we all cry, `Be near me when my light is low, when the blood creeps, and the nerves prick and tingle; and the heart is sick, and all the wheels of Being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frame is rack d with pains that conquer trust; and Time, a maniac scattering dust, and Life, a Fury slinging flame. "
Do this, Reese. Do this for me, but more importantly, do this for the others like me who cry like the cardinal on our windowsill. I love you. I will always love you.
Yours, Emma
I stood from the hammock, walked downstairs, and pulled what I needed from the woodshop. I constructed my small boat, slid the sail into place, doused it in lighter fluid, and pushed it off. It floated smoothly, aided by the breeze, and when it caught the outskirts of the Tallulah, it turned south and headed toward the moon. A few hundred yards later, the candle burned down, li
t the fuel, and the sail rose in flames. In the distance, the flames climbed, sputtered, then disappeared into the black beneath.
I am ashes where once I was fire.
I stood on the beach, straddling that narrow ridge upon which I had built my home. I turned, not really knowing where to go or what to do, and saw Cindy highlighted by the moon, her faded, ankle-length flannel gown almost translucent in the light. She didn't say a word, but on her face, I saw shared pain.
"I need to show you something," I said.
She swallowed and nodded slowly.
"You're going to be angry, but I need to show you." I took her by the hand, led her upstairs, and unlocked the door to my office. I turned on the light and stepped aside so she could go in.
On the walls hung the diplomas and degrees and special medical recommendations of Jonathan Reese Mitchell. Hung about the room and sitting on the desktop and shelves were pictures of Dr. Donny Mitchell with his patients-each one smiling and alive. On my desk sat a stethoscope, a key to a small city in south Georgia given me by the mayor whose bypass had gone flawlessly, various old retired pacemakers or mechanical hearts that I used for paperweights. Beneath the window sat a teaching model of the heart, about the size of a child's football. Filtered in and around all of this were pictures of Emma and me. Charlie was in many of them as well. And scattered around my desk were the medical files and records of Annie Stephens I had retrieved off-line.
Cindy walked the perimeter of the room, her mouth open, her fingers walking the edges of the frames and the lines of the windowsill. Finally she sat at my desk, saw the files, the work in progress, and all the pieces fell into place with a thunderclap.
Waves of emotion flashed across her face like the northern lights: confusion, anger, hurt, betrayal. Each appeared, disappeared, bled seamlessly into the next. "How could you?" she whispered.
"It's a long story."
Cindy rose from the chair, walked to the edge of the office, slid down against the wall, and tucked her knees up into her chest. She didn't say a word, but her rigid body language told me all I needed to hear.
I took a deep breath and started with the pictures of Emma and Charlie and me as kids. I told her about our childhood, Emma's medication, the faith healers, her parents' struggle, high school, our falling in love, college, getting married, medical school, Dr. Trainer, Nashville, my fascination with transplantation, the trip to Atlanta, Emma's worsening condition, and our dinner with Royer. I told her about my work, about putting together the team, and then about our last weekend at the lake. And when I got to that story, I told her almost all of it.
Four o'clock in the morning found us spent, aching, not knowing what to say.
After a silence that lasted a long time, Cindy spoke in a broken whisper. "Reese, I'll only ask you one time. If you say no, I'll kindly ask you to take us home. But if you say yes, I want you to say it completely. I don't want half of you, because Annie needs all of you. I want to know right now, will you save Annie?"
Sitting on the floor, beneath the shadow of all that I once was and everything I had once hoped to be, I said yes. The word formed slowly and came up from someplace deep, recessed behind my soul where the nerve endings to my heart tingled with feeling.
Cindy took a deep breath, looked around the room, and shook her head. And for a long time, we just sat there, letting the truth sink in, or drain out, depending on where you sat. We didn't speak for almost an hour.
I finally stood and said, "I've got one more thing to do. I need to tell Charlie."
She looked confused. "Doesn't he know everything already?"
"Not everything."
"Do I?"
"No, but I need to tell him first."
She nodded, and as I walked out onto the dock, I turned and saw that she had followed me out and was standing on the porch, arms crossed but shoulders relaxed. She called softly, "You mind if I call Royer?"
"No. I mean, I don't mind. Tell him I'll be in touch." I looked across the lake, then back at her. "Maybe later this afternoon."
I dived in, pulled myself up on Charlie's dock, and was met by Georgia's licking. She wagged her tail and then ran back over to Charlie, who sat on the bottom steps, harmonica in hand, playing quietly to himself. He heard me climb up on the dock, wring the water out, and then sit down beside him.
He spoke first. "You told her?"
"Yeah."
"How'd she take it?"
I looked through the trees and saw her rocking slowly on the porch, looking out over the lake. "I'm not sure ... I mean, she's shocked and she's angry, but I guess she took it okay."
Charlie nodded and turned the harmonica in his fingers. "So you finally came over here to say the thing that's been on the tip of your tongue for five years and yet you haven't had the guts to tell me?"
I was stunned.
Charlie leaned against the railing and turned to me. He ran his fingers along my face and then held my face in his hands. "Stitch ... I'm blind, not stupid." He put his hands down and waited.
"Somewhere in medical school," I said, looking down at my hands, ashamed, "I began taking them. I'm not excusing it, but between the days on end with no sleep, the pressures and the responsibilities, I found what I needed in several different meds. They allowed me to stay awake long hours, work more focused, and then sleep short amounts of time." I paused. "They also allowed me to come home heavy with sleep, lie in bed with Emma, and listen to her heart beat." I closed my eyes and ran my fingers through my hair. "I wanted ... I wanted to know that she was alive. The drugs let me live beyond what my body was capable of. They let me ..." I shook my head.
Charlie took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"That went on through my residency, through my specialty in transplantation. I told myself that once we got past the surgery, I'd cut back, cut them out altogether, go someplace to get clean if I had to, that I was only doing it for Emma, for us. But that never happened. The night Emma died, I had ... I had taken several earlier in the day ... more than I'd ever taken, to help me through the transplant of a lady named Shirley. When I got home, I was coming down and ... by that time, I hadn't slept in almost four days. Then we laid down, and I couldn't hold it off anymore. I crashed.
"When I woke and heard the crash in the kitchen, I was so ... well, I hadn't been that tired in a long time. For the last week, I'd been trying to plan, put the team together, think ahead, make sure I had everything I needed ..." I was quiet for a moment. "I think she tried to wake me for probably close to thirty minutes. Slowly at first, then more ... more violently as her pain grew."
Charlie ran his fingers along my arm and felt the faint scars of Emma's claw marks.
"Charlie, if she'd been able to wake me ... we wouldn't be having this conversation."
Charlie stood, walked to the edge of the dock, sank his hands in the water, and splashed his face. Then he sat down against a piling and pulled his knees up just as the first signs of the sun crept above the trees.
"Stitch," he said, "I never expected to see my sister graduate high school, let alone have a twenty-first birthday. And if you'd told me when we were kids that I'd get to stand as the best man in her wedding, I'd have said you were smoking something. Emma lived to be thirty because you gave her the hope that she might live past that." Charlie shook his head.
"That girl loved you, brother. You gave her twenty more years than anyone else on the planet could have ever given her. That had little to nothing to do with your ability as a doctor, but it had everything to do with you as a person. You put a new heart in Emma a long time ago, it just wasn't the kind you were thinking of."
He laughed to himself. "Hope is an amazing thing. I saw it in Emma, saw it with my own eyes." Charlie stood, walked over to me, and squatted.
I looked up and saw his chiseled face searching mine.
"I was thinking just today about Helen Keller and the day Annie Sullivan took her down to the pump house and thrust her hand beneath the flowing water and then wro
te w-a-t-e-r in her hand. When Helen realized that cool, liquidy stuff flowing through her fingers was w-a-t-e-r, something inexplicable happened. She said that `living word awakened her soul, gave it light, hope, joy, and set it free."'
Charlie stood up and reached for my hand. I gave it to him, and he walked me to the edge of the dock, knelt down, thrust my hand into the water, and brought his face just inches from mine. I felt his breath on my face and saw the strain behind his eyes while the tears cascaded off his face. Charlie's words were pained. "Close your eyes."
I did.
He waved my hand through the water and said, "You were that water for Emma." Charlie leaned in closer. "I'd like my eyes back, Reese, but I'm not waiting around. I'm living. And that's the thing. You're not. I'm soaking it in, feeling every minute, and you're the walking dead." He gripped my face with a stern hand and turned my chin up toward my house.
"Emma died. Not you. But I swear, you might as well have. Now, there's a little girl up there who's God's spitting image of my sister. Some people never get their chance at redemption, but .. He let go and shook his head. "Yours is up there sleeping."
I walked to the edge and stood, staring back at Charlie. "Charlie ... I'm ..."
"You're one of the smartest people I've ever known, but you don't always catch on too fast."
"How's that?"
"I forgave you the night it happened. How else do you think I've been living here across the creek from you? If I was all torn up about it, you think I'd be living here, day in and day out, rowing up and down this lake? I don't even like to row."
"You don't?"
"No." Charlie laughed. "It's boring as all get out, and it's not like the scenery is any good."
"How come you never told me?"
Charlie shrugged. "You're my best friend. Besides, it gets me out of the house and keeps my heart in shape. And that's important," he said, laughing and patting his chest, "'cause Lord knows I don't want you cutting on me."
He pointed to the house while Georgia leaned against his leg. "Go on. You got some explaining to do, and the little girl ain't gonna understand it in the same way the woman did."
(2006) When Crickets Cry Page 25
