All We Can Do Is Wait

by Richard Lawson

  That sounded so harsh, though, so severe, so criminal. Danny was just . . . having a hard time, Skyler rationalized to herself.

  “I don’t think we need to do that,” Skyler said quietly. “It isn’t that bad.”

  Kate made a scoffing sound. “It isn’t that bad? Pull up your sleeves then, Skyler. Show me your arms.”

  “Kate . . .” Skyler pled. But she wasn’t sure what she was pleading for. She didn’t want Kate to stop. It felt good to have someone finally say these things, even if it wasn’t her saying them. “Things will get better. I’ll talk to him. He’s not a bad guy, Kate. He’s not a bad guy.”

  Kate threw up her hands, sighed in resignation. “If I . . .” she started and then trailed off. They sat the rest of the bus ride in silence, stop requests pinging and the doors wheezing as passengers got on and off. By the time they got downtown, neither was much in the mood to shop, and they wandered Copley and the Pru aimlessly, finding nothing for their grandmother. With a cruel irony that almost made Skyler laugh, or maybe cry, all of the shops were decorated for Valentine’s Day.

  It was almost like Kate could sense the night coming. Just a few weeks from then, on a windy, wet March night that felt far more like winter than spring, when she got a frantic, panicked phone call from Skyler begging her sister to come to the Roxbury apartment.

  Earlier in the night, Skyler was having a perfectly fine evening at Danny’s. He was relatively placid, playing Xbox and drinking rum and Cokes. Skyler was doing homework—just staring at her books, really—trying to avoid another session of summer school. She heard her phone trill, a text message. She looked around for it, but it was nowhere on the little kitchen table where she’d set up her laptop.

  “Who’s Boli?” she heard, coming from the living room. She must have left her phone on the coffee table, while she and Danny were watching the Celtics. (They’d won, hence Danny’s decent enough mood.)

  “Huh?” Skyler replied, turning around in her chair. Of course she knew who Boli was, but Danny would seize on any little vibration of tension in the room, so she wanted to keep things as calm as possible for as long as she could.

  “I said, who. Is. Boli,” Danny said in his menacing, deliberate sing-song, the tone that meant he was probably about to lose his shit.

  “Oh, Boli,” Skyler said, still trying to play the casual game. “He’s this kid from school I’m doing a dumb project with.”

  “What project?” Danny asked, sitting forward on the couch now, setting his drink on the coffee table.

  “For American history. It’s just this stupid thing. I don’t even know why he’s texting. It’s not due for, like, another week.”

  “Is the project on ‘Hey, what’s up?’ Because that’s what the message says. It says, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ What part of American history is ‘Hey, what’s up?’”

  He was standing now, the phone clutched tightly in one hand.

  “Danny,” Skyler began, knowing he probably wouldn’t let this go, but hoping, wishing, that just this once he might. But she didn’t have time to finish saying that it was no big deal, that she really had no idea why Boli was texting her—Boli, a shy, nerdy, sweet boy whose name sounded so strange coming out of Danny’s mouth, in that dim, drafty apartment—because Danny hurled the phone at her. She ducked out of the way, a grim reflex, while jumping out of her chair. The phone bounced off the wall, somehow not shattering, and skidded across the floor.

  “Danny!” Skyler screamed, moving to a corner of the kitchen, instead of, she chided herself in her head, for the door.

  Danny was advancing on her, face red, eyes dark but unfocused. “Who the fuck is Boli, and why the fuck is he calling you at eleven o’clock on a Sunday fucking night?!”

  “He didn’t call me, Danny!” Skyler yelped. “It was just a text!”

  This was dumb. She knew it was dumb as she was saying it, before she even said it. Now was not the time to correct him. Sure enough, this seemed to make him angrier. He grabbed for her arm and caught a bit of her shirt as she wriggled out of his grasp and ran into the living room.

  He chased after her, drunk and unbalanced. Skyler knew she was essentially trapped now, stuck in the interior of the apartment, Danny’s roommates not home, not that they were ever much help when one of Danny’s storms blew through.

  “Danny, please,” she pled, as he lunged toward her, grabbing again for her arm. He got a better grip this time, and as she tried to twist away he pushed her back, directly into the long, thin mirror affixed to the wall.

  The back of Skyler’s head hit the glass, and she heard a crunch. She couldn’t tell if it was the glass or her skull. She stood there dazed for a second, her vision blurry, and then snapped back into focus.

  Danny looked shocked, maybe even a little scared. “Jesus, Skyler,” he said.

  Skyler reached a hand back and touched her head. There was wetness, and she felt something, blood, dripping down her neck. “Danny . . .” she murmured, before a sudden surge of something—terror, will, whatever—had her bolting for the bathroom door, grabbing her phone up off the floor as she went.

  Danny yelled, taking a few steps toward her, but she made it into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, sinking to the floor and letting herself cry while she dialed her sister’s number, her phone badly cracked but still working. She felt the back of her head again and pulled her hand away. It was bloody, but not totally red. She would probably be O.K. She would be O.K.

  Outside the bathroom, Danny was stomping around, making noise. He hadn’t yet begun banging on the door, but Skyler knew he would. This wasn’t the first time she’d locked herself in the bathroom, but it was the first time it felt this serious. Like something was going to break or end here, tonight.

  Her sister picked up on the third ring.

  “Skyler? What’s going on? Are you O.K.?”

  “Kate, Kate,” Skyler said, barely able to get the words out between sobs. “Can you come get me, please? Please?”

  Hearing Skyler on the phone, Danny began banging on the door.

  “Skyler, what’s that sound? What is going on?”

  “Kate, can you please just come get me? Everything’s fine. I just need you to come get me, please.”

  “I’m coming now,” Kate said, and Skyler could already hear her leaving, the familiar whine of the front door. “Stay on the line, O.K.?”

  And so Skyler did, she and Kate barely speaking, Skyler mostly hearing the sounds of the car, the jangle of Kate’s keys as the wheels rumbled down Centre Street. Skyler waited.

  Danny’s banging had slowed to intermittent thuds, and he was whimpering, saying, “Skyler, please. Baby, please open the door. Please don’t call the cops. Please, baby, please.” Skyler realized that’s what he was concerned about. Not her head, not the blood, not whether she was dead on the bathroom floor. He just didn’t want to spend the night in jail.

  Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen. Then, a strange quiet, Danny either no longer at the door or having given up. Then, a banging, and another one, a clang.

  Skyler heard Kate’s voice, suddenly in the apartment. She was yelling at Danny, who was yelling back at her to get out, that she needed to mind her own fucking business. Their voices grew louder as they moved toward the bathroom. Skyler heard her sister yelling, “Back the fuck up, Danny! Back the fuck up right now!” and then she was knocking on the door. “Skyler, Skyler, it’s me. Unlock the door. We’re leaving, now. Back up, Danny!”

  When Skyler opened the door, her sister was standing there, in her winter coat, jeans, and flip-flops, clutching the tire iron from the trunk of her car like a club. Danny was pacing furiously on the other side of the room, but not advancing on them. Kate looked hard at her sister and said, “Go to the car now,” and Skyler obliged, noticing on her way out that it looked like Kate had broken the apartment door down, forcing her way in to get to he
r sister. Danny didn’t say anything as Skyler left, but as she and Kate got in the car, he leaned out the window and yelled, “Bitch!”

  Skyler cried the whole way home, apologizing over and over again to her sister, who just stared straight ahead, trembling a little, taking deep breaths. “It’s O.K., it’s O.K.,” she said a few times, speeding all the way to the house.

  Their grandparents were already asleep, so the girls quietly made their way up to Skyler’s room, where she cried some more. Kate made Skyler show her her arms, the bruises and marks that Danny had made.

  “Give me your phone,” she said, and Skyler handed it to her. There were already texts from Danny, twelve of them, and Kate deleted each one. She then blocked his number and blocked him on Instagram and Facebook. “There,” she said, handing the phone back to her sister. “You’re done with him.”

  Skyler looked up at her sister, calm and tired looking, and wanted to believe her. That she really was done with Danny, even though some awful part of her still loved him, even though he was only a few miles away.

  And of course, it wasn’t done, not entirely. He showed up to Skyler’s house, but only once. Kate stood on the porch and threatened to call the police, their grandmother watching quietly from the dining room, a solemn expression on her face. Kate’s threats seemed to have scared Danny—he knew she was serious—and he didn’t come around again. There were occasional texts and calls from unknown numbers, though—still, eight months later. The awful part of Skyler, the part that still wanted Danny back despite everything, itched to answer every one. But when Skyler was clearer headed, not lost in Danny’s thrall for a day or a week, she knew she was ridding herself of him. Slowly and uncertainly, maybe, but she was. She knew that she couldn’t make him go away, not entirely, and that was still scary, many months later. But she at least felt more sure of herself, bit by bit, day by day. Like she didn’t have to tiptoe through the world quite so much.

  In her bedroom that night, after they’d cleaned up the cut on her head and Skyler got into her pajamas, she threw her arms around her sister and said, “I’ll pay you back, I promise. I’ll do something for you, too.” Kate just laughed and said it didn’t work like that, and she and Skyler fell asleep together, like when they were little and their mom would be fighting with their grandparents downstairs, those bitter few months before she left for California, or wherever.

  Their mom had left, their father remained an unknowable mystery. But Kate was always there, her warmth close to Skyler, enveloping and protecting her in ways Danny’s arms never could.

  • • •

  And now this. Kate could be gone, before Skyler was able to repay her, like she said she would. The hospital was cold, and Skyler’s clothes were still damp from running in the rain. She shivered. Alexa noticed and offered her the sweatshirt lying on her lap. “I took it off because I was hot. You can wear it if you want.” Skyler said no thank you, she’d be fine. They sat in silence, the sound of Kate’s voice, consoling and steady, echoing in Skyler’s head.

  “My sister saved my life, I think,” Skyler said, to herself, to Alexa, not sure why she was sharing this fact with this stranger, but knowing that it felt good to say out loud.

  Alexa nodded. If she wanted to know what Skyler meant, she didn’t ask. “Yeah” was all she said. “She sounds great. You’re lucky to have her.” Skyler’s eyes welled with tears. Lucky to have her. She couldn’t lose Kate, she couldn’t lose Kate.

  She was repeating this mantra to herself, like she was back on the plane to Phnom Penh, when Alexa stirred and made a little sound. Skyler looked up and saw Mary Oakes, the Patient Services person, walking toward them with a serious-looking woman, short gray hair and little round glasses, beside her. Skyler and Alexa stood, Skyler fixing her hair for some reason, smoothing it down and collecting it all on one side.

  “Skyler Vong?” Mary Oakes said, flat and grave. Skyler nodded. “This is Dr. Lobel. She’d like to speak with you about your sister, about Kate, if you could come with us, please.” The doctor nodded, smiled tightly, and Skyler felt the plane dip down toward the earth. She was falling and there was nothing left to catch her.

  Chapter Nine

  Scott

  ON THE FEW occasions that Scott had scored a goal during a soccer game—a few perfect fall afternoons when things had gone just right—there had been a moment when everything slowed. When the world distilled, and there was only Scott and the space of grass between him and the net, the movements of the goalie and the defenders becoming almost predictable, as if Scott had tapped into the Matrix and could see it all laid out so clearly in front of him, ones and zeroes streaming down in green. But weirdly they were also quick, these moments of excitement and frenzy, gone before they really had a chance to register.

  Scott felt some version of that sensation—the world narrowing, both slowing down and flashing by—as he watched Mary Oakes and a woman who looked to be a doctor walk toward him. Was this it, the moment when he found out? That Aimee was dead, that Aimee was alive? He felt anxious, his insides tight. The doctor had spiky short gray hair and little glasses, and her mouth was tight with—what was it? Concern? Pity? Scott braced himself, stood up taller and clenched his jaw, as the doctor approached.

  But then she and Mary Oakes walked past him and over toward Alexa and Skyler, both girls looking up, then standing up, a flutter of hesitation, of fear that they were about to hear the worst. The news wasn’t for him. Scott felt a rush of relief quickly followed by another stab of fear. He still knew nothing, and now, from the looks of it, someone else was about to have their world cave in.

  Scott assumed the doctor was there to speak to Alexa. He wasn’t sure why, and it made him feel terrible to think it, but he had some dark intuition that Alexa and Jason’s parents weren’t going to be O.K. That they had been crushed or drowned or whatever else, and these two kids, so dark and worldly seeming, would be orphans. They could handle it, though. They’d figure it out. They had money, they had each other, even if Jason was an asshole. That meant something. They could bear the news somehow.

  Mary Oakes, though, had turned to Skyler, was pointing at the doctor, who nodded and put her hand on Skyler’s shoulder. Skyler flinched at her touch and looked, panicked, at Alexa, and then to Mary Oakes, and then back to the doctor. Slowed down, sped up, all of this happening in the tick of seconds, but seeming to take forever. Now the doctor was turning, walking back toward the swinging doors, and Skyler was following her, nervously, taking halting steps, eyes wide and teary.

  Alexa trailed after her until she reached Scott, grabbing his arm and staring off toward the doors.

  “What happened? What did they say?” Scott asked. Alexa shook her head.

  “I—I don’t know. They just said that they had to talk to her, about her sister, and they said that they wanted to talk somewhere quiet. That can’t be good, right? That’s got to be bad news . . .”

  Scott heard something in Alexa’s voice that he thought he recognized. Something he was feeling too. There was, in the meanest and shittiest of ways, a twisted kind of hope burbling up in Scott. If Skyler’s news was bad, did that tip the scales somehow for the rest of them? What were the odds that they’d all get bad news that night? All their loved ones couldn’t be dead, right? So wasn’t there a kind of cruelly hopeful arithmetic in the fact that Kate was gone? If Kate died, then the odds were better that Aimee would be O.K., that Jason and Alexa’s parents might be O.K. Scott looked down at Alexa and wondered if she was doing this same math in her head, this same wishful equation, one that, he knew deep down, wasn’t really how these things work.

  How did he get here? Wishing that some strange girl, who seemed nice enough and had been a comforting, calming presence all night, had lost her sister so that Aimee could be saved? It was so easy to suddenly feel like a bad person, Scott thought. It was so easy to become a bad person. To stand there and wish for something terrible for som
eone else.

  He saw that Alexa was crying and, instinctively, he hugged her, pulled her in tight and thought of Aimee, the way she used to cry so easily—sometimes because she was practicing, to get better at her acting. She’d go on YouTube and watch random videos and would pretty much instantly lose it. She’d be laughing soon after, and Scott had gotten used to just letting her cry.

  Sometimes he’d cry too, around her, because she made it so easy. They watched Toy Story 3 and cried together, not, like, big embarrassing sobs, but definitely tears. Definitely something he’d never do in front of his friends. It was almost fun, to be so nakedly emotional with Aimee, to feel like a kid again, when you could just cry any time you wanted.

  “See, don’t you feel better?” Aimee said once, after showing him some video of a dog being reunited with his owner, a soldier who had just come home from Afghanistan.

  “I guess?” Scott said, tears streaming down his face, and laughed. Aimee laughed too. A good, weird day.

  Alexa’s crying was something else, though: deep and scared and meaningful. But it didn’t make Scott want to do the same. It only made him want to disappear, to close his eyes really tight and have this all not be what it was, to not be here, to have the bridge uncollapsed, to not have anyone dead, anyone sisterless, anyone orphaned. He wanted Aimee in Salem with Taissa and everyone else, he wanted things the way they had been not that long ago.

  When Scott was in third grade, his parents had spent the better part of the year fighting. Business at the store was bad, and money was tight. But there was something else happening too, some worse problem in his parents’ relationship, that at eight or nine years old Scott couldn’t understand, and certainly couldn’t fix. But he tried, praying fervently every night that his parents would stop fighting, that they wouldn’t get a divorce, that things would just go back to how they had been, when things were simpler and happier.