Morgan’s father shook his head, either in resignation or disbelief, Morgan couldn’t quite tell. He grabbed Morgan’s hand and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry,” he said, tears welling in his eyes. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Morgan said nothing, too shocked to cry. They said thank you to the doctor and left, walking out into the parking garage, getting in the car, and driving home.
She watched him fade. Another parent, all over again. He was weak, didn’t leave the house much. The hospice discussion never went beyond the doctor’s office, because even with the department pension a decent place was, in fact, too expensive—“Even dying costs money,” Morgan’s father said to her with a sigh, the two of them sitting at the little table in the kitchen—and because Morgan wanted him there, in the house with her. Even though it was horrible to watch, her once strong father withering and graying.
There was still laughter, sometimes, still a steady enough stream of friends and well-wishers, bringing food (that he couldn’t keep down), sometimes cigarettes (“Can’t hurt you now!” one of Morgan’s father’s friends said, with a gravelly laugh). But many times, summer nights when the house was hot and quiet, it was just the two of them, Morgan’s father dozing in his recliner while something played on the television—a cooking show that he liked, or a Red Sox game, the cheers of the crowd and the announcers’ voices a soft drone as Morgan sat reading on the couch, one eye on her father, sometimes going over and leaning in close to make sure he was still breathing. A relief, mixed with something else, when she determined he was.
And then, suddenly, late in the summer, he was better. A little, anyway. The doctor told them, after they called her, elated and hopeful, that this might happen. A swell of energy, a dulling of the pain. But it did not mean her father was getting less sick.
“We’re not always sure why it happens,” she said, over the hum of the phone line. “But you should try to enjoy it.”
So, they did. They went to a game at Fenway, Morgan’s father taking the stairs to their seats very slowly, but staying awake for all nine innings. It was a perfect August night, warm and breezy, a round moon hanging high and serene in the sky, the stadium lights bright and reassuring.
Morgan drove them up to the beach in Nahant, where her father had gone swimming when he was a kid. They sat in beach chairs, two towels over her father’s legs to keep him warm in the wind. He drank a couple of cans of Coors, told Morgan a few rambling stories about his “salad days.” About meeting Morgan’s mother on that very beach, years ago, Morgan hearing a kindness toward her she had not heard in a long time.
His resurgence, his swan song, whatever it was, lasted longer than the doctors said it would. By October he was still mostly alert, still somewhat mobile. Morgan set him up in a chair on the sidewalk so he could supervise her decorating the house for Halloween, a tradition he held dear, doing the little house up in new and elaborate ways every year. It was strange to be hanging cobwebs and skeletons, all these symbols of mustiness and death, but it seemed to make him happy, so Morgan did her best to make the house look good.
“That’ll scare ’em,” her father said when Morgan was done, giving her a pat on the behind, like he used to when she was little and had done well at something—a hit in softball, a good grade, a nice homemade present for her mother.
They had a few more weeks together, Morgan coming straight home from school every day, making sure her father was comfortable, that he was warm enough, seeing if he was hungry, if he needed anything. He would wave her away, say, “Do your homework,” and they’d spend the rest of the evening in the living room, Morgan trying to focus on whatever work was in front of her, some math problem or impenetrable Shakespeare speech, but mostly worrying about her father, about how long they had left.
She did not want him to go, she was not ready for it, but she also hated not knowing, every day, if she would come home to find him dead, her hands trembling as she turned the key in the lock every afternoon, walking hesitantly into each room until she found him. “You snuck up on me!” he’d say sometimes when she discovered him, but usually he was asleep, looking small and frail in his Patriots sweatshirt, lightly snoring, the house smelling strange and sour.
The night before the bridge collapsed, Morgan brought her father dinner, setting up the TV tray so he could stay in his chair, and he ate a few spoonfuls of soup before he said, “Listen, kiddo, we have to talk.”
Morgan didn’t want to talk, not about what he wanted to, anyway. She knew a conversation like this was coming—one about funeral arrangements and what she would do after he was gone—but she was not ready for it. She would never be ready for it. But she knew they had to have the conversation someday, because she would have no idea what to do otherwise. So she nodded, said, “O.K.”
But then her father said something she hadn’t expected.
“I’m gonna do the hospice thing. You’re just a kid. You shouldn’t have to see this, to take care of me like this every day. Not after what you went through with your mother. It’s not right.”
Morgan shook her head. “No. If you go to one of those places, I’ll be alone! Is that even legal? Wouldn’t the state take me away or something? Put me in foster care?
“Only if they find out,” her father said with a shrug. “It’s gonna happen eventually anyway,” he added, giving her a little smile, its corners creased with sorrow.
Morgan stayed firm. “Well, all I know is unless you want to drive yourself there or take a cab, you’re staying here.”
He tensed up, shook his head, said, “No, no, Morgan. This is my decision, this is up to me, come on now. I want to do this. It’s the best thing. It’s what’s right.”
Morgan could see that he wouldn’t let it drop. He may have been physically weak, but he was still stubborn, was still her father. “All right,” she said, a heaviness rising in her throat. “I guess we can look into it tomorrow.”
He nodded, satisfied, and they continued eating, he more pretending to eat, really.
They watched a movie, Casino, one of her father’s favorites, and he fell asleep before Sharon Stone had her freak-out on the lawn, Morgan covering him with a blanket and turning out the light. She always wondered if she should kiss him on the forehead or something, just in case, but it was just not something they did, Morgan and her dad. There was love there, a quiet abundance of it, but it mostly went unsaid, undemonstrated. Morgan knew her father knew. And that was enough. So she went upstairs and went to bed, lying awake thinking about the next day until she drifted off into a restless sleep.
And then, the morning.
Morgan came downstairs and saw her father’s chair empty. Which wasn’t all that unusual, but he wasn’t in the bathroom either, or in the kitchen, or out on the little back porch smoking a cigarette. Morgan didn’t think he’d have gone upstairs, wasn’t sure he could even have made it upstairs, but she checked up there just in case.
His bedroom was still and empty. He wasn’t in the bathroom. And he obviously wasn’t in her room. Panicked now, Morgan raced downstairs and out the front door, the decorations from Halloween still there, damp from rain, fake cobwebs billowing in the cold morning air. The car was gone. Her father had driven somewhere, even though he could barely stay awake for a half hour at a time.
She went back inside, figuring she’d call one of her father’s friends who was still on the force. They’d be able to find him, track him down, get him back home safely. But before she could get her phone, the landline in the kitchen rang, a loud, jarring sound that froze Morgan in place. That was the bad-news phone. Morgan’s dad’s friends never called, they just showed up. The phone really only rang when it was telemarketers, or, back when Morgan’s mother was still living with them, a new minor disaster had happened—it was usually some police station, giving Morgan’s father information about his wife’s whereabouts. Morgan hesitated, not wanting to know who or what was on the other en
d.
She answered on the fifth ring, her voice shaky as she said, “Hello?” There was a fuzz, the crackle of a not-great connection. And then she heard the familiar voice of Mike Murray, her father’s childhood friend, a police sergeant in Lynn, where her father had grown up. “Hey, Morgan, honey, it’s Uncle Mike. Listen, I need you to head up to the hospital. They’ve got your dad here. He’s . . .” The rest of what Mike said was blurry, Morgan saying, “Thank you, thank you, I’ll be right there.” She called a cab and waited out on the front stoop, her mind oddly blank. Her father had done something. Somewhere he knew she wouldn’t be the first one to find him.
When she got to the hospital, running into the emergency room in leggings and a hoodie she’d dug out of her closet (laundry had gone by the wayside in recent weeks), the one she’d stuck safety pins through during a long-gone punk phase, she saw Mike waiting for her, talking to her mom’s old co-worker, Mary Oakes. Mary had been more than a co-worker, really, she’d been a friend of the family. But when Morgan’s mom started stealing pills from the hospital, Mary had been the one to report her, saying it was for her own good. “A real stickler for the rules,” Morgan’s father had called her.
Mike gave Morgan a hug, looking weary and sad. “Where is he?” Morgan asked, pulling away from Mike and knowing from the expression on his face, before he said it, that her father was gone.
“He took some of his pain pills, honey. Drove up to Nahant, must have been early this morning, parked by the water. Trooper found him about an hour ago. They tried to get him back in the ambulance, but he was already gone. There was nothing they could do, honey, there was nothing they could do.”
Mary nodded, her eyes glistening. “They tried, Morgan. I promise they tried.”
“I know, I know,” Morgan said, instinctively giving Mary a hug, to reassure her as much as herself. “I know, I know.” She said it over and over again, not knowing what else to do.
“I don’t . . .” she started. She had no idea what came next. Were there arrangements? Had her father left any instructions?
“There was this,” Mike said, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out an envelope, legal-sized, most likely from the desk in the corner of her dad’s bedroom, largely untouched since Morgan’s mother left. Mike handed the envelope to Morgan. Her name was written on the front in her father’s wobbly script. She wondered when he’d written it. How long he’d planned on doing this. If the discussion about the hospice the night before was just a test, to see if she’d agree to send him on his way. She was angry at her father, that he left without saying goodbye. But she also, in a way she didn’t quite understand, felt glad for him. Or, at least, relieved.
She hated the thought of him dead in his car, but it was good at least that he’d been somewhere he loved when it happened, looking out at the water, hearing the seagulls, smelling the salty air. It was peaceful, in a way that dying in the house maybe wasn’t. And now it was done. He’d decided it for both of them, the final thing he could do for Morgan. She hadn’t been the one to find him, as she had so often feared. She put the envelope in her bag, unsure when she would, or could, read it.
“I don’t . . .” Morgan said again. Mike put an arm around her. “I’ll help you with all the paperwork. And then, we’ll, well, we’ll figure the rest out when we can.”
Morgan said thank you. She turned to Mary. “Can I see him?”
Mary looked to Mike, then back at Morgan. She gave her a quick nod. “Of course. He’s . . . he’s downstairs. I’ll take you.” Mike gave her another hug, and Morgan turned to follow Mary further into the hospital.
Mary led her downstairs and into a small room, where Morgan’s father, a sheet covering most of his body, was lying on a table. Morgan found herself worrying that he was cold and almost asked for a blanket. She walked up to the table, stared down at her father. It was his familiar face, but there was something different about it. A distance, a dimness. He was gone.
She began to cry. “Oh, Dad . . .” she said, her voice cracking, the sobs now coming in big heaves. She felt a hand on her back, and there was Mary, giving her a sympathetic look. Morgan turned and hugged her, crying into her blazer, Mary stroking her hair, saying, “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
They stood like that for a moment, hugging in that cold and finite room, until Mary’s phone buzzed in her trouser pocket.
“I’m sorry,” Mary said, pulling away from Morgan. “I have to take this.” She answered the phone, said a few quick yeses, and then hung up. “I have to go back upstairs. But you can stay here for a little while if you want. I’ll tell them not to bother you.”
Morgan nodded. “Thanks. Yeah. I’ll be just a little bit.”
Mary put a hand on her shoulder. “Just come upstairs and find me when you’re ready. And we’ll go through everything. Do you have anyone you want us to call?”
Morgan thought of her mother, dying or already dead somewhere. She shook her head. “No. I’m it. It’s just me.” Mary gave her a tight smile, nodded, turned, and left.
There was a chair in a corner of the room. Morgan pulled it closer to the table and sat down, staring at her father. Time drifted.
When she was finally ready to leave him, to go back upstairs and do whatever needed to be done, Morgan looked at her phone and saw that not only had hours passed, but she’d missed five phone calls, three from friends, and two from a 617 number she was pretty sure was her school. She’d forgotten to tell them she wouldn’t be in that day.
Morgan made her way upstairs, back toward the doors to the emergency room, and saw that the place had exploded into activity. Mike was gone. Nurses were running around, phones ringing everywhere. She found Mary, who looked startled to see her.
“Morgan! I thought you’d gone home. Something’s happened. There’s been an accident.”
And there was the day, rushing away from Morgan and her dad, from this small, private pain, into something much bigger, something far beyond the new and lonely life Morgan suddenly lived.
Chapter Seventeen
Skyler
MORGAN WAS CRYING. It was strange to watch, as she’d been so quiet, so composed and watchful, all day. She told them that her father had died that morning, something about cancer, about a car. It was hard to put it together while Morgan wept, Jason looking at her, face frozen in shock. Everything seemed to be happening at once.
“He wasn’t on the bridge?” Skyler asked, not sure why it mattered. Morgan shook her head.
“I didn’t know where else to go. I had nowhere else to go. I have nowhere to go.”
Morgan seemed to be spinning out, and Skyler impulsively grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. Morgan was much taller than Skyler, so it must have looked silly, this small girl clutching to this crying girl’s midsection. But Morgan returned the hug, her sobs softening into watery hiccups.
Skyler said, “Let’s go sit down,” and Morgan nodded, Skyler walking her over to some chairs and easing her into one. Morgan wiped her eyes and nose with her sleeve, took some deep breaths, said, “Sorry, sorry” a few times, then “I’m O.K., I’m O.K.”
Skyler sat there, not sure what to say, wanting to offer Morgan some words of comfort, to say something about how she’d be all right. Skyler had lost her parents too, in a way. But she knew it was different—much, much different—from what Morgan had experienced that morning. Skyler thought about her grandparents, about what she would do if—when, really—they died. She couldn’t imagine it, the feeling of being un-looked after, unwatched, untethered. Being alone in the world.
But, of course, she had Kate. After a terrible scare, Kate was still with her. That was something. That was enough. And in the coming months, Kate would need her help, while she recovered. Physically, yes, but Skyler knew there would be some emotional fallout too. She thought about her grandfather, about the things he had likely seen before fleeing Cambodia, the way he w
as so clammed up about his trauma. She hoped that Kate wouldn’t experience the same thing. She hoped Kate didn’t remember it. But if she did, if she was haunted or terrorized by memories of it, Skyler would have to be there to help her through it. She wanted to be there. What good was having people to help you if you couldn’t, in whatever way possible, help them too?
Morgan was mostly quiet now, sniffling a little, head down and rocking gently back and forth.
“What was his name?” Skyler asked Morgan. “Your dad.”
Morgan looked up, gave Skyler the faintest of smiles. “Daniel,” she said, with a little laugh. “Danny. Everyone called him Danny.”
Skyler thought she might wince, hearing that name, but instead what flashed in her mind just then wasn’t her Danny, not the controlling, angry boy who had scared her into timidity so many times, but some vaguely defined dad, ruddy and cheerful, like so many men she’d known growing up in Boston. “That’s a nice name,” Skyler said, and Morgan smiled again.
“Yeah. It is. The only problem is, our last name’s Boyce. So he’s Danny Boyce. Like ‘Danny Boy’? He hates that song. He hated that song. Which is a problem, if you live here.”
Skyler laughed a little, not sure how lightly to treat the moment. But she could see that just getting Morgan talking was making her more relaxed, her face already brighter.
“He was really sick,” Morgan said. “I mean, he’d been feeling better the past couple of months, but the doctor said that didn’t mean anything. He probably only had a little while left. So I get it. I get why he did it. This way he could decide. I get that.”
“Yeah,” Skyler said softly. “I get that too.”
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