Shore Lights

by Barbara Bretton

  Pretty much the way it’s always been.

  But he didn’t say it. His kid had made it this far without cynicism and bitterness. He’d like to see her stay that way a little longer.

  “It’s part of the process,” he said softly, turning away from Irene. “I read one of those booklets they have near the nurses’ station, and it explained the stages a person goes through in a natural death.”

  The O’Malleys knew a lot about death, but none of it had ever been natural. The gift of old age, of dying in your sleep, had been denied to them. Grandpa Michael. His first son. Aidan’s wife, Sandy. His parents. Billy. A long, sad list of lives cut short for no good reason other than the fates were bored and needed something to amuse themselves with.

  Only Irene had lived out her span and more, and he wondered if maybe that wasn’t her own taste of hell.

  Irene stirred and both he and Kelly turned to look at her. The old woman’s eyelids fluttered, and for a moment he thought they might open wide and she would see them, really see them, for the first time. Those poor O’Malleys. What terrible luck they have. Those words had followed him like the tail on a kite throughout his life. Irene had caught him staring at his face in the mirror once not long after his parents were killed in the accident. There’s nothing to see, she had told him, understanding instantly what he was all about, but it’s there just the same.

  Which, if you thought about it, was a hell of a thing to lay on a fourteen-year-old boy who had just buried his parents.

  She had always viewed the world through the darkest lens. At least in the years he’d known her she had. But how could he blame her? By the time Aidan and Billy were born, Irene had already lost her firstborn to war and her husband to the sea. She had earned the right to be bitter, but how much happier their lives might have been if she had been able to offer them the hope of something better.

  Kelly left the room to make a phone call. He sat down on the edge of Irene’s bed and took her hand in his, a gesture he would have been unable to make if she were conscious, and held it tight. She wasn’t a toucher, not at all the cuddly, cookie-baking grandparent immortalized in movies and TV shows. She had always been distant, quick to criticize, steadfast in her belief in family, but loyalty seemed to matter more to her than love.

  He wished he knew how she had come to be that way. It wasn’t as if her past was shrouded in some deep, dark mystery that the family had been trying for years to unravel; it was more that her past didn’t exist at all. Who had she been before she married Michael O’Malley? She had been born in a time when birth certificates were often afterthoughts, if they were thought of at all. Born on the other side of the ocean, of that he was sure. Irene Taylor O’Malley. Carved in granite, immutable, unknowable.

  He had known old people like her before, met them in the crazed aftermath of a fire or false alarm. Some spilled their histories at your feet before the flames were extinguished. Others claimed no history at all; they simply sprang to life at eighty-five or eighty-six with arthritis, no teeth, and a subscription to Modern Maturity.

  The booklet he’d found near the nurses’ station talked about the stages a patient went through in the hours or days before death. The restless picking at the bedcovers. The deep, almost drugged sleep. The occasional nonsense syllables Irene muttered without opening her eyes. Names he had never heard her mention before. The booklet called it “The Life Journey,” where the dying man or woman somersaulted back into his or her own life and relived events at random, met up with old friends and foes and family, maybe worked through issues or redefined them as sand spilled through that metaphorical hourglass at an alarming rate.

  Was that what was happening with Irene right now? Was she standing in front of the original O’Malley’s with Grandpa Michael by her side and her youngest son beaming into the camera? Or maybe it was in those days between the worst of the Depression and the start of World War II, back when she had two healthy, strapping sons and a popular restaurant and a husband who adored her.

  “Were you ever happy?” he asked his sleeping grandmother. “Did any of it ever make you happy?”

  She didn’t answer him. He hadn’t expected her to. Why should today be any different than a thousand other days?

  He leaned closer. “We love you.” He had never said it that way to her before. She wouldn’t have allowed it. “You took Billy and me in when nobody else would.” He swallowed hard against the memories. “Kelly tries so hard to—” No more. He’d gone as far as thirty-five years of conditioning would let him go.

  Tell me how to make it better for Kelly. Tell me how to put an end to all the years of unhappiness and build something fine for at least one of the O’Malleys.

  Irene, as usual, had nothing to say.

  The Candlelight

  The pediatrician didn’t mince words. “We’re taking her to Good Sam,” Dr. Romanelli said as she washed her hands at the bathroom sink.

  “Oh, God.” Maddy felt her legs slip out from under her. She grabbed her mother’s arm for support. “What is it? What did you find?”

  Dr. Romanelli dried her hands on a guest towel. “I don’t know what it is,” she said bluntly, “but I don’t like what I’m seeing. I think we’d all rest easier if we get Hannah admitted so we can run some tests.”

  “Good Sam,” Rose said, sounding as terrified as Maddy felt. “Isn’t that out of the way? Especially with the roads the way they are.”

  “Good Sam has the best diagnostic facilities in South Jersey,” the doctor said, eyeing Rose with fleeting curiosity. “No question that’s where Hannah should go.”

  “Of course,” Maddy said with a quick glance at her mother. Rose had aged ten years in the last five minutes. “Wherever you think she’ll get the best care.”

  The doctor nodded, then pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her jacket. She punched in a number, waited, then fired off a rapid series of instructions, only some of which penetrated the icy burst of terror in Maddy’s brain.

  “An ambulance?” Maddy started to shake. “She needs an ambulance?”

  “You have medical, don’t you?”

  Maddy nodded. Thank God she had kept it up on her own after losing her job. “I don’t care about the money. Is Hannah that sick?”

  “I’m being cautious,” the doctor said. “The roads are bad . . . why not take advantage of what’s available, right?”

  She wanted to cry. She wanted to throw herself in her mother’s arms and sob until she woke up and found out this was only a bad dream.

  “She’ll be fine,” Rose said as they walked back down the hall toward Hannah’s room. “This is all precautionary.”

  “Of course it is,” Maddy said. “They think they can make a few extra bucks by calling for an ambulance.”

  “It’s all about money,” Rose agreed. “Isn’t that always the case?”

  But it wasn’t. Not this time. And they both knew it.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  KELLY HAD JUST tossed her empty plastic coffee cup into the trash when she saw them.

  At first she thought she was hallucinating. That couldn’t be Rose DiFalco and Maddy Bainbridge standing near the admin desk at the entrance to the emergency room. She blinked her eyes. It couldn’t possibly be. She’d just seen them a few hours ago.

  Her glance drifted toward a tiny figure on a stretcher who was being hustled quickly through the double doors and into the great unknowable bowels of the ER.

  Hannah.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, then crossed herself. Hannah was only four years old.

  She lingered in the hallway between the cafeteria and the entrance to the ER, watching Maddy and Rose fill out the endless reams of paperwork. She wanted to walk over to them and say something comforting, but she couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound trite and insincere. She’d only met Hannah last night, after all, and how much of a connection could you forge with a four-year-old over supper and a teapot?

  Still, there had been a connec
tion between them, a very real one. Click. Like the sound of a door being unlocked. Once, when Hannah was pouring water from Rose’s bedside pitcher into the samovar to serve pretend tea, Kelly had experienced the sensation that Hannah was somehow taking her in hand, teaching her things she needed to know.

  None of which made the slightest bit of sense, no matter how you looked at it.

  But then, who would have imagined that the little girl with the sad blue eyes would be rushed by ambulance to Good Sam less than twenty-four hours later?

  She forced herself into the corridor and toward the waiting area. Rose disappeared into the ladies’ room while Maddy leaned against the doorway to the office with her eyes closed.

  Her eyes fluttered open at the sound of Kelly’s footsteps.

  “Kelly.” Her eyes widened. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s my grandmother,” she said, determined not to get weepy. “They think she’s—” She couldn’t say the word, so she shrugged instead, a big up-and-down motion of her shoulders.

  “Oh, honey.” There was nothing but compassion in Maddy’s eyes as she reached out to touch her hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  Click. Another connection she didn’t understand.

  “I saw you and Mrs. DiFalco and—” She forced herself to take a deep breath. “Is Hannah very sick?” Stupid question. How could you ask such a stupid question?

  Maddy’s eyes welled with tears, but there was still nothing but kindness in her expression. “I don’t know, Kelly. She’s restless, yet we can’t seem to rouse her from sleep. She keeps pulling at her pajamas, the sheet, the blanket—Rose heard her mumbling something, but we couldn’t understand her.”

  Dread washed over Kelly and she struggled to keep the fear from her eyes. Maddy’s description of Hannah’s condition sounded exactly like the way Grandma Irene had been acting all day.

  No.

  She refused to let her mind move in that direction. She tried to will the thought into extinction. Suddenly she longed to see Seth, to see her father, to hold Grandma Irene’s hand. Terrible things happened every moment of every day. You could be walking down the street one morning, young and healthy and happy, and a car could jump the curb and your life, your future, your hopes—everything, gone in an instant.

  “Ms. Bainbridge?” A nurse popped out of the admissions office. “Your daughter’s in Room 2. I’ll bring the rest of the paperwork back there for you to sign.”

  Maddy thanked the woman, then turned again to Kelly.

  “I’d better get back before my dad wonders where I’ve disappeared to,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Maddy said, kissing her swiftly on the cheek. “I’ll say a prayer for your grandma.”

  ROSE LEANED AGAINST the narrow sink in the closet-sized rest room and took a deep breath. The air barely made it into her lungs. She closed her eyes and tried again. Breathe, they all say. Just breathe deeply and your anxieties will melt away like snow in spring.

  Of all the hospitals in South Jersey, why did it have to be Good Samaritan? If she wasn’t feeling so fragile right now, she would appreciate the irony. She had been diagnosed here at Good Sam, had surgery at Good Sam, endured chemo and radiation at Good Sam. And all because it was the one hospital her family and friends rarely used.

  Secrets required planning, and Rose had always been good with details. Of course it was inconvenient—Good Sam was a longer drive—but blessed anonymity was well worth it.

  And now there she was, selfishly wrestling with her own ridiculous fears while her beloved granddaughter lay sick in the ER and her prickly and equally beloved daughter struggled to hold it all together.

  You should be out there helping her, Rosie, not cowering in the bathroom.

  “Tell her,” she said to the terrified old woman in the mirror. “Tell her while it’s still your choice.”

  Before someone else took matters into their own hands and told Maddy for her.

  “IRINA! YOU’RE NOT to tease your sister like that. You are late for your studies, and Monsieur LeGrand says your grammar is most appalling. Come along! Come along!” It is most important that the girls learn to speak perfect French as befits their position in Russian society.

  Natalya, the governess, stands in the doorway to the nursery-turned-schoolroom and looks most sternly at her young charges. Irina can’t stop giggling. She tries to hide her mirth behind her hand, but Natalya isn’t easily fooled.

  “She pulled my hair!” her little sister cries out. Maria is six years old but still a baby. “She must be punished!”

  But Irina knows Natalya will not punish her. The big house is filled with love, each floor, every room, and she knows it will always be that way. . . .

  IRENE CONTINUED TO hover in some sort of half-world. A feeling of sorrow permeated the room, almost visible like fog rolling across the snowy beach. Aidan had finally gotten it through his head that there wasn’t going to be a happy ending this time. Irene was dying. Each shaky inhalation of breath moved her closer to that moment when respiration would slow, her heart would stop, her life would end.

  Nurses came and went. They checked Irene’s bedclothes, wiped her brow with a damp cloth, swabbed her mouth with what looked like a cotton lollipop, tried to offer her sips of water, which she refused to take. Each step toward the end choreographed with the tight precision of a ballet.

  “IRINA! IRINA! STAND still or I shall not be able to fasten this last button.”

  Irina laughs and playfully bats away Mila’s faltering hands. “Oh, do stop, Mila!” she says as she dances out of her maid’s reach. “You are just teasing me. Let me see myself in the glass or I shall go mad.”

  Mila pretends great annoyance, but Irina sees the way her tired old eyes dance with delight as Irina pirouettes before the mirror.

  “I look like Mamma, don’t I?” she asks as she admires her reflection. “I have waited all my life, and finally I look like Mamma.”

  “You are lovely,” Mila says, but her words dance right past Irina’s reflection.

  She is thinking of Nikolai, her beloved Kolya, and the look in his beautiful blue eyes when he sees her in this lovely dress. . . .

  THEY HAD STOPPED suggesting that he might like to go home for a while, that there was little point to being there. She didn’t know. She didn’t see. She didn’t care. “It could be hours, it could be days,” the doctor said.

  “You might as well go home for a while and come back later.”

  He told them he was staying put. Irene wasn’t going to die alone.

  It was toughest on Kelly. She couldn’t stay in the room more than ten minutes at a time. Irene would make a sound or start plucking at the bedclothes, and his daughter’s face would turn white, and next thing he knew she was off to make another phone call or buy another cup of coffee.

  He glanced at his watch and saw it was almost seven o’clock. She’d been gone quite awhile. He wondered if this time she’d bailed for good. No matter how many times you’d been in its company, no matter how old you were, death was never easy.

  “Daddy.” Kelly stood in the doorway. She looked stricken.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She stepped closer and he could see she had been crying. “They brought Rose DiFalco’s granddaughter into the emergency room.”

  “Jesus.” He felt like he’d been sucker punched. “How bad?”

  “I don’t know,” Kelly said. “Maddy looks pretty scared.”

  He was on his feet. “You mind being alone here for a while?”

  Kelly shook her head. “I’ll be okay.”

  He saw the fear in her eyes and the resolve. This young woman who had seen too much of death already.

  “If anything happens—”

  “I know,” she said. “I’ll find you.”

  He had the sense of being trapped in a bad and familiar dream, the one where everything that matters is slipping through his fingers and washing out to sea. Last night he had almost believed the bad times were coming to an end,
that maybe there was a chance to turn the O’Malleys’ long run of lousy luck around and start over again. Figure out happy. Get a lock on optimistic. Maybe even snag one of those fairy-tale endings he had stopped believing in a long time ago.

  SHE HEARS HIM leave the room. She tries to call out to him, but her words are a tumble of that long-ago language, of sounds that seem to begin somewhere beyond this shell of a body that lies dying on the white bed. She senses the girl, that lovely child whose name is so hard for her to remember, crying softly from somewhere close by. Is that love? She wonders. It has been a very long time. . . .

  Her beloved parents stand near the foot of the bed . . . how beautiful Mamma looks and how strong and tall Pappa stands in his elegant uniform . . . her sisters . . . and oh, how her heart leaps when Kolya steps forward, smiling, always smiling, and reaches for her hand. . . .

  But it is only the girl with the soft hands and sweet voice who touches her, whispering in Irina’s ear. . . .

  “I KNOW YOU can hear me,” Kelly said to Grandma Irene. “You may not be able to answer me, but I know you’re listening to every word.”

  She squeezed Irene’s hand gently, and for a moment thought she felt the slightest pressure in response. The doctors would say it was only a reflex action, some involuntary motion that hopeful relatives invariably misinterpreted the way they misinterpret a newborn’s grimace for a smile.

  “I’ll bet Grandpa Michael’s waiting for you,” she said. “And Billy, too. You were the first one to explain heaven to me . . . do you remember? I was just a little girl, and you took the time to explain it all in a way I could understand. . . .”

  She talked softly, drifting from subject to subject, trying to ignore the odd sounds Irene made from time to time. They sounded like words, but certainly not English words. Gaelic maybe? They almost sounded Russian, but that was ridiculous. Where would Irene learn Russian?