The First Stone

by Don Aker

  Maybe it was the way the left side of his face quivered, as though he were biting the inside of his cheek. Or maybe it was the way his eyebrows knitted together in a portrait of strained concentration. Or maybe itwas just because she really had nothing left to lose. Whatever the reason, she said the first thing that came to her mind: “Oh, I think you have.”

  Then they were both laughing, loud gusty whoops that echoed up and down the hallway. And they continued laughing, Leeza gulping back sobs, Reef wiping his nose, both of them gripping their sides, and before long curious patients and nurses were drawn into doorways to see what had caused such uncommon hilarity.

  “Quite a view,” Reef said as he looked out across Winter Street and Aberdeen Road. Far below, pedestrians in shorts and sunglasses were enjoying the August sunshine. In the distance, a patch of harbor glinted beyond office towers in the downtown core.

  Leeza rolled her wheelchair over to the window. There was no one else in the lounge, which was fine with her. “Certainly prettier than the one you had earlier,” she said, and then the two were laughing again.

  Leeza struggled to remember the last time she had laughed as hard, really laughed with no holding back, and a memory surfaced of Ellen on the day Leeza passed her driver’s test. In her excitement to show her sister her new Registry of Motor Vehicles license, she’d pulled quickly into the driveway and, pressing the gas instead of the brake, rammed her mother’s Subaru into the garage door. Diane had been livid and was wellinto a lull-volume lecture about motor vehicle safety when Ellen had appeared. Seeing her, Leeza had held up her license and shouted, “Look! I can drive!” and the irony of the moment struck both sisters at the same time, sending them into simultaneous gales of laughter. Even Diane, in the midst of her tirade, had begun to smile, then chuckle, then burst into wheezy gasps. All three had laughed hysterically for several minutes, clutching each other weakly for support. It was the last time Ellen had had anything to laugh about. She’d been diagnosed with cancer the following week.

  Before she knew it, Leeza was sobbing. Images of Ellen in the driveway laughing and Ellen in the hospital dying alternately blurred and focused in her memory. It was like looking at those 3-D pictures hidden in two-dimensional drawings—it was only when you stopped trying to see them that they rose off the page, sudden and surreal.

  The young man turned from the window. “Uh, look, uh …” he began when he saw she was crying. He shifted awkwardly, obviously unsure what he should do. “I, uh, I’m sorry if I, uh …” He trailed off.

  She shook her head. “No, it’s nothing,” she choked. Then she sobbed even harder. Dr. Dan had warned her there would be times like this, times during her rehabilitation when the physical damage to her body would unexpectedly trigger a release of raw emotion. It was like wires crossing, he’d told her—two completelyunrelated things would suddenly connect and the floodgates would open. Leeza had thought he’d been speaking metaphorically at the time, but, trying now to wipe away her tears with the sleeve of her robe, she was no longer sure that was true.

  A tissue appeared under her nose. She looked up and saw the young man holding a Kleenex box he’d taken from the table by the window. “Here,” he said, and something about the gesture, the contrast of the soft tissue in his large, rough hands, touched her.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “So, how’d today go?” Colville asked when Reef climbed into the truck.

  Jesus. Was every day gonna be like this? Two seconds in the truck and already the third degree. Reef hated the thought of taking the bus back and forth, but it beat being grilled each afternoon by Constable Colville. He sighed, slumped back in the seat. “Okay,” he said finally.

  “Just okay?”

  Christ Almighty. Reef ignored him and stared out the window. Cyclists and skateboarders were out in full force, their lithe bodies sweeping past them in the heavy traffic. Reef thought about bikes, thought about never having had one of his own. He’d stolen a few over the years, of course, ridden them a day or two before ditching them. But it wasn’t something youcould enjoy. You always had to be watching for cops, could never just forget everything and pedal, the wind tugging at you, pulling everything out and away.

  Colville steered the pickup expertly through traffic, stopping at a crosswalk to let two small children and a woman pushing a stroller cross the street.

  Reef watched as the woman maneuvered the stroller down off the sidewalk. The two children with her each placed a hand on the stroller, one on either side, and the procession moved slowly but purposefully across in front of them. When they reached the other side, the woman knelt down and said something to the children, then kissed both of them, and Reef remembered how he had knelt by the wheelchair in the sixth floor lounge.

  It had been weird how, in the middle of all that laughing, the girl had started to cry. And not just a few sniffles. Once she’d got started, the sniffles had become sobs, her shoulders shaking like branches on a windy day, and he’d wanted to leave her there, call the nurse to come deal with that shit, tell her it wasn’t his job to babysit loonies who belly-laughed one moment and then bawled the next.

  But he hadn’t. Had, instead, found the Kleenex and given it to her, listened to her apologize over and over. And then, out of nowhere, begin to talk. About her sister. She’d cried even harder then, telling between sobs what it was like to watch the cancer eat her sister alive. And he’d said, without even thinking, wasn’t it morelike watching someone burn up, watching the flame become a flicker then go out altogether? And she’d looked at him and nodded, asked him how he knew, and he’d begun talking about Nan, about what she’d been like before, about the first signs that something wasn’t right, about the doctors and the drugs and the hospitals. And the funeral home.

  She’d known that funeral home. Proule’s on Pinehurst. Had sat in the same “slumber room” with her sister. Had watched people come in and go out, get on with their lives, while she’d left so much of hers behind.

  He’d told her about the service, how it was all words and nothing at all like his grandmother. And she’d told him how the music had been the only comfort, Ellen’s favorite songs piped through a PA system from a portable CD player. And he’d told her about the gravesite, the casket suspended by straps over a gaping hole. And she’d told him about how wrong it all was, how they’d made all the mud look clean, the bright green of the fake-grass carpet hiding the dirt that would seal her sister in. And he’d told her about the feel of that dirt in his hand, how he’d ground it under his fingernails before dropping it into the hole, needing somehow to have even this much of his grandmother left behind. And she’d told him how she had done the same, had refused to let it all slip from her fingers, had carried some back with her in the car.

  They had talked all afternoon.

  And when Carly had come to collect him, they’d still been talking.

  He looked now at the young mother bent over the stroller, turned to watch as the scene slid by. Still looking out the window, he surprised himself by saying, “It was a good day.”

  Thankfully, Colville said nothing. Let the moment be what it was.

  Chapter 19

  The person who rolled into the room and greeted Brett was not the one who had rolled out earlier that day. She was a total mess, her face covered with what looked like tear-tracks, her hair bunching out in all directions. Nothing unusual about those. It was the ear-to-ear smile on Leeza’s face that clearly astonished her.

  “Okay, who stole my roomie and replaced her with you?” Brett asked.

  Leeza’s grin became, if possible, even wider. She guided her wheelchair into the bathroom and ran warm water over a facecloth, emerging a few moments later with her hair combed and face freshly washed. She gasped as she bent toward her locker, but hummed as she rummaged through it, pulling out various articles of clothing and looking them over. “I thought you had physio this afternoon,” Leeza said brightly as she sorted through her things.

  “I did. I wen
t and came back while you were gone.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Leeza replied.

  “Like I said,” Brett repeated, “I went and came back while you were gone.”

  “I heard you.”

  “And then I was here while you were gone,“ Brett said slowly, as if giving dictation.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  A slipper sailed across the room and bounced harmlessly off the locker above Leeza’s head.

  She turned. “Something you want, Brett?”

  “Only every last detail!”

  “So. Sounds like you had an interesting afternoon,” her mother said. Even over the telephone, her voice revealed her pleasure at the obvious improvement in her daughter’s spirits.

  Dressed for bed, Leeza leaned back against the pillow, barely aware that the morphine injection Carly had given her was somewhat weaker in strength than her last. “Yeah,” she said, “I did.”

  “I’m glad. This Reef sounds like a nice person.”

  “He is,” Leeza said. “I can’t believe how long we talked.”

  “Losing his grandmother like that,” Diane offered, “he knows how you feel, knows what you went through with Ellen.”

  “What we all went through,” Leeza said softly.

  The silence on the other end of the line spoke louder than any words her mother might have said. Leeza heard a sound, knew her mother was swallowing, forcing back the tears that were just beneath the surface of any moment. She waited.

  Her mother cleared her throat, then continued. “So. Leeza, why’s this Reef volunteering at the rehab?”

  “He didn’t say. Because he wants to, I guess. Maybe because of his grandmother. Why else would anyone spend time in this place if they didn’t have to?”

  “Gotta point there, honey. Speaking of spending time there, sorry I can’t make it tonight. I think I’m in over my head with this office I’m doing.”

  Leeza smiled. Whenever her mother said she was in over her head on a decorating job, Leeza knew she was having a great time. It had everything to do with challenge and her mother’s Type A personality. If a job went smoothly, chances were her mother was bored. The more overwhelming a job was, the more passionate she became in exploring options, experimenting with different solutions, discarding everything and returning to the drawing board yet again. Her mother was having fun.

  And it was about time. Leeza knew the situation at home was not good. Although Diane had never mentioned it, Leeza knew things hadn’t been great lately between her mother and Jack. Part of the reason Leeza knew this had to do with how carefully her mother avoided talking about him. Leeza liked Jack, and sohad her sister. He was. after all, the only father they had known in the last nine years. Except for birthday and Christmas cards containing checks—always the same amount—they almost never heard from their real father. He had a new family. Three sons, two of them twins.

  But liking Jack and understanding him were two different things. Leeza knew that Ellen’s illness had put considerable strain on her mother’s and Jack’s marriage, and she couldn’t ignore the fact that her car accident and hospitalization had caused even more stress between them. Jack Morrison feared illness. His obsession with health and fitness grew out of a childhood filled with illnesses of his own—besides the usual things like chicken pox, measles and mumps, Jack had developed diabetes and renal disease, and doctors had had to remove one of his kidneys when he was nineteen. What followed was an almost manic preoccupation with diet and exercise, and when their mother met and fell in love with him two years after her divorce, she had no idea that this tall, powerfully built man who worked out at the gym twice a week quavered at the sound of a cough, left the room when someone sneezed and paled at even, the thought of entering a hospital. Despite this idiosyncrasy, he’d been a good parent, caring and thoughtful. But the last year had taken its toll on the in-sickness-and-in-health part of his marriage vows.

  Suddenly things were clearer to Leeza than they’d been in a long time. “I’m glad you can’t make it tonight,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You’re here too much anyway.”

  “Leeza, honey—”

  “No. I mean it.” Leeza took a deep breath. Plunged ahead. “You’re here all the time. You need to focus on that job you’re doing. And Jack, too. When’s the last time the two of you went out to dinner or to see a movie?”

  “Sweetheart, there’s plenty of time for that. Once you get out of rehab—”

  “Look, I’ll be here for at least two more months. Probably longer. Are you going to put everything on hold until then?”

  “You’re my daughter, Leeza. I don’t mind.”

  “But I do. You need your life back. So does Jack.” She paused. “And so do I.”

  She could hear her mother’s sudden intake of breath. “What’s that supposed to mean? When have I ever done anything but try to help you?”

  It was Leeza’s turn to swallow. Hard. “I know. But I think now it’s time I tried to help myself.”

  There was a long moment when neither of them said anything. Then, “You can’t keep me from visiting you, you know.”

  Leeza smiled at the hint of compliance that had crept into her mother’s voice. “I’m not trying to. I think I just need to see a bit less of you.”

  There was another silence, this one shorter than before. “Well, can I still call you?”

  Leeza looked at the phone, imagined her mother on the other end of the line, saw her as someone much younger, a child asking permission of an adult. “Of course you can call me. Any time. And you can visit, too. Just not for a while, okay?”

  She heard a sigh. “Okay.” Then, “I love you, Leeza.”

  “I love you, too, Mom.” Leeza yawned, suddenly very tired. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Say hi to Jack for me, okay?”

  “I will, dear.” But her mother didn’t hang up. “Leeza?”

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “This Reef person. Did he have anything to do with this?”

  The question surprised her, made her think. “Not directly, no.”

  “But indirectly?”

  Leeza’s mind went back to that afternoon in the lounge, the stories Reef and she had shared. “He made me remember something I’d forgotten.”

  “What was that?”

  “That I can be strong too.”

  “Honey, you didn’t need a stranger to show you that.”

  Leeza looked up at her sprinkler and smiled. “I think maybe I did.”

  Chapter 20

  “Back again,” Carly said. “You’re getting to be a permanent fixture around here.”

  “Yeah,” mumbled Reef. He wasn’t sure what to say. Didn’t feel like replaying the explanation he’d given Colville for why he needed to return today when he wasn’t scheduled to show up at the rehab again until next week. “I didn’t finish everything yesterday,” he’d said. Which wasn’t exactly a lie. But he was afraid the nurse would see right through him.

  There was something in the way Carly had looked at him as he was leaving the day before that made him think she’d seen what had happened in the sixth-floor lounge, had maybe even set the whole thing up. Whether that was true or not, he hadn’t been able to get Leeza out of his head, had lain awake half the night thinking about her. Reef had never felt like this before. Sure, he’d had more than his share of girls over the years. There had always been plenty on the periphery, girls who skipped classes with him, smoked and drank, did whatever drugs were available for the taking. Girls who liked the rush of breaking rules.

  And then, of course, there was Scar. But it was different with her. With Scar, whatever fun he had was always diminished somehow by guilt. Like he was keeping her from being more than she was, making her less than she could be. Those other girls used him as much as he used them. Scar, however, used no one. She only gave. And in giving, she’d made it more and more difficult for Reef to take. She had too much to offer to waste it on him. Or anyone like him. It had taken him a while to see a
ll that, to understand. Maybe it was being away from her for so long. His grandmother was fond of saying how sometimes you couldn’t see the forest for the trees. He’d never really understood what she meant. But he thought he did now.

  “So,” Carly said, “how about reading to Stephen again? He’s been pretty agitated this morning.”

  “Okay,” said Reef. But, of course, it wasn’t really okay. Stephen wasn’t the patient he wanted to see.

  And Carly seemed to know that. Her smile said so. “Leeza’s down having physio. She won’t be back on the floor until noon. I imagine you’ll be wanting a break by then, won’t you?”

  Reef smiled, the expression on his face hot and clumsy. Even the roots of his hair felt red. “Could be,” he said.

  The morning unwound like thick yarn. Every few moments, Reef found his eyes drawn to the clock on Stephen’s table, surprised to see that the minute hand hadn’t advanced much farther than the last time he’d looked. He’d picked up a Reader’s Digest that someone had left behind and begun reading aloud some of the “Life’s Like That” submissions, but he didn’t find the anecdotes amusing. Nor, apparently, did Stephen, who moaned and thrashed about continually in his bed. Someone had put him in restraints before Reef arrived, and Reef didn’t like seeing his wrists in those straps, didn’t like hearing the restraints ring against the metal side rails each time Stephen flailed about.

  So Reef put down the magazine and reached for a Halifax newspaper, yesterday’s Chronicle-Herald. Reading the paper aloud had seemed to calm Stephen the last time Reef was with him, and he thought maybe it had something to do with the news. As he moved through the paper, though, he discovered it wasn’t what he read but the way he read it that Stephen responded to. News items dealing with business developments on the world scene—in which Reef had zero interest—elicited considerable thrashing on Stephen’s part, while items about events closer to home—to which Reef paid much more attention—seemed to calm him.