by Susan Conley
Linda rolls the wheelchair right up to the side of the bed and Kit leans over and pulls the earphones out of Sam’s ears.
Sam screams, and Linda and Kit both crack up.
When Sam sees his father, his face changes.
“Oh, hey. Don’t mind me,” Kit says. “You’re just in my bed.”
Sam chooses to smile. Then he climbs out, and Linda helps Kit sit up on the bed and turn himself around and lie down.
“Give me your phone, mate,” Kit says to Sam. “I want to see this thing.”
I try not to laugh. I tell Linda I finally have some backup on my antiphone campaign.
She shakes her head at us and goes out to the hallway.
“Thanks a lot, Dad. You leave us in Maine with Mom, then you take my phone?” Sam looks over at me and grins.
“Ouch,” I say.
“I’m not going to keep it, Sam.” Kit raises his eyebrows at me. “I just want to see it.”
Sam hands it to him. Then he and Charlie go out to the parking lot to take the Subaru to a gas station for snacks, because they’re both starving.
“Get me something too,” Kit calls to them when they’re out in the hall. “Surprise me!”
* * *
—
I’M IN THE GREEN chair over by the window, trying to think of something good to say. I feel an unremitting tiredness. There’s a void in the room now that the boys have taken all their energy with them.
Kit asks why they don’t want to talk to him anymore.
“What do you mean? They love talking to you. But you have to talk to them about things they want to talk about. They’re boys. They’re right there waiting for you.”
“They don’t miss me.” He closes his eyes.
It’s unlike him to feel this bad for himself.
“They miss you too much. It’s not good how much they miss you.” I’m not sure he understands what I mean. “They listen to you. They really listen. So please tell Sam not to do drugs.” I smile, but my mind starts turning in on itself. “Please tell him.”
“I did drugs, and I’m fine.” He looks out the window. “Well, I’m not really fine. I’ve got a trawler I can’t use, I’m crippled, and I got pummeled on my quotas this year.”
“Please don’t say that. Please don’t say any of that.” I walk over to the bed and take his hand. “Pot is different. It’s much stronger. Please talk to him.”
“Look at me, Jilly. It’s a joke, really. You could say the industry’s killing me.”
“I’m not listening. You’re tired. It’s been too much with us here.”
“I only ever wanted to make a living like my dad did.”
He’s still more melancholy. More openly emotional, and I’m trying to understand if he’ll stay this way or go back to the way he was before the accident.
“Please don’t let the bank take my boat while I’m gone, Jilly. My mother wanted that boat for me. It was her plan.”
He doesn’t talk about his mother, ever. And the unspoken rule is that no one else can talk about her.
I’ve always known that what was between them was special. And that because his mother died when he was ten, Kit didn’t get some of the things a child needs. He didn’t get to understand himself through his mother’s eyes for long enough, or to hold on to a story of his family that had her in it alive.
It’s rare that after twenty years someone you love surprises you.
I bend down and whisper, “No one’s going to take your boat away.”
I don’t know what we’re going to do about the boat. But we’ll keep it somehow. We can’t sell it.
“Your mother would be proud. Look at the boys you’ve raised.” I’ve never referred to her this way.
But I’ve had my own conversations with her in my head. What woman doesn’t have conversations with the mother of the man she loves?
I do think she’d be proud of the boys and of the life we’ve made on her island. But I’ll never know. I am hit by a wave of sadness that I’d been able to avoid until then. I have no idea how I’ll tell the boys if he can’t come home with us. Sadness comes for me in the pale hospital room with the cinder-block walls and concrete floor where I know people before us have suffered.
His eyes are closed and his hair has been pushed back from his face in a way I don’t recognize. I’m not sure if he’s sleeping or if he’ll remember what he’s said.
The boys walk back in and break the tension. They’re carrying three different brands of Canadian salt-and-vinegar potato chips and want to take the chips down to the common room and watch ESPN on the bigger screen and do a taste test. They’re excited about this.
“It’s too much,” I say. “Too much for Dad. No more walking. All too much.”
“Don’t listen to your mother,” Kit says. And the boys smile and bring the walker back over to the bed and help him stand.
Then they walk with him slowly, slowly down the hall.
I follow behind, trying to leave the sadness back in the hospital room. I can hear Charlie say that we’ll get a wider boat to go back and forth to the mainland if Kit needs to use a wheelchair.
“I won’t be needing a wheelchair.” Kit laughs. “Do you see a wheelchair anywhere near me?”
He sits down on the edge of one of the big, brown armchairs close to the TV and extends his right leg. It doesn’t look comfortable. We can’t stay here long. The boys sit on the carpet and talk to the TV.
I lean against the wall by the door and am able to speak with the bifocal doctor when he pokes his head in.
I ask him when Kit might be let go. “Is there a chance it could even happen this Sunday?”
He tells me there’s a blood infection that seems to be slowing Kit’s recovery. “There is no way that your husband will leave with you Sunday,” he says. Then he’s gone.
I HOLD ON TO the part about the blood infection while the four of us walk back to Kit’s room. I don’t share it with any of them, so it becomes my secret.
The boys and I pull chairs around Kit’s bed and play chess on the tray Kit uses to eat the bad hospital food.
Charlie beats Kit. Then Sam beats Kit.
But Sam refuses to play Charlie for the championship. “Charlie always wins, so what’s the use in playing him anyway?”
We switch to Oh Hell. It’s Sam’s favorite card game.
I think Charlie knows Sam’s cheating, but that it’s better not to say anything about it.
The stress of the hospital gets to you and plays with your mind. The metal smell and the cinder-block walls and the three watercolors of sailboats on blurry oceans above Kit’s bed.
Sam plays a card out of turn. He looks so tired to me now. We need to get to the hotel and sleep.
“Rules, Sam,” Charlie says. “Card games have rules for a reason.”
Then I say, “Please stop pretending that you’re not cheating, Sam.”
It’s a stupid thing to say, and I regret it immediately. But it takes only one thing to set Sam off.
He stands up and throws his cards in the air and yells, “I hate everything about this family.”
Then he runs into the hall. Charlie goes after him.
Kit and I sit in the silence and talk to each other without speaking. We’ve always done this well.
Something I’m working on is how not to bait Sam, because it’s never worth it. I feel I baited him this time, and that it’s somehow my fault he’s run out of the room. We should have gone to the hotel earlier.
Kit says, “Well, that was a shitshow.”
“That,” I say, “is basically what we’ve been dealing with since you left.”
When Sam loses control like this, I feel it in my stomach.
Kit says, “I’m trying like hell to get out of here and come home. But now there’s an infection
, and I swear it feels like I’m never going to leave this place.”
I take his hand. “Of course you will get better. Of course you’ll come home.”
I can sense our hold on things slipping. “You’ll come home, and we’ll figure things out with the boat. So many people are rooting for you. Shorty wants you back, and I’ve never seen Jimmy more worried about someone. Sleep.” I stand and lean over the bed and kiss him on his face. “You need sleep.”
When I see him drift off, I go out to the nurses’ station, where Linda and two other nurses are eating homemade pumpkin bread. None of them has seen Sam.
Then I walk down the hall to the elevators and wait for the doors.
Please let the boys be inside.
They each step out holding a green apple and a Hershey bar, and I feel such relief. Maybe I can be absolved of my guilt.
I raise my eyebrows at Charlie, and he raises his back and this is how I know things are going to be okay with his brother.
We walk past the nurses’ station, and Linda says she’d like some of Sam’s Hershey bar, and he laughs, like he’s always this agreeable.
* * *
—
KIT IS CRYING IN the bed when we get there. It’s the most surprising thing.
Jimmy has rules about who’s weak and who’s strong and who cries. And except when the boys were born, I haven’t seen Kit cry.
Charlie starts crying too. I’ve forgotten the last time I saw Charlie cry. He runs over to Kit’s bed, sobbing.
Sam stands in the doorway, watching them. You can tell he’s struggling over what to do.
He yells, “Don’t cry, Dad! We love you!”
Then he punches the wall and goes and buries his head in Kit’s stomach.
The three of them stay like this, while I stand by the door, watching.
WHEN KIT FINALLY FALLS asleep again, the boys and I gather ourselves and drive to the Best Western. The same one I stayed in last week, next to a one-story shopping center with the tanning salon and a Thai restaurant.
Charlie says he’s so hungry, even though he just ate a pizza in the cafeteria. I park and he and Sam walk across the parking lot to the restaurant, and Charlie gets a beef curry to go.
He brings it inside the lobby, where I’m sitting on one of the fake velvet chairs by the check-in desk, and he tells me that he’s trying to eat healthy now. Fewer calories after dark and more protein.
I can’t keep up with his dietary restrictions.
Sam has gotten a bag of sour cream potato chips and a root beer.
We have two queen beds. The insurance checks pay for almost half of what we owe the hospital. If I’m not careful, I will hyperventilate over this. Sam grew two inches last summer. It’s like we run a small sneaker store with his feet. I put him in his own bed because he kicks in his sleep. He crawls under the blankets and plays a rap song very loudly on his phone while he watches a YouTube video of the best NBA three-point shots. The song lyrics go something like “I want to see you naked on the roof.”
“Sam! Turn it off. The words are killing me.”
“But you aren’t meant to listen to the words, Mom.” His face is in his phone.
I lie down on my side of my bed and close my eyes and wait for the boys to turn out the lights so I can be alone in my mind. When I was here last week, I met a shockingly handsome man at the breakfast buffet.
I’d found the nuts and brown sugar for my oatmeal in little bowls by the milk dispensary, and the man—his name was Steven—got a plate of pineapple and a plate of scrambled eggs and mixed them together. I said I’d never seen that combination before.
We laughed and went to the same table almost by accident, and he told me about his wife, who was in the hospital for heart surgery.
I had no idea how much I missed talking to an adult. My neck hurt from the drive, and he asked thoughtful questions about it, and it was nice to have someone ask me questions.
I told him how Charlie was like Kit in the sense that he wasn’t rash and remembered facts the rest of us forgot, like who in the family was allergic to kiwis. I said Sam depended on me too much and was needier than Charlie.
Then I took a sip of coffee and saw myself for a moment, sitting in the Best Western in Halifax saying personal things about my family. I knew I was lonelier than I thought and that I had to leave the hotel. I made an excuse about forgetting an appointment with a doctor. Then I drove back to Kit and never saw Steven again.
SAM IS UP FIRST the next morning and goes into the little bathroom and announces it’s time for a shave.
“But you don’t need to,” Charlie says from his side of the bed. “There’s nothing to shave.”
“Come look.” Sam waves him in. “There’s a hair here and a hair here.” He points above his lip.
The bathroom is white, and each thing in here—the fake marble sink and the fake marble vanity and even the toilet—looks smaller than the usual size. Charlie gets up and goes and leans over the sink, studying Sam’s face in the mirror. “Nope,” he says. “There’s not enough to shave yet. Don’t do it.”
I get up too and stand in the doorway, trying to be invisible.
“Look at my underarm, then.” Sam puts his bare arm up in the air. “Lots of hair.”
There is actual armpit hair.
“Don’t rush it.” Charlie sounds paternal now, like Kit. “It’s coming. It’s coming.”
These sweet moments arrive when I’m not expecting them. Please let neither of the boys ever grow a day older.
Then they file out of the Best Western bathroom. Their work is done. Their hearts are open. Their day is just beginning.
SATURDAY IS QUIET AT the hospital. Kit sleeps on and off, and the boys and I sit by the window. They do homework. I write grant applications and watch the rain. We’re getting used to the routines, and the way the nurses come and go. It’s almost peaceful. Even though the sadness is still with me, and I’ll have to tell the boys the truth soon about Kit’s infection.
We bring in pizza for dinner, and Sam finds The Bourne Identity on the AMC channel. The boys and I carry chairs over to Kit’s bed and sit around him and watch on the TV above the bed.
* * *
—
SUNDAY STARTS MUCH EARLIER than Saturday. The boys eat egg sandwiches at the cafeteria. By eight o’clock Charlie’s talking about getting on the road. He has a precalc test tomorrow he needs to study for.
We still haven’t told the boys that Kit isn’t coming home. My strategy seems to be to give Sam almost no time to react to the news, though this approach hardly ever works.
Then Marsh walks in and waves.
It’s worse to see her this time, but almost just as much of a surprise. I had forgotten her.
She puts her little dog down on the bed and has a defiance about her. Like she dared herself to come here and pierce our family.
I watch Kit take in the dog and take in Marsh. He gives her the private smile that he’s given me hundreds of times. The one where he looks right into my eyes.
Then he points at her.
“Boys. Boys, this woman is the one who called the Coast Guard. We have her to thank for my life.”
“For your life?” Sam gets up out of his chair and stands and waves at her. “Like for saving your life?”
“You could say that.” Kit smiles.
Marsh rolls her eyes.
“That’s cool,” Sam says. “That’s epic.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Marsh says. She has her hair in a giant, floppy bun on the top of her head.
The boys come take the dog from her and pass it back and forth to each other. They’ve always wanted a dog, and they talk in baby voices to it and ask why we can’t get one just like Maxwell. Why not, Mom? Why not?
I haven’t heard these baby voices in a long time, and I try not t
o laugh.
It starts raining hard out, and we have to talk loudly to hear one another over the sound.
Kit asks Marsh if she wants any of the salt-and-vinegar potato chips.
She shakes her head. “We just came to see you.”
Then she smiles the warmest smile at him, which feels like an act of possession. How she’s able to make me feel bad just by smiling at my husband isn’t clear. I try not to stare too long at her Pretenders T-shirt or her enormous silver belt buckle.
She says I must be going out of my mind in the hospital. “Do you want to get out of here? Like get a coffee or something?”
I want to tell her that I am going out of my mind. And it has to do with her being in the room. But I say, “I’d love to get a coffee. I’m tired of being the only member of the female species.”
It’s nine o’clock in the morning now, and we need to get on the road. But I follow Marsh out to the hall anyway. I don’t make eye contact with Charlie, so I can’t see if he’s glaring at me.
I THOUGHT GETTING A coffee meant going down to the cafeteria. Not driving to her apartment. Charlie’s going to kill me. I follow Marsh and the dog out to the parking lot and climb in her truck, because it’s too weird to say anything now. We drive for maybe five minutes, with Max in Marsh’s lap.
Then she pulls into a lot behind a two-story apartment building and gets out with Max and puts him on the ground. There’s a little drugstore on the ground level, and she and Max walk past the glass door to the store and up a set of steep wooden stairs attached to the end of the building. Some of the treads are loose, and the wood gives when I step on them.
When we’re almost halfway up, she turns and tells me that Kit was going to fix some of these stairs for her—the ones that were the most rotten, she says. But then he got in the accident.
I don’t know if I’m meant to be surprised by this. I feel sleepy. Almost hypnotized or something because what am I doing here? I just nod at her.
