Autumn's Child

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  Except he wasn’t waiting for her in the sense that she wanted him to be. He was simply waiting for someone to relieve him at Grannor’s bedside.

  Why, Ben, why? Everyone else likes me. Why don’t you?

  “I was hoping you’d get here before I had to leave,” he said. “I knew that you wouldn’t want her to be alone.”

  Colleen forced herself to look back at her grandmother. “She looks so old.”

  “She is eighty-six.”

  “Tell me what you know.” She wanted to hear his voice.

  He claimed not to have much news. He and Leilah had given her aspirin as soon as they could in case she had had a heart attack, but the doctors thought it was more likely that she had had a stroke. They would do more tests in the morning. Ben was afraid that he might have broken her sternum during CPR, but the ER people hadn’t thought so.

  “You had to do CPR?”

  “Not for long and just chest compressions. It probably wasn’t necessary, but when I couldn’t get a pulse immediately, I started right away.”

  “You know CPR?” She wanted to keep talking to him.

  “When you do any coaching, they want you to have it. My certification’s probably not current, but whatever.” He flicked his hand, dismissing any possible heroics. “I’d better shove off. I told your father I’d pick him up at the airport.”

  “I could have waited in Charlottesville for him.” That was the closest big airport. Ben was having to go right back to where she had come from.

  “I knew you’d want to be here. I don’t mind. And that little cooler…it’s got food for your dinner. Nothing fancy, just something from Subway.”

  “How nice of you.”

  “Leilah has a lot to do at the house, getting ready for people. Otherwise she would have brought you something better from the lake.”

  “This is fine. This is more than enough.”

  “There’s tuna or turkey for you. Ham or Italian deli meats for your father.”

  “That’s great, Ben. Really.” Are you having trouble leaving? Why? You didn’t want me. “It has been good of you to spend so much time with Grannor. She enjoyed it.”

  “You were right. She is an intelligent woman, and she actually enjoys having people disagree with her. She likes to argue.”

  “Most people are too afraid of her to do that, but you’re used to doing things other people find scary.”

  He shrugged. “It comes with the job, at least with my old job.” He turned his arm and looked down at his elegant watch. “I suppose I should be leaving.”

  “Yes.”

  “But the room’s cold. I’ll leave my sweatshirt.”

  He tried to hang it on the corner of the bed’s footboard. It fell. Colleen bent to pick it up. When she stood up, he was standing with his hands in his pockets, still unable to leave. This is where you belong. With me. She dropped the sweatshirt on the chair and stepped forward. Putting a hand on his shoulder, she stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. His skin was rough against her lips; he hadn’t shaved. “Thank you for everything.”

  For the briefest moment, she felt a warmth, a hand, at the small of her back. It was the lightest of touches.

  “It was nothing,” he said. “I was glad that I was there.”

  How nice he had been. Did he just feel sorry for her? She had seen it at parent-teacher conferences, the single mom and the happily remarried dad. The men were often very courteous to their ex-wives, deferential and solicitous…because they could afford to be. I was a shit to you once, but now I am going to be nice because I’m happy and you’re not.

  Colleen would rather have Ben not care at all than be nice because he was happy and thought that she wasn’t.

  Before the room could feel empty, a nurse came in. Colleen asked question after question. The nurse kept saying that the family would need to speak to the doctor, but clearly Colleen had been assuming too much from Ben’s calm. This was indeed serious.

  “Is she going to be impaired?” Grannor would loathe that.

  “It is too early to answer that, but some patients do make remarkable strides during rehab.”

  Remarkable strides? Did that mean that Grannor had something remarkable to stride away from?

  The room was bright with a harsh white light. After the nurse left, Colleen realized that she was cold. She had warmer clothes in the car. Should she go get them? No, Ben had left his sweatshirt for her. She had been sitting on it. She pulled it out from under her. It was a thick, soft cotton fleece, charcoal gray with a hood and a kangaroo pocket. She recognized the black and red Street Boards logo. That was the family company that his friend Seth was now helping to run. She pulled the shirt on over her head, scooping her hair free from the neck. The heavy fabric fell to the middle of her thighs. She could have worn it as a dress.

  “You would not like seeing me in this,” she said to her grandmother.

  Over Grannor’s left shoulder was a little forest of equipment mounted on chrome poles that sprouted from heavy wheeled bases. Green LCD lights flashed numbers that changed constantly, but their values varied only a little. Colleen assumed that a big change would bring people rushing in.

  The chair was a padded vinyl recliner. The headrest was a little high for her. She reached behind her neck and rolled the hood of Ben’s sweatshirt. It made a nice little pillow.

  She felt cozy in the thick fleece, cozy and taken care of. People didn’t usually think of her needing to be taken care of. It was nice.

  Grannor had told her that she should have fought for him. What did that mean, fighting for someone? It wasn’t like she could have drawn her sword and forced him to love her. You could fight for things to happen, but not for people to change how they felt.

  Sweet, but fierce, little Grammy O’Connell had known that.

  Colleen’s mother had believed that God had put her on earth to raise her three children, these three and no others. Maybe that was true. If so, God had worked through her mother’s mother. Grammy O’Connell had called parishes throughout central and southern Minnesota, up into the Iron Range, and across the borders into Wisconsin and Iowa. Grammy had fought to make sure her daughter had children to raise. That was fighting.

  Some of the ladies answering the parish phones must have gotten sick of hearing from her. “No, Mrs. O’Connell, we’ve already told you, none of our girls would ever…there’s no reason for you to keep calling.”

  But Grammy, sweet, kind Grammy, had ignored the rejection and had gone on calling. Was that what Colleen should have done with Ben? If so, that was a more important lesson than the one about not wearing knits at the dinner table.

  Colleen tucked her knees up under the sweatshirt, pulling the hem down over her legs. She suddenly asked herself a question that she had never asked before.

  If Grammy had found Sean and Finn, who had found Colleen? Who had made the calls that had brought the priest to her grandparents’ porch in Georgia? Grammy wouldn’t have called parishes in the South.

  It wouldn’t have been Grannor. She didn’t have Grammy O’Connell’s empathy for someone else’s pain, not even her own child’s. Moreover, she was a snob. Catholics had too many children and machine-made lace curtains. Grannor would have never called the secretary of a Catholic parish…unless it was to complain about weeds on the church’s sidewalk.

  But someone must have.

  * * * *

  Ben dropped her father off without coming inside; Dr. Ridge would use Colleen’s car to get back to the lake.

  “You should come too,” her father said. “There’s no reason for you to stay here all night.”

  “I want to stay, Dad. I’m going to.”

  “Ben said that you would feel that way and there was no point in fighting you on it.” He put his arm around her. “You’re a good girl, Colleen. I wish my mother deserved it.”

 
; “She’s family, Dad.”

  “Now, don’t you go Southern on me. But speaking of family, I talked to my brother. He wants to know if there is a DNR order.”

  A DNR was a “do not resuscitate” order, instructing the health care professionals not to perform heroics to keep a person alive. “I don’t know,” Colleen answered. “Mr. Healy had her update all her papers last fall. So I assume she has one. I’m sure she would have wanted one.”

  “Of course she would have, but Norton wants to have it rescinded.”

  “Why? Is he concerned about how small the hospital is?” She herself had already wondered if they should transfer Grannor to a more sophisticated facility.

  Her father shook his head. “I wish it were that. No, my charming brother and his wife—his third wife—have separated, and he doesn’t want your grandmother’s estate to be a part of the divorce settlement.”

  Colleen made a face. There wasn’t anything to say to that.

  Her grandmother woke up while her father was still there. She recognized them, but her speech was slurred and the right side of her face drooped. Colleen’s father was surprisingly comforting, taking her hand in his, telling her that she had had a little “event,” that she was in the hospital for observation. There was nothing to worry about, and Colleen would be here if she woke up again.

  You do love her, don’t you, Dad? Somewhere beneath all your disapproval and hostility, there is still love.

  “You were the best of the lot, Neddy.” Grannor seemed unaware of how impaired her speech was. “That wife of yours…is she here? She is so pretty, that red hair of hers.”

  Colleen saw her father flinch. Genevieve, his current wife, kept her hair stylishly light. But his voice was still as soothing as before. “No, she couldn’t make it.”

  A few hours later, after her father was gone, Grannor woke again. “Your mother, Mary Pat, she passed, didn’t she?” Her speech was still slurred.

  “Yes, Grannor.”

  Grannor sighed and shut her eyes. She didn’t like being wrong. “Is Will here?”

  “Will?” It took Colleen a minute to figure out who she was talking about. “My cousin Will? Uncle Norton’s son?” They hardly ever saw Uncle Norton’s sons by his first marriage.

  But Grannor had already dozed off again.

  Her father returned in time Saturday morning to talk to the doctor. The news was discouraging. When he called his brother and sister to confirm their arrival times, Colleen had him tell Norton that Grannor had been asking for Will.

  In the middle of the morning, her brothers arrived. Colleen had told them what to expect, so they didn’t even ask Grannor how she was doing. They instead pulled up chairs and started to reminisce about summers at the lake and spring vacations in Georgia. Colleen had heard it all many times before, but her brothers could tell a story. She was like a toddler with a favorite picture book. If either of them had skipped any part of a story, she would have wanted them to start over.

  When an aide came to give Grannor a sponge bath, she, her brothers, and their father went out to the hall.

  There were four of them. Suddenly she was no longer a child being comforted by family stories. Four wasn’t the right number. They had always been a family of five. Five plates, five forks, five seat belts, five tickets.

  Except they weren’t even a family of four. There was Genevieve, Patty, and Liz. And Genevieve’s son, daughter, daughter-in-law, and little grandson. Colleen had spent Christmas with her grandmother because her father and brothers were with their wives’ families.

  Did she want her father to be lonely or her brothers not to have married? No, of course not. She just wanted to feel like she still had a family.

  As soon as the door to Grannor’s room closed, Sean spoke. “I have marching orders from my wife. I am to forget that I am the older brother. I am to do exactly what Colleen tells me to do.”

  “Patty said that?” Colleen couldn’t help being pleased.

  “Yes, she said that at a time like this, the women need to be in charge.”

  “She’s absolutely right,” Colleen’s father agreed.

  “But me? Not Aunt Laura? Shouldn’t she be in charge?”

  “Oh, children,” her father sighed. “Whatever happens, we are not taking orders from my sister. And not from my brother either. I talked to Tim Healy this morning. I have your grandmother’s health care proxy, not Norton. And I can’t do anything as long as she is competent, which she seems to be.”

  “What’s this about?” Finn asked.

  Colleen’s father explained his older brother’s situation. “I’m sure that the three of you hope for your grandmother’s complete recovery, but we all know that she wouldn’t want to live if she were in pain or had severe cognitive impairment. Unfortunately, my brother wants her to be kept alive under any condition.”

  Sean stretched and linked his hands behind his head. Finn folded his arms. Colleen knew that both of them were disgusted, but like her, they had been brought up not to criticize their elders.

  “In the next few days,” Dr. Ridge continued, “even with the best possible outcome, my brother may want to talk about your grandmother’s estate. I don’t know exactly what’s in her will—she did a major overhaul of it several years after she became a widow—but I assume that most of it goes to my siblings and me. It’s possible that there will be some specific bequests to Colleen, silver and jewelry and such, but—”

  “I hope that there are a lot of specifics for Colleen,” Sean interrupted. “She deserves more than the rest of us.”

  “I agree,” her father continued, “but it’s less about Colleen herself than the fact that our family gives things to the girls. There will probably be other such bequests for Kimberly. I mention this in hopes that your wives won’t feel slighted.”

  “Liz and Patty? Slighted?” Finn was surprised. “They won’t expect a thing.”

  “And you should have known that, Dad,” Sean added.

  Their father’s lips tightened. Then he nodded apologetically. “You’re right, son. Just because my blood relatives will behave badly doesn’t mean that other people will too. Let me say one more thing on the subject, and then we will not speak of it again. If I do inherit a third of my mother’s estate, it is my intention to disclaim my share and pass it directly to the three of you. I don’t need it, and in fact, I don’t want it. I have some ambivalent feelings in play here.”

  The additional tests and the conversations about rehabilitation wouldn’t happen until Monday. Her uncle, then her aunt arrived, departed, then came back again. Colleen took Ben’s sweatshirt off, then put it on again. She got more ice for the sandwiches in the cooler. The local Episcopal priest stopped by. She ate the turkey out of one of the sandwiches. Flower arrangements were delivered. Her father returned, bringing her car back.

  By mid-afternoon everyone was urging her to go back to the lake. She would have liked to have taken a shower, eaten a decent meal, and gotten a little rest, but no one offered to stay at the hospital in her place. She tried not to feel like a martyr. None of them felt that it was necessary to have someone in the room. Why should they inconvenience themselves to live up to her standards?

  She didn’t have an answer for that…except that if it were Grammy O’Connell in the bed, the aunts, the granddaughters, the neighbors, person after person, would have considered it an honor to be the one to stay with her.

  Where were Sean and Finn? They would feel uncomfortable, being here alone, helping with the pillows and the bedpan, but if Colleen asked, they would each take a shift. When they had left for lunch, they said that they would be back, but they hadn’t come.

  She got out her phone to send Sean a text, but remembered that if he was at the lake, he wouldn’t get the message.

  Finally at around eight, there was a light rap on the door. It was the youngest member of Grannor’s br
idge club—a gal in her early seventies. She was wearing comfortable clothes and was carrying her knitting bag. She had heard that Colleen had been in the hospital for more than twenty-four hours without a break.

  “You go home and don’t you worry about me,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep anyway, not until I figure out where I went wrong on this sweater pattern.”

  Colleen kissed her.

  * * * *

  Lights were on all over the house. Colleen paused in the sitting room to speak to her aunt and uncle and then went into the kitchen. Leilah had a cookbook open on the counter; she seemed to be making up a grocery list.

  The kitchen had been painted last winter, but it had never been updated. The narrow pine cupboards were probably original to the house; the linoleum floor was yellowed and cracked; the appliances were all from different eras, having each been replaced whenever it could no longer be repaired. Grannor had spent almost no time in the kitchen; she hadn’t cared what it looked like or how well it functioned.

  Colleen felt awkward. Didn’t fighting for Ben mean fighting with Leilah? I’m out to take your man.

  “I’m sorry.” She couldn’t help starting with an apology. “I’m sure you’re sick of people wandering in and out—”

  Leilah held up her hand, stopping the flow of apologies. “I knew that people would be grazing all day. Do you want to eat here in the kitchen?” Her tone was surprisingly down-to-earth.

  “Please.”

  Colleen sat down at the old metal-rimmed kitchen table, relieved not to be treated like the Spoiled-Brat Princess anymore. Of course, Aunt Laura genuinely was a Spoiled-Brat Princess, and even Leilah, despite all her serene competence, might be finding that one such creature was enough.

  Colleen watched Leilah take a ham out of the refrigerator. “I saw my aunt and uncle. Where is everyone else?”