All Dressed Up (32 page)

“And how’s God
doing for you this week? On a scale of one to ten? Compared to,
say, the Big Bang or the idea of the entire universe being merely a
laboratory experiment on the part of a civilization unimaginably
more advanced than our own?”

“That doesn’t
really solve the God problem, though, I don’t feel, because who
created the unimaginably advanced civilization?”

“Ah, you
noticed that, too?”

“You’re
beautiful when you’re philosophical, Mac.”

The sun
sparkled on the lake. He put his arm around her. Her heart swelled
up like a helium balloon, and since his heart was the twin of hers
she felt confident it must be doing the same. “So are they getting
easier?” He kissed her hair. “The trite God conversations?”

“A little. I
like that we have them sparingly.”

“I’m thinking…
hoping… daring to suggest… that we have plenty of time.”

They went into
his house and didn’t come out for hours.

On Monday
morning, almost a week after the surgery, Billy looked a lot
better.

His incision
was healing nicely and his pain level had dropped to three when
they asked him to score it on a scale from one to ten. He was keen
to try Jell-O and Seven-Up again, and he was allowed. He went to
the children’s activity room, did a word search and an educational
computer game, then on Monday night he threw up all the fluid and a
froth of old, khaki-colored bile in a series of desperate, weary
spits every two or three hours all night. Early Tuesday morning he
vomited for the thirty-sixth time since the previous Wednesday
afternoon, because Mom had been counting.

She cried. She
tried not to let it show, but every time Emma looked at her, she
was red-eyed, fighting it back, quietly sobbing, just a mess. Billy
had had no nourishment except the glucose in his I.V. for over a
week, and when he shuffled to the bathroom to pee, wheeling his
I.V. stand along with him, he looked like a homeless waif in his
boxer shorts and hospital gown.

Emma couldn’t
cry. She felt like such a fraud, loving Billy but not knowing him
enough, wanting to hold those kidney dishes for him but not able to
cry or feel Mom’s helpless despair.

“We’re going
to send him for an X-ray,” the doctor decided, and the X-ray showed
a partial bowel blockage. There was a conference in his room, with
the senior surgeon, two residents, Mom, Dad, Emma and Sarah all
standing around Billy’s bed. He would have a naso-gastric tube
inserted, they were told, so that his stomach contents could be
suctioned out to give his bowel a more complete rest and, it was
hoped, allow the blockage to resolve on its own. A second X-ray
tomorrow afternoon should reveal whether there had been any
improvement. If there was none, he would have to go back into
surgery to relieve the adhesions and clear the bowel.

Emma and Sarah
sat with Billy in the treatment room while he had the tube
inserted. It was as thick as a turkey baster, long and clear and
stiff, snaking up and up into his nose, scratching past the tender
skin at the back of his throat, snaking down into his stomach. The
nurse pinned the tube to his gown and attached it to a drainage
bag.

Mom couldn’t
bear to watch the procedure and cried in the pediatric social
worker’s office instead. Dad tidied up Billy’s room, bought him a
helium balloon and arranged the five cards that had come from his
friends at home, the result of several emotional phone calls from
Mom to his friends’ parents last Wednesday night.

“He was so
good about the tube,” Emma reported to her. “Some kids… God, I was
so proud of you, Billy.” Her voice broke on the word proud, her
eyes brimmed and she felt a strange, transient rush of relief at
the tangible nature of her own distress. “How is it, now? You can
feel it, can’t you?” And I can feel it, too. Love is a naso-gastric
tube. Who knew?

He gave a tiny
nod.

“You can’t
bear to talk.”

Shake.

“The tube’s
making you want to throw up more, isn’t it”

Nod.

“Oh God, it’s
right there at your gag reflex, I hate these things. It’ll stop
feeling like that after a while, Billy, I promise. Your body will
get used to it and you won’t feel it any more.”

Billy didn’t
say a word the rest of the day. Dad made Mom leave the hospital
that night to go have real dinner instead of cafeteria food, and
breathe real air, and stop crying about Billy. Sarah and Emma could
both see how scared she was, especially Emma, who knew that maybe
her fears would prove well-grounded and that Billy would transform,
thanks to one five-millimeter slip of a surgical instrument, from
being the healthiest child in the family to being the one whose
body was never quite right again. Surgery to relieve adhesions
could create more adhesions. The bowel and the stomach cavity were
delicate places.

Sarah told
Mom, “We’ll be here, and he’s not going to be vomiting any more,
with the tube.”

But when Mom
and Dad had gone, Emma steered Sarah into the corridor outside
Billy’s room and said, “Please? Could you go, too? I can’t ask Mom
not to stay the night. I mean, that sofa bed beside him is hers, I
know that, but if I could just be here on my own with him until she
and Dad get back. Just that little step toward – Am I being selfish
again?”

“No, no, it’s
fine, I understand.” Sarah chafed her arm with an awkward hand.
“It’s good, Emma, it’s the right way to do it.”

“And bring me
some Chinese food? Go to the place with the wooden ramps next to
Walmart where we always go. Something with shrimp and noodles,
okay? But bring it to me after you’ve eaten, yourself. I’m not
hungry yet.” Emma hugged her. “Thank you, Sarah.”

“No biggie,
Em.”

Lainie went to
visit Billy in the hospital again on Tuesday night.

Not wanting to
chase down the distracted Deans on their cell phones – and also so
happy about Mac that she didn’t think she’d be able to hide it from
them, which would be unkind when they were so worried about Billy’s
complications – she had taken to calling Brooke every day to check
on his progress, and Brooke reported all his ups and downs with her
usual sympathy and good cheer. On Tuesday she didn’t wait for
Lainie’s call but phoned her at work to say that he might have to
go for further surgery.

Lainie arrived
at the hospital at seven, when there were a lot of visitors, kids
seeing their sick brother or sister, grandparents with balloons and
candy. Instead of Terri Dean, she found Emma there, keeping vigil.
Billy lay asleep, propped up on a litter of white pillows, with a
tube snaking up into his nose. His face had thinned perceptibly
since her first visit to him last Friday night.

Emma jumped up
when she saw Lainie in the doorway. She applied the usual
good-daughter-in-law look to her face and they hugged stiffly.
“Thank you for coming, Lainie,” she said, as if taking leave of a
funeral guest.

“He’s
sleeping?” Lainie mouthed.

Emma led her
into the corridor and spoke quietly. “He had an N.G. tube put in
today. He’s still feeling it in the back of his throat. It’s better
if he can sleep until he gets used to it.”

“Brooke called
to tell me about the tube and the second surgery.”

“I can make
you a coffee in the parents’ room.”

They went
along the corridor together, and Lainie couldn’t help several
glimpses into other rooms as they passed. Some of the rooms were a
little bland and temporary-looking like Billy’s was, others had
obviously contained the same occupants for weeks or even months,
and were crowded with stuffed toys or teenage girl decorations gone
wild – hand-made cards and photo frames and scrap-books lettered in
artistic feminine script.

Emma saw where
she was looking. “Anorexics,” she said. “Their rooms always look
like that.”

Lainie
accepted a coffee because of the way it might strengthen their
tentative connection, not because she wanted one. The parents’ room
already contained three or four people chatting and watching
TV.

“Let’s find
somewhere else,” Emma suggested.

But it wasn’t
comfortable. Emma looked in on Billy on the way past – still
asleep, in the same position – and they ended up standing near one
of the stainless steel carts around the corner from a bathroom,
setting their cups on the cart’s shiny, disinfected surface between
sips.

“You’re giving
your mom a break?” Lainie said, making conversation.

Emma gave a
bright nod. “Mm-hm!” Bright and fake. Be real with me, Emma?
Please? “She’s wearing herself out,” Emma went on. “Dad made her go
have dinner in Lake George.”

“And
Sarah?”

“I thought she
should go, too. I – I wanted a little time just him and me.”

A nurse needed
the cart and they had to pick up their cups and keep hold of them,
leaning side by side against the corridor wall. Visitors came and
went. The bathroom door sighed shut, and someone’s I.V. or monitor
alarm went off in a maddening series of electronic pips. A
different nurse muttered a complaint as she went to check it.

“Billy looks
more like you now, with the weight he’s lost in his face,” Lainie
blurted out.

Emma gave a
little nod. “Mom said the same thing… But I don’t see it.” She
looked very uncomfortable about it. “At all.”

Awkwardly
Lainie said, “He’s a very handsome boy.” They took some sips. The
coffee had a flavor of burnt paper. “He reminds me of Charlie.”

“Is, um, is
Charlie still staying with you?” Emma asked.

“No-o, honey,
he went back down again. Sunday night.”

Emma nodded.
“Okay.”

“I think he’s
hoping to come back up soon. What’s going on, Emma? Wednesday, when
he got your messages and came racing up here and straight to the
hospital to see you, I thought… But obviously when you talked -
”

“There was
something I had to tell him. Was overdue telling him. I should have
–

I mean, it was
Mom’s way of handling it, ten years ago, but maybe none of us
should have treated it like such a huge secret all these years. She
thought it was best for Billy. You see – ”

And then it
clicked. Omigosh, it just clicked in a sudden flash, while Emma was
still struggling to say the words herself. Lainie remembered
Charlie’s questions the other day about what choices she had had
when she was pregnant, linked it with Emma’s clear discomfort at
being told Billy looked like her while he very obviously didn’t
look much like Eric or Terri, and with the way she’d wanted to have
some time just him and her, and it all clicked into place.

“Billy’s
yours!” she exclaimed. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” Her
voice rose and she couldn’t help it. “You must only have been
seventeen!”

Emma nodded.
“I should have told Charlie. Or else I should have stayed happy
with pretending Billy was my brother and never told him.”

“No, I don’t
think you can live forever with that kind of lie.”

“So I
discovered. And I’m still not sure which it is, Lainie, the lie or
the giving Billy to Mom.”

“That’s making
Charlie angry?”

“So he is
angry? Still?” She looked beaten about it, but not surprised. Her
lips looked very pale and dry.

“Oh,
honey!”

They’d
finished the coffee. They hugged hard, and Lainie accidentally
tilted the cup so that the last drop of the drink ran over her
other hand, which had wrapped around Emma’s back. It was the
closest Lainie had ever felt to the girl who might still, even now,
become her daughter-in-law – the girl who was in the same
sisterhood as herself and Angie and Brooke, girls having babies in
their teens with deadbeat fathers when, despite any excuses about
naivety and risk-taking in the young, they should have known
better.

Lainie
gabbled, “I really care about you, Emma, I love you because my son
loves you and because you see all the things about him that I do.
The goodness and strength, the way he can be so bright and clever
but so simple sometimes. I don’t have to sell those things to you –
you know, like talking up the benefits of a three-car garage. And
you see the hard things about him, the things that make him so
difficult to stomach sometimes. His intolerance for mistakes from
the people he loves – which is what this is, isn’t it? You know
what, he would forgive this far more easily in a patient.”

Emma smiled
faintly. “He would, wouldn’t he? You’re right.”

“And you
forgive his silences. You manage to forgive the things about him
that people have to forgive if they’re going to reach the good
parts, like the reliability and the integrity. And I love you for
it, only we’ve never gotten close. Why is that? Sarah says you
often find it hard.”

“Oh, you and
Sarah, you both talk too much!”

“I’d like to
talk too much with you, honey, only you’ve never let me. I wish
you’d stop being so polite with me. If you’re mad at me or
impatient with me, I want to know!”

“I’ll try,”
Emma said. “I will.”

“Let me wash
out your cup,” Lainie said.

Emma gave it
to her. They started back along the corridor and saw Billy’s
ghost-like silhouette – the shuffly legs, the gown hanging from his
shoulders, the I.V. stand with its line snaking into his arm, and
his N.G. tube trailing in the breeze. They caught up to him in six
steps. “You woke up, Billy?” Emma said.

He nodded.

“You needed
the bathroom?”

Another
nod.

“Did you
unplug your I.V. by yourself?”

Head
shake.

“So you
pressed your buzzer for a nurse.”

Nod.

“I’m sorry I
wasn’t there.” In Emma’s head, the apology was abject and the sin
unforgivable. Again she’d failed him. When would she stop? The only
thing she could do for him was to keep him from knowing, keep
cheerful about it. So he’d had to call for a nurse? As Sarah had
said to her earlier, no big deal. No biggie.