All We Know of Heaven (22 page)

Until he could tell Maureen that they had to stop seeing each other—and he didn’t know if he would ever want to do that—he couldn’t hook up with anyone else.

They went out for two months. Eventually, Lindy sent him a note saying she was going to start seeing a guy Danny knew slightly, a senior who was going to Texas on a bas ketball ride. “Life’s short,” she wrote. “You’re one sexy guy, Dan. But I’m moving on, because I can tell when a guy

doesn’t have his mind on me.”

Danny didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved.

When Maureen didn’t hear from Danny, she didn’t know if she’d been dumped or was being mourned.

She was being mourned.

Danny tried hard not to think about her. Everything was easier when he didn’t. Lindy had been a major distraction. He could have fun, goof around, stare at girls, flirt, play ball, and play cowboy. When he was alone at night in his bed, though, he remembered Maureen’s sweet, pale body on the night of the prom, and those few other times when they’d really been together. It made him sick to think of her with someone else, now that he was over thinking no one else would want her. Evan was right. . . . It wasn’t a turnoff if you knew her.

Maureen lay awake and tried to picture Danny’s face just before he kissed her. She thought she would go out of what little mind she had left.

Jeannie could see that the progress Maury made was withering. The pain of continued loss was too much.

“It’s like I am being punished for living,” Maureen told Jeannie.

Jeannie held Maury against her shoulder. “I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear. This is the price you pay for living, Maury. Bridget got away easily. I don’t mean that her parents did. But you went on living with the suffering and loss; and she went on to our Lord, where there are no problems and memories of grief. Life is much

harder. You have to pray for the strength, because no one is going to give it to you on a plate.”

“I wish they would,” said Maury.

Jeannie didn’t answer. But she knew she had to get Maury out, back into the community so she could see that she wasn’t universally despised. She had to get her back into life without Danny’s arm to shield her. Jeannie and the rest of the O’Malleys weren’t about to give up Maureen’s progress to a depression. Without her, the O’Malleys held a family meeting when the boys were home from spring break.

It was Patrick who first drove Maureen to the community pool. Though she swam weekly against the current at the therapy pool, Maureen hadn’t been to the town pool, with its big roll-back top, since the summer before last. Patrick had to threaten to carry her into the building. The Bigelow swim team was practicing, and Maureen did not want them to see her.

“I am not walking out onto that deck with that cane,” Maureen told him. “I look like Queen Elizabeth. I’d rather crawl.”

“Then crawl,” he said. “You’re never going to build up that right leg unless you use it hard, Maury. I’m not saying you’ll be a ballerina. But you could lose that cane and just have a limp. And lots of people have a little limp.”

“I’m not going,” Maureen said. Patrick pulled open the passenger-side door before she could lock it and took hold of her wrist. Finally, he picked her up and brought her in side.

Maureen didn’t use her cane. Slowly, she all but slith ered out onto the deck, step after tentative step. And when she was no more than a foot from the protective support of the pool ladder, she slipped and fell flat on her rear end. The glare she sent Patrick was tipped with a thousand poi son arrows. He felt tears tickle his eyes as he looked away, determined, while Maury, in front of a dozen members of the boys’ swim team—one of whom had the class to actu ally snicker—slowly got up to her knees and slipped into the warm pool. It was all Patrick could do not to rush to her and pick her up. But he made her drag herself into the wa ter and use the paddleboard for a full half hour that night, until she was exhausted.

Within a few weeks she was doing the breaststroke— crookedly, but with all her might—and by the end of April, the sidestroke.

Soon Maury had real muscles—maybe not the rugged muscles of cheerleading, but real muscles, visible muscles. One night when Patrick had to pick up a few things at the grocery and had dropped her off at the pool, Maureen pulled herself out after her laps and met Miss Bliss, the chubby lunch lady she and Bridge had conned out of Girl

Scout cookies so long ago.

Miss Bliss was just about to get into the pool.

“I work here nights now, Maureen,” Miss Bliss said. “I work in the back office. But a couple times a week, I come out here and do water aerobics to get rid of some of this fat.” She slapped her big thigh. “The first time I had to

put on a bathing suit in front of Catherine Castellucci and some of my other neighbors, the lap swimmers, I wanted to die. But I had to, or die. You know, really die. Die young. Well, not young. But too young. And with a bad-looking body, too.”

Not understanding, Maureen smiled. “Did you lose weight?” she asked.

“Twenty-six pounds so far,” said Miss Bliss. “The thing is, I’ve been watching you, and here’s the thing, I thought I was brave. But you put me to shame.” She put her arms around Maureen and held her close. “Don’t think that there aren’t a lot of us in town just cheering for you.”

“Thank you,” Maureen said. “Miss Bliss, I feel like all everyone does is stare.”

“They stare because they can’t believe how much you can do. I promise. Not all of them are staring because they think you’re weird. And the ones who are, well, to heck with them, right?”

Maureen couldn’t really believe what Miss Bliss said, but she tried to.

Jeannie’s next task was to get Maureen a job. What could it be?

Maureen worked hours each night on homework she once breezed through. All she had time for afterward was piano practice and a round of phone calls before she crawled into bed exhausted. The things that had come eas ily to her brought her to tears when she simply could not remember how to do them—because she could remember

the feeling of knowing how to do them. All the adaptations in the world would never make Maureen the math student she had been. Nothing would ever let her hope to study it in college—if she ever got to college.

Jeannie and Bill talked it over.

“Why doesn’t she work at the country club on week ends?” Bill asked. “So many girls from the high school do.” “She can’t stand that long, Bill. And she’d have them out

of dinner plates after one sitting . . . wouldn’t she? We’ve replaced six sets of dishes since last year.”

Jeannie pondered.

Maureen needed something to do when she would oth erwise be thinking about Danny. Or cheerleading. When she would be thinking about what was lost for now, or what was lost forever. Molly still came; but as spring days grew longer, she came less often. Maureen’s friends were going to be seniors next year. They were all taking their ACTs. Those who had their eyes on the world outside Bigelow were starting to think about what they would do when they got there.

Jeannie worried that Maureen might never have such a life. Her daughter would certainly live on her own. She wasn’t stupid. But could she go to college? Her memory had come as far as the rehab specialists believed that it would. Only with her tutor was she pulling Bs and Cs. Unless she found a specialized field, or gave up the love she had for math and science for art, design, or something else she could do with computers (because computers would func

tion as her memory) she wouldn’t be able to hack it at UM or even the community college. Jeannie wanted her daugh ter to start focusing more on what was possible instead of dwelling on what was not.

Finally, when decorating the altar at Holy Mother of Sorrows for Easter, removing the dark altar clothes and solemn draperies of Lent and banking the sanctuary with decks of vanilla-colored lilies and pale irises, Jeannie spoke with Janet English, her old school friend, and Betsy Lemon, another member of the Altar Society.

Betsyoffered to line up a summer job for Maureen work ing with the older kids at Toddle Town, the preschool and summer day care. Jeannie didn’t think that Maury had the patience or the strength to run after the babies. But then Janet English suggested that Maury might work at her sis ter Ruth’s new bakery and craft shop, Crafty Crumpets. The grand opening was the Sunday after Easter.

“What if she spills something on somebody?” Jeannie asked Janet.

“We’ll put her behind the counter making the drinks and getting the bakery goods frosted,” Janet said. “It’ll be good for her hands, and she can sit on a stool when she gets tired.”

So, within weeks, Maury was spending all day Satur day and every other Friday night making quad, half-decaf, extra-tall, part-soy, no-foam gingerbread lattes with an extra cardboard sleeve. What her mother had hoped would help with her hand-eye coordination did even more: It

taught Maureen to use memory tricks, such as matching the drinks that the “regulars” ordered to their appearance. For example, the extra-tall, no-foam gingerbread man was extra tall himself. Soon she no longer came home with drink orders scribbled on her forearms like temporary tattoos.

On some Friday nights, there were musicians, whom Maureen loved. That night, Crumpets had what they called a coffeehouse.

Evan and his friends, among others, came in on those nights to watch and flirted mildly with Maureen in her red pants and polo with her red-striped apron. Maureen bit back the urge to ask how much Evan had heard from Danny. All she got were one-line emails, signed with love but telling her that writing more would make it worse be cause he missed her too much already. There’d been one awkward phone call on the night of his birthday.

Then one night Evan and Slade Dinerson came in with a portable keyboard and a guitar case. It was open mike night; and Evan and Slade came on next to last, before Mrs. Rottier sang some horrible song about vegetables from
The Fantasticks
. The guys sang a couple of old Woody Guthrie songs, including one about California nights and stars that Maureen loved. And then they played an Ian Tyson song that Judy Collins sang—one Maureen’s mother liked—about a young man who rode the rodeo. She caught herself sing ing along, “Someday soon, going with him . . .”

And she remembered how much she loved to sing, and about how silent her months had been since she and Dan

ny had sung along with the radio through the long summer nights with the stars dancing above them like fireflies on strings.

She remembered that there was a boy somewhere riding a horse, and that she still loved him. She was being true to him, too, not that anyone else had broken down the door to ask her out. Someday soon, going with him . . .

Thenexttimetherewasanopenmike, Maureenshocked Evan by slipping off her apron and joining him and Slade for the old Stevie Nicks song “Landslide.”

“I forgot that Danny told me you had pipes,” Evan said with a really sweet smile. He told her that they ought to be a trio. She could get a couple of black nightgowns and be the Stevie Nicks of Bigelow, Minnesota.

But Maureen reminded him that she was the “coffee” in “coffeehouse” at the Crumpet.

In Sky, Montana, Danny was seeing a lot of sky.

Naturally, as the new kid in a small school, he had been an object of considerable interest to girls after Lindy went her own way. He thought he was ripped from wrestling, but he found out what sore really was working nights and weekends on his uncle’s ranch. More and more, he was trying his best not to think of Lindy or Maureen or girls in general, not in that way. He was trying to be content to hang with groups of kids, and the occasional date he had was casual. One night as he was getting ready to meet a girl his cousin had fixed him up with, a text from Maury popped up on his phone, about singing at some café in town with

Slade Dinerson and Ev. Danny wanted to run every mile back to Bigelow. Then he thought that maybe he should grab this girl he was seeing tonight and send pictures to Maury of them making out.

She sounded so normal and breezy. She was so over him.

How could she be over him?

Danny rode. He cleaned tack and mucked the stalls and fed the freshening heifers. One night, he was with his un cle when twin calves were born—it was a miracle that both survived. That night Danny started to think his cousins had it made. They lived wild and free. Every corner of the ranch looked like some calendar picture, and it was all go ing to be theirs someday: His uncle had a good job down in Missoula, but he wanted to move his life to Sky forever once he got enough money. Year by year, he bought more land for the heifers. He had other plans, too. He wanted to raise horses, beautiful quarter horses like his big bay stal lion, Turk. Pictures of the house that his uncle and aunt were going to build on the south ridge, just under the brow, looked like some massive hotel for skiers.

And a lodge, his uncle said, might come next.

If it did, he might want a guy like Danny around.

Danny started to think that hotel management might be something to study. Music might be just a hobby, like his dad always said. In Sky he got grades like he never got back home—he guessed it was because there were no dis tractions—and slept hard every night. Some nights when

the sky was a riot of stars, he dreamed he might never go back. His cousins’ tales of fly-fishing in the canyons at sunset made him wonder if staying through the summer wouldn’t be so bad. Having his own horse, Soda Pop, to ride and herding the calves up to the spring pasture sure beat hauling sod for his dad and sucking up to the richies in The Corners while he planted their annuals and pulled their weeds. He missed his mom and Den and Dave; but he figured he would be leaving home in another year or so anyway, and this was what college would be like. He told his parents he’d like to spend the summer in Sky. To his sur prise—he knew his dad relied on him to work at the busi ness–they agreed.

Finally, it was June. The term ended in Montana before it did in Minnesota. It was time to go home to see his se nior teammates graduate.

He’d see Maureen.