Dreams for Stones (18 page)

But who will help me heal?

It was all I thought to ask for. That Bobby
would live. But nothing is the same.

Before the meningitis, the house was full of
sounds. Bobby’s feet running, Bobby banging my pots and pans, Bobby
chattering to himself like a squirrel in his own language,
occasionally surprising me with words in my language.

Now, I cannot tell if he understands me or,
indeed, if he feels anything. He lies so quietly, I can hear the
clock ticking in the other room.

I am suspended in time. Jess goes out into
the world each day and returns each night, but the boundaries of my
world are this house and yard. It’s as if Bobby and I are under a
spell and are waiting for a fairy godmother to touch us with her
magic wand so he will be able to run and talk, and I will be able
to feel once more.

“What do you think?” Charles asked. “We got a shot at the division
title this year?”

“Classic definition of ‘hopeful’ is a
baseball fan in the spring.” Alan hadn’t been in the mood for a
baseball game, but Charles had insisted.

“In other words?”

“Not a prayer.”

“That optimistic, huh?” Charles waved the
beer vendor over. “You ready for another?”

“No. I’m good.” Not true. Only eight days
since he learned he wasn’t getting tenure and four days since
Grace, Delia, and Kathy had failed to come for their weekly ride.
At first, he worried they had been in an accident, but the highway
patrol said there had been no accidents on any of the roads leading
to the ranch.

He’d called Grace, several times, but there
was no answer. He didn’t know what to think. Were they away, or
were they choosing not to speak to him?

He knew he’d handled the situation with
Kathy badly, but he hadn’t expected Grace to cut him off as well.
Delia loved the horses, so it was cruel of Grace to let his
problems with Kathy interfere with that. It really was taking
feminine solidarity entirely too far.

“You never mentioned what happened with your
tenure decision,” Charles said, paying the vendor and taking a sip
of his fresh beer.

It was a relief for Alan to change the
direction of his thoughts, even though this subject was almost as
painful. “Committee approved it. Hilstrom didn’t.”

“That’s a tie. What happens next?”

“College committee, Dean, provost, and the
board of trustees.” Alan took a sip of his beer. Finding it
lukewarm, he set it down.

Charles glanced at him. “Next time I’m
trying to teach a witness to answer just the question and not give
details, remind me to give you a call.”

“Everyone after Hilstrom is more for show,
not go. I’m out.”

There was a sudden flurry of activity as the
batter hit a high fly to left field. After the Rockies’ player
caught the ball, Charles sat back down. “You’re not going to fight
it?” he asked, picking up the thread of conversation along with his
beer.

Alan shrugged. “I followed your advice. Gave
the impression I might sue. Obviously, it didn’t work.”

Taking a sip of beer, Charles examined him.
“Hmph, how did I miss it? You’re not even trying to write anymore,
are you.” He set his beer down. “It’s Meg, isn’t it.”

“You think everything is Meg.” Alan looked
away, his gut tightening.

“Yeah. Matter of fact, I do.”

The sudden surge of anger shocked Alan. Then
the anger ebbed, as swiftly as it had come, leaving him exhausted.
“Could be you’re right.”

“Then do something, man. See a shrink. Talk
it out.” Charles sounded as ragged as Alan felt.

Alan closed his eyes and turned his head
away. Talk. Elaine had been pushing it as well. As if that were the
magic formula. But if they couldn’t understand how impossible it
was for him, there was no way he could explain.

Charles was silent for the rest of the
inning. Then he sat back, stretched slightly, and spoke without
looking at Alan. “You got a plan?”

“I still have a year. Contract runs through
next May.”

“You think they’ll change their minds?”

“Nope.”

“So, what happens next May?”

Unable to speak, Alan shrugged.

“And you don’t want to discuss it.”

“You got it.”

As always, Charles seemed to know when he’d
pushed far enough.

Alan had just walked into the house Saturday morning, filthy and
exhausted from spending the night with a colicky mare, when the
phone rang. He picked it up, and when he heard Kathy say hello, his
heart began to race.
Thank God
. It was going to be all
right, after all. They could work something out. Figure out how to
be friends again.

It took him a moment to sort out what she
was saying—not that she planned to come out for a ride or that she
wanted to see him. But that Delia was critically ill. In intensive
care at Children’s.

Dread hit his gut, nauseating him. He closed
his eyes, but the memories were still there. . . Delia holding out
her hand to give Arriba a carrot and giggling because it tickled;
hugging a new foal, so excited it bubbled out of her in laughter;
lying still as death, her smile erased, her voice stilled.

It can’t be real. I can’t bear it if it’s
real.

The phone beeped in his ear, demanding to be
hung up. He stared at it with no memory of the conversation after
Kathy’s first words. Had he even responded?

He fumbled with the phone, dropping it to
the floor. As he bent to pick it up, the nausea hit in earnest, and
he barely made it to the bathroom. Afterward, he sat on the floor,
his whole body shaking as if he were freezing, and with that cold
came the memory of the way he’d felt immediately after losing Meg.
He’d been nauseated then too. And in so much pain, he didn’t
believe he would survive it. Hadn’t wanted to survive it.

The memory of that day slipped back, as
insidious as a flame blackening the edges of a piece of paper
before becoming a conflagration. He had to stop it. Couldn’t go
through it again. He pushed the images and memories frantically
away, Meg somehow entangled with Delia.

Think of something, anything
. The
colicky mare, riding Sonoro, training a fractious foal. He focused
on the coolness of the tile, the smell of his clothes, the rasp of
his breath, the sour taste of vomit in his throat. Gradually, he
pulled himself back from the brink.

After a while, he forced himself to get up
and strip off his clothes. Then he stood under the hot shower until
the water ran cold, trying to wash it all away—the pain, the fear,
the helplessness.

Not succeeding.

When he got back to Denver after that weekend, Alan lay on his bed,
staring at Meg’s picture. Remembering the day he lost her.
Remembering his last sight of her, so unlike herself, so utterly
and emphatically still, the gold of her hair darkened. Remembering
how he vowed he would never let himself care enough for somebody to
hurt that way again.

But he’d screwed up. Twice over. And now,
thinking about Kathy and Delia, he felt. . . something he didn’t
want to name.

The memories of the past months, and the
sad, restless feelings they evoked, stuck like burrs he couldn’t
shake off. Kathy grinning at him after he spilled the beer.
Laughing as she missed a tennis ball. Standing in his mother’s
kitchen, her hair shining like the copper pans in the late
afternoon slant of sunlight.

He’d chosen loneliness over the possibility
of pain, yet pain had come anyway.

Elaine insisted talk would help. But most
women seemed willing to delve into their psyches with the abandon
of a flea-market treasure hunt. For him, it was the worst possible
trespass. Better to let the problem lie, walk around it, do
something physical in order to stop thinking about it. Not dredge
it up and examine it in minute detail. Examination only made it
that much more difficult to go on.

He stared at Meg’s picture, remembering the
trial and error that had taught him what worked best to keep the
memories locked up.

In the beginning he hadn’t been able to
manage it. Every waking hour, Meg’s absence was a heavy weight that
slowed and muted word and act.

Simple things, like cooking a meal,
answering the phone, shaving, took all his energy. If it hadn’t
been for Charles, he wouldn’t have made it. Charles, showing up at
random times, opening blinds, turning on lights, heating up soup
and watching him while he ate it. Charles insisting he go to a ball
game. Charles pushing back when Alan told him to get lost.

When the fall term at DSU had started, Alan
began teaching, emerging from his apartment as if from a long
convalescence. Gradually the students and the teaching began to
distract some of his thoughts. Weekends at the ranch with the
horses, his parents, Cormac helped as well. As did hard physical
labor. All of it more effective than talk.

But what about now? With Delia critically
ill, Kathy slipping beyond his reach, and his position at DSU
ending.

Was silence courage? Or cowardice?

Alan called the hospital at least twice a day. An impersonal voice
would say only that Delia Garibaldi was still in critical
condition.

He called Grace and Frank, but all he ever
got was an answering machine. He finally left a message, saying he
was thinking about them.

He knew where Grace and Frank were. With
Delia. And he could see them if he drove to the hospital and waited
outside the ICU until they came out. But what good would that do?
It wouldn’t help Delia. And Grace and Frank didn’t need the awkward
words he’d be able to string together.

Even as he made excuses, he knew they were
weak. Knew with the clarity of self-knowledge that was Meg’s best
and worst gift to him what the real problem was. He couldn’t face
either the reality of Delia’s sickness, or the possibility he might
run into Kathy at the hospital. Even though he missed Kathy and
wanted to see her. Wanted back what they’d had—that easy,
undemanding camaraderie. But that was something that was probably
no longer possible.

Best then not to see her at all.

Kathy, one kind of pain, Delia another. He
tried to pray for the little girl, but the part of him that
believed in a loving God had shattered when Meg died. In spite of
that, an incoherent, useless,
Please. Please don’t do this.
Please don’t let her die
, played continuously in his thoughts,
and accompanied everything he did.

He moved through the days automatically,
finishing up his classes for the year, relocating to the ranch for
the summer, cleaning stalls, exercising horses, readying equipment
for the summer trips to regional fairs.

And always it was right there, the fear that
the next time he called the hospital, the voice would say Delia had
died. Or maybe they wouldn’t even tell him that.

He carried that burden of worry and guilt
alone, knowing if he told his parents, it would put in motion a
persistent and unrelenting concern. Sickness, birth, death meant
food. The ranchers’ way. His mother would cook and insist he take
the food to the Garibaldis.

He shuddered, remembering the casseroles
covering the table and kitchen counters and filling every cubic
inch of refrigerator and freezer space after Meg’s death. He’d no
more been able to eat any of it than he could fly.

Eventually, he could take it no longer—the
Garibaldis’ silence and the refusal of the hospital to give him any
information. He drove back to Denver on a Monday morning,
determined to sit in the ICU waiting room, until someone told him
what was going on.

Alan startled to the feel of a hand on his shoulder. Frank. Looking
years older than the last time Alan saw him. The other man slumped
into the chair across from Alan.

“How. . . ” It was all Alan managed. His
throat was so dry the word came out parched and cracked.

“We turned the corner. Yesterday.”

“Thank God.”

“Yeah.” Frank looked at him with bloodshot
eyes. “How about a cup of coffee?”

“Sure. Good.”

The two of them went to the cafeteria, and
Alan sat, mostly silent, while Frank described what the previous
weeks had been like.

“Is there anything you need me to help you
with?”

Frank shook his head. “Mostly we’re living
at the hospital.”

“You’ll let me know when she’s well enough
for me to see her?”

“Probably won’t be for a while yet. Guess I
better get back.” Frank stood and extended his hand to Alan.
“Thanks for coming. That’s the important thing. To know you’re
thinking about us. Appreciate it.”

Alan accompanied his parents and four of the TapDancer horses to
the fair in Pueblo. After they arrived and settled the horses, they
went to dinner, and Alan, knowing he could no longer put it off,
told them he’d been denied tenure.

His mother, looking troubled, touched his
arm without speaking.

“Shows they don’t know a thing about how to
run that place.” His father’s voice was gruff. “Have you decided
what you’re going to do?”

“I’ll have next year to find another
position. Hopefully, I’ll find something in Denver or maybe the
Springs.”

“Oh.” His mother’s face clouded over in
sudden comprehension. “But that would be terrible, if you had to
move. We love having you at the ranch so much.”

“More than love having you. You’re a big
help.” His father cleared his throat. “Matter of fact, we could use
you full-time, if you’ve got any interest.” He held up a hand to
stop Alan’s response. “Nope. Don’t want an answer now. You got a
year to think. Just let me know.”

“Thanks.” The word was raspy and uneven, and
it wasn’t enough, but it was all he could manage.