Dreams for Stones (25 page)

My name is Bobby Kowalski. When I was
younger than I am now, I had a bad sickness. It was something
called men-in-jeans, and I almost died. I don’t remember any of
that. I just heard Mom telling the lady, who comes to help wash and
feed me, all about it. She said, “Oh the poor little man.”

I’m not a man. I’m a boy. So maybe someone
else had the men-in-jeans. Still, it is most odd that I can no
longer move my arms and legs or make a sound.

Kathy’s pen flew across the page, the words
flowing out of the tip as if on their own. She had no idea where
they were coming from; they were just there, one following the
other in a steady stream, as fast as she could write them down.

Not an answer to her question about Alan,
but a respite, because while she wrote, the unproductive spinning
of her thoughts had stopped.

“Kathy, I didn’t realize you were in here
working.” Mr. Costello stood in the doorway. “Came to catch the
light. Thought the missus forgot. We’re going up to bed. Don’t stay
up too late.”

“No, I won’t, Mr. C. Good night.”

Kathy looked back at the page, but the pen
remained quiescent in her hand, and her brain no longer teemed with
words straining to get out. She sighed, stood up, and carrying the
notebook, went to bed herself.

In the days that followed, she continued to
work on the Bobby story, and sometimes it felt like Emily was
sitting with her, reading over her shoulder and smiling.

Writing the story was giving Kathy a chance
to catch her emotional breath and to ignore her problems for a
time. It was an additional relief when Charles, caught up in his
latest case, was unable to make time to see her. He called daily,
but their conversations were brief, hurried affairs, always ending
with Charles promising to find time to get together soon. Kathy,
glad he was busy, didn’t push.

Occasionally, she had a day in which no new
ideas for the Bobby story came, but she felt no impatience when
that happened and no fear he had deserted her as Amanda had. When
it happened, she simply closed the notebook and went for a run.

Invariably, after a short break, a fresh
torrent of ideas was there to guide her the following evening.

A quiet pattern began to emerge from those
days—a mix of the hours at Calico and long runs in the late
afternoon, followed by evenings spent writing—all of it acting like
a gentle massage on her sore spirit, easing the tight painful knots
of loss.

She still had no answers to her Alan
dilemma, but it felt good to be able to stop searching for a
time.

Excerpt from the diaries of Emily Kowalski

1948

Jess finally finished his work for his PhD, and he is now a
full-time faculty member at Xavier.

The summer has gone by so swiftly. Already,
as I look out the window, I see leaves drifting down. By the pond
they have formed big heaps the goats run through in joyful abandon,
just like I think Bobby would if he could. Oh, there’s really no
sense writing, if I’m going to get all teary.

Bobby’s birthday. Today, he’s eighteen. Thirteen years since the
meningitis. This is the hardest day of the year for me. It is one
of the few times I can’t help thinking about what might have been
and grieve.

Bill told me the last time we were together that he felt good about
his life, because teaching made it possible for him to change for
the better the lives of so many children. It strikes me that Jess
and I have done the same. A procession of youngsters, Jess’s
students, have moved through our lives. Some needed extra tutoring,
some needed feeding up, and some just needed loving to alleviate
their homesickness.

A few of them have been in the war.
Sometimes I can tell because of the external wounds—a missing arm
or a limp—but mostly I can tell from their eyes. They have the same
pain and confusion I saw in Bill’s eyes when he returned from war
thirty years ago. I think they need to get used to feeling safe
again. The ones who have been in the war are especially gentle with
Bobby.

I enjoy the students, but Bobby is at the
center of my heart. His quiet spirit infuses this house, and he is
the one who has helped me find the courage to look for joy in my
life.

1953

As I start a new year, it has become my habit to put down where I
am with my life. As always, everything revolves around Bobby. I
lived thirty-five years up to the day Bobby got sick. Now Bobby is
twenty-three, and it has been eighteen years since that day.

In the beginning, I was so weighed down with
sorrow, I didn’t write anything at all, so the woman, who survived
those first months after Bobby came home from the hospital, is a
mystery to me.

I do remember that at first I was angry
about Bobby’s illness and what it did to him, to our family. Then
the anger faded, and I went numb. I was numb for a very long
time.

I don’t know what eventually convinced me to
live once more. I didn’t just get up one day and decide, today I
start living again, but I have come to realize that over a period
of time, I made many small choices that have had that effect.

I do know the music and the painting started
the process, and my love for Bobby and Jess helped, and it was hard
to mope surrounded by the menagerie Jess put together. Before he
stopped, we had Brad and the goats, ducks, and geese for the pond,
and cats, chickens, and guinea hens.

I take Bobby outside as much as possible and
let him interact with the animals while I paint. Two of the goats
and one of the cats seem to be his special friends, and they come
over to greet him whenever they see us.

Brad spends most of his day at Bobby’s side,
sleeping, with his gray muzzle resting up against Bobby’s chair.
Brad is getting old. I wonder what we will do when he dies. He and
Bobby are so attached to each other that the thought makes me very
afraid.

Still, that time has not yet come. And
meanwhile, by whatever means it’s happened, I do seem to have found
a way back to happiness—a very different happiness than I ever
envisioned, but happiness nonetheless.

I now believe that when something happens
that brings unimaginable pain, it is essential to stop feeling for
a time in order to survive.

Alan sat down at the computer a half dozen times before he finally
typed “Alaskan tidal flats” in the search field. He read through
the list that came up and decided on the Anchorage Daily News
website. Once there, he typed in “Turnagain Arm,” the name of the
inlet outside of Anchorage where Meg had died. That search brought
up the headlines and first two lines of a number of stories.

He worked his way through the list until he
found himself reading Meg’s name. He stared at the screen for a
long time before he followed the instructions to pay for a download
of the story and printed it out. Not yet ready to read it, he put
it away and went out to do chores.

The next morning, he got up at dawn, saddled
a sleepy Sonoro and calling softly to Cormac, rode out. By the time
he reached the lake, the sun was well up, and the dawn’s promise of
clear skies was fulfilled.

He dismounted and walked through crunchy
grass to the water’s edge where he picked up a small stone and
rolled it in his hand before tossing it into the water. He watched
the slow tide of ripples circle the splash until they reached the
shore by his feet with a tiny sibilance.

When the water stilled, he pulled the pages
he’d printed the day before out of his pocket, then sat on a
boulder near Sonoro, who was greedily cropping the dry grass.

The article, dated two days after Meg’s
death, described her accident and also reviewed a number of similar
incidents. A geologist from the University of Alaska was quoted as
saying the tidal flats of Turnagain Arm were treacherous because of
the unique nature of the silt washed down from the surrounding
glaciers. “The angular granules are surrounded by water in a
delicate balance. Pressure, as from someone walking, can disrupt
that balance, causing the granules to become more mobile, even
liquefied, for a moment. Then they reposition themselves and lock
together in a new, more compact structure, possibly trapping the
person whose footstep set off the chain of events.”

The article went on to discuss how
extraordinarily difficult it was to free such an individual, and
with forty-foot tides, victims had to be freed quickly.

Two of the rescues described in the article
were of locals, and the Alyeska fire chief was quoted as saying it
was past time for the public works department to post additional
warning signs along the Turnagain Arm road.

It meant the danger wasn’t well-known,
wasn’t something he’d missed through carelessness or
inattention.

It was what the rescuers had told him
afterward, but he’d been unable to believe it. He thought they were
trying to comfort him, when nothing could comfort him.

And now? Could he accept it now?

He re-read the first part of the article,
letting the words sink in and begin to overlay his previous
thinking. Choosing to accept those words, would change. . . what
exactly?

Guilt
. The thought gusted over him
like a quick, sharp breeze.

Guilt had been the underpinning of all his
thoughts about Meg’s death—the conviction that had he been more
observant, done something more, Meg wouldn’t have died.

Letting go of that. . .

He sat breathing slowly, staring at the
scene in front of him without seeing it.

After a time, he looked back down at the
pages and continued reading the discussion of rescue options that
had been considered before being rejected.

The first: using SCUBA gear to allow the
victim to continue breathing if rescuers couldn’t beat the tide.
Rejected, because unless the victim could also be kept warm, they
would quickly succumb to hypothermia in the frigid water.

But as the tide came in, one of the rescuers
had given Meg a length of hose. Alan had tried to believe it was
going to keep her alive. It didn’t, of course. But maybe it helped.
Maybe it gave her a feeling of control. To keep breathing until
hypothermia set in, or to drown. He didn’t know which he would
pick. Perhaps having the choice was the important part.

The second option that had been considered
and rejected was amputation of the trapped limb. Rejected because
of the remoteness of the rescue site, the difficulties inherent in
actually doing it, and the potential liability to the rescuer.

Both of Meg’s legs had been trapped to
mid-calf. He would have let them do it. Even that. Anything to save
her.

Cormac ambled over and put his head on
Alan’s knee. Absently, Alan stroked the dog’s smooth head and soft
ears as he continued to read.

The next part described his actions. The
account was provided by one Jim Little, the man who’d stopped to
help them. When Alan tried to climb down to where Meg was trapped,
Jim had grabbed him and told him not to be a fool. That he wouldn’t
be able to do any good, and he’d bollix things up if he got stuck
too.

Jim had been big enough, in spite of his
name, to make the order stick.

And Jim had been forced to intervene a
second time. When the water began to cover Meg, Alan had flung
himself toward her, not thinking, simply reacting to his need to
hold her, be with her. Jim had tackled him and pulled him back.

He remembered the taste of dirt in his
mouth, the pain in his ankle, the cut on his cheek. When he got
back to the hotel twelve hours after they’d left, he noticed for
the first time the front of his jacket was stained with mud, grass,
and blood.

How had he managed to forget all that?

As Angela stood to greet him, Alan thought what a close thing it
had been—his decision to return. And he’d made a further decision:
to continue the therapy through to the end.

“I looked at the information on tidal flats
as you suggested,” he said, after they were seated.

“Did it change your thinking in any
way?”

He frowned, staring at the Vasarely print.
“It says the danger isn’t well-known.” Something he’d been
repeating over and over to himself since reading it.

His feelings had not yet altered, but he
thought it was possible they eventually would.

Angela waited for a moment, but when he
didn’t add anything more, she said, “Tell me about Meg.”

He didn’t want to talk about Meg, but the
only way to avoid it was to walk out, and he’d promised himself he
wouldn’t do that.

“She was the best and bravest person I’ve
ever known.”

“What was something brave she did?”

They were eleven when he’d first known how
brave Meg was. “There was this bully. In grade school. He picked on
the little kids. Meg stood up to him.”

“What happened when she did that?”

“He pushed her over, kicked her.” It had
seemed to happen in slow motion. As Ted’s leg moved in an arc
toward Meg’s face, Alan had flung himself toward Meg, trying to
take the blow himself, fear and anger blanking his vision.

He’d only partially deflected the kick, but
he did manage to pull Ted to the ground. After that everything was
a blur of dust, sharp pains, deep aching blows, and low guttural
sounds. When Mr. Dodd ended it with a sharp blast of his whistle,
Alan was hanging onto one of Ted’s arms, and Meg was right there,
hanging onto the other.

“Did you get involved?” Angela asked,
speaking gently.

“Not soon enough.”

“Was Meg injured?”

“She ended up with a broken tooth and a
black eye.” He’d teased her that she looked like a pirate.

“What about you? Were you injured?”