Five Days Left (24 page)

“I’d visit ya there.”

She put a hand on his cheek. “I wouldn’t want you to.”

“Yuh, I guess I knew that. Don’t want anyone seein’ ya . . . like that.”

“Don’t want to be like that. All those people doing all the things I should be doing for myself? Feeding me? Brushing my hair? Giving me a bath?” She shuddered. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Not ta pry, but I gotta say. You’ve relaxed so much around me, don’tcha think? And in a couple days only. Lettin’ me help ya into the car, lettin’ me get yer wallet that one day? And today . . . with the, ya know . . . dishes. Don’tcha think ya could keep doin’ that, a little more at a time, until it didn’t bother ya so much for other people ta do that stuff for ya? Yer parents even? Yer husband? People at a . . . nursin’ home?”

“Honestly, Harry, I think you must have some kind of super power. I’ve been thinking that exact thing, how being around you this week has . . . changed me so much. But I’m not sure it’s enough. I’m afraid what you’ve seen may be about the limit of what I can allow.”

“Too old a dog for those kinda new tricks?” he asked.

She smiled. “Something like that.”

“Right.”

“So let me ask you a question,” she said. “You know, to even the score a little.”

He laughed. “Fair enough.”

“What about writing Caroline a letter, letting her know how you feel? How sorry you are, how badly you want to make things up to her. I’m not sure someone in her position will reach out to you first, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to hear from you. She may be waiting for you to make the first move.”

“Yuh, I’ve thoughta that. Even tried writin’ a time or two, but ended up tearin’ up the pages. I ain’t got yer gift for words, not that it ain’t obvious by now. My heart knows what I wanna say but my head can’t order the words right.”

“I see. If you could write a letter, would you say anything more to her than what you told me in the car?”

He thought for a second. “Nope. I think what I told ya about sums it up. Not a lot ta say other than I messed up and I’m sorry and I’d love ta see her if she’d let me. Love ta make it up ta her if she’d give me another chance. I mean, I’d say it in a longer, better way than that if I could. But that’s the basic message.”

They stood quietly for a few minutes, and then Harry spoke. “So when ya called me on Tuesday, ya said ya needed someone for the week. And now the week’s over. But you’ll still call me, whenever ya need me.” He said the last part as more of a command than a question.

“I will,” she said. “In fact, I have a few errands to run tomorrow, and then a lunch date with my girlfriends, while Tom’s at ballet with Laks. I usually take her, but . . .”

“So you’ll do errands instead,” he said. “With me. And then I’ll take ya to yer lunch.”

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. Before she could react, he turned and headed down the walk, sticking an arm up in a high salute as he went.

Scott

Having Scott, Laurie and Bray come to his school in the middle of the day couldn’t mean anything good. Curtis’s lips were quivering before he even got the words out.

“What’s wrong?”

He folded to the hallway floor in a crumpled heap of limbs and tears when he heard the answer.

LaDania hadn’t been a great mother. She left Curtis with Bray more often than she should have. She let him go hungry, dirty. She sold half the contents of his home to support her on-again, off-again habit. She had only responded to a fraction of the letters and artwork he sent her in jail, her responses not usually longer than one or two sentences. But she was his mother. And he had been counting on her to keep herself together, for his sake.

When he finally stopped crying long enough to look up at them, Bray held his arms out. But Curtis reached up to Scott, who lifted him into his arms and held him, Curtis clinging around Scott’s neck as though he were drowning and Scott was a life buoy. Scott looked at Bray apologetically and started to hand Curtis to him, but Bray shook his head. “He counts on you more than anyone,” Bray said quietly. “You should feel good about that, not bad.”

At home, Curtis lay on the family room couch in the fetal position, a throw pillow clutched tightly to his chest. Bray sat beside him, murmuring to him softly and stroking his head. After a while, the little boy edged his way closer to the big one until his small head was on his brother’s legs. When Scott went in to tell them dinner was ready, the boy’s entire body was curled in Bray’s lap. He was facing Bray now and had his arms wrapped around his waist.

“Do you want to?” Bray asked him.

The small head lifted, moved from side to side, then lowered.

Bray looked up at Scott helplessly and shrugged. “Think we’ll sit here a while longer, Coach, if that’s okay with you.”

“No problem.”

They were still in the same position an hour later, when Scott and Laurie had finished dinner and cleaned up.

“You’ve gotta be starved,” Scott said to Bray.

Bray nodded, then gestured to his lap and shrugged.

“Curtis,” Scott said, “what do you say we get you to bed? I’ll take you up—unless you want your brother.”

Wordlessly, Curtis slid off the couch and went to Scott, a hand out. “No
Stuart
tonight,” he said.

“No,” Scott said, squeezing the small hand. “This isn’t a night for
Stuart
, is it?” Looking at Bray, he said, “Laurie put a plate for you in the fridge. Help yourself.”

“Should I come upstairs after? You know, to check on him?”

Scott looked at Curtis, who was listing a little as he stood, his eyelids half closed with exhaustion. He reached down and lifted the boy into his arms. “Don’t think there’ll be anyone awake for you to check on.”

Upstairs, Scott found an old T-shirt for Curtis to wear to bed and got him settled under the covers. Being tucked in seemed to rouse the boy a little and he started to sob big, gasping sobs that shook his entire body. Scott felt his own tears start to come and he stretched himself out on the bed, wrapping his arms tightly around the heaving little body. This was
not how he’d imagined his first reunion with the boy would go. “I know, Little Man,” he whispered. “I know. It’s a raw deal. I’m so sorry.”

He stayed long after the boy’s sobs gave way to rhythmic breathing and the sky through the windows turned from the light bluish gray of early evening to darker gray and then finally to the deep black of nighttime. A little after ten, Laurie peeked in on her way to bed and said she had set Bray up to sleep on the family room couch. “I wish we had one of the other spare rooms set up for him to stay in,” she said. “He’s about three feet longer than the couch.”

But they had put off outfitting the other upstairs rooms with beds in an effort to spare their limited decorating funds for the rooms they had a regular use for.

“He’s fine,” Scott told her. “I’ve offered to get one of those blow-up mattresses for him a million times and he always says he’d rather be on the couch. I think he likes being near all the action.”

After twelve lonely years living with an often-gone mother, followed by another six with a brother who needed comfort more than he provided, Bray seemed to migrate toward people. He had laughed at Scott and Pete’s suggestion that he live in a private dorm at Michigan so he could focus on schoolwork when he wasn’t on the court. “I feel better in a crowd,” he told them, and accepted the invitation to live in tight quarters with a handful of teammates who went everywhere he did, and not quietly.

Life in LaDania’s old apartment, with no one but a child for company, would kill him. Long fingers of dread spread through Scott’s chest.

“Come to bed,” his wife said gently.

He raised himself to sitting and stole another glance at the sleeping boy. He was about to stand when Curtis flinched suddenly and let out a small whimper.

“He’s only dreaming,” Laurie said.

But Scott had already lain down again, edging his body close to the
boy and draping an arm around him. “I know. But I’ll stay a few more minutes. Just in case.”

Later, Scott eased himself into bed beside his sleeping wife. He turned onto his stomach, head in his arms. Lying motionless in the quiet darkness, he became acutely aware that the hard knot of tension that had formed in the bottom of his stomach earlier in the day hadn’t gone away. Neither had the dull throbbing below his skull. He had taken something for his headache after dinner, but it hadn’t worked. And the glass of scotch Laurie had poured for him hadn’t untied the knot.

He tried taking deep breaths, but it didn’t help and he wondered if the knot in his stomach, the throbbing in his head, would ever go away. He felt Laurie shift beside him, and a second later her warm hand was on the back of his neck, her thumb and fingers massaging below his skull in exactly the right spot. He closed his eyes and tried to let the gentle pressure lull him to sleep, or at least relieve the tension in his neck.

Neither happened, and finally he turned to face her. “I can’t stand this.”

She moved her head closer until they were sharing his pillow, their foreheads almost touching. She stroked his cheek. “I know.” Her voice was low, soothing.

“He has no idea what he’s getting himself into.”

“I’d give him more credit than that.” Her thumb rubbed his temple. “You promised you’d support him.”

“But this is crazy. How do I stand by and let him do this when it’s so crazy?”

“I don’t know that you have a choice. Not if you want to keep them in our lives. If you’re planning on telling him every time you see him that what he’s doing is crazy, he’s not going to come around much.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he said. He took a breath and asked himself if he should go on. But if not now, when? “I meant . . . what if . . . we stop it from happening in the first place?”

She drew her hand away. “What do you mean?”

But he could hear the strain in her voice, and her eyes were suddenly flitting everywhere.

“I mean, maybe we should offer to keep him?”

She rolled onto her back, letting out a long breath, and stared at the ceiling. He reached for her hand but she folded her arms across her chest and tucked her hands underneath, out of his reach. “Offer to keep Curtis,” she said.

Propping himself on an elbow, he tried meeting her gaze but she took another long breath and tilted her face away from his, toward the bathroom door. The skin around her mouth was taut; it wasn’t a good sign, he knew, and he prepared himself for a lecture on all the reasons he was wrong to ask this of her, after everything. But when she turned to face him again, her mouth was soft. For a second, he thought she was going to say yes.

“Don’t you think it’s a little, I don’t know, insulting?” she asked. “For you to suggest he’s not capable, so we need to do this for him?”

“It’s not about him being capable. It’s not about him at all. I’d say the same thing to anyone his age. He’s twenty years old. How can he raise a kid? He’s only a kid himself.”

“He’s not, though. He’s a twenty-year-old man. People become parents at that age all the time. Kids you know—friends of his—already have kids. Do you want to tell him he can’t handle what they’re doing? After he asked you to stop challenging him and stand behind him?”

She had a point. He couldn’t sweep in, cape flying behind him, and rescue someone who didn’t want to be rescued. He flopped onto his back, and now it was his wife who propped herself on an elbow, leaning over him. She kissed his temple. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I’m only saying you promised him you’d do it.”

“What about his future?” he said. “His degree, the draft. Everything.”

“This is his future,” she said. “This is what he wants.”

“But—”

“He asked for your support, Scott. You promised to give it.”

He felt her shift beside him, edging closer, pressing against him. She put a hand on his chest and moved it in slow circles and her touch calmed him a little. But after a while, the hand on his chest slowed, then stopped, and her breathing grew deep and steady. He lay still for a few minutes more, talking himself into falling asleep. It didn’t work and he lifted himself out of bed, crept into the hall and eased the bedroom door closed behind him.

Mara

Mara’s parents appeared at the front door minutes before Laks’s afternoon bus was scheduled to arrive. A pale yellow silk dress for her mother today, light green shirt with pale yellow stripes for her father. Phone against her ear, Mara smiled and gestured for them to come in, raising an index finger to tell them she’d only be another second. She was in the middle of convincing the second of her two best friends that she didn’t need a ride to the restaurant the next day.

“Yes, Gina, I’m positive. Like I told Steph, I’ve got some errands downtown and I’d rather get them done and not have to go out again. I’ve already arranged for the cab. He’ll drop me at the restaurant and come back and get me after . . . Yes, the same guy . . . Yes, I am, a torrid affair in the back of the car. Look, my parents are here. Can we talk tomorrow? . . . Great, see you then. Love you, too.”

It wasn’t until she’d hung up the phone and started in on an apology to her parents that she realized only her mother had walked inside. She poked her head out. “Dad? You coming?”

“Why don’t we let your father wait for Lakshmi while you and I put these things away?” Neerja held up another Agarwal’s bag.

“Did Tom ask you to come?” Mara directed her question at her father, knowing her mother would never confess.

“I’m going to pull up a few weeds while I wait,” he said, walking away. “You know how I can’t stand to sit here with nothing to do.”

“I’m going to wring his neck when he gets home,” Mara said. “I don’t need him arranging things for me like this. Interfering. Protecting me.”

But it hit her: she wasn’t the one he was trying to protect. It was Laks who said she didn’t want her mother outside the house.

“What’s that?” Neerja asked.

“Nothing, it’s fine. It was a misunderstanding.” Her mother of all people would never understand, she thought, frowning. And then she caught herself—no more than forty-eight hours ago she had chastised herself for unfairly criticizing her parents and here she was, doing it again. She turned to her mother and put a hand on her arm. “Stay for dinner.”

Neerja clapped her hands, holding them under her chin. “We’d love to!”

Soon, Laks arrived home and cajoled her grandfather into pushing her on the swing set in the backyard. “Mama does a big push for every year I am,” she told him as she led him by the hand out the back door. “That’s five big pushes. I’m lucky, because Susan’s mom won’t even do one anymore. She says it’s too much work, and sometimes Susan smacks right into her when the swing comes back, and her mom doesn’t like that.” Mara heard her father tsking about Susan’s misfortune in having such a mother, and promising he wouldn’t hear of his granddaughter suffering such an injustice.

She watched them through the sliding glass door for a few minutes and when she turned away, she found her mother in the family room, examining a photo on the wall: the five of them, last Halloween. Laks was dressed like the Tin Man because Tom had been in charge of the costume, and he was in the garage one day, putting gas in the lawn mower through a funnel, when Laks asked what she should dress up as. He spray-painted the funnel silver, and he and Pori spent an hour wrapping the girl in foil on Halloween night, then rewrapping her each time she bent a limb and ripped their handiwork. They finally deemed her
costume good enough to head outside, but even then, they sent the women a few paces in front while they followed behind, each carrying a roll of foil and carefully examining the child after every step. She spent more time being repaired than asking for candy.

When Neerja realized she was being watched, she swung her head away from the picture and made a very poor effort at wiping her eyes without detection. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just a sentimental old woman.” She laughed. “It’s just seeing that girl in her costume—”

“It’s not that, and we both know it.” Mara crossed to her mother, hugged her. “You get to be upset, Mom. And you get to be upset in front of me.”

Her mother didn’t respond and Mara led her to the couch. When they were seated, she took her mother’s wrinkled hand in hers, turning it over and running her fingers along the older woman’s veins, as she used to do as a child. “I know what we should do. Come with me.” She led Neerja to the guest room and pointed to the narrow bookshelf in the closet that held the family photo albums. Neerja clapped her hands and reached for the five thick albums on the top shelf, carrying four of them back to the family room while Mara trailed behind her with the last one.

They sat on the couch and Mara indicated the stack of albums on the coffee table in front of them. “The complete life of Mara Nichols, volumes one through five, ages three months through forty-two years.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Neerja asked, a hand on Mara’s knee.

Laks had asked about looking through the albums recently and Mara declined. When Laks pushed, Neerja ushered her away, distracting her with toys in her room. “I understand, Beti,” Neerja told Mara later. Mara nodded, and they said nothing more about it.

It was too painful to watch herself growing up on Kodak paper, knowing what was waiting for the girl blowing out the candles, opening
her presents, graduating from college, walking down the aisle, making law review, making partner. Knowing that in each moment, the girl wasn’t enjoying the occasion as much as she might have had she realized how finite the cakes and ceremonies and celebrations would be. Instead, she was thinking ahead to the next big goal, telling herself she was one step closer, telling herself not to bask too long in the moment but push harder. If she’d had some warning . . .

Mara shook the thought away, put her hand on her mother’s and nodded toward the stack. “In order, or random?” she asked, reaching toward the books. “In order, I think.” She took Volume 1 from the pile as Neerja laughed. Mara joined her. As if random had been a legitimate option for Mara.

They had made it to her junior high prom when Tom came home. He took one look at the weeping pair on the couch and said, “Not sure any man is safe in here.” He bent to kiss them both, then spotted his father-in-law and daughter in the backyard, took two beers out of the fridge and escaped out the door to join them.

By the time they were into her McGill days, he was back inside, asking about dinner. “Laks says your parents are staying, which is wonderful. Want me to just come up with something, or do you two ladies have a plan?”

Mara and Neerja stared blankly at him before Neerja blew her nose and Mara wiped her eyes.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll grill some chicken.” After rooting in the freezer and fridge for a minute, he left again, with an armful of white packages from the butcher and bottles of marinade. “I suggest we take our time out here,” Mara heard him say before the glass door sealed off his voice.

“So many memories,” Neerja said, smiling through her tears. She took a fresh tissue and wiped her nose again.

Mara considered all they’d seen—trips to the Rockies, the Maritimes, the Grand Canyon. Birthday cakes in the shape of castles,
dragons, books. New bikes, roller skates, record players. Sleepovers with ten or more giggling girls in their small Montreal living room. “Did you and Dad get any sleep those nights?” she asked her mother.

“Not one minute,” her mother confessed. Yet they’d allowed her to do it countless times, from sixth grade through twelfth.

“You’ve done so much for me, you and Dad,” Mara said, taking her mother’s hand again. “Without a thought about yourselves. You’ve put me first since the day you brought me home from Hyderabad. Before then, even. Since the day you decided to go rescue me.”

“It’s nothing, for someone you love.”

“It’s everything, Mom. I’ve had a lovely, lovely life because of the two of you. How can I ever thank you for everything you’ve given me? Everything you’ve done for me? And now for Tom and Laks, too?”

“You just did.”

“No. I mean
really
thank you. How can I
really
thank you for all of that? How can I
really
show you how much you mean to me, how much I love you, how lucky I feel to be your daughter?”

“I don’t need
really
. I need this.” Neerja patted Mara’s leg, which was pressed against her mother’s, then nodded toward the albums. “Only this.” She tilted her head and rested it on Mara’s shoulder, and in that moment Mara felt like something between them opened up. For her entire life, her mother had looked after her. Even more since the diagnosis. Never once had her mother revealed uncertainty or anxiety about any aspect of parenthood.

Neerja had cried about the diagnosis, of course, but other than that, she’d never shown fear or vulnerability or weakness where her daughter was concerned. She had been Mara’s capable, self-assured mother. She had everything under control at all times, including her emotions, because she never wanted her daughter to worry about her. And here she sat, head on her daughter’s comforting shoulder while she allowed her own to quake with noiseless sobs. Allowed Mara to put an arm around
her, pull her close and say, “I know. It’s okay. I’m right here. Let it out,” as she had done for Mara so many times.

Mara kissed her mother’s soft, dark hair before tucking it behind her ear the way she did for Laks each morning. “I love you.” She spoke into the top of her mother’s head, where her lips remained. “I love you.”

They sat that way, while outside, on the other side of the glass doors, Tom marinated and grilled the chicken and Pori pushed Laks on the swing, then watched her show off her “spider guy” method of climbing up the slide. They sat that way while Laks climbed the monkey bars and called to her father and grandfather, who sat in lawn chairs, lazily sipping their bottles of beer. They sat that way until the sliding glass doors finally whooshed open and a “starvingsostarvingsostarving” Laks raced through to her bathroom to wash her hands for dinner, calling as she ran that she’d decided on the pink plate and the yellow cup, please.

“Photo albums!” Pori leaned over to flip one open. “I haven’t seen these pictures in years.” He turned hopefully to the women on the couch, widening his eyes in surprise when he realized they were both crying.

“Not tonight,” Neerja said, sniffling. “We’ve just been through them all, and you know it’s not Mara’s favorite thing. Wait for another time, Puppa.”

Mara kissed her mother again, then gently nudged her a few inches to the left to make room on her right. She smiled at her father, patted the space beside her and reached for the first album.