Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel (44 page)

Most people are surprised that I am a clinical psychologist who has such a strong interest in the esoteric world
and
a belief in God. “But what about all those awful things religion has caused?” they’ll ask as if I have all the answers to everything. For me, my belief in God is separate to “the church” and to “religion.” Separate to all the “my god is better than your god” stuff that happens in the world.

My belief in God is personal, I do not need to browbeat anyone into agreeing with me, because I believe what I believe and I try to live by it. My belief in God is about trying to be the best person I can be in this life, and knowing that in the next life, whether it is as a reincarnated soul on earth or as myself in heaven, I will see the people I love again. That’s what life and the afterlife is all about for me: it is about being with the people I love.

I need to start praying.

I stand in the very corner of the room, watching them work on my son, trying to get him back, trying to stabilize him, and I know, in my soul, that I need to start praying. To ask for what is best for him at this critical moment and to ask for him to be looked after if what is best is for him to leave.

I need to start praying for the little boy who was never meant to be mine. Who I was blessed with for nearly eight years. I shouldn’t have had him for even one day, but I got him for more than seven years. It isn’t enough. It isn’t nearly enough. I am being robbed.

I need to start praying.

But I can’t.

I’m not ready.

I probably never will be.

It can’t be now, though. Please not now.

I close my eyes, feel the storm around me: the noises from the machines; the shouted instructions with words I recognize from journals but do not understand; the professional, controlled panic. It feels like it has been going on for hours. It’s probably only been ten minutes, but every one of those minutes feels like long, protracted hours. Where they cannot get him back. Where he is gone for real and they cannot bring him back and keep him here.

The stillness at the center of the storm is Leo. “
I’m ready to go, Mum
,” I hear him say.

That is what the dreams have been trying to tell me; that is what my mind has been trying to tell me with the dreams: what is best for Leo is not going to be what is best for me. I may be keeping him here, by clinging on so tight because it’s what I want, but it is not what he needs. I may need to let him go and
see if he still stays. But letting go is too much to ask of me right now. I need more time.

Please.
That is my prayer.
I need more time. Not even a forever, just more time.

I open my eyes because all is still again, there is the forced hush of inactivity. The doctors and nurses have stopped, they are waiting. Waiting to see.

Bleep-bleep-bleep
, go the machines.
Bleep-bleep-bleep.

Counting out his heartbeats. Counting out the time.

When I was about twelve, I said to Mal and Cordy wasn’t it weird that your heart was only going to beat a certain number of times and then you would die. And no one knew how many times your heart would beat before that happened. Mal nodded and agreed it was weird, Cordy burst into tears and ran to tell on me because she thought I was saying “you” to her and was saying that her heart was going to stop beating.

I watch the lines on the monitor tell the world that my son’s heart is still beating, that he hasn’t reached the final number, yet.

When I look away from the monitor, from the jumpy, glorious lines that say he is still here, there are only four of us left in the room: Leo, Keith, me and the doctor with the young face and old soul in his eyes.

He stares at me across the bed, I stare back at him. We’re back to being two intimate strangers locked in visual combat.

I know he’s going to do it again, he’s going to say something I don’t want to hear.

He knows I’m going to tell him he’s wrong. Only this time, he’ll sound a little more certain, I’ll sound a little less convincing. And only Leo will be able to tell us who’s right.

“Dr. Kumalisi,” he begins.

I hate you
, I think at him across the sleeping form of my son.
It’s not often I can hate a person, but I hate you.

K
eith thinks I should call my family, even though it is late now, and tell them what the doctor said.

We are standing in the corner of the hospital room, fighting in whispers about it.

By not calling them, he thinks I am lying
again.
My husband thinks I am a liar because I choose to not say things. He’s probably technically right about that, but I never omit things for personal gain. If I do not tell something, it is to protect someone else. But for Keith, lying is lying, no matter what your motivations. This is where his view of the world—that wrong is wrong and right is right and there is no middle ground—differs from mine. This is where his view of the world, which gives him such strength of character and conviction in everything he does, creates a gnawing irritation that reminds me why Keith sometimes pisses me off.

“You have to tell them.”

“You want me to get on the phone right now, and tell a group of half-asleep, already upset people what the doctor said? That the coma is so deep now that he’ll never wake up? That we’re looking at forty-eight hours at the most? I’m supposed to do that to the people I love?”

“It’s the truth,” he states.

“Yeah, well, fuck the truth.”

“Nice,” he replies, the word double-dipped in disdain and disgust.

“Forty-eight hours, Keith, yeah?”

He nods, reluctantly, looking down upon me from his high horse, letting me know I’m honored that he has even bothered to acknowledge me now that I have stooped to swearing in the same room as my son about something so fundamental and pure.

“How do I want them to spend the next forty-eight hours? Crying, grieving, wishing there was something they could do but feeling powerless? Or full of hope? Thinking that it’s possible for things to be OK? And how do I want them to spend tomorrow, probably their last day with him? Sitting around here, crying and talking quietly, bringing gloom and sorrow in here? Or chatting and playing and reading and crocheting like it’s just another day in this bizarre situation?” I pause, then add, “And am I supposed to allow all that anguish to surround Leo, before it’s necessary?”

Mr. Truth says nothing. He knows I’m right, but like me, he’d rather have his nipples removed than admit it straightaway.

“No one is going to say goodbye before they absolutely have to. I want them to look back on the last day and think of it with happiness, not sorrow. I’ll tell everyone Monday morning and they can all go in one at a time and say goodbye.”

“You’re going to have to lie again about when you found out,” Keith says, which means he definitely knows I’m right about this.

I glare at him in the gloom of the room. “It’s a really good thing I love you, because I fucking hate you sometimes,” I tell him.

“And I sometimes wonder with the way you can hide things, if I know you at all,” he replies, to get the final word.

“Well, we’re even then,” I add, to usurp him, and march across the room before he can say anything else and sit down in his chair just to further needle him.

“You know what, Leo,” Keith says to our son as he sits in my seat, “you’ve got a really silly mummy.”

I pick up Leo’s hand, imagining how he’d roll his eyes at how childish we’re being, even at a time like this. “You’ve always known how ‘difficult’ your dad is, haven’t you, sweetheart? Well, he’s being really very difficult today. I think I might ban him from the PlayStation.”

Keith jerks his head around to me with such horror on his face, and a protest on his lips, I actually laugh at him. It is such a Leo expression of injustice. Keith starts laughing, too, at his reaction. We keep on laughing until Keith’s laugh becomes breathy and hiccupy, and light from outside the room catches the tears on his face.

As his hiccupy laughter subsides, he gets up and stumbles over the chair as he leaves the room.

I keep laughing, long after he has gone to find a quiet corner where he can cry in peace and solitude, where he can stop being a big strong man with principles and a failing marriage and just cry his heart out.

I keep laughing because once I stop, the only sound I’ll hear is the bleeping machine, counting down the heartbeats Leo has left.

A
ll I can do is wait.

Smoke and wait.

Mal accepted my apology by dismissing how I had been on the phone and saying he was sorry, and that he missed me. He is going to call when there is any news.

All I can do now is wait. And smoke. And hope that it’s going to turn out all right.

I
’ve had that song, “Perfect Day,” lodged in my head since this morning.

It’s all rather corny, really, hearing that on loop and watching all the important people in Leo’s life gathering round his hospital bed, carrying on as normal.

Mum has been crocheting and trying not to tell Cordy how to mother Randle and Ria—Mum thinks they’re a little bit on the spoiled side, and she should know since she’s done a hefty amount of the overindulging.

Dad has been completing the stack of
Times
crosswords he has brought with him in between beating Mal at cards. Every hand Mal loses he puts a look on his face that says he’s let Dad win, but we all know it’s not true. Aunt Mer, Keith and I have been taking it in turns to read aloud; there aren’t that many chapters left and Keith and I both know that we’ve got to get it finished today.

Randle and Ria have been remarkably well behaved, and have been either rapt listening to the story or playing with the array of toys on the floor, with Amy and Trudy, who have focused on the children all day.

Cordy has been tormenting her Jack. She has been sending him out on missions to find things she doesn’t want—like a stick of Brighton candy that doesn’t have writing imprinted all
the way through. Whenever he thinks of protesting, she raises an eyebrow, slides her gaze threateningly over to Mal, her big brother—Jack is usually on his way in minutes, sometimes taking a child with him. He came back in the afternoon with pizza for everyone.

In many ways it is a perfect day. Yes, we’re all crammed into a small hospital room, yes, the nurses and doctors all disapprove, and yes, Leo, the focus of attention, is deeply asleep, but it’s as close to perfect as we’re ever going to get again.

When they look back, I hope they remember this as a happy day. And I want Leo to hear his family around him, being themselves, being exactly as they always were.

The song is still playing in my head as they all start to drift away, back to another evening before they come back again and do it all again tomorrow.

The song is still playing as I turn to Keith, now we are alone. “Do you mind staying here while I go away for a few hours?”

He lays the book facedown on his lap. “It was a good day,” he says. He grins at me like he did the first time I asked him about a job in the bar in Oxford. “
I thought you would be my undoing from the moment you spoke to me
,” he said in his speech at our wedding. “
And I smiled because I thought there couldn’t be many better ways to become undone.
”

“Yeah, it was,” I say, smiling back.
Such a perfect day.

“You were right, we all deserved it. It’s just what we needed.”

“Did you just say I was right? Pass me the phone, I need to call hell to tell them to expect cold weather.”

“Don’t bother, hell isn’t going to freeze over until you’ve said I’m right about something,” he says with a laugh. “Sleep?”

“Sorry?”

“Are you going to sleep?”

“No. I need to get some stuff from home for Leo. Walk around. Find a way to empty my head. I’ll come back later and you can go home and sleep till morning. I’ll do the night shift.”

“Yeah, sure, anything you want.”

I slip on my denim jacket, hook my bag onto my shoulder and then go to him, sitting so tall and upright in his chair. I pour myself into his lap and loop my arms around his neck.

He stares at me, a little confused. I take the time to enjoy his face: his big, black-brown eyes, his wide, flat nose, his full lips, his smooth, mahogany-brown skin, and the wonderful, perfect lines that make up his face and shaved head.

The wide spaces between the small moments of great irritation are filled with such an overwhelming love for him. And that’s why I can be irritated with him: I know that at the end of it, I’ll still always love him.

I close my eyes and wait for the gentle press of his lips on mine. When he kisses me, it’s as simple as falling through time. This is how it’s always felt to kiss him. Easy, uncomplicated, honest. His tongue finds mine and I know the exact moment he closes his eyes and drops himself completely into the kiss.

We used to kiss for hours. Just kiss. Lie together on the sofa in my flat in London, kissing and luxuriating in it.

I’d love to do that now. To spend the next few hours kissing and kissing him, but we can’t.
Then
it was a wonderful way to spend our time together; now we both know the longer we kiss, the further apart we’ll feel once we stop.

W
hen he opens the door to his hotel, he knows. Mal knows why I have come to him. He knows what it means.

But he’s known all day. He caught my eye once and held my gaze for a few seconds before looking away, and then avoided looking directly at me all day. Out of everyone, he worked it out.

I need to forget. He offered me a way before and I need it now.

He stands aside to let me in, clutching the doorframe momentarily for support and briefly closing his eyes as he does so.

The room is large, larger than I expected. The double bed is neatly made and he’s obviously been sitting in the armchair, watching television with the sound turned down because the subtitles are crawling up onto the screen one at a time. His mobile and BlackBerry are on the desk, both flashing with unread messages. As the door clicks shut, I stop examining his room and turn to face him. My arms are wrapped around myself, my bag hanging off my shoulder, my hair probably blown wild by the wind on the seafront as I walked here. I no longer have to be strong in front of Leo, with Keith, with my family, in front of doctors and nurses, so I am the disheveled wreck on the outside that I am on the inside.