Song of Renewal (8 page)

Liza felt Ruth’s hand gently squeeze her arm in empathy. She and Tom had slipped in quietly as the doctor talked. Twenty brief, silent minutes ticked away and visiting time ended.

“It’s plain heartless,” Liza grumbled to Garrison on their way out. “We shouldn’t have to leave our girl at a time like this.” The elder Wakefields walked a distance behind, allowing their son and his wife privacy. But then, Liza thought with a touch of resentment, that was their style. Distance.

“Yeah,” Garrison concurred darkly. “I don’t like it, but it’s a necessary evil.”

“I know. I just wish your folks could stay longer.” The senior Wakefields had to leave the following morning. But Garrison needed them. She needed them.

“Yeah, me too.”

Family. Liza was just now realizing how crucial familial connection was at a time like this.

Liza had been sixteen when her own mother died from breast cancer. Fortunately, Renee’s erratic behavior had been less difficult to control in her last years. Partly because Liza’s father learned to crush and slip her pills into her religious morning mocha coffee and partly because as her cancer progressed, she was too sick to resist his loving oversight.

Ironically, Liza now admitted, her mother’s declining health had gifted Liza with the most precious of memories. It bore the double comedy/tragedy drama mask. On the one hand, Renee became the icon of motherhood, bestowing upon her girls the one thing they had missed out on in their short years with her – constancy.

The tragic side of the mask bore the imminency of separation. This time, permanent separation. How Liza had clung to those days. Charlcy, true to character, held herself more aloof, though Liza knew it was a survival thing with her sister. Plus, Charlcy had married during her mother’s long illness, providing more acceptable, guiltless distancing.

Liza suspected that Charlcy’s desperate sequestered deportment was to vaccinate herself against the demons of her mother’s illness, ones that could reappear at any given moment.

Hers was a position earned by her hellish odyssey from such a young age. “Battle scarred” was Charlcy’s bantering label.

Liza’s father, an Alzheimer’s patient in an assisted living home, was not accessible. Even Charlcy, her joined-at-the-hip
sister, was halfway around the world right now. How she missed Charlcy’s snug presence at that moment.

Yeh, along with Garrison’s distancing, Liza felt the aloneness closing in on her.

“I guess I just plain need family,” Liza said, barely controlling her voice and emotions as she looked at Garrison. When their gazes collided, his slid away. Her heart dropped even lower. He wasn’t buying in to her need.

His distancing stung even more right now. Once he would have sailed like a scud missile to her. Long ago. He’d never have held her at arm’s length when Liza keened to fall into his comforting embrace while their daughter lay at death’s door.

Thanks, Garrison.
She would get the hang of going it alone, even if it killed her.

“When will Charlcy be back?” Garrison asked Liza the next evening after they’d gotten home from the hospital. Their dinner had been a hamburger and fries again, half of it dumped down the garbage disposal.

“Charlcy’s month long European cruise has three more weeks to go before her ship comes in. She knows about Angel, but I told her under no circumstance is she to shorten her trip and fly back. There’s nothing she can do. I can keep her informed by e-mail and on rare occasions by phone. She carried her laptop.” She was aware of her nervous prattling and reined herself in.

He shrugged and moved to the den. Liza felt hurt at his lack of real dialogue. Lately he’d grown more and more taciturn. She could no longer read him. Nor his body language. She followed him into the den, where he flipped on Fox News. She curled up in her chair while he slid onto the long sofa. Did
his little shrug mean he censured her not summoning Charlcy home or that he simply did not want to talk?

She decided to elaborate. “Charlcy’s saved for this vacation for a long time and it’s not fair to her to cut it short. Teaching isn’t the most lucrative profession.”

Garrison’s eyes remained glued to the screen, where Bill O’Reilly declared the “Patriot and Pinhead of the day.” “My mother was a teacher.” His voice was empty. Flat.

In other words,
shut the heck up
. Hurt swirled and tossed about inside her, bouncing like boulders against her vitals. Her already wounded and raw emotions flamed high, like an out of control wildfire. Desperation clawed at her nerve endings.

Suddenly, Garrison arose and asked Liza politely, “Can I bring you anything from the kitchen? I’m going for some ice cream.”

“No, thank you,” she replied, perplexed, jerked around. Just when she thought there was no hope left for them, he turned on his blasted manners.

Liza credited Ruth for that. His mother’s long classroom experience enabled her to teach Garrison the finer points of behavior. She had done a great job there.

Except for teaching him about
being there.
And forgiveness.

Liza shoved away that line of thought. She would survive.

With or without him.

Chapter Five

Angel floated in nothingness…bits and snatches of sounds wafted in and out...voices…Mama…Daddy…others not familiar…words reverberated in a strange way, echoing, running together, seamless, Loveloveloveyoucheckbloodpressure…Penny’s voice…she’s crying…why?...Laurie and Ginger, “She’ssososopalepaleale…lookslookslooksbadbad… cheerleading squad...Chuck and Buddy, “wha’s’supupup, Angelgelgel?”

“Byebyebye, Angelgelgel. Seeseeyouyoulaterter.”

Floating...floating…
why can’t I move, dang it? ...
tightness like a coil, intruding on the blasted nothingness… coil pulls pulls pulls….

Snap!

Blackness.

The ten a.m. visit to Angel’s bedside ended. The Wakefields returned to the waiting area with Penny and five other Byrnes cheerleading teammates of Angel’s trailing in their wake. All
seven of them had managed to rotate in twos and threes, the visit quota max, and spend a few moments with Angel.

Garrison’s parents had left for the airport after the morning visiting slot and Liza already sorely missed their consoling presence. Liza liked them despite their lapses in Garrison’s young years. They did try to be good parents; they just didn’t have all of the parenting skill ingredients together in the right measure and order. She had to admit that their presence had assuaged some of her desperate neediness, a primal, clawing thing now.

The timing of their departure sucked.

“The staff was quite understanding,” Garrison muttered to Liza on the walk back down the wide white corridor. “They absorbed all the moving about quite well.”

Liza nodded. “They did.”

The tension she felt with Garrison had let up somewhat during the visit to the ICU. But then, that was only natural since their minds and emotions centered on their daughter. Whatever, she appreciated the daily respite.

How Liza missed bygone days when her and Garrison’s hearts were so finely tuned together that they could finish each others’ sentences and divine each others’ thoughts. Even their silence, in those days, meant peace. Fulfillment.

Four of the teens departed with promises to come back another day. Penny remained with Liza and Garrison as they found chairs in the waiting area. Garrison, seated several feet away, spread open the
Spartanburg Herald
newspaper and buried himself in it.

Penny smiled past the sadness etched into her young features. “I’ll bet it’s hard not having Angel’s grandfather here with you now. I’d miss my daddy, too, if I were you.”

Liza felt a pang of longing all the way to her toes. She nodded and sighed. “Placing Dad in a nursing facility was tough. But it was also a blessing. We don’t have to worry about him
anymore. He’s safe.” Liza ached that, just when her father could enjoy life without the agitation of managing a hellion bipolar wife, he had lapsed into early onset Alzheimer’s. Not fair.

But then, whoever said that life was fair?

“Yeah. I guess your sister feels the same way, huh?”

“Yes. She does. We rotate visiting days with him. With Charlcy gone, it’s not possible. Some days his mind’s clear as a spring. Others, he doesn’t know anybody. I just hope he’s not aware of our absence.” She shrugged and smiled sadly. “Charlcy doesn’t think it’s a problem.”

Penny grinned, her turned up, freckled nose tilting even more. “Charlcy’s cool.”

Liza chuckled. “Yup. She is that. My big sister has the family corner on wit and cool. Well, almost. Angel’s no slouch there.”

Penny giggled. “Got that right. And neither are you, Mrs. W.”

Liza raised her eyebrows and crossed her eyes. “Ya think?”

Full belly laughter erupted from Penny, reminding Liza so much of Angel’s exuberant laughter that it took her breath.

In that moment, everything in Liza longed to wake from this nightmare and engage Angel in droll, silly nonsense over the crazy dream and laugh until they rolled on the dance studio floor, until tears filled their eyes then trailed down their cheeks.

Dr. Abrams’ appearance in the ICU waiting room was, as always, with strobe-light haste. He got right to the point. “Your daughter has just had a seizure. I just happened to be there when it happened.”

“Oh, God,
no,
” Liza moaned, her eyes misting. Penny’s hands shot up to her mouth, eyes round as donuts above them.

Garrison’s paper rustled as he tossed it aside, shot to his feet, and strode across the floor, his features tense and pale. “What does this mean?”

“It means her brain is swelling. I’m sorry. For the moment, we’re using Dilantin to control the intracranial pressure. It’s a very strong drug and hopefully it will do the trick. We’ll monitor her constantly to see how this works. In the meantime, keep doing what you’re doing; take it a minute at a time.”

In the next instant, he was gone.

Liza looked at Garrison, who stood gazing at the empty doorway, frozen as a video pause, as if a three-hundred-pound linebacker had slammed into him and he needed only to topple. Feeling as though she were in a slow free fall to hell, Liza glimpsed Penny’s pasty face just as the girl burst into tears.

“Oh, Mrs. W,” she sobbed, “what’s gonna happen?”

Liza, numb as a Novocained tooth, gathered Penny in her arms. “Shh. It’s gonna be okay. We have to believe that.”

Garrison turned, a gaunt zombie as he faced her. “Yes,” he murmured in a voice as desolate as she felt. “We must believe that.”

Garrison awoke early, glad there had not been a call from the hospital during the night.
No news is good news.
He showered and dressed in a navy blue Armani suit and paisley tie for the difficult day ahead. Liza now finished her own grooming upstairs.