The Life You Longed For (28 page)

“Is it really that shocking to you, Grace? Your friends and family and even some of the doctors and nurses have used similar terms to describe you.” Dr. Lee glanced at the manila file folder in her lap. “Let's see, you're ‘incredible,' ‘amazing,' ‘strongest person they know,' and yes, here, ‘hero.'” She glanced up. “Isn't it at least possible, Grace, that Jack's illness made you feel important in a way you never had before?”

 

The days had no shape. Stephen went to the Y, then to work; the kids went to school. They were like a family in a play. A pretend family. An intact family. Stay-at-home mother, hardworking father, older brother, younger sister. They attended a hockey game of Max's one night, played Monopoly another. Stephen brought work home and stayed up at the kitchen table, a martini next to him. Grace sat in bed with the TV on, trying to organize boxes full of loose photos into albums. She kept finding the pictures that she'd cut to make Jack's book. In some of them Stephen was missing, in some of them she was missing, in some, Jack. These were the photos that came the closest, she thought, to revealing the truth.

 

Twelve days.

And then ten.

Eight.

She went to the bookstore in the new mall and sat in the café for an entire morning. Weak wintry light spilled over the bleached wooden tables. She chose one near the wall, away from the counter and the noise of the espresso machines. She forced herself to take a sip of her coffee. She couldn't think about touching the cranberry scone she had purchased. She wasn't sure why she had even bought it. Instinct, not desire. Evolution's lesson of survival: eat when you can, for you never know when in the future there will be a war or a famine or a drought. It occurred to her that maybe this was, in part, what she'd done with Noah: tried to stockpile love, more than she needed, against the time when Jack was gone and she would not have enough.

After a while, she left the café and browsed, ending up in the true crime section.
What kind of person reads these books?
she wondered.
And why?
She stared at the titles.
Special Delivery: “
A family slaughtered and a baby born by murder.”
Sleep, My Child, Forever:
“The mesmerizing crime story of a mother whose double life hid the dark heart of a murderer.”
Mother's Day:
“The shocking tale of a mother who murdered her daughters with the help of her sons.”

Small Sacrifices.

A Mother's Betrayal.

And then
Cradle of Death
. The Marie Noe Story.

Grace pulled it from the shelf, a hard knot in her stomach, and opened to the insert—
eight pages of photos!
They were black-and-white. In one, the Noes stood in front of a window, shadows from the Venetian blinds casting dark bars across their faces. They looked like the stern Iowa farm couple in Grant Wood's
American Gothic
. The same gaunt faces and stoic expressions. In another photo, the Noes stood in New Cathedral Cemetery, at one of the children's graves. On the next page a photograph of St. Hugh's, the church “around the corner from their home,” that the Noes “regularly attended.”

Abruptly, she closed the book, and set it on the shelf, not bothering to put it back in the right place. This is not your life, she told herself. And these horrible stories have nothing to do with you.

 

In the children's section, she pulled
The Child's Everything About the Moon Book
from the shelf. There was a cartoon picture on the cover of a red-haired boy in a space suit. She took it to one of the over-stuffed armchairs to glance through, thinking maybe she'd get it for Jack.

“There's no sound on the moon,” she read. “So you can shout as loud as you want or play drums all night, and the grownups won't tell you to ‘Be Quiet!'

“Your alarm clock can't wake you up on the moon, because you won't be able to hear it, and it doesn't matter if you sing out of tune because nobody will hear you!”

She smiled. Jack would love this!

But a few pages later, she read: “If you weigh forty pounds on earth, on the moon you will weigh only seven. On the moon it seems you would hardly be there at all.” She closed the book and left it on the table next to her.

You would hardly be there at all
.

S
even days.

Six.

She walked around the lake, her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt. It was so silent. Nothing but the crunch of her footsteps, the crack of a branch, the rustle of an animal she didn't see or a bird whose name, a year ago she wouldn't have known.
Chimney swift, Northern mockingbird, Eastern bluebird
. She thought of Noah, of John James Audubon. The irony of his killing the birds he loved and wanted to save. Even that seemed related now to Munchausen's. Everything did.

 

“How do you know he wasn't the one who accused you?” Stephen stood at the counter making a martini. She knew immediately who he meant.

“I just know,” she said.

“You know,” he mocked. “You questioned
me
, but with him you
know.
”

“I didn't say I didn't question him too. But he wouldn't have done this. He had no reason.”

“How do you know he's not lying? Maybe he wanted to punish you for dumping him all those years ago.”

“Please, Stephen. I don't want to defend him to you. He just wouldn't.”

“Does he know that you've lost your child because of him?”

She watched him peel a lemon rind into a long curl and drop it into the chilled glass. “I haven't spoken to him, if that's what you're asking.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, eyebrows raised, then turned back around. “So you're still protecting him.”

“Protecting him from what?”

Stephen glanced at her, the muscles around his eyes tensed with anger. “Protecting him from
what
?” he said as he turned all the way around to face her. “How about from the fact that he's single-handedly
fucked
up our lives for starters? How about the fact that he single-handedly cost me,
me”
—he jabbed his finger at his chest—“custody of my child?” He whirled back around, picked up the lemon and threw it against the sink, knocking his martini over, the glass shattering, vodka everywhere. “Goddamnit!”

Grace sat at the table, head bowed, hands over her ears. When she looked up, Stephen was crouched on the floor, angrily picking up broken glass.

 

On the opposite side of the lake, the land sloped towards the water, then back up. Through the bars of the trees, she saw a bright spot of color. Marriott Nielsen out jogging. A car passed and she looked up, waving out of habit. Demetra Schoch. It was a small neighborhood, and though they didn't often socialize, the neighbors all knew the basics of each other's lives. They knew that Grace was Ellen and Paul Martin's daughter, Stephen Connolly's wife, the mother of three children. They knew her youngest had some sort of terminal disease—a strange name, something rare. They might have said that Grace was a smart woman, that she had a master's degree. University of Pennsylvania, something related to medicine. Not a doctor or nurse, though. Something academic. And Stephen worked with one of the Center City banks. A great guy, they might have said. Would give you the shirt off his back. A swimmer. You could set your watch by him at the Y. Six o'clock every morning.

Or at least that was what they might have said a week ago. Now all she was was the woman who had lost custody of her child, the woman so desperate for attention she had made her child sick just to get it. She stared across the lake, too small for boats, but perfect for ice-skating, for playing hockey, for swimming. The branches of the pines looked dislocated and broken. The sky was a pale sling, holding the world in place.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Grace asked, rolling over to face Stephen. He was sitting in bed, staring at the TV, arms crossed over his bare chest.

“Not at eleven thirty at night.” He flicked the remote. Reruns of
Gunsmoke
, Doc and Miss Kitty leaning on the bar of the Long Branch, talking to Matt Dillon.

“I didn't necessarily mean tonight. Just sometime?”

He flicked the channels again.
Larry King Live
, an interview with the guy from
America's Most Wanted
. Back to
Gunsmoke
again.

Grace turned back onto her side, eyes closed. She heard Stephen lift the snifter of Grand Marnier from the bedside table and drain it in a gulp. “Look,” he sighed. “I'm pretty confused about things. I don't know what I think right now…about anything.”

She sat up, chilled suddenly. “You're not suggesting that I might have hurt—that—”

He wouldn't look at her.

“Oh, Stephen, don't,” she said. “Please. I know you're angry, but you can't—You don't believe for a minute that I would—”

“Didn't, Grace. I
didn't
believe.”

“What are you saying?” Her voice sounded high and far away, as if she were speaking in a place where the air was too thin. “You
know
that I would never harm Jack, Stephen.” She looked at him, begging with her eyes, which he refused to meet. “How dare you,” she said after a minute. Her voice broke. “How dare you.”

He sighed. “You're right, okay? You're right. I'm just so goddamn angry.”

“Do you hate me
that
much?”

He looked at her sadly. “Sometimes.” He flicked off the TV, then turned onto his side.

 

The days were like the chalked squares in a game of hopscotch. Every other one she leaped over, landing on one foot, unbalanced. Jack's name was like the white pebble tossed across the grid and that she must try to retrieve without falling.

Five days.

Four.

Then three.

 

She handed Erin the pack of yellow construction paper. Jack's favorite color. The color of Mr. Moon. They'd shopped at the craft store after school. “You want to work at the table while I make dinner?” Grace asked as she pulled a package of hamburger rolls from the grocery bag. From Max's room upstairs, rock music throbbed full blast.

“But what if I don't finish and it's time to eat?”

“We'll just have dinner in the family room. How would that be?”

Erin nodded, smiling. This was how it had been every night: take-out pizza, Chinese food, tonight sloppy joes in front of the TV. As if they couldn't bear to be a real family until Jack came home.

It had been twelve days. Two to go. Grace would see him tomorrow, bring more drawings from Erin. His room was crammed. Balloons from the nurses, a
Blue's Clues
balloon from Kempley, stuffed animals, a remote-control car that he could race in the bed from Becca, cards, drawings, even an orange-and-black Flyers' poster from Max.

“Hey, duckey, before you start, would you do me a favor and go tell your brother to turn down that music?” Grace said

“Mom,” Erin whined.

“Oh, come on. And tell him we bought scones.”

Two more days. It seemed impossible that they'd done it. Only two more. She reached beneath the cabinet for the electric skillet. Anju had phoned the judge after that first awful morning and arranged to lengthen the visits so that they had more transition time before leaving. It had been better. Not good, but better. Jack understood at least. “Two days,” he'd say as they were leaving. He'd hold up two fingers. “You come visit me again in two days, right Mama?”

Outside the sky was still faintly light, though it was close to six. Shadows stretched from the pines towards the lake, the sun reflected in its center like a heart. Although it was only February, she pushed up the window over the sink, and a balmy pine-scented breeze drifted in, rustling the pile of drawings, homework papers, and permission slips stacked on the counter. Grace inhaled sharply, wanting to cry almost, though she wasn't sure why. Not sadness, but the opposite maybe. Happiness? It seemed perverse, but there it was.
Two days
. They would get through this. She smiled, moving purposefully through the rest of the house, opening windows, letting in the air. And then upstairs, where Erin and Max were laughing in his bedroom. “Hey guys, help me get some of these windows open,” she called down the hallway.

“Hello? Like, it's winter, Mom,” Max called to her from his room.

“But it's nice out. Come on.” Max was trying to get Erin to squeeze a fake rubber eyeball. His room was filthy, not a single area of carpet showing beneath the dirty clothes and books and hockey equipment. “How can you stand this?” Grace said from the door. How about opening at least one window?” She turned to go. “Did Erin tell you we bought scones?”

“No!” He started to push by her, but Grace stopped him, her arm across the doorway. “Window first,” she said, pointing.

“So what kind of scones?” Max followed Grace down the stairs, Erin in tow. Four steps from the bottom, he leaped over the banister, landing on the floor with a huge thud.

“Max!” Grace said. “I've told you not to do that a thousand times. You're going to yank the banister right out of the wall one day.”

But the phone was ringing and Max was sliding across the waxed floor in his sock feet as if on a boogie board at the beach.

Grace winked at Erin. “What are we going to do with that boy?”

But then Max was shouting, “Mom!” and his face was white and his eyes were scared and he was thrusting the receiver at her like it was burning. “I think it's Aunt Jenn.”

She was already across the room. “You
think
?”

“I don't know, she's really crying.”

 

Her father drove. Her mom came to stay with Max and Erin. Rush hour, the traffic going in the opposite direction, away from the city, was bumper-to-bumper. Like an emergency evacuation, she thought. As if all these people were trying to escape something horrible that she was rushing toward.

They didn't listen to the radio, didn't talk. The road narrowed for construction. Men in hard hats and T-shirts were finishing up for the afternoon, the thick smell of tar in the air. Was this the day Jack would die? She had tried to imagine before what it would be like, but it had been nothing like this: the sky feverish with sunset, the ragged red fibers of the clouds. Every now and then, her dad laid his hand over hers and squeezed. “He's a survivor, Grace. He's pulled through worse.”

But I was with him, she thought. And then horribly—at least they can't blame me.

 

“Mama's here, Goose. It's okay. Mama's here. Mama's got you.” He'd already coded twice. Twice they had resuscitated him. She understood that he would not live, vital organs already shutting down.

He squeezed her fingers. “Mama,” he croaked. “You. Stay. Me?”

“I'm never letting go,” she whispered into his ear. “Daddy either.” Jack nodded. He kept reaching to itch his nose, a reaction to the morphine, but he'd nod off halfway, arm dropping to his chest. And then he'd stop breathing, the monitor would beep, and he'd jerk awake. “Mama?”

“I'm here, Goose. Daddy too.”

How do you memorize a face, a skill so crucial to survival that there is a specific region of the brain that is responsible for this and only this?

His reddish rooster hair. His long eyelashes. His fierce little eyebrows.

People moved in and out, but she didn't take her eyes off him. She thought of how damaged hearts are usually larger than healthy ones, sometimes two times as large, and she knew that her own was huge and that after this night, it would be filled with scars that for the rest of her life would force it to work harder and harder just to keep beating. She thought too of how, when she was giving birth to Jack, she had told Stephen, and even the doctor, at one point, “Don't touch me,” not because of the pain or even irritation, but from concentration. Never had she been more focused on a single act, more aware of her body. She understood now that Jack's dying was similar, that she would become untouchable again, every cell, every pore, every muscle and bone turned towards letting him go.

“His S4s are getting worse,” someone said. “He's Cheyne-Stoking.” She and Stephen sat on either side of him, holding his hands, watching his chest, his breathing starting and stopping, growing more shallow, raspier. Anju came in to intubate him, securing the respirator tube to his cheek with adhesive tape. Later still, Grace heard someone mention the ECMO. Extra Corporeal Membrance Oxygenator, followed by Anju's “Absolutely not.”

“What did they just ask?” Stephen said.

Grace explained. “The ECMO's basically a pump that takes all the blood from the body, reoxygenates it, then forces it to circulate.”