Words and Their Meanings (13 page)

Daily Verse:

I had been working on the surface for so long.

29

C
offin yoga. Daily Verse. Think about Gramps. Think about Mateo. Think about how weird it is to feel broken and mended all at once. Sad and h
appy. Sappy.

Bea is sitting on my floor, pounding the wood like a strung-out drummer and singing totally inappropriate lyrics about not getting laid but getting in a fight.

“Um, you can't say that kind of stuff. Where did you learn that song?” I recognize it from when Nat and I used to go to the '80s night at the bowling alley, like way back in middle school. Or tenth grade.

“Lori. She was playing it at Dad's when I had to sleep over the other night. She said it was a slumber party kind of song.”

Bea stops drumming and looks up at me.

“She's kind of dumb.”

I can't help but laugh.

“Do you want to make stovetop s'mores for breakfast?” I ask.

Bea hops up and starts dancing around my room.

“Okay,” I nod. “But then we're going to call Mom. I know she's nervous about you being in the room with him, but I think you can handle it. We need to give her a break, and I can bring cards and some stuff to draw with too, so we can almost pretend he's just taking an afternoon nap. It will be like we're hanging in a hotel room.”

I'm pretty sure Bea stopped paying attention after I suggested the stovetop s'mores at 9 a.m., because she's bobbing her head up and down as she skips right out of my room.

–––––

The ICU floor is empty for a Saturday. Fluorescent light bounces between the ceiling and fresh wax on the floors. Our shoes squeak and Bea begins twisting with each step to magnify the sound. I don't tell her to stop. It makes us walk slower.

“Hi, Mom.”

We stand in the doorway of Gramps's room. A single paper crane, which I recognize to be his first origami attempt, sits on his tray table, frayed and lopsided. In his stories, my grandmother's engagement ring was tucked inside it many years ago. There is also a potted fern with a card sticking out of it. I walk over with Bea on my heels. It says, “I love you, George. Fight the good fight. Jack.” My father.

When I turn around I feel sick to my stomach because everything seems yellow. Yellow, not black, is the color of death. Gramps's skin is yellow. The florescent lights make the whole room yellow.

Mom offers a thin smile, asking Bea if she's okay and if she'd like to come closer. Bea shakes her head no but puts on a brave-enough face that Mom only nods and says it's good of us to come. She fidgets with her ringless ring finger, twisting skin instead of a wedding band. On the nightstand beside her chair are four empty plastic cartons of red Jell-O and two crossword books without a single crease in the spine.

“We thought you could use a break.”

“No thanks.”

Mom shakes her head. Stands up to stretch, twisting until her back answers with a sharp crack. Laying one hand on her father's, she turns to Bea and me like she wants to say something but can't. Emotional lockjaw. So Bea steps in for her.

“Mom, I got 100 percent on my spelling test this week. I even spelled the bonus word right, so technically I got 101 percent. It was ‘necrophilia,' the bonus wor
d.”

Newsflash, Mrs. Lovack (Bea's summer school teacher): bonus words about sexual attraction to corpses on little kid spelling tests offer a pretty unflattering glimpse into the reasons the youth of America are falling apart.

All things considered, I'm thinking Bea's attempt at small talk might make Mom lose it. But that's the thing about having a conversation with a griever. Everyone waxes poetic about spiritual and philosophical and psychological boo-hooey, as if the emptiness can be filled with something as worthless as words. But Bea and her ability to properly spell a vocabulary word that's meaning boils down to an affinity for doing it with dead things, that makes Mom's mouth twitch and give way to great gasping chokes of laughter. Tears stream out of her eyes.

“Oh, Buzzy,” she finally says, throwing her arms around my sister. “Girls, I think Gramps will be okay with some quiet time. Why don't the three of us get out of here and go to Guido's for lunch?”

Guido's is right across the street from the hospital and serves the best tomato basil soup from here to outer space in handmade bowls that sit crookedly on the table. My memory of the place and the place itself match up to perfection, like we never left. Like we've discovered a wormhole in which time stands not still, but together, and one year ago is also right now. The black painted wood floor planks, hot waiters wearing vintage ring-collared tees, mismatched furniture, and stereo blasting the next coolest indie rock band albums—it's all the same.

This was my parents' spot when Joe was in the hospital. They walked across the street for lunch and took turns going back to pick up takeout for dinner. Pretended they were on dates, not waiting for my father's only remaining relative, his best friend/practically own kid/little brother, to get better. To get better, she stressed. Not to die. We never thought that would happen, Mom said once, voice breaking a little. If they'd known, she said, they never, ever would have gone for lunch.

I wonder now if she thinks Gramps is going to get better.

There are only three other occupied tables. All of the people glance up, and then back down at their food. A man who looks like he usually shaves, but hasn't, tucks a newspaper under his sport coat, drops a five dollar bill on the metal table, and walks out into the sun. A waitress steps out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She does a double take at my mom and smiles.

I wonder if they have lots of customers like us: ghosts of those waiting for people to become ghosts. The hospital is so close, after all.

“Are you sure you want to eat here?” I whisper as we take our seats.

Mom cocks her head to the side as if I'm speaking a foreign language.

“Why not? I'm tired of hospital cafeteria food and we can have a quick bowl of soup. Soup is so comforting, don't you think?”

I used to.

But now soup reminds me of what I did. When everything went down with that London writing program and Joe kept ditching me, I got sick. Like, got-the-flu sick and I started wishing he'd get it too, because then he'd have to stay home. I got it in my head he needed to get sick. He needed to stay home and eat Mom's chicken noodle soup.

So I did everything I could to pass my germs to him. And it worked. He wasn't able to listen to my stories and poems, or tell me one stupid writing program didn't matter. He couldn't say he still believed in me because he got so sick so fast.

I know I didn't kill him on purpose. But he died because I thought I needed to play the “nonsense words only” version of Scrabble we'd created when we were kids. I thought being quarantined together would give him time to tell me about all the hope and otherness existing beyond high school, beyond hometowns. The promise of a wide-open future. And then I got better and he got worse. My stupid plan put an end to his life.

The day he went into the hospital because he couldn't breathe, I took his pillow into my room. It smelled of old sweat and sickness but I buried my face in it, breathing his smell and his germs and wailing until my eyes were swollen and it hurt to blink.

Bea didn't understand. In the hospital waiting room she kept asking when Joe could play, as if he were only hiding.

Mom and Dad kept saying we needed to stay home. One evening, I left Nat coloring get-well cards and watching Psychic Friends Network infomercials with Bea, so I could sneak up to the hospital for a few minutes. I brought a stack of Kurt Vonnegut books and
The Catcher in the Rye
with me, because they were Joe's favorites. Through Joe's cracked-open door, I could hear beeps and blips and hisses of the machines. Heavy curtains drawn together, it seemed like night had already arrived.

“They ran to get coffee,” our family's favorite nurse, Betty, said as I peeked down the hall for any sign of my parents. Betty was nearly Gramps's age, with thinning, frizzy white hair and huge boobs. She wore her scrubs like a business suit. She also wore white sneakers and a scowl mean enough to make a baby cry. She doted on Joe, and Mom and Dad too. She liked to rush in all bossy and thunderous, saying things like “Rise and shine, Joseph. It's a brand new day and you are missing all these ridiculous Bambis”—that's what she called young nurses—“peering in, wanting to be the one to give you a sponge bath.”

“Go on in and see him,” Betty said that night. “Fifteen minutes. Then you scoot your fanny right back home and get your little sister into bed.”

She ushered me into Joe's room and gently closed the door. He was already in and out of consciousness, but not on a breathing tube. Not yet.

“Hello?” his voice rasped. I shuddered.

“I'm here,” I said, rushing to his side. I was afraid to turn on the light. I could tell in the green glow of machine numbers that he was getting worse.

“You came.” His clammy hand clamped down on mine. Earlier, it had been ice cold.

“I'm right here,” I said again.

We sat together for what seemed like a year. It was probably ten minutes. Every blip the machine made accused me of hurting Joe. I wanted to tell him I was sorry. Instead, I sat still and quiet. I thought about death, and how people will forget each other, and eventually how no one will think of us at all. I sat by Joe's hospital bed and thought about the pointlessness of life. He must have sensed this, because all of a sudden he shot up coughing and crying.

At first the sounds coming out of his mouth made no sense. Garbled bits of half-words, coughs, wheezes. But then he gripped my hand tight. He wasn't looking at me. He wasn't looking anywhere, really.

“You have to let me explain. You have to know,” he said. “Don't you see? Everything hurts. Everything. I want to go. I want to go. I need you to tell me it's okay. I need you to say it!”

Betty came rushing in, because Joe was shouting. His eyes were bugged out but not focusing, and sweat dripped from his forehead. Then he started to hack and gasp and cry out in pain. Betty's hambone arm shoved me back as she fiddled with an IV drip and smoothed a mat of hair
against Joe's forehead.

“Go on home now, Anna. He needs to sleep. He's delirious. You understand? He's fevered and talking nonsense.”

I tripped over my shoelace, landing against the cold linoleum floor with a thud. I don't remember getting up. But I do remember standing in front of the window at the end of the hospital hall. Hues of dusk filtered inside. The kind of color and light where, under different circumstances, a person would feel infinite. I watched a black bird with orange-tipped wings fly straight toward the glass. It shot skyward right before hitting. In the distance, fading sunlight glittered across the river, as if the water were a steady current of fire.

30

W
hat I also remember: the next day, Mom's head bent against Joe's arm. His eyes were closed. Not conscious. She wept. It made my stomach hurt, her mix of gagging and crying and moaning. It told of a fear too big for a mom to hold.

“Stay. Stay. Stay. Please, stay with us,” she begged.

Daily Verse:

The worst that could have ever
happened to me had already
happened.

31

L
aura showed up at the hospital today. Bea and I were in the middle of Twister when she walked into the family waiting room. My left foot was twisted under Bea's right hand, her left foot entangled with my right, when Laura's familiar snicker echoed in from the doorway. I tipped over in surprise. And waited a second to look up.

Joe's friends rotated through this waiting room a lot, the last time. Nobody stayed long, except Sameera and Laura. They came almost every day, bringing Bea and me ice cream or new movies. Sometimes, Sameera got too sad. Laura stayed then, held her friend's place with us O'Mallys. It's jarring, seeing her here now. Like we've gone back in time. Like we have to live it all over again.

“Figured I'd find you two here.”

“Hiya, Laura. Wanna play Twister?” Bea says, recovering first and skipping over to give her a hug.

“What are you doing here?”

“Geez, Anna. Bad hair and bad manners makes for a really crappy combo. I'm done with my summer class, so I'm home for a few weeks. My folks told me about George. Thought I'd come see if you needed a break, or wanted me to hang with Bea so you could, you know, sit with him.”

She casts her eyes down when she says this. I can tell it's not just me remembering now.

“Thanks,” I manage to say, sitting on the edge of a fake leather couch. Seeing Laura here also reminds me of something else entirely.

“Hey”—I snap my fingers—“I heard this story the other day, and I think it's a lie, but whatever. Did Joe ever stick a fake baby Jesus—”

“Upside down like a flagpole in my awesomely huge snow fort?” Laura interrupts with a laugh. “Yeah. And he tried denying it for a week. What a dork. You never knew about all that?”

I don't answer.

“Hey, really, I'd love to hang with Bea for a bit,” Laura says.

I nod and slide away. In Gramps's room, Mom is asleep in the chair. I stand over him, watching tubes and machines chug and pump and hiss
.

He isn't waking up.

It makes me ache for all the words I haven't heard him say. Our relationship still has too many blank spaces, and I'm sick of people I love being defined by stories I haven't heard firsthand.

Gramps isn't coming back and I wish, just for a second, we could trade places.