All You Need Is Love (14 page)

“I’ve got to run now, but let’s catch up soon.”

“Bye,” I say and think about how much can change in one phone call. I started off as someone’s girlfriend and now, as I press the ‘end’ button on my phone, it hits me that that’s just what this is for me and Asher.

I don’t listen to anything on the way to Mass General because whatever song came on would just be ruined as “that song I heard right after Asher Piece and I broke up” so I drive with the windows down, the breeze its own mellow music.

At the hospital, I’m busy having an outer body post-end of serious relationship experience so I don’t notice someone saying my name over and over. Iin my mind I’m hearing Asher say Love the way he did in London, with the emphasis on the L part. Now I won’t hear it anymore except when we randomly cross paths like if Arabella gets to be a famous actress and I go see her movie premiere and he’s there.

“Love? Love. Love!”

Margaret Randall, Mable’s favorite nurse, taps me gently on the shoulder and I welcome myself back to the waking world. “I know you’ve brought food for Mable — she’s been mentioning that frappe all day. We were going to ask the kitchen to send one up but Mable said not to bother if you were coming.”

“Oh,” I say. I try not to cry again when I explain that I’ve come without the frozen goods, just lukewarm smushed burgers and soggy fries. “I’ll go get her one from the cafeteria.”

A knock at the door makes us both look over. “No, I’ll go, you visit,” offers Henry Randall, Margaret’s nephew and my quasi-buddy from the Vineyard.

“Hey, Henry,” I say and it’s only slightly as lackluster as I feel.

He comes over and hugs me — not lingering like
boy I’ve missed you even though I hardly know you,
and not
I want you so badly.
It’s just a reasonable hello. In fact, all of him seems reasonable. He’s friendly but not effusive (see that SAT verbal studying really did pay off) and asks thankfully not about my year at Brown (where he still thinks I go) and not about Mable but about the summer.

“I heard you went abroad,” he says. “I studied in Florence for a semester.”

Suddenly it dawns on me that tons of American girls have had this experience. College women or graduate students go to different countries and fall in love and it doesn’t work out. Then maybe they visit that country a decade later and remember those kisses they had near some monument but basically it’s all just one long postcard or photo or — for me — journal entry.

“I did — but I’m back now, obviously, right I mean I’m standing here…and getting ready to head to Edgartown for the summer. Will you be there?”

“I’m on my way down right now,” Henry says and reveals his car keys as proof. “I’ll be up and down a little for the next month then down for good. My dad’s got a bunch of properties that just went on the market for the summer season so I have to go manage them.”

“You’re selling real estate?”

Henry grins and shuffles his feet a little like I just called him a used car salesman. “No — not exactly. But between the rental and the properties for sale, I’m doing an internship of sorts.”

“Meaning you sleep late and show up when you feel like it?” I joke.

“Pretty much, yeah. Except when my father throws a fit and decides I need a lesson in hard work.”

I look towards Mable’s room. “I’m really late getting here,” I say and back away from Margaret and Henry. “These were supposed to be emergent.” I gesture with the take out bags.

“Well, will I see you soon?” Henry asks. I nod.

My kiss on her cheek wakes Mable up. “Delivery,” I say.

“You just missed your dad,” Mable says and motions for me to put the food down on the table and sit with her in bed. “I’m not so hungry anymore.”

“Now I feel guilty — like I missed your window of hunger.”

“Don’t feel guilty — it’s a useless emotion. But do explain why.”

So I tell her about Bartley’s and Asher’s prolonged phone call and bumping into Charlie. Mable nods and listens — really listens like she always does and hears what I say, not interrupting me even for a second. I start to cry and Mable says, “I can’t hold it in any more — you’re crying over spilled milkshake!”

It’s lame but I crack up anyway and ask her why her room is a mess. There are piles of paper and pens and books with photos sticking out of them, balled up legal pad paper, its bright yellow visible from across the room.

“Did you have a decorating party that I missed?”

Mable shakes her head then rests it again on the pillow. “No — I was just writing some things down, organizing.”

I study her face. She studies mine. I want to ask her — are you my mother — but I can’t. It sounds so crazy, so far-fetched that I’m scared it might be true.

But Mable knows I have something on my mind so I tell her this. “I’m almost done with the film — the documentary that made me documental.” She laughs. “I got one of the nice av people to help me and now there’s some voice over and you talking plus that footage from the Avon Walk. It’s not going to win a nomination or anything, but it’s pretty good.”

“Just think — I finally got my chance at being a movie star.”

There’s a finality to her words that gets to me. “This isn’t your only chance — I mean, if you wanted to be an actress you could…”

“Love — relax. I never wanted to be an actress. Can you imagine me on a set? I’d be busy directing the director and getting fired before anyone even said cut.”

“I was only saying that you could still change careers if you wanted to. Aren’t you always telling me that, that it’s never too late to go after what you want?”

Mable shrugs and closes her eyes a little. She looks small, like a doll I had once that I hugged so much bits of her yarn hair and apple-button nose wore off. “That’s my advice to you. Not for me.”

“So what haven’t you gone after that you really wanted?” I ask.

Mable exhales out her nose and puts her hands on her belly, smoothing the sheets. “I got what I wanted, I think.” I hug her and wish I could take her home with me so we could order in Chinese and sit with our backs on either end of the couch, our feet touching. “No, wait. Scratch that. Life keeps coming at you, so you peck at it like birds do, you know bobbing your head here, clucking over here.”

“This is a chicken analogy?”

Mable smiles but keeps her eyes closed. “It’s totally not working, is it?”

“No way,” I say.

A knock at the door. Margaret comes in and hands me a large cup. “Henry got this for you,” she says and leaves.

“Feel like a frappe?” I ask Mable and she suddenly sits up to take a sip.

“Now this, this is the secret to a good life.” Mable swallows and goes back for another mouthful.

“The ice cream philosophy?” I ask and watch her.

“Yeah — work with me here — it’s sweet, composed of some good things like milk and sugar…”

“And it doesn’t last so you have to appreciate it while you have it.” We lock eyes over the milkshake and don’t say anything else; we just sit there, appreciating.

Heaped in among the dirty laundry is the pink tee shirt from today. Even as I shove it down with the rest of the week’s wash, I can’t discard that memories attached to it. First there’s the stain. Though it will technically come out in the wash, its impact will be permanent in my mind.

This is the shirt I was wearing when Asher dumped me. This is the shirt I was wearing when I cried in public in Harvard Square. This is the pink top I had on when I got the feeling that Mable was slipping away — for real — and came home to find my father bawling in his study affirming my feelings.

“She’s not doing well,” Dad says and keeps crying. He’s in his desk chair, the Hadley Chair that is given to each faculty member upon hiring. It had the Hadley crest on its seat and on its back, but Dad is leaning back so you can’t see this.

“I just saw her,” I say.

“I know — I left right before you got there,” he said. “I was hoping to meet you there so we could discuss some things.”

“Like what?” I ask. It’s horrible to see my dad cry. His eyes are red and puffy and he looks torn apart, really so ruined, that I can’t respond with tears. I respond with not once trace of sadness, keeping my face as calm as I can, everything else shoved inside.

“I’m not going to bother you with the medical issues…I just wanted you to know that at this juncture…”

“Juncture sounds like you’re a president or being a principal,” I tell him. Not in a mean way, I just want him to be honest.

“Mable is not likely to recover. The best thing we can do now is to keep her comfortable and be with her…” Dad’s tears are quiet now. I remember reading for my big drama paper about anticipatory studies some playwrights did in order to get to know how their characters would act in a given situation. It seems like Dad is doing this now, like he’s anticipating grief before he feels it — or maybe he’s feeling it now so he won’t have to later.

“But there’s still a chance, right? Isn’t there always a chance?” I pick at the sticky stain on my pink t-shirt and wish I could throw the thing away. But I won’t. it will just sit in my drawer not being worn.

Dad gets up and puts his arms around me. “I don’t know, Love. I’m just not sure.”

In my journal is a list of reasons Mable could be my mother — not proof so much as plausibility. Here’s what I know — she used to be married to a man named David — she told me that last year when I found an old photo of her sitting near a green VW van. My dad’s name is David — they could be the same guy. She and my dad could have made a pact to raise me separately but together, with her in living nearby but — so as not to pollute my brain with divorce — they make her my aunt. I admit it gets less and less believable as the idea progresses, but it might be true. The only thing I can’t work out though is why they wouldn’t have told me by now.

I call Arabella and tell her about Mable and how grim things are here and when I get to the part about my journal list Arabella says, “Look, Love, just ask her. It sounds like time-wise you should probably get…”

I don’t want to hear what she has to say about limited time so I cut her off. “You’re right — I’ll just do it. It’s not like I haven’t made a fool of myself in front of her before.”

“How’s your dad taking it?”

“Well, there’s not much ‘it’ to take right now, just more this looming dread I have. But not well, in answer to your question. He’s beginning to suffocate me. If I’m in the kitchen, he’s in the kitchen. If I’m doing laundry, he needs to wash his shirts, if I want to flip around and see what there is to watch at eleven at night well he’s going to sit there with me.”

“He’s reassuring himself you’re not leaving, too,” Arabella says. I can hear her playing piano in the background and wonder why it is I’m always drawn to people who can play. I can easily imagine her in the flat we shared with her feet bare and her hair loose around her shoulders, her hand plucking music from nowhere and pressing the keys until they lull me to sleep.

“I know — I get the psychology here but it doesn’t make my day to day very pleasant. He’s so busy crying and hugging me and asking me what I feel that I can’t say anything — mainly because it’s like if I show any emotions he’s going to completely lose it.”

“I know this goes without saying — but I’m so sorry, Love. And I’m sorry about Asher. If it’s any consolation, he showed up here drunk and sad and saying he made a mistake.”

I brighten just the tiniest bit. “It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.”

“But it does, and you know Mable wouldn’t want you to ignore the rest of your life because of her illness. So even though you’re guilty and you feel ashamed for still liking boys or being hungry or feeling annoyed at your dad, you have allow yourself to do those things, to feel those things.”

“Um, do you have a degree in counseling or something you haven’t told me?” I ask and put away my folded laundry, shoving the pink shirt way way to the bottom of my drawer with the things I never wear yet insist on keeping.

Arabella gives a small laugh. “No, but Dad’s a playwright who firmly believes in character studies so I read one of them and this is kind of a similar situation except that the character was a man in his twenties in Ireland during the potato famine.”

“Oh, but otherwise, just like this.”

“Exactly,” she says.

Chris is gone all weekend to visit Alistair the American who claims the title of his First Real Boyfriend (or Ferb as we’ve been saying — Ferbie if we’re giddy) so I spend my time making piles of stuff in my room that have no rhyme nor reason. Stuff to give away, over here. Academic stuff I need to complete over there. Books that require returning stacked on my desk. Or, no, I’ll put those downstairs. I am relegated to my room by choice just to avoid Dad and his neediness. The times Dad’s at the hospital, I’m free to wander downstairs or go running. I even went to the music building for a little song therapy but couldn’t motivate once I was there. And maybe I had hoped to bump into Jacob again but I knew he wouldn’t be there — not because I’m all-knowing but because I actually got up the guts to “be friends” with him and went to his dorm for a visit. But I checked his sign out card and sure enough he’s signed out for the whole weekend to some day student’s house where he’s probably reveling in the near-end of school and his popularity that affords him top pick of the Hadley crop (the fact that I can now count myself among the corn and wheat is just not something I want to deal with).

“Where do you want to eat tonight?” Dads asks. He’s slacked off on his squash games, been spending more time at the hospital and with Louisa, and has memorized most of the take out menus we keep in the drawer by the kitchen phone.

“Aren’t you seeing Louisa?” I ask (ask=hope).

“She’s closed for inventory,” Dad says. “Not her personally, obviously, but her store is. She closes every year at this time. She won’t emerge from the book cave until Monday so you and I have tons of time to be together.”

Again. Encore. I love him but he’s smothering me. I want to be with him, but like it was not like it is now.

“I’m actually heading out myself,” I say.