C
HAPTER
17
W
hen Claire arrived at the hospital the next morning, Nicholas told her that his Dad had come back to say good-bye. That they watched some TV together, and that he would be returning for a visit soon. She could see the hope
and
disappointment in Nick’s eyes. She recognized its resemblance to her own, the unalloyed hope of family. She played Scrabble with him after lunch and art class, and again after dinner, pondering questions for which there seemed to be no immediate answers and wrongs for which there might be no amends, as another sun-blasted day crept toward dusk.
“Did you remember who Taylor was?” she asked before saying good night, the puzzling reference having become an increasingly vexing earworm over the course of the day.
Nick looked at her like he’d completely forgotten the name, but then with it back out there and hanging between them, he became agitated again. Grinding his teeth, he breathed heavily and shook his head no. “No. Who is he?” he pleaded. “Who
is
Taylor?”
She could see him fighting hard, for whatever reason, to unearth the locus of this mystery, along with his frustration at his inability to succeed, and she felt like the worst kind of mother. “I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t mean to upset you,” she soothed. “Probably just someone you used to know. It’s not important.” Just another piece of the jigsaw that might never turn up. “Your memory still has some gaps, but that’s okay now.”
As he had before, Nick turned away and shielded himself inside his sheet, and Claire wondered if the name Andrew ever entered and, just as quickly, exited Nick’s thoughts. She wondered, too, if Andrew still felt the hot sting of remorse. She kissed Nick good night and made a silent promise not to ask any more senseless questions. But she could most definitely not stop wondering what was going on in her husband’s head.
As the week progressed without so much as a text from Michael, Claire focused her mounting intensity on Nicholas and all of his classes, and spending as little time in her apartment as possible. The busier she remained, the more distant her fears seemed, each day another bandage on her uncertainty. The exhaustion that arrived at night was her only hope for sleep. And as she lost herself in the routine, her uncertainty was displaced by the hope that somehow things might not really be as desperate as she had thought.
Nicholas had begun a rapid improvement in his communication and cognitive skills. A leap in word-finding ability fostered an increase in his thought-organization skills, which, in turn, bolstered his confidence. His burgeoning muscle strength and coordination allowed him to graduate from his wheelchair to a walker. And Claire saw his attitude shifting into positive terrain for the first time since they had been at Rancho. He was smiling and looking forward to his speech and art classes, and the Tourette’s-like outbursts had become less frequent. The staff psychologist reported that Nicholas was making outstanding strides in their sessions. He had excellent recall of the events of his life leading up to the weeks before the accident, though his presence at Rancho still continued to confound him despite numerous discussions about the drug overdose.
Amy told her there were any number of reasons for Nick’s sudden and impressive show of progress: the last bit of swelling in his brain going down; the computer-assisted programs he was working with; compensation by other parts of his brain; general healing. With traumatic brain injury, she saw mysteries and miracles every day. But Claire was convinced Nick’s progress was partly the result of Michael’s visit. She never discounted Michael’s influence, and one thing Nick’s rapid improvement told her was that he had been keenly aware of his father’s disappointment in his progress. And now his body was going for gold. Subconsciously or not, Nick was always trying to grasp at Michael’s brass rings.
She thought back to the start of Nicky’s sophomore year at Andover. The moment they had arrived at Foxcroft Hall—the same dormitory that had housed former presidents, and Michael—she felt her son trying to hide the sense of duty he felt to measure up. Michael had arranged for Nicholas to have his old room there. With a nervous smile and both thumbs pointing skyward, Nick had posed for a photo with his dad in the quad before heading in to unpack. Claire remembered thinking it should somehow be easier the second time around, the setting up and the sending off. But depositing her child two thousand miles away from home for ten months was never the same pride-filled experience it was for Michael, who had been couch-jumpingly giddy when Nick’s application to Andover had first arrived. Never mind her repeated misgivings about not having their son at home for first dates and dances and sporting events, never mind his diabetes and her belief that while it had been a good option for Michael and his brothers,
they
were a functional, loving family and Nick would be better off at home. In the end, though, she’d put aside her feelings and had caved to the soft-spoken wishes of her son, and to the sweetly narcotic but uncompromising
you’ll come around since it’s the only logical way
expression Michael had given her when he’d said, “You can’t hover over him forever.”
And so Claire found herself in the quad watching her son don his mask of confidence, and wondering if Michael’s neck ever ached from carrying such conviction in the correctness of his choices. Then after the traditional dinner with Paul and Margot and the general family hoopla over the start of the school year, and after Michael had left for business in New York, Claire stayed in town for an extra day to help Nick get settled. As was
their
tradition.
She remembered Nick and his roommate, Charlie, constructing a pyramid of Ivy League shot glasses on the shelf over Charlie’s desk, as Nick stopped to scan the room.
“Did you know a couple guys from the team painted the ceiling blue and white when my dad lived here? Kind of like in tribute,” Nicholas had said with quiet pride in his voice. “Instead of this cracked gray crap?”
“Dude, everyone knows the story. We’ve all seen the trophy case. You’re royalty, man. Son of the winningest QB at Andover,” Charlie replied. They both stepped back to admire their handiwork while U2’s “Beautiful Day” blasted from somewhere in the quad. “And we are going to have a fucking phenomenal year.” When they went to high-five each other they caught Claire’s eye from her spot in the corner. “Oh, I’m very sorry, Mrs. M.,” Charlie said in his most Brahmin elocution.
“Yeah, sorry, Mom. It’s just kind of cool, you know?”
“I know.” Claire stood and went to level the top edge of a poster. “Your father was pretty hot shit in his day,” she said, looking over her shoulder at them with a wink. She hoped Nick would find inspiration, not pressure, in the Montgomery history here. “But you never heard me say that.” It really was inevitable, the whole setup, she thought.
Along the moldings Claire could see various shades of gray and blue crackling through the topcoat, the quiet force of history whispering not to be forgotten. And she wondered if the echoes of previous generations, of fathers and grandfathers, had already become a persistent whir in Nicholas’s mind.
“So, can I take you boys to lunch?”
“Thanks, Mrs. M., but I’m meeting my brother in Boston later.”
Nicholas was staring out of the window onto the quad below. “Let me just finish these boxes, and maybe we could walk into town?”
She tied her cardigan around her shoulders and sat down on Nick’s bed, watching the boys get back to the business of unpacking. The rickety steel frame groaned. She looked around the room at the ancient pine desks, the too-small closet and drooping door frame—further reminders of the old-money tradition that permeated boarding school life out there. The prudent squeakiness of it all. But the squeaky people, Cora loved to remind, were the keepers of status and convention, the glory-makers of society. And if Nicholas continued on the prescribed Montgomery path to glory, Princeton would be next. Claire smiled and lay back into Nick’s pillow, relishing their secret that he wanted to follow
her
path to Stanford instead, where there might just be a little more room to breathe.
That
kind of tradition she relished.
When Claire awoke from a brief catnap, she heard Nick and Charlie talking in the hallway. She rolled over onto her stomach and picked up a framed family photo from Nick’s night table. The three of them, huddled together with open smiles and foggy breath at the base of Ruthie’s Run in Aspen, just after Nicholas had raced Michael from the top and beat him for the first time.
“That asshole already took all of my Diet Coke from the refrigerator. I can’t believe we’re in the same freakin’ dorm again.” Claire heard the barely controlled anger in Nick’s voice outside the door, and sat up to listen. “Last year it was my shampoo and towels. All year. Fucking Blake.”
“Dude, don’t let it bother you so much. Buy extra next time.”
“Why do we have to put up with this shit? I’m sick of it.”
“It’s just, you know, how it’s always been. We get hazed, and then we get to do the hazing.”
“Yeah, right. I know all it about it.” There was a long pause and Claire wasn’t sure if Nick was holding back tears or about to punch the wall, though she couldn’t imagine he’d cry in front of anyone else. “And Chaz,” she heard him say quietly, “don’t say anything again about my diabetes in front of everyone, okay?”
“Sorry, man. I didn’t think it was a big deal anymore.”
“It’s not. But . . . whatever.”
Dust particles floated in a halo of sunlight near the door frame, and Claire waited for Nicholas to reappear. Instead she heard his footsteps disappearing down the hall, and the bathroom door slamming shut. The sensitivity and stoicism, the masks of teenage boys. She tried to see Nicholas the way others did. Typical all-American boy, popular, a budding hockey and lacrosse star. The son of one of Andover’s famous sons. But she knew he suffered the taunts and hazing of the upperclassmen with more sensitivity than he would have liked. Michael had shared his own stories with Nick of stolen towels and “swirlies” in the toilet. The many rites of passage and traditions to look back on. But how do you immunize your son against the constant specter of his father’s greatness? She got up from the bed and began organizing his diabetes supplies into a storage box for under the bed. It was a lot of weight for a kid’s shoulders.
As Claire was placing the last boxes of test strips into the container, Nicholas came into the room and sat down heavily on the bed. “Are you okay?” she asked, looking up into damp eyes.
Nick shifted his posture from hunched preoccupation to slouching indifference. It was a delicate balance, boys and their emotions. She placed her hand on his knee and waited.
“I just want to be normal, you know?”
Understanding normal was a tall order for anyone. Claire paused, trying to refrain from making it all better with a pat response. “I know, honey. And I know it’s difficult to feel normal—whatever that means—living with all this. But I want you to remember that you can define yourself in the ways that
you
want to. You’re the one who—”
“Yeah, but I’m still the son of the legend,” he said, pronouncing the word slowly, “no matter how I want to define myself. And all these guys are harder on me because of that. It just sucks.”
“Why do you think they’re harder on you?”
The shy hunch of his shoulders returned. “It’s like I’m under a magnifying glass, and they’re watching to see if the legacy can measure up.” He stared at the bulging container of supplies at Claire’s feet. “And sometimes I think they feel sorry for me.” His tears began to fall in earnest, and he didn’t try to wipe them away. They dripped down his nose and rested in the hint of stubble on his upper lip. “I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.”
Claire saw Michael’s blossoming features in her son’s face. Similar looks, different nature. She understood why Nicholas played his medical condition so close to the vest. To admit a weakness was to invite unnecessary scrutiny, or worse yet, sympathy. Maybe that’s why they were harder on him on the playing field, because they knew he wasn’t fragile there.
She stood and wrapped her arms around him, feeling him squeeze back with the last remnants of openness and fear and helplessness a boy on the verge of manhood reveals. The walls, she knew, would soon become increasingly impenetrable. She closed her eyes, savoring one of the final sweet embraces of his childhood.
“Nicky,” she said, taking his hands in hers, “everyone here is just trying to figure out who they are. They measure themselves against the people around them, and sometimes if they don’t believe in their own strengths, they put others down or make things difficult for them in order to make themselves feel bigger.”
The mask of self-assurance and adolescent swagger, the I-can-conquer-it-all smirk—they were gone from Nick’s face, eclipsed by the sensitivity she wished he wouldn’t be punished for expressing. “Honey, I wish I could just tell you to ignore them, but I know you can’t. And I know it sucks.” He smiled slightly. “But what I will tell you is to have confidence in your
own
abilities. You’re a wonderful, compassionate person, Nicholas. You’re a talented artist and you’re an athlete in your own right, who just happens to be quite handsome on top of everything else.”
“All right, Mom, I get it.” He wiped his lip and cheeks with the back of his hand, and rolled his drying eyes. “I get it.” He tried to scoot off the bed. “Can we go for some lunch now?”
“Not just yet, buddy boy.”
“I know, I know.” He inched back and leaned his head against the wall, crossed his arms and cleared his throat. “Always do the right thing and live up to our own high standards, no matter what,” he said in a robotic imitation of Michael. “Dad gave me his speech, too.”
“Look, your dad and I are very proud of
you,
Nicky. Not the fact that you happen to go to Andover or live in the same room your dad did. We love you and want you to find the best in yourself here. The only thing you have to live up to is your own potential.” Claire felt a thick layer of emotion coating her throat, and she was afraid she was dripping too much syrup for his taste. But she also wanted to stockpile the reserves, give him something to draw on in her absence.