Love Over Matter (8 page)

“
What are you doing?” he
asks.

I click a tiny pink nose into place,
completing the face of an orange tabby. “Eh, not much,” I admit.
“Just having a snack”—I crunch one of the Funyuns in his ear—“and
. . . studying?”

“
So you’re not, uh,
busy?”

My stomach starts twisting. “Uh-uh.
Why?”

“
Think you can get a ride
to St. Mary’s?”

“
What’s wrong?” The last
time I had the misfortune of visiting St. Mary’s Hospital was the
day after George’s accident, an hour or so before doctors unplugged
his life support.

After a heavy pause, Ian
whispers, “He’s not gonna make it, Cass. He’s only
got”—
sniffle
—“a
few hours, maybe. Everything’s . . . shutting
down.”

I don’t want to believe Mr. Smith is
dying, because it’s just too cruel. And Ian has been working so
hard to stop it. “Where are you exactly?”

“
The third floor, in the
ICU waiting room. I don’t know if they’ll let you in here,
though.”

“
They will,” I say. “Don’t
worry.” I check the LCD clock on the microwave and round up by half
an hour. “Look for me around eight fifteen.”

* * *

Despite my objections, my
father insists on accompanying me to Ian’s side, his sloppy track
suit only slightly more presentable than the wrinkled, owl-themed
pajamas I was too lazy (and depressed) to change out of. “Be
prepared,” Dad tells me as we exit the elevator and scan the walls
for directions. “If this is as serious as Ian says, it’s going to
be very . . .
difficult.
”

“
Remember who you’re
talking to?” I say. I spot the ICU sign and give his sleeve a tug.
“C’mon. This way.”

Dad can’t take a hint. “I’m just
saying that you should brace yourself for the worst. You don’t want
to fall apart when people are depending on you.”

Okay, so he’s speaking from
experience. I get that. But I’ve been through the wringer too. “I’m
aware,” I say, with a bit too much snip in my voice.

We come upon the double doors of the
ICU, and Dad gives the wall switch a pop with his elbow, making the
doors drift open (you’d think the things would zip apart at the
speed of sound, given the critical state of the patients in this
ward, but apparently not).

Dad halts at the nursing station and
gives the receptionist, a robust dude with a midlife paunch and an
acne-cratered face, the lowdown, while I fiddle with the drawstring
of my pajama bottoms.

“
Will do,” Dad says,
agreeing to whatever instructions we’ve been given.

As we round the corner for the waiting
area, a thought occurs to me. “What’s gonna happen to Ian after
this?” I ask, not necessarily expecting an answer.

Dad clutches at the
handrail, slows his roll and shakes his head. “That’s a tough one,
Cassandra.” He sighs. “
Very
tough.”

I pause adjacent to the waiting room
door and steel my resolve. Then it dawns on me: college. Ian’s a
senior and has been accepted to both Green Mountain College and
Castleton State, the latter being his school of choice. And even
though it’s no Middlebury (I mean, get real: we can’t all be as
brainy as Rosie), it’s a good, safe place where he’ll receive food,
shelter, and hopefully enough of an education to get by on when he
hits the real world in four years.

Dad lays a hand on my shoulder, and we
cross into the mishmash of hope and despair that is every hospital
waiting room, but especially those that cater to the loved ones of
the critically ill. When I spot Ian hunched over his cell phone, my
heart starts jackhammering. “Look,” I say, signaling the clock as
he glances up at me. “Eight fourteen. Impressive, huh?” I could
start off with a sincere, heartfelt consolation, but there’ll be
plenty of time for that later.

He cracks a smile. “Not bad,” he says,
brandishing his phone, its display alive with colorful blocks
arranged in jagged columns. “You got here just in time to witness
me breaking the world record for consecutive losing games of
Tetris.”

I sink into the chair beside him, its
cushioned seat flat and bounceless from the worried fidgeting of
the masses who’ve occupied this spot before me. “Any change in
. . . anything?” I ask.

Dad gives us our space, wanders across
the room and studies a rack of pamphlets on healthy eating,
diabetes prevention, and organ donation.

Ian shrugs. “He’s pretty out of it.
The doctors said it’s just a matter of time now. Like before
morning, they think.”

How macabre. “I’m sorry.” My gaze
bumps around the waiting room, which is predictably crowded with
sorrow. “Are you alone? I mean, isn’t there someone else who should
be here? Family or something? If you want me to, I can
call—”

“
They’re on the
way.”

“
Oh.
They
who?” While George was alive,
Ian and I were more friends-in-law than actual friends; hence, I
don’t know as much about him as I should.

“
I’ve got two aunts on my
mother’s side. They’re coming from Baltimore.”

I cringe at asking this,
but I can’t stop myself. “What about
her?
Do you think
she’ll . . . ? Or your sister?” This much
I
do
know: when
Mr. and Mrs. Smith divorced, they divided their children like most
people divvy up china and flatware. Ten years later, Ian might as
well be an orphan.

“
I doubt it,” he
says.

“
That’s
so . . .”

“
No kidding.”

Dad loops back our way, shoots us a
cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. “How about a pick-me-up? The
cafeteria has the best coconut cream pie you’ll ever
eat.”

It’s sad that my father knows this,
but also sweet of him to offer. “Whadda ya think?” I ask Ian
hopefully. “Can you take a break?”

“
Like I said, he’s out of
it. Doesn’t even know I’m here. And the nurses have my cell
number.”

“
That settles it then,”
says Dad. And off we go.

chapter 7

The doctors were wrong about the time
of Mr. Smith’s death by eleven hours, leaving Ian and me to bang
around the hospital in virtual silence all night and into the early
afternoon on Saturday. Out of necessity, Dad abandoned us at four
a.m., since, as he put it, “The eggs won’t cook themselves.” (I
wish he’d take my advice and hire a breakfast cook for The
Moondancer already.)

I won’t detail what happened in the
last few hours of Mr. Smith’s life, because 1) mostly I tried to
pretend I was lawn furniture, and 2) it’s way too sad, and I’ve
witnessed enough dreariness for one lifetime.

What I
can
say is that Ian held up well
through the ordeal, all things considered. The day after his
father’s funeral, he put his head down and plowed through the
remaining weeks of high school, graduating to a cacophony of
raucous cheers and yowling catcalls (not to mention a poorly
executed, double-fingered whistlefest by none other than my dear
ol’ dad).

* * *

“
Congrats,” I say when I
catch up with Ian outside the Milbridge High gymnasium. “You did
it.”

“
Your father would be so
proud,” my mother adds from behind me, her voice wet with
emotion.

In his crimson cap and gown, Ian looks
suddenly grown up. “Thanks,” he says, scanning the sea of faces
around us. “Have you seen Jeanette?”

One of Ian’s aunts who made the trek
up from Baltimore stayed on to see him through to graduation. She’s
slated to ship out tomorrow. “Um, she was in the ladies’ room five
minutes ago,” I report. “Haley! Come here!”

My sister and Opal (geez, those two
are as joined at the hip as George and I used to be) slink through
the crowd. “What?” snaps Haley.

“
Where’d Jeanette
go?”

Haley pops her shoulders into a shrug.
“I dunno.”

“
You didn’t see her in the
bathroom?” I ask.

Opal cocks her thumb as if she’s
hitching a ride to Tijuana. “Isn’t that her?”

A floral muumuu swishes and sways in
our direction (is Jeanette part Hawaiian?). “Oh, yeah.” I nudge Ian
in the ribs. “There she is.”

His face lights up like a
landing strip at LaGuardia.
Thank
God,
I think.
He’s
tunneling out of the darkness.
With a wave,
he beckons, “Aunt Jean!”

A few swings of her robust
hips later, Jeanette floats up beside us wearing her own megawatt
smile. “Well,
there’s
the man of the hour!” She plants a lip-smacking kiss on Ian’s
cheek, leaving a coral-colored smudge in her wake. “I thought you’d
up and vanished.”

Mom and Dad exchange a satisfied
glance and make a vague excuse to beg off (some sort of “restaurant
business,” or so they claim). “Did you feel that?” Haley asks Opal,
the forest of bodies around us starting to thin.

“
Yep. Coulda told you an
hour ago that it was going to rain.”

Opal is known for predicting the
weather with her migraines. “You have a headache?” I
ask.

“
A whopper.”

A raindrop jumps off the tip of my
nose; meanwhile, Jeanette substitutes a graduation program for an
umbrella. “You guys better catch Dad,” I tell Haley and Opal,
“before he takes off.”

Haley’s face twists into a pout, but a
clap of thunder deters her from arguing. “Yeah, all right,” she
says with a huff. “Let’s get out of here.”

“
Happy graduation!” Opal
manages to squeak, her fingers rubbing circles around her temples
as she scurries off.

“
See ya,” Ian says after
them, though I’m not so sure he plans to cross paths with my sister
and her sidekick again before heading to Castleton
State.

Jeanette twirls a watch around her
wrist, studies it and frowns. “You know, I ought to be getting back
to the hotel too.”

I am
so happy
that someone from Ian’s
mother’s side of the family has bothered to care about him. “What
about BurgerRama?” I interject. “Don’t you want to get some dinner
before you pack?” I mean, normally I’m not too keen on inviting
adults along on my social engagements, but the more time Ian spends
with Aunt Jean the better.

Jeanette pretends to mull the idea
over. “Oh, why in tarnation not?”

I give a sigh of relief. “Perfect.” I
turn to Ian. “So I’ll ride with you?”

* * *

I found another knotted Funyuns bag
under the sofa while I was groping for a pair of quarters that had
pinged like slot machine winnings from my jeans. Like the wrapper
tucked into the backseat of Mom’s Prius, this nugget of garbage has
no business being in my life since, three months ago, my parents
hired a contractor to paint our living room, a job that required
huddling all the furniture in the center of the room, including the
plaid-skirted sofa in question. There’s no way the Funyuns wrapper
could have survived such a move, leaving me to conclude it was
deposited here in the last ninety days to taunt me.

“
Morning,” I grumble at Mom
and Dad, who are seamlessly performing what I call “the kitchen
dance”: him scrubbing the dishes and twirling sideways to hand them
to her, whereupon she shimmies to the dishwasher and loads it
up.

“
You’re up early,” says
Dad.

Mom chimes in with, “Want some
toast?”

I give a weak smile that hasn’t a
chance of matching the upbeat one she’s shot me. “Nah. I have
plans.”

She knees the dishwasher shut.
“Oh?”

“
What’re you guys still
doing here?” I ask, prying the refrigerator open and shuffling
through it until I spy the OJ, which I tug out.

“
We’re taking the day off,”
Dad says.

A swell of panic grips me. “Why?
What’s wrong?” Since Mom’s heart attack and George’s death, I’ve
come to regard change—even the good kind, which by all appearances
this unscheduled vacation day is—as suspect.

Glug, glug, glug
goes the juice as it sloshes into my
mug.

Mom floats over to the table and takes
a seat (honestly, I wish she’d clomp around the house so I’d know
she’s real; her near-death history and ghostly white-blond hair do
nothing for my easily freaked out imagination). “Day trip to the
Berkshire Botanical Garden, for our anniversary,” she informs
me.

“
That’s right,” says Dad, a
damp dishrag draped over his shoulder.

“
But”—I search the
rooster-themed calendar for the date—“it’s
only . . . Your anniversary isn’t
until . . .”

“
Saturday,” says Dad. “But
we can’t leave The Moondancer on a weekend.”

Actually, they can; the place is on
autopilot. “Well, have fun,” I say. “Pick a few extra daisies for
me.”

Dad gives me a peck on the
forehead as he ambles by. “Already in the works,
ma chérie
.” I doubt he
means this literally, since if he pilfered as much as a needle off
a pine tree, Mom would divorce him.