The Blessings (15 page)

But for Stephen, the world was not so easy. Life got under his skin. As a little boy, he was teased for his right eye, which drifted when he was tired.
Bring your eye back
, Margie would tell him, and he obeyed. He was afraid of all sorts of things—cemeteries, monsters, oceans, God.
So God knows everything?
he'd ask after church on Sundays, slumped in the car, chewing at the skin around his thumbnail.
God can see me right now? God can hear my thoughts?
When he was nine, they came home from the shore to find his fish dead, and Joe flushed them down the toilet.
But where are they now?
he asked her the next day. By the time Margie's father died, Stephen was a teenager, but he broke down sobbing in her parents' living room and stormed outside—why hadn't she gone after him? Comforted him?

Margie stares at the kitchen wall and wonders if that was her crucial misstep, or that one, or that one.

Because there are so many decisions she regrets. Naming their second-born after Joe—it should have been the first, like John and her father, or none at all. Letting Stephen move his room into the basement. Not being harder on him. Joe, especially, had always seemed more amused than angry, but they both had downplayed Stephen's problems to the family. About his trouble at school, Margie hadn't told a living soul, but it might have helped straighten him out, to be embarrassed, exposed. The shame.

Margie closes her eyes and remembers—like a penance—the spray paint incident in tenth grade.
Obscenities
, Father Malcahy told Joe on the phone,
of a religious and sexual nature
. Margie had felt sick. Where did this kind of anger come from? How did thoughts like these get inside your own son? That had been the beginning of something, the first indication of real recklessness, real fury, of her son being in the grip of something bigger than himself. But Margie hadn't handled the situation; she couldn't handle it. John was so sick then. He died five days later. Stephen, at the funeral, with that unexplained black eye. Margie knows she should have done something. Gone to talk to the school counselor or a priest or
something
. But the spray paint had so unnerved her that she pretended it never happened. She didn't know the specifics, told Joe she didn't want to. She just wanted it all to go away. The black eye faded, the school year ended. She told herself it was a fluke. The way she'll see an ant on the kitchen counter and convince herself there's only one of them, or the way, when something new crops up in a body—the itchy red patch between her pinky and ring finger, the blurred spot in her mother's eye—she'll tell herself it doesn't mean more are coming.

Because there were other times—looking back, Margie is sure they are there—when things seemed to be turning. When Stephen got his job at Pet World—he loved that store. He fed the fish and cleaned the cages and sifted through the hermit crabs, picking out the dead ones. He came home full of stories—how the birds flew wild around the store after hours, how the mynah could sing Bruce Springsteen's “Thunder Road.” Margie wasn't sure she believed it, but she loved to see her son excited about something. Then he was fired for lateness. From there, it was the same story, different versions. Sam Goody. Wawa. The Hess station on Cottman. Even the ShopRite, after Joe got him a job as a bagger—nothing stuck. He went to CCP, planned to major in engineering, but lasted only a semester and a half. There were always reasons. The teachers who hated him, the friends who goaded him into doing something that wasn't his idea. It was never his idea, but he always went along with it. Until three weeks ago, he'd had a job at the Burger King on Rising Sun, then he didn't. He never said why. Margie knew he hadn't liked working the counter, smelling like French fries and taking people's orders. It was about dignity, she supposed. But in the weeks since, he hadn't done much looking. Except for nights, he rarely left the house.

But this she knows: Her son is not bad. Probably all the mothers on
Dr. Phil
believe this, but Margie knows it's true. Life had cast her son in the role of a troublemaker, but he's a good boy. A good heart. Not like that Mark Rourke, who served jail time for assault in a bar fight, a boy truly black at the core. Look at how sweet Stephen is with his cousins, Patrick's children. Holding baby Tate, letting four-year-old Hayley serve him imaginary tea. Going to watch Max's Little League games. He stands just the way Margie's father used to watching Joey, tips of his fingers hooked loosely in the sagging wire fence. Some nights, when Stephen comes in, he pauses in the kitchen, kisses the top of her head.

But in the morning, he disappears again. Sleeps past eleven, wastes away the afternoon.
Any leads on a job, honey?
she asks him.
Working on it
, he says.

Margie watches the oven clock slide to 2:26. She doesn't care where he's been, what he's been doing, she just wants him to walk in the door. Once he's here, she can take a pill, go to bed. Tomorrow night, she'll do it all again. She fixes her eyes on the wooden cross on the wall above the toaster, rubbing at her necklace, and prays.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord—
Then the phone rings and her heart stops beating.
Oh God oh God oh God.
The chair falls over in her rush to grab the receiver. “Hello?” she says. “Stephen? Hello?”

She is already crying by the time her mother speaks, her voice wondering and weak. “Margie?” she says. “Did I wake you?”

Joe grabs the coats and keys while Margie calls Ann.
She fell
, Margie reports.
The hallway.
Ann will call Patrick, who will meet them there. No sense waking Lauren, they decide, who's alone with the kids. They'll tell her in the morning.

She and Joe hurry down the front steps, crunching across the fallen leaves, Margie murmuring Hail Marys. She can't stand the thought of her mother lying there alone. She blames herself. They've known her eyesight wasn't good, that she has trouble with her swollen legs. She takes medication, but Margie has noticed once, at least once, that she forgot to take a pill. Then she stops and gasps.

“Stephen!”

Her son is slumped over on the curb, shoulders rounded, head hanging forward so his chin nearly rests on his chest. She isn't sure that he's conscious. She rushes to his side as he lifts his head, slowly, looking up at her with glassy eyes. His head seems to lean too far backward, as if loose, like a baby's on an unformed neck.

“Hey, Mom.”

“What are you
doing
out here!”

Her voice is shrill, almost a scream.

“Nothing.”

There's that expression again, a floating smile, almost a grimace. How long had he been sitting out here in the cold? Was he out here every night, while she sat inside worrying herself sick? Margie wants to burst into tears, collapse to the ground, and shatter into pieces. But she can't. Not now. She must prioritize: one crisis over another. Joe is somewhere behind her, awaiting instruction.

“Get in the car,” she says to Stephen, her voice shaking.

He laughs. “The car?”

“Get up,” she says. “Your grandmother needs help.”

Impossible not to be reminded of the other time they were all summoned in the middle of the night like this, more than a decade ago, everyone in their sweatpants and winter coats and the awfulness of how her father had looked in bed. It's been almost eleven years, but Margie still misses him every day. If only she could talk to him, ask him what to do about Stephen. Would her father make him leave? Probably. But she knows that with her father in charge, it would never have come to this in the first place.

When they arrive at St. Mary's, Ann is already there, kneeling over their mother. She is on her back on the hallway floor, next to the little wooden candy table that holds the M&M's dish and phone. “I wasn't sure if I should move her,” Ann says as Margie rushes through the door.

“Who's there?” Mother says, trying to turn her head.

“Me, Mother,” Margie says, dropping to her knees beside her. “And Stephen. And Joe.”

Her mother looks up at her, face soft without her glasses.

“Stevie's here?”

“He's right here.”

“Does he want something to eat?”

“He's fine, Mother,” Margie says with a short laugh.

Stephen is staring down at his grandmother, his face slack. Margie puts a reassuring hand on his leg, feels his big kneecap beneath his dirty jeans, radiating heat. He takes a step away.

“She fell in the bathroom,” Ann says to Margie. “When she couldn't get back up, she pulled herself along the floor to reach the phone.”

Margie takes in her mother's nightgown, a peach flannel they gave her last Christmas. The hem is ruched up around her knees, her bare feet flopped inward. Her feet look swollen, her legs shiny and smooth, marbled with purple and blue veins.

Stephen laughs. “It's like that commercial.”

Margie looks up at him, a touch nervously. “What commercial, honey?”

“You know. I've fallen and I can't get up.”

Margie thinks of slapping him across the face, feels the clean tingle of it course through her palm. Heat flies like a brushfire through her cheeks.

“Is that Stevie?” Mother says.

No, Margie thinks, it isn't—one look at him and anyone can see her son isn't here, this is someone else, the smile hanging on his face, hooked loosely at the corners. At least, thank God, her mother didn't hear what he said, or didn't understand it. Margie can't bring herself to look at Ann. She looks instead at her husband, standing in the kitchenette—if he's laughing, she thinks, she'll kill him. But his face is inscrutable, his huge bulk filling the tiny kitchen, saying nothing, and resentment spikes right through her, bright and pure.

“Will someone get me up from here?” her mother asks.

“I think we should wait for Patrick,” Ann murmurs, then addresses her mother in a loud, clear voice. “You're sure you're not in any pain?” In recent years, Ann has become this person, the one who will take the lead on things. All her therapy—first for Meghan's eating problems, then her divorce—has made her, if not a natural communicator, a resolute one. Margie used to grow annoyed sometimes listening to Ann talk about the problems in her marriage—their lack of intimacy, Ann's need for control—but still, she admires her sister for letting things dissolve so honestly, getting it all out in the open.

“I'm fine,” Mother says. “Would everybody stop worrying about me?”

“Should we try to move her?” Ann says just as Patrick, thank God, rushes through the door.

“Hey there, gang,” he says. “Fancy meeting you all here.”

“Is that Patrick?” Mother says, craning her head, an uptick of joy in her voice. “Is Patrick here?”

“Hi, Mommy,” Patrick says, and Margie can feel the exhalation in the room. He crouches beside her in his jeans and sneakers, red hair mussed from sleep. “What happened? Break-dancing again?”

Stephen laughs, too loudly. Patrick glances up at him, and Margie feels a deep wash of shame. Everybody knows Stephen still lives at home, has had a string of dead-end jobs, but seeing this is different. This is the Stephen only she knows, shuffling through the darkened kitchen at two in the morning, disappearing into his basement room.

“Did you bring the babies?” Mother asks. “Where are the babies?”

“No babies. They're asleep,” Patrick says. He checks her vital signs, talking to her all the while—“Does anything hurt, Mom?”—while Margie and Ann look on, grateful. Their youngest brother, their funny brother. A doctor, of a kind. Margie remembers the night their father died, how Patrick cried, slumped on the end of the couch with his pretty new wife, rendering Margie's boys sheepish and confused. Patrick was still the baby then; John was the one in charge. That's what happens in families—things shift, openings appear, roles that need filling. Patrick is now a success by all accounts—has his own practice and a big house on the Main Line—though something has hardened in his face. It's more than age; it's as if his old, easygoing personality has become an effort. His children are perfect, but it took years to make them. God knows what they went through.

“Steve,” Patrick says. He looks up at her son. “Take her feet.”

Joe doesn't move to help, still lurking in the kitchen, and it occurs to Margie that it's a blessing Stephen came. That Joe, with his size and his bad knees, might have been unable to get down and lift her. To do the job that needed doing. Stephen clasps his grandmother's feet, cupping them in his hands. Something about it makes Margie's eyes well up—her mother's small, swollen feet in her son's giant hands.

“One, two, three,” Patrick says, and Margie prays that Stephen doesn't stumble and drop her. She holds her breath as they carry Mother across the room and settle her, gently, into the blue wingback chair. She's sitting upright, her hair disheveled. She would hate to be seen this way.

“My glasses,” she says, touching her face. “Where did I put my glasses?”

“Right here, Mother,” Ann says, sliding them on her face.

“Well,” Mother says, and looks around. Margie notices then how bright the room is. Three in the morning and every light is turned on—the overhead, the standing lamp. The small brass lamps with the horses at the bases. When she was growing up, the lamps had sat on either end of the couch, next to her father's green glass ashtrays.

Margie looks at her son. Relieved of duty, he's standing next to the table in the hallway, eating M&M's from the dish Mother keeps filled for the kids. The night her father died, all of the grandchildren were there except Ann's oldest, away at college; tonight the only one here is Stephen. Stephen, loyal by virtue of his inertia. Looking at him, Margie is struck by how much his build is that of a young Joe—at twenty-five, the same sloping shoulders, the same shifting gait. He's turning into his father. It's never looked as plain to her as it does now.