Authors: Carla Buckley
“I’m not talking about tests. I’m talking about that stupid paper, the one that wasn’t even in the course description, the one she sprang on us during class.” Arden knows this. She’s just making me do the hard work of spelling it all out.
Focus, Rory,
my mom said.
You know you can do it. You just have to try.
I’d leaned over the worksheet centered on the table before me, opened my eyes as wide as they would go as if that would make the difference. But the letters pushed together to make nonsense words. I couldn’t unstring them fast enough. If only I could breathe a little, but my mother’s face was so close to mine, the concern stamped into the lines of her forehead and dragging down her mouth.
You will never get into Harvard if you don’t try,
cherie.
“It’s hard enough coming up with one thesis, Rory. I can’t do two.”
“Of course you can. You’re like a genius at this stuff.”
“I’m not a genius. I’m just…”
“What?” She’s not going there again, is she? It’s not that I’m stupid. I’m not.
“Whatever.”
“Come on. I’ll do your econ homework.”
“I’m not taking econ.”
“Calculus, then. Come on. Please. It’s just one paper. You can write it in your sleep.”
She rocks back on her heels and looks at me. “Rory, don’t do this.”
“I’m stuck, okay? I really don’t get this stuff. I’m already jammed up with all my other coursework. You’re the only one I trust.”
“You could buy a paper online.”
“Dude. People get caught doing that shit.”
“You could find a really obscure one.”
“You know that won’t work. They have software that searches for this stuff.”
She stands, crosses her arms, and shakes her head. “I can’t. I can’t compromise my grades anymore.”
She’s looking at me, begging me to understand, but I won’t. It means nothing to her and everything to me. “Your grades are fine. Better than mine.”
“I killed myself to get them.”
Impatience jolts through me, hot and red. “Here’s a plan. Help me with this one class so that I don’t screw up my chances of transferring to Harvard and I’ll leave you alone. I’ll go to Boston and you’ll go to California, and we’ll be three thousand miles apart. Just what you wanted, right?”
“Wow. Three thousand miles. I’m surprised you know that. I didn’t think you’d been paying any attention in geography.”
She thinks she’s so brave. “I wonder how Ignacio’s doing,” I say mildly.
Her face goes white; her eyes spark green.
I spread the shirt out on the rumpled covers of her bed and leave, closing the door quietly behind me. I’m meeting D.D. for dinner and she’s waiting in the dining hall, but I stop, lean against the wall, and collect my breath.
I need help,
I’d begged my mom, and she’d frowned.
We had you tested. You do not need help. You just need to be more disciplined.
She never sees how hard I work. She only sees what she wants to see. She never sees me at all.
—
When I get back to the dorm later that night, there’s a note taped to the door, the familiar handwriting, dark and upright, an assault on the white paper, all the vowels with their tiny curls in the middle of their foreheads. I’d practiced forming my letters the same way until my second-grade teacher cupped her hand over mine, stopping me.
That’s not the way Americans write,
she’d said.
I yank the note free. My mom’s been here. I should have guessed a hundred and seventeen miles wouldn’t be enough.
Natalie
I WASH UP
in a white-tiled bathroom with steel fixtures and signs posted everywhere,
CALL DON’T FALL
, quick with guilt at getting a little clean while my daughter lies defenseless. I’ve been on her Facebook account, all of it so innocent. I’d smiled at Arden’s face, splotches of orange paint on her cheeks and chin. Who knows why? It could have been face paint from some college activity, or acrylic paint from her art class. Either way, she looks so happy. I held this happiness close, then signed out. Gabrielle had been wrong. There was nothing suspicious there.
I pull on the jeans and T-shirt Theo brought me. He’d forgotten to include a fresh bra, so I hook back on the lacy, black push-up I’d worn for our anniversary date Friday, two nights ago. It feels ridiculous beneath my cotton T-shirt, the swell of my breasts pushing out against the fabric. I comb back my damp hair with my fingers and step into the hall. The floor’s sticky, sucking at the soles of my shoes. Why doesn’t someone clean it? I hate dirty floors. I make sure we keep Double’s floors spotless. Vince used to say that if we ran out of tables, we could always seat customers on the floor.
Tomorrow’s Monday, a new start to the week. It’s also the day they’re going to begin debriding the girls’ burns. Arden has some areas of concern along her left arm and torso, but Rory’s the one with burns along the fronts of her legs, her chest, both shoulders. Treating her burns is a more extensive process, but it won’t affect her prognosis. The nurse has told us it’s a blessing the girls will be unconscious during the process.
Lately, whenever I asked Arden how Rory was doing, Arden would impatiently say
Fine,
and I’d let it go. It would have been easy enough to call Rory myself and see how college was going for her, but I’d let all the opportunities slip past. I loved my niece as much as I loved my own children, but I’d let this break with her father spill between us and push us apart. She’d taken her cue from me. She’d stopped pulling up a chair to nibble biscotti and watch me tackle a new sauce or entrée; she’d stopped texting me upbeat updates. She’d slip past at Double with just a breezy hello. I’d noticed and let it go, telling myself I need to focus on saving Double, but the truth was I’d welcomed the distance. I hadn’t figured out how to manage keeping her in my life and not Vince. I’d failed Rory just as much as I’d failed Arden.
A man heads toward me, pushing a little girl in a stroller. They both look so happy, the little girl kicking her legs to make her skirt dance, and her father with a half-smile on his face. I was that complacent parent once. I want to grab his arm and say,
This can all change in an instant.
The room across the hall is bright with light, revealing a woman leaning forward to spoon Jell-O into a patient’s mouth. I’m seized by envy. This is what I want, suddenly and passionately—to be able to slide a quivering orange spoonful into my daughter’s mouth. Surely the nurses have a refrigerator full of Jell-O and juices somewhere for requests such as these. Surely they have a spoon and will permit me to feed just one small bite to my child. But when I reach Arden’s room and step inside, the flash of the hallway light briefly falling into the darkened room, I see her lying exactly as I left her, flat on her back with her mouth agape and filled with a thick rubbery tube. Theo glances up from where he sits in the corner. “Feel better?”
“A little more human.” I drop the bag with my dirty clothes onto the chair inside the door.
This dark crowded space with its rickety padded chairs and rolling nightstand. A tall cupboard stands against the wall, intended for Arden’s possessions, all of which were consumed in the fire. The clothes she wore into the hospital had been cut away and discarded, so we use these drawers to stash our things instead—tissues and notepads where we jot copious notes, Theo’s laptop when he’s not using it. He brought framed photographs from home, all the ones that stood in our den, swept up in one great armful, and placed them on top of the dresser: the boys peeking out from the tree house Theo and Vince built them the previous summer, Rory and Arden on graduation day with their arms around each other’s waists, Sugar and George on the gangplank of their first cruise, my mother lifting an Easter egg from its cup of dye, me and Vince standing in front of Double the day it opened, the four of us at a restaurant table, our wineglasses raised in a toast I’ve long forgotten. It’s too dark to make out any of our smiling faces. It’s too dark to see even the general rectangular shapes of the frames, but their presence is enough—a reminder of the love that surrounds Arden as she sleeps.
Theo’s got his laptop balanced on his knees, but I don’t think he’s really getting any work done. He nods to the arrangement with a bobbing balloon. “Liz sent flowers.”
“That’s nice.” She’d volunteered to drive my car home from the alley behind Double and arrange for a ride back. My mom had invited Liz in when she arrived bearing pastry, and the two of them had visited briefly while Oliver and Henry played with Percy.
We were careful,
my mother assured me.
We didn’t talk about Arden and Rory in front of the boys.
I haven’t explained what’s going on to Oliver and Henry. I’ve relied on saying vague things like
Arden’s sleeping
and
She bumped her head,
and thankfully the boys haven’t asked the hard questions.
Other people have sent flowers, too: the Bishop School teachers and staff, the PTA president, my father, Theo’s parents, who sent twin arrangements of blush-pink roses. My parents-in-law have always been careful to treat the girls exactly the same, and so if Rory gets a cashmere sweater on her birthday in May, Arden knows to expect the same sweater when her birthday comes around in September, although maybe in a different color. They don’t do this with Oliver and Henry, who actually
are
twins. If Oliver gets a set of paints, Henry will get a football.
It’s important to treat them as individuals,
Sugar, my mother-in-law, has very seriously informed me.
That’s her name, really?
I’d asked Theo when he’d told me that first time, thinking I could never marry a man whose mother’s given name was a food additive.
It’s a southern thing,
he’d tried to explain, which made me retort that D.C. was not a southern city, which made him retort,
Ha!
Because the girls aren’t individuals, too?
I’ve groused to Theo in private. I don’t know why this irks me. Maybe it’s because Sugar has never embraced me as an extension of her family. It’s not personal, I don’t think. I’ve noticed that she treats Gabrielle with the same polite distance, but this doesn’t seem to bother Gabrielle. In fact, I think Gabrielle prefers it.
Sugar and George are in Italy for a long-anticipated trip and will head to the hospital the moment they return in six days. I have steeled myself for this. Sugar will not be dissuaded, even if we tell her the doctors have warned us the girls can’t have the stimulation of a lot of visitors. She and George are upset with Theo and Vince for fighting and have made their views strongly known. They don’t understand that this is the way it’s always been between their sons—Theo always having to rescue Vince and Vince always resenting him when he does. The last time Sugar phoned, Theo listened for a few minutes, then silently handed me the phone and strode away, leaving me to interrupt Sugar’s tirade about how her sons were acting like children, how life was too short, and the importance of family.
All you boys have are each other,
Sugar was saying when I put the phone to my ear.
That’s not true, Sugar,
I said.
Theo has me.
I’d caught her watching me on my wedding day as I danced first with Theo, then Vince.
“Your brothers made you a card,” I tell Arden. Theo brought it back with him, an exuberantly crayoned piece of paper with their names inexpertly printed on it. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s ants playing soccer.” I can see my twin boys, identical heads bent and elbows bumping as they lean close, squabbling over the green crayon that is both boys’ favorite color. The card will make Arden smile and I’ve propped it against the plastic water pitcher on her nightstand so it’s the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes.
“I was thinking we could call the boys and let them talk to her,” Theo says.
Hearing her brothers’ voices might be a good thing for Arden. Why am I so resistant to this, though? “Maybe with my mom on the line,” I hedge. Her cheerful chatter would distract the twins from noticing that Arden wasn’t saying anything back. “Maybe after school.”
“It’s Sunday, Nat.”
Right.
I search back through my memory for the boys’ schedule and it slowly assembles itself before me. Cub Scouts. Their den leader’s big on hiking through Rock Creek, running along a trail, searching the woods for fossils. Today they’re headed for the quarry. My mom will be finding chunks of quartz in their pockets for days to come. I blink back tears. “How about tomorrow, then?”
“Nat.”
“You know they’ll be bouncing off the walls when they get home after Scouts. Mom will have her hands full getting them to calm down enough just to eat dinner.”
“We’re talking about a phone call. Not running the Marine Corps Marathon.”
Instead of answering, I scrape my chair over to Arden’s bed and place my hand on her covers. Touching, but not.
When Detective Gallagher raps lightly on the door, I startle awake. I’d fallen into an uncomfortable sleep, and somebody—Theo?—had draped a hospital blanket over my shoulders. I open my eyes to see the policeman inside the curtain and Theo beckoning to me.
“We’re holding a news conference this evening,” Detective Gallagher tells us as we sit in the family lounge down the hall. The door’s closed and we’ve pushed our chairs close to him. We’re going to hear secrets. We’re finally going to hear the truth. I feel relief and apprehension, both. For some reason, Detective Gallagher wants to talk to us alone, without Vince and Gabrielle. “Reporters will start calling. They won’t be able to get to you while you’re here. The hospital staff will keep them away, but they might get hold of your cell numbers.”
His glasses make him look so serious. His hands are loosely clasped in front of him. It inspires friendliness. It makes me want to lean forward, too, but I sit back. I think,
Why does the media want to talk to us?
“It doesn’t look like this was an outside job. There’s no sign of forced entry and no one’s seen a stranger hanging around. We don’t have gang activity in this area, and there’s no indication drugs were the motivation. The tox report hasn’t come back yet, but we do know alcohol wasn’t a factor.”