Just before I slid off the hospital bed I felt the soft grip of a hand on my arm.
My mother’s hand.
“Mom?” A thrill flew through me. “Dad! Jim!” I called out to get their attention and they gathered behind me, looking at Mom, waiting. She hadn’t yet said a word since she’d woken up, just watched us and listened and spent time being aware.
Being alive.
This time she was struggling to communicate with something more than her eyes. A clear mask covered her mouth, but we could see her lips working as she tried them out. After a long wait and with tremendous effort, she managed to mouth three words.
“I.” Her mouth opened wide and stopped. Then, “Love.” And then, “You,” she said, her lips closing after this last word. She was careful to look at each one of us in the eyes, Dad, Jim, and then me.
“Oh, Mom!” we were shouting. “We love you, too. We love you so much! You are going to be okay!”
That’s when I noticed the tears rolling down her face to the pillow.
I brushed them away, my fingers gentle along her cheek.
By the next morning, she’d slipped away again, this time for good.
The office door opened and I lifted my mind from these painful memories. The doctor walked inside and pulled up a chair next to me, setting her clipboard on the smooth wood surface of a side table. For a moment I wanted to reach out and touch the beautiful braids cascading past her shoulders, wondering how long it would take to weave so many and wishing we could
discuss this instead. But she started speaking and I had to focus on why we were here.
“I’m Dr. Stone,” she began.
“I’m Rose Madison,” I said, a reflex.
“I know.” Her voice was firm, but somehow reassuring. “Your brother isn’t here yet?”
“I called him. He’s at college. I don’t know when he’ll arrive, though. Maybe in another hour.” If I kept babbling maybe I might hold off whatever came next. “Jim said he was already getting in the car when I was on the phone with him—”
Dr. Stone placed a hand on my arm, as if hitting an invisible
pause
button. “Let’s talk about your dad,” she said.
“Okay,” I whispered, the word barely audible even in the quiet room.
All that wanted to come out of my mouth was a string of questions: Was he drunk? Is that why this happened? Did he hurt anyone else? Did he kill someone else? Is he going to die? Is he going to die, too, like Mom died?
Dr. Stone looked at me, her brown eyes steady. “What you need to know first, and what you need to remember while we discuss the details, is that your dad is going to be okay. He’ll need recovery time but he will get better.”
“Really?” Hope found its way into my voice.
“Yes,” Dr. Stone replied. “But now we’re going to talk about the circumstances. Okay?”
It felt as if she was leading me down a rocky path in the middle of a brook, little by little, guiding me through each step,
waiting, patient, making sure I was ready to place my foot onto the next slippery surface. “Okay,” I agreed.
“Your father’s car hit a tree off the side of the highway,” she began.
Time at a hospital goes by differently, as if on its own clock. A few minutes can sometimes feel like days and vice versa. A week can pass without you realizing it. I had no idea how long I was in that office, maybe hours. When I came out and returned to the waiting room, my eyes narrowed to a squint in the bright hallway, the white flickering glare intense after the soft darkness of the private room.
“Rose.” I heard my name, said by many people at once, and Krupa’s arms wrapped around my waist and her hair, long and soft, pressed against my shoulder.
“I want to go home,” I told her.
“What about your dad?” She watched for my reaction. “Is he okay?”
“There’s nothing to do but wait.”
“Oh, Rose—”
“No.” My voice was quiet and steady. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Rose?” Kecia came toward us, her heels, normally so loud clicking against the floor, silent now, like soft slippers. “Can I do anything?”
“Thanks for coming.” I forced myself to see her, to look beyond Krupa, noticing that Mary and Tamika sat in a nearby row of waiting room chairs. Chris was still here, too. He’d not only waited, he’d called my friends. Will was missing from this group, though. He hadn’t come, hadn’t changed his mind. This thought flashed quickly and was gone. “Has anyone heard from Jim?” The loud sound of my voice cut across the quiet of the waiting room.
Krupa looked at the clock on the wall. “He left around two, and it’s after five so he should be here soon, depending on traffic.”
I sat down in the open seat between Chris and Tamika. Kecia and Krupa took seats in the row across from us.
“Are you hanging in there?” Chris asked, and I stared as if he might be a stranger, his perfect bone structure, his almond-shaped eyes, his face so beautiful. For the first time all afternoon I began to wonder why he was really here, if this was another strange attempt to get me to consider going out with him again. I shrugged in answer to his question since I didn’t know what to say. Regardless of his intentions, I was grateful. I needed someone and he was there for me.
As if he could read my mind, he said, “Just let me be a friend. That’s all I want—I swear—to be here as your friend.”
“Really?” I asked.
Chris nodded, his eyes sad, but I could tell he meant it. Within moments, with just a few words, we resolved six months of uncertainty and hurt and missed connections. I was so unbelievably relieved to have this sudden consolation of closure.
The second hand on the clock ticked in circles, around and around, time passing slowly. All my energy was given over to willing Jim to walk through the door, and that Will, too, would suddenly appear. I needed him to explain how what happened earlier at school had been a mistake, a misunderstanding, that he was ready to be there for me and wouldn’t leave my side, whatever happened next. But my attention was soon drawn from these wishes by the welcome sound of my brother’s voice.
“Rosey!” Jim called from across the waiting room, rushing toward me, and I felt myself being pulled up from the chair, my brother’s arms around me, holding me tight to his chest. It felt so much like home that I started to cry. All day I’d done so well holding back the tears, but now that Jim was here I couldn’t stop them. He let me sob into his sweatshirt for a long time, never lessening his grip. Eventually, when I calmed down enough to speak, I told him what I had decided during those hours in that tiny office. “You need to deal with Dad,” I said. “I can’t any longer. It’s your turn.”
Jim looked at me with confusion.
But I knew this was what I had to do.
Before Jim could say anything I spoke again. “Here is the deal: Dad is going to be fine.” I stopped, making my voice even while I told him this news, as if I was giving him a list of items to pick up at the store and not discussing our father’s fate. “But he has broken bones and a concussion and is undergoing some sort of surgery. They are keeping him”—I paused, gathering the
words—“
unconscious
, but for just a few days, so his body can rest. He’ll come home probably in a few weeks. Maybe three. Maybe four. We have to wait and see.” I needed to backtrack. “No,
you’ll
have to wait and see. I don’t want to. I can’t. I can’t see him on one of those machines like Mom was. I just
can’t.
” Tears spilled down my cheeks and I sniffled, wiping my face with my sleeve.
“Rosey.” Jim sounded shocked. “You’re not going to stay? Seriously?”
“I’m not.” I stepped away, as if proximity might chain me here. There was a long silence before he spoke again.
“Was he … had he been … ?” Jim couldn’t even say the word.
So I said it for him. “Drinking?” I had lost my ability to care whether other people heard or knew. “I don’t know. The doctor didn’t say anything. But from the sound of it, my guess is yes. Probably. He didn’t hit anyone else, though, just a tree,” I added, like this was good news, and in a way I suppose it was.
“Oh god. Oh god.” Jim put both hands up to his head. “What should we do? What are we going to do?”
Gently, I touched my brother’s shoulder. “The question is: what are
you
going to do?” On this last line, my voice cracked and I turned to my friends, the tears streaming down my cheeks, one after the other. “Would someone take me home? I need to go home. Now. Please,” I said, and without looking back I began to walk away, down the hall toward the exit, listening to
the footsteps of the others behind me, alternately clicking and padding and shuffling against the shiny, tiled floor of the hospital corridor. I was doing the right thing for me, but maybe it was the right thing for Dad, too. Maybe leaving him here, refusing to see him, would finally make that message sink in, about how if he kept drinking, not only did he put himself at risk, but he risked losing me, his daughter, too. Jim could handle this on his own, at least for now. He’d have to, just like I’d done. Today, though, I wouldn’t be the one to bear this responsibility. Anybody else but me, I thought, as the wintry air rushed right through my sweater as if it was thin as a spider’s web, taking that familiar sour hospital smell with it.
NOT YOUR YEAR
A week passed and then another, and the rainy gloom of March matched my gray mood. I kept my word about my father and refused to see him. The daily messages he left on my cell I erased before I even listened to them. Aside from the occasional word exchanged with my brother or Grandma Madison, who had come back to stay for the duration, I spoke to no one. I didn’t go to school. Instead, I sealed myself in my room, shades pulled tight to avoid the dreary view of old snow, melting and turning into brown muddy slush, the trees still bare of leaves. Grandma Madison hovered, made remarks about the scraggly state of my hair and my disheveled appearance, but she couldn’t hide the worry knotted through her voice. Krupa called, Kecia called, and I watched the screen of my cell light up with their pictures and turn black again when it rang through to voice mail.
The one person I hoped would call didn’t.
It was as if Will vanished from my life as suddenly as he’d appeared in it. He hadn’t come by once to see me, to explain, to ask if I was okay, or even to check if my father was recovering. I
kept going over the day of the accident, how paralyzed Will had seemed, that closed-off look in his eyes, and how he’d let me leave school with Chris. The more days that passed without any sign from him, the more it felt like I must have dreamed everything between us, the nights in his truck and his room, the snowstorm and all that followed afterward. An impossible distance opened between us, one I didn’t intend or create.
I felt helpless.
Jim traveled to and from the hospital with updates on Dad’s condition, whether I wanted them or not. I learned that my father was on the mend, that he would be home in April, but even this news didn’t help me to feel anything. His accident had robbed me of what little joy and security I’d managed to regain. If he hadn’t kept drinking, if he had listened to my pleas, to Jim’s, to Grandma’s, none of this would have happened.
I’d still have Will.
Life was fragile and love was, too. At any moment, even our happiest ones, our world could shatter and we wouldn’t see it coming. There was only more loss ahead, showing its ugly face when we least expected it. The Rose I became when my mother died, the girl who didn’t want to see people, who couldn’t have fun, who didn’t want to be touched, who refused her friends’ help—the Rose I was before Will—was pulling me down again, an anchor tied to my legs, permanent and unforgiving, denying any effort I made to get away. I thought I had lost her, but I was mistaken.
This was the lesson my father’s accident forced on me.
Then one afternoon the doorbell rang, and after a while it rang again. I was lying in bed reading a book, and I yelled for Jim to answer, then for Grandma. The sun peeked through the waning March clouds, brightening the gap between the shades of my room. When the bell sounded a third time, I concluded I was home alone and waited for silence to tell me the visitors had given up and left.
They were persistent.
Eventually the chimes became too much so I got up. I was still in my pajamas, barefoot, my hair in a sloppy ponytail, strands falling around my face and trailing down my back. When I opened the door, Krupa, Kecia, Tamika, and Mary were standing on the front porch.
“We’ve missed you,” Krupa said, walking past me without waiting for an invitation.
“We won’t take no for an answer,” Kecia said as Mary and Tamika followed her inside. I watched them disappear around the corner into the kitchen. Then I shut the door and went to join them, feeling like a zombie. Chairs scraped against the tiled floor and a flurry of activity ensued, opening and unpacking and whispering. Dangling from Kecia’s fingertips was a giant bag of chocolate bars, and Tamika poured the contents of her bulky purse onto the kitchen table. Eye shadows, eyeliners, compacts, bottles of nail polish and remover, lipsticks, and hair clips spilled
across the wooden surface, clacking as they spread out and rolled to a stop. Mary took out a series of old, battered DVD cases. They looked at me, waiting for my reaction, but I didn’t have the heart for this today. A tear rolled down my cheek and then another. I opened my mouth to protest, but Krupa spoke before I could tell them to go.
“We’ll only stay an hour,” she said. “Today is just getting out of bed and sitting with friends in your house, nothing more.”
I knew they were right, that I had to start somewhere. “Okay,” I said after a long silence. “For just a little while.” I let them lead me into the living room, where they consoled me with chocolate, lipstick, movies, and most of all, their friendship.
Every afternoon that followed, my house filled with friends. I was surrounded by people and activity, but still I felt lost. My father would be coming home soon, and I wasn’t sure how to begin again or who was at fault anymore—him for being so reckless, or me for my refusal to forgive. With the end of March came warmer weather. Tiny green buds began to dot the bare branches of the trees, the ground began its spring thaw, and the plants in my mother’s gardens poked up from the soil, drinking the sun and stretching toward the sky. Every morning I watched from the windows to see if Will had returned to work—I knew it would happen eventually and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss him.
Then one day he appeared in the yard.
He was out back, next to the peony bed, tearing open a bag of compost. My breath stopped when I saw him through the living room windows, my heart quickened and I put a hand out to steady myself on the sill. I wanted him to turn my way, but he didn’t, as if he purposely avoided looking at the house. Now was my chance to thaw this frost between us, to go outside and meet Will at the very spot where he and I began and where little red shoots were about to push up from the soil, soon to be the peonies that he’d promised me would grow. He crouched down for a moment, studying the bed, then suddenly he turned and looked at the exact spot where I stood at the window.
Our eyes met.
Quickly, I turned away.
Krupa was standing behind me. “You should go and talk to him.”
“I miss him,” I whispered. “But he just dropped me without a word, or any explanation.”
“Why don’t you ask him what happened? His reasons may not even be about you.”
More than anything, I wanted my mother back. I wanted her to take care of me, to tell me what to do about Will, to show me how to fix everything with my father. I wanted her to take away this endless grief and complication and more emotion than I knew how to handle. Without consulting my brain, my
feet began to move, carrying my body across the house, past Krupa and everyone else in the kitchen until I reached a door I hadn’t opened in almost a year, and grasping the knob, I turned it, went inside, and closed it behind me.
I was in my mother’s office.
Stacks of construction paper were piled high on the shelves, sparkly pipe cleaners poked up from mugs like pencils, mobiles hung from the ceiling, and paintings by Mom’s kids covered every inch of available wall space. Bright markers and scissors and colored cotton balls were strewn across the desk, as if Mom was still here, working on a project she was planning to teach tomorrow. Her office had always been like a miniature version of her classroom. The experience of taking in these possessions that were once my mother’s evoked the memory of another, similar moment, when I’d gone into Mom’s closet after the funeral and discovered the Survival Kit she had left for me.
I’d let myself off the hook for too long, ignoring the tasks that remained. I remembered the box of crayons, and suddenly I knew what came next. From Mom’s shelves, I gathered as many pairs of scissors as I could fit in one hand, wedged a thick stack of construction paper under my arm, grabbed a mug of pipe cleaners, and brought everything out to the kitchen. I went back and forth shuttling the things from Mom’s office, setting up piles on the table and the countertops: markers, pipe cleaners, glitter glue and finger paint, colored pencils, tissue paper and
silvery, metallic paper and paper plates, and about a dozen other things.
Plus an enormous stack of brown paper lunch bags.
Because crayons, of course, were meant to be shared.
I’d kept the Survival Kit a secret long enough.