Would You (9 page)

“Really bad.”

I'm glad they don't have one of those lights, like we do, that pop on when a raccoon goes by. A raccoon or a skulking teenager.

“I'm so messed up,” says Joe. “I keep thinking someone is going to shake me awake and tell me it was a nightmare. It's just so, just so …”

And here's another reason boys cry: their girlfriends get hit by cars. Joe covers his face. I don't want to watch him, so
I go to lean my bike against the wall, but it sways and twists and knocks into him while he's trying to pull it together.

Then I lunge to catch the bike but Joe misunderstands and thinks I'm trying to embrace him. We end up standing there in this wrong hug, with the bike kind of pinned between us, and it's
so
awkward.

I step back and get the bike set. I sit down on the little step by the door.

“Have you seen her?” He sits next to me.

“Yeah.”

He wants to know but he's afraid, I can tell. I'm waiting to ask him, but I'm afraid too.

“She's pretty bad,” I say.

I think about today. I see her head and the gash and her swollen face and the tubes. I grope for the real Claire. The old Claire. I remember the prom photo taped to her mirror. Joe was her date, wearing a tuxedo, and they were so gorgeous it was ridiculous, like movie stars at a premiere. Now I can see her face, clear as clear. Her hair, darker than mine, cut so it would fall just right, no hokey updo for Claire.

“She was crying,” says Joe. “She was telling me …” He stops, and when he talks again his voice cracks like a sad little kid's. “You can't tell anyone this.
Please
, don't tell. She was saying she thought we should, you know, spend the summer apart, because of going away in the fall. I couldn't even listen. I knew from the first sentence she was breaking
up with me, and I felt like my heart stopped. I got all… well… I cried, Natalie. I cried. And then
she
started crying and she tried to hug me and I told her to get lost and I punched a telephone pole.”

He holds out his knuckles, scraped and scabby. “See? And then I turned around and said, ‘I mean it! Get lost! I don't want your pity! Don't be nice to me while you're breaking up!’ And I was sort of yelling but I was hiccuping too, and that got me more pissed off. And Claire was crying so hard she must have … well, I guess she couldn't see properly. And she went… stumbling back across the sidewalk and turned around to cross the street and then … oh god…”

He has a hand over his eyes and he shudders.

“Did you … did you
push
her?” I say. “Is that why she—”

“No! We were just, you know, mad, and …
emotional.
But then this car came out of nowhere and …
boom!”
Joe is whispering now. “Except it wasn't a boom…. The sound I remember was the brake grinding, like
eeeeee…
and a thud. A hollow thud. I keep hearing it, I keep trying to figure out what it sounded like….”

“Like a body,” I say.

Joe moans. It's miserable. Animal in pain.

A light snaps on inside.

“Oh Nat.” He grabs my arm and yanks me off the steps, around the corner of the house. “Ssssh! My mom—”

We're in the dark near the garage. I can feel loops of hose on the wall next to me. Joe is leaning against the bricks, trying to recover his composure. The door opens.

“Hello?” calls Mrs. Russell. “Is someone there?”

Joe puts a hand over my mouth, but I twist away.

“What?”

“My parents said not to talk to you, or
anyone,”
he whispers. “Your dad scared them, like … I
did
it.”

My hand is gripping what turns out to be his bicep.

Claire had sex with him. That's what goes through my head while we're hiding there. The screen door bangs shut.

“Did you
do it, Joey?”

“What? How can you say that?” His eyes are horrified.

“Because Claire is really messed up!” I yell. “She's really damaged! And you were with her when it happened! Why didn't you stop her? Why didn't you save her?”

I wrench myself away from him and grab my bike. I look back and he's standing with his tanned arms just hanging there. I hurtle down the drive, blind with tears. I scrape against the curb and grind my ankle so it rips and bleeds.

Claire comes in and I look at the clock. “Late.” But then I see she's red-eyed. “What?” I say. “You did it?”

She plonks down onto her bed and nods, grim and unhappy while she takes off her sneakers. Then she says, “But you know what? He acted like a jerk, like a baby high school jerk. He cried and he punched the telephone pole and he was a pathetic idiot, so it just makes me know that I did the right thing.”

“Poor Joe-boy,” I say.

“Don't even start,” says Claire. She throws a shoe at me, but she misses and topples my bottle of water, which spills all over my duvet.

“Aaah! Claire! You whore! Look what you did!”

“Oh, shake it out. It hasn't even soaked in yet!”

So I pick up my duvet and thwack it a couple of times like an oversized dish towel, and water sprays around the room and we laugh.

“Ice cream?” I say.

“And
Breakfast at Tiffany's.”

That's how it should have been.

Dad's at the computer when I come in.

“Look at this,” he says.

“I'm tired.” I'm not going to tell him that I saw Joe-boy

“Just for a second. Look at this,” says Dad. “Your Aunt Jeanie told us about all kinds of times when people despair and then …”

So I go and look over his shoulder at the computer screen. He's got a list from Google of medical journal articles or maybe crappy tabloids, with titles like “Man with Head Injury Rewires Brain” and “Woman in Vegetative State Shows Signs of Awareness” and “Car Crash Victim Wakes After 20 Years in Coma.”

“Dad.” I put my hand gently on his plaid shoulder, pretending I'm the nurse. “Dad.”

He slumps a little, hearing me through his hope.

But, “It could happen,” he says. “We can't give up.”

I sink into a chair. Have I given up? Or am I being realistic?

Every part of me is aching and fuzzy, longing to be asleep. But when I get to my bed, my brain won't let go of this day. I want to lie on my side and whisper to Claire as if she's in the other bed, like all the nights of our life.

Maybe I can trick sleep if I try a different position. I stretch out on my stomach, pretending I'm on the beach. I lie on my back, being a vampire in a coffin with my arms crossed over my chest. I go back to my side and wait.

Audrey is sleeping beside me like a puppy. How'd she sneak in? She's on the floor, not on my bed. And not on Claire's bed either.

I look at her face, her eyes crusted with black, lips parted and making a sound like there's a bug whirring in her throat. She's got a bath towel over her and she's curled up with her head on Claire's stuffed chimp, Finny.

I love Audrey, coming over here for me to wake up to.

I don't have to work until noon but here I am at eight, as perky as can be, sitting with the ladies. The kitchen is already bustling, as if we're getting ready for a party and all
hands are on deck. Aunt Jeanie is being hostess, pouring coffee, unwrapping more muffins from somebody.

Maeve went to high school with Mom. Shelley is Kate's mom, so she and Mom have been on school committees and all that. Gina's younger; Mom met her at the gym. They've been around as long as I can remember, but I haven't lingered in their company since my playground days.

“Can just you and me go see Claire?” I whisper to Mom. “Before I go to work?”

“Yes, darling, of course. But can we stop on the way? At Devon Road?” says Mom. “I think I'd like to see—”

I'm going to say no? It's the first time she's wanted to do anything, the first time she's spoken to me, really, since her wack attack in the bedroom.

I leave a Post-it on Audrey's sneaker:
ur the best.

Zack went yesterday and read all the cards and looked at the dolls and ribbons, and he said I should too, it might be good for me. Good for me? I wasn't going to, but then Mom …

We've been avoiding Devon Road on purpose, going around the other way to get to the hospital. It's as if some news channel is filming it, recording a tragedy with poignant details. We see it on TV all the time, whenever there's a heart-tugging victim. But now it's real life, our life,
where we can pick the stuff up and read it. We stand and stare for a minute.

“But she's not dead,” I say.

“It feels as if she's gone, though,” says Mom. So she knows too.

We swallow and go closer.

I pick up a folded card with a crayon picture on the front of a big stick person and a little stick person, both wearing triangle dresses.

Claire looked after Michelle on Saturdays while her mom went to business school. Try explaining this to a six-year-old.

“Who's this?” Mom asks, handing me one.

“I don't know,” I say. “There's a Steve in her class, but he's kind of—well, he plays chess, basically, so I don't know if this is him.”

“If this is
he,”
says Mom.

Sure, I think. Don't sign your name. Painless.

That one I crunch up and slide into my pocket while my mother is bawling her eyes out, touching teddy bears and miniature soccer balls.

“Can we go now?” I ask.

My mother puts down the card she just picked up. “Yes,” she says. “I think I've seen enough.”

She brings Michelle's drawing with her. “Maybe we can pin up some of these in Claire's hospital room,” she says. “To brighten the scenery.”

When we arrive in the parking lot of the hospital, she turns off the ignition. I open my door and get a blast of heat from the real world. Mom's not moving, aside from shivering. I didn't notice that the car is freezing till I opened the door. But Mom is just sitting there, so I pull my feet back in and close the door and look at her.

If she's this stoned, I think, she shouldn't be driving. She's just staring out the window with her lower lip pushed slightly out, looking petulant. But then I guess, Oh, maybe she's afraid. To go back inside for another day.

“Natty,” she says.

“ Uh-huh.”

“This is not the way it's supposed to be.”

“No kidding.”

“People tell me we'll be okay, but it's hard to believe, isn't it? I feel like I won't ever be okay again.”

I look at her. “I know.”

“I had these babies,” she says. “These darling babies. And from the first second that I held a living creature in my arms, I was terrified. First Claire and then you. It was
just the idea, in the beginning, that I was responsible, this little bug could live or die because of me.”

“Mom.”

“Look what happened to Gina! She put Alexander to bed one night and he just died. Crib death. Over. Oh my god, the way I paid attention to my babies … And then you went to school. And to parties and camp and playdates and movies and riding in other people's cars. Even other parents' cars. A part of me was unable to breathe or think until you were home again.”

“That's a little extreme, isn't it?” But then I swallow. Nothing is extreme, it turns out. Anything can happen.

“So all this time I've been expecting the terrible phone call…. And then it came. You'd think, since I've been waiting forever, you'd think I would have made a plan for the next part….” Her eyes start to tear. “Wouldn't she hate this, Natty? If she knew she was …”

“She would. She'd totally hate it.”

“It's so … I can't bear … to see her this way.”

“I know, Mom.”

“And you're my baby too.” She smacks the steering wheel. “But… how can I ever be a whole mother again?”

I lean over as far as I can in the car and try to hug her. She leans against me. She laughs just a little while she's crying because it's so clumsy.