Accidents of Marriage (17 page)

“You’re supposed to knock,” Emma yelled.

“I did. You didn’t hear me. Daddy wants you downstairs.
Now.
”

“Is he mad?” Emma asked.

“I don’t think so. But maybe. He said he wants to talk to us.”

Emma got a sick feeling in her stomach. “Did he look upset?”

“He said Mommy was the same,” Gracie answered.

Emma and Gracie walked downstairs. Caleb sat on the floor by the television, twisting an ancient Rubik’s Cube he’d latched on to after finding it in their mother’s desk last week. Or was it longer ago? She knew it was after.

Time had a new meaning—before and after. When she’d looked at a calendar that morning, it didn’t seem possible it was only two weeks since the accident. It seemed like forever.

“We need to talk about when Mommy wakes up,” her father said after she and Gracie settled side by side on the couch.

“She woke up?” Gracie’s giant grin split her face in half. “Mommy’s awake?”

“No, no,” her father said, fast. “I’m sorry, kids. I didn’t mean to raise your hopes so high. But she could be coming up a little at a time. Maybe. That’s what the doctor says. So we can hope. We can be positive. Kath says being positive is important.”

“Hope?” Emma said. Kath and Olivia must have drugged her father or something, but still, weird as it was, hearing her father talking about being positive lifted her spirits an inch. She almost laughed, wanting to joke with him as she might have a year ago.
Hey, Dad—why don’t we wear matching prayer bracelets?

“Not just hope, honey. Her eyes fluttered. She responds a little more to pain.”

“Pain!” Caleb bit at the edge of his thumb. “Why are they making her hurt?”

“It’s just tiny tests, Caleb. A little tiny prick. Like this.” Her father leaned forward and pinched Caleb on his knee. “Just to test her response.”

“What’s response?” Caleb asked.

“It’s how much her body, um, shows it knows that it got pinched.”

“How does she show it?” Gracie asked.

Her father leaned back in the soft chair and closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and slapped his hands on his knees. “They have a special, safe way of measuring it, but—”

“How?” Gracie asked.

“Let me finish, Gracie. I want to talk about—”

“Just tell her, Dad.” Emma also wanted to know. How did they measure her mother’s pain?

“I think it’s the nerve endings or something.” He stopped speaking.

Emma stared at him just as intently as her sister and brother.
Tell us!

“Actually, in truth, I don’t have a clue. But it’s okay—I promise.” He looked at Gracie. “Cross my heart.” Her father made the sign Emma was used to seeing from her sister and Grandma Frances.

“When did the doctor tell you all this?” Emma was suspicious of this rush of happy talk.

Her father stared at each of them in turn. “This is what he’s been telling me all along. And today I asked about her pain response—and it’s getting better. And yes, that really is a good thing. Ask Grandma; she was there when he said it.”

Gracie nodded. Emma guessed that her sister’s little computer brain had decided if Grandma thought it was good, it was good.

“Listen, guys.” Her father’s voice had switched gears. He sounded less worshipful-prayer father and more deal-maker dad. “I’m asking you to be as wise—that means truly smart, Caleb—as possible. Grandma and Grandpa and I talked about something important today. Something for Mommy.”

“What?” Emma sat up straight, alert.

“When Mommy is, um, better, when she wakes up, she won’t be all the way better right away—after she wakes up, she’s going to go through stages. Like the hospital counselor told us. Do you remember?”

“Like a butterfly?” Gracie suggested. “How it changes from a caterpillar?”

“Sort of—but in her head, not just in her body. So she’ll talk slower and not understand everything for a while. Some things she’ll have to learn again.”

“Like what?” Caleb crossed his legs and rocked on his butt.

“We won’t know until it happens—but things like reading. Or how to tie her shoe.”

“I can help, right?” Caleb asked.

“Sure, buddy.”

“How long?” Gracie asked.

“I’m not sure. No one knows until it happens.”

“But what if she never wakes up?” Caleb asked.

“She’s going to wake up.” Emma squeezed her brother’s arm.

Her father put up his hand, signaling them to stop. “Listen. When Mommy wakes up, she’s going to need plenty of help and lots of love, and we have to treat her special. One way is going to be making sure she doesn’t have to worry. It’s very, very, very important. Do you understand?”
His voice raised just enough so that Emma knew they were meant to nod—even Caleb got the message.

“When she comes home, we’re not going to talk about the details of the accident,” her father continued. “Otherwise she’d get upset.”

“You mean how you went too fast?” Caleb asked.

“None of the details need to be . . . shared with Mommy right away. I mean that it doesn’t matter how it happened. The important thing is that she gets well.”

“We’re lying about it?” Gracie’s forehead wrinkled until she looked like Grandma Frances.

Her father tapped his foot against the table. “We’re not lying. We’re just making the beginning easier for Mommy.”

“How?” Gracie asked.

“By explaining the important part, how it was raining and there was a car too close to us that tried to pass. We have to keep it simple.”

Her father looked at Emma, appearing grateful when she didn’t say anything.

“She’s going to have to get used to a lot of things that will be difficult for her,” he continued. “And she’ll need all her energy for getting better.”

“Are we ever going to tell her?” Gracie fingered her cross.

“We’ll see, cupcake. If the right time comes, we’ll tell her everything.”

“How will we know when it’s the right time?” she asked.

“Because I’ll tell you,” her father said.

Right. Because you’re so wise, smart, and know how to handle family matters so well.
Emma thought she should say something—speak up for her mother, for truth, for doing the right thing. Still, how would her mother feel coming home to the news that it might be Daddy’s fault? That without Grandpa Benedikte he might be in jail right now? That’s what she heard Aunt Vanessa say. Her aunt was probably exaggerating like always, but it was true that they were deciding whether to charge him with driving to endanger. They were investigating. Emma wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but she knew it had to be very bad. And that he could be in lots of trouble.

He drove too fast. Like a maniac. End of story. Maybe Grandpa Benedikte’s lawyer will get him off, but he’ll always be guilty to me.

Last time she was at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, she’d heard Grandpa Jake say that. They thought she was upstairs, but she’d been right in the next room, listening to them.

Does it really matter in the end?
Grandma’s words were so teary it was hard to understand everything.
Isn’t what is, is? Let’s just get her better. Now she’ll need Ben more than ever.

What was Emma’s responsibility here? Weighing one bad option after another left her queasy and in need of someone who wasn’t insane, crying, or angry.

CHAPTER 16

Ben

The hospital corridor had become all too familiar, a perfect lane for considering crimes and misdemeanors. What new sin had Ben committed the night before, asking his children to lie? He tried to recall his childhood, his catechism classes, and knew, at the very least, he’d forced them into a sin of omission by forbidding them to reveal the details of the accident. For him it was a sure sin of commission.

Big pat on the shoulder for only sending his kids to purgatory.

Jesus, his sins piled up so fast he could barely sort them. Sometimes shutdown was the only way he could function; otherwise looking at Maddy, thinking of her, knowing he’d put her there stopped him dead. Piling up barriers against his self-loathing was a constant job.

His life had become a perpetual loop. Wake. Get kids up. Drive to hospital. Quick kiss to Maddy. Check with nurse. Check in at work. Lean on Elizabeth. Barely know which end is up. Motions, briefs, court appearances—all on automatic. Call kids. Thank Anne for being there. Ask for news on Maddy. Go back to hospital. Hold Maddy’s hand. Talk about anything and nothing in another one-sided conversation. Go home, stopping for pizza, Chinese, bagels, Thai, if no Anne dinner waited. Homework. Laundry. Clean. Read to Caleb. Fall asleep.

How had Maddy ever done it?

When he reached Maddy’s bedside, Ben took out a crayoned picture of Caleb’s. Should he tape it to the side of the pressure monitor? The heart monitor? Finally, he folded it until only a crooked pink rose on a lily pad showed. Using the small roll of tape Gracie had given him, he fastened it to the side of a compression box and then gave it a quiet little pat for luck.

“Ben.” Bernadette gave him a caretaker pat when she came over to Maddy’s bed, her touch conveying compassion with a wee bit of
buck up, buddy
, and then she placed a hand on his wife’s.

“Maddy, my sweet—how are you? Could I borrow your husband if I send him right back? First, I’ll give you two a moment.”

Agitation hit him in the gut. She couldn’t possibly be bringing good news, right? Hospitals were citadels of horror, with nurses bearing the early warnings. Compassionate canaries in the health mine—that’s what they were.

“I put up another work of art from Caleb, Maddy. That kid is an incredible artist—just like you always said . . . say.” No past tense. One of Ben’s many coma rules. He kissed Maddy’s forehead. “I’ll be right back, beautiful.”

Bernadette looked concerned when he caught up with her at the nurses’ station. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Before answering, she pressed her lips as though physically holding her words inside. “There’s something I’m keeping an eye on, though I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. Really, it’s just instinct.”

“Did you see something?” His chest contracted. “What happened?”

“It’s not really that anything happened. But I watch you and Emma, and the pictures you bring in from the little ones—the way you come in to kiss her good night every night.” She stopped, shook her head, her soft blond dandelion-fuzz hair moving under the thin hairnet she wore. Bernadette was one of those semi-ugly women who wrenched at Ben’s heart—made him wish he were a better man. Someone who would date her because she was so fucking nice and then marry her because she was so fucking good.

“It’s okay, Bernadette,” he said. “I’m not going to hold you to anything.”

“She opened her eyes today.”

“And nobody called me?” Ben’s heart pulsed.

“Shh!” Bernadette glanced at the Haitian nurse, the one who frightened Emma. “I saw it only once, and just for a second. No one else saw it. I put it in the chart, but I wanted to tell you myself.”

“This is good, right?” Ben wanted to hug her, find a kind and gentle man to marry her. “Terrific?”

“I think so.” Caution coated each of her words. “I think so. But the doctors will say it’s that the absence of more instances of eye opening that’s a bad sign, than opening her eyes one time is a good one. More to the point, to regain consciousness, Maddy must both react
and
respond.”

His hopes sank to where they’d been before as he lost his brief dance with optimism. “So what does this actually mean?”

“The doctor won’t want to raise your expectations—not simply on one eye opening—but I felt her presence, Ben. Truly. It’s like a baby quickening.” Bernadette placed her hands on her belly as though remembering a mound of pregnancy.

He knew nothing about this woman. Was she married? Children? Maddy would have known all that and much more. She’d have brought brownies and taken her out to dinner. No wonder Maddy yelled at him for complaining about their neighbor, Mrs. Gilman, who exasperated Ben each time she buttonholed people for conversations first thing in the morning.

“You have to open your eyes and see people who aren’t your clients,” Maddy had told him. “It doesn’t take much. It’s not as though I talk to Mrs. Gilman for hours on end, but I know she treats her Pekinese like her baby and collects china ballerinas. You could have a thousand suppers with her, and you’d know no more about her than you do today.”

He’d probably screwed up ten thousand suppers with Maddy and the kids just by being an asshole.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but it’s something I feel. As though her soul’s come back.” Bernadette stared as though seeking his soul. “I know this much is true. There’s a spiritual light that’s there
or not there. Something indescribable. Maddy’s in there, but you have to pull her back. I think this is the moment to put out your hand and pray she catches it.”

Ben noticed the twisted rope crucifix she wore, with tiny Jesus writhing upon it.

“Thank you,” he said.

•  •  •

Nothing happened.

Ben sat by Maddy’s bedside each day, waiting. Her eyes didn’t flicker. Her hand didn’t twitch, but based on Bernadette’s report, they held vigil all weekend: Anne, Jake, Vanessa, Olivia, Kath—one of them was always there.

Nurse Bernadette avoided him. She probably knew she’d made a huge mistake with her voodoo I-see-into-the-soul shit. Or maybe she was just crazy. Still, Ben didn’t take any chances. He talked to Maddy about anything he thought would reach her—from his memories of holding her shoulders as Emma slipped into the world, to how they’d snuck into the bathroom to make love when they’d gone away for that week with her parents and all the kids. He played her favorite music—even the shaky-achy country stuff she had a weakness for—using the tiny and wildly expensive CD player Jake had bought for her room.

And he did all this while staring at machines hissing in and out, as he monitored Maddy’s pale, inert body.

•  •  •

Monday he was dying to get to the office. They’d slowed the vigil. He drove to the hospital on his way to work—back to the loop, back to an eternal round of checking items off a daily schedule that he’d never imagined. This morning he’d left earlier, hoping to buttonhole the doctor making early rounds.