Accidents of Marriage (35 page)

One long-ago snowy night, Ben had slipped an engagement ring on her finger. The diamond had overwhelmed her—so perfect. Brilliant. Valuable. At the moment of joy she’d thought, come the Nazis, she could sew the ring in the hem of her coat and trade it for freedom. Food. In Ben she was sure she had a man who would take up guns and fight. Her Raoul Wallenberg. Her hero.

Why had she needed pills for protection from her hero?

The wind died. She unbuttoned her coat and slowed her pace. This was the longest she’d walked since the accident. At Northeastern University her legs trembled. She feared that she’d collapse. After resting for a moment on a bench, she crossed Huntington Avenue, a broad street bisected by trolley tracks, and wandered into a Store 24, hoping to find rescue, something to quell fatigue.

In her wallet she discovered ten twenty-dollar bills. Ben. He worried that she’d leave the house without money, so bills appeared as though she possessed a money genie.

Wandering through the aisle of the crowded store, she ran her fingers over boxes of Trix.
Trix are for kids!
She pushed at the plastic wrapping of Oscar Mayer bologna, hearing the meat jingle in her head. Legions of water bottles lined up in the cooler. She grabbed one and brought it to the front of the store.

When her turn came to pay, she placed the bottle on the metal counter crowded with a million other things she could buy. Key chains. Lollipops. Slim Jims. She held out a pile of bills to a frowning man with skin reminiscent of malaria. Was her money dirty? Did most people pay some other way? Should she have said something?

“I need. Change,” she said.

“Where are you from, huh?” He shook his head. “You shouldn’t be so trusting, miss.”

She kept her hands out, palms up. “I need help.”

He picked out a limp twenty-dollar bill and handed back a fistful of change and smaller bills. “You’re lucky you met me and not the night guy.”

Gratitude overwhelmed her as she nodded with thanks at her lucky, lucky malaria man.

Clutching the money, she walked to the closest trolley stop, the one that would take her back in the direction from where she’d come. She would go to work. To Olivia. Minutes later, a trolley pulled in and she boarded, realizing too late that her cold water still sat on the Store 24 counter.

Holding out the change in her hand, she asked the trolley driver, “Could you take? What you need? And tell me. How to get. To Beth Israel. Hospital?”

“Lady, don’t you have a Charlie Card?”

“Card?” Did you have to identify yourself now to get on the T? She remembered 9/11. Rules had become strict. Scary. She shuddered.

“Where’s your T-Pass? Don’t you know what I’m talking about?”
The driver shook his head, so skinny the uniform bagging on his chest billowed out with his movements. “Never mind.”

He waved away her money and directed her to a handicapped seat across from him and said he’d tell her exactly which stop to get off, warning her that after she got off she’d have to walk many blocks to get to the hospital.

Maddy fell into the bucketed seat, proud that somehow she’d made it this far.

•  •  •

The place where she once spent every day didn’t seem welcoming. Brookline Avenue looked desolate, despite the people hurrying back and forth between the sterile brick buildings. Didn’t the world allow curves on buildings anymore?

She stood in front of the hospital where she worked and where the ambulance had brought her after the accident. Her only memories were from before, when she’d rush from the house with sopping wet hair to get the kids to school on time. Family always trumped vanity.

Now she could spend all day drying her hair.

The entry to the hospital seemed familiar and not. She waited for some inbred sense to lead her in the right direction toward her office, but nothing came. She opened her book and searched for Olivia’s number.

“Come get me. In the lobby,” Maddy begged Olivia.

Drained, she curled up in a blue foam chair until Olivia appeared, all juicy bright in buttery yellow. Maddy drank her in as though she were sacramental wine.

“Hey, you,” Olivia said, putting out a hand to pull Maddy up.

“Hey, you.” She smiled and stared at Olivia. “Skinny. Pretty.”

Olivia ran her hands along her hips. “A few pounds fell off. A miracle, huh?”

“Truly miracle,” she said. “Never thought possible.”

Olivia hugged her tightly. Laughing.

“I love you,” Maddy burst out.

“I love you too, honey.”

In the elevator, she stroked the shoulder of Olivia’s blouse, so smooth and soft, like baby skin. “Do you miss me?”

“Almost as much as I miss my morning jelly donut. They tried to put someone new in your office. Just till you came back,” she said. “But I ran right over to human resources and banged a file big as my ass right on Steve Reilly’s desk, telling him to watch out before I called in the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

“My desk? They want my desk?” Why did they want to take her desk?

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing.”

The office seemed neater than Maddy remembered. Olivia used to accuse her of being a slob. Had Olivia cleaned her desk? It looked so blank. She fidgeted with a stapler labeled
Madeline Greene Illica
in green ink. Why had she marked her office possessions? Could the hospital be rife with supply thieves?

Olivia leaned back on the arms of her chair. Their desks were close enough to shake hands while they talked on the phone if they so wished.

“Want to work.”
Use pronouns,
Maddy heard Zelda chiding.

Olivia placed her elbows on her desk and rested her chin in her hand. “Now?”

“I need it.”

“Are you bored?” she asked.

“No, not bored.” Bored had become a foreign concept. Entire days slipped away while she tried to understand the world: like who first thought of eating garlic?

“I’m scared.”

“What are you scared of?”

She shrugged. “Money. Not enough. Ben and I over.” She ran her fingers over a Red Sox pencil cup that she didn’t remember. “Maybe he won’t want. To come back. If I let him.”

Maddy would understand if Ben didn’t come back—carrying other people’s burdens wears a person out. Clients’ pain had worn her out before. Sometimes she’d felt crippled by the anguish she
swallowed. Like turkey drippings that were too rich to eat on a regular diet.

Olivia rolled her eyes. “Come on. He’s begging to come home. You told me. Kath told me. Your mother told me. It’ll probably be tomorrow’s headlines in the
Globe
.”

“It could happen. Shit. We work in a hospital. Happens all the time. Remember Cigarette-Face?”

Cigarette-Face was Joe, a client whose wife had been dying of liver cancer. He resembled a stubbed-out cigarette, but inside was a hero who sat with his wife, reading to her eight hours a day. Joe slept in a chair by her bed and fed her as though it were his honor. Once a week he came to Maddy’s office to weep because he didn’t want to cry in front of his wife. That was all he needed—someone to hear his suffering.

“What are you talking about, Maddy?” Olivia asked. “First of all, you asked Ben to leave. He’s dying to come back. And Joe stayed with his wife. He was our saint.”

“Right. Exactly. I don’t think. Ben’s like that.”

•  •  •

If Olivia didn’t want her at the office, she didn’t let on. She gave Maddy a pile of folders and told her to catch up on cases. Ha! Another joke. She shuffled papers while Olivia saw clients down the hall, jumping up from her desk like an excited puppy each time Olivia returned.

And then she told Maddy it was group day. The Wednesday Blues Club.

“Please. Let me come,” she begged.

Olivia shocked her by saying, “Okay. Might as well. They never stop asking about you. Do you remember the last time you were with them?”

Maddy squeezed her eyes shut, trying to picture it. After a few moments, she sighed. “No.”

They pulled on their coats and headed toward Olivia’s battered car. “Right before your accident.”

•  •  •

As they drove the roads leading to Dorchester, Olivia filled the silence, passing on hospital gossip and commenting on the landscape.

“Look at that!” She pointed to an empty lot heaped with rubbish. Twisted shopping carts strewn among bare mattresses held garbage. A naked one-legged doll, her white skin potent against a torn black Hefty bag, lay on her back. “You gonna see that in Beacon Hill? No way! But here, big effing deal. Why shouldn’t these people have to look at shit all day, right?”

“Emma. She’s the one.” She’d tried to keep this a secret from Olivia—knowing how angry her friend would get at Ben for putting Emma in that position. “Told me. About the accident. About the charge. About Ben.” Maddy’s words slid out in a TBI truth serum torrent.

“Jesus, what the hell. I didn’t know she was the one who told you. She must be a wreck. How is she handling it?”

“Forget it. Don’t want to talk. About it.”
How was Emma handling it?
Another way Maddy failed each day.

“Emma will need a lot of guidance,” Olivia said. “No one’s paying enough attention to her. Certainly not Ben. And you can’t. Let me help you.” Olivia hit her horn as the driver in front of her braked for a yellow light. “Emma needs it.”

“Don’t. Tell me. What we need. Just be my friend. The group. Everyone still there?”

“Listen, up, Maddy. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. So much has happened, and now Emma.”

Maddy grabbed a tissue from Olivia’s ambitiously organized dash drawer. “Going to work. Not going to cry. Stop.”

Olivia pressed her lips together and then pretended to smile. “Fine. I’ll stop. For now.”

After they parked and walked three blocks, Maddy became calmer. Zelda had said going back to work would be like putting on a suit that you remembered as comfortable but now didn’t quite fit anymore. Therefore, you had to tailor it. She reflexively reached for her pocketbook, ready to pop an Ativan—the Ativan Dr. Paulo prescribed—but stopped. She’d be fine. Just fine.

•  •  •

The room where the Wednesday Blues met hadn’t changed; it still had dingy beige linoleum, a circle of dented metal chairs, and the smell of a basement too often flooded.

After ten minutes of hugging her, the Wednesday women got past the excitement of Maddy’s appearance and went back to talking about themselves. Almost nothing seemed different except Maddy. She met the one new woman, Jasmine, a well-curved girl with a loud mouth who reminded her a little of her sister at that age—if at seventeen Vanessa had been pregnant and worn a swirl of purple and yellow faded punches as eye shadow.

“My baby came this weekend. It’s the second time in a row they gave me unsupervised visits,” Kendra said. Her braids shook with excitement as she spoke, wiggling and tapping her foot. “And she cried like they were tearing off her arms when that bitch social worker took her back. No offense, Olivia, Maddy.”

“None taken,” Olivia said. “How did it feel when she cried?”

“It felt good.” Kendra crossed her arms. “Because she knows I’m her mama, and she should be with me. She knows that.”

“So what does that make you feel?” Olivia asked.

“I just told you.” Kendra looked so young that Maddy thought the girl might stick her tongue out.

“No,” Olivia said. “I mean how did it feel knowing that your situation made your baby upset?”

“It’s not like I wanted her sad, if that’s what you’re trying to say. Can’t I be glad that she knows who I am? She remembers me. I was happy. Is that so wrong?” Kendra tightened her eyes into stubborn slits.

“Yeah. It’s wrong.” Sabine curled her hands into fists. Still so thin that she seemed raw, Sabine hadn’t changed. “It was you being so fucked-up that put her there.”

“Don’t start on me, Sabine.”

“I’m not starting on you.” Sabine remained unruffled. “I’m telling you what is. You put the tears in your child’s eyes, not the social workers and not the crackhead who beat you up. ’Cause you stayed with
him just like he was, didn’t you? Did you even think about what he might do to your baby?”

“Fuck you,” Kendra said. “You know what Olivia and Maddy say—we stay because we love them, not because they’re mean.”

“Fuck me, but you know it’s true. Just like it’s true I gave my baby away.” Sabine wrapped her arms around her thin chest and hugged herself tight.

Maddy struggled to remember Sabine’s story. A child of rape. Mother who hated her for that rape. Then drugs. As Sabine’s final punishment for her life, the state took away her baby.

“Go easy, Sabine. Self-responsibility doesn’t mean we control the world. Leaving is difficult,” Olivia said.

“I have an announcement,” Moira broke in.

Moira. Our mother of cookies.

“What?” Maddy asked. The group turned to her as though the table had spoken. “I can speak. You know.”

Nervous laughter swept the room.

“I left Ed,” Moira said in her soft brogue. “Yesterday. That’s why I didn’t bring anything today.” She spread her arms as though indicating the lack of cookies.

“Wow, Mama. Why’dja let me go on and on when you have that news?” Kendra, who always sat next to Moira, grabbed the older woman’s hand.

Maddy leaned in, eager to hear. “Why? Did. You leave him?”

“You,” Moira said. “You helped me decide.”

“Maddy hasn’t even been here in a hundred years.” Amber whined as though Maddy had been on a shopping spree. Her stringy blond hair looked oilier than ever.

“Moira has the floor, ladies,” Olivia said.

The women shuffled their feet and sat up straighter. Only Sabine didn’t seem affected by Olivia’s mild rebuke.

“Did you know I went to see you in the hospital, Maddy?” Moira asked.

“I don’t remember.” Maddy hated that Moira had watched her while she lay unconscious.

“I didn’t stay but a moment.” Moira twisted her hands. “But it made me think how you worked so hard, to help us and all, and yet that’s how you were rewarded? With a coma? What would my reward be? What medal would I get for letting Ed beat the crap out of me and for convincing myself God must have a plan? For telling myself I was protecting my children?”