All the Good Parts (28 page)

CHAPTER 32

A text from Carly startled me awake:
Take down all the mirrors. Be home in an hour.

I checked on the sleeping kids, then quickly showered and dressed in a leggings and sweatshirt combo that should have shamed me, downed some coffee, and tackled the mirror problem.

The floor-length mirror in the mudroom was an antique Carly and I found at a flea market. Maura couldn’t help getting an eyeful whenever she walked in the door. I stared in the mirror, at my off-center widow’s peak and the pitted scar on my chin, courtesy of the chicken pox when I was five; at the fine lines feathering the corners of my eyes and mouth; at the deep furrow between my brows. Difficult as it was, I tried to imagine wounds like Maura’s, her Frankenstein patchwork of stitches. Even with half the house packed, there were still half a dozen mirrors in the house, and even more compacts and other ways Maura could see her reflection. It was unavoidable.

Carly wanted to save her from that pain, at least temporarily, but damage was not normally something you had the luxury of easing into. I wondered if there was a good reason for that. Did Maura need to be shielded? Would she want to be? I thought of my headstrong niece, and for one of the first times in my life, I knew exactly what needed to be done.

They came home in the late morning. I’d laid Josie down for her first nap and sent the boys over to a friend’s. I watched the van pull up. Carly got out first, and she and Donal scurried over to the passenger seat to open the door for Maura, Donal lifting her out as he did when she was a child. She wiggled out of his grasp, and her shoulders slumped forward, curling in on herself like a wilting flower.

“What the hell, Leona?” Carly said when she walked in. “You couldn’t do the one thing I asked?”

I shook my head. Maura stood in the mudroom, frozen in place, eyes trained on the mirror. She stared at the stitches grabbing at her skin, pinching it into jagged lines. One bisected her eyebrow, and the other a crescent moon, the tip of which reached into the delicate corner of her right eye. The doctor had covered them in a clear, goopy ointment that looked unfortunately like mucus. I willed myself not to flinch. I wouldn’t hug her either. She looked ready to crumble into dust.

“Keep walking,” Carly commanded.

“I can’t,” Maura said.

Donal looked ready to cry. “Mom’s right. You need a lie down.”

Maura moved closer to her reflection. Her mouth twitched, her eyes burned.

“Baby,” Carly said, her voice growing soft. “Don’t.”

“Did you do this, Auntie Lee?” Maura rasped, ignoring her.

Ever so slowly, I placed my hand lightly on her shoulder. “I did, and I mean every word.”

Maura touched the surface of the mirror, tracing her finger over the words I’d painted on the glass.

You are beautiful.

All scars tell a story.

Mistakes are made by those who are learning to really live life.

And . . .
learn to not be an ass by being a badass
, written across the top.

“Cliché much, Auntie Lee?”

“Don’t be a cynic. Not yet, anyway.” I brought my head to hers, our auburn hair mingling, and gently touched the side of her face. “You are beautiful. I’m your aunt and I’m biased, but I’m allowed that bias because I know who you are inside and out.”

Maura choked down a sob. “I do look kind of badass, don’t I?”

I drew her into a hug. She felt substantial in my arms, a solid presence. “The baddest. You’ve got a story now, which means you’re a more interesting person. Part of being a
better
person is acknowledging your role in what happened.”

“I know,” she said into the side of my neck. “I should have left when they started drinking.”

“That’s part of it.”

She started to tremble. “I just wanted them to like me. It sounds so lame now.”

“Because it is lame. But that was a decision you made before what happened yesterday, and now the you after is the one calling the shots. You’re different because you should be different if you’re paying attention to things.” I pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Are you super concerned with them liking you right now?”

“I guess not,” she said, smiling tremulously. “Not as much, anyway.”

“You don’t have to worry so much about what they think of you, because you’re too busy figuring out what
you
think of you.”

She hugged me tightly. “I hope I am, Auntie Lee.”

Donal gave me a thumbs-up. “Come on, Maur,” he said. “Let’s get you upstairs. Do you want to lie down, or do you want me to fix you something to eat?”

“I’m starving,” Maura said. “Can you make a grilled cheese?”

Donal led her into the house. “I think I can manage that.”

Carly remained silent after they’d left. She hadn’t reacted much after her burst of anger, and I wondered how she would retaliate. Had I overstepped my bounds?

She made a face in the mirror, sticking out her tongue and crossing her eyes. “I hate it when you know better than me,” she said, smiling faintly. “I really do.”

I left them alone, talking quietly in the kitchen, for an hour. Nursing 320 was rapidly coming to a close, and I needed a stellar grade on my final work in order to boost my respectable B+ into an incredible A. Darryl and I finished with our women’s health project, so I spent the next hour brainstorming for my reflective essay, the last graded assignment for the term. Distracted by the day’s events, it was tough going, and by the time I needed to leave to see Jerry, I was exhausted, starving, and, if I was honest, lonely. I fought the urge to join the family, sensing Carly and Maura needed some mother-daughter time. Maura was going to be okay, and the thought that I might have had something to do with that gave me a lift. I brushed my teeth and hair and made myself look presentable. I’d just grabbed my coat and keys when Carly and Donal poked their heads into the basement and asked if I had a minute to talk.

They came down the stairs slowly. I hadn’t seen them look like this, so drained and pale and anxious, since they’d come to tell my dad Carly was pregnant and they were moving in together.

“Everything okay with Maura?” I asked, suddenly nervous.

“Yes, thanks to you,” Donal said.

“It was a risk. I didn’t know how she’d react. I’m sorry if I went too far.” I took a breath, unable to stop my rambling. “She’d taken some vodka. I knew her friends were drinking. I’m so sorry. I should have told—”

“We know the whole story,” Carly said, voice tight.

“We aren’t here to eat your head off, Lee,” Donal added.

They stood there. Not saying a thing. Carly had a death grip on Donal’s hand.

“Now you guys are freaking me out. What is it?”

“Can we sit down?”

I realized I didn’t have anywhere for them to sit but the bed. My clothes hung over the single chair in the corner of my room. I was living like a college student.

In tandem, they lowered themselves gingerly onto the edge of the bed. After another excruciating moment, Carly spoke first. “You know we love you, Lee.”

“Oh, God.”

Donal cleared his throat. “We’re leaving soon. We still hope you come with. That’s a worry for us.”

“But what we’re going to say has nothing to do with that,” Carly continued. “Whether you decide to go with us or not, our offer stands.”

“Offer?”

Carly and Donal gave each other that look couples share when they’re trying to figure out how to make sure they’re both going to say the same thing, at the same time.

“Oh, just spit it out,” I groaned.

“Donal and I want to father your baby.”

“That was smooth,” Donal murmured.

“You would have done better?”

I threw a pillow at both of them. “Stop bickering so I can freak out on you.”

“I know this might come as a surprise . . .” Carly started.

“A surprise? You’ve been against this from the start! Is it because I made Maura feel better? Do you feel you need to pay me back somehow?”

“That’s not it.” Carly awkwardly moved closer to me on the bed. I wouldn’t move toward her. “Okay, that changed my mind a little about things. Why can’t I do that? Donal doesn’t have as many problems with it as he thought. Maybe because we’re going away, or maybe because our perspectives have changed. Maybe we had a reminder today that life is short and we love you and want you to have what you want. Is that so wrong?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m having a hard time with discerning between right and wrong.”

“It’s possible something like this shouldn’t be judged that way,” Donal said quietly. “Your heart is in the right place. And I think ours are as well. Perhaps that’s all we need to think about?”

I smiled at my sweet, well-meaning brother-in-law. “This is so . . . nice. And I love both of you so much, but I’m worried you’ll resent me, or the baby. I’m worried you’ll regret this.”

“It’s a risk,” Carly said. “We’re okay with taking the risk if you are.”

“I want to say yes, but don’t know,” I said on a sigh. “Will it be weird and embarrassing?”

“Now you’re just being difficult.” She swatted Donal. “Send him into the bathroom with a Wonder Woman comic book and a jar of coconut oil. You’ll have what you need in three minutes.”

“That is an image I’ll have to scrub from my brain.”

Donal whistled. “If you can find Wonder Woman versus Supergirl, it’ll take me thirty seconds.”

“Ew. This is already weird.”

“It’s us,” Carly said. “It doesn’t have to be a Jerry Springer episode.”

I thought for a moment. “If this happens, I’d want Dr. Bridge here. Do you think she’d come?”

Carly laughed. “I don’t think she’d miss it.”

“Let me think about this, okay? I have to go see Jerry. We’ll talk when I get back.”

Carly nodded. She crawled off the bed and pulled Donal to his feet. “You know,” she said before they left, “I still don’t think it’s the greatest idea, but I realized you shouldn’t have to listen to me. No matter how much I insist on it.” She winked at me. “I can’t
always
be right. There’s no fun in that.”

CHAPTER 33

They’d removed Jerry’s ventilator, and the near stillness of his body gently breathing was somehow more frightening than when he was hooked up to the machines. His skin was ashen, his lips bloodless.

“He woke up for a few minutes,” Paul said when I arrived. “I don’t know if he recognized me or not.”

“I’m sure he did,” I assured him. Paul sat next to Jerry, hovering but not touching, his large body curved protectively. I slipped my hand into Jerry’s cold one and squeezed. “Hey, you. Wake up and join the party.”

Part of me expected him to blink his eyes open and say something witty. That didn’t happen. His lids fluttered, but they often twitched, the nerves firing blanks.

“I feel like if I sit here and keep willing him to get up, it’ll happen,” Paul said. “Jedi mind tricks.”

“Well, then I’ll join you,” I said, sitting down on the edge of Jerry’s bed. “If anything, maybe we can levitate him if we work together.”

As it was, we didn’t have to wait long for something to happen. A nurse came in, face set with calm efficiency, an expression I’d always tried to master and failed; poked Jerry with a syringe; and tapped his face with her palm.

Paul intervened. “Is that necessary?”

She ignored him, slapping lightly at Jerry’s face until his eyes fluttered and he made a deep, rumbling noise that brought up everything that had been settling the past few days. “Mr. Pietrowski,” the nurse said loudly. “Can you speak?”

“Arghuwagu,” Jerry said.

“Good. I’m going to sit you up.”

As she lifted the bed, two doctors came in, and a team of nurses, edging Paul and me toward the door.

“Can I talk to my father?”

“He’s not ready yet,” the nurse told Paul, an edge to her voice. “Why don’t you take a walk, and when you come back, maybe he’ll be able to communicate.”

In other words, get the fuck out, we’ve got work to do.

Paul’s face turned crimson, an expression I recognized now as one step before the volcano erupted. “I’d rather stay,” he said tightly.

“He’ll be disoriented if you don’t allow him to acclimate,” she said, appealing to me. “Thirty minutes.”

I tugged on Paul’s sleeve. He followed me silently into the elevator, and said nothing as I stopped at the coffee dispenser in the cafeteria and bought us some sludge, but the redness had drained from his face, and his shoulders no longer bunched around his ears. He smiled wryly at the cup I placed in his hand. “The coffee beans are probably older than us. The creamer is made using hydrochloric acid. You sure you want to drink this?”

I took a sip, being sure to leave a coffee-stain mustache on my upper lip. “I love hydrochloric acid. So tasty.”

“You have serious problems.”

“We both do,” I said. “Do you want to talk about mine or yours?”

“Yours,” he answered. “To my surprise, I’m actually interested. Or I need a distraction.”

We sat on a bench outside the cafeteria, next to a long window overlooking the employee parking lot. “Want to count BMWs?” I asked, suddenly nervous. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to share with Paul. My impulse was to tell him everything, but my impulses were usually followed by intense mortification, so I let him lead.

“I have a Mercedes, so no. Why acknowledge the enemy?” Paul took a sip of his coffee, grimaced, and placed it on the floor. “Are you going to talk about it?”

“What?”

“You’ve got this look, like you want to open your mouth and spill your guts, but you’re afraid to start. Is it Maura?”

“No, thankfully. She’s going to be fine.”

“I’m happy to hear it.” He shot me a look. “Do you want to tell me or not?”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Well, what’s bothering you the most?”

I couldn’t come out and discuss that. I’d build up to it. “My sister and her family are moving to Ireland.”

“The ones you live with?”

“Yeah. There are no other ones. My parents have passed on, and it’s just me and Carly.”

“So you’re going to be alone. Is that it?”

“It’s like being alone is one thing, but being lonely is so much worse. Right now I see only loneliness when they’re gone. Big stretches of it.”

Paul shifted in his seat. “Is that why you want a baby?”

“I wanted a baby before they’d decided to move. But maybe I knew something like this would happen eventually? Does that sound like a horribly selfish reason?”

“People have babies for all kinds of reasons, and many of those are lesser than yours.” Paul considered this for a moment. I got the feeling he was really thinking about what he wanted to say. There was something comforting in that. “Why is the reason so important to you? Can’t you just say, ‘I want someone to love,’ and move on to the practicalities? Like evaluating the two-hundred-dollar dossier. The perfect math genius super jock?”

“Still an option. He’s in the running.”

“With whom? Please don’t say my comatose father.”

I took a breath. “Don’t be weird when I tell you.”

“I’m always weird,” he said, smiling faintly. “But I promise to withhold judgment.”

“My brother-in-law has offered to help me.”

What followed was a long, drawn-out pause that made me want to throw myself down the stairs. “That is weird,” Paul finally said.

“You promised not to judge.”

“That was simply a statement. No judgment attached . . . though, really? Your sister approves?”

“It was her idea.”

Paul nodded. “I don’t have siblings, so maybe there are some things I can’t understand.”

“There are lots of things I can’t understand, most of all my feelings about this.”

“It’s a hell of a farewell gift.” Paul bent to pick up his coffee cup and froze. “Will you have to . . . ?”

“No! Turkey-baster method.”

“That works?”

“It just so happens I have a medical professional on call to oversee the proceedings.”

“Well, in that case . . .”

“This isn’t what I would have chosen, you know.” The tears threatening to fall surprised me. “I don’t want my kid’s life to be started with a joke. But I don’t usually get what I want. I didn’t want my father to die, and I don’t want my sister to leave. I don’t want your dad to feel like he can’t live any longer, and I don’t want to feel like my life is some kind of prolonged adolescence where all I do is worry about how I’m supposed to live life until one day I’ll wake up old and all I’ll be able to worry about is how to die. I’ll miss all the important middle stuff. I’m trying to pay attention to the middle. I’m trying to really
live
in the middle.”

Paul made fists with his hands and held them tightly at his sides. I didn’t know what he was stopping himself from doing. Did he want to avoid comforting me or knocking some sense into my crazy, thick skull? “Do you think it’s possible to jump into the game at halftime?” he asked. “I mean, if you’re in the middle of the middle, is it just a slog to the end at that point?”

“I hope not.”

“Well, then I want to join the competition. Put my name in the mix.”

I leaned back to look up at his face, but he could have been playing a high-stakes poker match—it gave away nothing. “What are you talking about?”

Paul unclenched his hands and rested them, palms down, on his thighs. He sat up straighter and set his jaw. “Your brother-in-law has made you an offer. An admirable one. I’d like to make a counteroffer. I’m not a bad person to . . . tangle with, DNA-wise. I take care of myself, and my health is impeccable. My face isn’t much to look at, but my teeth are naturally straight, and I can offer height, and . . . uh . . . good musculature.”

I made a strange choking sound.

“I won’t ask for partial custody if that’s important to you. I can even draw up legal documents, all in your favor.”

I thought of Garrett’s sweet face when he agreed to help me, and of Jerry’s sincerity. I knew why they’d offered—and I loved them for it—but Paul’s motives were murky. “Are you really serious?”

“I think you know me well enough to answer that.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You’re still deciding. You shouldn’t say anything until you know what’s going to come out of your mouth. First rule for judges and criminals.”

“Which one am I?”

“Don’t be paranoid,” Paul said, getting up and stretching. He poured the contents of his coffee into a planter and took my empty cup. “I like that I’ve shocked you. I don’t think I’ve ever really shocked anyone in my life.”

“Shocked only begins to cover it.”

“Now, it’s time to distract you,” he said. “Let’s go see my dad.”

Only one nurse remained in Jerry’s room, and with a meaningful glance at me, she smiled and said it would be a few minutes before the doctors would return. They’d propped Jerry up only slightly. His mouth turned down at the edges, dry at the corners and slack with disuse. I wanted to rush forward and hug him, but I resisted, letting Paul approach his father. Paul’s apprehension filled the room, his hesitation setting the foundation for the inevitable barrier between father and son.

“Get over here,” Jerry said, his voice sawdust.

Paul drew closer, bringing his ear to Jerry’s mouth.

When Jerry started talking again, his mouth moved like every word was painful to form. “I didn’t want to leave you. I just wanted to be with her.”

“It’s okay, Dad.” Paul’s words were perfunctory, an attempt to hide the hurt. I went from wanting to hug Jerry to wanting to shake him.

Don’t make him feel like the second choice. Don’t make him feel like he isn’t worthy.

“Let me finish, asshole. I came back for
you
. I coulda gone on. I walked away from the white light for you.”

“I’m supposed to be grateful?”

“I don’t want a goddamn medal for it. That’s not the point.”

“What do you want, then? I found you lying on the floor. I called 911. I yelled at them, screaming that they weren’t coming fast enough, like a jerkoff on some stupid reality show.”

Paul was wilting. It was like watching a mountain start to crumble from an avalanche. His head tilted away from Jerry, his shoulders slumped, his strong legs shifted in place, like they could no longer take the burden of his too-large body.

Jerry’s good hand reached up, stroking Paul’s cheek. “You’re not the asshole. I’m the asshole. Don’t you understand? You haven’t done anything wrong. I didn’t want to go without telling you that. I love you, and that has nothing to do with me or your mother or anything else. It’s love, pure and simple.”

Paul’s body finally gave. He gently laid his head on his father’s chest and began to sob, the kind of cry terrified children make when a trauma is over and they’re finally safe to let it all out. Both of their hearts were laid open, bare and vulnerable, and it felt monstrous to stand there watching them beat.

I backed into the hallway quietly, closed the door, and went home.