All We Know of Heaven (11 page)

“I didn’t do it for the attention!”

“So you did not like being on this show! It’s something you regret!”

“I liked it! I just think we have to go to the hospital as soon as we get home and tell the O’Malleys. We should have asked them.”

“Hmm?” said Leland. Eric had texted her. He wanted to see if she could hang out Friday night. But then so had Shane Baker and Matt Wright.

To Jeannie’s alarm the appearance of the trio on
Today
was only the first salvo of the media army that descended on Bigelow and camped outside the hospital.

“I can’t imagine how they all found out about us,” Jean nie told Ben, the nurse.

“Mrs. O’Malley, I’m sorry, but this is a really big deal. I know that no one from the hospital was supposed to say a word, but there are two thousand people working here, and every single one of them knows about this. You could hardly expect them to keep their mouths shut.”

“I guess. Do you think it will stop now?”

Privately, Ben was surprised that somebody hadn’t used a phone to take a picture of Maureen in her pig tails and flowered pajamas. That didn’t happen for an other week. But there were already photos in
Ours
and
The One
of the cheerleaders and of workmen replacing Maureen’s headstone with a temporary cross for Bridget Flannery, and of the Flannery house and Danny Car

mody jogging across the parking lot of the school to his truck. Ben thought,
No way is this going to end.
He looked at Jeannie with pity. People loved their miracles! They were in short supply in the real world. It came with the territory.

When Jeannie finally could no longer bear to wash with little foil packets of Castile soap and wear hospital scrubs, she dodged reporters successfully by leaving through the staff exit. But once she was home, she found the answering machine clogged with forty-five messages that she duti fully copied down—from a distant school friend who now worked for
Nancy Cassidy Live,
from two different
Today
show producers, from the BBC and
Stars and Stripes,
from Leland Holtzer and Molly Schottmann. The last was from Danny Carmody.

Jeannie called Danny back.

“You probably don’t want to hear from me,” he said. “Why ever not?” asked Jeannie. “You’re Maureen’s pal,

Danny.”

“I was honestly broken up that it was Maury and not Bridget. I fell apart for a while. A few of us did. Bridget . . . no one on earth is as sweet as Maury, but Bridget . . .” Jean nie waited, not wanting to intrude. “I . . . can’t say what I mean,” Danny concluded.

“Bridget was like a comet, Danny. Everyone loved Bridget. Why should I blame you?”

“Does Coach?”

“Danny! For goodness sake!” Jeannie scolded him.

“I can’t believe Bridget is gone,” he said. “Neither can I,” Jeannie said honestly. “You must be totally happy.”

“Not really. Of course I’m overjoyed for us. I’m sick for the Flannerys,” Jeannie said. “Have you seen them?”

“I went over once. I talked to Mr. Flannery and to Sarah. They’re trying to plan a memorial service. But Mrs. Flan nery is like, out of it.”

“I should have gone to see her by now.” “They’re pretty out of it.”

“Danny, I’m so sorry,” Jeannie said.

“Yeah, it’s rough. I don’t think it’s really hit me yet. It’s just days. . . .”

“This will be with you for years, Danny.” “Would you mind if I came to see her?”

“No, ofcoursenot,” Jeannieanswered, slightlyshocked. We . . . actually, we want to encourage her friends to come to see her. The last few days have been a blur for me. Maury is starting to talk, and she saw Lee-Lee and the others . . .”

“On TV, yeah. Bridget’s memorial fund at the bank has thousands and thousands of dollars in it already, Mrs. O.”

“Well, I certainly don’t know about that.” “People wonder why . . .”

“What, Danny?”

He thought he couldn’t say it now, though going to see Maureen and saying this was the real reason he had de cided to call. People were saying Coach and Mrs. O. didn’t

seem grateful. Nobody understood why they refused to talk to anybody. It was like Maury belonged only to them and not to anyone else who loved her.

“What?” Jeannie asked again.

And so he did tell her, and Jeannie went silent for a mo ment before she replied, “That makes sense.”

“So, I thought I’d come to the hospital maybe Sunday.” “That’s good,” said Jeannie.

She put down the phone and called her son, Henry, at school to ask for his help. Henry agreed to drop all but one class and come back to Bigelow to become the O’Malley family spokesman.

Bill had to be coaxed into letting his son make such a sacrifice. He had to confer with Henry’s coach to see if a semester off would mean cutting off Henry’s scholarship. The coach was adamant: Henry would be welcomed back in the fall.

So with easy grace, Henry appeared on the Nancy Cas sidy show and provided a home video of Bridget and Maureen for
Today.
He held a press conference in front of the hospital and spoke of his sister gradually growing more responsive by the day, answering questions, asking for her dog.

Henry told Larry King, “She’s my sister, and so it’s pri vate to us, the family. You can’t blame my folks for not wanting to leave her bedside. But we also understand how people can really genuinely care so much about a stranger. These people have become our friends even though we’ll

never meet them.”

Jeannie was proud of him.

Henry started his own blog. He asked Jeannie to con tribute a daily Bible verse, knowing that she would like that. The first was from Psalm 121.

March 10

Psalm 121:1 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

There was great relief when my sister recog nized my brother Pat today. Pat came home from school for the weekend because our family is having a sort of celebration at church, a Mass of thanksandthenasmallget-together. Hewentto the hospital and right away Maureen, who was sitting up in her chair, said “Fat!” And we know it wasn’t a mistake, the kind she makes when she says “gulls” but means “glass” or “slider” when she means “window.” When he was in about sixth grade, Pat was chubby, and Maury would tease him and call him “Fatty Patty.” It was a great moment, because my brother was very depressed that Maury didn’t know him at first.

Maureen’s therapy is going well. Her right leg is still very weak, but her left leg is getting strong and stronger. Her arms were injured very badly in the crash, so the therapists are encour

aged that she can do some small things like lift a glass—actually that’s a pretty big thing!—and put together a simple puzzle.

The hospital let us bring our Yorkshire terrier, Rag Mop, to visit. He was Maury’s twelfth-birth day present. I thought she was going to jump out of the bed when she saw him. All the kids on the rehab unit loved petting Rag, and Maury was so proud that Rag would lie down on her lap while our mom was wheeling her around the unit. She still has trouble with ordinary words, but she startles us sometimes with more complicated ones. For example, Mom said she looked into the big playroom and right away said, “Chimpan zee,” because there was a chimpanzee family painted on the wall.

My mom asks all of you who read this to please pray for our dear friends, the Flannerys, who are in the first stages of grief for their daughter Bridget.

Jeannie spent one whole night reading Henry’s blog and the answers to it, which came in by the dozens.

Then she read the blog begun by Molly. There were hun dreds of posts from people who signed themselves “Cheer leaderMom” or “BlessingBabe” or “SurferDude” or “Fran caisFrancis,” all of them wanting to share their puzzlement and grief for the Flannerys and their joy for the O’Malleys.

She was particularly touched by one of them, from a wom an in Utah who wrote:
“We understand now in part but will understand all in time. We aren’t given to understand what happened, but we need to rejoice for both of these girls, for one has gone home to God and the other has come home, like the lost lamb, to her family.”

Jeannie thought all of it was good. But the cheerleaders’ blog annoyed Henry.

One of them had changed the name to THESETWO GIRLS: The Original Bridget-and-Maureen Blog.

Henry changed theirs to The Official O’Malley Family Blog.

Then Leland wrote:
“Of course we love Coach and Mrs. O. to the sky, but it’s hard to not be invited to see your best friend if you thought she was dead. They keep her to themselves like they think we’re these intruders with germs or something. I haven’t been to see Maureen one time and they haven’t returned my phone calls
.”

Henry looked up the Holtzers’ number and called. “Leland,” he said, “it’s Henry O’Malley.”

“Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

“I called to ask you to come and see Maureen. You didn’t need an engraved invitation, Leland.”

“You don’t have to be such a jerk, Henry,” she said. “I’m not the one being a jerk. You’re making us sound

like we don’t want people around Maury, but we actually would love it if she could see some of you.”

“Just some of us. Not me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, you act like it,” Leland said. “I know the Flannerys are really offended that you didn’t talk to them, too, which I personally would have done myself.”

“Have you been over to see them?” “No, but I know that’s how they feel.”

“I didn’t call to fight with a seventeen-year-old kid, Le land,” said Henry, pulling the college card.

“And what are you, twenty? Please.”

“This is ridiculous. You guys act like this is all about you going on the
Today
show and getting quoted in magazines. My sister was dead. We thought my sister was dead,” Henry said.

“We did, too, Henry. And we love Maureen, too. We probably know her better than you do. We spent every day with her for the past three years. You’ve been in college since she was in eighth grade. Give me a break!”

“Well, then come and see her. Come a few at a time. But don’t be surprised if she doesn’t recognize you at first. She’s still getting better, and she doesn’t even recognize my dad.”

Leland gasped. “No way!” “It’s very common.”

And it was in the
Star-Telegram
, on the front page be low the fold, in the morning. The fact that Maureen didn’t know her own father was there with an anonymous quote from someone “at the scene” saying that Maureen had not been wearing her seat belt.

But the O’Malleys decided to ignore it.

Jeannie offered Father Genovese a hundred dollars to rent the church gathering room for an hour after Saturday night services so that she and Bill and the boys could throw an open house to thank everyone who had been so kind to them.

Seeing people again, Jeannie felt as though it were she who was awakening from a long sleep.

She realized that it had become a custom for her to go for days without taking a bath or washing her hair, sim ply stumbling out of bed and shrugging on Maury’s old UM sweatshirt over whatever she’d had on the day before—leg gings or sweatpants or pajama bottoms—and heading to the hospital. If it were up to her, she would have eaten nothing but chocolate because it gave her a sensory mo ment of being alive—not pleasure, simply a short reentry into the realm of human comfort. Jeannie hadn’t cooked a meal in months.

Every day since the accident, though, there was a cas serole and a dessert outside the door. No notes, no bids for gratitude. Jeannie had enough Corning Ware to open an aisle at Sears! All the offers of support and kindness, the benefactor who would not give his or her name who paid off the emergency treatment balance—and it was huge, de spite what the hospital deferred, more than ten thousand dollars. She couldn’t believe she had been so lost and so, honestly, demented that she couldn’t respond to these ges

tures. How could she not have been aware of such love?

Father Genovese, of course, refused any payment for renting the room. The Altar Guild decorated it in gold and black—in tribute to Bill as well as to both girls. And when Jeannie saw all the older ladies down there before Mass, all of them just itching to hug her and tell her that their prayers were answered, she almost felt guilty.

It was a beautiful occasion.

Bill gotchokedupthankingeveryone, and Jeanniehadto take over. “We’re just so happy and so blessed,” she said.

After an hour or so people drifted away, happy.

Dr. Park said that the comfort of familiar things in a hos pital setting was important to any child, no matter how old she was. So parents were encouraged to bring everything they could find that wasn’t too big or cumbersome.

The O’Malleys filled a duffel bag with Maury’s things— her favorite Mickey Mouse flannel PJ bottoms; her CDs and a boom box; photos of her brothers and Rag Mop, and of Bridget.

Jeannie wished she had the quilt she had pieced from Maury’s baby clothes and middle-school cheerlead ing uniform, but it gave her comfort knowing it lay over little Bridget, like a touch from Maureen’s hand. Instead she took out the precious old quilt her grandmother had brought from Ireland—these many years in the cedar closet.

Bill was strangely quiet on the drive toward the hospital;

Jeannie had known this man for thirty years. She finally asked, “What’s eating you, darling?”

“Well, you know we should go see them.” He didn’t have to add who “they” were.

“We could send them a letter,” Jeannie offered. “Jean, you know we can’t do that.”

“How can I face them?

“We have to,” Bill said simply.

And so they backtracked and knocked for several min utes on the Flannerys’ door before Sarah answered.

Dark haired and broad shouldered, she looked nothing like her older sister Bridget. She and Eliza were both more like Mike.

“I’ll get Daddy,” she said.

Mike came down the hall to meet them. Impossibly, he seemed to have lost ten pounds in two weeks. His thick, dark hair stuck up in spikes, and the sweats he wore were stained with something, coffee or syrup.

“Bill,” Mike said. “Jean.”

“Mike,” Bill said. “I’m so sorry. Jean and I and the boys are so sorry. We loved Bridget.”