All We Know of Heaven (18 page)

Making him choose between Maury and his family was something nobody should ever do to a kid. The shoe would be on the other foot if he were the one who was sick or . . . dented.

If he thought of Maury’s disability at all, that was how

he thought of it—a dent that couldn’t be pounded out. A flaw that wasn’t her fault. Otherwise she was perfect. It was almost sweet the way she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. When they got into the car, she’d say, “Let’s go make out! I have thought of this all day!” He knew she didn’t have a gatekeeper on her mouth, but it also was pretty wonderful to be loved that way.

He was damned if he was going to trade all the sweet ness she gave him because of his parents’ prejudice.

They didn’t know how hard she cried when she saw the picture from MyPlace. When she was out, unless it was with him alone, she barely spoke. If she did, it was so slowly that people got impatient, so Maureen usually faked a giggle and said, “Never mind. Brain blooey!”

It wasn’t like they were together 24/7, the way he had been with Bridge. He couldn’t be with her every minute of the day. He was starting practice for American Legion ball, playing shortstop on a team that could really make a dent in the Cities’ dynasty if they learned to get over being indi vidual hot dogs. He had practice three nights a week and a game on Saturday. Maureen went to therapy at Anne Mor row Lindbergh on the days he didn’t have practice.

There was the business of the Flannerys’ whole take on this, too.

He’d seen Kitt twice—but the time that scared him was when he was helping Maureen into the car one Friday night.

Kids were still outside playing double-dutch and bas

ketball in the cul-de-sac. Bridget’s little sister Eliza had a new tetherball. He spotted Kitt sitting on the front porch, smoking. When her eyes met his, they were like lasers, boring a hole through him. He flinched; and Maureen glanced up, puzzled. She caught on right away.

“Stares. She doesn’t like seeing,” she said. “Kitt.”

No one said a thing, but Kitt’s eyes followed him down the street. She looked like a skeleton. She was always thin, but now it seemed as if she didn’t eat at all. Miss Bliss, the lunch lady at school, who was friends with Danny’s mom, said Kitt was a big drinker now. Danny got that. Who wouldn’t be?

To be honest, he also got why they were mad about him and Maureen. And Maureen got it, too.

They talked it over one night in a way that they never had before.

“I guess I ask myself how I could feel this way about you if I felt that way about Bridget,” Danny said. They were fishing in the creek—Maureen was hysterical every time she caught a blue gill.

“You don’t know if you and Bridget would last. Have lasted,” Maureen said. “You don’t know if she would have stayed.”

“I felt like it was expected. I expected it, too. I just wor ried about when we went to different colleges.”

Maureen shrugged. “Maybe then. People change. Fish.

Wish. Wish. I knew. Us.”

“I wish I knew about us, too,” Danny said, thinking that

it was going to be hard for him next fall, when she was in school dragging her foot and repeating her thoughts.

Maureen read his mind.

“You want to stop now? It’s okay. Okay, I mean,” she said. “I care. I always cared. But next fall, will you feel shame of me? Be ashamed of me?”

“Not ashamed.” “But something.”

“Something. I don’t like to be on display.”

“I don’t have a choice,” Maureen said. He was so proud of her then. She didn’t have a choice. She had to go back to school knowing everyone would watch her every move, knowing she would have a private aide with her at all times, knowing someone would have to take notes for her, help her in an adaptive PE class at the Y twice a week, knowing all that. Danny thought,
I am keeping her going. I am helping her face that. But what do I feel
?

“We can be friends. We were friends.” “Would you date another guy?” he asked.

She looked stung. “So, if I would, you’ll stay with me.

Just so I don’t give it away?” “No!”

“Be true, Danny. Be honest, I mean. That was what you were thinking.”

“Actually, I was thinking we could try being friends, but I couldn’t do it if I thought you were with another guy.”

“You have to have me as a girlfriend not a friend.”

“I guess. I think I’d be jealous if I tried to be just a

friend after what we did.” “We aren’t engaged!” “I know.”

“You don’t ever have to go out with me again.”

“That’s not what I want! But people are going to say things.”

“So you are ashame. I mean ashamed.”

“Look, Maureen, if I have problems with that in the fall at school, I have to get over it. If I’m here with you now, I have to be okay with being there with you then. Should I say, absolutely not, it will never have any effect on me? You’re right. We don’t lie to each other. It will have an effect on me. It already has an effect on me. My parents give me a lot of garbage.”

“And so do mine,” Maureen said. “Why?” Danny asked, incredulous.

“They think you forced me because I have no impulse control. See it. Do it.”

“How do they even know what we did?” Maureen exam ined her hands. “Maury? How do they know?”

“Well, I was never good at lying. Now I can’t lie at all. And I have to take the pill. I’m seventeen. My mother knows.”

“Pardon me while I drown myself!” Danny said. “I can feel Coach’s hands tightening around my neck.”

“He does not know.”

“Oh. Thank God for that. So Mrs. O. thinks I’m this psy cho sex fiend.”

“No. She knows that I did this to feel alive. She was glad

it was you. She trusts you. She is worried about me. But you, too. She thinks you feel sorry for me.”

“Oh, God.”

“I told her it was my idea.”

“Oh, that helps,” Danny said with heavy sarcasm. Maureen said, “She is worried just because, cause,

claws, claws, pause. Stop. Because she thinks you still love Bridget, and you’re just going on loving Bridget in your mind. She thinks this because you came to see Bridget in the coma and you loved her and prayed she would wake up and then, whoops, I was the one who did. So I was like the booty . . .” Maureen blushed. “The bobby . . .”

“The booby prize,” Danny finished for her. “That’s the longest speech you’ve made since you moved here from Uzbekistan.”

“No, Mars. Yes.”

“Well, I don’t love Bridget now. I mean, I’m not dying from love of Bridget. I don’t think of Bridget when I’m with you.”

“Mom feels sorry for you.” “You said that.”

“Okay, well. Of course you still do love Bridget.” “I don’t love her that way.”

“Duh. She’s dead.”

“What scares me is, I don’t know if I ever did. Maybe I liked you all along. Maybe I was really looking for a girl I could talk to and joke with and feel the way I do with you, but I was worried about my image. I mean, who wouldn’t

want to be going out with Bridget Flannery?”

“Thanks. That makes me feel better,” Maureen said, struggling to get to her feet, throwing down her pole. “I am the booby prize.”

“Maury, no! She was just the girl everyone wanted! You know that. I was in eighth grade when I started going with Bridget. I was thirteen years old. All you think then is, If I go out with the best girl, then I must be this big manly man. I mean, maybe I loved you all along. I know I felt some thing. But I denied it.”

“Me, too. I always loved you. And too bad you have to find out when I a freak. When I am a freak.”

“You’re not a freak.”

“I am a feet!” Maureen screamed. She stamped her feet. “Wait!” she said. “I stamped both my feet! I’m a freak who just stamped both her feet!”

Danny picked her up and twirled her around.

“You’re getting better and better. Why wouldn’t I love you as much for coming back from this? Maybe I like you better as a feet. I admire it.” They began to laugh, tried to hold it back, and gave in. Danny kissed her and sank down with her in the grass, and in moments her legs were find ing their way around his.

“Well, feet, I don’t have anything with me. It’s a long walk back to the car. Are you sure you want to take advan tage of a poor dumb jock?”

“Start walking,” said Maureen. “You’ve got two good legs.”

joy in the morning
‌

She woke sweating at four
AM
. School.

Danny would drive her, but still. School.

She couldn’t get it out of her mind.

The aide would help her, but she would have to find the rooms. Eventually, some teacher would call on her in class. Eventually, people would hear her talk. And they would make fun of her. It was supposed to give her char acter. That was BS. Nobody got “character” from being put down. That was just therapy happy talk. She was not a better person for having this happen. She had been a good person before.

It sucked.

She and her parents made the choice. She was starting over as a sophomore, at least technically, to give her more time to catch up. It meant her friends, now juniors, would graduate before her. But at least this way, Maureen thought, she might actually graduate.

At least she was tan. Her hair looked cute. Her lion cane was like her good-luck charm.

By the time the sun came up, she had dressed care fully in her brown leggings and pink miniskirt and double tanks. She didn’t dare wear flip-flops, because her right leg got tangled up when she got tired. So she had five pairs of ballet shoes her mother had dyed in every color. Today was pink. Through the soles, she could feel the floor. She concentrated on that. During PT Shannon had told her, “Reach for the floor like it’s your anchor. Hold on to the earth.” Maureen did that.

She went down the stairs, slowly.

Since the beginning of August she’d been back in her own room—a room that Tommy had totally redone for her as a late birthday gift. The pink paint was dark now, almost coral. There were no curtains. Everything else was white, from the blinds to the furniture. Her mother had surprised her by making her a new quilt, just like the one buried with Bridget.

Oh Bridge
, she thought.
Be with me
.

In her dad’s office was the piano. Maureen began to play the
Moonlight Sonata
. Slowly, carefully, so no one would

hear. She used both hands fairly easily now. It was still more difficult to use her right hand. It always would be. But she could do it. If she could play this without getting tan gled up, her first day would be okay. She was almost three- quarters of the way through it when she felt a presence at the door. There stood her father.

“How did you do that?” he asked. He was dressed for his run.

“How you get to Carnegie Hall,” she said. “Practice.” “You were using your right hand.”

“I have been.”

“I never thought you would use it again, especially . . .

Can you really read the notes, Maury?” “I really can, Daddy.”

“So, you made something new of yourself.” “What choice was?”

“Was there.”

“What choice was there?” she asked. “I practiced. Prac tice. Perfect. Practice.”

“Don’t get nervous.”

Maureen slammed the cover down over the keys. “Don’t get nervous! Everyone there is going to star, star. Stare. Stare at me! Don’t tell me not to be nervous!”

“Settle down!” Jeannie told them. “Pat’s still asleep.” Pat would be heading back to school at the local junior college in a few weeks. He was studying to be an air traffic control ler. “What the heck is all the ruckus?”

“He says don’t be nervous!” Maureen sneered.

“Don’t call your father ‘he,’ Maureen O’Malley,” Jeannie snapped.

“Don’t let him tell me I’ll be jus fine. Just fine! I won’t ever be fine! Deal!” She grabbed her cane and stomped into the kitchen.

“I just worry because kids are so cruel,” Bill said.

“We can’t protect her,” Jeannie said. “She knew this was coming. The state would have let us homeschool her. This is what she wanted. She should have worn her seat belt.”

“I heard that!” Maureen shrieked. They heard a plate hit the floor with a sharp clang, like a bell breaking. Then an other. And before they could grab her hands, another.

“Stop it!” Jeannie told Maureen. “That’s my only full set.

We’ll have to replace that!” “Too bad can’t replace me!” “Maury,” her father began.

“I didn’t wear my seat belt because it was broken! It was broken and I didn’t want to tell! Why did you get me no car with an air bag? Too cheap? Not too cheap for Tom and Henry and Pat and Jack! Every soccer camp! Out in Califor nia! All for your athletics! Your athletes! What about me? You send me out in a cheap, busted, rusted. Broken car with a broken belt!”

“I didn’t know,” Jeannie said.

“Don’t you think we’ve thought about that a million times? And suffered about that? Don’t you think we know we were idiots for thinking, Well, she’s just driving to school and back; we don’t have to get her a car until she’s in

college? Don’t you know we feel responsible?” Bill asked. “You think I’m respondable! Responsible! I heard you,

Mom! You said I should have worn my seat belt! I always wear my seat belt! Always!” Tears were running down Maureen’s face and her nose was leaking.

“Go run,” Jeannie told Bill, and he literally ran for the door.

“Maury, if you keep this up, you’re going to have to miss the first day. Do you want that?”

“You blame me?”

“No! I blame us, so I say stupid things,” Jeannie told her. “Listen. I didn’t know until now that the seat belt was bro ken. And if I didn’t think I would cut my feet to shreds on the broken dishes, I would puke in that sink. As it is, I’ll go in the bathroom.”

Maureen sat down. Then she got up, and, using the broom as a cane, began awkwardly sweeping up the pieces of smashed crockery. When her mother emerged from the hall bathroom, Maureen said, “I’m sorry.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be. Yes, we were cheap. On the other hand, you should have told us. Don’t shake your head. Do you think we wouldn’t have done something about it? Do you think we really care more about the boys than you?”

“No,” Maureen said. “Go fix your makeup.” “Okay. Will you get it?”