All We Know of Heaven (23 page)

He’d be home for three full weeks.

For two days before he left Sky, Danny couldn’t sleep. He played out in his mind what he’d say when he saw her. He’d play it cool. He’d pick her up and swing her around. He’d call when he knew she was at school and leave a message.

But when Danny got home, even his parents weren’t there. His brother picked him up from the airport, and he found a note saying that they couldn’t wait to see him. There were sandwiches and cake in the refrigerator; but his aunt Laura, his dad’s sister, had picked this Saturday of all days to up and marry the guy she’d been dating for

years. She’d given them exactly one day’s notice. Even Dave Jr. and Den weren’t invited. His parents would be home by nine at the latest. They were so sorry . . . blah blah.

Danny was in the house, alone. Could he bring Maureen here?

Why did he think she’d even want to come?

He could barely remember her cell number, but he pushed the buttons. It went right over to voice mail.

Danny tried to lie down on his own soft bed. It felt like a veritable cloud after the thin mattress in the bunkhouse, but it might have been a gravel road for how comfortable he could get. Danny tossed and turned and finally gave up on a nap. He got in his car, which Den had started reli giously every week while Danny was away, and drove past the O’Malleys’; but no one was home. He saw the curtains twitch at the Flannerys’; but everything was quiet over there, too. He drove on to the school and walked in through the gym entrance. Decorations were already up for gradua tion. But he could hear the cheerleaders in the side gym.

It would be fun to surprise Brit and Molly.

When he walked in, though, it was Maureen he saw, Maureen without her cane, clapping out the rhythms of “Hey, hey, hey, talk that ball away. Go, go, go, Bulldogs from Bigelow . . .” Her hair was longer, pulled back in a band; and she was wearing khaki shorts and a couple of those strappy things girls wore one over the other. She’d put on weight. She looked beautiful, already cocoa dipped by the sun. Danny didn’t recognize the girls learning the cheer

until he spotted the youngest Hillier girl. These must be eighth graders, getting ready to try out for junior varsity.

He thought of Bridget at the top of a cheer pyramid, sus pended high on the Smith sisters’ shoulders, her beautiful leg extended alongside her head, her toe a perfect point. For a moment his head shimmered with all he had lost. In the vision, the faces of the two girls he loved slid back and forth, morphing into and out of each other—Bridget and Maureen, Maureen and Bridget.

But this was now. This was his Maureen. What was Maureen doing?

“Come on now!” she told the younger girls. “Let’s prac tice some jumps! What’s more important? Enthusiasm or perfection?”

“Enthusiasm!” the little girls called. They looked so very little and young.

“That’s right!” Maureen called. “It’s spirit! It’s the big give-it-all-you’ve-got! Perfection comes after you do somethingahundredtimes. Let’sstartwithsomestretches. Down for three sets of leg lifts in a straddle. Hands behind you on the floor. Now lift, lift, lift! Yeah, I know it hurts! Point your toes, Corey! That’s it. Stretch! Legs straight! You can’t throw a jump if you’re going to pull a muscle. I

used to do it all the time. ”

Moments passed before each of the girls, one by one, noticed him and, self-consciously, stopped what they were doing. Maureen whirled.

Then she was in his arms and his mouth was on her

mouth; and for both of them, it was like a cold drink after a long hike.

Hours later, as they left Danny’s darkened house, after he’d scribbled a note for his parents telling them he was going out with some friends for a pizza, she put her hand on his arm.

“I’ve had a good time since you were gone,” she said. “I worked hard.”

Danny could still smell her cologne, the Irish cologne he had given her before he left, on his skin. He stepped back.

“I . . . I had a good time, too. Sky is great. My uncle’s great,” he said.

“But this is what I want to tell you. I don’t care if you love me,” she said. “I love you. And if it’s not going to last, that doesn’t mean I don’t love you now.”

Danny could breathe again. He said, “I was going to say it if you didn’t.”

And they had a whole week until his dad found out that he was with Maury again.

Danny had to admit to Maureen that he’d agreed to go back to Montana for the summer.

“How could you?” she asked him, through tears.

“I didn’t know I’d feel the same,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d feel the same, to tell you the truth.”

“Can’t you get out of it?”

Danny argued with his father. He offered to work six days instead of his usual four at Green with Envy.

His dad was unmoved. “It was your idea, son,” he said. “Your uncle created a job for you. That’s how it is.”

Danny had no arguments left. He held Maureen close the following night, as they lay on a blanket at the ski lodge.

“I can’t ask you to wait all summer,” he said. “I’ll under stand if you don’t want to.”

“And you’ll want me to understand if you don’t,” Maury said bitterly.

“I love you, Maury,” Danny said.

“I love you, but what does that mean?” she answered.

When Danny left the second time, Maureen thought that if she didn’t give him up—really give him up, with all her heart—she would go out of her mind.

And so she wrote him a letter.

Dear Danny,

If someone can break up with someone by saying she loves him too much to stay together, that’s what I’m doing. I care too much about you to make you wait for me, or for me to wait for you. If I do, it’s going to be all I think about. It’s going to be no life for me except wondering when the next time you’ll call me will be, or if they’ll ever let you come home. You’re going to college out west after next year anyhow. We’d be apart no matter what we felt. And so, I’m going to tell you that it’s never going to be over in my heart, but it has to be over for now. You’ll be my

friend. You’ll be my first love. I’ll never forget. But all our loving each other has brought you is trouble. And I have to face school and the world on my own, without Danny Carmody to stick up for me. When you come back, I don’t know how you’ll feel, or how I will. But you’ll always be my Danny.

Love, Maureen

She waited until she was sure, and then sent it.

June slipped away. Maureen checked the mail every day, and no answer came. Then she began to count the days un til school began.

two again
‌

To be safe, Maureen took the bus to school the last week in August.

She felt like a complete fool, with middle-schoolers whacking one another on the head with their binders and mooshing their faces flat against the back windows. Tuck ing in the ear buds of her iPod—purchased with her earn ings at the Crumpet over the summer—she stretched out her legs and tried to doze. Inevitably, she thought of Dan ny, although she tried to pay attention to the lyrics of the songs.

Danny had come home two weeks before. He didn’t call the first day. The next day he did, and was eager to see her. But when they’d finally hugged, they both felt awkward and

broke away. They ended up going to a funny movie and studying each other secretly. The letter Maureen had writ ten back in June sat between them like an open question neither of them wanted to answer.

Danny didn’t know if she wanted him back, or if he wanted to go through what getting back with her would mean.

Maury didn’t know if she wanted him back for nine months, just to lose him later.

Danny was taller and leaner and tanned. But he also had a changed spirit. He seemed to approach things in general more casually, as if content to let life unfold slowly.

Maureen looked different too. And the change was more than physical. Maureen’s mother once told her that a month in the life of a teenager is a year in the life of an adult. It was true.

She’d spent the summer serving lattes and muffins at the Crumpet and occasionally visiting the lake cabin up north that Molly’s parents owned, flirting with boys at the music camp across the bay. She’d swum every day and had felt herself getting stronger and more coordinated. The pool sessions had definitely made a big difference; and she had written Pat to tell him so and to thank him. She had made tapes of herself talking and played them back, and learned that if she simply spoke more slowly, she didn’t have so much trouble with the words. She’d let her hair grow. With her mother, she’d sewn new clothes that didn’t scream “handmade.”

Danny had spent the same time chasing calves and

sleeping in a barnlike bunkhouse with his two cousins and the rest of the men at his uncle’s hobby ranch. After several days of soaking his legs in a stream because of the sores he’d gotten sitting five hours at a stretch in a saddle, he got used to riding and loved it. He drank beer and smoked ci gars with the cowboys, who came from Missouri and New England and Mexico. After he had gotten Maureen’s letter, Danny had nearly fallen for a dark-haired girl—Marianna, the daughter of the rancher down the road. She was strong and curvy, as strapping as Maureen was tiny, and rode up to the house on her big Morgan, never bothering with a saddle. They had come close to it one night, high up in a mountain meadow.

But Danny had drawn back, again thinking that he and Maureen deserved another chance.

And anyhow, if he got a scholarship to Missoula, Mari anna would still be there.

Danny had sent Maury one card.

She had sent him a card, too—a funny one—for his birthday.

When he came home, he knew he was changed; and though Bigelow was not, Maureen seemed changed, too.

She didn’t use her cane anymore, except for long walks. And her arms were buff with muscle, her shoulders wider from daily lap swimming.

She was no longer Danny’s broken angel.

He was no longer her devoted protector and constant companion.

And so they circled each other for the early weeks of school.

Their first dates were with groups of friends, and Mau reen apparently was happy with that. Keeping it light seemed to be what she wanted. That was fine with him . . . well, actually it wasn’t, but Danny was too proud to say.

October came, and homecoming.

They went together, but in a group. Danny brought Maureen flowers; but after a huge pizza meal, they didn’t pair off to be alone. Maureen went home with Molly for a sleepover.

Neither brought up the fact that they’d done no more than kiss since school started.

Although Danny wanted to be with her—no candle had winked out, in his mind or his belly—he wasn’t sure he could handle such an intense bond. He wasn’t sure any more what he meant by “love.” The more he thought about it, that past closeness seemed like something they had needed then but not something they could easily resume now.

And Maureen was so busy it wouldn’t have been possible to spend much time together anyway.

She was taking piano, and now voice lessons twice a week, and working Saturdays at the Crumpet, so their times together were few. Ev had dated Britney Broussard for about two weeks, until he realized that if they hung out, he would never be allowed to speak a full sentence again. So he went back to being the all-around flirt. Molly had

been with Brandon Hillier since the middle of the summer. Maureen and Danny were absorbed into the usual rumble- tumble of a loud gang of couple-friends—no longer the intense and isolated pair they were before. Part of it was due to Maureen’s recovery. Now she could go easily with Danny to watch Evan play fall soccer, and to the homecom ing bonfire. With what probably had been a massive effort on her part, she’d overcome her naturally shy nature and the compound effects of her brain injury. Once withdrawn and clinging to his arm, she now drifted among the others, joking and teasing. No one in their group brought up the accident. No one treated her as if she were breakable. He noticed that she’d grown adept at turning attention away from that.

One night, lying in his bed with the warm October breeze stirring, Danny took stock: Maureen was just a girl again—a girl who struggled in math and needed help writing and organizing her English essays—but where she once had been Bridget’s little water carrier, now she and Molly were equals in their growing friendship. When she went to the Apple Creek Mall, it was with Molly; and Maureen drove. Molly stayed over; and, now, Maureen often slept over with Molly or Britney. She went to cheer- leading practice sometimes and watched, a sweet, ironic smile on her face. She continued to help train the junior varsity squad and had learned to enjoy working with the younger girls. It was almost like cheering herself. Some times when Danny called, she wasn’t home; and Jeannie

didn’t know when she’d be back.

Most nights she texted Danny before she went to bed, but sometimes she didn’t. She still grinned so that her whole face bloomed whenever she saw him, but that eager grin no longer was for him alone. He saw other guys look ing at her, and he minded, but did he mind enough to make a stand?

Did she need him anymore?

Was that what he wanted, for her to need him?

Had he rushed into his thing with Maureen without ever having finished grieving for Bridget? Obviously. But was being with Maureen his way of grieving for Bridget? And why did Bridge seem such a distant, distant part of his past?

He didn’t have ready answers.

A mile away, Maureen was sifting through the same sort of thoughts.

There was no doubt about how much she had missed Danny.

But why?

She had helped Danny through the most difficult part of his life to this point, helped him face a grief he would always remember.

He had helped her, literally, to come back to life.

There would always be a bond between them, but she honestly did not want her first love to be the only love she ever knew.

She honestly didn’t want that.

She was sure.

What they’d done was crazy—now that she looked back at it. They’d had—what? Over a year together? A long time, but how much of it was just him helping her?