All We Know of Heaven (27 page)

They would stop to see Grandma on the way.

So it was with longing and excitement that Maureen passed the week, taking her midterms, getting respectable Bs in everything but math, still passing that with a low C. She began practicing her solo. It was no honor. Every voice performance student had one. But her song was in Latin and not an easy one to learn, despite the many times she had heard it. Over and over, Melody told her, “Stop rush ing! I want to hear reverence in your voice. This is a song of praise. Everyone knows it. So slow down and form each word.”

Maury listened to the tapes of herself and then, with a backing tape Melody made for her, sang the song so many times that her suite-mates complained that it felt as if they were taking Communion.

She retreated then, tromping through a wet and unex pected snow, to the basement of the arts building, where it was possible to reserve one of the ten soundproof practice rooms.

Two days before the concert, on Melody’s orders, she stopped singing altogether and simply spoke softly and drank cup after cup of tea.

She thought she would go mad with joy when she heard the plop of a snowball against her window and saw her brother Henry standing outside. As close as she could come to running, Maureen made it down the stairs and threw herself into four pairs of waiting arms. Rag Mop wiggled out of her mother’s purse and, after polishing Maury’s

face, jumped down and raced around and around them in the snow. That night she stayed with her parents at a cozy bed-and-breakfast, sleeping on a roll-out sofa, sitting up late to talk to Jeannie—outlasting even her brothers.

“Mom, I know Danny is dating Molly,” she said once Bill had turned in and they were alone.

“I thought you would. How do you feel?”

“I felt horrible at first. I couldn’t eat. I never thought that Molly would betray me that way.”

Jeannine asked, “Do you really feel that she betrayed you by dating a boy you broke up with? And is Molly really the one you should be angry with?”

“No,” Maureen said honestly. “I don’t think that. But I feel it. I’m not going to let it ruin my summer at home, though.”

“So you’ve decided against the summer term? I’m so glad. That house is too quiet,” Jeannie said.

Maureen fell silent. If she took a full load in summer term, she could go home for a few weeks but make up most of a whole semester and graduate only one semester behind her Bigelow classmates. She could start at the University of Wisconsin, her first choice, in the spring of next year.

“I’m not sure, Mom,” she said. “It might be too painful for me back in Bigelow. Especially now. Speaking of that, are the Flannerys doing better?”

“Honey, a for sale sign went up in front of their house last week. They’re not leaving Bigelow, but I gather the business is doing great and they’re building a super man

sion out at The Corners.”

“Wow. Is that a relief for you?”

Jeannie sighed and nodded. “I’d like to look across at a friendly face, I have to admit it.”

“So much has changed.”

“That’s the one constant of life,” Jeannie told Maureen, stroking her daughter’s hair.

It was nine at night when Danny Carmody turned to Evan Brock at Overture Cinema and said, “Road trip.”

“Now?”

“Why not?”

“Where?”

“Iowa. Five hours by my calculations.”

“You’re nuts, brother. She doesn’t want to see you . . . or me. And what’s Miss Molly going to think?”

“All I want is to hear her sing. Coach says she has a solo at this rinky-dink school with a hundred students. I don’t want her back. I don’t even know if I want to talk to her. We’ll stay one night and turn around. I’ll drive most of the way.”

“Gee, I always wanted to see Iowa in March,” Evan said with a groan.

“I’ll go myself then. I’m a free man, pushing eighteen. I can cross a state line.”

“No way. Let’s get some subs and clean drawers though.” They pulled into the Holiday Inn Express outside Fall

Creek at three in the morning. The only room left had a single king-sized bed.

“I never thought of you this way,” Evan told Danny as they sat down on opposite sides and chucked their shoes.

“Life’s full of surprises,” Danny told him, slapping Evan across the head with a pillow. He fell asleep as soon as he lay down, but not before thinking,
She’s a mile away from me
.

The auditorium was already filled by the time he and Evanshowedup. Anirritatedwomanwiththebiggestboobs Danny had ever seen on anyone in real life shone a flash- light on their tickets and pointed them to seats in the first row of what she called “the loge” but which was a big cliff of seats that jutted out above the main floor. They could see Coach and the family in the third row down there.

“How’d you get these seats?” Evan asked. “Called two weeks ago.”

“So this wasn’t really just on the spur of the moment.” “Kind of,” Danny said. “I didn’t think I’d have the nerve.” “So you bought twenty-five-dollar tickets. Two, no less.

I think you take me for granted.” “Shut up. It’s starting,” Danny said.

They had to listen to people squall for what seemed liked years before Maureen, dressed in a long blue velvet dress, walked out onto the stage.

The music began, low and tender. A harp. A single flute.

Maureen waited. Then she raised her face.

“Ave Maria,”
Maureen sang.
“Gratia plena, / Maria, gratia plena . . .”

How her voice had changed.

It had grown from a single-stemmed flower into a young tree.

Danny could still hear the voice he knew, but something richer and finer now trembled in its depths. He caught himself holding his breath for Maureen, willing her to reach for the higher notes.
“Ave Maria,”
she sang,
“Ave Ma ria . . .”
And then it was over. Maureen dropped her shining blond head and gently dipped one knee. He heard Jeannie’s trademark whistle, but he was too stunned even to applaud. Another girl sang a song from
West Side Story
.

At the end, all of them joined hands onstage while the families stood and clapped for them. Maury was shorter than anyone else by six inches. She looked up as the lights came on, and he saw the smile drain away from her face. She had seen him.

Danny began to jostle his way to the exit. Evan yelled after him, “Wait up! Idiot!” “I’ll get the car,” Danny called back.

But when he emerged into the lobby, there she stood, at the foot of the staircase.

He had no choice.

When Jeannie and Bill, with the boys and Josh—whom they’d met that day at lunch—slipped past the other parents into the lobby, they saw Maureen in Danny’s arms, kissing him as though his mouth held her own breath.

a place for us
‌

And then they were lost.

There was only waiting—for her visits on the weekends, for his visits to her, the hundreds of phone calls with bills that made the veins stand out in Bill’s neck. He’d chosen the family plan.

After a week of sulking, Molly blogged on MyPlace that true love was a force too great for anything to overcome. She enjoyed a certain celebrity at school, being a part of the most romantic story any of them knew firsthand. Molly thought it was easily as good as a Nicholas Sparks book. Leland thought the crash added a lot to it. Molly thought Leland was morbid by nature.

Maureen announced that she had decided to come home

for the summer after all.

Jeannie announced that Maureen had already applied for and been granted her summer scholarship, and she was going to use it or answer to her father. One day in May Danny drove Maureen home for the confrontation. He had barely closed the door behind him when he heard Coach roar, “And I am telling you no, Missy! I will not have you end up pregnant! No! You’ve come too far for that.”

“Dad, all it means is that it’ll take me a year instead of a semester,” Maureen pleaded. “I should work for the sum mer and pay you back for some of those phone bills. . . .”

“Don’t hand me that, Maureen. I know exactly why you want to come back here. And it’s fine. If it lasts for you two, it’s fine. But no daughter of mine is going to get married out of high school.”

“Like you did!” Danny fled.

The next morning a chastened Maureen was sitting on her front porch when he pulled into the driveway.

“Does your dad have a shotgun in there?” Danny asked. “No, it’s the other way around. He’ll shoot you if you

want to marry me! I lost this round.”

Danny took a short breath and sat down. Marriage? He loved Maureen. He knew he did. But marriage . . . that was a long way off.

“Not that I want to get married,” Maureen said hurried ly. “I’m not saying that! God, Danny! You didn’t think . . .” She began to laugh. “I might meet a millionaire! You might

meet a senorita in Colorado. It’s just that I’ll miss you so much, honey. Eight weeks of summer term and then just two weeks and back at school.”

“I’ll have to really train, anyhow,” Danny said. “I’m not exactly the top guy in my weight class in America. They’re giving me a chance, not a promise.”

“But we’ll have holidays. We’ll . . . I wish we could just promise to meet right here after graduation.”

“I wish that, too, but you have to take your chances,” Danny told her.

They drove downtown to the new café that had replaced the bacon-and-eggs joint where Danny had bought Mau reen her grilled cheese sandwich. The lunch lady, Miss Bliss, was the manager of the new place. She enfolded Mau reen in a huge hug and asked, “So, how’s this new school? I heard from one of the ladies at church that it’s all set up for kids like you.”

“It’s not just for kids who sing. It’s a regular high school, just with dorms and that. . . .”

“I meant with special helpers and such,” Miss Bliss said. “Kathy said it was the kind of place where a kid could get an education without having to compete so much.”

Danny watched Maureen’s face crumple and saw her chin begin to quiver. But she stood up straight and smiled at Miss Bliss. She said, “It’s not a school for brain-injured kids. I’m the only one there who’s brain injured. There are some kids who are disabled in different ways, and I have tutors to help me. And when I go to college . . .”

“College?” Miss Bliss asked.

“I’ll always have to have special help . . . and adapting . . . adaptions . . . and . . .”

“I think that’s wonderful!” Miss Bliss said. “Colleges are sure different now!”

“They have to be,” Maureen said. “It’s a law.” “We want to have lunch,” Danny said.

But both of them only played with the club sandwiches they ordered, and finally they had them wrapped. Without speaking, they drove out County G and turned on Bell wether Road. Danny spread out the blanket.

“It’s not exactly a white tablecloth and candles,” he said.

Maureen looked down on Bridget’s grave. The grass had grown in thickly, and someone had planted two pink rose bushes—at the head and foot of where Bridget lay.

“One for her and one for me,” Maureen said. “Does Kitt still come every day?”

“I don’t know,” Danny told her. “I don’t see them any more. Sarah’s fine. She’s really grown up a lot. She actually told me to tell you that she was sorry.”

“You know, I believe that. And I was scared to death of Kitt, but I don’t really even blame her. Losing your child, especially that way . . . You’d lose your mind.” She sat down awkwardly on the blanket. “I’m never going to be able to sit down right. And I’m never going to be able to live in my hometown, Danny.”

“You mean Miss Bliss.”

“It’s going to shock people that I can have a job. It’s go ing to shock people that I can have a baby.”

Danny shrugged. He knew she was right. “It’s not the only town on Earth,” he said. “But it was mine,” Maury answered.

He dropped her off early, planning to have dinner with his folks—who were tight-lipped about the whole Maureen matter—before he drove Maureen back to school. It was ten hours round trip, and he had school Monday. He would pick her up at nine the next morning and be home by nine Sunday night.

Just before he left, Danny opened his folder of college mail and extracted an envelope. He sat down at his desk and read the letter. Then he dialed a number.

In his home office, Ryan Ebberly, who coached varsity wrestling at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, just under a two-hour drive from Dubuque, sat back in his chair. He pushed up the brim of his cap with satisfaction. He called his assistant.

“Dan Carmody,” he said. “The kid from Minnesota. Changed his mind. Got a full ride to Colorado, but he didn’t sign yet.”

“We knew he was going to Colorado. We filled that space,” his assistant said.

“He’s a good kid. A good student. He can wrestle for it. He’s a tough kid. I want him here. Let’s give him money.”

“Dan Carmody. That’s the kid . . . Remember that,

Coach? The little girl who was supposed to be alive except she really died? A few years ago? That was his girlfriend.”

“Huh. So you’re saying he might be screwed up,” Ebberly said. “Well, I know Bill O’Malley coached him. I’ll call Bill.”

“That was the other girl,” his assistant went on. “I re member it now. Bill O’Malley’s daughter. She was mistaken for her friend. It was all over the TV. You remember that.”

“Well, yeah, I do. How long ago was that?” “Got me. Years.”

Ebberly dialed Bill O’Malley. Was Bill at home? It was Sunday. Was it too early?

The phone rang just as Danny pressed the doorbell and beckoned Maureen out onto the porch. Bill watched them through the porch window. Yes, he told Ebberly. He couldn’t recommend a boy more. Maureen threw her arms around Danny’s neck. He lifted her off her feet. Yes, a solid wrestler, even-tempered, a team player, never a whine out of him.

“Congratulations,” Bill told Ebberly. “He’ll make you proud.”

Bill shook his head. Well, there were worse things than finding the one you loved before you knew who you were. There were worse things than losing that love, too. All of it went into the folder labeled
EXPERIENCE
. They had raised Maury under their wing, but it was under their wing that she’d almost slipped away. If this was time for Maureen to find her true love, or her first heartbreak, Bill was fine in