All We Know of Heaven (5 page)

He ended up going over to see Maureen.

When she opened the door, he busted out laughing. She had on flannel Mickey Mouse drawstrings and a gigan tic UM sweatshirt that came down to her knees. But what was funny was that she had this guck on her face, as green and lumpy as guacamole; and she tried to shut the door on his foot. Once she’d let him in she said, “I made it myself,

from cucumbers and yogurt. I should probably eat it. But it’s supposed to make your pores all clean. . . .”

After she washed it off and tied her hair back, she looked like Bridget’s little sister Eliza in her PJs and flip-flops. She brought him her brother Tom’s old guitar and, after he tuned it up, asked him to play for her. He played “Duel ing Banjos” because girls loved it, even though he missed a bunch of notes.

“I wish I could do that.” Maury sighed when he was through.

“It’s not that hard,” he told her. “I wish I could do trig.” “All the musical notes look like spaghetti to me,” Mau

reen said.

“You mean you don’t read the notes in choir?”

“Perfect pitch,” she’d said, pointing to her ear and blushing. “If I had to sight-read, I’d be out of it now. Play another one. Nobody’s home but me. My parents are at poker club. Jack and Henry are out. And they’ll probably be out all night, which will mean a great fight in the morn ing.” The twins were in college at Gustavus Adolphus on scholarships—Jack in soccer and Henry in wrestling—so their father raised hell if they touched a beer or did any thing that might get them bounced.

Danny said, “I will if you sing.” “I can’t do that.”

“I know you can. You sang the solo in church.”

“That was church!” Maureen said. “When you’re in church, you don’t think that people are watching.”

“Okay, forget it then,” he teased her.

“Well, just once,” she said. She got out a book from choir and showed him a song called “Aura Lee,” which turned out to be the same as the old Elvis song “Love Me Tender” but with different words about a maid with golden hair.

Maureen’s voice was like a flute, strong and pure. She seemed to forget him being there as she sang until the last notes died away, and then she sort of crumpled down on the floor and hid her face. He pulled her back up and said, “Do you take lessons? Because that was beautiful. You should.”

She shook her head. It happened then.

He could never explain it.

Maureen was his pal, his buddy. He loved Bridget totally. But that night he just leaned over and kissed Maureen, and lay down with her on the sofa in the living room; and pretty soon his shirt was off and then hers was . . . and then she was crying and saying it was all her fault and that she would never be able to face Bridget. He had to joke around with her for an hour to get her to stop, asking her if she thought he was a werewolf or something no girl would ever want to kiss or if she was some dog no guy would ever want to kiss.

He meant every word of it. They were still friends. But he got all confused after he left.

Did he spend so much time talking to Maury because he had feelings for her?

Jesus!

They never talked about it again. She seemed to forgive

him. Besides a few dates with Sam Hillier, Brandon’s brother, he knew she didn’t go out with anybody. It was probably the furthest she ever went with a guy. After he got over feeling lousy about it, he was actually kind of happy, because she was clearly as into it as he was.

Danny leaned his face into his mom’s shoulder. He thought his face might give him away—it was sick to have sexy thoughts about a dead girl who was his friend. His mom reached up and touched his cheek.

Near the end of Mass, when everyone was beginning to get hot and the smell of the flowers was sickening, Mau reen’s cousin Jeremy, who was what Mom called an Irish tenor, sang this old song called “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Then came Communion and, finally, Maureen’s great- uncle, Father Jim.

Danny thought he was never going to get to the point.

His dad frowned at him for shifting around in the pew.

Father Jim said, “That song was a favorite of my moth er’s. I can remember sixty years ago, her singing it to me with her Irish brogue, although it’s not an Irish song. It was written right here, by Stephen Foster, I believe. But in any case, I remember thinking then that I was safe in the world so long as I could hear her voice. I think . . .” The old man stopped and took a handkerchief out from under his robes. “At Christmas, before we had our family meal, Maureen sang for us in place of a formal blessing. Of course, I did insist on a formal blessing. But last year, which would be the year before last, really, she sang ‘What Child is This?’

And I think of those words now: ‘What Child is this who, laid to rest / On Mary’s lap is sleeping?’ No one who is loved every really dies; and no one who dies in Christ is ever dead, only sleeping in hope of the resurrection to come. Beauti ful dreamer, we must say good-bye to you now and tell you sleep tight, as my mother once told me. And we must pray for Bridget Flannery, that she awakens and grows well and strong, because it is not only our family who suffers tonight and questions God’s will but our friends, our community.”

Mrs. Flannery sat up straight in her white suit and bit her lips.

Danny did not think Bridget’s mother had left the PICU, which was what they called the kids’ intensive care unit, for more than eight hours since Bridget was injured.

Danny tuned out the old priest and thought about Bridget.

She would have hated the way she looked. Her lips were cracked, and her face was covered with crude rows of black stitches. Her hair was greasy and pulled back in a dirty scrunchy. They didn’t want to wash her hair because parts of her head were still covered with bandages from her surgery and the swelling in her poor rebuilt cheek was fresh, purple and blue. Her shoulder was broken, although it turned out her neck wasn’t, and she cried out when the nurses had to turn her. Sometimes, Danny knew, they hurt her on purpose or clapped next to her ear to try to bring her out of the coma.

When they sat her up, to keep fluid out of her lungs so

she didn’t get pneumonia, they had to tie her head and chest to the chair with fabric strips.

She looked like a broken doll in a toy hospital.

She was breathing on her own now. After three days the doctors had “weaned” her off the ventilator, the machine that was breathing for her, and had cut a little hole in her windpipe where they put in a tube. Oxygen was pumped in—at first twelve puffs a minute, then four, then two, then none.

As time passed, the fluid pockets in her brain that the doctors had initially seen on the MRIs of her head went away.

The fractured bones would heal on their own, but some needed to be fixed. So once she was stable, they had taken Bridget back to the operating room and repaired the bones in her arms. At the same time a cosmetic surgeon from Chicago, Dr. Traverian—who was a big pal of the main sur geon, Dr. Fahey—had taken tiny bits of skin from places on the back of Bridget’s head and had grafted them where they would, he hoped, grow on the area where the scalp had been ripped away over Bridget’s ear. He opened the rough patching of the gash under Bridget’s eye, replaced her bro ken eye socket and cheekbone with Teflon—Danny was sure he said Teflon, though that was what they put on the inside of no-stick frying pans—and closed the cut with Su per Glue (really, Super Glue!) so that there would be hardly any scar at all. They worked quickly to minimize Bridget’s time under anesthetic.

He did all this for free, Mrs. Flannery had told Danny.

And though Bridget had had a setback after that surgery and had to be on oxygen again, it didn’t last long.

Her body got better and better; but still she slept on.

It was like she was a house fixed, patched up, and wait ing for someone to move in.

With a probe stuck through a hole in her head, Dr. Zi mensi, one of the neurologists, monitored the swelling of the brain, which was a huge source of concern. Bridget’s brain had banged back and forth against her skull like a balloon in a jar at the time of the impact; and as the doc tor explained, like any bruised part of the body, it swelled. She debated the radical step of removing a section of bone to allow the swelling to run its course. That proved to be one more bullet they could dodge. Daily, the swelling went down.

The doctors were pleased and surprised by Bridget’s improvement.

But she didn’t wake up.

It was more than four days now.

Finally, the team—the pediatrician, Dr. Coy; the head of the rehab, Dr. Park; another neurologist, Dr. Zimensi; and the surgeon, Dr. Fahey, all women—sat down with the Flannerys and explained that they “needed to see” Bridget make signs of conscious movement, recognition, sight, and responses to speech that were more than reflexes. Sometimes she squeezed their hands and her eyes moved under the closed lids. Sometimes her lashes fluttered.

But that was about it. The brain scans showed what some doctors called “shallow” damage, mostly in the area that controlled motor function, like walking and stuff. Dr. Park said mild to medium brain injury was a good result, rela tively speaking.

Then she told them what she meant by “mild to medium brain injury.”

She said that eventually Bridget might be able to learn to walk and feed herself and that “special” schooling might be possible in time.

Finally, Mrs. Flannery asked, “Isn’t there any chance at all that she’ll be like she was and be able to go back to school in the same way she did?”

“Well, there is always some chance, but it is a small chance. Still, with kids, we can be surprised,” said Dr. Park, tracing the line of an invisible necklace with one finger.

And that night, a neurologist intern told them that the real truth was, the longer Bridget was in the coma, the more likely she would be “gorked.”

That was the actual word he used.

He got in trouble for it and apologized. But they all knew what he meant. He meant that Bridget would be a veggie. So on the one hand the Flannerys and Danny were com pletely grateful Bridget was alive. And on the other hand, sometimes Mr. Flannery said that maybe the O’Malleys were luckier than they realized. Maury was at peace. She would never be “gorked.”

As the service ended, Danny didn’t want to think about

Maury; and he couldn’t bear to look at Coach and Mrs. O. as they put their arms around the coffin—as though they were trying to pick up Maury and take her home. The O’Malley boys finally had to gently pull them away.

After the Mass came the burial.

The short line of cars took less than a half hour to get from the church to the cemetery.

Danny fell asleep on the way.

He just couldn’t take any more depressing stuff. He was depressed enough to last until he was forty.

In a line at the grave, the cheerleaders wrapped their trophy in Maury’s quilt. They stepped back, sobbing and holding one another up. And the priests each did a quick, quiet blessing. The wind was sharp edged and probing, so Danny turned up his coat collar and let his mom hold on to his arm. Though there were only twenty or thirty of them alongside the grave, he later heard that about five hundred people came to the funeral.

He just wanted it over.

ThepriestsaidthatbecauseofthenatureoftheO’Malleys’ tragedy, the tradition of a reception was going to be sus pended. The O’Malleys would forever be grateful for the outpouring of love from their friends and neighbors—all the food and flowers, and the donations that would even tually go to a scholarship fund in Maureen’s name—but now they needed quiet time alone to try to heal.

As they all walked away except for Coach, who stood there slumped by the grave in his camel-colored coat and

green fedora, Danny told his mother that he had to see Bridget.

He thought about the big board in Bridget’s room with ranks of cards and letters pinned to it, such as the one that said “Spirit!” in Leland’s big, loopy writing. Danny would tidy up the pictures of him and Bridget and Bridget with her sisters and Bridget with Maureen. He would read the card on the newest delivery of baby pink roses, Bridget’s favorite. There would be the nurses and therapists to joke with, warmth, a Coke, and a chair to sit on.

And Maureen . . . They had to leave her there all alone, with a stray corner of her quilt flapping in the hard wind under an iron-colored sky. Danny couldn’t hold it togeth er. He thought that most of all he would miss her voice—as sweet and high-pitched as her singing. He would never hear it again. Her flower-open face, always with a big grin for him. He would never see it again.

He thought of her back there. All alone.

a slow turning
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“Do you think she’ll ever come out of it?” Leland asked Molly. It was two weeks after the funeral and just before lunch. They were in the first-floor bathroom. As if on com mand, they both threw their long hair forward, brushed it ruthlessly, and then pulled it back into ponytails, carefully tugging strands out at the back. They stared into the mirror and regarded the just-out-of-bed effect with satisfaction. “I have ten thousand zits,” Leland added.

“I don’t,” Molly admitted. “I don’t mean I don’t have zits; I mean I don’t think she’ll wake up.”

Molly didn’t have zits, however. She was physically per fect in every way, with a tight little butt and cute boobs. Guys all thought Molly was sexy, although she didn’t date

anyone because her mother was so strict. She liked the at tention, though. She made Leland feel like a stork. Molly wasn’t always loved on the squad because she was such a hardnose, always pushing them to do the next thing, to point their toes and really stretch so they could all do splits—she said it was a disgrace that there were four varsity cheerleaders who couldn’t do real splits, since she her self could do both kinds. She wasn’t the captain, but she acted like it. She nagged them to smile and put some life into their kicks. Molly never did anything halfway, and she didn’t expect other people to. She missed Bridget for that reason. Bridget had been sloppy but so enthusiastic and naturally athletic that no one ever noticed. Molly frowned now. Underneath her attitude of perpetual criticism, she was a tender person. “My uncle is a doctor, and he says it’s been way too long.”