Between Friends (33 page)

It was so cold in the room, and Letty could swear that when he said that, about the transplant person coming, it got even colder. Nobody said anything for a minute.

Her mom and Aunt Cora’s boyfriend looked at Aunt Cora. Everyone except the doctor; he didn’t even notice that they were all freaked out, he just kept talking. Aunt Cora didn’t look up; she just sat there with this really weird look on her face, staring down at her boyfriend’s hand.

He was the one who finally said something, or, he didn’t really
say
anything, but he cleared his throat like he was going to, and the doctor finally stopped talking and looked confused.

“What?” Letty asked, but nobody even looked at her.

“Wait,” her mom said. “Go back.”

But she didn’t tell him where to go back to.

“Ali,” Aunt Cora said, and she was the only one whose words actually sounded like they might mean something, like she knew what she was going to say. But then she only said, “Don’t.”

And then everyone else started to talk at the same time.

“This is
not
an appropriate time to discuss this,” Aunt Cora said.

“Discuss what?” Letty asked. “Discuss what?”

“Is that possible?” Drew said.

“Just hold on,” her mother said.

And the doctor said, “Slow down, now tell me what the situation is here.”

They all talked over each other, talking about Aunt Cora, and how sick she was, and how she needed a kidney. It got even colder, and Letty started to shiver, and then she was shaking. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, leaning her head down on her knees while all the words jumbled around her.

But in a second she felt Aunt Cora jump up from her chair and grab her by the arm, making her feet thump down on the floor.

“Look,” she said, and she sounded really mad. “You two”—and she pointed at her mother and Drew—“can stay in here and talk about this, but I’m not going to sit here and listen, and I’m not going to make Letty sit through it either. Come on,” she said, pulling on Letty’s arm.

She was just glad to have someone tell her what to do. Her mom reached out for her hand, and Letty wasn’t mad at her or anything, but she just wanted to go, and she slipped away from her.

“I’ll be right there, Letty,” her mom said, but the door shut behind Aunt Cora and they were out in the hall before she could say anything.

“What do you want to do?” Aunt Cora asked her.

“Is it true?” she whispered.

She didn’t say anything for a minute. But then she looked at her directly, just like Aunt Cora always did, and she knew she would tell her the truth.

“Yes, Letty, it’s true. But it’s going to be okay, and this is the last thing you need to worry about right now. I’m going to be fine, just fine. I’m sorry you had to find out now, like this. And they can talk all they want, but the only thing I’m planning on doing for the next year is being here with you and your mom, okay?”

“What’s wrong with your arm?” Letty asked, finally noticing the bandages.

“They put in an access point for when I start dialysis.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say.

“Letitia Makani,” she said softly, and for the first time Letty wanted to hear it again, wanted to hear her whole name said by someone who loved her. “I’m okay. And you’re going to be okay, too. And I’m going to be here to make sure of that. Now, what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” she said, even though she did.

“Hey,” Aunt Cora said, crouching down a little to peer at her. “I know it doesn’t seem possible right now, but we’re going to get through this. We all will. Come on.”

She put her arm around her and started to steer her toward the elevators, but Letty pulled back.

“Maybe we could go back? You know, to . . . Dad,” Letty said, afraid she wouldn’t want to, but Aunt Cora turned right around.

“Of course,” she said, and they walked down the hall.

Letty hesitated at the door.

“Do you want to be alone?” Aunt Cora asked. “I’ll just stand right here and wait for you if you do.”

She shook her head. “Do you—I mean, don’t you want to see him, too?”

Aunt Cora looked like she was thinking about it hard.

“I’d appreciate that,” she said, like she was thanking Letty.

She wasn’t afraid to go right up to him this time, and even though her mom and the doctor said he wasn’t “there,” which was just another way of saying he was dead, it still only seemed like he was hurt, and unconscious.

When she was little, they used to nap on the sofa together, and she would wrap her hand around one of his fingers, and he would tell her a story about when he was little, or about when he and her mom were dating, or even about when she was born. But his stories about that were different from her mom’s. She never felt like she needed to be anyone different than who she was, any more special, when her dad told the story about her conception.

He never said it was a miracle. He just said he was happy.

“Do you think I could sit there?” she asked, pointing to the space beside her dad’s knees, on the right side, away from the bandages on his arm and shoulder.

“Of course,” Aunt Cora said. She helped her scoot his leg over a little and Letty kicked her shoes off and climbed up, crossing her legs against his. She felt like she was going to fall backward off the edge of the bed, but she inched a little closer, and Aunt Cora moved a chair behind her and sat down, and when she wrapped her hand around his finger, she knew she was safe.

It felt like him, mostly, but she also sort of felt what her mom was saying, like there was just something missing. Even when he fell asleep on the sofa and she was awake, his hand still felt . . . alive. This didn’t, not at all the way like it used to.

She didn’t care, it was something, and she held on.

“Aunt Cora?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“Why do you like wind?” she asked.

Letty, as she had over the past couple of weeks, had surprised me again. She’d never asked me about my work.

“I mean, how did you know what you wanted to do? Why wind stuff?” Letty asked.

I was silent for a minute, thinking about it, realizing that she just wanted some distraction, some white noise while she sat and held on to Benny. I wasn’t sure where to start.

“You know I was adopted, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, Barbara’s house was filled with all kinds of things I’d never seen before. She’d traveled all over the world, and she had more books than I’d ever seen in my life. And not just novels, or biographies, but all of these huge books about the creation of the world, and religion, and oh, I don’t know, every kind of thing you could ever imagine, or, I suppose, I’d never known I
could
imagine. And one of them was a book on sea charts.”

“Sea charts?”

“Like big, colorful maps of the seas. Incredibly artistic, colorful, absolutely beautiful. But the one that really struck me was a wind rose.”

“What’s that?” Letty asked, looking genuinely interested now.

“Think about a compass the way it’s drawn on paper, a circle, all divided up, with north, south, east, west. Okay, so a wind rose is like that, only in this one, the circle was divided into thirty-two sections representing the different winds that blew in those directions. And each section was labeled with these amazing names, Libecia and Africus for the southwest wind, Maestro for the northwestern wind, Ostro and Notus for the south wind. And there were thirty-two faces that went with each wind, bearded ones for the northwestern winds, black faces for northeastern ones, old-fashioned white men for southeast, feminine faces with flowers in their hair for southwest winds.

“It was all . . . I don’t know, it gave me some sense of things, put the world in order somehow.”

I laughed softly, remembering what I had done next.

“I tore it out of the book and hid it in my room. I was so afraid she’d find it and send me back to Texas. But I got home from school one day, and she had framed it and hung it on my ceiling—”

“On your ceiling?”

“I know. It was really neat, though. She put this spotlight on my nightstand so I could light it up. She said she thought I could look at it while I was lying in bed, thinking about what I should do, which way I wanted the winds to carry me, she said. And I did.”

“She wasn’t mad?”

“Not at all.”

“She was pretty cool.”

“Yeah, she was. I miss her.”

Letty stared at Benny, and we just sat for a while without saying anything. I looked for something that would keep her distracted, would make her feel close to her father.

“You want to know something about your dad that your mom doesn’t even know?” I asked.

“Okay.”

“You remember that year I was here for Christmas? I guess you were about eight? And I took you to see Santa?”

She looked as if she didn’t remember for a moment, but then her face cleared and she smiled at me.

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “You got me a cinnamon bun and even though it wasn’t cold out at all, we got hot chocolate.” She nodded, as if satisfied with this chunk of memory falling into place. “But why did
you
take me?”

“It was so busy at the store. And that was the first year your mom had to run it by herself, remember? So I thought I’d surprise your parents and get your picture taken with Santa, and you acted pretty excited, but I knew you didn’t believe in him anymore.”

Letty laughed. “You knew?”

“Eight-year-olds are more transparent than they think they are.”

“I guess,” Letty said, still smiling. “That was cool of you.”

“But we had fun, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, it was fun.”

“Well, we’re waiting in this line, and all these kids are screaming and crying and generally acting like brats, and oh my God, was I starting to regret the whole thing and wishing you were old enough to go get a Bloody Mary with me instead. But it was so funny; as soon as these kids got to Santa, they’d calm right down. You always hear about kids being afraid of Santa and crying when they get plopped on his lap, but I don’t know, this Santa was like the Brat Whisperer or something. I joked to the woman behind me that maybe he was slipping them something, but she wasn’t amused.

“Anyway, so the kid in front of us is sitting on Santa’s lap, but Santa’s staring right at me, and I’m thinking,
Jeez, Santa, you shouldn’t be flirting with the moms
. But then I looked, really looked, back at him, and I realized it was your dad.”

Letty looked appropriately shocked.

“What? No way!”

“It was, and he was panicking, shaking his head at me, and the kid on his lap is getting upset because he thinks Santa’s turning down his request for whatever toy he’s asking him for. But there was no getting out of it by then. You were next, and whether you thought you believed it or not before we arrived, you were practically pulling off my hand to get up there.”

Letty laughed. “I remember that part. When I saw him, I sort of forgot I didn’t believe in him.”

“So we just both hoped for the best, and I got you on his lap, and you never even noticed.”

“Wait, why didn’t Mom know?”

“He wanted you guys to have a really great Christmas, but he couldn’t get as much overtime as he wanted to make extra money, so he took a bunch of odd jobs during the day when he was supposed to be at home, sleeping. He was working nights back then, and he didn’t want your mom to know. And he was right about that. She would have been ticked off.”

“Well, why did he tell you?”

“He sort of had to, didn’t he?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess so. But why didn’t you ever tell her?”

“I thought it was a pretty harmless secret. And I thought it was a sweet thing for him to do. I liked that he loved you both enough to do something like that. It made me feel like y’all were being taken care of. And that made me happy, that I didn’t have to worry about you.”

“And now?” Her face contorted, and I knew she was trying not to cry, but it didn’t work.

“I’m worried,” I said.

“Me too,” Letty whispered. “Aunt Cora? I think I might be in real trouble.”