Broken Vessels (20 page)

We were on the bunk for an hour or more. We did not talk about our sorrow, but Cadence's face paled, while Suzanne and Joe waited with Madeleine in the dining room for the car to come. When it did, Suzanne called me, and Joe came and stood behind the wheelchair and held my upper body as I moved down from the bunk. In the dining room Madeleine was in her high chair; Suzanne was feeding her cottage cheese. I talked with the young police officer, then hugged and kissed Madeleine and Cadence goodbye.

In Salem District Court I got shared but not physical custody. The girls would be with me two weekends a month, Thursday afternoons and alternate Monday afternoons through dinner, half a week during the week-long vacations from school, and two weeks in summer.
That's a lot of time
, people say. Until I tell them it is four nights a month with my two daughters, except for the two weeks in summer, and ask them if their own fathers spent only four nights a month with them when they were children (of course many say yes, or even less); or until I tell them that if I were making a living by traveling and earning a hundred thousand a year and spent only four nights a month with my family I would not be a good father. The family court system in Massachusetts appears to define a father as a sperm bank with a checkbook. But that is simply the way they make a father feel, and implicit in their dealings is an admonishment to the father to be grateful for any time at all with his children. The truth is that families are asunder, so the country is too, and no one knows what to do about this, or even why it is so. When the court receives one of these tragedies it naturally assigns the children to the mother's house, and makes the father's house a place for the children to visit. This is not fatherhood. My own view is that one house is not a home; our home has now become two houses.

On the tenth of January 1988, Madeleine was a year old. It was a Sunday, and one of my weekends with the girls, and we had balloons and a cake and small presents, and Cadence blew out the candle for her sister. During that time in winter I was still watching Cadence for signs of pain, as Suzanne and Andre and Jack were, and Marian and David Novak, and Joe Hurka and Tom. Madeleine was sometimes confused or frightened in her crib at night, but never for long. She is a happy little girl, and Cadence and Suzanne and Jack and I learned during the days of Christmas that “Silent Night” soothes her, and I sing it to her still, we all do, when she is troubled; and she stops crying. Usually she starts singing at
holy night, all is calm
, not with words but with the melody, and once this summer she sang the melody to Cadence when she was crying. We all knew that Madeleine, only ten months old when the family separated, was least touched, was the more fortunate of the children, if indeed anything about this can be fortunate for one of the children. So we watched Cadence, and let her be sad or angry, and talked with her; and we hugged and kissed Madeleine, and played with her, fed her, taught her words, and sang her to sleep.

The fifth of February was a Friday in 1988, and the first night of a weekend with the girls. Suzanne brought them into the house shortly after six o'clock in the evening; I was in the shower, sitting on the stool, and she brought them to the bathroom door to greet me. When I wheeled out of the bathroom into the dining room, a towel covering my lap, Cadence was in the living room, pedaling my exercise bicycle. A kind woman had given it to me when she saw me working on one at physical therapy, and learned from Mrs. T that I did not have the money to buy one. With my foot held by the pedal strap I could push the pedal down and pull it up, but my knee would not bend enough for me to push the wheel in a circle. In February I did not have the long ramp to the living room, against its rear wall, but a short steep one going straight down from the dining room, and I could not climb or descend it alone, because my chair would turn over. Madeleine was in the dining room, crawling, and Suzanne stood behind me, in the doorway between the dining room and kitchen, talking on the phone and looking at the girls. I was near the ramp, and Cadence was saying:
Watch this, Daddy
, and was standing on the right pedal with her right foot, stretching her left leg up behind her, holding with both hands the grip on the right end of the handlebar, and pushing the pedal around and around.

Then she was sitting on the seat and pedaling and Madeleine crawled down the ramp and toward her and the bicycle, and Cadence said:
Madeleine, no
, as Madeleine reached with her right hand to the chain guard at the wheel and her index finger went into a notch I had never seen, and a tooth of the sprocket cut her with a sound distinct among those of the moving chain and spinning wheel and Suzanne's voice: a
thunk
, followed at once by the sound of Madeleine's head striking the floor as she fell back from the pain, and screamed. She did not stop. Cadence's face was pale and frightened and ashamed, and I said:
She'll be all right, darling. Is it her head or her finger?
and Cadence said:
It's her finger and it's bleeding
, and Suzanne was there, bending for Madeleine, reaching for her, saying:
It is her finger and it's cut
off. Three of my four daughters, and I see their faces now: the oldest bravely grieving, the youngest red with the screams that were as long as her breathing allowed, and above them the five-year-old, pale with the horror of the bleeding stump she saw and the belief that she alone was responsible.

Then Suzanne was rising with Madeleine in her arms and saying:
I have to find the finger; they can sew it back on
, and bringing Madeleine up the ramp to me. She was screaming and kicking and writhing and I held her and looked at her tiny index and middle fingers of her right hand: the top knuckle of her index finger was severed, and so was the inside tip of her middle finger, at an angle going up and across her fingernail. In months, that part of her middle finger would grow back. Suzanne told Cadence to stop the chain because Madeleine's finger could be stuck in it, and she dialed 911, and the police officer told her to put the dismembered piece in ice. Cadence came up the ramp; I was frightened of bleeding and shock, and had only a towel, which does not stop bleeding. I said to Cadence:
Go get me a bandana
. She turned and sprinted down the hall toward my room, and I called after her:
In the second drawer of my chest
, and she ran back with a clean bandana she held out to me. Suzanne was searching the bicycle chain and the living room, and Cadence watched me wrap Madeleine's fingers. I held her kicking legs up but she did not go into shock and she did not stop screaming, while Suzanne found the rest of her finger lying on the floor, and wrapped it in ice and put it in the refrigerator, and twice I told Cadence it was not her fault and she must never think it was.

But she did not hear me. I imagine she heard very little but Madeleine's screaming, and perhaps her own voice saying
Madeleine, no
, before either Suzanne or I could see what was about to happen, an instant before that sound of the sprocket tooth cutting through flesh and bone; and she probably saw, besides her sister's screaming and tearful face and bandaged bleeding hand, and the blood on Madeleine's clothes and on the towel and chair and me, her own images: her minutes of pleasure on the bicycle before Madeleine crawled down the ramp toward her and then once again, and so quickly again, her life became fear and pain and sorrow, already and again demanding of her resilience and resolve. When a police officer and two paramedics arrived, she said she wanted to go in the ambulance with Madeleine and Suzanne.

By then Tom and Jack were there, and I was drying and dressing. The police officer found the small piece of Madeleine's middle finger in the chain and ran outside with it, and gave it to the paramedics before they drove to Lawrence General Hospital, because Hale Hospital has no trauma center. I asked Jack to phone David Novak, and by the time I dressed and gave the officer what he needed for his report, David was in the house. I phoned Andre at work and Jeb at home, then David and Tom and Jack and I drove in David's Bronco to the hospital, twenty-five minutes away. I had put into my knapsack what I would need to spend the night in the hospital with Madeleine. Her mother was in Vermont, to ski. But in the car, talking to David, I knew that Cadence would need me more.

In the ambulance Madeleine stopped screaming, and began the sounds she made that winter when she was near sleep:
ah
ah
ah
ah… At the hospital she cried steadily, because of the pain, but now she was afraid too and that was in her voice, even more than pain. A nurse gave her to me and I held her cheek to mine and sang “Silent Night,” then Jeb was there. At Lawrence General they could not work on Madeleine's finger; they phoned Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, then took her there. Suzanne rode with her, and Jeb and Tom followed. Suzanne dealt with the surgeons and, on the phone, reported to me; I talked to the girls' mother in Vermont; and Suzanne and Jeb and Tom stayed at the hospital until the operation was over, and Madeleine was asleep in bed. The surgeon could not sew on the part of Madeleine's finger, because of the angle of its amputation. Early next morning her mother drove to the hospital and brought her to my house; her hand was bandaged and she felt no pain; her mother had asked on the phone in Vermont if she could spend the weekend with Madeleine, and Cadence went with them for the afternoon, then in the evening her mother brought her back to me for the rest of the weekend.

When David and Jack and Cadence and I got home from Lawrence General, I put Cadence on my lap and wheeled to my bedroom and lifted her to my bed. She lay on her back and held her pincher and sucked her thumb. She watched me as I told her she had been very good when Madeleine was hurt, that she had not panicked; she asked me what that meant, and I told her, and said that some children and some grown-ups would not have been able to help Suzanne and me, and that would be very normal for a child, but I only had to tell her to get me a bandana and she had run down the hall to the drawer in my chest before I could even tell her which drawer to look in. She turned to me: “I heard you when I was running down the hall. You said the second drawer, but I already knew and I was running to it.”

I told her that was true courage, that to be brave you had to be afraid, and I was very proud of her, and of Suzanne, because we were all afraid and everyone controlled it and did what had to be done. She said: “
You
were afraid?”

“Yes. That's why I was crying.”

She looked at the ceiling as I told her she must never blame herself for Madeleine's finger, that no one had seen the notch in the chain guard, the bicycle had looked safe, and she had tried to stop Madeleine, had said
Madeleine, no
, and two grown-ups were right there watching and it happened too fast for anyone to stop it. She looked at me: “I started pedaling backwards when I saw her reaching for the wheel.”

Then she looked up again, and I said she had done all she could to keep Madeleine from getting hurt, and it was very important for her never to feel responsible, never to blame herself, because that could hurt her soul, and its growth; and if she ever felt that way she must tell me or Mommy or Suzanne or Andre or Jeb. Her thumb was in her mouth and her pincher lay across her fingers, so part of it was at her nose, giving her the scent she loves. Finally I said: “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

Still gazing straight up, she lowered her thumb and said: “I only have one question. Why does it always happen to me? First you got hurt. Now Madeleine is hurt. Maybe next Mommy will get hurt. Or I will.”

I closed my eyes and waited for images, for words, but no words rose from my heart; I saw only Cadence's face for over a year and a half now, suffering and enduring and claiming and claiming cheer and joy and harmony with her body and spirit, and so with her life, a child's life with so very few choices. I opened my eyes.

“I don't know,” I said. “But you're getting awfully good at it.”

It is what she would tell me now; or encourage me to do.

Today is the twenty-ninth of August 1988, and since the twenty-third of June, the second of two days when I wanted to die, I have not wanted my earthly life to end, have not wanted to confront You with anger and despair. I receive You in the Eucharist at daily Mass, and look at You on the cross, but mostly I watch the priest, and the old deacon, a widower, who brings me the Eucharist; and the people who walk past me to receive; and I know they have all endured their own agony, and prevailed in their own way, though not alone but drawing their hope and strength from those they love, those who love them; and from You, in the sometimes tactile, sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes seemingly lethal way that You give.

A week ago I read again
The Old Man and the Sea
, and learned from it that, above all, our bodies exist to perform the condition of our spirits: our choices, our desires, our loves. My physical mobility and my little girls have been taken from me; but I remain. So my crippling is a daily and living sculpture of certain truths: we receive and we lose, and we must try to achieve gratitude; and with that gratitude to embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses. No one can do this alone, for being absolutely alone finally means a life not only without people or God or both to love, but without love itself. In
The Old Man and the Sea
, Santiago is a widower and a man who prays; but the love that fills and sustains him is of life itself: living creatures, and the sky, and the sea. Without that love, he would be an old man alone in a boat.

One Sunday afternoon in July, Cadence asked Jack to bring up my reserve wheelchair from the basement, and she sat in it and wheeled about the house, and moved from it onto my bed then back to the chair, with her legs held straight, as I hold my right one when getting on and off the bed. She wheeled through the narrow bathroom door and got onto the toilet, her legs straight, her feet above the floor, and pushed her pants down; and when she pulled them up again she said it was hard to do, sitting down. She went down and up the ramp to the living room, and the one to the sundeck.
Now I know what it's like to be you
, she said. When she was ready to watch a VCR cartoon, she got onto the living room couch as I do, then pushed her chair away to make room for mine, and I moved onto the couch and she sat on my stump and nestled against my chest; and Madeleine came, walking, her arms reaching for me, and I lifted her and sat her between my leg and stump, and with both arms I held my girls.