Critical Injuries (29 page)

As does Dr. Grant. “So do I.” So she does: Madeleine's own formidably honed, undiluted and disciplined will — nothing to mess with, a powerful weapon on Isla's side.

“And afterwards, I'll be here to help. You'll have some work to do then, and I'll do anything at all that I can.” Her little teeth are gritted, her faded eyes glitter. “I've wished a hundred times I could trade places with you, but after a while that's just self-indulgent, and a waste of energy. So since we can't do that, I'll do anything else. Whatever gets you back on your feet.”

Ignited, this is a fierce energy, Madeleine's. She sparks and radiates, her little body looms huge in its silvery, goldeny, deep-bluey will. Those colours cannot be visible; Isla sees them anyway. Bert once called Madeleine a “hot little number,” which Isla found peculiar and possibly disrespectful and which put a small dent in her affection for him. This might be what he meant, though, what he was seeing.

“Thank you. I've been so lucky you're my mother.”

“Hardly. But we all do our best, don't we?”

Some do, some don't.

“And this will go by. It won't be easy, but you'll do it.” Madeleine is saying reassuring words, but her real and hard, true meaning is in her eyes, which are saying,
You shape up, you get through this.
“Now I'm going, but I will see you very soon. And you will be fine.” Each word is separate and distinct and determined; no mere “catch you later,” but a promise, and a demand. One more time she places her palm hard and firm on Isla's forehead, and when she leaves Isla is under the impression that she has been scorched by her mother's hot touch, and her magnified gaze.

Could she really, truly, be seeing these people for the last time? She can't take this in. She knows, but the information dazes, it blinds, it is impossible; although possible.

“Mum?” she hears from the doorway; Jamie's voice, naturally. They have organized these moments of privacy, they must have: a chart regulating potential last words. The luxury of careless, or even carefree, conversation has vanished, and so — what words does Jamie bring? Her children are unnerving, they require gearing up for. Look at Alix and her desire to spend time, perfectly good, precious time, with the insignificant-in-the-world author of this small, barely remarkable, hardly noticeable-to-the-world personal tragedy. Also Alix's leap into freedom, that announcement as well. Isla's children, her tilted, aslant offspring, are prone to springing surprises. Like kids on tiptoe trying to slip out of a sleeping household, knowing perfectly well the need for alertness and caution, they trip, stumble, knock over lamps. They are often clumsy; or just inattentive.

Jamie settles into that bedside chair, and like Dr. Grant leans into the railing, hovering close. The resemblance, this near, is a good deal less marked. “You know,” he begins, “how grateful I am you stuck by me, and I'm sorry about causing so much trouble.” He's said that often enough before, it hardly needs repeating now.

“The whole mess took a big chunk out of my life, though” — hers too, she would say, not to mention Lyle's, but anyway — “so I'm running behind most people my age. I knew I didn't want to spend my life at a flower shop, but I guess I was taking a while to figure out how to make a change. But now it feels like I better get moving. I mean, all this,” and he waves his arm overhead in a wide gesture so much like Alix's he might have caught it, like measles, from her, “it makes you think.” Think what, that life is short, or uncertain? That shit happens? Awful shit, good shit, what?

“So I thought you'd like to know that Lyle says he'll help me find out what courses I still need, or if I can just write high school equivalency exams, and then I think I'm going to apply to university. I don't figure,” and he suddenly grins so brilliantly she can almost see her little boy again, the one with no lines, no shadows, no sorrows yet and no crimes, “all that experience should go to waste. It should be worth something. So I think I'd like working with people in trouble. Addicts, maybe. Stuff I've talked about but I never got off my ass before. I figure I better. It's time.”

A clean sweep, evidently, a full hundred per cent of her children achieving epiphanies from, it seems, just standing around looking at her. She may not have been an entirely good or wise mother, but she certainly seems to have turned, lately, into a useful one.

As with Alix abandoning Serenity, if not serenity, she says, “That's very good news.” And “I'll help you any way I can.” The opportunity may, after all, arise. And, once again, “I'm very proud of you, Jamie.”

“Thanks. I wanted you to know, anyway.” Just in case. “And I'm proud of you, too, Mum. I can't even imagine how hard this is, but you hang in real good. Kind of an example, if that doesn't sound stupid.”

“Not to me. I don't mind at all.”

He frowns. “Can you stand a little bit more news?”

Oh dear. Maybe not.

“Because I don't know if you want to hear this, but Dad asked me to tell you he's thinking of you.”

Dad. Jesus Christ. Why wait for surgery when the heart can slam closed any moment, when your own child will first lull it, then take a hammer to it?

“Well,” he goes on apologetically — she must be staring with quite a noticeable ferocity — “he asked me to tell you. I promised I would. Anyway, I thought I should.”

Yes, what a shame, if she'd slipped off into her death-or-life-or-paralyzed-or-crippled-or-totally-healed tomorrow, without thinking of James. What an omission.

Then again — what exactly is shocking? Only, maybe, that this comes out of the blue. That Jamie is in touch with his father, for one thing. Then that he calls him
Dad
, as if he could just as easily toss him a beer, put a hand on his shoulder, give him a tie or barbecue tongs for father's day, talk about prospects and women and jobs.

Like a normal son, with a normal father.

Other than that, his words sink slowly in and she finds her heart, having briefly leaped and thudded and banged — not her real heart, she has no idea what it's doing, but the heart in her head, the one susceptible to shock — rising slowly to meet them, settling finally into a kind of wonder: James. That doesn't feel so bad. The name doesn't hurt that much.

Well, her concerns at the moment are rather larger than one long-lost, well-lost husband. Also it's been a decade, for heaven's sake, ten whole years of intervening events. Still, it seems as if there is as well some larger sort of release. Something similar to the way Alix described events in the courtroom, looking at that boy and feeling hatred and anger and vengeance lifting right out of her, through her skin, off her shoulders, drifting away.

Relief.

Jamie looks very anxious; no doubt afraid he's made a godawful blunder.

“You talk to him?” That does amaze her, that they might be in touch; after everything, so much harm.

“Not really. Not very often. But, you know, he phones Grandma and Grandpa, and one day a few years ago I was over there when he called. Grandma just handed me the phone and there he was. So yeah, we said a few words then.” Isla's ex-in-laws, yes, still holding out, as best they can, for their son's essential innocence.

As Isla has held out for Jamie's essential innocence.

“How are they? His parents?” What a swift and thorough amputation that long side of life underwent, once disaster started its roll. How brutally unsentimental she must have been.

Although they would not have welcomed her.

“Grandpa's pretty deaf and his arthritis slows him down, but what's really sad is his mind. He doesn't even know who I am a lot of times any more. Grandma's cool, though, except it's hard for her to look after him. I go there sometimes to help out. Mow the lawn, have a coffee, keep her company for a little while. Try to cheer her up.”

Isla probably knew that. She often forgets her children have these other private lives and tasks, and larger attachments, bigger families, their own different loyalties. Alix's Serenity Corps doesn't count in the scheme of these things, and Jamie's various crimes didn't, either. Those have been her children's addictions, but their loyalties and attachments have been more enduring.

“It would have been rude not to take the phone when she handed it over,” Jamie goes on explaining. “It's not like I called him, or wanted to talk to him.”

“It's all right. I know. How is he? What's he doing?”

“I guess he's okay. He sounds all right. I don't know, how much do you want to hear?”

“Oh, some medium amount, I expect.” She tries smiling. “Enough for the basics, not so much it takes more time than I can spare.”

“Thanks, that really helps.” But he smiles back. “But if you're sure — he's living in a little town out in the Rockies now. He has a computer store, nothing like before, but he says he makes a living. He sounds, I don't know, kind of settled in. Old. Remember how he always used to be so intense about the business, flying all over the place? Not like that any more.

“And then,” he pauses, “I don't know if you want to hear this, either, or maybe you already know, but he got married again.”

Whoof, there goes that heart again. Although not banging so high or hard this time, and just for a moment. “No, I didn't know. When did he do that?” As if
when
matters. Like
where
, it's hardly one of a person's key questions.

“A few years ago. Five, maybe.”

Five years ago, remarried Isla was still learning relaxation and trust in Lyle's arms, Jamie was still tangled in his swamp of troubles, and Alix was soon to embark on her quest for serenity. Or Serenity. “Did you know?”

“Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't think you wanted to hear anything about him. Grandma even wanted me and Alix to go out west with them to the wedding, but we didn't.”

What a family for secrets, what a family for lies. An inherited gift, perhaps, or only a need handed down, like heirloom silverware and the best furniture. “Alix knew, too?”

“Yeah. I didn't give a particular shit, but she did for some reason.” Perhaps James's newish wife was only Alix's age? Since those were his tastes, after all: young, untried, budding flesh.

“Do they have children?”

“Gosh, no, she already has grown-up kids.” And so Isla sees that some part of her was hoping James was prey right to his bones of his own foolish desires. And she sees that some part of herself is disappointed, and strangely, stupidly hurt, that this is not the case.

It makes what happened to them more personal, she supposes; more to do with her, or the two of them together, than she has come to believe.

Neither her fault nor her responsibility, but still personal.

Also that her children have been so terrorized by her and her fury that they have kept every morsel of news about him all this time to themselves. And that even now, even at this last minute, Alix still does.

“How did he hear about me?”

“Grandma read about it in the papers, and then I told her, anyway. And she told him, I guess. He called Lyle's, I talked to him there. And he said to say hi, and he's thinking of you and wishes you well, and,” Jamie shrugs, “that's about it.”

Sure is.

“Did I upset you? Should I have kept quiet about him?”

“No. No, I don't think so. You did the right thing. When you're talking to him again, tell him hello for me.”

“Really?” Jamie looks astonished, as well he might.

“Really. You might tell him I'm thinking now that at least we both had a run at second chances. Sometimes it must get too late for that, but it wasn't for either of us.” And she can hope the girls he assaulted feel as benevolently about the opportunities he offered them. Thrust upon them. This is all very well and detached and long-viewed for her — learning serenity at this late date, is she? — but he's the one who did something terrible. “Is he sorry, do you think?”

“I don't know. We haven't talked much about any of that. It's hard, on the phone. But you'd think he'd have to be, wouldn't you?”

Yes, you would. “Perhaps you could ask. You can say things, you know, you have a right to ask questions.”

Don't ask anything you don't want the answer to.
There's that about it, too.

“Maybe, but I'm not real interested. He really fucked up, and I don't think I'm much into forgiveness.”

“Me neither, probably.” And this is also more or less true. A successful lift-off of anger, packed, formed, and real, hurtling up through the atmosphere to explode far enough away it can cause no more great harm here below — that's not the same thing at all as forgiveness. Like hatred, forgiveness requires investment, it needs constant tending.

Even indifference sounds easy and light, insignificant, but it is not.

Sighing seems the appropriate gesture, the right sound for indifference. Jamie naturally misunderstands. He frowns. “You tired, Mum? I don't mean to wear you out. I know you're supposed to be keeping your strength up.”