How to Be Brave (23 page)

I think for a minute. “I guess this doesn't have to be about my mom, right? It could be about me. It could be a little bit about her and mostly about me.”

“Exactly.”

I look back at the list. Let's see. This is what I've completed: handstands, skinny-dipping, drawing, cheerleading, tribal dancing, cutting class, getting high, and asking Daniel out.

This is what has yet to be determined: running downhill, skydiving, trapeze school, fishing, and flambé.

Shit, that's a lot.

“Do you have a pen?”

Liss digs into her bag and hands me one.

This is what I write:

#16.
Finish the list.

“Okay, fine. I'll do it. I'll finish the list. But I want to do some of these with you
and
Evelyn, though,” I say. “Like, trapeze school—will you do that with me? When she wakes up, we'll get her to do that with us. We'll go swing like monkeys. It'll make her feel better.”

Liss gives me this sorry look like she can't even pretend to promise me that Evelyn's going to wake up and that she's going to be okay and that we'll all be hanging from swings happy as can be.

But I have this fantasy: It involves getting Evelyn away from her mom, convincing her to get her GED, maybe even move with us to Champaign, where we can get an apartment and she can go to the community college down there.

“You can't save her, you know.”

“I know,” I say, but then I write it down, anyway.

#16.
Finish the list, after Evelyn wakes up.

Now she has to.

*   *   *

After Liss leaves, I take the train down to the hospital. The only thing I've heard is that there's been no change. Evelyn's comatose. Her mom said they think she took some of her mom's Ambien and some other shit and washed it all down with half a bottle of rum.

I hate it here. I hate having to walk through these doors again. I hate having to press the buttons on the elevator again. I hate having to walk the same maze of hallways. I hate the smell of piss and blood and antiseptic and Jell-O. I hate being here, where my mother spent too much time. Where I spent too much of my childhood. I hate it.

But I have to do this, for Evelyn.

I find room 6-142. I take a deep breath and knock. Her mom opens it and silently waves for me to come in. The nurse is there, checking her vitals. She points me to a chair next to Evelyn.

It smells like hospital, and Evelyn looks like shit; her dreads have been shaved and her skin is gray. She's not intubated like my mom was, but she's in that deep sleep that I remember too well, and I don't want to be here I don't want to be here I don't want to be here.

The nurse flips her chart closed and leaves the room with no words, and before I can say anything to Evelyn's mom, like I'm sorry I can't stay I have homework to do, or I'm sorry I can't stay I have dinner to cook, or the truth, that I'm sorry I can't stay I'm going to dissolve if I have to, this is too much, I shouldn't have come, it's all too much for me, Evelyn's mom says this: “It means the world that you're here. No one else has come.” And then, “Talk to her. She needs to hear us.” She leaves to get coffee. She deserts me here with her in this hospital room where so many have died.

Evelyn, can you hear me?

I don't know what to say.

I have so much to say.

Mom,

You lie there,

choking on air

the blast

the force

fills you so powerfully your lungs fill and fill and fill.

There is no exhale.

Inflated, you are still conscious but you cannot breathe out—not on your own—

there is only oxygen.

Too much of anything can kill,

even life force.

It's like moving through the sun.

There is only gas, vapor, moving air,

light and more light.

There is nothing else.

*   *   *

Your heart:

I can't see it as anything but broken. I travel down a tunnel to a time when you were a child, five years old, maybe your birthday, maybe the morning, when you first woke up. You were open and expectant and smiling. Your mother, who I never met, was awake, maybe cooking or maybe cleaning or maybe sitting in a chair waiting for you, and you walked into the kitchen, where she greeted you with everything inside her heart, her arms wide open for your first morning embrace. You settled into this love; it filled you. Your heart was full.

*   *   *

Once upon a time, your heart was wrangled from your chest cavity, disconnected from your body, placed on a table, and tinkered with. I remember that day. I felt you there on the bed, feeling nothing, knowing everything. Your heart was not your own. As the earth spun, hurtled, carried you through space, they moved the space that was your body, they moved you out of your body. The soul does not live in the heart, and breaking ribs do not release the soul. It is a heart, a pump; it moves oxygen through thin wires. The soul is in the air. The soul is in the skin. The soul breathes and exhales every minute. That day, the day they ripped it out of your chest, your soul was still there, not inside you, but everywhere. I felt it.

At the end, it was bruised.

At the end, it was empty—the body, the heart, the mind.

At the end, we had to let you go.

We had to.

And I'll never be sorry enough.

Evelyn,

Can you hear me?

*   *   *

Dad comes home with dinner—I'm guessing French dips from the smell. He sets the bag on the dining room table. I put down my book and walk over to peek in the bag. I was right. “Thanks for bringing home food,” I say.

Dad doesn't look at me or say you're welcome or even ask me if I've heard anything about Evelyn. He just goes into the bathroom. It's like I'm a nonentity to him.

When he comes back out, I say it again. “Thanks for bringing home dinner.”

He sits down at the table, picks up a magazine.

“Evelyn's still in a coma.”

He doesn't look at me.

“Her numbers are good, but they won't know for sure until she wakes up.”

He still doesn't look at me.

“Dad, put down the magazine and talk to me.”

He looks up. “What do you want me to say? What do you have to say about all this?”

“Dad, I don't know. I just—”

“What were you thinking? What have you been doing all this time? I thought I knew you—”

“Dad, you
do
know me. I'm standing right here—”

“But you did not think, Georgia. You have to think about what others would say. What do you think they are saying, that you hang out with people like this?”

“Dad, what are you even talking about? I don't care what other people are saying. I don't have that many people, anyway.”

“But your family.” He's yelling now, not making any sense. “What about your family? You know what they say: It is better to lose an eye than to lose a good name.”

“Dad, enough.” I sit down at the table. “Can we just talk, like for real, you know?”

 …

“Dad.”

 …

“Dad, I'm almost eighteen. I'm going to college soon. Would you talk to me? For real.”

 …

“Dad!” I yell. “I'm not a little girl anymore. Just talk to me already!”

I take a deep breath and lower my voice. “Here's the thing. I was trying things, that's all. And I'm allowed to try things. I wasn't being stupid—I mean, not that stupid. Not like what Evelyn did.

“But you—you can't put all this on me. I mean, where have you been this past year? Why do you care all of a sudden? Why weren't you caring all along?”

My dad starts to cry, really quietly, which is weird. I've only seen him cry once, on that very last day when we had to disconnect Mom from the wires, when they injected her with morphine.

He didn't cry at the wake. He didn't cry at the funeral.

And I guess I should stop talking. I guess that's enough.

But it's not.

I need to say it all.

“You should have been there for me. You should have been asking how I was doing. You should have been listening and watching. And—” I have to say it, finally. I'm shaking and now I'm crying, too, and I almost can't say it, but then I do. “You should have made the decision to take her off the machines. You should have been the one to let her die.”

He looks at me. “Oh,
koúkla mou
…”

“Not me. Not me, Dad.”

There. I said it.

Finally.

He takes my hand.

“You're absolutely right.” And when he says it, it's as though he hadn't even realized what he'd done. “I'm so sorry, Georgia.”

“Okay, Dad.” I squeeze his hand. “It's okay.”

“You're just a little girl. My little girl…”

“No, see, here's the thing, Dad. I'm not. I'm almost done with school and then I just have to figure out my life. I'm going to go to college and maybe I'll drink, and I don't know, maybe I'll get high, and I'll definitely date guys—no, Dad, I'll date men—and I'll want to move out at some point, and maybe I'll get married, maybe I won't, but I have to do it all. And you have to let me, but you also have to be there for me. You haven't really been there for me, you know?”

I say all this, and while I'm saying it, my heart is pounding pounding pounding, for it's the first time that I'm able to say exactly what I mean to my dad, and I can see from his old, sad face that it might be too much, but then he does something that lessens the deafening pounding, something that makes it all better.

This is what he does:

He places his hand on mine.

“To kseri, koúkla mou,”
he says.
“Katalaveno
óla.”

I know, my child. I understand it all.

And I really think he does.

*   *   *

Tonight, it's like this:

After dinner I ask him to teach me to flambé.

He protests at first, says it's been years,

too long to remember,

but then he smiles at the thought

at the memory

at the prospect

of returning to a place

where he hasn't been

for a very long time.

We heat the oil

add the cheese

and the brandy, and

he tells me to light it.

The flames rise high

blue and gold and bright

in this small, dark kitchen

in this warm, spring night.

My father and I together,

staring into the sun.

*   *   *

Evelyn's mom calls at around midnight. Evelyn's okay. She's awake and talking and groggy and in a terrible state, but she's alive, and she's going to be okay.

She's going to be okay.

 

15

Sunday morning, ten
A.M.

Today's the day to do it.

I pick up the phone and dial his number.

It rings and rings.

He answers.

“Hello?”

Deep breath.

“Hi, Daniel. This is Georgia.”

“Oh, hi!” I can hear him smile through the phone. Isn't that a funny thing? Even in just two little words, you can tell. The tenor of the voice is so specific that that particular emotion can travel across time and distance through invisible airwaves into the human ear, into the human heart.

I do #13, again.

And he says yes.

We're going to meet (today!) for lunch and a movie and maybe something after.

I text Liss.

She texts right back with cheers and hoorays.

Time to go tell Evelyn.

Time to do something right.

*   *   *

I'm back at the hospital, back at the land of the almost dead, but now this girl Evelyn, who I've known for less than eight months, who texted
me
in what could have been her very last moment on this earth, is awake and alive and looking at me.

She's only barely alive, though, her arms nearly as thin as the metal rail that separates us, her eyes hollow and red and fixated on her own woven hands.

An IV drips into her veins. The machine behind her head announces the
beep beep beep
of her pulse. Tulips wilt next to her.

She's waiting for me to say something.

I don't know what to say.

At first, I stumble. I say things like “I'm glad you're okay” and “How's the food?” and “When will you get out of here?”

She gives me stilted answers like “Yeah, me too” and “Sucks big-time” and “Not for a few weeks, probably, I don't know.”

I don't know what to say.

So finally, I say this:

“I'm horribly pissed at you for doing what you did.”

Evelyn turns her empty eyes to look at me. It's the first time she's looking at me.

“Thanks,” she says. “Real nice. Way to get mad at a sick person.”

“That's not what I mean.” I stumble again. I want to get this right. I need to get this right.

I reach into my bag and pull out my mom's letter. I unfold it. It's crinkled and worn from me opening and closing it so much. Besides Liss, I haven't shown it to anyone else, not even my dad.

I hand it to Evelyn. I let her read it.

She looks back at me, her eyes wide and empty, her skin tight and pale. “What does this have to do with me?”

“My mom charged me with this directive to do everything she didn't do, and I'm sort of pissed at her, too, for not doing it herself. She could have done it. She could have controlled her sugar and eaten right and walked more like she said she was going to, but she never did. Instead, she let herself gain weight and she didn't control her sugar and then she left my dad and me with the final decision to let her go. There's this 0.0001 percent chance that she could have fought the sepsis and maybe woken up and maybe lived to still be my mother, but she had signed these papers saying that if there seemed to be no chance of her living a healthy life that we should pull the plug. And it was supposed to be my dad's decision. He had power of attorney. But he froze. He was lost and sad and he didn't really understand, maybe, you know, everything that was happening, everything the doctors were saying. He looked at me and he said, ‘What do you want to do?' He made me decide. I was sixteen. Fucking sixteen. I shouldn't have had to decide whether my mother lives or dies.