Laughing Down the Moon (27 page)

I didn’t sit down on the bedside stool as I had the first time. This time I stood. I slid my hand under Dad’s so that it felt as if he were holding my hand against the bed sheet. I tried to hear his voice in my head telling me he would be just fine, telling me he’d wake up soon. I tried to hear one of his jokes. Was he listening in his head for a reason to recover? How did comas work? Just in case he was listening, I whispered to him that I loved him and that we all needed him to wake up.

My resolution to stand only lasted until the tears got the best of me and forced me to sit. They seemed to come from an infinite well these past two days. What was the rush to get back to the waiting area? I cried into my bent arm, making sure not to lose contact with the palm of Dad’s hand, until my head throbbed and my throat ached. Wake up, Dad. You’re not done yet—wake up. We need you.

“Honey.” The nurse’s hushed voice broke into my silent pleading. I looked out from the crook of my elbow. I watched as the pale yellow slice of light from the corridor got wider.

“Honey, we need to prep your father for surgery,” the nurse said.

I cleared my throat and looked back at my dad.

“Here, you need these.” The nurse was at my side with a box of tissues.

I took them, looked back at my dad and sent one more silent plea for him to wake up. He didn’t listen. I slid my hand out from under his and left his room.

Mom was allowed to have visitors in her room. She’d likely only be in overnight for observation, so we piled in like a reverse clown car. Once we’d all perched, leaned and sat ourselves around the tiny room, Mom told us of the accident. She and Dad had been pushing on toward an RV park later into the evening than they had planned. They were both tired. Dad was driving. A deer appeared in the arc of their headlights. Maybe Dad was so tired that he forgot he was driving Gladys rather than his old car and swerved to avoid hitting the deer. I didn’t even know there were deer in Florida. Gladys careened off the road into a ditch where impact with a tree sent Dad’s head into the steering wheel and then backward into the doorframe. Both he and Mom had their seat belts on, but only Mom’s airbag deployed. Dad had been knocked out and had been out ever since. Mom had abrasions from her seat belt, a black eye from the airbag, and stiffness in her back, but she wasn’t concerned about herself. She was too worried about Dad.

From the way she was telling the story, it was apparent her emotional injuries were worse than the physical ones. She said motorists were there to help almost immediately and an ambulance was on the scene faster than she expected. She began describing Dad after the wreck, but she broke down and couldn’t go on. I started crying, and Alaina went to sit on Mom’s bed and held her until she stopped sobbing.

I looked at Falina sitting on the windowsill next to me. I could tell she was holding her breath so as not to break down herself. Dad’s brother’s family looked dazed. They were all in various states of grief as well. Eventually we were able to look up and out of ourselves again. It seemed no one in the cramped room dared to breathe for fear of more crying and setting off my mom’s tears again. Funny how we all tried to keep our emotions so self-contained for one another.

Over the next two days, the rest of the family arrived and we drifted between our rented hotel rooms and Dad’s bedside. He was still in a coma, but the surgery had gone well. I watched Mom troop through visits, phone calls and hospital decisions. I was saddened by her ethereal presence. She was fading. More than once, the idea occurred to me that I was lucky to have lost Shiloh early. I was lucky to be free of Mickey, too. Watching my life mate struggle for her life was not an experience I wanted to have, ever. It was hard enough to watch as a daughter, but when it was your
partner
, your future there in the hospital bed…no, thank you.

At the end of the fifth day, I wandered the hospital halls after buying a few trinkets at the hospital gift shop. I had cleaned them out of Almond Joy bars a day ago, but they still had a few items I needed. I headed out the front doors in hopes of some fresh air, a clearer perspective on things and the possibility of a plea fulfilled. In my pocket were my new purchases. I had three small crystal prisms, a miniature Raggedy Ann doll no taller than my pinky finger, a bag of dried apricots, a glittery bookmark and a tiny pewter acorn.

With these, I petitioned the fairies to assist Dad in healing. A petition is an earnest request for help, like a spell, but it’s a spell over which one feels powerless to affect an outcome. I hadn’t packed any salt, candles, or incense, so this was the best I could do here in the raised flowerbeds outside the hospital. I’d also left my Book of Shadows at home, so I’d have to record the petition later. I thanked the fairies in advance for any healing they could perform as I hid the gifts under the nodding blossoms of hydrangea and the broad leaves of the hosta plants. The small metal acorn was the last gift I offered. Its weight in my hand was satisfying. Such a small thing, yet it was so definite and dense. No wonder it represented life, strength and potential—exactly what Dad needed right now. I kissed the acorn and snuggled it into the earth under the big blue flowers.

I sat on the edge of the raised flowerbed and pulled my cell phone from my bag. The last time I’d used it had been in the Minneapolis Airport before flying down to Florida. I turned it on and listened numbly to the chimes announcing every voice mail and text I’d missed. Six, seven, eight. These would take my mind off Dad. Thirteen…eighteen, nineteen. Dad wasn’t improving as rapidly as his doctors thought he would. Chime, chime, chime. What if Dad never came out of the coma? What would Mom do? What would we all do? Nothing would be the same. Nothing would be right without Dad. Twenty-two messages. So much the better for giving me something concrete to worry about, something I knew how to respond to.

The oldest text message was from Patrick. “Dwight settled in nicely at ours,” he texted. “Locked your house. Keep me posted. I love you.”

After receiving Falina’s call I had raced home, changed clothes, thrown two black skirts, three long-sleeved T-shirts and underwear into my gym bag, grabbed my license and credit card and headed for the airport. Five hours later, I was on a plane headed for Mom and Dad. Patrick was happy to take Dwight. He had been stunned by the news, and although I knew he wanted to do more, looking after Dwight was the biggest help anyone could be to me at this point.

The second oldest text was from Shiloh. I looked at her name in the lineup, and my pulse quickened painfully. What a change from the depressed, tentative beats my heart must have been keeping the past few days. Ouch. Maybe I’d come back to read that text later.

The third oldest text was from Veronica. “Allura, I’m so sorry to hear! Please call me to let me know what I can do!” I’d call Veronica first after I checked the rest of these messages.

The oldest voice mail was from my editor at
The Indelible
saying how much he appreciated the clean, amusing copy I’d sent on the Mini-Marquee—a personalized door sign that writers, or others who often found themselves behind closed doors, could update via their computers to let others on the flipside of their closed doors know what they were up to. I’d imagined messages such as, “Mommy will be done at 2:35. Eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch” or “Killing off antagonist while instant messaging my secret lover.” What would my Mini-Marquee say? MIA while hoping Dad wakes up? I toyed with my amethyst beads and bit the inside of my lower lip to quell the tears.

The next two messages were from Shiloh. Skip, skip. Later, I told myself. Later. Or maybe never. Watching my mom worry and fade these past five days had made me realize how hard loving someone could be. We really have no control over what happens to the people to whom we give our hearts. And with that being the case, it was best not to give your heart to anyone. I’d decided during the past few days I was not going to let myself get close to her or anyone else. It wasn’t worth the risk of losing someone. I had thought this before, but now Dad and Mom were confirming it for me.

Do what ye will and harm none. The ancient Pagan rule could be best accomplished by not complicating matters with a love relationship. Love just increased the likelihood that a person would harm another. Strangers or people with whom we don’t have a close connection rarely harm us. Mom was likely indifferent to the plight of every other patient in this hospital, but the condition of the man whom she spent her life loving, well, that was killing her right now. We were all afraid he’d never come out of the coma, but we were going on with the business of living, for the most part. Mom hadn’t been able to eat much or to sleep for more than twenty minutes at a shot for fear of waking to find Dad gone. My own selfish fears of Dad dying were compounded by the fear of Mom losing Dad. That would annihilate her. They had been best friends and partners for decades.

What business did any of us have going out, meeting another person and allowing that person to get attached to us? What business did others have in allowing us to fall in love with them? None. That was bad business. There was more room to harm others that way. Would I have been hurt by Shiloh’s reaction to the “Oh Goddess” if she’d only been a one-night stand? Doubt it. I’d have said, “It’s been lovely; thanks for the orgasm. Let’s not do this again.” But since I did care—care deeply—unfortunately, Shiloh’s question and the subsequent conversation gnawed at me.

I contemplated deleting Shiloh’s messages. Best-case scenario, Shiloh sent words that would make me feel better, but that would also be the worst-case scenario because when we eventually had our inevitable parting, we’d have shared that much more of ourselves with each other. It would hurt that much more. Best to leave it now, after just a few months. A few months? Was that all it had been? Yes, a few months. What was I doing comparing my and Shiloh’s relationship to my parents’ relationship? Apples and oranges. I’d never allow myself to get that attached to someone.

Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to delete Shiloh’s messages. I scrolled down to the next message, a voice mail from Davidoff Academy. A man named Boz Green, the Davidoff principal, was offering me an interview. I was supposed to call him back. Hm. I’d have to think about that one later. How tangled a web did I want to spin for myself?

My phone vibrated in my hand. It was Falina… and Dad was slipping. I raced back into the hospital.

* * *

My throat was dry and tight, so I couldn’t answer Mom’s question. We were sitting on a bench in the Intensive Care Unit hallway. I was slumped back against the wall but Mom was sitting straight up, alert. Her energy was livelier than it had been since I’d arrived.

“You know, don’t you, that he’s always very proud of you?” she prompted me again.

“Yes,” I whispered. I thought of the letter he’d written to my high school principal requesting that she change her mind on same-sex prom dates during the grand march. I thought of the way he’d take me, Falina and Alaina to a cemetery to find the most ragged looking grave to tidy up during our celebration of Higan no Chu-Nichi—the fall equinox. We didn’t have any dead relatives in nearby cemeteries, but Dad had always been drawn to autumn, death and dying. He had loved the celebration because it represented the beginning of death in the earth’s cycle. He had read the obituaries every day.

I smiled as I remembered the joke question I’d heard him ask more often than any other—do Jews get buried in a
matzoh
leum? Dad had used this question the way some people use the question—do bears shit in the woods? Every time he asked it, he’d slap something across his thigh—usually the rolled up obituary section—and guffaw until Mom told him that was enough. Ouch. Double whammy. Thinking of this made me ache for Dad and for Shiloh both. She’d laugh at that one, I’d bet. I smiled again and then shot a glance at Mom, but she was also smiling.

“You know,” she said, “regardless of how this turns out for Benji, I don’t regret the choice we made to roam the United States with Gladys. If he pulls through, I will be very happy. If he doesn’t make it, I will still be happy that we did what we did and that I loved him.”

This wouldn’t have happened if they’d stayed home though. I waited for her to say more. I wondered if she’d cry. The only time I had seen her cry since the accident had been that night she had recounted the story of the crash. After the first five days of extreme sadness, it was if she had it all out of her system and had moved on with making sure Dad had the best care. I could never be that calm in her shoes.

She was washed out though. Her now silvery pale red hair and paler skin showed her stress. Hollows had formed under her cheekbones and even her freckles looked faint. Her eyes, however, were bright with memories.

“Allura, we’ve had such fun! We needed this change of scenery to keep us going, to energize us and to let us play again. I know things might never be the same, but I do not regret going for it, going for our little pipe dream. Even now, I don’t regret anything.” She leaned forward and patted the back of my hand. Her palm was warm, soft and papery. I had to work hard to not cry at her touch.

I heard what she was saying, but didn’t know how to process it. She would trade those good times for her husband? For my father? Is that really what she meant? Was she telling me this because she knew my own new relationship had squealed to an abrupt halt? We waited in silence. Dad was in his room, having been back from his second surgery for a little over an hour. His blood pressure had taken a dive during the operation, but was more stable now. The doctors remained hopeful that this surgery would allow him to come out of the sedation responsive and awake. I had doubts.

I whiled away the minutes thinking about how genuine and how certain Mom was with her words. She’d really rather have loved Dad well and lost him in the end, than…than what? Than to never have known or loved him? My conclusion seemed ridiculous to me now. Of course she was right. Had she not loved him, I would not be sitting here. Falina wouldn’t be waiting in Dad’s room for him to wake. Alaina wouldn’t be at the other end of the hallway staring out the window. For her entire life, Mom would have felt like a jigsaw puzzle that was missing a piece. Thank Goddess she had been brave enough to fall in love and roll with it. I covered Mom’s hand with my own and squeezed it.