The Life You Longed For (26 page)

O
nce the unimaginable has happened, how do you believe it won't again? How do you ever stop being afraid? Or is it that after the unimaginable happens, there is nothing left to fear? What else is fear's purpose, after all, but to protect what we love? Language itself evolved from this fear of loss, the first human sound a cry of separation.

Don't go.

Come back.

Stay.

Is a voice the opposite of fear, then? Is a word? A string of words? A story? Is silence synonymous with fright?

Think of how, in the immediate aftermath of September 11, when there were no survivors to be found, no more blood to give or supplies to donate, people wrote. On butcher paper and walls and the makeshift plywood boards surrounding Ground Zero. On the posters of the missing. Our “public diaries of grief,” one reporter called them. Our “message boards to the dead.”

A word. A name.
Don't go
.

Perhaps even darkness is just another kind of silence. Our innate fear of the dark, scientists say, reaches its peak by age two, then decreases. But I wonder: Is it that our fear lessens with age? Or do we have more words to name the shapes our fears have taken?

Even our laws are just a reflection of our fears. What is a law but a suit of armor composed of words into which we step each day so that we might be safe? The more fears a society has, the more laws. In ancient Greece, even grief was banned, the public lamentation of mourning mothers perceived as a direct threat to the order of the state.
Don't go.
And in Ethiopia at the end of the twentieth century, the military junta declared it a crime for the mothers of disappeared sons to cry.
Come back
.

The history of medicine is also a history of fear. Think of how in the twelfth
century, lepers were so feared that its sufferers were taken to church to have a burial mass said over them as they knelt beneath a black cloth. Lepers were ordered to carry bells or strike wooden sticks together to warn people of their approach. They were forbidden to walk on narrow streets, to
ever
touch a child.

To speak above a whisper.

In Philadelphia in 1793, during the outbreak of yellow fever, people were afraid to shake hands; they walked in the middle of the streets to avoid contaminated houses; they shot guns indoors to “purify” the air. They feared westerly winds, and they feared the new moon. “It is not death that makes a plague,” wrote the physician Benjamin Rush, “[but] the fear and helplessness in people.”

In the midst of the influenza outbreak of 1918, people wore gauze masks, sterilized water fountains with blowtorches, put sulfur in their clothing, had their teeth pulled and their tonsils removed. During the polio epidemic, sick children were taken from their homes by police and put in isolation wards. Tuberculosis sufferers were forbidden to laugh.

We scoff at these things now. How naïve people once were, we think. How silly. But we laugh in direct proportion to our fear, for despite all our technology, our scientific and medical breakthroughs, despite our ability to peer inside another's brain or to hold someone's heart in our palm and place it into another man's chest, there is so much that we don't—and maybe can't—ever know.

And so we fear.

Ours is the generation descended from the one that learned the hard way how banal evil could be, how the ordinary, routine surface of everyday life could trick us into complacency, how the worst atrocities of the century could be—and were—committed under our own noses. And so we live now in a world where we fear everyone, where we trust no one: not the kindergarten teacher who lives alone or the neighbor we barely know or even the ordinary woman in St. Louis or Memphis or the Pine Barrens of New Jersey whose youngest son is so terribly sick. Is she a heroic mother, fighting to save her child, or a monster glorying in this drama? The question terrifies us because we can't ever know the answer for sure.

People think the opposite of fear is courage.

It is actually faith.

G
race sat cross-legged on the floor in her robe and PJs, the coffee table scattered with ransacked photo albums and shoeboxes filled with unsorted pictures. It was not yet four in the morning, but she couldn't sleep. At ten they could visit Jack. Six hours still.

“
A
is for Astronaut,” she wrote, the marker squeaking across the shiny paper. Above the words, she glued a photo of Jack in his astronaut pajamas. “
A
is also for Aunt Jenn,” she added. She cut Jenn's face from last year's Christmas photo of her and the boys, then started sifting through the photos again, looking for something to go with
B
. Birthdays, she thought. And beach. She held up a photo of Jack playing in the sand the summer before, wearing a sopping wet, sand-crusted T-shirt that hung below his knees, and huge surfer boy mirrored sunglasses that were twice as big as his little bird face.

She turned the picture over, then drew the glue stick across its back. The house was dark, quiet but for the click of scissors or the squeak of the marker. She was making Jack a book for the nurses to read to him when she wasn't with him during these next fourteen days.
Fourteen
. The number was impossible. “
D
is for Daddy,” she wrote next to a picture of Jack grabbing Stephen's nose. A game they played: “I got your nose, Daddy!”

“Oh yeah? Well, I got your ear.”

“Well I got your other ear!”

She pressed the picture into place. She thought of how Stephen had continued to squeeze her hand even as those words—
affair, adultery
—reverberated around the courtroom.

“
E
is for Erin,” she started to write, but her eyes blurred with tears, and she set the marker down, hands in her lap. He was
so
good, she thought, staring again at the picture of Stephen and Jack. And he always had been.

“
G
is for Goose,” she wrote.
And good.

“
H
is for Hospital. And Heart.”

“
J
is for Jack.”

“
M
is for Mama and Max and Moon.”
Munchausen's. Mitochondrial disease.

She heard the beep of Stephen's alarm upstairs, though outside it was still dark, not yet five. The flush of the toilet, water running through the pipes. So he was still going to the Y. Despite herself, she felt a surge of anger that he could just do the same old things, that even now nothing changed for him. Nothing. He'd probably go swimming the day Jack died, she thought bitterly, then immediately regretted it. Why shouldn't he? What was wrong with her?

“What are you doing?” he asked sleepily from the kitchen doorway a few minutes later, his gym bag slung over his shoulder.

“Making a book for Jack. You want to see?”

He stood behind her and glanced through the letters she'd done so far. “It's great,” he said when he finished. “I like the
D
page.”

“You're a good dad, Stephen,” she said. “I know I don't tell you that enough.”

“We're both good parents, Grace.” He sighed. “I know that, okay?”

She turned to look up at him, but he wouldn't meet her eyes.

“I'm going to make this up to you,” she said thickly.

“You can't.” His voice was hard. “I'll be back by eight.”

 

As soon as they walked into the hospital lobby, Kate stood up from a bench near the information booth, her camel-colored coat folded neatly over her arms. “Mr. and Mrs. Connolly,” she said, glancing at her watch. “I appreciate your being on time.”

Grace couldn't even begin to respond. Nothing
except
being here,
on time,
had mattered since yesterday afternoon. Not even Max and Erin, if the truth be told, not even Stephen. Grace regarded her icily.

He is my
child
, she wanted to scream. My
child.
Do you have any idea what that means. Do you have a clue?

“I'm sorry,” Kate stammered. “I didn't mean that to sound…”

Grace interrupted. “Can we please just see Jack?”

Before Kate could answer, the guard who had escorted Grace from the hospital three days before stepped out of the glass-fronted security office near the service elevators. “If you'll just step over here with me, folks,” he said. He lifted his eyes to Grace's. “It's policy,” he said quietly. “I'm real sorry.”

Inside the office, the guard asked Grace to set her purse on the table by the door. He quickly rifled through it while they watched, lifting out the picture book she'd made for Jack. “Ms. Helverson?” He held it up to her. “This okay?”

“You have a problem with a
book
!” Grace said, whirling to face Kate.

Kate nodded to the guard, who replaced the book in Grace's purse. “Man, I hate doing this,” he mumbled under his breath. He sighed, then asked Grace to stand, arms outstretched at her sides, feet planted apart.

Stephen strode from the room, nearly shoving Kate aside.

“This'll take just a minute,” the guard said softly as he moved a security wand over Grace's arms, down her sides to her legs. Grace stared straight ahead at the wall in front of her, at the smudge where a picture must have hung. She was aware of Kate, shifting uncomfortably in the doorway, staring at her feet like a guilty little girl, but to look at her, even in anger or hate—both of which Grace felt—would have been a response and to give Kate even that much would have cost more than Grace could afford.

 

Jack was sitting up in bed, staring at the TV. Bright January sunlight slanted across his sheets, crowded with stuffed animals, books, and Matchbox cars. His nose was running and dried tears had left salty streaks on his cheeks. Grace stepped back when she saw him. “They
promised
,” she wailed in a low whisper to Stephen. “They
promised
they wouldn't leave him alone.” They: Jenn, Rebecca, Anju.

“Mama!” Jack said, pulling himself up by the metal bed rails, his Ronald McDonald hospital gown hanging off one shoulder. “Why you not stay me?”

She was across the room in a minute. “Well, I wanted to, you silly goose.” She hitched up his gown and held his little face in her hands. “I couldn't
wait
to see you!”

“Daddy too?” He squinted up at her. The left side of his face, which he must have slept on, was puffy with fluid. “Why you come, Daddy?” he asked over her shoulder.

“What do you mean?” Stephen growled. “You got a problem with that, Mister?” He tousled Jack's hair as Grace lifted him carefully over the side of the bed. He was warm and cuddly and he smelled of baby powder and bananas, and Grace wanted to just stand there in the sunlight, nose pressed against his cheek, forever. “Oh Jack,” she whispered into his skin. “Mama missed you so much.” She nuzzled her face into his neck. “I was so excited I couldn't even go to sleep,” she whispered in his ear, and he put his hands on her cheeks and put his forehead to hers and whispered, “Me
either
, Mama!”

“Really?” she laughed. And then, “Uh-oh.” She squinted at him suspiciously. “Were you up all night with Mr. Moon again?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I was!”

“
What
?” Stephen said, “I thought I told you to stop hanging around that guy!”

“But, Daddy, he comes to see me,” Jack said. “He comes right in my window.”

“Your
window
?” Stephen bellowed, hands on his hips. “Let me see!” He stalked across the room and yanked up the already opened blinds. More light, bright, pure yellow—the exact color of her child's laughter, Grace thought—spilled into the room.

“Well, I don't see that Moon guy anywhere!” Stephen turned from the window back to Jack and Grace. He pointed at Jack. “Are you
sure
he comes in the window?”

“Daddy!” Jack said. “Mr. Moon isn't outside in daytime! He only comes see me in night time!” He laughed again, and one of the monitors started beeping. Rebecca hurried in. “Hey guys!” she said, pushing the reset button. She wagged her finger at Jack. “What are you up to, buddy?” then hurried out, calling “I'll be back.” Laughter increased the heart rate, Grace knew and abruptly remembered accusing Stephen once of hastening Jack's death by making him laugh so much. Regret spiraled through her.

They lowered the bars on Jack's bed so that they could both sit with him, both touch him. Grace watched his chest rise and fall as he and Stephen zoomed his cars across his blankets. Despite the oxygen he was still getting, his nostrils flared with each breath, which meant he was still working too hard to breathe. Why hadn't Rebecca or Anju noticed? Grace wondered. But they wouldn't unless they'd actually spent time interacting with him, getting him to talk and laugh. And mornings on this floor—any floor in a children's hospital, she imagined—were crazy, and Jack
was
doing better. Still, it seemed another failure of her's and Anju's, of the hospital's and the whole child protection system's, because nothing about this situation was really protecting Jack, which was the only way any of it could have somehow made sense. She thought of the outcomes-study she'd read years ago and which she'd thought of every time she chose to stay in the hospital with Jack no matter what he was in for: hospital deaths were typically the result not of any single catastrophic error—the wrong surgery or wrong medicine or even negligence—but were the consequence of a series of seemingly trivial errors. Something as simple as Jack's oxygen being not quite high enough…She thought of that airplane crash again: one small spark.

“Hey, Goose,” she interrupted his game. “Did you see Dr. Mehta today?”

He nodded. “I was crying,” he said.

“I see that.” She traced the line of a tear down his cheek. “I think a tear went right here,” she said. She angled his face in the light and pretended to study his other cheek. “And another went this way.” She took a breath. “So why were you crying?” she asked after a minute. Please don't let it be because of me, she thought. Because I wasn't here.

“I didn't want Dr. Mehta listen to my heart today,” Jack said, zooming a police car over the mountain he'd made with his knee. He looked at her.

Grace made a sad face. “Oh, poor Dr. Mehta,” she said. “Why didn't you want her to listen today?”

“I just didn't.”

“So what you want to play with me now?” he asked after they'd played Candy Land and cars and read through half a dozen books. The hour was up.

“Well, Mama and Daddy have to go soon,” Grace told him in an artificial voice that felt like yet another betrayal. Of them both. She didn't care that he was only three. He shouldn't think, even for a second, that leaving him was somehow
okay
for her, a choice. Except wasn't this what she'd done on Christmas Eve?
This supposedly devoted mother.
Hadn't she chosen to leave him to be with Noah? The thought made her heart quicken. Did it matter that he'd been napping most of the time that she was gone, that she was home by the time he awoke?

“You can't go,” Jack was whining now.

“But Rebecca's going to come play with you,” Grace persisted.

“No,” he whimpered. “Not Becca, Mama. I want
you
to stay me.”

“Oh, honey-bunny, I can't, but I'm going to come back in two days.” She held up two fingers. “Only two!” She smiled so brightly, it hurt. “Look! One. Two.”

His chin quivered and two huge tears spilled from his eyes.

“And you know what else,” she rushed on. “Mama made you a special book.” She opened to the first page. “See,
A
is for Astronaut. Who wants to be an astronaut?”

“I don't know,” he said, hanging his head.

“
What
?” Stephen started to tickle him.

“No, Daddy, don't!” Jack swatted the book onto the floor, crying now. “I want Mama to stay me.”

“Oh sweetie, Mama wants to stay with you more than anything, but I can't. That's why I made you a special book.” She pulled him to her. “And Aunt Jenn is going to read it to you and Rebecca.” She looked at Stephen helplessly.

“Mr. and Mrs. Connolly?” Kate said from the doorway. “It's time.”

“Hey Jack-attack,” Stephen said, “How about if I read you your new book?”

“No!” Jack sobbed. “I don't want you to read me, Daddy. I want Mama to stay me!” His monitor started beeping.