When He Fell (15 page)

I walked them to the door while Ben went back to the Xbox; Josh had run ahead, around the corner towards the elevators. Lewis and I were alone, or as alone as we were ever going to be.

I smiled at Lewis, tilted my head. “That was fun. We should do it again sometime.”

“Yeah.” He hesitated, and I could tell he wasn’t sure how to say goodbye. The tension coiled and snapped between us, and the silence felt expectant, at least to me. I stood on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Surprised, he moved his face at the last moment and we ended up kissing on the lips.

It would have ended there,
should
have, with an apology and an awkward laugh, but the taste of a man’s lips on mine after so long—it had been
years
—was too much to resist. My lips parted and my hands came up to grip his shoulders. And then Lewis turned that barely-brush of a kiss into something else.

It only lasted a few seconds, I’m sure of it. His mouth hard on mine, his big body pressing me against the door. Everything in me roaring into shocked life as my hands roamed over his chest and then down to his taut abs, slipping under his shirt…and then Lewis jerked back as if I’d bitten his tongue. He looked dazed, winded, and then, as realization trickled it, utterly appalled.

“Maddie…” he said, and it was an apology.

I swallowed hard; I could still taste him, and I had no words. But then I didn’t need any because Ben came loping up. His curious gaze darted between me and Lewis and then he asked me to turn off the password on the Xbox. I wanted to brush him away like a fly but I couldn’t, and before I could do anything Lewis was gone, striding towards the elevators.

12
JOANNA

I don’t ask Lewis about his visit with Maddie. He goes on Thursday night, and Josh and I complete a puzzle of the Empire State Building in companionable silence.

I’d asked Josh how school was and he shrugged and ducked out of reach of my hand as we walked down the sidewalk. I’d left work early to pick him up yesterday; I’ve canceled so many appointments lately I wonder if I’ll have any patients left. I haven’t told Barbara or my hygienist Paige about what’s happened. I’ve just hinted at some child-related issue, and left it at that. Both of them are childless and they don’t press.

For his second day Lewis and I agreed to let Josh go in as normal, and Lewis picked him up. We are attempting to return to the way things were, even if it feels like scaling a mountain or slogging through mud, or both.

Friday morning I tell Lewis that I’m going to take Josh to visit my parents on Saturday. I try to see them every few months; Lewis never comes with us. The one time I brought Lewis home, my parents asked him where he went to college. When the answer was nowhere they went silent, and didn’t attempt to talk to him for the rest of the visit.

In the fifteen years since Lewis has only seen them a handful of times. He is obviously a disappointment to him, but then, so am I.

Even so, I go out to Danbury every six months or so because no matter what, they’re my parents—and I still seek their approval. And I think both Josh and I could use a break from the intensity of our lives right now, even if visits to my parents aren’t too uplifting.

Friday afternoon Lewis comes home with Josh and I can tell he’s unsettled. Josh disappears into his bedroom and I turn to Lewis, my eyebrows raised.

“They held an assembly in school today,” he says on a low breath. “Mrs. Rollins told me. To explain what’s happened to Ben, why he won’t be coming back for a while. It was hard for Josh.”

I nod, swallowing. A lot of things are going to be hard for Josh. “Is there any news about Ben?”

“He opened his eyes while I was there.”

“He—he did?” I feel relieved, but also unnerved as I picture Lewis and Maddie sharing that moment. “That’s good news.”

“Yeah.” Lewis pauses. “It’s still a long road ahead, though. Maddie’s considering a lawsuit against the school.”

“A lawsuit? Why?”

“For negligence, like you’d said. They should have been looking, Jo.”

“Yes, but…” I feel uneasy. “I thought you said Maddie wasn’t the type to sue.”

Lewis shrugs. “The situation is different. If those supervisors had been on the ball, the boys wouldn’t have been up on the rocks.”

But would Josh have still pushed Ben? Maybe, but it wouldn’t have mattered, because Ben would have scraped his knee rather than hit his head.

“What if Josh gets dragged into some lawsuit? You know how these things are. No stone unturned and all that.”

“He won’t,” Lewis says firmly. “Maddie doesn’t want that. She loves Josh.”

For a second all I can do is stare as I fight the anger that flares up inside me. She
loves
my son? “I didn’t realize she knew him all that well,” I say as casually as I can.

Lewis shrugs and looks away. “She’s spent a fair bit of time with both of the boys, doing stuff, managing their play dates. You know.”

But I
don’t
know. All those play dates, all that time together, and I had no idea. My brain stopped at the idea that Josh had a friend and was happy, and was satisfied. I didn’t think about the details, or how it all worked. I didn’t picture Maddie with my son, Maddie and Lewis together with the boys. But now I do. Now I wonder and fear.

“Well, I’m glad Ben opened his eyes,” I say, and Lewis nods. He’s still not looking at me.

The next morning Josh and I take the train out to Danbury, Connecticut where my parents live. I grew up there, although they’ve since moved to a condo in a gated retirement community, complete with tennis courts and swimming pool. One of the rules of the community is that ‘persons under the age of eighteen cannot spend the night’. I don’t think that rule concerned my parents overmuch; they probably didn’t even think about it. I’ve only spent a handful of days there in the eight years since they moved to the condo, when Josh was two.

We take a taxi from the train station to my parents’ place. Josh has been silent for most of the trip, reading one of his fact books while I gazed out the window at the blur of suburbs: Wilton, Cannondale, Branchville, Redding. There are only a few leaves on the trees now, and they look skeletal; the grass is already turning brown. I point out a birch that looks like a yellow flame to Josh, and he smiles slightly.

As we get out of taxi in front of the condo I have to steel myself for the next few hours. The truth is I’m not all that sure my parents actually
like
me. My mother had me when she was forty-three, a year older than I am now. They’d put off having children because they wanted to be established in their careers; I think they would have done better not to have kids at all.

I was, unfortunately, an unexceptional child. I think if I had been noticeably clever or athletic, my parents would have had more time for me. But I was clumsy and shy, even when I was small, and my grades always hovered around average. Average was an abomination to my parents, and I think they quickly realized with me that average was all they were going to get.

Then there was the fact that they were so busy, both of them surgeons at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in the city. With the hour-long commute and their demanding work schedule, I spent most of time in daycare or afterschool clubs.

Now my father opens the door, squinting slightly at us as if he’s not sure who we are.

“Hey, Dad,” I say, and step inside. We don’t hug or even touch. “How are you?”

“Not bad.” My father turns away and walks back to the living room where he is reading a medical journal with the help of a magnifying glass; his eyes are bad. My mother is in the kitchen, folding dishtowels; she doesn’t come out to greet us.

“Hey, Mom,” I call, and she twitches her shoulders in an agitated greeting. Over the last year or two I’ve noticed how quickly my mother gets upset; she’s always been a bit high strung, and apparently that characteristic worsens with age.

“I haven’t done anything about lunch,” she says, almost accusingly, and I put down my bag and try to smile.

“Why don’t we order something? Josh and I can go get it.”

“All right, if you want,” my mother says, and turns back to the dishtowels. Josh and I sit in the living room while my father reads his journal. Nobody talks.

As always, I wonder why I came. Why I keep coming, when these visits are always the same. Silent and painful. I suppose I feel some obligation to the people who raised me, more or less, but I know it’s more than that. It’s hope. Even now, when I’m forty-two years old with a lifetime of experience with these people, I hope for more. For better. For my father to ask me about my work, about Josh, for us to talk and relate and maybe even hug. Of course it never happens. I am always both disappointed and unsurprised.

After about fifteen minutes my father looks up from his journal. “So how’s the dental practice?” he asks.

“Fine. Busy.” I turn to Josh. “Hey,” I say lightly. “Why don’t you go get a puzzle from upstairs?”

Obediently Josh goes upstairs and I turn to my father. “Actually,” I say, lowering my voice, “there’s been some trouble with Josh’s school.”

“Trouble?” My father frowns, and I wonder why I broached the topic. Do I actually expect him to be sympathetic? Maybe this once. For Josh’s sake. And because I always have to try.

“Josh’s friend fell in the playground. Josh…pushed him. By accident, of course. But his friend hit his head and now he’s in a coma.”

My father stares at me for a moment, his bushy eyebrows snapping together. “A medically induced coma?” he asks and I stare at him in bewilderment.

Does it matter?
“Yes, I think so. But…it’s been really hard on Josh, Dad. He doesn’t want to talk about it but I feel like… I think that maybe he’s hiding something.”

“Hiding something?” My father frowns. “What could he be hiding?”

“I don’t know.” And I’m not sure I want to find out. “We’ve just been going through a hard time,” I say quietly and my father doesn’t answer.

Josh comes back with the puzzle and we set it up on the kitchen table while my mother frets and flutters about. My father has gone back to reading his journal.

A little after noon I order sandwiches from a local place and then Josh and I escape the suffocating atmosphere of the condo, both of us relieved for the brief respite. My father has graciously allowed us the use of his car. It occurs to me as I reverse out of their one-car garage that I’m not sure he should be driving, with the state of his eyesight. I have no idea when his license was last renewed.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Josh as I pull through the gates of the community, having typed the security code in first. “I know visiting Grandpa and Grandma is kind of hard.”

“Why don’t they like us?” Josh asks. He doesn’t sound aggrieved or hurt, just curious.

I open my mouth to say they do like us, but even I can’t pretend that much. “I don’t think they’re used to children,” I say. “They were like that when I was little too, Josh.”

He glances at me and I see a surprising gleam of sympathy in his eyes. “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” I say, surprised. I decide not to remind him that we don’t use the word ‘sucks’. “It kind of does. But I’m used to it.”

When we return with the sandwiches my mother has cleaned up the puzzle even though we’d only half finished. As I unpack the sandwiches she asks me four times if I’ve remembered the mustard. Josh glances at me, and I see my father frowning.

It happens again after lunch, when I am cleaning up; my mother flutters around me, waving her hands, insisting several times that I should take the trash out so it doesn’t smell. I do it, of course, and when I come back in she tells me several times where the trash bags are. It’s starting to feel…off. Even for my mother, this is a little OCD.

It isn’t until Mom has gone upstairs for a rest and Josh is watching TV that my father tells me. He beckons for me into his study, which is full of framed diplomas and leather-bound medical textbooks.

“I think your mother has dementia,” he states flatly and I recoil a little.

“She might be a little forgetful…”

“I’m a doctor, Joanna,” he barks. “I know.”

I don’t bother pointing out that I’m a doctor too, and that considering our degrees, we’re both equally qualified to diagnose dementia—that is, not much at all. “Can she get treatment?” I ask after a moment. “They’ve been making strides with some of the drugs for—”

“I can’t drive any more,” my father cuts across me flatly. “My eyes.”

I stare at him in confusion. Their condo is four miles from any stores or facilities. “But…”

“We don’t want to go into a nursing home. Not yet.”

I don’t reply, because I am too busy trying to figure out what he’s really saying. The retirement community isn’t the kind of place where they ease you into assisted living and then full-time care. It’s for people who play tennis and go on power walks and take Viagra. “But you need to be able to drive, Dad,” I finally say. “I mean…what about food? And medical care?” I shake my head. “You need help.”

“I know,” he agrees. “But it’s only an hour to New York. We could manage with one or two visits a week, for doctors’ visits, groceries, that sort of thing.”

I stare at him in disbelief. Is he actually asking me to come out to Danbury twice a week and manage their lives? I haven’t been out here for more than six months. When I do visit, it’s for a couple of hours, max. They always seem relieved when I go. And now my father wants me to be their
carer?

“Dad, that’s impossible,” I say even as guilt needles me. “I have a full-time job. And with Josh…”

“We need you, Joanna,” my dad says. He speaks firmly, without affection, clearly expecting me to capitulate, and why shouldn’t he? I spent my entire childhood and adolescence attempting to please them, trying so hard to be good at everything, to get straight As, to be the daughter they’d been hoping for when they finally decided to have kids. I tried and I failed.

And now?

I close my eyes. I can’t handle this, not on top of everything else. Yet even as I think that my mind is racing, figuring out ways. I could come out on Sundays and one weekday afternoon, move my appointments to Saturday. I could do it, but it would take over my life. And what about Josh? And Lewis?