When He Fell (35 page)

“Oh, Lewis.” I sniff, swallow. The world dissolves into glare and glitter, the sunlight reflecting on everything, all of it too bright. “It was my fault, too. I know that. I shut you out. I blamed you.”

He reaches for my hand. He forgot his gloves and his fingers are freezing. “I want us both to learn from this, Jo. I want us to be stronger than ever, for Josh’s sake as much as our own. So something good can come out of…out of his life. Because of all the things… Josh would have wanted that.” His voice breaks and he turns to me, tears trickling down his face, everything about him open and vulnerable, more than he ever has been before.

And even though everything in me is hurting, breaking, I know this is one good thing. Perhaps the only good thing.
Us.
“I love you, Lewis,” I whisper, and I wrap my arms around him and cling tightly, as cars and people stream past us on the bright and bitter day. “I love you.”

And so the unthinkable, the very worst, comes to pass. We go back to the hospital and tell the doctor we are willing to turn off the life support. I call my parents and tell them what has happened; I haven’t spoken to them since Josh’s accident.

They are shocked into silence, and I wonder if they will come.

“Oh Joanna,” my father says, and his voice, to my amazement, is choked. “I’m so sorry.”

Does it take a tragedy, the worst kind of tragedy, to make you realize you care about someone? That you love them? That all the minor hurts and fears are just that,
minor?
Meaningless? Does it take something this terrible to wake you up?

Maybe. Maybe. But oh, how I wish it didn’t.

“We’ll hire a car and a driver,” my father says. “We’ll be there.”

Lewis calls his mother. He hasn’t spoken to her in years, although she has always sent birthday cards for Josh. He tells me she will come too, and I can’t believe it is for
this
that we are all making amends. Building bridges

And then I do what I know I must, what is right. I call Maddie. I tell her, briefly, what is happening. And I ask her to come.

“Do you want me to?” she asks, her voice filled with guilt and grief and uncertainty.

Do I? No, because she still reminds me of hurt and loss. But yes, because finally, finally, we are going to do things the right way, out in the open, and we are going to heal. That is Lewis’s and my promise to each other; it is the only thing that is keeping us upright, sane.

“Yes,” I tell her, and then I take a deep breath, the pain I feel so much I wonder how anyone can endure it. “You should bring Ben.”

Maddie lets out a little cry. “Oh, Joanna… are you sure?”

“Yes, I want him there. I think Josh would want him there.” I close my eyes, the pain crashing over me in waves. “I want something good to come out of this,” I tell Maddie. “I want something to heal, to be made right.” My voice wavers and I draw a deep breath. “Josh would want that. He wanted…he wanted things to be okay again. And I’m going to make sure they will be. Lewis and I are.”

The night before Lewis and I don’t sleep. We hold each other, clinging to each other, drawing strength from each other, even though we both feel as if we are drowning.

And even though I don’t want it to, morning comes anyway. It has snowed again, heaps of white that covers the sidewalks and cars, looking like icing or cotton wool. The world is clean and pure, and it is less than a week before Christmas. And all I can think is: My son is going to die today.

We shower and dress and take a cab to the hospital. We don’t speak, but we hold hands tightly, so tightly the bones in my fingers ache, but I don’t let go.

My parents are already there when we arrive, looking older and frailer than I’ve ever seen them before. They hug me silently in turn; there are tears in my father’s eyes. I wonder how much he regrets, and I am not angry. Not anymore.

Lewis’s mother comes from New Jersey; I have never met her, and yet I recognize her. She has the same curly hair as Lewis, now completely gray, the same deep brown eyes. Her face has the weathered look of someone who has lived too hard, too desperately, and she clutches Lewis in a wordless hug. There are no words for a moment like this. None that work.

And then Maddie comes with Ben. He can walk now, with the help of a frame, although his gait is awkward and ungainly; he drags his left foot along the floor. He says hello to us, although it is so garbled I can barely make out the words. He grins at Lewis, and I feel a pain in my heart so sharp it is like a dagger, it is like I’m dying.

But I’m not angry with this little boy for wanting a father, for making up a story he wanted to believe. How can I be? I simply wish there was more love and compassion in the world, in myself. I wish I’d let my heart expand rather than contract. What if I’d made of an effort with Maddie? What if I’d included her and Ben in our lives? Perhaps then Josh would be alive. But I can’t think that way now. Now is not the time for regrets or what-ifs; it is the time for goodbyes.

Josh’s room is crowded with everyone in it; Lewis and I sit on either side of him, by his head, my parents behind us in chairs. Lewis’s mother, Maddie, and Ben all stand. All the people in his life here together, for this final, awful farewell.

The doctor told us it wouldn’t take long. They will remove the ventilator, and since he can’t breathe on his own, he will simply suffocate. It will take only minutes, and he won’t feel anything, because there is nothing left in him to feel. That is a comfort now.

I stare down at my son and try to memorize his features. I know he is gone, he has been gone for a while, but at least now he is still breathing. His skin is still warm. And I can pretend, for a few seconds, that he will open his eyes and give me that funny, shy smile and tell me how many Lego bricks it would take to reach the moon.

And I would
listen
, and I would revel in how much he knew, how smart and inquisitive and interesting he is, how
alive.
I would never worry that he’s too quirky, too quiet, too sad. I would love him, all of him, for who he was, who he could be, because he is my son.

Except now I need to let him go.

I touch his hair. It is soft and silky as I let it run through my fingers. He still needs a haircut. I touch his cheek, as smooth as a child’s, a baby’s. How could my little boy have felt so much pain, that he thought he should take his own life? Did he realize what he was doing? Was it an act borne out of a second of desperation or a lifetime of fear? I will never know. Lewis is clinging to my hand; he puts his other hand on Josh’s shoulder.

“I love you, Josh,” he whispers, and his voice is both steady and sad. “I love you so very much.”

I stroke Josh’s cheek softly. If he has a soul, and I believe he does, it is gone now. It has flown somewhere free, like a trapped bird released into the sunlight and air, to a place without either petty worries or deep fears. I know his body cannot hear me, but I hope his soul does.

“You are perfect,” I tell him, “just the way you are. You are the son I always wanted, the son I love so very much.” I reach down and kiss his cheek; my lips hover for a moment, not wanting to end this moment. Not wanting what comes next. But then I kiss him, savoring the feel of his skin, and I sit back.

Even amdist the grief I am glad we said goodbye, Lewis and me. I am glad we were together, that we made this right. We hold hands as the attendant turns off the ventilator. We all wait with hushed breaths.

Nothing much changes. His body doesn’t shudder or shake. There is no struggle or gasping for breath, for air and life. There is simply a long, static beep, and then there is silence, the greatest silence of all.

31
MADDIE

Nine months later

I stand outside the doorways of PS 811, The Mickey Mantle School, one of several schools in New York City for children with disabilities, and wait for Ben to emerge.

A lot has happened in the last nine months since Josh’s death. A lot of sadness and grief, desperate searching and leaden acceptance of guilt. A lot of healing, too.

I dropped the lawsuit right after, hoping that Bruce would possess the sense, if not the humanity, to drop the counter-suit for damages. I underestimated Keith, however; he returned to the insurance adjuster with signed witness statements that Juliet and Helen had been talking, that there had been no warnings. And Juliet finally broke, and admitted as much.

So in the end they settled. I didn’t get the kind of money you read about for spilling coffee on your lap or finding a fingernail in your burger. It was enough, though, for me to move to a two-bedroom ground-floor apartment in a family-friendly building on the Upper West Side, to be near Ben’s new school.

He came home from rehab in April, and started school in May. I went back to work full-time, managing flexi-hours so I can drop Ben off at the breakfast club and be there to pick him up after school. It’s hard work, and I’m exhausted most days, but I wouldn’t trade any of it. I don’t want anything more.

Brian has continued to be part of our lives. We’re still only friends, and perhaps we always will be. I’m not sure if I have it in me now for a healthy romantic relationship, but I hope one day I might. For now, I value Brian’s friendship, the weekends we spend in the park, the evenings on my sofa watching movies or playing the Xbox with Ben. Simple pleasures I will never, ever take for granted again.

“Hey, Mom.” Ben emerges from the school; he can walk without aid now, although his gait is, and always will be, lopsided and ungainly. His speech is slow and slightly garbled, but most people can understand him. As his recovery has continued, other issues have manifested themselves, just as the doctors had warned me. He has trouble with short-term memory, so five minutes after I tell him something he’s forgotten what it is. Most little boys are like that anyway, I know, and I try to be patient with Ben. But he gets frustrated with himself, and that can lead to sudden rages. He’s broken more dishes, hurled more books and toys, pummeled and hit me more times, than I care to number. I have the bruises to show for it, but I bear them gladly, because my son is alive. Ben is always sorry afterwards, and I know he doesn’t actually want to hurt me. Like I said, none of this is easy. But I’m grateful. I’m so grateful, because I know I don’t deserve this happiness.

“How was school?” I ask him now as I take his bag from him. He gets tired easily, and the noise of the city streets can agitate him sometimes. We’ve walked down Broadway with him wearing earmuffs, for his own comfort.

It takes him a moment to form the word, his lips rounding over it like a baby’s. “Ggg…good.”

“Good. You remember we’re going to the Lego Store today, right? To see Josh’s memorial?”

He nods slowly. We don’t talk very much about Josh. Ben doesn’t remember the argument or the accident. He remembers Josh vaguely, but he’s never connected him to everything that happened. Whenever I do mention Josh, it’s the good things. The happy times. Because there were a lot of them, even if it didn’t seem like it before.

One day, maybe, I will tell Ben what happened, our part in the tragedy. I still hurt inside to think of how my own selfish actions affected that little boy, contributed to him taking his life and tore apart his family. Joanna has assured me she doesn’t blame me, that she forgives. And I try to accept that, to believe, for her sake as much as my own, that hope survives even this.

Today we are going to the Lego Store, for the unveiling of the memorial Joanna and Lewis have had built for Josh.

It has been a year since Ben’s accident, a year that has been endless and awful and yet with sudden, surprising joys. If someone asked me to rewind this year and go back to before Ben fell, I’m not sure I would. There are things I’d change; of course there are. I would have never kissed Lewis. I would have never sent those texts. I never would have done anything to hurt that family. And I would have appreciated my life and my son so much more.

But this year has made me change, and for that I am profoundly grateful, because I needed to change, and only something like this would have forced me to.

I reach for Ben’s hand, and he slides his in mine easily, unselfconsciously, something he never would have done before his accident. And I never would have reached for it in the first place.

But today we walk hand in hand down the street, toward midtown and the Lego Store, toward our future.

32
JOANNA

It has been a hard nine months. A terrible, endless nine months; for the first six weeks after Josh’s death I hated going to sleep, because it meant waking up and remembering all over again.

Those first six weeks are like a dark spot in my mind, a blurred fog in my memory, just as they were after Josie’s death. But we survived. Lewis and I made it through those weeks—together.

We started going to grief and couples therapy twice a week, something that we both desperately needed. We talked, words spilling out of us, so many words, so much hard honesty. All the feelings and fears we kept from each other, out of fear or misguided love. I know more about Lewis, and he knows more about me, than ever before, and none of it is easy, but some of it is good.

Of course there have been arguments and cold silences and days when one or both of us felt like we couldn’t go on, couldn’t manage the awful, endless mundanity of our survival. A lot of days. But we still clung to each other, we were each other’s anchor in this sea of grief and loss. And now, like a miracle, a miracle made by Josh, our marriage is stronger than ever before.

Today we are unveiling the memorial we had built for Josh by a Lego Master Builder. It took some time to arrange, to get the permission to feature it in the store he loved to visit.

And then we had to decide on a design, something that would remind us of who Josh was, why we loved him.

We chose a puzzle piece.

As we enter the Lego Store waves of memory crash over me, one after the other, unrelenting. How many times did I bring Josh here, reluctantly, willingly, tiredly, fearfully, wishing he wanted to do something else, something more normal?