Laugh (29 page)
Authors: Mary Ann Rivers
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. But even though Des was younger, Lacey and Des were more of a kind. I’m not proud of it, but I was so determined to be this badass in middle school, I basically started acting like an ass-ass. But since Des has been gone, we’ve been hanging out more.”
They watched Rachel take Lacey to meet John, watched the normally self-assured nurse flush and run her hands through her hair, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.
“My brother loves you.”
Nina didn’t answer because this was Sam’s sister. She didn’t have any siblings, but she could easily imagine, if she did, the fierceness with which she would want to protect them.
Sarah’s statement made her feel some pleasurable intensity that was just
Sam
and also an awareness that he might need to be protected from
her
by a sister who had all the reasons in the world to avoid seeing him hurt. Who had seen him nothing but hurt for so long.
“He asked you to marry him.”
Nina didn’t answer.
“It may seem like he did that based on nothing, because he … doesn’t understand how he should’ve played things or how he feels, but look. He’s serious. I know he is. I just do, and he’s such a clueless asshole but. Yeah.”
“I know.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I know it’s real.”
“He’s just like our dad. Just like him.”
Nina started toward the house, looked at Sarah.
“Yeah, okay. I’m seriously not trying to arrange my brother’s marriage. Except that I kind of am.”
“If you have lunch with him, I’ll think about what you said.”
“Huh. I need something stronger than that. I feel you’re not really offering me anything that you’re not already doing. You can’t tell me you don’t think about Sam and his serious thoughts about you constantly.”
“What if I
tell
him I know he was serious?”
“You realize that if you do that, in Sam Language it means he’ll totally rent a tux.”
“Dios.”
“I’m thinking of taking that deal, though. I play dirty.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah? I wasn’t entirely serious.”
“I should talk to Sam, and you should have lunch with him. That’s all.”
Sarah grinned, and it made her prettiness almost painful to look at. “Let’s go in with everyone. I want to meet John Lake.”
“You haven’t?”
“No, and I have a total crush on him.”
“Everyone has a total crush on him. I think Rachel called dibs two years ago.”
“Dang, she’s tall, too. If only I were up to my full scrappiness.”
They joked all the way in and it was nice. Nina tried to hold back the feeling of unreality, of all this working, of the possibility that what she had asked Sam for last night—to hear those words from him—meant that she was ready to say them, too.
That she loved him and could be loved and had found in him someone who didn’t see her life as a before and an after. Who didn’t expect her to set aside Russ and her widowhood and her love for him and what she was then, but who kept all the doors wide open and loved her because she had been loved, and then lost everything.
Who knew she was like that stupid pepper field and had a long memory. Long enough to twist, at least a little, anything that it tried to nurture.
They all sat at John’s long breakfast bar and planned a wedding for their friends. John agreed to let them use the house for the wedding and reception, and to play music with PJ.
It was a beautiful spot, with lots of room. In the early evening, the western sun would come from the side of the property shielded by a mature wind break, and it wouldn’t be too warm. There was a place near the
gravel road and away from the fields where they could have a small bonfire once it got dark.
It would be just exactly right for Tay and Adam—under the sky, the harvest half in and half out, music and friends and food. She hoped Tay would feel well enough to dance, and if she wasn’t, she hoped everyone else would dance and make up for it.
When they were getting ready to go, she looked for Lacey and PJ, who were sitting on the back of the truck. Lacey was on her phone again, her hand against her forehead, and looked exactly like someone in the middle of terrible news.
PJ had his arm around her, and looked as serious as she’d ever seen him.
Nina’s arms and legs went cold, then heavy and hot.
All she could think was
Tay.
Except when she got close, she realized Lacey was talking to Sam, and something was wrong.
Then she couldn’t think because her heart had stopped, her throat and face numb.
Lacey got off the phone. “I had Sam go to a regulator’s meeting today to finalize credentialing for the clinic. Credentialing is what will let us practice at all, because it’s what permits us to bill. Regulators won’t let us open unless we can bill for services, because even free services have a process. We have to have the credentialing, it’s everything, and—” Lacey stopped, right there, and Nina put her hand to her throat as if that would allow Lacey to talk past her tears.
She watched Lacey take PJ’s hand.
“So, he got there. And there was an investigator from the medical board waiting for him. He had a file about Sam. There are things Sam has to do, for his board certification and license every year, and mostly, the hospital sets him up with reminders. Like if he needs to recertify with exams or by application or continuing education.”
“Okay,” Sarah said. “Okay, honey, what’s the deal?”
“He missed something. He missed something he was supposed to fucking do and there was some period, recently, where he was, essentially, practicing without a license. He can’t get credentialed until the board investigates. He can’t
practice
until they’re done. He could have reprimands on his new license, once he gets it, which means everything we’re trying to do with the clinic gets held back.”
Lacey looked at them. Then she was crying, “I’m sorry. I’m just—I’m so
angry.
I don’t know if I’m mad at myself or at Sam. I mean, I
know
this about him, but I know it could have happened to anyone, too. It’s just that this happens to him more often than anyone, and it’s not just him, here, that’s getting shit on.”
Nina felt her heart start back up.
Steady.
“Stop. Take a breath. Then get in the truck and we’re going back.”
“Yeah, I need to go to the clinic, meet Sam there, figure this out.”
“No,” Nina said. “There isn’t anything you or Sam can do today.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“No. You need to yell at him, and I’m not going to let that happen.”
Nina watched Lacey let go of PJ’s hand. Rub the tears off her face.
“Okay?”
“Yes. Okay. I get it, I just—I’m upset, I just want to do something.”
“You’ll do what you need to, like you always do,” said PJ.
“This just sounds like … an administrative thing? I don’t know. Paperwork?” Nina could hear the steel in Sarah’s voice that she directed at Lacey, and it made her want to hug her. Give her pie.
“Really serious paperwork. Paperwork that could take everything away.”
“Not everything, surely? Sam needs a friend, okay? I’d be completely pissed, too, and God knows I can get plenty pissed at Sam, but dude, it sounds like his livelihood is being threatened as well, and all he cares about is if other people are happy. He’s probably dying that he put the clinic in jeopardy.”
Hearing Sarah say that made Nina more resolute, made her calmer, made her wish she weren’t half an hour or more from Sam. She walked to the driver’s-side door, and she texted him.
I’m coming to you. To your place. I’ll have pie.
Everyone was quiet in the cab on the way back, which was good, because it helped Nina go through everything in her head.
Helped her rummage through everything in her heart.
When she dropped everyone off at the café where they were parked, she followed Rachel back into the kitchen and asked her for her best pie.
“I have a sour cherry cream pie in the walk-in I was saving for him.”
“You save pies for Sam?”
Rachel pulled out the pie and started boxing it. “I save pies for Sam. Not so hard to understand why I wouldn’t. Beautiful man like that, who loves my pies like he does. Loves you like he does.”
Rachel taped two forks to the lid of the box. Pretended like she hadn’t just declared their love all over her kitchen.
“I don’t know what to say to him.”
“I wouldn’t know what to say either,” Rachel said. “Maybe just start with the pie eating, and then see what happens from there.”
“He’s a sensitive man, Rachel.”
“He is. The type that doesn’t seem so always is. My brother’s like that, smart and determined to do
everything just the way he wants to, always up in everyone’s face about how they’re living their life, then you say just one thing about how he’s living his and he goes into a sulk that lasts a month.”
“All Sam wants to do is to do right by his family. And here he’s messed it up. I don’t know,
m’ija.
”
“You understand how to talk about difficult things and how to listen. You’re uncertain because you’re uncertain about him. Not about how to comfort him. Even though, if you ask me, there isn’t any reason to be uncertain of Sam Burnside.”
Rachel shoved the box over and Nina took it in both hands.
Des—
I’m pretty sure you don’t know this, you were in third grade at the time, but I almost didn’t graduate from high school. Working my ass off and standardized tests meant that by my senior year, I could take AP classes, which was a huge fucking deal to me, because I had it in my head that this was all the beginning of how I would get into medical school, and be a doctor.
It had been harder and harder since Mom died to keep up with my meds and stuff for ADHD. Plus, Dad was never comfortable with me taking meds every day. All he needed to hear from my doctor was that since it seemed like I was doing well, sure, let’s do a trial off them.
At the time, all I heard was, I’m doing well. I didn’t question it.
I was still doing sports, too, track and field and baseball. I had practices and training all the time.
I remember it was Halloween, right before the first marking period, when I started to get afraid. My English teacher told me she was going to have to tell Coach I wasn’t meeting minimal requirements to participate.
It was all the projects, the papers. Multiple deadlines for stuff. I couldn’t keep track of it. Between practice and working that job at Giant Eagle I couldn’t find time at home to get into a routine or get things done. Other classes were only a little better because I could make up some points on the tests.
I didn’t talk to Dad, he’d just tell me, Ah Sam, I know you can do it, you’re just adjusting, that’s all. We’ll make a few changes around here, and help you out. But changes would only mean less babysitting you guys, for a while, until he forgot, or more nagging. I wanted to ask him to take me back to the doctor’s, but he made me feel like I’d be asking for something shameful.
It was January the first time they brought me into the guidance counselor’s and told me that I couldn’t graduate with my current course load. My only chance was to switch to the minimum standard state curriculum and do a class after school.
I had never been so ashamed in my whole life.
All those smart kids in my AP classes, I had to leave behind, take classes with kids I had never met before or teammates who I knew for a fact didn’t give a fuck what happened to them
after high school. That shithead Lacey took up with, Mark Lockwood—I shouldn’t say that because he’s Nathan’s dad—was in my math class.
Even worse, it was hard. Not the material, but I still struggled with the requirements. I couldn’t do sports, so I didn’t have that. I think it was something I really needed.
That’s when I started fighting with Dad all the time. I think that’s when PJ started to get kind of afraid of me. He was so little, and I was so big and angry.
I didn’t get into Lakefield State on my first try, and practically everyone did. I had to take a term of community college classes to “demonstrate ability to benefit” to the LSU admissions board. Before I started those classes, I went to the doctor on my own. Started running every day. Demonstrated how I would fucking benefit.
This stuff going on that I’ve attached from an email from Lacey, it’s some immeasurable amount worse than all of that was.
I don’t think I could normally send this to you, except I know Lacey or PJ or Sarah will probably talk to you about it soon, and this way you don’t have to ask me about it. I’m not sure I’ll have anything much to say, for a while.
Sam
* * *
He knew that his knee was going to swell to a fucking near split the minute he stopped running and sat down, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He wasn’t even looking at where he was going, just running by feel, by the muscle memory of every ten-mile run he’d made on this route for years.
He was soaked, and he’d pulled off his T-shirt and stuck it in his shorts, but then his lower back had started getting raw where he’d shoved it so he threw it on the side of the road—a forty-five-dollar tech shirt—like it was trash.
Then his knee, a light rubbing grind at first, was now full on bone-to-bone; it was an old minor injury he knew how to baby, but he couldn’t think enough to baby anything. Only to run.
He was waiting for the kick when his brain was washed clean, when his heart seemed to slow down, and his breath felt like it was hitting all the way to the bottom on every stride.
Instead, he stepped on a broken piece of pavement, and his stomach lurched and cramped, the rubbing in his knee seeming to take over his whole leg. He stopped, bent over, and retched into the grass, over and over, sweat dripping from his face and stinging his eyes until he shut them and retched blind.
He limped home, cutting across alleys because he was three miles from his apartment building and could barely walk from blisters and raw places. His sweat felt oily and then like sludge under his arms, in the back of his shorts.