Phantom Limbs (33 page)

THAT PIERCING TWO-FINGER WHISTLE — IT still made me cringe. A metal whistle hung around Dara’s neck now, but she preferred to go old-school.

“Out of the pool!” she yelled. “Clearly we need to go over a few things.”

I leaned against the wall and smiled as fourteen little swimmers clambered out of the pool and gathered around Dara. She called them the little monkeys.

They called her Coach.

I stood near the door of the high school pool, now reopened after the renovations. I had just finished my own practice, and I was going to run out of time to get some lunch before work if I didn’t get out of there soon. But seeing Dara with those kids was something else.

She was doing okay. She was working with a new neurologist on the phantom limb pain. She was in therapy. Some days were harder than others, but she was trying.

She carried my mirror box in her bag.

She said I saved her life, and maybe that was true. But she saved mine first. It was hard to imagine what would have become of me if she hadn’t showed up in my life when Meg left. She picked me up, dusted me off, and kicked my ass. Maybe we all need that from time to time. If we’re lucky, there’s someone there who cares enough to do it.

“Mueller!” She waved me over.

I sighed and walked toward her.

Dara spoke to the kids. “You guys are looking at our club’s record holder in the hundred breast.”

A couple of them actually gasped. I blushed, even though it was just a bunch of kids. But I shouldn’t have been surprised, because there was no mistaking how pleased Dara was about my swim at Senior Champs. It had been good. The whole meet had been good.

“Mueller,” she said. “Show us what arms should be doing in breaststroke.”

I demonstrated while Dara pointed out the details of the stroke. “You have to
finish
the stroke,
scoop
that water. You guys try it.” She watched as her swimmers imitated my stroke. “Much better! Remember that frog kick. And where do our eyes look when our head is in the water?”

“Down!” a few of them called out.

“That’s right, down. Now go kick some ass — I mean, butt.” They giggled and scurried back to the pool, some of them practicing the arm motions as they went.

“Any Olympic material here?” I asked Dara.

She squinted. “I have my eye on that Hannah Swanson kid. She’s a fast learner, and she’s wicked tough.”

“Tough is good.”

“Tough is important.”

Dara had finally let go of her Olympic dreams for me. We modified my goals to qualifying for State in the hundred breast as well as the medley relay. I was happy with that. And Dara — well, she might not have been
happy
about it, but she accepted it. That was all the victory I could ask for. I knew better than anyone that sometimes just letting something go can be a victory in itself.

“Look at her.” She pointed to the head bobbing down the lane, yards ahead of the others. “See that? She could be a winner.”

We stood watching for a while. Dara was right: that Hannah kid was a different breed from the rest.

“Hey,” she said, after a moment.

I glanced at her.

“I got a card from Meg.”

That was about the last thing I expected to hear. And yet there was nothing surprising about it.

“Have you talked to her?”

I shook my head.

She watched me for a moment. “Mueller. Don’t you think it’s —?”

“Leave it,” I said quietly.

She left it. We watched the kids for a minute. Then she asked, “How’s your therapy going?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “She wants me to keep a journal.” Basically, I guess I was still trying to learn how to talk. I didn’t mind the journaling, actually. Even though it made me think of Meg and her journal, which somehow only seemed to emphasize the distance between us.

Dara nodded, not taking her eyes from the pool. “My therapist wants my dad and me to have dinner together three nights a week. So get this: my dad hired a personal chef. We have a dinner date at home on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. He’s supposed to stop traveling so much.”

Yikes.
“Well, that’s nice,” I tried.

She turned to me and grabbed a fistful of my T-shirt. “You have to come to dinner tonight. You
have
to.”

I shook my head, smiling gently. “You’re on your own this time.” I shrugged. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

She gave me an
Are you kidding me?
look. “Otis.
Please.
Just for this first time.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, come on. You’re not doing anything and we both know it.”

I glanced down at my feet. “Today’s the anniversary of Mason’s death. I’m going to the cemetery after work.”

Dara let go of my shirt and smoothed the wrinkles out. She chewed her lip for a second, then stepped over to the pool and did her two-finger whistle. When all the heads had popped up, she yelled, “Who wants to come to my house for dinner tonight?”

This was met with a loud chorus of
meeee
s and a flurry of hands frantically waving in the air.

Dara gave me a sidelong look, a smug smile working its way to the surface.

I laughed and headed out.

It was after five by the time I’d finished with lessons and showered off. My parents had gone to the cemetery first thing in the morning, as they always did. Because of swim practice and my work schedule, we decided to go separately.

Dara had finally traded in the Stupidmobile — for two rusted clunkers and a sizable wad of cash. The money she donated to the Wounded Warrior Project, which seemed just right to me. One of the cars was for her, to replace her beloved old Corolla.

The other was for me.

Mine was a fifteen-year-old Maxima — gray where it wasn’t rusted, with a dent in the driver’s-side door. Dara had positively beamed as she showed me its dubious virtues. It was a stick shift, of course. The stereo system had been upgraded with an amp and a subwoofer. And the engine had been tweaked so it had some good muscle — a stamp of approval from my unlikely driving mentor, although she acknowledged it would be wasted on my “pussy driving.”

I drove to the cemetery with the windows down, the warm summer breeze streaming through my damp hair. The sun was starting its descent earlier now. Soon school would start. Dara wouldn’t be there. Meg wouldn’t be there. And I could only hope that it wouldn’t always be as painful as it was now.

I pulled into the landscaped entrance, all low pink and white flowers and taller stalky purple things. On the lawn to the right, some men were moving one of those casket-lowering devices, and I choked under a sudden flash of memory: Mason’s casket. So small; so terribly, bizarrely, wrongly small. The tears sprang up, fierce and surprising; it was maybe the first time I had remembered the casket with such clarity. There was so much I had pushed away, for so long. Despite my therapist’s confidence, I wasn’t sure I was up to the task of remembering. If something is unbearable, then how do you bear it? It’s an oxymoron.

And yet I was here, wasn’t I? Somehow I was bearing it.

I parked the car and headed up the familiar, winding lane, trying to breathe through the ache in my chest.

The cemetery was oddly beautiful in all seasons. At this time of year, it was as green as hope itself. In a few months, reds and yellows would color the trees and blanket the grass. Later, when I came back for Mason’s birthday, all would be bare and still, with or without a coating of snow.

I made my way past the familiar rows of tombstones, pausing as I often did at E
STHER
B. C
ROMWELL, 1899–2002
. Esther had survived to see three different centuries, and my brother was barely a blip in one.

From a distance I could see a large bouquet of flowers at Mason’s grave, evidence of my parents’ earlier visit. White flowers, the flowers of the dead . . . Mason probably would have preferred a little color.

And then a flash of yellow caught my eye — something small and bright, nestled in the grass against his headstone. I squinted as I approached, trying to make it out. I squatted down, and as I reached for it, my breath caught.

A dump truck.

Warmth surged through me.

She’d been here. She’d come. She’d come
back.
Why did she? As part of her own healing? Or was she stretching herself beyond her limits, as she had done years before, out of love for me? Was there a message in this gesture, or was this just my wishful thinking at work?

It only could have come from her. My parents left only white flowers, never toys. A dump truck —
dumb fuck . . .
That could only be Meg. I scanned the cemetery, in case she was still there, but I saw no sign of her.

I turned to Mason’s headstone, reading it through blurred eyes, my heart aching with all the love and sorrow contained in those seven words: M
ASON
L
UKE
M
UELLER
. F
OREVER IN
O
UR
H
EARTS
.

I lowered myself to the ground and sat in the grass. Not being much for talking to God, I talked to Mason instead.

Mason, it’s four years now that you’ve been gone. If you were here, you’d be seven. Seven! You’d be starting second grade this fall. I try to imagine what you’d look like, what you’d sound like, but I can’t. I’ll always wonder what you’d be like if you were still here. When I graduate high school, when I get married, when I have kids, when Mom and Dad get old . . . I’ll always be thinking of you, wishing for you. It’s never going to stop hurting; I know that now. But even though it hurts, I will carry you with me. I hope that, wherever you are, you carry me with you, too.

My closed eyes heightened my sense of surroundings: The sun dappling my face. The sweet, green smell of deep summer. The distant hum of highway traffic and, closer, the unmistakable coo of a mourning dove. The feel of the toy truck, smooth and slightly warm from the sun.

When I opened my eyes, I turned the truck over in my hands and realized there was something underneath the dump bed, taped to the base of the truck. I lifted the bed and discovered paper, tightly folded. I carefully removed the tape and opened it, my heart pounding.

There were two pages, both in Meg’s handwriting, round and small.

I read the top one first. Its ragged edges suggested it came from some kind of notebook. It was dated over a year ago:

My eyes stung. I couldn’t stand to think of her hurting so badly, all that time. It was tempting to think,
if only
she’d reached out to me sooner,
if only
I’d noticed how much pain she’d been in. But I knew better than anyone the futility of
if only
s. We can’t turn back time. But we can try to see things how they were, how they are. And we can try to learn from them, to make the tomorrows better.

I flipped to the second piece of paper.

I folded up the note and set the dump truck against Mason’s headstone, then sat there, overwhelmed. When I could stand, I got up and made my way down the path to my car.

I imagined our first unspoken compromise taking shape.
You will come to the cemetery if I really want you to, but I mostly will go on my own. When I come home, you will hold me. And you will remember Mason with me, but I won’t stew in the past because I know that our life is right here, right now. I will try harder to listen, and when I try to talk, no matter how inept the effort, you will tilt your head at me and make me feel important and loved. I will do the driving. You will decide how much sriracha sauce to put on our food. And I will always, always check for ducks for you.