The Good Goodbye (35 page)

“You don’t know. You don’t know anything.”

“I know you never planned to get married, not to me, not to Vince. I know you never wanted kids.”

I’ve never told him this. I’ve never even whispered it. “I love our kids.” It sounds lame. It sounds pitiful.

“Of course you do, and they love you. But here we are, Natalie, in another place you never expected to be. You need to figure this out.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me—
figure it out
?” I turn away, and he grabs my arms.

“You can do this, Natalie.”

His green eyes so like Arden’s. His face blurs. “I can’t.”

“You can. I’m right here, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.” He kisses my forehead, my cheeks. “I’m never going anywhere.” He presses his lips against mine. I taste the coffee on his breath, the salt of my tears. I put my arms around his neck and pull him toward me. This man, the father of my children. My best friend, my lover.

The first time you hold your baby and see she’s all right, you breathe a sigh of relief. You think you’ve crossed the finish line. You don’t realize that the race has just begun.

—

My mother phones me from the hotel. I get up from Arden’s bedside and go out into the hall, almost running to answer her before she hangs up. It’s a three-hour trip from D.C. and it’s been more than five since she called to tell me she was about to leave. A million things could have happened en route, but I didn’t dare phone her while she was driving. “We’re here, honey. How’s Arden? Is she out of surgery?”

“She got out a couple of hours ago.” The intracranial pressure has already decreased, which is a very good thing. Now all we can do is wait and hope that it drops even lower. She’s still heavily sedated. There’s no way to know how she’s doing. There’s no way to predict if she’ll start to move, open her eyes, smile. I have spent the past forty-eight minutes watching the machines pump oxygen and drip IV fluid and a complex cocktail of medication into my daughter. Watching, but not really seeing.

We’ve heard from Denise the nurse that Rory’s been put on the lung transplant list. Theo is in Rory’s room, talking to Vince and Gabrielle. Everything feels precarious. Fear and loss loom tall in every corner
.

“Could you please tell the girl at the front desk to let us into the room?” my mom asks.

I hear squealing in the background and guess that Henry’s torturing Oliver or vice versa. I glance at the clock over the door as I talk to the girl.
Yes, she has my permission. Yes, please bring in a rollout. You can charge it to our credit card.

“How was your trip?” I ask my mom when she gets back on the phone, meaning,
What took so long?
She sighs. “It’s raining.”

Still?
I glance to the gray window streaked and smeared. Arden loves rainstorms. She huddles outside beneath the porch overhang to watch the thrashing trees and bright bursts of lightning. The boys sit with her, Oliver leaning in to the curve of her arm, while Henry darts forward to capture a handful of water gushing from the downspout. The three of them swimming in the same gene pool and yet each so different.

“Do you need help settling in?” I ask my mom. There are two nurses in the room. They are watching Arden very closely. Theo could run over to the hotel, or maybe I could. I am craving my sons. Now that they are so near, it feels unbearable.

“No, no. We’ll be fine. Give us a few minutes and then we’ll be right over.”

They’re already seated at a far table by the time Theo and I get down to the cafeteria. My mom’s focused on cutting Henry’s sandwich into triangles while Oliver carefully peels the foil from a cup of yogurt. Henry’s hair’s been combed, the cowlick at his crown lying flat. My mother’s doing. Henry will never sit still long enough for me. Oliver’s got on his favorite Pokémon jacket, a size too small. The sleeves ride up his wrists and the zipper barely closes. I’d put it in the donation pile, but Oliver must have persuaded my mom to take it out. They look so ordinary and extraordinary, both. Henry spots us first and shoves back his chair. “Mommy! Daddy!” Oliver looks up and then both of them are running toward me.

I crouch and they crash into me. I wrap my arms around them and hold on tight. They feel exactly the same, smell exactly the same. I can’t get enough of them. When I stand, I hug my mom. She’s wearing the gardenia perfume Theo and I gave her for Mother’s Day and this gesture touches me. Theo tousles first Henry’s hair, then Oliver’s, and we all sit down. Oliver clambers onto my lap while Henry leans against me, a thrill. He doesn’t like to be confined. Even as an infant, he’d raise his head away from my shoulder to see what was happening around him. He’s always the last to fall asleep, the first to wake up. “I’ve missed you guys so much,” I say, nudging Henry’s plate toward him, handing Oliver a spoon.

“We’ve been looking for the chicken spots,” Oliver tells me quite seriously between bites. “But we don’t have any.”

“That’s terrific.” I cuddle him. The curve of his head is hard and whole beneath my cheek. I’ve seen photographs online of somber-faced people with sunken depressions above their temples that look as though someone took a bite out of each side, leaving behind a narrow isthmus of face. Theo had noticed what I was doing and closed the laptop.
You don’t need to see that,
he told me.
You don’t need to prepare yourself for that.
Arden’s head is contained in a helmet of gauze. I don’t know what I need to prepare myself for.

“How’s Rory?” my mother wants to know, and Theo says, “She’s on the transplant list, but they’re worried…”

“She’s so young. Shouldn’t she be at the top?”

“Lot of people on the list, Mom.” Theo has always called my mother this, and it pleases her when he does. It draws the circle closer.

Henry’s telling me about the hospital gift shop Grandma had walked him past. It has Cool LEGO Sets in the window, and stuffed animals that Look Real. “Want to check it out?” I look to Theo, who nods. “You go on. I’ll get us both something to eat. What can I get you?” he says to my mom.

I take the boys by their small warm hands and they pull me across the cafeteria. It’s late afternoon, but the storm outside the windows makes it look like midnight. The cafeteria’s blessedly empty of gawkers and whisperers. No one jerks a chin toward us; no one turns away abruptly as we approach. There’s just an elderly couple holding hands at a small table, a woman sitting back in her chair and texting. A cafeteria worker is mopping the floor. No one’s paying any of us the slightest attention. The boys are my good-luck charms. They always have been.

I buy Oliver a stuffed tiger and Henry a plastic dinosaur with beady yellow eyes. The boys practice roaring as we make our way back to the cafeteria. They’re arguing over which beast makes the scariest noise, and I’m enjoined into volunteering an opinion. I’m keenly aware of the time ticking past. Arden’s been alone now for twenty minutes.

“Look, Grandma.” Henry elbows Oliver out of the way and jumps his dinosaur toward her.

“Oh, my. That’s a scary one.”

“Not as scary as THIS.” Oliver smacks at Henry’s dinosaur with his tiger.

This is an interesting development—Oliver’s never the instigator. Theo and I exchange looks. We are always urging Oliver to stand up for himself. “There are lots of dangerous animals around in the forest,” my mom says to the boys. “Your dinosaur and tiger would be better off working together to defeat them.”

“Good idea,” I say.

“Yeah,” Oliver says. “One of them can be the lookout.”

“They need a secret password,” Henry says. “In case the aliens abduct them.”

Theo’s gotten me a salad. “Thanks.” I pick up my fork. I haven’t eaten anything since nibbling the burrito he brought me—was it today? Yesterday? I’m suddenly ravenous. It’s an ordinary salad, but the lettuce is green enough and the tomato not too mushy. I take a bite and chew. I think about a light poppy-seed dressing and seared bay scallops. Fresh bread smeared with goat cheese and sun-dried tomato. A tablespoon of good olive oil.

I catch Theo looking at me. “What?” I reach to brush something from my chin, my cheek. “Where is it?”

He smiles. “No. You’re fine.”

“Your phone’s ringing, Mommy,” Oliver says, wrapping the long striped tail of his tiger around his finger.

Arden

AUNT GABRIELLE LOWERS
her arm. Now I can see her whole face, the round swells of her cheekbones and the dark hollows beneath them, her almond-shaped eyes and high plucked eyebrows pushed together in a frown. She glances over her shoulder, then brings her face closer. “Rory?” I feel her breath light against my lips.

Not Rory.
I look into her eyes. She’s the only one looking at me, and so I have to trust her. I have to reach past. I don’t know what I’m afraid of, just that I’m afraid.

Look at me. See who I am.
Tell me—am I awake or am I asleep?
I try to move my hand to grab her arm, but I’m frozen. I’m stuck to this bed.
Am I paralyzed?
My eyes go hot with tears.

“Gabby,” Uncle Vince says.

She suddenly straightens, turns away.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

No no no. Come back.

“It’s Arden.” His voice is choked.

Uncle Vince sees me. He’s missed me, too! But no. Now they’re both gone and I’m alone.

—

After our fight, I curl up on one of the grungy sofas in the lounge and listen hard for any noises down the hall that can tell me what’s going on. Stupid me, I stormed out of the room in my nightgown and without my phone. Sad little me, I don’t have anywhere else to go. So I wrap my arms around my bent legs and rest my cheek on my knee and try not to cry.
You can be such a baby,
Rory’s scolded me.
You really have to get a grip, little cousin.
Will she ever call me that again? Will she ever
talk
to me again?

All my fault. All of it.

I hear D.D. go down the hall, and a little while later the door to our room closes. When I peek out, I see Rory going around the corner. I have to wake the RA to get him to let me in my room.
Sorry,
I keep saying.
Sorry, sorry.

I find my cell at the bottom of my backpack and fish it out. Hunter answers it, laughing. “Hey,” he says. He’s with people. I can hear noises in the background, but as I talk, the noises go away. Hunter’s gone into a room by himself. “Shit.” His voice is dull.

“What do we do?” I wail.

“I’m such an asshole.”

We both are. “Rory’s on her way over there. She should be there any minute.”

“She hasn’t called or texted.”

“She probably knows I’m giving you a heads-up.” I stay on the phone with Hunter, pacing in the darkness and kicking piles of clothes out of my way, but Rory never shows up. I don’t know where she is.

—

Rory’s already there by the time I get to class the next afternoon. I stand in the doorway and scan the room and there she is, over in a middle row. I’m stopped by undecision. Where do I go? What do I do? I wait for Hunter, but he never shows. He’s upset with me, too. I’ve ruined everything for everyone.

Professor Lee walks into the room and goes to the lectern. “Lights, please,” she tells her assistant, and as the room goes dark, I slink into a seat at the back of the auditorium. Rory never once turns around. Fifty-five minutes spin past, slide after slide popping up on the screen and then disappearing. When the lights flare on again, I look down at my notebook. I haven’t written down a single thing.

Rory’s standing up. Turning, she sees me across the room and her face goes blank. She looks exactly like her mom. Our whole lives, I’ve never seen her face look so still and cold. It’s as though I’m not even there. I gather my things and rush to meet her at the top of the stairs. “Rory, we need to talk.”

“You said plenty last night.” She won’t even look at me. She just keeps on walking. I hurry to keep pace.

“I screwed up, okay? It’s over. I’m sorry.” I told Hunter this last night on the phone.
I don’t get it,
he’d said.
Isn’t this what you wanted?
To have him all to myself? Yes, desperately, but not this way. He hung up without saying goodbye. I don’t even remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, I felt hollowed out. Empty. I’d blinked at the early-morning sunlight slanting through the open window and glanced toward Rory’s bed, which lay smooth and untouched.

“You think apologizing can make everything better?” She’d gone back to the room at some point, showered and changed, applied her makeup. She smells bright with flowers; she’s been especially careful to blend her eye shadow so you can’t tell where it starts or ends. I imagine her doing this, humming as she leans close to the mirror with her little brush, happy with self-righteousness and a clean conscience. Yes, she’s upset and hurt and betrayed, but this time she stands on the good side.

People are pushing past us, trying to get through the door.

“What can I say? What can I do?”

“Nothing. You’re nothing to me. I can’t stand to look at you.”

Her voice is rising and I’m embarrassed. “Please, Rory. Can’t we go somewhere?”

She puts her face close to mine. “You want to go somewhere? I know where you can go.”

She turns and steps into the stream of students, and just like that, she’s gone.

—

Aunt Gabrielle’s in my room when I drag myself back. Hunter’s texted me twice and I’m looking down at my phone trying to decide whether to text him back when I hear her talking on the other side of my door. I’m confused. She can’t be in there with Rory. I’d just left her, going in the other direction. When I open the door, she’s by Rory’s bed. The nightstand drawer is open and she’s reaching inside, turning things over. “Can we move it to tomorrow?” she’s saying, and I realize she’s got her cell phone pressed to her ear.

I let the door bang against the wall and she turns and sees me.

“Hi, Aunt Gabrielle.”

She holds up a finger to signal me to wait. She doesn’t even look guilty about going through Rory’s things.