The Goodbye Summer (36 page)

Magill picked her up. He kicked the back door. “Open it, get the dog, get out.” Cornel came out of a dumb, staring trance and scrambled to obey.

“I can walk,” Caddie protested. But all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball.

“No, you don’t move.” Magill laid her on the backseat and covered her with his jacket. “Cornel, give me your coat and get in front with Finney.
Hold
him.” He bent close, tucking Cornel’s coat around her, too. He put his hand in her hair. “All you have to do is lie still, Caddie. You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m afraid I’m losing the baby.”

“No, I don’t think so. We’ll be at the hospital in about ten minutes. They’ll take care of you.”

“I don’t want to lose it.”

“You won’t.”

“I want us to have—musical evenings, us three, with your saxophone.”

“We will.”

“Who’s driving?”

“I am.”

He made the tires shriek on the wet pavement when he started off. On purpose? She shut her eyes and didn’t think about it. The car seat smelled like dog and motor oil and wet wool, but she pressed her cheek to the cold vinyl hard, wanting any sensation but pain. Oh, this would be so cruel. If she lost her baby, it would be a punishment for not wanting it in the beginning. Could it really be happening? But it was so
mean.

She sat up to see where they were. Magill wasn’t covering one eye, he was just driving. He was flying—the number on the speedometer terrified
her. He had both hands on the wheel tight as clamps, his scarecrow shoulders rigid. “How are you doing?” he asked, eyeing her in the mirror. She just nodded. “Lie back down, Caddie, we’re almost there.”

Cornel looked grim. Finney kept trying to squirm out of his lap and jump over the seat, he had to hold him by the collar. “Good dog,” she crooned, reaching down to stroke him. “Good boy, you’re all right.”

“Lie down,” Magill said, and flicked on the turn signal. Oh, Lord, he was going to pass the car in front of them. She lay back down on the seat.

Rain, trees, telephone wires, red and yellow leaves blowing in the gusts of wind like confetti. Along with the cramps, she felt nauseated. Where would she throw up if she had to?
Oh, baby.
It could suck its thumb now, she’d read in a book. It had very thin skin, its tiny blood vessels were visible right through it. She’d never felt it move—but that was normal, that wasn’t even supposed to happen for two or three more weeks. She rubbed her stomach gently.
It’s okay, I won’t let go of you.
What God should she pray to? Hers was so vague; Nana was the one with vivid gods. But she was as angry as she was scared.
No fair
sang in the back of her mind, in time to the slap of the tires.
No fair, no fair.

“There it is right there, the hospital, right on the road. Emergency entrance,” Cornel directed, “go in there.”

Rain-stained yellow brick and glass doors, wings, extensions, parking levels. The car stopped with a lurch; Magill jumped out and disappeared.

“Cornel, don’t let Finney go or he’ll run away,” Caddie instructed, sitting up to put on Magill’s jacket.

“I won’t, I’ve got his leash on. How do you feel? Don’t worry about the dog.” His grumpy old face was screwed up with distress. “Is it bad?”

“No, not too bad now. I’m just scared.”

He worked his lips, trying to think of something to say, something comforting. When it wouldn’t come to him, he put his hand back and gave her shoulder a soft pat.

A man in blue scrubs yanked her door open. “Hey, how you doing,” he said in a sympathetic voice, and helped her out of the car. Magill hovered behind him. “I can walk,” she told them, but the man, the orderly or whatever he was, opened a collapsible wheelchair and made her sit down.

“I’ll be there in a second,” Magill called as she rolled away through hissing automatic doors. “Gotta park the car!”

Hurry,
she thought, and moved her fingers in a frightened wave.

The triage nurse had a tiny office in the ER waiting room, nothing in it but a desk and two chairs, a sink and a scale. Caddie liked her attitude, concerned but businesslike, and tried to answer her questions in the same style. But when the interview was over and the nurse told her she had to sign in with her insurance information at the emergency department registration booth next, she blurted out, “But am I losing the baby? Shouldn’t they do something
now
? Do you think it’s a miscarriage?”

“It could be, but I can’t say. The OB on call will see you as soon as he gets here, and he’ll definitely want a sonogram. But I’m sorry, they won’t know anything before that.” She got up from behind her desk. “Are your friends out here? Let’s get you registered, then I’ll buzz you into the ER, you can wait there for the doctor. Do you need a pad?”

Cornel couldn’t believe it. “You have to register? Now? You’re in pain, you’re—and they want to see your
insurance card
? This is what’s wrong with this country—”

Caddie tuned him out. “What did the nurse say?” Magill asked, and she told him. He wheeled her over to a woman behind a counter next to the triage office. More questions. Magill had her purse; he found her wallet and read the information on her card to the registration lady. Caddie couldn’t think anymore, only worry, so when the lady, writing on her form, said, “Oh, you’re from out of state?” a complete, fully formed nightmare unfurled in her mind: They couldn’t take her here, people from out of state weren’t allowed, and Magill would have to drive her back to Maryland. Cornel would get them lost, they’d never find another hospital, and in the smelly, moldy backseat of her own car, she would lose her precious baby.

“Okay, you can wait over there and somebody will come and get you in a few minutes.” The registration lady stapled papers together and handed them over.

“Where?”

“Right over there. They’ll buzz you in in a sec.”

“Can I go with her?” Magill asked.

She shook her head with an apologetic smile. “But the nurse will keep you informed.”

He pushed the wheelchair over to an empty space in front of the double doors. Cornel came over from wherever he’d been. “This is an outrage,” he started—but Magill shooed him away. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders from behind and brushed her cheek with his lips. Whispered encouraging words she wanted more than anything to believe.

“I wish you could come in with me.”

“We’ll be right here. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Don’t forget Finney.”

“I’ll make Cornel walk him.”

She put her hand on his face and pressed it to hers. “You went eighty miles an hour. I saw.” She rested her chin on his forearm. “What does it mean?”

“One crisis at a time.” He stayed like that, bent over her, holding her around the chest, for a long time. Then he kissed her on the temple and straightened up. As soon as he did, the doors swung open and the same man who had wheeled her into the hospital came striding through. “Hey, there. You ready?” The badge on a chain around his neck said his name was Albert Johnson.

“She’s ready,” Cornel said irritably from behind her. She hadn’t known he was there.

“See you,” Magill said. “See you soon, Caddie. We’re right here.” He was so thin, almost insubstantial, standing with his hands flexing at his sides, trying to smile with confidence. She still had his jacket, she realized, but it was too late to give it back. “Bye” was all she had time to say to him—and Cornel—before Albert Johnson stepped behind her, blocking the view, and rolled her across the black rubber mat into the emergency room.

The technician wouldn’t tell her what the sonogram showed. She only asked once, “Is everything okay?” but the tech, a sharp-featured, pale-haired girl who looked too young for her job, only hummed something unintelligible. She kept her eyes on the screen while she moved the greasy
scope around on Caddie’s abdomen, occasionally clicking a pedal with her foot. When she finished, she stood up too quickly, Caddie thought, and scooped up a paper. “Okay, you relax now, I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Are you going to show it to the doctor?”

“That’s right. You just relax.” She disappeared through the curtain.

Usually Caddie liked ultrasounds. The darkened little room was always warm and humid, almost like a womb itself, and the tech always chatted with her, pointing out this and that on the screen: “That’s your uterus, that’s your bowel,” and especially, “That’s your baby.” Men must come, too, to get things looked at, but she’d never seen one; for that matter, she’d never seen a male technician. It was a woman’s place, and, since she’d made the decision to keep her baby, a place to hear good news.

This room oppressed her. She couldn’t lie comfortably in any position on the narrow cot. Snatches of casual, soft-voiced conversation beyond the curtains sounded threatening; she listened like an animal, but not one clear word surfaced from the low, ominous undertone. What did the machine say? She craned her neck to see the screen behind her, but the usual grainy-gray fan shape was all it showed.

Footsteps. A man’s voice she recognized—the doctor who had examined her before the sonogram. She put her hands over her face.

“Caddie?”

“She’s dead, I knew it. Oh, God.” She heard the wheels on the technician’s chair squeak, heard the doctor sit down. His name was Dr. Bhutra. Finally she had to look at his face.

It told her everything. “I’m sorry. Your body’s aborting your pregnancy, just as we thought.”

“Is she dead?”

“You’re terminating your pregnancy,” he said, his voice kind but clipped. “It’s common to have some bleeding afterward, like a period, but in your case we feel the bleeding is a little heavy for this stage.”

He kept talking about hemorrhaging and tissue, something about her uterine wall, the need for a D&C, but the words ran together and she concentrated on the half-moon-shaped bags under the doctor’s eyes and the pouches of flesh at the sides of his lips. The space between his nose and his
top lip was very long, with vertical wrinkles all the way across. What was that space called? It had a name.

A new nurse appeared behind him. “Let’s get another H and H,” he said to her, or something that sounded like that. More words; she heard “OR” and “incomplete AB.” The chair squeaked when he stood up.

“Why?”

He halted with his hand on the curtain. “Why did it happen?” He came closer. “There’s probably no reason. Sometimes it just happens, a spontaneous abortion. It doesn’t mean you can’t have another pregnancy.”

“But why did it happen?”

He shook his head. “Hormone levels, chromosome defects, the shape of the uterus, a thyroid disorder, a weak cervix. Think of it as nature’s way of protecting what was too weak to survive or thrive. It just happened. No reason. And nothing you could’ve done to change it. I’m sorry,” he said, and patted her knee.

They left her alone for a while in the dim, warm room. She lay with her hands on her belly, cupping the tiny bulge. The emptiness was only starting. She couldn’t imagine that, how it could be any worse, but it would be. “Here,” someone said, and she opened her eyes. The pale-haired technician put something in her hand. A wad of tissues. She looked at them for a while before remembering what they were for. She wiped her face.

“I can get that man in if you want to see him.”

“What?”

“The fellow outside. Your friend you came with, I can let him come in and visit for a minute even though he’s not family. You want to see him?”

“No.”

“Okay. You can come back to the exam room now.”

Caddie looked at her blankly.

“Where you were before. You can wait there for the anesthetist to come down. He’ll ask you a lot of questions about allergies and so forth.”

“What?”

She said it all over again.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

The technician handed her the box of tissues. She was rolling something,
it smelled like a mint, back and forth in her mouth. She pulled the chair out and sat down.

Caddie said, “Did you say I have to move?”

“Just back to the exam room.” That cold, bright cube where she’d taken off her bloodstained clothes and lain on a paper-covered table. “Are you sure you don’t want to see your friend?”

She didn’t even know who she meant for a second. She was unconnected; she had no friend, no attachment. “Oh.” Magill, that’s who she meant. “No, thank you. I’d rather just wait by myself.”

Dr. Anders, Caddie’s ob-gyn, told her she might benefit from some counseling and gave her the name of a therapist. She joined a group. She didn’t have much to say in it. She couldn’t get over how articulate some of the women, who had had miscarriages or stillbirths or otherwise lost their babies, were about their feelings. They could describe them precisely; they had a lot of words for their emotions. They told her she was blocking or holding back, but that wasn’t it. She just didn’t have any words.

Talking was too hard. When students came to the house for lessons, she’d be fine at first, but gradually she would drift away. The music they played would sound muted, as if it were coming from behind glass; a sensation would come that she was alone in a darkened theater watching a play. She didn’t have to react; she was in the audience. She wasn’t really there.

Magill called every day. She listened, but she couldn’t hold up her end of the conversation. He’d done so much for her, he and Cornel, including the endless drive home from the hospital while she slumped in the backseat, blind to the view from the streaky window, blind to everything. And he’d stayed in the house with her for two nights, sleeping on her couch, walking the dog, bringing her soup and toasted cheese sandwiches while she lay in bed with her face to the wall, waiting for the bleeding to stop and the pain to go away. When they did, she’d asked him to please go away. He kept trying to
talk
to her. “No, just go,” she’d begged, and at last he’d kissed her goodbye, saying he would call.

She hated the sound of the phone. Hated it that Magill seemed to think, although he didn’t say it, that she should be ready now to resume what they’d started, whatever that was. She could hardly remember it. “Would you like me to come over?” he would ask. “Let me take you out. Or come to Wake House, Caddie, your grandmother misses you.”

Once he asked her if she blamed him. “Why should I?” she’d asked, wary, staring out the window at Nana’s ruined yard. A cold rain was turning the ground to mud. She’d planned to rake it up and plant grass seed after the Cape May trip. October was the best time to plant grass, people said.

“Because we made love.” His voice on the phone sounded too intimate, as if he knew her. She resented it. “The night before,” he added, in case she wasn’t sure which night he was talking about.

“I asked the doctor. She said that had nothing to do with it.”

“Thank God, Caddie.”

She didn’t like his relief, either. How nice for him that he was off the hook. “But I’m in a mood to blame everybody. You, me, God.”

He said something in a consoling voice, but she didn’t catch it. Her thoughts drifted. “…come over,” she heard distinctly.

“What?”

“Let me come and see you. We could go for a drive. Or a movie or something.”

“No.” She couldn’t stop him from calling, she was too passive, and anyway what difference did it make. But seeing him, seeing anybody she didn’t have to, that was different. “I can’t. Sorry.” She hung up.

Why would he want to see her, anyway? She only had two moods, two personas, ghost and crybaby. She’d made an awful mistake in the recovery room: She’d asked Dr. Bhutra what the baby’s sex was. A boy. He’d said it gruffly, as if he disapproved of the question and knew the answer would be bad for her. He was right. The most harrowing storms of grief came when she imagined what her baby, her little boy, would’ve been like if he’d lived. She saw him so clearly. She knew him so well. The anguish had been a little easier to bear before, when he was only a gender-less “fetus.”

“You have to grieve,” the counselor advised. “Your hormones are having
a party inside. Don’t expect anybody else to understand, and don’t let anybody hurry you. You’ve lost a child. No one can understand the pain of that but you.”

She never thought of Christopher anymore, but one sleepless night she had an idea of calling him. “I have some good news and some bad news,” she would say. “Good for you, bad for me.” But she didn’t pick up the phone, although she knew the number. She didn’t want to hear the sound of Christopher’s voice. It felt like a hundred years had passed since she’d thought she loved him.

It rained almost every day in November. Magill kept calling. She couldn’t make him stop. She thought of the old music video, the man trying to dance with the dead woman, hauling her limp body around, her head flopping on his shoulder. “I’m moving out of Wake House,” he told her one night. He always called late, often when she was already in bed. It didn’t matter; she was hardly ever sleeping. “I’ve got a little apartment on Tyler Street. Know where that is?”

“Yes, mm-hmm.” Near his foot factory. He used to have a house, but after the accident he’d sold it. “Will you go back to work?” she asked.

“Try to. Things are sort of falling apart. It’s nobody’s fault. Well, mine, it’s my fault for not being there. I’ve got great people, the ones who have stuck, but they couldn’t run the place on their own indefinitely. Leadership vacuum, I believe they call it. Caddie? You still there?”

“I’m here. Well, it’ll be hard,” she acknowledged. “I’m sure it’ll work out, though.” She watched the numbers change on her digital clock. Finney slept with her every night now, a bad habit she didn’t have the heart to break. He liked to press up against her hip, under the covers. She liked the company.

“I miss you, Caddie. I’m starting to think I imagined you.”

She sympathized. Sometimes she thought she’d imagined herself.

“I’ve read all the things I’m not supposed to say.”

“What?”

“A list at a grief site on the Internet. Things not to say to someone who’s lost a child. I can say I’m sorry, but that’s about it. And I can offer to be with
you. Would that be okay? We could just sit. Anywhere. When we get tired of that, we could get up and walk the dog.”

“Magill…” It was easier to be receptive or noncommittal—or like smoke, not give him anything to grab onto, nothing he could use to force the issue. But that’s what she’d been doing for weeks. She kept thinking he would give up. Since he wouldn’t, she had to dredge up the will from someplace and finish it herself. She had a little bit of kindness left inside her.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t. I don’t have anything. I’m out.”

“Why don’t you let me try to help you? Give me a chance, Caddie. I don’t want you to hurt like this.”

“There’s nothing you can do. I wish you would believe me. I’m sorry.” She hated disappointing people. “I’m not who I was before.”

“I’d like to wait till you are.”

“No, don’t, that would be—and anyway, it’s not—a
disease,
” she said, some strange bitterness rising in her throat, “I’m not going to get
better.
Please stop, just don’t call, it’s better if you don’t call anymore. I’m glad you’re all well, it’s great, you can get on with your life now. I’m so happy for you, truly I am. But when you call me, it—I know it shouldn’t, but it makes it worse.”

There was the most awful silence. She took the phone away from her ear and cried through most of it.

“Okay, Caddie. I think I’ve got it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, you said that.”

“Are you angry?”

“Am I
angry
?” He made a sound, a sigh or a laugh. “I don’t want to make it worse for you, but you broke my heart. And I’m only telling you that so you’ll know how far I am from being
angry.
Here’s my new number in case you ever need it.”

He recited it, but she had nothing to write on. “Thanks.” If she said “I’m sorry” again, it would be the fourth time.

“Take care of yourself, Caddie.”

After that, he stopped calling.

Nana moved back home on a cold, ugly Sunday, in a biting wind that blew through clothes and skin straight to the bone. She’d never bothered unpacking most of her art supplies, so the move out went faster than the move in had six months ago. Caddie avoided farewells by telling people she’d be back, she had lots more stuff to haul, they’d probably
never
see the end of her. It was true, there were a few more boxes of junk in the basement she didn’t have the heart to deal with right now. But mostly what she didn’t have the heart for was last words, even with the addition of “But I’ll come back and visit all the time!” Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t, but the emotional strength to say goodbye even provisionally just wasn’t in her. Saying it to Magill had depleted her storehouse.

For Nana’s first night back, Caddie made a special dinner with all her favorite foods, but neither of them felt like eating. It was no use trying to pretend they were celebrating. Nana hadn’t wanted to come home, for reasons Caddie still wasn’t a hundred percent clear on, but Brenda said the time had come. Her patience ran out when Nana used the private office phone to charge over three hundred dollars’ worth of 900-number calls to a TV psychic. When Brenda confronted her with the bill, Nana denied everything, excused herself, and ran down in the basement to hide. It took half a day to find her. Thanks to Thea’s generosity, Wake House was improving, upgrading, even expanding, but its
purpose
hadn’t changed. Elder care and convalescence were still its mission, and the elderly it cared for still had to be compos mentis. It was so unfair.

In some ways it was good to have her grandmother back, someone to talk to and look after, someone who needed her. They watched TV after dinner, and it was pleasant to look over and laugh with Nana at the silly jokes on the program and make cracks about the products in the commercials. Nana had Finney on her lap, Caddie had some mending on hers. An idea of what the two of them looked like, what a third person would make of them, would chill her if she thought about it for long, so she didn’t think about it. Was it so bad that they were back where they’d started last spring, before Nana broke her leg?

But they weren’t, of course. Caddie felt as if she’d lived a lifetime since then. And yet if that was true, why wasn’t she a stronger, better, wiser, braver person? Six months ago she wasn’t sure she wanted Nana to go away: now she wasn’t sure she wanted her to come home. Time changed most people, but even her
ambivalence
was the same. A sense of missed opportunities plagued her; time squandered; something precious she’d let slip through fingers too weak or indecisive to close together and make a cup.

“Time for bed?” she suggested at a little after ten. “It’s been a long day for you.”

Nana was watching the news. She got off the sofa and looked around. “Which room is mine? Do I sleep here?”

“No, your old room, Nan, you know. Upstairs, where you always sleep.”

She had to help her get undressed, remind her to brush her teeth, take her hair down for her. Had Brenda or one of the aides been doing this? Oh, surely not—it must be the newness of home. After Nana got into a routine, she’d be back to normal.

Caddie tucked her in. “It’s so great to have you home,” she said, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. She looked anxious and wide awake. “Do you need anything? Glass of water?”

“No.”

“Well, holler if you do, I’m just down the hall.” Why did she feel she needed to remind her? She lingered, straightening things on the bedside table, unwilling to turn out the light and go. Then Finney jumped up, licked Nana’s cheek, and burrowed under her arm. Nana smiled and closed her eyes with a tired sigh.
I knew he was good for something,
Caddie thought, and kissed them both good night.

The next day she got a long, newsy letter from Dinah. “Aunt D,” she signed herself. Caddie had written first, just a note to tell her about the baby, and Dinah had instantly called to commiserate. This was her first letter. Everybody was fine, she wrote, except Mother had a cold that wouldn’t quit and at her age a thing like that could go into pneumonia before you knew it. Earl was hard at work on his biggest project ever,
somebody’s pet pig. Not a Vietnamese one, either, a regular pig, big as a sofa. He sent his love. (Earl.) First of the year, they might get Sherry to come stay with Mother while they drove up to Atlantic City for a night or two; they hadn’t been off somewhere together, just them, in over a year, and that wasn’t any way to keep the spark lit, if Caddie knew what she meant.

“How is Cornel? How’s Magill? Send them my regards. Most important, how are you? I hope you are feeling better, honey, than when we last talked. My only advice is that time heals all wounds. Not that that ever made anybody feel better. I still miss my sweet Bobby, so there’s a wound that didn’t heal. I guess they scar over, though. That’s the best we can hope for, some thick skin to form between our pain and our tender hearts. Caddie, call me
any time
you want to talk, and know that I’m thinking about you. It’s still a miracle to me that we found you, or rather you found us. Lucky day! Hugs and kisses and much, much love, Aunt D.”

Nana kept mixing up the Miss Michaelstown pageant with one of Caddie’s community orchestra concerts because they were in the same building. “Shouldn’t you be up
there
?” she asked several times as they took seats in the back of the civic center. They were late, and the hall was already full. They’d missed the swimsuit competition, but the talent portion was just beginning. A girl in a long gown played the “Appassionata,” and Caddie wrung her hands.
Oh, Angie,
she thought,
see what you’re up against!
But the next contestant was a juggler, so maybe not. Then a girl who sang “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” A lovely, graceful ballet dancer. A girl who told jokes.