The Life You Longed For (15 page)

On the caller ID she saw the words
unknown caller
. A cell phone. She grabbed the receiver, her breath in her throat.

“God, I've missed you,” Noah said the minute she said hello.

She felt herself crumple at the sound of his voice. She sank to the floor, back against the kitchen cabinets so Jack wouldn't see her. She was crying so hard it sounded as if she were choking. She couldn't speak.

“Grace,
what
? Shit, is it Jack? Is—Grace, honey, please, what happened?”

She shook her head, beside herself. “They—they think—” but she couldn't finish. “They think—”

“Think what, Grace? Who?”

She shook her head, crying harder. She couldn't say it.

“You're scaring me, Grace. I don't—is Jack okay?”

She nodded yes, sobbing. “I'm so sorry.”

“There's no need, honey, come on, just talk to me.”

She nodded, hiccupping, and tried again. “They think I'm—” She closed her eyes. “They think I'm—” Tears ran into her mouth, and she tasted salt. “They think I'm trying to kill him,” she whispered finally.

For a moment Noah didn't say anything.

“Noah?” she sobbed.

“I'm here, baby, I'm here, but I don't understand. Someone thinks you're trying to kill who?”

“Jack,” she whispered.

“What?”

 

Father arrested for DUI
, she read, and again in the margin a note:
investigate re: alcohol abuse.
The same bubbly handwriting.

Mother has history of depression. Mother prescribed Zoloft but is noncompliant
. Sentences like wartime trains, carrying away entire histories. Grace stood to pour herself more coffee, then dumped it out and filled the tea kettle instead. Tea—as if she were ill. She felt that way. How could the report be so wrong
and
so horribly true all at once? Or was this the nature of all truths? Like light, both particle and wave. She bent over, her elbows on the edge of the sink. Yes, she had taken antidepressants after Jack was diagnosed, but that didn't constitute a
history
of depression. And yes, she had stopped taking the Zoloft after a few months because it kept her up at night, and the Trazadone the doctor gave to help her sleep made her groggy in the mornings, but mostly she stopped taking the antidepressant because she had gotten angry.
Of course
she was depressed and she
should
be depressed, and not allowing herself this depression started feeling like one more thing that was being taken from her; it started feeling like a betrayal of herself and Jack. He was a year old then—
one year
—and he'd been diagnosed with an incurable illness, and to somehow make that bearable was unfathomable, was, in itself, unbearable. She had wanted to feel grief, every goddamn ounce of it.

 

“I didn't mention the affair,” she told Bennett when she phoned him back. “I just, I didn't think it had any bearing.”

“Is the relationship over?” Bennett inquired gently.

“It will be.”

“I think that's wise, Grace.” He paused. “I'm not necessarily convinced that the infidelity has anything to do with why the accusation was made, but I'm not unconvinced either.” He paused. “Until this is settled…”

“I know.” She swallowed hard, eyes closed. “Is it—adultery”—the word
adultery
landed hard in the pit of her stomach—“is it a part of the profile?”

“In that it suggests an ongoing pattern of deception, yes, I'm afraid so.”

 

“Can you come home?” she asked Stephen when he returned her call. She was in bed, Jack down for his nap. Harsh January sunlight slammed into the room like an accusation. Her eyes ached. She couldn't lie still, couldn't think, couldn't focus. “I can't—I need someone to pick up Erin. And Max has hockey, and can you call my mom to see if she can help? I can't talk to her, Stephen—I can't talk to anyone.” She couldn't stop crying. “It's so much worse than we thought. They asked Anju if she'd ever checked for traces of ipecac poisoning in Jack's blood. They subpoenaed all of Jack's medical records, they notified the police—”

“Okay, okay, but think about it: They did the most thorough investigation possible and still don't have enough evidence. They found nothing, Grace. Nothing.”

His words didn't help. He didn't understand. They'd found plenty. It just wasn't enough. Yet. And who was to say they wouldn't keep looking?

She lay on her side, the pillow damp, hugging the heating pad to her chest. Jack was still napping. Her mother was getting Erin. Late-afternoon light shone through the windows, illuminating the sheen of dust on top of the night tables and armoire. A heap of dirty clothes sat on a chair next to a stack of Christmas presents she still hadn't put away. She closed her eyes, trying to sleep, but felt her eyelids twitching, her mind racing with explanations. She hadn't
refused
family counseling when that psychologist suggested it; it was the first time he'd even met her, and she had explained that with all of their schedules—Stephen's work and Max's hockey and Erin's Brownie troop and swim lessons, not to mention all of Jack's appointments—she didn't think it was feasible.

And maybe she was
overly focused on the technical aspects of Jack's illness
, his creatine counts and iron levels, but how could anyone whose child had never been seriously sick understand? That if she didn't sometimes focus on those
technical
aspects of Jack's illness, she would fly apart in rage and grief at what her child was going through. Still, she felt nearly sick with doubt. What if her behavior wasn't normal? What if there was something wrong with her?

She heard her mother and Erin come in and move around the kitchen, then the creak of the wooden steps and Erin's timid knock on the door. “Mama?”

“Come in, sweets,” Grace called, sitting up against the pillows. She held out her arms to Erin. “There's my girl. How was school today?”

Erin cuddled against her. “Fun,” she said. “Mrs. Turner said I could go into the Tiger reading group today.”

“The Tigers? Isn't that the group Samantha's in?”

Erin nodded. “And in art, we traced our bodies on these big pieces of paper and Miss Gail is going to cut them out for us and tomorrow we're going to decorate the insides with anything we want that tells about ourself.”

Grace tilted Erin's chin up so she could look at her. “I bet you've already been thinking about that, haven't you?”

“Uh hmm,” Erin said. And then, “Mama, can I watch a movie in bed with you?”

Something settled in Grace. “That's the best idea I've heard all day,” she said. “Why don't you go pick out a movie, and…” She nuzzled her nose to Erin's and whispered, “I bet if you ask Grandma real nice, she'll make us a big bowl of…”

“Popcorn?”
Erin sat back, a smile on her freckled face, then threw herself forward again, arms around Grace's neck. “This is the best day of my whole life!” she exclaimed. And then she hopped up and raced downstairs, already calling, “Guess what, Grandma…!”

 

They were halfway through
Beauty and the Beast
when Grace heard her mother go into Jack's room, followed by his exuberant “Grandma!” and the squeak of his crib as he pulled himself up by the bars. She listened to the hum of their voices, followed by her mother shushing him in the hallway, saying, “Mama's not feeling good.”

“Why she not feeling good?”

“Mom, bring him in with us,” Grace called.

Her mother pushed open the door, with Jack on her hip and the backpack holding his oxygen slung over her shoulder.

“Mama, why you not feeling—” Jack started to say, but then he put his hands on his head and shouted. “Erin, why
you
in Mama's bed? You not feeling good either?”

“No, silly, we're watching a movie,” Erin laughed around a mouthful of popcorn. “You want to watch with us?”

“Grandma
too
?” he asked.

“Oh no,” Ellen laughed as she settled Jack onto the bed next to Grace. “That would be a little crowded for me.” She smiled at Grace. “You okay, honey?”

“Thanks Mom,” Grace said, glancing at the kids. “This is exactly what I needed.”

They snuggled, Erin on one side of her, Jack on the other. The bed was warm with all of them under the covers.

“Mama, why did that man want to hurt the beast?” Jack asked, pointing at the TV.

“You mean Gaston, Goose?” She swept her hand over Jack's furrowed little brow. “He's not being very nice is he?”

‘But why he not nice?”

“Well, Gaston wants Belle all to himself.”

“You mean, he doesn't want to share?”

“Nope.”

“But why he not want to share?”

“Maybe he's afraid that if he shares Belle, the Beast will take her away.”

Jack wrinkled his nose at her. “But the Beast wouldn't do that, right Mama?”

“That's right, Goose.”

 

Jack turned back to the TV, his head solid and warm against her arm. Grace smiled. Her little scientist. Questions inside of questions inside of questions. She watched him, absorbed again in the movie, his face almost incandescent in the artificial glow from the screen. The last of the fading daylight had dissolved, the sky its own dark movie screen now, stars rolling up like credits at the end of the day. From the kitchen drifted the scent of sautéing onions and baking apples. A few minutes later, she heard the hum of the motorized garage opener, the thud of the back door, then Max clomping up the stairs, loaded down with hockey gear. The clatter of silverware, the squeak of the oven door, the low thrum of Stephen's voice. And then he was creeping into the darkened bedroom, still wearing the Burberry overcoat her parents had given him for Christmas.

“And
what
is going on in here?” He turned on the brass lamp near the door.

“We're watching a movie, Daddy!” Jack said.

“A movie? A
movie?
Who said you could watch a movie in MY BED?” Stephen wiggled his fingers at the kids as if to grab them, and they both started screaming, burrowing deeper under the covers, shouting, “Get him, Mama! Get him.” Grace smiled at Stephen gratefully as he groped for the two wiggling bundles on either side of her. “Is this…is this a head I feel? A foot? Hey! Whose foot is this?”

And then Jack was tossing back the blankets. “It's me, Daddy!”

Stephen snuggled in next to Erin for the last ten minutes of the movie, then ushered the kids downstairs, telling Erin to take Jack's Spaceship backpack and to go ahead of him on the steps, helping him slide down on his bottom. Grace started crying as soon as Stephen shut the bedroom door behind them. “I'm so sorry,” she sobbed.

He sat on the edge of the bed. “Oh, Grace, this whole thing—you are the last person who deserves this, and I promise, we'll get to the bottom of it.”

It didn't help. She only cried harder.

“Do you want me to bring you up some dinner?”

She shook her head. “My mom made apple pie, didn't she?” Her favorite dessert.

“And meatloaf, mashed potatoes…Are you sure you don't want to come down? It might make you feel better.”

It would. She knew this. Rarely had being with her children, simply being in the same room with them, not made her feel better. And yet she had the sense that this was the last time in the coming weeks when she would be able to simply give in to what this accusation had already done to her life. A part of her almost wanted—or needed, was that a better word?—to fall apart because she wouldn't be able to later, couldn't afford to after this night. Starting tomorrow there would be phone calls and meetings with Bennett and Anju and the rest of Jack's team: his therapists, respiratory techs, the head of the birth-to-three program. She would have to talk to Max's hockey coach. And in the midst of all of this, she would need, more than ever, to make her children's lives feel no different from they had always felt, to be
ordinary
. It was a word similar to
misunderstanding,
which when Grace thought of it now, was like those huge beautiful air balloons, a hundred feet in circumference, that the Japanese had sent across the ocean, nearly ten thousand of them, during the Second World War.
Misunderstanding
was like this, Grace thought, a huge, graceful word, weighted down with bombs, that floated, seemingly out of nowhere, across the surface of people's lives.