The Measures Between Us (34 page)

Vincent didn't think a small duck qualified as making a
spectacle of her coming home. And he thought it would be equally strange if none of them acknowledged that Cynthia had been away, if they all pretended the past five weeks had never happened. This seemed like a good, meaningful compromise. Nonetheless, he wanted to be careful, so he phoned the discharge doctor, who said a modest gift wouldn't be misinterpreted.

Above him, he could hear his wife furiously cleaning. She had come home the day before hauling bags of cleaning supplies, enough, it appeared to Vincent, to erase decades of dirt. He didn't say anything, just helped her unload it all. Mary would give their daughter a shiny, spotless house and fresh sheets and a perfectly made bed, and Vincent would give her a little painted animal with glass eyes:
We missed you
. He hoped their efforts wouldn't embarrass her and make her clam up with shame.

The day before Cynthia was supposed to be discharged, Mary had coffee with Tom Slater. She knew she probably wouldn't be seeing him again, and she wanted to spend more time with him than their usual ten minutes in the parking lot, him leaning against his Buick, the two of them trading sometimes harmless, sometimes troubling news, laughing on the slightest excuse. They were both harboring sadness and fear, and she wanted to say good-bye in a proper way, sitting down, without the incessant hum of rush-hour traffic hinting that they too should be driving home.

It was she who suggested the Westway, and Tom quickly agreed. Five minutes later they were parking side by side in the glow of the stainless-steel diner. Our whole relationship happens in parking lots, Mary thought, shutting off the ignition. Who knew there could be such happiness in these random, nothing places? She liked it, the unpredictability of it, how natural and unforced it all seemed. Tom Slater was pure and easy and his daughter had killed herself and he was fighting for his grandson. Yet here he was, not hobbled by that awful future, not struggling to get out of bed each morning. The very sight of him, his good posture and infectious laugh, gave her hope.

The diner was warm and bright, and there was only one other couple, so they had their choice of tables. Tom led the way to a booth and let Mary sit down first. After she did, she spread a napkin open on her lap. The sky outside was just beginning to dim, starting its gradual shift into evening. Mary had always liked this time of day, when the light seemed like a living, breathing thing.

All day she had cleaned the house for Cynthia. She was happy to have a list of chores to do, scrubbing and sweeping and dusting to prevent her from sitting down and being paralyzed by the idea of her daughter coming home. Vincent stayed in the basement the entire time. If she put her head to the door, she could hear muffled snatches of a sports talk-radio show, an overheated listener or host calling for the firing of the Red Sox manager, another one offering new nicknames for the Yankees that stopped just short of profanity. But she never heard Vincent himself, never a footstep or a frustrated sigh or the creak of the stool legs or him calling up the stairs and asking for something. That wasn't unusual, though—he rarely asked for anything. She didn't know what he was doing down there. Taking apart and reassembling his tools, maybe, greasing the gears and sharpening the saw teeth. The symmetry pleased her: the idea of the two of them parallel, cleaning, so engaged in the effort they didn't need to exchange a word.

The waitress brought two cups of coffee. Once she was out of earshot, Mary spoke first. “My daughter,” she said, and suddenly she was unable to finish the sentence. Tom looked at her over the lip of his mug. Take your time, his eyes said, no rush.

Mary locked her fingers around her cup and let it heat her skin. Behind her, she heard another customer order a slice of
pecan pie. “My daughter …” she repeated. “Cynthia's coming home tomorrow.”

Tom drummed the Formica table softly with his forefinger. “That's wonderful,” he said. “You must be so happy.”

Mary took a sip of coffee. “I'm nervous,” she said. “I don't know exactly what to expect, I don't want to say the wrong thing. I never knew what to say to her at the hospital, and now I don't know what I'll say at home.”

Tom nodded. “I guess I wouldn't know what to expect either, with a child who'd been away at a place like that.”

“My husband and I have been visiting her the whole time, and we've spoken to her doctors on occasion. So it's not like it should be a major shock. There don't seem to be any radical changes. Still, though …”

He nodded again. “Were there supposed to be big changes?”

Mary shrugged. “Who knows? I just want her to be all better.”

“I can understand your trepidation.”

Could he? Mary wondered. She doubted he could fully sympathize with the panic she felt, her fear that Cynthia would return as a person totally different from the one who left five weeks ago, would arrive home full of rage, despondency, maybe both. Back then she had already seemed lost. What if her hospitalization merely sped up this transition, stripped away even more of her personality?

For a moment she wanted to leave. Maybe Tom Slater was not who she thought he was and this was yet another false hope, that one person can understand and deliver salvation to another. What if, Mary wondered, Cynthia had simply understood the lie faster and more deeply than everyone else? Maybe the best way to respect and help her daughter was to get up without saying
anything and rush to her car without even the faintest of explanations.

Try not to expect too much. This is what the people at Rangely and Henry Wheeling kept warning. These kinds of troubles often take a while to get better, they said; it's a gradual, sometimes frustrating process. Years, they cautioned, it could potentially take years. It took years to set on, so it might require years to fully undo. That was all so vague, though. Mary wanted her to not collect bottles of pills. Was that too high an expectation? Were all the parents who were hoping the same asking too much?

“Does she seem happy about coming home?” Tom asked.

It suddenly occurred to Mary that neither she nor her husband had asked Cynthia that same question. During their visits they tiptoed around her, keeping the conversations as innocuous as possible. If Cynthia wanted to talk about deeper, more emotional issues, she would lead them there, they reasoned. She was probably bombarded with it anyway, by all the therapists, so maybe what she really needed was a break. Mary, for one, was relieved to focus their discussions on the level of current events and whether the hospital meals were tasty.

“I think she is,” Mary said. “She's nervous too. But she's ready. I mean … it's hard to know, but she must be.”

“And the care in that place, has she gotten some good counseling?”

“If she hasn't, I'm not sure why they're charging so much,” Mary joked. “No, in all seriousness, she seems very attached to one of her doctors. He's been very helpful to her.” Mary sipped some coffee, glanced at one of the waitresses sitting at the end of the counter, totaling her checks. She looked close to Cynthia's age. It didn't seem fair that she was here and Cynthia was not.
“Have you ever been to talk to someone like that, a psychiatrist?” Mary asked.

Tom shook his head. “Never. Never really been tempted to, either. I suppose I don't really feel comfortable with the idea of someone wanting to get inside my head and dig things out.”

“Do you think that's what they do, dig things out that don't want to be dug out?”

Tom shrugged. “Just a guess.”

Mary didn't want to imagine the fearsome things Cynthia was saying to her psychiatrist.

“I'm sure there must be an art to it,” said Tom. “I just know I wouldn't be a good patient. Too private.”

“I'm with you,” Mary said. “A stranger, asking all those intimate questions—seems totally unnatural.”

He signaled to their waitress to refill his coffee.

The waitress appeared and poured fresh coffee. She asked if they needed anything else, and Tom deferred to Mary, who shook her head.

“We're fine,” he said, and the waitress left. “Your husband must be excited about your daughter coming home,” Tom said.

“Thrilled,” said Mary. “He's counting the hours. He was so miserable the whole time she was away, thinking we'd done the wrong thing by placing her there.”

“It doesn't sound like you had much choice.”

“I know,” Mary said. “We really didn't.” She looked out the window. “The pills were too much of a warning sign. That's what the people we consulted told us. I don't even know what most of those drugs are for.

“It didn't make much of a difference, though, no matter how
much we told ourselves we had to do it. Vincent was just so devastated with guilt. I'd make him special dinners, or we'd go out to a movie or a Sox game, but nothing lifted his sadness. He used to love going to Fenway. He'd keep score inning by inning using those symbols in the little boxes. He just missed her and worried about her so much.”

“He'll be relieved,” Tom said.

Mary nodded. Relieved, she thought, relieved and acres more. “One night I woke up at three in the morning and he wasn't in bed. I found him downstairs, standing by the door, car keys in his hand, his coat buttoned. I asked him what he was doing and he said, ‘Nothing.' But I knew: He was thinking about driving to Rangely and bringing her home, where he could watch over her, tend to her himself, not deposit her in the care of strangers.”

“Do you really think he would've gone, in the middle of the night? Would they have let her out?”

“He would have, yes,” Mary said. “I don't know what stopped him.”

“Maybe it was you.”

“I didn't tell him not to go.”

“Could have been just seeing you. It gave him a moment to think—not just act on impulse. It reminded him of what you were fighting for.”

God, don't let me cry, Mary thought. She didn't want to make Tom uncomfortable, especially because she already felt like she was asking for too much simply by suggesting they get coffee. That night she had found Vincent about to leave, keys in hand, she walked slowly toward him. She was wearing a sweater over her nightgown and when she got to him, she let him hold on to the keys but she started loosening his coat, button by button.
Then she crouched and unlaced his boots, lifted one foot out and then the other. And then she led him back upstairs, back to their bed, where he lay down and did not say a word and wrapped his arms around her and she felt on her back the small, insistent pressure of a key needling out from his fist.

The waitress came by one final time and dropped the check on the table. Mary opened her purse, and Tom Slater said, “Don't. My treat. It's all of two fifty.” He left a few dollars and then followed Mary out of the diner.

He accompanied her to her car and they both stood silently for a moment, unsure exactly how to say good-bye. She felt a sudden urge to tell him another truth: that he would soon lose his fight to raise his grandson, that the church wouldn't intervene, not God and not those vivid windows that the devoted glassblowers spent months on. Myths and legends, the tease of a world not our own. Stop believing in miracles. Prepare yourself, Tom Slater, it is about to get very, very dark.

Then he hugged her, a brief, strong little hug, and she thought he knew, somewhere deep in his body he knew and understood and he would weep and, later, maybe much later, months or years, find a way to stop weeping. He was like Vincent in that way, determined to soldier on through even the worst kind of sadness.

When they broke their embrace, she reached out and squeezed his forearm. “I'll be thinking of you,” she said. “I'm sorry for your loss.”

Tom stared at the ground. He traced a rough semicircle with the toe of his shoe. “Thank you, I'll be thinking of you, too,” he said, burying his hands in his pockets. “Good-bye, Mary.”

Interviewer: Henry Wheeling, PhD

Transcriber: Jack C.

Subject: G. Phillips, 8116 River Road

Damage to property on Davidson/Ortiz

Scale: 6.3

DR. WHEELING:     Can you tell me what happened in the days before the flood?

G. PHILLIPS:     Before the flood? I thought you were interested in the flood itself.

DR. WHEELING:     Both, really. The leading up to as well as the actual flood.

G. PHILLIPS:     Well, first thing is they were calling it a fifty-year flood, maybe a hundred-year flood, which made no sense since we've had them maybe four or five times in the past fifteen years. They need to readjust because it makes it hard to believe them. They need to get the math right because it seems like it must be based on outdated models that don't take our current weather into account.

DR. WHEELING:     So you and your wife live on River Road?

G. PHILLIPS:     Yes, about a half mile from where Rock Run
meets River Road, past the hunting grounds. There's a bridge with a slat missing. Then the Miller place, then us.

Dr. Wheeling:     Did anyone tell you to leave?

G. PHILLIPS:     Usual folks—sheriff, FEMA jackasses, the rich young couple who renovated the one-room schoolhouse on Elan Road. They kept the chalkboard up, which I only know because they invited us over when they finished the renovation. I appreciated their concern and all, but we were staying. Don't like to be chased from home. My wife even less so. Look up “stubborn” and you'll see her picture. I have a bit, too, but not like her, Lord, not like her.

DR. WHEELING:     So she was a factor in the decision?

G. PHILLIPS:     Factor?

DR. WHEELING:     She influenced you, she played a major role.

G. PHILLIPS:     We talked about it, if that's what you mean. I told her we should consider going, she said no. I maybe asked a second time, she said no again. It wasn't a lengthy argument.