Would You (10 page)

“I love you, Mommy.”

It slips out and makes her cry more but I'm glad I've said it.

What is the deal with old women and facial hair? I know it's some function of aging and not producing estrogen and blah blah blah, but these old dames at the hospital, they've all got nasty spiky hairs growing out of their chinny-chin-chins!

One lady today, her name is Blanche, which I know because she's got it written in BLOCK letters on a giant sticker on her cardigan,
upside down
, so that when she forgets who she is, she tips her tag and reads her own name.

So Blanche is in a wheelchair in the hallway close to the intensive care unit. She's got a rolling IV apparatus and she's wearing slippers that without a doubt she knit herself, green-flecked woolies with pom-poms on the toes, like portable cat toys. She's clearly listening to music from an alien spaceship, because she's tapping her feet on the wheelchair footrests, and she's snapping her fingers and she's jutting out her hairy chin with the biggest grin on her face. Till she sees me.

“Hold your horses,” she says.

“Hello, uh, Blanche,” I say.

“You enduring?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You just cry if you need to,” she says. “You deserve it. You are never going to be short on tears, from here till the end of time.”

And I believe her. I have this vision of myself wearing Blanche's dressing gown and Blanche's slippers. I'm a distressed old crone and my heart is still breaking for Claire.

But you can be damn sure I'll be plucking out those chin hairs!

Last fight: Well, the black thingy wasn't really a fight, but it feels like one now. It
would
have been, if she'd known.

Last movie watched—don't laugh:
The Princess Bride.
Our all-time favorite line:
My name is Inigo Montoya. You keeled my father. Prepare to die!

Last purchase together: Flip-flops at the mall. Two for five dollars. I got green and she got bronze.

Last thing she said to me: Mwa.

Charlie's been delivering mail to our house since probably before I was born. His kid Ali goes to our school. His wave is usually the cheeriest of the day. But this week he's
bringing a stack of envelopes so weighty he shakes his head and hands over Get Well cards like sheaves of thistles. He stands on the doorstep as if he needs to say something, but then he backs down the steps and goes off muttering his Jamaican oaths.

“Where are we going, Dad?” This is not the way to the Y. Then I read the street sign. Carlisle Street.
Uh-oh.
Dad pulls over in front of a garage-type building painted yellow.
U-RENT-IT! U-DO-IT!
says the sign. The big doors are open and there are giant machines and tools inside.

“Dad.” I have this instant chill. Dad is just staring over there. I hear Carson's voice, And then the father, insane with grief and pumped up on revenge, he gets out of the car and it's a wide-angle shot, and you can see the crowbar in his hand….

“Dad!”

“Do you think that's him, Natalie?” says Dad. His hands are holding the steering wheel and he's pointing with one raised finger.

“I don't know,” I say. But I'm also kind of peering at this guy in shabby jeans and a muscle tee. He seems to be rubbing a rag over the blades of a lawn mower that's turned upside down in the drive.

“Keeping himself busy,” says Dad.

“I think he was injured too.”

“Not so's you'd notice.”

“Maybe that's not him.”

“Oh, that's him, all right. Just tinkering, going about his day. Like he's got a tomorrow.”

I learned to swim at this same Y. I bet Mom and Dad did too. It's not some gleaming modern aquatic center, it's a moldy little old-fashioned pool-in-the-ground.

The first time I made it from the ladder to Mom's arms eight feet away, Claire was hopping up and down, yelling “Go, Nat, go! Go, Nat, go!” Everybody in the pool joined in and I doggy-paddled as if I were finishing a triathlon. I try to pass along that triumph to the Tadpoles, making them blow bubbles, get their faces wet.

Of course, mostly I just have to tell them the rules ten times per lesson.

“Hey, Milo,” I say. “No running. You know better than that.”

And he grins at me, that little-boy-with-one-tooth-missing grin, as in, If I flash my cutest smile you won't notice that I'm gonna run again the second you turn your lifeguard head.

And he does, only this time he slips on a wet patch and wipes out,
thwack
, skull to the tiles. The sound echoes like a bark and I'm blowing my whistle,
shreet shreet shreet
, before I even think about blowing my whistle.

The kids all know, I've drilled them; they're out of the pool and shivering on the side, gaping at Milo. And Milo, he's lying there like … ohgod, like Claire, still as stone. But before I get to him, before his mother's off the
bleacher, he lets out a wail that's the sweetest sound I ever heard. Crying kids I can deal with. Breath-sucking silence I can't. Suddenly I'm infected with Responsibility: it's up to me. I'm guarding their lives, and anything can happen.

Zack meets me at the Y as a surprise.

“Yay, Zack.”

“Audrey made red velvet cake.” He takes my swim bag so I can fiddle with my bike lock. “Come over.”

“I don't know.” I'm afraid Zack might look me in the eye and expect someone to be there.

“Why are you working, anyway?”

“Routine,” I say.

“But everything's different.”

I unlock my bike. “It sure is.”

“So?”

“It's hard to be at home. They're kind of… marooned by mourning.” That phrase came to me beside the pool and now I'm saying it out loud.

“Aren't you?” he says.

The lock slips out of my hand and clanks on the ground. How can I still have a crush like a kid when the rest of me is … grappling with
real
stuff? “I am too.”

“Audrey told me to bring you home.” Zack picks up the
lock and hands it over. “But maybe you just want to go to the hospital.”

“Yeah.” I reach for my bag and cram it into my basket.

“What's it like?” he says. “I can't even …”

I notice we're almost whispering.

“I've been trying to imagine,” he says. “If it was Audrey.”

I shudder. “I keep thinking it's not true. I wake up and trick myself every time. Today it'll be all fixed. But it's still true.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, you know. I'm okay.”

“What should I tell Audrey?”

“How about if I meet you guys later?”

But then.

“Zack.”

And he turns back, eyebrows up.

“I'm faking,” I whisper. “I'm not okay at all.”

My bike is suddenly too heavy to hold and I lay it down.

Zack scoops his arms around me. Zack. Who knows not to say anything stupid. I'm smelling his ice-cream-sticky shirt and sort of pressing into him. In a way I never have before.

For one second I consider pulling back and making a joke. But I think, Anything can happen at any moment. What if a car leaps out at me and I've never kissed Zack?

And then I'm kissing him like crazy; hot and tongues, chlorine and vanilla. I'm gripping his new gardening shoulders and his T-shirt soft as tissue, washed a hundred times. His hands are cupping my face, and I feel… cherished. I like this skinny boy so much … but now I'm crying too, tears streaming, and the kiss turns salty, like we're bobbing in the ocean.

Of course it has to end. And here we are outside the Y, with traffic and a wasp and summer dust and each other's faces in a new light.

“What just happened?” he says.

I laugh and sob together, unzip my bag and pull out the damp towel to hold over my face, my burning eyes.

“Nat?”

I shake my head, inhaling the pool.

“Nat, just so you know … I…”

I wait, still hiding.

“That was …” He tugs at the towel. He wraps his arms around me again. “You mad?”

I shake my head.

Because I sure won't be saying anything to Audrey. And what's the point of telling Claire?

Mom and Dad are both in Claire's room, sitting side by side, holding ungloved hands and not wearing their masks. They're using both chairs, so I sit on the floor next to Mom, where she can rest her other hand on my head. I slide my own mask down. Maybe it'll be good luck if we're all breathing the same air.

“Wouldn't it be the most awful feeling to hit someone with your car?” Leila can't let it go.

“Since I've decided I'm never going to drive,” I say, “that's one experience I will definitely avoid.”

“Amaxophobic,” says Zack, “and stick with your instincts.”

We look at him.

“Afraid of riding in cars.”

“Does anyone notice how sick this conversation is?” Audrey asks. “Considering?”

All night Zack is watching me, but I'm not letting my eye get caught. Finally he snags me alone outside the Ding-Dong ladies' room.

“Hey, Nat.”

“Hey.”

“Was I dreaming this afternoon?”

I laugh. “No.”

“So?”

“I'm in kind of a weird zone, Zack.”

“Well, yeah.” So …

“Just please don't say ‘Let's pretend it never happened.’”

“I couldn't pretend that,” I say, not wanting to grin under the circumstances, but knowing we sort of just shook hands on a deal. “But I can't think about this right now.”

He leans over and I hold my breath. He touches his nose to my neck, so lightly.

“Whenever you can,” he says.

I hate when people tell you their dreams, like they mean anything to anyone but the person who dreams them. But I just dreamt about you. I dreamt that my cell
phone rang and the display said CLACK, like I used to call you. So I answered and you said “Hi, Natty” and my breath caught in my throat and in my dream I felt like my head would pop open.

“Claire!” I said, giddy with relief. “Claire! Everybody thinks you're dead.”

And you laughed. “Well, here I am,” you said. “Everybody's wrong, as usual.”

And I was holding the phone, pressing it against my ear like I was breathing through it. “Where are you?” I said.

“I'm going to LA.” you said. “Get it? The City of Angels.”

“Don't go,” I said. “I need to talk.”

But I couldn't hear anymore and I woke up with my hand hot against my ear.

My clock says 2:09 and I'm so awake I'm electric. I can't hear you breathing from the other bed. I look over and the duvet's bunched up but you're not there. You're really not there. It was a dream.

I feel like I have to see her now and not wait till morning. What if this is one of those cosmic moments where she's calling me in my dream but I go back to sleep and only think about it later when they tell me Time of Death, 2:09 a.m.?

I splash water on my face and put a cold, damp hand on the back of my neck to startle myself. I trade boxers for shorts and sneak out of the house, which is so easy I should do it more often. Dad snores and Mom's on drugs. The garage door makes that bent-metal screech, but really, who's going to wake up or care? I pat my bike like she's a pony, waiting for me in her stall.

At the hospital I avoid the main entrance. They probably won't let me in. I go through the Emergency door and sit in the waiting room while I figure it out.

There's a mother holding a little boy who is chalk faced and breathing weird. An old lady is clutching her purse, but I can't tell what's wrong, other than she needs a comb. There's a guy who is piss drunk, with a face somebody punched, his lip puffed up like a donut.

Only medical personnel are supposed to go through the swinging doors, but the nurse at reception is tapping away at her computer and not watching the room. So when the old lady gets everyone's attention by starting to cry, I slip through and head for the elevator.

On the fifth floor, intensive care, I expect Claire's room to be dark, but when I step into the scrub room I realize there's a light, and a nurse sitting inside next to the bed, knitting. I haven't seen this one before. She's older than the day nurses, gray hair cut short, as in hacked off with nail scissors to look like a molting mouse. I wonder
what's she doing here. Should I leave? Do I hide and wait for her break? Do I just go in?

I wash my hands and put on the gown and the mask. I open the door and the nurse looks up.

“Oh,” she says, “who are you?”

“I'm the sister. I mean, I'm Claire's sister. I'm Natalie.”

“Hello, Natalie.”

“I know it's not really visiting hours … but…”

She looks at her watch and laughs, “No, not really.”

“But I really wanted to see her,” I say. “I had a … I had a dream.” That sounds lame. “I just wanted… Has anything changed? Is there any difference?”

Now that I'm looking at Claire, I think, How could there be any difference?

She shakes her head, feeling sorry for me, I bet. “No, dear.”

“Do you think… I mean, you must have seen situations like this before,” I say. “Lots of times … Is there ever any hope?”

She considers me for a moment. “Depends on what you're hoping for,” she says.

Quiet.

I turn to look at Claire. What am I hoping for?

My heart hammers like when a wave knocks you head over heels. I know. What I've been hoping for is impossible.