Henry told Larry King, “She’s my sister, and so it’s private to us, the family. You can’t blame my folks for not wanting to leave her bedside. But we also understand how people can really genuinely care so much about a stranger. These people have become our friends even though we’ll never meet them.”
Jeannie was proud of him.
Henry started his own blog. He asked Jeannie to contribute a daily Bible verse, knowing that she would like that. The first was from Psalm 121.
March 10
Psalm 121:1 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
There was great relief when my sister recognized my brother Pat today. Pat came home from school for the weekend because our family is having a sort of celebration at church, a Mass of thanks and then a small get-together. He went to the hospital and right away Maureen, who was sitting up in her chair, said “Fat!” And we know it wasn’t a mistake, the kind she makes when she says “gulls” but means “glass” or “slider” when she means “window.” When he was in about sixth grade, Pat was chubby, and Maury would tease him and call him “Fatty Patty.” It was a great moment, because my brother was very depressed that Maury didn’t know him at first.
Maureen’s therapy is going well. Her right leg is still very weak, but her left leg is getting strong and stronger. Her arms were injured very badly in the crash, so the therapists are encouraged that she can do some small things like lift a glass—actually that’s a pretty big thing!—and put together a simple puzzle.
The hospital let us bring our Yorkshire terrier, Rag Mop, to visit. He was Maury’s twelfth-birthday present. I thought she was going to jump out of the bed when she saw him. All the kids on the rehab unit loved petting Rag, and Maury was so proud that Rag would lie down on her lap while our mom was wheeling her around the unit. She still has trouble with ordinary words, but she startles us sometimes with more complicated ones. For example, Mom said she looked into the big playroom and right away said, “Chimpanzee,” because there was a chimpanzee family painted on the wall.
My mom asks all of you who read this to please pray for our dear friends, the Flannerys, who are in the first stages of grief for their daughter Bridget.
Jeannie spent one whole night reading Henry’s blog and the answers to it, which came in by the dozens.
Then she read the blog begun by Molly. There were hundreds of posts from people who signed themselves “CheerleaderMom” or “BlessingBabe” or “SurferDude” or “FrancaisFrancis,” all of them wanting to share their puzzlement and grief for the Flannerys and their joy for the O’Malleys. She was particularly touched by one of them, from a woman in Utah who wrote: “We understand now in part but will understand all in time. We aren’t given to understand what happened, but we need to rejoice for both of these girls, for one has gone home to God and the other has come home, like the lost lamb, to her family.”
Jeannie thought all of it was good. But the cheerleaders’ blog annoyed Henry.
One of them had changed the name to THESETWOGIRLS: The Original Bridget-and-Maureen Blog.
Henry changed theirs to The Official O’Malley Family Blog.
Then Leland wrote: “Of course we love Coach and Mrs. O. to the sky, but it’s hard to not be invited to see your best friend if you thought she was dead. They keep her to themselves like they think we’re these intruders with germs or something. I haven’t been to see Maureen one time and they haven’t returned my phone calls.”
Henry looked up the Holtzers’ number and called.
“Leland,” he said, “it’s Henry O’Malley.”
“Oh,” she said. “Hi.”
“I called to ask you to come and see Maureen. You didn’t need an engraved invitation, Leland.”
“You don’t have to be such a jerk, Henry,” she said.
“I’m not the one being a jerk. You’re making us sound like we don’t want people around Maury, but we actually would love it if she could see some of you.”
“Just some of us. Not me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, you act like it,” Leland said. “I know the Flannerys are really offended that you didn’t talk to them, too, which I personally would have done myself.”
“Have you been over to see them?”
“No, but I know that’s how they feel.”
“I didn’t call to fight with a seventeen-year-old kid, Leland,” said Henry, pulling the college card.
“And what are you, twenty? Please.”
“This is ridiculous. You guys act like this is all about you going on the Today show and getting quoted in magazines. My sister was dead. We thought my sister was dead,” Henry said.
“We did, too, Henry. And we love Maureen, too. We probably know her better than you do. We spent every day with her for the past three years. You’ve been in college since she was in eighth grade. Give me a break!”
“Well, then come and see her. Come a few at a time. But don’t be surprised if she doesn’t recognize you at first. She’s still getting better, and she doesn’t even recognize my dad.”
Leland gasped. “No way!”
“It’s very common.”
And it was in the Star-Telegram, on the front page below the fold, in the morning. The fact that Maureen didn’t know her own father was there with an anonymous quote from someone “at the scene” saying that Maureen had not been wearing her seat belt.
But the O’Malleys decided to ignore it.
Jeannie offered Father Genovese a hundred dollars to rent the church gathering room for an hour after Saturday night services so that she and Bill and the boys could throw an open house to thank everyone who had been so kind to them.
Seeing people again, Jeannie felt as though it were she who was awakening from a long sleep.
She realized that it had become a custom for her to go for days without taking a bath or washing her hair, simply stumbling out of bed and shrugging on Maury’s old UM sweatshirt over whatever she’d had on the day before—leggings or sweatpants or pajama bottoms—and heading to the hospital. If it were up to her, she would have eaten nothing but chocolate because it gave her a sensory moment of being alive—not pleasure, simply a short reentry into the realm of human comfort. Jeannie hadn’t cooked a meal in months.
Every day since the accident, though, there was a casserole and a dessert outside the door. No notes, no bids for gratitude. Jeannie had enough Corning Ware to open an aisle at Sears! All the offers of support and kindness, the benefactor who would not give his or her name who paid off the emergency treatment balance—and it was huge, despite what the hospital deferred, more than ten thousand dollars. She couldn’t believe she had been so lost and so, honestly, demented that she couldn’t respond to these gestures. How could she not have been aware of such love?
Father Genovese, of course, refused any payment for renting the room. The Altar Guild decorated it in gold and black—in tribute to Bill as well as to both girls. And when Jeannie saw all the older ladies down there before Mass, all of them just itching to hug her and tell her that their prayers were answered, she almost felt guilty.
It was a beautiful occasion.
Bill got choked up thanking everyone, and Jeannie had to take over. “We’re just so happy and so blessed,” she said.
After an hour or so people drifted away, happy.
Dr. Park said that the comfort of familiar things in a hospital setting was important to any child, no matter how old she was. So parents were encouraged to bring everything they could find that wasn’t too big or cumbersome.
The O’Malleys filled a duffel bag with Maury’s things—her favorite Mickey Mouse flannel PJ bottoms; her CDs and a boom box; photos of her brothers and Rag Mop, and of Bridget.
Jeannie wished she had the quilt she had pieced from Maury’s baby clothes and middle-school cheerleading uniform, but it gave her comfort knowing it lay over little Bridget, like a touch from Maureen’s hand. Instead she took out the precious old quilt her gr
andmother had brought from Ireland—these many years in the cedar closet.
Bill was strangely quiet on the drive toward the hospital; Jeannie had known this man for thirty years. She finally asked, “What’s eating you, darling?”
“Well, you know we should go see them.”
He didn’t have to add who “they” were.
“We could send them a letter,” Jeannie offered.
“Jean, you know we can’t do that.”
“How can I face them?
“We have to,” Bill said simply.
And so they backtracked and knocked for several minutes on the Flannerys’ door before Sarah answered.
Dark haired and broad shouldered, she looked nothing like her older sister Bridget. She and Eliza were both more like Mike.
“I’ll get Daddy,” she said.
Mike came down the hall to meet them. Impossibly, he seemed to have lost ten pounds in two weeks. His thick, dark hair stuck up in spikes, and the sweats he wore were stained with something, coffee or syrup.
“Bill,” Mike said. “Jean.”
“Mike,” Bill said. “I’m so sorry. Jean and I and the boys are so sorry. We loved Bridget.”
“I know that.”
Jeannie asked, “Can I see Kitt?”
“She’s, ah, asleep,” said Mike. “Yeah. She is asleep. It’s best for her now. She can’t really handle it…the calls from the newspapers and people trying to take pictures of the little girls. Yeah.”
“Who is down there?” a voice shrieked from somewhere high above them.
“Yeah,” said Mike distractedly. He called, “It’s Bill and Jean, honey. They came to talk to us.”
They heard the quick slap of running feet.
“NOW!” Kitt screamed, leaning over the railing of the vaulted foyer twenty feet above their heads. “Where were they when we found out it was our daughter who died?”
“Kitt,” Jeannie said, beginning to climb the stairs.
“It’s probably not the best time,” Mike said.
Jeannie kept climbing. Kitt ran at her, swinging her right arm out perpendicular to Jean’s face; but before she could strike, Jean wrapped her arms around the taller woman and together they sank to the carpet, Kitt sobbing and clinging to Jeannie. “Why couldn’t we keep both of them? Why would God play such a cruel joke on us?”
“Oh, Kitt, I don’t know. I only know you helped keep our girl alive.”
“I can’t go on living,” Kitt whispered, sitting back on the carpet.
“You don’t have to, for a while. Just keep breathing. I didn’t ever want to see another living soul. But I had to. I had to because I had four sons, like you have those two little girls.”
“A part of me hates you,” Kitt said. “Can you believe that?”
“Completely,” said Jeannie. “We felt the same way.”
“No, you’re a good person. You’re naturally good,” Kitt replied.
“No one is that good,” Jeannie told her. “We had awful thoughts.”
They sat together on the floor for ninety minutes. Finally Kitt nodded off in Jeannie’s arms.
the pipeline
After she finally visited Maureen, Leland showed everyone the photo she had taken with her phone. Maureen had tried to put her hands up to block the picture, but her hands were too slow.
“She looks like Frankenstein,” said Elly Mazur. “I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
“And she talks in one word. ‘Hi. Mom.’ And she can’t remember the easiest things, like the word for ‘window,’” Leland said.
“Lee-Lee, shut up!” Molly said. “That’s not fair!”
“I am only telling the truth,” Leland said.
“You are only doing your favorite thing, causing trouble,” said Molly. “We have practice in ten minutes. The NBC crew is coming to film us.”
“Ohmigod,” said Leland. “I look like dung!”
“Well, if you weren’t so busy running off your mouth!”
“I heard Danny went to see her yesterday,” Elly said. “Is that true?”
“I have no idea,” Molly said.
“Yes, it is,” said Leland.
Molly grabbed Leland by the arm and let her fingers dig in.
By the next day, Leland had sold the photo of Maureen to the British magazine. When it finally worked its way over the Internet back to Minneapolis, her parents grounded her for two weeks and made her apologize to the O’Malleys.
Henry was furious.
Jeannie was hurt.
Danny Carmody told Lee-Lee she had gone nuts and she was no friend of his anymore.
Danny hated the attention and couldn’t understand why anyone would feel otherwise. Reporters followed him to and from school in cars. People took pictures of him bringing pink roses to lay against the temporary marker on Bridget’s grave. It seemed that whenever he said something, it showed up on a blog or in the newspaper. It got so that Ev was the only other human being outside his family he spoke to.
Ev and Coach.
And then he went to see Maureen, and it was all so familiar. Danny felt as though he had crept into a refuge. The hospital was more real to him than school.
The first thing that happened had terrified him.
When he got to her room, Maureen wasn’t there. He stood just inside the door, hoping someone would come along and tell him what was going on. The person turned out to be Maureen, returning to her room in a wheelchair pushed by Mrs. O.
She had changed so much in just over a couple of weeks that he had had to sit down.
There was also the painful knowledge that she wasn’t his Bridget. The last time he had seen her, he had thought she was a different girl. It was too much information to organize on the spot.
So Danny simply looked at her.
The bruises on Maureen’s face were fading. She had teeth instead of the caved-in place at her cheek. Her hair was French-braided loosely, and she had on her Mickey Mouse pajamas and her big UM sweatshirt. When she smiled at him, she looked almost like a regular girl.
Danny couldn’t help but think of that spring night last year.
Maureen had probably forgotten it ever happened.
But she did know him.
“Danny!” she said clearly, and held out her hands. He got up and hugged her while Mrs. O. watched. “Danny! Bug…not here,” Maury said. “Danny, so sad. Danny, it’s so sad. Danny, I gush the try. I gush…” She wanted to pummel herself. She thought, I sound like a retard, and I probably am.
“The confusion gets worse when she’s upset,” said Mrs.
O. She and the nurse maneuvered Maureen from the chair to the bed. Then Mrs. O sat down in the rocker. Danny sat in the big, overstuffed chair.
No one said anything.
Jeannie took out her knitting bag.
Maureen finally said, “Mom. Go. Banana. Split.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry! Maureen, I’m so sorry! Of course you don’t want your mother sitting here! I’ll go get a bite to eat! I like the ice cream downstairs. She’s not being random.”
“It’s okay,” Danny assured Mrs. O. “You can stay.”
“Nuh!” Maureen said, louder. She rapped on the arm of her chair with her knuckles. “Splits. Bigelow. Go. Go!” She blushed. “Sorry. I thought of cheering. In the brain, out the mouth. That is what Shannon says. Shannon is the physical therapy person.”
How could she say some things so plainly but stumble over the word “no”? Danny was dumbfounded.
“Maury’s right, Danny,” said Mrs. O. “She would have killed me for sitting here watching her talk to her friends before the accident, and I don’t blame her for feeling the same way now!”
Alone, Danny took Maureen’s hand and kissed it. “You know, you’re probably thinking I’m sad that it’s you. How I really feel is sad it’s not Bridge. I’m happy it’s you. I missed you. I couldn’t stand that I would never see you again.”
Maureen nodded and pointed to her chest. Danny took this to mean that she fel
t the same way.
“I loose,” she said. “Let loose. No. no. I have loose.”
“You lost your best friend. I lost my girlfriend—the girl I really thought I would marry someday,” Danny said, frightened he would cry.
He did begin to cry.
“Okay, Danny. Okay, Danny,” said Maury. Of course it was okay. They had both loved Bridget so. Anything you said was safe with Maury.
Maureen had felt confused. The strong, square line of his jaw made her stomach tighten below her belly button. She remembered Danny had kissed her once. They had done some things. She and this person right hair. No. Here.
But she also knew that Bridget and Danny had done everything. Their first time was at homecoming—a warm October night on top of the hill at the ritzy golf course subdivision…. What was it called? The Covers? The Corn? Bridget had told Maureen everything: how much it hurt the first time, how good it felt the second time.
“You’re probably going to wait until you’re married,” Bridget had told Maury.
“I’m probably going to wait until I meet someone who wants to do it with me,” Maureen answered.
“Lots of guys would want to,” Bridget argued.
“Yeah, sick perverts like Grant Milorry!”
“Lots of guys like you,” Bridget insisted.
“They like me, but they don’t like me like a girl. They like me like a sister,” Maureen had told her. “Danny says I’m as good to talk to as a boy.”
“That’s quite a compliment,” Bridget said, heading for the bathroom.
She watched now as Danny talked, and unwanted thoughts kept crowding in on her. This boy had been naked with Bridget. She felt her face get warmer and warmer. If Danny looked up now, he would see a girl who looked like a potato. No, no. A tomato.
“So, all those days I sat here and read and cried and watched TV and farted, it was you all the time,” Danny said. “I guess I’m glad it was you, because you know me. But it’s really weird seeing the same girl I saw for all those weeks and knowing it’s not Bridget.” Maureen nodded. “You look so much like yourself, which means you look so much like her. You look…pretty.”