“Around. There are other places to party, you know.” She pulled away, nodded toward Nathan. “Meet a friend of mine.”
The guy glanced toward Nathan. “Any friend of Lisa’s …”
“I got it.”
“You looking over the Greeks?”
“Not yet,” Nathan said.
“Well, this is party central. If you’re into partying, that is.” He put his arm around Lisa’s waist. “And if you’re with Lisa, you got to be into partying.” He kissed her cheek, and she shooed him away.
“What?” Lisa said to Nathan, looking irritated.
“Why are you doing this? To show me how cool you are?” He was angry at her and jealous of every guy she had a past with.
“Life’s short.” She turned on her heel and melded into the crowd.
Her words stung. Nathan elbowed his way behind her, caught up with her just as she was heading to dance with some other guy who was nuzzling her neck. Nathan watched and seethed. If she was trying to hurt him, she was succeeding. He didn’t think the song would ever end, and when it did, he shoved through and caught her up under his arm. “Wondered where you got off to.” He told the guy, “I use the head and next thing you know, I’m dateless. But now I’m here to take her off your hands.”
The guy, who looked glassy-eyed, gave a drunken shrug and staggered off. Lisa said, “Don’t go possessive on me, Malone.”
The music screamed around them. All he wanted to do was get her out of there.
“I need another beer,” she said.
“Take mine.”
She held it against her temple and Nathan saw perspiration prickling her upper lip. Her skin looked pale and clammy, and she was trembling.
“Come with me.” Shielding her, he wove them both through the room to the front door and outside into the chilly night air. She stumbled. He led her across the lawn and away from others. “What’s wrong?” He didn’t figure she’d had enough beer to be drunk, but something was definitely going on with her.
“Go away,” she said. She dropped the bottle, staggered behind a hedge of bushes, and fell to her knees. He heard her vomiting. He plowed through the brush and knelt beside her. “What can I do?”
“Nothing.” Her face was contorted with pain.
“Let me help you.”
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Bad headache.”
Nathan’s gut seized. “Just lie down.” She needed no urging. He ripped off his jacket and made a pillow for her head. He remembered that she’d stuffed her long coat into a saddlebag on her cycle. “I’ll be right back.” He raced to where they’d left the Harley, quickly pushed it to where she was lying. He could hear her moaning. He fumbled in the saddlebag, grabbed her coat and covered her. “Tell me what to do.”
“Nothing … to … do …,” she managed.
He couldn’t watch her suffer. He rummaged through the bags, pulling out lipstick, a hairbrush and then her cell phone. He found Charlie’s preprogrammed number, punched it. When Charlie answered, Nathan said, “Lisa’s sick. We need help.”
Nathan held Lisa, smoothing her hair and rocking her until Charlie’s pickup arrived at the curb. “Over here!” Nathan shouted. Charlie ran over, scooped up Lisa as if she were a small child, walked her to the truck and laid her on the front seat. “Help me with the cycle,” he said to Nathan.
Together, they lifted the machine into the bed of the pickup and Charlie swiftly secured it. “It happened so fast,” Nathan said. “One minute we were dancing. The next she was in horrible pain.”
“Sit up front and hold her while I drive,” Charlie said.
Nathan did as he was told, all the while his heart hammering with fear. Lisa moaned. “She’ll be all right, won’t she?”
“She needs to go to the ER. Morphine’s the only thing that helps when the headaches are this bad.”
Charlie made record time on the freeway, pulled into the semicircle parking in front of the emergency room at Grady Hospital reserved for ambulances, and lifted Lisa from Nathan’s arms. “Park the truck. Meet me inside.”
By the time Nathan found a space and went inside, Charlie was filling out paperwork in an area crammed with waiting patients. He said, “They took her into triage. They called her doctor. Nothing to do now except wait.”
Charlie turned in the paperwork, returned to the chair Nathan held open for him. They sat side by side, Charlie looking at the floor, Nathan pushed back against the wall. After a few minutes, Nathan said, “How often does this happen to her?”
“The headaches come and go. No pattern. No warning.”
“Does it mean the radiation isn’t helping?”
Charlie glanced over at Nathan. “She’s told you about that?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. I told her she should.”
“It stinks. Her being sick and all.”
“It does,” Charlie said. “Things went pretty good for a long time. We almost forgot the tumor would grow again.” Charlie’s use of we made Nathan aware that Lisa’s mother hadn’t shown up. He wondered about it, but didn’t know how to ask. “If you need to leave—”
“Not until I know she’s okay,” Nathan told him, aware that he was way past his curfew, and not caring.
“It could take a while.”
“I’ll wait.”
At some point, a doctor appeared and talked to Charlie. When he left, Charlie said, “They’re going to keep her for observation.”
“When can she leave?”
“Probably tomorrow. We can go back and see her, though.”
A nurse in green scrubs led them to a curtained-off area. Lisa was on a bed, eyes closed. An IV line was taped to her arm, and the tubing ran to a bag of clear liquid hooked to a pole. To Nathan, she looked childlike, as pale as paste, as fragile as bone china. All he wanted to do was hold her.
Charlie bent and kissed her forehead. “Hey, princess.”
Her eyelids fluttered open. “It was a bad one, Charlie.” She looked drugged and her speech slurred. She focused on Nathan, her expression confused. “Why are you here?”
“Don’t you remember the party?”
“Sort of. I got sick.”
“From the pain,” he clarified, forgiving her everything.
“You should have gone home. You’ll get in trouble.”
“And miss this adventure? No way.”
Her eyelids drooped. “Keep … my … secret, Malone.”
Once she was asleep, Charlie said, “I’ll take you home, Nathan.” Everyone seemed to call him by his first name but Lisa. “I’ll talk to your parents if you want me to.”
“I’ll handle it,” Nathan said.
They left the ER.
Nathan made no pretense of sneaking into his house. He went into the kitchen and to the refrigerator. From a chair at the table, his mother raised up like an apparition. “You are so grounded, mister.”
“Okay,” Nathan said. He extracted a cola, shut the door, popped the tab.
“Is that all you have to say for yourself?” She snapped on the overhead light. “Where were you? Do you know what time it is?”
He glanced at the clock, saw that it was after four in the morning, thought better of telling her the obvious, and took a long drink from his cola. “I went to a party with Lisa.”
“Without permission?”
“Call me wild and crazy.”
Karen came closer. “Don’t be flip. Why didn’t you call? I’ve left a dozen messages on your cell phone. I’ve been worried sick!”
In truth, he’d forgotten about his cell phone. “I turned it off while our band played tonight and forgot to turn it back on. Sorry.”
“Oh, please!” She stomped to the counter. “Did you ride on that girl’s cycle?”
“We did.” He knew she wouldn’t have asked if she didn’t already know the answer.
“Skeet said you had.”
“You called Skeet?”
“What was I supposed to do? Yo
u weren’t home and I could see your car in his driveway.”
“Hope you don’t get him in trouble. You know how his old man is.”
“That’s your fault too.” She banged her fist on the cold granite top.
“I’d like to go to bed now.”
She glared at him. “Sleep fast because there are some new rules. You will be going to work today and every day of your school break with your father. You will come home with him and go nowhere else. You hear me?”
He wanted to protest, but knew that it would be useless at the moment. She was mad and needed time to cool off. He also knew that there was no way he was going to remain under house arrest for two weeks. One way or another, he was going to see Lisa over the holidays.
“You want to talk about it?” Nathan’s father asked as they drove into work the next morning.
“No.” Nathan’s eyes were closed, and he had tipped the passenger’s seat as far back as it would go. Three hours of sleep had done him more harm than good.
“Why do you go out of your way to provoke her, son?”
“I don’t mean to.”
“But you know her hot buttons and lately it seems like you make up new ways to push them.” They rode in silence before his father said, “Is this girl this important to you?”
Nathan raised his head. “Yes. She is.”
His father’s jaw tightened. “You be careful, all right?”
Nathan knew what his father was thinking, and he didn’t need a lecture about safe sex at the moment. Nathan knew how to protect his body. He had no idea how to protect his heart. “I’ll be careful,” he said.
Nathan’s father cut his eyes sideways. “Your mother loves you. You need to understand where she’s coming from.” In the parking garage, Craig turned off the engine but didn’t move to get out of the car.
Now what? Nathan wondered.
“Do you remember anything about that day?”
Nathan didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know which day he was talking about—the day that had changed their lives forever. “You mean the day Molly died,” he said.
“Why are you bringing this up now?” Nathan asked. He really didn’t want to talk about it. “I think it will help you see things from her—our perspective,” his father said.
“Right now?” All Nathan wanted to do was go inside, get to work and call about Lisa.
Ignoring his question, his father continued. “We bought our house in late July, about three years after we were married. It was a big house and much more than we could afford, but your mother’s grandfather had died and left her a small inheritance. That’s what we used for the down payment. We figured we’d make the payments over the life of the mortgage somehow.”
Nathan looked straight ahead as his father talked, at the cold cement wall of the parking garage, and wondered why earthshaking information seemed to be delivered to him in parking garages.
“One of the reasons your mom loved the house was because it had a pool. Did you know she was on her high school swim team?” His dad didn’t wait for Nathan to reply. He plunged ahead. “Molly was especially excited about it, but neither of you could swim and we didn’t want to be foolish, so we fenced in the pool and I installed a special latch up high where little fingers couldn’t reach. Your mom wanted the two of you to learn from the best, so she hired a certified teacher for you and Molly.”
“I don’t remember.”
“No reason you should. You were barely three. In September, Molly started first grade. You both had taken two lessons, but Molly was certain that she could swim. She threw tantrums when your mother made her wear water wings. She kept saying she was a ‘big girl.’ She didn’t need them, only babies like Nathan needed them.”
His father pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. Nathan wished he’d stop the story, yet knew he wouldn’t, and worse, Nathan knew he should hear it. “You got sick,” his dad explained. “Kids’ stuff, ear infection, congestion. You were miserable and awake for about three nights in a row and your mom was awake with you. By Saturday, you were on an antibiotic and getting well. Best of all, you were sleeping again too. Molly was too old for naps, but we insisted on her having a quiet time in her room. I was out playing golf that day. Your mom was so tired that she lay down and fell sound asleep when you did.”
Nathan’s heart was racing now because he knew where the story was going, and it was making him sick to his stomach.
“Molly was a precocious child, such a smart, clever little girl. Once you and Mom were asleep, she sneaked out of her room, down the stairs. She even dragged a dining room chair to the gate and stood on it so she could reach the latch.” He took a breath, and his voice took on a raspy quality. “And she got it open. Your room was overlooking the backyard at that time, and you must have seen her in the pool from your window because when Mom came into your room and asked if you knew where Molly was, you said, ‘Molly go swim.’ ”
From the deepest recesses of his memory, Nathan heard a wailing sound. He wasn’t sure if it was the sound of his mother’s anguish or a siren. He shook his head to clear out the noise. In his mind, he saw a bird’s-eye view of the backyard, a blue-water pool and someone floating facedown. A memory? Again, Nathan wasn’t sure. Emotion clogged his throat and he couldn’t speak.
“The paramedics came but couldn’t do anything for her. Molly was dead. After the funeral, we hired a contractor to take out the pool. We put in gardens to remind ourselves that life goes on. I believe that everything your mother plants is a tribute to Molly’s memory.”
Nathan knew it was true.
“At any rate, your mother never forgave herself for falling asleep, and you became the focus of her life.” His father squeezed Nathan’s shoulder. “I know you want to grow up, son. I know you feel smothered sometimes. All I want you to realize is why she’s this way and—and to be kind to her.”
Nathan cleared his throat. “She shouldn’t blame herself, Dad. It was an accident.”
“We know that in our heads, but in our hearts—” He paused. “Well, in your heart you tell yourself you should have prevented it from happening. If she had lived, Molly would have graduated from high school by now, gone to college or gotten a job, maybe even gotten married. No way of ever knowing, of course. When a child dies, dreams die.”
Nathan’s insides turned cold. Lisa’s face materialized on the concrete wall outside the car’s windshield as his father’s words went through him like a sword.
Going back to work at his dad’s office in downtown Atlanta wasn’t difficult for Nathan. Not only was he warmly greeted by his dad’s colleagues, he had use of the company van for errands and deliveries, plus free time. The first opportunity, he called Lisa’s cell and was relieved when she answered. She was home.
“Charlie told me how much you helped. Thanks for that. Did you get in much trouble?”
“Not too much.”
“How did your gig go? I never asked you, and I should have. I wanted to come, but the headache came on. I took some stuff and thought I’d knocked it out. I was wrong.”
“We got paid, so they must have liked us.” He paused. “Do you get headaches like that very often?”
“Please don’t ask me questions about my health. I really don’t like talking about it.”
Didn’t she understand how worried he was about her? Didn’t she know that he couldn’t simply forget what was happening to her? He didn’t want to scare her off though, or have her retreat into her isolation mode, so he asked, “When can I see you?”
“Aside from radiation treatments, I’ll be hanging around until school starts back up.”
He told her about work and said he’d be sticking close to home evenings. “But we can meet for lunch when I have a delivery out your way.”
She read between the lines. “I thought you said you weren’t in trouble.”
“Maybe just a little bit of trouble.”
“I’ll meet you wherever you want.”
Nathan felt
elated. “I’ll let you know.”
On Saturday, The Heartbreakers played at a man’s fortieth birthday party. After dropping off Skeet and Jodie, Nathan fought the urge to go to Lisa’s and instead went home like a good boy, arriving before the eleven-o’clock news. On Sunday afternoon, Nathan wheedled time out of his mother to go Christmas shopping at the mall. He bought toys for the twins, a sweater for his mother, a dress shirt for his dad and a video game for Skeet. He spent the bulk of his money on a heart-shaped necklace for Lisa. Two days before Christmas, he met her in one of the city’s public parks and gave it to her. The day had turned blustery, the sky gray, but sitting on the park bench watching her unwrap his gift made him forget everything except being near her.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, holding it up to catch the light.
Like you, he wanted to say, but knew it would sound too corny. “Let me put it on you.”
She stroked the gold heart once he snapped the catch. “I have something for you too.” She reached into the oversize handbag she was carrying and pulled out two wrapped items. One was a CD of a hot country band. “You have it?”
He didn’t. He unwrapped the other gift and discovered a book on how to market songs—how to sell music, and names and addresses of agents, houses and music industry labels.
“I haven’t thought about selling my songs in a while.”
“Why not? You can’t forget your dreams.”
“Pipe dreams.”
“Has Fuller read any of your work out loud yet?”
“A couple.” Nathan squirmed, not wanting her to know he’d written the one poem for her. Which didn’t make sense because he’d all but laid his heart at her feet. “How about you? He read any of your stuff?”
“Some.”
“Some is more than a couple.”
“A figure of speech.” She looked up at the low gray clouds blanketing the sky. “I wish it were spring.”
“It’s not too far away.”
“Far enough,” she said.
Right after Christmas, Nathan got the idea of inviting Lisa to his house. How could his mother object to that? They’d be right there under her watchful eye. Karen agreed, but Nathan saw by his mother’s expression that she wasn’t thrilled with the idea. What surprised him was that Lisa agreed to come. And she came often, making a guarded peace with his mother by talking about flowers and Lisa’s beloved flame trees.