"What do you think?" I smile at her. "Martha Stewart would love it, huh?"
"Martha Stewart would make you her life project," Julia murmurs. She sits down on the couch, leaps up, and removes a handful of potato chips that have, holy God, already left a grease print in the shape of a heart on her sweet ass.
"You want a drink?" Don't let it be said my mother never taught me manners.
She glances around, then shakes her head. "I'll pass."
Shrugging, I pull a Labatt's out of the fridge. "So there's been a little fallout along the home front?"
"Wouldn't you know?"
"I try not to."
"How come?"
"Because it's what I do best." Grinning, I take a nice long pull of my beer. "Although this is one blowout I would've loved to see."
"Tell me about Kate and Anna."
"What am I supposed to tell you?" I swing down next to her on the couch, way too close. On purpose.
"How do you get along with them?"
I lean forward. "Why, Ms. Romano. Are you asking me if I play nice?" When she doesn't as much as blink, I knock off the act. "They survive me," I answer. "Like everyone else."
This answer must interest her, because she writes something down on her little white pad. "What was it like, growing up in this family?"
A dozen flip responses work their way up my throat, but the one that comes out is a totally dark horse. "When I was twelve, there was this time Kate got sick--not even big sick, just an infection, but she couldn't seem to get rid of it by herself. So they took Anna in to give granulocytes--white blood cells. It wasn't like Kate planned it or anything, but it happened to be Christmas Eve. We were supposed to all go out as a family, you know, and get a tree." I pull a pack of smokes from my pocket. "You mind?" I ask, but I never give her a chance to answer before I light up. "I was shuttled over to some neighbor's house last minute, which sucked, because they were having a nice Christmas Eve with their relatives and kept whispering about me like I was a charity case and deaf to boot. Anyway, that all got lame pretty fast, so I said I had to pee and I snuck out. I walked home and took one of my dad's axes and a handsaw and chopped down this little spruce in the middle of the front yard. By the time the neighbor figured out I was gone, I had the whole thing set up in our living room in the tree stand, garland, ornaments, you name it."
In my mind, I can still see those lights--red and blue and yellow, blinking over and over on a tree as overdressed as an Eskimo in Bali. "So Christmas morning, my parents come to the neighbors to collect me. They look like hell, the both of them, but when they bring me home there are presents under the tree. I'm all excited and I find one with my name on it, and it turns out to be this little windup car--something that would have been great for a three-year-old, but not me, and that I happened to know was for sale in the hospital gift shop. As was every single other present I got that year. Go freaking figure." I stab my cigarette butt out on the thigh of my jeans. "They never even said anything about the tree," I tell her. "That's what it's like growing up in this family."
"Do you think it's the same for Anna?"
"No. Anna's on their radar, because she plays into their grand plan for Kate."
"How do your parents decide when Anna will help Kate medically?" she asks.
"You make it sound like there's some process involved. Like there's actually a choice."
She lifts her head. "Isn't there?"
I ignore her, because that's a rhetorical question if I've ever heard one, and stare out the window. In the front yard, you can still see the stump from that spruce. No one in this family ever covers up their mistakes.
*
When I was seven I got it in my head to dig to China. How hard could it be, I figured--a straight shot, a tunnel? I took a shovel out of the garage and I started a hole just wide enough for me to slip into. Every night I would drag the old plastic sandbox cover across it, just in case of rain. For four weeks I worked at this, as the rocks bit into my arms to make battle scars, and roots grabbed at my ankles.
What I didn't count on were the tall walls that grew around me, or the belly of the planet, hot under my sneakers. Digging straight down, I'd gotten hopelessly lost. In a tunnel, you have to light your own way, and I've never been very good at that.
When I yelled out, my father found me in seconds, although I'm sure I waited through several lives. He crawled into the pit, torn between my hard work and my stupidity. "This could have collapsed on you!" he said, and lifted me onto solid ground.
From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.
Darkness, you know, is relative.
BRIAN
IT TAKES ANNA LESS THAN TEN MINUTES to move into my room at the station. While she puts her clothes into a drawer and sets her hairbrush next to mine on the dresser, I go out to the kitchen where Paulie is chefing up dinner. The guys are all waiting for an explanation.
"She's going to stay with me here for a while," I say. "We're working some things out."
Caesar looks up from a magazine. "Is she gonna ride with us?"
I haven't thought of this. Maybe it will take her mind off things, to feel like she's an apprentice of sorts. "You know, she just might."
Paulie turns around. He's making fajitas tonight, beef. "Everything okay, Cap?"
"Yeah, Paulie, thanks for asking."
"If there's anyone upsetting her," Red says, "they'll have to go through all four of us now."
The others nod. I wonder what they would think if I told them that the people upsetting Anna are Sara and me.
I leave the guys finishing up dinner preparations and go back to my room, where Anna sits on the second twin bed with her feet pretzeled beneath her. "Hey," I say, but she doesn't respond. It takes me a moment to see that she's wearing headphones, blasting God knows what into her ears.
She sees me and shuts off the music, pulling the phones to rest on her neck like a choker. "Hey."
I sit down on the edge of the bed and look at her. "So. You, uh, want to do something?"
"Like what?"
I shrug. "I don't know. Play cards?"
"You mean like poker?"
"Poker, Go Fish. Whatever."
She looks at me carefully. "Go Fish?"
"Want to braid your hair?"
"Dad," Anna asks, "are you feeling all right?"
I am more comfortable rushing into a building that is going to pieces around me than I am trying to make her feel at ease. "I just--I want you to know you can do anything you want here."
"Is it okay to leave a box of tampons in the bathroom?"
Immediately, my face goes red, and as if it's catching, so does Anna's. There is only one female firefighter, a part-timer, and the women's room is on the lower level of the station. But still.
Anna's hair swings over her face. "I didn't mean . . . I can just keep them--"
"You can put them in the bathroom," I announce. Then I add with authority, "If anyone complains, we'll say they're mine."
"I'm not sure they'll believe you, Dad."
I wrap an arm around her. "I may not do this right at first. I've never bunked with a thirteen-year-old girl."
"I don't shack up with forty-two-year-old guys too often, either."
"Good, because I'd have to kill them."
Her smile is a stamp against my neck. Maybe this will not be as hard as I think. Maybe I can convince myself that this move will ultimately keep my family together, even though the first step involves breaking it apart.
"Dad?"
"Hmm?"
"Just so you know: no one plays Go Fish after they're potty-trained."
She hugs me extra tight, the way she used to when she was small. I remember, in that instant, the last time I carried Anna. We were hiking across a field, the five of us--and the cattails and wild daisies were taller than her head. I swung her up into my arms, and together we parted a sea of r
eeds. But for the first time we both noticed how far down her legs dangled, how she was too big to sit on my hip, and before long she was struggling to get down and walk on her own.
Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.
*
It seems remarkable that while one of our daughters is leading us into a legal crisis, the other is in the throes of a medical one--but then again, we have known for quite some time that Kate's at the end stages of renal failure. It is Anna, this time, who's thrown us for a loop. And yet--like always--you figure it out; you manage to deal with both. The human capacity for burden is like bamboo--far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.
While Anna was packing up her things that afternoon, I went to the hospital. Kate was having her dialysis done when I came into the room. She was asleep with her CD headphones on; Sara rose from a chair with one finger pressed to her lips, a warning.
She led me into the hallway. "How's Kate?" I asked.
"About the same," she answered. "How's Anna?"
We traded the status of our children like baseball cards that we'd flash for a peek, but didn't want to give up just yet. I looked at Sara, wondering how I was supposed to tell her what I'd done.
"Where did you two run off to while I was fending off the judge?" she said.
Well. If you sit around and think about how hot the fire's going to be, you'll never get into the thick of it. "I took Anna to the station."
"Something going on at work?"
I took a deep breath and leaped off the cliff that my marriage had become. "No. Anna's going to stay with me there for a few days. I think maybe she needs a little time by herself."
Sara stared at me. "But Anna's not going to be by herself. She's going to be with you."
The hallway seemed too bright and too wide all of a sudden. "Is that a bad thing?"
"Yes," she said. "Do you really think that buying into Anna's tantrum is going to help her any in the long run?"
"I'm not buying into her tantrum; I'm giving her space to come to the right conclusions by herself. You're not the one who's been sitting outside with her while you're in the judge's chambers. I'm worried about her."
"Well, that's where we're different," Sara argued. "I'm worried about both our daughters."
I looked at her, and for just a splinter of a minute saw the woman she used to be--one who knew where to find her smile, instead of having to rummage for it; one who always messed up punch lines and still got a laugh; one who could reel me in without even trying. I put my hands on her cheeks. Oh, there you are, I thought, and I leaned down to kiss her on the forehead. "You know where to find us," I said, and walked away.
*
Shortly after midnight we get an ambulance call. Anna blinks from her bed as the bells go off and light automatically floods the room. "You can stay," I tell her, but she's already up and putting on her shoes.
I've given her old turnout gear from our part-time female firefighter: a pair of boots, a hard hat. She shrugs into the coat and climbs into the rear of the ambulance, strapping herself to the rear-facing seat behind Red, who's driving.
We scream down the streets of Upper Darby to the Sunshine Gates Nursing Home, an anteroom for meeting St. Peter. Red grabs the stretcher from the ambulance while I carry in the paramedic's bag. A nurse meets us at the front doors. "She fell down and lost consciousness for a while. And she's got an altered mental state."
We are led to one of the rooms. Inside, an elderly woman lies on the floor, tiny and fine-boned as a bird, blood oozing from the top of her head. It smells like she's lost control of her bowels. "Hi, hon," I say, leaning down immediately. I reach for her hand, the skin thin as crepe. "Can you squeeze my fingers?" And to the nurse: "What's her name?"
"Eldie Briggs. She's eighty-seven."
"Eldie, we're going to help you," I say, continuing to assess her. "She's got a lac on the occipital area. I'm going to need the backboard." While Red runs out to the ambulance to get it, I take Eldie's blood pressure and pulse--irregular. "Do you have any pain in your chest?" The woman moans, but shakes her head and then winces. "I'm going to have to put you in a collar, hon, all right? It looks like you hit your head pretty hard." Red returns, bearing the board. Lifting my head, I look at the nurse again. "Do we know if her change in consciousness was the result of the fall, or did it cause the fall?"
She shakes her head. "No one saw it happen."
"Of course," I mutter under my breath. "I need a blanket."
The hand that offers it is tiny and shaking. Until that moment, I've completely forgotten Anna is with us. "Thanks, baby," I say, taking the time to smile at her. "You want to help me here? Can you get down to Mrs. Briggs's feet?"
She nods, white-faced, and crouches down. Red aligns the backboard. "We're going to roll you, Eldie . . . on three . . . " We count, shift, strap her on. The motion makes her scalp wound gush again.
We load her into the ambulance. Red hauls off to the hospital as I move around the cramped quarters of the cabin, hooking up the oxygen tank, ministering. "Anna, grab me an IV start kit?" I begin to cut Eldie's clothes off her. "You still with us, Mrs. Briggs? Little needle stick coming," I say. I position her arm and try to get a vein, but they are like the faintest tracings of pencil, blueprint shadings. Sweat beads on my forehead. "I can't get in with a twenty. Anna, can you find a twenty-two?"
It doesn't help that the patient is moaning, crying. That the ambulance is swaying back and forth, turning corners, braking, as I try to insert the smaller needle. "Dammit," I say, throwing the second line on the floor.
I do a quick cardiac strip and then pick up the radio and dial into the hospital to tell them we're incoming. "Eighty-seven-year-old patient, had a fall. She's alert and answering questions, BP 136 over 83, pulse 130 and irregular. I tried to get IV access for you but haven't had a lot of luck with that. She does have a lac on the back of her head but it's pretty well controlled by now. I've got her on oxygen. Any questions?"
In the beam of an approaching truck, I see Anna's face. The truck turns, the light falls, and I realize that my daughter is holding this stranger's hand.
At the emergency entrance of the hospital, we pull the stretcher out of the cabin and wheel into the automatic doors. A team of doctors and nurses is already waiting. "She's still talking to us," I say.
A male nurse taps her thin wrists. "Jesus."
"Yeah, that's why I couldn't get a line. I needed pedi cuffs to get her pressure."
Suddenly I remember Anna, who's standing wide-eyed in the doorway. "Daddy? Is that lady going to die?"
"I think she might have had a stroke . . . but she's going to make it. Listen, why don't you just go wait over there, in a chair? I'll be out in five minutes, tops."
"Dad?" she says, and I pause at the threshold. "Wouldn't it be cool if they were all that way?"
She doesn't see it the way I do--that Eldie Briggs is a paramedic's nightmare, that her veins are shot and her condition's waffling and that this has not been a good call at all. What Anna means is that whatever is wrong with Eldie Briggs can be fixed.
*
I go inside and continue to feed information to the ER staff as needed. About ten minutes later, I finish up my Run Form and look for my daughter in the waiting area, but she's gone missing. I find Red smoothing fresh sheets onto the stretcher, strapping a pillow under its belt. "Where's Anna?"
"I figured she was with you."
Glancing down one hallway and then the other, all I see are weary physicians, other paramedics, small scatterings of dazed people sipping coffee and hoping for the best. "I'll be right back."
Compared to the frenzy of the ER, the eighth floor is all tucked tight. The nurses all greet me by name as I head for Kate's room and gently push open the door.
Anna is too big for Sara's lap, but that's where she's sitting. She and Kate are
both asleep. Over the crown of Anna's head, Sara watches me approach.
I kneel in front of my wife and brush Anna's hair off her temples. "Baby," I whisper, "it's time to go home."
Anna sits up slowly. She lets me take her hand and draw her upright, Sara's palm trailing down her spine. "It's not home," Anna says, but she follows me out of the room all the same.
*
Past midnight, I lean down beside Anna and balance my words on the edge of her ear. "Come see this," I coax. She sits up, grabs a sweatshirt, stuffs her feet into her sneakers. Together, we climb to the station's roof.
The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark. "Oh!" Anna exclaims, and she lies down so that she can see better.
"It's the Perseids," I tell her. "A meteor shower."
"It's incredible."
Shooting stars are not stars at all. They're just rocks that enter the atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on, when we see one, is only a trail of debris.
In the upper left quadrant of the sky, a radiant bursts in a new stream of sparks. "Is it like this every night, while we're asleep?" Anna asks.
It is a remarkable question--Do all the wonderful things happen when we are not aware of them? I shake my head. Technically, the earth's path crosses this comet's gritty tail once a year. But a show as dynamic as this one might be once in a lifetime.
"Wouldn't it be cool if a star landed in the backyard? If we could find it when the sun came up and put it into a fishbowl and use it as a night-light or a camping lantern?" I can almost see her doing it, combing the lawn for the mark of burned grass. "Do you think Kate can see these, out her window?"
"I'm not sure." I come up on an elbow and look at her carefully.
But Anna keeps her eyes glued to the upended bowl of the heavens. "I know you want to ask me why I'm doing all this."
"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."
Anna lies down, her head pillowed against my shoulder. Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas--a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak.
FRIDAY