Chapter 1.1
Behind the house with the blue balloons, Tom Greenwood was starting to grill the steaks for his son’s fourteenth birthday party. The party consisted of seven boys having chicken fights in the above ground pool, chasing each other around the yard, calling each other names, and eating anything and everything his wife Bonnie and her friend Elaine could find to dump in a basket and bring out to the table. Tom had promised Bonnie that he would do all the cooking for this party since she had to tend bar later that night and also because it put him closer to the center of the kids’ attention. But Tom didn’t plan for the mountain of food the boys would devour before he got the real meal finished. The ladies always seemed to make him feel foolish about such things, smiling kindly at him as they took care of whatever he messed up.
Josh came out of the pool, shaking the water out of his light brown hair and sprinkling his father in the process. “Will you take me to the video game store tonight after the party, Pop?” he asked. Josh relished these occasional days when his father partook of family life.
“You can wait a day, can’t you, before you spend your money?” said Tom, flipping a steak.
“School starts soon, Dad. Time’s a wastin’. I could play all day tomorrow,” Josh said, twisting his face into that pleading little boy expression that always worked on Dad, but never on Mom.
“No, and that’s my final answer,” said Tom. Josh was surprised but he didn’t complain. He was having too good a day to argue.
Tom’s menu included baked beans from the deli and a huge green salad that looked like a lot of work but was really two large containers of toppings from the salad bar at the supermarket dumped on top of bagged lettuce. He did prepare homemade potato salad from scratch early this morning because Josh had specifically asked for it, or more precisely, because Bonnie snapped at him last night when he came home with supermarket potato salad. He didn’t use the family recipe that Josh requested. In Tom’s opinion adding expensive deli olives and roasted red peppers to the potato salad was a big improvement which also demonstrated that he couldn’t be completely bossed around. “Bonnie,” he said in her general direction. “Bring out the salads, will you? They can eat them before the steaks are done.” He was getting more and more embarrassed by the ladies’ frantic efforts to feed the kids.
“Good idea,” Bonnie said. Elaine nodded in relief. They brought the salads out and the kids tore into the food.
Josh’s best friend Max, temporarily sated, came over and said, “Mr. Greenwood, would it be all right if we got the volleyball net out of your garage?”
“Sure, Max. Help yourself,” Tom said. Max was Elaine’s son, the same age as Josh. Max and Elaine were their catty-corner across the street neighbors in an old residential neighborhood where the streets ran in nice logical straight lines unlike the self-conscious new developments where Tom installed wallboard. Max was the only one of Josh’s friends that called him Mr. Greenwood, even though he had known him far longer than any of the others. Some of the kids called him Tom, which he didn’t mind. But most of them talked to him as if he didn’t have a name, which he did mind.
Max and Josh had one important thing in common besides having gone to school together since they were four. They loved to play baseball. Tom played football when he was in school and he used to think that nothing else really counted as a sport, but now with Josh and Max in the game he was a big fan.
The boys got the net set up and a volleyball game started just as Tom finished the steaks. So the steaks cooled until the first game was finished, but at least that gave the adults some time to relax, so Tom didn’t complain.
They sat in plastic chairs by the pool, and Bonnie passed around some “grown-up punch.” Elaine said, “Is Josh disappointed about being in the middle school for another year, now that they’ve taken 9th grade out of the high school?”
“When did they decide that?” said Tom. Maybe he didn’t pay enough attention to such things, but Bonnie could have told him.
“About a month ago,” said Bonnie. “Josh thinks it will be cool to be in the oldest grade in the school twice. I think he was fairly intimidated about going to the high school anyway, although he wouldn’t admit it.” She addressed her answer more to Tom than to Elaine. She consistently gave Tom’s clues about Josh in ways that never implied he should already know these things.
Tom said, “That does sound like fun.” Bonnie gave him an approving smile.
“Max is disappointed. He wanted to get into some of the science labs at the high school,” said Elaine. She took a sip of her punch and looked disappointed as well.
“Is he in all honor classes again?” said Bonnie.
“Yes. We’re hoping for some college scholarships by the time he finishes. He’s a hard worker,” said Elaine.
“He’s just a kid. He needs to have some fun,” said Tom.
“He does have fun.” said Elaine.
“Did I tell you that Janet gave her notice?” said Elaine, to change the subject. Janet was a young woman at Webster’s Gardens, the nursery that Elaine owned, who had been missing a lot of work lately. “I don’t know how I’m going to get everything done until I can replace her,” Elaine said.
“Didn’t you say that she was thrilled to get this job? What happened?” said Bonnie.
“She found out she’s pregnant. I think her parents are going to raise the baby, and they insisted she quit,” said Elaine. “Moving shrubbery and small trees around all day is tough work.” Elaine was sympathetic, but she was also short on help.
“Maybe she should’ve thought about getting married before she had a baby,” said Tom. “Just an idea. You know…” Tom switched into a singsong theatre voice. “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Susie in the baby carriage.”
He laughed his big booming laugh, and waited for his audience to respond.
Bonnie gave him a dirty look. She didn’t find Tom’s performances as funny in recent years.
Elaine said, “Hey, watch it. I was never married either.”
Tom recomposed his face, disappointed because he didn’t get a laugh, and said, “Really? I always thought you must be a widow.” His attention wandered to the volleyball game. Josh got a good dig and Max tried for a spike but missed completely.
Bonnie said, “Honestly Tom. How long have we known Elaine?”
“So shoot me,” said Tom, dutifully returning his attention to the ladies, although he had to miss the next point in the volleyball game. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry if I offended you Elaine.”
“It’s OK,” said Elaine.
“Max has never talked about a father,” said Tom.
“No. Max has never met him,” said Elaine.
Tom didn’t understand why but he didn’t ask because Bonnie’s mother, Juliet, appeared with Marvin and Mitch just in time to eat. Bonnie ran to show her family to the chairs she already had set up for them. Tom got busy with a batch of chicken wings at the grill and waved in their general direction.
Tom tried hard to find something to like in everyone but he had to admit that Bonnie’s family was not a lot of fun. Juliet was OK. She was just an older lady who hadn’t had an easy life. Tom flirted with her a little now and then and that was all it took to get along with her. Trying to talk to her latest husband Marvin was a problem. An occasional grunt and a scowl were about all Tom could ever get out of him.
The young guy, Mitch, was Bonnie’s half-brother. He was Juliet’s son by some guy or another between Bonnie’s father and Marvin, and he was bad news. Sometimes guys can tell things about other guys that you can’t explain to the women. Mitch always put Tom into a state of high alert, as though an unspecified but hair-raising danger was lurking in the bushes.
Elaine rounded up the boys and got busy filling plates and pouring drinks. Tom watched Bonnie sitting under the maple tree with her crew for a little while, but by the time he finished helping Elaine making s
ure all the kids had enough food and went over to mingle they were leaving. He was probably in some kind of trouble. Juliet got her feelings hurt really easily and Bonnie would never hear the end of it.
Josh took his place in a plastic chair by the table on the pool deck for the gift opening ceremony. The first present was from Mom and Dad. It was an expensive fly-fishing outfit. “Thank you, Mom,” he said. He jumped up and ran over to her chair and planted a loud smoochy kiss on her cheek. Bonnie was a fisherman who was always hoping to get her son more interested in her sport. Josh was beginning to get good at it, mostly because it pleased his mother so much. Bonnie beamed at him, and said, “You’re more than welcome, honey. You’re my favorite fishing buddy.”
Josh remembered that Dad’s name was also on the tag, and gave him a hug too. It occurred to him that the other kids might think this was dorky, but he really didn’t care. The next present he picked up was from Matt, the total jock, and Ross, the emerging psychopath. The boys all had labels like that for each other. Josh was surprised that Matt and Ross went together on a present since that meant that some agreement must have been reached and executed, an amazing feat for that pair.
“Ta daaa, and the surprise is…” he boomed, showing off the new deepness in his voice. He ripped the paper and found a brightly painted blue and yellow birdhouse. He held it and examined it from all angles. “A birdhouse,” he announced in his stage voice, and then he repeated in a small, confused voice, “a birdhouse? Why did you get me a birdhouse?”
“My sister makes them to sell. She needed the business,” said Ross. Josh noticed his father laughing with the kids while his mother tried hard not to. Aunt Elaine was shaking her head.
“OK, let’s try again,” said Josh. He closed his eyes and reached for another gift from the pile. “And for your edification and entertainment ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “we now have, drum roll please…” Josh opened the present and found a never-opened calendar from two years ago, with pictures of New England lighthouses.
The kids, anxiously waiting, all cracked up. “OK. I sense a theme here. Let’s see what the rest of you did to me,” said Josh.
Manmohan gave him a book on how to plan his wedding. Lee gave him a Santa Claus costume.
Max gave him a set of lavender scented bath products. “Hey I might actually use these,” said Josh. “Look in the bag again,” said Aunt Elaine. In the bottom of the same gift bag, he found a very good catcher’s mitt. He was stunned. He had occasionally substituted for the catcher last year and he really wanted to try out for the position this year. Wow.
“Aunt E. You are so cool. Mucho gracias,” Josh said. She smiled happily at his reaction.
The adults went in the house to start a first round of cleanup and the boys were all hanging around the patio table waiting for the requisite half hour after a meal to pass so they could go back in the pool. Josh was surprised when Max said, apropos of nothing else in the conversation, “I wish my mom would take me fishing.”
“Yeah, your mom is cool,” said Lee. “All my mom ever does is work and shop. She’d probably scream if she saw a worm.”
“You’d probably scream if you saw a worm too,” said Ross.
Lee pushed Ross into the pool for that. Then Alan pushed Lee in, splashing Matthew’s backpack, which meant Matt had to throw his wet backpack at Alan. Josh had to chase Matt around the yard. Matt led Josh right back to the pool, and jumped in, and then Josh and Max jumped in on top of him.
When Tom came out of the house to see what the commotion was, all of the boys were wrestling in the pool. Several of the boys looked worried that they were all about to get into trouble. They didn’t need to worry. Tom wanted to play too. Tom did a cannonball, fully dressed, wallet and keys notwithstanding, into the water between Max and Josh sending a geyser of water all over the boys and much of the deck.
Bonnie and Elaine came out of the house. “Some boys never grow up,” Bonnie said, trying to look disapproving.
“And some people don’t know how to have fun,” said Tom.
“And some of us have to get going,” said Elaine. “Come on, Max. I need to get to the nursery before it closes tonight.”
“Yeah, I’m coming,” said Max.
Tom hauled himself out of the pool and then offered a hand to Max. He was pulling Max out of the pool when he slipped on the water he had just slopped onto the deck. Tom dropped Max back into the water and tried to direct his fall onto a raft lying nearby. A sharp pain in his left ankle made him yelp, and his landing on the raft turned out to be much more clumsy than comical.
The boys were startled, but only until Josh said, “Way to go, Pop,” and began to laugh.
Bonnie said, “Are you OK?” Tom’s ankle was already beginning to swell and turn color. “Seriously, Tom. That looks serious,” said Bonnie. “Let me look at it.”
“I’m fine. It’s just a twisted ankle,” said Tom. It really hurt but he didn’t want to look like a fool in front of the kids.
No one had noticed Elaine leave, but she returned with a bag of frozen corn. “Put this on. It shapes itself around your ankle better than ice packs,” she said.
Max went into the house to change. When he returned Tom said, “Josh, go get me an ace bandage, will you? Elaine, hold on a minute, let me walk you guys out.”
Elaine was annoyed by the delay, but she didn’t say anything. Josh returned with the bandage and Tom quickly wrapped his ankle. He tried putting some weight on it and it seemed sturdy enough. He took a step and it pained more than he cared to let on. He grabbed one of the baseball bats propped against the fence and made a show of using it as a cane.
“Come on, Josh, your guests are leaving,” Bonnie said. Josh followed her pretending to catch with his new glove.
Elaine was struggling with two bags of leftover food from the party. “Would you guys carry these for me?” she said. Josh put the glove down and he and Max each took a bag.
The group made their way through the gate and toward the corner. Tom limped more than a little, and the women talked too quietly for him to hear. A wind gust tore the balloons from the front stoop. The blue balloons skittered across the front lawn toward the street. Tom stopped for a minute to block their path and pick them up. Then he tried to catch up to the group wincing from the pain in his ankle. He noticed a Dodge pickup truck with a rusted tailgate partway down Jefferson Street with a multicolored tarp billowing and flapping in the wind behind it.
“Did you enjoy your birthday, honey?” said Bonnie, when the group reached the corner with Tom bringing up the rear.
“Way cool. Thanks, Mom,” said Josh. “Thanks again for the glove, Aunt E,” he said, remembering his manners and turning around.
“You’re welcome, Josh,” she said, smiling. She took the grocery bag from him to carry it across the street.
“Happy Birthday, Josh,” said Max.
Max made a move to cross the street, and then decided to wait for a motorcycle to go by first. The biker leaned way over rounding the corner too fast and nearly caught his exhaust pipe on the asphalt. Everyone watched, fascinated, as he skidded almost out of control when he hit the group of stones that had just flown out of Dwayne’s truck, now oddly lying in the street. Our small rock shot out from under the rear tire and seemed to fly straight for Bonnie’s face. She instinctively put her arms up to shield her face and Tom tried to jump into position to either shield her or shove her out of the path of the projectile, but due to his bad ankle he could not reach her in time.
She screamed as the sharp end of the rock sliced deep into the side of her neck. Blood immediately started pumping from her neck in a rhythmic fashion that Tom, shocked as he was, knew was catastrophic. She tried to tell him something and couldn’t and sank to a wobbly sitting position trying to hold in the blood squirting between her fingers.
Tom saw that neither Josh nor Max, because they were standing on the other sid
e of him, had a line of sight to the terrifying wound. The kids did not need to have that gory picture in their memories, so he grabbed his son’s arms and turned him away from his mother. Potato salad and pretzels flew everywhere. “What’s happening?” said Josh, squirming in his father’s grip, frantic and angry at not knowing. Tom’s fingers were bruising his arms.
“Your mom is hurt. I’m going to take care of her. Go back. Hurry.” he said, looking over his shoulder at the same time. Bonnie was slumped over on her side, already unconscious.
Tom gave Josh a shove toward Elaine, who was already calling 911. “Get the kids out of here,” he barked and then was on the sidewalk without waiting for a response, kneeling in a growing puddle of warm fragrant blood, searching with his fingers for the ends of a vein in the wound. Bonnie was getting cold.
“Don’t look back,” he yelled over his shoulder as Elaine shoved the boys along back toward the house and talked on the cell phone at the same time.
“Hold on honey. Hold on,” said Tom, pinching what he hoped was a vein with one hand and stroking Bonnie’s hair with the other. His wife lay motionless on the sidewalk, eyes closed, unable to respond. He wasn’t sure if she could hear him, but he said many times, “I love you Bonnie. Please don’t go.”
When the ambulance crew took over Bonnie was still alive. In Tom’s experience emergency people usually spent a long time working on someone before they were satisfied that it was safe to transport them to the hospital but these people acted like they couldn’t get Bonnie moved fast enough, which scared the hell out of him. In the ambulance he could see that they were upset about whatever the monitor was telling them about her heart.
At the hospital they took her directly to surgery.
Tom waited and paced. Elaine called several times, but no, he didn’t know anything. She was still trying to get all the kids turned over to their parents and Josh was frantic. He waited and paced some more. He had to go to the bathroom, but he was afraid to leave the waiting room. He tried not to notice the drying blood on his knees.
Finally, about an hour and a half later, a grizzled doctor came out wearing green scrubs smeared with blood across his right shoulder.
Tom jumped up from the bench where he had done nothing but fidget anyway and said, “How is my wife?”
“Please sit down,” the doctor said. He sat down next to Tom and put his hand on Tom’s knee. He waited for Tom to focus and then said, “I’m sorry. We lost her. She went into cardiac arrest three times, and the last time we couldn’t pull her out.”
Tom stared for a minute. “That can’t be right,” he said. “She’s a fine healthy lady. She can’t just die. Are you sure?”
It didn’t make sense. There had to be a mistake.
He sank back onto the bench, twisting his bad ankle intentionally and welcoming the pain as something he could understand.
“I’m sorry,” said the doctor again. “Too much blood loss. Can I send someone out to be with you until you collect yourself?”
“What do I do?” said Tom. He didn’t want the doctor to leave. The doctor was his last connection to Bonnie. The last person to see her alive. Letting him leave was letting Bonnie be dead.
“Excuse me. I don’t understand what you mean,” said the doctor. Tom knew he had introduced himself but he couldn’t remember the name.
“Do I take her home?” said Tom.
“Oh. You call the funeral home and they arrange to collect the body from the hospital morgue.”
“Did she suffer?” Tom asked. His mind had already wandered before the doctor answered the question.
“No. She was anesthetized.”
“We have a fourteen year old boy,” said Tom. Surely she couldn’t be dead if he explained that she was still somebody’s mother.
“Who is with your son now?” said the doctor.
That brought Tom back to his senses. “My wife’s best friend, Elaine,” he said.
“Maybe you should call her. Elaine can give him some mother-lovin’ for the initial shock.”
“OK,” said Tom. The doctor rose from the sticky green plastic and stuck out his hand. Tom shook it and the doctor patted him on the arm and said, “Good luck,” and then he was gone.