Time robs us of chances for reconciliation. Time makes us liars. I wanted to save my daughter, and even now, I don’t know what made me think I could keep her from going through what I had gone through, widowed and pregnant, all at the same time. The scars from her father’s death had never fully healed, but if not for Tony’s illness, Sandy would have sailed into her future and I would have gone on trying to save the world, one kindergartner at a time.
That June of 1994 when I closed up my classroom and headed off to Washington, DC, I teetered on the brink of an exciting transition. For the past few years, aging parents had kept me in Chicago. Not that I begrudged them: This was the natural progression of a woman’s life, or so it seemed, even though women of my generation thought we had liberated ourselves from traditional roles. You can’t really free yourself from love though, nor from the surprise that middle-age doesn’t mean you have more time for yourself. Children leave the nest about the time parents grow frail. One minute you’re changing babies’ diapers and the next you’re tugging up Depends.
My mother had died. I missed her terribly, but her death had freed me. Finally, with an unencumbered heart, I could see my daughter’s new house and help when the second grandchild arrived. The birth would give me a chance to make amends for the baby showers and birthdays I had missed.
Standing on the sidewalk in Glover Park, a neighborhood in the capital’s northwest quadrant, I looked from my Day-Timer to the rusted numbers above a set of tilted concrete steps. In the upstairs windows, the blinds had yellowed. Brown paint, like shaved chocolate, curled back from the porch-beams. Next to the door, plastic recycling bins overflowed with newsprint. The grass looked brittle and the azaleas dead. Hoping I’d written down the wrong address and ignoring the clues that something disastrous might be wrong, I prepared a smile I might have brought with a casserole or condolence flowers.
An envelope poked from the mail slot. Surreptitiously, I slid it out. A letter for Tony Dimasio. Yep, I had the right address. Tony, my son-in-law, was a good-looking punster with scads of friends—lacrosse friends, college and law school buddies, environmental activists, reporters—and he had pursued Sandy as if she were the hottest babe on the planet. Which to him, she was. Her savings had paid for their first house.
Sighing at the mountain of work that awaited them, I cupped my hand against the glare and pressed my nose to the door’s glass panel. Sandy had no idea what it really took to fix up a place, even though she had seen me do it a dozen times, and I feared she’d taken on too much. Before I could even catch a glimpse of the interior, the clomp of footsteps made me back away.
Sandy’s face appeared. A nutmeg of summer freckles. A smile. The door flew open. “Mom!” Like her father, Sandy had deep-set eyes. In bright light, they looked blue, but in the shadows of the porch, her eyes reminded me of clouds before a storm. In the years since her teenage rebellion had come at me like projectile vomit, I’d learned to watch for the early warning signs of her bad moods. I saw none now. Since Christmas, her belly had inflated to the size of my exercise ball. She was nine months pregnant and the baby had dropped. A flowered jumper hung from her bare, hunched shoulders. Sandy had never been much of a hugger, but this time she threw her arms around me, a drowning person lunging for the life preserver. Which was my neck.
“Don’t choke me,” I said, disentangling her arms.
“Thank god you’re here,” she said.
Reflexively, I tucked in her bra strap. “I can’t believe the pregnancy’s almost done.”
Sandy looked sideways at my hand, and then brushed it aside to massage her shoulder. “I hate my bony arms. Even eating for two, I can’t seem to put on weight.”
“You look fabulous, honey.”
“I must look better than I feel,” Sandy said. A taut grin flipped up like a mask. “Well, you’re here, at least, but I expected you an hour ago.”
Maybe we could rewind this to the knock. Had I said something or done something to deserve this tiny flash of anger? I’d tucked in her strap. That was it, and I should have known not to. She could not stand to be touched or drawn into an embrace. At that moment, however, her brief hug had left me wanting more: a longer and less desperate hug, the downy softness of her cheek against mine, or a map crumpled to bring Chicago and Washington, DC closer together.
“I really should have pulled over and found a payphone,” I said, still searching for what had made her say she hated her bony arms and why she was angry because I had arrived an hour late. “I thought about calling, but then I thought it’d just make me later and anyway, I had a map so I wasn’t lost, just playing pin the tail on the donkey.”
Exhaling, she reared back.
“Sandy, please,” I said. “I came to help, not get in your way.”
She must have had a long day, but so had I. Weary from the drive and the demands of the last few months, I needed a refuge. “Can I come in?”
“Sure. I don’t know why we’re standing outside in this heat.”
Backing into the living room she looked around. “The place is a pigsty, but, oh well, you can’t do everything.”
The inside looked better than the exterior. No books on the end tables, no out-of-place couch cushions, and, surprisingly, no toys on the floor.
“The place is definitely not a pigsty,” I said.
She shook her head. “I try to keep it picked up, but it’s hard because Josh doesn’t have a playroom. We have a basement, but it’s so dingy I can hardly bear to go down there.”
She had planted a hook in my mouth. I felt the barb, but let her reel me in. “Maybe I can do a little painting while I’m here.”
“Oh, would you, Mom?” Sandy said. “That would just be amazing.”
“Sure,” I said, though on the two-day drive out, painting Sandy’s basement had been the last thing on my mind.
“I’m trying to get the house organized, baby clothes washed and in drawers, and work’s crazy. Some cases I can’t delegate because I’m the lead attorney.” Sandy checked her watch. “Oh no. I’m late.”
I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“A doctor’s appointment.” Sandy grabbed her purse. “They’re squeezing us in at the end of the day, and I didn’t find out about it until a couple of hours ago. Can you watch Josh? He’s upstairs in his crib.”
“Sure.” I followed her to the porch.
Holding her watermelon belly, she jogged to the car. Just like the White Rabbit. No time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late. In the parking strip Sandy opened the car door.
“Should I wake Josh at a certain time?” I called.
“Let him sleep. His teacher said he didn’t nap.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“An hour or so.” Sandy slid back the seat of her Toyota Tercel. The car had scratched bumpers and a caved-in passenger door, an almost new car turning into a junker. She roared out of the parking space.
Sandy’s brothers joked that she’d never learned to tell time, but that didn’t matter because she had lots of other skills. She’d never find herself in my situation, Broke, With Children. My life would have made a good sitcom.
Back in the house I knelt on the couch and tried to raise the front windows: painted shut and no curtains. A stroller stood in the corner. I could have taken Josh out for a walk, but Sandy hadn’t left a key. I opened the TV hutch. On the shelves below the old black and white with the clothes-hanger antenna sat wooden puzzles and LEGO blocks. Good for fine-motor skills.
Grabbing blunt-nosed scissors from the dining room table, I returned to the porch and eased into a plastic chair. From the recycling bin, I separated out two pages of the Washington Post, folding and refolding the newsprint until I held a rectangle the size of a book. The key to making paper dolls, paper houses, or paper anything was to start with the right shape, fold in the same direction, and leave part of the fold uncut. In my classroom,
I always had something like this on the windows—leaves in fall, pumpkins in October, and snowmen at Christmas. Across the street the houses had twisted, licorice porch railings, attics with small, winking windows, and chimney pots smack in the center of tiny slate roofs. A neighborhood of Hobbit houses. And here was Sandy’s. Dead azaleas and recycling bins.
Inside, I threw the paper houses on the couch. Until I could get curtains made, I’d tape up the cityscape to provide privacy. Sandy must have tape on her desk.
Upstairs, the door to the right opened to the master bedroom—the room with the yellowed shades. On Sandy’s desk, next to a wicker basket of unpaid bills, sat a roll of American- flag stamps. No tape. Maybe Josh had used it up. When my kids were little, I could never find a roll of tape to save my soul.
I looked at the indent in the chenille spread, the pillows propped against the wall, and a novel she’d tossed on the bed. How Stella Got Her Groove Back. I sniff-laughed. That book had inspired me to dip into the barrel and see if I could pull out an edible apple. I hadn’t found the young hunk Stella found, only some bruised bananas.
In the room across the hall, Josh lay spread-eagled. Small for three, he had Tony’s black curls and Sandy’s fair skin. His pink neck felt hot to the touch. The nursery-school teacher had forgotten to hit it with sunblock. Three-to-six was my favorite age. They were little philosophers, as I had seen last Christmas, when Josh said he thought dolphins had a secret language and someday he would learn to speak it. The Spiderman shirt, one of my presents, had faded. An inch of skin showed above his shorts. I hated these big gaps between visits, and I hoped the creak of stairs as I descended would wake him.
The paper houses had dropped like a slinky from the couch.
I should tape up the diorama before Josh needed attention, but where had Sandy put the tape? A drawer to the left of the sink held silverware, and below it, the drawer my mother always called the “Fibber McGee and Molly” drawer: string, screwdrivers, thumbtacks, birthday candles, white glue, and the odd button. Whether women wanted to or not, we took on our mother’s patterns: spices in the cabinet to the left of the microwave, cookie sheets in the oven drawer. I could be blind and cook a meal here.
A pen-mug sat on the counter. Next to a stack of unopened bills sat a roll of tape. Twirling it around my finger, I whistled softly, trying to fill a silence broken only by the bark of a neighbor’s dog and a motorcycle’s distant cough. Kneeling on the denim couch, I taped the paper houses to the windows. The silhouette reminded me of the skyline at the Adler Planetarium. Newsprint blocked the view of parked cars, but that was good. If I couldn’t see out, no one could see in. Breastfeeding Josh, Sandy had always thrown a receiving blanket over her shoulder. A private person, she wouldn’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry looking through her windows.
With no more self-assigned tasks, I thought about taking a look at the basement, but the heat punctured my balloon of good intentions. I can picture myself innocently walking through the house, curious about the life my daughter had begun to construct for herself. It was the last moment of tranquility before fate blindsided me. Blindsided me again, I should say, because my husband’s death had also come at me out of the blue, on just such an ordinary day.
The screen door wheezed open, and I stood on the porch. The rooflines’ spiked shadows had advanced across the small, square lawns. Across the street, a paper skeleton hung on the door, a relic of last year’s Halloween. When I heard a hubcap scrape the curb, I turned.
Their Toyota sedan was backing into a parking space. Tony sat in the passenger seat. Usually, he drove. Sandy, on the driver’s side, turned off the engine. Then she leaned on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead, the way people do when they’re having a fight and trying to decide whether to finish it or go in. I leaned on the porch rail, fearing that Tony had crossed her in some way. Better him than me. Finally, she opened her door. One hand at the crook of her back, the other on the hood, she went around to Tony’s door and opened it.
Tony started to get out but fell to his knees and curled up in a ball.
I stood. My mouth went dry. “Tony, are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” he called.
“I’ve got him, Mom,” Sandy said.
To keep myself from dashing down the stairs, I grabbed the railing and prayed that Sandy wouldn’t injure herself. Holding him under the elbow, she lifted him to his feet and brushed grass from his pants. He swiped an arm across his forehead. His cheeks looked flushed. At work he gladhanded so many people he’d probably picked up a bug. When he felt better, I’d tease him and ask if the halls of Congress needed an Elvis impersonator: Since Christmas, he’d grown muttonchops shaped like the boot of Italy.
Sandy unlocked the trunk and took out his sport coat.
Letting her carry it and shuffling his feet, he came up the walk.
I held the screen.
Inside, Tony flopped down on the sofa, the one beneath my paper silhouette. Stretched out full length, he put one foot up on the sofa’s arm; he left the other on the floor. His shoelace had come undone, and though tempted to kneel down and tie it, I didn’t want him to feel like he’d gone back to kindergarten.
“You look like you had a terrible day,” I said.
“The longest day of my life,” he said.
I put my palm on his forehead. It felt clammy, not hot. He drew his hands to his chin. His chest heaved, but no sound came out. Elbowing me aside, Sandy bent over Tony and put her arms around him.
He pushed her away. “Too hot.”
Sandy went to the kitchen. Water splashed. When she returned, her bangs dripped. “Where’s Josh?”
“Asleep,” I said.
“He won’t sleep tonight, but then, I guess that’s all right because I won’t either.” Sandy sank down onto the other sofa and bumped a framed poster from the National Zoo, a mother panda with a protective paw curled around her baby. My legs shook, and I backed toward the rocking chair.
“Hey, Colleen, do you happen to have a handkerchief?”
Tony said. Beads of moisture dotted his upper lip.
I always carried packages of tissue to wipe runny noses. Reaching out, I handed one over.
He blew his nose. “So, did Sandy tell you what this was all about?”
“I didn’t want to worry her,” Sandy said.
“What should I be worried about?”
“My finger.” Tony held up the index finger of his right hand.
It moved like the second-hand of a clock: tick, tick, tick. Not a smooth motion.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“Since March, we’ve been thinking he had a pinched nerve,” Sandy said.
This was June. “What do you have, carpal tunnel?”
“I wish.” Tony propped himself on an elbow, opened his mouth, and pointed to his tongue.
“Could I have one of those tissues?” Sandy asked.
“Sure.” I had another packet in my purse.
Sandy blew her nose. “He was testifying a month ago on Capitol Hill—”
“A swine farm bill was coming up—”
“And he got so tongue-tied—”
“I couldn’t speak,” Tony said.
“You?” Driving through Ohio, I’d heard him interviewed on public radio. There’d been a call-in program on factory farms.
The stench. The animals’ living conditions. It wasn’t an issue I’d ever thought twice about, but Tony had been so eloquent, I’d actually begun to think the animal-rights’ folks might have a point.
Tony pulled up his shirt. The dark, curly hair, once thick on his chest, had been shaved clean, leaving only the stubble. Dozens of white circles the size of bottle caps dotted his chest. He looked like he’d been stood against a wall and used for dart-gun target practice.
“I saw this neurologist—”
“Two, actually,” Sandy said.
“The second doctor was a mom from our nursery school,” Tony said.
“She saw Sandy coming down the elevator, just losing it.”
“She brought him back upstairs and ran the tests again,” Sandy said.
“I had a hundred electrodes on my body.”
“Nipples and everything,” Sandy said.
Tony looked down at his chest. He shuddered. “They shocked me over and over again. Like a rat in an experiment.”
“After the second battery of nerve tests,” Sandy said, “the doctor told him he has ALS—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.”
“Lou Gehrig’s disease?” I asked.
Tony pulled down his shirt. “The doc said for sure.”
I ran a hand over my face and took a breath. Through the open screen came the hum of tires and the urgent ring of a tinny bell. Riding a purple bicycle with training wheels, a curly-headed girl, biting her tongue, stood on the pedals. Her mother jogged behind, close enough to grab the seat. The ring echoed long after they’d passed.
He shook his head from side to side, moaned, and put a hand over his eyes and the other on his heart. “I thought I had it right from the start. I mean, that was what the HMO doc told me back in March, that I had ALS, and I thought if I did, I could be brave and suck it up, but it’s different when neurologists tell you for sure.”
Sandy reached over and massaged Tony’s foot and with her other hand pressed her belly. “The baby’s quiet.”
“Probably sleeping,” I said. One domino-disaster tipping another. That’s what she feared.
Tony blew his nose and wiped his eyes with a corner of his shirt. “I’d better start dinner.”
“You can’t be in a mood to cook,” I said. “Let’s order pizza.”
Tony stood up. “I have stuff for spaghetti.”
I followed him to the kitchen. The doctors had to be wrong. Tony was in the prime of life, a lacrosse player, a runner, and lately, a vegetarian. He took an onion from the refrigerator and put it on a cutting board. After peeling off the onionskin, he found a knife and used the flat of his hand to force down the blade.
“After Christmas, when Sandy saw her brothers in the kitchen, she said I had to learn to cook. I actually like it, and I want to cook while I can.”
“While you can?” I wanted to draw out this moment, the moment when I couldn’t yet see around the corner. “Can what?”
“Cook, of course.” Tony stared at me. “My muscles will atrophy.”
“I don’t know much about ALS.”
“Actually, I don’t either,” Tony said, “except I’ve got it.”
Trying to have a normal conversation and accept this news as if Tony were telling me about a raise or a promotion, I found myself increasingly upset. I thought of the Chinese woman who lived two doors down from my new house and how she’d stand on the porch in the bitterest weather, going through her tai chi exercises. Balance in slow motion. I opened the silverware drawer and took out knives and forks.
“What, exactly, did the doctor say?”
“A lot of men get it.”
“So, what are they going to do?”
“Nothing they can do,” he said.
“Nothing? But there’s something they can do for everything.”
He shook his head like it was a fait accompli and dumped onions in a cast-iron skillet, one that had belonged to my mother. I wondered how I could possibly deal with this loss when I’d barely absorbed her death, and immediately felt ashamed that the first thought that bubbled up was whether I had space inside my skin for another grief this big. This was Sandy’s tragedy, not mine.
“Have you got another Kleenex?” Sandy called from the living room
“She can have this.” Tony handed me the rest of the packet.
I took it, returned to the living room, and sat down next to
Sandy, who leaned against me. Like a kitten on a tree, she dug her nails into my shoulders. Tears soaked my blouse.
“Your daughter’s upset,” Tony called from the kitchen.
“I can see that.”
On the second floor, the toilet flushed.
Sandy lifted her head. “Josh is awake.” She blew her nose and crumpled the Kleenex in her fist.
“Do you want me to throw that away?” I asked.
Sandy held out the damp wad. “My body feels all numb, like it went to the body dentist.”
Mine did, too. “Where’s your trash?”
“Under the sink.”
“Sandy, could you open this can?” Tony said.
Letting out a silent scream, Sandy flung her head back, bumping the panda poster.
I leapt up. “Let me help him.”
“Thanks so much, Mom. I’ve had Braxton-Hicks all day.”
“I’ve heard the word, but what is it?”
“Contractions,” Sandy said.
“But they stop if she sits,” Tony said.
“In my day, we called that going into labor.”
Sandy put her hands on her stomach. “I don’t think it’s true labor. I hope not, anyway. My due date’s not for another ten days.”
“Mom,” a little voice called from upstairs. I helped Sandy to her feet, but I had to lean back and counterbalance her weight, or she would have pulled me down.
“I’m coming,” Sandy said.
The voice said, “I need you to wipe me.”
“Could someone open this can?” Tony said.
I went into the kitchen. “What do you need?”
A can of pomodoro tomatoes sat on the counter. Tony held out a can opener. “My fingers don’t have the strength.”
I picked up the tomatoes and squeezed the can opener’s handles. Air hissed.
“One thing I don’t quite get,” I said, “is what happens. I mean, what’s the progression of the disease?”
“I have a year to live,” Tony said. “Maybe less.”
“No way!” The can dropped on the counter. The lid sprang open. “Are you sure?”
“I’m just going by what the doctor said.” Tears streaming, he looked over his shoulder. “Fifty-five’s the average age.”
“But you’re only thirty-four.”
“I was young, she said.”
I put my arms around him, but he pushed away. “I need to finish dinner.”
Tony broke spaghetti into the pot, stirring the pasta with a wooden spoon. He wiped his forehead with the back of his arm.
“Shit, it’s hot,” he said.
“That’s because the back side of the house faces east, and you’re getting the late afternoon sun.”
“Sandy said you’d have known that and not let us buy it. It’s the one thing about the house she hates.”
“Unless I’d come by at the end of the day, I wouldn’t have flagged that as a problem. I told her to hire a home inspector.”
“Well, she’s over it so you can relax.”
“Over what?”
“Over being angry because you didn’t fly out.”
Eyes down, I laid out silverware and napkins. “My mother was dying.”
“Yeah, well. Sandy needed you and you didn’t come.”
“A home inspector looks at homes full-time. Most of them are engineers or former contractors. I doubt I could have told her anything more than what they wrote up in their report.”
“You don’t have to sound so defensive,” he said.
“But … oh, never mind,” I said.
The last three weeks of Mother’s life had passed in a blur. I had to make decisions about a feeding tube or comfort measures. Sips of water dwindled down to ice chips and spongy swabs of her tongue. I couldn’t reconstruct when exactly, in that blur of days, Sandy had called. And, of course, my daughter had a right to feel let down. No one could understand what the inversion of roles meant, the child taking on the role of a parent, making end-of-life decisions for an emaciated, vacant-minded shell. Sandy had just started her journey. The first house. The second baby. And now this.
Tony bit into a noodle. “Al dente.” He looked at me. “Whole wheat. They turn mushy if you cook them too long.”
Tony. The newbie in the kitchen. My boys would have found his sudden culinary interest hilarious. But then, no they wouldn’t. Not now.
Sandy came down holding Josh by the hand. Smiling, she looked down at her son. “Do you remember Grandma?”
“You’re Mommy’s mommy.” Josh’s eyebrows looked like charcoal smudges. From beneath them shone two blue marbles.
Rob’s eyes and the eyes of Sandy’s brothers.
“Remember last Christmas we went to an aquarium where they had dolphins?” I said.
“And jellyfish.” Josh tugged his mother’s hand.
She smiled.
“It’s time for dinner, Josh,” Tony said. “Get the step-stool and wash your hands.”
“He washed upstairs,” Sandy said.
“Could somebody dump the water out of the pan and put the sauce on the noodles?” Tony said.
I did as he asked and put food on the table. Josh climbed into his booster seat and buckled the strap.
“Did you make salad?” Sandy said.
“I wasn’t in the mood,” Tony said.
“I don’t like tomato sauce,” Josh said.
I wondered if the opening gambit of this negotiation were for my benefit or if they negotiated every meal. That kind of thing wore me out.
“Daddy made a nice dinner,” I said. “Why don’t you try one bite?”
“I already know I won’t like it,” Josh said. “It’s red.”
“He likes plain noodles with butter and cheese.” Sandy went into the kitchen and rummaged in the refrigerator. She put a turkey roll on his plate. “He’s fine with this.”
I twirled my spaghetti. The sauce tasted burnt. Maybe I could bargain for a turkey roll.
“What’s wrong?” Tony said, his dark eyes glaring at me from across the table. “Don’t you like it, either?”
In my stomach, a gerbil raced madly on a wheel. “No, it’s fine. Whole grain noodles. Very nutritious.”
Standing behind Josh’s chair, Sandy took a taste of spaghetti, frowned, and put her plate down on the counter, a pass-through between the narrow dining room and aisle kitchen. “The humidity takes away my appetite.”
Tony looked up at her. He hadn’t touched his dinner. We were pretending to be normal for as long as we could.
“Why don’t you take Josh outside and let me do the dishes?” I said.
“I guess we could do that,” Sandy said. “It’s still light.”
“Okay,” Tony said. “Fresh air would feel good.”
I cleared the dishes, listening to the tape that ran in my head whenever I wasted food. Think of the starving children in Armenia. The distant tragedy flashed up from my childhood, and it was the rare meal that found me leaving a bite of food on my plate. The spaghetti was really bad. I dumped it into the garbage.
The dishes took ten minutes. With sweat dripping from my brow, I was glad the house had an east-facing front porch.
On the dead grass that passed for a lawn, Sandy tossed a Wiffle ball from hand to hand.
Tony wrapped his arms around Josh’s shoulders, showing him how to swing a plastic bat. When Sandy pitched, Josh connected. The ball bounced across two neighbors’ lawns into a clump of ice plant. Josh gave a whoop, then raced, his arms pumping. All elbows and knobby knees, he looked like a cricket.
“Did you see that one?” Josh held up the ball. “Wasn’t that a great one?”
“That was good, Josh.” Tony looked over at me, sitting on the porch.
“I always dreamed of taking my kids to Yankees’ games.
Josh won’t remember this.”
I leaned over the railing. “Why don’t I take Josh to the park and give you some time to decompress?”
“No, that’s okay,” Sandy said.
Tony wiped his brow. His face turned sullen and Sandy looked at him. “Then again,” Sandy said, “maybe that’s a good idea.”
“He’d better run off some energy or he’ll never go to sleep tonight,” I said.
“I want to play baseball,” Josh said.
“Grandma knows how to play baseball.” Sandy handed me the bat.
“Not as good as your dad,” I said.
“I’ll carry the ball.”
“Sure,” I said. “But don’t drop it.”
From the sidewalk, Josh looked back at Sandy and Tony entering the house. The screen slammed. “What’s wrong?”
“Your dad just found out he’s sick,” I said.
Josh looked up, his eyebrows in a squiggle. “But the doctor can make him better. Right?”
“I hope so.”
“The doctor makes me better.”
“Doctors can do a lot.”
I didn’t want to be the first to tell him his father was going to die. That job belonged to his parents, and maybe they could shield him by breaking the news gradually.
Sandy had found out the worst way possible. Rob’s mom had invited us for dinner. It was Friday. We lived in Schaumburg then. I fought traffic on the Stevenson to get to his parents’ house on the South Side of Chicago, and Rob planned to drive straight there from work. By the time I arrived, Jean had a pot roast on the stove, and the smell of onions and gravy made me instantly sick. Three months pregnant, I threw up and came out of the bathroom to find Kevin pulling open the cupboards. I apologized for him getting into things, but she said that was nothing. Her kids got into a lot worse mischief. Having a smoke and scraping cookie dough from a spoon, she sat at the kitchen table. Across from her, Sandy, five, a little girl with lopsided pigtails and a dishtowel apron, knelt on a kitchen chair and waited for permission to lick the bowl. Jean launched into a story about the time she came back from the grocery store to find all ten kids standing on the garage roof. A phone call interrupted her story. I took the call.
“I’d like to speak to Mrs. Gallagher,” a police officer said.
“Her husband has been in an accident.”
Oh, my god, Rob’s father, I thought, then covered the receiver and looked at Jean, tapping an ash into her cupped hand. Her gray hair caught back in a bun made her look like one of those impoverished women from the dust bowl. Rob had three brothers in high school. Who would pay for their college?
Jean took another drag of her cigarette, waiting to tell me how she got the kids off the roof and what punishment she’d devised. I put the receiver to my ear. “Are you sure you’ve got the right Gallagher?” I asked. “There’s lots of us here on the South Side.”
“Robert Gallagher,” he said. “Age twenty-six. His driver’s license lists this as his permanent address.”
Feeling the earth turn to sand beneath my feet, I steadied myself against the table. “That’s my husband.”
“Mrs. Gallagher,” the man said, “I’m sorry to tell you, your husband’s dead.”
“What do you mean, my husband’s dead? That’s impossible.”
Jean stubbed out her cigarette on the Formica and stood, leaning across the table to take the phone.
Sandy jumped off the chair. She looked up at me, her face white. “My daddy’s dead?”
“Yes,” I said. The room spun and, knees weak, I fell back against the wall. My teeth chattered. Sandy tore down the hall, running upstairs to her uncles’ room. “My daddy’s dead. My daddy’s dead.” Her screams barely penetrated the roaring in my ears. The baby I carried would never know his father. Sandy would never see him again. Death meant not coming back. Not ever.
