All the Good Parts (8 page)

“So you aren’t allowed to dispense medicine, but you can make major, life-altering decisions about it.”

“I’ll talk to him. When I’m here, I’ll make sure he takes it.”

Paul nodded. He reached around me and turned the knob, opening the door to Jerry, who still slept peacefully. Shattered by how vulnerable he appeared, I stumbled into his room.

“Look, Ms. Accorsi,” Paul said, his voice low but not a whisper.

I turned to him, waving my hand toward his father, who lay stretched out on the bed, good arm cradling his stump. “Shhh . . .”

Paul brushed off my concern. “Once he’s really under, he could sleep through an alien invasion,” he said, but still he waited until we were in the hallway before continuing. Paul didn’t touch me, but as he spoke, his words grabbed me by the shoulders and shook. “You need to be better,” he said. “You know that, right? My father requires it.”

“I’m—I’m trying.” Tears threatened again. I inhaled deeply, trying to keep them inside.

The corner of Paul’s mouth twitched, and for a moment I thought he might say something to lessen the sting. But I didn’t want to be let off the hook. He was a bully, but I was incompetent.

I looked at my shoes. “I’m going to clean the kitchen now.”

“That’s . . . fine,” Paul said. “I’m . . . going to finish up outside.”

“Fine.”

He moved away from me with a speed I’d assumed impossible for a man his size.

I dumped the hot cocoa down the sink and began to scrub out the mugs, watching as Paul hauled himself up the wooden ladder, mouth pulled into a frown.

Even if he made a good point, Paul was an asshole. But then, in a way, I was, too. Did I really think a Disney princess mirror would solve all Jerry’s problems? That I would float in like Tinker Bell, sprinkle fairy dust on his stump, and every little thing would be all right?

For someone who wanted to be a nurse—a good one—overlooking a patient’s needs was a grave offense.

But maybe Paul was wrong. Maybe I was doing the best I could, and the only thing incompetent about me was my self-esteem. Maybe he was just a capital
A
asshole.

You need to be better.
Was Paul doing me a favor or projecting his insecurities on me? He couldn’t convince his dad to wear a prosthesis or eat healthy meals. It seemed we were both amateurs when it came to taking care of Jerry.

The genetic squares sprang back to mind. Big
A
s and little ones. (A)ssholes and (a)mateurs.

So . . . what were the chances our kid would be an asshole?

Right. I was pretty sure that any way you calculated it, (A)sshole was a dominant trait.

CHAPTER 9

Nursing 320 (Online): Community Health

Private Message—Leona A to Darryl K

Leona A:
I got an 80. A stupid 80. On an open-book quiz. Woe, woe, woe . . .

Darryl K:
A B- is nothing to be ashamed of.

Leona A:
That helps a little. Thanks. It’s just that my 3.3 GPA means more to me than hot coffee in the morning. Or perfectly toasted bagels. Or bubble tea with those little tapioca pearls at the bottom.

Leona A:
And that’s saying a lot.

Leona A:
Darryl?

Darryl K:
Still here! Got a cramp in my leg. Had to roll over my calf with a baseball bat.

Leona A:
Did you see that on House?

Darryl K:
Nope. Baseball bat pummeling as a form of therapy was created in the very small receptacle of practicality that lies on an overstuffed shelf in the closet of my mind.

Leona A:
Wow. Okay. You’re a poet. Or you have an open dictionary in front of you. Hey, speaking of your mind, you didn’t mention what you got on the quiz.

Darryl K:
I did fine.

Leona A:
Darryl. Seriously.

Darryl K:
100. But it’s not that important. It’s just a quiz.

Leona A:
Don’t do that. It’s wonderful. Good for you.

Leona A:
So, since you’re so smart, can I ask your thoughts on a personal matter?

Darryl K:
Go right ahead. I love personal matters.

Leona A:
Even with your impressive intelligence, you’ve done stupid things before, right?

Darryl K:
Often. Sometimes multiple times in one day.

Leona A:
Do you think stupid begets stupid? I’ve been on a roll lately, and I’m trying to make a major life decision, but I’m terrified all the mistakes I’m making are a sign that everything I do right now will be a mistake. Stupid? Or not?

Darryl K:
I don’t think you’re stupid. No one but you has used the word “beget” properly since Shakespeare and Marlowe were one-upping each other in Elizabethan England.

Leona A:
I’m being serious.

Darryl K:
I know, and that’s your problem. Overthinking things is the curse of the modern woman. These mistakes you’re making, did they leave anyone six feet under?

Leona A:
Um . . . no.

Darryl K:
How about maimed? Did it result in major destruction of property? A lawsuit? Long-term psychological damage? Bankruptcy?

Leona A:
No. Well, at least I hope not. But . . . my actions still have consequences, you know?

Darryl K:
Sneezing has consequences. So does drinking coffee. Filling your gas tank has consequences. Think about the explosion of possible outcomes when you mistakenly get in the slow lane at the grocery checkout! What I’m getting at is this—even if you decide not to do something—even if you try to stay perfectly still so your personal status quo is as calm as a lake in the dog days of summer—shit is gonna happen. You might as well take a risk.

Leona A:
But what if taking that risk affects others? Isn’t that selfish?

Darryl K:
Not unless you have foreknowledge that someone is going to get seriously hurt. Face it, real life often requires a great leap into the land of the unknown—a chaotic kingdom full of responsibilities and disappointments and joys and terrors, and built entirely on chance. Does that freak you out?

Leona A:
No.

Leona A:
Yes.

Darryl K:
Good. You know that saying, “Do the thing that scares you”? I like that, but I want to add to amend it slightly—keep making choices that scare you until nothing does.

Leona A:
Does that really work?

Darryl K:
It did for me.

Leona A:
But I’m thinking about doing something crazy.

Darryl K:
Aren’t those the only things that can truly change our lives?

Leona A:
I suppose so. But we don’t know if the change will be good or bad, do we?

Darryl K:
And that mystery right there is the beauty of life.

CHAPTER 10

I thought about Darryl as I huffed through my Wednesday morning run. So he was a little bit reckless, but also smart and kind. My mind went back to the genetic squares, filling in
R
s and
S
s and
K
s, and then I stopped. Could I offer those things as well?

Acting on what was essentially a pipe dream was reckless. I wasn’t sure about smart, but I had better be kind, given my profession. I scrolled through some random memories. I was usually kind, or at least I tried that option first.
Uppercase K,
I thought, smiling to myself. Darryl’s words had given me a jolt of self-appreciation. Score one for him.

My thoughts continued to flow, trying to piece together a face from his words, but I kept coming up with a vague comingling of Channing Tatum and George Clooney. Pure fantasy. I started again, gathering the facts I’d collected like poker chips.

Darryl was a nursing student, which, even in the twenty-first century, was still unusual for a guy. This denoted a degree of sensitivity.

He watched at least some television.

He encouraged me to be stronger without making me feel like I was somehow less than.

He’d survived a challenging situation and lived to tell the tale. No one dismissed fear so easily without having taken it head-on, and won.

So now I pictured a combo of Channing Tatum, Bear Grylls, and Mr. Rogers. In my mood, even that was strangely hot.

Turning the corner onto Catherine Avenue, I slowed, my breath coming ragged and shallow. I called what I did running, but it wasn’t, just an awkward kind of interval training. I ran like someone was chasing me for a few blocks, not superspeed, but with enough effort to wind me. Then I fast-walked for a while, stiff legged, arms pumping tight and close at boob level. I loved the way exercise ironed out the tightness in my muscles, the stress and worry evaporating off my body like steam. I burst into another run, pushing myself again, seeking to relieve the tension caused by Paul’s words.
You need to be better.

So I would be, and he’d have nothing to do with it. Quad muscles screaming, I tore onto Stone, a quiet, residential street. A cloud wandered from the sun, and my eyes struggled to adjust to its coldly bright autumn rays, yellow light soaking the leaf-strewn sidewalk. For a moment, I wished my iPod wasn’t broken; my favorite running playlist, a mix of flute-heavy Celtic
Braveheart
-y tunes, would offer an incredible sound track to the colorful world before me.

But if I’d been wearing earbuds, I never would have heard the car inching behind me, staying a house or two back, its engine revving as the vehicle stopped and started, stopped and started. It was white, as far as I could tell, idling in the corner of my peripheral vision, and big, an SUV or a van.

The street was deserted.

I slid my key into the hollow between my index and middle fingers. Across the street, two ranch houses stood side by side, no fence between them. If I ran into that narrow spot and came out the other side, and then repeated the process one block over, I’d find myself in the safety of a busy street, with loads of bystanders. I inhaled deeply, trying to steady my breath, and took off, legs flying. I’d just made it to the houses when I heard, “Lee!”

Fuck. Donal.

I stopped short, nearly tripping over my shoes, and turned around.

It was his work van, windowless, the perfect getaway car for your garden-variety pedophile, something Carly begged me to camouflage with art. I’d painted an ornate claddagh on the side, but the cheap acrylic had mostly chipped off, the heart and crown missing, leaving only a creepy pair of gold, disembodied hands. If I were a kid, I’d take one look at that van and scream for my mother.

Donal pulled to the side of the road, reached over, and opened the passenger door. “Get in,” he said in an uncharacteristically bossy tone.

“But it’s Brophy-free day.” When I moved in, Carly insisted I pick one day I had completely to myself, and it had always been honored. On Wednesdays, I only saw or spoke to a Brophy if I initiated contact.

Donal ran a hand through his thick gingery hair. “It’s Brophy emergency day. That trumps all.”

My heart flew upward, wedging in my throat, which had gone instantly dry. “Are the kids okay? Carly?”

“For now,” he answered. “Can you get in, please? I need a word.”

Donal’s vowels, broadened and flat from so many years in the Midwest, shrunk up when he was nervous, his Irishness rising up to clip them in the jaw. I nodded, knees wobbly with anticipation, and settled into the front seat. He turned the ignition but didn’t drive, his body very still, eyes gazing out the windshield, glassy and unfocused, not really seeing.

“You’re killing me. What is it?”

Wordlessly, he pulled an envelope from the visor and tossed it in my lap. It was thick, and embossed with an official seal I recognized. “Immigration.”

“Read,” he said, the word almost a groan.

It was a long letter, wordy and crammed with legalese, but the message came through clear as a bell. “You’re being deported!”

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know.”

I read the letter again, quickly, looking for a loophole. “It says you failed to comply with the conditions of your residency. You allowed your green card to expire and then misrepresented yourself when you reapplied. Donal—”

“It’s my fault, I know.” He melted into the seat, the bones in his body giving up the fight to stay upright. “I was supposed to send five hundred dollars in with the green card form, along with some other fees. Kevin had just visited emergency. We had to pay the hospital back, or they’d send us to collections. I didn’t have the money.”

“Why didn’t you ask me? We could have figured something out!”

He shrugged, and I wanted to yank his gingery beard until it popped off. “I went back to it, but then Carly needed a root canal and Maura’d outgrown her shoes, and it seemed easier to file the application away and deal with it later. By the time I sent the form in, I was so panicked I sent it in as is, not realizing I’d left Jimmy V. on as my employer. When Immigration phoned, Jimmy told them he hadn’t seen me in months. He’d killed a bottle of Jameson the night before and was in tatters.”

Donal had worked for Jimmy until he’d set out on his own. A few years back, Carly set me up with Jimmy, but on our first date he threw up in my purse. “Why didn’t you ask Jimmy to call them back?”

“I didn’t think it’d be an issue! The government takes years to get on things.”

“Not this time. They seem pretty on the ball.”

Donal sighed. “Oh, Lee, haven’t you ever buried a problem and then forgot you’d ever dug a hole?”

I wanted to rail at him, but the thing was, I had done that. Plenty of times. “Okay,” I said. “What do we do now?”

He glanced at me, just for a second, and I caught the relief in his expression. “You’ll help me?”

“Of course I’ll help you. Between me and Carly—”

“No,” he said, with more vehemence than I’d ever heard from my mild-mannered brother-in-law. “I don’t want to worry Carly or the children until I’m forced to.”

“But—”

“No,” he said. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I get it, but I think you’re underestimating her. She’d more than help, she’d take over like a generalissimo.”

Donal shook his head. “She’s had a lot to deal with of late, and I don’t want to add to her troubles. The boys are at a tough age, and Maura’s been difficult lately . . .”

He trailed off, which led me to think there was more he wasn’t telling me. “And?”

“She’s not infallible, Lee. Sometimes Carly is as bewildered by life as the rest of us.”

If that was true, it was a side of herself my sister hid well, at least with me. “She’ll be angry when she finds out we kept it from her. And she will.”

“My lawyer says the solution might simply be a mountain of paperwork. If that’s true, then I’ll never have to bother anyone but you.”

“You have a lawyer?”

Donal shifted, drawing his battered wallet from the pocket of his work jeans. He handed me a business card, plain black lettering spelling out
Kara Svenson, Immigration Lawyer
, and an address a few suburbs over. “I’ve got an appointment in twenty minutes, and I want you to come with me. She said to bring my wife, and I figured you’d do.”

“Thanks a lot.” I looked down at my running tights, black faded to gray, and my threadbare T-shirt, leftover from my first artsy round with college. The word “Riot” spilled down one long sleeve and “Grrrl” down the other. A line of sweat bisected my sports-bra uniboob, and I could feel the hair that had escaped my ponytail sticking to the back of my neck. “I need to change.”

“You’re fine as you are,” Donal said. “And anyway, we haven’t the time.”

It didn’t feel right, participating in something this monumental in Carly’s place, but Donal looked so stricken I couldn’t say no. I nodded at him, and we began our drive to the lawyer’s office, both of us struck silent by worry.

Kara Svenson worked on the shabbier part of town, in a one-story, octagonal building that bore the unmistakable architecture of a fast-food restaurant. When Donal approached the reception desk, I almost thought the admin would ask if he wanted the grilled-chicken combo, but instead, she gave him a clipboard and pen, and gestured toward the only two remaining seats in the waiting area. Crowding into the small room, Kara Svenson’s clients represented a modern version of Ellis Island—take a snapshot of the group and it could serve as a stock photo advertising the wonders of diversity. I took a seat next to a woman in a hijab, her dark, liquid eyes staring at me unabashedly. “I’ve been waiting over an hour,” she whispered, and I swallowed a groan.

An hour and twenty minutes later, we were ushered into a cramped office by a harried assistant. Kara Svenson stood and shook both our hands. She was very blonde and younger than I thought, her flushed cheeks and round features reminding me of a milkmaid. “Can I see the letter?” she asked, and Donal passed it over.

She didn’t give it more than a glance. “Pretty standard. We can ask for an appeal. We might get it, and we might not. If you don’t get it, we’ll go to court and the judge will decide if you move on to a removal hearing. All kinds of things can happen between now and then.”

Donal pushed out the breath he was holding. My eyes flitted to the tissue box figuring prominently on the middle of her desk. “What’s the worst-case scenario?”

“Deportation. Probably temporary if he’s got someone like me in his corner.” I saw a hint of steel in her smile, enough to give me a little hope.

“What are your rates?” Donal said, a note of panic in his voice.

“The appeal will most likely cost a thousand, maybe two,” she said quickly. “More if we go to court. We’ve got a payment plan, Mr. Brophy. Most of our clients make use of it. It’s not our goal to add bankruptcy to your list of problems.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” he said, and if I didn’t know him so well, I would have thought he was being sarcastic, but he wasn’t, just going into Donal Default polite mode.

“If I file today, we’ll know in two weeks if your appeal has been granted,” Kara explained, though she was already standing, keeping us in motion. “You’ll fill out your forms and pay your fees and life will go on. Let’s hope that’s what happens.”

Donal swallowed audibly. “What are the chances?”

“There are too many factors involved to give you an accurate percentage, Mr. Brophy,” Kara said, sticking her hand out again. Donal shook it, though the action seemed instinctive, little to do with thought or intent.

“Will you call us?” I asked as she turned to me.

“I will. If you haven’t heard from me, it means I don’t have any information yet,” she said briskly, a bit rote, as though she’d said the same thing a hundred times during the course of a day. “The admin up front will have the necessary forms for you to fill out, and you can get the financials settled.”

We were dismissed. I read a tattered poster about the Bill of Rights while Donal finished up with the paperwork, and then we were back in the van, driving aimlessly. “You need options,” I said after a while. “What if the appeal doesn’t go through?”

Donal slapped a palm against the steering wheel in answer, but I knew if I didn’t press, he’d do nothing for two weeks but worry himself to a heart attack.

“When are you going to tell Carly? You need a plan, and a backup to that one, and a backup to that.”

Donal pulled into a Starbucks parking lot, probably for the first time in his life. He didn’t believe in mass-market coffee. “Let’s get a cup of sludge,” he said in a voice only vaguely like his own. We gave our orders to the barista and found a table, sitting silently, warming our hands on our cups. I stopped pressing Donal, and after gingerly taking a few sips of his coffee, he began to talk.

“My grandmother owns a farm outside of Kilkenny. If the worst happens, I could return to work it, and she’ll give me ten thousand euro.”

“Return for how long?”

His expression was pained. “Return, Lee. I don’t know for how long.”