All the Time in the World (11 page)

“Matt, I don't want you to stay home again.” I pick up two monogrammed throw pillows off the floor, then think better of it and put them back down, in case Georgie falls off the end of the bed. “I want you to try and go to school. I think you'll be okay once you're there with all your friends. If you still feel bad, you can ask Miss Leslie to call me, and I'll come get you.” I pull open the closet door so he can contemplate his clothing options.

Matt flops over to face the other direction and doesn't say anything. I try not to sigh. It's a sound they hear too frequently from me since they started back to school three weeks ago. The three weeks before that were utter chaos in the land of a little kid, making it almost a month and a half since the world had order.

“Come on, baby, let's get dressed.” I pick up George and carry him into his room. “Do you want to hold your Chickie while we get some clothes on?”

“I not a baby. I get big,” he says, taking his little yellow chicken from me with great dignity. Chickie is a toy that I brought in as a ringer. Pup was never found after that night we left the hospital. At the time, it had seemed like the worst case of insult to injury I had ever encountered. I think I cried more for the loss of Pup than George did. In his mind, I think somehow he had equated Pup's departure with Gretchen's, that he had made it okay, thinking that Mommy and Pup had gone off together to the same place. But I had obsessed over it. I had called the New York City taxi authority. I had stalked the hospital lost and found. I had checked every tote bag and closet three times. Pup was nowhere. We don't speak of Pup in this house anymore.

I dress George and release him down the hall so he can play while he waits for me to retrieve Matt and toast his waffle. The TV is not on, so I think Scotty has probably left for work.

Matt is sitting up in bed. He's taken off his pajamas and is hanging out in his underwear, staring into space, as if he forgot what he was doing halfway through getting dressed.

“Do you want to wear this green shirt?” I ask. “George is wearing his orange one. You guys can match.”

“No,” he says.

“How about this one?” I go to his closet and pull out a blue plaid button-down. “Your mommy loved this shirt.” I see no point in participating in the rampaging silence that everyone else maintains around the boys where Gretchen's existence is concerned.

“No,” he says. “I hate that one.” I can't wait until next year when North-Mad starts enforcing the uniforms.

“Would you like to pick?” I say, determined to hang on to my patience. Lately, it seems that not only does Matt want to turn everything into a fight but that he actually revels in it. The more the fight escalates, the more he enjoys it. The psychologist they've been seeing has some theory about the anger phase of grief, but I'm of the opinion that the more I engage with him, the more likely this will become the norm forever. I don't want him to spend his whole life fighting, simply for the energy in the drama.

He slinks out of bed and stands in front of his dresser, probably because I am in front of the closet, and I take that to mean that he will put on clothes and be out when he is ready.

“Don't forget to put on socks,” I say and then want to scold myself for nagging.

I'm surprised when I enter the kitchen to find George sitting on Scotty's lap at the table. Scotty is drinking coffee and staring at the business section of the
Times
, and George appears to read it with him. It hurts my heart, because I know that Georgie must be counting the precious minutes he is having with his father right now. It won't be long before he is shut out again, forced on the other side of the invisible wall that separates Scotty from the rest of the world.

Scotty gestures to the coffeemaker. “The front page and the sports section are over there,” he says. “Or you can have this one, if you want.”

“Well, you know how I love the sports section.” I pour coffee for myself and put two multigrain waffles into the toaster.

Scotty maneuvers Georgie off his lap and sets him on the floor.

“See you later,” he says and kisses no one. There's no one in this house that he wants to kiss.

I lift George into the booster seat and set him up with his waffle, then walk back down the hall to check on Matt's progress. He is in his bed, with his pajamas back on and the covers pulled up over his head.

Valentine's Day

Once I realize that Gretchen has died, my first thought is that I need to text Eliza.

But what to text? She should know, of course. It's the responsible thing to do where Scotty's job is concerned; plus, I promised. But if I type the words, will it become more true? Will it be less true if fewer people know? And if I am able to force my fingers to acknowledge the truth, how will I phrase it? What words could I possibly use?

Scotty has shifted his frozen stare from the sleeping boys, to the doors the doctor has just walked back through. Maybe the doctor wasn't sure. Maybe he's gone back to double-check. It would be silly to text Eliza now. The doctor should make sure that this is indeed the truth before I start a widespread panic via text. Patrick is standing behind Scotty with his hands on his brother's shoulders, like a father might stand. I'm confused for a moment, wondering how Patrick can appear so much taller, until I realize that Scotty is hunched over and has been inching that way since the doctor walked away. What if he falls? I'm suddenly afraid he might, and I don't want that. But Patrick has him; Patrick is guiding him to a chair.

Scotty sits in that chair for a long time. Rosie Ramsay comes out once or twice. Do they want to take him back to identify the body? Did they use a stale phrase, like “see her one last time”? Patrick waves Rosie off. He is crying. Patrick is crying?

And then I realize that
I'm
crying. Of course, I'm crying too. I don't want the boys to wake up and see me crying. I don't want them to wake up until I hear from Scotty that he knows how he wants to handle this.

But Scotty is the only conscious person in the room who is not crying, so I'm not sure I'm going to hear anything at all from him.

Gretchen's sister and her teenage daughter walk in then. They are coming down the long, frustrating hallway, and I can see them approaching for what seems like a distorted amount of time before they arrive in our waiting room. I have a sudden flash of gratitude that Patrick is here and appearing to function. This is not my responsibility. I'm not part of this family, not really. This thought is disconcerting, and what's worse is that it's followed by a now-or-never moment. If I want to get out, now is the time to do it, the time to leave and not come back. Right now, no one I matter to is in a state of awareness; Gretchen is dead, Scotty is in limbo, and George and Matt are sleeping. Before I hear anyone ask for me or about me, there's still time to escape.

I don't. There's no weighing of pros and cons. I simply don't. I don't move. I don't go while I have the chance. I don't do anything.

Gretchen's sister's name is Lila, and the daughter's name is something innocuous. Mary? I think that's right. Patrick rises to greet Lila.

I am thinking, in a muted, panicky way, of all the roles that have been vacated by the loss of her, all the capacities that suddenly no longer exist. The mother of two particular little boys, the wife of a particular husband. Someone's daughter, someone's best friend, sister, ex-girlfriend, confidante. The object of someone's particular affection, jealousy, animosity, maybe? There's going to be competition, I think, in a flash of foreboding. There will be competition in this grief. Everyone will have memories, stories. Everyone will have had a unique experience of her, with her, and they will compete to prove who loved her the most. Thank God the boys are too young to understand that. I want to throw my body in between them and anyone who might lay that on them.

It seems Patrick has already taken on that role for Scotty. Even now, as Lila weeps into the arms of her fourteen-year-old, Patrick is on the other side of her, holding her up, guiding her to a chair as he did for Scotty. It's not helpful that through her sobs Lila keeps saying, “Oh Scotty, oh Scotty,” over and over like some kind of morbid record skip. Patrick seems to understand that no one needs to hear that. He says, “Shh, shh,” a few times, like you would to soothe a child, and she does stop eventually. No sooner has she quieted down than Patrick catches my attention over her slumped form and shakes his head. To me, it looks dismissive. I'm glad because now I can go back to hating him.

By taking no action, by my staying put here tonight, I have condemned myself to watching a horrifying parade. There will be more family to arrive and hear this news. There will be more people to call. There will be more tears, more wailing, more foreheads covered in ash and breasts beaten. And I will watch it all.

And then the boys will wake up, and that will be the absolute worst.

I text Eliza. I can't think of an appropriate way to say what's happened. I just type two words: “She died.”

A little time passes, and I get her response. One word only: “No.”

April, six weeks after

I have finally gotten both kids to school, employing a small amount of literal dragging. Georgie has a playdate today and will be picked up by another nanny. I explain this one more time to him, even though I know it won't make him any happier when it comes time for the playdate to actually start. After depositing George in his classroom and tricking him into surrendering Chickie, I am about to foist Matt into the hands of Miss Leslie, the head kindergarten teacher.

As she sends Matt over to put his things away in the designated cubby, I start to go, but she calls me back over.

“I've left a message with Mr. McLean's secretary, but I don't want to be a nag. We don't have another number for him. The cell phone number we have is—” She catches herself and recovers with grace. She has exactly the right temperament for a kindergarten teacher. “The number we have on file was Gretchen's.”

“I can give you his cell number,” I say. I am reluctant because I know that if Eliza took a message, then he had definitely received it and chosen not to call back, at least not yet. “Could you maybe, I mean, is there a way you could tell me what it was regarding? I can check again with him to make sure that he knows.”

I understand her hesitation—I'm not the parent. She hasn't seen a parent's face in six weeks. She's only seen mine, and maybe Gramma Mae's once or twice.

“Well, we're having trouble getting Matt to follow directions, which isn't typical for him,” Miss Leslie finally says. “We know he hears what we say. We know that he knows what we mean but chooses to do what he'd rather do instead. It's completely understandable, and we're prepared to deal with it in a way that's conducive to grieving, but…” She isn't looking me in the eye, like she's casting around for the right way to phrase it. “There's been a recurring incident with Ainsley, and we need to make sure that the other kids are okay and feel safe.”

“Of course,” I say. “What's been happening?”

“We thought it was silly at first, but now Ainsley winds up crying at the end of every recess, maybe three or four times now,” Miss Leslie says, more gently than I would have.

“Oh, wow. I don't know what to say,” I tell her. “I'm so sorry. Is he hurting her?”

“Not initially,” she says, looking uncomfortable. “He keeps asking her if she wants to get married, and she'll laugh, and sometimes she says yes and sometimes no. It's pretty much no, though. When she says yes, he'll say things like, ‘You're my wife now forever, we have to live together, you can move into my house, and Georgie will go live at yours,' stuff like that. And then when she wants to stop pretending, he'll grab her arms and drag or push her into their corner ‘house.' Or, like the other day, he kind of shook her a little.”

“Stop, stop,” I say, and I don't know why I say that, although it's probably what I would say if Matt could hear me. “I'm so sorry. I can't believe he did that. Is she okay? Does Jillian—I mean, is she mad? Oh, no, I'm so sorry.”

“Everyone is fine.” Miss Leslie is comforting me. “It didn't escalate that far, and we've been keeping them apart at recess. But I need to tell Jillian about it, just to make her aware, and I wanted to be able to tell her that Mr. McLean is also aware.”

“Of course,” I say. “I'll make sure he hears the message. Let me also give you my cell phone number so that you can reach someone right away if you need to during the day.”

“Are you the only one who's there with them, besides their dad?” she asks. I'm annoyed by the implications in this question, but I try not to let on. Miss Leslie is either my exact same age or a few years younger, from the looks of her, which somehow makes her sympathy worse.

“Their grandmother, Gretchen's mom, was here for about a month. She left two weeks ago, and since then, it's mostly me with the boys, until they figure out what they want to do more permanently.” The last part of that is of my own invention. I suspect Scotty hasn't gotten around to entertaining what's next for the boys' future. “They go out to visit their aunt on the weekends.”

“It must be very hard for you,” says Miss Leslie.

“It's very hard for everyone,” I say.

Valentine's Day

By the time Gretchen's parents arrive at the hospital, Lila and Mary have collected themselves enough to go with Rosie Ramsay and do whatever it is that needs to be done back there. Patrick, in a fit of wisdom, has opted not to leave the waiting room and therefore not let Scotty out of his sight. However often I will it not to, my heart is starting to bleed for Patrick. I am dreading the moment that the boys will have to learn that the central figure in their lives is no more; it's an equally unfathomable task to have to deliver the news that a daughter has not outlived her parents—that they have not made it in time to even say good-bye—and Patrick will have to be the one to take on those tasks when Gretchen's parents arrive.