Before the Storm (22 page)

her birth had never abated, although I was no longer anemic.

I began hiding my symptoms from my doctor. I didn’t care if

I got better; I was that far gone. I didn’t care what happened

to me. I sometimes still fantasized about leaving, though, about

letting Jamie find a normal woman who could be a better

mother to Maggie.

Sara had finally persuaded Jamie I needed “professional

help,” and for several months, they both badgered me about it.

Jamie even made an appointment for me with a psychiatrist in

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Jacksonville and drove me there to make sure I kept it. But the

man sat and stared at me and I stared back. I didn’t cry. I’d

moved beyond tears. The psychiatrist told Jamie he could force

me into a psych unit for a couple of days, but Jamie didn’t have

the heart for that.

Maggie didn’t like me. My early fears about that had come

true, and who could blame her? She cried when I’d take her

from Jamie’s arms, sometimes screaming as if my hands were

made of cold steel instead of flesh and blood.

“Dada!” she’d scream, reaching for him. “Dada!”

By her first birthday, she knew five words, recognizable to

those close to her.
Dada. Bih,
which referred to her pacifier.

Missu,
which seemed to mean Miss Sara.
Nana,
which meant

banana. And
wah,
which was water. She had no word for me.

Sara had become the closest thing I had to a friend, in spite

of how I’d tried to push her away when Maggie was a baby.

She’d bring us meals, occasionally do our grocery shopping and

suggest ways I could deal with Maggie’s developing personality. She had no children of her own, yet she knew better than

I did how to mother my daughter.

One morning when Jamie had been called to the fire station

and I was alone with Maggie, I had a sudden spurt of energy

and decided to take her outside to the beach. It was September and the weather was warm and mild.

Maggie screamed the whole time I changed her into her

ruffly pink bathing suit.

“We’ll go out on the beach and make a sand castle!” I said.

“We’ll have such fun!” My hands shook as I slipped the straps

over her shoulders.
What mother is nervous about dressing her

sixteen-month-old child?
I chided myself.

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She continued screaming while I doused her with sunscreen,

but calmed down as we walked onto the deck. I picked up her

pail and shovel, and she held my hand as we toddled down the

steps to the beach. We sat in the damp sand close to the water

and I built a little sand castle, trying to engage her, but she preferred running through the waves where they splashed against

the shore.

I was adorning the sand castle with shell fragments when

Maggie suddenly screamed. I looked up to see her crouched

over, still as a statue.

“Dada!” she wailed.

I ran to her and saw blood trickling from her hand.

“What did you do, Maggie?” I grabbed her hand. “What

happened?”

I spotted a narrow, splintery board stuck in the sand, water

flowing over it. Picking it up with my free hand, I saw the rusty

nail jutting from the surface.

“Dada!” Maggie screamed again, the blood running from her

hand onto mine.

Scooping her into my arms, I ran with her to the cottage.

She wailed in my ear as I opened the door and darted toward

the kitchen sink.

I turned at the sound of footsteps on the deck and saw

Marcus through the window. He’d been fired a few days earlier

after showing up plastered at work and falling off a roof. At

that moment, I was glad he’d lost his job and was home. I

needed help.

He pushed open the door. “What happened?”

“She cut her hand on a rusty nail!” I said, turning on the

water.

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Marcus moved swiftly toward us. “Good thing her mom’s a

nurse,” he said.

I was a nurse. I’d nearly forgotten. It seemed as though

some other woman had gone through nursing school and

worked in a pediatrician’s office. Some happy, capable woman.

Maggie screamed, trying to squirm out of my arms, blood

splattering everywhere.

“Hold her!” I said.

Marcus wrapped his arms around Maggie’s little body, capturing her unharmed hand with his so she could no longer fight

me off. “It’s okay, Mags,” he said.

I straightened Maggie’s arm to hold it under the faucet as

water flowed over the wound. It was deep and ragged across

her palm. She’d need stitches. A tetanus shot.

Maggie’s wails turned to earsplitting screams. I wanted to

grab her hand
hard
and twist it clean off her wrist. I could

imagine the cracking, grinding feeling of it. Letting go of her,

I jumped back from the sink. “I can’t do this!” I started to cry.

“Yes, you can.” Marcus was so close I could feel his boozy

breath against my ear. “You have a clean dish towel?”

I fumbled in the drawer near the stove, pulling out a dish

towel. Still crying, I rinsed Maggie’s hand again, then pressed

the towel to her palm.

“She needs stitches, doesn’t she?” Marcus asked.

“I can’t do this, Marcus,” I said again. My voice was a child’s

whine in my ears. I wasn’t even sure what I was talking about.

What couldn’t I do? I hated myself.

“She’ll be okay.” Marcus misinterpreted my tears.

I nodded, sniff ling. The dish towel, where I held it to

Maggie’s hand, was turning red.

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“We’ve got to get her to urgent care,” he said.

I nodded again.

“Come on,” Marcus said. “I’ll drive.You hold her and keep

pressure on her hand.”

He shoved Maggie into my arms, and I followed him outside

to the driveway.

Together, we managed to buckle Maggie into her car seat.

I sat next to her, trying to keep pressure on her hand while she

screamed and screamed and called out for her daddy.

When we arrived at urgent care, I longed to hand Maggie

over to the staff, but they wanted me to hold her as they

cleaned and stitched her cut, erroneously thinking that, as her

mother, I would be a comfort to her. I looked down at her dark

curls as the doctor worked on her. Beautiful curls. Huge tears

glistened on her jet-black eyelashes. Why didn’t I feel anything

for her? How could I be holding my own frightened, hurting

child and feel nothing? I pictured my bed. How good it would

feel to crawl under the covers! I could call Sara to come watch

Maggie so I could sleep. I had it all planned out, my mind a

million miles away as they worked on my baby, whose screams

might have been made by a machine for all they touched me.

“It’s okay, Mama.” The young female doctor smiled at me

as she finished bandaging Maggie’s hand. “She’s going to be

fine. She’ll just have an extra lifeline across her palm. Too bad

we can’t all be that lucky.”

That night, Jamie sat on the edge of the bed as I burrowed

beneath the covers.

“What would you have done if Marcus hadn’t been here?”

he asked.

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I thought about the question. What
would
I have done? I remembered the image of twisting Maggie’s hand from her arm

and shook my head quickly to make it go away.

“Why are you shaking your head?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You could have called me.”

“Jamie.” I wrapped my hand around his arm. “I want to

leave.”

He tilted his head to one side. “What do you mean, leave?”

“You and Maggie would be better off without me.” It was

not the first time I’d said those words in the past sixteen

months, but it was the first time he didn’t contradict me.

Whatever Jamie and I’d once had together had disappeared.

We rarely made love. We hardly spoke to each other. He’d

stopped trying to understand me, to empathize with me, the

way he’d stopped trying to empathize with Marcus. “I don’t

trust myself with her,” I said. “With being able to take care of

her.”

Jamie looked down at my hand on his arm and covered it

with his own. “Are you saying you want a separation?” he

asked.

I nodded. The word itself brought me relief. “I’m not sure

where I’d go, though.” That uncertainty was the only thing

that scared me.

“You’d stay here,” he said, and I knew he’d already thought

this through, that he’d been thinking of it for a while. Even

planning it.“Sara and Steve have a spare room I can move into.

I’ll pay them a little rent. They can use the money.”

I gasped. “Don’t leave Maggie with me!”

Jamie shook his head.“She’d come with me,” he said.“That’s

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the whole point.You…I don’t know what’s wrong with you,

Laurie, but whatever it is, it’s interfered with you being able

to be a good mother to Maggie. If I’m staying with the

Westons, Sara would be right there to help with Maggie when

I get called to the fire station or can’t take her to work with

me or whatever.”

It seemed like a perfect solution and I was grateful he’d

figured everything out and I didn’t need to do a thing. I was a

shitty mother. A shitty wife.

“Okay,” I said, closing my eyes. “Thank you. That sounds

good.”

And I rolled onto my side to face the wall.

MONDAY MORNING, I DROVE ANDY TO school and faked

like I was going into the building with him, but once he was

out of sight, I went back to my car and drove to Surf City. I

hadn’t slept all night. It had been more than two weeks since

the fire, but those posters from the memorial service were still

on the back of my eyelids every time I closed my eyes. Around

two in the morning, I got up and drove to The Sea Tender. I

sat on the deck and cried, because I couldn’t quiet my mind

enough to make contact with Daddy. It’d been so long since I

felt him with me! Every time I tried to still my thoughts, those

posters popped up again. I wanted to grab that blue-eyed Jordy

and that scared-looking little boy, Henderson, and Mr. Eggles,

who’d probably saved Andy from getting pulverized by

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Keith—I wanted to grab them and breathe life back into them.

I kept saying,
“Please Daddy, please Daddy, please Daddy,”
like he

could somehow magically make things better. But he wasn’t

coming. I finally decided something, though, sitting out there

in the dark. I’d cut school today and go to that accountant, Mr.

Gebhart, to ask how I could help with the fund-raising. I had

to do
something
besides give money. That was the easy way out.

Mr. Gebhart’s office was on the mainland side of Surf City

and it wasn’t open yet. I sat in the parking lot, listening to music

on my iPod and trying to read
The Good Earth.
I was so behind.

It was one thing not to be valedictorian, totally something else

to flunk out in my senior year. No way I’d let that happen. I

had
to graduate, because once I was in college, Ben and I could

pretend to start dating. Publicly. Mom and Uncle Marcus

would freak, but they’d just have to deal. Then maybe after a

year, we could get married. I hoped Ben wouldn’t want to wait

until I got out of college. We’d never talked about it. I just

knew I wouldn’t be able to wait that long. I didn’t care about

a big wedding and all that, like Amber. She had it all planned

out. The flowers and the music and the color of her bridesmaids’ dresses, and I just wanted to say
grow up.
Ben and I could

elope, for all I cared.

I’d fallen asleep when I heard the
tap,tap,tap
of stiletto heels

walking past my car. I jerked awake and saw a woman unlocking Mr. Gebhart’s office door.

I pulled out my earbuds, drank from my water bottle and

followed her inside.

“Hey, honey.” She was making coffee. “What can I do for

you?”

“My name’s Maggie Lockwood,” I said, “and I—”

“You related to Andy?”

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“Yes, ma’am. His sister.”

She scooped coffee into the filter. “I bet you’re real proud

of him.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Unbelievable what that boy did. And wasn’t he somethin’

on the
Today
show?”

I smiled.“He was.” No one with half a heart could have seen

that interview and not fallen in love with my brother. He’d

been too cute, all big brown eyes and jiggly knee and his simple

view of the world that—as long as you weren’t his teacher—

couldn’t help but suck you in.“I wanted to talk to Mr. Gebhart

about helping with the fund-raising,” I said.

“Oh, honey.” She pushed the coffeemaker’s On button, then

sat down at her desk. “Mr. Gebhart only handles the money

part of it. The donations.You need to talk to Dawn Reynolds.

You know who she is?”

Oh, yeah. Unfortunately.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I was hoping

Mr. Gebhart could tell me what I could do, since I’m here right