Daughters for a Time (28 page)

I nodded. Ross needed me to be sympathetic. He needed me to not hurt him more than he was hurting already. But I needed something, too. I needed more time with Claire, and I didn’t care—seriously, I did not care one bit at this
point—whether she was brain-dead or not. I wasn’t ready to let her go; I wasn’t ready to never touch her again.

“That’s not Claire anymore,” Ross said. “My wife, Maura’s mother—she’s gone.”

I nodded. “I know, Ross. I know,” I said as compassionately as I could. I squeezed Claire’s hand more tightly and looked at Ross. “Can we just not make the decision today?”

“I don’t want to see her like this.”

“I’m begging you, Ross,” I pleaded. “Please. Just not today.”

Ross turned and left without saying good-bye.

I stayed by Claire’s side for two more days. I slept in her bed, applied lip salve to her cracked lips, and rubbed lotion into her hands. I brushed her hair and dotted cream rouge on her cheeks. I massaged Tiger Balm into her back, in case it hurt her the way our mother’s had. On the last day of April, when it was certain that the miracle I had prayed for hadn’t come, the doctors turned off the machines, and I covered her body with mine until the last breath had left her.

Two days later, on the morning of Claire’s funeral, just as Sam and I were stepping out of the bathtub, the phone rang. The caller identification informed me that it was the Genetic Counseling office of Fairfax Hospital. I exhaled a stream of breath and answered it, holding tight to Sam and the towel wrapped around us.

“Mrs. Francis, this is Michelle from the Genetics office. I’m calling to let you know that we got back the results of your blood test.”

For a split second, I wanted her to say that I was predisposed. I wanted her to say that I would share Claire’s fate. For
a split second, I wanted her to hand me a one-way ticket to seeing my sister again.

“And?” I asked.

“Good news. The cancer gene did not show up in your blood work.”

“Oh, thank God,” I said, and started to cry because what I had thought a second before wasn’t true. As much as I wanted to see Claire again, I wanted to stay here even more. One of us needed to be here for Sam and Maura. I hugged Sam tightly in her towel bundle.

“So, again, good news,” Michelle said. “But still, please remember to make your follow-up visit in six months.”

“That’s great,” I said, rubbing Sam’s back. “Thank you for the good news. Um…”

“Do you have any questions?” she asked.

“No,” I hesitated. “It’s just that…”

“What is it?”

“My sister died,” I said, though I wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe I wanted to test-drive the words, see if I could form a sentence out of my pain. “Her funeral is this morning.”

“Oh, Mrs. Francis,” Michelle said. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“I don’t want to get it,” I said, sounding like a six-year-old worried about catching chicken pox.

“Some women with extensive family history get hysterectomies to reduce their chances,” she said. “I’m not advocating it, I’m just saying.”

“Thanks, Michelle,” I said. “For listening.”

We buried Claire on a crisp May morning. Father O’Meara presided over the service. A friend of Claire’s from college—Sarah, who I remembered from Claire and Ross’s wedding—sang “Ave Maria.” Claire would have loved to hear her friend sing, I thought, listening to the haunting, pure tones of the song that meant so much to my sister. But Claire was gone, dead. She couldn’t hear it. But that was just me and my lack of faith. If Mom were here, she would have seen it differently. She would have believed that Claire was able to hear the timbre of her friend’s voice, see Maura straddling her father’s lap, feel the love of those who congregated to remember her.

After the service, we drove to the cemetery. Tim drove and Larry sat next to him in the passenger’s seat. I sat in the backseat, with Sam in her car seat on one side and Maura adhered to me on the other. I had whispered to her earlier that it would be nice for her to go with her father, but she clung tightly to me and shook her head no. Ross said that it was fine, that he wanted her to do what was most comfortable. His brothers were with him; Martha was at his side. We were all statues, buckling under the weight of it; we all needed our scaffolding to hold us up.

At the cemetery, we climbed the hill to the manicured plot. My mind felt fuzzy and unreliable. The surroundings seemed exceptionally vivid. The sky was strangely blue, as in a child’s
painting. Cotton-ball clouds scattered above us. The hillside was too perfectly sloped, as if Maura had drawn it: a steady line, an exaggerated hump, more steady line. The gladiolus that draped my sister’s casket were perfectly shaped trumpets, their colors almost too vibrant. It occurred to me that my senses were piqued, heightened perhaps to compensate for the grief tunneling through my body, digging in, taking root.
I’ll be here for a while
, the angry pain seemed to be saying.
Distract yourself with the lovely flowers.

We stood before the casket—Tim, me, Sam in my arms; Ross, now holding Maura; the grandparents. I was there, but my awareness was skewed as I stared at the grave, the casket.
That’s Mom
, I thought as a wave of a fourteen-year-old’s insecurity and need pulsed through me.
That’s Claire
, my adult mind reminded me. You’re all that’s left. You’re the mom now.

Somehow, we made it home, back to our house. Though Claire’s house would have accommodated the crowd better, Ross asked if we could come to ours. He was sure that Claire wouldn’t have wanted people at their house in the shape that it was in, messier than normal, a hospital bed in the family room, prescription bottles everywhere. She had been so proud of her decorating and housekeeping.

Our house had the feeling of somehow being whipped, frenzied. Delia and Martha zipped around, tending to the girls, answering the phone, accepting flowers, preparing food. I was aware of Davis playing cards with Maura.
Go fish
, her helium-balloon voice said. Then later, there was Larry, scooping up Sam and taking Maura by the hand into the backyard to show them a bird’s nest perched in the crook of a tree, housing three new hatchlings. Maura brightened at the sight of them, her eyes widening. That’s what I remember, that Larry was the first to make Maura smile.

The guests left and the sky grew dark. Maura asked for pillows. She was on the floor, watching a movie. I went upstairs to Sam’s room, sat on the bed, and a wave of sadness overtook me with such ferocity that I had to lie down and cry into the sheets. Later, Tim said that he’d come up to check on me, only to find me asleep. By his clock, I slept for twelve hours.

We all, collectively, made it through the next week.
The week after
. The first week without Claire. It was a cobbled effort where everyone pitched in, worked, and contributed until they reached their breaking point, then withdrew until they were ready to join in again.

In the mornings, Sam and Maura and I would watch kid television for hours, we’d read a mountain of books, we’d eat dry cereal from the box. Maura would color, Sam would scribble, and together, they’d piece together puzzles or stack LEGOs. It astonished me to watch the two of them. I had just assumed that the age difference between Sam and Maura would be too big for them to get along. I had just assumed that a one-year-old and a five-year-old would be in completely different spaces, mentally, physically, academically. But while it was true that Maura
was
in a completely different space, her added maturity didn’t preclude her from playing with Sam. They enjoyed the same things, just in different, age-appropriate, ways: Tim’s Matchbox cars, stuffed animals, and arts and crafts. They were happy companions. It was an odd thing, how we were nourishing each other, how I was bonding with Sam, how Sam was finding a companion in Maura, how Maura was accumulating the affection she so desperately needed to restore to her life.

As they played, I’d sit at my computer, checking e-mail. Amy DePalma wrote daily. Her oldest sister’s breast cancer had recurred. It didn’t look good. But in Amy’s usual fashion, she had found peace. She was like Claire in that way, which was a trait in both of them that I still didn’t understand. Claire
was the most principled person I’d ever known, the type who would fight a ten-dollar parking ticket given erroneously, just to right a wrong. Amy, too. At the airport in China, she had argued with a Chinese official who claimed that her suitcase was overweight, when Amy knew that it wasn’t. She ended up with her suitcase on the plane and a twenty-dollar voucher for snacks. How, then, did these two women, who stood for everything and put up with nothing, accept cancers as if they were fated in the stars? Of course, I knew. It was their faith. I just wasn’t there yet.

Each day, around lunchtime, we’d go downstairs. Delia would fix whatever the girls wanted: grilled cheese, peanut butter and jelly, soup. Then I’d let Delia and Davis, or Martha, or Larry, or Tim, or Ross take the girls outside for a while, just to get some fresh air. Ross tried, but he was struggling. He would play a game with Maura and she would smile or laugh; then his eyes would fill and he’d have to excuse himself. I’d watch him walk away, suck in the air, throw sticks into the woods.

At one point—it must have been Wednesday or Thursday—I looked out the window to see Larry sawing down a dead tree in our front yard, Tim standing next to him holding a beer, Maura riding a scooter on the driveway, Sam toddling behind her, Martha and Delia pulling weeds from the beds. Only months ago, I was a girl with a scrawny family tree. Now in the midst of losing another branch, it was regenerating.

While the girls spent time with their relatives, I’d go upstairs alone, turn on the shower, and stand under the water. I’d make it hotter than was comfortable and let it beat down on me, turning my skin red, curling my toes, while I cried until I was doubled over and coughing. I’d sink to my knees, pull at the hair on my head, and pound my fists on the tile floor. That would be enough to get me through the rest of the day, a
temporary patch that would allow me to put on a brave face for Maura and Sam.

I no longer asked Maura where she wanted to sleep. It was clear that she needed me to provide what was now missing from her life—a warm, maternal body. Maura would sleep in my arms, and Sam, now used to having her older cousin around, slept next to her. Each morning I would find the two asleep, touching
somehow—
a tangle of legs, an overlap of arms, two mouths puckered, only a centimeter apart. The girls were comforting each other; they just didn’t know it. They didn’t know that they were one and the same, that each in her own way had been left.

That was when I realized that a miracle
had
occurred. What I had assumed to be more bad luck on my part—coming home with Sam the same month that Claire was diagnosed with cancer—hadn’t been bad luck at all. It had been a blessing. A miracle. Maura needed Sam at this exact moment in her life, and undoubtedly, Sam had needed Maura for the entirety of hers. The realization hit me hard in my chest, and for a moment, I struggled to find the breath to fill my lungs. I was covered in a blanket of sorrow, but now I could see that there were threads of goodness and divinity woven through it.

But the divinity wasn’t always so clear.

This morning, Maura stirred, wiped the sleep from her eyes, and propped herself up on her elbows.

“Hi, Aunt Helen,” she said, yawning and stretching.

“Hi, sweetheart.” I kissed her forehead.

“I love you,” she said in a perky voice.

“I love you, too.”

She looked at me intently and furrowed her brow. “Why am I in your…oh, yeah.” Her cheerful expression slid away as easy as the sand in her Etch A Sketch did. Her mouth turned downward and her eyes drooped.

“Oh, pumpkin,” I said and hugged her tightly.

“I want my mommy!” she cried.

“I know you do,” I said, pulling her into me and stroking her hair, because other than my set of hugging arms, I had nothing else to offer.

On Sunday night, a week after Claire’s death, Tim cooked prime rib. Ross’s brothers had already gone home, but Martha, Davis, Delia, Larry, and Ross were still hanging around, helping with the girls and household chores. After dinner, we all lingered at the table, nursing our glasses of wine. Delia took Sam and Maura into the family room to play.