Edward's Eyes (5 page)

Trick and Albert drank coffee
in the kitchen. They were silent. Everything in the house was still. Wren was in her room, the door closed. Will, too. Sola had been gone for a long time. I walked out on the porch and saw her sitting down by the water, Sabine on her lap. I walked down the steps and down the grass, wet with early dew now. I stepped over second base and my throat tightened up. I could feel tears at the corners of my eyes.

I stood next to Sola for a moment. The sky was flat dark blue, no clouds. She didn't look up at me. I sat down next to her. She turned then, and her face didn't seem like Sola's face anymore.
It looked like stone. It frightened me. Sabine made small baby sounds between us. A herring gull wheeled over the water and I thought about the day Edward had hit a long ball where the gull had flown. A sign.

We sat for a long time, not speaking. And then we heard a car. We stood and watched Tom's police cruiser come into the driveway. Jack got out of the backseat and reached out his hand to help Maeve. Tom got out, too, and went up to Maeve and held her hand, just the way he had when he came to get them and take them away. Then Tom got into his car and left. Maeve and Jack walked up the yard, holding hands. Jack turned and saw us then, and they stopped. No one said anything.
Wasn't anyone going to say something? Anything?

Maeve's eyes were red rimmed and that frightened me as much as Sola's stone face had frightened me.

“Oh, Sabine,” she whispered.

She took Sabine. Then she put her arms around me and I began to cry so hard that she handed Sabine to Jack and held me tighter, as if she knew I might break into a thousand pieces if she didn't.

“Come. Into the house,” she said softly.

Jack took Sola's hand. We walked up to the porch and into the house.

Albert and Trick stood up.

“Maeve…,” Albert began, his voice breaking. “We'll go now.”

“No.” Maeve's voice was stronger now.

“Thank you for staying,” said Jack. “Thank you so much.” He put Sabine into her high chair.

Wren and Will had heard Tom's car. They stood in the kitchen doorway. Maeve hugged them both.

“I want you to stay, Albert. Trick. I want to tell you what happened.”

Albert filled a glass of water and handed it to Maeve.

“Thank you, Albert.”

She looked up at Albert standing next to her.

“What would we do without you?” she said, her eyes filling up with tears.

Jack put his head down on his arms for a moment. And there was silence again. Late afternoon light fell across the kitchen table. Maeve got up and turned on a lamp.

I waited for her to speak. But I couldn't wait any longer.

“It was the brakes of the bike, wasn't it? I told him not to go. I should have followed him….”

Maeve held up her hand with a fierce look. Sabine's hand went up to Albert's cheek.

“Could? Should?” said Maeve, her voice flat. “I could have told Edward not to go to town, Jake. Maybe I should have.”

She took a sip of her water.

“I bet you already thought about that. Didn't you?”

My face got hot.

I had thought of that.

“It's all right, Jake. You haven't thought anything that hasn't gone through my mind today, either.”

She stroked my hair.

“Now. We won't talk about ‘woulds' or ‘coulds,'” she went on.

“We will talk about Edward,” she said softly.

Wren came over and leaned on Trick.
He put an arm around her. Will sat across from me. Sola stood at the sink, so still.

Maeve began.

“Edward died at one o'clock this afternoon,” she said flatly.

I could hear Sola take in a breath. It was the first time it had been said. Edward's gone, Albert had said. Gone meant he was somewhere to be found. Dead meant dead.

“One o'clock,” I whispered.

“Game time,” said Jack, taking my hand. “If you're thinking that, it's all right.”

“It wasn't anyone's fault that he died,” said Maeve. “There's no one to blame.”

“It wasn't the brakes of his bike, Jake,” said Jack. “No one ran into him. He turned on his bike to wave and smile at someone across the street.”

“I can see him doing that,” Maeve whispered. “And he ran into a tree. And that was all. No one knows why he went to town.”

“He went to get a baseball cap. That one,” I said. “For Sabine.”

Maeve picked up the cap and and put it up to her cheek.

“And we can't blame Sabine, either,” she said. “Can we.”

Wren began to cry. Trick gathered her onto his lap and held her.

“So, he's just gone. Like that?” said Will angrily. “Gone forever?”

Maeve took a deep breath.

“Yes,” she said. “And no.”

 

They have taken Edward's heart. And his lungs and other organs to give people who need them. Even his tissue they've taken. Maeve tells us this is like Edward living on. No, I want to say. It is not like Edward living on. Where is he? I want to yell at her. They've taken all of him. Where is Edward!?

 

“And there's one thing more,” said Maeve, looking at me.

“We have donated Edward's corneas.”

I jumped up from the table, my chair crashing on the floor behind me. Sabine began to cry.

“Why did you do that?” I yelled at Maeve. “I hate you for doing that!”

Albert Groom put his arms around me and held me close. I fought him at first. Then I gave up and cried.

“No!” I said into his shirt. “They are Edward's eyes!”

Albert turned and walked me to the kitchen
door and out onto the porch, closing the door behind us.

After a minute he leaned down close to my ear. I could feel the tears on his face. He whispered so softly that I leaned back and looked at him to hear better.

“Someone should have those wonderful eyes,” he said softly. “Someone who needs them.”

I stared at him.

Then he looked over my head out to the water.

“Remember what Trick once said? You have to ask the right questions.”

“I would ask why did Edward die,” I said.

Albert sighed.

“Maybe. But maybe the right question now is what would Edward want?”

I went over to the porch railing and looked out to the baseball field. No players. Only Weezer sitting down by the water waiting for something.

“Weezer looks like he's waiting for something,” I said. “A sign.”

Behind me Albert Groom's voice was clear and steady.

“I think we're all waiting for a sign,” he said sadly.

It was quiet for days.
There was no laughter in our house and no talk. Silence filled all the spaces, taking up all the air.

Flowers were delivered. Food arrived.

But no music.

“Maeve doesn't sing,” I said to Jack.

“She will, Jake. When the right time comes.”

“What's the right time?” I asked him.

“It will come,” was all he said.

He put his arms around me.

“I promise,” he said very softly.

Will packed up all his books in boxes and put them under his bed.

“I don't want to read,” he told me.

Wren was quiet.

“Want to go to town, Wren? We'll have ice cream,” I said.

Wren shook her head.

“It's too scary,” she said.

I had no answer for her.

Some nights Maeve took walks. I saw her from my window. And once when I passed Edward's room she was there, sitting on his bed, slowly turning the pages of
Goodnight Moon.
She never saw me standing in the doorway. I wanted her to look up, smile at me, and beckon me in to sit by her. But she didn't. So I made her hear me.

“I taught him how to read,” I said, my voice loud in the quiet room.

Maeve jumped a bit, startled.

“And I sat with him in the bathroom, and read him that book.” I pointed.

“Even in French, and I taught him baseball rules, and…” I couldn't go on.

Maeve got up and put her arms around me.

“Oh, Jake, it was as if he was yours from the very beginning,” she said. “You raised him.”

I looked at her, surprised.

“He loved you,” said Maeve. “Maybe he never said it. But it was you he came to for everything.”

She looked down at me.

“I'm so sad for you, Jake,” she said.

I started to cry again.

“You know what?” I said after a while.

“What?”

“I'm mad at Edward,” I said. “For running into that tree.”

Maeve sighed.

“I am, too,” she said. “I am, too,” she repeated very softly.

“Edward was special,” I said.

Maeve looked closely at me.

“Of course he was. Like you and Sola and Wren and Will and Sabine…”

“No,” I said. “He was different. He was more special.”

Maeve looked surprised.

“Here's what I think, Jake. If Edward seemed more special, maybe it was because of you.”

Suddenly, I thought about Edward, curled up next to me, falling asleep on the lawn. I could almost…
almost
smell him.

Maeve and I sat on Edward's bed then for a long, long time. In that quiet empty room.

 

Sola carried Sabine into my room.

“I miss everything. I even miss the baseball games,” she said.

“You miss Edward,” I whispered. It was hard to say. My throat ached.

“Yes. And I miss the way things were,” she said.

I reached out my hand and touched Sabine's cheek. She moved her head and looked at me. Her eyes were steady and serious. Sabine's eyes and Edward's eyes were all mixed up in my mind.

Edward's eyes.

 

That night I dreamed about them, looking at me, that gold-flecked blue of the night sky when he was a baby. Looking at me across the yard—across the water after he dove from the boat—from the pitcher's mound as he called out his strikes, “change up, slider, knuckleball.” I woke up from my dream and had to get out of bed and walk through the house to keep my heart from beating too fast.

It was a sign, that dream. Trick would have said so. Edward would have said so, too.

Two days later the letter came.

It was late afternoon,
Trick and Albert cooking a stew in the kitchen, my mother trying to save some of the flowers that had come, tossing out the ones that had gone by. Jack came in, carrying a small glass vase and holding a letter.

“I found these flowers on the porch,” he said. “Someone must have left them.”

“Poppies,” said Maeve, with a small smile. The first smile I had seen in days. “Beautiful red poppies, almost ready to bloom.”

Red poppies.

“Who left them?” asked Sola. “We've been here all day.”

Maeve shook her head. “I didn't see anyone.”

Jack put the vase in the middle of the table.

He took Maeve's hand.

“They gave me this letter. At the hospital,” he said. “It's for us. You'll want to read it.”

We all looked up at the strange, sad sound of his voice.

Maeve read it in the kitchen, the letter trembling in her hands. Trick and Albert stopped cooking, leaning against the counter, listening. Wren and Will sat at the table. Wren reached out for Sabine. Sabine touched Wren's hair.

Maeve sat down suddenly as if she couldn't stand anymore. She dropped the letter on the table.

“It's a nice letter,” said Jack softly.

“Yes,” said Maeve. “Yes,” she whispered. “I don't know how to feel…sad or glad.”

“Both,” said Trick. “Both,” he repeated softly.

 

A baseball player. Of all the people in the world; painters, writers, mechanics, builders, teachers, waiters, dancers, singers, librarians, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers…

A baseball player!

 

Albert reached over to look at the letter.

“He doesn't play too far away,” he said with a small smile.

He handed the letter to Trick.

“Close enough,” said Trick.

I looked at the name at the bottom of the letter: Willie Roberts.

It was quiet. And in that quiet something happened. A poppy bud in the vase trembled a little. As we watched, the husk fell to the table and very, very slowly the poppy opened.

Sabine turned to look. And then another trembled. The husk fell, and the flower slowly, more slowly than the first flower, opened. None of us moved or spoke. And then Sabine made a small chirp.

A sign. You know it when you see it.

I stood up.

“Music,” I said to Maeve. “It's a sign. Please. Please, we need music,” I pleaded. “
Sabine
needs music.”

Maeve looked up at me for a moment. Then she got up and put a disc into the player.

Suddenly, music filled the room. Sabine waved her arms.

“Good night, you moonlight ladies. Rockabye sweet baby James.”

Jack put his arms around Maeve and they danced.

Wren got up and danced with Sabine. Maeve reached out and took Sabine, dancing with her and Jack. Maeve smiled and cried at the same time. And she began to sing, softly at first. Sabine smiled her toothless smile, and then, with her eyes on Maeve, Sabine laughed.

That sound, so new, made us all laugh.
Something about that sound.
I looked at Will and I could see the change in his look. Wren was different. Her worried look was gone.

Maeve put in another disc.

I went out to the porch, the sound of music following me.

“And when we die we say we'll catch some blackbird's wing.”

Albert came out, too.

I leaned down and picked up a small card that had dropped there.

It read:

I smiled.

The door opened behind me, and everyone came out and down the yard to the water.

And then, for Edward, because he had once said he wanted it, Jack sent off a rocket. It went high in the sky over the water, a big dandelion of light. Albert and I watched the sparks fall back to the water. Then it was quiet again.

“I want to find them,” I said.

“Them?”

I looked at Albert.

“Edward's eyes,” I said.

“We will,” said Albert, putting his arm around me. “We surely will.”