Flying Changes (24 page)

A social worker named Sandra Compton calls the next morning. She wants to meet with us, will come to our hotel room if that’s what we prefer. She wants to know if it’s all right if she brings a hospital administrator, if we’re ready to begin making arrangements.

I sit on the edge of the bed, twisting the phone cord around my fingers, and wishing Eva weren’t in the room.

“The only thing is that technically I’m not Roger’s wife anymore. So I don’t know if the arrangements are mine to make. It’s not that I won’t do it—his current wife died in the same accident—it’s just…Well, I don’t know how these things work.”

“Did he have any other family?”

It dawns on me that she’s speaking of Roger in the past tense, and I’m still using the present.

“Just my daughter, and she’s underage,” I say, lowering my voice in the hope that Eva won’t hear me, which is just possible because she and Mutti are involved in some sort of heated discussion behind me. “And his son,” I add quickly, remembering Jeremy. “But he’s just a baby.”

“Yes, I know about him. Did Roger’s wife have any family?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’ll look into it and see what I can find out.”

The noise behind me increases. I twist at the waist and find Eva putting on her jacket as Mutti fusses and clucks.

“I’ll call you back in a little while,” the social worker says. “Will you be in your room?”

“I don’t know. Hang on a sec,” I say, pulling the phone away and covering the mouthpiece. “What’s going on?”

“She wants to go see Jeremy,” says Mutti.

“I
am
going to see Jeremy,” retorts Eva.

I bring the phone back to my face. “We’ll either be here or at the hospital. My daughter wants to go see her brother.”

“Yes, of course,” says Sandra. “I’ll catch up with you at one place or another. I also want you to know that grief counseling is available for both you and your daughter. You may have been divorced, but that doesn’t mean you’re not grieving.”

I give my head a little shake, baffled.

I realize that she must think I’m in denial and need permission, but, my God—of course I’m grieving. I spent more than half my life with Roger. He wasn’t the man for me, but he was a good man, a decent man, and what he went through is beyond comprehension. What kind of a monster wouldn’t grieve? I’m grieving even though I’m glad he didn’t survive.

I’m glad he didn’t survive.

I feel like someone has slammed a brick into my open chest.

“I…uh…uh…” A flash of color passes in my peripheral vision. It’s Eva, with Mutti close on her heels. “I’m sorry, I have to go,” I say and hang up.

I grab my purse and rush after them.

As we get off the elevator on the children’s floor, a nurse pushes a portable crib toward us. An IV bag hangs from a pole. Its tube leads to a thin baby’s splinted arm. A haggard woman trails behind, holding her forearms, hugging herself. I hold the elevator door open for them.

As they approach, an alarm screeches.

The procession stops, and the nurse turns back to face the nurse’s station. Three surprised faces pop up—
boom! boom! boom!
—with the frantic insistence of whack-a-mole.

“It’s just me,” the nurse shouts, waving at the prairie dog heads, which drop back down.

A security guard rushes round the corner. He stops when he sees the nurse. “Sorry, Rob,” she says. “Just me. Taking mister here down for an ECG. Want to unlock the elevator for me?”

The guard nods and turns. He punches a code into a keypad beside the elevator and trudges back whence he came.

As the nurse, crib, and weary mother enter the elevator, I stare in astonishment. The mother gives me a searing look and I realize with horror that it looks like I’m gawking at her emaciated baby. I wasn’t, although his condition sends a horrified shock through my core. I was staring at the device attached to his ankle.

Do they really have to put anti-theft devices on the
babies? Are there people really sick enough to steal sick babies? As we pass between flat white panels that look for all the world like the devices at the doors of most clothing stores, I realize there must be.

The three of us approach the nurses’ desk. I feel like I’m walking down an ever-lengthening tunnel.

The nurses are expecting us. Sandra warned them, I suppose, although I’m grateful since it saves us from having to explain ourselves. We may be dry-eyed, but we’re walking wounded. I know our composure—or mine, at least—wouldn’t survive the ordeal of having to explain why we’re here. I’d shatter like a Christmas ornament.

But the nurse knows all, and leads us down a brightly painted hall with murals at regular intervals. Cookie Monster and Elmo playing in the sand. Another muppet I don’t recognize holding a dozen multicolored balloons. Flowers with faces, ladybugs, and sunshine. Bluebirds dipping down in carefree delight.

Mutti and I flank Eva. We clutch hands, a human chain.

“Most of the children here have family staying with them,” the nurse says over her shoulder. She has an odd shape—thin shoulders and a small waist that opens onto large hips. Her legs are bent at an odd angle—they seem to get further apart below the knees. “Since Jeremy has been on his own, we’ve been taking turns,” she continues. “We’ve come to think of him as our baby,” she says. “He’s an awfully good boy. Here he is, the poor little mite.” She turns into a doorway.

The room is deeper than I expected, with a crib in the center and a window at the back. There’s a gliding
rocker beside the crib, and there, in another nurse’s arms, is the famous Jeremy.

The nurse cradles him close, giving him a bottle. I inch closer. I have seen pictures, of course—Eva flew out to Minneapolis immediately after his birth and brought home about three dozen pictures, which I viewed with Teflon eyes. The framed picture in her room has been updated at regular intervals, and while I’ve noticed its changing contents, I’ve avoided looking too closely. It was too painful. It reminded me of what Dan and I could never have.

But here he is, directly in front of me, and I can’t take my eyes off him. He’s gorgeous. His blond hair sticks up in soft tufts. His cheeks are round, his eyes wide. Their color surprises me—they’re a deep crocus purple—until I remember that all babies are born with blue eyes and that they change over the course of the first year. Roger’s eyes are—were—of the deepest brown. His daughter has them, and so will his son.

Jeremy’s cheeks had been moving in and out as he drank, but they stop as his eyes flit from person to person. His right wrist is in a blue fiberglass half-cast, resting on the nurse’s generous forearm. There’s a raised purple bruise in the center of his forehead. His hands and fingers are pudgy, and my heart about stops when I realize that his knuckles are inverted, mere dimples. I had forgotten that about babies.

The nurse who brought us here leans over him. “Well hello, sweet pea,” she coos, stroking his cheek. His eyes glom onto her face. “How’s my little sugarplum?”

Jeremy blinks and then moves his cheeks in and out, exactly once, as he takes another sip.

“Carrie, this is Jeremy’s sister,” says the nurse who brought us here. “Her name is Eva.”

Carrie looks up in surprise. “Well, I’ll be,” she says softly. She shifts to the edge of the rocker. “Would you like to give him his bottle?”

Eva hovers at a distance.

“Come on now, don’t be shy. There’s nothing to it.”

“Will I hurt his arm?” Eva asks without moving.

“No,” the nurse says, shaking her head vehemently. “It’s protected by the splint. And besides, that’s coming off soon. Jeremy is a lucky boy—his fracture was only a greenstick.”

Jeremy is a lucky boy
—my stomach lurches at the words.

The nurse holding Jeremy rises as Eva inches forward. “Come on, honey. Don’t be shy. You just take a seat right there. Put your feet up on this footrest. That’s right. Julie, get her a pillow to put across her lap.”

As the baby is transferred to Eva, a chubby pink foot with perfect pea-pod toes pops out from beneath the flannel blanket. He, too, is wearing a house-arrest anklet.

An hour later, I’m in the rocker with Jeremy, having rescued Eva when it became apparent she had no clue how to burp a baby.

It all came back instantly—the warm little Easter egg of a body, his complete and utter trust in me as I leaned him forward and rubbed and patted his rounded back. After a belch of seismic proportions, I wiped his chin and brought him back against me. He simply melted,
nestling his downy head beneath my chin. He placed his thumb in his mouth and zoned out; not napping but staring into space with his long-lashed blue eyes.

I haven’t moved since.

“Hi there.” A petite woman in her fifties with short silver hair has entered the room. Her skirt and suit jacket are in muted eggplant. She has pearl earrings and speaks softly. “Are you Annemarie?”

“Yes,” I say.

“I’m Sandra, with the Department of Children and Family Services. We spoke earlier.”

She turns to face Eva and Mutti, who are parked on the window seat, watching.

“Are you Eva?”

“Yes,” I say, answering for her. “And that’s my mother, Ursula Zimmer.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Sandra says, smiling in a sad and kindly fashion.

Eva’s face hardens. I brace myself, unsure whether she’s going to break down or fly into a fury. Neither reaction would surprise me—this is far too much for a sixteen-year-old to absorb. It may be too much for this forty-year-old to absorb.

“Thank you,” says Mutti, neatly relieving Eva of the need to answer.

Sandra seems to understand. She turns to me. “Annemarie, can I steal you for a few minutes?”

“Yes, of course,” I say.

Before I can even shift in my seat, Mutti is at my side reaching for the baby. As she takes him by the armpits and lays him against her, he emits a meep.

“Nein, nein, nein,”
she says, supporting his bottom with one arm and running the other around and up his
back so that his head rests in her gnarled fingers. She rocks from side to side. When his thin voice rises to a wail she begins to sing: “
Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf…
”

I walk over to Eva, who observes me from beneath crooked brows.

“I’ll be right back, sweetie.”

She nods.

I kiss her forehead, give her hand an encouraging squeeze, and turn before she can see the tears in my eyes.

Sandra leads me to the end of the hall and turns right. A short jag, and then a left, down a hall that isn’t brightly painted. She raps lightly on a door, waits for a moment, and then opens it. It’s a small conference room with a laminate table and six chairs of molded polymer. The lights are fluorescent, embedded in the ceiling behind plastic waffle-weave. A whiteboard hangs on one of the walls. On another is a standard-issue clock and a poster that demonstrates how to perform infant CPR.

“Please, have a seat,” says Sandra, gesturing toward one of the chairs. She goes around the table and sits opposite me.

After we’re both seated, she looks at me for a while.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck.” My eyes spring open. “Oh my God. I can’t believe I just said that.”

“It’s okay, Annemarie. It’s just an expression.”

“Yes, but…I’m sorry,” I say, as my eyes fill. My hand flaps beside my face. “I think I need a minute.”

Sandra reaches across the table. A tissue appears as though by magic. I never even saw the box. “Take your time.”

I nod and daub my eyes with the tissue. It’s a full two minutes before my throat loses the strained feeling that signals an imminent meltdown. When I’m finally able to speak again I say, “Can you explain something to me?”

“I’ll try.”

“How is it that Jeremy is virtually unscathed?”

“He was in the back of the car.”

“But surely it must have been damaged too. I mean, if you saw what it did to…” I blink and swallow hard, trying to maintain control.

“The amazing thing is, he wasn’t even hurt in the collision. After the truck carried the front away and the back stopped spinning, Jeremy’s car seat simply fell out onto the highway. He hit his head and arm on the pavement.”

I blink in disbelief.

After a pause, Sandra speaks. “How’s Eva?”

I force myself to shift gears, because I’m still thinking about the back of the car spinning like a top, and the car seat toppling forth. “I don’t know. She fell completely apart and then she pulled herself together. But honestly? I have no idea how she is.”

“I can give you some referrals to grief counselors in your area, if you like.”

“Thank you.”

“You might consider going yourself.”

I stare at my hands, which are clasped on the table in front of me. They’re sweating, and I’m embarrassed by the little spots of condensation beneath them. My skin looks sallow under the fluorescent lights.

“Annemarie?”

I nod. “Uh-huh. Yup. I might.”

“The thing is, something like this doesn’t hit you right away. Some people get through the early stages of grief just fine, and then fall apart when the reality—and permanence—begins to sink in.”

I clear my throat. “I know all about the various stages of grief. I lost my father last summer.”

“Oh, Annemarie. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too,” I say.

She nods. A long silence stretches between us.

“Well,” she says finally. “In that case you know that there are certain practicalities we need to address even though it’s probably the last thing you want to do. I followed some leads on Sonja’s family this morning, and I’m afraid there doesn’t appear to be much there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that it seems she was the only child of a woman with a fourteen-year-old warrant for her arrest. Everyone’s best guess is that she’s in Argentina. At any rate, she’s not on the radar.”

I stare in shock. “What about her father?”

“Her birth certificate said ‘Father Unknown.’ The mother cohabited with a number of men, but only married the last one, whom she since divorced. I spoke with him this morning.”