Someone Else's Love Story (34 page)

“Is he there?” Natty says. His voice is very low.

“Yes. I’m in his room, and you see that I’m fine. It is very quiet here, because of the coma. Stevie is here, sleeping, and that’s all he does. All day and night. All the time.” These are lines from the doctor’s script. Shandi went over it with him. He is to describe the coma as a special kind of permanent sleeping. “Do you want to see him?” William asks. There’s no reason to use still shots. Stevie is inert and his tubes are minimal, only some IV equipment and a clear line running up into his nose.

“I’m scared of see him,” Natty says. He and Shandi have the same face, their eyebrows pushing inward, lips down.
The turnips are worried.

“I’m not,” William says.

“But you aren’t scared of any things,” Natty says, and oh, but William wishes that was true.

In the corner Carrie is trying to cry silently. William hopes they can’t hear her moist snuffling over the hum and beep of the machines in the room.

“Could I see him only little bits?” Natty asks.

William turns the camera, careful to keep Carrie out of it. He takes Natty on a small, fast tour of Stevie.

“You see his eyes are closed?” he says.

“Why do he beeps?” Natty says.

“William?” Shandi says, and William flips the camera back to his own face.

“The beeps are from his heart monitor,” he says. “They keep that on because Stevie is so quiet, all the time, they need it to know he’s all right. That tube is to feed him. He’s so sleepy, he can’t wake up to eat.”

He shows the heart monitor, but angles the iPad camera so Natty can see part of Stevie, too.

Natty says, “I don’t think that sleepy man is Stevie.” His voice sounds better. Less afraid.

“It’s him,” William says. He goes closer to the bed, aiming the camera down to Stevie’s face. In Natty’s head, Stevie is seven feet tall with gun-hands, so of course this version is unfamiliar. “You see?” The face has not changed. It is still short-nosed, puffy.

After a pause Natty sucks his breath in, and he says, “That’s really Stevie.”

“Yes,” William says. “He can’t come to your room anymore. He can’t go anywhere. Not ever. He’s very sick. He won’t get out of this bed anymore.”

Natty says, “William? Why are you sad?”

“I don’t mean to sound sad,” William says. It is expedient and often kind to lie to children, but William can’t do it. Not right now. He turns the camera to himself. Now all Natty can see is William’s face and the wall behind him. He looks and looks at Natty. Not Shandi, hovering worriedly behind him. And not beyond the iPad to the weeping girl, rocking the baby inside herself back and forth with her arms wrapped tight around it. “I’m sad because I’m the one who hurt him. It was the right thing to do. He had a gun, and he was doing a crime. I couldn’t let him hurt you or your mother, or the Grants.” He leaves Carrie out. She was never in danger. But he says these things both to Natty and to the girl who loves this sorry excuse for a man so much that she set William’s SUV on fire. “I’m sorry it turned out this way. I wish he would wake up. I only meant to stop him from hurting anyone.”

Natty’s small face pushes forward so he fills the iPad screen. He peers through the technology at William’s face. “You want him to wake up?”

“Yes,” William says. “Very much. He would go to jail, so you wouldn’t have to worry. But yes, I wish he would wake up and go there.”

Natty thinks about it, then he says, “Me, too, then. I want him to wake up and go to jail. I could call him to wake up.”

“It’s not likely he could hear you, Natty,” William says.

William looks at Stevie’s face, and through the iPad he hears Natty say again, very loud, “Stevie!” Natty can’t see Stevie, only William, but he yells to Stevie anyway. “Stevie! You can wake up now!”

Steven Parch’s eyes open.

William feels his body flush into heat, though he knows intellectually that Parch’s open eyes mean nothing. Coma patients often open their eyes, even move their limbs, following an unconscious daily schedule. It is only the timing that makes it disconcerting.

“He won’t wake up, Natty,” William says. William keeps his own face carefully neutral. Stevie’s open eyes stare into nothing. “I’ll be down in a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” Natty says.

William kills the connection and closes the iPad cover. He sets it aside on the rolling table by the hospital bed. The second the lid is closed, Carrie is across the room, leaning over Stevie.

“Baby?” she says. She kisses his cheek, burrowing under the nose tube to kiss at his slack mouth.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” William tells her.

Carrie hovers over him anyway, and it sure as hell seems like Stevie is looking back.

“Baby?” Carrie says, and Stevie blinks. His mouth works.

“Wha happ’n?” Parch says, and his voice sounds rusty and unused.

William rocks backward like he has been punched. Stevie’s eyes track the motion, and he looks past Carrie, blinking more at William, confused. “Did you . . . 
hit
me?” Parch asks, and then Carrie leans in closer, blocking their view of each other.

“Baby, baby, oh!” she cries.

William keeps backing up, his heartbeat roaring and banging in his ears.

William can hear Stevie’s rusty voice, saying, “Hey, honey.”

“Oh, baby, oh, honey, oh,” Carrie says. She puts a lot of little kisses on his face.

William wants to pull her back, away, but he can’t bring himself to touch her. This is not medically probable.

His heart pounds in him and his rational mind begins lecturing, explaining very calmly that there was always a small chance that Stevie could wake up. Perhaps it is Carrie’s voice that called him back. There is plenty of scientific research suggesting that the voice of a loved one can be heard in a coma. This is coincidence. Or it is Carrie’s presence. There is no causal relationship between Natty’s order and Stevie’s awakening.

“We need to get a doctor,” he hears himself say to Carrie, from very far away. “We need to get out of here.”

“I won’t leave him!” she says.

“Then you’ll go to prison,” William says.

That pauses her. Her hand flies to her belly. He takes her arm at last, pulls her back. He wants out of here, too. This is so medically improbable it approaches infinity. William doesn’t want to be in the room with it.

In this very hospital, when he was a patient one floor down, Shandi asked him,
Do you believe in miracles?
The Red Sea. A virgin birth. In one of the Gospels, William remembers, the product of a virgin birth stands well outside a tomb and calls,
Lazarus, come forth.

Stevie blinks and stares around, confused.

William’s hand is clamped so hard on Carrie’s arm now he can feel the grind of her bone. He pulls her toward the door with him.

“Don’t talk,” he says. He can’t be in this room.

He opens the door and says to the cop, “He’s awake. He’s up. You need to get a nurse.” Even as he speaks he is moving. Pulling Carrie out and down the hall.

“What?” the old cop says. “What?”

William keeps walking, calling over his shoulder, “You know that we can’t be found here. I don’t want to cause you trouble. Get the nurse.”

“You’re hurting me,” Carrie whines as he tows her around the corner. He tries to ease his grip. It was her voice in the room, no doubt. William is positive Stevie’s consciousness returned when she said
Baby
. That is how it must have been. There is research. He will not think about the fact that Natty, however technically, was born of a virgin.

But wouldn’t Bridget love this? She would love this. If she were here she would be crowing at him, saying,
In your face, Will! In your face!

He thinks he might fall down. His head is light. His lungs are constricted. He pulls Carrie back into the alcove.

“I need to be with Steeeevie,” Carrie says, but she wails it in a whisper.

He releases her. “Run back there if you like, and go to prison.”

She stays where she is, staring at him wild-eyed. Panting. Her hands again press protectively against her thickened middle.

“You’re gonna send me anyway,” she says, but her facial expression is a mix of crafty and hopeful.

He puts his head down, blowing. There is nothing he can do for this stupid, pregnant girl and her stupider lover. They have made terrible choices involving reproduction and robberies. Her life is lurching toward a bad end, whether she goes back to the room or not, whether he turns her in or not. Even if he keeps his mouth shut, Bialys might still figure it out, or Stevie could sell her out for a reduced sentence.

“What are you going to do?” Carrie Miller says again.

He knows the two of them are canny enough to lie under pressure. Perhaps Steven Parch will plead guilty and eat the jail time, to protect her and his child. He certainly protected her that way in the Circle K, which showed a certain amount of foresight. A certain amount of love.

William cannot be involved in this, but he takes his phone out anyway, and begins scrolling through his contact list. Now that he has not killed Stevie, it is his moment to walk away clean. But he can’t quite. Her tear-stained face. The thickness of her middle, where she is making something helpless. However improbable, there is love here. Whether she goes to prison or not, this baby that has worried him and kept him from comfort about Stevie’s fate is not going to have a good life. It will be unhappy. It will engage in crime. Probably.

But then, there are anomalies, like Paula. Carrie is no worse than Kai, all things considered. Who knows what secret combinations, what recessive magic, could be at play inside those multiplying cells?

He finds the number he wants, then gets his pen and an old
Reader’s Digest
from the magazine rack. He copies it down.

He does it because Stevie’s eyes opened before her voice was in the room. He knows this. He witnessed it. Stevie’s eyes opened when Natty told them to.

He hands her the magazine.

“That’s my dentist,” he says. “If you call him next week, he’ll fix your teeth. It will be paid for.”

Carrie stares at him, blinking, not comprehending, as if he has now handed
her
a miracle. Perhaps he has. The air is thick with impossible things. What she does now, what happens to the baby she is floundering to protect, the world will choose. He is absolved of it.

In this breath of absolution, he has decided. He knows the risks. He knows the constant, the only human outcome. But if he is going to live on this earth—and he is—he cannot go on as he has been. He will not.

“Thank you,” she says.

He isn’t sure why she thanks him. Maybe only for the dentist. But maybe she understands the larger gift, which he gives her now.

He walks away.

P
ART
T
HREE

Rise

A heaven in a gaze,

A heaven of heavens, the privilege

Of one another’s eyes.

E
MILY
D
ICKINSON

Chapter 13

I
opened the front door to find Clayton Lilli standing on my steps. I was barefoot and he was tall; when the door swung wide, I was looking at his collarbone. I had to travel all the way up his skinny stretch of neck to find his face.

A huge, surprised scream rose up inside my body, whirling round and round like a trapped tornado, winding all my guts together. My throat stayed closed, though. I would not let it out. Around the corner, in the godawful glass and chrome living room, Natty and Walcott were playing with the Matchbox cars. If the scream got out, they would come running.

Clayton Lilli was existing on my very steps, and Natty was a single wall away, secret and perfect and only mine. I bulled my way forward, out the door, and I shut it between them.

Clayton Lilli backed down the stairs as I came out, all the way to the sidewalk. It made him shorter than me. He stood on the curb, and I saw his mousy girlfriend had come, too. He looked blank, but Mouse Brown had brought a whole big bunch of feelings with her. They all showed on her face. She stood behind him, desperate and determined and a thousand other mixed-up things. It was easier to look at her, quite frankly.

“Leave, before I call the cops.”

I hissed the words, forceful but not loud. I didn’t want Walcott and Natty, please not Natty, coming to see if I’d gotten hung up with a Jehovah’s Witness or a Girl Scout. Behind them, my two parking spaces held my car and Walcott’s Subaru. They must have parked on the street, outside the high brick wall. I had to make them go there. Out the gate and out of sight. I only had a couple of minutes, four or five at most, to move them before Walcott and my son came to see what was keeping me. I wanted to yell inside to Walcott, to tell him to stay put, but that would likely bring them to us faster.