The Gift (4 page)

“She's not here, Liz, she's gone …she's all right now.”

“She's not all right. She's mine … I want her back … I want her back,” she said, sobbing, as their friends drifted awkwardly away, not knowing how to help her. There was nothing one could do or say, nothing to ease the pain, or make it better. And Tommy stood there watching them, aching inside, pining for Annie.

“You all right, son?” his hockey coach asked him, as he drifted by, wiping tears from his cheeks without even trying to conceal them. Tommy started to nod yes, and then shook his head no, and collapsed into the burly man's arms, crying. “I know … I know … I lost my sister when I was twenty-one, and she was fifteen … it stinks … it really stinks. Just hang on to the memories …she was a cute little thing,” he said, crying along with Tommy. “You hang on to all of it, son. She'll come back to you in little blessings all your life. Angels give us gifts like that …sometimes you don't even notice. But they're there. She's here. Talk to her sometimes when you're alone …she'll hear you …you'll hear her …you'll never lose her.” Tommy looked at him strangely for a minute, wondering if he was crazy, and then nodded. And his father had finally gotten his mother away from the grave by then, though barely. She could hardly walk by the time they got back to their car, and his father looked almost gray as he drove their car home, and none of them said a word to each other.

People dropped in all afternoon, and brought them food. Some only left food or flowers on the front steps, afraid to bother them or face them. But there seemed to be a steady stream of people around constantly nonetheless, and there were others who stayed away, as though they felt that if they even touched the Whittakers, it could happen to them too. As though tragedy might be contagious.

Liz and John sat in the living room, looking exhausted and wooden, trying to welcome their friends, and relieved when it was late enough at night to lock their front door and stop answering the phone. And through it all, Tommy sat in his own room and saw no one. He walked past her room once or twice, but he couldn't bear it. Finally, he pulled the door closed so he wouldn't see it. All he could remember was how she had looked that last morning, so sick, so lifeless, so pale, only hours before she left them. It was hard to remember now what she had looked like when she was well, when she was teasing him or laughing. Suddenly, all he could see was her face in the hospital bed, those last minutes when she had said “thank you …” and then died. He was haunted by her words, her face, the reasons for her death. Why had she died? Why had it happened? Why couldn't it have been him instead of Annie? But he told no one what he felt, he said nothing to anyone. In fact, for the rest of the week, the Whittakers said nothing to each other. They just spoke to their friends when they had to, and in his case, he didn't.

New Year's Eve came and went like any other day in the year, and New Year's Day went unnoticed. Two days later he went back to school, and no one said anything to him. Everyone knew what had happened. His hockey coach was nice to him, but he never mentioned his own sister again, or Annie. No one said anything to Tommy about any of it, and he had nowhere to go with his grief. Suddenly, even Emily, the girl he had been flirting with awkwardly for months, seemed like an affront to him because he had discussed her with Annie. Everything reminded him of what he had lost, and he couldn't bear it. He hated the constant pain, like a severed limb, and the fact that he knew everyone looked at him with pity. Or maybe they thought he was strange. They didn't say anything to him. They left him alone, and that's how he stayed. And so did his parents. After the initial flurry of visitors, they stopped seeing their friends. They almost stopped seeing each other. Tommy never ate with them anymore. He couldn't bear sitting at their kitchen table without Annie, couldn't bring himself to go home in the afternoon and not share milk and cookies with her. He just couldn't stand being in his house without her. So he stayed at practice as long as he could, and then ate the dinner his mother left for him in the kitchen. Most of the time, he ate it standing up, next to the stove, and then dumped half of it into the garbage. The rest of the time he took a handful of cookies to his room with a glass of milk and skipped dinner completely. His mother never seemed to eat at all anymore, and his father seemed to come home later and later from work, and he was never hungry either. Real dinners seemed to be a thing of the past for all of them, time together something they all feared and avoided. It was as though they all knew that if, the three of them were together, the absence of the fourth would be too unbearably painful. So they hid, each of them separately, from themselves, and from each other.

Everything reminded them of her, everything awoke their pain like a throbbing nerve that only quieted down for an occasional second, and the rest of the time, the pain it caused was almost beyond bearing.

His coach saw what was happening to him, and one of his teachers mentioned it just before spring vacation. For the first time in his entire school career, his grades had slipped and he seemed not to care about anything anymore. Not without Annie.

“The Whittaker boy's in a bad way,” his homeroom teacher commented to the math teacher one day at the faculty table in the cafeteria. “I was going to call his mother last week, and then I saw her downtown. She looks worse than he does. I think they all took it pretty hard when their little girl died last winter.”

“Who wouldn't?” the math teacher said sympathetically. She had kids of her own, and couldn't imagine how she'd survive it. “How bad is it? Is he flunking anything?”

“Not yet, but he's getting close,” she said honestly. “He used to be one of my top students. I know how strongly his parents feel about education. His father even talked about sending him to an Ivy League college, if he wanted to go, and had the grades. He sure doesn't now.”

“He can pull himself up again. It's only been three months. Give the kid a chance. I think we ought to leave them alone, him and his parents, and see how he does by the end of the school year. We can always call them if he really goes off the deep end and fails an exam or something.”

“I just hate to see him slide down the tubes this way.”

“Maybe he has no choice. Maybe right now he has to fight just to survive what happened. Maybe that's more important. Hard as it is for me to admit sometimes, there are more important things in life than social studies and trig. Let's give the kid a chance to catch his breath and regain his balance.”

“It's been three months,” the other teacher reminded. It was already late March by then. Eisenhower had been in the White House for two months, the Salk polio vaccine had tested successfully, and Lucille Ball had finally had her much publicized baby. The world was moving on rapidly, but not for Tommy Whittaker. His life had stopped with the death of Annie.

“Listen, it would take me a lifetime to get over that, if it were my kid' the more sympathetic of the two teachers said softly.

“I know.” The two teachers fell silent, thinking of their own families, and by the end of lunch agreed to let Tommy slide for a while longer. But everyone had noticed it. He seemed not to take an interest in anything. He had even decided not to play basketball or baseball that spring, although the coach was trying to convince him. And at home his room was a mess, his chores were never done, and for the first time in his life, he seemed to be constantly at odds with his parents.

But they were at odds with each other too. His mother and father seemed to argue constantly, and one of them was always loudly blaming the other for something. They hadn't put gas in the car, taken out the garbage, let out the dog, paid the bills, mailed the checks, bought coffee, answered a letter. It was all unimportant stuff, but all they ever did anymore was argue. His father was never home. His mother never smiled. And no one seemed to have a kind word for anyone. They didn't even seem sad anymore, just angry. They were furious, at each other, at the world, at life, at the fates that had so cruelly taken Annie from them. But no one ever said that. They just yelled and complained about everything else, like the high cost of their light bill.

It was easier for Tommy just to stay away from them. He hung around outside in the garden most of the time, sitting under the back steps and thinking, and he had started smoking cigarettes. He had even taken a couple of beers once or twice. And sometimes he just sat outside, under the back steps, out of the endless rain that had been pelting them all month, and drank beer and smoked Camels. It made him feel terribly grown up, and once he had even smiled, thinking that if Annie could have seen him, she'd have been outraged. But she couldn't, and his parents didn't care anymore, so it didn't matter what he did. And besides, he was sixteen years old now. A grown-up.

“I don't give a damn if you are sixteen, Maribeth Robertson,” her father said, on a March night in Onawa, Iowa, some two hundred and fifty miles from where Tommy sat slowly getting drunk on beer under his parents' back steps, watching the storm flatten his mother's flowers. “You're not going out in that flimsy dress, wearing a whole beauty store of makeup. Go wash your face, and take that dress off.”

“Daddy, it's the spring dance. And everyone wears makeup and prom dresses.” The girl her older brother had taken out two years before, at her age, had looked a whole lot racier and her father had never objected. But that was Ryan's girlfriend, and that was different of course. Ryan could do anything. He was a boy, Maribeth wasn't.

“If you want to go out, you'll wear a decent dress, or you can stay home and listen to the radio with your mother.” The temptation to stay home was great, but then again, her sophomore prom would never come again. She was tempted not to go at all, especially not if she had to go in some dress that made her look like a nun, but she didn't really want to stay at home either. She had borrowed a dress from a friend's older sister, and it was a little bit too big, but she thought it was really pretty. It was a peacock blue taffeta, with dyed-to-match shoes that killed her feet because they were a size too small, but they were worth it. The dress was strapless, and had a little bolero jacket over it, but the low-cut strapless bodice showed off the cleavage that she'd been blessed with, and she knew that that was why her father had objected.

“Daddy, I'll keep the jacket on. I promise.”

“Jacket or no jacket, you can wear that dress here at home with your mother. If you go to the dance, you'd best find something else to wear, or you can forget the dance. And frankly, I wouldn't mind if you did. All those girls look like sluts in those low-cut dresses. You don't need to show off your body to catch a boy's eye, Maribeth. You'd best learn that early on, or you'll be bringing home the worst sort of boy, mark my words,” he said sternly, and her younger sister Noelle rolled her eyes. She was only thirteen and a great deal more rebellious than Maribeth had ever dreamed of being. Maribeth was a good girl, and so was Noelle, but she wanted more excitement out of life than Maribeth did. Even at thirteen, her eyes danced every time a boy whistled. At sixteen, Maribeth was a lot shyer, and a lot more cautious about defying their father.

In the end, Maribeth went to her room, and lay on her bed, crying, but her mother came in and helped her find something to wear. She didn't have much, but she had a nice navy blue dress with a white collar and long sleeves that Margaret Robertson knew her husband would deem suitable. But even seeing the dress brought tears to Maribeth's eyes. It was ugly.

“Mom, I'll look like a nun. Everyone will laugh me out of the gym.” She looked heartbroken when she saw the dress her mother had chosen for her. It was a dress she had always hated.

“Not everyone will be wearing dresses like that, Maribeth,” she said, pointing at the borrowed blue one. It was a pretty dress, she had to admit, but it frightened her a little bit too. It made Maribeth look like a woman. At sixteen, she had been blessed, or cursed, with full breasts, small hips, a tiny waist, and long lovely legs. Even in plain clothes, it was hard to conceal her beauty. She was taller than most of her friends, and she had developed very early.

It took an hour to talk her into wearing the dress, and by then her father had been sitting in the front room, grilling her date without subtlety or mercy. He was a boy Maribeth hardly knew and he looked extremely nervous as Mr. Robertson questioned him about what kind of work he wanted to do when he finished school, and he admitted that he hadn't decided. Bert Robertson had explained to him by then that a little hard labor was good for a lad, and it wouldn't do him any harm either to go into the army. David O'Connor was agreeing frantically with him, with a look of growing desperation as Maribeth finally came reluctantly into the room, wearing the hated dress, and her mother's string of pearls to cheer it up a little. She had on flat navy shoes, instead of the peacock satin high heels she had hoped to wear, but she towered over David anyway, so she tried to tell herself it really didn't matter. She knew she looked terrible, and the dark dress was in somber contrast to the bright flame of her red hair, which made her even more self-conscious. She had never felt uglier, as she said hello to David.

“You look really nice,” David said unconvincingly, wearing his older brothers dark suit, which was several sizes too big for him, as he handed her a corsage, but his hands were shaking too hard to pin it on, and her mother helped him.

“Have a good time,” her mother said gently, feeling faintly sorry for her, as they left. In a way, she thought that she should have been allowed to wear the bright blue dress. It looked so pretty on her and she looked so grown up. But there was no point arguing with Bert once he made his mind up. And she knew how concerned he was about his daughters. Two of his sisters had been forced to get married years before, and he had always said to Margaret that he didn't care what it took, it wasn't going to happen to his daughters. They were going to be good girls, and many nice boys. There were to be no tarts in his house, no illicit sex, no wild goings-on, and he had never made any bones about it. Only Ryan was allowed to do whatever he wanted. He was a boy, after all. He was eighteen now, and worked in Bert's business with him. Bert Robertson had the most successful car repair shop in Onawa, and at three dollars an hour, he ran a damn fine business, and was proud of it.