When You Go Away (22 page)

     "And tomorrow, you start your visits with the doctor.  The psychiatrist.  Once a day, really."

      "Okay."

     He sat down at the table with her, and put a hand on her arm.  "Keep that steady strain.  Or as a buddy of mine up at the tennis courts says, 'One day at a time.'  He's usually talking about winning tennis games, but it's a good point.  Let's just do one day at a time."

     Peri pulled her arm back and stared at him.  "What do you think I've been doing for five years?"

     "What?"

     "With Brooke.  One day at a time.  That's all I could see, and then I couldn't even see the day.  A minute was too much to look at."

     "Oh, sweetie.  I'm so sorry."

     "Are you?  Why didn't you try to find me earlier?  Why did you have to wait until Noel called?  He told me how it all happened."

     Her father stood up and walked to the refrigerator, opening the door, yellow light illuminating his wrinkles. 
There
, she thought. 
He looks his age
.  He took out a carton of orange juice and poured them each a glass, bringing them back to the table.

     "I think about that all the time now.  I don't know.  I guess I was scared.  You were so angry with me. After Graham left, it was like you brought out all that old stuff and lay it on the table."

     "You're still the same."  Peri shook her head, her hair in front of her eyes.

     "What do you mean?"

     “It’s not old stuff.”

     Carl raised his eyebrows and gripped his glass.  “It was thirty-one years ago, Peri.”

     "You’re still scared to talk about it.  You never talked about it."

     Her father held his glass, spinning the juice in circle waves.  He nodded but didn't say anything.

     "Why weren’t you around more?" she asked, looking at him now.

     "I told you.  You were so angry with me."

     "No.  No.  I mean before.  I mean when you left Mom."

     "Oh, Peri.  Like I said, that's water long under the bridge."

     "Not to me.  Not to me it isn't.  It's right now.  All of this.  It's all the same thing."

     Her father glanced up, the color drained from his face.  "You're not blaming me for--for this, are you?"

     "For the first part.  For what you did to Mom.  But I'm just like you.  I learned how to leave."  She folded her arms on the table and brought her head down, her cheek resting on her hand. 
Close your eyes
, she thought. 
Close them and it will all disappear
.  But she didn't close them, listening instead to her father running his hands through his hair, tapping his feet on the floor, sliding the glass back and forth on the table.

     "Maybe you did," he said finally.

     Peri leaned her head against her palm, watching him.  "Why did you go?  What did she do that was so wrong?  What did we do?"

     "You did nothing.  Your mother didn't really either.  We were just married too fast, too young, too early.  I didn't know--I didn't know the difference between love and, well, lust.  The next thing I knew we were married and then you came along, and I had a job and then another kid.  There was my life, all charted out forever.  Your mom could see I felt that way, and she fought back, and I decided I didn't need any of it.  So I sacrificed you and Noel for myself.  I did.  I did."  He placed his hands on the tabletop, fingers spread wide.  "I've regretted leaving you two since, but I haven't regretted leaving that life.  And I can't apologize because I wouldn't mean it, Peri.  I didn't want that life."

     "You didn't want us."

     She saw him swallow.  "Maybe so.  Maybe so.  But I do now.  I want you now.  I want the kids."

     Outside, four small birds chattered and fought over rungs on a birdfeeder, and Peri watched them peck each other and then rearrange themselves.  There was some perfect order they were trying to find, and they battled for it, a bird squawking periodically over something lost.  A car drove by too fast, and they flickered away, the feeder rocking back and forth, empty.

     She'd always known that what her father said was true, but the air felt smoother now that he'd admitted it.  The hate she'd built up since Graham had left settled, stopped rising, still visible and deep but calm.  "I know you want us, the kids and me.  I'm glad.  Thanks."

     He almost jerked at her words but then leaned forward and touched her softly, moving a warm hand down her arm and grabbing her hand.  "If I can make it up, I will.  But for us, it's like with this trial.  One day at a time, like Ramon says.  Stupid, but the way it is.  Just like it was with Brooke."

     Peri nodded and her father stood up and took a casserole dish out of the fridge.  "Lookie here.  I've made us dinner.  Believe it or not, it's your mother's old Frito and chili bean casserole."

     Peri stared at him, smiled, and then laughed, the sound punching her solar plexus.  The hum of anxiety in her chest thinned and disappeared, turning to relief and space, this one minute clear and wide open.

     On the way to visit Brooke at the hospital Wednesday morning, Peri didn't say a word.  Carl kept his eyes on the road, his thighs tense, sighing deeply as the moments passed and Peri made no sound.  What would he do if she were having a relapse into her depression or whatever it had been?  Carl didn’t have much experience with tending to kids, much less a depressed adult, and he wished he’d made an appointment for himself with Dr. Kolakowski to ask.  When Peri and Noel were little, Janice took care of all their ailments, colds and flu and whatnot. There had to be a protocol of some sort for depression, a way of talking to a person who was falling into that dark pit.  As he drove, he sneaked peeks at her, expecting his daughter to laugh weirdly or pull at her hair, but she was only silent, her arms crossed over her body, her eyes on the freeway ahead of them.

     In the hospital parking lot, he shut off the engine and turned his body toward her, his jeans sliding easily on the new leather, and hooked his arm over the seat back.  "Sweetie, are you ready for this?  You don't have to do it right now."

     Peri closed her eyes.  "I have to do it now.  I should have done it before.  I should have always done it.  I can't leave her alone one more day in that place."

     "She's doing great.  Rosie's been there to see her as often as possible.  Garnet even called to tell me how well she's doing."

     "Has Graham seen her?"  Peri's eyes widened.

     Carl shook his head.  "No.  No he hasn't."

     "Who's Rosie again?"

     "Rosie?  Your neighbor--oh, well, she's the one I told you about.  The woman who found the kids.  Who called the ambulance?"

     Peri shook her head and sighed, running one hand through her hair, which was still damp from her shower.  "Oh yeah.  The one who saved my kids.  From me.  She must be something."

     "She's a nurse.  She really likes the kids, too."

     Peri almost smiled.  "Yeah.  Likes the
kids
."

     Carl looked at her tentatively, expecting her to rehash the conversation they'd had a couple of days ago about why he left Janice.  Peri thought he was some sort of woman magnet, and maybe he was in a superficial way, a first date kind of way, all sort of gals jostling around him.  But after awhile, the crowd would thin and then disappear altogether.  He was alone, wasn't he?  He was trying to rustle up a date at the bridge center, for Christ's sake.  Carl didn't have what it took to keep anyone.  The only woman who stayed with him was Mrs. Trimble, Louise, but that was because she lived next door.  But if she had a mobile home, who knew?

     "Come on, let's go see Brooke.  She's going to be flat out thrilled to see you."  He opened his door and swung a leg out.

     "Dad?"

     "What?" he said, looking at Peri hunched up in the corner of the seat.

     "Oh, nothing.  Let's go."

     "Good girl."  Carl reached out a hand and squeezed her softly, holding on until she pushed on the handle and opened the door.

     Two doctors and Fran met them by the nurses' station.  He hoped Peri didn't notice how the doctors eyed her,
judgment
in their expressions, but Fran moved toward her and took her hand. 

     "It's good you are here, Peri.  I've told Brooke about your visit, and she is very excited."

     "How is she?"  Peri asked quietly, avoiding the doctors' faces.

     The female doctor, whose name Carl had already forgotten, cleared her throat.  "The pneumonia is completely out of her chest, but we've been using the ventilator at night.  That will have to continue indefinitely.  She has another five days or so of antibiotics.  Her weight is up significantly."

     Carl saw Peri flush and her eyes fill and then overflow.  She brushed at her cheeks and nodded.  The doctor went on. 

     "And the bedsores are all but healed.  We were lucky we got to them in the early stages.  She didn't need any additional discomfort."

     "Okay, then," Carl said.  "Can my daughter see her now?"

     Dr. Murphy looked like he wanted to say something, and not about Brooke's physical condition.  Carl breathed in and looked at him hard.  Peri knew what she had done, and she didn't need any more criticism. 

     "Fine," the doctor said, raising his eyebrows at Carl.

     Fran took Peri's arm and led her away from the two doctors who stood like bowling pins by the desk.  Carl followed behind them.  "I'm going to be in the room during the entire half-hour visit,” Fran was saying.  “It's what the judge decreed.  But I'll be in the corner and hopefully, you won't even remember that I'm there."

     "Does she know what I did?  Has anyone told her?"

     "I think Carly initially told her you went somewhere, but no one has said anything about your arrest.  She's asked for you every single day."

     Peri turned back and pressed herself against Carl's shoulder.  "Oh my God," she sobbed.

     "Hush.  It's okay.  Hush."  Carl smoothed her hair and looked back at the doctors, but they were gone.  "You'll be okay."

     Peri moved slowly away from him, and then wiped her face.  She dug in her pocket and pulled out a hair elastic and quickly put her hair in a ponytail.  She dusted off imaginary lint from her shirt and then looked up at him.  In that instant, Carl’s whole body stopped, blood, air, bones.  With that simple move, he was back in 1970, and here
was his girl, asking him for help with a math quiz.  How he'd been able to explain decimals and fractions!  How he'd been able to help her then.

     "Let's go."

     They rounded the corner and walked into Brooke's room.  By now, he recognized the shape of her small body under the covers, not straight and smooth like any other prone child, but bent at angles and restless.

     "Brooke?  Brookey?"  Peri asked, moving slowly to the bed.  "It's me.  Mommy."

     Brooke flung her head to them, kicking her way through the covers, and Carl held his hand to his chest when he saw her face break into what was for her an unnaturally huge smile.  "Ma!  Ma!  Da u are!  I mi u!  Ma."  Peri now moved fast, sitting on the bed and taking Brooke into her arms in a way Carl had never seen anybody do, cradling her like a baby, kissing her head and face.

     "Oh my baby.  Oh my baby.  I'm so sorry.  Mommy is so sorry."  Peri pulled back, touching Brooke's face, pushing her red hair back from her eyes, and then Carl saw Brooke do something he'd never seen before.  She bent her neck and smiled a deep, lips-together smile, her eyes slits.  It was an exact copy of Peri's smile, the smile she'd had since childhood.

     "Oh, baby.  Oh God."  Peri brought her tight again to her body, rubbing her hands over her shoulders and arms.

     "We ur u?  Ma!  Ka ted u ga!"

     "I know, baby.  Carly was right.  I was gone.  But I'm back.  I won't ever leave again.  I promise."

     Brooke closed her eyes, humming with pleasure, and Peri began to softly sing a song he hadn't heard in a long time, not since Peri herself was a baby and Janice sang at her crib.  He couldn't name it, but it brought him back years and years, and he sat down on a chair next to Fran, wondering how it would feel to let the memory crack him open, to let out the tears he knew were there.  He swallowed, his gaze unfocused, willing the moment to pass, the scene to turn, a new thought to take him away

Twenty minutes later, Carl was out in the hall, leaning against the nurses' desk.  Peri had asked to change Brooke's diaper and clothes, and he'd left, letting the nurses and Fran observe.  He hoped they didn't think Peri would do anything wrong now, after all this, and he wanted to tell them to leave her alone.  But could he be sure of anything?  He hadn't known what was going on in his girl's head the first time, would never have believed that she thought she was going to explode into a thousand vicious pieces, so he stood quietly, nodding at the nurses walking by, listening to the hospital noises, ripping plastic, machine beeps, murmuring voices.