Chapter 35
In December, I throw a big snowman party and introduce my students to their post-holiday teacher.
She smells like gumdrops and owns multiple sweaters with kittens on them, so it isn’t a hard sell.
As soon as school is out for winter break, the Bad Teachers help us pack up a U-Haul trailer, and Gus figures out how to attach it to my car.
We drive the whole way with Fern secured between two pillows in the backseat.
I feel good leaving Boston, the place where Stewart lives.
I feel good moving back to a town that feels more mine than his, regardless of the name.
Patsy comes for Christmas and she brings the roast, complete with spices and a plan for how to cook it.
She enlists the help of the twins and Jeremy, and Gus and I stand back in disbelief.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen another woman cook in this kitchen.
Since I wasn’t responsible for dinner, I spent Christmas Eve baking a B?che de Noel, complete with little meringue mushrooms. It was heavenly.
On New Year’s Day, Gus wakes up with a fever. I make him tea with honey and put him back to bed with some Tylenol. He sleeps all day, and in the middle of the night he is burning hot. I call my doctor in Boston and am told to go to the emergency room.
I bundle Gus up and drive the icy road to the hospital in Harvey.
I leave my car at the door and walk us both to the front desk.
There are so many sounds, the lady typing, someone on the overhead speaker, people being wheeled around.
The only thing I can feel is Gus’s arm, hot under my hand, like he’s been sent to the fiery pit of hell.
If I let go, he will fall into it forever, this is the only message my brain is receiving.
A nurse takes us back to triage and then into a room and tells us the doctor will be right in.
Gus looks like he’s about to fall asleep.
Like he’s slipping away. I hold his hot hand, and I pray for a quick diagnosis and an easy fix.
Prayer doesn’t feel aggressive enough, so I start making deals.
I ask God to send us the doctor who will know exactly what to do, the one who’s seen this a million times and has the right pill in her pocket.
In return, I’ll be a better mother. In every single way.
I’ll stop ruminating over everything. I’ll plant lavender even though I don’t want the bees around.
I’ll bake and sew and fetch and hug and fix, and you will be so glad you let me keep him.
The doctor walks in and says hello without looking up from her clipboard. “It’s a high fever,” she says, and looks up.
“Victoria,” I say. God has a great sense of humor.
“Dolly,” she says. “I’m…well, okay. Yes, I remember Gus, like the mouse.
” She smiles at me with so much kindness that I start to cry.
It’s the combination of the terror I’m feeling about my kid and that quick flashback to the day Stewart walked away from his work to pick Gus up.
“Now, I know this is stressful, but I need you to tell me what’s going on. Gus seems very sleepy.”
“He woke up with a fever yesterday. Nothing I give him brings it down, and it’s getting worse.”
He’s already had his temperature taken, but she touches his forehead with the back of her hand the way moms do. She looks in his eyes and down his throat. “Gus, can you do me a favor? Look at your mom.” I wipe my eyes so he doesn’t see me crying.
He turns his head the slightest bit and winces. “Stiff neck,” she says. “We’re going to do a spinal tap.”
She’s acting so quickly and so decisively that for a second I think the deal is on.
A nurse comes in and wheels him away, asleep, and I’m shown to a waiting area.
Time folds in on itself there. I hold my phone but can’t seem to remember how to use it.
I have no news yet to share anyway. I yearn for someone who would show up here and put their arms around me.
I close my eyes and try to imagine my parents, maybe in this exact waiting room, wrecked with worry over Christopher after the accident.
My dad would have had his arms around my mom, stroking the back of her hair the way he used to.
I let out a sob. Something about how desperately I want to know Gus is okay every day for the rest of my life and the fact that she just up and left us releases the deepest, ugliest rage in my heart.
It’s the rage that sits at the bottom with the bile.
I have always felt sad and dismayed by the choice she made, but sitting here inside the full force of a mother’s love, I cannot fathom her leaving.
I sit with this anger for a while and the force of it terrifies me.
I want to call her and scream, and it astounds me that I never have, that I’ve never heard my dad scream at her into the phone.
We just let her leave and made do. So much sweeping up and making do.
And all the while I’ve been carrying this beast of rage in my heart. I am dizzy in its presence.
I call my dad. He answers with a three a.m. voice. “Dolly?”
“I’m in Harvey at the hospital with Gus, his fever is so high. Can you come? I’m not totally functioning right now.”
“I’m on my way,” he says.
The door opens and before I can register that it’s Victoria, she’s talking.
“He’s going to be absolutely fine. We were lucky to catch it.
He has meningitis, the neck was the giveaway, and the spinal tap confirmed it.
” She’s seated next to me now and puts an arm around my shoulders.
I am sobbing for so many different reasons.
She releases me and hands me the box of tissues from the little magazine table.
“Here’s the plan. I’m keeping him here on IV antibiotics tonight.
If you want to stay I’ll have a bed brought in. ”
“Please, yes.”
“Then he’s going to be on antibiotics at home, and then he’s going to be better. I’m going to make sure of it.”
“I’m not always this much of a mess,” I say.
“Everyone’s a mess when it comes to their kids,” she says. She takes my hand and squeezes it. I nod and wipe my nose.
“Gus is sleeping. Give me a bit to see that the room is ready, and I’ll check on you and your little mouse in the morning.”
It’s such a cute thing to say that I smile at her. When I’m not fake-dating her son, she is a lovely woman, just like my dad said.
My dad arrives while I’m still in the waiting room. I rush into his arms and hold him tight. “He’s going to be fine,” I say. “Meningitis, he’s on antibiotics.”
“Okay, okay,” he says. He leads me to a chair and sits next to me, keeping his big hands around mine. “You must be wiped out.” He looks around the waiting room, and I know he’s been in here before. “God, I hate this place.”
I give his hands a squeeze. “Must have been so awful.”
He nods. “Like a horror movie happening in real time.” He shakes off the memory and meets my eyes. “I’m glad you called me.”
“Me too,” I say. “I was in a bit of a dark place.” I motion to two chairs away, the dark place. “And I was thinking about you guys being here. And how much I love Gus and how impossible it feels to me to ever leave him. How dare she? You know?”
“How dare she indeed,” he says with a sad smile.
“How come we weren’t stomping around the house, shouting, ‘How dare she?’ ” I raise my fists in the air like I’m part of an angry mob. “Did you ever call her out? I don’t remember a big blowup. She was just gone, no question or consequence.”
“Well, she lost us, so there was a consequence. But no, I didn’t say much, I let her off the hook pretty easily, actually.”
“Ha,” I say. “The Brick way.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” he says. “I was angry, but I knew she didn’t love me. I sort of always felt like she was leaving, you know? So I guess I made it easy.”
“I do,” I say. “And that’s it. I want to stop making it so easy for people to leave.
Oh what’s that, Mom? You’re done here? No problem, I’ll handle it.
Oh sorry, Stewart, you just decided you don’t love me anymore?
Totally fine, enjoy!” I’m waving my hands around and using a bit of a crazy voice through my tears.
My dad’s smiling at me, and I know he can relate. “I even made things easy for Niles!”
“Bastard,” he says.
I laugh. “Yeah.”
“After a while, I turned it around in my mind. Took a while, but I stopped being angry that she left and started being happy that I stayed. I was the lucky one to run the circus with you.” He squeezes my hand. “You’re angry, and I don’t blame you. In a sense we both let you down.”
“Dad.”
“I did. I was so overwhelmed, and there you were, pitching in like a total lifesaver. I shouldn’t have leaned on you the way I did. But we’ve got time to work that out between us. Your mother’s got nothing. She lost out.”
We’re quiet for a bit and I try to picture her somewhere in Virginia not seeing the maple come to life in front of our house every spring. It’s been so long since she’s heard Christopher’s laugh that she probably doesn’t remember it. She’s never even met Gus. She lost out.
“Tonight I made a deal with God that if Gus was okay, I’d be a better mother. But, you know, I think I’m a perfectly good mother.”
“You are for sure.”
“I think what Gus needs is for me to step up a bit in my own life. I think I’m done making everyone’s shitty behavior okay.”
“Good,” he says. “I think that’s good.”
“Thanks for being here, Dad.”
“Thanks for calling me,” he says.
Before we’re released from the hospital, Victoria gives me her number. “In case you need anything and don’t feel like going to the ER.”
I text her once the following week because Gus says his joints hurt. She replies: Gatorade
And she’s right again.