SUNDAY
PAIGE
Daddy came home in the middle of the night and found me asleep on the couch in the family room with Milton curled up beside me. I stumbled up to my room, didn’t even undress, just fell into bed.
I slept till nine o’clock, and when I came downstairs Daddy was finishing up his scrambled eggs and toast and coffee. Daddy always made us breakfast. At least that hadn’t changed.
“There’s more eggs and bacon in the skillet. Butter and jelly on the table.” He was wiping his mouth with a cloth napkin, and he was dressed in a dark blue suit with a yellow tie.
“Are you going to church?” I didn’t mean to sound accusatory, but Momma was lying in a coma. Surely church could wait.
“I’m just stopping by to update everyone,” Daddy said, glancing down at his watch. “Then I’m heading back to the ICU so Hannah can come home and get some sleep.”
He didn’t say it, but I knew Daddy needed those people at church, needed their prayers and support. The fridge overflowing with casseroles and soups and the stacks of baked goods on the kitchen counter testified to their love. But he needed to see them in person.
“Okay. Tell everybody thanks. I’ll come to the hospital after lunch, okay?”
He nodded, folded his napkin and placed it on the table. Then he got up and took me in his arms. He still smelled like Daddy, starched shirts and aftershave, but he held on to me a little more tightly than usual, a little longer too, and when I looked up, his eyes were still vacant and red.
Mamie and Papy Bourdillon, my French grandparents, called after Daddy left for church. They lived in Lyon, and it was late afternoon for them. “Paige!” they said in unison.
I loved the way they pronounced my name in French, soft and romantic, rhyming with mirage instead of age.
Just hearing their voices, I got tears in my eyes again. “Mamie! Papy!”
“Comment ça va, ma biche? And Hannah? How is she?”
I assured them that Hannah had arrived safely, and we were both doing as well as could be expected.
“Et comment va notre chère Josephine?”
“Nothing has changed with Maman. Je suis désolée.”
They loved Momma, and as the story went, Mamie’s mother taught my mother how to cook. They enjoyed telling stories of Momma’s floundering French and pitiful attempts in the kitchen, but they told it so lovingly that rather than feeling condemned, Momma laughed right along with them.
And they loved our visits. They didn’t fly. Cars, trains, boats, and public transportation worked just fine for them. They’d only taken a plane twice in their lives—first for Daddy’s graduation and then for Momma and Daddy’s wedding. I wished they would come now.
“And our dear Patrick?” Mamie asked. They both pronounced it as Patreek. “How is he?”
To that, I answered with a bold-faced lie. “He’s being strong for all of us.”
———
Late that morning, after Hannah had slept a little and then pulled herself out of bed, we sat on the floor in Momma’s office, cradling our mugs—hers of coffee, mine of tea. Momma called her office The Chalet, giving it her writerly flair. The Chalet was a wood-paneled room on the third story off the back of the house with rafters that rose in an A—like a Swiss chalet, Momma said—and with a magnificent view of the Blue Ridge Mountains beyond. Momma romanticized most things.
“She’s in her own little world,” Daddy would whisper, and that meant Stay away. Let her create.
Imagination Momma, we sometimes called her, and she’d laugh. We always paid special attention to her laughter—it didn’t come that often.
At that moment, out the window, two bright orange butterflies—or maybe they were particularly colorful moths—were doing a mad jig around each other, twirling and twirling and twirling beside the window box that hung over the wooden porch railing and was filled with yellow and orange marigolds. The butterflies flittered and spiraled down and off toward the woods where the leaves on the hickories had just begun their gradual change from avocado green to sunshine yellow. The view from her window inspired Momma, and when she let me sit at her desk—the one Daddy had made for her from an oak he’d had to cut down—I felt inspired too.
I used to sneak into her office when I was a little girl and lose myself among the smell of old books and Momma’s endless cups of tea—all kinds of exotic brands—and a candle burning with the scent of the season. Autumn pumpkin in the fall and holiday spice in winter, rose bouquet in spring and lavender afternoon in summer. She usually let me stay, curled up in a corner, once I had crossed the threshold.
Momma’s office enchanted me. One bookcase—the one we’d found at a neighborhood garage sale when I was about nine or ten—held all of the novels she’d written, eight to date, published not only in English, but also in several other languages. It intrigued me to compare the covers of the different editions—for instance, a woman’s face and a misty background with a swastika on the English cover, whereas the Dutch cover had a woman seen from the back and the swastika much more prominent.
“I used to love to come in here.” Hannah interrupted my reverie. “It is so much like Momma, so cozy with its disordered order.”
Yes, Momma was cozy in a disordered way.
“And we’re everywhere.” On the wooden walls of The Chalet hung photo after photo of the family: Momma, Daddy, Hannah, and me at varying ages, plus photos of our grandparents on both sides of the family. Also extended family members, and every one of our pets, past and present, as well as many friends, especially Ginnie and Bert and Drake Ellinger. Momma had more friends than anyone I knew.
Photos and every craft we’d made for her since kindergarten also sat on shelves, on top of her filing cabinet, and on the chest of drawers where she stored her office supplies. Momma had no use for fancy—she wanted symbolism. Everything meant something to Momma.
“Yeah. You feel loved in here, don’t you?” I said.
Hannah reached for my hand and grabbed it, holding on with the same intensity with which Daddy had wrapped me in his arms earlier. “It’s unbelievable. Surreal. She’s so pale. She looks dead, the way her skin is all translucent and yellow and her eyes are closed, and that breathing tube in her mouth and her lips sagging, and ten tubes attached to her and all those machines lighting up in red and green numbers. It freaked me out to see her like that.”
We both started crying, really sobbing, at last, which felt like relief, clutching each other in our shock and anguish and dark questionings. After a while Hannah whispered, “I can’t imagine that she’ll ever be normal again—if she lives.”
I got us a box of Kleenex from the bathroom and while we blew our noses, still crying and then smiling at each other through our tears, I went to Momma’s desk and opened her laptop. I waited for the screen to come to life, and the screen saver flashed a photo she’d received only a week ago of Hannah at the flower market in Aix, her face bent over a perfect sunflower.
“Look how content she is, Paige,” Momma had said. “She’s in her element.”
I blinked back the image, blinked back more tears, and could still hear the little squeal of delight Momma had given when Hannah’s photo had zipped through cyberspace and landed in her inbox.
I clicked on her fan mail account and groaned as 2,367 new messages frantically loaded, bringing the total number of messages she’d received since the shooting to just under 7,000.
Hannah peered over my shoulder. “Dear Imagination Momma sure is loved. Have you read any of them?”
“Are you kidding? This is only the second time I’ve even turned the computer on since the shooting. It’s been so overwhelming. Mrs. Swanson, bless her neighborly heart, is the one who has been taking in all the food people bring by. And letting Milton in and out of the house.”
At present Milton lay sprawled beside Momma’s desk, right under my feet. He had a knack for getting in the way, and I respected him for it. I reached down and fluffed his golden coat.
“You know Mrs. Swanson’s loving every minute of it, Paige. She doesn’t have a whole lot else to do. We should ask her to check the mailbox tomorrow if no one is here. I’ll bet Momma will be getting handwritten notes too.”
“Good idea.” I stretched, yawned, and then glanced over at the four clear plastic bins stacked in the back left corner of the office, each filled with fan mail—“from before the internet made sweet letters on beautiful stationery obsolete,” as Momma would say. I lifted the lid off the top bin—in which I stored her most recent snail-mail letters once I answered them—set the lid on the floor, and squatted down.
Hannah plopped down beside me. “Wow. This brings back memories.” She motioned to the other three bins, all the same size. “She still keeps every letter, doesn’t she?”
“Yep. Every email too.”
“Good job organizing them by month and year. Impressive.”
I stuck out my tongue. It was Hannah who had organized Momma’s office before she left for college two years ago, and I, with much more of Momma’s creativity than Daddy’s organization in my blood, had simply tried to keep up.
I found the two letters near the top. Both were handwritten on pink stationery, with big, bold block printing in bright pink Sharpie.
Hannah pored over the first one. “Why, this isn’t threatening. It’s . . . it’s rather harmless.”
I looked over her shoulder. “If you say so. Personally, I think ‘Be careful what you write in the future because there are still plenty of people in this nation who agree with white supremacy and they can be dangerous’ sounds rather menacing.”
“Maybe it’s a kid just mimicking something he heard his parents say. It’s like the letter writer knows someone who’s mad as a hornet about what Momma wrote, but the writer himself isn’t. Let me see the other one.”
She perused it. “Okay, this one’s worse. ‘I’m not kidding. Your book is going to get someone killed if you don’t watch out. Watch out!’ Weird. Well, for sure you need to show these to the police. They’ll be interested.” Holding the two letters as if they were laced with poison, Hannah said, “But who would do this? It’s evil. It’s as if . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
But I prodded. “Just say it.”
Hannah turned her cinnamon eyes to me, and in them I read something almost holy and profound. “Momma writes truth in a way that gets into people’s hearts. It’s as if something bigger than just a person doesn’t want her writing truth anymore.”
In our family we had a line—the line of faith. Some had crossed it. Others hadn’t. Those who believed looked at everything in life through that lens. Like Hannah—beautiful and pure and faith filled. Daddy played life like a game with Jesus as the captain of his team. Momma made everything a lot more symbolic and complicated. And me? I just couldn’t see it. I’d tried. But I couldn’t see it at all.
“Sorry for getting all spiritual on you, Paige.”
“No, it’s fine. I asked. So you think these letters and the assassination attempt have some kind of spiritual implications?”
She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes. “I think we need a whole army of people to keep praying for Momma.”
“Well, you’ve got that.” For emphasis, I pointed to the laptop with its endless emails and Facebook messages.
“Yeah, but I think I need to set up a CaringBridge site so they can really know how to pray.”
And I knew she didn’t mean it that way, but I felt scolded. So I changed the subject. “Do you have a return flight booked?”
“Daddy insisted I stay only a week. I don’t see how I can help much in that amount of time. Momma’ll probably still be in the exact same shape in a week.”
“But you’re here now, and that’s what counts. And Drake is coming tomorrow, and then it’ll be the three of us again.”
“Just like old times,” she said, with a little catch in her voice, sitting cross-legged on the floor in a sweat shirt and jeans, her hair spilling over her shoulders like moonlight.
I chewed on my lip for a minute and then broached a subject that had kept me awake after I’d finished researching comas in the night. “Hannie, do you think the police will question Daddy?”
“What do you mean? I thought you were both questioned that first night.”
“Yeah, we were, but not in detail. Like, how much money is Momma worth? Does she have a big insurance policy—will they think Daddy had something to do with it?”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “You read way too many crime novels, girl. Put that out of your mind. For right now, let’s get this stuff to the police.”
“But . . . I mean . . . won’t they find out about The Awful Year?”
She dropped the letter and froze, her hand in midair, then lowered it and turned. Her face had blanched. With a barely perceptible shake of her head she said, “Don’t go there, Paige. . . .”
I retrieved the piece of stationery without meeting my sister’s eyes and pretended those last seconds had not occurred. Sometimes bad memories, the worst ones, couldn’t be dealt with in the middle of a fresh crisis. So we placed both letters with their envelopes in a clear ziplock bag (not that they weren’t already completely covered with my fingerprints), and we drove to the hospital.
Of course Libby took Jase to church on Sunday morning, like always. Wanting people to feel sorry for us, was what I told her. We didn’t need pity, like I saw on Miz Garrison’s face when she looked over her glasses at me. I didn’t want pity for my son; I wanted an operation that would fix him. Why didn’t they hand me some money for that instead of a scrunched-up forehead and a whispered “We’re prayin’ for Jase.”
I stayed home and read more of Miz Bourdillon’s book. I figured maybe reading would calm my mind a bit.
The book said interesting things that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. The main character was a boy about fifteen or sixteen, I reckoned, who had gotten into trouble. Then he met up with an old woman who half the time seemed crazy and half the time seemed really wise. She said things like “You don’t have to accomplish everything at once. Life isn’t a fifty-yard dash, boy. Life’s a cross-country adventure. Don’t rush it.”
Sounded like my ma. Before she passed away, she said things like that. “Henry, you got all your life to figure that out. Don’t you be in such a hurry.”
Thing was, Pa didn’t agree. If he ever said, “Take your time, boy, take your time,” it was when I was looking through a site finder on a rifle, and he meant that I’d better concentrate real hard on pulling that trigger and I’d better not miss or else. I never doubted Pa’s “or else.” To him, showing love to his family came with a lot of slapping around and beatings and other things I’ve tried my best to forget.
But on that Sunday morning, reading Miz Bourdillon’s book, I started feeling all satisfied and warm, like when Libby fixes her barbecue pork and it makes the whole trailer smell welcoming. Something was seeping into my spirit—that’s how the pastor at Libby’s church would have said it—something was seeping in that made me think. On just about every page something was happening that meant more than you thought was happening, if I could put it that way. Reading it, I felt like I had stepped right into that young boy’s shoes, and I was walking around in them so fine and comfortable I didn’t even hear Libby and Jase come home from church.
At lunch there was a prescription bottle sitting by my plate. “When you get this?” I asked.
“After church at Walmart.”
“Well, I was gonna get it.”
“I know. But you’ve been busy, and I thought if I could help. . . .” She was watching me now, and I knew the look—fear. Always fear.
“Okay.” I managed a glance her way. “I’ll start back up on the meds. I will.”
Libby’s face, her beautiful face, melted into a smile. Man, I liked to see that smile. I reached for the bottle, opened it, slid out a light blue pill and threw it in my mouth. Made like I was swallowing it down, but I didn’t.
Libby put her hand on my shoulder. I almost thought she was gonna start bawling. But she just said, “Thank you, babe. You keep taking them, every day. No more starting and stopping.”
After lunch Jase went to his room for a rest, and Libby came over to where I was sitting. She got that funny little tinge in her voice, the one that comes when she has to bring up something unpleasant. “Do you think you can come with me to talk with the surgeon tomorrow? He moved the appointment.”
I shut the book. “What time is it?”
“Four.”
“I should go back to work. Boss won’t like it if I’m gone much longer.”
“So go on back, and just get off a little early. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
“How you aim to get there if I have the pickup?”
“We’ll be okay on the bus.”
Jase didn’t like riding the bus if it was crowded. Sometimes it got him all panicked. “Naw. I’ll take the bus in to work. You come by and pick me up before the appointment.”
“All right.” Libby leaned over and kissed me softly on the mouth. She smelled like that lavender oil she sometimes used. “Thanks, babe.”
PAIGE
The Mission Hospital took up several city blocks and comprised St. Joseph Campus, Memorial Campus, the Rathbun House, and the Cancer Center. In short, it was a maze of buildings near the downtown area. Momma was on the fourth floor of the Memorial Campus, in the Neuro Trauma ICU.
“No reporters at the visitors entrance,” Hannah said.
“Thank goodness. Yesterday morning they followed me all the way into the parking garage. I guess Momma is old news now.”
Up on the fourth floor, at the entrance to the ICU, we were greeted by two policemen. I had met one of them, Detective Blaylock, the day before. Stocky, midthirties, balding, with a black beard and what I’d call a cynical smile. The other officer was a crisp-looking woman, short, big chested, dyed-red hair, maybe forty. Officer Hanley. They nodded at us as we headed to Momma’s room. Daddy was sitting in his chair by her bed. Same tubes, same machines.
“Mamie and Papy called. They send their love. I told them you would call them back later.” He gave a half nod, and I kissed him on the cheek. “Any change?”
He shook his head. “None that I can tell, but the surgeon is coming by in a few minutes to talk with us.”
“We’re going to show the detective those disturbing letters Momma received recently. Is that okay?” I tried to sound casual.
Daddy didn’t respond.
I asked again. “Would that be okay, Daddy, to show him the letters?”
He gave a little jerk, as if awaking from a dream, and nodded. “Good idea. Good idea, girls. Thank you.”
“And if he wants to see anything else?”
Daddy barely looked up. “Yes, of course,” he mumbled. “He can look through anything he wants. I’ve already given the detective permission.”
I leaned over the bed rail and kissed Momma on the bridge of her nose. “I love you, Momma. Everyone is praying for you. And Drake will be coming tomorrow.”
When I explained my story to Detective Blaylock and showed him the two letters, he asked, “Mind if keep these?”
“Not at all.”
“And can I take a look at the rest of your mother’s fan mail?”
“Sure. That’s fine.”
“Good. I’ll be coming by your house this afternoon. Can you read over all the emails before I come and flag any that might be suspicious?”
“That’ll be a cinch,” I said under my breath, but he heard me.
“Excuse me, Miss Bourdillon?”
“My mother has received almost seven thousand emails since she was shot—seven thousand—and hundreds of Facebook messages. And,” I added, “I haven’t looked at any of it.”
Detective Blaylock lifted one bushy black eyebrow, poked out his lower lip, and said, “All right, then. I’ll put Officer Hanley on it full-time. She’ll come over to your house later. Anything the slightest bit suspicious, we need to see it. Anything at all.”
At one thirty the surgeon, Dr. Moore, a wiry little man with thick-rimmed glasses, escorted us into his office. “Think of a brain injury like real estate,” he said, almost enthusiastically, as if we were actually considering purchasing a house. “What matters is location, location, location,” and he smiled.
Daddy’s face darkened, and I thought he might punch the little man. Dr. Moore must have caught on because he added, “And your wife’s extremely lucky that the bullet hit at the least dangerous location—the right frontal lobe.”
He took his hands out of his lab coat pockets and moved to a poster containing a detailed diagram of the brain. With his pen he began pointing out regions in the brain. “The bullet entered and exited the brain—first positive sign—nothing still stuck in there. And as I said, it penetrated only the right region, not both regions—second positive sign. Much less damage. And lastly, the bullet was narrow and fast. Think of it like a football pass.”
Again Daddy growled at the surgeon’s unsympathetic analogy.
“A tight spiral pass gives a lot less resistance going through the air than one that wobbles from side to side. It’s the same with a bullet. The shooter used a handgun from fairly close range. The smaller and faster bullet created less damage as it passed through the brain than if it had been slower and wobbly. The combination of velocity and bullet dynamics and the location that the bullet entered the head determine the extent of the injuries. As I said, we are hopeful. Each day brings a little brighter outlook.”
Then he frowned. “But I won’t kid you. Ninety percent of victims of headshot wounds do not survive. Many who do are permanently disabled. We don’t speculate because we’ve seen the gamut. One patient has severe trauma and survives, another has a less serious brain injury and dies. Only time, and great patience and perseverance, will tell.”
He reached out a hand, which Daddy shook reluctantly, and then added, after glancing down at a chart in his other hand, “But her score is up.”
We looked at him blankly. I wondered if he was still talking about football.
“The combined Glasgow and Rancho score has moved from a four to a six in only twenty-four hours. That’s progress, really important progress.”
“But what does that mean, Doctor? What has changed?” I’d studied both of those charts on the internet the night before. “When she first arrived at the hospital she had no eye opening, no verbal or motor response, right?”
He nodded. “Correct.”
“Well, she’s still got her eyes closed and hasn’t moved or said a thing.”
“Good observations and good questions. The attending nurse in the night noticed a slight twitch in her eyelids, and one of her hands jerked.” As we left his office Dr. Moore repeated, “That’s progress.”
“You hear that, Daddy? He said it’s progress.”
Daddy simply nodded. With Hannah and me on either side of him, we made our way back to Momma’s room, where he slumped into the chair by her bed and buried his head in his hands.
“Daddy, go on home and get some rest. Hannah and I will stay here with Momma.”
He finally lifted his head, gave a weary smile, and said, “All right, girls. I’ll come back by five so you can meet Officer Hanley at home and go over the fan mail.”
Well, at least some things had registered with him. I stepped out of the room and watched him leave. From the back he looked composed, a lanky middle-aged man in a tailored blue suit, pushing open that heavy steel door marked ICU and disappearing in the distance.
While Hannah set up the CaringBridge account on her phone, I sank into the other chair by Momma’s bed and thought about a wobbling football and a house sitting in the perfect location on the beach. Once, as I rambled on and on to Momma about who knows what, I thought I saw a flicker of her eyelids. But when Hannah called the nurse over, nothing.
Nothing for the next three hours that we sat by her bed.
JOSEPHINE
1970 . . . The choir was singing that song again, “Just as I Am,” and the church was so crowded—every pew and in the balcony too. The ladies wore the most beautiful hats. Josephine especially liked Mrs. McBurney’s hats, a different one each week, bold and bright with a long feather, or small and lacy and pastel. She liked even more to sit in Mrs. McBurney’s Sunday school class and hear her talk about Jesus.
Ever since Josephine was really young, no more than three or four, she’d liked to talk to God, especially out in the woods behind the house with the stars shining down. That was easy, like talking to a friend who listened and helped when the dark thoughts crowded in.
As the choir sang she stood and made her way to the aisle. The sapphire blue carpet ran smooth under her patent leather shoes, but her knees trembled. She wanted to “go forward”—she wanted everyone to know she loved Jesus. But she was scared. What if she didn’t do it right? What if it didn’t work?
———
1971 . . . The first time Josephine found Kit with Daddy’s whiskey bottle she was eleven, and Kit was thirteen. Kit was on the floor, leaning against her bed, sound asleep. Josephine carefully lifted the bottle from her sister’s hands and hurried downstairs, where she set it back on the shelf. Maybe Daddy wouldn’t notice it was only half-full.
The next time Kit was awake, sitting in their walk-in closet. “What are you doing, Kit? Are you drinking Daddy’s whiskey?”
“None of your business,” Kit snapped, then cursed. Then she frowned and said, “Sorry, Sis. Sorry.”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t care. He drinks himself to oblivion. I thought I might like to see how it feels.”
“Oh, Kit.”
———
1972 . . . Mrs. Schaeffer, the eighth-grade English teacher, stood in front of the class, beaming. “Students, you have all done a fine job with your short stories. A very fine job. However, there is one story that is exceptional. I believe we have the makings of a novelist in our midst.”
Josephine looked around at the other students. A novelist! She hadn’t known that another of her classmates loved writing the way she did. Who could it be?
“Josephine? Josephine, would you be willing to read us your story?”
Josephine jerked her head around. “Mine? You want me to read my story?”
Mrs. Schaeffer was smiling and holding out the manuscript. All fifty pages, written in Josephine’s loopy cursive on loose-leaf paper, skipping every other line. She swallowed hard and stood beside Mrs. Schaeffer, who handed her the stack of papers. She felt her face go red. A voice in her head chanted, But what if they don’t like it? What if they don’t like it?
I had to write this story, she answered it. I had to.
But what if they don’t like it?