In This Moment

“I’m fine, Dad,” Sam says, only briefly raising his eyes to meet Andrew’s.

“Good,” he says. Then more quietly he says to me, “He’s been sick. Has had this fever and sore throat thing for a couple of days.”

I nod, and then there’s a lull between us. I start to get antsy; I don’t do well with silence, especially in highly emotional situations. “How long do they expect Jack to be in surgery?”

Andrew’s jaw works furiously. I know he’s holding back more tears, and I quickly regret asking the question. “They can’t know for sure, but the surgeon said to prepare for a long night.”

Without realizing I’ve done it, I press a hand tightly to my stomach as I think of Jack in the operating room all night, his parents waiting for news, hoping for the best, trying to ignore the worst.

“Are you okay?” Andrew asks, for the first time taking in my open coat, my soiled dress—the bloodstain. He shifts his body to face mine, his hands hovering slightly in front of my stained dress. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

“No, I’m fine,” I say. “This isn’t my...” My voice trails, thankfully stopping before I finish the sentence, say the word blood. He looks ill, because even though I didn’t say it, we’re both thinking it. I use one hand to close my coat over the stain on my dress and place my other hand on his arm. This time he rests his fingers overtop of mine and squeezes slightly.

“I’m so sorry this is happening, Andrew.” My chest contracts again, the vice grip of guilt moving through me.

He nods, mouth set in a grim line. “Me, too,” he says, voice breaking. He looks down. “They also said Jack’s back is broken. Probably from when he...hit the ground.”

“Oh, Andrew.” I’m finding it hard to breathe, the fabric of my dress, the wrapped tightness of my coat suddenly too constricting.

He keeps his voice low, so Sam and Audrey don’t hear the conversation. “They said there’s a chance he might not walk again.” His eyes fill, and his voice catches. “How the hell do you tell your kid that?”

Jack Beckett is a gifted athlete, a golfer who apparently has a decent chance at playing the professional circuit if he keeps going the way he has been. He has his whole life ahead of him: college, career, a family of his own one day. He needs to walk out of here.

“I don’t know,” I say, a little breathless. My words are the truth, but they sound terribly useless in the moment. “Andrew, is there someone else I can call for you? Or can I get you something? A coffee? Something to eat?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t think I could keep anything down. Thanks, though.” His eyes drop to his phone, where a text message illuminates the screen, and he’s quickly typing back to whoever it is. I tell him I’m just stepping out to make a call, then once outside, sit on a bench beside a hospital gown–clad woman attached to an IV pole, halfway through a cigarette. I can’t catch my breath and so bend at the waist and suck in great heaving lungfuls of air.

“You okay, honey?” the woman asks, her voice raspy. She rests her elbows on her splayed knees and takes a long pull on her cigarette, watching me.

I look to her face, heavily wrinkled and a sickly shade of yellow, and shake my head. “No,” I say. The cigarette smoke is making me nauseous, and I want to leave, but my legs aren’t yet ready to hold my weight.

She nods. “Most of us here aren’t.”

6 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)

“I want to stay with Sam,” Audrey implores, after I tell her we need to head home. Andrew’s parents and sister, Suzanne, have arrived, and Alysse managed to get on a flight that will get her here before Jack’s out of surgery.

“We should give them some privacy, Aud,” I reply quietly. I wonder when you learn that particular nuance of crisis—that giving people time and space is appropriate in situations like these—but then just as quickly wonder if that’s actually the best thing for anyone. When Audrey asks again if she can stay with Sam, this time a bit louder, I wish I could use the old “Three...two...one...” trick I used to when she was a preschooler. Audrey would usually concede when I got to “one,” and I never had to follow through on whatever consequence would happen after the countdown. But she’s a teenager now, on the cusp of being a woman who can make her own decisions, and my influence over her is diminishing. Which scares the hell out of me.

Andrew glances at us. “She’s welcome to stay, Meg,” he says. “Suzie can drive them back to our place in a bit.” Suzanne, who with her short blond bob and long limbs looks like the female version of Andrew, nods in response and rubs Sam’s back. I open my mouth to insist Audrey come with me, then see her face and Sam’s, and pause. He needs her right now.

“As long as you’re sure,” I say to Andrew. He murmurs again that it’s fine, and I nod. “Audrey, Dad or I will come get you at Sam’s place a bit later. Text me, okay?”

She hugs me and assures me she will, and after a quick goodbye to Andrew and his family, I head home.

* * *

I sit at the kitchen table in my bloodstained dress, too tired to do all the things I need to: get changed, bury the dead bird, deal with work stuff. My mind is both racing too fast and moving too slow, and I still feel like I can’t draw a full breath.

With shaking hands I pick up my phone and dial Julie, who answers on the first ring.

“Meg! Are you okay? What happened? I heard about Jack Beckett. Oh, my God. Where are you?”

I’m crying too hard to speak.

“Are you at home? Meg?”

“Yes,” I manage to say.

“I’m coming over. Give me ten minutes.”

Nine minutes later Julie lets herself in the front door, and seconds after that she’s got me in a tight hug. “Oh, Maggie. You’re okay.” Though she’s shorter than me, no one would ever call Julie petite. She’s solid and fit, yet still has a soft layer over top of her muscles. She does not subscribe to potions, surgical interventions or negative body image, saying her girls need to see the way “God made her” and understand what a real woman’s body looks like. Her halo of dark curls, that never seem to lay flat no matter what she does, tickle my face, making me sneeze.

“Sorry,” I say, sniffling, but she doesn’t let me go.

“What’s a little snot between friends?” she asks, finally pulling back and holding either side of my face in her hands. “Mags, you look like hell.”

I sniffle again, take the tissue she hands me and honk my nose into it. “I know. I feel like hell, too.”

“Why don’t you go get changed and I’ll make you a cup of tea.” She gently nudges me toward the stairs. “After that you can tell me what happened. Okay?”

I nod. “Thanks. Also, there’s a dead bird upstairs. I need to bury it before Audrey gets home.”

Julie doesn’t miss a beat. “Then I’ll meet you upstairs with tea, and rubber gloves. Off you go.”

Once I’ve stripped out of the bloodstained dress, balling it up with the pashmina and stuffing both into a plastic bag in my closet that I’ll throw in the trash bin later, I pull on some yoga pants and a sweatshirt and swallow two more ibuprofen. I’m standing at the balcony door staring at the tiny brown bird, lying exactly where it fell this morning, when Julie comes in my bedroom.

“Here,” she says, putting the hot tea in my hands. I take a tentative sip, and my eyes widen, the honey and lemon mingling with a hit of whiskey. She shrugs. “I brought the booze with me. Figured this was the time for something stronger than chamomile.” She’s wearing the pink rubber gloves I keep under the kitchen sink and has her hands on her hips. “So that’s the little guy, huh?”

I nod, staring back at the bird. In a flash I see Jack on the road, feel the pills I just swallowed trying to make their way back up.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, and I know she doesn’t mean the bird.

“Not even a little bit.”

Julie nods. “Okay, so about this bird.” She crouches down and gives it a long look. “What do you want to do with it?”

“We could just put it in the trash,” I say. “Audrey doesn’t know what happened.” Making the effort to bury it does seem pointless.

But Julie shakes her head. “I think it needs a proper burial.” She looks pointedly at me. “I think you need this as much as the bird.”

She’s right. I can’t bring myself to put it out with the trash, like its life didn’t matter at all—not today. Frowning, I take a deep breath and hold out my hands. “Give me the gloves.”

“I don’t mind,” Julie says but then, seeing my face, pulls the gloves off her hands and gives them to me. I open the sliding glass door to the balcony and gently pick up the bird with some difficulty, thanks to how small its body is and how awkward the gloves are. Its body is stiff, yet so light it’s practically weightless. Julie holds the half-empty tissue box from my nightstand toward me and I set the bird’s body inside, covering it with a few tissues so I don’t have to look at it anymore.

We already have two birds buried in our backyard—a baby robin that was pushed from its nest a few springs ago, and the yellow finch that started Audrey’s save-the-backyard-birds campaign in our house. The graves are marked by two stones, upon which Audrey has painted red hearts with wings, and I start digging with the garden spade about a foot away from the one on the left. The wind blows strong, and Julie, sitting on the grass beside me, holds tightly to the tissue box so it doesn’t get knocked over by a gust.

A half hour later back in the bedroom, Julie and I are meticulously placing Audrey’s gel clings in a pattern on the balcony windows, tiny semicircles of dirt still stuck under my fingernails from the bird’s burial, when my phone rings.