Post 19 The Need To Believe

Day 24: John, The Dream: Uncle Hal Was Wrong.`

Oh, John. I don’t think I ever told you about that awful day. I’ll bet if you looked in the dictionary under “humiliation” you’d find a picture of me there. That was a joke, John. I don’t care right now, because of how the movie ended. Swimming. Swimming, John. Uncle Hal was so wrong, so fucking wrong. Swimming was my salvation. Look it up! “Preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin or loss.” Oh, my god. Swimming was that, exactly. I’d forgotten how much I wanted to fit in. I want to laugh but nothing’s responding.

Day 27 John: Smile.

“Did you see that?” Emma is dozing in the other chair, next to Drew. I shake her awake. “Did you see Drew? He moved. He moved his mouth. It was the slightest smile. I swear to god. Emma. Wake up.”

Well how about that? I was definitely happy, John. Maybe I did smile. My swimming trophy was something to smile about. So, yes. I think you’re right.

I am up and leaning over Drew.

“Baby. It’s John. That’s right. Can you smile for me again? That was so great, Drew. Was there something funny? Were you remembering something happy in there? Oh baby, smile for me again. I know it’s hard, but can you try for me?”

I push the nurse call button. Wendy arrives. “Anything you need for our Drew?”

“He smiled, Wendy. Not a big one, but a smile. I saw it.”

Wendy draped her stethoscope over her shoulder and bent directly over Drew. She withdrew her penlight and gently retracted his closed eyelids, one at a time. She looked at his respiration record and took his pulse manually.

“I’ll note this in Drew’s chart and be sure Dr. Creasy is told.”

I am wild with hope. “But this is great news, right? He’s coming out of it. I can just tell. He hears me. He hears us. He knows we’re here. Right?”

I’ve put Wendy in a difficult spot.

“Well, it seems, to me, to be a good sign. But, like Dr. Creasy says, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, right?” She seemed to be trying to buy time.

“Well, goddammit, Wendy, no. No. I am so fucking tired of ‘not getting ahead of myself.’ I need this one small win. I need to get ahead of the nightmare of losing him. He is my everything. I saw it. I need to believe he’s coming back. I need it, do you fucking hear me?”

I stop, realizing that my voice is reverberating off the walls of Drew’s small room, where only the whir and beep of his machines are now evident. I’ve been yelling, swearing at one of Team Drew’s biggest supporters and cheerleaders. Wendy has taken a silent step away from this madman. I am instantly in tears.

“Oh, Wendy, I’m so sorry.” I repeat my apology through a convulsion of sobs.

Day 29: Drew, The Dream: Chain of Fools.

John, it’s Mae. The woman whose voice I’m hearing. She sounds exactly like Mae. The woman who changed my breathing tube. And my catheter, too. Same light, southern cadence, almost song-like. But wait. This doesn’t make sense.  It can’t be Mae. Can it? If I’m still alive, I’m pushing seventy. That would make Mae, what? Over a hundred and ten, at least. I can’t make this make sense. Is Kit there? She’ll know. She was there, John. She’ll know that voice. John, are you still here?

 *

 Spring of 1961. Cousin Natalie must have been only nine, which would have made me six. It was Easter time, and she and her family had descended on our hometown, partly in deference to GranMag, who by then had lost GranDaddy, and partly because these adults and children alike, despite family gripes, still had a strong affinity for one another. The adults genuinely liked spending time with each other, remembering earlier days and catching up on the present aspects of their disparate lives. The cousins followed our parents’ lead: this is what it meant to be family.

It was unquestioned that family, at least our family, gathered at each point of the holiday triumvirate: Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. That Easter, when we were still young enough to see both the magic and the parochial in it, meant two things: Easter Bunny candy and dress-up for church. Dress up for the men and boys meant shined shoes. Haircuts. If you had outgrown last year’s sport coat, you got a new one along with long pants, a white dress shirt, and a new tie. The photos of that Sunday confirmed it, with us carefully posed in the front yard next to a slender and beautiful white birch.

For Natalie and Kit, the uniform that year was pastel dresses with white petticoats, white patent leather Mary Janes, a lace cap and gloves. Depending on when Easter fell and the attendant weather, the holiday was at the very least a starched, scratchy, tight-collared, stiff-shoed event. Add even the slightest heat, and Easter Sunday could be plain unbearable. This meant that whatever fun to be had must happen on the Saturday before.

That particular Easter weekend was a scorcher. Kit, Natalie, and I had spent a cranky morning in the house underfoot and in no way being helpful. Mae, our cleaning lady, ostensibly there to help Mama with “company,” tried to engage us and finally settled us down for lunch with cold sandwiches and warm cookies. After lunch, she shooed us outside with orders to “find something to do with yourselves.”

I’m not sure when Mae came to work for us. In my memory, she was just always there. I was told that, after I was born, Mama needed help with us children, an infant and a three-year-old, as well as the heavy housework. Despite crying poor the majority of my growing-up years, we managed to have Mae in our lives five days a week and more on holidays. The year I turned ten, Mae cut back her time at our house and added several other families. She told me we were her favorites, and gave me no reason for disbelief.