Heartbeat

  I can’t do this. I can’t say, No, Dan, you can’t talk to her like I would have because I finally see he gets that she’s gone too. I see her and I know she’s dead but I still hope and now I know that he does too. I see that someone can be gone and you can still think they will come back.

  I see that even when there is no hope, you can still have it.

  “Is it very bad?” I say, and it hurts to say it. It really does. The words cut into my throat, slice over my tongue.

  “The baby...” Dan says and I tense, thinking of course, of course, and he sees that. He takes a deep breath and takes a step back. Says, “You should go see her.”

  I see how alone he is, and we found a way to reach each other but I can’t get there now. I can’t forget that Mom walked around holding her stomach and never talked about the baby. I can’t forget what I know.

  And that’s how we part. No words of consolation from either of us. To either of us, and I worry that what we’ve built will fall apart. I worry nothing will survive, that we all died the morning Mom did.

  “Hey,” I say when I walk into her room, when I see her. Her face is swollen, and there are more IVs in her arms.

  It hurts to look at her.

  “I remembered you telling stories,” I say. “I miss them. Even the ones about the business deal, the ones Dan and I...” I trail off.

  “I found all the food you put away,” I tell her. “I found it last night. I...Mom, I drank your bottle of wine.” I look at the monitors beeping away. Beeping for her. “I went to see Caleb after that. We slept together. Not like you think, okay? I swear. But I did stay all night and he was so—Mom, I don’t get it. I was sure he was glad I was there, even if I did throw up a lot, but I haven’t seen him today and I’m scared. I was sure before too, remember? With Anthony. And I was wrong. I just...I just want to know what to do. You knew with Dad and with Dan. How did you know?”

  The monitors beep and that’s it. That’s my reply.

  I look at Mom, and she looks so wrong. So...no. I can’t think it, even if it is. She’s so bloated and her skin is weird-colored and my eyes are burning.

  I turn away, but not before I catch a glimpse of her stomach rippling, of the baby turning inside her.

  For the first time, I wonder what it’s like for him. I see her, but he lives inside her. He lived in her when she was alive. I wonder if he knows the difference.

  I wonder if he is scared.

  “Hey,” I say, and not to Mom. Her belly ripples again and I swallow. I should say something else but I can’t. Everything is tangled up inside me, grief and love and hate and worry.

  I have never spoken to my brother before.

  I close my eyes and keep them closed until Dan comes.

  I watch as he kisses Mom goodbye, his lips to hers. I watch him put a hand on her stomach. “Be back soon,” he says, and there is no movement under her skin.

  No reply.

  44

  Dan and I walk in silence to the elevator and as we’re waiting for it, I hear a familiar sound, a squeaky cart.

  Caleb.

  I look up, see him and watch him smile at me. Watch the curve of his mouth, the one I wanted to kiss last night.

  The one I still want to kiss, and I fidget, start to look away, but then remember what he said. That he wanted to kiss me. That we were together, all night, and granted he spent a lot of it holding my hair while I puked, but he was there. He helped me and he held me and when I left I knew I’d see him later.

  And so I smile back and it’s not like time stops—I don’t have that kind of life anymore because I used to believe that everything would be okay. That I could have a fairy-tale perfect life.

  I smile back and I’m simply happy to see him.

  I believe he’s happy to see me, and that’s enough.

  “Emma?” Dan says, and I look at him, see he’s stepped into the elevator.

  “Right, coming,” I say and just as I get ready to step on, Caleb walks by, brushing a hand against mine and sliding a piece of paper into it.

  “You didn’t say hi to your friend,” Dan says as we get off the elevator, when we’re walking out to the car. “Or is he not your friend? I don’t know very much about what’s going on with you now. I know you see Olivia.”

  I nod, and I know the note isn’t burning my skin. I know that. But it sure feels like it is because I want to read it so bad.

  “So, I got a call from your AP History teacher and I also got a letter from the school. What’s going on with you and your classes?” Dan says, and I stop and look at him.

  “Oh,” he says. “That bad?”

  “I’m done,” I say.

  “But you like school so much. Too much, Lisa always says. Said.” His voice cracks on that word. “It’s different now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Everything’s different now.”

  Dan’s silent as we get into the car and then he says, “So, that guy. Caleb, right?”

  I nod.

  “Friend? Not friend?”

  “Friend.”

  Dan taps one hand against the steering wheel. “Is he who you were with last night?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what you’re thinking. I feel like I’m taped together most of the time, like I’m a shadow of the Emma that used to be.”

  “That’s when things can happen,” he says, and then blows out a breath. “That’s what I feel like I should say. But I know what you mean about being taped together and after this morning, I think that what happened last night was important because it made us talk for real. Although I do wish you hadn’t gotten drunk.”

  “Not as much as I do.”

  “You got sick?”

  “More than once.”

  “What would she do?” he says and I look at the road, my eyes filling with tears.

  “I don’t—it would be different. None of it would have ever happened.”

  “Even last night with Caleb?”

  I nod.

  “Is he like Anthony?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Your mother would be happy about that,” Dan says. “I am too. So, he’s nice?”

  I think about what that question would have meant before, back when my life was grades and planning for the future. When I was so sure I knew what I wanted and I never looked at someone who wasn’t in my classes, who didn’t have the drive I did, the belief that grades and getting into the best possible college meant everything. When I was that girl, I would have heard the stories—if I ever even noticed him—and believed them, looked through Caleb if I happened to see him. He didn’t get what was important, and so he wouldn’t have mattered.

  I think about what it means now. How I missed so much trying to be the best student. How I could have spent time with Mom and didn’t. How I never would have bothered to look past the surface because I was so busy chasing what I thought mattered more. How I thought I could create my future, how I believed I could shape all of it.

  I know better now, and Caleb matters to me. He matters to me in a way that’s new. That no one else has and it’s because he’s seen everything, he has seen that I am made up of grief and fury and fear and held a hand out to me. Not to save me, but to just be there.

  “He’s nice,” I say to Dan, who says, “I’m glad, because Anthony—having to listen to him talk when you were doing that debate thing last year—Emma, that boy is an ass.”

  “He really is,” I say, and then we are both laughing but it’s a little too loud, a little too hard. A little too brittle.

  We have forgotten how to do this normally. We are doing this without Mom and it’s weird and we both know it.

  But still, we try, and when we get back to the
house Dan says, “We’re going to be okay.”

  I look at him, and I can’t nod. I can’t say yes. But I can say, “I hope so,” because it’s the truth. Because I can feel myself hoping, and it’s scary but it’s nice too.

  The phone rings and Dan answers it. I head up to my room. I leave the door open.

  I sit on my bed and open my hand. I’ve kept it closed all the way home and my heart is pounding as I look at the piece of paper inside. It’s just a note, but it matters.

  Caleb matters.

  I’ve never seen his handwriting before. It’s cramped, the letters printed, no loops or curls of cursive.

  Want to see you, stuck down in recovery handing out magazines. Do you want to come see me tonight? I’m at home if you do.

  I fold the note back up and put it in my pocket, walk downstairs and realize I’m tracing over it with one hand, like I can feel Caleb’s words through my jeans.

  Dan’s in the living room, still on the phone. “Remember the Florida thing?” he says to me and then “Hang on,” into the phone.

  I nod. I remember how he was going to go and talk about what’s been done to Mom.

  This morning and even the car ride back here suddenly seem very far away and I think again about how Dan never asked me about Mom. I was just her daughter. I just spent my entire life with her. I just love her.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Dan says, and I look at him. “I’m not going to go down there.”

  “You’re not?” Does he get it? Does he really finally get it?

  “I can’t,” he says. “You’ve heard what’s going on, and I can’t leave the baby now. I can’t leave your mother now. So I’m going to do some teleconference thing with the lawyers. It might be a while, so I was thinking that for dinner—”

  He doesn’t get it.

  “I’m going out,” I say.

  “Emma, we’ve talked about this. You know how I feel, and—”

  “Yeah, I know, and there’s the money for doing it, right?”

  “This isn’t about the money. At least...we do need it, but I truly believe that if there’s a chance another baby can make it and her mother wanted it, then—”

  “This mom said that before she died?”

  Dan looks away from me. “Her husband knows what she wanted, and I think that a father’s wishes count—”

  “For everything.”

  “No, but he should have a say,” he says, and I see the moment he gets it, that he remembers what I said to him this morning.

  “Emma, I’m sorry. I was in so much pain, and I just wanted to do what your mother wanted, I just wanted to make sure that the baby—”

  “I know,” I say for what feels like the millionth time, and I am so tired of talking to Dan, of hearing his attempts to make what he’s done okay. I’m tired of him pretending he never saw what Mom was really afraid of, that she clutched her belly and kept silent about the baby because she was scared.

  I’m tired of him pretending like I got any say in what happened. I’m tired of how he just left me and chose what he wanted. Once that happened, we weren’t a family because families talk and he didn’t ask me what I wanted. If he had, I—I don’t know. I just know I never got to say anything. My voice didn’t matter.

  Mom knew I was going to get chicken pox before I ever got my first spot. She knew Dan was special as soon as she met him. She knew she loved my dad on their first date. She knew I’d get over Anthony.

  I wish I’d spent that last night with her, that I’d put away my books before it was too late and sat with her. That I hadn’t been so sure about making the future what I wanted that I forgot the present. That I had a memory of her right before she died besides being at the hospital and hearing she was dead. Before I stood there, alone, and realized I would never see her again.

  Before I was told I could see her. That I ended up in this place, this here.

  Dan says something as I leave but I don’t stop to listen. I have heard it all before and I don’t need to hear it again. I don’t want this morning and the talk we had poisoned.

  I’m afraid it is, though.

  I walk and reach into my pocket. I feel the note, Caleb’s words, and my heart flutters. Maybe it shouldn’t do that, and maybe I shouldn’t want it to.

  But it does, and I do.

  45

  Caleb’s house looks enormous in the dark, and I shiver a little, not from cold, but from memory of the place, as I head toward it.

  He comes down to meet me.

  “Hey,” I say. “How did you know it was me?”

  “I saw you coming,” he says. “Not that I was looking for—never mind. I was, you know. Hoping.”

  I walk over to him. “Have you ever had a day that was good and then bad and then good and then bad and then good again?”

  “Your mom?”

  “I—” I say and then I’m spilling it all out, how I was happy this morning and then talked to Dan and then things seemed like they would be different but okay, and then we talked again and things were different but not okay. “It felt just like it has since Mom died,” I said. “And I—”

  “Hoped,” Caleb says. “You hoped. I’ve done that.”

  “Does it always suck?”

  “With my parents it does. But not with everything.”

  “You’re right,” I say softly and he is. Hope doesn’t always suck because I felt it when I got his note. I felt it walking over here, at the idea of seeing him. I feel it now, when I am with him.

  Hope is so simple and so hard to have but it’s here, and we have it and it’s about each other.

  “You wanna come up?” he says, and I nod because I do.

  And then, just in case he didn’t see, I reach out and take his hand. I’ve felt it before but now it’s not about fear of his house or trying to provide some sort of comfort. It’s not a quick brush of fingers, the passing of a note.

  I take his hand just to hold it.

  His fingers twine with mine and we head up to his room. It’s as bare as I remember but smells, strangely enough, like sugar.

  “Are you cooking or—?” I say and then break off as I see what’s sitting on his counter.

  I see a tiny cotton candy machine, like people buy for kids, blue with little animals on it, and beside it are two cones of pink sugar, propped up in a coffee cup.

  “Oh,” I say because it is all I can say. He did this, he went out and bought a cotton candy machine and made cotton candy, real cotton candy, and it is the sweetest, most amazing thing.

  “It’s probably cold,” he says. “It’s not as easy as you’d think to make it and I burned some sugar and it probably smells in here and I’m sorry about that and also, I made three cones but I ate one of them and—”

  “Caleb,” I say and he stops talking. He stops talking and he looks at me and then he is right there, he is right next to me, in front of me, all around me, and he smells like sugar and I thought I understood want when I was with Anthony that night in the lab but I didn’t, it takes you over, your blood, your breath. It is you, it is the world, it is everything, and when his lips touch mine there is nothing but that. But us.

  He tastes like sugar, he tastes like Caleb and I want more, I want him. I wrap my arms around him and that’s where thought stops. I am all sensation; his breath, the taste of his mouth, his tongue against mine, his lips on my throat, his hair twining around my fingers, his hands on my waist, my hips, and he pulls back, breathing hard, and looks at me like I am—

  He looks at me like I am beautiful, and when he does, I am.

  “Emma,” he says, and he is shaking and I did that to him and I am shaking too and maybe I should be scared but I’m not, I feel, and for once it’s not anger or sadness or worry it’s just want and happiness and I didn’t know it could
be like this.

  Even before, I didn’t know.

  I pick up one of the cones of cotton candy. He made this for me. I look at him and he is still looking at me as if I’m the only person in the world, as if I’m everything, and as I pick off a piece of cotton candy and eat it, I feel him watching me, I feel him watching my mouth and I hold out the cone, watch him blink at it, watch him sway a little and then grin, take it from my hand.

  I watch him eat a piece and I know I am looking at him but I don’t care, I want to look at him, at this guy I never saw, who I would have written off and would have never known, and I can’t bear the thought of that, of this not happening, and I say, “Caleb,” and I hear what is in my voice, all the wonder. All the joy.

  He smiles and he is all I can see.

  So I kiss him, and the world is just us again and I hope it stays that way forever and ever and ever.

  But of course it doesn’t.

  46

  His parents come home. It’s hard not to notice, even when you are in the middle of an incredible kiss, because his room shakes and I hear the car.

  So does he and we pull apart and look at each other. His lips are redder than usual and his hair is tousled and I did that, I had my hands in his hair.

  I was touching him and it’s enough to make me forget about the car.

  But then another one comes in and the hot light in Caleb’s eyes dims and he looks down at the floor as if he can see through it to the garage. To who is in the cars.

  “Caleb,” I hear, and it’s a woman’s voice, nice-sounding, sweet-sounding even, and it must be his mother. She doesn’t sound like I thought she would, but then I see Caleb’s face and remember the house and before I know it I have reached out and taken his hand again.

  “I have to go see them,” he says. “You don’t need to—you shouldn’t have to deal with them.”

  I squeeze his hand gently and say, “I want to.”