All We Know of Heaven

  Maureen made a motion as if she were holding something in two hands, moving the fingers of her right hand.

  “The guitar?” Danny guessed. Oh hell. She did remember that time. “Would you like me to bring it sometime?” Maury nodded.

  “I drink. I drain. I…” She pounded her small fist on the railing of the bed. “I dream about Bug.”

  “I do, too,” Danny said. “I dream about when we were younger. I dream about all of us at Memorial Pool. I dream of Bridget in her homecoming dress.”

  Maureen looked away, startled by her own anger. Had she always been jealous of Bridget and Danny?

  “Are you tired, Maury?”

  “No!” she answered, sharper than she meant to be. It was her turn to talk. “Do see Kitt?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Does she know?”

  “Know?”

  “Know Bridget hit…cross…hit…truck?”

  “No,” Danny said. He was stunned. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Maury said. “Yes. We. Fooling. My fool. My fault.”

  “No, Maureen. Just an accident,” Danny said, his mind whirling.

  “I want Kitt see.” God! Would she always be an idiot? She sounded like an idiot with her mouth full of oatmeal. The new teeth looked pretty, but they made her talk funny—as if she didn’t talk funny anyhow. But Danny understood. He looked surprised.

  “Uh. You want to see Kitt? I’ll tell her; but, Maury, I don’t think she can handle coming to see you now. She’s a basket case. May not even go to her own daughter’s memorial on Monday. The cheerleaders have made up a ballet sort of thing to this song….”

  “You Got Friend.”

  “Yes, it’s the same one that they played…” Danny realized that he had been about to say that it was the same one that they had played at Maureen’s funeral.

  “I know,” Maureen said clearly. “My dead.”

  Her mother had told her all about it. The salute by the cheerleaders. Her beautiful quilt that now kept Bridget warm. The trophy won in her honor.

  She was glad she had died young, at least once, while everyone still liked her.

  “Yes,” Danny said. “Taylor sang that at your…service. She was named after the guy who wrote it, I guess. I have to speak at this service….”

  “Say lub, lush…,” said Maureen.

  “Try again.”

  “Love. Bug,” Maureen said carefully.

  “I will,” Danny promised. “I’ll tell them you are thinking of Bridge. I don’t know how to get through it. It’s not real to me that she’s gone.”

  “Home,” said Maureen.

  “I don’t blame you,” Danny said.

  “Home,” she said again. “Rag. You. Kiss me. Oh, God, sorry.”

  “You’ll go home soon.”

  Abruptly, Maureen reached for a button and flicked on the TV.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Days is on.”

  Danny couldn’t believe it. She was going to ignore him because of a soap opera! The first time he saw her after she literally came back from the dead. Maureen was utterly absorbed in the boring antics of Alice and Julie and Lucas and Maggie. Danny thumbed through a Time magazine from 2005.

  “It’s time for her to rest now,” said Mrs. O’Malley, peeking in. “They tell us a half hour…”

  “No!” Maureen almost yelled, snapping off the television and pushing a plastic water jug off onto the floor. Danny jumped out of the way. The floor flooded. Maureen began to cry.

  “She gets so emotional. It’s normal,” Mrs. O. told him.

  “Come? Coming? Common. Mom!” Panicky, Maureen thought, He’s never going to come back. He just dropped by this one time. And she had turned on the TV! “Don’t go.”

  “She wants you to come back, Danny.”

  “Tell her…” That was crazy. He could tell her himself. “I will next week, Maury. I promise. Do you want me to bring Leland or Molly or Britney? It’s probably easier if we come in a group because of gas.”

  “No!” Maury cried again.

  “Okay, I’ll just come.”

  “I think she feels you were closer to Bridget,” Mrs. O. said, as Maury’s eyelids blinked and drooped.

  “She can’t remember anything from the first few weeks after the accident. We’re sure of that. But she has impressions. And she wants to see the picture of her car…all that. She wants to know more about the accident, Danny. We haven’t felt entirely okay about telling her everything. She wants to see a picture of Bridget’s grave. It’s like she’s obsessed with it.”

  “I guess I kind of get that. It’s her life,” Danny said.

  And it was Bridget’s death.

  The O’Malleys were in the front row at Bridget’s memorial, held in a heated tent on the Flannerys’ wide lawn. Kitt did not want it at church; she said it would have reminded her too much of the first time, when they had buried Bridget without knowing it. There was hardly any room, and hundreds of people stood in their coats outside. A huge blowup photo of Bridget’s graduation picture stood on a stand, flanked by banks of pink roses. Between the news trucks and the regular people’s cars, it was a mob scene. Henry Colette finally got disgusted and had his deputies block off the street so he could park his own squad car and get himself and Margo in.

  The cheerleaders’ “dance,” which everyone thought would be incredibly stupid, was really sweet and short. It seemed to be about everyone laying down a rose or a leaf or a snowflake.

  Mr. Flannery sounded like a robot.

  He thanked the hospital for trying to save Bridget’s life and nodded at the line of doctors seated toward the front. He thanked the hospital foundation for forgiving Bridget’s expenses. He thanked his daughters, Eliza and Sarah, for giving him the will to go on. “I never was a church guy,” he said. “Just on holidays. But now, I guess I want to believe that when I’m an old man, I’ll see Bridget Katherine again. I guess she’ll be as cute as she ever was, and not hurt; and she’ll come running to me. I guess that’s how I imagine heaven to be. My wife and I want to thank all of you for so much caring and love you showed us and continue to show us. We are putting together an archive of photos of Bridget, so any of you who have any…” He stopped and seemed to forget where he was. “Obviously, we are having a very hard time, my wife particularly. In fact, Kitt is going to stay with her sister in Wisconsin for a short while until she can face life again.” Kitt’s sister, Sherry, smiled and waved. He stopped again, for about five minutes. People looked around nervously. But then he started again. “The O’Malleys are our friends. They will always be our friends. Well. I just wanted to say that. Yeah.”

  Father Genovese got up and led them all in the Lord’s Prayer.

  Then Danny Carmody walked to the front of the room.

  He looked down at a card, then put it into his pocket.

  “I just want all of you to know that Bridget was an amazing person, more amazing than anyone I’ve ever met. And I know she wasn’t afraid that night, because she was never afraid of anything in her life. I would imagine she would not be afraid of death, either. If she can see us, she’s probably glad that the news trucks are here, because Bridget had no doubt that she was going to be famous in her life. On the red carpet. Not this way. But she probably doesn’t mind.” There was mild laughter. “I have a message for all of you from Maureen. She wants you to know she loves Bug—that was her name for Bridget. She misses her as much as I do, probably as much as anyone except her own mother and father and sisters do. I think it’s important to remember that.” In the silence, Kitt’s thin, keening cry was the only sound. The news cameras pressed close. Henry Colette got up to tell them to get the hell out. “I wish this didn’t happen. I wish we were all together again. I will always love Bridget Flannery. But we have to love Maury, too. We all lost something out there on County G that night. The Flannerys lost most of all. None of us will ever be the same.”

  He sat down.

  His mother gave him an odd look. So did other p
eople. He felt scratchy and hot in his suit, which was a little too short in the arms. Then, just as the caterers began to open tables and lay out silver bowls and platters, Mr. Flannery tapped him on the shoulder. Danny put his hand out to be shaken, thinking Mr. Flannery was going to thank him.

  But he asked, “How dare you bring up Maureen at my daughter’s memorial?”

  Danny felt like Mr. Flannery had punched him in the gut.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you would mind. She asked me to.”

  “You didn’t mean to be offensive,” said Mr. Flannery. “But it was completely wrong, Danny. Maureen is getting better. Bridget can never get better. You have no idea what we’re feeling.”

  “Actually, I think I do,” Danny replied, surprising himself.

  “What? A kid crush? This was our child! Listen. Just…I’m not saying you’re a bad kid. But you remind Kitt…just…”

  “Well, okay. I won’t come around.”

  “Just for now.”

  “Fine.”

  When Mr. Flannery turned his back to tell the men where to put the food, Danny and Ev took off.

  homecoming

  Over the next two months, Jeannie met other mothers on the ward—each of them clutching her own shot glass of hope the way Jeannie’s grandmother used to wrap her long fingers around her hot whiskey and sugar.

  “You’re so brave,” she told one woman whose son had been airlifted from up north. The boy had been a piano prodigy at ten but was hurt diving into a shallow pond at his cousin’s birthday party. That had been a year ago last summer. Every time he was about to go home, he got a fever or bronchitis and was readmitted to a medical floor. And then he had to come back to rehab. His injury was not only to his movements but also to his mind. “I’m not brave,” the mother, whose name was Denise, told Jeannie as they strolled the long corridor, Denise pushing Charles in his wheelchair toward the soft-drink vending machines. “You do for your child what you do for your child. Everyone here does that. You did it when they were babies, and they need for you to do it again now.”

  “Skank!” snarled Charles, snatching at the vending machine with a hand cocked sharply at the wrist.

  “He doesn’t mean me. It’s okay, honey,” said Denise. “With the brain, it’s like being obese. The more you have to lose, the more you can lose, or so it seems. But it’s also true that the more you have to lose, the more you know you’ve lost.”

  Jeannie was submerged again in the wave of guilt: Maury was doing so much better than most of the kids. She was recovering more words each day.

  Her regimen of physical exercises was endless. Maureen came back from physical therapy sweating as though she’d been at a long cheerleading practice. They had her bending her knees and raising her arms overhead to improve her range of motion after the shoulder injury. They taught her to use exercise bands and little dumbbell weights. Jeannie sometimes watched Shannon barking out orders, “No, I said squeeze that ball! Do you want that right side at all! I said squeeze it, missy! Don’t you throw it away!”

  Shannon was like a mean sergeant in some bizarre army. That her daughter should have to undergo this after everything she’d already endured…but it was for the best. It was all for Maureen’s own good.

  And when Maureen went home, Jeannie would have to do the same things with her every day.

  But Jeannie didn’t know if she was adequate to the task of helping her child.

  She thought that kids cramming for medical school exams must feel this way. There was so much to learn. They all said it would become routine once Maureen had done it a few times. Muscle memory, Shannon insisted. Dr. Park, so encouraged by Maury’s progress, was beginning to talk about home, perhaps by May. Jeannie was horrified.

  It was too soon.

  She barely knew her way around the rehab!

  But she tried to count her blessings.

  Jeannie felt okay about leaving Maureen overnight now.

  There was always someone from the family there. Henry came almost every day, as did Jeannie and Bill. Danny came several times a week. The cheerleaders came, too, but not with Danny. The story was slowly draining away from the front pages. There was so much to be grateful for that it seemed absurd to worry.

  Jeannie remembered her vow to live life now, and tried to enjoy those moments that weren’t a trial.

  Molly and Taylor and Britney came to deliver a get-well CD with the most raucous dance music they could find. They did the Bigelow Stomp as they had for Bridget—well, as they had when they thought Maureen was Bridget. And as Maureen watched from her wheelchair, clapping in delight, Molly did back walkovers all the way down the hall of the ward. All the rehab kids were enchanted. One guy was so enchanted that he showed Taylor his penis. Taylor burst into tears and ran for the elevators. She never came back.

  For Maureen, the visits were bittersweet.

  Seeing Molly do the things she once could do—and knowing that Molly wasn’t as good as she and Bridge had been—reminded her of her great hefty bag of losses. Bridget. The two of them in tumbling class. In their teeny Bulldog uniforms when they were in second grade, the two mascots for Bigelow High. Her aching, stubborn muscles could remember how it felt to throw herself confidently back and touch the floor, to jump and almost touch her outstretched toes, to slip down into a split.

  Never again. Never, never again.

  Part of her wanted Molly—refreshing, healthy, pretty Molly—to go away and stay away. But when they weren’t there, Maureen wanted all of them to come back.

  One day when Molly visited alone, Jeannie could tell that there was something on her mind. And sure enough, Molly walked out into the hall and motioned for Jeannie. She asked if they could speak privately for a moment. From her room, Maureen roared. She hated it when people talked about her outside her hearing. With a troubled face, Molly confessed, “I knew it was her all the time. I had dreams.”

  Jeannie nodded and admitted something she hadn’t even told Bill. “I had dreams that she was talking to me. I had dreams that she was telling me she was here. I thought she was trying to tell me that heaven was wonderful. Now I think it’s possible that if you’re close to someone, that person can kind of hear your voice in her head. And maybe you can hear her thoughts.”

  “Like ESP?” Molly asked.

  “Who knows?” Jeannie answered with a shrug.

  “I guess I was closer to her than anyone except Bridge,” Molly said. “I mean, she was closer to Bridge than I was, not that I was closer to Bridge than I was to Maureen. I don’t mean that the way it sounds….”

  “I know,” Jeannie told her.

  “So I kept thinking, Why am I dreaming about Maureen? Not Bridget? And still, I’m really, really happy for you. I hope you forgive us for going on the TV….”

  “We do.”

  “It was just all so exciting and so strange. I’ve read about other times it happened now, before this. But then I thought it was the first time it had ever happened. It was so scary and thrilling to be part of it!”

  “It was.”

  Maury shouted to them, “Hell-OH!!”

  Laughing, Jeannie and Molly hurried back into the room.

  “You might have lost some teeth, but you found a temper!” Jeannie said.

  You try living in a shell and see how polite you are, Maureen thought. But she only said, “Yes. I did.”

  “Keep it up,” Molly told her, and Maureen could almost feel what she was going to say next. “You need that fighting spirit! By fall you’ll be back on the squad.”

  Was Molly stupid? Or only trying to be nice? Maureen knew she would be lucky to be able to sit in the stands for a game by next fall. When she left, Molly said, “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  But she didn’t.

  When the spring days started to lengthen and the flowers bloomed, Jeannie began wheeling Maureen out onto the roof terrace to see the daffodils and trilliums budding in the big tubs and boxes out there. Visiting Maureen had become a daily grind.
The drama was over.

  The cheerleaders’ visits dropped off.

  The kids were doing term papers.

  The prom committee was having meetings twice a week.

  It was only natural.

  It broke Jeannie’s heart.

  And for Maureen it was devastating. There were days when she actively fought the therapists and nurses. She cussed them with words her mother didn’t realize that Maureen knew. Why not just stay in bed? This was going to be her life anyway. Why should she let people push and prod her like a baby? Put stupid stickers on a chart when she walked a step alone on the rubber mats between the railings? She grew so depressed that rehab sent a psychologist to talk to her.

  “I hear you’ve been refusing your therapy,” the man said. He wore a jogging suit and Nikes. Probably this was supposed to make kids feel he was “one of them.” Maureen put a pillow over her face. “You’re only hurting yourself, Maureen. If I were you, I’d want every bit of power back that I could have.”

  “You not me!” Maureen spat at him. “Fat. Fat butt.” The man clearly wanted to be seen as a jock type. But his gut betrayed him.

  “But if I were you, I’d stop feeling sorry for myself,” he continued, shrugging off the insult.

  Maureen burst into tears of rage.

  The psychologist handed her a tissue. Why did people always do that? Didn’t they know how good an accumulation of tears felt? When you cried, you wanted to drown in your tears, let them course down your neck and into your ears. It felt real.

  “I loose my face. I can not walk! Bridget die. My head hurts all day. Sorry? For me? Sorry? Yes. Why not?” She looked around for something to throw. She was getting good at throwing things.

  “Yes, feel sorry. Feel sad about Bridget. Feel hurt that you got slammed. But Bridget died. You didn’t. You can sit here until your legs shrivel up into wet noodles or you can fight. I think Bridget would have fought,” said the man.

  Later, in the hall, he told Jeannie that Maureen was grieving entirely appropriately for her situation. The happy zombies were the ones who really worried him. He also said she might need weekly counseling later, that it would be worse when she was at home. Friends would be flipped out by her blurting and her impulsiveness. They would all promise to visit every day and then stay away. Here, her astonishing progress won her superstar treatment. Back among fully abled people, she was going to seem like a freak. The dumbest baggy pants guy would be more with the program than Maureen was. It wasn’t that he wanted to say these things, the psychologist told Jeannie. But she needed to know.