All We Know of Heaven

  No one knew who sent the picture to Maureen.

  PART III

  maureen and danny

  long winter

  “I said no,” Dave Carmody repeated. “It’s bad for you, it’s bad for her, and it’s bad for business. That’s not why it matters, but it’s true.” Danny and Dave were loading slabs of sod onto the big garden truck outside Dave’s greenhouse. The truck was new and the name of his dad’s business, Green With Envy, was stenciled on both sides.

  It was June 10; and despite Danny’s efforts to keep everything low-key, the word about him and Maureen was out.

  It was way out. Parents knew.

  “Dad, it has nothing to do with you,” Danny said evenly.

  “Everything that has to do with you has to do with me. It’s already gotten you suspended, which would have been on your record permanently if I hadn’t been able to convince Old Beckwith there were special circumstances. You’re only seventeen. While you live under my roof…” Dave Carmody stopped and rubbed the back of his neck. When he started again, his tone was down in the lower registers, gentler. “Danny, you’re a great kid. You’ve got a big heart. I know you want this poor girl to feel accepted. I know Coach is grateful to you. But enough is enough. Sympathy only goes so far.”

  “Why do you think she’s with me out of sympathy?” Danny asked, knowing it would piss off his dad.

  “Listen, smart ass. I told you what my feeling is on this, and I expect you to pay attention. You have state the year after next, and a good chance for a full ride if you pay attention to your work and your sport. You don’t have time to be the white knight and handicapped driver to Bill’s messed-up daughter.”

  “She’s not messed up.”

  “Danny,” said his father, sitting down on the truck’s tailgate. “I know what goes on. Steve Collins’s wife told me about the chances of her ever being normal, back when they thought she was Bridget. I don’t mean she would gossip about Steve’s patient. I doubt if he ever told her the specifics. But she used to be a nurse herself. And she said she felt so bad for you because it would be awful if Bridget died and awful if she lived. I know. I do their plantings. And I know why you got into that fight. It’s a terrible thing. I don’t fault you there. But you’ve done your best. You’ve fulfilled your obligation to Bridget.”

  “We don’t think of it that way,” Danny said, hefting more sod onto the truck. He got his gloves out of his pockets. Maureen cringed at dirt under his nails, and during June he could scrub them with a brush all day and not get it off.

  “‘We’?” his father shouted. “So it’s ‘we’ now? Listen, as long as you’re in high school, the only ‘we’ in your life is your mother and brothers and me. Do you get that? Am I clear? I don’t know if you’re doing this just to get to your mother and me or not. You’ve never given us a day of trouble. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “I’m not going to stop seeing Maury.”

  “This discussion is over.”

  “That’s fine. But I’m still going to see Maury.”

  Suddenly, Danny was spun around by his father’s two powerful hands gripping his shoulders. Danny was strong for his size, but no match for Dave, who had five inches and forty pounds on him. “Son. Look at me. What in the name of all that’s holy do you see in a girl who can’t even take care of her own…personal needs?” Danny looked away, but Dave cornered him. “That girl is going to be a burden on her parents all her life, Danny. You heard what Dr. Collins told the Flannerys. The brain does not get better!”

  “You have no idea what she’s like! Do you think she wears diapers or something? You’re wrong. If Mom would let me ask her over here, you wouldn’t think she was any different from anyone else unless she got nervous and started forgetting her words. She’s practicing driving….”

  “That’s great,” said Dave. “Maybe someone else can get killed.”

  “Cut it out, Dad! Listen to yourself! Maureen has a brain injury. She uses a cane. She limps. Maybe she’s never going to take pre-calc the way she could have before. But she’s taking piano lessons. She’s learning to read music, learning fast! She’s as smart as she ever was in some ways. She’s smarter than me! You’re a Jaycee, Dad. Isn’t that all about helping kids like Maureen live full lives? Or is that just bull? What if she had cancer? Would you want me to drop her because she had to have chemo to be cured and lost her hair?”

  “It’s not the same thing at all,” said Dave. “But yes, to be absolutely honest, I wouldn’t want you to tie yourself down to anything, especially when you’re not even eighteen yet, that will ruin your future. What if you keep on with this? What if she gets pregnant, Danny? Do you think of that? I hope to God you’re not thinking of getting really involved with her.”

  “If I was, it wouldn’t be any of your business, Dad.”

  “You’re in high school, Dan.”

  “You met Mom in high school.”

  “That was a different time.”

  “You hate it when I say that. You hate it when I ask how it was back in the day.”

  “You need to tell her, in a nice way, that you want to be friends.”

  “I don’t, though. I’d be lying. I don’t want to be just her friend. I don’t know if it’ll last over the summer. I don’t know what will happen when we go back to school. But I want to be with her now.”

  “It’s your funeral, Danny,” Dave finally said. He swung into the truck and, before Danny could hop into the cab beside him, drove off alone.

  “You asshole,” Danny said quietly, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets.

  He wanted to punch someone. He wanted to cry. He wanted to throw his stuff in his car and move to his brother’s house. He loved his dad. His dad hadn’t missed a match since Danny was ten. And he wasn’t a beast, like other wrestling dads, giving their kids diuretics and urging them to kill. The only thing he had done to redshirt Danny was keeping him out of kindergarten until he was six so he’d have a power advantage. Danny loved his mom. His mom still treated him like he was ten; but if he was sick or in need of something for school, she’d come on cross-country skis if she had to to make sure he had it. Mom worked days baking for the Art House Café and weekends mending things for the dry cleaner to make sure Danny, Dennis, and David Jr. had iPods and at least a small college fund. She loved telling her bad jokes and always told them wrong, getting all flustered and saying, “Wait! I forgot to tell you! The famous genetics guy was eating a stork!”

  Making him choose between Maury and his family was something nobody should ever do to a kid. The shoe would be on the other foot if he were the one who was sick or…dented.

  If he thought of Maury’s disability at all, that was how he thought of it—a dent that couldn’t be pounded out. A flaw that wasn’t her fault. Otherwise she was perfect. It was almost sweet the way she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. When they got into the car, she’d say, “Let’s go make out! I have thought of this all day!” He knew she didn’t have a gatekeeper on her mouth, but it also was pretty wonderful to be loved that way.

  He was damned if he was going to trade all the sweetness she gave him because of his parents’ prejudice.

  They didn’t know how hard she cried when she saw the picture from MyPlace. When she was out, unless it was with him alone, she barely spoke. If she did, it was so slowly that people got impatient, so Maureen usually faked a giggle and said, “Never mind. Brain blooey!”

  It wasn’t like they were together 24/7, the way he had been with Bridge. He couldn’t be with her every minute of the day. He was starting practice for American Legion ball, playing shortstop on a team that could really make a dent in the Cities’ dynasty if they learned to get over being individual hot dogs. He had practice three nights a week and a game on Saturday. Maureen went to therapy at Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the days he didn’t have practice.

  There was the business of the Flannerys’ whole take on this, too.

  He’d seen Kitt twice—but the time that scared him wa
s when he was helping Maureen into the car one Friday night.

  Kids were still outside playing double-dutch and basketball in the cul-de-sac. Bridget’s little sister Eliza had a new tetherball. He spotted Kitt sitting on the front porch, smoking. When her eyes met his, they were like lasers, boring a hole through him. He flinched; and Maureen glanced up, puzzled. She caught on right away.

  “Stares. She doesn’t like seeing,” she said. “Kitt.”

  No one said a thing, but Kitt’s eyes followed him down the street. She looked like a skeleton. She was always thin, but now it seemed as if she didn’t eat at all. Miss Bliss, the lunch lady at school, who was friends with Danny’s mom, said Kitt was a big drinker now. Danny got that. Who wouldn’t be?

  To be honest, he also got why they were mad about him and Maureen. And Maureen got it, too.

  They talked it over one night in a way that they never had before.

  “I guess I ask myself how I could feel this way about you if I felt that way about Bridget,” Danny said. They were fishing in the creek—Maureen was hysterical every time she caught a blue gill.

  “You don’t know if you and Bridget would last. Have lasted,” Maureen said. “You don’t know if she would have stayed.”

  “I felt like it was expected. I expected it, too. I just worried about when we went to different colleges.”

  Maureen shrugged. “Maybe then. People change. Fish. Wish. Wish. I knew. Us.”

  “I wish I knew about us, too,” Danny said, thinking that it was going to be hard for him next fall, when she was in school dragging her foot and repeating her thoughts.

  Maureen read his mind.

  “You want to stop now? It’s okay. Okay, I mean,” she said. “I care. I always cared. But next fall, will you feel shame of me? Be ashamed of me?”

  “Not ashamed.”

  “But something.”

  “Something. I don’t like to be on display.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” Maureen said. He was so proud of her then. She didn’t have a choice. She had to go back to school knowing everyone would watch her every move, knowing she would have a private aide with her at all times, knowing someone would have to take notes for her, help her in an adaptive PE class at the Y twice a week, knowing all that. Danny thought, I am keeping her going. I am helping her face that. But what do I feel?

  “We can be friends. We were friends.”

  “Would you date another guy?” he asked.

  She looked stung. “So, if I would, you’ll stay with me. Just so I don’t give it away?”

  “No!”

  “Be true, Danny. Be honest, I mean. That was what you were thinking.”

  “Actually, I was thinking we could try being friends, but I couldn’t do it if I thought you were with another guy.”

  “You have to have me as a girlfriend not a friend.”

  “I guess. I think I’d be jealous if I tried to be just a friend after what we did.”

  “We aren’t engaged!”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t ever have to go out with me again.”

  “That’s not what I want! But people are going to say things.”

  “So you are ashame. I mean ashamed.”

  “Look, Maureen, if I have problems with that in the fall at school, I have to get over it. If I’m here with you now, I have to be okay with being there with you then. Should I say, absolutely not, it will never have any effect on me? You’re right. We don’t lie to each other. It will have an effect on me. It already has an effect on me. My parents give me a lot of garbage.”

  “And so do mine,” Maureen said.

  “Why?” Danny asked, incredulous.

  “They think you forced me because I have no impulse control. See it. Do it.”

  “How do they even know what we did?” Maureen examined her hands. “Maury? How do they know?”

  “Well, I was never good at lying. Now I can’t lie at all. And I have to take the pill. I’m seventeen. My mother knows.”

  “Pardon me while I drown myself!” Danny said. “I can feel Coach’s hands tightening around my neck.”

  “He does not know.”

  “Oh. Thank God for that. So Mrs. O. thinks I’m this psycho sex fiend.”

  “No. She knows that I did this to feel alive. She was glad it was you. She trusts you. She is worried about me. But you, too. She thinks you feel sorry for me.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “I told her it was my idea.”

  “Oh, that helps,” Danny said with heavy sarcasm.

  Maureen said, “She is worried just because, cause, claws, claws, pause. Stop. Because she thinks you still love Bridget, and you’re just going on loving Bridget in your mind. She thinks this because you came to see Bridget in the coma and you loved her and prayed she would wake up and then, whoops, I was the one who did. So I was like the booty…” Maureen blushed. “The bobby…”

  “The booby prize,” Danny finished for her. “That’s the longest speech you’ve made since you moved here from Uzbekistan.”

  “No, Mars. Yes.”

  “Well, I don’t love Bridget now. I mean, I’m not dying from love of Bridget. I don’t think of Bridget when I’m with you.”

  “Mom feels sorry for you.”

  “You said that.”

  “Okay, well. Of course you still do love Bridget.”

  “I don’t love her that way.”

  “Duh. She’s dead.”

  “What scares me is, I don’t know if I ever did. Maybe I liked you all along. Maybe I was really looking for a girl I could talk to and joke with and feel the way I do with you, but I was worried about my image. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be going out with Bridget Flannery?”

  “Thanks. That makes me feel better,” Maureen said, struggling to get to her feet, throwing down her pole. “I am the booby prize.”

  “Maury, no! She was just the girl everyone wanted! You know that. I was in eighth grade when I started going with Bridget. I was thirteen years old. All you think then is, If I go out with the best girl, then I must be this big manly man. I mean, maybe I loved you all along. I know I felt something. But I denied it.”

  “Me, too. I always loved you. And too bad you have to find out when I a freak. When I am a freak.”

  “You’re not a freak.”

  “I am a feet!” Maureen screamed. She stamped her feet. “Wait!” she said. “I stamped both my feet! I’m a freak who just stamped both her feet!”

  Danny picked her up and twirled her around.

  “You’re getting better and better. Why wouldn’t I love you as much for coming back from this? Maybe I like you better as a feet. I admire it.” They began to laugh, tried to hold it back, and gave in. Danny kissed her and sank down with her in the grass, and in moments her legs were finding their way around his.

  “Well, feet, I don’t have anything with me. It’s a long walk back to the car. Are you sure you want to take advantage of a poor dumb jock?”

  “Start walking,” said Maureen. “You’ve got two good legs.”

  joy in the morning

  She woke sweating at four AM.

  School.

  Danny would drive her, but still.

  School.

  She couldn’t get it out of her mind.

  The aide would help her, but she would have to find the rooms. Eventually, some teacher would call on her in class. Eventually, people would hear her talk. And they would make fun of her. It was supposed to give her character. That was BS. Nobody got “character” from being put down. That was just therapy happy talk. She was not a better person for having this happen. She had been a good person before.

  It sucked.

  She and her parents made the choice. She was starting over as a sophomore, at least technically, to give her more time to catch up. It meant her friends, now juniors, would graduate before her. But at least this way, Maureen thought, she might actually graduate.

  At least she was tan. Her hair looked cute. Her li
on cane was like her good-luck charm.

  By the time the sun came up, she had dressed carefully in her brown leggings and pink miniskirt and double tanks. She didn’t dare wear flip-flops, because her right leg got tangled up when she got tired. So she had five pairs of ballet shoes her mother had dyed in every color. Today was pink. Through the soles, she could feel the floor. She concentrated on that. During PT Shannon had told her, “Reach for the floor like it’s your anchor. Hold on to the earth.” Maureen did that.

  She went down the stairs, slowly.

  Since the beginning of August she’d been back in her own room—a room that Tommy had totally redone for her as a late birthday gift. The pink paint was dark now, almost coral. There were no curtains. Everything else was white, from the blinds to the furniture. Her mother had surprised her by making her a new quilt, just like the one buried with Bridget.

  Oh Bridge, she thought. Be with me.

  In her dad’s office was the piano. Maureen began to play the Moonlight Sonata. Slowly, carefully, so no one would hear. She used both hands fairly easily now. It was still more difficult to use her right hand. It always would be. But she could do it. If she could play this without getting tangled up, her first day would be okay. She was almost three-quarters of the way through it when she felt a presence at the door. There stood her father.

  “How did you do that?” he asked. He was dressed for his run.

  “How you get to Carnegie Hall,” she said. “Practice.”

  “You were using your right hand.”

  “I have been.”

  “I never thought you would use it again, especially…Can you really read the notes, Maury?”

  “I really can, Daddy.”

  “So, you made something new of yourself.”

  “What choice was?”

  “Was there.”

  “What choice was there?” she asked. “I practiced. Practice. Perfect. Practice.”

  “Don’t get nervous.”

  Maureen slammed the cover down over the keys. “Don’t get nervous! Everyone there is going to star, star. Stare. Stare at me! Don’t tell me not to be nervous!”