The only one who seemed suspicious of him was the redhead, Libby. When he left that day, he decided that when this was over, when Stella was able to come home, he’d bring chocolates to the nurses’ station, for them and for Stella’s doctors. He’d let them all know how grateful he was for everything they’d done for Stella.
THAT NIGHT, HE called their friends, other musicians he knew, people they went out to dinner with or just hung out with sometimes. When he told them about Stella, there was always a shock of silence, and some of them cried. “Whatever you need,” people told him. The next day, he found casseroles in the building lobby, offers scribbled on note cards to clean the apartment, to visit. People showed up at the hospital and found him in the waiting room, and Simon didn’t have the heart to tell them that their silence just made him feel more terrified.
He finally got up his courage to call his parents that night. “Why didn’t you tell us before?” his mother cried. “Why did you wait so long?”
His father got on the line, a rumbling in his throat. “What’s this about?” he said, and Simon told him. “What can we do?” he said.
“How could this happen,” his mother said, but it was a statement rather than a question. “Will she be all right?”
“They don’t know when or if Stella will come out of the coma,” Simon said.
His parents were silent while he glossed over the details, leaving out the booze, the pills, the argument.
“Oh, honey,” his mom said. “We’re so, so sorry. We truly are. It must be so terrible.”
“Can I have some money?” Simon blurted. “To help with Stella? She’s in the hospital where she works, but maybe a private nurse would help—”
Silence again, blooming around him like a thorny cactus. And then Simon could hear his father’s breath in the phone. “Let me give you some . . .” his father started to say, and Simon felt a rise of hope. His father coughed. “Let me give you some advice. You don’t want it to be five years from now and you’re still struggling for money, still depending on other people. Use the time, for God’s sake. Stella’s in a class A hospital and she’ll be fine, most likely. Think about taking business classes. Don’t let it all be tragic.”
But it all is, Simon wanted to say. “What about a loan? You can’t give me a small loan?” he said. “With interest.”
“Do you know how much this joint costs us?” his father said. “Twenty grand a month.”
“Darling,” his mother cut in. “It’s fifteen.”
“We invested for this. We saved—” his father said.
“Don’t listen to your father. What do you need?” his mother asked. “Certainly we can help. What do you need? Help for a month? For two? Name the amount and we’ll send a check.” Simon could hear his father’s measured breathing. What if it were more than a month? What if it were for a year? He felt a thousand small fires igniting inside him, trapping him.
“Never mind, I’ll take care of it,” Simon said, and he abruptly hung up the phone. Instantly he felt a rise of fear. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he take the money? Why hadn’t he said twenty thousand, or four, which would be nothing to his family? He called back, but the phone just rang and rang.
Simon sat, his head in his hands. He would call Stella’s mother now. Bette had always been polite to him, even though she had a habit of talking about her dead husband, as well as bringing up the names of Stella’s old boyfriends, all of them successful. “Mom,” Stella always said, a warning in her tone, and she rolled her eyes, but it hurt Simon a little. He wanted Bette to like him, to approve of him and Stella as a couple, and he was never sure that she did. He didn’t care what she said to him or how she treated him now. All that mattered was that she come, that she help with Stella, and he knew that she would.
Her voice on the phone sounded as if it were crackling, and when he told her about the coma, she screamed into the phone. “I’m flying in,” she cried. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”
He’d dig out his car so he could pick her up at the airport. He’d make up the bed in the alcove. At least he’d have another person here with him, and that should be a good thing, right?
BETTE ARRIVED THE next evening, and it stunned Simon to see how old she looked. Her hair was white, cut into a workaday pixie, and she was in track pants and a sweatshirt and wearing none of the jewelry she usually draped herself in. Her face was crinkled, her jawline smudged. She now walked with a cane. Bette, he realized, was nearly eighty.
“Let me hold your arm,” she said, and he felt the slight pressure of her weight. “Take me right to her,” she said, and he drove to the hospital, neither one of them talking. Finally Simon couldn’t stand it any longer, and he began to talk, to tell her what the doctors were doing, how much he loved her daughter. “Do you want to know how it happened?” he said quietly, and she reached over and touched his hand. “I only want to know about her getting well,” she said. “There’s no need for anything else.”
At the hospital, when Bette first saw Stella, she drew in her breath sharply. He expected her to cry, to fall apart, but instead she pulled up a chair and sat beside her daughter. She took Stella’s hand. “You’re getting better every second,” she said quietly. “I’m not leaving until you do, and we know how much you like your privacy.” She tried to laugh, but it came out more of a sigh. She began talking quietly, telling Stella family stories that Simon had never heard.
Simon sat listening to the waves of Bette’s voice, as if Bette were introducing this sleeping Stella to the old lively one. Then suddenly the stories stopped, and he saw that Bette’s eyes were closed. She was asleep. He took her hand and warmed it between his, but she didn’t stir. He looked at Stella, who somehow seemed calmer, like she knew her mother was there. “Thank you,” he whispered to Bette, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him.
SIMON DROVE BETTE to the apartment and helped her settle in. She put her suitcase next to the daybed in the alcove, then sat quietly on the living room couch, knitting. Simon was glad Bette was there. Having another heart beating in the apartment, especially one connected to Stella, comforted him. It would be a reason for him to get up in the morning, to not fall apart. It would make him feel so much better to be able to do something, if not for Stella, then for her mother.
They spent the following day at the hospital, coming home so exhausted that Bette went immediately to sleep. Simon, though, couldn’t. It wasn’t just that he was so worried about Stella. Tonight was the LA concert. He paced the apartment. All he had to do was shut his eyes, and he was there. He felt the thump of the amps, the sweat on his forehead from the stage lights, and the intoxicating roar of the crowd, the way sometimes, when things quieted, you could hear someone shouting your name, all the outstretched hands shimmying and waving like a field of wheat. He thought of the way Kevin always sashayed toward him on the stage, bending into Simon for harmony, how Rob would wink at him when he wailed. We’re all in this together.
He was not there with them, but at least he wasn’t alone. Instead of the thumps of the amps, he could hear the staccato bursts of Bette’s snoring. There weren’t any spotlights, but there were streetlights outside. No roar of the crowd, just the same incessant honks of taxis, the squeal of brakes and the shouts of people going by. It was all passing him by. He put his head in his hands.