“Your father had a heart attack earlier this evening.”
A space of silence. A quiet breath.
“Abigail. Honey. I’m—”
“What time? Has he had TPA? Are they life flighting him here or to Holy Family?” She sounds as calm as if she’s taking report on an incoming patient.
“They’re not sending him anywhere. He’s . . .” Despite my best intentions, a sob escapes me, my voice breaking.
“Mom. Take a breath. Just tell me.”
“He’s not . . . he didn’t . . . honey, I’m so sorry, but he’s dead.”
“Oh,” she says, still in that professional voice. “I should probably come home. I’ll need to get my shift covered.”
And then she hangs up before I can even suggest that she get somebody to drive her. No tears. No I-love-yous. Just the silence of my own thoughts and all of the time in the world to think them. Maybe this is what hell is, I think. Being given the thing we think we want and then having to live with it.
News travels fast, and members of the congregation come and go. Many of them bring food. Some offer comfort, but most seem to expect it from me.
“God has a plan, even if we don’t understand it,” I tell them, because it’s the sort of thing Thomas would say, not because I believe it. Val stays with me, quietly making decisions. She carries the food into the kitchen and tactfully herds anybody toward the door who stays too long or cries too hard. All the while, I’m worrying about Abigail.
The stretch of road from Spokane to Colville is treacherous, even in the summer. Corners, deer, idiot drivers who are in too much of a hurry and try to pass when they shouldn’t. This time of year, there could be packed snow or black ice. She was in shock on the phone. When that breaks, she’ll be distraught, maybe not safe to drive.
I watch the clock, mentally tracking her progress. An hour, maybe, before someone can be called in to cover the rest of her hospital shift. Half an hour to drive to her apartment for an overnight bag. Another hour and a half for the trip home, maybe longer depending on the road conditions.
It’s half past ten when I finally hear her car in the driveway. I run to the door, wrench it open. She’s standing on the porch, a duffel bag in one hand, the other clenched into a fist.
All I want is to draw her into my arms, to comfort her, but Abigail hurt is Abigail defiant. She’s sealed herself off into a self-contained module, untouched and untouchable.
I reach out a hand but let it fall when I see her stiffen. “Abigail. Honey . . .”
She brushes past me into the house, and I watch her take it all in. Her father’s recliner, empty, when at this hour he should be comfortably ensconced with a cup of tea, absorbed in his bedtime reading. The kitchen, where a plastic-wrapped fruit basket sits on the counter next to an array of desserts and a simmering Crock-Pot. Still wordless, Abigail proceeds down the hall, past her own old bedroom, stopping at the open door of Thomas’s study. The inner sanctum, a threshold neither of us ever cross without invitation.
Empty. Desecrated.
Seeing it through my daughter’s eyes, I’m struck by remorse that I didn’t clean it up before she got here. I should have thought of this. The office chair lies on its back like a dead thing that could no longer support its own weight. There’s a litter of discarded packaging on the floor, left behind by the EMTs.
Abigail drops to her knees in exactly the place where her father fell. She picks up his Bible and smooths the crumpled pages. Her body heaves as if trying to rid itself of some terrible toxin, and then she begins to weep, the choking, tearing sobs of a woman who hardly ever cries, forced beyond her limit of endurance.
No Band-Aid will fix this hurt. I can’t kiss her and make it better. Helpless, I sink down beside her and lightly touch her head. When she doesn’t push me away, I stroke what I can of her hair, which is twisted up so tightly into a bun that it pulls the skin of her forehead into tiny hills and valleys.
I long to loosen it, to see her beautiful hair free, to be able to soothe her by running my fingers through it like I used to do when a nightmare woke her. But it’s been years since she’s allowed me that liberty. We sit in that small space, physically pressed together, so that every one of her cries travels through my own body.
Gradually, her weeping subsides to gentle sobbing. She draws in a deep breath, and I get up and bring her the box of tissues that always sits on Thomas’s desk for use by emotional advisees.
“It doesn’t seem possible.” Abigail plucks tissues from the box, mops up her face, blows her nose.
“I know.”
“This room . . .” Her face crumples in on itself, and my heart crumples with it. I don’t want her to feel grief or heartbreak. I want to go backward in this day and press pause somewhere, anywhere, before Thomas died. But I can’t shift reality for either of us.
Soft footsteps in the hallway. “Is there anything I can do?” Val stands in the doorway, an unlikely angel of salvation with her frizzled hair and overdone makeup, a serpent tattoo coiled around her forearm.
“Thank you so much, but please don’t trouble yourself,” Abigail says.
She corrects her posture. Neutralizes her expression. Puts on a polite veneer. My heart twists again as I watch her, knowing I’m the one who taught her this.
“Everybody is watching you, honey. You need to be an example for the others.”
The words nearly choked me then. Now the thought of them burns like acid.
Val smiles, kindly. Her mascara is smeared black around her eyes from tears of sympathy. “I was about to put the food away, but you really should come and eat a little something, Liz. Just a little soup.”
“I’ll take care of it. I’m sure you’d like to get home.” Abigail’s words are polite, but her tone is dismissive. It’s the sort of thing Thomas would have said, and it stings me.
“Oh, I don’t mind.” Val either doesn’t notice Abigail’s coolness or she’s deliberately ignoring the hidden message. She reaches down a hand to me. “Come now. Your body needs food, at least a few bites.”
“All right. Thank you, Val. For everything.” I infuse all of the warmth I can find into the words, remembering her arm around me, her hand holding mine. All of this day, she has been here for me. A rock. A tobacco-scented angel. I let her pull me to my feet, then reach out to my daughter. “Come. Let’s eat something.”
Abigail gets to her own feet, ignoring my outstretched hand. Adjusts her blouse and skirt. Smooths hair that doesn’t require smoothing. “I’m not hungry. I’m going to ask one of my docs to call in a sedative and pick it up for you. Which pharmacy are you using?”
“I don’t need—”
“I guess it’s really a question of what’s still open,” she says as if I’ve never spoken.
I glance at the clock. “Nothing, at this hour.”
“Maybe I can pull some strings.” She taps her phone, searching for something.
“Abigail. I don’t want to take a pill.”
“It’s just for a few days, until you get over the shock.”
A thread of anger winds through my grief. If I’m guilty of teaching her to hide her feelings, it was Thomas who taught her this sense of superiority masquerading as concern for my well-being. Always the two of them, riding over my words, discounting my opinion, knowing what I need better than I do. But Thomas isn’t here now, and Abigail is my child, and the shadow of my inner self bristles at the condescension.