Acts of Contrition Read online

  “Nurse!” I say, and walk to the open door. “How long ’til the doctor comes in?”

  “It shouldn’t be too much longer. He just finished up with a guy from a car accident.”

  “Oh, yikes! Is he okay?”

  “If you call two busted ribs and a broken arm okay,” she says lightly.

  “What about the reaction?” I say. “Are you sure that she’s out of the woods? Is it possible for her to have another one?”

  “Doubtful,” the nurse says. “She’ll be fine now.” The nurse takes a step.

  I grab her arm, release it quickly. “What about in the future? How do I keep her safe?”

  “Other than doing what you’re doing—being a vigilant mom and knowing your family’s medical history—there’s not much more you can do. With kids, things are going to come up. The doctor will be in soon to suture her wound,” she says, and this time walks away before I’m able to ask more.

  “Sally, honey. I’m going to step outside and make one more phone call, okay?”

  “Can’t you call from in here? In case the doctor comes?”

  “They really don’t want people using cell phones in the rooms.”

  “But you just called Dad,” Sally points out. “Why do you have to call him again?”

  “I just need to ask your father something,” I say. “Honey, just give me a second. I’ll be right back.”

  “Tell Daddy that I’m sorry,” Sally says, her bottom lip quivering. The enormity of the day is finally hitting her.

  “It’s okay, baby,” I say. “I’ll stay. I can text instead.”

  My hand trembles, but I have no choice. For Sally, I need to know. With my phone shrouded in my lap, I punch in the first three digits of the cryptic cell phone. The number populates the screen. I look up at Sal. She’s staring at the door, probably wondering when the doctor will arrive. I exhale in a slow stream, look down at my phone, and attempt to put into words this gigantic question I need the answer to.

  I need to know if anyone in your family is allergic to the tetanus vaccine. For my daughter—for Sally’s sake—she had a reaction. Let me know ASAP.

  I look back at Sally—dear, sweet, precious Sally—the sacrificial lamb in this tangle of torment, my daughter who is years smarter than her age, who will someday be blindsided at the hand of her mother. As Greek tragic as you can get.

  I read the text again. Hit send.

  Two hours later, gone seven hours in all, Sally and I arrive home. Tears are flooding my vision before I even open the door. When I see my mom and dad, Tom and the boys, Emily, Angela and her family, Martina with her daughter, Kayla, I lose it completely. A tray of cheese and crackers sits on the ottoman. Glasses of red wine are in hands and on tables. College football is on the television.

  “Hey! There they are! How’s our Sally!” Everyone stands, rushes to Sally, examines her wrapped hand, kisses her forehead, offers her a seat.

  “Oh, honey,” Mom says, cupping my face and kissing my mouth. I fall into her, letting go of the tears I’ve held on to all day. “It’s over,” she says. “You’re just in time for dinner.”

  “You came,” I say, hugging Martina, my amazing big sister. I hug Kayla and size her up, noting that my niece is a good foot taller than me.

  I look at the beautiful table, the golden turkey resting on the rack, and cry some more. The kindness kills me. Everyone is too good. Angie brings me a glass of wine. Emily breaks out in song, an original she’s named “I Hope Another Suture Isn’t in Your Future!” The boys deliver construction-paper cards to their sister. I’m finally where I want to be. Surrounded. The smells start to fill the air as Mom heats up the side dishes. Pop is carving the turkey. Soon we’re all seated for dinner, saying grace, and I’m crying again.

  “She’s emotional,” Angie says, as if the rest of my family doesn’t already know that I’m strong through illnesses and injuries but crumble at kindness and pride. Seldom do I make it through one of Emily’s recitals, Sally’s soccer goals, or moments of pure goodness, like when the boys hug each other in their sleep.

  “It was the storm,” my mother says. “It set things off balance.”

  “I’m so glad you’re all here,” I say in a pitifully grateful voice.

  Just as the first dish is passed, I hear my cell phone burble, signaling an incoming text message. I pop out of my seat like a piece of bread in the toaster. “Let me get you some milk,” I say to the boys, and once I’m concealed by the refrigerator door, I open the text. It reads: Poor Sally. Is she okay? I’ve never heard of a tetanus reaction before in my family, so I don’t think she got it from me.

  I had uttered the truth only once before—the day I went to see Landon—the day the photo was taken: the truth that Landon James is Sally’s biological father.

  In the ten years since, time has obscured the truth as sure as moss blankets the walls of an abandoned house, encroaching upon sacred space without the need to put down roots. Tom has been Sally’s steadfast father. The seasons have rotated ten times. We have celebrated birthdays ten times. Christmas, Lent, and Easter. Birth and death and Rising. For the ten years that Tom has been Sally’s father, Landon never once tried to be. That was the deal I made: with Landon, with God. Give me her, give me Tom, and I promise, I promise, I promise…Now, in the form of a text message, the heavy spiral of ten years’ time seems reduced to nothing. The contract I wrote has suddenly gone missing.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TEN

  Failing to Do Good

  DECEMBER REFUSES TO TURN COLD. It’s defiant and warm and the kids are loving every minute of it, still riding bikes down the driveway and swinging on their play set. The meteorologists debate the meaning of this warm spell. Some predict that we’ll be punished for too much of a good thing, like a champagne hangover or stomachache from polishing off the second half of a pecan pie. Winter will dump on us unmercifully, these grim meteorologists say, as though to remind us that excess in anything will always have consequences.

  Angie and her family are the first to arrive two days before Christmas. My girls, little groupies to Angie’s girls, traipse after them like lovesick puppy dogs. I hear Kelly, Angie’s oldest, murmur something about showing my girls a YouTube video of a talking cat. I look questioningly at Angie and she assures me that it’s clean. I’m scared to death of the Internet, YouTube, and Facebook. The thought that my girls could end up on the wrong end of a chat line sends shivers down my spine.

  Teresa arrives next with her two boys. Dom and Danny accost their cousins at the door and drag them down to the basement to see their dinosaur collection.

  The husbands are outside on the deck drinking beer. We can hear them defending their respective teams. College ball, and Notre Dame football in particular, is their thing. Tom went to Notre Dame, and since neither Loyola (Teresa’s husband Paul’s school) nor Gonzaga (where Angie and Kevin went) field football teams, it’s Notre Dame’s fortunes that get analyzed. Paul and Landon James overlapped a few years at Loyola, but their paths never crossed.

  My sisters and I settle at the counter and I open a bottle of malbec.

  “When’s Martina getting in?” Teresa asks.

  “Not until late,” I say. “They’re staying with Mom and Dad, so we won’t see them until the morning.”

  “What’s the plan for the morning?” Angela asks while arranging slices of cheese and an assortment of crackers on a breadboard.

  “We have the parade,” I say.

  “What time should we be ready?”

  “Please,” I say. “Sleep in. Hang around the house. The fridge is packed with food. There’s a dozen bagels, bacon, eggs. We’ll sneak out in the morning and be home by eleven. Then we can start baking the Christmas cookies with the kids.”

  Each year my sisters and I bake dozens of cookies with the kids: sugar cookies decorated with icing and silver ball sprinkles, snickerdoodles, linzer hearts, biscotti, snowballs, gingerbread men. It takes us all day and we freeze them immediately. T
he next day we create platters and tins, some to keep to last us through the holidays, others to give out to neighbors and teachers. Teresa makes them for the shut-in parishioners.

  That night my sisters and I lay out a row of sleeping bags and blankets for the kids in the basement: Sally, Emily, Dom, Danny, Kelly, Shannon, Matthew, and Luke. We call out movie choices until we find one agreeable to the four-year-olds up to the teenagers—How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I hug and kiss and tuck my way down the line, charge Kelly and Shannon with being the “grown-ups,” listen to Sally whine about not being included in their group even though she’s ten years old.

  Upstairs I load the dishwasher, start a load of laundry, and take out the garbage. Then I lay out a mountain of jackets and mittens and hats for tomorrow’s parade, a bag of snacks to get the boys through the inevitable midmorning meltdown, my camera, video recorder, and cell phone. Finally I sit down next to my sisters for a final glass of wine before bedtime. The husbands are in the family room watching a game.

  “So, Mare,” Angie says, turning into me. “How are things?”

  Teresa swivels her stool in my direction. The husbands are watching football, but I’m the one with double coverage.

  “What things?” I say, thinking immediately that this has to do with Landon James, his running for Senate, the rogue photo.

  “Patrick.” Angie says Tom’s brother’s name in a hushed voice, like it’s a secret. “We heard he’s back in rehab.”

  My shoulders drop and my fists unfurl. Phew. “Yeah, he was in rehab. He’s out now, but Kathy went to her mother’s with Mia and still hasn’t come back.”

  “Poor Kathy,” Angie says.

  “Poor Patrick,” Teresa says.

  “I know he’s an addict,” I say. “Even in recovery, he’s still an addict. I just wish he understood what’s at stake, you know? Enough to make him stay clean.”

  “I’m sure he tries,” Angie says.

  “I’m sure he tries twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” Teresa says calmly. “Then he has a weak moment, a crack in his foundation.” Teresa is a listener and rarely comments on anyone’s life other than mine, so I’m surprised that she’s piping in her two cents. “Unless you’ve battled addiction, I don’t think anyone has a right to judge.”

  “I’m not saying it’s easy,” I answer. “But he needs to try harder.” Teresa looks at me for too long, her deep brown eyes locked on mine, as if to say, “Who made you so perfect?” I’m the first to look away. “It’s a sacrifice that he needs to make for the sake of his family.” I hear myself pushing the point and wonder why; maybe I want to hear what Teresa has to say about Patrick’s fall from grace—the crack in his foundation—seeing that he and I are made of the same cement.

  “And I’m just saying,” Teresa persists, “that you don’t know what you’re talking about because you’ve never been in his position. You can’t know what it’s like to be drawn to something forbidden—even if every fiber in your being is fighting against it. It’s hard, Mare. Addiction is something you know nothing about.”

  I refrain from saying that addiction and I are hardly strangers. While I’ve never been addicted to alcohol, I’ve been addicted plenty to people: first Landon, and now Tom and the kids, without whom my skin would have no bones to hang on. Perhaps I could be something other than a wife and mother, but I don’t want to be. The risk in losing what’s valuable has led me to make a decade of sketchy decisions.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I say, lightening up. “I’m sure it’s much tougher than I can even imagine. I can’t even stay away from doughnuts. I’m sure alcohol is just a tad tougher to stare down.”

  Teresa nods, and then I nod, and then we sip from our wine.

  “Anyway!” I say. “Tell me what’s going on with you guys. Ang—give me the latest update on teenage girls. Make my head spin.”

  Angie proceeds to rattle on about Kelly and Shannon. Kelly brushes her hair incessantly until it’s as smooth as silk and then secures it in a messy ponytail/bun do that makes her look like she just rolled out of bed. She has a “boyfriend.” They text, but Kelly is required to turn in her cell phone each night for her mother’s inspection. “Keeps her honest,” Angie says.

  Shannon started her period and wants to use tampons because she’s grossed out by pads. She thinks Lady Gaga is a “poet.” She’s given up meat on principle but makes an exception for her grandmother’s meatballs, since that’s “ground beef.” We all laugh at that one.

  We finish the bottle of wine just as the game ends. We say good night, send Angie and Kevin up to Sally and Em’s bedroom, Teresa and Paul up to the boys’, and Tom and I head up to ours after checking the locks, turning off the lights, and arming the home security system. As I walk through the hallway, I see Angie in the bathroom brushing her teeth and signaling for me.

  “I’ll be right there,” I say to Tom.

  In the bathroom Angie spits and rinses. “Listen, Mare. Are you okay?”

  “I’m more than okay,” I say. “I’m so happy everyone’s here.”

  “I know that, but is there something else going on? Something you haven’t told me?”

  I look down the hallway. “There is something,” I admit. “But it might be nothing. I’m really hoping and praying that it’s nothing.”

  “And you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “I really don’t.” I hug my sister and tromp off to bed, anxious to cuddle against my husband while the getting is still good.

  I pull on my flannel, pull my hair back in a ponytail, and brush my teeth. In bed we go over the plan for tomorrow.

  “I’m going to march with the boys and you’re going to stick with the girls, right?” Tom asks. Showing that he knows the plan is one of Tom’s methods for getting on my good side. Tonight he’s putting forth an admirable effort, probably hoping for a little action or at least a back rub.

  “Yeah,” I say, “and then we’ll meet at the courthouse steps. That’s where Emily is going to sing her solo.” Emily’s choir group will be singing carols tomorrow, and Em’s been chosen to sing the first verse of “Silent Night” solo. Then Sally, who has been collecting money for the local food bank, has been asked to introduce the mayor. It is destined to be a big morning for my two amazing daughters.

  “We got lucky with this arrangement,” Tom says, as if reading my mind.

  “I know. What are the chances that they each get to do something special tomorrow? At least we won’t have to worry about sibling jealousy for this event.”

  Tom slides over and puts his head on my chest. I rub his back while I settle my head deeper into the soft pillows, exhaling with the satisfying fullness that comes from having a houseful of family, imagining the line of cousins sleeping peacefully in the basement, and eager for the morning to come.

  In the morning, the six of us sneak out of the house without waking my sisters or their families. In the car I hand out chocolate-milk boxes and Nutri-Grain bars with promises that we’ll eat a hot meal after the parade. The kids hardly seem bothered; they’re more excited that they’re allowed to eat a junky breakfast.

  Once in the parking lot near where the parade will start, I begin the great bundling act. The boys slept in their long underwear last night, giving them an extra layer under their jeans and turtlenecks and wool sweaters. I zip up their puffy down ski jackets, wrap scarves around their necks, push gloves onto their hands, and cover their heads in caps with flaps that make them look like aviators. Tom’s holding an American flag and a rolled-up Cub Scout banner.

  “Boy, aren’t we the picture of small-town America,” I say.

  Tom smiles. “It doesn’t get more wholesome than this.”

  “Okay, honey,” I say to Tom, “I’ll meet you and the boys at the end of the parade near the steps to the courthouse.”

  “I have my phone on vibrate,” Tom says over the din. “In case you need to get ahold of me.”

  “Okay, great. Bye, boys!” I holler. “Stick ne
ar Dad, okay? Safety first!”

  “Never last!” they holler back.

  “No mistakes,” I say to Tom.

  Once Tom and the boys are on their way, I turn to the girls, who are cozy in the backseat, bracing themselves for the cold that will engulf them in a minute.

  “Sally, you ready?” I ask. “Emily, what about you?”

  “I don’t want to wear a cap,” Emily whines. “I’ll look stupid while I’m singing.”

  “Then wear this!” I say, pulling out a surprise Santa hat I picked up at the dollar store yesterday.

  “Gorgeous!” Emily exclaims.

  “You can wear your winter cap underneath. You’ll never see it. You’ll stay warm and you’ll look adorable.”

  Sally, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about how she looks. Staying warm is her priority. She’s bundled in a ski jacket, wool hat, gloves, and clunky boots. The only sign that she’s Sally is the amber waves that puddle around the neck of her jacket.

  We leave the warmth of the car and brace ourselves against the cold, my girls each holding tight to one of my mittened hands as we walk to the start of the parade. Main Street is already lined with onlookers, hunkered closely against each other for warmth, bundled in blankets and jackets, sipping coffee and cocoa. Once the parade starts and we begin to march, I forget about the cold and relish the moment: my girls in front of me, tossing candy to little kids; Tom with the boys and the Cub Scout troop; my sisters and their families at home in our house; a hot dinner at Mom and Dad’s later today. This—small-town quaintness, a community wrapped in Christmas parades, my family’s bond as sticky as molasses—is what it is all about. It’s bigger than everything it’s up against.

  In front of us is a float from a local school, a pack of gorgeous hounds from the local hunt club, their master donned in scarlet-red tails. In front of them is a cheer squad, a marching band, a sequined dance team.

  Once we wind our way through the parade route and end at the courthouse, I signal for the girls to ascend the steps. The councilman at the top acknowledges me and the girls with a friendly smile, gesturing for the girls to come up.