Acts of Contrition Page 9

  The others are still waiting for their eggs to cool down.

  “Don’t you dare go near that chain saw!”

  “Like I would,” she says.

  Next I call Teresa, who is four years older than me and has two boys, Matthew and Luke, who are a few years older than the twins. She lives in the country in Maryland, homeschools her children, and drags them to morning Mass seven days a week. Teresa is unwavering in her devotion to the church. Behind her back, Angie and I refer to her as “Salt of the earth” because she’s so good. Teresa has x-ray eyes, as if her chosen-one status has given her a greater ability to see inside each person’s truth. Once—when I was in law school and my vocabulary was plump with legal terms—I leveled her in a debate. She looked at me with her penetrating eyes and said, “You think you’re so smart, Mare. You think you’re clever, but really you’re just sneaky.”

  “That’s mean,” I insisted. “I’m not sneaky. I’m no mystery. What you see is what you get.” I can still hear the defensiveness in my voice and see the smirk on my sister’s face as she said, “Yeah, right,” like it was so obvious to her that I had the potential to lie under oath, if the price were right.

  When I talk to her this morning, she hems and haws. “I don’t know, Mare. It might be better to stay put.”

  “Wimp! Get your ass over here.” I hardly ever swear, but for some reason, when I’m talking to Teresa, the words flow right out, like I’m trying to shock her for sport.

  “We have some parishioners who are homebound and I think I’d better check in on them, bring them a plate, just in case their relatives can’t make it to them.”

  “Isn’t there anyone else who can look in on them?”

  “Mare,” Teresa says in her disapproving tone, as if I have just suggested leaving children in a burning building. “What if it was Mom or Dad left alone on Thanksgiving? Nothing to eat. No heat.”

  “You’re right,” I grumble. “St. Teresa. You’re a good person,” I say, but selfishly wish Teresa could put her family first for just one day out of the year.

  Next I talk to my oldest sister, Martina, who is ten years older than me and who was married and pregnant by the time I was in the fifth grade. Her two kids are grown and in college. She started young and never made it to college like Angela, Teresa, and me, but now her kids are independent while we’re still raising ours. Sacrifices and trade-offs, that’s how it goes. Last time I talked to her, she mentioned going back to school to get her nursing license. She’d make a great nurse. She was the one who taught me and my other sisters how to take care of our babies, how to get them latched on to nurse, how to settle the barking coughs of croup, how to aspirate snot from a screaming baby’s nose.

  “So, really?” I say. “You’re not coming?”

  “We’ll see,” she promises. “Let me check in with the kids and I’ll get back to you.” Martina’s oldest, Kayla, is studying at the University of Virginia, her second oldest, Maria, is at the University of Maryland, and her baby is taking a year off, working at the National Aquarium.

  Finally I sit down at the counter with the boys, a cup of coffee in hand.

  “Happy Turkey Day,” I say to them.

  “Gobble, gobble,” Dom replies.

  “Hey, champs,” I say. “What did the turkey say at Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “What?”

  “I’m stuffed!” I exclaim. “Get it—stuffed?”

  “I don’t get it,” Danny says.

  “You stuff a turkey on Thanksgiving,” I say. “You put stuffing—you know, dressing—inside of it.”

  “Inside of it where?” Dom asks.

  “In its tummy?” Danny says.

  “Well…not really. Never mind! You guys want to help Dad pick up sticks?”

  “He said he’d give us a penny a stick!”

  “Sounds like a good deal,” I say. “Go to the bathroom, and put on your fleeces and boots.”

  Once the boys are outside, I’m left with Emily, who is still at the counter flipping through a Pottery Barn catalog, commenting on what’s gorgeous and what’s dreadful, sipping her hot cocoa like the queen of England.

  I open the refrigerator and start pulling out ingredients for the side dishes. Once I have what I need, I begin cubing the sourdough for the dressing. I chop the onions, celery, and sage, sauté in stainless steel with a chunk of butter, then deglaze with white wine. As I pour the mixture over the bread, I’m already thinking about a leftover turkey sandwich tomorrow, stuffed with dressing and cranberry sauce. Once I clear the kids’ dishes, I start in on the butternut squash, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole. I’ll leave the gravy for Mom. She has a magical way of scraping brown bits off the bottom of the roaster with a sprinkling of flour and a half bottle of red wine.

  Once I get the turkey in, I’ll focus on setting the table. I love setting the table, pulling out the special tablecloth passed down from my grandmother, rinsing off the china from our wedding, retrieving the good wineglasses from the hutch. And I always sprinkle the kids’ turkey art projects around the table: a papier-mâché turkey here, a pilgrim made out of paper towel tubes there, a cornucopia stuffed with clay fruit.

  Just as I’m heading down to the basement to get the turkey from the extra refrigerator, Sally and Tom burst through the door. Sal’s crying and Tom’s muttering words of assurance. Sally’s hand is bleeding. Badly. Tom’s holding his shirt over it, applying pressure.

  “What happened?” I say, praying that five fingers are still attached.

  “She cut herself on the scythe,” Tom says through clenched teeth.

  “The scythe?” I gasp, peeling the bloody T-shirt from her hand, revealing the palm, with a gash about two inches long, splayed open like a scored sausage.

  “Ow!” she howls.

  “Why’d you have the scythe, Sally?”

  Sally looks down and then at Tom with pleading eyes.

  “She was trying to help,” Tom says, and at once I know what happened. Sally overstepped her boundaries. Trying to be a big shot. Trying to be older than ten years old. All of a sudden I know why Tom’s ready to spit fire.

  “I wanted to help Daddy,” she cries.

  “I asked her to pick up branches,” Tom says. “Branches! Just a few minutes ago she was picking up branches.”

  “But then I saw a big branch that needed to be cut, and I thought I could do it myself.”

  “Gosh darn you, Sally,” I mutter under my breath. And thank you, God, at the same time. “Miss Independent. Don’t you think Daddy knows what he’s talking about? Don’t you think he has his reasons for not letting you use dangerous equipment?”

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  Sorry ’til next time. Sorry ’til you decide it’s okay to scald crème brûlée with a blowtorch. Sorry ’til you decide it’s okay to hatchet open a watermelon.

  I look again at her cut, cover it back up, and press. I have a scar in the same spot from a bagel-slicing incident.

  “She’ll probably need a tetanus shot,” Tom says.

  “The emergency room on Thanksgiving. That’ll be fun.” I look at Tom. He’s shouldering the blame, I can tell, when clearly it’s not his to carry. But that’s how it is when you’re a parent. If an accident occurs on your watch, you always feel responsible.

  “Which sounds least horrible to you?” I ask him. “Going to the emergency room, or staying here with the remaining three kids?”

  “I’d definitely rather stay here,” he says. “But seriously, I don’t care. Whatever you say. You’re the boss.”

  “I’ll take her.” I’ll hold her hand and look into her eyes while the doctor sews up her palm. I’ll pocket her look of betrayal as I pin her down and keep her still. That’s what moms do. We sit on our kids as they scream for us to stop.

  “How many do we have coming for Thanksgiving? When do we need to put the bird in?” Tom asks.

  “Right now just Nana and Pop and Angela’s family are coming. Looks like Teresa and Martina are ba
cking out. And the turkey doesn’t need to go in until eleven o’clock or so.”

  “It’s only nine o’clock,” Tom says. “You should be back by then. If not, just call me and tell me what to do.”

  “The boys have had a busy week,” I say. “Don’t hesitate to put them in front of the television.”

  “The doctor is going to want to know why a ten-year-old was handling a scythe,” Tom says.

  “I doubt it, honey. They’re used to seeing kids who get into things they shouldn’t. But if he asks, I’ll just tell him that it’s part of the slave-labor camp we’ve got going on here.”

  “Seriously, Mare. Make sure you tell him that I didn’t let her.”

  I grab Tom’s chin and give him a kiss. Good man. Good, responsible daddy.

  “It’s okay, honey,” I say. “Everything will be back to normal in a few hours.”

  “Call me as soon as you hear anything.” He bends down and kisses Sally. “Be brave, okay?”

  “Can I bring Missy?” she asks. Missy is Sally’s American Girl doll, and though she claims to have outgrown her, she still sleeps with her every night.

  Two hours later we’ve made it through triage and we’re waiting in the lobby. The edges of Sally’s cut have dried and curled back, like they’re running away from each other. I wonder if waiting this long is going to make the stitches worse. I don’t mention this to Sally, who’s reading her myth book with her arm held out to the side. Better to let the doctor explain. When I lean near her, I see that she’s studying a picture of a Greek god—and he happens to be holding a scythe. Maybe a sickle. My heart flips. Is this where she got the idea? “Sally?”

  “It’s Kronos,” she says. “He’s the one who ate all of his children because he feared they’d overpower him. Except Zeus. Rhea kept Zeus hidden and instead gave Kronos a rock to swallow.”

  “Did he fall for it?” I ask, distracted by finding out about the repercussions for this wife pulling a fast one on her husband.

  “Yeah,” Sally says, wide-eyed. “Eventually Zeus made Kronos barf up all of his siblings and Kronos was sentenced to Tartarus for life.”

  “Tartarus?”

  “An abyss—below the underworld.”

  “And the moral of this story?”

  Sally exhales, stares at her cut as if it’s a miniature version of the chasm to which Kronos was sentenced. “The books would say that it was about power, but I think it’s more about how the gods thrashed around because they weren’t sure who they were.”

  I nod, try to swallow, and rub my daughter’s back. Her profundity has left me speechless. “And the scythe? Were you trying to be like Kronos?”

  “No!” Sally says. “I was just trying to cut the branch in half.”

  “Okay, Sal.”

  “Besides, I’d never want to be like Kronos. He hurt his father, and what could be worse than that?”

  When Sally’s eyes meet mine I shrug and shake my head, because she’s right, there could be nothing worse.

  When the nurse calls us back, Sally crawls onto the table and I settle into the chair. The nurse informs us that it’ll be a while longer. When she leaves, Sally slides down the table and onto my lap.

  “Sorry I’m ruining Thanksgiving,” she says, burrowing her head into the crook of my neck.

  “Oh, honey, you made a mistake,” I say, rubbing her back. “You love your daddy, you were trying to help him out, so I can’t really be too mad at you. Next time, just be more careful, okay?”

  With Sally in my lap I stare at the muted television bolted into the corner of the room. The news is on and a recap of the Macy’s parade is playing through: Snoopy, Garfield. The same floats every year. When the reel is over, the newscaster shuffles her papers, and then a photo of Landon is displayed in the corner. Navy suit, red tie, ice-blue eyes, square jaw. Determined. Motivated. Trust me, he seems to be saying. I can make a difference.

  I find the clicker and turn up the volume so I can just barely hear. The newscaster proceeds to give an update on the race. Landon is holding his own, and there is talk about the incumbent Republican senator retiring. This would be incredibly good news for Landon. The chance of another candidate popping up now is unlikely, the newscaster says. But if the incumbent doesn’t retire, Landon might have a real battle.

  The nurse comes back in holding a silver tray with a gloved hand. A long syringe stretches across it—the tetanus shot. Sally burrows her head into my chest while the nurse injects her. Sally yelps, then cries, then softens into my lap. I stroke her hair and whisper, “Shh, shh, it’s okay.”

  “The doctor will be right in to stitch up her hand,” she says and then leaves.

  With my free hand I call my mother, though I know cell phones are prohibited in the hospital.

  “Ma, real quick,” I say.

  “Tom’s already called,” she says. “How’s our angel?”

  “She’s doing good,” I report. “Can you call Tom and lead him through putting the turkey in the oven?”

  “Oh, honey,” she says. “We’re on our way over now. We’ll get everything ready. You just take care of that girl of ours.”

  I hang up and twist my head around to look at Sally. My heart skips when I see that her face has turned blotchy and her eyes seem buggy.

  “Baby, are you okay?”

  “Uh-huh,” she says, sitting up. And then, “My chest. It feels kind of hard to breathe.”

  I dash into the hall and call for the nurse. “Hurry! Please.”

  The nurse rushes in, snapping the earpieces of her stethoscope into place. She listens to her heart. “Allergic reaction. I’ll get the doctor.”

  Seconds later, a team of doctors pushes through the doors, a metal cart jangles in front of one of the nurses, stadium lights seem to appear overhead. I hear the rip of paper as instruments are freed from their sterile bags. I watch as a young doctor presses his stethoscope to Sally’s chest. I smell antiseptic—alcohol or iodine—and see a dozen hands working at once. A decade of ER episodes flash through my mind, how the dumb twelve-year-old doctors always screwed up the intubations, how the emergency room always seemed more like a combat zone, where every illness was life threatening and every decision was a dire, last-ditch effort.

  The doctor—Indian perhaps—speaks crisply in British English, telling her to administer a drug. The nurse fills the syringe with a clear liquid in a glass bottle, flicks the needle with her finger, and jabs it into Sally’s arm before I can even get to her side. Before I can dispense false promises that everything will be okay.

  “This is an antitoxin,” the nurse says.

  “Is anyone in your family allergic to the tetanus vaccine?” the doctor asks, though he says allergic like aller-jeck, and my dizzy head keeps repeating his word over and over.

  “No!” I say. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve never heard anything.” But then again, maybe. Maybe there’s a history that I don’t know about. I bobble the question and my answer, because I don’t have the words to make this better. The guilt claws at my neck with a thick accusation of You’ve done her wrong, and I nod my understanding because the gravity of my ignorance is life threatening. I haven’t just sent her outside to play without sunscreen, or failed to apply bug spray before camp—my not knowing could be fatal.

  “She’s responding to the antitoxin,” the doctor says. He’s listening to Sally’s chest, her hospital gown is parted, her beautiful tanned skin stretched across her precious ribs. Make her better, please. Next time I’ll know all of the answers. Next time I won’t let you give her tetanus or anything else that might hurt my baby. Next time there will be no secrets.

  An hour passes. Sally’s face is no longer blotchy. Her breathing is no longer labored. But the doctors still want to watch her.

  I step out of the room and call Tom. “Tetanus?” he says. He can’t believe she had a reaction. I can hear my mom in the background, clucking her concerns, saying that no one in our family has reacted badly to the tetanus vac
cine. Tom says he doesn’t think anyone in his family has either, but he’ll call his mom as soon as we hang up.

  “It’s over now,” I say.

  “Yeah, but we should know,” Tom says.

  “Tom,” I say, laying my hand over my chest, feeling the heavy thumps. “Tom…”

  “Are you okay?”

  “No,” I say, “I’m not. I have to tell you something.”

  I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m starting. But the ache inside me is cracking my ribs, and I no longer want to hurt. I no longer want the guilt of knowing what everyone else does not.

  “Mary?”

  “Mom?” I hear Sally call from her room.

  I blink, look in on Sally, and now I’m back and my courage is gone. “It was so scary,” I say. “That’s all. I was so scared.”

  “She’s okay,” Tom says. “Thank God.”

  I know that Tom’s crossing himself at the same time I am.

  We breathe, listening to each other as if we’re holding hands over the phone.

  “How long will you be?” Tom asks.

  “They haven’t said. I’ll ask the nurse the next time I see her. I just want to get her stitched up and home for Thanksgiving.”

  “We all do,” Tom says. “But if the doctors want to keep her to make sure she’s okay, then you’ll just have to stay. Thanksgiving will be here whenever you guys get home.” Tom’s perspective on everything is infinitely more patient, calm, and reasoned than mine. Tom’s the guy who can look at this situation and say, “Who cares? It’s just another dinner. What we really have to be thankful for is a houseful of healthy kids.”

  I know that, too, but sitting in this little room with the fluorescent lights bearing down on me like an inquisition is just too much. What other dangers are lurking around a corner for her? What if there’s something else even more reactive out there that could make her throat close like the shutter of a camera? What if it were to happen again when we didn’t have a team of doctors outside our room? What if…?

  The nurse walks by in her efficient manner, charts stacked in her arms, glasses secured on the top of her head, pen behind her ear.