Part 17 (2/2)

Annie looked at her mother.

Rose made a little gesture with her hands. ”We can't deal with this here. It's not fair to the others. We'll talk about it at home.”

Desperately relieved, Annie left the room, carefully easing the door almost shut.

Rose and I were alone.

”Darcy, why didn't you tell me?”

I didn't have a good answer to that. I sank down on the bed. I was tired, my drink had been too strong, and my medication had worn off ages ago.

”You must know how worried we are about her, how we feel that we know nothing about what she's doing or feeling . . .”

I had been so happy a few hours earlier, so relieved to be without the burden of anger, but now it was like my mother was talking to me: Darcy, why? She would have been bewildered, disappointed, hurt. And I would not have known how to answer. I would not have been able to explain myself. As Annie had said yesterday, there was this little nugget inside you that you could never explain.

”They asked me not to tell.” That was all I could say in my defense.

”Don't you know that I would have protected you? I wouldn't have let them know you told me. I would have figured out some other way that I might have gotten the information. Why couldn't you trust me?”

”I don't know . . . but honestly, Rose, it didn't feel like a trust issue.”

”It seems like one to me.” She sat down on the other bed. ”It's bigger than just this one thing, Darcy. You don't trust anyone, do you? Not really. You never talk about yourself. You're so afraid that someone will feel sorry for you that you act like nothing ever bothers you. You're always making me read between the lines, trying to figure you out.”

”No . . . no,” I protested. I didn't want to be difficult. She had felt betrayed by so many women-her sister, Jill Allyn, all the women in her neighborhood who had stopped being her friend when she was of no use to their careers. I had wanted to be the one who made that up to her. I had wanted to be her sister, her friend.

”I give up, Darcy.” She sounded more exasperated than resigned. ”It's too hard. I know you'll change sheets, load the dishwasher, make corn-free ketchup, but ultimately I can pay people to do that. I need more than that from a friend. Managing you, reading you, antic.i.p.ating you, never having you say what you feel-I could accept that because I believed that we had the mother-to-mother thing, that we would help each other do what was right for the kids.”

There was nothing she could have said that would have hurt me more. Nothing. I loved her children, each one of them- Finney, so sweet and vulnerable; Cami, so determined to do what was right; and Annie . . . honestly, of them all, I think I loved Annie the most. She was as vulnerable as Finney. She wanted to love and be loved on a level beyond that of a cognitively disabled eight-year-old. Like Cami, she wanted to do the right thing, but Cami had tasks a person could do. Annie had set impossible tasks for herself; she wanted to save her parents.

I knew what it was like to have a perfect older sibling. I knew what it was like to feel that you didn't understand yourself, Then suddenly, without thinking, without being aware of having an impulse that I might need to control, I blurted it out. ”Rose, have you ever had Annie tested?”

”Tested? Tested for what?”

”Oh, G.o.d, no, I didn't mean that, not STDs, but for learning issues. Don't you think there's a chance that she has ADD?”

Was I saying this? Was this me talking? I hate people who make amateur diagnoses, who once they find out that someone in their family has ADD, alcoholism, codependency, anything, they start seeing it everywhere . . . and they don't shut up about it either.

”Of course,” Rose answered. Her voice was tight. ”We took her to an educational psychologist when she was in fifth grade. She underperforms, that's all. She isn't motivated.”

”But, Rose, some of the tests have changed, they've gotten better, and people are understanding girls more and more-”

”Don't you think it breaks my heart to see Annie squandering her potential when she has so much and Finney doesn't? Don't you think I've done everything I possibly could? Are you saying that I care more about this wedding than the welfare of my other child?”

I had not said one word about the wedding. I hadn't even been thinking about it. But that's what Rose had heard. She thought I was judging her for spending so much time on the wedding.

What had I done? After months and months of keeping my mouth shut, why had I opened it now?

I know that you're supposed to say that ADD or any other disability is something that you ”have,” not something that you ”are.” But right now that seemed a meaningless distinction. ADD wasn't something I had; it wasn't a new handbag. It was who I was.

I should have never spoken now. This was the first time Rose had traveled any distance without Finney. She had to be worrying about him constantly. At a time like that, she didn't want to hear about what she had failed to do for another one of her children. My timing had been terrible.

Nonetheless, I did believe that I was right: Annie should be reevaluated in light of the improved understanding of various conditions in girls.

I stood up. ”I'm sorry, Rose. I really am. I was wrong not to call you, and I certainly didn't mean to criticize the way you're raising Annie. She's a wonderful girl.”

Rose said the right thing-that she knew I meant well, etc. etc-but she wasn't looking at me. She was not accepting my apology.

S.

unday was surprisingly subdued. I wasn't the only one with regrets. The graduates themselves were quieter than they had been on Sat.u.r.day. They were starting to realize that college was over. Whether it had been grueling or joyous, nothing in their lives would ever be like it again. The immediate friends.h.i.+ps, the easy gatherings, the lively, unenc.u.mbered fun were over. Some of the graduates were facing the long grind of professional schools, the soul-draining memory work of the first year of law school or medical school. Others were going back home with no greater prospects than the lifeguard jobs they had held every summer since age sixteen. And the debts. No one was joking about the debts today.

Rose was leaving as soon as the ceremony was over, not even trying to find Cami and Jeremy in the crowd. She needed to get home for Finney. The rest of us were on red-eye flights.

I felt guilty as I nestled into my s.p.a.cious first-cla.s.s seat. Guilty and sad.

All year long Rose had been reaching out to me, trying to have a real relations.h.i.+p, and I had never responded. ”Keep your mouth shut” had been terrible advice. Why had I ever listened to it? Why had I had so little faith in myself?

Eleven.

T.

he week before Zack's high-school graduation was full of parties, a.s.semblies, and recitals. Claudia came to several of the events, but I couldn't blame her for how strange and disconnected I felt. The festivities had been taken over by the ”lifers,” the families whose children had come to Alden as four-year-old prekindergarteners. Zack was, in fact, the newest member of his cla.s.s, the only student to have been admitted after freshman year.

I went to all the parties, all the banquets. I sat through the performances, watched the slide shows, listened to the speeches, and felt less a part of this school community than I ever had, less connected to the other mothers.

Give me another chance . . . I wanted to beg them. I could be your friend. I could stand around and talk in the parking lot. I would learn to trust you; you would learn to trust me.

But this was the last week of Zack's senior year. There were no more chances. I had failed.

The kids had come to graduation with their cars crammed full of beach chairs and portable beer-pong tables. They grabbed a piece of cake at the reception, handed their diplomas to their parents, and departed for Beach Week.

Mike found me at the reception and invited me to go out to dinner with Claudia and him. I should have gone-that would have been the right thing to do-but I couldn't face how awkward and stilted the evening would have been. It seemed easier to go home alone.

I was surprised at how long the week felt without Zack at home. When people had asked me about being an empty nester, I'd laughed. ”I never see him anyway. What difference will it make?”

But it did make a difference. A big one.

My s.h.i.+fts started on Wednesday of that week. One of my patients was a man, a husband, a dad, a failed suicide. He'd lost his job and then made some wild investments, leaving his family in terrible financial trouble. He couldn't face the consequences of what he had done. His suicide attempt had made an even bigger mess because now he was in an ICU bed that cost about a million dollars a minute, and he had stopped paying his health insurance, something his wife had first learned in the emergency room.

Usually I ignore anything I disapprove of in a patient's life . . . if I even know about it in the first place. As unfeeling as this might sound, I can even ignore the fact that he or she is a human being. When someone's heart stops, I don't think of him as a person, a person who is loved and treasured, whose death will devastate his family. I don't even think of his heart. I focus on the monitors. I'm not trying to make this person live so that he can go home to the people who love him. I'm working with everyone else in the room to get that monitor started. It's us and the machine. It wants to stop, and we want it to start. I fight this battle as fiercely as I would if it were Jeremy or Zack in the bed. I have to think of the machine and only the machine because sometimes the machine wins and we lose. Someone's Jeremy or Zack dies, and I can't bear to think about that.

But this man, this suicide, this coward . . . I was angry with him. That was wrong; it could have compromised the care I provided. I had to ask another nurse to change patients with me. I'd never done anything like that before.

The Director of Nursing called me in, asking me if I was all right. ”I don't know,” I said honestly.

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