“There’s blood on your shirt,” Eve says, trying to lift my head with her other hand. I stay furrowed, my forehead pressed into her arm. I picture her veins beneath me. Working. Pumping life through her.
I play through our history. Eve and I have memories without Maddy. They pop to mind as if someone’s spoon-feeding them to my brain. Tennis. We played together. When Eve was younger, I let her win, but at some point her lessons paid off and we routinely and legitimately split the victories. I’m stronger, but she’s more strategic, and a trash-talker like her mother. “You’re getting too old for this,” she jabbed on our last trip to Florida. “Maybe we should play bingo instead.”
I go back further. Bean. When she was an infant, skinny and long, I was the only one who could calm her down from a fit. The trick was to hop from foot to foot at an even pace. The faster I jumped, the more she relaxed in my arms. I’d press the right side of her face against my heart to keep her head steady and whisper, “It’s okay, my little jumping bean.” That’s where the nickname came from. We had a connection, she and I. Maddy actually called me home from work one day when Eve wouldn’t let up. I think she was only four or five months at the time. “If Daddy’s little girl doesn’t stop crying Mommy is going to have a nervous breakdown,” Maddy said. I knew she was serious from her use of the third person. Maddy wasn’t one to disassociate from her thoughts.
There’s more. When we were en route to her first day of kindergarten, Eve announced that she and I were getting married. Maddy laughed and asked what she’d do without us, alerting me this was not cause for alarm. “Don’t worry, Mommy,” Eve said, “you can live in the guest room.”
Yes, there was a time when Eve preferred me. I know I’m now forever relegated to a pinch hitter, but I have to step up. I am all our child has left. And it suddenly seems so obvious, this detail I’ve been overlooking: she’s all I have too.
Eve gives up competing with my internal trip down memory lane and instead gently rests her hand on my head. It’s soothing. I wonder how Eve thought to do it. How do women just know?
The doctor appears, forcing me to stand. He looks a little put out by my lack of composure, but then softens in a way that suggests he knows about Maddy. It’s a small town. Our neighbor is the chief of surgery here. With a series of nods he directs me to a little room off the registration area. I’m confused why our discussion requires such privacy until he speaks.
“She’s a tough young lady. No one else got hurt, but there was heavy drinking involved. The boy who was driving—Jim? John?—will definitely be charged. Your daughter might too, for underage consumption, although with your family’s recent struggles, I wouldn’t be surprised if they let it go. That’s what I intend to recommend.”
If he expects a thoughtful response, mine will come up short. “Okay. Can we go?”
He seems ready to repeat his speech, assuming a miscommunication of some sort, but instead yawns. “I’ll send a nurse to give care instructions. The staples in her head are going to hurt once all the medicine and booze wears off.”
I linger in the room. I haven’t prayed in years. As a kid my knees were permanently scuffed from all the kneeling we did as a family, but Maddy and Eve weren’t into it, and my hectic schedule left me content to drop the extra obligation. I have no right to ask for anything, but I make a pledge. I intertwine my hands, still standing, and say, “Thank you, God, for keeping my baby girl alive. I’ll do better.”
When I return to Eve, she’s asking the nurse about John. “He’ll be fine,” she assures. Eve asks if she can see him, but the nurse says, “I’m sorry. I really am. He asked the same thing and his parents forbid it.”
Eve’s expression is unmistakably grateful. We’ve become loners. Maddy was our spark. When we get in the car our words are short and to the point.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Me too, Eve.”
Sorry for her. Sorry for me. Sorry for Maddy.
CHAPTER FOUR
Madeline
The worst part of watching the cars collide was Eve’s eerie calm. Her eyes were wide, not with panic, but acceptance. She’s become comfortable with tragedy having a seat at her table. The lesson she’s pulling from all this is that misfortune is commonplace; chaos lurks everywhere; no one can be trusted. It pains me—those were the realities of my childhood. I worked tirelessly to give Eve a different start, and yet here she is, arriving at the same conclusions.
I was helpless in that moment, desperate to transcend the invisible boundary that separates us. Eve isn’t done yet. She still needs to find her true voice and chase down a passion and get married and have children who will no doubt expand her perspective like she did mine. She needs time. Decades more time. As metal crunched into what sounded like a cacophony of death, I pleaded, Oh God, please, please, no, please don’t take her. An unexpected calm warmed me like a slow-burning fire that carried with it the knowledge Eve would live. More than live. Eve would prosper. And then a peculiar thing happened: my position in the universe, which hadn’t budged since death, shifted higher. A slight but discernable rise. After the noise ended and Eve was still in one piece, I questioned what transpired. My plea was more a wish than a prayer—I didn’t realize I had an audience—but the response was authentic, spiritual. Thank you, I said. Thank you, God. My gratitude pushed me up higher still, and Eve’s promising future stayed rooted as a fact in my soul, not something crafted for comfort, but the truth, offered as a gift.
So maybe I haven’t been abandoned after all. I didn’t acknowledge my unease until hope presented itself, but I’ve had a nagging fear about what will become of my spirit after Eve is grown and Brady remarries. Today I’m a ghost with a purpose, but if I’m successful, at some point I’ll be reduced to a plain old ghost. Bored and frightening. The possibility that I’m still on some cosmic radar is a tremendous relief.