I think your phone’s off, by the way, because it’s just going to voice mail. But seriously, I’d love to come over and talk about this.
Well, I just spent the whole night researching Niemann-Pick. This is so wild, and I can’t imagine you going through this alone. I would like to help you in any way I can. Obviously, yes, my life is up in the air right now, but I can’t think of just letting you go. Call me when you’re ready.
So on one hand I’m dancing around my room in my underwear screaming HALLELUJAH at the top of my lungs. I just want to fucking ENJOY this because not everything has to make sense. On the other hand, Stuart has known me for two months and is pledging himself to me when he could be enjoying his summer diseased-girlfriend-free, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Either way, he is coming over.
GRATITUDE
A couple of hours later, I slid open the door and Stuart wrapped his arms around me, clutching my back as if I would float away.
“Hi,” he said into my hair.
“Hi,” I repeated, and when we let go, I took in his wet eyes, still with traces of sleep in them. It looked like he didn’t get a lot of it. “Thank you for being so wonderful,” I told him, and as I said it, a bang sounded from down the hall. My family was stirring.
With Stuart and my parents in the same room—a room, mind you, covered in peanut butter–crusted plates and pillows from everyone’s various beds and crumb-filled blankets—I felt like a little girl again, looking back and forth from one person to the other, trying to follow a conversation that I didn’t quite understand.
Stuart looked around at our wide, low-ceilinged room, the McDonald’s colors in the kitchen, the chrome table, the bookshelf in front of him lined with garbage magazines and kids’ books. I wondered exactly what Coop wondered the other day: if Stuart knew what he was in for.
“So how long have you and Sammie known each other?” Mom asked after she had settled on the couch in her scrubs, next to my dad. Harrison had stayed in his room, and Dad sent Bette and Davy outside to play with Puppy. All of us held cups of green tea.
“A few years, kind of,” Stuart said, looking at me. “But we’ve been seeing each other for just a few months.”
“You understand that Sammie is in a compromised position, healthwise,” Dad said, giving Stuart an unblinking stare.
Stuart nodded.
My chest was tight. I pressed my hands into my cup, and took a scalding sip.
Stuart hadn’t wanted to sneak out and talk, like I had wanted to. He was the one who wanted to speak to my parents. There was a little part of me wondering, why couldn’t he just talk to me? Like, why do we have to bring the adults into this right away? As usual, the McCoys always have to make things so intense. I tried to give Stuart an out.
“Well,” I said. “Now that we’ve all made each other’s acquaintance, Mom, Dad, I know you have to get going to work.”
I looked at Stuart, searching his face for signs of panic. But his hands were still calm, clasped lightly around his cup, and his gaze still steady. It appeared I was panicking for both of us.
“Before you go, Mr. and Mrs. McCoy, I can’t imagine what you’re all going through,” Stuart said, setting his cup on the carpet so he could put his hand on my back. “When Sammie told me, I…” He took a deep breath, thinking, breaking his exterior a bit.
Mom smiled encouragingly. He really did care. I couldn’t help but melt a little, too.
“I researched what’s at stake, and I don’t want her…” Then he turned to me, probably aware of the way I tensed under his hand, that he was talking about me as if I wasn’t in the room. “Like I told you, I don’t want you to have to go through all this alone.”
“We don’t, either,” Mom said, her voice catching in her throat. “And we plan on taking off more work if things get worse, as Sammie knows.”
“But for now, it’s tough,” my dad muttered. “With the other kids and all that.”
I sat as frozen as I felt. I was very confused, but I wasn’t sure why.
Stuart was saying, “I may have to go back to New York at some point, but I’ll stay for as long as I can, and help out with the little kids while your parents are at work.”
“No, no need to go that far,” I said, but my parents’ sigh of relief was audible.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t know all this already, but I felt I was being discussed as a concept, rather than as a person. A concept everyone in this room deeply cared about, but a nonperson all the same. A generator of consequences.
By the end of the conversation, Dad was taking Stuart outside, hand on his back, so he could show him where we kept the chicken feed. They emerged from the shed, my dad holding a brand-new fifty-pound bag hoisted over his shoulder, pointing with his other hand at the chicken coop.