Blue Stars (46 page)

Ellen and Michael were only a few rows back from the recipient on their side. Ellen leaned to watch as the jumper removed his goggles and carefully took out a folded flag from a side pocket. This he handed gently to an Asian woman in her late seventies, who was flanked by relatives including what must be her grandson, an army soldier on crutches, one pant leg pinned up. Michael’s attention had already moved on, but Ellen surprised herself by tearing up at the parachutist’s swift salute, his tender smile, and the family’s stunned reaction. Only the older woman herself seemed unperturbed, her face round and solemn, as if she thought it were perfectly natural for a goggled man to parachute down from a plane in order to hand her this flag personally. Her grandson’s leg was gone in their war. Why shouldn’t this be done for her? Among all other things.

To divert all the sudden emotion she felt Ellen pretended she had to look for something in her purse. She checked her phone—nothing. “She hasn’t called you?” she said to Michael, dialing Lacey again. Why did it go directly to voice mail? Michael was busy on his own phone, texting Jane, sending her photos of the jumpers. Whatever was between them, they weren’t sharing it with Ellen.

Except—

“Mom,” Jane had said, tentative and sad. They were getting ready for bed in the Mologne room, a day after Mike had been moved back to Ward 57 from SICU, still shaky from how close he’d come. “He thinks I should give it up. For adoption.” Ellen came slowly out of the bathroom, toothbrush in hand. Jane was cross-legged in the middle of the bed, her big belly nestled in her lap.

“What do you think?” she asked quietly. “Is that what you want?” And then she had to hold still, hold back, while her daughter’s eyes filled with sorrow and relief. When she nodded, tears spilled down and Ellen climbed over to hold her.

“But it’s going to be so sad,” Jane gasped. Ellen was wild with agony, to say whatever could take this pain away from her girl:
Yes, but I’ll be there. You’re doing the right thing. I will help you in every way I can.
But she spoke no words, only rocked Jane and let her cry as long as she would.

Now, as the parachutes were gathered and the jumpers left the grass for the announcer’s dais, Ellen thought about Jane at home, driving herself to meetings at the adoption agency, beginning the process. Ellen had reservations to go back home next week; the doctor had said the baby was head down and all seemed to point to an accurate due date … but she and Jane had decided that Ellen would get there at least ten days before, just in case.

“She says hi,” Mike said, squinting up at Ellen.

“Hi back. Are you ready to go in?” Long stints in the chair made his back hurt, she knew, and he looked pale.

For a long moment he didn’t speak. Then, all in a rush: “It’s fine about my leg. About the amputation. I would’ve said yes, I would’ve signed off on it or whatever…”

Ellen trembled, in the sun. “It didn’t seem like there was any choice.”

“’Cause there wasn’t. No choice about any of this.” Mike screwed up his face in a smile. “But it’s fine.”

“Thank you,” she said, with difficulty. A moment later: “It’s not fine.”

“No,” Mike agreed. They looked out over the dissipating crowd. Where was Lacey?

Waiting for these shuffling ding-dongs to get out of the way so Eddie didn’t trip over their slow asses. Thinking about Jim. He knew nothing about what Lolo had said to Lacey about Ed coming back to live with her, or the fact that Lacey had turned those words over in her mind a thousand times, weighing the possibility of actually allowing it to happen, and what that might mean for the shape of her life. Try as she might, she couldn’t picture it. All she could see for the future was her and Otis.

“Mom, you know that guy Jim?” The sound of his name last night, through the banged-up receiver of Building 18’s common-room phone, had lit her up.

“Mr. Leahy,” she corrected.

“Whatever. Well, he—”

“Excuse me. Not ‘whatever.’ Not to your mom. You hear me?” Aggrieved silence on the other end. “Look, when we get back there is gonna be some work done in the manners department. Just because you got a pass on a lot of sh … stuff while you been at Lolo’s doesn’t mean—”

“Okay, okay! Do you want to hear or what?”

Yes, she did want to hear, about Jim, with pretty much every fiber of her being. So Lacey leaned her head on her hand and traced patterns on her jean leg with the corner of her calling card. She listened to Otis and ignored the other residents who came in looking for phone time and stood around obnoxiously making their presence known. Jim had stopped by Lolo’s, O said, and brought three bleachers tickets for the Mariners game at Yankee Stadium next week. Said he wasn’t sure if Otis’s grandma liked baseball, but that Otis could have a good time there with one of his friends and the friend’s dad. Or whoever.

“So I was thinking
we
could go, Mom. ’Cause you’ll be home!”

“You serious?” Oh she loved this boy. “I’d love to. But is that a school night?”

Otis ignored this, but his voice dropped in worry. “But, like … would Eddie want to come? I mean, even if he can see out of one eye, he might not … get it. Anymore. Right?”

Lacey closed her eyes. How should she answer? What Otis was asking could be a dozen different things. And how could she reassure him if she didn’t know herself what was going to happen—with them, with Eddie?

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “If he’d want to come. But how about this. You and I have a date for sure, and then we’ll see about the other ticket later. Is it gonna be a good game? Who do we have pitching? How’s my boy Mo doing?” That got Otis to go off on how lame she was, how clueless, how could she not know about Mariano Rivera’s
three saves this month already, Mom, what, do they not have the Internet in Washington, D.C.??

Now, straining to catch sight of Ellen in the flow of passersby, one hand on Ed so he wouldn’t get knocked over, Lacey realized she hadn’t asked Otis if he’d said anything to Jim about when she’d be home. Tomorrow.

The ring-shaped crowd began to dissolve. Low-angled sunlight slid through treetops and made rainbows on the pavement, bouncing off the light poles’ dusky globes. Women tugged on cardigans and hoodies, snapped at children who were fussing. They sighed and hugged one another good-bye, and promised to get together soon. Because they hadn’t even scratched the surface today, no way. About the caseworker who forgot her son’s first name and then excused herself by saying she had forty files to manage so how was she supposed to keep the details straight; about the dead mouse under the sink still there two days after she made the first call. Her boyfriend who had four sessions of electrotherapy on his wrist before they figured out that was a mistake. Should have been his ankle. The broken dryers, the broken elevator, the loneliness. That bitch in accounting, that bitch in processing, that bitch who gave her kid a D in social science. Did she hear about the suicide in Fisher House? It wasn’t suicide—OD. Same difference! How to keep an attitude of gratitude, how to make it to chapel and back before rounds, how to not cry when he does. Do you have Wi-Fi, who’s got Wi-Fi, I hear you can get it in Mologne’s bar. Oh, you can get a lot in Mologne’s bar. Like a dose of the clap. All right, girl, you hang in there. Love you. I’m praying for him. Text me when you find out. Get some sleep. You too. You too.

Just then one woman spied another across the green circle. Her frantic motions caught her friend’s eye and they faced each other opposite the wide lawn, and kept waving, in surprise and delight.
I’m here, I’m here! I see you! There you are.
One held up her phone, the other shrugged, palms up, and shook her head. The exiting crowd flowed around them but the two women stood still, smiling, each with a protective hand on her soldier. One pointed to the midpoint on the paved path—
meet there?
—but they saw it was impossible, blocked, the crowd directed another way.
Meet in the middle?
one gestured,
Can we?
and they considered the circle of grass, where the jumpers’ crew was cleaning up and breaking down. No. They cupped their hands over their mouths and tried to call to each other, but words were taken away by the wind. They laughed at themselves, and then fell silent. Time to go. And so they said good-bye in the only way they could, with more waving and a blown kiss. Then the women turned away and edged into the long snaking lines of people filing out from Heaton’s plaza. They joined the others, and disappeared.

EPILOGUE

MADISON, WISCONSIN
MARCH 2007

Each of them still missed Maisie. At dinner, they felt around under the table for her soft ears, or listened for her paw-clicks trotting downstairs while the coffee machine began to bubble. Ellen had collected her bed, food dishes, and favorite chewy toys and stowed them in a cardboard box in the garage; no one could bear to give or throw these things away. And on this evening occasionally one of them could be found by a window, looking out over the latest crust of snow in the yard, smooth and unbroken by prints, under the yellow porch light.

Her decline had been mercifully fast, too fast for any possibility of Ellen to make arrangements to come back from Walter Reed in time. She had just returned to D.C. after three weeks home with Jane, for the birth of her daughter, and the adoption, and helping her through those hard days afterward. Jane had taken Maisie in to the vet, worried about how she kept falling, and had the tests done, and heard the results. But she couldn’t bear to be the one, so it was Wesley who came home from Chicago to do what was needed. He was with Maisie at the end, stroking her head as the injections were administered, driving back to the house alone. That night he and Jane finished a bottle of Macallan someone had given to Ellen years ago, and they called Ellen and Mike in Mologne—Mike having moved there too, rooming with another amputee from 57—and all four of them cried on speakerphone as they remembered and toasted their good dog’s good life.

Now, as Ellen loaded the dishwasher, she wished Wes was here. Originally he’d had plans to come home for the weekend but canceled when the opportunity came up to go skiing with his girlfriend at Steamboat, where her parents kept a condo. She was rather proud of how nonchalantly she’d rolled with the news, on the phone with Wes, but admitted to herself now that she felt disappointed.

“They’re not, like, getting
engaged
this weekend.” Jane had wandered into the kitchen and hopped up to sit on the island counter. “Are they?”

“What?” She was startled, by both the possibility and Jane’s ability to read her mind. “I haven’t heard anything. Why, did he say something to you?”

“Would you give him your ring to use, if he did? The one from Dad?”

“That one goes to you, actually.” It was in a faded velvet box on her dresser, with her wedding band: a single diamond in a gold setting. “If you want it.”

“Really?” There was so much pleased surprise in Jane’s voice that Ellen glanced at her over her shoulder, both hands still in soapy water. Her daughter had a sunburned nose and cheeks from a snowshoe hike she’d gone on with friends yesterday in the woods near Eagle Heights. Her hair was wound into two coils on top of her head, like emergent horns. With her tangled necklaces, made of string and silver, and the glinting delicate blue stone in her nose, she looked like a mystical woodland faery alighted on Ellen’s kitchen counter. Possessor of great powers for mischief and joy.

“I have an older family ring I had meant to give to Wes, when the time comes. But yes, the diamond one is for you. Would you like to maybe … I think I’d like to give it to you now.”

“Now, like—tonight?”

“Why not?” Ellen blinked at the pot she was scrubbing. “Or tomorrow. If it doesn’t fit, we’ll go downtown and find a place to have it resized.” They were so careful with each other now, after the birth, with Jane still living at home—working a few days at the vet. No mention was made of when she would move out, or how or where or what next, but that was all right. It wasn’t time yet; they were still held in the space of having survived giving that baby away. They had gone through it together, although of course the main burden was Jane’s. But it had drawn them close, in a new way. They were still blindly touching the soft walls of this cocoon, trying to determine what it meant and when the pain would soften too.

The obstetrician had gently asked if Jane would like to give her daughter a name, at least for now. Before she went to her real parents, waiting in a separate area in the hospital. Ellen would never forget Jane’s response, the way she held her newborn for those few moments, the expression on her face as she bent close to her.
No,
Jane whispered. Her eyes stayed only on the baby.
No, that’s all right.

“If you want,” Ellen said now, to the pot covered in dish soap. So careful.

“Okay, sure.”

Then at the same time she began to ask “Is the table cleared?” Jane said “Thanks, Mom.” Ellen smiled to herself.

“Could you two bring in anything else that’s out there?”

“Mike!” Jane shouted, not moving from the counter. Ellen sighed. “She wants you to clear the table!”

“I can’t,” they heard him call from the living room, where the TV had been moved from the basement. “No leg, no chores.”

“Nice try, stumpy.” Jane swung off the counter, her face suddenly alive. “Get off your butt and come help me.” Ellen listened to their affection and bickering, the clattering of plates and their coded insults. The things she knew about them and the hints of what she didn’t.

*   *   *

After Walter Reed Mike had moved into an assisted living apartment run by the Madison VA. But almost from the start he chafed at the rules and regulations there, and so was now making plans to find a place with a guy he’d met there, a National Reserve BK amputee originally from Indianapolis. In the fog of leaving Walter Reed after most of a year there, Ellen realized she had always assumed Mike would move in with them, at least for some time—she’d never really thought about it. And all the paperwork, all the bureaucracy, involved in detaching them both from Walter Reed had consumed her every free moment for weeks. So she was caught out, embarrassed by her feelings of rejection, when he told her about all the plans he’d made. This was on their first day back, in mid-September. Wes had picked them up from the airport and soon the four of them were on the back patio eating grilled tofu dogs and potato salad.