The Measures Between Us (29 page)

Cynthia, too, could sense it. From an early age, when children are more intuition than anything else, she knew. The three of them would stroll down a street after a movie at night and Cynthia would gravitate toward her father as if he were a powerful magnet. Like Mary, she could appreciate how solid he was, that he would never let anyone harm her. There is something brutally seductive about that, Mary thought, something inarguable.
Others spent their whole lives searching for such security and Mary had married it, Cynthia had been born into it. In time their daughter would understand how lucky she was.

Mary didn't bother trying to keep track of the strangers she saw at St. Saviour. Sometimes she exchanged tentative smiles with them, muted greetings. But one kept showing up when she did. He would enter the church ten minutes or so after her, take a pew several rows behind her. He whispered his prayers, then headed for the altar to light a candle. He never removed his sport coat. Those first few times, Mary avoided eye contact. She watched him right up until the moment he turned around from the altar, then she stared at the floor until she heard the heavy front door open and close, signaling his exit.

The fourth or fifth time, however, she didn't look down quickly enough and their gazes met, if only for a second. He was in his mid-sixties, with neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper hair. Good posture, Mary thought, and a seriousness about him, not only because he was in a religious sanctuary.

His name was Tom Slater, and he introduced himself late one afternoon when he was smoking a cigarette in the church parking lot and Mary was walking to her car.

“I'm Mary,” she said, shaking his hand. “Mary Pareto.”

“We're on the same schedule,” he said.

“What's that?” Mary said.

Tom motioned at the church.

“Oh, right. I hadn't noticed,” Mary lied. “Do you come to Sunday Mass too?” Mary didn't think she had seen him on the weekends, but she wasn't certain.

He shook his head. “Don't like the crowds,” he said. “The receiving lines and socializing and all. It's not for me.”

“It's a nice service,” Mary said. “Father O'Leary gives a very good sermon. He explains things in a patient way.”

“I'm sure he does,” said Tom, dragging deeply on his cigarette. “He's been extremely helpful to my wife and I, so I'm not surprised.”

Mary nodded. She wasn't sure she wanted to follow where the conversation seemed to be headed, from harmless social pleasantries to somewhere more personal and private. Cynthia was already occupying so much of her head, she didn't think she had room or energy to contemplate anything or anyone new. She patted her purse and rotated her wrist to look at her watch. “I should be going,” she said.

Tom Slater dropped his cigarette to the pavement and ground it out with his wing tip. “It was nice to meet you,” he said, not even looking up.

Once they had started speaking regularly, Mary and Tom fell into an informal routine. When she was finished with her prayers she joined him in the parking lot, leaning against his car while he smoked, a habit he always apologized for. He said he picked it up again after he lost his daughter and started battling for custody of his grandson. “It helps calm me down,” he said, “and it's something to pass the time, which suddenly seems to move so slow.”

“Whatever gets you through,” Mary said, and he liked that. It made him smile. He repeated it, shyly, staring at the ground and his spent matches.

He was a manager with Massport, the agency that ran Logan Airport. They had been incredibly understanding since his daughter's death, he told Mary, granting him days off whenever
he needed them. “Some people like to be distracted with work,” he said. “Not me. I look out at those planes taking off and landing, and the control tower and the rotating radar dish, and I think, Who gives a shit. You know? Why should I care about a flight bound for Oklahoma and whether it'll be an hour late—my daughter's gone and my grandson is growing up motherless. Is a flight delay really important? Is luggage important?”

Mary liked his mixture of sensitivity and tough-guy Irish Catholic. He reminded her of boys she had grown up with in South Boston. They were quick with their threats, quick to turn to their fists, but lurking beneath their bluster and bravado was something soft, generous, even if they were hesitant to show that side of themselves. A few ended up in scrapes with the police, minor stuff mostly, but most of them settled down and got decent jobs, married their high school or college girlfriends. Became fathers, Little League coaches, worn Sears portraits hidden in their wallets. Driving through the old neighborhood, Mary could still hear the faint echoes of street hockey and football games, as if the boys' exuberance had been embedded in the asphalt, in the streetlamps and stop signs they pocked with BB guns.

Tom never asked Mary why she came to church. He let her tell him when she was ready. It was two weeks after they had first spoken, and Mary finally heard herself say the words: “My child is in the hospital.” It was the first time she could recall saying it to anyone. She had had Vincent tell their friends and family and anyone else who needed to know. And now the words sounded new, as if she was practicing a foreign language. She had thought she might trip over them, stutter and quickly give up, and she was surprised they came out so naturally.

Tom said, “It's always a child, isn't it?”

Mary nodded, tightly.

“Your husband doesn't come here with you?” Tom asked. “Does he come on Sundays?”

“Neither. I don't really push him to. I'm perfectly happy coming alone.” Mary wondered, for a moment, if that was true.

“My wife doesn't like to come either. She says church is for desperate people. I know what she means, but it makes me feel better. Something about the quiet and the faith makes me feel more hopeful.”

“Cynthia's at Rangely. Do you know what that is?” Mary asked.

Tom shook his head. He lit another Marlboro Light.

“I didn't either, before she went in. It's a psychiatric hospital,” said Mary. “It's in Belmont, up on a hill. You'd never know it was a mental facility by looking at it. They keep the grounds so beautiful, almost like a fancy country club.”

Mary had expected Tom to say, “Oh,” or make some sort of involuntary sound when she said the phrase “psychiatric hospital,” but he didn't even flinch or step back. More proof of his sensitivity, she decided.

“How's she doing?” he asked. He said it as if she had the flu, a broken leg.

Mary shrugged. “Hard to tell. My husband and I go to visit her and she seems pretty much the same as when she was living at home with us. Maybe a little quieter, though that could be medication. Or just the strangeness of it all.”

“She get counseling while she's there?”

Mary nodded. “Every day, I think. Or maybe every other day.
They explained what her days would be like when we first checked her in, but I was only half listening.”

“In one ear and out the other,” said Tom.

Mary smiled. “I was depending on my husband to absorb it all. I figured if one of us was listening to everything, that was fine. It was very hard to concentrate.”

“You should've had my wife with you. She listens so hard, sometimes she hears things people only
meant
to say.”

In the church parking lot, Tom Slater absently tapped at his hip, checking that his phone was still clipped there. From their previous conversations, Mary had learned that this gesture was a prelude to his saying good-bye, and indeed a minute later he said, “I'll see you soon,” and began walking toward his car.

“Can I ask you something?” Mary said, lobbing the question at his back.

He stopped and faced her again. “Of course.”

Mary looked away, at the traffic buzzing by, the constant stream of strangers and their errands. “I wanted to go see my daughter today and drop something off for her,” she said. An eighteen-wheeler rumbled past, and she waited for its intrusive noise to fade. “I was wondering if you wouldn't mind coming with me.”

Immediately she regretted the request, and she took a half step toward him, as if she might haul the words back in. Her legs felt shaky, her neck hot.

Yet before she had a chance to become fully embarrassed, Tom said, “Absolutely. Don't mind at all.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “It's a much easier thing to not do alone, and my husband is stuck at school with meetings today.”

“I understand,” said Tom. “It's no inconvenience at all.” He unclipped his cell phone from his belt. “Just let me make a quick call to work.”

While he was on the phone, Mary tidied the passenger seat of her car and the floor. She hid two of Vincent's empty Diet Coke cans under a newspaper in the backseat.

“All set,” Tom said, appearing at the window.

She didn't have anything to bring to Cynthia. No food, no magazines, not a favorite sweater she had forgotten to pack. Mary simply wanted to see her daughter, but that sounded too flimsy and intimate to say to Tom. And she didn't trust herself to make the drive without someone by her side, someone whose very presence would prevent her from turning toward home, marooning Cynthia for another day.

She wanted, too, for Tom to see Rangely. Though Mary was always certain to stress how pretty and well kept the hospital was, still she worried that everyone doubted her, picturing instead somewhere little more than a prison with dilapidated walls, high fences, hostile attendants, uncaring guards. She feared, constantly, that strangers and friends and family alike were judging her and Vincent for where they had placed Cynthia, as if there had been some alternative they were either too stupid or too impatient to consider.

While Mary drove, Tom stabbed at idle chatter—the weather, local politics, favorite movies and TV shows—and Mary tried to engage but her mind wandered. Stopped at a red light, she said, “I don't expect you to come in. Don't worry about that. It was more just for the company on the ride over and back.”

“Sure,” said Tom. “I'll have a smoke by the car, you take all the time you need. It would probably be odd for your daughter to meet another stranger, what with all the strangers she's dealt with lately.”

Mary hadn't considered that part of Cynthia's hospitalization. Her daughter had always been something of an introvert, preferring the company of herself or a few close friends to big groups. During meals, as a child and later as a teenager, she could be very quiet, almost steely. It was a hard thing for Mary to accept and she often wished there wasn't such a wall between them. It was as if Cynthia didn't trust her.

Tom didn't say much on the final few miles of the drive, and Mary appreciated not having to talk. She focused on the landscape: groves of trees, a sloping cemetery, a historic Friends meetinghouse. The towns around Rangely were suburban, but they hadn't been overtaken by strip malls and plasticky fast-food restaurants. They were tasteful, calm. She hadn't planned on seeing Cynthia that day—she and Vincent were supposed to go tomorrow—but the idea came to her in church, and she thought Cynthia might like the surprise.

The last thing Tom said before they arrived was, “What did you bring for your daughter?”

“Oh,” said Mary, startled at the reminder of her lie. She locked her eyes on the hospital entrance. “A book. A novel she asked for. It's in my purse.”

As she turned off the ignition in the visitors' parking lot, Mary said, “I'm still not used to it. Coming here, I mean.” She unlatched her seat belt.

Tom palmed the dashboard over the glove compartment. He
moved his head panoramically and watched a few random staff members enter and exit the main building. “You described it well,” he said. “Still, I wasn't imagining somewhere so nice.”

Mary nodded slowly. “My husband and I thought the same thing,” she said. “When we first came, we thought we'd made a wrong turn. We stayed in the car a few minutes rereading the directions, thinking maybe we should turn around and try again.”

“The patients, they're mostly behind this building?” Tom asked.

“The grounds stretch out back there,” Mary said, pointing vaguely south. “There are other buildings, too. Everything's nicely kept up like this, not just the front for the public to see.” Stealing a glance at Tom to make sure he wasn't looking at her, she shut her eyes, stifling an urge to cry. The last thing she wanted was to break down in front of a stranger, even one so caring and generous as Tom. Talk, she willed him, say something so this moment will pass. Do something I maybe don't deserve.

His cell phone rang, and before he could even grab it to check who it was, Mary said, “I don't mind if you need to take the call.”

“Thank you,” he said, staring at the screen. “It's just work, but I should answer it.”

Mary nodded. As he spoke on the phone, she reached beneath her seat for her purse. Was there even a book in there? It hardly mattered. It wasn't as if Tom would become a customs agent and demand she unpack its contents. Then she slung it over her shoulder and pointed to it, indicating she was going inside. Tom stepped out of the car at the same time she did, and for a moment she feared he would follow her inside, forgetting what she had said about staying outside. But then, with the phone cradled
between his ear and shoulder, he shook out a cigarette, lit it, and leaned against the door. He didn't want to stink up the interior with cigarette smoke, Mary realized.

She walked to the entrance and opened the heavy front door. She wondered whether Vincent would mind that she had come without him. Probably not, she thought; he would be happier that Cynthia had had a visitor on a day when she was expecting no one.

Inside the main hall, a receptionist smiled warmly. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“I'm here to see my daughter,” said Mary.