Lift - Kelly Corrigan [12]
Kathy washed some dishes, changed into pajamas, met Tony and the girls downstairs for a movie, and went to bed.
It was hard to sleep—teenagers. But you can’t expect them to play Scrabble every Friday and Saturday night.
Around 3 a.m., the phone rang. It was a friend of Aaron’s. A car, a convertible, had flipped.
In the pictures in the newspaper the next day, huge white sheets were draped over the car doors, to hide the ruin, but on the passenger side, I swear you could see a hand, in a loose fist, knuckles on the pavement. The police estimated the vehicle skidded sixty feet before it stopped. EMTs inflated an industrial balloon to raise the car and free the boys’ bodies.
The officers stood on Kathy’s stoop. She doesn’t remember how the conversation went but the words were said—the combination of your child and I’m sorry and nothing we can do and then someone said dead just to make sure there was no room for misunderstanding or denial or resistance, which could easily happen because next they explained that they were taking her boy to the hospital, a place of healing.
She wanted to go with them. The officer kept telling her it wasn’t necessary. Of course it was. Mothers go to the hospital with their children. We hold their hands and look at them with our most reassuring expressions and whisper encouraging things like The medicine will help you sleep. We slip into the hall for a minute to talk openly with doctors. We make decisions and sign forms and go back into the room wearing that same put-on look of composure. We check for signs of pain, we reposition pillows and lower the bed and curse the paper-thin shades as we darken the room the best we can. We sit, we stand, we stare and stretch, we shudder and sit back down and hold our heads and decide it’s better standing. We lean over the bedside and run the backs of our fingers across our child’s cheek and close our eyes in a moment of passion and physical memory of every other time we’ve touched that cheek, that singular orchid of a face.
The next night, Kathy took a shower, put on some Carmex, a long-sleeved T-shirt, a pair of nondescript black pants, and her most supportive shoes. Aaron’s body had been released from the hospital. He was laid out at the funeral home and visitors were welcome starting at 8 p.m. Kathy said they all went—Tony, the girls, grandparents, even a few friends.
The mortician had tucked a large white blanket around Aaron, like you would a baby, so all that showed was his face, no makeup and somehow no scratches. Around Aaron’s neck was a tiny cross that had once belonged to Kathy’s Italian grandfather. It was thick and old-fashioned and Aaron loved it. Around his head was a wrap to cover the skull damage, almost like a white bandana. Everyone told Aaron Stories, and one by one, everyone touched him. Even Kathy. Did she want to wake him, to beg him to open his eyes and sit up and come home? Did she want to yell at him, Be careful! The roads are slick! Drive slowly around that bend! No, she told me later, she wanted to memorize him. They only left because a staff person came in to say that the family of the other boy—Aaron’s friend Ross, who was also laid out there—were on their way over.
I tell you about Aaron because he died when you were both in diapers and his death has changed every day of our life together. I tell you about Aaron because I want you to live longer than he did. Even though I hope you have Aaron’s general trust in people and his belief that things usually work out, even though I want you to love people as easily and overtly as he did, I want you to be more cautious and less optimistic. I want to keep you in the world where I can find you.
I hurt you once, Georgia. When you were three. I’d taken you to the Lawrence Hall of Science to look at displays about gravity and Saturn’s rings and the crust