Chapter Seventeen
Vienna

She begs me to go out with her. She’s minimally drunk, maybe just tipsy because she’s managed to do her makeup, and she looks nice in her jeans, her mauve colored blouse. She looks pretty. Normal.

“I don’t want to go, but if I don’t...” I’m at Troy’s bedroom door. He’s sick with the flu, and my mother is too lucid for us to call Gram. She’s in “mom mode” and thinks she can handle a sick kid and take a healthy one out to pick up groceries. It’s a school day, and our second-grade class is taking a field trip to the children’s museum, but Mom waits until our father has left for work and calls the school to take both Troy and me out of class. She says there’s nothing I can learn from a museum that I can’t learn from her.

“She came in. Looks okay. Just don’t drive anywhere.” My brother is shirtless in bed, and the sheets stick to his perspiration. He takes a half-hearted spoonful of the cold soup Mom dumped into a bowl and canvased with crushed Ritz crackers.

“You’ll be okay?”

“Just peachy,” he says and rests his head against his wall. I nod at him and reluctantly shut his door. She’s downstairs waiting for me. I walk the stairs, a gangplank beneath my feet. Mom hands me my coat, even though we’re minutes away from summer. I ask her where we’re going, and I’m relieved when she says “The Green Grocer” because we can walk there, but the feeling is held hostage by my fear that somebody will see my mother walking in daylight.

“I can’t believe you’re in the third grade already,” she says when the sun meets our stride. I don’t tell her I’m in the second because we’re on the sidewalk. I watch her feet to make sure she doesn’t trip off the curb.

“Beautiful day.” She shields her eyes as we walk, and I nod my head, even though I’m sweltering beneath my jacket. It’s one she found in the coat closet, and it’s too tight. My arms jut out at soft angles at my sides, and she mistakes this for me holding my hand out to her. She grabs it.

It feels like an “I love you,” or being trapped in a hole, or losing where you end and the universe begins. She smiles at me, but I don’t think she sees me because the sun is still in her eyes. I look away at my feet. I’m wearing my jelly shoes, purple and clear so I can see the shape of my toes. They don’t feel like they belong to me even when I try and wiggle them. 

We walk and nobody seems to be staring at us, but I don’t venture to check much. Mr. Markie greets us with his broomed hands at The Green Grocer, and he tries to hide his surprise at seeing my mother, but he’s rotten at it.

“Louise,” he says, and she smiles as if the last time she saw him was just last week, not months ago when she stockpiled a cart full of vodka and claimed she was throwing a “soiree.”

“Graham,” she nods. She grabs a basket, and we walk to the soup aisle, and she fills it until it goes heavy in her hands. She has me fetch another, and as I walk to the front near the double doors, a woman walks in the color of Tang. She’s wearing a long orange dress that swishes at her feet. It’s covered in hair, from a cat maybe. I look up at her, and she crouches down a little. 

“Hi, there,” she says.

“Hi.”

“I’m Loretta.” She extends her hand but not in a patronizing way. She smiles, and it seems to make sense, so I grab her fingers and watch her shake my hand up and down. “And you are?”

“Vienna,” I say. She nods, and my answer seems to agree with her. She releases my hand and grabs a cart. “See you around, Vienna,” and she smiles again. This time, I smile back.

For a moment, I can’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing, but I see an empty basket and carry it over to my mother. She’s in the place I knew she’d be, and she’s running her teeth over her lip as if she’s really trying to decide if vodka is a necessity this trip.

“Oh, just a few won’t hurt,” she says. She grabs a handful of the smaller bottles and places them in my basket. She adds a few things to cover them up, a bag of chips, a pair of sunglasses, a magazine with a woman whose smile looks a lot like Loretta’s. I see her again as we move up to the register. A young woman with short black hair and a gnarled hand checks us out. The process is slow, so I watch Loretta walk around, moving her cart in her dress. I like how it sleepily dips and curves around her ankles. 

I don’t want to stop watching her.

“All set,” my mother says, and she gives me one of the bags, the one without the bottles in it.

We walk, and on the way back we go another way, so we stop by Miller Park. 

“Let’s have a picnic,” my mother says. I think about Troy. He’d probably be fine without Mom bothering him with cold soup. So, I follow her. 

“Okay.”

We sit on the top of a picnic table, and it feels like we’re breaking a rule. Mom kicks off her shoes and sits Indian style. She fishes out a tiny bottle from the bag she’s holding and swigs it with her thirsty lips. I think about that Loretta lady. How her idea of a picnic probably doesn’t involve vodka.

“This has been a fun day? A good day, right?” my mother says.

“Yes,” is how I answer her because this is the best day I’ve had in a while.

#

MY DREAM DISSIPATES, and I wake with a pillow under my head, a darkened window in my view. I notice the pain in my abdomen and the absence that is lulling all parts of me to sleep again. But I keep my eyes open because I hear shuffling behind me. I know it’s my father.

“Vienna? Heather just got here. Rosa says you asked for her.” Dad stops moving. I can feel the exact place he’s standing in the curve of my spine. “Didn’t know you two were such good friends.” He doesn’t leave to retrieve Heather like I hope. He sits down in the visitor’s chair on the other side of the bed. In my mind, I can see his ankle propped up on his knee. “I’m not sure if now is the time to talk.”

“Probably not.” I lose the words. Too late to grapple for them.

“I know. But you can’t struggle like this,” he grunts, like gears changing. “Not alone.”

“That’s the only way I know how to do anything.” The word “alone” floats through my mind as a tear breaks free and snakes my face. There are covers, a hospital gown, but I feel naked. A baby in a bath. A baby.

“Oh, Vienna.” His breathing whirs around. It says more than he probably wishes it does.

“Can I ask you something?” I say. He doesn’t answer, so I ask it anyway. “Why did Mom have us?” 

“What do you—”

“Why did she give birth to us?” I wait for the typical “because she wanted you, she loved you, she wanted to bring some good into this world,” but that’s not what I’m given.

“She thought it would fix things,” he says through his nose, and it innocently whistles around us. There is so much sense to it, and I’ve always figured that was the case, but I shut my eyes tighter because I’m burning on the inside, and I hate how much I suddenly miss her.

“My turn,” Dad says, shifting against his seat. I watch him in the reflection of the window and try to place the last feeling I have of him, the one where he was holding me in his arms. “Who?”

I want to lie, but lying is a futile thing I’m tired of piling in my heart. “Wyland.” No response, just quiet. “Him.” I can’t think of anything else to say, and there is a delicious freedom in that. 

“He’s married to Heather.”

“Yes.” He doesn’t say anything. What’s there to say? He has to realize somewhere in that indifferent soul of his that his daughter has turned out as reckless as his wife. “Well, I’m sorry. For you, for the Turnbulls. For...the baby.” He waits. “And...” Dad trails off, getting up and heading to the door.

“And?” I ask, watching my father’s reflection crack open a door lost in another world.

“I love you.” He closes it behind him, and I squeeze my eyes closed to the heat, and wet, and the raw-throated effort of having to believe him.

Moments later I hear the door give in, and I feel defenseless. Heather’s belly glimmers in the window. So do the flowers in her hand.

She sits in Dad’s chair and succeeds at an ungraceful plop. She sighs, and I try to find my words.

“I don’t care,” Heather says, and I keep the “How dare you?” silent. “Oh no, not about...” Her hand goes to her lips, and I watch her shear it bare of its skin. “I mean I don’t care about the past. I care very much about this, about you being in the hospital.” Heather sighs again, and in the window she’s scratching hard at her head with the hand holding the flowers. It looks like a wilting garden is springing through her hair.

“About my miscarriage,” I say for the first time. It sounds like “mistake,” or “misstep,” an accident that can be repaired with very little effort. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. I nod, but I don’t know if she can tell. I think about what I’ll say next, and I quietly apologize to the woman in the window and her sad host of flowers.

“I slept with your husband.” It’s not powerful. It leaks from my mouth and wets the bed.

“I know,” she says.

“I know you know. But I had to tell you.” I twist to my other side so I can face her. The dull pain follows me, something I’m sure will never let up, but it refuses to match the pain in Heather’s eyes.

“What was he like in high school?” she asks. Her ankles are crossed, the paint on her toenails are starting to chip. I take too long to remember my friend, but something comes to me and snatches the wind in my lungs

“Honest.” I choke it out. I remember one particular bruise on his stomach when we were young and lifting our shirts had no shame in it. When I touched it, he winced, and when he cried, I cried. Then we both laughed and stuffed our bellies with Hawaiian Punch until we forgot why none of it was funny in the first place. 

“Oh.” She studies the skin she’s snagged between her fingers. “He was my first.” Mine, too, I think but don’t say. There’s no need to bring up how Wyland was my first in high school—my only since then—and I’m not sure if I keep quiet to spare Heather’s feelings or my own. 

“What do you think happened?” She is solitary when she asks it, and I have to realize that even though Wyland isn’t at my side, he’s not at his wife’s either. 

“He’s a guy.” It’s a lie, and it tastes sour like one. 

“You know it’s not just that.” She flicks the dead skin, and I watch it arc slowly in the air.

“Okay. If you really want to know what I think, I think we’re older, different. And he is too.” I look at Heather, and she’s exactly what I always hoped she’d be when I was younger. Fallen, no longer a threat. No longer strong. And maybe that’s why he no longer loves her like he should; he conquered her. 

“But you know what I miss most?” I ask as she studies a new shriveled piece of skin.   

“What?”

“The feeling of being new.” 

She thinks it over, and I can see it wearing on her too. There’s something cruel in rubbing bare, that worn dance of being expected. And I think maybe that’s it—that when it comes to me, Wyland always expected me to stay in one place, to be the safe choice. 

“Ha. What’s that?” she says, and she smiles in spite of herself. She coughs through it, and her body quakes, the stomach that’s popped ripe as a pearl. “You could have won,” she adds.  Her eyebrows knit a long dark scarf. “But I couldn’t let you,” 

I look at her face, and despite the newborn crow’s feet, her chewed-up mouth, she reminds me of her younger self. I’m transported inside Caroline Hammel’s home, four paper-flaking walls growing weed-like all around Heather. Her feet are soldered to the floors, but she can’t see them because she’s knee-deep in old newspaper. How to survive this way? The thought flips on like a lighter, and I worry through the answer. You make everyone else suffer.

“What now?” I ask. It’s not directed at Heather. It’s directed at the flowers that are now napping on the linoleum next to Heather’s ankle. My ache keeps me company, but it’s still evident—the emptiness between us, the reason I’m talking from a hospital bed, and Heather’s hands are tied to her belly. 

“We let him lose,” she says, and I hold on to every word. I let them burden my lungs.

#

THE MORNING OPENS WITH my eyes, and a nurse—her cheeks rose-warm and flushed—hovers above my face. My head is weeded by dreamlike memory, by the dry bed of my throat. She hands me a Dixie cup of water before I ask for it. I look around, even though I know Wyland isn’t here. 

“There you are, hun. Thought you’d sleep forever,” she says, and for a moment, I close my eyes. I pretend she’s my grandmother. 

“You’re released today. I have your clothes. Need me to help?” I shake my head “yes” as I sit up in bed because I don’t trust myself to breathe let alone put on anything to wear. She helps me out of my hospital gown, and I see a pair of black stretch pants and an oversized Tweety bird t-shirt. Apparently, Loretta has been given the role of my stylist. 

The nurse’s name is Mariam, and I concentrate on the smooth sound of the “m’s” so I don’t have to concentrate on facing the world alone in a hand me down t-shirt with a cartoon bird on it. I don’t want to get into the car and note the weather, the construction on Mendel Street. I don’t want to get into Loretta’s car.

“Knock, knock,” someone says, and it’s Rosa, arms at her sides. Her hands are empty except for the key chain with the rubber ducky in her left that she squeezes methodically. “Your father already came and picked up your flowers. I have a bouquet from my mom and brothers in the car.” I smile, my mind caught up in the idea of my father floating around my unconscious body, gathering flowers for me. I smile at the thought of Mrs. Piedras sending flowers, but my face jerks into a freeze when I realize what it took for her to reach out. 

“She’s all set,” Mariam says after she slips on my flip flops, and as I stand, I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror attached to the inside of a storage cabinet. The outfit is worse than I thought.

Rosa comes over to me and takes me by the hand as Mariam rolls in the wheelchair. I feel my friend’s pulse through my skin, and I feel shame working the nerves in my face. I can’t look up at her, but I know she’s looking at me, loving me, and the thought wounds me all over again.

The nurse walks us into the elevator, and we descend with two older women, one clutching a pink plush bear, the other discussing how awful the name “Harmony” is.

The doors open, and the light is too loud. Not bright, but loud as if I can hear everything the moment I see it. 

“All right, Ms. Oaks, your father has all your paperwork and your medication. He’s been instructed to give you a pain pill when you get home. Dr. Roper says you have one refill after the medication is gone, but you shouldn’t need it.” Mariam’s face comes into view again, and I can still find what I’m looking for even beneath her professional stare: pity.

The nurse leaves us right outside the covered hospital entrance, and Rosa tells me she’s going to pull the car around. 

“You okay here?” she asks. I nod and watch her walk away. My nerves work through my face and consume the rest of me knowing we haven’t talked since I ripped out her heart in the morgue. I’ve felt Rosa’s hand on my back as I lay distraught in the hospital bed listening to the doctor murmuring the details of my hemorrhaging, but no words came out between the two of us. Her fingers threaded through my hair as he went on about the pills in my system. I had taken too many, and the tears stung hot between my pillows and my cheeks as Rosa’s hand stroked deeper. 

I don’t have long to ponder what I’m going to say to her in the car because something is blocking my peripheral, and when I turn to look, my heart is ripped out too.

“Just one sec, Liz. I’ll get the van. You don’t need me to get the nurse to wait with you?” The voice disperses from a man not much older than me. He looks un-showered, and I’m sure if I scooted closer, I’d be able to smell him. 

“No, I’m fine here.” Liz, the woman in the wheelchair smiles at the man who’s already jogging backwards to the parking lot. It’s not her pleasant, plump red face or his frantic legs that get me. It’s the baby in her arms.

“Harmony,” she says at me, her silly grin still locked firmly in place. I don’t have time to say anything because the older women who were in the elevator with us have made their way out of the hospital, and the one who had criticized the baby’s name before tells Liz how beautiful it is. I want to punch her in the face.

Rosa finally pulls up, and I’ve never been more relieved to see that hunk of metal she calls a car. Sitting is only slightly painful, and I know it’s because I’m strung out on whatever was pumping through my IV. I’m worried about what happens when the pills are all gone and the only thing I’m prescribed is the act of feeling.

When we’re in the car, I think Rosa is reaching to blast the music louder, but she shuts the radio off altogether.

“You’re right. At least you’re not a child.”

“Rosa, you know I was being stupid when I said that. And the other thing I said, the horrible thing...” I trail off, but we both relive that moment. Rosas squeezes her eyes shut.

“You love your brother.” She says, her shoulder grazing her cheek. “But I want you to know that you’re right, you’re not a kid, Vienna. You shouldn’t be made to feel like one either.”

“No one makes me feel like that.” She lifts her eyebrow, raised and defiant on her forehead. 

“I don’t want to get into you and your father’s relationship—you’ll figure that out on your own—but I was just thinking about your situation, about how you feel about your dad and how I never knew mine and...I can’t do that to Maya anymore.” A tissue is tucked in her fingers, and she presses gently against her lower lid like she does when applying eyeliner. “She told me you two talked,” she says, slowly guiding the car out of the hospital’s parking lot. I force my thoughts to cooperate through the drowning feeling from my pain meds, but I remember sitting in the pew with my niece and the long list of preservatives in her hand.

“I’m sorry about all of it. I shouldn’t have said anything to her about Troy, and I’m so sorry for hurting you, Rosa.” She’s crying, and it’s taking a toll on her shoulders. The car sways with her gasping breath. A truck honks at us, and she grabs at me to make sure my seat belt is locked in place.

“It’s okay. It’s just...” She steadies the wheel and drops her tissue in her lap. The rosary beads hanging from the rearview mirror slap against the dash. I still the crucifix with my hand. “Vienna, Maya’s pregnant,” she whispers, and I feel like the world is mocking me. It’s strange though, because even though I’m hurting everywhere, and the loss has sucked me dry, I’m not sad because my niece is pregnant, and I’m not anymore. I’m sad because I see her three-year-old face when I blink, and I think how quickly that freedom is lost.

“Wha...why? Who’s is it?” 

“College kid. Goes to Mizzou. I guess his buddy’s from Blythesville, and Maya met him at a party. She’s called, texted, emailed the guy. Can’t get a hold of him.” 

I try to breathe long, steady streams of breath, but the ability has left me. “Can you pull over?”

“What?” 

“Please, now. Over,” I manage. Luckily, Rosa has already taken our exit, and we’re on the frontage road. She inches the car onto the gravel, and I stumble into the grass, my vulnerable toes itching in the mess. I vomit, and it feels good. It feels better than crying or screaming combined. I feel almost hopeful in the letting go it gives me.

Rosa helps me back inside when I’m finished, and I reach for where she keeps the tissues in the glove box. I wipe my mouth, and we restart our path back home.

“I want him in our lives.” She doesn’t look me in the eye, but I know she means Troy, and I know what I have to do to make that happen.

I feel wrecked—the physical part, the mental too. But I’m confronted with my power and know exactly where it lies. It’s in my ability to mend the broken shards in the people I love. To give up everything I have left. For them. For me.

I know exactly what I have to do, and the prospect is terrifying.

I ask Rosa to pull over one more time.