“Can we see her?” Leni asked.
“Of course. Follow me.”
Leni and Mr. Walker followed Dr. Irving down the white hallway and into a room with a sign that read RECOVERY on the door. He pushed open the door.
Mama was in a fabric-curtained cubicle. She was sitting upright in a narrow bed, wearing a hospital gown; a warming blanket lay across her lap. Her left arm was bent at a ninety-degree angle and was encased in a cast of white plaster. Something wasn’t quite right with her nose and both eyes showed signs of bruising.
“Leni,” she said, her head lolling a little to the right on the stack of pillows behind her. She had the lazy, unfocused look of someone who’d been drugged. “I told you I was tough,” she said. Her voice was a little misshapen. “Ah, baby girl, don’t cry.”
Leni couldn’t help herself. Seeing her mother like this, living through the crash, all she could think about was how fragile Mama was and how easily she could be lost. It made her think sharply, keenly, of Matthew and how quickly and unexpectedly death could sweep in.
She heard the doctor say goodbye and leave the room.
Mr. Walker went to Mama’s bedside. “You were leaving him, weren’t you? What other reason would there be to be out in this weather?”
“No.” Mama shook her head.
“I could help you,” he said. “We could help you. All of us. Large Marge used to be a prosecutor. I could call the police, tell them he hurt you. He does, doesn’t he? You didn’t break your nose in the accident, did you?”
“The police can’t help,” Mama said. “I know the system. My dad’s a lawyer.”
“They’d put him in jail.”
“For what? A day? Two? He’d come back for me. Or you. Or Leni. Do you think I could live with putting other people at risk? And … well…”
Leni heard Mama’s unspoken words: I love him.
Mr. Walker stared down at Mama, who was so bruised and bandaged she barely looked like herself. “All you have to do is ask for help,” he said quietly. “I want to help you, Cora. Surely you know I—”
“You don’t know me, Tom. If you did…”
Leni saw tears gather in her mother’s eyes. “There’s something wrong with me,” she said slowly. “Sometimes it feels like a strength and sometimes like a weakness, but I don’t know how to stop loving him.”
“Cora!” Leni heard her father’s voice and saw how Mama shrank into the pillows behind her.
Mr. Walker lurched away from her bedside.
Dad ignored Mr. Walker completely, shoved past him. “Oh, my God, Cora? Are you okay?”
Mama seemed to melt in front of him. “We crashed the bus.”
“What were you doing out in that weather?” he said, but he knew. Leni saw it in his eyes. There was a deep scratch on his cheek.
Mr. Walker backed toward the door, a big man trying to disappear. He gave Leni a sad, knowing look and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
“We needed food,” Mama said. “I wanted to make you a special d-dinner.”
Dad laid his work-callused hand against her bruised, swollen cheek, as if his touch could heal her. “Forgive me, baby. I’ll kill myself if you don’t.”
“Don’t say that,” Mama said. “Don’t ever say that. You know I love you. Only you.”
“Forgive me,” he said. He turned. “And you, too, Red. Forgive a stupid man who can’t get his shit together sometimes, but who loves you. And who will do better.”
“I love you,” Mama said, and she was crying now, too, and suddenly Leni understood the reality of her world, the truth that Alaska, in all its beautiful harshness, had revealed. They were trapped, by environment and finances, but mostly by the sick, twisted love that bound her parents together.
Mama would never leave Dad. It didn’t matter that she’d gone so far as to take a backpack and run to the bus and drive away. She would come back, always, because she loved him. Or she needed him. Or she was afraid of him. Who knew, really?
Leni couldn’t begin to understand the hows and whys of her parents’ love. She was old enough to see the turbulent surface, but too young to know what lay beneath.
Mama could never leave Dad, and Leni would never leave Mama. And Dad could never let them go. In this toxic knot that was their family, there was no escape for any of them.
*
THAT NIGHT, they took Mama home from the hospital.
Dad held Mama as if she were made of glass. So careful, so concerned for her well-being. It filled Leni with an impotent rage.