Despite the rest of the house smelling like a Yankee Candle shop, the scent of pubescent boy still lingers in Kevin’s room. There’s an old aquarium that used to house a snake called Hoagie and, next to that, a box filled with faded yellow CliffsNotes and a stack of CDs. On top is a scuffed plastic case that calls to me, Nirvana’s Nevermind. I put it in the three-disc changer on the ancient stereo and press play, stare at the chubby naked baby on the cover.
Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
I can barely remember to brush my teeth in the morning or where I left my keys, and yet each and every word of this song comes rushing back to me like I’m fourteen again.
The faded glow of the stars still glued to the ceiling are like dozens of eyes watching me as I lie back on the itchy quilt covering the bed. It’s too much: our life is never going to be the same. I have to remind myself of this again and again. The last five years have been so hard—all the miscarriages, the failures to get pregnant, the all-consuming fear I would never be a mother. All the times I lay in bed like this, blinking up at the ceiling, thinking the worst thing that could ever happen to me was not having a baby. It was like driving down a stretch of highway that disappears into nothing. That’s what my life would have been like, no children, no degree, no great career… nothing. On those long dark nights, I used to bargain with the universe: If you just give me this, I will never ask for anything else. And it worked, I got pregnant. The worst was over. But that seems so stupid now. Of course life can get worse. It can always get worse. I was so focused on one thing, there wasn’t room to consider all the other terrible things that could go wrong. Like my husband going to prison for the rest of his life, or the lawsuits that will bankrupt me and my kids and my kids’ kids. And that poor little boy. Every time I let myself wallow, I come back to that poor boy and remember what my husband did. Will I ever be able to look at Kevin and not think about that boy?
I fumble around the bedside table for the tiny, dusty remote to the boom box so I can play the song again. Instead, I land on my phone, abandoned since this morning. It’s been so long since I had that heart-quickening sensation of waiting for a boy to call or text me, and I experience that same jolt of agitated anticipation now: Has Riley been in touch? But when I look, the only text waiting there is from Lou.
You hanging in there kiddo?
Never mind that her message is more fitting for someone home sick with a cold. At least she’s checking in. It’s something.
I close the text and scroll to my favorite pregnancy app, the one that tells you the size of your baby from week to week. At thirty weeks, our baby is the size of a large jicama. I look up what a jicama is—this whole fruit-and-veggie thing comforts me. It helps to picture the glob of cells growing inside my belly. I’ve already lost a baby the size of a blueberry, and one the size of a plum. I scroll through the next few as if looking into my future: a butternut squash, a pineapple, a pumpkin, then a baby.
I drift off dreaming of vegetables.
It could be minutes or hours later when Kevin comes into the room. His voice, its urgency, wrenches me from a rare deep sleep. “Jen, Jenny.”
Kevin makes a kind of choking sound like the words are caught in his throat.
“He died, Jenny. Justin died.”
Chapter Five RILEY
Gigi’s eyes flutter behind paper-thin lids. Otherwise, she doesn’t move. I swipe a damp washcloth across her cheek, skin so smooth it should belong to a baby, not to an eighty-nine-year-old woman.
I’m happy to lose myself for a moment in this simple act of caring for Gigi, especially considering all that she’s done for me over the years, patiently teaching me how to play chess, sewing my Halloween costumes, giving me swimming lessons while keeping her head above the water so she wouldn’t mess up her roller set; painting my toenails Berry on Top, even when Momma told me no because that color was trashy.
It’s not enough though, this piddly washcloth. I would do anything—walk through fire, give any organ or my last dollar—if it would help. But nothing will. Yesterday the doctors told us she’s too weak to continue on dialysis, which wasn’t really working anyway. Her blood is essentially poisoning her day by day. They hinted to us that she only has weeks, rather than months. We’re all desperately hoping for time: one more Christmas. Just give us one more Christmas. Please, God, one more.
This early in the morning, it’s blissfully peaceful in the small hospital room. The TV perched in the corner is muted. I look up and catch my face on the screen. Yet another thirty-second promo for my live interview tonight with Tamara Dwyer, set to air at the top of the five-o’clock broadcast. The banner on the bottom of the screen reads: A MOTHER’S ANGUISH. The station’s been teasing the segment hard, and each time I see the ad, my jangly nerves ratchet one level higher because I’m still not even sure it’s going to happen now. I change the channel to CNN. The news about Justin’s death has been making the rounds of the cable networks. #JusticeForJustin began trending this morning on Twitter.
Beyond Gigi’s soft snores, I can hear laughter from the nurses’ station. Their trivial conversations waft down the hall to fill the rooms of those watching their loved ones waste away. This morning they’re twittering on about a new royal baby.
Yesterday, I overheard one of the nurses complain about the overflow of flowers in this room, as if that was really something to be irritated about. Granted, the bouquets from Gigi’s church friends are taking over the place, covering every available surface, their sickly sweet scent strong enough to stick to your clothes, but no one has the heart to throw them away. Even if Gigi doesn’t care much for flowers.
“They should be in a field somewhere, not in a vase,” she’s grumbled more than once.
I close the door a few inches to block out the noise. With the blinds drawn, it’s dark in her room, a liminal space. Hospitals are like casinos that way, free of the constraints of climate or time. There is only here and now. I try to embrace the calm, but it’s hard when Justin’s face appears on the screen. The headline reads: UNARMED TEENAGER SHOT BY POLICE IN PHILADELPHIA DIES. I watch the anchor’s lips move, the sad nod she exchanges with her coanchor, a Black man who just landed his own show on the network focused on race and politics. They’re probably trotting out the same grim statistics I’ve been researching: Philadelphia ranks fifth in the nation in Black homicide. Black kids are ten times more likely to die from gun violence than white kids. The police fatally shoot an average of one thousand people per year nationwide. And now another one: Justin, an innocent fourteen-year-old.
I’d just gotten home from work last night when I heard. Arriving within seconds of each other: a text from Scotty—Kid didn’t make it—and one from my source at the hospital who’d been sending me confidential updates. I slumped on the couch, precariously close to crying, as if Justin were my own brother. Maybe because it could have so easily been my own brother bleeding out on the ground.
My phone pinged with another text from Scotty not ten minutes after his first:
I hope the interview is still on. Find out. Make it happen.
It was obnoxious to intrude on the Dwyers at a time like this, but I needed to know if the interview was still happening, as crass as that was, which meant reaching out to Justin’s uncle, Tamara’s brother. Wes was serving as the family’s de facto media liaison, a role he was thrust into and clearly found overwhelming judging from his anxious tone whenever we spoke about the interview. I was trying to come up with the right words to text to Wes when my phone buzzed yet again. I assumed it was Scotty, but it was Wes’s number that came up, and the first words I saw as I frantically scanned were, I’m sorry. I was already strategizing as I read the entire message.