“Believe me, I wish she’d blinked when she heard my name.” He leaned closer. “Julian True. Julian True. Julian True.”
“Nada.”
“Keep talking to her, Rosa. You left off when she fell in love with him.”
She frowned. “The rest of the story, it is filled with much pain for her. Maybe it will make the coma worse.”
“Pain is a powerful stimulus. Maybe even stronger than love. We can’t give up yet. Talk to her.”
Rosa drew in a deep breath. It went against her every instinct to talk about these things—especially in front of Dr. Liam. But then she thought about the blinking of her daughter’s eyes. Such a little thing, maybe it meant nothing at all, but maybe …
“You loved him so much, my Mikita. Loved him in the way that only young girls can. He swept you off your feet—it wasn’t hard, not when you ached so badly to fly. He took your heart and your virginity … and then he left you.”
Rosa brushed the hair from her daughter’s forehead, letting her fingertips linger on the pale, cool flesh. “I watched you wait for him, day after day, night after night. You stood at the diner’s cloudy window, waiting for a car to drive up.”
Rosa remembered those days in brutal detail. Every time she’d looked in her daughter’s eyes, she’d seen the sallow reflection of her own past. She had known what would happen; slowly, before Mikaela knew to guard against it, she would begin to shrink. Already her daughter had begun to keep her head down when she walked, already she moved silently aside when someone came too close. Rose knew it would go on, the slow chipping away of self-confidence, until only a shadow of Mikaela was left. Rosa had seen all this too clearly, but she hadn’t known how to stop it.
She had tried to tell her. This pain, she’d said, it will go away if you let it.
Mikaela had turned to her, letting her gaze travel slowly over Rosa’s tightly braided hair, across the wrinkles at her mouth that were anything but laugh lines, down the stained polyester of her waitress uniform. Will it, Mama? Really?
“When you asked me, I told you that it would go away, this love of yours, but we both knew it was a lie. I watched you fade into me, a little bit at a time. And then it happened. A milagro. He came back for you.”
In later years, when Rosa looked back on it, she wondered how it was that there’d been no warning of such a thing, no salt thrown in Mikaela’s path for good luck, no sun breaking through the clouds. Rosa had been in the diner, loading dishes into the dishwasher—Joe had already gone home and the place was closed for the night. Rosa was trying to keep her eyes open long enough to finish. She couldn’t see Mikaela, but she could hear her in the dining room, pushing chairs into their places and stacking ashtrays.
Then she’d heard something completely out of place. The clink-ka-ching of money falling into the jukebox. It was such an odd sound; no one much played the music at Joe’s. There came the buzzing blur of the machine skimming through forty-fives, then the music started. The love theme from An Officer and a Gentleman.
Rosa had put her soggy rag aside and closed the dishwasher with her hip. She edged past the big gas stove. At the closed door, she stopped again, head tilted, listening. Slowly she pushed the door open a crack. At first all she saw was darkness. The lights were turned off. There was only the electric blue haze from the outdoor neon sign.
Then she saw Julian, standing in the farthest corner of the room. Mikaela stood motionless in front of him.
Rosa knew then, as sure as she was standing there, in the diner that smelled of dreams left on a hot burner, that Mikaela would mortgage her soul for another day with him.
“I could not believe it when he asked you to marry him, mi hija. I knew you had hitched your heart to a star—or worse, the sun, and if you looked at it too long, you would be blinded. He took you out of Sunville and gave you the world. From that moment, you were someone who mattered.
“You were in every newspaper, on the television all the time; they turned you into a woman I’d never seen before, this Kayla of the midnight hair. When I went to California for your wedding, it was like being on the moon—people followed you everywhere. I wanted so badly to make your dress—we had dreamed of it for many years. But, of course, that could not be … not for Kayla.”
Rosa’s voice fell away. She turned to Liam. “After that come the years I do not know about. She kept secrets from me, too. I read in the tabloid newspapers about Julian’s drinking, about his other women, but Mikaela told me none of this. All I remember is when she called me—it was the day after Jacey’s first birthday party. She sounded tired and broken, my little girl, when she told me that it was over.” Rosa sighed. “Mikaela was only twenty-three, but I heard in her voice that she was not young anymore. Loving Julian had broken something in her, and it was more than just her heart.”
Liam made a sound, part sigh, part moan, and there was such a sadness in it …
Rosa wished she were the kind of woman who could go to him, hold him in this moment that was tearing at his heart. “I am sorry, Liam …” she said, curling her fingers around the bed rail so tightly her skin turned white.
He rose from the chair and went to the bed. “Help us, Mike,” he said. “Let us know you’re still there. We all miss you—me, Rosa, Jacey, Bret … Julian.”
She sees something floating in the murky water. It’s small and round and white. It bobs on the surface, peaking and sliding with the waves. The sound of the sea slapping against her body is so loud she can’t hear anything else. Somewhere in the back of her mind drifts the thought that she should hear birds, seagulls or ducks, but the silence is endless and unbroken.
She knows that if she can relax, she can float on top of the water, and it can be peaceful. This she has learned in her months at sea.
Today she can smell cinnamon and pine trees—familiar, comforting—and now there is something else. She breathes deeply, and instead of the sea, she smells a woman’s fragrance, one she can almost remember. She tries to concentrate on that, the concrete image of before, but the memory is unattached to anything.
“Helpus,Mike. Letusknow you’re stillthere.”
The voice, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, keeps asking questions she can’t answer, in words she doesn’t truly understand.
But then there is that one sound again.
“Julian.”
She tries desperately to extract a single perfect memory, just one, but the shallow, rocky soil of her mind gives up nothing.
If only she could open her eyes …
“… Miss you …”
These are words she understands, and they hurt. Miss. It is about being alone and afraid … yes, she understands.
Please God, she prays, help me …
She can’t remember if there is supposed to be an answer to these words, but when there is none, she feels as if she is sinking into the turbulent water. She is too tired to keep herself up, and she is missing … missing so much …
“She’s crying. Jesus Christ.” Liam reached for a tissue and gently wiped her eyes. “Mike, honey, can you hear me?”
She didn’t respond, but those terrible silver tears kept falling. A tiny gray patch appeared on the pillow. Liam punched the nurses’ button and ran for the door. When he saw Sarah, he yelled for her to go get Dr. Penn.
Then he went back into the room and bent over his wife, stroking her damp cheeks, whispering the same words to her over and over again. “Come on, baby, come on back to us.”
Stephen Penn appeared in the doorway, out of breath. “What is it, Liam?”
He looked up at his friend. “She’s crying, Steve.”
Stephen went to the side of the bed and stared down at Mikaela. She was as still as death, her cheeks pale, but the trail of moisture glittered promiselike in the dim lighting. He produced a straight pin from his pocket. Gently lifting her bare foot in his palm, Stephen stuck the sharp tip in the tender flesh.
Mikaela jerked her foot back. A broken moan escaped her lips.
Stephen laid her foot down again and covered it back up with the blanket. Then he looked at Liam. “The coma’s lightening. It doesn’t necessarily mean …” He paused. “You know what it does and doesn’t mean. But maybe … maybe something reached her. Whatever you’re doing—keep doing it.”
It was way past bedtime when Bret heard the knock on his door. He was sitting on the floor of his bedroom, playing Diddy Kong racing on his Nintendo 64.
He thought he said, “Come in,” but he couldn’t be sure, because he was concentrating on keeping Diddy on the track.
The door opened, and Dad poked his head in. “Heya, Bretster.”
Bret looked up, just long enough. His guy hit the wall and started a free-form tumble across the multicolored screen. “Hi, Dad. You wanna play?”
Dad sat down beside him, picking up the second set of controls. “You know I’m terrible at this. I like the Star Wars one better.”
Bret giggled. He loved watching his dad play Diddy Kong, because he couldn’t ever keep his guy on the track, and Bret always kicked his butt. He started up another game, and for the next half hour they raced.
Finally Dad tossed the controls down. “That’s it, Mario. You win. I give up.”
“Mario’s a different game, Dad.”
Dad climbed awkwardly to his feet, hanging on to the fender of Bret’s bed, as if he was going to fall at any minute. “Come on, kiddo. It’s bedtime. Close up the game and get your fangs washed.”
Bret turned off the television and hurried down the hall. In his bathroom, he brushed his teeth really good (Dad was famous for sending him back to do it again if he didn’t do a good job) and peed. Then he went back into his room.
Dad was already in bed, stretched out under the covers, with a book open in his lap. The bedside lamp was on now.
Bret loved it when Daddy was in his bed. Then nothing seemed scary. He bounded over to the bed and started to get in.
“Hold it, pal. Put on your pajamas.”
Bret made a face. “Aw, Dad—”
“Nope.” He smiled. “I know you. You’ll sleep in those clothes and then get up and wear them to school again tomorrow. And hey, when was the last time you took a shower?”
“Grandma made me take one yesterday.”
“Okay. But no jeans in bed.”
Bret pulled off his dirty jeans and tossed them in a heap in the corner—where he knew he’d just pick ’em up tomorrow and put ’em back on for school. Then he crawled over his dad and got into bed, snuggling up close. “Is that the lion book?”
“You bet.”
Bret curled up next to his dad and listened to the story. It calmed him down, listening to his dad’s deep, steady voice.
It felt like only a few minutes later that Dad shut the book and set it on the table by the lamp.
Dad took him in his big, strong arms and held Bret tightly. “I think you should visit Mommy. It’s … important now.”
Dad had never said that before—that it was important that Bret see her. All along, he’d thought he didn’t matter …