Tre found Nadine sitting on a windowsill at the end
of a long, sterile hall. St. Mary’s six-story hospital was the tallest
structure in Cade County, and Nadine could look beyond the glistening lights of
Jordan to the blackness of the farm fields, melting into the vastness of the
starless sky.
Nadine was the family chatterbox, but she hadn’t spoken a
word since the doctors told the family that morning that Dan Franklin’s brain
activity had stopped. Fever and infection had finished the job that bullets had
begun. Franklin was less than a vegetable, the doctor had said. There was no
chance of recovery.
Tre was the silent one in the family, but looking
over Nadine’s head into the emptiness of the darkened sky, he knew it was up to
him to speak.
“Remember when Mama went in for that last operation,
and she made Daddy promise that he would never make her live hooked up to
machines?”
Nadine said nothing.
“Daddy cried. That was the only time I saw him
cry. But he did what had to be done. I
know now how hard it was for him.”
A tear drizzled down Nadine’s cheek but she didn’t
say a word.
“Remember he told us that the angels had come for
Mama? He said those machines were like leaving the lights on in an empty room.
Mama was already gone.”
“Do you think Daddy’s gone?” Nadine said.
“I think he went to be with Mama ’cause he loved her
so much.”
“Then, I guess we’d better turn out the lights,”
Nadine said, looking up into her brother’s face. The two embraced and sobbed loudly, but there
was no one in the abandoned hospital corridor at that hour to complain.
***
“It must be so
hard on those children,” Penny said as she painted broad strokes of green on a
ceramic Christmas tree during the regular Saturday morning gathering in Su Le’s
ceramic studio. “What are they going to
do?”
“I
understand they are going to live with an aunt in Chicago,” Josie said,
kneading a clump of rich red clay. “Or
maybe the aunt is going to come here to live in their house. I’m not sure of
the logistics.”
“Well, I know he was a friend of yours, Josie,” Barb
said, the muscles of both arms bulging as she wrestled with a large mound of
white porcelain clay on the whirling wheel. With firm pressure on the clay,
Barb tamed the wobbling mass until it rode smoothly in the center of the wheel.
“But for me there’s a sense of closure. We knew Franklin had to die eventually.
Now it’s over.”
“Is so hard for children to lose both parents,” Su
said as she passed by with the latest pieces from the kiln.
“Oh, yes,” Josie agreed. “Children have a hard time
understanding death. When I told Kevin that Davy’s father had died, he showed
no reaction at first, but then last night I found him crying in bed. He said he
was worried his father would die, too.”
“Oh, no,” a murmur of sad acknowledgement passed
through the room.
“Of course, I called Kurt right away to have him
reassure Kevin, but he wasn’t home.”
“Isn’t he with his father this weekend?” Barb asked.
“Yes, but by the time Kurt picked him up this
morning, Kevin seemed to have forgotten the whole thing.”
“Isn’t that just like a child?” Penny said. “They
recover so quickly.”
“Well, I may not color as quickly as you, but I’m
getting there,” Aggie said, looking up from a detailed bouquet of flowers she
was painting on a vase.
“Oh, silly,” Penny said, dabbing a wide stroke of
green paint on her mother-in-law’s forehead to the delight of everyone in the
room. “We weren’t talking about you.”
