Дэвид Балдаччи: One Summer

Before he’d gotten sick, Jack had talked to his daughter many times about making good life choices, about the importance of school, but nothing seemed to make a difference to the young woman. There was a clear disconnect now between father and daughter. When she’d been a little girl, Mikki had unconditionally loved her dad, wanted to be around him all the time. Now he rarely saw her. To her, it seemed to Jack, he might as well have been already dead.

“Mikki seems lost around me,” he said slowly.

Lizzie sat next to him, held his hand. “She’s scared and confused, honey. Some of it has to do with her age. Most of it has to do with...”

“Me.” Jack couldn’t look at her when he made this admission.

“She and I have talked about it. Well, I talked and she didn’t say much. She’s a smart kid, but she really doesn’t understand why this is happening, Jack. And her defense mechanism is to just detach herself from it. It’s not the healthiest way to cope with things, though.”

“I can understand,” said Jack.

She looked at him. “Because of your dad?”

He nodded and rubbed her hand with his fingers, his eyes moistening as he remembered his father’s painful death. He took several long pulls on the oxygen. “If I could change things, I would, Lizzie.”

She rested her body next to his, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and kissed him. When she spoke, her voice was husky and seemed right on the edge of failing. “Jack, this is hard on everyone. But it’s hardest on you. You have been so brave; no one could have handled—” She couldn’t continue. Lizzie laid her head next to his and wept softly. Jack held her with what little strength he had left.

“I love you, Lizzie. No matter what happens, nothing will ever change that.”

He’d been sleeping in the hospital bed because he couldn’t make it up the stairs to their bedroom even with assistance. He’d fought against that the hardest because as his life dwindled away he had desperately wanted to feel Lizzie’s warm body against his. It was another piece of his life taken from him, like he was being dismantled, brick by brick.

And I am, brick by brick.

After a few minutes, she composed herself and wiped her eyes. “Cory is playing the Grinch in the class play at the school on Christmas Eve, remember?”

Jack nodded. “I remember.”

“I’ll film it for you.”

Cory was the middle child, twelve years old and the ham in the family.

Jack smiled and said, “Grinch!”

Lizzie smiled back, then said, “I’ve got a conference call in an hour, and then I’ll be in the kitchen working after I give Jackie his breakfast.”

She’d become a telecommuter when Jack had gotten ill. When she had to go out, a neighbor would come over or Lizzie’s parents would stop by to help.

After Lizzie left, Jack sat up, slowly reached under the pillow, and pulled out the calendar and pen. He looked at the dates in December, all of which had been crossed out up to December twentieth. Over three decades of life, marriage, fatherhood, defending his country, and working hard, it had come down to him marking off the few days left. He looked out the window and to the street beyond. The snow had stopped, but he’d heard on the news that another wintry blast was expected, with more ice than snow.

There was a knock at the door, and a few moments later Sammy Duvall appeared. He was in his early sixties, with longish salt-and-pepper hair and a trim beard. Sammy was as tall as Jack, but leaner, though his arms and shoulders bulged with muscles from all the manual labor he’d done. He was far stronger than most men half his age and tougher than anyone Jack had ever met. He’d spent twenty years in the military and fought in Vietnam and done some things after that around the world that he never talked about. A first-rate, self-taught carpenter and all-around handyman, Sammy was the reason Jack had joined the service. After Jack left the army, he and Sammy had started the contracting business. Lacking a family of his own, Sammy had adopted the Armstrongs.

The military vets shared a glance, and then Sammy looked over all the equipment helping to keep his friend alive. He shook his head slightly and his mouth twitched. This was as close as stoic Sammy ever came to showing emotion.

“How’s work?” Jack asked, and then he took a long pull of oxygen.

“No worries. Stuff’s getting done and the money’s coming in.”

Jack knew that Sammy had been completing all the jobs pretty much on his own and then bringing all the payments to Lizzie. “At least half of that money is yours, Sammy. You’re doing all the work.”

“I got my Uncle Sam pension, and it’s more than I need. That changes, I’ll let you know.”

Sammy lived in a converted one-car garage with his enormous Bernese mountain dog, Sam Jr. His needs were simple, his wants apparently nonexistent.

Sammy combed Jack’s hair and even gave him a shave. Then the friends talked for a while. At least Sammy said a few words and Jack listened. The rest of the time they sat in silence. Jack didn’t mind; just being with Sammy made him feel better.

After Sammy left, Jack lifted the pen and crossed out December twenty-first. That was being optimistic, Jack knew, since the day had really just begun. He put the calendar and pen away.

And then it happened.

He couldn’t breathe. He sat up, convulsing, but that just made it worse. He could feel his heart racing, his lungs squeezing, his face first growing red and then pale as the oxygen left his body and nothing replenished it.

December twenty-first, he thought, my last day.

“Pop-pop?”

Jack looked up to see his son holding the end of the oxygen line that attached to the converter. He held it up higher, as though he were giving it back to his dad.

“Jackie!”

A horrified Lizzie appeared in the doorway, snatched the line from her son’s hand, and rushed to reattach the oxygen line to the converter. A few moments later, the oxygen started to flow into the line and Jack fell back on the bed, breathing hard, trying to fill his lungs.

Lizzie raced past her youngest son and was by Jack’s side in an instant. “Oh my God, Jack, oh my God.” Her whole body was trembling.

He held up his hand to show he was okay.

Lizzie whirled around and snapped, “That was bad, Jackie, bad.”

Jackie’s face crumbled, and he started to bawl.

She snatched up Jackie and carried him out. The little boy was struggling to free himself, staring at Jack over her shoulder, reaching his arms out to his father. His son’s look was pleading.

“Pop-pop,” wailed Jackie.

The tears trickled down Jack’s face as his son’s cries faded away. But then Jack heard Lizzie sobbing and pictured her crying her heart out and wondering what the hell she’d done to deserve all this.

Sometimes, Jack thought, living was far harder than dying.

Jack awoke from a nap late the next day in time to see his daughter opening the front door, guitar case in hand. He motioned to her to come see him. She closed the door and dutifully trudged to his room.

Mikki had auburn hair like her mother’s. However, she had dyed it several different colors, and Jack had no idea what it would be called now. She was shooting up in height, her legs long and slender and her hips and bosom filling out. Though she acted like she was totally grown up now, her face was caught in that time thread that was firmly past the little-girl stage but not yet a woman. She would be a junior in high school next year. Where had the time gone?

“Yeah, Dad?” she said, not looking at him.

He thought about what to say. In truth, they didn’t have much to talk about. Even when he’d been healthy, their lives lately had taken separate paths. That was my fault, he thought. Not hers.