Russell Banks - The Sweet Hereafter

“Depends,” Mr. Stephens said. “If they appeal, and they probably will, this could drag on for quite a while. But we’ll be there at the end, Sam, don’t you worry,” he said. He put his cup on the coffee table and stood up, thinking about a cigarette, I bet. He said his goodbyes, and Daddy saw him out to his car, where they talked together for a while.

I went back to my room and closed the door and locked it. Let them discuss their lawsuit without me, if they wanted; I had done my part for now, and I didn’t want to speak about it again until I had to.

The whole thing, even though I liked Mr. Stephens and trusted him, made me feel greedy and dishonest. I looked at my picture of Einstein. What would he have done, if he’d been in an accident and been lucky like me?

I hitched myself out of the wheelchair and when I swung onto the bed, my skirt got hitched up, and I sat there for a minute, looking at my dumb worthless legs reflected in the window glass. They looked like they belonged to someone else. How much had they been worth a year ago, I wondered, or last fall, at the Keene Valley game and the Harvest Ball afterwards, when Bucky Waters and I, with crowns on our heads, danced in the gym in front of the whole school? And to whom? That was the real question. To me, my legs were worth everything then and nothing now. But to Mom and Daddy, nothing then and a couple of million dollars now.

After that night, I remember, a long time passed when it seemed no one talked about the lawsuit, at least not to me, and I didn’t hear anything more about Mr. Stephens, either. Which was fine. I sure didn’t want to bring it up, and I guess Mom and Daddy, for different reasons, didn’t want to, so it was as if it had never happened. Like I had dreamed it, the way I used to about me and Daddy; and just as before, I felt guilty for having so much emotion about the subject. When you live with people like my mother, who thinks Jesus takes care of everything except your weight, and my father, who goes around whistling and hammering and sawing all the time, you tend to feel guilty for your emotions. At least I did.

Then one night we were having supper together; it was in June, I remember, because Mom and Daddy were trying to get me to attend my graduation ceremonies with the other kids. I had come out second in my class, and Mr. Dillinger had told Mom and Daddy that everyone thought it would be great if I would give the salutatorian’s speech from my wheelchair in front of the whole town.

I thought it was a terrible idea, and I said so. I had written a research paper for English on Sam Dent, the man the town was named after, and had received an A + for it, and Mr. Dillinger and Mrs. Crosby, the English teacher, said that with a little revising it would make a perfect salutatorian’s speech. The way they wanted me to revise it, I knew without their even saying, was to turn Sam Dent into an example for the kids who were graduating, which meant that I’d have to cut out all the bad things he’d done, like cheating the Indians out of their land and buying his way out of the Civil War, things— that lots of people did in those days but that were just as bad then as they would be now.

“C’mon, Babes,” Dad said. “You’ll be the star of the show.”

“Some star,” I said. “What you mean is, you and Mom’ll be the stars of the show!” That was the main reason I didn’t want to do it. Of course, they thought I was just ashamed of being in a wheelchair, which was partly true, but I was slowly getting over that by then. Twice a week, since I’d come home from the hospital, Mom had been carting me over to Lake Placid for physical therapy at the Olympic Center, where there were lots of kids and young people who were even worse off than I was, and some of them had made friends with me, so I was beginning to see myself in the world a little clearer by then. I didn’t feel so abnormal anymore, and I didn’t worry so much about whether I was lucky or unlucky. I was both, like most people.

No, the reason I was dead set on avoiding the graduation ceremonies was because Mom and Daddy were so dead set on getting me to do it and because they wanted it for themselves, not me. They didn’t realize that, of course, but I did. Sometimes I almost felt sorry for them, the way they desperately needed me to be a star, and that’s why in the past, before the accident, I had always given in to them. But no more. Now I only did what I wanted to do, for my reasons. For my reasons, I didn’t go to church with them anymore, I didn’t teach Sunday school, I didn’t baby-sit for anyone in town (although no one had asked me to), I didn’t go to the movies or to restaurants with the family. Instead, I stayed home, behind the door of my new room, and that I did for my reasons too. No one else’s.

Anyhow, in the middle of our arguing about this, the phone rang, and Mom got up to answer it. Daddy hates talking on the phone and never answers it himself, even if he’s standing beside it when it rings. He walks away and lets one of us do the job for him. I never minded, and I used to rush to the phone when it rang, hoping it was for me; but no more, of course.

A minute later, Mom came back to the table, looking worried. “That was Billy Ansel,” she said to Daddy. “He wants to come over. To talk to us, he said.”

“He say what about?” Daddy asked, sounding suspicious, although as far as I knew then, he liked Billy Ansel well enough. Everyone did. In fact, Billy Ansel was more of a local hero than Sam Dent was. If they wanted a graduation speech about a role model, they ought to get someone to make it about him.

“No,” Mom said.

“Was he drinking, could you tell?”

“I can’t tell about those things, Sam, you know that.”

I just listened. This was new, Billy Ansel drinking and Mom and Daddy worried about his coming over to talk with them.

Rudy asked to be excused, and then Skip did, and Daddy said sure, and they took off to watch TV in the living room, with Jennie following along behind. Usually, that’s when I disappeared from the table too, heading for my room, but this time I stayed.

“Is he coming over now? Right away?” Daddy asked.

Mom got up and started clearing the table. “That’s what he said.”

Daddy turned to me and said, “What’re you up to tonight, Babes?” Trying to get rid of me.

“Nothing.”

“No homework?”

“Done. Besides, it’s Friday.”

“Nothing good on your TV?”

“Nope. Thought I’d wait around and see Billy Ansel,” I said, but as soon as I said it, I realized that I didn’t want to see him at all. Because of the accident. Maybe that’s why Mom and Daddy were so nervous about his coming over.

In the last couple of years, after Billy’s wife died, I had become his kids’ regular baby-sitter, and now they were gone too. Maybe I was stuck in a wheelchair and all, but I sure wasn’t dead, like his twins, so the idea of him seeing me made me cringe with shame. I didn’t want to be seen by anyone whose kids had been killed in the accident, but especially not Billy Ansel.

“Actually,” I said, “now that I think about it, I’d just as soon stay in my room when he comes.”

“Fine,” Daddy said, obviously relieved, as I shoved my chair away from the table and rolled across the kitchen toward my room.

“Daddy, when he comes …,” I said, trying to think of what I wanted him to say for me to Billy Ansel, remembering all the times I had tucked Jessica and Mason into bed, remembering how they loved to have me read their Babar the Elephant books to them before they went to sleep, remembering their faces, their bright trusting motherless faces; and I had to give it up — there was nothing I could say to Billy, except I’m sorry. I’m sorry that your children died when my parents’ children didn’t.