A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

Hello, My name is Avery and I am writing to thank you for the gift of life. I live in Ohio and was on the wait list for a heart and lungs for a long time before I received your donation. At the time, I didn’t know if I would stay alive long enough to even have this chance to write to you. Through your tragic loss, I received an incredible gift, a second chance at life, and want to thank you and your family. I hope that you find comfort in knowing what the heart and lungs of your loved one have provided for me — since the transplant I have gained great strength and can now breathe well enough to walk and to climb a flight of stairs. I was able to return to school and finish my undergraduate degree — it is my hope to continue my education and become a social worker or perhaps a poet. And the big news, I am engaged to be married. For years I have been in love with a wonderful man, but I did not feel able to accept his proposal until I knew there was a chance we might be able to build a long life together. And more recently I have been able to travel, we went to California. It was amazing. Anyway, part of my reason for writing is to say that if you are open to the idea I would very much like to meet you and thank you in person. I know that this is a difficult thing — but it is my hope that seeing the opportunity and joy you have given me will give you some comfort in dealing with the loss of your loved one. I look forward to hearing from you.

Avery

I read the letter and I can’t help but cry. I cry for Avery, for Jane, for Ashley and Nate and Ricardo. I cry for everyone. And then I stop. I stop because Cy and Madeline are waiting for me to take them somewhere, Tessie wants her lunch, and the children will be home from camp in a few days and there are things to do. I put the letter away.

The children return, stronger and more confident than before. Ricardo arrives wearing medals for swimming, archery, boating. He is golden brown, slimmer, taller, with a golf swing and a tennis serve, and he is on no medications, instead a regimen of activity plus amino acids and some kind of fish-oil swirl that he says tastes like melted ice cream — I try it and almost vomit. Ashley has breasts that I swear weren’t there four weeks ago. She’s a funny mix, part girl, part woman, and painfully self-conscious. And on Nate’s upper lip there’s an unmistakable dark fuzz, and depth to his voice. They are filled with stories of friendships, adventures, and secret languages, the high of the South Africa trip extended through their time at camp, and I see not only growth but a new kind of thinking — things are possible.

Ricardo presents me with a wallet he made for me, pieces of leather whip-stitched together, my initials hand-tooled on the front. Ashley has constructed a shadow box that looks like a TV with a small painted portrait of her mother on the screen. Nate brings remains of animals he found in the woods around his camp — the skull of a squirrel, the skin of a snake — and a dozen owl pellets, which he cracks open, showing us how to identify what animal the owl has eaten.

There are only two weekends left before school starts. I gather the children and tell them about Avery.

“Would you like to meet her?”

“Yes,” they say unequivocally.

“So,” Ashley asks, pushing for further clarification, “is she like a new mom?”

“No,” I say.

“A stepmom?” she tries again.

“Not so much.”

“A transplant mom?”

“How about she’s just a lady from Ohio,” Nate says. “She’s not related to us.”

“But she has Mom’s heart and lungs — don’t you think that changes who she is? I mean, now she’s more like Mom than anyone, except us.”

Nate shrugs. “You know what, Ashley? She can be whatever you want her to be.”

“Thanks,” Ashley says.

I explain it to the children, and then I try and explain it to Cy and Madeline, who don’t quite follow — the best they can manage is to understand that this woman, Avery, was bequeathed something precious that used to belong to Jane.

Cy seems nervous. “I just sold the insurances,” he says repeatedly. “I didn’t deal with technicalities. When they died, they didn’t usually come back. Isn’t this more of a trusts-and-estates issue?”

“She’s just coming to say thank you,” I say.

“Why didn’t my mother get to give her organs away?” Ricardo asks me privately that evening. “Is that something only rich white people can do?”

“No,” I say, “anyone can do it — but you have to plan ahead, and you have to die in a way that preserves your organs, so they are viable.”

“What does ‘viable’ mean?”

“Your mother died on the scene after a car accident; Jane died in a hospital, where they could keep giving her body oxygen, making sure her organs stayed healthy, and then they removed them as quickly as possible.”

“Do you have to be dead to give your organs?” Ricardo asks.

“Usually,” I say. “There are certain organs that you have two of, like your kidneys, that you can give even if you’re alive.”

“I want to give an organ,” Ricardo says.

I nod. “That’s a lovely idea,” I say. “But you can’t give any organs away until you’re a grown-up.”

“Fine,” he says, “but as soon as I’m grown-up, I’m giving it all away.”

On Saturday at noon, we meet Avery and her fiancé, at the hamburger pub in town. It’s a place George used to like to go, because they knew him and always seated him so he could see both of the TVs simultaneously. I’ve always hated it, because it seemed to be the place where miserable husbands went when they ran away from home — even if only for an hour — to soak themselves in the comfort of other bastards and beer.

Avery and Mark, her fiancé, are already there; I see them nervously pawing through the crème mints by the register when we walk in.

She is small, with short close-cropped hair, like a Jean Seberg or Mia Farrow.

“You must be Avery,” I say as we approach.

“Wow,” she says. “Look how many of you there are.”

“I’m Ashley,” Ashley says, extending her hand.

“Nate,” Nate says, hanging back, just giving a wave.

“Ricardo,” he says, shaking hands with both Avery and Mark.

I introduce Cy and Madeline and suggest that we take a table.

“This feels good,” she says, “very familiar. It’s almost like I’ve been here before.”

“It’s a hamburger joint,” Mark says. “They’re pretty much all the same.”

“I like this one,” Avery says.

When the waitress takes our order, Avery asks for a burger well done, and Ashley comments that that’s the way her mother used to like them too. Avery smiles.

“So how come you needed the transplant — is that an okay question to ask?” Nate wants to know. “I mean, it’s fine if you don’t want to answer, if it’s too personal.”

“It’s fine,” Avery says. “I have a congenital syndrome. It got worse when I became a teenager. I couldn’t go out in the summer because I wasn’t supposed to sweat; I couldn’t do any sports, no salt, lots of diuretics, Lasix, Digoxin, iron, vitamins. Sudden death was always a threat. I would leave the house in the morning and wonder if I’d be coming back. That’s when I started writing poems,” she says. “I wrote poems to manage the stress. I even wrote one about coming here today.”

Our drinks arrive. Ricardo breaks the ice by shooting the paper wrap from his straw across the table at Mark.

“With the transplant,” Nate continues, “do they give you a choice of who it’s going to come from? Like, you can get it from this woman or that guy, or …?”

She shakes her head. “There’s a very long waiting list for organs. You wait and you wait, and then the doctors have to think it’s a good match, and, funny enough, women don’t do well with men’s hearts.”