(Her father always said here, “And for all that, your mother was another eleven hours in labor, so what was the rush? She could have walked to the hospital, and I could have gotten the ride in the pickup truck. I was the one who had hit my head on the steering wheel and cut my forehead. I was the one who had a cracked rib, although we didn’t know it at the time.” Of course, he could say these things, because everyone in the Patel family knew that Vikram Patel could have been dying in a ditch and he would have insisted that the gatehouse keeper take care of his wife first.)
Many years later the road to Sheppard Pratt was redone, at great expense, so instead of going through the gatehouse, the road now swept to the side. It was an article of faith in the Patel family that Josie’s birth had led, at least indirectly, to that bit of reconstruction. My road, Josie always thought when she passed it. Eight years later, then ten years later, her younger brothers had been born at GBMC, but far less dramatically.
Meanwhile Josie had been in GBMC several times since then-she was something of a regular in the ER because of her physical fearlessness-but this was her first overnight stay. Her parents had explained that the doctor wanted to keep her here for observation, but Josie hadn’t felt observed so much as guarded. She had been given a sedative, but she vaguely remembered someone coming to the door and being turned away, on the grounds that she just couldn’t speak right now. Part of her had wanted to call out, groggy as she was, and part of her had been glad to fall back into the dreamless sleep afforded by the pill.
Now here she was, at 2:00 A.M., wide awake. What were the rules? Was she allowed to ring for water? Turn on the television, or even the light, or was there someone on the other side of the curtain? Would they bring her a bedpan if she had to pee? Oh, God, she would rather hold it all night than pee in some basin, a nurse standing by. She had been allowed to limp to the bathroom throughout the afternoon, a nurse or parent supporting her. How bad was her foot anyway? It felt funny-throbbing and fiery, with a pins-and-needles sensation.
And then she realized her father was sitting in a chair in the corner, his chin resting on his chest, his bald spot staring at her. A few strands of hair, so much darker and glossier than her own, clung to his skin, but most of it had fallen back to the side from which it had been coaxed so painstakingly. Her father’s comb-over was a source of great embarrassment to Josie, but her mother had forbidden her to tease him about it. “You can say all the hateful things you want about my appearance,” her mother had said, “but don’t you dare pick on your father. He works so hard.”
He works so hard. Her mother was always saying that, as if it should have some special significance to Josie. He works so hard. Translation: You and your brothers need too much. You can’t imagine how hard it is to commute. Translation: We moved out here just for you. The strange thing was, Josie’s mom worked hard, too, with virtually the same commute, but she sought no sympathy for herself. Josie was left with the sense that her mother was happy to make the sacrifices that children required, but her father had surrendered something infinitely more precious.
What, exactly? What else could her father have wanted from life? Here he was, asleep in front of her, murmuring, literally dreaming. Yet Josie could not imagine her father’s dreams. For all her mother’s complaints, he had a job he genuinely liked at Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, pretty much nirvana for a onetime math nerd. (He wrote code. At least that’s what Josie thought her father did. She had always been a little vague on the details, even after going to the office with him on Take Your Daughters to Work Day, where the one thing that kept Josie’s interest was the tray of doughnuts. She was only eleven.) He adored Josie’s mother to a degree that was almost embarrassing, and he was just as affectionate with his children. If she had to guess, Josie would say her father was happy, although she didn’t know why.
Josie’s father had been a musician in college, playing guitar in a band. That was how her parents met, at a keg party in the middle of a field at Grinnell College. “His band was terrible, just terrible,” her mother said. “Although they did a very good punk version of ‘ Pleasant Valley Sunday.’” Her father still had a guitar and played in the garage on the rare weekends when there was nothing else to do. He wasn’t very good. Josie could recognize the chords he picked out only because some Glendale guys listened to a lot of vintage music-the Clash, the Rolling Stones, that sort of thing. Every now and then, her father would start plucking out the derder opening of what Josie’s mother called his signature song, and her mother would abandon whatever she was doing and go out into the garage and dance to the Monkees’ idea of what was subversive, all those years ago-to Josie’s utter embarrassment, although her brothers were still young enough to think it was funny. There was something so…well, teenage about her parents’ devotion to each other. Her mother especially reminded her of the Glendale girls who went steady with the same boys all four years. Although, come to think of it, those girls always looked grim and exhausted, while Josie’s mom beamed as if she still couldn’t believe that Susie Cobb from Janesville, Wisconsin, had landed worldly Vik Patel, the math whiz who played in a band, tossing his then full, dark hair back from his face, smiling his brilliant smile, so white in contrast to his walnut-colored skin.
“I couldn’t believe someone so worldly was interested in me,” her mother always said. Josie, who had learned the word “uxorious” when studying for the SATs, asked her English teacher if there was a corresponding word for a woman who worshipped her husband. Mrs. Billings had shrugged. “I guess it was assumed that wives were supposed to be that way about their husbands, that it was the natural order of things.” So sexist, Perri had pointed out.
But being goony in love with your spouse clearly wasn’t the natural order, not based on what Josie saw around her in Glendale. Perri’s folks were nice enough, but hardly romantic. Mrs. Kahn did that humorous, put-upon thing, claiming that Dr. Kahn was terrible to her, but it was clearly all for show. As for Kat’s parents-they had always been a little snappish with each other, even before the divorce. Kat may have been shocked when her parents broke up, but Josie and Perri had seen it coming from a long way off. Josie had always been keen to escape the Hartigan house, despite its wealth of toys and gadgets, making a beeline for the patch of trees and the old creek at the far end of the Hartigans’ property. Yes, Kat had the coolest house but the worst parents. Josie had the worst house, and her parents were a close second to Perri’s. Perri had the second-best house and the best parents, because they simply never got mad. Perri could do no wrong as far as her parents were concerned, although they did have very high standards in terms of effort. The only time that Perri had gotten in trouble for a report card was when she had gotten a 2 in effort.
But it was wrong, keeping score, now that Kat was dead. Dead for no reason. How could this have happened? Perri was crazy, an actual lunatic. Had she always been this way? Not when they were little, of course. No one’s insane in the third grade, except for serial killers, the boys who blow up cats and set dogs on fire. It was only in the past year that Perri had gotten so weird, and every-one-Josie included-had chalked that up to her obvious jealousy of Kat.