When He Fell
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Juliet took me under her wing that first day; she told me about cabbage leaves for sore boobs—I just smiled, since Ben was firmly on the bottle by then—and how it was okay to still be wearing maternity jeans. “The fourth trimester,” she said cheerfully. She looked beautiful with her long, curly golden-brown hair, her generous, unapologetic figure, her expensive yet careless clothes. She basked in motherhood, reveled in it, while I sat there clutching Ben as if he was a stick of dynamite that had been super-glued to my fingers.
Juliet has guided me through the choppy waters of motherhood ever since then, always offering me the latest advice on healthy snacks and limiting screen time and intelligent play; I don’t really take any of it on board but I appreciate her earnestness. She popped out two more babies while I struggled alone with Ben, and I watched from afar as she took her growing brood on holidays to Florida and the south of France. I was never jealous, or at least not that jealous. Our lives were too far apart for me to envy her penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, or the succession of au pairs, nannies, and aides that paraded through her household ‘just to give her a little help’, or even her silver-haired hedge fund manager husband Bruce, who worked fourteen-hour days and still was a doting dad.
No, I didn’t envy her any of that, at least not more than was natural, because I knew if I let myself I’d drown in a sea of jealousy. I’d destroy myself by wanting what I knew I could never have, and I’m smart enough—mostly—to keep myself from that toxic cycle.
But I still wish now that she’d called me. It makes me wonder why she didn’t, and then it occurs to me that no one from Burgdorf has called me. Ben has been a student there for three years, since first grade, and not one person has reached out. Not even Mrs. James, who knows I’m here. The insensitivity of it, for a school that prides itself on being so caring, burns. Don’t any of them care about me, about Ben?
Ben. Just this morning he was bouncing around the apartment, kicking his soccer ball against the doorway even though it annoys my neighbor on the left, a single woman with a boyfriend I suspect is married to someone else. I know the signs.
I yelled at him for kicking his soccer ball, and as I bolted a cup of coffee and stuffed a browning banana into his lunchbox, I relented and let him go on his DS for five minutes before we left for school. I am always relenting.
Did we talk on the way to school? I search my memory, trying to conjure up some meaningful conversation when in my heart I know there wasn’t one. I might have scolded Ben, told him to slow down or keep up or not to jump up and try to touch the tops of the street signs because someone knew someone who lost a finger that way. But we didn’t talk. Sometimes I wonder if we ever do.
And when he went into school? I try to picture the moment; me standing on the sidewalk on Fifty-Fourth Street, not even hiding the fact that I am checking my phone, that I am worried about getting to work on time.
Did I watch Ben go in through the double doors? Burgdorf is in an old office building in midtown but they’ve tried to make it look more child-friendly. They painted the doors bright blue and they hung a banner outside, with the school’s logo: three blue interconnecting circles that symbolize heart, hand, and mind.
As I search my memory now I acknowledge the hard truth: I didn’t watch him go through the doors. I didn’t even wave goodbye. I have a horrible feeling that I was already turning around, walking in the other direction before he’d even gone inside.
The night stretches on and Ben starts to storm again; Dr. Stein tells me this but advises me not to look in the window. I swallow hard, because I don’t want to imagine what my son is doing that I shouldn’t witness, and yet I do. Of course I do.
Sometime around dawn they settle him again and I finally get an update. If Ben can remain stable today, without any more storming episodes, they will transfer him to the neurology department tomorrow morning. Next they will see if he can breathe without the ventilator and then, in a few days, ‘all things going well’, they will attempt to take him out of the induced coma. That’s the best case scenario.
“And then,” Dr. Stein says, “we’ll begin to assess how much trauma his brain has sustained.”
Which is something I’m desperately afraid to discover. Dr. Stein briefly lays a hand on my shoulder.
“This might be a good time to recharge yourself,” he says. “Get a cup of coffee or better yet, a meal. Go home for a few hours.”
I blink at him in near-incomprehension. Go home? But then I nod, because I can’t live at the hospital and I have a feeling I stink.
I emerge onto Fifty-Eighth Street at seven o’clock in the morning; it is a bright, crisp autumn day and Manhattan is stirring all around me as people climb into cabs or walk briskly down sidewalks to work. I see people with trench coats and brief cases and smart phones, Starbucks cups and wax paper-wrapped bagels in hand, everyone busy, busy, busy, and I marvel that just twenty-four hours ago I was like them, and I was annoyed. I didn’t even realize how easy my life had been. And I’m afraid I still don’t know how hard it’s going to get.
Even though it’s only a dozen blocks I take a cab to my apartment building on Tenth Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street as I’m way too tired to walk. I live in a modern building of box-like apartments in Hell’s Kitchen, all aimed at the young upwardly mobile corporate types, which was what I was when I rented my one-bedroom eleven years ago; I’d just been given a promotion at Alwin to Sales Associate and I was thrilled to move out of the tiny walkup I was sharing with a woman I’d met on my training course.
Since Ben’s birth I’ve toyed with the idea of moving; the building and neighborhood are not very child-friendly. But moving costs money. Getting a decent apartment in Manhattan requires a broker’s fee, which runs to thousands of dollars. And there’s the actual cost of moving, not to mention the exhausting process of searching for a place, applying to rent it, and getting through all the checks…
Renting in Manhattan is not for the faint of heart, and buying’s even worse. Not that I’ve ever had the money even to think of buying. And so I’ve stayed where I am; about five years ago I hired someone to build a wall across the dining alcove to make a bedroom for Ben. Before that I’d stacked bookcases to make it more private, but the light from the living area still filtered in and Ben’s always had trouble sleeping. The wall has helped, even though it turns the living area into a windowless cave.
People are hurrying out of the building as I come in, everyone moving quickly to get to work and no one meeting my eye. Not that anyone does; it’s not that kind of building. The doorman murmurs a greeting—there are over a dozen doormen on rotation and none of them know my name—and I move past him slowly. My feet feel like cement blocks.
Upstairs my hall is quiet; everyone has already gone to work. I unlock my door and step into my apartment’s tiny foyer. The first thing I see is Ben’s soccer ball, kicked into a corner before we left, and an unruly sob escapes me before I can bite it back.
I toss my keys onto the table and press a fist to my lips, willing the other sobs back. I’m afraid if I let them out I’ll never stop crying. I’ll fall apart completely, and I don’t have the luxury of that now.
I move through the apartment, stripping off my filthy clothes, and then step into a scaldingly hot shower. I let myself cry a little bit in the shower, as if the streaming water can hide the tears from myself. They slip down my cheeks as my shoulders shake and my mouth forms a silent scream. I wonder how much emotional pain a person can endure, can hold. I feel as if it is spilling out of me, and I crave the comfort of another person, anyone to help me carry this burden.
But there’s no one.
After my shower I dress and then gather some things together for the hospital. I have no idea how long I’ll be staying, or how often I’ll be able to come back here. I pack some basic toiletries and a few changes of clothes; it’s only when I see the red light blinking angrily on the answering machine, like an accusing eye, that I remember I walked out of work yesterday and haven’t so much as sent a text as to where I went or why.
With my heart thudding sickly, I scroll through half a dozen missed calls and texts from my boss on my cell that I hadn’t even opened yesterday. I dial my boss Elena’s cell. She answers on the first ring, her voice a screech in my ear.
“Madeleine, where the hell have you been?”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Elena—”
“Did you remember the meeting we had with the Boston reps yesterday afternoon? The presentation on dapaglifozin you were meant to give?”
I remember now; I had a PowerPoint presentation on a new medication for diabetics that had just been approved by the FDA. It was a big deal, and yet now it means less than nothing to me. It’s all so trivial, so meaningless. Jobs. Work. Money. But no, I need money.
“Elena, listen,” I interrupt, and she sucks in an aggrieved breath. “My son Ben had an accident at school. A…serious accident. I went to the hospital yesterday as soon as I’d heard, and…” I can’t make myself continue.
“And?” Elena asks in ringing tones, clearly unconvinced by my little sob story.
“He’s suffered a traumatic brain injury,” I say, the words squeezed out of my too-tight throat. “They’re not…they’re not sure if he’s going to…” I stop. Elena lets out a huff of breath.
“Maddie?”
“Live,” I finish, and there is nothing but silence.
Ten minutes later Elena has granted me indefinite compassionate leave; she informs me rather gruffly that I will have to consult HR regarding the current policy of payment.
“I still have ten days’ annual leave,” I say. I know Alwin doesn’t grant compassionate leave until you’ve used up all your vacation days.
“Maybe you’ll be back by then,” Elena says. I almost want to laugh. I know she means it as an encouragement, but even I am realistic enough now to know I won’t be back after ten days.
Will I? The truth is I have no idea what situation I’ll be in, in ten days. What situation Ben will be in. And I feel too tired and alone to hope.
As I’m getting in the elevator, my phone buzzes with a text message. My heart lifts and then crashes again when I see it’s from Lewis: I need to cancel this afternoon.
Josh and Ben were going to get together, I recall. Lewis and I had talked about taking them bowling downtown, after I got off work. That was before, of course. Before Ben’s fall. Before I messed things up with Lewis.
Before everything changed.
4 JOANNA
That night I don’t sleep well, because I’m worried about Josh. I don’t bother Lewis with my concerns; I tell myself I’m overreacting.
“Just let him be, Jo,” he’d say, if I mentioned Josh’s withdrawn silence again. And so I don’t. I tidy the kitchen a little more and I pack Josh’s lunch for tomorrow and leave it in the fridge. Lewis finishes his paperwork and then stretches out on the sofa to watch the news while I get ready for bed.
At eleven I slip into Josh’s room to check on him. He is asleep, curled on his side in the fetal position, and when I bend closer I can see the streaks of dried tears on his cheeks that are still smooth and soft as a baby’s. I draw a quick, horrified breath at the thought of my child crying alone in the dark. I touch his head; his hair is soft beneath my fingers.
Then I tiptoe out and go into our bedroom; Lewis is stripping down to his boxer shorts but even the sight of his well-muscled body, a body that takes my breath away even after twelve years of marriage, does not distract me.
“Josh’s been crying,” I say quietly. Lewis glances at me, eyebrows raised.
“How do you know? He’s asleep, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but I could tell he’d been crying. I could see the tears dried on his cheeks.” A lump forms in my throat and I swallow hard. “Something’s really wrong, Lewis.”
“Okay.” Lewis sits on the edge of the bed to take off his socks. “Something’s bothering him, obviously. We can talk to him in the morning.” He glances up at me. “But you know if he wanted to tell us, Jo, he would.”
“You know Josh isn’t like that.”
Lewis sighs. “You know it too, and yet you keep pushing him. He’s not going to talk if he doesn’t want to.”
“He’s nine years old, Lewis. He doesn’t have the necessary tools to talk about his feelings.”
“I don’t know what else we can do besides ask him in the morning.”
I don’t either. I wish there was something more, something I could be sure of. When it comes to your children, you never know when you’re getting it right, and I am constantly terrified that I am getting it wrong.
Maybe Lewis’s let-them-be hard knocks school of philosophy is better for your kids, I think as I slip under the covers. Maybe I’ve mothered Josh too much; maybe I’m smothering him.
I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, my stomach knotted with anxiety.
I turn on my side and tuck my knees up to my chest like Josh had. Eventually I fall into a doze, only to waken a little when Lewis pulls me towards him and fits me snugly against the warm wall of his chest.
He strokes my hair gently, his palm cradling my cheek. “It’ll be okay, Jo,” he whispers, and finally I relax into a deeper sleep.
The next morning Josh is silent and a bit morose, and I react by being almost manically upbeat, as if I can jolly him into a good mood by sheer force of will. I push back my morning appointments so I can take him to school, and I make scrambled eggs and toast instead of the usual low-sugar cereal and fruit for breakfast. I even allow him a cup of hot chocolate, an unimaginable treat. He only drinks half of it.
Lewis comes in as Josh is cutting his untouched toast into even pieces.
“Hey, buddy,” he says lightly, resting a hand on Josh’s shoulder. I see Josh tense, and he gives Lewis a quick, searching look that I don’t understand. “How are you doing this morning?”
“Fine.”
“Do you mind if we go bowling another day?” Lewis asks, and Josh stares at him unblinkingly. I frown.
“Bowling…?”
“I was going to take Ben and Josh bowling,” Lewis explains. “After school. But I’ve got an appointment uptown.” He glances at Josh whose expression has not changed. I cannot read it at all. “That okay?”
“Yeah.” The word is barely audible.
“Everything’s okay with Ben, isn’t it?” Lewis asks, his voice deliberately light. “You guys haven’t argued or anything?”
Josh’s eyes widen and I see his hands clench on his knife and fork. “No,” he says after a moment, but I feel as if he is hiding something. But why would Lewis think Josh and Ben had argued? Is that why he canceled their plans? What does he know that I don’t?
I feel like I’ve missed a scene in a movie, as if someone pressed fast forward without telling me.
Josh rises from the table. “I’m going to go brush my teeth.”
After he’s left, I turn to Lewis. “What was that about?”
Lewis takes a sip of coffee, shrugging. “What do you mean?”
“Why do you think Josh and Ben have argued?”
“I thought that might have been what made Josh upset.”
“But they don’t argue usually, do they?” In that moment I realize how little I know about Josh and Ben’s friendship. Lewis is the one who handles the play dates, who picks the boys up from school. I’ve never considered just how ignorant I am about the details. I’ve just been happy that Josh has a friend.
“Not often,” Lewis says, and reaches for the newspaper. “But I thought it might be a possibility. In any case,” he adds as he snaps the paper open, “Josh will tell us in time. We’ve just got to be patient.”
Josh comes back into the room and so I don’t press Lewis. Instead I smile and ruffle Josh’s hair. For once he doesn’t duck away from my hand; instead he leans a little into me, and my heart melts and yearns with mother love.
“Ready for school?” I ask, and he nods.
Lewis heads to his workshop uptown while Josh and I wait for the subway on Ninety-Sixth Street. It is another beautiful autumn day, crisp and clear, the sky a brilliant, hard blue. In the distance the leaves on the trees in Central Park are just starting to turn. Everything dazzles.
We don’t speak on the subway; the morning commute makes conversation impossible anyway. At Seventy-Second Street Josh gets a seat and I remain looming over him, hanging onto one of the straps. We make it to Burgdorf with just two minutes to spare before the doors close; being late costs twenty dollars a pop, a fact that outrages Lewis, considering the over thirty grand price tag the school has already. So far this year we’ve paid over a hundred bucks in late fees.
I bustle Josh towards the door; parents are encouraged to stay outside so children can ‘value their independence’ and get to the classrooms by themselves. Of course, most parents ignore this rule. We Manhattan mothers are a pushy lot. I consider going into Josh’s classroom, introducing myself to Mrs. Rollins, and mentioning that I think something is bothering Josh. But then the bell rings and the doors close and I know his teacher—whom I haven’t even met yet—will be annoyed at having a parent wanting a private word when the school day has already started. Plus I have an appointment at nine.
Still I take a moment before Josh goes in to hold him by the shoulders, look into his eyes. “I love you,” I say, and Josh blinks rapidly. For a second I wonder if he is going to cry, and the thought makes me want to cry. “You know that, don’t you, Josh?” I press, my voice choking a little. “I really, really love you.”
He nods, still blinking, and then he twists out of my grasp and goes into the classroom. I turn away from Burgdorf and head downtown to my office on Forty-Second and Sixth, trying to banish my lingering fears.
Two years ago I opened my own private dental practice, after working for a larger practice uptown. In theory it was meant to give me more flexibility so I could spend more time with Josh, be there for drop offs and pick up and the sports games that have never actually materialized, because Josh hates sports. In reality operating a private practice is a ton more work. I’m responsible for everything, and the bills and maintenance costs I have to heft by myself mean I never turn away business. I rarely get home before seven at night, and I’ve even had to go in for emergency appointments on weekends since they pay the best.
Still, I enjoy my work. I went into dentistry by default; my parents, retired now, were both cardiothoracic surgeons and although they’d never said it out loud, I always knew they wanted me to go into the same field. Their disappointment in my life choices has always been conveyed by silence rather than words.
I would have gone into cardiothoracic surgery just to please them, but I couldn’t stand the intensity, and the idea that you might, quite literally, have someone’s heart in your hands made me feel sick and faint.
So I applied to dental school instead, and spent four years training to become a dentist with a specialty in periodontics at Columbia with my parents acting as if I were learning how to clean toilets. Of course, they never said that. But their silences have always been eloquent.
The surprise for me was that I actually enjoyed it. Defaults are usually disappointments, but I’ve never regretted becoming a dentist. I like being able to fix problems, and usually relatively easily. A cavity can be filled; a broken tooth can be capped.
Of course, there are the usual hassles: patients come in with an abcess or dentures or a need for multiple root canals. Sometimes there are worse problems, white spots or bumps on the gums that indicate oral cancer. I’ve had several cases where I’ve had to refer a patient to an oncologist. But at least I was there at the start. I don’t want to be the one who is there at the end.
Normally, though, my day is one of scheduled appointments, fillings and root canals and restorations, along with the cosmetic work our culture of airbrushed beauty demands. I’ve said on more than one occasion that I can see the charm in a crooked smile. In point of fact, my own teeth are not perfectly straight, but I don’t have any fillings, either.
Barbara, my receptionist, raises her eyebrows at me as I come into my small office on the second floor of a Brownstone across from Bryant Park. I’m not usually this late, and my nine o’clock is already waiting, flipping through one of the magazines in the waiting room.
“Everything okay?” Barbara asks in a murmur after I’ve greeted the patient and go back to take off my coat.
I nod. “I just wanted to take to Josh to school. He’s having a bit of a tough time.”
Barbara clucks sympathetically. She has no children, has never married, and I’ve only given her sparing details about Josh because I know she won’t understand. I don’t know if anyone will understand; so many people want to either label or fix Josh, or just leave him alone. I want none of those and all of them at the same time.
I’ve just finished my third appointment, a straightforward filling, when my cell rings. I check the screen and my heart seems to hang suspended in my chest when I see it is Burgdorf calling.
“Mrs. Taylor-Davies?” a woman asks and I clear my throat.
“Yes?”
“This is Mrs. James from The Burgdorf Institute for Committed Learning.” Mrs. James, I’ve noticed, always refers to the school by its full and rather ridiculous name.
“Yes?”
“I was hoping you and your husband might come into the school today, to talk about Joshua.”
My hand, now slippery, tightens on the phone. “Josh? Why? Is something wrong?”
A tense pause. “I don’t like to discuss these things on the telephone. Could you and Mr. Taylor-Davies come in at one-thirty?”
I glance at my watch; that’s in less than an hour. It will be difficult, but it’s obviously important and I don’t really feel like I have a choice.
“Okay,” I say, and then, my stomach knotting, I call Lewis.
“Why the hell does she want us to come in so quickly?” he demands.
“She wouldn’t say on the phone—”
“Of course she wouldn’t,” Lewis says in disgust. Lewis has never been a fan of Burgdorf and its alternative approach to education. When I first showed him the brochure, he did an Internet search on the educator whose philosophies Burgdorf is founded on, Johann Pestalozzi.
“You realize this guy was a total loser, right?” Lewis asked me as he looked up from his laptop. “He reduced his family to poverty, he tried to farm and it failed. He started a school and it failed.”
I scrabbled for the brochure, searching for the brief paragraph on Pestalozzi. “He started another school at Burgdorf Castle that was innovative for its time,” I read a bit desperately. Lewis just shook his head.
Lewis might not have liked Burgdorf but he accepted its necessity; he recognized that the intense atmosphere of Manhattan’s competitive private schools would be unbearable for Josh, and the brutal social dynamics of public school would swallow our son whole and spit him back out in seconds.
“This meeting is obviously important, Lewis,” I say quietly. “Maybe she’ll tell us what’s bothering Josh.”
“You really think she knows?” Lewis asks, but he relents. “I’ll meet you at Burgdorf.”
At one-twenty I am standing outside Burgdorf’s bright blue doors, waiting for Lewis. Tension coils tighter and tighter inside me as I scan the busy streets for his familiar figure, that easy, loping walk. I have no idea what awaits us inside the school, what Mrs. James wants to discuss with us, and why she wouldn’t mention it on the phone. Josh may be quiet, but he’s generally a good kid. He obeys his teachers, he does his homework, he doesn’t tease or bully or fight. Yet Mrs. James sounded as if he were in trouble, and considering how withdrawn Josh has been for the last two days, that doesn’t seem like an impossibility. But I hate the thought of it.