She gave up her life for me. That was how it felt, although in another sense you could say I gave up my life for me. Some sort of better me. And Monica was almost irrelevant, just a vehicle, you could also say-but then again, trying to save her was the very thing that had restored me to myself, that act. Wasn’t it?
So confusing. Hettie might be right-these tears were just from stress.
No, they were for Sonoma. When she drowned, I lost the best of myself. But I would spend the rest of my life trying to find her again. In me.
Sam saw me before I saw him. Hettie was raising the bed and punching up the pillows when I heard a sound and looked behind her. He stood in the doorway with his arms held out a little from his sides, knees flexed. His face looked tender and dumbstruck, his body poised as if to fly.
“Hey,” said Hettie with a huge smile. “Well, I’ll just finish this up later, won’t I?” I bet she was Sam’s favorite nurse, too. “They’re getting set up to do a lot of tests, so this visit will have to be quick. Plenty of time later, though. Plenty of time.”
She hugged Sam on her way out, but I’m not sure he noticed. He didn’t seem to be able to move. Even when I held out my hand, he only came a step closer. It took my voice to uproot him.
“It’s me, Sam. I’m back. I’ve come back to you.”
Then I had him, tight in my arms, holding me, warm and breathing and alive. My Sam. Both of us laughing, crying, saying, “Thank God,” and “I love you,” and “I missed you,” and things that made sense only to us. We started to kiss everywhere, as if welcoming each other back in pieces. Then we rested, just holding on and breathing together. Then we kissed again.
“Benny?” I said, and Sam said, “He’s here.” And there he was, shy as a fawn, holding Hettie’s hand in the door. But unlike his dad, he came to me on his own.
“Hi, Mom,” he said, comically matter-of-fact; I thought he might shake hands. But something, maybe my tears and gluey-voiced “Oh, Benny!” cracked his bashful shell, and he landed beside me in a bound, all arms and nuzzling head and sharp shoulders. Just under my joy and the intense need to hold him closer, tighter, an odd thought drifted: I can’t smell him. Even when I buried my nose in his hair, I couldn’t completely get that smoky-sweet scent I loved so much. Oh, well. I had Benny.
“You woke up! I knew you would. Daddy said and said, and at first I thought you might not, but then I knew you would.”
“That was clever of you.”
“What were you doing? What were you thinking?”
“Umm…”
“Where were you? Did you know when I was here? I came a lot.”
“I did know. Sometimes, anyway.”
“But you couldn’t wake up until now?”
“Not till now.”
“Because it was hard.”
“It was so hard.”
“And your head hurt.”
“Well, at first. But then it didn’t, and I was just sleeping.”
“Could you hear us talking? We did. We talked all the time. Dad… Dad, mostly. Sometimes, Mommy.” He mumbled this against my neck. “Sometimes… I just played.”
“Oh, but that’s okay-I always knew you were here. I wanted you to just play.”
Exactly the right thing to say, because Benny heaved the deepest sigh and laid his head on my chest, his relief heavy as a winter blanket.
Sam was kissing my hand, each of my fingers. “You’re still wet,” I noticed, patting his damp sleeve. His lifted brows told me he thought that was an odd sentence construction. That was the moment it first hit me: I have a strange story to tell. And this probably wasn’t the time to tell it.
“That’s because we’ve had a bit of an adventure,” Sam began. “We-”
“We went on a picnic and Monica almost drowned! But Dad got her in time and she’s okay, and she’s in the lounge with Justin and Ethan. They came with us, but they have to go back and get all our stuff because it’s still there, because we didn’t pick anything up. We just ran! Daddy speeded.”
Sam and I smiled at each other, and I felt the world shift a fraction. Go back to normal. I was definitely home.
I stroked Benny’s dear, bumpy back, comforting him. Lovely for him to get his mom back, sure, but how terribly, terribly sad to lose his dog. “We’ll get another one, sweetheart,” was on the tip of my tongue when he suddenly sat up straight and said, “Mom! We got a dog!”
“Oh, baby, I’m so-”
“She’s a girl- Sonoma -she’s really good, and smart, she can shake hands and open doors and everything. We ran over her! But then we saved her and now she’s ours. You’ll like her, Mom, she’s really, really good.”
I looked at Sam in alarm. Didn’t Benny know?
Sam made a wry face. “Well, I don’t know how good she is, but she’s definitely our dog. She’s out in the car. Maybe they’ll let you see her later, tomorrow or-”
“ Sonoma ’s in the car? Sonoma is here?”
“Yeah.” Sam looked at me strangely again. “She’s a mess right now, though, been in the river, got some scrapes and bruises-”
“Monica said she saved her! Monica said she jumped in and got her by the shirt! Then she almost drowned, but she ended up on a rock and now she’s okay except a bump on her head. Monica said we should take her to the vet.”
“Don’t spay her,” I said. In case I wasn’t home by Tuesday.
They both looked at me strangely.
“I mean, if you were going to, you know. Just hold off till we talk about it, is all. ’Kay?”
“Sure,” said Sam. He looked bewildered. “No problem.”
“So we can keep her?” Benny asked in a very soft voice, also garbled because of the two fingers he had in his mouth. As if he didn’t really want me to hear. As if no answer would equal permission.
The fact that he was worried at all just killed me. “Hey, are you kidding? Of course we can keep her. She’s our dog.”
At least.
I couldn’t wait to meet her.
After
“Crap!” Sam makes a graceful grab for his jack of spades, but the river is too swift. The card floats away before he can catch it.
“I was wondering when that would happen,” I rouse myself to say. He’s been doing flawless fancy shuffling for five minutes straight. Something had to give.
“You said crap.”
“I was provoked.”
“Crap, crap, crap, crap-”
“Benny. Stifle.”
My son cackles and goes back to pitching a rubber ball to Sonoma in the shallows. Underhand lobs, up high and right into her mouth. Being in the river was supposed to add a new layer of difficulty, but they perfected this game a long time ago.
So here we are, back where we started. Looking at us, if you didn’t know, you’d think we were the same Summer family as before, just a year older and with a dog. You’d be right, except for all the ways in which you’d be wrong.
“What time are they coming tomorrow?” Sam asks, stashing his deck of cards in his pocket.
“Two-i sh. Which means two on the dot,” I say in the middle of a wide-m outhed yawn. Time for my nap. I love naps.
That’s a difference-old Laurie would’ve suspected some horrible health crisis if she’d ever wanted anything so pointless and wasteful as a nap.
Another difference is my friendship with Miss Punctuality: Monica Carr. She and the twins are coming down to the cabin for the afternoon tomorrow. Sam will take the boys fishing or hiking while Monica and I sit in chairs in the river-like now-and talk and talk, and then we’ll all go in and eat whatever delicious but healthful meal she’s prepared ahead and brought down with her. I won’t feel an ounce of resentment. I’ll notice all the ways in which she’s a better mother, friend, and general human being than I am, but instead of feeling cynical or superior, I’ll just be grateful. That she likes me as much as I like her.
She’ll probably bring her new camera and take lots of pictures. She never told old Laurie her secret ambition was to be a nature photographer-Why would she? I wouldn’t have been interested anyway-but she was afraid to try. What if she wasn’t any good? she worried. What if it took too much time away from Justin and Ethan? What if it was impractical or, horrors, selfish?