A Hope for Emily

Still, it’s sunny now as head towards Newton, the sky a fragile blue, the air balmy. Jake bounces in his seat, kicking his legs against the back of Andrew’s, and laughingly he tells his son to settle down. There’s so much love in his voice, so much easy affection, that it makes my eyes sting. This afternoon is going to be harder than I thought.

I’ve never been to Wellington Park, even though I grew up a town away, and my spirits lift a little as we park on the road and head towards the playground in an oasis of green planted in a residential neighborhood.

“Apparently a group of volunteers tend the garden,” Andrew tells me, with a nod towards the neatly-tended herbaceous borders. Jake starts running towards the swings, clambering on one with adorable effort.

“He’s only just moved into the big boy swings,” Andrew says. “I’m teaching him how to pump his legs.”

“Always a tricky one.” I’d only just been teaching Emily to pump when she fell sick. She never really learned how. But I don’t want to think about Emily now, at least not in that way. She’ll always be in my thoughts; she’s practically here with me, and yet I don’t want to keep thinking I never got to do that. Emily missed this.

Instead, I want to think about what she could do, what she might be able to do if I take her to Italy, if the nerve stimulation works. Maybe she won’t be able to pump her legs, but she might be able to sit in a swing again. She might tilt her head back and laugh for joy, like Jake is doing now, as Andrew sends him flying high, running underneath the swing as it soars up, making his son squeal with delight.

I amble over to a bench to watch them, and curious to see what has happened, I load Emily’s page on my phone. A ripple of shock goes through me when I see there have already been eleven page views, and it’s only been an hour or two. I slip my phone in my pocket and tilt my face to the sun, determined to enjoy the day.

Jake scrambles off the swing a little while later and makes his way to the sandbox, which is thoughtfully scattered with communal toys—a plastic truck, a battered bucket and spade. Andrew joins me on the bench.

“This should tire him out,” he says with satisfaction.

“And he’ll sleep well tonight.”

“Was Emily a good sleeper?” Andrew asks. “I mean, as a baby?” I must look startled, because he adds, “Sorry, I don’t know if you want to talk about her or not. Tell me to shut up if you need to. It’s just… I know what it’s like when people tiptoe around a subject, and you just want them to ask about it.”

“Not really,” I say after a moment, when I’ve absorbed everything he’s said. “She wasn’t a particularly good sleeper. She was colicky when she was a newborn, and then she used to sleep very lightly. We used to not even flush the upstairs toilet after she’d gone to bed.” I give a little laugh at the memory, one I’d forgotten.

“Jake was like that too. You’d tiptoe out of his room, holding your breath, praying he was asleep for good this time, and then the floor would creak or something and his head would pop right up. I remember once I had just laid him down in the crib when my phone went off with a text. Ping! It took another hour to settle him.”

“Rookie mistake,” I tell him with a smile. Surprisingly, this doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it might. “Bringing your phone in while you were rocking him. Classic newbie error.”

“I know, I know.” Andrew shakes his head, smiling. “What was I thinking?”

I glance back at Jake, who is industriously filling a bucket with sand. “What about you, Andrew? What is it you want people to ask you about?”

“Oh, um.” He lets out an uncertain laugh as he scratches his chin. “Christina, I suppose. No one wants to talk about her. They act as if she’s dead, but she isn’t.”

“Does she see Jake at all?”

“She keeps saying she will, but I’m not so sure. She hasn’t yet, and it’s been six months.” He sighs. “I always knew she was a free spirit. That was one of the things I loved about her. She was so full of joy—dancing in the kitchen, deciding we should wake Jake up and get ice cream at nine o’clock at night, because it was so beautiful out.” He slides me an apologetic look. “I know that could sound like bad parenting, but—”

I shake my head. “I’m no judge.”

“Well, she was a lot of fun, and Jake and I both adored her. But when he was three or so, she started to get restless. I pretended to ignore it for a while. And then when I couldn’t ignore it anymore, when she was leaving Jake with babysitters every day and coming back later and later, I encouraged her to get a job. Retrain, if she wanted. She’d worked as a physical therapist but she said she didn’t want to go back to that. That’s when I suggested the yoga retreat.” He sighs heavily as he leans back against the bench, his features drooping with the memory of it.

I touch his hand lightly, just as he touched mine earlier. His skin is warm, and his hand moves under mine, a little twitch. The contact feels strange, and far more important than it should. I realize besides my mother’s hugs, I haven’t been touched by another human being in a very long time.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “It all sounds incredibly difficult.”

“Yes.” He shoots me a look of grateful understanding. “It is, mainly for Jake, because of course he doesn’t understand. Not that I do, really, but for him… he kept asking when she’d come back, and that broke my heart. And then he stopped asking, and that broke my heart even more.”

“Yes.” I can understand that. I remember two years ago, when we thought Emily might have epilepsy, how terrified I was, breaking down in tears, not wanting it to be real, praying for it to be something else. And then later, thinking almost savagely, why couldn’t it have been epilepsy?

“Maybe Christina will come home one day,” Andrew says on a sigh. “It’s only been a little over five months.”

“Yet I bet it feels like forever.” Emily has been in a state of unresponsive wakefulness for nearly that long, and yes, it feels like an age. And yet at the same it feels like no time at all.

We lapse into silence, and like a nervous reflex, I check my phone. Sixteen views. Andrew glances over and I show him. “Who do you think is looking at the page?” I ask.

“Could be anyone. Maybe some people who have pages themselves. Do you belong to any support groups?”

“Yes, on Facebook, but I’m not very involved. It just feels a bit overwhelming sometimes.” But it occurs to me as I sit there in the sunshine, that perhaps I’ve chosen to isolate myself all this time.