The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg Page A

Seems like any little thing—”
    “Enough,” Pete said. “She was offended by this guy’s bad manners. She’s right—he shouldn’t have cut in front of us.”
    The man turned around, belched in Pete’s face, and put his back to us again. I saw Pete waver for a moment, as did I, and then we all exploded into laughter.
    When we reached the counter, I ordered cheese curds for Caroline anyway. She’d eat them. I knew her.
    When we came outside, we saw her sitting at a picnic table piled high with other people’s litter. She was on her cell phone, frowning. She held up a hand to indicate that we should be quiet.
Busy, busy, busy,
I wanted to say to her. But when she snapped the phone shut, she said, “That was Mom. Dad’s at St. Joseph’s Hospital.”
    The image of my mother appeared, dressed in the robe she’d had on that morning, waving away my concerns about my father.
    “Do we have to leave?” Hannah asked.
    “Yes.” I took her hand and started walking quickly. Ten minutes to get to the exit, at least. Another fifteen to walk home—that would be faster than trying to get a cab through this traffic. I’d told her it was his heart and she’d said to leave him alone. I’d known it wasn’t right. I’d known it and I’d listened to her anyway.
    “Is it okay to eat my cheese curds?” Hannah whispered, and I nodded a tight yes. It would take fifteen minutes to get to the hospital, if there was no traffic.
    During the quick and silent walk home, I did not think of my father. Instead, I thought of Caroline, of all the times she’d come home from school, crying. Or come in from outside, crying. The way she would moon over a book where some horse died. The way she would go to sad movies over and over. I was so tired of her theatrics, her fragility, her deliberate forays into melancholy, her complicated secrecy—not just now but always. I worked myself into a pretty nice state of anger at her, which kept me from having to think about what my father might look like right now. I had lived this long and had only seen a dead man once. He was lying on the floor of a shopping mall, right outside the entrance to Penney’s. His face had been gray-blue, his mouth slightly open. There’d been a woman kneeling beside him who was attempting CPR, in vain. Her purse and shopping bags lay scattered about her; and one of her shoes had come loose off her heel. “He’s gone,” she’d kept saying, but then she would give him another breath and pump on his chest, counting aloud in a high voice that shook a little.
    I’d thought,
This

morning,

he

picked

that

shirt

to

put

on.
I’d thought,
I

wonder

why

he

came

to

the

mall

today.
And then I’d walked away. I’d told myself that it was because it was indecent for people to make a ring around the man, gawking at him. But the truth was, I’d left because I couldn’t stand looking at him and realizing people die. As soon as I turned away, I’d told myself to forget about him. And I had. I’d gone into a store three doors down and looked at bath oil, and then I’d bought some. All the way home, I’d imagined not the sudden loss of another soul on earth but rather how nice it would feel to be submerged in warm water, breathing in the scent of white gardenia. It had been so easy to erect my barricade against fear, against pain, against knowing. Now it seemed that my house had blown down. I was about to meet the wolf.
    AUNT FRAN WAS SITTING IN THE WAITING ROOM of the ICU when we arrived. She was wearing light-colored pants with circles of dirt stains at the knee—clearly, she’d been working in her garden when she was called. She shared a love of gardening with my mother, but there the similarities ended. Where my mother was stunning, Aunt Fran looked . . . friendly. The same could have been said of Steve and me; it was only Caroline who inherited my mother’s great beauty. I was “pleasant looking”—I’d heard that all my life—with widely spaced