All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 200

200

That night in the ICU Charlotte would not leave, distraught that her actions had brought about the heart attack, no matter that Saint told her of Norma’s age, a family history, an addiction to honey and bourbon and cigar smoke.

Still, she shrugged off her hand, curled up on the bench and stared at the television, at the roll of news that did not sleep. A California serial killer; Embassy bombings; updates on an Indiana train collision.

Mrs. Meyer sat beside Sammy, who lay his large coat on her chair because he worried about the cream of her dress.

Saint knew the room well. It was a place she had waited for a life to be saved, for a story to begin and end.

A little after three in the morning a nurse came to collect her, and she was glad the others slept. The nurse was old and knowing and did not need tell her it was time, for Saint read it in the mourn of her smile.

“She’s ready,” she said, and Saint did not tell her that she, herself, was not.

Saint took the chair beside Norma and was left with only the steady organ of the machine that inflated Norma’s chest, the fading flutters of a heart that had beat long enough.

She looked around at switches and canisters and machines and plugs.

She looked to the window where she had once pressed her face and begged the stars to spare a boy who would become a brilliant man.

“Goddamn,” she said, as she took Norma’s hand and told her sorry for cursing. Her hand. Norma had held hers when she was seven years old as they crossed the street. When they first heard the hum of bees. She had

taken it as they strolled to Monta Clare High for graduation. And now it was Saint’s turn to take hers.

She whispered, “I promised God I wouldn’t sin. I promised him that if he saved Joseph then I would live a decent life, and I wouldn’t hurt anyone.

And every day I’d be kind to people.”

She pressed her cheek to Norma’s hand.

“It might sound like a big ask, like too much to promise, but I knew I could do it, Grandma. I knew I could do it because I had you to show me how.”

She finally looked up and saw her grandmother, her wrists now so thin.

“You told me I was named Saint because I brought you all so much joy.

But I worry…I worry I only made your life harder. You are the absolute best of us.”

They would ring the bells at the church.

“Why do we hold on to the bad things and forget the good?” She posed the question to the small medal clipped to Norma’s sleeve, to the empty halls, the green glass and leather benches, the lead roof and the clock that counted them down.

“I want you to take me for ice cream at Lacey’s. I want to ask God to make that happen. But I know I’ve already asked for so much.”

She leaned over and kissed her grandmother’s cheek. “I’m so sorry I let

you down, Grandma.”

She wet Norma’s face with her tears.

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