A Song for Issy Bradley Read online

  “Doing as you’re told,” she said.

  “Well done! How important is obedience?”

  “Very important,” she said.

  “Yes! Obedience is the first law of heaven. Do you know why? Obedience to the commandments makes us free. Free from sin and free to receive blessings from Heavenly Father. The key to freedom is obedience. Now, that was President Carmichael on the phone.”

  “Was he fantastic?” Zipporah asked.

  “He was.”

  “So what did Captain Fantastic want?”

  “Don’t be disrespectful, Alma. He’s asked me to go to a missionary meeting on Saturday morning.”

  “But it’s my birthday party,” Jacob protested.

  “It’s a small sacrifice when you think about it,” Ian said gently.

  Claire sighed, stood up, and began to stack the dirty plates. She started to walk toward the kitchen but stopped in the doorway, holding the tower of dishes like a waitress. She opened her mouth, appeared to think better of it, and closed it again.

  “Let me help you with those.” He got up from the table and followed her into the kitchen.

  “It’s no sacrifice for you,” she said as she dumped the dirty plates in the sink and began rinsing the gravy away. “You just got out of supervising fifteen seven-year-olds at a party. I only organized it because you promised you’d help.”

  He leaned against the counter next to the sink and nodded sympathetically while she adjusted to the news.

  “Nothing I say will make any difference, will it?” she asked, staring out the kitchen window and into the back garden.

  He reached out a tentative hand and stroked the soft flesh of her arm.

  “Right, then,” she said, and she dried her hands on a towel and padded back into the dining room. “Who wants rhubarb crumble?” he heard her ask. There were shouts of “me,” and when he returned to the dining room a moment later she was fine.

  Ian glances at his watch as the dock road bridges, merges, and stretches into the suburbs. The missionary meeting ran overtime and he is later than promised. Claire will be upset. A spurt of acid burns his esophagus. He holds the steering wheel with one hand and rummages in his suit pocket for the little plastic box of indigestion tablets. He can’t reach past the wad of missionary pass-along cards, so he tugs them out of the pocket and places them between his knees. He has promised to distribute them as part of the Church’s new advertising campaign. He isn’t very good with nonmembers, but the missionary meeting has inspired him to be bolder. President Carmichael challenged all the bishops to a competition to see who could give the cards out the quickest. Then he shared a story about a General Authority who sat next to Mick Jagger on a plane in the 1980s and told him he’d go to hell if he didn’t turn his life around. That’s boldness for you! Ian finds the box and when he stops at traffic lights he flicks it open and knocks back a couple of capsules.

  He’ll make up for his lateness by stopping at McDonald’s. He’ll buy a milkshake for Jacob and they can have a nice father-and-son chat. Afterward he’ll make notes for the talk he will deliver at church tomorrow, a talk he has been mentally preparing for the past few days. He’ll speak about sacrifice, he’ll mention missing Jacob’s party as an illustration, and he’ll also tell a story about the children that will go some way toward making up for not seeing much of them this weekend. He likes to use real-life stories in his talks because they have a greater impact on the congregation. Plus, he looked up self-sacrifice on the Internet last week during his lunch hour and all that came up was a list of tattoo and body-piercing providers.

  The children will pretend to be embarrassed, but he knows they’ll be secretly pleased to have been mentioned. He’ll tell the story of the time the tall ships came to Liverpool and he bundled the family into the car and drove them to the docks.

  It felt as if they had just emerged from a time machine as they walked along the Salthouse Dock that day. The water was swimming with square-riggers and brigs, ketches and cutters. The schooners looked like they had sailed to Liverpool straight from the set of Treasure Island, the pylon structures of their masts strewn with bunting.

  “Look,” he said to the children, sweeping both arms in an attempt to conduct their reactions. “Let’s imagine we’re about to get on a boat to travel to America. We’re going to be pioneers and we’ve got to leave behind everything we can’t carry. When we get to America, we’re going to walk a thousand miles to Utah. Imagine how exciting it would be.”

  At first no one responded. But everyone was hungry and he’d been clutching the shopping bag of brown-bread sandwiches. Holding the lunch as ransom proved to be an imagination activator.

  “I’m sure it would be exciting at first,” Zipporah said, “but I bet we’d be seasick.”

  “Yes! That shows you’re really thinking about it!”

  “Me, Daddy?” Issy called from the buggy.

  “Yes, you’d come too, Issy.”

  “Could I take my Legos with me?” Jacob asked.

  “No,” Ian explained. “You’d have to make sacrifices. You know what a sacrifice is, don’t you, Jacob? It’s when you give up something good for something better.”

  “So I’d get more Legos in America?”

  “No. You’d get something much better than Legos: blessings for being obedient and Eternity with your family.”

  Everyone waited for Alma to say something.

  “I’m excited,” he finally conceded. “Can I have a sandwich?”

  “In a minute,” Ian said. “First, I’d like it if we could sing a pioneer song.”

  They’d all groaned, even Claire. But it was a groan laced with affection, a groan telling him that, even though they didn’t want to admit it, they were enjoying themselves and didn’t mind singing on the dockside like an English version of the Von Trapp family.

  “Let’s do ‘Whenever I Think About Pioneers,’ ” he said. “Just think about what they sacrificed so we can have the gospel today. After three; one, two, three.”

  It had been a special moment. He’d felt the reassuring warmth of the Spirit in his heart as they sang the simple words in honor of the sacrifices of their pioneer forebears. The bunting on the tall ships flapped applause at them, and although they’d sung quietly, Ian’s heart filled with gratitude as he looked at the children and Claire. They probably looked like an ordinary family standing on the dockside. But they weren’t, they aren’t. They’re an Eternal family, sealed to one another by the power and authority of the priesthood forever and ever. Like the pioneers, they’ll be called upon to make sacrifices for the sake of their beliefs and, like the pioneers, they won’t falter. He will describe that special, faith-enhancing moment in Sacrament Meeting tomorrow, a moment so perfect it hadn’t been spoiled even by Alma’s improvised second verse, which began, “I would like to have died of frostbite.”

  He turns the Tabernacle Choir CD down as he drives into the McDonald’s parking lot. He can’t remember what flavor milkshake Jacob likes—strawberry, banana, vanilla, chocolate. He reaches into the pocket of his suit jacket for his phone and realizes he forgot to switch it back on when he left the meeting. Chocolate, that’s it—much better to remember than disturb Claire while she’s busy tidying up. He drops the phone on the passenger seat and edges closer to the drive-through intercom.

  When the girl passes the milkshake through the window he places it between his knees because the drink holder is full of scribbled-on bits of paper, empty candy wrappers, and several of Issy’s barrettes. He turns the CD back up and skips to his favorite song. There may be just enough time to listen to it.

  “Come, come, ye saints, no toil or labor fear,

  But with joy wend your way!”

  He isn’t far from home when thoughts of Brother Rimmer and his homemade handcart roll back into his head. He hasn’t visited Brother Rimmer for a week or two and the Tabernacle Choir’s soft rendering of the fourth verse of “Come, Come, Ye Saints” reminds him of poor Sister Rimmer’
s death.

  “And should we die, before our journey’s through,

  Happy day! All is well!”

  Someone should visit Brother Rimmer; perhaps the Spirit is prompting him to do it, right now. He is never as certain as he would like to be about these things, he doesn’t hear the distinct voice that some people report. When the Spirit speaks to him it’s more of an impression, a prompting and, as it’s always best to err on the side of caution, he takes a right turn at the roundabout and drives in the direction of Brother Rimmer’s house, singing the final line of the hymn in a forceful crescendo.

  “Oh, how we’ll make this chorus swell, All is well! All is well!”

  – 6 –

  Knowing

  Claire knows. She knows the instant she steps into the bedroom and gauges the panting, shallow breaths. Knows when she pulls the blankets back and Issy is already diminished, half-emptied.

  She kneels down as her urgent words slide off Issy’s forehead and onto the floor, and when she hears herself shouting it’s as if the sound is coming from someone else.

  – quickly, bring a glass, now

  – a glass, Alma, I said a glass—what am I supposed to do with a plastic cup?

  She knows as she rolls the glass across Issy’s thigh, as she presses harder, pushing up and down in an effort to excise the red floret-spatters. She reaches for the telephone with thick, clumsy fingers.

  – all floppy and I can’t wake her up

  – stop asking questions and do something

  – yes, a red rash

  Her words ring, as if she is hearing them on a microphone, and she knows.

  She knows when the stocky paramedic call-me-Dave doesn’t bother with a stretcher and just carries Issy down the stairs, her limbs wilting over the frame of his tattooed arms. It’s goodbye hallway, goodbye house. The front door is suddenly an exit to much more than the driveway, the street, the park, and Claire fights the urge to push ahead of call-me-Dave and slam the door shut; the urge to shout, “Wait! Stop! You can’t take her, I’m not ready!”

  She knows as she pauses in the doorway and watches the children crowd the bottom stair in a solemn huddle.

  – don’t be upset

  – nothing to worry about

  – keep trying to get hold of Dad

  Jacob breaks away from the older two and dashes to the door. “When can I open my presents?”

  Zipporah follows him. “Shut up,” she scolds, wrapping her arm around his shoulder to soften the rebuke. “Don’t worry, Mum. We’ll all say a prayer, won’t we, Alma?”

  Poor Jacob. Poor Zipporah. And poor Alma, standing alone on the bottom stair—Claire knows he’s got no intentions of praying. There isn’t time to hug the three of them, before they know too, before everything changes.

  IT’S BRIGHT INSIDE the ambulance; the blue overhead cupboards, yellow ceiling straps, and red and green bags of medical supplies are incongruously cheerful, like Jacob’s Lego emergency vehicles.

  Dave points to a blue chair beside a tinted window.

  “Sit down.”

  Issy is marooned on the stretcher, limp and raggish, like something the tide has washed up. Dave fastens straps around her chest and legs while he talks about intramuscular injections and antibiotics. Claire picks out the word “penicillin,” but she is finding it hard to hear; her ears are still ringing and her skin is tight with prickling dread. She can see the other paramedic, the woman, pacing outside the ambulance talking on a cell phone.

  “We’ll be off soon,” Dave says. “She’s just calling ahead. To let them know we’re coming. So they’ll be ready.”

  The other paramedic jumps into the driver’s seat, starts the engine, and pulls away.

  “We’ll go as quickly as we can,” Dave says. Then the sirens start, and Claire stares out the back windows as cars signal and brake and edge up curbs. Their urgency, their kindness makes her feel like crying, she wants to shout, “Thank you, thank you!” and she knows in the future, whenever she hears sirens, she will be transported back here.

  “How long has she been unwell?”

  “She was fine yesterday. She went to school—she’s just started—she came home, we had spaghetti for dinner. I think she went to bed at the usual time, we had a babysitter because we had to go to a meeting at our church, there was—”

  “When did you notice she was unwell?”

  “She didn’t get up this morning,” she says. “I thought she was tired. I had to go shopping, it’s my younger son’s birthday, I thought she’d be up when I got back, but she wasn’t. I checked on her. I did check on her.” Her voice rises, quivers—she is protesting too much, Dave won’t believe her, but she can’t help it. “I gave her some Tylenol I thought it was a cold or one of those twenty-four-hour bugs they get when they start school and they seem desperately ill but they’re better after a couple of hours. And then it was the party. I thought she’d sleep it off. I left her for two hours.” She pauses and says it again, appalled, “Two hours. She’s really ill, isn’t she?”

  Dave nods.

  “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”

  “She’s very ill,” he says.

  WHEN THE AMBULANCE stops outside the emergency room, a group of staffers are waiting by the automatic doors in bottle-green, purple, and blue scrubs.

  “We’ll get her off first,” Dave says. “Just wait there a minute.”

  The ambulance doors open and there’s a draft of noise and a burst of shouted questions. Anxious, waiting arms receive the stretcher, then it disappears through the automatic doors. Claire follows, past a reception area and down a corridor to a long room lined with empty beds. The ceiling is crisscrossed by curtain tracks, but no one touches the curtains. They lift Issy off the stretcher and onto a bed, and while Dave talks to someone in bottle-green scrubs the other paramedic pushes the empty stretcher away.

  Claire catches wisps of words, tiny sentence strings.

  “Has she had the IM?”

  “She’s collapsed, we’re not going to be able to do an IV.”

  “A central line, then?”

  “I want a lumbar puncture.”

  “Can you intubate? We’re going to need dexamethasone.”

  “Will someone get the mother out of here?”

  A woman in blue scrubs leaves Issy’s bedside and drapes an arm over Claire’s shoulder. “It’s all right, love,” she says. “We’re just going to stabilize her and then we’ll move her to a ward. Why don’t you go and get yourself a cup of tea?”

  “I’m OK, thanks.”

  “You don’t want to be here for this.”

  “Why? What are you doing?”

  “Can you wait outside, please?”

  “It’s OK, I want to stay.”

  “Come on, that’s right, love.”

  The nurse maneuvers Claire out of the room and back to Reception. The waiting area is almost empty. There’s a teenager next to his mother, nothing visibly wrong, and a man sitting beside a little girl with a cut head, muttering about bloody ambulances and waiting around all pissing afternoon for a couple of stitches. Claire gets a drink and sits as far away from him as possible. She tries to sip the hot chocolate but her hands are shaking and in the end she just holds the cup.

  WHEN THE NURSE comes back, the chocolate is cold. Claire leaves it on a table and follows her out to a corridor that slopes gently and appears to run the length of the hospital. They walk past murals painted straight onto the corridor walls: dolphins and sea lions and enormous, smiling blue whales. The nurse asks her what she does for a living. Nothing. Does she live near the hospital? Not really. How many children does she have? Four.

  They pass fairy-tale paintings bordered by pink stencils: Little Bo Peep, a falling Humpty Dumpty, soldiers with glassy, hemisphere eyes, and Sleeping Beauty’s castle. They pass leopards, foxes, a giant panda, and a colossal gorilla with blind circles where its glass eyes used to be. “It’s a long way, isn’t it?” the nurse says and they carry on past a beje
weled mine cart from Snow White and a sign for the ICU.

  The floor is blue now, the walls are quieter and the lights lower. The corridor feels like a tunnel and Claire experiences a buildup of pressure in her head that reminds her of swimming underwater. The nurse stops to call an elevator and they stand side by side as they ascend. When the doors open, the nurse turns down the passageway marked “ICU” and Claire is flooded with the horror of knowing again.

  The heavy doors at the end of the passageway are locked shut. “You’ll need to press this button,” the nurse says. “Just tell them who you are and they’ll let you in.”

  The door opens to reveal a woman sitting at a desk.

  “Come on, lovey,” she says. “Follow me.”

  They pass a wall decorated with donation plaques and photographs of smiling children. Claire wonders how many of them are still alive. The nurse presses another keypad and opens a door labeled “Parents’ Lounge.”

  “I thought I was going to … When can I see her?”

  “They’re just settling her in. Someone will come and get you when everything’s ready. You can make yourself a drink while you wait.”

  It’s cold in the Parents’ Lounge. Two fans attached to the far wall drive freezing air around the room. She sits beside a fan and the cold creeps into her ears like it does when she walks on the beach. She gets up and wanders around, examining the posters on the walls and the pamphlets stuffed into various holders: Carbon Monoxide Poisoning, Baby Bottle Decay, Pregnancy and Flu, Measles. She chooses an upright chair away from the blast of the fans and sits down again. The clock on the wall has barely moved. Time is gluey and thick. She stares and stares at the clock. Eventually, she realizes it’s wrong—stopped. She chews the insides of her cheeks and spins her wedding ring round and round. Where is Ian? Somehow it will be for everyone’s good that he disappeared with Brother Anderson, that he went to the missionary meeting and vanished afterward on a worthy errand. She grabs the impulse to blame him and chokes it. But she’ll revive it later; she’s no saint.