She shakes her headnowithout breaking the rhythm of her palms on his chest.
Anne.I call her, but she doesn’t pick up. I try a second and third time in quick succession, prepared to keep at it—when she clicks in with an annoyed, “I’m working.”
“Dad shot himself,” I shout before she can hang up. “He’s on the floor of the potting shed, and he isn’t breathing. You have to come home.”
“Oh please, Mallory,” she mocks, “I’m not an idiot. He can’t shoot himself. I got rid of the gun.”
“He must have had another—Annie, you need to come!”
She falters then. “Is this a joke?”
“No joke,” I wail, staring at Dad’s lifeless body. “He shot himself!”
Then I realize that he hasn’t. If he’d shot himself, there would be blood. But his head is intact, and there is blood neither on his pajamas nor pooling out from under his body. I don’t smell it either, just a wisp of something match-like fading into the ubiquitous smell of the sea. Bewildered, I look around and, yes, a handgun lies on the cement floor by a stack of clay pots, though whether he fired it himself or it went off when it dropped, I can’t tell. All I know is, gunshot is not the problem.
“Heart,” I say with dawning horror, recalling the shortness of breath I had seen several times and ignored. “It must be his heart.”
Anne must be remembering the same thing, because she says a frightened, “Okay,” and ends the call.
“He gets breathless,” I tell Margo in a rush. “Remember how he sat down hard on the stairs just now after walking two steps from the kitchen? He was worse walking up the hill from the square and even going down the beach stairs yesterday morning. I knew there was a problem, but he kept saying there wasn’t.”
“He knew,” Margo says with one downward push, then with another, “Didn’t want. Intervention. But he came. For the gun. He wanted to die.”
“He can’t dienow,” I argue in a high-pitched voice, “not when we’ve all just come, not when he’s still thinking straight, not when there are still so many questions.”
“He. Wanted to die,” she repeats through gritted teeth.
She is angry. But so am I. “He isnotallowed to tell his heart to stop.”
“Tom Aldiss. Makes his own rules.”
“Do you feel anything?”
“No!” Her bark shakes me. Margo is the oldest, the strongest, the smartest. One word is all it takes.
“Is there anything else we can try?”
“No!”
“Can I take over for you?”
“I’m good,” she says, which is a crazy remark but one I understand. She needs to do this herself. Through the rhythmic up and down of her body, she says, “Meet the EMTs. Bring them here.”
I don’t want to leave her alone, but she needs this, too. Tom Aldiss is her father, no questions asked. Whether justified or not, she will be feeling guilt for not being part of his life all these years. This effort to save him is redemptive for her.
My car is still alone in the driveway. Phone in hand, I call Jack, fully expecting voicemail, relieved when he picks up.
“She’s fine,” he says with a smile, but his voice is low, like he’s with a client, which would give me pause any other time, just not now.
“Something happened to Tom!” I blurt. “I think he had a heart attack. I think he’sdead.”
Jack sobers. “Where is he?”
“The potting shed. Margo’s doing CPR. I’ve called 911, but, God, how long do theytake?”
“Not long. Do you want me to bring Joy home?”
“No, uh, not yet.” Squeezing my eyes shut, I finger my forehead and try to decide. “Uh, maybe. No. I don’t know.” Yes, I want Joy with me, but no, I do not. She was barely three when my mother passed and has no memory of death. Schoolmates have lost grandparents, one an estranged dad, but Joy’s emotional involvement with those was nil. This is immediate and personal, the darkest moment of life. I want to shield her but am not sure that’s right.
