Marie’s eyes flit between my mom’s grave and me. She opens her mouth, lips parting, then snaps them shut. Once, twice, three times. Whatever she’s struggling to say, she’s going through monumental effort to do it, and I’m really not looking forward to it.
“Tell me about that day,” she says gently.
My eyes close and my shoulders drop. I don’t have to ask her what she means. The band of steel that snaps shut like a trap door when this subject comes up isn’t there. Shannon pried it open shortly after we got together for good and I told her the whole story.
She’s the only person, other than medical authorities, who has ever heard it. Dad didn’t want to know. Even Andrew has never asked. He knows what he remembers, but not what I experienced after he passed out.
And now, Marie.
“There’s not much to tell. We went to one of Andrew’s soccer games. It was May, the day before my senior prom. He was a sophomore and I was a senior and Mom was filled with the craziness of planning my graduation party. She was lecturing me on how to treat my date because prom is every girl’s dream, and Andrew was teasing me about making sure I got a nice hotel room so I could deflower her,” I say, the words slow, my mouth filled with cotton and regret.
Marie makes a small noise of encouragement.
I can’t help but grin at the memory. “Yeah. Mom loved that. Smacked him upside the head and told him he was being vulgar.”
I sigh. The memory isn’t just a series of images in my head, retrieved to repeat and tell. It’s like they’re living in my mind, like I can smell the freshly-cut grass around the soccer fields, hear the ref blowing the whistle, the shrill sound cutting through my thoughts.
“Mom wanted to go for a walk while Andrew was between games. She loved the trails in the park. There was this creek that we played in as kids. Lots of rocks and little pools. The perfect place to bring rowdy little boys for an afternoon.” My voice hitches on the last word. I imagine me and Shannon taking Jeffrey and Tyler there and make a mental note to mention it to her.
I think it might be good to revisit there on a happy note with little boys who can play and throw rocks and get muddy.
I’ve never been back.
“And we were walking near the water when a swarm flew by. It just—pure randomness. You ever see a wasp or bee swarm?”
Marie shakes her head.
“It’s marvelous.” I can hear the wonder in my own voice. “Frightening and powerful. Hypnotic. At first you have no idea what it is. The damn thing looked like a ball of darkness in the sky, moving impossibly through space. My eyes kept trying to pattern match and turn it into birds. And then, as it passed overhead, we realized what it was.”
“Mom shouted and ducked. Andrew just stood there, stunned, like me. And then he screamed, a high-pitched sound like a little kid. Again.” I’m reliving it now, eyes stuck on the word loving on Mom’s gravestone.
“Mom made a funny noise of pain, a muted sound. I remember shoving Andrew down to the ground, with Mom, and he jerked, grabbing his leg. By the time the damn wasps were gone he’d been stung at least three times—the doctors weren’t sure about a fourth sting—and Mom twice.”
“Oh, God,” Marie says quietly. I can’t bear to look at her. She’ll have tears in her eyes. And if I’m going to tell the story, I just can’t look at her.
“Mom told me to stay calm. We knew she had a bad allergy and I knew she had an EpiPen in her purse. Andrew was screaming. No one was anywhere near—we were at least a half mile from the soccer fields, though you could hear the loudspeaker announcements from a distance. Mom handed me her purse. I knew what she meant.”
I can remember the warm touch of her fingers as we exchanged the bag. Her manicured nails, a pearly pink. I can’t say that part aloud. It’s mine. Private.
“‘EpiPen,’ she croaked, her breathing labored already. I could see the two stings on her elbow as she pulled her shirt up.”
“Two?’ I remember shouting.”
“’Andrew’,” she rasped, crawling over to him. And then I realized, as I found the EpiPen in her purse, that she wasn’t the only one struggling to breathe.”
Marie is crying softly now. I can hear her. She comes up to me and places a hand on my forearm. I don’t move, but my eyes start to leak.
Damn new allergies.
“‘Where are you stung’? I asked him, and Andrew pointed to his calf. Two stings, then one on his neck. He sounded like he was having a horrible asthma attack.”
Gravel on the road behind us crunches as a landscaper’s truck drives through, equipment loaded on the back. The sound of the lawnmower is gone.
Good.
It sounds a little like a swarm.
“Mom pointed to Andrew, then the EpiPen, then back to him. ‘Inject him,’ she said, sounding like she was choking.” I finally look at Marie. “And I froze.”
“Anyone would, Declan. Anyone. And you were just a boy.”
I squeeze my eyes tight and go on, watching it behind my closed lids. “‘No,’ I said. ‘You need it, Mom.’ She just shook her head, hard, and tried to grab the damn EpiPen from my hands. Andrew was passing out. Mom’s lips were turning blue and she grabbed my face so hard, looked in my eyes and said, ‘Do it.’”
Marie squeezes my arm.
“So I did. I opened the pen and shoved the needle as hard as I could in Andrew’s thigh, and then I got up and ran as fast as I could to the soccer fields. Could barely breathe, but said enough to get all the people who had cell phones to call 911.”