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Mrs. Beckett is thoughtful for a moment, and then she asks, “Is that what you wanted? Just the one child?”
The short answer is yes. I made a conscious decision to have only one child. I didn’t struggle getting pregnant with Sienna, not at all. It was too easy. She was an accident, though we don’t go around trumpeting that fact. I found out I was pregnant with Sienna before I was ready to have kids. It caught me off guard.
“When I was younger,” I say, “I always thought I wanted a large family. I had this very idealistic, starry-eyed view of what motherhood might be. But Sienna was colicky when she was born. She cried all the time, and not just a fussy baby cry, but a screaming in pain type of cry. It was horrible to listen to. I couldn’t soothe her for anything. She would cry in the middle of the night, so that I never got any sleep. I was working then, fewer hours, but still. My husband couldn’t get up with her at night. He had to be at work earlier than me, and for longer hours. It didn’t matter though, because even if he had offered to help, I would have insisted on doing it myself, because I’m her mother. She needed me.
“I remember that when Sienna outgrew her crib, I sold it. It was something subconscious. I didn’t even think to keep it for another child of mine because on some level, I’d already decided there wouldn’t be another child. I remember too, seeing how frazzled our friends with multiple kids were. They had to be in four places at the same time, and their weekends were full of things that neither adult in the family wanted to do. By then, Sienna had moved beyond the colic, and Ben, she and I had some semblance of a normal life. I could sleep at night. We could do things together as a family.” I pause for breath—feeling embarrassed that I’ve said so much—and then say, “It sounds selfish.”
“No. Not at all. It sounds honest.”
“It’s good to know our limitations, I suppose.”
“It’s not as if it’s a shortcoming. Raising children is more work than anyone imagines, and you have something very special with your daughter, I imagine. A bond.”
“I do,” I say, letting my guard down because I like Mrs. Beckett, and because, despite the circumstances, she’s easy to talk to, though I should know better than to let myself get close to patients or their families. I should know better than to talk so openly with strangers. I should have learned my lesson by now.
“Please don’t tell my wife, but I’ve been doing some research,” Mr. Beckett says later in the day. “Occupational hazard,” he explains. “I’m an attorney.”
“What type of research?” I ask.
“About falling. About how a person survives a fall like Caitlin did. I’ve been to the bridge,” he says, “and when I saw how far she fell, I didn’t know how it was possible. That bridge is unmarked, but the state, I’ve come to learn, requires a vertical clearance of twenty-three feet above the tracks. The fatality rate for a fall like that is high.” Mr. Beckett sits back in the chair and I think that this must be a defense mechanism, a way to cope. Fact-finding as a means of avoiding the reality that his daughter might be in a vegetative state for the rest of her life or she might die.
“But Caitlin,” he says, going on, letting his eyes run over her, “from what I’ve learned, had some advantages—her age, for one, and the fact that she’s a woman. Older or younger people and men are more likely to die from falls like this,” he says, very matter-of-fact, then returning his eyes to mine to say, “Women are more resilient than men. Their weight compared to that of men saves them sometimes. You ladies are fortunate,” he says, and then he pauses for effect, holding my gaze, and I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if Caitlin was dead.
I’m drawing up warm water to flush her feeding tube. I turn my back to him, which makes me uncomfortable, to not have him in my visual field.
I try to be nonreactive, but my throat has tightened and gone dry. I empty 50 mL of water into the tube, pushing slowly down on the plunger, reminding myself to breathe.
“In the end though,” he says, after some time, “it all comes down to luck. Some people can survive a hundred-foot fall or more. Sometimes you have that one lone plane crash survivor. Others die by falling six feet.”
I let my eyes go to Caitlin’s face. “She was lucky then,” I say, but even I can tell how disingenuous that sounds.
I feel Mr. Beckett’s eyes on me still, as if he wants to say something more, but he doesn’t.
I’m alone in the room with him now. A friend came and took Mrs. Beckett down to the cafeteria to eat, though she wouldn’t leave the building, which is what the friend suggested. Mr. Beckett had to practically force her to go, and I think the only reason she did was because her friend came all this way to see her and she didn’t want to come across as rude. It was clear she didn’t want to leave. She only did with Mr. Beckett’s promise that he would call her if anything happened, if there were any changes, if Caitlin woke up.
“You said that Caitlin has an apartment in the city? Have you been to see it?”
“No.” He looks back over his shoulder to make sure we’re still alone and that Mrs. Beckett isn’t coming back. “My wife,” he says, bringing his eyes back to mine, “would like to go or she’d like me to go, to make sure that Caitlin didn’t have a cat that might be starving or something. I told her Caitlin could hardly take care of herself, much less a cat.” His words catch me off guard, and I can see that Caitlin was a letdown to him. She failed to live up to his expectations.
“I’m sorry,” he says when I say nothing because I’m not sure how to respond. “That probably sounded cruel. I didn’t mean for it to. What I meant is that Caitlin was still trying to find her way and that it’s more important for Amelia and me to be with her now, rather than wasting time going to see her apartment. Our daughter is here. There’s nothing for us to see there.”
“Of course,” I say. “I understand. You said you hadn’t spoken to her since she’d been back?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“How did you know where she was living then?” I ask.
He clears his throat. “We received a call from her work. Caitlin had listed Amelia as an emergency contact, which surprised us because we didn’t even know she left California and was living here in Chicago. When she didn’t show up for her shift and couldn’t be reached, someone called to see where she was and if she was okay. Her boss gave us Caitlin’s address.”
I nod, wondering about the legality of that, if employers are allowed to just give personal information away, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because sooner or later they would have found her. Caitlin’s personal belongings were given to the Becketts at the hospital, and included things like the contents of her purse, which likely meant an ID and apartment key.
He says, “What I said before, I didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did.”
“It’s fine. I didn’t think anything of it.”
“I don’t want you to think that I’m disappointed in my daughter for the choices she’s made. It’s just that we have these lofty aspirations for our children. We want them to grow up to be happy, successful, independent. Caitlin struggled with that.” He hesitates, thinking, and then decides to go on. “Please don’t repeat this. I never told my wife about this but, a couple months ago, Caitlin called me. As far as Amelia knew, it had been six months since we’d spoken. Caitlin, I believe, was still living in California at the time. She wanted money. Caitlin was never shy about asking for money,” he says, and again I hear the disappointment in his voice. “The requests were frequent because she was always between jobs or not making enough to support her lifestyle, and because Amelia indulged her as a child. Caitlin wasn’t used to having to work hard. I said no when she called. I’d had enough of her requests. She’s an adult, for heaven’s sake. She should be able to support herself.
“But then,” he says, and his tone changes from exasperation and disappointment to something else, something different and far more like remorse. “A few weeks before the suicide attempt, she tried calling again. I saw her call come in, but I didn’t answer it because I didn’t want to be put in a position to have to say no to her again. It wasn’t easy for me because, as a father, I wanted to give her the world but I also wanted to teach her about having a good work ethic and being a responsible human. I let the call go to voice mail. She left me a message; I still have it. I never called her back, because I assumed it was money she was after.”
