“We’re starting with swimming lessons at a club nearby,” Whitney said vaguely. “She needs to relearn how.”
“What about the rest? You can’t overprotect her forever,” Amy said, concerned that Whitney would try to keep her from normal activities.
“She had a serious brain injury less than a year ago, and a trauma over her mother’s death. I’m not going to let her do anything dangerous on my watch,” Whitney said nervously.
“She’s almost recovered from her injury, and she may never get back some of the skills she lost. But you have to let her be a regular kid now, fall down, hurt herself a little, get banged up. You can’t keep her from that,” Amy reminded her, as Whitney looked worried.
“Why not? I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.”
“Neither do I, but that’s part of life. You can’t stop her from leading a real life. She’s not going to slip into a coma or forget how to speak again, unless she has another major traumatic injury, and chances are, she won’t.”
“I have a responsibility to her mother,” Whitney insisted. “I don’t want her to get hurt.”
“The only thing she shouldn’t do is get a blow to her head. Other than that, she needs to experience being a normal kid. She’s never really had the chance.”
“I know,” Whitney said pensively. All she wanted to do now was keep Emma safe. She couldn’t bear the thought of anything bad ever happening to her again, which she knew wasn’t entirely realistic, but her sister’s death had affected her too. Paige had left her a sacred responsibility, and Whitney wanted to live up to it. She had left her the child that Whitney would never have had the courage to have herself.
“What about you and Bailey? What’s happening there? He clams up whenever I ask him.” Amy smiled, curious about them. She had grown very fond of Whitney in the past year.
“I’m playing that safe too,” Whitney said with a shy smile. “I don’t want us to get hurt either. He’s coming to Tahoe for the Fourth of July weekend.”
“You two should go away somewhere together, and have some fun. God knows you’ve earned it after the past year.”
“Tahoe will be fun. And I’m taking some neurology classes in September. I enjoyed the work we’ve done together a few times. I want to start seeing some brain injury patients, for the behavioral aspects. It’s more interesting than dealing with teenagers smoking too much dope, Beverly Hills housewives with shopping addictions, and corporate husbands who cheat on their wives.”
“I want you to come and work with us eventually,” Amy said seriously. She had brought it up to Bailey several times, but he wasn’t sure where their relationship was going and didn’t want to create an awkward situation by working with her, at least not yet. “You two were made for each other,” she said. “I wish you’d figure that out.”
“Maybe we’re too old to take a leap of faith like that,” Whitney said thoughtfully.
“I don’t buy that. I’m forty-one, planning to get married, and trying to have a baby as soon as we are. People do things later these days, particularly with jobs like ours. It’s never too late to take a chance on someone you love. Look at you with Emma. Suddenly, you have a kid. You could even have kids of your own if you wanted to. It’s not too late for that either.”
“If I had the guts,” Whitney said and laughed. “My sister was a lot braver than I am. I have Emma now, that’s enough.”
“I’m going to try IVF, if we can’t do it on our own,” Amy confided. “We’re going to try this summer, even before we get married. My family will have a fit, if I get pregnant before the wedding, but I’m old enough to do what I want.” She envied Amy’s ability to please herself and not worry about what everyone else thought. But what was holding Whitney back from throwing her heart over the wall was the same thing that had held her back all her life—the fear of making a mistake, or being controlled by someone else. After generations of divorced parents, it seemed to be what a lot of people worried about these days, and Whitney was no more confident than some of her patients. Her practice was full of women who were afraid to get married, didn’t really want to, and decided to have babies on their own, but she didn’t want that either. Often their male counterparts saw no reason to marry either. It was the old story of why buy the cow when you could get the milk for free, and there was a lot of free milk around these days. And she hadn’t even gotten that far with Bailey. She hadn’t gone to bed with him yet. They’d been flirting and kissing and skirting the issue for six months. But what if she did, and lost her head over him? The thought of it scared her to death. Hiding behind her responsibilities to Emma was always safe. There was a guest cottage at the house she was renting in Tahoe, and she was planning to have Bailey sleep there. She didn’t want to embarrass Emma, or create an uncomfortable situation by having him in her bed. She had made that clear to him too, and he agreed.
“Well, I hope you two figure it out one of these days,” Amy said to Whitney, and she promised to come to Tahoe for a weekend sometime in July. Whitney had met her fiancé, Ted, and liked him too.
* * *
—
Before they left for Tahoe, Whitney took care of something she’d meant to all year. She hadn’t had the time or the courage, but the anniversary of Paige’s death was in a few weeks, at the end of July. She had never picked her ashes up from the funeral parlor, and she called them, and the cemetery where her parents were buried. She hadn’t had a funeral for her, and it seemed late to do a memorial service a year later. Paige had had very few friends, her whole life had centered around Emma.
Whitney was going to bury her alone, without a service, and then decided to tell Emma. Paige hadn’t been religious, so she decided to simply make arrangements to bury her ashes next to their parents, with no ceremony. But she didn’t want to cheat Emma of the experience if it was important to her.
“You mean bury Mom?” She looked shocked when Whitney mentioned it to her cautiously over breakfast one day. “Where’s she been till now?” Emma hadn’t let herself think about it, and didn’t really want to now.
“Her ashes are at the funeral home, in a box, like about the size of a jewel box. I’ve been meaning to bury her with our parents at Forest Lawn. They’re going to make a little plaque with her name. And I guess I’ll be buried there one day too, since neither of us were ever married.”
“Is that what people do?” Emma had never thought about it before, and Whitney nodded.
“They get buried with their families, their husbands and wives, and their kids, or their parents.”
“That seems really sad. Can I be buried there one day too, with you and Mommy?”
“I hope not.” Whitney smiled at her. “I hope you’ll have a husband and about ten kids.”
“That’s too many,” Emma said practically, thinking about it. “Why didn’t you ever get married, Aunt Whit?” It was a big question which would have required a long answer if she told her the truth.
“I don’t know. Scared, I guess. I never really wanted to get married. I was too busy studying to be a doctor, and enjoying my work. And now I think I’m too old to have kids, except for you.”
“Mom said she never met the right guy, or she would have gotten married. So she had me anyway. My father was her best friend, but he wasn’t really my father, he just wanted to be friends.” She said it very matter-of-factly. Her mother had shown her a photograph of him, but she didn’t know much more than that.
“I’m glad she had you,” Whitney said, although she had been vehement with Paige at the time about what a mistake it was. But now she was glad Paige had done it. It was the right thing after all. So as it turned out, Paige wasn’t wrong, even if it had seemed that way to Whitney at the time. Things looked different with the perspective of time.
“I’ll come with you.” Emma answered her initial question. “Should we bring flowers?” Emma looked serious as she asked, and Whitney nodded. She hadn’t thought of it. “My mom liked pink roses and daisies.”
“I’ll order some,” Whitney said softly.
“What about balloons? She liked those too.” It sounded a little too festive to Whitney, but why not? Paige belonged to Emma too, and she wanted it to be the way Emma wanted. And Paige had had a childish side to her, even at thirty-seven. In some ways she never grew up, which was part of her charm. Whitney could see that now, although it had annoyed her at times.
“I’ll get balloons,” she promised.
* * *
—
The day before they left for Tahoe, Whitney and Emma went to the cemetery. The funeral parlor had dropped off the ashes at the cemetery office, in a discreet bronze-lined wooden box with a bronze heart on it. They walked to the grave site where two of the cemetery workers were waiting for them with the box. The small hole had already been dug. The monuments to Whitney’s parents were a pair of white marble angels that stood about five feet tall, side by side, holding hands. It seemed the perfect memorial to them. The small spot next to them for Paige seemed dwarfed by the angels, and looked insignificant when one of the workers put the box into it. Whitney had ordered a heart-shaped white marble marker with Paige’s name on it, which wouldn’t be ready for several months, which she explained to Emma. Whitney was carrying the bouquet of pink roses, and Emma held the daisies, and the bunch of pink and white heart-shaped balloons were fluttering in the breeze, as though struggling to be free as Whitney held the ribbons that hung from them.
Emma and Whitney stood holding hands as the box with Paige’s ashes was lowered into the grave, and then they each laid the flowers down on the place where she should have been for the past year, next to her parents. It was a beautiful cemetery with rolling hills and a view of the L.A. skyline, and many famous actors buried there.