Saving Elijah

lived only an hour away.
    "It's been eleven weeks since our lives changed forever." She always got to that, said it to nearly everybody, as if she were a robot child implanted with an adult computer chip.
    "I'm sorry, honey." I wiped my face with a paper towel, then I turned and went out. My own children would be coming soon. In fact, they were there. Sam's parents had brought them. They are a physically mismatched pair, the Galligans. My mother-in-law is so short it's hard to believe she's an adult, and my father-in-law stands over six feet tall.
    I took as deep a breath as I could take, and gave each of my children a hug.
    Kate was crying. "What should we do about Elijah's hamster, Mom?"
    She was looking to me to tell her what to do, and I didn't have a clue. I was trying to remember what day it was. Thursday. Right. I'd missed her flute recital last Sunday. Sam went, though.
    "Just keep feeding him," Sam said.
    I let my in-laws hug me, then dropped into a chair in a corner.
    Shortly, my mother and father came in. But no, this couldn't be Charlotte Rosenberg, of the perfect coif, the flawless makeup, the impeccable taste. Still tall and willowy, even at the age of seventy, Charlotte wouldn't miss the opportunity to wear something dramatic and designer. She didn't own anything else. And what was the perfect outfit for visiting a comatose grandson? A black cape. On the other hand, for the first time in my life, I could actually see the gray at the roots of my mother's hair.
    My father looked pretty bad, too. He had circles under his eyes, and his stocky frame seemed somehow smaller, deflated. He hugged me, then Charlotte hugged me, enveloping me in that black cape. It reminded me of the one she'd worn when we shopped for my wedding gown at the salon of a designer she knew on Seventh Avenue. They kept bringing out heavy brocades, beaded silks, taffetas with skirts wide enough to hide a platoon. "So what is it you want, Dinah?" she kept saying, all the while winking at Mr. Jacques, really Jack Mancuso of Brooklyn. Charlotte wanted an elaborate affair at a fancy New York City hotel that would have cost enough to feed the starving children of some small country. I wore an ornate pearl-encrusted gown, in which I felt kind of silly. I did stick to my guns on the place, though, and was married on a beautiful old estate near their home on Long Island where we'd moved when I was fifteen, a move that caused no end of resentment. How could my mother make me move and leave my best friend behind, back in the old neighborhood?
    "How is he?" my mother asked now.
    "Seems like his color is better," my mother-in-law said.
    As I've already said, Mary Galligan is one of those relentlessly upbeat, endlessly energetic women who always has two or three projects going at once. She knits and chats, needlepoints and has a pot of homemade jam on the stove, cleans up while she's cooking. And Lordy, she doesn't just take a walk with you, she swings her arms back and forth for a little exercise and points out interesting things along the way.
    I looked at Elijah. Maybe his color was a little better. But he was still just lying there.
    Mary held her rosary in one hand, leaned over and kissed Elijah. "There, there, wee boy," she said softly. Then she whispered a prayer.
    I've always had a lot of respect for Mary, for coming over here from Dublin by herself at so young an age, for the easy way she connected with Elijah, when everyone else had such a hard time of it. Not that she'd ever admitted Elijah had problems. Yet by instinct Mary somehow knew how to relate to him on his level, which was the only way he could accept. So what if Mary buys kitschy holiday sweaters to wear once a year, a Halloween sweater with orange pumpkins and flying witches, a Christmas sweater with perky trees adorned with little multicolored beads for the lights. All of which goes down really well with my mother in her Armani, of course.
    Mary had started to cry, and my mother put her arm around her. Kate started to cry and came over to sit down next to me on the floor. My father teared up and walked out of the room. I could see him through the glass.
    After a while, Sam's father said, softly, "Where's the soda machine, Sam?"
    "There's one in the corridor," Sam said. "I'll take you, Dad. Did you have dinner?"
    "No," Mary said, wiping her eyes, "nor a chance to give the kids dinner, either. I'll take them down to that cafeteria. The sandwiches down there are brilliant."
    Come