Then, 979 words into the narrative, John’s mother, Ann, steps into the story. We meet her standing in the hospital, listening to doctors tell her that her son might not make it through the night. The first time we hear her, she is responding to a doctor’s ominous question about her religious preference:
“I’m Catholic,” Ann said, giving him a bewildered look.
This isn’t simple dialogue, as we will learn. Those two words sum up the source of Ann’s resolve. Her faith then leads her to make the statement that sets up her impending prominence in the story:
She slowly turned to the doctor, her hands trembling. “My Johnny is not going to die,” she said. “You wait and see. He is going to have a good life.”
As quickly as Hollandsworth has brought Ann to the forefront, he must nudge her offstage. John’s story has reached its climax, with the accident, so now must come the falling action. The news media visits, as do a couple of Dallas Cowboys. Local businesses and teachers and schoolmates hold bake sales and benefit dances. Letters arrive from all over the country, even from President Richard Nixon. In a phone interview with the Dallas Morning News, John declares that he will walk again, even play football again. “I will never give up,” he says, providing the Disney optimism we’ve been trained to expect.
As John utters these words, Ann is holding the receiver, a beautiful detail that prefaces the narrative’s true climax, which comes two grafs later as Ann, her husband, Mac, and John’s brother, Henry, are summoned to the rehab center’s conference room:
One of the staffers took a breath. “We’ve found that ninety-five percent of the families that try to take care of someone in this condition cannot handle it,” she said. “The families break up.” She handed them a sheet of paper. “These are the names of institutions and nursing homes that will take good care of him.” Ann nodded, stood up, and said, “We will be taking Johnny home, thank you.”At that moment, John’s story ends. Ann’s begins. John’s accidental paralysis is unfortunate, something he is forced to live with; Ann’s confinement is a choice. “Still Life” turns on that choice. Hollandsworth recognized that an epic protagonist isn’t defined by what happens to her, but by what she makes happen.
