Brass Ring

by Diane Chamberlain

  A jagged flash of light appeared in the corner of Vanessa’s vision. She reached in her drawer for the migraine pills, but the bottle was empty. She’d have to call in a prescription for herself. She was popping medication left and right these days. Head. Stomach. What if she got pregnant while she was taking all this stuff? She leaned her elbows on the desk and rubbed her temples.

  “And now,” Terri said, “the one witness we do have is starting to chicken out. She doesn’t want to be up there alone. So Zed says if we spend this year trying to find decent witnesses and put together a good case for funding, we might stand a chance next year.”

  “We can’t just give up, though.”

  Terri was silent. “Excuse me, Vanessa,” she said after a moment, “but I really have to take issue with your use of the word ‘we’ here. I know you’ve got your reasons, whatever they may be, but you’ve really let the rest of the network do the lion’s share on this. I’m only calling you in case, by some miracle, you happen to have a few sterling witnesses tucked away in your back pocket. And also, I thought you might appreciate an update on what’s going on. You’ve been completely out of the loop on this.”

  “I know.” Vanessa pressed the palm of her hand hard against her forehead. “I know, Terri, and I’m sorry.”

  SHE HADN’T SEEN JANE Dietz in a year, not since her last annual examination. Sitting in Jane’s waiting room, it was hard to believe it had been that long. Jane felt more like an old family friend than her gynecologist. Vanessa had seen her for the first time at Sara Gray’s insistence when she was twenty years old. “You need to take better care of your health,” Sara had said. Even then Jane had seemed old, with her gray hair and out-of-date horn-rimmed glasses. Now she was in her mid-sixties. Sometime over the years Vanessa had stopped calling her “Dr. Dietz” and started calling her “Jane.” Whether that switch had occurred spontaneously or through invitation, she couldn’t recall. It didn’t matter. She felt a bond with Jane she had never experienced with another physician outside of her colleagues. She supposed that was why she had made the appointment today. Yes, it was time for her annual checkup, but it was more than that: She needed a dose of Jane Dietz.

  Jane spotted her in the waiting room and nodded to her with a smile. From that brief exchange, Jane must have intuited that Vanessa needed to talk, because she had her receptionist usher her into her office rather than one of the examining rooms.

  “It’s good to see you, Jane.” Vanessa sat down in one of the three leather chairs and looked across the desk at the doctor. What an anachronism this little woman was, with her steel gray hair pulled back into a bun and her harsh navy blue suit beneath the white coat. This year she was wearing wide tortoiseshell eyeglass frames.

  “Good to see you, too,” Jane said. “And I heard through the grapevine that you and Brian finally got married.”

  Vanessa smiled. “We did.”

  “I am enormously pleased, dear. Enormously.”

  “And,” Vanessa felt her smile widen, “I’m hoping to get pregnant.”

  Jane’s look of surprise was quickly replaced by a grin, out of place and endearing on her pale and wrinkled face. “That’s good news, Vanessa. I have to say I never thought I’d see you pregnant, although I know you always wanted a baby.”

  “I do. And I want a healthy baby. I’m a little concerned about my age being a factor, and—”

  Jane shook her head. “It shouldn’t be. Not if you’re healthy and we take the proper precautions to minimize the risks.”

  “Well, I’ve also been under a lot of stress lately, and the migraines are back.” Her words sounded almost apologetic. Confessional. “And my GI tract’s been…overactive. I’ve been medicating myself, but I need to figure out what I can take safely, since I may get pregnant while I’m taking it.”

  Jane drew in a long breath and sat back in her chair, lips pursed. “And the nightmares?” she asked. “Are they back, too?”

  Jane had never known the source of Vanessa’s nightmares, only that she had them. She did know, of course, about Anna. Or at least that Anna had once existed. It had been Jane who’d persuaded Vanessa to go into therapy, who had given her Marianne’s name.

  “The nightmares are back,” Vanessa admitted, “but certainly not like before.”

  “Are you seeing Marianne Sellers again?”

  “No. I don’t think it’s necessary. Really, Jane, it’s nothing like before. This is just some…I don’t know, residue from the old stuff. It’ll pass.”

  Jane pursed her lips again. “All right,” she said. “Let’s do some blood work, and we’ll talk about medication for your head and your gut. We’ll get you ready to be a mom. But I urge you, Vanessa”—she leaned forward on her desk, her small dark eyes riveting behind the thick glasses—“you’ve come to see me because you want a healthy start on this new part of your life. A clean, fresh start. I’ve known you a long time. I know you don’t get migraines unless something is seriously disturbing you. And I know it’s not just work. You’ve dealt with insane amounts of stress on your job without so much as a tension headache, let alone a migraine. It’s the old stuff, as you call it. You don’t want to be carrying this load of stress around while you’re trying to start a family, do you?”

  Vanessa shook her head. Something about Jane made her feel like a child in desperate need of mothering. A child who welcomed a stern but caring hand.

  “Please, Vanessa. Do what you need to do to clean that slate before you have a baby. For the baby’s sake, if not for yours and Brian’s.”

  “All right,” she said, although she didn’t know if she had the reserve it would take to clean that slate. More hours of talking about the past. Her eyes filled. She couldn’t go through that again. The thought brought fresh, stabbing pain to her head.

  “Vanessa?”

  She looked at Jane through the blur of tears. “Yes?”

  “I know you’re hearing your biological clock ticking away, dear, but it will wait,” Jane said. “It will simply have to wait.”

  That night, Vanessa called Marianne’s office, only to learn that her former therapist was on a monthlong trip to England. Vanessa had to smile. Marianne had talked about taking that trip, always in the abstract, always with a wistful look in her eyes. Good for her, she thought. But lousy timing.

  Marianne’s answering service gave her the name and number of the therapist covering for her. Vanessa wrote the information down on a notepad, sloppily, almost illegibly. She knew she would never use it.

  40

  MCLEAN

  WHEN SHE AWAKENED, CLAIRE felt hot and groggy and undeniably aroused. She vaguely remembered stretching out with Randy on his carefully made bed, talking over the events of the day. They had done that a dozen times before—lay on his bed to talk after a day of work—and so it hadn’t occurred to her that it might be a mistake to do it again. It had been barely five o’clock then, and they were still in their work clothes. But they must have fallen asleep, and now the room was dark and the air felt thick with desire.

  Randy’s face was close to hers, his lips light against her cheek. His hand slowly kneaded the flannel of her shirt, just below her breasts. Through the fog of half-sleep, Claire moved closer to him, running her hand across his chest. He kissed her, and she felt the stirring in her body, a stirring borne of deprivation and a longing to please him. As he slowly worked the buttons on her shirt, she made a decision, not only to allow what was about to occur, but to embrace it.

  She lay quite still as he undressed her, letting her need build with the eager pressure of his fingers against her skin. When she lay naked and bathed in moonglow on his bed, he straddled her, still clothed himself, and ran his hands in long, light waves over the hills and valleys of her body.

  “Am I taking advantage of you?” he asked.

  She rolled her head from side to side, not bothering to open her eyes. Then she pulled him toward her, and he balanced himself above her as she unbuttoned his shirt, unzipped his pant
s. He stood up to finish undressing, and she watched him, mesmerized by the way his erection stretched taut the fabric of his shorts. He was hard as steel already, and she hadn’t even touched him.

  He disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes while she lifted the comforter and slipped under the sheets. When he returned, he was unwrapping a condom, and she couldn’t help but recall the only time she and Jon had ever made love using one. They’d been teenagers then, young and green, and that scrap of latex had nearly driven Jon to tears of frustration as he tried to make it function with his temperamental erection. Randy, though, was having no such problem. The moon caught him fully in its light as he stood next to the bed, rolling the sheath over his penis. His thighs were thick and dark and muscular, and by the time he was in the bed again, kissing her, touching her, rubbing against her, Claire could think of nothing other than having him inside her.

  He thrust into her slowly at first, but quickly picked up his pace, and she struggled vainly to capture the familiar sensations, the rising and falling and fullness she usually experienced with lovemaking. She was barely aware of her hand slipping between their bodies, her fingertips finding their place. The building up, the electric tension, was instantaneous as he thrust against the back of her fingers. She heard the ragged edge to her breathing. The light on the ceiling began to blur before she squeezed her eyes shut to focus on the fire as it spread through her body.

  Randy came shortly after she did, although she was not at first certain that he had. He was so quiet, so contained. He lay still above her, breathing hard. After a moment, he rolled onto his side and slipped an arm around her shoulders. Claire felt sudden tears in the back of her throat, regret she didn’t want to feel.

  “How are you?” Randy asked.

  “Okay.” She was not sure how she was.

  “Just okay?” he asked.

  “Give me time,” she said. “I don’t know how I feel about what just happened.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “I feel great about it, though.” He kissed her lightly, then caught her hand and lifted it to his lips. When he spoke again, his voice was tentative. “Do you need to have your hand between us when we’re making love?” he asked.

  “Oh.” Should she feel embarrassed? “I did that all the time with Jon. It was the only way I could have an orgasm during intercourse.”

  “But…I’m not disabled.” He was speaking with great caution.

  “It’s a habit,” she said. “Did it bother you?”

  He shook his head. “It feels sort of…unnatural, but if that’s what works for you, it’s all right with me.”

  Again, she could think of nothing to say. He didn’t seem bothered by her silence, and she gradually became aware of the even rhythm of his breathing, the rise and fall of his head on her shoulder.

  It was far too early for sleep, but she continued lying there, eyes wide open, the knot of sadness still tight in her throat. In an instant, she had allowed the nature of their relationship to change, and she knew she had lost something in the process. Honor. Self-respect. She had crossed a line she had never intended to cross.

  AT BREAKFAST THE FOLLOWING morning, Randy touched her hand across the table, the tips of his fingers resting lightly on her gold wedding band. “Are you going to leave this on?” he asked.

  She looked at the ring. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d removed it, but she did so now, tugging at it, twisting it. She slipped the ring into the pocket of her robe, then looked across the table at the man who had suddenly become her lover.

  “I don’t know what I want, Randy,” she said. “Please don’t have expectations of me that I—”

  “Shh.” He leaned across the table to kiss her. “I don’t. I’m just very happy you’re here right now.”

  They talked awhile longer, and she studied him, reminding herself that she had felt the undeniable heat of desire the night before. But had it been desire for Randy or merely the desire of the moment? She couldn’t say.

  After breakfast, she put her dishes in the dishwasher and then climbed the stairs to the second floor, and only when she reached the guest room did she realize that her hand was wrapped, tight as a fist, around the abandoned gold ring in her pocket.

  THEY MADE LOVE IN his bed again the following night. Claire didn’t even bother with the pretense of the guest room. She hadn’t been able to sort out her feelings yet. They were snarled together in a tangle of guilt and need. She was making Randy happy, though. That in itself was worth something.

  She lay awake after he’d fallen asleep, thinking back over the past week. She’d finished painting the scenery and was now spending her time either working with Randy at the restaurant or helping the seamstress with the costumes for the upcoming play. She was actually sewing. She despised sewing.

  She missed her house. She missed Amelia and the foundation. She’d thought of asking Jon if she could return to work on a part-time basis. She’d talked to Debra Parlow about that idea, and Debra had agreed she needed the stimulation her old job would offer. But would that be fair to Jon? Especially now. How could she ask him to work with her when she was practically living with another man? And she could no longer say to him, with any honest indignation, that she was not sleeping with Randy.

  She had called Jon’s voice mail a few times, telling him thoughts she was having about the retreat, offering suggestions. Her mind-numbing activities during the day seemed conducive to the generation of creative ideas as well as to the regeneration of memories.

  The memories often came to her these days in complete, detailed form, and they were no longer merely the pretty remembrances of a happy childhood. She saw her father slapping Mellie in the farmhouse kitchen; she heard her parents arguing loudly after she and Vanessa had gone to bed. Each new image surprised her, and she was still not convinced of their authenticity. She felt such distance from the memories that it seemed as if they’d been stolen from someone else’s life.

  “They’re yours,” Randy would say quietly, and she knew he was right.

  She snuggled against him now, and he pulled her closer in his sleep, mumbling something she couldn’t make out.

  “Randy?” she asked. “Are you awake?”

  “Yes.” His eyelids fluttered open for a second before closing again.

  “Can we talk for a minute?”

  “Mmm.” He rolled onto his back. “Sure.”

  “I’m thinking of going back to work at the foundation,” she said.

  “Oh.” He sighed, tightening his arm on her shoulders. “I didn’t think painting scenery and sewing costumes would hold your interest very long.”

  “I miss my work,” she said. “I think I can concentrate on it now. Part-time, anyhow.”

  He wrapped his other arm around her, too, squeezing her to his chest. “You miss Jon,” he said.

  She was surprised. “No, I don’t. Not really.”

  Randy stroked her hair. “Oh, I think so.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  “You never talk about him.” Randy broke the silence.

  “Well, no. My mind’s been filled with other things lately.” She stared at the ceiling. “Actually, I try not to think too much about him. It’s too…difficult.”

  He ran a hand down her arm. “Tell me how you met him,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I’d like to hear about it.”

  She hesitated. “I’d feel strange talking to you about him.”

  “Tell me.”

  He was insistent, and she began to talk. She was accustomed to sharing her memories with him, and so slipping into this one was easy, so easy she was afraid she might forget to censor it for the tender ears of a lover.

  She had met Jon on a clear, brisk day in October of her senior year. He wheeled himself into her homeroom for the first time, and Claire was immediately intrigued. She had never seen a wheelchair-bound student in her high school, with the exception of one of the football players who had broken his
leg the year before and did a brief stint in a chair. But Jon Mathias didn’t look like a football player. Everyone’s eyes fell immediately to his legs. Was this a kid with a temporary disability or something more? They needed to know quickly, as one did in high school, how to categorize the newcomer.

  But it was more than the wheelchair that fascinated Claire. It was his face. His demeanor. He was unsmiling, almost angry looking, and he didn’t so much as glance at his prospective classmates as he wheeled himself to the front of the room with a note for Mrs. Wexler. Claire could almost see the chip on his shoulder.

  The rumors spread at a furious pace. By lunch she knew that he was from California and that his back had been broken in a plane crash. He was—or at least, had been—very wealthy, attending only private schools. Most likely, he was accustomed to a very different type of student than those who now surrounded him.

  Listening to other students talk about him, Claire felt a pain in her heart that grew as each new fact was revealed. He’d spent six months in a rehabilitation hospital and was now living with an aunt in Falls Church. His parents and sister had died in the accident. In the space of six months, he had lost his family, had nearly lost his life, and had gone from being rich to not rich. Where was the money? If his parents had died, wouldn’t he still have it? She knew the neighborhood where his aunt lived. The houses were small and poorly maintained. Maybe the money was nothing more than an embellishment to the story.

  On that day in October, she was eating lunch with her boyfriend of six months, Ned Barrett, when Jon wheeled into the cafeteria. He stopped for a moment, looking dazed and daunted by the sea of tables. Then he wheeled himself forward again, toward the end of the food line.

  “I can’t believe they let him into this school,” Ned said, his eyes following the chair. “Why didn’t they stick him in Garrett?”

  Jon had reached the tail end of the food line and sat staring at the waistband of the tall boy in front of him.