The Fortunate Ones

by Ed Tarkington

“Endometriosis.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s complicated,” he said. “They’re taking her uterus out. She doesn’t know yet. They had to cut her open before they could see what was wrong. What they found—it’s bad. I can’t even describe it.”

  His face was a mixture of grief and horror. “I had to give consent,” he said. “She would have died otherwise.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  A nurse with a stubble beard, a stringy ponytail, and a pair of round wire-rimmed glasses came through the door.

  “Are you ready, Mr. Creigh?” he asked.

  Arch nodded.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To see the baby,” he said.

  “Let me come with you.”

  “All right.”

  We followed the nurse down the hallway to a dimly lit room. There she was, in a basinet, wrapped in a blanket so that only her tiny wrinkled head was visible. Arch peeled the blanket away so that he could see the whole body. He stroked the child’s head gently and bent and kissed it. As he stepped back, his shoulders began to shake. I grasped him and held him there and waited and listened to his choked sobs, and I felt it too.

  Vanessa was placed in the intensive care unit after the surgery. Arch was present when she regained consciousness. She seemed too heavily medicated to understand what had happened. And she kept asking for the baby; the drugs made her forget. Or maybe she just kept hoping the death of her daughter had been a dream.

  Arch went back and forth from sitting with Vanessa to wandering up and down the hallways, his expression inscrutable. Maybe he had forgotten what it meant to feel powerless. Maybe he’d never really known.

  With a bit of persuasion from Averett, Arch roused himself from the darkness of his guilt and grief by deciding that the brave thing to do was to soldier on for the sake of the city. Averett spun the story with skill. The news media played along. The Greene campaign expressed sympathy. And so Arch and Vanessa’s tragedy only enhanced his prospects.

  Vanessa went home after two days. She could barely walk to the bathroom. Without Arch’s knowledge, Averett had him photographed through the door, sitting by Vanessa’s bedside, holding her hand while she slept. Averett leaked the photo and feigned righteous fury in a statement to the press at the outrageous invasion of privacy. Every outlet ran the picture. When Arch saw the photograph in the newspaper, he shook his head.

  “Vanessa’s not going to like this,” he told me.

  “Too late now,” I said.

  “I had nothing to do with it, you know.”

  I didn’t argue. I had learned by then how men in Arch’s position depend on people like Averett to anticipate their less honorable wishes and needs and fulfill them without prompting.

  Nancy Haltom flew in from Naples. At some point, I ended up alone with her, sitting on the couch near the windows facing out to the rose garden, where Jim could be seen walking around with Dolly. Nancy leaned back and rested her head on the cushion so that her hair swept across it, her neck lengthened, and the falling light caught her face just so. In that moment of weary grief, the bitterness fell away from her expression.

  “She’s a pretty girl,” Nancy said, gazing out the window. “Favors her mother.”

  “She certainly does.”

  “Is that hard for you? To see your mother’s eyes and nose and mouth in that precious little face?”

  “I don’t see her as often as I’d like,” I said. “The last time before today was at her birthday party. I wasn’t going to go, but Arch and Vanessa insisted.”

  “And how did that go?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  In truth, it had been dreadful. Jim was still having difficulty looking at Dolly without crying. He’d never arranged a child’s birthday party on his own before, and so he overdid the whole affair. The farm was transformed into a child’s paradise, with mechanical rides and a petting zoo, balloon animal guys, and pony rides. He invited every kid in Dolly’s grade at school and all of their parents, not a one of whom was within fifteen years of him in age. When I arrived, the young parents were getting loaded on free booze while the children ran amok.

  “Jim is much more attentive to your baby sister than he ever was to either of our children,” Nancy said.

  “He has to be.”

  “Not really. He could send her to boarding school in the fall and sleepaway camp in the summer, and never have to deal with her outside of a few odd weekends and holidays. I wonder if he’s more interested because he’s old enough to be her grandfather. Maybe grandparents should raise all the children.”

  It seemed a good time to change the subject. “How long are you staying in Nashville?” I asked.

  “Until tomorrow. Vanessa asked me to leave. Says she’s fine. I don’t think she’s quite ready to accept me as a doting mother yet.”

  “I expect she just wants to be alone.”

  “But you’ll be here, won’t you, Charlie?”

  “That’s what she wants.”

  “It hasn’t taken you very long to resume your place at the right hand, has it?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  She smiled.

  “They love you, you know,” she said. “Both of them.”

  “I know,” I said.

  Later on, after Vanessa had gone to bed, I sat up and had a drink with the former Mr. and Mrs. Jim Haltom. Jim and Nancy were natural together, the way they must have been at some point long before the twins or even Arch came along. They teased each other, told stories I’d never heard about their early lives together, when they’d experienced the Belle Meade version of struggle. I could see that they had, in fact, once been in love. The thought occurred to me that, with my mother gone, the two of them might reconcile. What an ending to the story that would have been.

  I drove out to the cabin with Jamie in his Suburban two days later. Scott was just putting away the riding mower when we arrived. Jim’s new maid, Verneta, was inside preparing the bedrooms. We had brought sandwiches, and so the four of us sat at the table on the porch and ate. When we were finished, Jamie and I followed Scott out to the shed. We took shovels and picks and work gloves, and the three of us went out on Arch’s four-man ATV to the spot in the woods across the pond where Arch’s father was buried. The earth was soft and pliant for the first few feet but got denser and rockier below. Jamie threw himself into the labor, and the sweat dripped down from his shirt to stain his pants. Finally, Scott deemed the hole sufficiently deep and wide, and we sat on David Creigh’s bench. Scott opened the cooler he’d brought and took out three beers, and we drank them quickly and each had another, drinking more slowly the second time.

  The next morning, we were up and ready long before the helicopter landed out in the center of the field. When it arrived, we carried Vanessa from the door to a bed Scott had made for her in the back of the pickup and again from the pickup into the cabin and back to the master bedroom. Scott drove the casket out to the clearing. Is there anything more heartbreaking than an infant’s casket? I know there must be, but I have never seen it.

  Jim and Dolly and Nancy were there, and Arch had brought Arch’s mom and Bray Hudson, the rector at Saint John’s. Callie Whitaker, Nancy’s favorite caterer, had driven a van out earlier in the morning and prepared a buffet lunch. There was no set schedule; when Vanessa was ready, Scott would drive her out to the clearing, and the rest of us would walk. Bray Hudson would conduct a short service. Afterward, we’d come back to the house to eat. Vanessa and Arch would stay at the cabin while everyone else who’d come out on the helicopter flew back to Nashville. I was waiting to be told what to do.

  For nearly an hour, Vanessa remained alone in the bedroom. Scott drove the priest to the clearing. Arch wandered down to the dock alone. The rest of us drank coffee and talked in hushed voices. I watched Arch, standing where we used to sit casting spinner baits for bream and bass until the sun set.

  “Let me see if I can help he
r get dressed,” Nancy said.

  She stood and smoothed her slacks and strode back to the bedroom, a hint of the old confidence in her gait.

  “Maybe I should go check on Arch,” Jamie said.

  “Probably better to leave him alone,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Jamie replied. “I’ll talk to him later. Make sure he’s okay.”

  At last, Nancy emerged from the bedroom. “She’s ready,” she said.

  I sent Jamie down to the dock to collect Arch. From the foot of the steps, I watched them walk back toward us, arms around each other. The sight buoyed me, less for the apparent tenderness than for its value as evidence that Arch was not too far gone to tolerate a moment with Jamie.

  I followed Jim on our way around the pond. Dolly walked between us, holding both of our hands. She had grown up enough for me really to start seeing my mother in her. I glanced over at Jim. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to love him, but I’d certainly run out of resentment. He’d more than paid for his sins in suffering.

  “If I have a baby one day,” Dolly said, “I hope it doesn’t die.”

  “I’m sure it won’t.”

  “But Nessa’s baby is with Mommy now,” Dolly said. “Daddy said so.”

  “If Daddy says so,” I said, “it must be true.”

  By the time we reached the burial plot, the priest had changed into his robes and set the table for Communion. A few minutes later, we heard the hum of the ATV and the sound of the wheels rolling gently through the pine needles. Scott stopped it at the edge of the clearing and Arch and Jamie helped Vanessa climb out of her seat. I don’t remember what the priest said; I wasn’t listening. When he was finished, he opened the Book of Common Prayer, and gave each of us the body and the blood, and we prayed again.

  Vanessa stood and Arch helped her walk up to the casket. She trailed her hand across the surface of the little stainless-steel box and stood still for a moment. Then she nodded, and Arch helped her back into the ATV, and they drove back to the cabin, where Vanessa disappeared into her bedroom again.

  Jamie and I were to sit down for lunch and wait for everyone to leave before going back out to cover the casket with earth, but I didn’t feel like I could swallow food. So I changed out of my suit and put on an old pair of jeans and a flannel and slipped out the back door. When I arrived at the gravesite, I found Arch, alone on his father’s bench, gazing toward the sky.

  “I’ll come back,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “We’ll do it together.”

  I took a shovel for myself and handed the second one to Arch. Tossing the dirt into the hole was much less taxing than digging it up.

  “Vanessa’s going to stay out here for a few days,” Arch said. “I have to go back tonight. Will you look after her?”

  “What about Jim and Nancy? They can’t handle things?”

  “Jim needs to get home,” he said. “Dolly has school. Nancy’s leaving for Florida tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Vanessa asked her to go,” Arch said. “Listen, Charlie, this is all a lot to take. But I need you here. You’re the only person I trust.”

  I stopped and set the blade of my shovel on the ground. Arch pulled this kind of shit way too often. It was as if he was tormenting me with my own loyalty.

  “Maybe you should stay too, Arch,” I said. “Just for a day.”

  “You know I can’t,” he said. “We’re so close to the end. People are depending on me. I can’t let them down.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t pretend you’re just doing this for other people.”

  For a moment, I wished I hadn’t spoken. Who was I to say such things to him? But his eyes softened and he nodded, and I could breathe again.

  A shadow passed overhead. Above us, a large bird was circling beneath the sun.

  “I have to go, you know,” Arch said.

  I sucked in a long breath and let it out slowly. Arch took his shovel back up again and returned to sifting dirt from the pile down into the hole. When we were finished, he went over to the bench where he’d left his clothes and put his dress shirt back on. I helped him with his jacket. He dusted off his shoes and straightened his tie.

  “Ready?”

  I nodded, and we began the long walk: along the path of soft pine needles through the woods, out to the field and the path along the rim of the pond, and back toward the cabin.

  “You’re not worried that you’ll look cold, leaving your grieving wife alone for politics?”

  He stopped, turned toward me, and smiled.

  “I’m not leaving her alone,” he said. “I’m leaving her with my best friend.”

  After Nancy said goodbye the next morning, Jim and Dolly drove her to the airport. It looked like nothing so much as a happy couple taking their granddaughter off on an adventure.

  I went to check on Vanessa. She was awake, propped up on pillows. Arch had left earlier.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Better,” she said.

  “Can I fix you something? You need to eat.”

  “Not yet.” Her eyes drifted off toward the windows. “So it’s just the two of us.”

  “The way I’ve always wanted it.”

  “Don’t tease.”

  “You know it’s true,” I said.

  “Your life would be incomplete without Arch.”

  “I lived without him for nearly a decade.”

  “But he was always on your mind.”

  “So were you.”

  She sat up and pushed her hair back.

  “I think I’d like to get out of bed,” she said. “Maybe walk around a bit. See how it goes.”

  “Only if you eat some breakfast.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You need something in your stomach so the medication won’t make you nauseous,” I said. “Toast and eggs?”

  “Toast and eggs.”

  I brought the tray to her bed and then helped her up and held her hand as she made ginger steps down the stairs. She told me she felt stronger, that it was more in her head than anything else.

  “I can’t stop thinking about this void inside me. Then again,” she said, smiling weakly, “I’ve lost a ton of weight. Maybe emergency hysterectomies will be the next big diet fad in Belle Meade.”

  “There’s my girl.”

  We took a turn around the porch and went back up to the bedroom. I called Arch—no answer; I left a message. Vanessa was already asleep. I couldn’t help myself; I went for my sketchbook. It was like we were seventeen again.

  After an hour or so, she opened her eyes and saw me there in the corner, drawing her.

  “Can I see?” she asked.

  I turned the pad.

  “You make me look so much better than in real life,” she said.

  “I draw what I see.”

  I went back to work. I was so intent on making the picture perfect that Vanessa startled me when she spoke.

  “I knew I’d pay a price one day,” she said.

  I put the pad down in my lap. “Life doesn’t work that way.”

  “Oh, yes, it does,” she said. “I should have guessed that this was how God would get back at me.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Don’t you believe in karma?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “Spend a few years watching people who don’t have two pesos to rub together on their knees every day in front of the Blessed Virgin and getting nothing for it but the promise of salvation after death, and you’ll stop believing any of us get what we deserve. And in any case, I never thought it was a mistake.”

  “What did you think?”

  “I thought you were very afraid,” I said. “And very brave.”

  “Your mother was brave,” she said. “I was a coward.”

  “My mother’s options were more limited.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

  “I know.”

  She looked off, out the window.

  “I don’t
deserve to be a mother,” she said.

  “Please don’t say that,” I said.

  We left it at that. She was not open to persuasion. I would never convince her of her own innocence.

  Arch called a little after noon. I spoke to him for a few minutes and then handed the phone to Vanessa. They stayed on for a very long time. I went outside on the porch to smoke. When she was finished, Vanessa hobbled out to join me. I’d lit another cigarette by then; she reached for it and took a long drag.

  “Arch wanted me to take care of you,” I said, “not poison you.”

  She eased down onto one of the rocking chairs and closed her eyes. “A little smoke can’t be any worse for me than these painkillers,” she said. “I feel like a zombie.”

  “If the doctor says to take them, it’s okay, right?”

  Vanessa opened her eyes and sat up. “Arch and Nick,” she said.

  “What about them?”

  “They’re . . . God, I can’t even say it.”

  I couldn’t look at her.

  “You didn’t know?” she asked.

  The thought had occurred to me. The way they looked at each other, how they were often huddled together, laughing. I had assumed the suspicion I’d felt was just jealousy for the old rapport I’d never quite recovered since my return.

  The silence seemed to go on forever. I lit another cigarette, took a deep drag, watched and waited for the smoke to dissipate before I spoke.

  “How do you feel about that?” I asked.

  “How would you feel about it?”

  “I wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “Really?” she asked. “What would you do?”

  “I’d tell him to end it,” I said. “Or else.”

  “Should I have said that to Arch when the two of you were always running off for the weekend together all those years ago?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “You think I didn’t notice the way you looked at him?” she said. “You were so in love with him. It would have been embarrassing if it wasn’t so heartbreakingly sweet.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. There was no point in denying it; she wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

  “We were kids. We didn’t know what we were doing. It was a phase, like puberty,” I said. “I thought maybe he’d outgrown that part of himself.”