Dead Time

by Stephen White

  Before she and Grace had left for Europe Lauren had suggested that we buy a travel policy that would pay to fly her or Grace home by air ambulance if either of them got sick in the Netherlands. The cost of the plan was a few hundred bucks.

  I’d scoffed, reciting my professor’s dictum about going broke buying insurance. She’d insisted that the coverage would give her peace of mind. I’d relented of course—not because I thought we’d ever use the insurance, but because I felt that a few hundred dollars was a reasonable price for Lauren’s peace of mind.

  My professor would have laughed at our gullibility. He’d once told the class that it was because of gullible people—like me and Lauren—that he kept a good chunk of his retirement-plan assets invested in insurance companies.

  I bought the coverage and paid the premium. In return the company promised to fly my girls home on an air ambulance if either of them became ill enough to be admitted to a hospital while they were away. A couple of hundred bucks for many tens of thousands of dollars of coverage.

  The company kept its promise. I made a solitary phone call to get the process started. Less than twenty-four hours later, Lauren and Grace were in an air ambulance crossing the North Atlantic with a doctor and nurse at Lauren’s side. The small jet refueled on the East Coast on the way to the airport in Jefferson County, not far from Boulder.

  I went back and forth. Had I had been too naïve, or too trusting? Maybe both, maybe neither. I couldn’t decide.

  The reality was that the possibility of Lauren reconnecting with her old lover during her trip to Holland had never crossed my mind.

  If Lauren had gotten sick in Amsterdam and not in Hilversum, I’m not sure I would have ever found out that she was getting together with her old boyfriend. But the fact that she was hospitalized in Hilversum when she suffered the MS exacerbation told me all I needed to be convinced that her rendezvous with Joost had taken some planning.

  My girls’ European adventure’s original goal had come to fruition during those last two days in Holland. Lauren and Grace had finally arranged to meet Lauren’s daughter—Grace’s half sister—Sofie.

  After the two families met for lunch in a restaurant, Grace received an invitation to do a sleepover with Sofie’s adoptive family in Amsterdam. That was wonderful. Gracie had fresh family. She would have memories of meeting Sofie that she would treasure for years.

  Lauren took advantage of her surprise night off from parental responsibility to do a sleepover of her own. Lauren’s sleepover was with Grace’s half sister’s birth father, Joost Holkenen. Joost lived in Hilversum.

  The logistics protected Grace’s innocence. Our daughter would be spending that night with Sofie’s family in Amsterdam—they lived on a canal within walking distance of the Van Gogh Museum—and in a perfect world Grace would never know that her mother wasn’t sleeping in their hotel room.

  In that same perfect world I would never learn that Lauren wasn’t sleeping in their hotel room, either.

  Lauren’s was an almost perfect plan in a world that I was growing ever certain was tilted much more toward irony than it was toward perfection.

  What had Sam said as we finished our beers on the roof of the West End Tavern before we’d left on our trips west? He’d said, “Fate abhors planning.”

  Got that right, Sammy.

  My friend Diane drove Jonas and me to meet the air ambulance.

  We watched the jet land. Jonas got a chance to spend a few minutes with Lauren. Grace and I had a brief chance to reconnect. She gave her brother a present—a T-shirt she’d picked out for him from a board store called TOMS Skateboardwinkel in Amsterdam. “‘Winkel’ means shop in Dutch,” she explained to him with a giggle. “‘Skateboard’ means skateboard.”

  He loved the shirt. He was also a mature enough kid to recognize that what Grace had said about skateboards was pretty darn cute.

  Diane drove away from the airport with the kids strapped into the backseat of her convertible. The top was down. The kids were waving. White cumulus clouds were billowing like cartoon balloons above the Rockies, highlighted against a sky the blue of blind hope. Diane would take the kids back to Spanish Hills and turn them over to Mona. Mona would keep an eye on them until I got home.

  As the fog of crisis cleared, Lauren’s medical condition was coming into sharper focus. She wasn’t actually paralyzed. She was suffering acute bilateral paraparesis—sudden profound weakness in both her legs—as the result of a new MS lesion on her spinal cord between the second and third cervical vertebrae. The news was far from good, but it was better than the awful report I’d heard from Joost Holkenen.

  I climbed into the ambulance after my wife’s stretcher was secure. I could smell fear seeping from her pores.

  “I’m relieved to see Jonas,” she said. “I was so worried. Marty didn’t put up a fight?”

  “Even Marty could see that Jonas needed to come home. He has a lot of grieving to do.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  The EMT was young. She wore a lot of makeup. She was busy getting everything ready for the road.

  “You must be scared,” I said to Lauren.

  “This is the worst yet for me,” Lauren said.

  I reminded myself that Lauren was talking about her illness. The worst exacerbation of her MS yet.

  The EMT closed the ambulance doors. I was flooded with memories of the Mojave. I could feel my jawbones clench as I tried to corral my panic.

  She fussed with the monitors. The ambulance started rolling.

  I hadn’t told Lauren about Tarzana or the Mojave.

  “What does Larry think?” I asked as the ambulance turned onto Wadsworth. Larry Arbuthnot was Lauren’s longtime neurologist.

  Lauren said, “He says it’s too soon to tell. We have to give the steroids a chance. He’ll stop by tonight at the hospital. We’ll talk about starting Tysabri.”

  Tysabri would be high-tech prophylaxis against the next exacerbation of MS. Solumedrol was treatment for this exacerbation of MS. If the steroids succeeded in reducing the inflammation on her spinal cord, Lauren’s paraparesis might wane, maybe even disappear. If it didn’t?

  Holy shit. “You’ve had one day of Solumedrol so far?” I asked.

  “Two. Two more to go,” she said.

  I held her hand. We were quiet. It was not the natural silence of a couple that had been married for years, comforting each other during a time of crisis. It was dead time.

  We were dropping into the Boulder Valley. Out the back window of the ambulance I could see the blunt southwest corner of Adrienne’s house in Spanish Hills. While we were married, Merideth had often maintained that the original architect wanted to use that spot on the house for a dramatic turret and covered porch, but that the homesteaders had been too timid to build it. I’d always assumed that the unspoken point of Merideth’s story was that I, too, would have been too timid to build the turret.

  A quarter-mile flew by while I tried to find a contemporary parable there. Failed.

  As the ambulance neared the crest of the scenic overlook south of our Spanish Hills home, Lauren said, “I’m sorry.”

  The EMT flashed a glance at me. When she caught my eye, she looked away. I wondered what version of the truth she’d heard.

  I tasted Lauren’s words. Was she sorry? About her exacerbation? Certainly. About hurting me? Maybe. I would give her that one. But about what she’d done with Joost?

  Was I sorry about what had happened with Ottavia and Amy? Not really. Was I in any frame of mind to make a judgment about the nature of Lauren’s regret? I wasn’t. Whatever had happened between Lauren and Joost in Hilversum wasn’t the worst thing that had happened lately. Not even close.

  I chose to cast away my doubts about the veracity of Lauren’s sorrow. “I don’t think now is the time to talk about it,” I said to her. Not in front of this stranger. “Later.”

  “I didn’t plan it this way,” she said, reeling the damn issue back in. Lauren seemed inured to the prese
nce of the EMT inches from her side. I reminded myself that she’d spent more than two days in the constant company of caretaking strangers. She had grown accustomed.

  I pondered what it was she didn’t plan. The getting caught part? The getting paralyzed part? Or the screwing Joost in Hilversum part?

  I was pretty sure she had planned the getting from Amsterdam to Hilversum part.

  I said nothing, assuming whatever I’d say would be the wrong thing. I cast the problem away, again. Hoped an upslope would catch it, carry it even farther into the distance. Perhaps all the way across the Divide.

  Lauren’s throat was dry. Her voice cracked as she said, “I didn’t know I would see Joost when I was there. It was a complete surprise when he called me. Sofie’s family told him we were in Holland. He wasn’t part of this. I didn’t reach out…to him. I hadn’t talked to him in…forever.”

  Joost wasn’t the issue for me. On the phone he hadn’t sounded like a man who was in love with my wife. He had sounded like a decent enough guy trapped smack in the middle of one of the most complicated one-night stands in Dutch history. I thought he had performed the last act of his unsavory role with surprising dignity.

  “I can’t wait to hear about Sofie,” I said. I meant it. I had a stepdaughter. That was a revelation. My daughter had a half sister. I thought that was wonderful for her. Grace had gained two new siblings in less than half a year. “I hope I can meet her someday,” I said, squeezing Lauren’s hand.

  Lauren finally got the message. She didn’t reel Joost back in that time. “Sofie wants to come and visit,” Lauren said. “Maybe in a year or two, she thought. When she’s a little older. She’s great, Alan. A terrific kid. She speaks four languages.”

  “I’d love for her to visit,” I said.

  “She’s taller than me already. Her hair is dark,” Lauren said. “She has my eyes.”

  My imagination sketched a picture of her while my eyes locked on the Foothills park-and-ride through the back window.

  Lauren said, “I don’t want you to stay with me because I’m sick. I couldn’t stand that.”

  Was the staying or the going up to me? I didn’t know. I did know that I was so far from approaching that particular intersection that I would have to go rent a car from Hertz and power up the GPS so I could ask Chloe for directions on how to locate it.

  I was in no hurry to get there. I turned toward Lauren. “I’m not with you because you’re sick today,” I said. “I won’t be with you because you’re sick tomorrow. Let’s talk about it later. For now, just focus on getting better.”

  I had already been pondering and repondering how much difference there was—really—between what I had done with Ottavia and Amy and what Lauren had done with Joost.

  Did it matter that I didn’t sleep with either the alluring Ottavia or the beguiling Amy? Did it matter whether Lauren did sleep with Joost?

  She hadn’t said what happened with him before the exacerbation felled her. I hadn’t asked. One moment, I thought it made all the difference in the world.

  The next moment, I thought it made no difference at all.

  If someone posted clips of the events on YouTube, I could ask Merideth to get her tech guy to clean up the video and enhance the audio so we could all have a clearer version of the past.

  A version that contained some hints about our future.

  Maybe that would help.

  Or maybe not.

  I was feeling hopeful, either way.

  SIXTY-SIX

  Once she was settled into her room at Community Hospital—her bed had a view of a corner of North Boulder Park and of one of the curious hogbacks that form the first vault of the foothills of the Rockies—I told Lauren about L.A.

  Tarzana, the Mojave. The Camry, the ambulance, the helicopter. The concussion.

  I left out little. But I left out some.

  It was the first time I’d told the story in a single sitting.

  It exhausted me.

  Her, too.

  Lauren and I had talked about her, and about me, and about the kids—all three of the kids. The time had come to talk about us.

  She started. “What now, Alan?” she asked.

  I didn’t know.

  After only a few seconds of silence Lauren said something about letting the dust settle. I agreed that was probably wise.

  I left her flat on her back in her hospital bed. I headed home to be with Grace and Jonas and the dogs.

  The cabdriver took Valmont east. I would’ve taken Broadway south and then picked up South Boulder Road. I thought of Chloe. Wondered what route she would have chosen. It didn’t matter. We would all end up in the same place.

  Sam called as the cab veered onto Foothills.

  His “Hey” soothed me.

  “You back in town?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  I heard something buried in his words. “That detour?” I asked.

  “You could say that.”

  “Too bad. I was hoping I could buy you a beer at the West End. I have a lot to tell you,” I said.

  “Won’t be happening. I’m staying in California for…now.”

  He paused. I said, “Yeah?” yearning for more. He didn’t respond right away. I added, “The Grand Canyon thing? Something new?”

  “No. That’s all done.” He gave me a concise update about Lisa and the baby. Oden and Jaana. The dead girlfriend from Estonia. Kanyn.

  I asked a couple of questions. He answered them.

  Two seconds of silence. Then he said, “Carmen’s pregnant.”

  “What?”

  In a tone as flat as a groomed run below an overcast sky, he said, “You heard me.”

  His admonition was spot-on. My question had been reflexive.

  He inhaled and exhaled. I did the arithmetic. Yes, it was possible.

  “Are you—” I said. “Is it—”

  “It’s my baby.”

  More cleavage. I thought of my molecular biology teacher in college. The other kind. “Cleavage is division,” she’d said during that first lecture. “A split from one into two.”

  From a couple to two singles.

  From parent-child together, to father-daughter apart.

  From an ancient grand mesa, to two plateaus separated by a canyon.

  From a zygote to a blastocyst.

  Sam had said that separation wasn’t always about cataclysm, that sometimes it was about erosion.

  It isn’t always about ending, either, I thought. Sometimes it’s about evolving. Other times, it’s about beginning.

  Conversationally, it was my move. I took a stab at guessing Sam’s feelings about the current cleavage. I said, “Congratulations, Sam. You’re going to be a daddy again.”

  His voice brightened. He said, “Thank you.”

  “You and Carmen? You’re…?”

  “We’re going to work at it. Yeah, we’re working at it.” He paused. “How about you? How’re you doing?”

  “Good,” I said. “It’s good to be home.”

  Sam’s question hadn’t been merely polite. My reply hadn’t been merely banal.

  Despite the cyclones spinning on my flanks, I’d meant what I said. I was doing good. It was great to be home.

  I was wondering where to start with Sam. Lauren’s illness? Jonas’s meltdown? Amy number two? Joost?

  For some insane reason I felt confident I could deal with all of those.

  I started elsewhere. I said, “I have a new kid too, Sam. A teenage stepdaughter. In Holland. Her name is Sofie.”

  He laughed. “Hot damn,” he said. “There you go.”

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Epilogue

  His Ex

  Eric didn’t get that job he coveted. The next election cycle would somehow go on without his guidance. He returned to Columbia to teach.

  It turned out I liked having him around more often. I was so relieved.

  After the rescue in the Mojave, the Grand Canyon episode finally became news. A
true-life tale of guns blazing in the desert sun proved titillating enough to give my colleagues in the media, especially those on cable, a reason to discover they actually did care about what had happened to Jaana Peet. Before the first week was out, the events in the Mojave were being hyped in a promo titled “High Noon in Death Valley.” Every newsmagazine but mine did a long segment on some aspect of the story.

  Truth, of course, got transplanted along with the saguaro cacti the graphics departments felt compelled to include in the art. Joshua trees just didn’t cut it. The confrontation hadn’t been quite at noon, and it hadn’t been quite in Death Valley. But the details were close enough to the truth for today’s fourth estate. I’m not pointing fingers. If I had produced a story on the shootout, I would have committed some—hopefully more imaginative—version of the same sins.

  The exhaustive coverage meant notoriety for my new husband. Notoriety, as he suspected it would be, was toxic for him.

  All the attention meant notoriety for my ex-husband, too. Alan refused to cooperate with the media. He gave interviews to no one.

  I didn’t ask. He would have turned me down too.

  I knew from experience that Alan was a tough get.

  Lincoln Oden had covered his tracks well. Despite an army of investigators, the details about his crimes developed slowly. It took a few weeks for the authorities and the media to sketch out a timeline of what Oden had done.

  Some things became clear before others. The son Oden had been raising as his own was in fact the child of Jaana Peet and Nicholas Paulson. Social Services took custody of the boy days after Oden’s death. Paulson’s attorneys in Las Vegas had weighed in since, as had Jaana Peet’s family in Estonia. The ultimate determination of the boy’s future promised to look something like the scrums that follow a hundred-dollar bill dropped into a crowd.

  A solitary neighbor identified Oden and Jaana as the couple who had been living together on an isolated ranch outside Kingman, Arizona, during the final months of her pregnancy. The landlord confirmed he’d rented the place to Oden, but he knew nothing about any woman who lived there. Oden had terminated his month-to-month lease just around the time the child was born.