“Aurora’s going up to her bedroom now. She’s changing clothes for her birthday party.”
“I see that,” I say, squatting beside her in the dirt until my legs begin to ache and I sit down cross-legged. “How old will she be?”
“She’s sixteen. This is her pony and she’s just a baby. She’s one years old.”
“Well, we should help her get dressed up, then. Will she be wearing her crown?”
Lia smoothes the nylon hair and wedges a glittery tinfoil crown over the doll’s forehead. “She’s getting married on her birthday.”
“She’s mighty young to get married, isn’t she?”
Lia is absorbed in stretching a tiny blue gown over Aurora’s inflexible arm, her breath staccato with each tug at the material.
“Aunt Marie, when will you get married? Mommy says I could be in your wedding someday.”
“Did she?” I reach over and loosen the Velcro waistband impeding Aurora’s vestment. “Well, I guess I haven’t found the man I want to marry yet.”
She jams sandy high heels onto Aurora’s feet, and sticks her upright in the sculpted castle. Then she rocks back over her heels in the dirt and looks up at me, squinting slightly against the setting sun. “Are you looking?”
“Looking?”
“Looking for your husband?”
She scans my face with serious purpose, curious about how this distantly admired aunt has missed such a critical benchmark. I prepare an explanation of the twenty-first-century woman’s choices in life, and then surprise myself with an abrupt and uncalculated answer. “Yes, I guess I am.”
This seems to settle some mild disturbance in her view of life’s natural order. Then she frowns slightly and says, “But not at night.”
I smile at the ease with which I can resolve this final puzzle about my world. “No. It’s too dark to look for him at night.”
The screen door bangs shut, and Aurora and her pony are abandoned to the fate of the night as Lia runs to the back porch. Lori is arranging chicken and hot dogs on the propane grill. She hands me a Coke and sits down in a canvas sling chair, dragging another beside her for me. The evening has cooled to a tolerable heat as long as I sit still. I roll the Coke can against my cheek to steal the cold.
Thousands of cicadas hum as twilight arrives; the sound inhales and exhales as one unified creature, hovering like an aura without visible source. It invokes barefoot summers playing in the open field behind our house—a field in which my sister and I once buried a mangled rabbit we’d found in the blackberry brambles, victim, it appeared, of some neighbor’s dog. A shopping center covers that field now; car radios have replaced the cicadas’ mating calls.
“I told Elsa to be back for dinner,” Lori says, turning her wrist to glance at her watch. She shakes her head and adds, “Her best friend has a big brother she’s got a crush on.”
“Yeah, I heard about that one. Do you know him?”
“No. But I’ve seen him and I don’t blame her. I swear, it happens overnight. Thank God she at least talks to you. I’m not sure she hears anything I say.”
I take Lori’s hand across the dark space between our chairs. “I’d tell you if I heard anything you needed to know. Promise. I don’t think you have to be worried.”
Lori gives me a wry smile that I remember signaling, decades ago, some secret held over me, the older sister. “I know. I count on that. But you start worrying about your children the day they’re born. Sometimes, when I’m waiting up at night for Elsa to come home, when she’s pushed her curfew to the last second, I ache for her to be a baby again. I ache for the days when I was the center of her universe, even though I know it’s selfish to want that. It’s almost cruel that we’re hardwired to love our children this intensely.”
“Does it bother you? Our phone calls?”
She looks bemused, wise about a realm of life I can’t fully comprehend. “It’s the best, Marie. We hardly even had one mom at her age. She has two. It’s been a hard year for her. Gordon’s last development flopped—over half the units are still empty. Then the investor for his upcoming project backed out on him. It’s turned our finances upside down—I’m managing his books now. I think it’s affected Elsa more than the others. She’s old enough now that she picks up on the stress—not to mention the cutbacks in all the clothes and makeup she wants at this age.”
“I can’t believe it, Lori. You never said anything about this to me.”
She flashes another strained smile. “Survival through denial. Works every time. Besides, you’ve had your own worries. We’ll get through it. Commercial real estate is that way—remind me to drive you past some of our deserted strip malls while you’re out here. But I confess, this one’s been a steep tumble.”
Lori lifts her soda to her mouth and sips with a soft gurgle of air and liquid. Lia flashes low and high on the swing set, pumping hard with her bare, dusty legs. I am ashamed at discovering how stoic Lori has been with her own trials, at how I’ve insulated myself within my crisis.
She swats at a mosquito on her neck hunting blood in the dusk and then flicks the crumpled insect into the long grass, sweat glistening over the rhythmic undulations of her carotid pulse. After a quiet minute she looks back at me. “Don’t say anything to Gordon about it, would you? Unless you decide you’d like to open a strip mall outside of Irving, that is. I’m sure he’d make you a deal. Not as much job security as anesthesia, but you could get a great buy on computer parts and acrylic nails.”
“Well, how serious is it? Is he worried about his business? I mean, you’re OK, right?”
She looks back at me. “Let’s just say there’s more demand for facelifts and appendectomies than nail salons and Domino’s Pizzas. I have to admit I miss the maid.” She swashes her hands at more mosquitoes and stands up. “I give up—they win. Let’s eat inside. Lia, come in for dinner. Wipe off your feet before you open that door.”
At this cusp of night it would be after nine o’clock in Seattle; late summertime dinners are eaten in full daylight. But here, nearer the world’s girth, it is almost dark at seven thirty. Lori sets a platter of chicken and hot dogs between two sterling candelabras on the glossy wooden dining room table.
“You don’t mind paper plates, do you?” she asks, fanning out white, crimp-edged Dixie plates and lighting the tapers. “I love it. Candlelight and hot dogs—only in Texas. Elsa should be here any minute. She almost canceled her plans today to stay home—a miraculous concept. You’re her idol, you know, a female doctor living in a swank apartment in the city. Not some stodgy suburban housewife like her mother.” She squinches her nose up in humor, such a characteristic Lori expression, connected with a thousand shared experiences. Like the way she hitches up her right shoulder whenever she exaggerates the truth, bites her lip in contemplation, or laterally flares her hands before she offers her frequently obstinate opinion on what’s right or wrong for the people she loves. I am flooded with a sense of belonging, to be so intimately aware of another person’s unique watermark on the world, connecting us like the secret insignia of clans.
The front door slams with a clank of the brass knocker and Elsa bounds into the room. I know it’s Elsa—she has my little sister’s face. Otherwise I would barely recognize her from the girl I saw two years ago. I don’t see any of my sister in the billowing figure of my niece—the miraculous mixing of genes has strayed far from the lean, functional physique of the Heaton line. I wrap her in my arms so tight she lifts into the air. Her hug invokes the luxurious sensation of falling into a plush comforter, round and warm and inviting. No wonder Lori’s worried.
“Aunt Marie. Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re here. I couldn’t believe it when Mom said you were coming today. My Spirit Club had a car wash so I had to go out before you woke up. We made tons of money, though—over two hundred dollars. But I swear tomorrow I won’t leave the house so we can talk. Well, I mean, I have to go out tomorrow night, but that’s, like, just for a few hours.”
She has no idea how beautiful s
he is, I can tell. Her hair, wet from what must have been a water fight after the car wash, has been haphazardly swept into a tangled knot skewered with a gnawed pencil. Her T-shirt clings to her cleavage. Only her voice, the part of her I know best, is still childlike. Truly, the fecundity of young womanhood has been launched, and she seems delightfully unaware.
Lori raises an eyebrow at me from across the table. “Hi, sweetie. Grab a plate and sit down. Have you eaten anything yet?”
“I gotta run, Mom. Sierra’s picking me up in twenty minutes to go to the mall with her and Dakota.” She plucks a chicken leg off the serving platter and gives me a kiss, fragrant with suntan lotion and Juicy Fruit gum.
“Sierra and Dakota,” I comment, as Elsa bounces out of the room, Lia following in her wake like an adoring fan. “Is it a family or a geography class?”
“You should hear the lineup of Neil’s baseball team. It stops just short of a world atlas. So, maybe you could rent a car and follow her—tell me what goes on at the mall.”
“She hasn’t gotten into any really dicey stuff, has she?” I have to remind myself I usually hear only one side of Elsa’s world.
“Maybe I should be asking you! I mean, what would I have done with a body like that at her age? Our parents were blessed with two scrawny, flat-chested wallflowers. Whatever happened to the ‘Heaton Late Puberty’ gene? Maybe it’s hormones in the milk—it makes me want to give them Coke. Do they talk about that at any of your fancy medical meetings?” She sweeps the dining table clear of paper plates and knots the red plastic ribbons on the trash bag with a fierce tug. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and Lia will stay little forever.”
“How can that much time have passed? All this year on the phone, I’ve been picturing her as a child,” I say, stacking up the emptied plastic cups.
“It’s been two years since you’ve seen her, Marie. Two years of estrogen and internet chat rooms. And Abercrombie and Fitch—or whoever decided it was indecent to cover your navel. Biggest problem is that she is a child. She just doesn’t look like it anymore. Maybe it used to be easier when girls got married in adolescence—less open ocean to navigate between childhood and moving out.”
“You’re kidding, I know.” She shrugs her shoulders and keeps clearing the table.
“Of course I’m kidding. Most of the time. Or at least the few hours of the day when she doesn’t seem to hate me. Did you and I argue with Mom very often, though? I can’t imagine she ever contemplated spyware.”
“They didn’t have spyware when we were growing up. What makes you think she hates you?”
“Oh, just the fact that fifty percent of our dinners and breakfasts end up with all the napkins being used to wipe tears instead of spilled milk. I feel like I’m walking on glass around her. I hand her a hairbrush because I assume she hasn’t gotten around to it yet and she bursts into sobs.”
“Here. Let me take it.” I pull the trash bag out of her hands.
She sighs and releases her hold on the garbage. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear me vent. Just remind her there’s more than one side to her issues.”
“I do. And it does me good to hear somebody else’s problems for a change. Do you want me to take this out back?”
“It’s a toss-up. In here it starts to smell, outside the dog rips it up all over the yard. And you thought only doctors faced tough choices. My life is filled with fascinating dilemmas like this. Just stuff it under the sink for now and come sit down with me. Want some ice cream?”
“Just water,” I say, jamming the trash into the overstuffed can and coming back to sit next to her.
She divides the last of the pitcher into two plastic cups and sets one down in front of me. “Now, you complain for a while. I’m tired of hearing myself moan.”
“Trust me on this. You’d rather hear yourself,” I say, my pulse notching up at the threat of revealing that my medical-legal nightmare has escalated to a realm I’d thought reserved for perpetrators of corporate frauds and investment schemes, if not just common thieves.
Lori is quiet, tracing tiny crosses and circles in a pile of spilled table salt, then she leans toward me over the table and takes my hand in hers. “I know you didn’t leave Seattle just to appreciate our summer weather. And I know they don’t give away extra vacation time at that hospital. Is there any settlement in sight yet?”
I shake my head and focus on the lacy crystal patterns of salt. “That’s a long way off. It’s gotten more complicated in the last few weeks.”
She gives me time to tell her more, then asks, “Complicated in what way?”
“You know the dream I told you about? The one about her heart?”
Lori waits, open, ready.
“I was right. Jolene had a heart problem. They found it in the autopsy. She had a coarctation of her aorta—a kink in the biggest blood vessel leaving her heart.”
She groans and covers her eyes with her hands. “Oh God. Is that why she died?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But it gives the other side a reason to blame me. I missed it. I didn’t know about it before I put her to sleep.”
“Did anybody else know? She’d been seen by other doctors, right? You said she’d been sick off and on since she was three or four.”
“She was mentally retarded—that doesn’t automatically make anybody look for a heart defect. Her mom didn’t say anything about her heart when I talked to her before the operation. There’s no record in her chart that anybody knew about it.”
“So why do you get the blame? Besides, you just said you’re not sure this is why she died.”
“I’m not. I mean, I might have put in an arterial line at the beginning, but—when I’m objective about it, really think it through—I still don’t think it explains her death.” I tuck my hands together between my knees, torn between leaving the room and telling her about the criminal investigation. “There’s more.” I stop, and bite my lip. After a minute I twist my mouth into a false smile and add, “I think I’m not ready to talk about it right now.”
She looks so sad, as if my inability to share this represents her failure. “How are you getting through your workdays?” she asks gently.
“Honestly?” She nods for me to continue. “Every time I introduce myself to a new patient I wonder if they’ve heard about what happened. I feel like a charlatan. I can’t take care of children anymore—I can’t stomach the idea of telling some mother that her baby would be safe with me.” I look up at her again, see the concern in her eyes. “I keep seeing her mother. Seeing her face when I walked into the waiting room to tell her what had happened. I keep imagining that if I could talk to her again, find out how she’s surviving this, I could somehow fix it. Not fix it—I know it will never be fixed—but, I don’t know, somehow take part of her pain into myself.”
Now I have brought Lori near tears, spilling my tragedy into her own turbulent life. I see her struggling to respond when the garage door suddenly squeals up on its metal rails and we both jump. She sighs. “Gordon’s home.” Then she leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “So here’s what I want to know, Marie. Who’s taking care of you during all of this? Who’s listening to this when you come home at the end of the day?” Then she walks into the kitchen, smoothing her hair, to greet her husband.
The refrigerator opens and closes, and I hear the hiss-pop of a bottle cap, the brush of cloth against cloth. Murmured fragments of words crescendo and fade through the walls. After a few minutes of silence Lori comes back into the dining room, followed by Gordon, my brother-in-law of sixteen years.
“Hey, Marie. A house call from the doctor at last. How are you?”
“Great,” I say, forcing a smile. “Great. Wish I’d brought some of our Northwest weather, though.”
“You guys just need to discover real climate control. Be as proud as us to build houses with windows that don’t even open. No kidding, though. It’s good to see you. The Heaton progeny need to get to know their smart aunt better. Got to get you
down here more often, now that Southwest Airlines flies to the hinterlands of Seattle.” He gives me a one-armed hug, and swings out the chair at the head of the dining table, then leans back in it, loosening his tie. Since I saw him two years ago, Gordon has increased his belt size by nearly the same percentage his hairline has receded. Lori sits down in the chair next to him and rests her hand on his sleeve.
“So how is it in the land of nod? Still putting people under, are you?” Gordon asks.
Lori winces and interrupts him. “Gordon’s always so fascinated by your job. I think it’s because he’s terrified of anesthesia.” She rubs his arm. “I saved dinner for you, honey. Hungry?”
She sets a plate full of microwaved barbecue on the table. As he leans forward to take a bite I watch the throb of his temporal artery snaking across his brow and wonder what his blood pressure is.
“I’m not terrified of anesthesia. But I’m sure Marie deals with plenty of people who’d rather be anyplace but unconscious under a knife. Don’t you?” Gordon asks.
I draw in a breath to answer him but Lori deflects the conversation again. “Tell Marie about the idea for your new project, Gordy. That one you want to start on the Holtman property. I thought I might drive her by there tomorrow.”
Gordon beams at her, then looks down at the whorled patterns of wood on the dining room table and raises his palms above the reflecting surface, as if preparing to conduct an orchestra. He clears his throat and draws his eyebrows together, apparently mesmerized by his internal vista. “Imagine you’re an artist,” he finally begins. “Imagine that you’re a sculptor, or a woodcarver, or a weaver.” His eyebrows are rising higher with each image. “A fiddle maker, a potter, a…a whatever. You’ve got talent.” He clenches his fist in front of me. “And vision. Skill. You can create beautiful, one-of-a-kind works of art.” He fans out the fingers of his thick hands and looks me right in the eye. “But how do you create your art and still have the time—and the business savvy—to find the market for it?”
“Well.” I try to sound optimistic about what might be coming. “I don’t know. I never really thought about that problem before.”
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