“I think I’d like to smoke,” Katharine said in a low voice.
In the hallway of the general medical unit she took Larue’s arm. “You’ve been so much help, I don’t know how to thank you.”
“It was so sudden. I know Gillian wasn’t feeling all that good, but she didn’t complain. I hope she—”
“Gillian’s going to be all right. Larue, you look tired. Shouldn’t you be getting home? Wally, would you see that Larue has a cab? Tell your father I’ve heard nothing but good things about his new play. We’ll call just as soon as we have news about Gillian.”
News was a long time coming. Specialists trooped in and out. They held conferences. A lab report came down: it was not meningitis. Nevertheless Gillian’s temperature fluctuated between 103.5 and 105 degrees. She was placed on a thermal mattress. She dozed, awoke, spoke deliriously to several people, none of whom were in the room with her. Her respiration was shallow; glands in her neck remained swollen, which suggested a viral infection, despite a normal throat appearance. The hematocrit was within a normal range. Her platelet count was minimum normal, but the leukocyte, or white blood cell, count was on the low side, not uncommon with a number of diseases, including influenza.
Avery Bellaver took his wife to dinner at a place near Lincoln Center, an area filled with gimmicky restaurants that serve miserable food. This one celebrated old-time aviators. Captains of the clouds. Devil dogs of the air. A Fokker replica hung from the ceiling. There were sepia murals of exploding aircraft. The waiters wore stovepipe boots, those cunning leather helmets that fit like bathing caps, goggles and long white scarves that occasionally trailed in the meals they served.
The Bellavers concentrated on a pretty good wine list and ate sparingly.
In the past three years they had spent fewer hours together than Katharine spent at her dentist’s. It would have surprised even her closest friends to know that she had any affection for Avery at all; according to their thinking she hung on to the marriage for all the correct reasons, the least of which was money. She’d won her place in the family, was tolerated by the women and respected by those Bellaver men who didn’t actually covet her. Avery Bellaver was the clan anomaly: obscure, strange and unapproachable. It was admirable that she had landed him, went the smart talk, but then she’d worked, darling, all those years, getting long in the tooth while appealing to his mind and then his glands, probing, probing deftly to find a human response or two, thereafter making the most of his no-doubt feeble urges.
Katharine had heard all the gossip and thoroughly enjoyed it. She’d never made the least effort to explain her husband to anyone. His sexual urges had been and were still quite strong, thank you; the gossips seemed to have forgotten her two miscarriages a year apart. Then had come Gillian and the simultaneous tragedy nobody knew about, which decided her against further pregnancies. She still looked forward to going to bed with Avery on those occasions when mood and opportunity coincided. As for his social shortcomings, he was less shy than preoccupied. He was no good with the self-important and aggressive examples of the species, whether cab driver, maitre d’, social parasite or ersatz royalty. He was not a gamesman. Politics alternately bored and frightened him. Avery’s obsessions were vastly more rewarding and of some value to mankind. He wanted, for instance, to learn everything he could about the daily life of a remote Mexican Indian village he’d been visiting for twenty-five years. Once, early in the marriage, Katharine had accompanied him to Mtecla, had seen the entire village turn out to greet Avery Bellaver. He spoke their dialect and knew all their names. In this hot, dry land the hesitant bumbler disappeared; he was at ease, under no compunction to behave as a Bellaver is supposed to behave. They were not a peaceful people, they were suspicious of strangers and had stoned missionaries to death, but his respect for them inspired trust and even love.
Katharine had similar feelings for her husband, though his life was not her life and she needed the attentions of many men. She was decent about her appetite, arranging trysts so they couldn’t be a source of embarrassment to him. Avery had never hurt her and she would never hurt him, the purest definition of love Katharine had to offer.
Avery studied a mural-sized portrait of a long-ago lieutenant.
“I was four years old when my brother was commissioned,” he said. “He looked like that. I was in awe of him.”
“Did he die during the war?”
“Yes, but not in combat. He slipped on some icy stairs in Amiens and broke his neck.”
“What was his name again? Oh, Charles. Mother Min wanted us to name our first-born after Charles.” Katharine finished her third glass of a ’64 Bordeaux. She was feeling the effect of the wine and the vodka martinis that had come before. “Do you think about him?”
“About my brother?”
“No. About our son. About the one who didn’t live. Gillian’s twin.”
He shook his head. “Do you think about him?”
“Yes. Sometimes. I wonder what he’d be like if he had lived. And Gillian thinks about him, or she used to. She asked a lot of questions. I explained, as best I could, about the cord. I told her there just wasn’t anything to be done. If he’d survived, he’d have been a vegetable.” Katharine grimaced. “The fever. If it stays high long enough it’ll just ruin Gillian’s brain. Short out the synapses or something. How cruel for her to get this far, then—. She’ll be—.”
“Katharine.”
“I know, I know. But I can’t help feeling shaky. All things considered, our luck’s too good. So we lose one in childbirth, but there’s a bonus baby. The goddamn Bellaver luck. We’re not all that charming and we’ve never been a national craze, but unlike the poor bedeviled Kennedys—let me see the check, please.”
She took it from Avery as he was about to pay, did some quick addition.
“You’ve overcharged us a dollar and a half,” Katharine told the waiter, who pretended to be grief-stricken. Later she said fondly to her husband, “They’ll try to do it to you every time.” Avery just smiled, bemused.
On their return trip to the hospital they were introduced to Dr. Hubert Tofany of the Division of Tropical Medicine at Columbia University.
“I understand you both travel a great deal. Could you give me a rundown on where you’ve been during the past six or eight months? You needn’t bother with airport layovers.”
“Do you think we could have brought back some kind of bug?” Katharine asked. “We’d have been sick ourselves.”
“Not necessarily. At the Yale arbovirus lab they have a rap sheet on approximately four hundred viruses, most of them obscure, all potentially dangerous, and each has its own peculiarities. They incubate in mysterious ways. There are viruses that bother adults hardly at all, but they’re devastating to children. And the reverse is true. We’ll take a blood sample from each of you. What we’d like to do now is move Gillian into an isolation bed at Washington Heights. We’re better equipped there to do the kind of serological analysis necessary to track down the … culprit. A serum may be available.”
Katharine looked at her husband, who said, “We … my wife entertains frequently. We have visitors from all over the world. It could just as easily be someone we’ve had to dinner.”
Dr. Tofany smiled patiently.
“I’d like as complete a list as possible. All recent house guests.”
Katharine said, “Tracking them all down, that could take a lot of time.”
“Yes.”
“Meanwhile if you can’t find out what it is—if it’s something you’ve never seen before—”
“We’ll continue the indicated protocol. Combinations of antibiotics. Sometimes, even with a new strain of virus, the patient is able to produce antibodies to destroy it. Try not to worry, Mrs. Bellaver.”
They visited Gillian briefly while arrangements were made to transfer her to the hospital at One Hundred Sixty-Seventh and Broadway.
“She’s been talking again,” the licensed practical nurse told them.
“Hello, darling,” Katharine said. “Poor baby.”
Gillian opened her eyes and looked at her through the oxygen tent.
“Ruh,” she whispered.
“What did she say?” Avery asked. “Would you say that again, Gillian?”
“She hasn’t been very clear,” the LPN reminded them with a smile.
Gillian began screaming.
It took three of them, Katharine, Avery and Dr. Tofany, to keep her from tearing free of the IV needles, from tearing the oxygen tent apart.
The seizure, and the screaming, continued for almost half a minute. Her strength was the strength of insanity, or desperation.
“Larue!” she cried, and subsided, as wet as if she’d stepped out of a shower.
“Restraints, Doctor?” the nurse said.
Tofany was checking the IV placements.
“No. Sponge her off.”
Katharine retied Gillian’s hospital gown, which had almost come off during her struggle. Blood throbbed in Katharine’s temples and her fingers didn’t work too well. There was a small cross, of gold and black onyx, on a chain around Gillian’s neck. She had never seen it before.
“Shouldn’t the phenobarb keep her quiet?” Katharine asked.
“Yes. What was that she was saying, do either of you—?”
“She was calling Larue. That’s her friend, the girl she was skating with today. Avery, where did the cross come from?”
“I’ve never seen it before.”
“Nurse!” Dr. Tofany said harshly.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Don’t touch her!”
“But you—”
“Have you touched her since you came on?”
“No, sir, that was just a few minutes—”
“Go get your hand attended to. Don’t you have better sense than to come into a sickroom with an open wound?”
The LPN stared at him. He nodded curtly at her right hand. She looked at the blood-soaked Band-Aid on the back of the hand and gasped.
“My Lord!”
“We’re dealing with a virus here we don’t know anything about. This kind of unforgivable carelessness—”
“Doctor, I don’t understand. This was just a scratch. It hardly bled at all two days ago—”
“It’s bleeding now. Copiously. Get out of here.”
The nurse hurried out. Katharine took another look at the pale, becalmed Gillian and followed the nurse from the room. She went to a telephone, looked in her purse for a number which Larue had scribbled for her and dialed shakily. The phone rang six times before a sleepy voice answered.
“Larue?” She could hear a television playing.
“Uh-huh.”
“This is Katharine Bellaver.”
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Bellaver. Timezit?”
“A little after nine.”
“I fell asleep. All that exercise—is Gil okay?”
“She’s being moved to Washington Heights Hospital. There’s a chance you’ve been exposed to something very contagious. We don’t know yet.”
“I feel fine.”
“Are you there by yourself?” Katharine asked.
“Dad has some people in.”
For the first time since Gillian had screamed Katharine was able to relax.
“Then you’re all right.”
She heard a stifled yawn, which was followed by a puzzled response. “Yes, ma’am. When will I be able to see Gillian?”
“Not for a few days. She’ll be in isolation until they’re sure of what she has. If you notice any symptoms at all, even if you think you’re just coming down with a cold, call us.”
“I will.”
“Larue? Do you know anything about a gold and onyx cross Gillian is wearing?”
“Oh! It’s mine. I know she’s not into religion, but I was so upset when she passed out … while we were waiting for the ambulance to come I put it around her neck. The cross was blessed by a Jesuit who my mother considers to be a very holy man. I didn’t think it would do any harm. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not. That was very thoughtful, Larue. I’ll keep in touch.”
For a couple of minutes after she’d hung up Katharine leaned against the wall near the telephone, feeling dull and drained; a headache was coming on. Gillian’s frantic screaming was too much with her; it was her daughter’s agony for Larue that had sent Katharine witlessly to the telephone. It seemed almost as if Gillian had willed it, directed her to make the call. But nothing was wrong; there was no emergency. Larue was at home and safe.
Katharine knew she needed to get a little better grip on herself, because Gillian could go on like this for days. She would insist on a room at the new hospital as close to her daughter as she could get. No more thoughts of the holidays in Acapulco, and Howard Wrightnour would have to struggle along without her. Only Gillian mattered now.
Chapter Five
LAMBETH, VIRGINIA
JUNE 1972
Robin caught the little pop fly a few feet to the right of the first-base line and sat down hard, clutching mitt and ball to his chest; while waving the first baseman away he had taken his eye off the ball for a moment and misjudged it. But he was up immediately, ready to charge the unprotected plate if Shanley, the runner on third, decided to come home. Shanley bluffed but returned to the base. Robin jogged back with the ball as he’d been taught to do at Johnny Bench’s clinic; only then, with the plate covered, did he lob the ball back to his pitcher. He held up a finger.
“One more!” he yelled. “Any base!” Feast of the Assumption had the sacks loaded in the bottom of the sixth; two out and the Barksdale Baptist Little Leaguers were clinging to a 10-9 lead. The batter was a lean long-armed kid named Giffin, who had really tagged one in the fifth inning.
Coach was up off the bench waving the shortstop closer to third. Robin adjusted his chest protector and picked up the mask he had discarded to chase the pop fly.
“Let’s hear it!” he chided the tired infielders. “Little chatter now! Stay alive, we’ve got ’em.”
The sun was setting behind the third-base bleachers, casting an orange glow over the field. Robin hunkered down and glanced at Shanley, the biggest boy on the Assumption team.
Shanley played first base, and early in the season Robin had had a run-in with him while trying to beat out a soft roller. A bad throw had pulled Shanley a step off the bag and in trying to tag Robin he’d hit him in the mouth with his elbow; result, one shattered eyetooth and three other teeth so loosened they had to be wired. It could have been an accident, but Robin wasn’t all that sure. Red Shanley was the sort who enjoyed a cheap shot if he thought he could get away with it. He looked heavy, almost fat, crouched down at third with his left foot nudging the bag, but Robin could vouch for his strength and for a big kid he could really get it into gear.
“Look who’s here,” Robin sneered as Giffin stepped into the box. “Hey, man, your bat’s got holes in it. Wave goodbye, Giffin, wave goodbye.”
“Don’t you ever shut up?” Giffin muttered, glaring at the pitcher. Robin signaled for Harkaday’s best pitch, a change-up, and stuck his mitt out. Giffin let one go by on the outside corner that the umpire called a strike. They were having a fit over there on the Feast of the Assumption bench. Giffin backed off looking disgusted and hit the ground with his bat.
Robin laughed. “That’s what happens when you don’t go to confession. Okay, Giffin, coming right at you. Show us your beautiful swing.”
Ball one, and Robin had to go down to smother it in the dirt. He called time and went out to settle his pitcher down.
“Break one off,” he told Harkaday.
“Coach said—”
“Break one off anyway,” Robin ordered, hoping he wouldn’t end up chasing the ball all the way to the backstop while Shanley sauntered home.
He went back behind the plate, and Harkaday threw his best curve in two weeks. Nevertheless Giffin got a piece of the ball, topping it to the pitcher’s mound.
“Home!” Robin yelled, crouching over the plate. The best and safest play was to first and Harkaday, who had been quick to pounce on the ball, knew it. But he was used to obeying Robin, so he hitched around and threw awkwardly as Shanley came barreling down the chalk from third.
The throw was wide but Robin knew it was going to be. He took two quick steps, grabbed the ball with his bare hand and flung himself back toward the plate, kneeling and covering it with his body. Shanley hit him and they went rolling over and over in the dirt. Robin held the ball, jumping up as the umpire called Shanley out. Shanley stayed down, openmouthed, clutching his stomach. Robin glanced nonchalantly at him as he walked away. The knee in Shanley’s solar plexus had been purely accidental, of course—but he was pleased with the results.
As the team was getting together for the after-game prayer Coach gave Robin a long look, but Robin ignored it. He was the team leader and it was up to him to make crucial decisions on the field. If either the curve ball or Harkaday’s hasty throw to the plate had gone astray Robin would have accepted all the blame, and shrugged it off. Johnny Bench never made excuses, either. When Johnny blew one, which wasn’t often—maybe a couple of times a season—he looked you right in the eye and owned up to his mistake. He didn’t remind you of all those games he’d won practically singlehanded with his bat, of the shrewdly called games that made his pitchers look like geniuses. And that was Robin’s style too.
He shrugged off congratulations, praised his teammates for every good play he could remember, slapped a few palms and rumps and walked home alone, carrying the tools of the catcher’s trade, limping just a little from bruises, weary but satisfied.
Robin was ten years old, and from the age of three he had lived with his aunt and a man he called sir but refused to call uncle in a pleasantly shaded frame house that leaned decidedly to one side, like the Tower of Pisa, but somehow never fell into the pond next door, despite much groaning and popping of rafters in a windstorm. The house hadn’t been painted since shortly after World War II and very likely never would be painted again; it was the property of the World-Wide Church of the Thirteenth Apostle, a missionary church that legislated against almost everything in life that could be dispensed with, as long as it didn’t cause physical hardship. Robin had found it necessary to run away three or four times before he was reluctantly granted permission by the Apostolate Council to play ball with the Baptists. Also his father had threatened to remove him from the Tidrow household and place him in military school, a certain loss of one soul to the devil.
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