“What?” Sam said.
“You,” Libby said, laughing harder. “Miss Goody Two-shoes. Miss Never-Skip-School. Breaking all those windows.”
Sam started laughing, too. Other patients stared at them now, but they were beyond stopping, hysterical.
There was a warning, the quick flash of something not right, then the first cramp took hold. It seized her calf muscle, just as it had when she was pregnant and she’d have to jump out of bed in the middle of the night and put weight on her leg, trying to release it. Then the pain was everywhere, gripping every muscle, every cell. Her fingers curled in spasm. The alarm on her machine sounded. Everett was there at once, adjusting her saline solution, soothing her, stroking her shoulder, rubbing her shin, telling her to hold on. Through the curtain of pain, she heard someone telling Sam to go out to the waiting room. She opened her eyes and caught a glimpse of her sister’s face contorted with terror.
It’s okay. Libby tried to push the words out, to console Sam, but the pain robbed her of speech.
Sam and Libby
Sam pushed her way through the waiting room, out to the parking lot. The image of Libby—mouth a twist of agony, body one single spasm—burned beneath her eyelids. The alarm echoed in her ears. “Oh, God,” she said, the words a sob. She doubled over, sucked air.
“Miss? Are you okay?”
A hand cupped her shoulder. “Take a couple of deep, gentle breaths. Easy now.”
She forced herself to obey. Her breathing slowed, but not her heart, which thumped wildly beneath her ribs, a small animal bent on escape.
“Better now?” It was the black nurse who had cared for Libby.
She straightened up, turned to him. “My sister—” Words clotted in her throat. Again she heard the urgent ringing of the alarm, saw Libby in spasm. “Is she—?”
“She’s fine,” he said. “She’s resting.”
She searched his face for a lie. “Honest?”
“Cross my heart.” He smiled warmly, then leaned over and picked up Libby’s tote, which had slid off Sam’s shoulder when she doubled over. He handed it to her.
“What happened in there?”
“Her saline levels went out of balance and she cramped up.”
“Jesus. Does that happen often?”
“Occasionally. We’ve adjusted it. She’s all right now.”
“Really?”
“Why don’t you go see for yourself?”
“Maybe in a minute.” She felt the heat of shame, knowing she couldn’t face it again. The buzzers and bells and people in green leather chaises hooked up to machines, blood running through tubes. She hadn’t realized it was going to be anything like this. How could he bear to work here? How did people take these jobs? Like the technicians who euthanized stray animals. What kind of heart did you have to have? Incredibly hard? Or soft?
“I’ve got to get back,” he said, and, taking her arm, he led her inside. She sank down on a chair in the waiting room, dimly aware of the curious stares from others.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Water? Or we have some soda in the staff refrigerator. Ginger ale. Coke.”
“No. No, but thanks.”
The others in the room had come prepared for the long wait. A woman was knitting, several were reading. One—a young woman— sat nodding in time to music pouring into her ears from a headset. Sam didn’t want water or Coke or something to pass the time. She wanted Lee. She clutched her hands in her lap to stop their trembling. She regretted leaving her cell back at the house. She needed to talk to him. She leaned over to a man seated on her left. “Excuse me,” she said. “Do you know if there is a public phone around here?”
He shook his head. “If it’s an emergency, they’ll probably let you use the one at the desk.”
“That’s all right,” Sam said. “No emergency.”
She lifted the heft of Libby’s tote, wondered if her sister carried a cell. Probably. Judging from the weight of the bag, it probably held just about everything but a vacuum cleaner, but knowing her sister, maybe that, too, one of those Dustbusters. She opened the flap.
A slender softcover book of poems lay on top. Poetry was Libby’s thing; Sam had never gotten its appeal. Except for the simplest, most direct—Emily Dickinson, say—it was a language she couldn’t decipher. Whenever she tried to read it, she just ended up feeling stupid. Libby had once tried to explain it to her, but even the words she used were maddening. Iambs. Trochees. Quatrains. Couplets.
Sam stared at the cover: A dark-haired man in profile, thin slash of an eyebrow, Roman nose, chin resting on cupped hand, was sitting by the bed of a sleeping woman whose hair was the same shade as Libby’s. She read the title: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. There was a Post-it stuck to the inside of the cover and she read it before she realized it was personal. “Remember, love always outweighs despair. Gabe.”
She slipped the book back into Libby’s bag. It was none of her business if Libby had a lover, but still, the softening in her heart she’d felt toward Libby since the first second she’d seen her earlier that morning toughened.
She continued rooting through the bag in search of a phone and found a second book, also poetry. Was this from the mysterious Gabe as well? Inside, in purple ink, was stamped “Northampton Public Library, Northampton, Massachusetts.” She turned back to the cover and read the title. The Will to Change, by Adrienne Rich. A door to memory opened and she recalled the monumental fuss this book—or rather its absence—had caused. At first there had been numerous calls from Mrs. Stinson, the librarian, informing their mother the book was weeks overdue and requesting its return. Libby had denied having it. Maybe you lost it, their mother had said, but no, Libby said, she’d never taken out the book at all. Mrs. Stinson’s calls had been followed by a registered letter requesting payment for the book. It was the only registered letter Sam remembered ever being delivered to their home. Their father had written a check that night.
Sam considered the book. Why hadn’t Libby just said she lost it? Why had she lied? Couldn’t she have gone to a bookstore and bought a copy? Sam leafed through the pages. Then, on the inside of the back cover, she saw writing that she instantly recognized as Libby’s.
Northern lights
Learn Latin
It was typical of Libby’s poetry. The Northern lights learn Latin. It made no sense at all, but Sam continued to read.
Swim with the dolphins
Italy
Portugal
Attend a concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields
Now Sam realized it was not poetry but some sort of list, evidently penned recently, since the ink had not faded. Things Libby had done, she supposed. Fuck my sister’s husband, she thought. Her lips tightened. That should be there.
Hold my first grandchild
So, not things Libby had done. But what? Things she wanted to do?
Write a book of poetry
When had Libby written this list? After she got sick? Were these things, then, that she had wanted to do? Things she would never do? Did Libby think she was going to die? Sam returned her attention to the list.
Forgive Richard
Reconcile with Sam
She read the words twice, felt the weight of them settle on her shoulders. Her fingers felt stiff as she closed the book and returned it to Libby’s bag. She picked up a magazine from the stack by her chair, opened it, and stared blindly at an article on how to pack healthy lunches for your school-age child.
“Sorry you had to see that,” Libby said. They were in the car, Sam driving. “It’s not always like that.”
“I thought you were—I don’t know. Dying, I guess.” There, she’d said it.
“The first time it happened, I thought so, too.”
“It’s happened more than once then?” Again the picture of Libby, twisted in agony, flashed before her eyes and she had to blink to clear her vision, to see the traffic around her.
“Twice. So far.” Libby dropped her head back ag
ainst the headrest, closed her eyes.
“How often do you have to go?”
“To dialysis? Three times a week. Four hours each session.”
Sam listened while Libby told her about the “part-time job” of staying alive. Libby, voice drained, told her how she had discovered her illness: the exhaustion, foamy pee, swelling ankles.
While Libby talked, Sam glanced over at her. The flesh beneath Libby’s eyes was puffy, her face drawn, ashen. Old. As if she’d aged twenty years in one morning. “Sleep if you want to,” she said. “I know the way back to your house.”
A smile flitted across her sister’s face. “Even after all this time?”
“Yes.”
Sam drove in silence. Occasionally she glanced over at Libby, but her sister slept.
Reconcile with Sam.
“I never liked him, you know.”
Startled, Sam jumped, and the wheel swerved beneath her hands. “Sorry,” she said, regaining control. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I never liked him,” Libby said again.
“Who?” Richard? Sam didn’t want to be drawn into their battle.
“Jay,” Libby said. “From the first time you brought him around, I thought he was an asshole.”
Sam clutched the wheel. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I did try and warn you about him, to tell you not to get married.”
In another situation, Sam’s double take might have been comical. “You never did,” she said, abandoning her resolve not to discuss this subject.
“You’re forgetting.”
“When?”
“Well, the last time was when you came here before you eloped. And we were in my bedroom. Remember? You were trying on dresses. I tried to warn you and you got mad.”
Sam recalled the morning, remembered the blue dress and the way it hadn’t fit quite right. But she did not remember Libby openly warning her about Jay. “Why didn’t you like him?”
“Well, for starters, the second time we met, he tried to feel me up, which gave me a pretty good clue he was a prick.”
“You’re lying.”
“Remember the July Fourth picnic at the lake? After we went swimming, you went to the bathhouse to change out of your suit and Richard took the twins for ice cream. Well, your boyfriend Took Liberties.” She gave a tired laugh. “God, don’t I sound like Mother. Remember how she used to say not to let boys take liberties with us? They say as you age you become your mother. Every girl’s nightmare. I still hear her voice in my head. Do you?”
Sam wouldn’t be pulled off the subject. “And you never told me about that day at the lake?”
“You were so in love. And we’d all been drinking.”
“So if you knew he was such a goddamn prick, why did you fuck him?”
Libby exhaled, a long sigh. “It’s a long story. It was a mistake.”
“That’s it? A mistake?” Sam thought of the list she’d written in preparation for a phone conversation with Libby. Don’t blame. Don’t get angry. Don’t be defensive. Don’t go over old history. “Is that your way of saying you’re sorry?”
“You know I am. God, Sam, if you know anything, you must know how much I regret hurting you. I would do anything to be able to change what happened. Anything.”
Reconcile with Sam.
She was not so easily won. Words were cheap enough. She maintained a stubborn silence and heard Libby sigh.
“Who’s Gabe?” she asked. She heard in her head the echo of Lee’s voice telling her she had the heart of a terrorist.
Libby gave her a quick look. “A friend.”
Back in Sippican, on the town square, there was a sculpture formed from woven tree branches, part of the Art in the Park series. A week after its installation, someone had knocked it to the ground. The artist, a local man, had meticulously resurrected it, but the next day it had again been leveled. The cycle went on for a month before they caught the vandals. Two fourteen-year-old boys who couldn’t explain their actions. They didn’t know the artist, they just wanted to ruin it, they said. It hurt them to look at it. Sam understood.
“This Gabe,” she said. “Is he someone’s husband, too?”
Libby closed her eyes and turned away. “Yes,” she said. “He is.”
Had Libby expected it to be easy? Had she thought that after the first awkward moments Sam would say all was forgiven and they would fall into each other’s arms like lost girls in a fairy tale? She supposed that she had. How had Sam grown so hard?
She thought of the story Sam had told her about smashing the windows. Once she wouldn’t have believed Sam capable of such violence. She reviewed the family myth of them: Josh the action man, adventurer, peace corps volunteer, marathon man, the hero. Libby the rebel, the poet, the bad girl. Sam the baby. The one who needed protecting, their mother’s pet. The one who caused no trouble. Over the years, the roles had all been switched.
The car slowed. Libby heard Sam gasp and she opened her eyes just as they pulled into her drive. A truck was parked in front of their house. Sam stamped on the breaks so hard, Libby was jolted against her seat belt. As Sam switched off the engine, the cab door on the pickup opened and a man got out. He was tall and good-looking, with a killer grin, the kind that would stop traffic quicker than a red light.
“Lee,” Sam said in a soft-bellied whisper.
“Someone you know?” Libby said, but her sister was already out of the car, running hell-bent into the stranger’s arms. He picked her up, lifted her right off her feet, as in some television commercial. He had to be strong to lift her like that, Libby thought. Sam wasn’t exactly tiny. The air around them shimmered with such happiness Stevie Wonder could see how in love they were. She swallowed against the hurt that closed her throat.
Finally the stranger put Sam down and turned toward her car. He led the way, Libby noticed. Sam held back. Her sister had said very little about the new man in her life, not even his name. Keeping her life secret. Libby understood, but this knowledge stung.
The man opened the door, held out a hand to her. “You must be Elizabeth,” he said. His voice was warm. A good voice. She could see this was a good man.
“Yes,” she said.
He pulled Sam to his side, held her hand with his. With his other hand, he helped Libby from the car. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said. “Sam’s told me so much about you.”
Libby looked at Sam, surprised and absurdly pleased.
Sam held on to Lee, challenging Libby with her eyes, not realizing it was no contest.
This man, thought Libby, looking at Lee’s face, this man would never betray her sister. Nor would she, God help her. Not ever again.
Libby and Sam
Libby woke to voices in the hall and, sleep-muddled, she thought it was the twins. She surrendered to the quietude she always felt when they returned home from school, the sense that she could breathe fully again because her children were back under her roof, safe. This sensation—peace of heart, she supposed, or the nearest thing to it—always surprised her, for she had never been one of those overly cautious mothers always fretting and stewing.
She nearly called out to them, and then, coming fully awake, she remembered. Not Mercy and Matt. Sam. And Lee. She lay quietly and listened as they passed by her door, followed the echo of their steps on the stairs.
Last night had gone well. Considering. She supposed someone viewing the scene through a camera lens would have seen four people enjoying themselves, with no hint of the truth, the subtext, as she knew it was called in the theater. What actors we are, she thought. Except for Lee.
Earlier in the evening, Sam and Lee had insisted on preparing dinner while she napped. Richard had suggested going out—his treat, he said—but they wouldn’t hear of it. Armed with the pages of Libby’s dietary restrictions and guidelines, the two of them had fashioned the menu: roast chicken, green beans with mushrooms, green salad with a cranberry vinaigrette. Fresh pineapple for dessert.
; The dining room was lit by candles, and by the extra source of light that was Sam in love. Libby could tell from the way her sister’s shoulder slanted toward Lee that, hidden from view by the drape of the tablecloth, their hands were interlocked. Richard played the host, serving wine, carving the chicken, steering conversation toward Lee, who, at Richard’s prompting, told them about himself and his boatyard.
Richard offered to arrange for them to go sailing on Michigan, and Lee said he’d like that, if not this visit then the next. (The next. How she had held on to the promise of those words, taking from them knowledge that Sam would come again.) In answer to Richard’s question about why he didn’t work on fiberglass crafts, Lee answered that he liked working with wood. Without a scintilla of self-consciousness he’d said, “It takes love to work on wooden boats.” He talked about how wood sat in the water in a natural way and how it honored the tree to give it another life.
Then he grinned sheepishly. “I’m talking too much about myself,” he said.
Libby liked him enormously then. He reminded her of Richard when they were much younger and he would talk to her for hours about music. Like a lovesick acolyte, she would sit and listen, just as Sam did now, as if every word was a key to the secrets of his heart, while he tried to find the words to share his passion.
“It’s like catching a perfect wave, you know,” Richard had told her once, and because she had wanted to be flawless for him, to not disappoint him in even an insignificant way, she had nodded, never telling him that she did not surf.
“The power of the music takes you,” he’d said. That particular time they had been in his room, both prone on the floor listening to a concerto. He had rolled onto his side to face her. “You almost don’t have to do anything,” he’d said. “You can’t push. The music carries you. You almost cease to exist. It’s an organic experience but it requires complete focus. Like being in a trance.”
She had stayed silent, letting him talk, but she had understood what he meant. It was like that for her when they were making love, or when she was writing a poem.
Now she wondered why she hadn’t told him that. Why she hadn’t let him know she felt that way about poetry. Had she not wanted to seem to be competing? (Her mother’s voice again. A man likes it when he is the center of your life. Listen, don’t talk. That’s what they want: a willing ear. At least Libby had never handed that advice on to Mercy.) When was the last time she’d been lost in a poem? She couldn’t remember. Certainly before the twins were born. How was it that Richard had kept his passion alive while she had turned from hers? How did something like that get lost? And once lost, or abandoned, could it ever be reclaimed?
The Law of Bound Hearts Page 23