“Preferable,” Hugh said.
“Yes, preferable. Don’t we all want to think of ourselves as purebred?”
“But we’re not. And you knew that”—he held up a hand when he saw his father preparing to argue—“on some level you did. What ever possessed you to write One Man’s Line?”
“I’m an historian. One Man’s Line is history. Clarkes have always played a role in my books.”
“Walk-ons. Never the lead before. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking it would work,” Eaton shot back. “We’ve been business leaders, politicians, diplomats. We’ve been at every crossroads in the history of this country, and we’ve done it through good, honest hard work. I’m proud of my family.” He stopped short and put a hand on his chest. “What do I tell my agent? My publisher?”
“What do you tell Mom?” Hugh added, knowing the worst of it was right here at home. “What do I tell my wife? She’ll remember how badly she was treated by this family—by you and Uncle Brad—does he know, by the way?” Then it hit Hugh. “Who’s his father?”
“The man I thought was mine.”
Chapter 22
Dana tended to Lizzie, trying not to think at all. After she put the baby down, she concentrated on finishing the Faroese shawl. She wanted it done for fall sales.
The shawl took all her attention. Even with the lace pattern done, with selvages on either side, and two main sections divided by a gusset in back, there were stitches to count, markers to move, and a chart to follow over hundreds of stitches. Each row took ten minutes to complete.
She couldn’t worry about the call from Albany, couldn’t worry about Hugh or Eaton or Ellie Jo. She had to focus on what she was doing. It was therapeutic. She felt relaxed by the time Lizzie woke up to nurse again.
Halfway through the feeding, Ali showed up at the door. She was carrying both of her dolls—Cream, with the red scarf looped once around her neck, and Cocoa, with the dark green one wound so many times that the doll’s face was almost completely obscured. When Dana pulled the scarf down, Ali pulled it back up.
“Don’t you want to free her nose so she can breathe?” Dana asked.
“She doesn’t need to breathe. She likes being covered up.”
“Why?”
“This way,” Ali explained, “she can see what’s happening without people seeing her.” Hugging both dolls, she looked up. “Are we going to the shop?”
They were indeed. Ali chatted the entire way about anything that caught her eye, and though Dana wanted to discuss the school issue, she didn’t know where to start. Ali was out of the car the minute it stopped, and running into the shop.
Dana followed with Lizzie in her arms. Once inside, she talked with Tara about an order that had been misbilled by the vendor, checked with Olivia about the status of enrollment in fall classes, and questioned Saundra about Ellie Jo’s spirits. Hearing that her grandmother was still depressed, she left Lizzie and Ali under Saundra’s watchful eye and went back to the house.
Ellie Jo wasn’t in the kitchen.
“Gram?” Dana called, and searched the rest of the first floor. “Gram?” she called louder, and went up the stairs.
Ellie Jo wasn’t in her bedroom or her bathroom, but Dana heard Veronica.
Fearing a repeat of the scene two weeks before, she hurried down the hall to her mother’s bedroom. Ellie Jo wasn’t there, but the closet door was open and the ladder down, as they had been that other day. Veronica meowed from the attic.
“Gram?” Dana called, and hurriedly climbed up.
She didn’t see Ellie Jo at first. It was only when Veronica meowed again that Dana spotted them. They sat together in a low, shadowed corner of the eaves. Ellie Jo’s casted foot was stretched out in front. A dislodged piece of pink insulation lay to the right of her hip. Spread on the floor beneath that was a group of papers.
“What are you doing here, Gram?” Dana cried, because the stuffy heat had to be bad for the older woman. She scrambled to join her. “What are these?”
When Ellie Jo didn’t reply, Dana began gathering the papers. There were several official forms, a newspaper clipping, and a handwritten note.
With a quick, questioning look at Ellie Jo, Dana looked at the clipping. It was dated the day after her grandfather died and described a freak accident in a motel room involving a fall and the discovery of the body twelve hours later. She skimmed the rest. Three words on the last line jumped out: Long-estranged wife.
“What is this?” Dana asked, looking at Ellie Jo.
Ellie Jo’s eyes were anguished, and something was wrong with her mouth. It was off-kilter, slightly ajar but not moving.
“Gram?”
Her hands hadn’t moved, either.
“Gram,” Dana gasped, and, losing all other thought, rose on one knee and touched her grandmother’s face. It was warm, and the pulse at her neck was strong. But Ellie Jo couldn’t speak.
Terrified, Dana touched a pocket for her phone and realized she had left it in her bag at the shop.
“Stay here, Gram,” she breathed quickly. “I have to get help.”
She scrambled down the ladder, grabbed the cordless phone from the bedroom, and raced back up. First she called the shop. Then she called Hugh.
When she heard his voice, it all came back—the closeness they had once shared, the stability he offered. This was an emergency. She needed him now.
“Yeah,” he said in a tone that was oddly restrained.
Dana struggled not to panic. “Where are you?”
“On the highway.”
“How far from the yarn shop?”
“Fifteen minutes.” He must have sensed her panic, because his voice grew concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Ellie Jo,” Dana said. She was squatting in front of Ellie Jo, lifting a limp hand and pressing it to her own neck. “They’re calling an ambulance, but I may need your help with Lizzie.”
“Her foot again?”
“No.”
“Heart?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Stroke?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Can you come straight here?”
Hugh arrived at Ellie Jo’s just as she was being put into an ambulance. Dana ran toward his car.
“They think it’s a stroke, but they don’t know,” she cried, looking terrified. “I need to be with her, Hugh. Lizzie’s over at the shop, and I have no idea how long I’ll be. I can’t bring her with me. We have those little bottles of ready-mixed formula. All you have to do is open them and screw on a nipple.”
“I can do that,” Hugh said. Granted, he hadn’t done a feeding yet, what with Dana nursing, but he had read all the books.
“Excuse me?” called the EMT.
Dana backed away from Hugh. “Everything you need is in the cabinet to the right of the refrigerator.”
“How long do I warm the milk?”
“Just so you can’t feel it on your skin,” she called, climbing into the ambulance.
“Will you let me know what’s happening?”
She nodded. As the ambulance door closed, Tara separated herself from the women who were watching anxiously, and came to his side.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” she said. “This isn’t good. Want me to take the baby, so that you can go to the hospital?”
Hugh trusted Tara, but he wanted to be with Lizzie himself. “Not yet,” he said, “but we need a breast pump.”
“I’ll pick it up. If I run it to the hospital, I can show Dana how to use it and bring you back milk.”
“That’d be a help,” he said and spotted Lizzie asleep on the shoulder of a woman who was worriedly looking after the ambulance. He had seen her before at the shop and been introduced to her at the hospital two weeks before. “That’s…Saundra?”
“Saundra Belisle,” Tara refreshed his memory. “She’s the best.”
Saundra met him just inside the shop. She was not much shorter than Hugh, and was stylishly dr
essed in white slacks and a chocolate-brown blouse. She had short gray hair, light brown skin, and eyes filled with pain. “Did the EMTs say anything?”
“Not that I heard.”
Saundra looked distraught. “She hasn’t been herself lately. Looking back, I wonder if her first fall was the result of a mini-stroke, a TIA. It could be that she’s had several, but she’s been adamant about not seeing the doctor. We should have insisted.” Easing the baby from her shoulder with hands that were strikingly gentle, Saundra cradled her for a final moment before giving her to Hugh. Lizzie slept blissfully on.
“You’re a lucky man,” the woman said.
Watching Lizzie, Hugh was hit by a gust of emotion stronger than anything he had ever felt before. She was his child. “Thank you for holding her.”
“It’s my joy.”
Something in Saundra’s voice made Hugh look at her more closely. He could see that joy and was comforted by it.
“If I can help at all,” she instructed, “I live five minutes away. Tara has my number. Please call.”
“Thank you,” Hugh said, and watched her return to the shop. That was when he spotted Ali Johnson. She was sitting in a big chair at the long table, holding her dolls and regarding him with soulful eyes. “Ali,” he approached, “how did you get here?”
“Dana,” Ali said in a frightened voice. “What’s wrong with Gram Ellie?”
“I’m not sure.” He knelt down.
“Is she going to die?”
“I certainly hope not. I need your help, Ali. They’re off to the hospital, and here I am alone with Lizzie and not really knowing what to do. It’d be a big help to me if you’d sit in the backseat and keep an eye on her while I drive. Think you could do that?”
Ali nodded.
Hugh smiled. “That’s my girl.” He stood. “Got a bag for your things?”
A short time later, they pulled up at the house. In the abutting driveway, David was climbing from his car.
Ali was out the door in a flash and running to him. “Daddy, Daddy, something awful happened to Gram Ellie. They had to carry her out of the house on a stretcher. Isn’t that what they do for dead people?”
“She’s okay,” Hugh called over, and took Lizzie from her seat. By the time he straightened, David was there.
“What happened?”
“She had a stroke, I think. The ambulance scared Ali. Is she inside?”
“Yeah.”
“Want to know something amazing?” Hugh asked, and what he had learned spilled right out. “My grandfather was half black.”
David’s face went blank.
Hugh sputtered. “Yeah, I feel the same way. I just found out. This is the first time I’ve said it aloud.”
David frowned. “Say it again.”
“My grandfather was half black.”
“Which grandfather?” David asked, like it was a joke. Was it the business mogul, or the ambassador to Iceland? Hugh could hear him thinking.
“A lawyer my father’s mother apparently fell for one summer on the Vineyard.”
David was another minute realizing Hugh was serious. Then he was suddenly livid. “You bastard.”
“Not me. My father.”
“After what you put Dana through? So you’re liars, the lot of you, passing for white? Taking every advantage you could all your life. Parading as holier-than-thou, when you were hiding the fact that you were of mixed race.”
Hugh didn’t argue this time. He figured he had it coming, figured that he had to let David get it out of his system if they had a prayer of being friends again.
“What do you mean, you just found out?” David asked.
Hugh told him about the sickle-cell tests and his subsequent confrontation with Eaton.
“And he really didn’t know?” David asked. “Do you believe that?”
Hugh thought for a minute. “Yeah. I do. I saw his face. I can fault him for not checking it out sooner, but he didn’t fake that surprise.” He didn’t go into Eaton’s horror at the thought of his book. It wasn’t a flattering picture.
David searched Hugh’s face a minute longer, seeming to be waiting for him to laugh and take it all back. But there was nothing to take back. This was for real.
David’s eyes lost their anger. He ran a hand over his bald head. “That’s actually pretty funny, y’know? Your dad must be in shock. Speaking of shock, I told Susan about Ali’s dolls. She flipped out at first, but as soon as she calmed down, she reverted to form. She says I’m imagining things, and that I’m just trying to upset her, and that I’ve spoiled Ali so she doesn’t want to leave.” He glanced at Lizzie. “Want me to watch the baby while you go to the hospital?”
“I’ll wait to hear from Dana.” He held David’s gaze. “Thanks, though. I appreciate the offer.”
“About the other,” David said, more quietly now, “it isn’t the end of the world.”
“No, but it sure changes my view of the world.”
“That could be a good thing.”
“Maybe. I haven’t gotten that far yet. I only got the news a couple of hours ago.”
“I’m glad you told me.”
“So am I.”
David glanced again at Lizzie. “Do you know what to do when she cries?”
“I’ve never fed her before, but we’ll manage. If she’s hungry enough, she’ll eat, right?”
That was the theory. In practice, it was harder. He couldn’t find the bottle warmer and, when Lizzie began to cry, had to go to Plan B, which entailed heating the pre-bottled formula in a pan of water on the stove. Unfortunately, the books hadn’t warned against overheating the milk. He stood the bottle in the refrigerator for a minute, then, when Lizzie’s cries accelerated, in the freezer. He finally took a second bottle, heated it briefly, and screwed on a nipple.
Apparently, Lizzie didn’t like that nipple. She continued rooting around for the real thing and grew frantic when she couldn’t find it. She finally tried the bottle, promptly gagged, and started crying again.
He checked the discarded package and saw that the nipples were medium flow for bigger babies. Rummaging around in the cabinet, he found a slow-flow package, wrestled one out, and snapped it on the bottle again. When Lizzie continued to fight him, he took a calming breath and tried soothing words. That helped.
Then the phone rang. Lacking a third hand, he tried holding Lizzie and the bottle with a single hand so that he could pick up the receiver, but she started crying again. He propped her safely between pillows on the sofa and held the bottle in her mouth, but even with his arm outstretched, he couldn’t grab the phone. When he figured there was only one ring left before it went to voicemail, he took the bottle out of her mouth and lunged for the phone. He was glad he did. It was Dana.
“Hey,” he said, “hold on a sec.” He picked up Lizzie, quieted her with the bottle, then clamped the phone between shoulder and ear. “How is she?”
“They say she’s stable. Why was Lizzie crying?”
“I took the bottle out of her mouth so I could get the phone. What does ‘stable’ mean?”
“She’s breathing on her own, and her heart is okay. The problem is on her right side. They’re doing tests to find out the cause.”
“What can I do?”
“Stay there with Lizzie. Tara’s coming here with a pump. She’ll bring you my milk.”
“Lizzie seems to be taking the formula okay.”
“But I’m ready to burst. And anyway, I need to learn how to do this. Gram will be a while going home, if she does go home.”
“She’ll go home, Dee. Don’t even consider the alternative.”
Brokenly, Dana said, “If they find the cause of the problem, it’ll either be surgery or medicine. They don’t know if she’ll ever regain full mobility.”
“If they don’t know, it means that she might.”
“She’ll never be the same, Hugh.”
The words touched him. “I’m coming to think that’s what life is about, a chronologi
cal chain made up of links of change. Each new one aims the whole in a slightly different direction.”
“But I want to go back.”
“Chains don’t have the flexibility to make one-eighties.”
“She’s my grandmother. She’s all I have of the past. She’s been my mother. That’s a special role.”
“Yes,” he said, suddenly thinking of Eaton. Eaton had been close to his mother. Hugh remembered when the woman died. Eaton had grieved for months.
“I’d better go. I’ll call when I know more.”
“Please do.” He paused. “I love you.”
“We’ll talk later,” she said quietly, and ended the call.
Hugh finished feeding Lizzie, but by the time she had burped, he was focused on what Dana had said. Mothers did play a special role. They were there when no one else was, seemingly bound by an unwritten contract with the child they had nurtured since birth.
Hugh had a mother. If she felt bound to him by such a contract, he needed to know. He picked up the phone.
Chapter 23
Hugh figured that two hours had passed since he had left Old Burgess Way. Lunch would be over. Larry Silverman would have left. Eaton would be in his library brooding, and Dorothy, as always, would answer the phone.
Her hello had none of its normal brightness.
“It’s me,” he said.
There was a second’s pause, then an indignant “What did you say to your father, Hugh?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“Not one word. He yelled out to us that there was an emergency, and proceeded to shut himself in the library. When I knocked and told him that Larry Silverman was leaving, he said he was on the phone. It was embarrassing, Hugh. Very rude. He answers me each time I call him, but he won’t come out. What did you say?”
Hugh couldn’t tell her. It wasn’t his place. Eaton would have to find a way—have to find the courage—to do that. He should have told Dorothy years ago. It boggled Hugh’s mind that the man had let his wife go through two pregnancies without alerting her to those rumors. If the lawyer on the island had been one-half black, Eaton was one-quarter so.
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