Sapphire and Shadow (A Woman's Life)

by Marie Ferrarella

  “He’s off duty.”

  Johanna tried to curb her impatience. Didn’t anyone stay to see things through? Careful, Joey, you’re letting yourself become hysterical. “What about my daughter?”

  Dr. Powell drew his cheeks together as he appeared to search for each one of his words. “We’ve given her something to lower her fever, but I think it’s best to keep her here in one of the rooms overnight for observation.”

  “What about the tests?”

  “Nothing conclusive yet,” he said impersonally. “As I said, this is just a precautionary measure.”

  Jocelyn gripped her mother’s hand harder. “Mommy?” The voice was young and frightened.

  No more pretense at being sophisticated and blase, Johanna thought with a tug at her heart.

  “Right here, Jocey.” Johanna looked at the doctor. “All right. Can you put a cot into her room so I can stay with her?”

  “We don’t have accommodations for parents.” Though his tone was formal, there was a trace of compassion evident now in his voice. “You may, however, stay in the lobby if you wish. It isn’t very comfortable, but it’s close.” His small, round eyes appraised Tommy. “I would, however, recommend that your husband take you home and you can return tomorrow morning. She’s in no apparent danger. We only want to be certain that she won’t have a repeat episode.”

  Johanna opened her mouth to correct the doctor’s misunderstanding as to who Tommy was, but she let it go. She was more concerned with Jocelyn than misconceived notions and appearances.

  “I think Jocelyn would feel a lot better knowing I’m close by.”

  Jocelyn smiled weakly. “Thanks, Mom,” she mouthed.

  Johanna squeezed her hand just as a gurney was rolled into the tiny area. Tommy stepped aside to give the orderly room.

  “Up you go, princess,” Johanna said, breaking contact.

  “You can follow her to her room if you like, Mrs. Whitney,” the doctor told her, “but as you must know, visiting hours are long since over.”

  “I’ll go back to the lobby like a good girl,” she promised, “once Jocelyn is settled in.”

  The hospital was a maze of corridors and signs pointing off into all directions, declaring routes to different facilities. Carefully, Johanna traced her way from the fourth floor down to the first until she finally found the lobby. And Tommy. He was sitting in one of the gun metal gray bucket seats. It looked far too small to accommodate his long frame.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, surprised.

  He lifted a container of coffee in her direction. “I thought you might need this.”

  She slid into the chair next to his. “You’re an angel.” She removed the lid from the container and took a long, deep sip. It tasted terrible, but at the moment the hot liquid fortified her the way nothing else could have. It filled her empty stomach and made her feel almost human again.

  As did he, she realized.

  But coffee was one thing, this budding feeling for the man next to her was quite another. She had to put a stop to it. After all, she was still a married woman, even if she had been one in name only for the last nine months or so. She still had no right to get involved with anyone. It wasn’t fair to the person, or to her. Her emotions were still raw. She couldn’t risk anything that might make them break open and bleed again.

  On top of that, she felt foolish about her reaction to Tommy. What would he think, she wondered, sneaking a look at him, if he suspected that his kindness had stirred a chord within her, making her susceptible to things of a more intimate nature? He’d undoubtedly have a good laugh with his friends.

  She realized that he sensed her looking at him. Nervously, she cleared her throat. “You know, this is the umpteenth time you’ve come to my rescue in one way or another. If you’re not careful, you’re going to become a regular hero.”

  He grinned, shrugging it off casually. “Must be all those nights me father used to read to me from Ivanhoe finally bearing fruit.”

  “lvanhoe?”

  “The novel by Sir Walter Scott.” He took the empty coffee container from her and put it down on a tiny side table.

  Even the small gesture seemed somehow sweet, intimate. “I know who wrote lvanhoe,” she answered, “I just pictured something a little lighter for a little boy, like Winnie The Pooh.”

  “Who said I was a little boy?”

  She looked at him, surprised. “You weren’t?”

  “I was fourteen at the time. A friend of mine offered to let me ride his motorcycle. It was a short trip. I broke my collar bone, not to mention both my legs and a couple of ribs.”

  “Ouch.”

  He laughed. “My sentiments exactly. I was stuck in a hospital very similar to this one for six months. My dad came to read to me every night until they chased him out. Fond of that book he was.” There was an affectionate smile on his face.

  “And your mother?” she couldn’t help asking.

  “She died when I was three,” he told her quietly. There was still a trace of pain lingering within him that he had never really gotten to know the woman who had given him life.

  “Well, we have that in common.” She wanted to reach out, to touch and comfort him the way he had her. But she didn’t. It was too bold a move. “My mother died when I was nine.”

  “Both half orphans. Small world.”

  And it felt like it was growing smaller. She pushed the thought from her mind. She was just extremely overwrought, that was all.

  But she knew it was more than that. She knew herself too well to lie. The fact was, she was vulnerable and Tommy was being more than nice to her.

  Something within her clutched at the cup of kindness and drank deeply.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The constant din of unfamiliar sounds and the austere room with its uncomfortable gray vinyl couch, combined with the anxiety she felt at having Jocelyn separated from her, made it impossible for Johanna to sleep. But she felt she had to try. She needed to be rested, if not for herself, at least for Jocelyn.

  She was too tense to rest.

  Instead, Johanna spent the night talking with Tommy, exchanging confidences, telling him about Harry, about the years that had been good, about the decade that hadn’t been. She didn’t know why he remained, but somewhere in the night she had stopped questioning his reasons for being kind to her. She was just grateful, fiercely grateful at this show of kindness from a stranger. Because of Harry, she had come not to expect kindness from anyone.

  In those hours before dawn, Johanna learned a great deal about the man who had come to her aid more than once. She learned how deeply his love of working with his hands really went. She learned of the work he did by fashioning things out of wood using tools that had been used by craftsmen a century ago. He took a great deal of pride in his work, in his creations, though he didn’t speak of it until she prodded him.

  In a way, she thought, he was as much of an artist as she had once felt she was, creating beauty out of nothing, beauty to share.

  With the same confident, patient way he approached his life and his work, Tommy managed to draw Johanna out about herself.

  To Johanna’s surprise, she found herself telling him not just about her hurt, but about her dreams. She told him things she hadn’t told another living soul. She discovered that they shared a mutual love and respect of art. By the time the first rose colors of dawn began to light the sleepy sky, she had agreed to let him take her to the Tate Gallery once Jocelyn was well.

  It almost sounded, she thought, like a date. But of course it wasn’t. Dates were for other people, not for her. She had admitted to herself that she no longer felt married to Harry, that she actually hadn’t for a long time now. A divorce would be only a technicality, legally declaring something that had been true for too long. So she was really free to date, but she wouldn’t, couldn’t. This would be just a pleasant outing between two friends, for she considered him that. After sharing the night with him, she felt that she knew hi
m a good deal better than she knew the superficial people who inhabited Harry’s circle of acquaintances.

  Still, the idea of spending more time alone with him made her feel content in a way she hadn’t felt in a long time. She was actually looking forward to something with a sense of delightful anticipation instead of the dread that had been part of her life.

  Johanna felt exhilarated despite her lack of sleep. Exhilarated and young again. Silly that a mere conversation in a dimly lit hospital lobby could work such miracles, but it had. She felt as if some of the mental shackles that Harry had chained her with were beginning to fall away. The deadness within her soul, that darkness that had beckoned her on to suicide, had disappeared.

  Johanna combed her tangled silvery blond hair with her fingertips. She became conscious of how disheveled she had to look. “Oh God, I must look awful.”

  Tommy grinned. “Not at all, luv, not at all. You look good in green.” He leaned forward and touched her arm under the pretext of feeling the blouse’s material. “It feels quite nice.”

  Her mouth went dry. “It’s silk.”

  “Expensive. Suits you.”

  She felt foolishly pleased. Her skirt was wrinkled and she realized that one of the shirttails of her blouse had worked itself out of her waistband. She uncurled her legs from beneath her and stood up, tucking the blouse back where it belonged.

  “You’re being kind again. I must look like a sight,” she murmured, embarrassed. She longed for a toothbrush and a few cosmetics. They were all in her bedroom at the hotel. When she had left yesterday afternoon for her ride, she had no idea it was going to turn into an odyssey.

  “Yes,” Tommy agreed simply, smiling at her. “A sight for sore eyes.”

  “You are good for my ego, Tommy.” She laughed, touching his shoulder as she spoke.

  The gesture made her stop as she abruptly became cognizant of what she had just done. She had once been a toucher, touching people easily as she spoke. Her hands had been an extension of her, of the way she felt. But life with Harry had curtailed that, making her withdraw until she touched no one at all. She couldn’t seem to reach out, bound the way she was by the oppressive life she led as the wife of Harold Whitney. She was just now beginning to realize what a living hell it had all been. Like someone waking from a bad dream, she couldn’t understand how she had permitted it to continue for so long.

  “I certainly hope I’m good for your ego,” Tommy said softly as he tucked an errant strand of her hair behind her ear.

  She had to exercise considerable self-control not to react to his touch. She had the strongest desire just to turn her face into the palm of his hand. “Why?”

  “Because your husband wasn’t. He should never have done that to you, you know.”

  She couldn’t take her eyes away from his. They were soft, brown and hypnotic. They seemed to see things. An artist always saw things beneath the surface, she thought. He had to be able to envision things within a lump of clay, or on an empty canvas. Or visualize completed wholes while handling disjointed pieces of wood.

  “Done what?”

  “Stripped you of your self-esteem.”

  “He didn’t.” As she said it, she knew it was true. “He just buried it.”

  Tommy cupped her face in his hand and she felt warmth and strength and compassion all in that one simple movement. “He should be horsewhipped.”

  Because he was an artist, he did see things not evident to the untrained eye. He saw the wide open, hungry gaze in her eyes when she regarded him. With someone else, he would have taken this to be an invitation to sex. But it was different with Johanna. There was something almost innocent there in her eyes. She was like a small child being shown something for the first time. He wanted her, but if something was to develop, he knew that it couldn’t be hurried. She needed time. And he would give her all the time she needed.

  “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I see him.”

  Someone entered the lobby and Johanna rose to her feet, shifting away from Tommy. “I’d better go find out when I can spring Jocelyn.”

  He was on his feet in an instant. “I’ll come with you.”

  There was no thought of telling him no. Instead, Johanna linked her arm through his. “All right, let’s go, Ivanhoe.”

  Jocelyn was relieved to see her mother enter the room. Her smile puckered into a confused expression when she saw Tommy enter behind Johanna.

  Johanna took her daughter’s hand in hers. It felt so much stronger this morning than the limp, hot hand she had held last night.

  “Jocey, this is Tommy Reed, the man who was nice enough to drive us here last night. He’s also the man responsible for keeping your mother from being flattened by a flying piece of scenery at Pinewood Studios and for having our car towed to a local garage to be fixed. It broke down. That was why I was late coming home yesterday.”

  He’s also the man who helped me keep body and soul together all through the night, Johanna added silently.

  Jocelyn absorbed all this information the way most twelve-year-olds assimilated data. Quickly, to be filed away and lost among the archives in deference to more important things, like the latest rock star’s vital statistics. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Tommy responded warmly, taking the young girl’s hand and shaking it. “Feels pretty firm to me,” he observed. “Looks to me like you might be ready to go home today.”

  Jocelyn brightened immediately, deciding that she liked her mother’s friend. “Am I ever.”

  Jocelyn’s manner was bright and lively as she spoke and asked questions. She bore little resemblance to the feverish, convulsed girl they had brought in a little over twelve hours ago.

  Tommy volunteered to look for the doctor on duty so that Johanna could talk to him. He returned shortly with the doctor they had originally met in the emergency room.

  Quickly reviewing her chart, the physician agreed with their observation that Jocelyn was ready to go home. He wrote out a prescription for Jocelyn to take until it was exhausted and told them that they could leave the hospital at any time.

  “But I highly recommend before eleven,” he said, pretending to share a confidence, “or else they’ll soak you for another full day.” He winked at Jocelyn who lost her heart to him totally. She thought he was cute.

  “Doctor, what did she have?”

  “Just some elusive twenty-four-hour virus that rattled her cage and then disappeared as quickly as it came. It has a long, technical name that will have no bearing on her life whatsoever.” The shaggy redheaded young resident ruffled Jocelyn’s hair. “She’ll be good as new before you know it. Maybe even better. Take care of yourself,” he said to Jocelyn, recognizing a full-fledged case of puppy love when he saw it.

  “I’ll go bring the van around,” Tommy told Johanna, “while you get her ready.”

  Johanna nodded, watching him go. He seemed to take on responsibility so easily, she thought, without being asked. Harry wouldn’t have been this helpful. If he hadn’t been stoned out of his mind when she needed him most, he would have still told her to handle the situation alone. He was never good in a crisis. He preferred to ignore them until they went away. Or he did.

  Johanna helped Jocelyn get dressed. Though she pretended not to be, she was still very weak. Johanna took over, buttoning her blouse for her.

  “What happened to Megan?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Megan?” Jocelyn looked out the window and watched two birds fly by, calling to one another.

  “Yes, she wasn’t there when I came back to the hotel.” Johanna looked around for Jocelyn’s shoes and then remembered that she hadn’t had any on. Johanna debated what to do.

  “Oh,” Jocelyn suddenly remembered, “she said something about having a date.”

  Shoes were forgotten. “And she left you?”

  Jocelyn shrugged. She felt defensive for her friend, even though the feeling of having been deserted was there. “So did you.”

  “Yes, but I le
ft you with someone and I didn’t intend to be gone all night. Megan was supposed to stay with you, or at least let me know that she intended to go out so I could stay with you.”

  “Would you have?”

  She was surprised by the question and the edge in Jocelyn’s voice. “Of course I would have.”

  “Even though you had a date?”

  “Jocelyn,” Johanna took the girl’s hands into hers, “I didn’t have a date.”

  “You picked him up?” Jocelyn asked incredulously.

  Sometimes, Johanna felt that her daughter was growing up too fast. “No, I told you, Tommy is a friend of mine. The car broke down and, luckily for both of us,” she emphasized the last part of her statement, “he just happened by. He called the tow truck and brought me back to the hotel.” She looked down at Jocelyn’s bare feet. “I guess that’ll be all right. I’ll ring for the nurse and she’ll bring a wheelchair.”

  “A wheelchair? Why?”

  “So that you can ride down to the first floor in style. Besides, you have no shoes. You were so sick, I never even stopped to think about shoes.” She smoothed back the hair from her daughter’s face and then brushed a kiss over the top of her head. “I love you, Jocey.”

  Jocelyn touched her mother’s arm. “Yeah, me too.”

  Tommy brought them back to the hotel room and endeared himself to Jocelyn by carrying her from his car to her suite. The last time, she had barely been conscious. This time, she reveled in the deed the way only a young girl on the threshold of womanhood could.

  He brought her back to her bedroom and Jocelyn did her best to flirt with him. She was definitely on the way to recovery, Johanna thought. Tommy took the time to make sure that she was comfortable and had everything she needed before he said goodbye.

  “I think she’s lost her heart to you,” Johanna confided as she accompanied him back to the front door.

  “She’s a special girl.” Tommy rested his hand on the doorknob. “Like her mother.”

  Johanna looked down, momentarily flustered. He made her forget that she was who she was and that he was a young carpenter who had no business in her life. But he was there all the same and she was glad of it.