Balancing Act (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Darcy, Lilian

  They were quiet for a few minutes. There was a lot of waiting around in hospitals. Staff walked purposefully back and forth on their rubber-soled shoes or their disposable blue shoe covers, and there were clattering sounds, and voices and strange chemical odors. Shut away here in a tiny, half-curtained-off cubicle, Libby and Brady were left to themselves and no one took any notice of them.

  “Can I talk?” Libby asked, sounding very groggy.

  “Only if you want to.”

  “I want to. I was thinking last night. Couldn’t sleep. I’m glad you’re here, Brady.”

  “Yeah, I’m glad, too. Glad you’re glad.” He squeezed her hand harder, just feeling happy that they’d both said it, even though it was such a tiny piece of communication.

  It was stupid. He knew they needed so much more than this.

  “And I think I’m glad Mom’s not, yet.” She thought about it for a moment, with her eyes closed. He almost thought she’d gone to sleep. “Yes,” she finally said. “I’m glad. I love Mom. I want her to love Colleen. That’s why I was pleased when she said she’d come. She’s slow to adjust.”

  Her voice sounded funny. It was slurry and wobbly and slow. Much better than before, in some ways. She’d been very tense on the drive from the motel, to her friend’s house, to the hospital. He’d asked her what she was afraid of, and all she’d said was, “The worst.”

  Yeah, he was scared of that, too.

  “After my dad left…” she said, then stopped again.

  “I’m listening, Lib.”

  This is the first time she’s talked about him, Brady realized. That’s interesting. That’s really interesting.

  “…Mom pretended for, oh, months, even a couple of years, even once we were in Chicago, that it was temporary,” she went on. “You know, when I wanted to see if I could visit more, or if he could come visit us, she’d say to me, “Let’s just wait.” And it was the same when my uncle invited us on a trip. “I want to wait.” All sorts of things, she kept waiting. And I didn’t realize for so long—maybe I was even grown up, and it was…yes, I’m sure it was…after my father died—that she was putting all her decisions on hold, ready for when he came back.”

  “Was she protecting you, maybe?”

  “She thought she was. More, she was protecting herself. Getting to grips with it gradually. That she was on her own. That she didn’t have someone to depend on. It was hard for her.”

  “And for you.”

  “I still don’t know why he reacted that way,” she said. Her voice was fuzzy, and then it cracked. “I’ll never know.”

  “What way, sweetheart?” Brady asked her, the tenderness slipping out so naturally he hardly noticed. He was a little confused. The way “he” reacted? Hadn’t she been talking about her mother’s reaction, not her dad’s?

  “I put my heart on a plate for him, and he ate it for breakfast. Dear God! I was twelve! And I was so praxical about it.”

  Her voice slurred, and she didn’t correct the mispronounced word. Practical? Was that it? She was very sleepy, very loose-tongued.

  “I really thought about it,” she said. “I remember lying in bed, thinking about it, and coming up with these great answers. I thought they were great. Hardly able to wait till morning. Horseback riding and Disney World.”

  She swore.

  He’d never heard her do that before.

  Ever.

  “Such innocent things,” she said, her voice sad and bitter and bewildered. “Why did it spook him so much? Horseback riding and Disney World. I said it. And then I never saw him again.”

  “Libby, sweetheart—” he began.

  The curtain of the cubicle screeched back on its rod.

  “All set?” said the nurse. “Going on a little trip to the OR, now.” There was an orderly standing behind her.

  Libby had closed her eyes again. Her face was very still and pale, and she had no makeup on. Her hair was pulled back under a disposable blue cap the color of a cartoon character’s hair. She looked about fifteen years old. “Uh-huh,” she nodded, and tried to smile. “Take me away.”

  “Mr. Buchanan, you’ll have to stay out in the waiting room,” said the nurse. “Or there’s a cafeteria, if you’re hungry.”

  “How long before I’ll be able to see her?”

  “Not until she’s ready to go up to her room, which will be on Level 5. It’ll be a couple of hours at least.”

  “I’ll check on our girls, and come back. Will they be able to see her, too?”

  “Not until regular visiting hours. Three till four for children and non-relatives. She’ll still be pretty sleepy, even so.”

  “Mm,” Libby agreed.

  Brady wanted to kiss her, but the orderly had started to maneuver the gurney, and Libby herself already looked as if she was miles away. He watched her go, with odd little details of the scene standing out for no reason. One of the gurney wheels squeaked. The orderly had very meaty knees. The nurse seemed to be looking for the next patient she had to check. Brady felt as if time was going very slowly, and as if Libby was about to disappear over the horizon of a featureless desert, hundreds of miles wide.

  “Can you find your way back?” the nurse asked.

  “Sure, yes,” he answered. “Through this door?”

  “That’s right.” She smiled, then stopped in her busy tracks and looked at him for a moment, as if she could read the lines etched on his heart. “She’ll be fine, Mr. Buchanan.”

  “Yeah,” he answered huskily. “That’s what she always tells me.”

  Libby counted backward from a hundred the way she was told, and got all the way to ninety-eight. A quarter of a second later, she woke up in the Recovery suite, to find someone pestering her to tell them she was okay. Or alive. Or something.

  “Yeah, eventually,” she said.

  “Sounds good,” said the voice.

  “Thank you.”

  “Want to open your eyes for me?”

  “No.”

  “I like ’em when they’re honest.”

  She was left alone for a while, and her eyelids got a little lighter. Only weighed around six pounds each, now.

  I guess I’ve had the surgery, she thought. Distant pain—several miles distant, but undeniably real—confirmed the theory.

  Was Brady here? The girls?

  She got one eye open, but couldn’t see anyone, and couldn’t move. If her eyelids each weighed six pounds, the rest of her body weighed a ton. “Hello?” she called, voice as scratchy as an old gramophone record.

  “Feeling a little better?” said a voice that still wasn’t Brady’s.

  “Some. Am I on Level 5?”

  “Not yet. This is Recovery.”

  “Right.”

  “You’ll be going up soon. We just need to make sure everything’s as good as it looks.”

  “Mm.”

  Sleep seemed like the best place to wait, even when the nurses were taking her blood pressure and her temperature and her pulse, so she waited in sleep for a good while longer, and awoke to find that she was traveling.

  It was a lovely journey, trundling along on the gurney’s slightly bumpy rubber wheels. Corridor, then swing door, then elevator, then corridor again. She didn’t have to know where she was going or open her eyes or speak. She didn’t have to do anything at all.

  And then she heard Brady’s voice. “Lib? Libby?”

  She tried to describe why she couldn’t answer him properly. “I’m on vacation. But I’m coming back soon.” That kind of covered it.

  “She’s been saying some interesting things like that,” she heard him say to someone.

  “Sometimes they do.”

  “How should I—? I mean, if she says something that seems significant, should I remind her about it later?”

  “Ask her if she went to Cozumel or Acapulco on her vacation?”

  “Well, no. It was before she went under. When she was getting sleepy from the medication. She was talking about her dad.”

 
Was I? Libby thought. Oh, I was. I was.

  She’d been thinking about him half the night. Things she hadn’t let herself think about for years.

  “Disney World,” she said, to show that she remembered, and that he was right. It was important.

  “There you go. She went to Disney World.”

  “No,” Brady said. “Really. It was before the surgery.”

  “Wait a while, then, sure, remind her. Worst can happen is that she’s forgotten.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll have our daughters with me. Might have to wait.”

  “Where are the girls?” Libby said, getting both eyes open at once, just for long enough to squeeze out a little smile at Brady. Oh, he looked…good. Just good. Right. The right person to be here. Her eyes closed again, but the picture of Brady stayed in her mind.

  “Angie said they were doing fine at her place,” he answered her. “Both of them happy. I wanted to see you before I went to pick them up. I can bring them in to see you at three, apparently.”

  “Good.”

  Sleep pulled on her and wouldn’t let her go. Someone made her move from the gurney to a bed and she had to crawl and roll across miles and miles of white sheet to get there. Her mouth felt dry, which woke her up a little. She was in her room, now. There was another bed in here, but it was empty. Brady had ice chips, all ready to hold out to her in a little paper cup.

  “Mm,” she said, as she took them.

  “I’d better pick up the girls.”

  “Kiss them.”

  “I will. Can I kiss you?”

  “If you like kissing sandpaper.”

  “I love it.” He touched his mouth to hers, quick and soft. “I keep a piece in my wallet just to remind me of you.”

  Her laugh woke up, and she dragged her eyes open again so she could get a fresh image of him to hold in her mind.

  “I want to talk later, Brady,” she said.

  “So do I.”

  By three o’clock, when the girls came, she felt much better. Still sleepy and dry-mouthed, but strong enough to fight it, with limbs light enough that she could keep bringing the melting ice chips to her lips.

  Scarlett and Colleen didn’t understand why Mommy was in bed, why she looked sleepy like it was night-time, and why they mustn’t jump on her stomach. But they were good. So cute. Hugged her and kissed her a lot, especially Colleen. Scarlett was much more shy about it.

  Because I’ve held back just that little bit, Libby knew. This time, I’m the one who’s set the bad pattern. I have to change that. She can’t call me Mommy and still feel she doesn’t belong in my arms every bit as much as Colleen does.”

  “I brought a couple of stories if you wanted to read to them,” Brady said. “And I brought… Well, the obvious.”

  Flowers. He’d put them down on her meal tray, which was pushed back against the wall, and she hadn’t seen them. They were gorgeous, a huge bunch of them in all the soft, pretty colors that she loved. Pink and white and yellow and purple.

  “I love the obvious,” she said. “And I’d love to read to the girls, as long as we can stop every page or two for ice.”

  The hour passed quickly, but there was no real chance to talk. It would have to wait. They both wanted it, though. When Brady squeezed her hand and she squeezed back, and when he leaned over the bed and kissed her dry lips once more, they were both silently promising, “Later.”

  Brady took the girls back to the motel for a swim in the indoor pool. Libby missed all three of them as soon as they’d gone. She wanted to sleep away the time until Brady came for her tomorrow morning—that would be their first real chance, wouldn’t it?—but perversely now her body wouldn’t cooperate. The dryness in her mouth wouldn’t go away, her limbs felt achy and restless, and her hurting abdomen told her that pain medication was due.

  She distracted herself with television instead, and was allowed a little soup for her evening meal, with Jell-O for dessert. She couldn’t believe it when she saw Brady in the doorway at a quarter of nine.

  “Where are the girls? They’re not with you? Did Angie—?”

  “Your mom’s here now, remember?” he said. “She rescheduled her flight for forty-eight hours later, and got to the motel half an hour ago. The girls are asleep, and she’s sitting with them. She wanted me to come over right away. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. Told me she’d realized that if I meant what I said about there being the slightest chance to—” He stopped suddenly.

  “What, Brady?”

  He ran his fingers across the day’s growth of stubble on his jaw. “Can I sit on the bed?”

  “As long as it’s not on my stomach. I’ll scoot over.” She eased herself across carefully and he pulled a nearby chair closer so he could sit beside her and still have somewhere to rest his feet. She felt nervous for some reason.

  As if this was a date.

  Or a crisis meeting.

  “Do you remember what you were talking about before you went under?” he asked.

  “My parents’ divorce.”

  “And your dad. Something about Disney World, and your dad. You said that you’d said it. ‘Horseback riding and Disney World.’ And then you never saw him again.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. Oh, lord! I never told Mom. Because of the ‘let’s wait’ thing. I knew that’s what she would have said, although I didn’t understand why, back then.”

  “I’m still not quite getting this, Lib.”

  “I know.” She reached out and took his hand. Found his eyes and smiled. She loved his eyes. “I’m getting there, okay?”

  “Okay.” He stroked the back of her hand with the ball of his thumb, his face watchful. She refused to let herself be daunted by the watchfulness.

  “You see, I wanted Dad and me to have something to do together, the times I went for access visits,” she said. “I was so sure it would help, and, you know, I was twelve, with twelve-year-old-girl ideas about what would be fun. So I thought, we’ll take up horseback riding, and we’ll go to Disney World.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “It was. I thought. I was so pleased with myself for finding an answer. And I suggested it, and I waited. ‘We’ll see, Lisa-Belle,’ he said. And I thought, well, grown-ups say that. They don’t jump into things. And I went home from the visit. Didn’t say anything to Mom. I thought, Dad’ll argue the case better. If it comes from Dad, she’ll say yes. Next vacation got closer. Nothing got said. Two weeks away. Nothing. You know, I’d need clothes and stuff. Riding helmet, maybe. A new swimsuit. I wanted to know.”

  “Sure.”

  “Am I looking forward to this, horseback riding and Disney World with my dad? Maybe two weeks this time? Or is it going to be the same awkward week, like we’ve been having for four years, when Mom puts me on a plane and then he and I don’t know how to relate? Finally asked Mom. What’s happening with vacation? With Dad? I didn’t mention the ideas I’d had. She said she’d had a call from him, like, weeks ago, two or three months.”

  “That long?”

  “Yes, and they’d talked, and he’d said he thought it would be best if we didn’t see each other anymore. She hadn’t known how to tell me. I think, as usual, she’d needed time to process it herself. I—you know, I knew she wasn’t strong, emotionally. I never told her how much it, oh, killed me, really. Killed a part of me. He died pretty suddenly, when I was eighteen. Heart attack. You know, high-pressure alpha type, never had time to look after himself. So I never got to—never got to—never—”

  “Okay. It’s okay.” He slid closer, along the edge of the bed, and held her.

  “It’s not. It’s not okay.” She stopped trying to push back the tears. “It never has been. I’m so angry with him! For never understanding how much he hurt me. For not trying to keep me in his life. For making me so afraid of talking to the people I love about what I need from them. You know, I told him what I needed, and he just turned his back. Forever. And I’m so, so angry with him for dying so we never had a chance to get ov
er it!”

  “I know, sweetheart. I know.”

  “I mean, for a long time I forgave Glenn everything…really, at heart, it’s still forgiven…because at least he—this is crazy!—at least he was there, so there, with all that confidence about his needs and mine. And he let me be there with him while he was dying, and it meant we could get closer. And we did. It wasn’t perfect, but we could finish things and say goodbye. I’ll never have that with Dad. I’ll never get to yell at him. I’ll never get to hug him.”

  “Yell at me, Lib. Please?” His voice cracked. “Hug me. Don’t— You know, that’s all I want. All the times when we mess things up, I just want you to stop saying, ‘I’m fine.’ Stacey lied to me all the time. ‘I’m fine’ is a different kind of lie, but it’s still a lie.”

  “Like silence…”

  “Yeah, like silence. Lies have a lot of power. Don’t do it. I’m not going to turn my back. I thought it was all about Glenn, but I was wrong. It’s about your dad. I’m not ever going to turn my back like he did, Libby.”

  “I think I’ve been afraid, in my heart, to get too close to Scarlett, to let her love me the way I love her, in case our marriage broke up and I ended up doing the same to her. I kept thinking that her relationship with Colleen was the one that really counted, the one we had to work on. I love her so much, but I haven’t let her be my child, the way Colleen is—you know, the outfits, you were right about that—because every little increment in how she…” She stopped and tried again. “Like when she started calling me Mommy… Every little thing made me more scared of what might happen later on. And I’ve been protecting Colleen in the same way. Making sure she stayed closer to me, and not so close to you. When you challenged me about the job, I thought I was defending my independence, after what I went through with Glenn, but in my heart I wasn’t. I was trying to protect both of them from getting hurt if an adult walked out on them.”

  There was a knock at the door, and Libby sat up a little in the bed to see Dr. Crichton standing there.

  “Hi!” she said. “Just come to check you out and tell you a couple of things. See if you have any questions. Sorry I couldn’t make it earlier, but everything’s been happening at once around here. How are you feeling?”