Surface

by Stacy Robinson

  “I’ve been trying to discourage her, but I thought I should check with you. Just in case.”

  “In case what? That after a few days of ministering to me, Mother would become a bit achy herself, and I’d want to take care of her?” She looked up at Jackie. “Please just hold her off for a little while longer.”

  “You got it, kiddo.” She kissed Claire on the forehead. “Now be smart, and listen to your big sis. Just chill here for a while, please.”

  As the sound of Jackie’s footsteps faded down the staircase, Claire pulled the sheets up over her face, grateful for her sister’s steadiness, for all the phone calls and offers of help she fielded when Claire had decided to go radio silent and focus her energy on the only thing that really mattered. How could anyone help? And how could she talk to anyone without letting her guilt collapse the flimsy house of cards they’d had to erect? Guilt. It had become the defining precept of her days. And Michael’s, it seemed, too, with his retreat into uncharacteristically remorseful moods and strange mumblings. Or maybe not. Who knew anymore? Thank God for Jackie, she thought, stretching out under the covers. The sheets were crisp and cool, the mattress firm and strangely foreign to her. She smelled Michael on the pillows, some new scent she couldn’t pinpoint, but still unmistakably his, fresh and clean. She wondered if they would ever share a bed again. If he could ever want her.

  Claire fidgeted and rolled between her side and Michael’s, wanting badly to sleep for just a few dreamless hours. She turned on some music—Elvis Costello’s “Almost Blue”—but still her mind wouldn’t let her forget. Ultimately, her search for comfort proved more frustrating than therapeutic, and she stripped off her clothes for a quick shower. Her hair, she noticed, felt old, like fallen leaves. Everything about her needed some tending to, but it all seemed so pointless, she thought as she trudged into the bathroom. She flipped on the light, and the instant her toes hit the marble floor an ice-cold shiver shot through her. She hadn’t been in there since the night of the accident, and the startling reminder sent her sliding backward from the present. Suddenly it was eleven o’clock, Saturday night. And the smell of Andrew seemed to wash over her again.

  Claire turned and raced out of the room and into the hallway in a panic of blood and cocaine and flashing lights. Flinging open the door to the upstairs guest bathroom, she saw the cream-and-gold toile shower curtains shudder. She stepped, practically jumped, over the tub ledge and drew the curtains shut with both hands, crisscrossing her wrists so that nothing could slip past. She turned on the taps and stood under the showerhead as the water spouted shockingly cold and then hot on her body, letting it beat down on her shoulders. For ten minutes Claire stood there shaking, waiting for the spray to wash the emotional shock of her flashback down the drain.

  Finally she reached for the soap and began lathering her body. One pass of the finely milled bar over her arms and legs turned to five, then ten before she moved on to the loofah. She washed her hair and shaved her legs with the never-used guest razor, reciting her litany of hatred for Andrew: his magnetism, his “party favor,” his general existence. Because no matter how long she exfoliated and scoured, it would always be there—the unforgettable spark of their lust, and the damning shadow of its fallout. Because with every cat and mouse game, someone had to lose.

  After, as she dressed, Claire tried hard to picture Michael and all the goodness of their life together. The breezy holidays, the lazy Sunday mornings following one of their fabulous dinner parties, the secrets and dreams and jokes they had shared. But all she could bring to mind were his words at the hospital. You think you can trust your instincts? And their now obvious lack of communion. When she and Andrew had fucked, they had kissed so passionately that she’d felt her entire body vibrate. But kissing had long since gone missing from her lovemaking with Michael; all that had remained was the act itself and a cool sense of release when it was done. Claire considered for a moment that perhaps she’d applied the wrong terminology to the wrong partner. She could hardly call the swift and occasional maneuverings with Michael lovemaking now, and she hated Andrew even more for magnifying this.

  Before him, things had seemed decent in their sex life—not perfect, not like the days of their swoon-worthy make-out sessions on the stoop of her Park Slope brownstone, or the comfortable twice-weekly pattern they’d settled into the year after Nick went to preschool, or even the diversion they’d enjoyed with the “bunny” when Michael started doing all of his deals in Asia a few years back and coming to bed too exhausted to give more than ten minutes to the effort. A little more romance and eroticism would have been nice, sure, but their expectations and patterns had shifted. It was the same story she’d heard in countless marriages at that stage in life. We don’t have the energy; I just can’t muster the interest; he needs Viagra; Every time he gets that edge to his voice it’s like a gut-check to my libido. Claire could relate to many of these complaints, but not with the degree of resentment or resignation that seemed to deflate so many women she knew. While theirs had never been a crazy, nails-digging-into-flesh kind of hunger for one another, at least she and Michael still had sex, and at least they didn’t fight about it. Certainly this was a more ideal status quo than the majority of her friends’ relationships.

  But the old adage about not knowing what you’ve been missing until it shows up on your doorstep hit Claire with a force she couldn’t ignore. Standing there half-naked in her dressing room and brushing her hand over the little half-moon scabs on her back, she acknowledged that their sex life, in fact, had been miles from perfect. Light-years. She tried to recall the last time she and Michael had made the fervent, passionate kind of love she knew she was capable of, and all she could come up with was a couple years’ worth of lackluster-in-hindsight fucks that had become even more robotic since the fall—de rigueur quickies before a business trip or on the odd leisurely weekend, and then nothing for long stretches. And she also had to admit that she shared the blame for this loss of intimacy. It had probably been at least as long that she hadn’t initiated sex. Why had she given up? she asked herself for the first time. Why had this not been important to her anymore? They’d stopped kissing good night when she started falling asleep before him a couple years ago, and then the inattention to any sort of real flame fanning seemed to have snowballed into . . . what? Zipping up her jeans, Claire closed her eyes and thought, desolation. And she began to weep for all that they had lost, and all that she had allowed to go unspoken, and all that was broken. And through the blur of those fresh tears and the terrifying uncertainty of the future, she whispered an imploring prayer that she and Michael could somehow bridge their gap and find a route back to each other.

  Back in the bedroom she looked for her cell phone to check voice mail, discovering it lodged under the bed where she must have kicked it during her mad dash from the bathroom. But there had been no calls or updates. Feeling even more unsettled and weary, Claire drifted around the house tilting artwork a few degrees up or down to levelness, sorting through unopened mail, rearranging magazine stacks. Stay home a bit longer, or go back to the hospital and let Michael’s smoldering anger bloat around them—the choices were equally disheartening. Finding herself on the stairway landing, she got down on her knees to comb the fringe on the Persian rug with her fingers, and just stayed there.

  When she woke up, her head felt heavy and dense. She rolled onto her back, scanning the balcony windows, wondering how long she’d been on the floor. Her cheek, she could feel, bore the indentation of fringe. She checked her watch, incredulous that she’d been asleep for six hours, and called Jackie.

  “Hell-o.”

  Startled to hear Michael’s voice, Claire immediately felt her body tense up. “Oh, you’re still there.”

  “I just got back about an hour ago. Jackie is talking to one of the nurses.”

  “Has there been any change?”

  “Don’t you think we’d have called?”

  “So, nothing?”

  “No,
Claire, there’s been no miracle yet. Do you want your sister?”

  “That’s all right. I’m on my way.”

  Claire took her own car and returned to the hospital. Michael left when she arrived. Separate shifts, the new order.

  CHAPTER 9

  Around 10:00 the next morning, as Claire was discussing Nicholas’s feeding tube with Dr. Sheldon, a nurse interrupted to tell her that there was someone to see her. “I explained to the gentleman several times,” the nurse said, “that we only admit family members to the ICU. But he was insistent. A Mr. Bricker?”

  Somehow, Claire managed to smile pleasantly and tell the nurse to let him know she’d be out shortly. She finished with the doctor and filed the notes she had taken into a loose-leaf binder with a trembling hand, alongside the bits information she’d started to gather about Nick’s condition and treatment. Then she walked through the ICU door hearing her shallow breath echo in her ears.

  Andrew Bricker stood behind a gray chair, leaning the weight of his body over its back and clutching the armrests. Claire watched him lift his head as the doors shut behind her. She had the sensation of sinking.

  “What are you doing here?” she hissed, walking past him out of view of the ICU window, looking over her shoulder.

  He followed her down a long corridor. “I called you.”

  She stopped short in front a stained glass wall that listed major donors to the hospital. Michael’s corporation headed the Silver Benefactor list above their heads. “You what?”

  “You seemed shaken up after I left. I called for two days. I knew Michael was gone. Finally I got your housekeeper.”

  “You called my house? You talked to Maria?”

  He nodded and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I didn’t have your cell. I told her I was an old friend, and she said you were at the hospital with Nicholas. Something about a diabetic coma?”

  Around the corner, elevator bells rang, people filed out. More doors opened and closed. Claire thought she heard someone call her name, and she looked over her shoulder only to see Michael’s $50,000 corporate gift acknowledgement confronting her from the stained glass wall. She stepped in closer to Andrew, trying to shut out the commotion round them. “So you just show up here? How would you explain this to Michael?”

  “Relax. I made sure he wasn’t here before I asked for you.”

  She stared into his eyes, which looked not exactly predatory, as she feared they might in the unsparing glare of the hospital, but no longer beautiful either. “Nicholas is not in a diabetic coma. Nick overdosed on your little stash of cocaine.” She stabbed her fingers into his chest as she spoke in a muted shout, tears beginning to roll down her face. “It must have fallen out of your pocket, and he found it in the bedroom after you left, when I was taking a shower.”

  “Holy shit.” Panic froze his features.

  “And he snorted it and ended up with a brain hemorrhage. They had to do surgery, and he still hasn’t woken up.” Her body was shaking.

  Andrew fumbled in a stunned silence and reached out for her shoulders. “I’m so deeply sorry. I never thought—”

  She felt the warmth of his hands through her shirt and backed away. “Yeah. Neither did I.” As she raised her hand to shove him away, she looked into his face and saw shock and fear and remorse. She dropped her arm and leaned against the wall next to him.

  “What are the doctors saying? Is he going to be okay?”

  “They don’t know when he’s going to wake up. They don’t know if there’s been any permanent damage.” She turned to him. “And I don’t know when Michael’s going to be back here, so you need to leave. Now.”

  “He knows about us?” His voice quavered.

  “He pieced it together. So I’d go back to New York without any more phone calls. We’re trying to keep things private for everyone’s sake. And I’m trying to save my marriage.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  Her stomach felt explosive and empty at the same time. What’s going to happen? “We’re going to get Nicholas through this and then, I don’t know. Hopefully Michael will be able to forgive me some day.”

  “If there’s anything I can do, Claire. Anything.”

  “You can pray for my son. I don’t know if you pray, Andrew. I never really did, but I do now.”

  He nodded.

  “And I’m going to have to live the rest of my life with this, so it would be much easier if you would just disappear. That’s what you can do.” She wiped her eyes. “Cut off your deals in Denver, and disappear. I think that would be in everyone’s best interest.” She stared into his eyes as she emphasized the everyone, making sure he understood exactly what he risked with his presence, before she turned to walk back to the ICU. “Good-bye,” she said firmly, still holding onto the image of Andrew’s mouth, his lips trembling under the scar. Please, just be smart, and be gone.

  As Claire rounded the corner toward the ICU, she bumped into—and was practically smothered by—an enormous bouquet of orange-pink roses. She let out a yelp as both she and the person behind the flowers simultaneously jumped backward.

  “Oh, Claire, here you are! I was just coming to see you,” a woman said, lowering the flowers to reveal her face. It was Jeannie Chase, an old Junior League friend and member of the museum gala committee.

  Claire swallowed her surprise and did her best to appear unruffled and gracious, checking behind her to be sure Andrew was, indeed, gone, while making small talk and cutting short this latest unexpected visit. “These are beautiful, and you are so kind to come,” she managed, accepting the bouquet and Jeannie’s sympathy over Nicholas’s condition. “I was just on my way to a meeting with one of the doctors, so I’m afraid I can’t sit down with you and—”

  “Oh, please. No apologies,” Jeannie said, nodding solemnly. “I completely understand. You go do what you need to do.” She gave Claire a hasty embrace and retreated toward the elevator, waving and wishing her and Nicholas her best.

  Dazed, Claire made her way back to Nicholas’s room, where she crumpled into her chair and read and reread a flyer on rehabilitation facilities. A new shift nurse appeared, whom she didn’t recognize. Her nameplate read Anne Corbett. She stared at Anne Corbett across the web of wires and tubes above Nicholas, trying to quiet her brain. If Nicholas had been a girl, they would have named her Anne, and called her Annie. But Claire knew that this woman with her severe black bun and dry, down-turned lips had never been called Annie. She was someone, Claire was certain, who had witnessed all the pain and sadness life had to deliver, and at some point became resigned to its unfairness with quiet reserve. Claire looked away until she heard the squeak of the nurse’s white rubber soles exit the room.

  She walked to Nicholas’s bed and softly rubbed the stubble that had begun to grow back on his scalp. “Do you remember all those trips we made to the ER, Nicky?” she asked. “The monkey bar incident and your arm cast? Your chin stitches.” He grunted and ground his teeth—reflexive responses that she had grown used to, but responses nonetheless. “At one point they knew you by name downstairs, didn’t they, kiddo?” She smiled, remembering how she would read from his favorite book, The Phantom Tollbooth, to keep him calm and entertained as he was being stitched up or wrapped in a cast, always the same chapter about the Senses Taker, over and over, as his fear and pain disappeared into the cleverness of the wordplay.

  She rested her fingers on the zipper-like staples on Nick’s skull, and it occurred to her that maybe her little boy just needed an old, familiar key to get back to them.

  Claire ran her hands along the spines of the books on Nick’s bedroom shelves and bookcases, searched the drawers of his desk. She worried if during one of her cleaning flurries she had boxed up his childhood books and given them away. She looked in the closet, among the cubbies of old trophies and jerseys, computer games and art projects, taking in, as she did, the range of her son’s young life. She pulled out a blue notebook with a squirrelly spiral binding. Eighth-grade
history. Claire opened the worn cover and thumbed through the pages, tentatively at first, tracing her son’s maturing script, the unexpected flourish around Dr. King’s initials, the sharp angles of a Washington Monument rendering; and then faster, flipping through the pages like an animator trying to bring it all to life. Claire pressed her nose into its pages, but only smelled a faint staleness. As she went to replace the binder, a note fell to the carpet. Meet me after school. xxoo P. P., it read in purple ink. P. P.? Peyton Pierce? She smiled and bent down to pick it up. Nick and Peyton had a crush? Neatly she folded the note and reinserted it into the middle of the binder, acknowledging that her son did have a life beyond what she knew.

  Claire closed the closet door and returned to the bookcases, reading each title aloud this time, book by book, shelf by shelf, to be sure she hadn’t missed it. Lodged between two yearbooks near the bottom, she finally found The Phantom Tollbooth. Clutching it, she went down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea before returning to the hospital.

  As the water was heating, Claire’s cell phone rang. Michael’s private line glowed on the screen.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Has something happened?” She was already grabbing her car keys from the counter.

  “Yeah, something’s happened. But not with Nick.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I just got a call from Robert Spencer.”

  She could hear the agitation in his voice, but wasn’t sure where he was going with it. Jackie had taken messages from Robert and Carolyn Spencer about Nicholas, but everyone was calling. “And?”

  “And he wanted to let me know about a ridiculous story he’d just heard from Jim Chase and his wife about you and a younger man, and a cocaine overdose.” His tone grew more hostile. “Who have you talked to, Claire?”

  Claire lowered herself into the breakfast area banquette. “No one,” she choked, replaying Jeannie Chase’s polite willingness to cut short her visit, and trying to imagine just how much she might have overheard in the lobby.