“Remember when we’d come here with Natasha?” said Suzette. Natasha was Meg’s third daughter, and acid reflux had kept her up at all hours. Suzette had met Meg at IHOP after her late shifts. They’d pass baby Natasha between them, drink coffee, and eat.
“I do,” said Meg. “How can she be in kindergarten?”
The waiter appeared with two coffees. “I’m sorry,” said Suzette, “I haven’t even looked at the menu.”
“Got us two Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruities,” said Meg.
“You know me so well,” said Suzette.
“OK,” said Meg, touching Suzette’s arm. “Just talk.”
“There’s this kid,” said Suzette. She took a gulp of her coffee. “Martin Fletcher. He’s very sick, getting worse. I performed his first operation, when he was a newborn. I shouldn’t have become…close.” She took a deep breath, put her head in her hands. “He needs a new heart, but he’s no longer a strong candidate for a transplant. He’s not a good risk. So I know they’re going to take him off the list. I was hoping I could convince them, but I know…I can’t.”
“What list?”
Suzette sighed. “If a heart becomes available, it should go to someone who has a better chance of surviving.”
“Fuck,” said Meg. “So you’re going to tell this kid’s parents he’s going to die?”
“We’re all going to die,” said Suzette, staring into her coffee.
“You always do accentuate the positive,” said Meg drily.
“And also…Dorrie.”
“Yes. Dorrie.”
“She…she’s just disappeared. She didn’t show up for the sonogram, and, well, I guess she’s run away or something.”
“Oh, sweetie,” said Meg. “I’m going to call my next-door neighbor. He works for KHOU News. They’ll be all over this. Would that help?”
“I guess so. Why not?” Suzette said. The waiter returned with two plates of pancakes smothered in fruit compote and whipped cream.
“What else can I get for you lovely ladies?” he asked.
“We’re fine,” said Meg. “Thanks.”
“This is so disgusting,” said Suzette, when the waiter was out of earshot.
“No joke,” said Meg, digging in. “I’m going to have to run to Dallas and back to work this off.”
Suzette’s phone rang. She was afraid to check, but it was Hyland. “Honey,” she said.
“I can’t sleep,” said Hyland.
“I’m at the IHOP on Westheimer with Meg.”
“I’m coming over,” said Hyland.
“OK, honey,” said Suzette.
“Has the young runaway turned up?” asked Meg.
Suzette shook her head. “Where is she?” she said. “How can this be happening?”
“It’s just a matter of time,” said Meg. “They’re going to find her, Suze. We’re going to be sitting here tomorrow and everything will be fine. I promise.”
“I already feel like the baby is mine,” said Suzette, somewhat stunned to acknowledge this, even to herself. “I thought it would feel so great, Meg, but this is the worst.”
“Welcome to parenthood,” said Meg.
7
Dorrie
My first and only morning on Grand Isle, I slept for about an hour and then woke again, feeling sluggish and sick. Could this be morning sickness already? I pushed the curtains apart and took in my view of the Seahorse Cottages parking lot. A pickup truck idled and a floodlight illuminated the driver, a young man with a beard and a trucker cap. I pulled the drapes closed.
There was a phone on the desk. I gazed at it, almost calling my mom. I even lifted the receiver, but I did not dial. I couldn’t bear to hear more disappointment in Patsy’s voice.
My stomach growled, so I ate the last of the Combos and a Twinkie. I turned on the television and was astonished to see my own face fill the screen. It was my high school yearbook photograph, my smile electric. The anchorman spoke: “Dorrie Muscarello, last seen in Galveston, Texas, was known to friends and family as a nice person.”
Suzette then appeared, looking pale and composed, standing outside of an International House of Pancakes. What was Suzette doing at IHOP? Your father was slumped next to her. “If you can hear us, Dorrie,” said Suzette, “please know we don’t mean you any harm. We just want you home safe. Please, Dorrie. Don’t make this any worse than it has to be. We beg you. We’re going to find you, you know. Just turn yourself in.” Suzette’s voice veered between indignation and a slimy, false concern. “It’s going to be OK, dear,” she added. Was she speaking to me, calling me dear? For the first time, I hated her.
On the TV, Suzette turned to your father, who nodded. He managed, “That’s right.” His eyes were red-rimmed, his face puffy. There was little trace of the handsome man who had met me for breakfast before the first doctor’s appointment, waving away my proffered dollars and telling me to “please, order a fancy coffee, too, on me. Order two!” He had been so happy, lit up with the possibility of you.
The young anchorman said that the Kendalls had offered a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for any information about my whereabouts. “She may have traveled out of state, or even out of the country, we just don’t know,” said a police officer. “She could be driving a silver Mazda sedan.”
The segment concluded with a video shot outside my mom’s bungalow in Galveston. The sky above the house was purple and marred with clouds. The newscaster wore a windbreaker. “Patsy Muscarello, a longtime resident of Galveston Island, refused to comment on her daughter’s disappearance. Neighbors here on K½ Street say they always thought Dorrie was a nice girl who liked to help others. It seems they may have been wrong. For KHOU News, I’m Melissa Hornsbach.”
I felt stung. Back in the studio, the news anchors were shaking their heads. Before they could condemn me further, I hit the mute button, understanding that I couldn’t remain on Grand Isle. It was only a matter of hours before the motel owners would wake and recognize me. For all I knew, they were calling in their fifty-thousand-dollar reward at that very moment. Maybe the man in the truck was with the FBI, CIA, or whatever the organization was that would hunt down a defenseless young pregnant lady just trying to make a fresh start in the Seahorse Cottages!
I pulled on my jeans. Not bothering to lock the door behind me, I ran to the car. No one followed, and the truck remained where it had been, coughing exhaust. The man watched me drive out of the parking lot. I had dreamed for years of sitting by the waves that had inspired Kate Chopin. Instead, I was on the move again, heading north, toward New Orleans.
When I was on the outskirts of the city, I parked the Mazda outside a Wal-Mart Supercenter. I bought scissors and Pepperoni Pizza Cracker Combos. In a bathroom stall, I cut off all my hair. I stuffed the black curls I’d been so vain about into the maxipad receptacle. The tin box with hair coming out was a horror.
I did, however, look like a new person. A deranged and exhausted person, a person who had chopped off all her hair in the Wal-Mart bathroom stall and then stuffed it in the maxipad receptacle, but a new person nonetheless.
I ate the bag of Combos as I steered the Mazda into New Orleans. I felt as if I hadn’t slept in days. I felt sick. I was worried that my desperation would harm you somehow. I chose an exit and got off the highway, found myself lost in a warren of streets. Whenever I slowed, figures approached—for a while, I wasn’t sure if they were real or if I was going crazy. It was terrible.
I slowed for a red light, and a heavyset person in a miniskirt rapped at the driver’s-side window. “Hey!” called the woman, whose face looked masculine, despite her cherry-red lipstick. “Hey! How about a ride?”
Scared, I hit the accelerator, drove straight through the red light, frantically trying to reach a more populated area. The EMPTY light blinked on the gas gauge. My entire body crackled with panic. When I finally reached Tulane Avenue again, I stayed on it, helplessly moving forward, hoping for a hotel or even a restaurant. I saw a po’ boy shop, an open doorway s
urrounded by men in hooded jackets and hats.
Finally, a motel. A seedy motel, to be sure, with a hand-painted sign reading THE MOTEL CLAIBORNE, but it had a parking lot. I pulled into the lot and exhaled, reading the sign posted on the wall in front of my car:
NO REFUNDS
NO HOURLY RATES
NO PROSTITUTION
NO DRUGS
NO ADULT ENTERTAINMENT
NO SOLICITATION
NO LOITERING
The parking lot was busy—men and women in various stages of angry or blank inebriation. I walked quickly to the office, where a sign in Magic Marker read:
Wlecome to the Claiborne
1 bed $55.00/day
2 beds $65.00/day
The office was cluttered and dimly lit. A few men seemed to be hanging around, resting drinks on the massive mahogany front desk. This seemed (I told myself—and please remember, I was hungry, exhausted, possibly delusional, and so very worried about you) a good place to hide, a place where having secrets might be just fine.
A florid man wearing a button-down shirt and a thin tie asked me if I was checking in. I nodded, thinking fleetingly of Mary and Joseph searching for room at the inn. But the man did not send me to the manger. He nodded mildly and pushed a clipboard across the desk.
I stared at the form. The time had come, I thought grandly, to begin again. I could take the Bic pen that had been jammed into the clip and write down any NAME, ADDRESS, EMERGENCY CONTACT, and STATE OF RESIDENCE that I damn well pleased.
Well, I asked myself, who are you going to be?
I wrote that my NAME was Jardine. My ADDRESS was a P.O. box in Portland, Maine, the birthplace of another of my favorite writers, Stephen King. For an emergency contact, I fabricated a phone number.
“Credit card?” asked the man.
I told the man I would be paying cash.
The man hesitated, then shrugged. “One bed or two?” he asked.
I told him one bed was fine, calculating my wad of cash divided by the daily rate slowly and painstakingly in my head. Math! I had always hated math. (Ah, the irony: I have spent my days punching numbers into a Walgreens register.)
I opened my wallet, sensing a ripple of interest in the lobby. I counted out enough for five days, then handed over the bills. The man handed me a key to Room 29.
“Elevator’s on your left there,” said the man. “You’ve got a balcony and all.”
I headed for the elevator. Was I safe? I didn’t feel safe. In fact, were I the betting type, I would have put all my chips on NO I WAS NOT SAFE. (I am not the betting type.)
I punched the elevator button once, twice, three times. Finally, the small chamber appeared and I hustled inside. In moments, I was deposited on the second floor. I found Room 29 and unlocked the door. The room was small and not very clean. It was clear at this point that the Motel Claiborne was a flophouse, or however you want to put it. A drug den, a den of iniquity. I was inside a Dashiell Hammett novel, which would have been exciting in my previous life, when I was a girl from a small island looking for excitement. That girl would have been thrilled to spend a night in New Orleans. But now I was someone different. I was going to be your mother, and I wanted only peace and the ability to become my best self, for you.
There was no TV remote. I tried to turn on the TV by punching every single possible button, but nothing happened. I climbed on top of the bed, which exhaled duskily as I sank into the wrinkled coverlet. Oh, we were so very tired. We slept.
8
Suzette
After pancakes, Suzette went home with Hyland for a few sleepless hours, then showered and went to work. Hyland saw her off, unshaven, eyes bruised. Their neighbor, elderly Rhonda Bardwell, paused, watering can midair, when Suzette stepped outside. An army of landscapers arrived every day to maintain Rhonda’s elaborate yard, yet there she stood in a threadbare robe and slippers, caring for the potted fern situated next to her front door.
“Morning,” said Suzette.
“Why, good morning,” said Rhonda, her tone making it clear she had seen the news reports, which had (in retrospect) been a mistake, serving only to violate the Kendalls’ privacy without yielding any credible leads. Rhonda, an oil widow with two red-faced sons who lumbered by occasionally, surrounded by swarms of children and wives who appraised the decaying mansion and its contents with their eyes, arranged her face expectantly, her forehead rising in anticipation of an update.
But Suzette did not deliver, turning from Rhonda and Hyland and walking to the Lexus, which she had parked out front due to the garage being filled with cardboard boxes. “Can you put the boxes out?” she called to Hyland.
He nodded. Suzette guessed he would spend the day sitting by the phone, continuing to catalog the dusty contents of his childhood home. She knew that Dorrie’s disappearance was another devastating blow to her husband, who had come so far since the accident that had defined him. Suzette understood his desire to replace what had been taken away. To—quite literally, as it turned out—fill his sister’s shoes. (He’d placed a box of worn ballet slippers in the baby’s closet.) Suzette had problems herself—she forgave and accepted Hyland in total. She loved him for trying to find happiness, rather than giving up hope. Being married to a man who cared too much was an issue Suzette was happy to have. She could only imagine that their child, if they ever had one, would agree.
Suzette got into the Lexus as Rhonda stared, her narrowed gaze a dam holding back a river of opinions. Suzette drove away, glad to be free from the miserable cocoon she and Hyland had made around themselves—waiting for the phone to ring, watching the TV on mute, and slowly emptying a large bottle of sake.
—
Suzette knew nothing about classical music, but this didn’t stop her from loving it. She enjoyed the absence of words, and tried to imagine what each song should be a soundtrack beneath: a mouse wedding, for example…a woodland dinner party, a battle on ice skates. As she drove to the hospital, Suzette thought idly that she and her someday-baby could play this game. What does this song sound like? Suzette would ask, and Eloise, from the backseat, would pipe, “A mouse wedding, Mommy!”
Suzette realized, alarmed, that she was about to cry. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, blinked furiously. It was that word—Mommy. It did something to Suzette, made her fall apart. Mommy, a sappy yet beautiful word, conjuring homemade jam and sewing supplies; a lovely young woman in a kerchief kneeling down as a child ran across a wide lawn for a hug. Suzette tried to pull herself together. She’d never used a needle or pincushion in her life.
—
No one mentioned Suzette’s missing surrogate or the news reports at the morning conference. Suzette made her case for Martin Fletcher, but the decision was data-driven: Martin was removed from the transplant list. After the weekly Morbidity and Mortality report, the day’s surgeries were outlined. There was no place for small talk. Like many of her colleagues, Suzette was intensely private. Sure, they bantered here and there about golf handicaps or the weather, but their work was serious, an honor, and bridging the gap between chitchat and the intensity needed to saw open a breastplate took energy none of them could spare. It was a relief to be amongst her tribe.
Suzette had gone to medical school planning to be a pediatrician. But shortly into her rotation, she realized she found the work stultifying: viruses, well-child checkups, the biggest thrill a sprained wrist. When she mentioned idly to her attending, Bill Levine, that 90 percent of the patients seemed to have ear infections, he put down his coffee mug and looked at her.
“You’re too aggressive,” he said simply.
And while she’d heard this before, and always as an insult, Suzette had to agree. “Where, then?” she asked Dr. Levine. “ER?”
Levine sat back in his desk chair, tapped his pen against his lips. He narrowed his eyes, evaluating her. Then he nodded. “Cardiothoracic surgery,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” said Suzette. She felt an almost carnal thrill at the proclama
tion, though Levine was a grandfather with ear hair and a paunch.
“Yes,” he said.
The air between them was electric. A heart surgeon was beyond her wildest dreams—the best of the best, the biggest boys’ club, the alphas. Levine met Suzette’s gaze, and she saw in him the dashing guy he must have been, before the years of vomiting children had reduced him to this. “Do it,” he said.
Suzette nodded. She was twenty-nine. “I will,” she said.
—
At 8:00 A.M., Suzette ate a bagel and peed (not knowing when she could do either again), then changed for her first operation, a transcatheter aortic valve replacement. She put on her headlight and loupes (the gear so heavy she was already starting to stoop forward like her older colleagues), then the rest of her equipment. She scrubbed in, counting down the seven minutes. Suzette paid special attention to the nail beds around her short fingernails; she hadn’t worn polish since her wedding day.
Cassie, the scrub nurse, handed Suzette a sterile towel. Suzette pulled her gloves on, letting them snap tight with a flourish (it was a tough maneuver with even slightly wet hands). After the long night of confusion and misery, she was back. It was her job to forget about Dorrie. And yet she requested classical music, causing Cassie to look up at her, momentarily confused. Suzette kept a stack of CDs next to the player and rotated amongst them, rarely adding to the pile.
“The classical music station,” said Suzette.
“I thought you—”
“Please,” said Suzette, in a tone that was anything but questioning.
The TAVR was risky: Suzette would run a catheter the size of a pen from an artery in the leg to the heart, then implant a valve made of bovine tissue and supported on a metal stent. In a few hours, if all went well, the patient (a middle-aged, mildly famous newscaster named Graham Magnuson) would have a functioning aortic valve.
The Nearness of You Page 6