“What happened? Goddammit, Megan, tell me!” He was shouting at her and she wanted to leave. She had to get to the hospital to see her.
“I don't know yet. She has a head injury, and they're getting an orthopedic surgeon in. …”
“What's broken?”
She had to tell him quickly. Time was wasting. “Her leg, arm, and hip are badly broken, and there could be some damage to her spine as well. They're not sure yet.”
“Oh my God …” He covered his face with his hands and she handed him his jeans and ran to get their shoes. She helped him put them on, as she put hers on.
“You can't let go now. You can't. We have to get to her. It may not be as bad as it sounds.” But it sounded awful, even to her, as a doctor. It was possible that Jane would never walk again. And if there was brain damage from the head injury, it would be disastrous.
He grabbed her arm. “Or it could be worse, couldn't it? She could die … or be crippled or be a vegetable for the rest of her life.”
“No.” She wiped her eyes and pulled him toward the door. “No … I won't believe that…. Come on …” But as she started her car and shot into reverse, pulling onto the highway almost without warning, he stared straight ahead, and she tried to keep him talking. “Bernie, talk to me.”
“Do you know why this happened?” He looked as though he had just died, and that was how he felt inside.
“Why?” It was something to say at least. She was going over ninety and praying the cops would come to give her an escort. The nurse at the emergency room had told her what Jane's blood pressure was. She was as close to dead as she could get, and they had a life support machine standing by for her.
“It happened because we were in bed with each other. God was punishing me.”
She felt tears sting her eyes, and pushed the accelerator down harder. “We were making love. And God isn't punishing you.”
“Yes, he was. I had no right to betray Liz …and …” He started to sob and his words cut her to the quick, but she kept talking to him all the way to the hospital, to keep him from snapping completely.
As they pulled into the parking lot, she warned him. “I'm going to jump out of the car as soon as we stop. You park it, and come inside. I'll tell you what's happening as soon as I know. I swear.” The car stopped and she looked at him. “Pray for her, Bernie. Just pray for her. I love you.” And with that she was gone and she came back to him twenty minutes later in a green surgical suit and a cap and mask, with paper slippers over her loafers.
“The orthopedic man is working with her now. He's trying to see how bad the damage is. And there are two pedi-atric surgeons coming in by helicopter from San Francisco.” She had called for them and he knew what it meant when she told him.
“She's not going to make it, is she, Meg?” His voice was half dead. He had called to tell Nanny and he was sobbing so hard she could hardly understand him. She ordered him to pull himself together and told him she'd be waiting by the phone for word. She didn't want to frighten Alexander by bringing him to the hospital. She wasn't even going to tell him. “Is she …?” Bernie was pressing her, and she could see in his eyes how guilty he felt. She wanted to tell him again that it wasn't his fault, that he wasn't being punished for betraying Liz with her, but this wasn't the place for that. She would have to tell him later.
“She's going to make it and if we're very, very lucky, she's going to walk again. Just hang onto that.” But what if she didn't? He couldn't get the thought out of his mind as Megan disappeared again. And he sank back into the chair like a rag doll, as a nurse brought him a glass of water, but he didn't want it. It reminded him of Johanssen telling him that Liz had cancer.
The helicopters landed twenty minutes later, and the two surgeons came in at a dead run. Everything was prepared for them and the local orthopedic man assisted, and so did Megan. They had brought a neurosurgeon along too, just in case, but the head injury was not as bad as they had first feared. The real damage was to her hip and the base of her spine. That was the real terror for them now. The leg and the arm were clean breaks. And in one sense, she had been lucky. If the crack in her spine had been two millimeters deeper than it was, she would have been paralyzed from the waist down forever.
The surgery took four hours, and Bernie was almost hysterical when Megan came out to him again, but at least it was over, and she held him in her arms while he sobbed.
“She's all right, baby …she's all right…” And by the next afternoon they knew she would walk again. It would take time and a great deal of therapy, but she would run and play and walk and dance and Bernie sobbed openly when they told him. He looked down at Jane's sleeping form and he could not stop crying. And the next time she woke up again, she smiled up at him, and then glanced at Megan.
“How're we doing, love?” Megan asked softly.
“I still hurt,” she complained.
“You will for a while. But you'll be out playing again in no time.”
Jane smiled wanly, looking at Megan as though she was counting on her to help her. And Bernie held Meg's hand openly with one hand as he held Jane's with the other.
Megan and Bernie called his parents together, and it was a shock for them. But Megan gave Bernie's father the details and he was as reassured as they were.
“She was very lucky,” he said with awe and relief, and Megan agreed. “It sounds like you did everything right too.”
“Thank you, sir.” It was a compliment she treasured. And she and Bernie went out for a hamburger after that to discuss the mechanics of the next few months. Jane would be in the hospital for at least six weeks and a wheelchair for months after that. There was no way she could manage the stairs of their San Francisco house in a wheelchair, nor could Nanny. They would have to stay in Napa, and he didn't hate the idea for entirely other reasons.
“Why don't you stay out here? You don't have stairs to worry about out here. She can't go to school anyway, and you could get her a tutor.” Megan looked at him thoughtfully and he smiled. A lot was suddenly coming clear to him now, and then suddenly as he looked at her he remembered what he had said to her when it happened.
“I owe you an apology, Megan.” He was looking at her tenderly across the dinner table, seeing her as though for the first time. “I felt so guilty … I have for a long time, and I was wrong. I know that.”
“It's all right.” She whispered at him. She understood it.
“Sometimes I feel guilty about how much I love you …as though I'm not supposed to do that… as though I'm still supposed to be faithful to her…. But she's gone …and I love you.”
“I know you do. And I know you feel guilty. But you don't have to. One day it'll stop.”
But the funny thing he suddenly realized was that it had. Sometime in the last day or two. Suddenly he no longer felt guilty for loving Megan. And no matter how long he had left Liz' clothes in the closet, or how much he had loved her She was gone now.
Chapter 44
The police checked out the accident, and they had even given the driver a blood test within the hour, but there was no question, it was an accident, and the woman who had struck her said she would never recover. The real fault was Jane's, but that was no consolation as she lay in the hospital, recovering from surgery and facing months in a wheelchair, and months of therapy after that.
“Why can't we go back to San Francisco?” She was disappointed to be missing school, and not to be seeing her friends. And Alexander had been scheduled to start nursery school, but all their plans were up in the air now.
“Because you can't manage the stairs, sweetheart. And neither can Nanny, with a wheelchair. This way at least you can go out. And we'll get you a tutor.” She looked bitterly disappointed. It had ruined her whole summer, she said. It had almost ruined her life, and Bernie was grateful it hadn't.
“Will Grandma Ruth come back out?”
“She said she would, if you want her.” Everything was on hold for the moment.
T
hat brought a small smile, and Megan was spending most of her off-duty hours with her, and they had long thoughtful conversations that brought them closer than they'd been before. The fight seemed to have gone out of her around the same time the guilt had gone out of Bernie. He seemed more peaceful than he had in a while, but he was stunned by the call that came the next day. It was from Paul Berman.
“Congratulations, Bernard.” There was an ominous pause, and Bernie held his breath. He sensed that something earthshaking was coming. “I have an announcement to make to you. Three of them, in fact.” He didn't waste a moment. “I'm retiring in a month and the board just voted you into my shoes. And we just hired Joan Madison from Saks to fill your shoes in San Francisco. She'll be there in two weeks. Can you get everything wrapped up in San Francisco by then?” Bernie's heart stopped. Two weeks? Two weeks to say goodbye to Megan? How could he? And Jane couldn't be moved for months, but that wasn't the point now. The point was something entirely different and he had to tell him. There was no point putting it off any longer.
“Paul.” He felt his chest tighten and wondered if he would have a heart attack. That would certainly simplify everything. But it wasn't what he wanted. He didn't want an easy out now. He knew exactly what he wanted. “I should have told you a long time ago. And if I'd known you were planning to retire, I would have. I can't take the job.”
“Can't take it?” Paul Berman sounded horrified. “What do you mean? You've invested almost twenty years of your life preparing for it.”
“I know I have. But a lot of things changed for me when Liz died. I don't want to leave California.” Or Megan … or a dream that she had spawned….
Berman was suddenly frightened. “Has someone else offered you a job? Neiman-Marcus? … I. Magnin? …” He couldn't imagine that Bernie would defect to another store, but maybe they had made him a remarkable offer. But Bernie was quick to reassure him.
“I wouldn't do something like that to you, Paul. You know my loyalty to the store, and to you. This is just based on a lot of other decisions I had to make in my life. There are some things I want to do here that I couldn't do anywhere else in the country.”
“I can't imagine what, for heaven's sake. New York is the lifeline of our business.”
“I want to start my own business, Paul.” There was stunned silence on the other end, and Bernie smiled to himself as he said it.
“What kind of business?”
“A store. A small specialty store, in the Napa Valley.” He felt like a free man just saying the words and he could feel the tension of the last months just flowing out of his body. “It won't be competition for you, but I want to do something very special.”
“Have you done anything about starting it yet?”
“No. I had to make a decision about Wolffs first.”
“Why not do both?” Berman was desperate and Bernie could sense it. “Open a store out there and get someone else to manage it for you. Then you can come back here and take the place you've earned for yourself at Wolffs.”
“Paul, it's something I've dreamed of for years, but it's not right for me anymore. I have to stay here. It's the right decision for me. I know it.”
“This is going to be a terrible shock to the board.”
“I'm sorry, Paul. I didn't mean to embarrass you, or put you in an awkward position.” And then he smiled. “Looks like you can't retire yet then. You're too young to do a foolish thing like that anyway.”
“My body doesn't agree with you, especially this morning.”
“I'm sorry, Paul.” And he was, but he was also very happy. He sat in peaceful silence in his office for a long time after the call. His replacement was coming in two weeks. After years with Wolffs, he was going to be free in two weeks …free to start a store of his own …but there were other things he had to do first. And he left the store in a hurry at lunchtime.
The house was deathly quiet as he turned the key in the lock, and the silence which greeted him was as painful as it had been ever since she died. He still expected to find her there, to see her pretty smiling face as she emerged from the kitchen, tossing her long blond hair over her shoulder and wiping her hands on her apron. But there was no one. Nothing. There hadn't been in two years. It was all over, along with the dreams that had gone with it. It was time for new dreams, a new life, and with his heart in his mouth, he dragged the boxes into the front hall, and then into their bedroom. He sat down on their bed for a moment, and then stood up quickly. He had to do it before he started to remember her again, before he inhaled the perfume of the distant past too deeply.
He didn't even take the clothes off the hangers, he just lifted them off the racks in bunches, like the boys in their stockrooms, and dumped them into the boxes along with armloads of shoes and sweaters and handbags. He kept only the beautiful opera gown and her wedding dress, thinking that one day Jane would like to have them. But an hour later, everything else stood in the front hall in six enormous boxes. It took him another half hour to get them all down to his car and stowed inside, and then he walked back into the house for a last time. He was going to sell the house, but without Liz, there was nothing in it he cared about now anyway. It held no charm for him. She had been the charm of their entire existence.
He gently closed the closet door. There was nothing in it now except the two dresses he had saved in their plastic cases from Wolffs. The rest was empty. She needed no clothes now. She rested in a peaceful place in his heart, where he could always find her. And with a last look around the silent house, he walked quietly to the door, and then outside into the sunshine.
It was a short drive to the thrift shop he knew she had used before for Jane's cast-off clothes. She always felt that nothing should go to waste, and someone could use the things they no longer needed. The woman at the desk was pleasant and chatty and she insisted on giving Bernie a receipt for his “generous donation,” but he didn't want it. He only smiled sadly at her and walked out the door, back to the car, and went quietly back to the office.
And the store looked different to him now as he rode up the escalator to the fifth floor. Somehow Wolffs wasn't his now. It belonged to someone else. To Paul Berman and a board in New York. And he knew it would be painful to leave, but he was ready.
Chapter 45
Bernie left the store early that afternoon. There were a number of things he had to do. And he felt exhilarated as he stopped on his errand, and then headed for the Golden Gate Bridge. He had made an appointment with the real estate broker for six o'clock, and he had to drive like crazy to make it. He was twenty minutes late when he arrived, thanks to traffic in San Rafael, but the woman was still waiting for him. And so was the house Megan had shown him months before. The price had even dropped, and it had cleared probate in the meantime.
“Will you be living here with your family?” the woman inquired as she filled out the preliminary papers. Bernie had written her a check as a deposit, and was anxious to get to work to raise the rest of the money.
“Not exactly.” He had to get permission to use the house commercially and he was not yet ready to explain anything to this woman.
“It'll make a wonderful rental property with a little work.”
“I think so too.” He smiled. Their business was concluded at seven o'clock. And he went to a pay phone and dialed Megan's exchange, hoping she was on duty and not Patrick.
When a voice answered a moment later, he asked for Doctor Jones, and the officious voice at the other end informed him that she was in the emergency room but they could page her, if he would give them his name, his child's name and age, and the problem. He claimed to be a Mr. Smith with a little boy called George, who was nine years old and had a broken arm.
“Couldn't I just meet her at the emergency room? He's in a lot of pain.” He felt rotten using a ruse like that, but it was for a good cause, and the operator agreed to warn Dr. Jones that they were coming. “Thank you.” He hid the smile in his voice and hurried back to his car to drive to th
e hospital to meet her. And he saw her standing at the desk with her back to him as he walked in, and his whole body smiled at the sight of her. The bright shiny dark hair and the tall, graceful body were just exactly what he had longed to see all day. He walked up behind her and gently patted her behind as she jumped and then grinned, attempting unsuccessfully to look reproachful.
“Hi there. I was just waiting for a patient.”
“I'll bet I can guess who.”
“No, you can't. He's a new patient. I haven't even met him myself.”
Bernie leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. “Mr. Smith?”
“Yes …I …how did …” And then she blushed. “Bernie! Were you playing tricks on me?” She looked stunned but not really angry. It was the first time he had ever done that.
“You mean little George and the broken arm?”
“Bernie!” She wagged a finger at him, and he pulled her gently into an examining room, while she scolded him.
“That's a terrible thing to do. Remember the boy who cried wolf.”
“That was Wolffs and I don't work there anymore.”
“What?” She looked truly stunned and stared at him in amazement. “What?”
“I quit today.” He looked delighted as he grinned at her, looking far more boyish than the imaginary George ever could have.
“Why? Did something happen?”
“Yes.” He laughed. “Paul Berman offered me his job. He wanted to retire.”
“Are you serious? Why didn't you take it? That's what you've worked for all your life.”
“That's what he said.” He was fishing for something in his pocket and he looked extremely happy as she continued to stare at him in amazement.
“But why? Why didn't you …”
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