“Can I sit here?” he asked, suddenly anxious. Perhaps she was fragile, perhaps he would upset some tenuous physical balance, sinking down on the mattress. “Is it all right?” He asked the first question of Amanda, but turned to her mother for the second: Caroline was in charge, after all.
It was disturbing, being here, so deep within Caroline’s territory, seeing his daughter so stricken. And feeling such hostility from them both, such a hot sullen tide of it. Feeling hostility toward them as well: wasn’t he as much the injured party as Caroline was? And how dare Amanda act angry? Hadn’t he more reason for anger than she did? But he was not here to blame, he reminded himself. He was here to comfort.
At his question, Caroline nodded indifferently. She stood in the doorway, her arms folded, as though on guard there.
Peter turned back to Amanda. “How are you feeling?”
He put a tentative hand on her shin, muffled by the sheet. He wondered at once if he should: a teenage girl’s body is such alarming and complicated territory. At his touch, Amanda’s leg twitched, and moved reflexively away, sliding sideways.
“Sorry,” Peter said.
Amanda shook her head. Her face was pale and puffy, her eyes seemed small. There were dark greenish shadows beneath them. There was a brownish patch, a healing bruise, on one cheekbone. Her hair, with the pale green streak, looked flattened and lifeless.
Peter turned to Caroline. “Is she still on painkillers?”
Caroline shook her head. “That was only the first day,” she said. She sounded disapproving, as though this was something Peter should have known.
“She’s not in pain now,” Peter said.
Pain: he saw Tess’s bruised face, the closed eyes.
“No,” said Caroline. “She’s recovering from shock.”
“When do they think she’ll be up and around?” It was easier to talk to Caroline, despite her hostility, than to Amanda, who was closed to him, distant.
“Next week, they think,” said Caroline. “Doctor Kornfeld wants to see her on Friday.” She used the doctor’s name like a boast, an accusation: here was her ally. “He says it’s important that she doesn’t push herself. He doesn’t want her to have a relapse. But she gets bored. She feels fine in the mornings. She gets up, then collapses.”
Peter nodded. He turned back to Amanda, who lay still, as though she waited only for him to leave. She was damaged, he reminded himself. She was still suffering from shock. She had been in a car crash. At the thought of the crash he felt a choke of rage, quelled it. He was not here to blame her. He was her father, she had been hurt.
“I brought you something,” Peter said. He held up the small brown bag. Amanda did not move, so he took out of it a dull gold box, tied with narrow gold twine. “Godiva.”
“Thanks,” Amanda answered. Her voice was a shock: so empty of energy.
Peter held out the box of chocolates and she took it without speaking. She leaned over and set it on the floor beside the bed.
A sudden gust of anger hit Peter and he leaned forward.
“If you don’t want it,” he said, “give it back. I’ll give it to someone who does.”
Amanda stared at him and did not speak.
Behind him Caroline said, “What did you say?”
Peter turned to her. “If Amanda doesn’t want the chocolates, I’ll give them to someone who does.”
“I can’t believe you said that,” Caroline said, taking a step toward him. She sounded choked.
“If Amanda cares so little about what I took the trouble to bring her that she can’t even bring herself to look at it—”
“She is in shock!” Caroline interrupted. “Your daughter is in shock! She’s been in pain! Can you grasp that? Is that something you will ever, ever understand?”
Peter stood up, away from the disheveled bedclothes. “If she is in pain, Caroline, it’s not my fault. Not everything in Amanda’s life is my fault.”
Caroline laughed angrily. “I see. Who do you think is responsible for the pain in Amanda’s life? What do you think has made her so unhappy?”
“I think you and I are equally responsible. You’re as much to blame as I am.” Peter’s voice rose. They shouldn’t fight in front of Amanda, he thought. He moved toward the door, but Caroline did not follow him.
“I see,” said Caroline. “Which of us was it that walked out on the marriage?”
“We’ve been through that before,” Peter said, stopping. He glanced at Amanda but she lay with her face turned away from them both. “What I did was in response to what you did. We both played parts. But I also don’t think it’s important, now. It was almost ten years ago.”
“Don’t tell me it was ten years ago,” said Caroline. “I don’t care when it happened. It’s just as true today as it was then. You walked out on us. You’re still gone.”
“Look,” said Peter. “Time passes. Things change. You can’t stay in the same place forever. I think you’re stuck. And I don’t think blaming is the way to live your life. That’s all you do now: you blame me, and you tell Amanda to blame me. You tell her everything, everything, is my fault.”
“I have never told Amanda that,” Caroline said, drawing herself up in a fury of self-righteousness. She folded her arms, standing in front of the bureau.
“Not in so many words,” said Peter, “but you make sure she knows it’s what you think. You’ve made it clear that your life was poisoned when I left, and you’ve tried to make sure that her life is poisoned too.” It was a relief to say this.
“Get out,” said Caroline, smoking with anger. She set her hands on her hips. “Just get out. You despicable slime. I am not trying to poison my daughter’s life.”
“You teach her that your lives were ruined because I left. The despicable dad. You don’t think that’s poison? Children want to love their parents. You make it impossible for her to love her father. Why don’t you think of her, instead of yourself, for a change?”
“You are telling me to think of Amanda instead of myself? Who were you thinking of when you ran off with Miss Teenage Atlantic City? I don’t think it was Amanda.”
There was a long pause.
“No,” Peter said finally. “I was thinking of myself. It was selfish. I’m sorry for the pain I caused you both.”
Again there was silence.
“It’s not enough,” Caroline declared.
“It’s all I can say,” Peter answered. “It’s all I can offer. It happened. We’re divorced. We can’t let it ruin Amanda’s life. She’s young. We can’t let her be ruined by this.”
“What do you care!” hissed Caroline. She leaned forward, nearly spitting at Peter. “You sanctimonious shit! You’re asking me to protect your daughter from your selfishness. You act as though I’m your partner in this, as though the two of us together will keep all this from our daughter. I’m not your partner. You made that clear years ago. You’ve betrayed and humiliated me. I owe you nothing! And I’m not going to cover up for you. Amanda should see you for what you really are.”
“Caroline—” Peter began. He stopped.
He remembered seeing Caroline, that first day at Barney’s Joy, when he could not imagine her angry. He remembered looking at her smiling face. It had been years since he had heard her voice unlaced with anger.
Caroline said challengingly, “What are you doing to make sure her life isn’t ruined?”
“I love her,” Peter said.
“So do I,” said Caroline, “but I didn’t let her sit around smoking dope all summer.”
Enraged, Peter answered, “Do you think she wasn’t smoking dope before? Do you think she had to come to Marten’s Island to discover marijuana? She’d never seen it in New York City?”
“Stop.” It was Amanda.
Peter and Caroline looked at her. Amanda’s free hand covered her eyes, and her face was turned away from them both, toward the wall.
“Go away,” she said.
There was a shamed silence.
&
nbsp; “Do you want your father to leave, Nanna?” Caroline asked, stepping closer to the bed.
“Both of you,” Amanda said, her voice muffled. “Go.”
For a moment neither spoke.
“Nanna,” began Peter slowly. He had made a mess of this.
“Just go,” she said, and then she began, horribly, to cry. The sound struck at him. Amanda was breaking down, she could no longer hold out. She sounded finished; it was unbearable to hear.
“Amanda, please don’t cry,” he said, and bent over her. He felt his own throat close as he spoke.
“Why shouldn’t I cry?” Amanda asked, sobbing. “Why shouldn’t I cry?” Her voice was hoarse and racking, as though she were not sobbing but choking, as though something were preventing her from breathing.
Peter knelt beside her bed and put his arms around her. He laid his head down on the sheets next to her. He held her. He felt her shaking within his arms. He felt his own throat tighten, felt a stinging behind his eyes, felt himself begin to cry. He closed his eyes and saw at once Tess’s face, battered, silent. Rage filled him again: he was furious. Amanda lay sobbing in his arms. He kept his face turned away from Caroline, he could not bear the sight of her standing, triumphant, her arms folded. He saw again Tess’s face, mute, closed, perhaps forever. He could not help himself, he felt his anger at Amanda rise up in him, felt it rise into speech as he sobbed. He had never been so angry at anyone.
“How could you?” he heard himself weep against Amanda. His voice was part of his weeping. “How could you do it?” He heard his voice rise higher, louder. “How could you?” He felt himself rocking Amanda in his arms, but the rocking turned harder, more vehement. He felt himself shaking Amanda, shaking her hard against her own bed, her own pillow. He felt her limp and unresisting. He wanted to shake her more and more violently. He wanted to force her to look at him, listen to him, acknowledge who he was, accept him. He wanted to break her down and make her yield, yield to him. He wanted to shake her in some mighty and terminal way, until she gave in, stopped, ceased altogether. He heard his voice become a howl.
“How could you do it?” He was screaming.
Amanda lay in his arms, crying. She didn’t return his embrace, didn’t hold him. Peter felt Caroline tugging at him, crying out something, but he barely heard her. Close to his ear he heard Amanda speak, through sobs.
“I’m sorry,” she said, crying. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”
28
Emma is alone in the room.
The hospital room now seems like the place where she lives. She knows every part of it, every view of it. She knows the shape of the high metal bed, its curved corners, the bulky squareness of its mattress. She knows the five perpendicular metal bars at the head and foot. The upper part of the mattress is raised, cranked up to an angle of thirty degrees, so that Tess’s head and torso are elevated. This is to prevent congestion, the nurse has told her.
Emma knows also the look of the floor, with its linoleum square tiles. These are beige, and patterned with geological lines to make them look like marble, though they do not look like marble, they look like linoleum squares. Emma wonders if most people who see these tiles even know the intention of the marble pattern. Why bother with it? Why not make them a single uninflected color? Marble is no longer a part of the public’s visual vocabulary, mineralogical veining carries no import. When they’d been designed, maybe in the twenties or thirties, the natural world was the standard. Nowadays, everyone assumes things are synthetic.
Emma knows the black metal window frame and the droopy beige curtains. She knows the angular metal chairs, with their brown leatherette backs and seats. She knows the molded plastic table, with its smooth white Formica top, its curved pedestal bottom. She feels as though she has known this room all her life. She feels as though she has been here for decades.
She sits now in the chair, leafing through a magazine that Peter has brought her. She cannot read books, not even one paragraph in a book, unless it is one of Tess’s. She reads those, aloud or silently, without thought, her mind skimming smoothly along the narrative. Her mind touches the words lightly, lovingly, as though it is a sacred text, one so well known, so deeply absorbed, that this sort of reading is all that can be effected: at once rote, superficial, and profoundly responsive. Reading these books is like prayer for Emma. She believes that it is actively helping Tess. Or at least that it might be.
But right now she is reading a magazine. It is glossy and colorful, full of serene, light-filled houses, lush lawns, gardens overflowing with bloom. There are no people in the pictures. The people who live in these places are implied, but not stated. They are a negative pregnant, one of Emma’s favorite phrases. It is a relief to her, not to have people in the pictures, not to see healthy children running across these lawns, not to see smiling parents in these kitchens. The places are all beautiful, all empty. They are soothing to look at.
Emma reads the text. “In the living room, the Middle Eastern theme is carried out with prints of Egyptian monuments by the nineteenth-century artist Robert Scott, and the pair of Anglo-Indian brass-covered side chairs, with their rams’ heads which project from the chairbacks.” In all these sentences there is a problem with verbs, because the articles are really only lists of objects. The problem, for the writer, is to inject some activity into the sentences, but since the subjects are all inert, it is difficult.
Emma examines the photographs. Sure enough, there is a print of the Sphinx, dim and massive, against Egyptian sands. And there, on the backs of the chairs, are rams’ heads. They face away from each other, powerful, compact, with their tight spiraling curls of horns. A ram’s head, thinks Emma, is one of those natural objects that’s perfectly designed. Unlike a cow, for example, which is ungainly, difficult to draw. Or a big poodle, her favorite breed of dog, so graceful and elegant in reality, but impossible to render as such. Even the great Stubbs had failed: she remembers his clumsy, woolly attempt, a shapeless beige mass in a landscape. Not even a horse, with its blend of strength and delicacy, has the spare graphic perfection of a ram’s head. That blunt-nosed simplicity, widening to the coiled power of the horns. Somewhere Emma has seen two rows of ancient stone rams, facing each other with silent gravity. Where was it, Luxor? Karnak? Delos? How can she not know?
There is a movement in the bed, and Emma rises at once to stand over Tess. Tess’s eyelids are slightly raised, her eyes slightly open, but unseeing, unfocused. A narrow colorless tube runs into one nostril. This is now her source of nourishment. The IV was only a short-term arrangement, providing dextrose, for calories. The nasogastric tube carries more serious sustenance, the nurse told her. Emma’s heart sank when she heard that. In for the long haul, she thought.
The movement that draws Emma to the bed is in Tess’s foot, which jerks restlessly.
“Hello, Tessie,” Emma says quietly. She takes Tess’s hand. “If you can hear me, squeeze my hand,” she says. She has done this hundreds of times, it seemed, hundreds and hundreds of times. But each time it is breathtakingly crucial, momentous. There is always the possibility of miraculous response, the first indication of Tess returning to them. A muscular quiver, minimal but deliberate: that’s how it would happen. So quiet.
For the next second Emma is silent, motionless, holding her breath. Her whole body is listening for Tess’s response. Tess’s fingers in her hand are warm, living. The muscles are there, they are active, the nerves work. The hand could move, it could squeeze her fingers, right now. This was how these things happened, with a tiny gesture. One moment.
Tess’s hand is soft, and Emma holds it as though she is shaking it in greeting. She squeezes it gently. Tess’s narrow supple fingers collapse against each other: they are asleep. There is no resistance. There is no squeeze. The hand is inert.
Emma leans over Tess. Very carefully she smoothes the hair back from Tess’s face. Peter was right, she thinks: the bruising was beginning, very slightly, to fade, the swelling beginning to lessen.
Tess’s own features, her own face, are now beginning to return. The rounded curve of the cheek is not quite so high, so strange. Tess’s eyes are now more visible, the cheeks no longer pressed so high against them. Tess’s beautiful eyes, the thick, springy lashes. The sweet line of the pale lid, folded meekly against itself. The high innocent brow, its long pure rise.
Looking at Tess’s beloved face, Emma is filled unexpectedly with happiness. She feels gratitude: she doesn’t know for what, but it wells powerfully up. Simply for having Tess? But this feels like prayer, blooming within her, it takes her over. She closes her eyes as it sweeps through her. She feels humble. She feels grateful for having Tess. Tess. She looks down at her daughter. Her chest fills. “Tess,” she whispers. She is near tears, confused. She can’t tell what she feels, but part of it, irrationally, is bliss.
Tess twitches, cocks her head suddenly sideways, then is motionless.
Emma goes to the window. The afternoon is on the wane. The sky is smoky and pale, the sun a burning white circle over the West Side. The sun is too glary, Emma thinks, glarier than it had been when she was a child. It was the vanishing ozone layer. She thinks of the ozone layer as a peaceful veil, like swathes of muffling tulle. It is soothing fog, protective, kind, necessary. And the sun had been gentle and benevolent in the past: she remembers those illustrations in old children’s books, the sun’s beaming face, smiling on travelers, flowers. As the ozone layer is burnt away, year by year, the sun’s character is changing. Now, it’s a harsh presence, flaming and malevolent. The sunlight in May is now fierce and pounding, the way it used to be in August, and the sun in August now feels deadly. When she was little it had been healthy to be outside. Children were told to run around in the sunshine. Now the sun itself, the source of life, is an enemy. Usually, thinking this, Emma feels a rising sense of terror: how could this be happening? What were they doing to the earth? It was like watching a horror movie, when the audience is unable to believe the stupidity of the characters, what they are allowing to happen. But now this fear is small and remote; the whole thing seems irrelevant. What she wants is Tess.
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