The park stretches out below the window, a scumbled mass of dusty green treetops. To the south is the wide light-filled expanse of the Reservoir, reflecting the colorless pallor of the sky. Around the water are the tiny figures of the runners, jogging determinedly along the dirt track. Watching them, Emma feels an unexpected tenderness for their brave, tireless, pointless efforts, jarring their spines, pounding themselves ceaselessly against the earth. What else was there to do but keep on going, circling that great flat sweep of water, drawing the harsh polluted air into their lungs, setting their feet down trustingly on the path, one in front of the other, over and over again?
Emma is looking out the window when she hears a voice behind her.
“Hello.”
Emma turns. Rachel is standing in the doorway.
At the sight of her Emma feels her throat close with emotion. Rachel had loved Tess too. She had held Tess on her lap, put her arms around her. She had known Tess’s tender body when it was well. Tears rise up in Emma’s chest, but Emma fights to keep them down. She blinks and swallows, lifting her chin to keep from crying. It’s important, not to let go, not to indulge herself. She will not cry in front of Rachel.
“Hello, Rachel,” she says. “Come in. I’m so glad to see you.”
“Couldn’t come before,” Rachel says. She looks wonderful, in a long red blazer. Her hair is no longer in braids, it’s now pulled straight back, in a soft sleek helmet. She sets her bag down, her eyes on Tess.
“Come and say hello to her,” Emma says. “It’s good for her to hear voices she knows. I think she hears us.”
Rachel bends over Tess. “Tessie,” she says, her voice warm, quiet. “Tessie, it’s me. Rachel. How you doing?”
Tess’s foot twitches, and Emma pats it gently.
“She does that, moves,” Emma says. “The doctor says it doesn’t mean anything, but I think it’s a good sign.”
“Hello, Tessie,” Rachel says again. She puts her large dark hand on Tess’s brow and smooths the fine hair back, as she has done hundreds of times. She strokes Tess’s cheek, gently, with her folded knuckles. Tess suddenly sighs, the sound of her breath—drawn in, expelled—a soft steamy whisper. Her eyelids flicker and still. The two women stand motionless over the bed, watching. Outside, the sun lowers. Its rays begin to redden, slanting through the window into the small room. Rachel withdraws her hand, straightens.
Emma and Rachel sit down in the chairs at the foot of the bed, and Emma begins to talk. She tells Rachel everything, the story of the crash, every detail, every moment of it. She tells her everything the doctor has said. She talks obsessively, fixedly, repeating the phrases as though, in themselves, they had some curative power.
“They had her on a respirator, at first,” Emma says. “To hyperventilate her, in case there was swelling in the brain. They X-rayed her chest for pneumonia. There are risks of infection if you’re in a coma.”
Rachel listens to it all. She frowns responsively at the terrible things, nods understandingly when Emma describes their decisions.
“So now we wait,” says Emma. “She’s not in a deep coma, not the worst kind. I think she’s just resting.” Her voice breaks on this word and she takes a quick gasping breath, to recover. She swallows, then looks up at Rachel.
“I’m so glad you came,” Emma says. “I’m so glad to see you.”
She looks at Rachel’s broad beautiful face with love. As Rachel smiles at her Emma remembers suddenly that time when Rachel had been so sulky, sullen. She remembers herself feeling embattled. Why had she? She can’t now imagine feeling that way. Rachel had been so wonderful with Tess, she remembers that. That is all she remembers now, how Rachel would make Tess scream with laughter, how Rachel had fed her and bathed and comforted her. Emma would come into the kitchen to find the two of them speechless with laughter. Why had she been so closed to Rachel, so tense and competitive? She remembers trying to slip back into the apartment without telling Rachel that she’d been out all night: why had she done that? Why had she put poor Rachel in that position? And why had she cared what name Rachel called her? It now seemed absurd, she herself seemed absurd. She had been so anxious, so fearful, in those days, so frightened of everything. Now, in this room, all those fears are so small.
“I’m glad to see you,” Rachel says, nodding. She gives Emma a warm, broad smile.
“Tell me your news. Where are you working?” Emma asks.
“An insurance company,” says Rachel, laughing.
“An insurance company?” Emma laughs too, without knowing why. Rachel makes it funny.
“In Brooklyn.”
“And? Do you like it?”
“I like it fine,” says Rachel, shrugging her shoulders lazily. “Better than doing floors.”
“Well, of course,” says Emma quickly. “And how’s your mother?” The famous mother, for whom Rachel had bought a goat on her birthday. Emma pictured her as large, laconic, fierce. She saw her in a small brightly painted house with banana trees around it, on a Caribbean hillside: Emma had seen the photograph of her on the porch, half-smiling, broad beamed, barefoot. The black doorway behind her.
“Mama died,” Rachel says.
“I’m so sorry,” says Emma. She pats Rachel’s hand. It is so easy for her to say this now, it is so clear that this is the thing to do: offer your sympathy, readily. She thinks again, embarrassed, of how she had been years ago, strangled, wary, self-conscious. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah,” says Rachel, nodding primly, her accent thickening. She speaks looking straight ahead of her. “It was quick. She had a stroke. I was very sad when it happened. But now, you know, I still miss her, but I feel better that I’m not always feeling I should go home. I used to feel all the time that I should go home, go see her, go be with her. But it was her idea for me to come here in the first place! Now, I love her, but I have her here with me.”
Emma nods, smiling.
The two women sit in silence. The sunset outside the window is fiery red, its rays fill the small room. Tess, on the high bed, is quiet.
“And how about your mama?” Rachel asks.
“She’s fine,” Emma says, her smile stiffening. “She and my father are coming down tomorrow to see Tess.” She sighs, dreading it: her mother’s awkward solicitude, her father’s stiff judgmental presence. He will find fault with everything.
“And your sister? How’s she?” asks Rachel. She had met Francie at the wedding and disapproved of her deeply.
“Francie’s all right,” says Emma. “She broke up with that man.”
“That’s good,” says Rachel, nodding.
“I thought you’d say that,” Emma says, and laughs. “She took up with another one.”
“I thought you’d say that,” Rachel says, and they both laugh.
Emma feels so comfortable with Rachel. She feels as though Rachel is her close friend. She doesn’t want her to leave.
“Do you remember the time when Tess was little, when she was two or three, and you found her in her room, walking around and reciting nursery rhymes? And she had her hands on her hips, sashaying around, whispering to herself, ‘Mary, Mary, quite the fairy’?”
Rachel laughs out loud at this, they both do, at the memory of Tess, so engaged, so guileless, so sure that the world was kind.
“Do you remember the time she told us she could turn all the lights out by herself? We asked her to do it, and she said, ‘Watch!’ and she slowly closed her eyes?”
They tell each other stories about Tess, stories from Tess’s childhood. Emma finds herself laughing, rocking with laughter, a relief. She is thinking only about Rachel, and about the past, which now seems so blissfully happy, so uncomplicated. It had been heaven, she knows now. She does not let herself think about anything else, not about Tess, lying motionless against the raised bed, or about Peter, whom she hates.
As they talk, from time to time there is a movement from the bed, and then she and Rachel both rise. They both lean over Tess
, murmuring to her. They both love her.
The nurse arrives: it is Cardina, a nurse Emma distrusts. She is large, black and bossy, and seldom makes eye contact with Emma. She comes in and glances sideways at Rachel, then ignores her.
“Have to ask you to step outside for a moment,” she says ungraciously.
Emma takes Rachel out with her to the horrible lounge, with its thumbed and tattered magazines strewn across the low table, with its atmosphere of exhaustion and hopelessness. A blond woman sits on the plastic sofa. She is wearing running shoes and leggings, a T-shirt. Her son was hit by a car, six days ago. Her legs are folded, her arms are folded, and her head droops on her chest. She is asleep.
“Thanks for coming, Rachel,” Emma says. She puts her hand on her shoulder.
Rachel looks at her and smiles. “Sure,” she says.
“I really appreciate it,” Emma says. She would like to go on: say, “And I’m sorry for having been so unpleasant and horrible to you, when Tess was little. I know I was unfair, and I’m sorry.” She would like to say that. She nearly does. The words swirl around in her mind, but she is unable to line them up and speak them. Also, Emma is ashamed. Saying these things out loud would increase her shame, name it, make it real.
She says nothing more: also, she is afraid she would start to cry. For what if this accident, this terrible thing that has befallen Tess, is a punishment for all the times Emma has been selfish, cold, mean-spirited? There are so many of these times that she cannot think of them all, the thought overwhelms her, the number of bad things she has done, it breaks her down. She knows them very well, all of them. She could not bring herself to say anything to Rachel, she could not bear to begin.
But Rachel puts her arms around her and hugs her, slow and close. Emma begins to cry, and Rachel holds her. She rocks Emma gently in her arms.
When the nurse comes out of Tess’s room, Emma pulls herself away from Rachel, and straightens up. The nurse nods grudgingly at Emma, not looking at Rachel.
“Thanks again for coming, Rachel,” says Emma.
“Sure,” says Rachel. “I’ll be back.” She strides off.
Emma watches her walk down the hall, her long pocketbook banging against her hip. Rachel is wearing clunky high heels that make her feet look huge, but she is so tall she carries it off. She looks so great, Emma thinks, with those high wide shoulders, the wrinkled scarlet blazer. Emma loves her. At the corner Rachel turns kindly to look back. Emma waves; Rachel waves back, vanishes.
Emma returns to Tess’s room. She knows what Cardina has done in her absence: she has used a small suction pump to clear Tess’s throat out. Tess has been turned on her side, then turned back. Cardina has lifted each limb. Emma bends over Tess: she looks no different. Her face is faintly flushed, perhaps. Emma leans closer.
“Hello, Tessie,” she whispers. “I love you.” She takes Tess’s hand in hers. “If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.” She waits.
When Peter comes in Emma is sitting in the chair again, reading the glossy magazine. He comes over to kiss her. Their lips barely touch. He goes to the bed, and Emma watches him bend over Tess. He takes Tess’s hand, he whispers to her.
“She looks better,” he says, coming back. “The swelling’s going down.”
“Rachel was here,” Emma says.
“Was she,” Peter says. He puts down his briefcase. “That was nice of her.” Peter sits down beside her. He looks tired. “What did the doctor say?”
“He hasn’t come yet. He should be here any minute.”
As she speaks the door opens and Doctor Baxter sweeps in. His long white jacket is unbuttoned down the front, and billows slightly as he walks. This gives the impression that he is moving rapidly, trailing importance. He nods at both of them, unsmiling.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Chatfield. Mr. Chatfield.” He heads past them, straight for Tess. Peter and Emma stand, and move to the foot of the bed, watching. The doctor bends over Tess, lifts her eyelids, shines his narrow flashlight deep into her eyes. He checks the tube running into her nostril, he looks at her charts. He examines her face, turning it slightly from side to side. He checks for reflexes, one hand supporting her knee, the other tapping the special place on the kneecap with his hammer: there are no reflexes. Her leg hangs limp. Peter and Emma watch, mute. Doctor Baxter turns away from the bed, back to them.
“How does she look?” Peter asks.
“There hasn’t been much change,” says Doctor Baxter. He fits his small flashlight back into the breast pocket of his white jacket.
“And now what?” Peter asks.
“Now we have to wait,” says Doctor Baxter. When he finishes a sentence he sets his lips together like a clamp, the corners of his mouth going down.
“How long?” asks Peter.
Doctor Baxter shakes his head. “We don’t know,” he said. He looks directly into Peter’s eyes. “We just have to wait.”
“But how long might it be?” Emma asks. “How long before it’s, you know, too long?” There are things she will not say.
Doctor Baxter looks at her without expression. She can see the lines stacked one above the other on his forehead. “The sooner she begins to make progress, the better,” he says. “But she could stay like this for a week, for two weeks, and still make a full recovery. What’s important now is that there is no infection.”
Two weeks. Today is only the fifth day. Emma nods at him, as though what he has said is fine, acceptable to her. As though she has some measure of control, authority. As though her nod means anything at all.
“How would she get an infection?” Peter asks. With his rumpled shirt, his unknotted tie, his hands in his pockets, he looks like a graduate student, overworked, distracted.
“Well, the human system isn’t designed for immobility,” Doctor Baxter says. He touches the rim of his glasses, adjusts them on the bridge of his nose. “There’s a risk of blood clots, or infection from the IV, or the catheter. That’s why we do the blood tests, to test for infection.”
Emma and Peter nod, to show they understand. Hearing this information makes Emma feel as though she is standing in shallow water, being hit by towering waves, one after another, each enormous, killing, hitting her hard. These are all new things to worry about, terrible things. Blood clots. Infection from the IV, the nasogastric tube, the catheter. She had thought these hospital things were benign, helpful: now she realizes they are all possible enemies. Tess’s sleep itself is a possible enemy. Emma stops nodding; she is stunned by all this.
Peter is still gazing at the doctor, nodding thoughtfully, looking concerned. He is frowning hard. He is also stunned.
When the doctor leaves they sit down again. Emma leans back in her chair and closes her eyes.
“Well, at least we know we have two weeks,” Peter says finally. Emma does not answer.
Peter looks at her. “That’s a blessing.”
Emma stays still, her eyes closed.
Peter opens his briefcase noisily and takes out some papers. He spreads them on his lap and begins to read them, a pencil in his hand. He keeps thinking of Amanda. The shock of holding her in his arms, feeling her sob. Each time the thought comes to him he feels again its shock: that child, sobbing.
Finally he says, without looking up, “I saw Amanda today.”
Emma’s head snaps upright. She doesn’t answer.
“I went to see her at Caroline’s.”
Emma says nothing.
“She’s still in bed,” Peter says. He lifts his head. “She has a sling on her arm. She looks awful.” He is playing for sympathy.
He pauses. Really what he wants is to tell Emma how terrible it had been there, how furious Caroline was at him, still, after all these years, how he still felt blamed for everything, even by his daughter, even for her own behavior. How he had felt as though he’d been captured and taken inside the enemy compound, where he was reviled. How fragile he had felt, how helpless and exposed. How angry and tormented he had been, seeing Amanda lying in
bed, seeing the greenish pallor of her skin, her anger, and then feeling his own rage suddenly mount, and then the bottom of it falling away, and his grief welling up, his compassion, his love for his daughter. But he won’t be able to explain this to Emma, who has not even turned her head. She does not want to hear this.
“She’s still in shock,” he said, then pauses again.
Emma speaks without looking at him. “I don’t want to hear about her.”
There is a silence in the room.
Peter turns to her. “Emma, look,” he begins, “Amanda—”
Emma turns to him. “I don’t want to hear her name,” she says, her voice terrible. “I never want to hear her name again. Never again.”
They stare at each other.
Peter starts to speak.
“Never again,” Emma repeats, louder She sounds unbalanced, like a madwoman.
Peter looks back down at his papers, spread out across his knees. He puts his head in his hands, and spreads his fingers across his face.
Later, when it is dark, Peter goes out to get dinner. This time he has ordered a meal by phone, from Pico’s, a restaurant on Madison and Ninety-first Street. He walks down Fifth Avenue through the summer evening, crossing over to Madison at Ninety-sixth Street. On Fifth there are big apartment buildings, massive, towering. Here on Madison the buildings are low and human scale. They rise only four and five stories below the purple nighttime sky. The shopfronts are cheery and gentrified: gourmet food shops, antiques, books, children’s clothing. There are stars and ribbons in the windows. The people on the sidewalks are still in their day clothes; they are wrinkled, sweaty, going home. Snappy-looking young women in short black dresses, blazers, gold bangles. Young businessmen with briefcases, and those floppy Italian trousers. Madison Avenue up here, in the nineties, is mostly families.
Most of the people he passes have children, he thinks. None of them understands what is happening to Peter: he feels like a spy, an impostor. Meeting the eyes, for a second, of a passing woman, her kinky pale hair pulled back into a ponytail, her round face cool and impassive, Peter feels a sudden horrifying drop. He feels the gap between two realities, as though he is on drugs, as though he is from a different race.
This Is My Daughter Page 43