“I’m eternally sorry.” His voice was husky.
“Doctor,” Barbara prodded. “The forms?”
“Right.” He took a breath and passed me the clipboard. He spoke quickly, getting something unpleasant over with. My ears were ringing so it was difficult to concentrate on what he was saying.
“Take your time,” he said. “But not too much. Emily listed you as next of kin on her personnel records. The hospital needs your signed consent for the surgery we have already performed, just to cover our ass. The other, well, I know this is a tough time to be making decisions. You’ll want to talk with family, maybe a lawyer. But I’m warning you, time is of the essence. So far, Emily is holding her own. But if there is a crisis, she stops breathing unassisted, or she goes into cardiac arrest, and we don’t have a signature on your desires about medical intervention, then the hospital board will make the decisions for you.”
“Can I trust them?” I asked.
“You can trust them to do what’s safe for the hospital. They’ll plug her in.”
I moved further onto the bed and squeezed Emily’s foot through the covers. She didn’t react. Even when I pinched the corn on her little toe, there was nothing. I looked at the forms, a blur of black-and-white legal mumbo-jumbo. I read the word respirator a few times, and the words food and water. The question was not what I wanted, but what Emily would have wanted me to do in her interest. I thought I knew, but who can be sure?
Albert Song looked at me expectantly.
“What’s in the frontal lobe?” I asked.
“As to function? Thinking, judgment, reasoning.”
“How about speech?”
He nodded. “And speech.”
In profile, Emily truly was incredibly like our father. I imagined them sitting side by side on the back deck of our parents’ house in the Berkeley Hills, staring up at Grizzly Peak or out across San Francisco Bay, locked together in endless silence. I knew what my father would advise.
I signed the consent for the surgery that had already been performed. Then I checked no in the box next to mechanical respirator and yes in the box next to food and water. I signed the bottom with my legal name, Margot Eugenie Duchamps MacGowen, and handed the clipboard back to Dr. Song.
“Here,” I said. “But ask me again in the morning.”
Chapter Four
The hospital staff had left me alone with Emily for a few minutes. I clung to her hand in the antiseptic room, feeling useless, growing angry. I needed more than anything to talk to my twelve-year-old daughter, Casey, to make sure that she was all right. To make sure that I was all right. I wanted desperately to hold her. A telephone connection was the best I could do.
It was late in Denver, where Casey was spending the holidays. Maybe she was in bed. I went to the bedside telephone anyway, and dialed her father’s number. I didn’t relish running the gauntlet long-distance of ex-husband and new wife, of explaining why they should rouse Casey to speak with me. But I needed to hear Casey’s voice more than I didn’t want to hear theirs.
Worse luck—Linda, the second Mrs. Ian Scott MacGowen, answered the telephone. She sounded sleepy. I had a sudden, uncomfortable flash as I imagined Scotty snuggled beside her under the covers.
“It’s awfully late to be calling, Maggie,” she said. “Casey’s asleep. She skied all day and went to bed exhausted.”
“May I speak with Scotty?”
“He’s asleep, too.”
“Please wake him. This is an emergency.”
“Is it your parents?”
“No. It’s Emily.”
“Emily?” There was a reverential pause. “I’ll go down and get Scotty.”
Go down and get him? I thought about that while I waited. Either she had lied to me and he wasn’t asleep, or they weren’t sleeping together. Both prospects were interesting. I hold nothing against Linda, though she detests me the way The Other Woman generally hates the first wife. It’s guilt. There had been times when I could have made her more comfortable, reassured her that she had moved in on a moribund marriage and was only a small factor in our breakup. But I kept quiet. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.
Scotty sounded wide awake when he picked up the phone. “Maggie, what’s happened?”
“It’s Emily,” I said. “She’s been shot.”
“Dear God. Is she … “
“She’s in a coma. She’s stable, but, Scotty, her prospects are grim.”
“How are Mom and Dad taking it?”
“They don’t know yet. I want to talk to Casey. Will you waken her?”
“She’s not asleep. She’s right here. We’ve been playing chess.” I heard an extension phone somewhere in the house hang up with a bang.
“Maggie,” Scotty was saying, “if there’s anything I can do. Anything.”
“Thanks. Where’s Casey?”
“Here she is.”
“Mom?” Casey’s voice seemed tiny, too far away from me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, baby. How are you?”
“Bored. Why’d you call?”
“Aunt Emily’s in the hospital. She’s been seriously hurt. I wanted you to hear about it from me before you saw it on the news.
“It’s really bad then, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Will she die?”
“I don’t know.”
“God, Mom, you must be real sad, I mean because she’s your sister. And you already lost your brother. I never had a sister or a brother, so I don’t know what that’s like exactly, growing up with someone and then they die. Aunt Emily’s pretty weird, but I know you laugh around with her a lot.” Casey never bothers with polite bullshit. I love her. “Was it, like, some disease she picked up?”
“No. Emily was shot.”
“Oh! Gross!” She took a couple of deep breaths. “Does she look bad?”
“There are a lot of bandages, but she looks beautiful.”
“Am I going to come home?”
“I wish you could, but I think it would be best if you stay with Daddy while I take care of Aunt Emily.”
“I could help you with things.”
I heard the undercurrents. Casey is a patient, loyal soul. She hadn’t said much about the divorce, except that she didn’t want to lose her father. This holiday trip to his new house had been essential to her, reassurance that the cement between them still held firm. She would never complain to me about Scotty, or about Linda. So, I knew that if she was looking for an excuse to come home, something had happened to make her feel more than just uncomfortable. I also knew, knowing Casey as I do, that I couldn’t force an issue.
“Linda said you had been skiing,” I said. “Having fun?”
“Colorado’s okay,” she said. There was a pause. “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Remember, after the earthquake when our house was all a mess and we had to stay with Grandma? Remember how fun it was?”
I remembered. The experience had been a nightmare for all of us. “Give Dad a little more time, honey. You’ve only been there a few days.”
“You still going to Ireland to film?”
“In January.”
“You’ll be gone so long, Dad wants me to register for school here next term.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“Linda’s pregnant.”
“So?”
“Take me to Ireland with you.”
I thought about it for maybe three seconds. “Okay,” I said.
“No bull?”
“No bull. You’re old enough. Maybe you’ll learn something useful.”
She gave a teenagery squeal. “Dad, I’m going to Ireland.” Scotty’s voice in the background did not sound happy.
“Dad wants to talk to you,” Casey said. “I’m sorry about Aunt Emily. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too, baby.”
“Here’s Dad.”
Scotty’s voice was on the cusp between control and fury. “Are you nuts? Belf
ast, Northern Ireland, is a fucking war zone.”
I squeezed Emily’s hand. “The whole world is a fucking war zone, Scotty.”
Dr. Song burst into the room and brushed me aside. “Emily, Emily, what are you doing?” he moaned.
His face was the ashen gray of a funeral guest. I stood there, panicked, while he took Emily’s hand from me and probed her wrist for a pulse. His eyes were on the heart monitor screen. The regular blip I had been watching before I called Casey had changed to wild fluctuations, sharp peaks and profound valleys. Then, suddenly, the peaks straightened into a flat green line.
“Please, Em,” I begged. I moved over her, as if I could shield her from some outside danger. But her battles were all being fought inside. There was nothing for me to do except watch her impassive face for clues to the outcome.
After a long pause, Dr. Song sighed and tucked away his stethoscope. I thought it was all over. I was trying to cry out, plead for him to do something. He wiped sweat off his face and smiled.
“Sorry for the scare,” he said. “She’s okay. Monitor sensor slipped, that’s all. I freaked like a first-year med student when I saw the monitor going crazy. I’m sorry.”
“Em’s okay?” I had to say it myself.
“Yes. Her pulse could be stronger, but it’s steady.”
I held Emily’s hand again, still scared, afraid to be encouraged by Dr. Song’s smile or the warmth he had left on her palm. He was now happily whistling “Jingle Bells” while I was still juiced from the panic he had carried into the room. I felt like decking him.
Dr. Song had peeled back Emily’s gown to get at the sensors strapped around her chest. While he worked on the sensors, Em’s torso was bare. I’m no prude, but I felt very uncomfortable being in the room with him while Emily was naked. When I last shared a room with Emily, she had still been a modest teenager. At that time, this situation would have mortified her.
I looked at her.
At forty-four, Em still had a nice, athletic body. Her belly was flat and well-muscled, the taper of her narrow hips was graceful. Her bare breasts were larger and fuller than I remembered them, certainly larger than my own. Hers were truly beautiful, well-shaped and firm even though she was lying on her back. This fascinated me. I remembered Em slipping foam inserts into a strapless high school prom dress. Too odd, I thought, that sometime between that night and this one, she had become so voluptuous.
It took me a few moments to realize that the thin red lines under her breasts weren’t impressions made by her bra. They were surgical scars. Emily had breast implants.
The pure hedonistic extravagance of this act threw me. Not financial extravagance, because she probably exchanged freebies with another doctor to acquire these accessories. It was the unprecedented attention to herself, and her appearance that was a shocker. Why had she done it?
In transit between my news-writing job at WHCK radio in Des Moines and an anchoring spot at KMIR-TV in Palm Springs, I had traded in my father’s hook nose for a pert Marlo Thomas special. It took a lot of soul-searching before I could do it. I liked the original better, but the change was a professional, video necessity.
Emily had given me a lot of heat for undergoing this “mutilation.” So what had compelled her to enlarge her bust? A lover? The disappointment of a lover?
I realized I had begun to think about Em in a nostalgic way, as if the sum of her existence had drifted into the past. Discovering Emily’s secret voluptuousness shook me, made me wonder what else I didn’t know about her, gave her new life.
“Maggie!” I heard Scotty’s voice, anguished but very faint. At some point I had dropped the telephone receiver. I reeled it in by the cord.
“I’m here,” I said.
“What the hell happened?”
“Nothing. Mechanical glitch. I’ll call you later. Take care of Casey.” I hung up.
Trinh and Nurse Barbara had slipped into the room. Barbara bustled over to help Dr. Song, while Trinh guarded the door. “She’s okay,” I said to them.
Trinh nodded, though she didn’t seem persuaded. She looked at me and said, apologetically, “Some of those policemen in the hall want to talk to you.”
“Good,” I said, helping Dr. Song to redress Emily. “I want to talk with the police. Ask them to come in.”
Trinh brought in two of them. Both wore banker-gray suits, both had police photo I.D.‘s clipped to their handkerchief pockets. There were four rain-spattered black wingtips on the floor. In spite of this plainclothes uniform, the two couldn’t have been more different. One was tall, slender, gray-haired, his face set in an expression of quiet, almost reverential watchfulness. His partner was a solid block of man, from his Brillo pad mat of red hair to his box-shaped feet. If he hadn’t had tears in his eyes, he would have been thoroughly intimidating.
The big redhead moved toward me first, offering his massive hand.
“Detective T. O. Bronkowski,” he said. “You’re McGee, Doc’s sister?”
“MacGowen,” I said. “Maggie MacGowen.”
“Right. Saw on the tube that thing you did about the ‘Frisco quake. Thought you’d be taller.”
“I’m tall enough,” I said. At five-seven, I’m no midget.
“I guess because the Doc’s such a stretch model, I thought you would be, too.”
He carried a white plastic trash bag that he carefully set on the floor. “I’m so damn sorry about the Doc. How’s she doing?”
“Holding on,” I said. “Who did this to her?”
“Don’t have much to tell you,” Bronkowski said. “But, count on it, we will. In the middle of Chinatown, in the middle of the day, someone heard the gunshot, someone saw something. People around here can be pretty tight around the police. But for the Doc’s sake, they’ll come around.”
Bronkowski leaned over and took a long look at Emily. His face flushed with blood. “Bastard must be some kind of animal to leave her out in the rain.”
“Emily was left out in the rain?” I hated the picture that flashed behind my eyes. “How long?”
“Hour, maybe two,” Bronkowski said.
“Where?” I asked.
“Alley off Gin Ling Way. Around six, a busboy from Hop Louie’s ducked out for a smoke and found her lying behind some lettuce crates.”
I turned to Dr. Song. “If someone had found her sooner .
He shook his head. “Wouldn’t have made any difference.”
When I looked away, I met the stare of the second detective. I had nearly forgotten about him. He stayed behind Bronkowski, quietly, constantly watching me. I couldn’t tell his age; his face was young but his short hair and his carefully trimmed mustache were silver-white. If I were a criminal, I think he would be the one to worry about.
We engaged in a bit of a staredown. I think I won, because he was the first to smile. He offered his hand.
“Detective Michael Flint,” he said. “Emily and I go a long way back.”
“Detective,” I said, taking his hand. His fingers were still cold and damp from outside.
“You live in the Bay Area?” he asked.
“San Francisco.”
“Down visiting for the holidays?”
“No. I flew down just for the day, to see Emily.”
“Someone called you about the shooting?”
“No.”
“You just happened to come down. Today?”
“Is this the third degree?” I asked.
“This is conversation.” He smiled again. I leave the third degrees to Bronk.”
“Okay, then,” I said. I didn’t just happen to come down. Emily called me. We were supposed to meet at her apartment at four.
“Did you meet?”
“No. She never showed.”
“Any idea what she was involved in?”
“Other than a measles epidemic and TB testing, no. I could probably sketch in her day until about noon. Then I lost her trail. She missed some appointments.”
“Noon? That gives us a bi
g gap. We think she was most likely shot between four and five.”
“Jesus.” I felt nauseous. “At four I was sitting on her doorstep, waiting for her.”
“Alone?”
“Alone with everyone in Chinatown.”
We were interrupted by the priest I had seen in the lobby. He pushed open the door and looked around the room. “May I?” he said.
“Father Hermilio,” Dr. Song said. “Please, come in.”
The small room already held a capacity crowd, so one more soul made tight quarters intimate.
“Albert, Michael, Bronk,” Father Hermilio greeted each in his soft, accented voice. Then he reached out for me. “You’re Maggie. Emily always speaks of you with affection. She is very proud of you.”
I almost lost it then.
“I ask you for permission to administer the sacraments to Emily,” Father Hermilio said.
“The sacraments?” I had to think about it. Emily had fallen away from our parents’ Catholicism long before I had. As far as I could remember, her last religious excursion had been a summer trip through Buddhism. If there seemed to be a lot of church-related people in her life, it was only because church volunteers staffed so many of the city’s social-service programs.
“Is it all right, Maggie?” Father asked.
“Yes, please,” I said, not for Emily’s sake, but because I knew my mother would ask about it when I called our parents. When I called our parents.
Father Hermilio slipped a purple stole around his neck and took out a little bottle of anointing oil. Bronk laid his big arm around me, Albert Song took my hand, and we all watched the priest. Maybe someone in the room was waiting for a miracle to come from the prayers. I was not. I was only glad for the moment of silence to gather myself, because I did not want these people to see me cry.
The situation was doubly hard for me because it was all deja vu, a rerun of the night of December 20, 1969.
Someone, the Pentagon maybe, had leaked an unconfirmed report that my brother, Marc, had been fragged, killed by his own men, in Vietnam. Coming at the same time as Emily’s indictment, with her face on the cover of Time, this was big news. The press descended on my parents’ house in Berkeley, corralling them inside, as it were.
Telling Lies Page 3