by Lynne Hugo
Is it surprising or shameful or both that I spent the night? Well, I did. The truth is that I don’t care so much anymore. I’m all cared out. Except for Claire, I just don’t really care what I should or shouldn’t do, what anyone might think. I hadn’t the slightest reason to think Claire might call me the night of her graduation, and I plain didn’t want to be alone. Who else should I have spent the night with? Her father and I, exiles from our daughter’s life, he by his choice, I against my will: why shouldn’t we comfort one another?
It was I who had moved closer to John on his plush sofa so that we could lean on one another. His cheek against mine was utterly soft, like an old woman’s. I stroked it with my thumb. “You shaved tonight?” I said. I remembered how John hated to shave. He used a straight razor.
“Our daughter’s graduation. Of course I shaved again.”
When one of his hands dropped from the center of my back to my waist, the signal that would have been required to tell him no would have been infinitesimal, the smallest shift of my body. Instead I drew him closer. And when he pulled his head back to look me in the eyes, I saw the question there. He would not have risked anything he thought could possibly be wrong for me. It was I who answered, Yes. Yes. I need you, too. I unbuttoned his shirt looking straight at him all the while, so he would know that I was sure.
He was still being cautious when I unzipped my dress, and made no move to help me. I stood to step out of it, and then pulled the skirt of my slip over my shoulders. As I did, he stood, too, and finished lifting the slip over my head in one sweet, brief motion. He unhooked my bra; I peeled off stockings and underpants, but slowly, stopping to unbuckle his belt and unzip his pants, and all the while keeping my eyes on his.
“Lydie, oh Lydie, you’ve not changed. You’re the same, beautiful Lydie. Those periwinkle eyes,” he said, breaking away to look at me frankly.
“Did you just come up with that or did you remember?” I asked it lightly, to hide how it affected me that he remembered the word he’d used.
“Of course I remember…I remember everything. The snow?”
“The first time we kissed,” I answered quietly.
“And it’s the same. It’s all the same,” he said, his hands sliding down my hips and leaving their feel the way cream leaves itself on the side of a pitcher.
“Flatterer. You’re the one time forgot,” I told him. The hair on his chest was half-grayed, like November bluegrass; other than that, it seemed the same body. This was a man who’d worked at staying in shape.
“Well, I’m glad if you’re pleased, I thought I’d changed a lot since we were…since we were.” There wasn’t a right word that he could find for it. He put his arms around me and caressed my back a few moments, but then just held me to him as if he were trying to press a flower between the pages of himself. I put my head on his chest and took in the scent of him. A couple of times I’ve sprayed a sample of it on my wrist, when the department store had it on display, but it was never right, never precisely the same. I could tell that much—just that it wasn’t the same. That night, I breathed John in and the scent of him, as much as the feel of his arms and mouth on me, was the way I remembered it when the two of us first found each other.
Afterward, one of his shirts was my nightgown and I slept, spooned against him in his king-size bed, straight through, not even waking to go to the bathroom. It didn’t matter, either. When I got home early the next morning, there were no messages on my machine. No one in my family had missed me at all. No one.
I showered and got ready for work. Friday. Always, the phones thrum with calls, patients wanting to get in or get a prescription renewed before the weekend when the office shutters down. I was shifting gears, thinking about the drug rep who’d bring in chocolates along with his boxes of samples, until I looked in the mirror to put on makeup. My face didn’t have its own natural roundness, but hollowed out under my eyes and cheekbones. My hair jutted wrongly, out of control. I couldn’t quite take my own direct gaze. “The son of a bitch didn’t tell you, and you still did it again,” I said aloud.
CHAPTER 33
Madalaine’s footsteps—she has always struck hard with her heels—sound in the hospital hall a good ten seconds before they reach Claire’s room, and she pauses too long when the scuffing of her flats stops just outside the door. By the time she opens it, both Claire and Ellie have their eyes fixed there. Madalaine sticks her head in, sees their expectant looks and laughs self-consciously. “Oh,” she says. “You are here.”
“I told you that on the phone,” Ellie ticks, emphasizing the told. “But we were going to get together at eleven.” She looks at her watch to point out that it’s nearly eleven-thirty.
“Well, this isn’t so bad. At least it’s a cheery room… It’s so beastly hot outside, be glad you’re not missing anything out there.” Madalaine gestures unsteadily at nothing in particular.
“Hi, Aunt Maddie.” Claire looks small against the white pillow.
“Have you been out to see Mama and Daddy lately?” Madalaine directs this to Ellie.
“I talked to them a day or so ago. I’ve been pretty busy with…other things. I thought you’d be looking in on them.”
“When I can,” Madalaine says, keeping her voice casual. “Of course, last time I went by I didn’t stop because the grass was too high to find the house. What, did Gert advise against mowing this year? Or did Charles plant trees again?” She’s referring to Charles’s attempt to grow gum trees a couple of years ago, when he saved up all the gum Lydie brought him, and placed chewed pieces all around the yard when Ellie thought he was looking for four-leaf clovers. Ellie is still bitter because Daddy made her clean the mower blades and it was disgusting. Madalaine knows where her sister’s buttons are, with exactly what pressure to push them.
“How is Jennifer doing?” Claire interrupts. Her voice is shadowy, not quite right. A machine thing is a couple of feet from her bed, but Madalaine can’t see that she’s hooked up to anything right at the moment, though there’s one of those pole things beside the bed. She looks faintly yellow, her hair a limp, dark bedraggle fallen back from her face onto the white pillow that props her. Madalaine wonders if since she can’t make pee right, it backs up into the body and turns the skin that color. Then the sight of her sister’s violently ruffled blouse and oversize pink hair bow briefly focuses Madalaine’s irritation, and she ignores Claire.
“So what’s up?” Maddie says to her sister, her voice like glass underfoot.
“Well…I mean Claire’s in here and you know, well…family…and Dr. Douglas said we should…” Ellie glances meaningfully at Claire for her sister’s benefit and then gives Maddie a look meant to wither flowers.
Madalaine moves a half stop, reducing the distance between herself and the door, though she doesn’t turn around. If Ellie thinks she’s going to back her into keeping Claire company, she’d better start consulting Gert about the future more often. Maddie has Jennifer to think about at home, especially now, when Bill is so unreliable, hovering over Melody who’s well past her due date. From the brief glimpse Maddie had of her on Wednesday when she and Bill picked Jennifer up for dinner, Melody looks like she’s going to deliver a full-size outhouse, or something equally deserved.
“Why don’t we run down to the cafeteria and get an iced tea, since it’s so hot outside?” Ellie says to Maddie. Then, to Claire, “I’m sorry, honey.”
“No problem,” Claire answers her. “I’m tired of it, but used to it.”
“Honey, I don’t mean to make you feel bad.”
“It doesn’t, really, it’s not…what anyone else does.”
Maddie is almost spun around with Ellie grabbing her arm as she heads for the door. “Want me to bring you a Coke or something?” she tosses over her shoulder at Claire on the way out.
“Six of ’em,” Claire calls back.
The heavy door to Claire’s room is still swooshing shut in Ellie’s hand when she says, sharply, “Don’t do that.”
>
“Do what?”
“She can only have sixteen ounces of liquid a day now. Don’t torment her offering Coke. And she’s got this terrible diet she has to stay on. Has to do with potassium.”
“How was I supposed to know?”
“I guess you’re supposed to know because you’re her aunt and she needs us. I can’t do everything, even though you’ve always expected me to.”
“God, Ellie, don’t start.”
“Dr. Douglas wants to talk with the family. I’m sure she’s down waiting for us. Lydie’s probably there.”
“I don’t want to talk to Lydie.”
“You have to. We’ve got to do something.”
Maddie stops short and plants her feet squarely. “Don’t tell me what I have to do,” she says. “Don’t even go there.” She braces herself for a fight, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Ellie stops too, and studies her, her head slightly tilted.
“Have you been… No, never mind,” Ellie says. “I didn’t mean it that way. You know, since Wayne is staying with you…you could at least, sort of…represent him. I don’t know. I mean, Dr. Douglas wanted him in on it, but…”
Immediately Wayne’s ghostlike presence in her house conjures itself in Madalaine’s mind and adds another layer to the fog of aggravation enveloping her. She shakes her head as if to say no, but she’s trying to clear it.
“He’s not there?”
Of course Ellie would misunderstand. Sometimes Madalaine is convinced that Ellie’s dumb on purpose. It’s far more irritating than Charles’s…what, dumbnitude? She can’t think of the word, and giggles for a second at dumbnitude.
“Yes, he’s there,” she finally gets out. “Not right now, now he’s at work, I guess.” What’s the subject, anyway? Maddie’s lost the thread. Ellie has, without Maddie noticing, gotten her moving toward the elevator. Gliding, actually. She doesn’t think she is moving her feet, so it’s a mystery how she can hear her flats on the cool hospital tile. “I can’t stand to come here,” she says as Ellie shepherds, a hand on Madalaine’s upper back. “I can’t stand it.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Ellie says and touches Maddie’s hair as if she’s a child. She doesn’t sound like Ellie at all, but like…Lydie. That’s it. Maddie is satisfied that one thing is cleared up.
The elevator leaves Maddie’s stomach on the third floor while it descends. She studies her hands to be able to put her head down without Ellie knowing she’s nauseated. They’re not really Maddie’s hands, though. She never would have had these stubby, uneven nails, with old-looking ridges and a little hint of grayish dirt under a couple of them and bloody little holes where she’s pulled the cuticles. She used to use an undercoat of ridge filler and polish them sweet peach or that gorgeous brownish wild-berry, and change her lipstick to make everything coordinate, just to go to the office. Maybe not every day, but most, except when she was letting her nails rest. Then they were filed and buffed to bring up natural shine. Even though she was back to work at the phone company, Maddie knows she’s not really Maddie, but some stranger, with a sketchy set of instructions, who’s come to take over her body, put it through the motions. Maddie would never wear this same old denim skirt day after day, just putting on whatever shirt was more or less clean, and not even bother to turn the ends of her hair under with a curling iron. “Maybe it’s the invasion of the body snatchers,” she says to Ellie.
“What?” Ellie says.
It turns out that they aren’t even going to the cafeteria. Ellie pulls her off the elevator at the first floor instead of going to the basement. Something about Dr. Douglas and Lydie that sounded faintly familiar, but there’s a humming that’s started in Maddie’s head.
“This isn’t going to work,” Ellie says to Dr. Douglas when she and Maddie reach the cubbyhole office where the doctor talks to patients’ families. “Somebody needs to take her home.”
“But we need to…” Lydie is sitting there all wrought up, and looking helplessly at Dr. Douglas.
“Mrs. Beeson..? I’m Sarah Douglas,” the doctor says, standing and putting out her hand to Madalaine. A hank of her blond pageboy falls forward as she tilts her head, assessing. Her glasses are open on her desk, on top of an array of pink and green papers and yellow crinkly papers that put Madalaine in mind of party streamers.
“Is the caterer here?” Madalaine asks the doctor.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Maddie,” Lydia breaks in, using her warning voice. Damn her. Definitely, right to hell.
“Really, this isn’t going to—” Ellie says.
“Maybe we could all just sit down a minute. Is Claire’s father coming?” The doctor comes from behind the desk and pulls the two empty chairs up next to Lydia’s. “Please, have a seat.”
“Which one?” Maddie breaks up.
“Oh, either one will do.”
Maddie’s laughing harder now. “I suppose they are interchangeable,” she chortles.
Dr. Douglas looks at Ellie, then says to Maddie, “I’m sorry Mrs. Beeson. Just take whichever seat you’d like.”
“Oh, I thought I could take whichever man I wanted. Lydie did, you know, and so did Melody, come to think of it. If Ellie can have Elvis’s ghost in addition to Presley, I don’t see why I can’t have a couple—”
“Sweet Jesus, Maddie, shut the hell up,” says Ellie.
That stuns them all into momentary silence. Dr. Douglas clears her throat. “Maybe you’re right, Ellie, perhaps this isn’t the time.”
Lydia moves forward in her chair until she is barely perched on the edge of it and her hands flutter like a distressed bird. “Wait. Please, this is about Claire. You said…we have to do this, to see if there are any options.”
“Well, I’m out of here,” Madalaine says, pushing the chair Dr. Douglas pulled out for her back into the corner to clear her way to the door. The burning weight of her own shoulders is too much; that and the fuzz around her eyes and mouth.
“One of you better go with her,” the doctor undertones.
“I don’t need one of them, thank you,” Madalaine says, huffy, pulling the door open. It gives with less resistance than she expected, and she loses her balance, banging her thigh on the hard molded arm of the chair she’s moved. Her feet scuffle with each other like small squabbling animals. Finally, it’s Lydia’s quick reach that steadies her. “Damn. Damn,” Maddie says, as the bruising ripples out on her leg. “Damn.” Then she’s gone, favoring the injured part of herself, and slowed by it, but gone all the same and glad of it. Her flats pound the hall until she reaches the tweed berber of the lobby area, which mutes and sobers them in an instant.
It’s Lydie who catches up to her there. “Maddie. Maddie. What’s going on? Are you all right?” Madalaine can hear her scurrying along on the tile, and then the abrupt change when Lydie reaches the carpeted area. The modulated voice of an operator pages a doctor with a long, foreign-sounding name. Lydia’s hand touches her arm.
“Right. Sure. Never better in my life.” Sarcasm drives Lydie up the wall. Good place for her.
Lydia angles herself in front of Madalaine, not quite but almost blocking her forward movement. Madalaine slows, but continues walking. “Maddie, this isn’t you. I know how terrible everything’s been for you, but please, just talk to me. We’re supposed to be upstairs talking about Claire.”
The universe is utterly clear to Madalaine. She can see her lost Brian tumbling over and over in black space between planets and stars, and she must anchor him firmly in everyone’s consciousness for him to be at rest, in a fixed spot where she can go to be with him. She hears her own voice, which sounds strangely like she is screaming, although she’s sure she’s not. She’s calm and deliberate. “I do not want to hear another word about Claire. Do you understand me? I am busy trying to save Brian. Leave me alone. Let go of me.” She jerks her arm free, giving her heavy purse the momentum that makes it thud heavily against Lydia’s side.
Lydia stumbles a
nd before she can right herself, Madalaine is headed for the automatic doors that lead from the lobby to the parking lot. She looks back only once. Lydia looks positively comical, with her mouth hanging open and two strangers approaching her with wrinkled-up foreheads and outstretched hands.
She has no real memory of driving home, but obviously she did because here’s the steering wheel between her hands and her own garage looming open the way she left it this morning. The front door seems to fling itself open, and here comes Jennifer, positively dancing down the walk toward the car, a yellow flower in a happy wind.
“Mommy, Mommy. You’re home. I’m glad, I’m glad you’re home.”
Madalaine’s mouth stretches into a smile. Jennifer will help her. Jennifer will be able to see Brian with her, and help her hold him still. She opens the car door and puts her arm out to gather Jennifer in a hug. Jennifer bounces to her, and actually bumps the top of her head against Madalaine’s chin.
Tears spring to Madalaine’s eyes from the sting of her bitten tongue but she reins in her reaction. Jennifer doesn’t notice, in the oblivious way of children.
“Whoa, sweetheart. Who wound you up? Did we win the lottery or what?”
Jennifer giggles and pirouettes in a little dance of joy. “Melody’s finally having her baby, and Daddy wants me to come to the hospital with him. It’s like three and a half weeks late and the doctor is inducting it.”
“Inducing.”
“Daddy says I can come and maybe even watch it get born. She’s having it at Maysfield General, she could’a gone to St. Francis, but… He says I can be in the birthing room and everything. I just have to stay way out of the way, but he’ll be in there, too. “
Madalaine is fighting for control. “Daddy says that, does he? When did he call?”
“About ten-thirty. He went to the doctor with her and the doctor said daddy’s too old to worry like this, and they’re going to induct the baby. So he’s going to come pick me up at one o’clock.”