by Wendy Wax
That afternoon, they consumed a platter of homemade chocolate chip cookies and rum balls washed down with an assortment of beverages: white wine for Serena and Mackenzie, milk for Zoe, and tea for Emma, whose appetite had not yet returned but whose legendary sweet tooth had begun to make itself known.
“These taste way better than those weird energy drinks Nadia keeps trying to pour down me,” Emma said as she nibbled on a cookie.
“Are you ready for physical therapy tomorrow?” Mackenzie asked after glancing at her phone.
“Maybe it’ll help me wake up.” Emma yawned. “I feel like a total slug. I haven’t even made it to the lake yet.”
“We’ll get you there,” Serena promised, but she wished she knew how long it would be until that was possible. “Even if we have to put you on our backs and carry you into the water.”
Zoe nodded emphatically and popped half a cookie into her mouth. Her haunted look had begun to fade, though Serena saw how often the girl’s eyes sought out her mother as if to reassure herself that she was all right. How carefully she studied Emma’s facial expressions and movements.
“We could put you in the bottom of a canoe and float you out into the lake like a Viking warrior,” Mackenzie said.
“As long as nobody tries to set me on fire,” Emma said.
There was laughter, all of them glad to see any sign of the “old” Emma.
They talked desultorily, wandering from topic to topic, trying to keep things interesting enough to hold on to Emma’s attention. The sound of the ringing phone was jarring in the quiet. Mackenzie sat up and grabbed the cell phone she’d been eyeing for the last two days. It took several more rings before it became clear that the phone that was ringing was Serena’s.
Mackenzie put hers down abruptly. Serena, seeing the studio’s phone number, got up and moved to the other edge of the porch to answer hers.
“Serena? It’s Catherine.”
“Hi.” Serena stared out over the railing to the lake where something, maybe a turtle’s head, had just broken the surface. “What’s up?”
“Ethan wants to know if you can come in to record. He offered to send his car for you.”
Serena watched the rings in the water that marked the turtle’s progress. She’d already been largely unavailable for the last two weeks and now she was looking at at least another couple of weeks up here. Ethan had been great about the time off and everything else. The least she could do was be there when he needed her.
She looked over her shoulder to where Nadia Kochenkov was helping Emma up and escorting her back to her bedroom. Emma was in good hands and Mackenzie might be clinging to a phone that never rang, but she didn’t seem in any hurry to leave.
“Of course,” she said into the phone. “I can do that. Can it wait a week? I’d just like to get things settled for Emma.”
They worked out the details and Serena was about to hang up, when Catherine said, “By the way, I’ve been meaning to let you know that guy who left his number keeps calling.”
“What guy?” Serena glanced over her shoulder once more and lowered her voice.
“The one with the sexy southern accent like yours,” Catherine teased.
“This is the first time I’ve ever heard a New Yorker call a southern accent sexy,” Serena said, aware that she was stalling. “Stupid, hillbilly, redneck, maybe, but never sexy.” Her heart was skittering in her chest in a ridiculously juvenile way. She ordered it to stop.
“What can I say?” Catherine replied. “I’m a sucker for anything that didn’t originate in Long Island or New Jersey.”
Serena drew in a calming breath, determined not to overreact. Emma’s situation had almost pushed thoughts of Brooks Anderson out of her mind. Almost. She had decided there was no reason to call him. After all, she’d been the injured party. He’d been the one who’d never shown up in New York, who’d married Diana Ravenel, gone to work for her father, had a family. Serena didn’t owe him one single thing. Ever. And that included a return phone call.
“I meant to call him back. But in all the excitement over Emma I must have lost his number.” Serena had no idea why she was lying. She knew exactly where the number was and had, in fact, looked at it so many times she could have dialed it from memory.
“Oh, gosh, I’m so relieved to hear that,” Catherine said in a rush. “I was afraid you were going to tell me you didn’t want to speak to him. Because, well, I know it’s completely against the rules, but he was so sweet and so . . . I didn’t mean to do it, but when he said he was going to be in New York and really wanted to make arrangements to see you, I . . . I went ahead and gave him your cell phone number.”
Serena gasped before she could stop herself. Mackenzie and Zoe turned to look at her.
Serena found her voice. “You’re joking, right?”
“I’m so sorry,” Catherine said. “I know better, really I do.” Her voice had sunk to a frightened whisper. “He’s just such a . . .”
Sweet talker, Serena thought but did not say. How could she chastise Catherine when she knew just how potent the man’s charm could be?
“I’m so, so, sorry!” Serena could practically hear the young receptionist wringing her hands. This was, after all, a firing offense.
“No, it’s okay,” Serena insisted as Catherine apologized again. Which made two big fat lies in one phone call. “Really, don’t worry about it.” She continued to look out over the lake, but it did nothing to soothe her. “It’s fine. Tell Ethan I’ll see him next Tuesday.”
As Serena ended the call and tucked her phone into a pocket, she told herself this was nothing to worry about. Her cell phone hadn’t rung. It was unlikely he’d ever use the number. They hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in twenty years. Why should that change now? And if for some unknown reason he did decide to call her . . . maybe she should put him in her contact list so that he’d show up in her caller ID. Wasn’t that why it had been invented? Forewarned was forearmed. There was no reason why she should feel like she had to answer any call.
The past was the past. Dead and buried. Done if not forgotten. She had no interest whatsoever in anything Brooks Anderson might have to say to her today or at any time in the future.
Despite how fanatically she watched it, Mackenzie’s phone didn’t ring until late the next morning, not too long after Bob Fortson had arrived and carried all his gear up to Emma’s balcony.
She’d watched him set up before heading out to what had always been her favorite spot, stretched out in the hammock strung between two tall pines at the southern edge of the cove. The shade was sweet. The breeze off the lake that skimmed over her bare skin kept the hammock swaying gently.
She’d given up reading the novel now splayed across her stomach and had tuned out Emma’s squawks of protest that occasionally reached her, finally falling asleep. It took several rings to wake up fully. Another to find the face of the phone and register the time and the person calling. It was Adam and it was noon. Which made it nine a.m. in LA. She almost fell out of the hammock as she tried to sit up too quickly. Her book landed in a pile of dirt. Her phone landed right beside it. Frantic fumbling followed.
“Mac? Are you there?” Adam’s voice was low pitched and unhurried. When she answered, his apology for taking two full days to return her call didn’t sound at all apologetic. “So how’s everything going?” he asked when she didn’t ask him first.
“Okay,” she said. “Emma’s sleeping a lot of the time, but apparently that’s to be expected. She started physical therapy this morning.” Mackenzie paused, thinking she’d tell him how beautiful the lake was at this moment, how Emma’s nurse was a former Soviet weight lifter who could bench-press all three of them without breaking a sweat, how desperately she’d wanted to believe that the blue heron she’d seen standing on the lawn early this morning was a good omen.
“That’s great,” he sai
d the moment she paused to take a breath. “Em’s tough. I knew she’d fight her way back.” He said this as if there’d been no doubt, as if the most traumatic thing Mackenzie had ever witnessed or lived through had been a sporting event whose outcome had never been in question.
A silence fell and she knew he was ready to change the subject, ready for her to ask about him. She realized with some surprise that she didn’t really want to hear what he’d been up to. What she really wanted to know was why he’d been so out of touch, why it had taken him two full days to return her call, though she supposed those were really both the same question.
But what would be accomplished by a long-distance argument? “So, how are things going there?”
“Great. Couldn’t be better.” Adam launched into a detailed explanation of where things were with the script, who’d said what about it and why, and then recited the list of actors that Matthew, Adam’s agent, thought might play the leads if the studio he thought might be interested in the screenplay signed on.
For the first time she could remember, she just wasn’t interested. She had spent two weeks with a friend who was fighting her way out of a coma. She’d barely slept or eaten. Even now she worried that Emma might not fully recover. Yet she’d barely gotten two minutes of her husband’s attention two days after she’d needed it.
She watched a sailboat prepare to come about, saw the captain push hard on the tiller. On cue the life-jacketed family ducked and shifted as the sail swung to the opposite side. As the sail filled with air and moved off in a new direction, she realized with startling clarity that despite having almost lost Emma, despite all that she’d been through, this conversation with Adam was no different than a million others they’d had in that it revolved almost entirely around what Adam thought, what Adam felt, and what Adam wanted.
How had she never noticed before? Had she really been that busy? Or had she simply not wanted to see?
Without her usual prompts and murmurs of praise and encouragement, his monologue finally ended. “So how long do you plan to stay at the lake?” he asked.
The sailboat receded and her eyes resettled on the opposite shore. It was July. There was no reason to rush home with the theater closed until after Labor Day. There were no longer elderly parents nor were there young children back in Noblesville waiting for her to come home. No husband, either. “I don’t know,” she said. “I thought I’d stay until Emma was stronger.”
“Then that’s what you should do,” he said agreeably with a disturbing note of relief. He didn’t suggest that he’d like her to come out to LA. “Maybe when I’ve got the screenplay the way I want it and the deal is signed, I’ll come out there.”
“Sure,” she said. “That would be great. I’m sure Emma would like that.”
“Okay, then,” he said, clearly ready to sign off. “Give Em a hug from me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And take care of yourself.”
“Will do,” Mackenzie said. But Adam was already gone. Gone to live the life he was so clearly enjoying. The one he would have chosen if she hadn’t gotten pregnant. If he hadn’t felt compelled to marry her. If she hadn’t begged him to move back to Indiana to raise the children they never had.
Several days later Emma sat on the cushioned chaise watching Bob Fortson pack up his instruments of torture.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, same time, same channel.”
“Right.” They’d just completed her fourth session of physical therapy and she was so tired she could barely move her lips. She twisted them into what she hoped would pass for a smile.
“You do good job. Try hard.” Nadia hung a towel around Emma’s neck as if she were a fighter coming out of a boxing ring or a tennis player leaving center court after an especially difficult match, when in fact she’d spent only thirty grueling minutes doing strength-building exercises. “Drink thees.” The nurse handed her a glass filled with a thick lime-green-colored liquid. The nurse’s energy concoctions came in a rainbow of colors, none of them particularly tasty, each with a pungent aroma. Emma was too tired to argue. She’d take any form of energy she could get.
It was a gorgeous midsummer day filled with clear blue sky, puffy white clouds, and a comfortable seventy-five degrees. The doors and windows were all thrown open to catch the breeze that came off the water. Everyone else was on or near the lake enjoying themselves. She was determined to get down to the lake under her own steam, but was appalled at how far away the achievement of that goal seemed. At the moment she couldn’t even make it inside, let alone downstairs, without assistance.
She sucked the drink down dutifully and had finally reached the bottom of the glass when a phone rang nearby. She realized with some surprise that the ringtone was hers, a melody she hadn’t heard since, well, she couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d heard it. Serena, who had turned the phone over to her just yesterday, had told her it had only survived her accident because it had been in the purse that flew out of her hands and landed in a nearby flowerbed. A detail that she didn’t remember, couldn’t picture, and might well have happened to someone else.
The phone was still ringing when Nadia brought it out to her. “Is Mrs. Mickhels.”
“No.”
The nurse tried to exchange the phone for the empty glass.
Emma refused to take it. “I don’t want to speak to her.” She left off the “ever,” but thought her tone implied it.
“But she your mother.”
“Not really.”
The phone continued to ring, for some reason failing to go to voice mail. Not that she’d want to hear a voice mail from Eve any more than she wanted to speak to her.
“You talk.” Nadia tried again to hand the phone to Emma, who kept her hands at her sides. “Is boss. Make paycheck.”
Emma could have happily continued to pretend that she had no idea where the nurse had come from, that she had magically appeared like some larger, more muscular Mary Poppins. She did not want to be beholden to Eve.
“Then you talk to her.” Emma assumed that would end the conversation, but Nadia Kochenkov raised the phone to her ear.
“Kochenkov here.” A salute and maybe a parade ground should have accompanied that voice. “Da.”
The nurse snuck a look at her. “Da. Is better.” Another question. “Nyet.”
Nadia looked at Emma again. “You talk.” It was not a question. “Tell mother you happy with me.” She didn’t bother to cover the mouthpiece when she issued this command, but the eyes that typically brooked no argument had turned beseeching.
Emma sighed and put out her hand. “Hello?”
“Oh. Hello, dar . . .” Eve halted abruptly. “. . . Emma.”
There was a silence that Emma had no intention of filling.
“I just wanted to check and see how you’re doing.”
“I’m okay.” Emma fought back the Pavlovian panic that seemed tied to even the thought of Eve.
“That’s good. I’m very glad to hear it.”
Emma stared out over the railing to where Zoe lay in her favorite spot on the swimming platform. Serena and Mackenzie sat in two Adirondack chairs on the beach, their feet in the water. They had what looked like glasses of iced tea in their hands and were talking.
“Are you satisfied with the care you’re receiving? Because I’m sure I could find someone else if . . .”
“It’s fine. She’s . . . fine.” At first Emma had just been too tired to argue about the nurse’s presence. Then she’d been too tired to argue with her. Now it was hard to imagine how she would have even gotten out of bed without her. “Thank you.”
Nadia’s smile was large, revealing one missing tooth near the back and two gold crowns. Eve, who had far better teeth, sounded both surprised and pleased. And oddly not in control of the conversation. “Oh, I’m so . . . that’s good.”
S
ilence fell between them once again.
“Is there anything else that might be helpful?” Eve asked. “Anything at all that you want or need?”
“Nyet,” Emma said, shooting Nadia a look. She was exhausted and more than ready for this conversation to be over.
“Oh, of course,” Eve said. “You must be tired. But you will let me know if there’s anything, anything at all that I can do. Or . . .”
Emma hung up before Eve had finished. Wearily, she handed the phone to Nadia Kochenkov. “Don’t ever do that again,” she said as the nurse hefted her up out of the chaise. “And if I ever hear that you’ve been reporting back to Eve, you’ll be out of here. Understand?”
“Da,” the nurse said. But Emma could tell that the woman didn’t understand at all. Nadia Kochenkov might have left Mother Russia, but that didn’t mean she’d divorced her.
Eighteen
Each day dissolved into the next, marked by small signs of improvement that Mackenzie and the rest of Emma’s cheering section celebrated as major victories. Emma fell asleep before the fireworks on the Fourth of July but her arrival downstairs for breakfast a few mornings later, after only minimal leaning on Nadia’s broad shoulder, was commemorated with stacks of Mackenzie’s soon-to-be-famous chocolate chip pancakes, which she served to Emma and the others on the screened porch overlooking the lake.
“Just making it down here this morning makes me feel like I’ve won an Olympic medal,” Emma announced as she raised a forkful of pancake in victory before popping it into her mouth. Mackenzie made the call and the next day when Bob Fortson arrived, he set up his equipment on the front porch instead of the bedroom balcony. Then he hung a gold-colored plastic medallion strung on a red, white, and blue ribbon around Emma’s neck and made her stand on the practice step, arms raised triumphantly, while they all hummed a horribly off-key rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”