Someone Like Her

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Only…what that really meant was that they wouldn’t be around at all. They’d keep having the Sunday dinners, but she and Adrian wouldn’t make it very often. It was too far to drive more than once a month, tops. And would he want to come at all?

  She could still call Sam when she was aggrieved about something, but her sister wouldn’t know the people she was talking about. They wouldn’t ever have the chance to do a mystery weekend together at the bed-and-breakfast.

  Of course, the wedding would be here in Middleton, so she’d be surrounded by family then. And maybe Adrian would take her someplace exotic for a honeymoon. If he could get away from work long enough.

  But Lucy felt a peculiar, sinking sensation in her stomach when she imagined herself newly moved into his condominium, and him getting up early and leaving for work. Didn’t he say he worked sixty-hour weeks and sometimes more? She would start job hunting, of course, and…she didn’t know what else.

  Oh, she was being a coward. Imagine, she told herself, him leaving for Seattle without her. Was that any better? Her heart squeezed, and she knew she couldn’t bear losing him. This would be an adventure, that’s all. She had never planned to stay in Middleton her entire life.

  Satisfied, she closed her eyes and snuggled, if such a thing was possible, even closer. She wouldn’t wake Adrian up, but she could hardly wait until he did open his eyes. Although she was feeling a little sleepy again.

  Lucy was drifting, almost asleep, when the jangle of the telephone ringing made her jerk.

  She didn’t keep a phone by her bed. Her mother was much too fond of calling before Lucy liked to be up in the morning. She hurriedly slipped out of bed, but saw that Adrian was stirring anyway, blinking and gazing at her with the blank look of someone who hadn’t quite placed himself yet.

  If it was her mother, she’d kill her. Especially if Mom was calling because someone had told her Adrian’s car was parked outside her daughter’s house all night.

  But it wasn’t actually that early, Lucy saw, detouring around the broken glass and making it into the kitchen as the answering machine picked up. Lucy hadn’t gone to voice mail, because she liked being able to hear who was calling and then decide if she wanted to answer.

  “Lucy, this is Dr. Slater. I’ve already left messages for Adrian on both his cell and home phones. His mother has regained consciousness. I’m hoping you’re home and able to make it into the hospital this morning to help orient her. She’s pretty confused.” He paused. “Give me a call.”

  Lucy lunged for the phone. “Dr. Slater?”

  He’d already hung up.

  “Who was that?”

  Lucy turned. Adrian was coming down the stairs wearing only jeans. Barefooted and bare-chested, he paused and stretched, his expression one of sleepy-eyed satisfaction.

  Still grappling with the news, she said, “That was Dr. Slater. He says…he says your mother has woken up.”

  Adrian froze a few steps from the bottom. His expression almost broke her heart. For just a moment, he was the little boy who’d come home from the summer in Nova Scotia to find his mommy wasn’t there. It was as if he’d heard a sound upstairs, in her bedroom, and hope tore at him even as he knew it probably wasn’t her.

  He swallowed. “Then I suppose we’d better get dressed and go to the hospital.” A muscle in his cheek twitched. “That is…do you have time?”

  His courteous question outraged her, but then she recognized it for what it really was: that same little boy bracing himself to do something terribly frightening on his own. Of course he wouldn’t plead, but, God, he hoped.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Of course I’m coming. Oh, let’s hurry!”

  Still looking stunned, Adrian turned and started up the stairs ahead of her.

  WHAT IF SHE didn’t know him? Never recognized that he was her son, the boy she hadn’t seen since she hugged him so fiercely as he was being sent away twenty-three years ago this June?

  Adrian moved his shoulders impatiently. She was still his mother. His responsibility. Whether she knew him or not was unlikely to have any impact on the decisions he’d have to make on her behalf. She was mentally ill and unable to adequately care for herself. That was reality. He’d have to find some kind of supervised living situation no matter what.

  The wrench in his chest told him he wasn’t as dispassionate as he wanted to be. To have found his mother after all these years and then have her fail to remember him…That would hurt.

  He could hardly wait to call his grandmother, who was waiting for this moment. She’d taken the news that her long-lost daughter had turned up better than he had feared, saying, “I used to beg God to give me an answer. That was all I asked for. And now I have it.”

  God, he thought, had chosen to give her more.

  Adrian stole a glance at Lucy, who leaned forward as if she could make the car go faster. Thank God for Lucy. No matter what happened, it would be all right with her there. If his mother knew anyone, it would be Lucy.

  He took the first spot he saw in the parking lot. Lucy got out as fast as he did, and was ahead of him when they reached the front doors despite his long strides.

  “Oh, I can’t believe…” she said in a wondering voice, as they went up the elevator.

  He laughed in astonishment. “You? You’ve always believed.”

  “I think sometimes I pretend.”

  “You?”

  “Well…I am generally optimistic,” she admitted.

  “Half-full.”

  “Maybe.” No one was at the nurses’ station, and they were almost to his mother’s room. “But you know,” Lucy said, “whether you see a glass as half-full or half-empty, the exact same amount of water is in it.”

  “I’m not so sure.” His tone was peculiar even to his own ears. They had turned into the hospital room, and Adrian’s stride checked. His heart was drumming.

  He heard his own, childish, self-important voice. When I get home from school today, Mom and me are gonna plant tomatoes. She says she bets mine grow big as this globe!

  How had Mom been both so sad and so optimistic?

  Or had she, too, pretended?

  Instead of hurrying ahead, Lucy had paused at his side, looking at him in silent inquiry. Seeing his momentary paralysis, she reached over and took his hand, her own so much smaller than his but strong.

  He might have hurt her with his desperate grip, but she didn’t even wince. For an instant, he squeezed his eyes shut, then gusted out a breath.

  “Ready or not,” he murmured, and pushed the curtain aside.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JUST BEFORE THEY rounded the curtain, Adrian heard Ben Slater talking. “Yes, you’re in the hospital. You got hit hard on the head and you’ve been unconscious.”

  His tone was infinitely patient, but Adrian guessed he was repeating the information for the umpteenth time.

  “My head?” His patient sounded querulous. “Why would they hit my head?”

  Adrian’s heart lurched. The last time he heard his mother’s voice, she’d been waving frantically and calling after the car as it drove away, “Tell Maman to let you call me!”

  “I will! I will!” he’d yelled back.

  Then his father had snapped, “For God’s sake, roll up the window.”

  The curtain swayed as his shoulder brushed it. Adrian came to a stop at the foot of the bed, distantly aware of Dr. Slater, of Lucy still holding tight to his hand, but they were in soft focus at the edges of his vision. What he saw was his mother.

  The bed had been cranked up so that she sat nearly upright. She was still too pale, her hair white and unkempt, the IV attached to her hand. But her eyes, the blue only slightly faded from his memory, were open. With her face now animated, he knew her on a primal level that nearly brought him to his knees.

  “Mom,” he said hoarsely. Mommy.

  At the sound of his voice, she turned from the doctor. Her stare was at first uncomprehending, then bewildered; finally he saw alar
m then distress that crumpled her face.

  “I don’t know who you are. Should I?” she appealed to Dr. Slater.

  He took her hand and spoke gently. “No. You haven’t seen your son in a very long time. He was a little boy the last time you saw him. Now he’s all grown up.”

  “Do I…do I have a little boy?” she whispered, studying Adrian furtively.

  Disappointment lodged in his throat, making it hard to answer. “Yes. Do you remember? Dad sent me to spend the summer in Nova Scotia with Maman and Grandpère. You…were gone when I came home. Dad never told me where you went.”

  “There…there was a little boy.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t know who he was.”

  Dr. Slater stepped away, unnoticed. Lucy hung back, letting go of him.

  Adrian forced himself to take the last couple of steps, to wrap his hands around the railing. “I’m that little boy. Adrian. I grew up.”

  She searched his face now with a hunger that echoed his own. “You look like someone.”

  “Dad. Do you remember him? Your husband?”

  She shrank back against the pillow, inching away from him. “Am I married? I don’t want to be married.” Her voice had become more tremulous. “I don’t have to be, do I?” she asked the room at large.

  Pity gripped him. “No. No, you don’t have to be. You haven’t been in a very long time. You and Dad got divorced. Do you remember him?” Adrian asked again. “Max Rutledge. He died. I know I look like him.”

  “You look like someone,” she said, in a small frightened voice.

  “I wanted to be a ferryboat captain. You took me down almost every day to watch the ferries load and unload. The seagulls would sit on the pilings until the ferry horn sounded, and then they’d screech and soar around it. Sometimes we’d see sea lions. And do you remember the divers? We’d watch their heads bob up.”

  “It smelled good,” she said unexpectedly.

  “Yes.” Tears burned the back of his eyes, and he, too, could smell the salty, fishy scent of the sound mixed with the exhaust from cars waiting in the ferry line and the aroma of food cooking in the dockside restaurants. For a moment, he wasn’t here at all; he was a child again, holding his mother’s hand and reveling in the sound of the ferry horn, the sight of water opening between it and the dock, the workers bustling importantly in their bright orange vests as they blocked the wheels of cars and operated the ramp on the dock itself.

  Without thought, he held out a hand. His mother slowly, tentatively, lifted her own and laid it in his. It was somehow a shock that his was so large and hers so small instead of the other way around, jarring him from the so-vivid memory. And yet the clasp felt right. They held hands, and they looked at each other, and a knot inside him loosened for the first time in all these years.

  “I do remember,” she whispered. “That little boy was mine, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.” He had to clear his throat. “Yes. He was yours.”

  “But…but who are you then?”

  “I’m that little boy, all grown up,” he repeated.

  Confusion furrowed her brow. “I tried to find him. I know I did.”

  Choked up, he could only nod.

  “I think I tried to go home.”

  He felt the wetness on his cheeks. “Do you remember your garden? The roses, and the bright blue and purple delphiniums? And your peonies? People would stop their cars to admire the peonies.”

  “Peonies like manure, you know,” she told him. “You have to feed them.”

  A lump in his throat, he nodded. He did remember. He could almost hear the buzz of honeybees and feel the sun on his face and the carpet of grass he sat on as he watched his mother work in the garden. She often talked, telling him what she was doing and why. He helped her grow seedlings in the small greenhouse attached to the back of the garage. His tomatoes hadn’t been quite as big as the globe in his elementary school classroom, but they’d grown fat and red and tasted better than any tomato he’d eaten before or since.

  Mom and me grow better tomatoes than anyone, he’d bragged.

  “Most plants like to be fed,” he said, in a choked voice.

  “Do you have peonies in your garden?” she asked.

  He used his shirtsleeve to swipe at his cheeks. “I don’t have a garden.”

  Unhappiness deepened every line in her face. “I don’t think I do, either. I wish I did.”

  “Maybe you can again.”

  Her hand went slack in his. “Who are you?”

  He closed his eyes and let her hand go. He was intensely grateful when Dr. Slater stepped forward and said, “You look tired. Perhaps it’s time for a nap.”

  She looked from Adrian to Slater with suspicion and confusion. “Why are you here when I don’t know you?”

  “I’m the doctor,” he said patiently. “You’re in the hospital. You hit your head really hard on the pavement.”

  Lucy came to Adrian’s side then. “Elizabeth, I’m so glad to see you awake and talking again. I’m Lucy.”

  “Of course you’re Lucy. Who else would you be?”

  Lucy laughed, as naturally as if her sister were teasing her. “Nobody at all. That was a silly thing to say, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. I know Lucy,” Adrian’s mother told the two men.

  “Of course you do,” Dr. Slater said comfortably.

  “Do you have a headache?” Lucy asked.

  “I feel…” Her face worked. “I don’t know what I feel.” She struggled suddenly to sit up straighter and grabbed for the bars. “My cart! Where’s my cart? Did somebody take my things?”

  “No. No, all your things are at my house. Do you remember crossing the highway to go to Safeway? You were hit by a car. I took everything home to be sure it stayed safe while you got better here in the hospital.”

  It went on that way: comprehension, bewilderment, all answered by Lucy’s steady warmth and reassurance. Adrian backed away from the bed, drained, stunned by how much he felt for this frightened, prematurely aged woman who could summon only fleeting memories of him, her son.

  Lucy sent him away to get breakfast. He went back to her place, showered and packed his overnight bag again. About to close her front door behind him, he turned around and went back to the bedroom where she stored his mother’s paltry belongings. He picked through, taking a few things he thought might mean something to her.

  Ten minutes later, he checked in at the bed-and-breakfast.

  As he was signing the book, Samantha watched him with a frown puckering her forehead. The expression was startlingly like Lucy’s when she was perturbed.

  “Are you all right?”

  All right? Adrian didn’t know. The ground beneath his feet had shifted.

  “My mother regained consciousness. Lucy’s at the hospital. I’m going back as soon as I—” For a moment he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to be doing. “I don’t suppose you’re still serving breakfast.”

  “Not officially, but I’ll put something together for you,” she said immediately. “Why don’t you drop your bag off upstairs and then come to the dining room?”

  Samantha’s “something” turned out to be scrambled eggs, thick slabs of whole wheat toast smothered in homemade blackberry jam and pastries that melted in his mouth. Adrian ate as if he were starving, which seemed to please her.

  He went back to the hospital to release Lucy, who murmured, “Ssh, she’s napping.” One of the gift-shop volunteers had offered her a ride home, she said. “So you can stay.” She kissed him on the cheek, then added, “I’ll try to pop in midafternoon, between the lunch and dinner crowds,” before she departed. She didn’t question the small carton he carried.

  His mother’s sleep was more peaceful than the coma had been, although the similarity was great enough that Adrian couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from her. Sitting there at the bedside, he couldn’t help wondering whether people ever slipped back into comas. What if she never opened her eyes again?

  An hour passed
. Two. Where the hell was Slater? Adrian wondered angrily.

  Having breakfast. Or lunch, as late as it was. Shaving.

  Adrian rubbed a hand over his own stubble. Should have done that himself. He didn’t want to scare her.

  A nurse came in several times, checking monitors. He was touched when she brought him coffee from the cafeteria.

  He was taking a swallow of it when he realized his mother’s eyes were open. She stayed very still and stared at him with all the alarm of a wild creature cornered.

  “You’re awake,” he said, careful to speak quietly. “You’re in the hospital. Do you remember getting hit by the car?”

  “I don’t want to be in the hospital! I don’t like hospitals!” She sat up and grabbed for the bed rail, her gown slipping to bare a protuberant collarbone. “Let me out!”

  He hit the Call button, and with the nurse’s help calmed his mother.

  He had to explain all over again who he was.

  “I did have a little boy,” she said again, eyeing him with deep suspicion.

  “I brought pictures.” He opened the carton he’d set at his feet, hoping this was the right thing to do. He regretted having left her driver’s license and that long-ago Mother’s Day card at his condo in Seattle. But he handed her a school photo of him that she’d kept all these years and watched her stare down at it.

  After a moment she lifted her gaze from the picture, examined his face minutely, then returned to the photograph.

  “Yes, that’s really me,” Adrian said.

  She looked at the other pictures, including the one of herself as a girl. That one she stared at the longest.

  Adrian talked, telling her about her parents and the home in Nova Scotia where she’d grown up.

  “I can’t remember how to get there,” she said sadly.

  He had to swallow several times before he could speak. “I know.”

  After a minute he lifted the conch shell from the box and saw her smile. He set it on the bed beside her.

  “I always wanted one of those,” she confided. “I tried to bring one home once, from Hawaii. But he wouldn’t let me. He said it was too big.” Her eyes clouded with the memories. “I found that one at a garage sale. Imagine! They were selling it for two dollars.”