by Jean Stone
Alice quickly joined them.
“Oh, Alice, I’m glad you found someone.” She gestured toward Mary Beth though Mary Beth did not know why. “As we suspected, Molly had a reaction to her medication. She’ll be okay.”
“We’d like to see her.”
“Right this way.”
Alice began to follow the nurse. Mary Beth didn’t move. This wasn’t her responsibility, was it? Oh, how she wished she had an idea how people in the real world handled such things. If Carla were here, Carla would know. But Carla was in Boston. Like the rest of them, even she’d abandoned Mary Beth.
Then Alice stopped, turned around, and motioned Mary Beth to come. She hesitated a split second, said what the hell to herself, then trotted off behind them on her pink high-heeled sandals.
Molly was half asleep. Mary Beth stood at the foot of the bed and watched as Alice kissed the little girl’s forehead and smoothed back her curly hair. Mary Beth averted her eyes because she thought she’d cry.
“Hi, honey,” Alice whispered. “Everything is okay.”
Molly opened her eyes. “Daddy?” Her voice was tiny, her body so little, huddled as it was beneath the starched, white sheet. Mary Beth took a step back. “Is Daddy here?”
“No, honey, but we’ve called him and he’ll see you soon.”
“What happened?”
“That darned medication,” Alice said with a smile. “They need to fix it again.”
Molly’s small hand came out from the sheet and searched for Alice’s. “Oh, no, not again,” she said. “Damn my silly old self.”
Mary Beth was startled at the six-year-old’s choice of words.
Alice laughed. “You scared Dennis right out of his sneakers.”
Whatever she meant, it made Molly giggle. Then her green eyes landed on Mary Beth. “Aren’t you Gabrielle’s friend?”
Mary Beth cleared her throat. “Yes, Molly. I’m her cousin.”
“Gabrielle braids my hair. She’s a countess, you know.”
Mary Beth smiled. “I know. Isn’t that something?” It seemed odd that of the three females in the hospital room, the six-year-old seemed the one with the most confidence.
“Is she coming to see me?”
Mary Beth looked at Alice.
“She went back to Italy, honey,” Alice said. “Remember she said good-bye?”
“Oh,” Molly replied, her voice growing sad. “I forgot.”
A man and a woman, both wearing white lab coats, stepped into the room. With each additional visitor, Mary Beth felt more and more the outsider, unable to contribute, unable to control. She backed up to the wall.
The doctor or nurse or whatever the newly arrived woman was smiled and examined Molly. Then she said she’d like to speak with them in her office about their next course of action.
Molly rolled her eyes. “I hate this part,” she said. “This is when the grown-ups talk about you behind your back.”
Mary Beth laughed, amused by such gumption in a child Molly’s age. “Grown-ups do it to each other, too, Molly,” she heard herself say, and was surprised she had.
Alice looked at Molly and Mary Beth and the woman. She grinned. “I think you can tell us the next course of action right here.” She must have known it would be nothing so horrid that she must shield Molly from it. Something suggested to Mary Beth that Alice had been through this before. Many times, perhaps, with her son.
The woman doctor nodded. “Well, I’ve spoken with Molly’s dad and with her doctor in New York. The doctor would like to see her. He thinks she needs a new cocktail, a different combination of medications.”
“Oh, no,” Molly cried, and the little girl with gumption became a little girl afraid.
Alice squeezed Molly’s hand, and Mary Beth felt the tug on her heart.
“They make me sick.”
The doctor nodded. “Sometimes that happens, but only for a few days, right?”
Molly slowly nodded.
“Well, then, the sooner you get it, the sooner you can come back to camp, right?” Molly looked bewildered. The doctor looked at Alice and then Mary Beth. “We’d like to airlift her to New York tonight. Her father can be there by morning.”
“Airlift?” Mary Beth asked.
“By medevac helicopter.”
Alice looked away, and Mary Beth had the feeling she’d known all along, that maybe that was the real reason she’d woken her up, because she needed money. Didn’t Alice know that, like Nikki, Mary Beth was broke?
“How much will it cost?”
“I’m afraid it isn’t cheap.”
Mary Beth closed her eyes. She thought about her mother. She thought about the wedding. But when she opened her eyes again, there lay a tiny, afraid, little girl.
“Order the helicopter,” she said without hesitation. “I will cover the cost.” Thank God for unlimited credit lines.
“Mary Beth?” Molly asked. “Will you come with me?”
She stared back at her but did not reply.
“I bet Molly could use a friend,” Alice said, and Mary Beth could not say no.
Mary Beth had not been in a helicopter since she and Eric had flown from Nice to Corsica, where the yacht of Emir Sabib awaited their presence for a three-week respite around the Mediterranean. The sheik was an old friend of Eric’s coin dealer in London and certain to show them a wonderful time. The walls of that helicopter were lined with soundproofing and adorned with raw silk; the white, butter-soft leather lounge chairs swallowed her up; and the dark-eyed, topless beauty who was their attendant stirred Mary Beth with an uncomfortable excitement.
As she sat now, bent over, next to Molly’s bed in the hollow, rattling cabin, Mary Beth felt ashamed of the champagne she’d consumed that week, the thousands of dollars of trinkets she’d purchased in nameless ports, and the lavish food she’d eaten three bites of, then thrown the rest away so she would still look inviting in her cache of bikinis. Not that it mattered, because while the yacht was delightful, Eric was her partner-on-board. The emir might indulge nakedness, but his values were quite moral.
She straightened the IV tube and tucked the blanket under Molly’s pale chin. What had the little girl been doing back then? It was two, no three years ago. Had she been diagnosed yet with HIV? Had Sam known that his daughter’s future was marred before it had begun?
She thought of him now: Was he sitting in an airport on a Caribbean island, desperately awaiting his flight to the States, sick all inside him, wondering if this time it would be worse?
“Daddy will be there?” Molly whispered, and Mary Beth quickly nodded.
“As fast as the plane can get him there. Faster, I bet, if he has his way.”
Molly smiled. “He worries about me more than he should.”
It was hard to believe the child was only six. Was grave illness responsible for profound insight?
Mary Beth glanced up to the IV bag to avoid looking at Molly, to help hold back her tears.
“Gabrielle has a little girl,” Molly said. “Do you?”
Mary Beth smiled. “Yes, but she’s not so little. She’s getting married this coming Saturday.”
“This Saturday? Is she going to wear a bride’s dress?”
A bride’s dress. There was shameful relief in a topic to which Mary Beth could relate. “Oh, yes. She’ll wear a beautiful bride’s dress with hand-cut crystals imported from India.” There was no need to mention that the materials for the bride’s dress had cost fourteen thousand dollars, though Alice was charging only a meager two hundred to put the dress together.
“And she’ll have a bouquet?”
“Oh, yes, a huge bouquet of freesia and baby orchids and calla lilies flown in from Chile.” Unless, of course, the florist demanded half up front as the caterer had. She straightened the tube again and tried not to think about the seventy-eight thousand that she needed in the next couple of days.
“She will look like a fairy queen,” Molly said. “She will be beautiful.”
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sp; Mary Beth forced a smile. “Yes, she will. She’ll look like a fairy queen! And the wedding will be out on the lawn, down near the beach. And all the guests will have silver bubble wands and they will blow fat bubbles in the air, shimmering, glimmering bubbles that will dance in the sunset and make everything perfect.”
Molly’s eyes had widened, her mouth smiled in wonder. “Oh, it will be like magic. I wish I could be there.”
Mary Beth stroked her forehead. “Maybe if you take your new medicine …”
“If I take it I can come?”
With quiet hesitation, Mary Beth replied, “If you take it, perhaps you’ll be well enough to come.”
“Can I be the flower girl?”
She did not know what to say. It wasn’t right to promise something to a child then not have it happen. And yet … Shauna had not planned to have a flower girl … perhaps she would not mind … and it would give Molly something to look forward to.
For Mary Beth, she had looked forward to her debutante ball. If she had not been able to focus on her dress, on how she’d wear her hair, on how the room would look, she might have dwelled on her abortion and killed herself like Aunt Rose did. Distraction, even the most frivolous, could be the most healing.
“Yes,” she replied, “you can be the flower girl.”
The small face brightened. “Then I’ll be there, because I always take my medicine. It keeps me alive, you know.”
“Yes,” Mary Beth said. “Yes, I know.” She took Molly’s hand and watched as the child closed her eyes and smiled, dreaming dreams of weddings and blowing bubbles in the air, accepting life for what it was and sidestepping the bad to focus on the good.
Mary Beth traveled the rest of the way without more conversation, but with a new conviction slowly growing in her heart. By the time they touched down on the helipad at St. Francis Hospital, she knew there was something else that she now had to do.
24
It was almost noon when Sam arrived, rounding the corner into Molly’s hospital room with lightning and urgency directing his feet.
“Daddy!” she cried, and Sam called out, “Peanut!” and she sat up and hugged him as if the hours had not happened, as if she hadn’t been watching the clock while trying to be brave.
Mary Beth stayed in the chair at Molly’s bedside, where she had been holding the little girl’s hand. It surprised her that this time she didn’t try to hide her tears.
“God, Mary Beth,” Sam said over Molly’s shoulder, his own tears staining his sleepless face. “How can I ever thank you?”
The old Mary Beth would have said, “Pay my American Express,” or “Find Lester fast.” But something had changed in the last several hours, and instead she just said, “No thanks required.”
Nikki slouched on the chair at the desk in the administration cottage after Alice had told her what happened.
“I hate that I wasn’t here for her.”
“It was okay, Nikki. She had the right medical help. And I was here. And Mary Beth.”
“Mary Beth. God, I can’t believe she went with her.”
“I figured if anyone knew how to scrape up the money to get Molly off-island, it would be Mary Beth.”
Nikki shook her head, not because she disbelieved Alice, but because she was stunned that her cousin had such compassion, and because she was crippled with guilt that she’d been out at the beach all night making love while Molly, sweet Molly, was in fear of her life.
This is what happens, so you’d better get used to it, her inner voice said. Never forget that these kids are sick.
But did she truly have the emotional strength to work with them … in sickness and in health?
Sickness and health, death do us part.
Mack.
No, she would not think of him now.
Alice spoke softly. “It was easier when you only had the foundation, wasn’t it? When you only had to give away your money and not be part of the rest?”
At least a dozen times in the last many minutes since Alice had told her, Nikki had tried to erase a picture of Molly having a seizure, tried to not think of the unfairness of the little girl lying in a big hospital bed.
“I know how you feel,” Alice continued. “Before Brian got sick, he had a few friends with AIDS. I helped out at the fund-raisers, but wasn’t really ‘involved.’ ”
Nikki had wanted her role in The Rose Foundation to be more than turning over her trust fund and hoping it helped, but she hadn’t expected it would hurt this much.
“We have to do more,” she said. “We have to help in more ways, and we have to help more of them.”
Gesturing toward the files, Alice said, “Starting with the applications we had for camp?”
“We need much more than that.”
Alice did not reply.
Nikki drummed her fingers on the old wooden desk. “This needs to be bigger than my trust fund, even if I still had it.”
“Finally,” Alice said, “you are beginning to understand. Maybe when you ask Connor for the money, you can bring Mack along.”
Nikki lifted her head quickly, but Alice simply smiled. “The best part about me,” she said, “is I wasn’t born yesterday.”
The first flight Gabrielle could get to Rome would leave Boston Sunday evening. Carla had wanted to stay at the airport hotel with her, but Gabrielle said no, though not without regret, for Carla had been so nice on the trip up from the Cape, trying to distract her with questions about Italy while Gabrielle was thinking of her father and trying not to cry, thinking of Stefano and trying not to worry.
So she’d told Carla, “Thank you for everything,” but that she would be fine.
But she was not fine. Tossing and turning throughout the night, Gabrielle was a jumble of unresolved anger and unresolved guilt, tangled with images of her father and her mother and Stefano and Rosa. Twice, she went into the bathroom and vomited. Once, she considered suicide, like they said her mother had done. But there was Rosa … she would not leave Rosa.
Around noon she ordered room service. Sipping lukewarm coffee and nibbling a dry croissant sandwich, Gabrielle knew she needed to call Nikki: She needed to give her a message to relay to Mack.
But before she had a chance to say why she had called, Nikki told her what had happened to Molly.
Sitting on a stiff bed in the bleak airport hotel room, Gabrielle cried tears that would not stop, tears for Molly, for all the children, including herself, the seven-year-old who so long ago had seen death too young.
Then she thought of Molly’s spirit, so bright and alive, so different from Gabrielle, who had given years to her grief, time squandered while she fought to keep her true self concealed.
Selfish.
Selfish.
She’d heard Aunt Margaret cluck that word at Nikki more than once when they were young.
But it was Gabrielle who’d become the selfish one. Gabrielle and her twenty-three million dollars parked in Zurich and a husband who professed to love her and a daughter who was hers, not his, though he did not know that. Maybe.
All those years she’d thought herself the victim of the family, the abandoned one. True, she’d not heard from Nikki or Mary Beth when she was young. But what had stopped her from contacting them when she was an adult? Had it become more comfortable to dwell in self-pity?
Selfish.
Selfish.
“Nikki,” she said, looking out the window at the airplanes lined up on the tarmac, preparing for new places in space and in time. “There’s something I need to tell you.” A deep breath, then another, helped calm Gabrielle’s nerves. “I’m not like you and Mary Beth.”
“No kidding. For starters, you’re younger.”
Nikki was trying to make jokes, but her tone was listless and flat.
“I’m not like you and Mary Beth,” Gabrielle quickly said before she lost her nerve, “because I’m still very rich.”
The pause wasn’t really long enough to be called a pause, just a short hesitation.
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Then Gabrielle continued. “I haven’t touched the monthly checks from my trust fund for years. Lester—Carla—has deposited them in Switzerland.”
The room was quiet for a moment. Gabrielle felt an odd swirling in her head, another slow, upsetting feeling in her stomach.
“Well,” Nikki said at last, “good for you.”
Gabrielle shook her head. “No. It’s good for you, Nikki. I will help out with Aunt Dorothy, and I will keep some in case I ever need it for Rosa and for me. The rest is yours, say twenty million dollars for your kids. Do not say no, because I will not allow it.”
“And I can’t allow you to do that, Gabrielle. That money is yours.”
“It is all of ours, Nikki. It is Atkinson money.” She hung up the phone and canceled her flight, then got a seat on a flight bound for Zurich.
It wasn’t until she checked out of the room that she realized she hadn’t given Nikki the message to give to Mack.
Mary Beth spent the afternoon at home in the city, on the phone with Shauna, who was now on the Vineyard. She’d reviewed the endless list of wedding chores.
Double-check with the wine merchant about the pink champagne.
Call the produce man to be certain they’ll have enough strawberries; Phillipe has insisted on an abundance of strawberries.
Make sure the tent man shows up tomorrow and that the trellises are in place by Tuesday so the florist can prewire them there.
And the chairs! They have to be set up soon so they’ll settle on the ground and not go topsy-turvy when the guests sit down.
“Mom!” Shauna cried at one point, “I’ll never do this right. You’re the wedding planner in the family, not me.”
“Everything will be fine. And if it’s not, that will be okay, too.”
Shauna paused. “Mom, are you all right?”
Mary Beth laughed. “Never better, darling. But I want to stay in the city a couple more days to be sure Molly’s on track.” True, there were only six days until the wedding, but Mary Beth now had some other things needing attention. “I’ll see you by Wednesday, when Phillipe’s due to arrive.” She swallowed that stupid lump that quickly rose in her throat. At least the caterer and his assistants were to stay at The Bluefin, an inn owned by old friends who would wait to be paid. “In the meantime, call with any problems.”