by Joy Fielding
“I think I’d prefer to eat in the kitchen.”
Paula regarded her suspiciously. “Dr. Whittaker said he’d like you to get as much rest as possible.”
“I think I can manage the trip downstairs,” Jane told her, trying not to whine. “Really, I’ll be fine.”
They went downstairs.
“You just rest while I get things ready,” Paula told her, guiding Jane into one of the kitchen chairs.
“I’m sure there must be something I can do to help.” Jane felt uncomfortable doing nothing while this young woman, as efficient as she obviously was, was getting everything organized. “I think I can probably remember how to make coffee.”
“Coffee’s already made,” Paula told her, pouring her a cup. “How do you take it?”
“I’m not sure,” Jane told her. “I’ve been taking it black for the past several days.”
“Black it is.” Paula deposited the steaming cup of black coffee in front of Jane, and waited for further instructions.
“Aren’t you going to have any?”
“Maybe later. What else can I get you? Scrambled eggs? French toast? A bowl of cereal?”
“Some toast would be nice,” Jane said, not wanting to be a bother. “And some orange juice, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Of course it’s not too much trouble. It’s the reason I’m here.”
“To get me orange juice?” Jane hoped the serious young woman would smile, but no smile was forthcoming. I wonder if she’s related to Dr. Klinger, Jane mused, recalling the sullen young resident at Boston City Hospital.
“To help you in any way I can.”
“What do you normally do when you’re here?” Jane asked, taking a long sip of coffee.
Paula was already busy at the kitchen counter, putting two slices of bread in the toaster, pouring out a large glass of orange juice, returning the bottle to the fridge, waiting for the toast to be ready, quickly buttering both slices as soon as they popped out, bringing everything to the table, along with a selection of jams.
“Usually I clean up, do the laundry, the ironing,” she answered, standing over Jane until Jane took her first bite of toast. “Aren’t you going to take any jam?”
Jane reached for the orange marmalade, thinking it was easier than a prolonged discussion.
“I’ll do that.” Paula took the knife from Jane’s hand and spread a generous helping of marmalade across each piece of toast. Jane watched her with the helpless anger of a small child. I can do that, Mommy, she wanted to say, but thought better of it. The young woman obviously had her instructions, which she was intent on following to the letter. There was no point in upsetting her when she was only trying to help.
“How long have you been working for us?” Jane asked as Paula began wiping up the already spotless kitchen counter.
“A little over a year.”
“I wish I could remember.”
“There’s no reason for you to remember me,” Paula told her. “I’m here on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the same days you help Dr. Whittaker at the hospital. I come after you leave in the morning, and I’m gone by the time you get back.”
“But I did hire you,” Jane stated.
“Actually, it was Dr. Whittaker who hired me.”
“My husband hired you?” Even not knowing the details of their relationship, it struck Jane as odd that Michael should be the one interviewing their domestic help.
“I met Dr. Whittaker at the hospital,” Paula informed her, no friendlier than she had to be. “He operated on my little girl.”
“You have a daughter?”
“Christine. She’s almost five now. Thanks to Dr. Whittaker.”
“He saved her life?”
“She had a series of spinal aneurysms. One minute she was in the backyard playing with her friends, and the next minute she was screaming that she couldn’t walk. I rushed her to the hospital, where they discovered the aneurysms. Dr. Whittaker operated on her for over eight hours, and it was touch-and-go for a few days after that. She would have died without him.”
“But she’s all right now?”
“She walks with a brace. Probably always will. But that doesn’t seem to slow her down any. More toast?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Would you like some more toast?”
Jane looked down at her plate, surprised to see she had eaten both pieces of the marmalade-slathered bread. “Uh, no. That was great, thank you.”
“You look like you could stand to gain a few pounds.”
Jane stared at her slender body, seeing the outlines of her nipples through the white of her cotton nightgown. Probably she should have put on a housecoat. “Where is your daughter now?” she asked, looking toward the front hall, half expecting to see her.
“My mother’s looking after her.”
“So that you can look after me,” Jane stated rather than asked.
“I’m happy to do it.”
“I’m sure that in a day or two, I’ll be able to manage on my own.”
“Oh, no. I’m here until everything’s back to normal,” Paula told her, brooking no further argument.
“So, how was it exactly that my husband came to hire you?” Jane said, returning to the original question.
Paula removed the dishes from the table and began washing them by hand. “Dr. Whittaker,” she began, rinsing, then rerinsing, the same dish many times over, “is very sensitive to other people’s problems. He knew I could never afford to pay for Christine’s surgery, so he arranged for one of those charities he’s involved with to foot most of the bill. Then, he offered me a job.”
“Where was your husband through all this?” Jane asked, understanding instinctively that Paula was in love with Michael, and understanding why. She also knew in her gut that Michael was totally unaware of Paula’s feelings.
“I never had a husband.” Paula Marinelli began vigorously drying the dishes she had just washed. “The man I was involved with decided his involvement didn’t include marriage and a baby. With my Catholic upbringing, abortion was out of the question. So I went ahead and had the baby on my own, and that’s pretty much the way it’s been ever since.” She paused, her eyes checking Jane’s for any signs of disapproval. “I never went very far in school, so my job prospects were never that great to begin with. After Christine, I couldn’t find work at all. I was on welfare when Christine had to have her surgery. Most doctors wouldn’t even have looked at her. They’d be too busy trying to line their pockets.”
Jane thought immediately of the hundred-dollar bills she had found lining her own pockets, and frowned.
“Sorry,” Paula immediately apologized. “I guess you’ve got a lot of friends who are doctors.”
“No apology necessary.”
“I was just trying to tell you how great your husband has been to me. He saved my little girl, then he saved me. Got me enrolled in night school, got Christine enrolled in some special school for handicapped kids. Got my name right to the top of the list.” She returned the dishes to the cupboards. “At first, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know, I kept thinking, nobody’s this nice. What does he want, really? But there wasn’t another shoe. He just wanted to help. He said he believed in this Oriental philosophy, that once you saved someone’s life, you were responsible for them from then on.” She took a long, deep breath. “The man can do no wrong, as far as I’m concerned. I’d do anything in the world for him.”
“Do you know what happened to his forehead?” Jane heard herself ask.
“You mean the stitches?”
Jane nodded.
“Some kid threw something at him,” Paula said, shaking her head. “He keeps all these toys in his office. Dolls and trucks and things, you know, so the kids will feel more relaxed. Didn’t work, I guess. One of them threw a jet plane at him. One of those ones with the real sharp noses. He said he saw it coming but couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. Can you imagine? He needed almost forty stitches
to close it up.”
“Sounds awful.”
“Well, you know Dr. Whittaker. He’s not one to complain a whole lot.”
Jane smiled, hoping Paula would continue, tell her more about the man to whom she was married. She liked hearing good things about her husband, not only because it was nice to find herself married to such a man, but because it implicitly implied that, if a man like Michael could love her, she couldn’t be so bad. So why the hysterical fugue?
“Would you like to go back up to bed now?” Paula asked, moving to her side.
Jane shook her head. “I think I’d like to sit in the sun-room for a while.”
Paula helped her through the kitchen door, and although Jane was feeling strong enough to make it on her own, she knew it would be pointless to protest.
The room was every bit as glorious as she remembered, her very own wonderland. Immediately the sun rushed over to welcome and embrace her, to warm her bare arms. Paula directed her toward the sofa-swing, depositing her on the cushions as if she were a breakable piece of china. “I’ll get you a blanket,” she said, and was gone before Jane could tell her not to bother. She had a baby-sitter whether she liked it or not. She was going to be cared for, whether she cared for it or not. They were going to see that she got better, so she’d better get used to it, the sooner the better. You’d better believe it!
This is silly, she thought and giggled. I’m being silly. I’m acting like one of Michael’s patients, the one who tried to land his toy plane on Michael’s forehead. Just because the woman is in love with my husband is no reason not to like her. I’m just a big, ungrateful kid who doesn’t know when she’s well off, who can’t remember how to behave when people are being nice to her, who doesn’t know when people are only trying to help. I don’t know what’s good for me, she shouted wordlessly. I don’t know what’s expected of me. I don’t know why this is happening to me. I don’t know anything. Goddamnit! I don’t know anything!
She burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, then watched helplessly as the laughter dissolved into a barrage of tears. Paula was instantly at her side, covering her with a soft yellow blanket. “Take these.” She extended her hands, displaying two tiny white pills in one palm, a glass of water in the other.
“I don’t need any pills,” Jane told her, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand, like a child.
“Dr. Whittaker said you’re to take them.”
“But I don’t need them.”
“You wouldn’t want to upset the doctor,” Paula said simply, speaking the unthinkable. Jane understood that there was no point in arguing. She knew, and she knew Paula knew, that sooner or later, she was going to swallow those two little white pills, so why make life difficult for this young woman whose life was already difficult enough?
She took the two little pills from Paula’s hand, dropped them onto the tip of her tongue, and swallowed them.
TEN
IN her dream, Jane saw herself walking down a dark street she didn’t recognize beside a woman whose face she couldn’t quite recall.
They were talking, laughing over a line from the movie they had just seen, arguing over who had been the first to discover Kevin Costner, and therefore who had the greater proprietary right to him, should they ever meet him face-to-face and he was forced to choose.
“I’ve already had the towels monogrammed,” the woman proclaimed, shaking her mane of red curly hair.
“You’re nuts, Diane,” Jane laughed.
So, the woman’s name was Diane, a voice whispered from somewhere far away. Diane somebody-or-other, she heard Michael say. DIANE BREWSTER, she’d seen printed in her telephone-address book.
Jane put her hand through the other woman’s arm, and together they prepared to cross the street. “Here comes some guy who doesn’t have his headlights on.” She waved at the dark-haired young man behind the wheel of a bright red Trans Am. “Excuse me, your lights aren’t on,” she said as he rolled down his window.
His response caught her with the force of a surprise slap to the face. “You fucking bitch! What the fuck do you want?”
“Let’s get out of here,” Diane whispered, pulling at Jane’s arm.
Jane stubbornly held her ground. Surely, the young man had misunderstood her. “I was simply trying to point out that your headlights aren’t on,” she repeated as pleasantly as she could.
“You fucking bitch! Fuck you!”
Something clicked in Jane’s mind. Her response was automatic. “Fuck yourself, asshole!” she said.
“Oh, Jesus,” Diane moaned.
The young man’s eyes bulged so violently that they looked as if they might burst from his head. Waving his middle finger wildly in her direction, he took off down the street.
“Thank God,” Diane sighed.
“He’s coming back!” Jane exclaimed, watching, transfixed, as the red Trans Am came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street, then reversed, gaining speed and momentum as it careened backward toward them, its driver leaning so far out his window that he was almost standing, screaming obscenities. “You fucking bitch! I’ll kill you!”
Jane grabbed Diane’s hand and ran, hearing his angry words chase after them. She turned to see the young man in pursuit, his short legs gaining speed, closing the distance between them, his car abandoned on the sidewalk.
“Where is everyone?” Diane yelled, her eyes frantically scanning the empty street.
“Help!” Jane screamed. “Somebody help!”
And suddenly a giant was standing before them, a man of astonishing proportions, at least six feet six inches tall, with a broad chest and enormous neck. And the dark-haired young man with the short legs and dirty mouth was scurrying back to his red Trans Am, waving his fists in the air as he made his ignominious retreat.
“I think you ladies could use a drink.” The giant led them inside the dimly lit restaurant from where he had emerged. “Rick, give these two damsels in distress a drink. On the house.” A phone began ringing somewhere in the background. “I better answer that. I’ll be right back.”
“That’s Keith Jarvis, the football player!” Diane squealed as soon as he was out of earshot. “I can’t believe it. You almost get us killed by some maniac, and then you get us rescued by Keith Jarvis! I wonder if he’s married.”
“Why doesn’t he answer the phone?” Jane wondered, hearing its persistent ring.
Suddenly the ringing stopped. “Hello,” a voice said quietly, not the voice of a giant at all, but rather that of a young woman. “No, I’m sorry. She’s not in. She’s gone to visit her brother for a few weeks.”
Jane opened her eyes, her dream fading as she came fully awake. She took immediate stock of her surroundings, trying to reorient herself as quickly as possible. She was half-sitting, half-lying on the green-and-white-floral sofa-swing, her body covered by the soft yellow blanket, the sun having temporarily disappeared behind a voluminous cloud. How long had she been sleeping? And who was writing these strange dreams of hers?
“Yes, it was very spur-of-the-moment,” she heard Paula say, recognizing her voice as the one she had heard at the end of her dream. “No, everything’s fine. She just felt like surprising him.”
Jane pushed herself off the sofa-swing as quietly as she could, steadying it with her hands so that it wouldn’t make any noise, then tiptoed toward the kitchen. She pushed open the door dividing the two rooms and listened.
“I’m sure she’ll call you as soon as she gets back,” Paula was saying into the phone, her back to Jane, unaware of her existence. “Have a nice day. Good-bye.” She replaced the receiver, took a deep breath, and turned around.
If she was startled by Jane’s unexpected appearance, she recovered quickly. “I thought you were still asleep,” she said.
“Who was that?” Jane indicated the phone.
Paula looked embarrassed. “I forgot to ask.”
“Why did you say that I was visiting my brother?”
Now Paula l
ooked sheepish, uncertain. “Dr. Whittaker thinks it would be better if you weren’t disturbed by phone calls. At least for the time being. Until you get your strength back.”
“I’m plenty strong,” Jane replied testily, feeling just the opposite. “My problem isn’t my strength. It’s my memory.”
“What’s the point of talking to someone you can’t remember?”
The very logic behind Paula’s question made Jane angry. “The point is that I might remember something.”
“And you might not. And then you’d only be more upset. Now, are you ready for some lunch?”
“Didn’t I just have breakfast?”
“That was hours ago. Come on, you need to …”
“Get my strength back, I know.”
Jane sat down at the kitchen table and waited while Paula prepared her lunch.
She found the photograph albums on the bottom bookshelf in the living room.
Jane went through each of the six leather-bound books in turn, watching her life unfold in a series of sometimes silly, mostly ordinary, occasionally remarkable, photographs. Her hair was long one year, short the next, curly, straight, worn up or down to match current hemlines. There were bell-bottoms and stretch jeans, open-toed sandals and thigh-high boots, leather jackets and oversized sweaters. The only constant was her smile. She was always smiling.
There were lots of pictures of her and Michael: their courtship; their wedding; their trip to the Orient. With others. Alone. And always their arms around each other’s waist their eyes reflecting their love.
There was a photograph of Michael flanked by an elderly couple Jane supposed were his parents. They were a handsome pair, tall and imposing, his father’s gray hair thinning, his mother’s a stubborn blond helmet. On another page were photographs of Jane hugging a woman who could only be her mother. Jane felt her heart lurch toward this woman. “Forgive me, Mother,” she whispered, tracing the woman’s outline with her fingers. “I want so much to remember you.”