A Montclair Homecoming

by Jane Peart

  At the far end of the corridor there was a waiting room. It looked much the same as those on the other floors. Chrome furniture with plastic cushions, a TV going with the sound turned low. A daytime soap was on, figures moving across the screen, carrying on a scripted dialogue. Yet the real events taking place in front of the set, where parents sat with anxious faces, haunted eyes, haggard expressions, were far more dramatic.

  Joy turned away, feeling an intruder on others’ grief. Some of these children were terminally ill. She had come down here to search the ward, look for a little girl she could use for Jarius’s daughter. She recalled Ginny’s caution about not wanting a child that looked “too sick.”

  Then through an open door Joy saw her. She was perfect. A sweet, round face framed with short blond curls. Joy felt that inner click she got when a subject was right, and knew she had found her model.

  She went to the nurses’ station to find out who the child was and to see if she could get the parents to agree to let her pose.

  “You mean Debbie Matthews,” the nurse on duty told her, reading from her chart. “But you’ll have to get permission from her attending physician.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Dr. Montrose.”

  Joy’s first thought was, Oh, good. I’ll ask her today. She was pleased that the search for her first model had been so easy. Then Joy recalled what Ginny had told her about Dr. Montrose, and wondered if it would be hard to get her permission. The doctor who dealt in life-and-death situations might think that posing for a mural would be a trivial, shallow thing for her patient to do.

  She saw Dr. Montrose in the distance, standing at the door of a patient’s room. It was the same door through which Joy had seen the little girl she thought would make an ideal Jarius’s daughter. As Joy approached, Dr. Montrose saw her, greeted her with a nod. She then turned to the little girl sitting up in a bed decorated with several balloons.

  “Debbie, here’s someone I’d like you to meet. Her name is Joy.” Turning to Joy, Dr. Montrose said, “Here is one of my favorite patients, Debbie Matthews.”

  Debbie gave Joy a long, appraising look over the heads of several enormous stuffed animals—a floppy-eared bunny, a teddy bear, a sad-eyed white baby seal. With one thin little hand she fingered the bunny’s ears. Slowly her mouth curved up into a shy smile, and she said, “Joy’s a pretty name.”

  “Joy’s an artist, Debbie. Tomorrow after your chemo we’ll take you upstairs so you can see what she’s painting on the fourth floor.”

  “Chemo?” Debbie’s voice echoed plaintively. “Do I have to have more needles stuck in me, Dr. Montrose?”

  “’Fraid so, angel. But that’s a piece of cake for you.” Dr. Montrose turned to Joy and explained, “Debbie’s been here twice before. She’s a real trooper.”

  They said good-bye to Debbie and walked down the corridor together. Dr. Montrose told Joy that before she could show her around further, she needed to stop at the nurses’ station to make some notes on patients’ charts. “I’m sorry; it will only take a minute,” she added.

  “Actually, I’ve already looked around quite a bit on my own,” Joy responded. “But if you have the time, I would love to talk with you over coffee.”

  “Well then, why don’t I meet you in the cafeteria after I finish my rounds?”

  Joy was eager to ask Dr. Montrose if she could use Debbie as her model. She waited at the entrance to the cafeteria until the doctor joined her.

  “Sorry I’m late. Something came up just as I was leaving. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  When Joy explained, Dr. Montrose didn’t answer right away. Instead she took her time pouring each of them a cup of coffee. When they had seated themselves at a table, Joy prompted, “So? What do you think?”

  “Why?” Dr. Montrose asked. “Why Debbie?”

  “She’s a beautiful child. Those eyes, those ringlets. She’d be perfect.”

  “You know her prognosis is terminal,” Dr. Montrose said flatly. “I’ve seen the latest tests. They show it’s just a matter of time.” Her face was impassive as she continued. “Leukemia. A virulent type. But maybe we can beat those odds. Each time we send her home, we hope. But then each remission period is shorter. We keep trying…” Her mouth settled into a grim line.

  The enormity of what she said kept Joy silent.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “She would have made such a beautiful Jarius’s daughter. Those curls—”

  “She’ll lose her hair…the chemo,” Dr. Montrose said shortly.

  “Oh, Gayle, that makes me so sad.” Joy had inadvertently used the woman’s first name.

  Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Then Joy had a thought. “If her parents give their permission…I can show them my sketches, tell them how a painting of Debbie would be a lasting memorial to their little girl…no matter what happens. And I think it would make her happy during whatever time she has left. Couldn’t she come up in her wheelchair sometimes and watch me paint? Wouldn’t that be a good thing, Gayle?”

  Gayle stirred her coffee thoughtfully for a few seconds, then said, “I think she’s strong enough to pose for a few sessions, if you like.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. But you’d better get started soon. Before her curls are gone,” Gayle said dryly.

  During the next two weeks the painting of Jarius’s daughter went well. Gayle had only approved twenty minutes of posing time with a break every five. Joy worked faster than usual. She loved the time she spent with the little girl. Debbie was thrilled at the idea that her picture would be painted on the wall.

  Joy brought her the book The Velveteen Rabbit, one of her own favorite childhood stories, to read while she worked. Debbie loved it, too. At nine she could read very well and took to reading out loud as Joy sketched.

  The unexpected bonus to choosing Debbie as her model was that Joy and Gayle became friends. They often had lunch together after leaving the ward. Although Joy didn’t ask her directly, Gayle began to tell Joy about herself. Because of Ginny’s warning, Joy refrained from discussing the coincidence of their identical last names. Instead she asked Gayle how she had decided to become a doctor specializing in children’s cancer. “That seems such a hard specialty to have chosen.”

  “No branch of medicine is easy. I guess you could call it a calling. I believe I was by nature called to work with children, sick children. There’s so much possibility with children, that they will get better, will recover. I don’t know. Don’t you ask yourself how you became an artist? I think all of us have a plan for our lives. The main thing is to find it, recognize it as yours, and go for it.”

  “So it isn’t so much that you chose it but that it chose you?”

  Gayle paused, looked at Joy for a long moment as if deciding whether Joy would understand the next thing she was going to say. “Get real, Joy. A black woman doctor. God has something to do with it. A whole lot. None of this has been an accident. It was tough for me to get into medical school, tougher to stay there. There is a reason for all this. One that I didn’t plan. My interest in medicine, to begin with. Nothing in my background, in our family, could have predicted this. Yet I always knew that somehow—I didn’t know how—it was all going to happen.

  “It was all hard work. And even when I graduated, became an intern, it all seemed like some kind of dream.” Gayle stopped and laughed, a full, rich laugh. Then with a quick raising of her eyebrows she added, “Or maybe I should say more like a nightmare. Still, I couldn’t believe it. I’d catch a glimpse of my reflection in a window or mirror, in that white jacket with the name tag that said, ‘Gayle Montrose, M.D.,’ and I’d think, That’s not me. That’s somebody else.”

  Joy wasn’t sure just how, but one day while they were talking about the mural, Dr. Evan Wallace was mentioned.

  “Oh, him.” There was something dismissing in Gayle’s tone. “Surgeons have it easy, if you ask me. They’re free from patients’ pain. They don’t have to know
they’re hurting someone; they don’t see them grimace or hear them moan. Their patients are anesthetized.”

  “Don’t you like Dr. Wallace?”

  “I don’t dislike him,” Gayle countered. “It’s just that he is like so many surgeons—cold, aloof.” Gayle frowned. “It’s their attitude. Such control, such confidence—” She paused. “But maybe that’s the way they have to be. Maybe it’s how we all should be. What they warned us about in medical school—not to become emotionally involved with your patients. Surgeons, as I said, have an advantage over other doctors on that.”

  “Isn’t that helpful? I mean, to do what they have to do? They have to be sure—it’s not a guessing game.”

  Gayle’s eyes widened and Joy quickly amended her statement. “Not that that’s what other doctors do, but isn’t diagnosing a kind of, well, trying one thing, then something else, sort of…,” she finished weakly, hoping she hadn’t offended Gayle.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Gayle said slowly. “You do have to test, check symptoms, compare, narrow it down to one thing or another…experiment,” she conceded. Then she smiled. “Hey, this conversation is getting way too serious, too philosophical. I’ve been meaning to ask you, would you like to come to my apartment for dinner? My next night off is Thursday.”

  Thrilled to be invited, Joy immediately accepted.

  “Shall I bring something?”

  “No, of course not. You might not guess, but cooking is my hobby. Having a guest gives me a chance to show off,” Gayle said with a laugh.

  Joy was early. She waited on the balcony outside number 10, and in a few minutes she saw Gayle’s Corvette pull into the parking lot below. As Gayle got out of the car, she looked up, saw Joy, and waved.

  Gayle came up the stairway carrying a huge bunch of golden chrysanthemums. Under her arm was a paper sack from which the top of a long loaf of French bread emerged. When she reached Joy outside her apartment door, she apologized. “I’m sorry I’m late. I stopped to get a few things, then saw these in a flower stand and couldn’t resist. I had to find a parking place, then go back and buy them. You know, ‘hyacinths for the soul.’”

  Gayle juggled her packages and handbag, got out her keys, unlocked the door. “Come on in,” she said over her shoulder, and Joy followed her inside.

  “What do you mean, ‘hyacinths for the soul’?”

  Gayle looked surprised. “Don’t you know? Haven’t you ever heard of it?”

  Joy shook her head.

  “Well, the poet called the Guilistan of Moslih Eddin Saadi, a Mohammedan sheik, some seven hundred years ago wrote this:

  If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft

  And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left

  Sell one, and with the dole

  Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

  “It’s my rule of life. Even when I was a miserably poor student, I practiced it. Now, when I’m a miserably paid resident, I still practice it,” she said, laughing.

  “I love it! I’m going to copy that down, give it to Molly to write in calligraphy for me, then frame it and put it up in my apartment and begin to practice it,” declared Joy.

  Gayle gave her a long, steady look. “But you do already, Joy. I don’t know anyone who is more appreciative of life than you. You were certainly well named.”

  “Why, thank you, Gayle.” Joy felt herself blush. Coming from Gayle, that meant a great deal.

  “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll go fix us some tea,” Gayle told her and went behind a bookcase divider into the small kitchen.

  Joy looked around. Gayle’s apartment was like its occupant, she decided—spare, neat, tasteful. There was a large sofa covered in a rough textured linen, a russet leather Eeams lounger and hassock, a Boston rocker. In one alcove she saw a desk of pale wood, on which was a computer monitor, a study lamp. The place had a restful, uncluttered atmosphere that Joy found refreshing.

  Over the angled fireplace hung a painting. Joy went over to examine it.

  There was something familiar about it, not the scene so much as the style, the brush strokes, the composition…a land-scape in autumn, a country road overhung with trees, bordered by Queen Anne’s lace, purple wild asters, a rustic fence. Bending closer, she read the artist’s signature.

  “Gayle!” she called. “Where did you get this painting?”

  Gayle came to the arch between the living room and kitchen, teakettle in one hand. “Oh, that! In a small New York gallery. It was my present to myself when I graduated from medical school. I worked a deal with the gallery owners. Had them put it away for me. Paid for it on the installment plan after I’d paid off my student loans,” she said with a laugh. “It took a long time…but it was worth it.”

  Joy turned slowly around, staring at her.

  Gayle frowned. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”

  “Gayle, the artist. Jeff Montrose. He was my great-great-grandfather.”

  Gayle took a few steps into the room, stood beside Joy in front of the painting. She bent closer, squinting to read the tiny signature in the right-hand corner of the painting. “I never even noticed it. I just loved the painting. Something in me responded to it for some reason.” She turned and looked at Joy. “Do you suppose…? What do you know about this Jeff Montrose?”

  “Nothing more than what Molly told me. When I lived with her when I was in high school, she said my artistic ability was probably inherited. She said my mother had told her that one of my father’s relatives had been a famous artist. That’s all.”

  “This is some kind of coincidence, isn’t it?”

  The two young women looked at each other wonderingly.

  chapter

  7

  “JARIUS’S LITTLE DAUGHTER” was well under way. Joy had utilized the time well and was excited and pleased with the results. The little girl, Debbie, was so pretty. Ironically, she seemed the picture of health, at least to Joy. Her bones were delicate, her features dainty, and her skin had a lovely translucence that made her lovely to paint. Was this a sign of her fragile health? Joy hoped not. There had been blood transfusions, she knew. She would have to ask Gayle if the child was improving.

  All this was on her mind one afternoon when she was absorbed in her work painting the scene that, as she imagined it, would be visible through the bedroom window of Jarius’s child. She had become used to the hospital atmosphere. It seemed almost to provide her with a concentration she needed. She could turn off the constant hum of activity, the sound of the wheels of food and medicine carts on the linoleum floors, the muted footsteps of interns and nurses and staff, the steady beep of pagers, the buzz of phones—all became the background of her daily work.

  Suddenly a long shadow fell across the panel. Startled, she turned to find Dr. Wallace standing behind her. Joy felt her face grow warm. How long had he been standing there watching her?

  As she looked up at him, she thought again what a marvelous face his would be to paint. It was a tense face, the muscles under the tan skin taut, the mouth resolute, in the eyes…an unfathomable depth. There was strength and character in that face.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Good,” she replied. “It’s only in the first stages.”

  She examined her brush, then moved as if to turn back to her work, but his next words stopped her.

  “I owe you an apology, Miss Montrose.”

  Surprised, she turned back toward him. “You don’t owe me anything, Dr. Wallace.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said stiffly, then paused. “May I buy you a cup of coffee in the cafeteria?”

  Further surprised at this unexpected invitation, she shook her head. “Thank you, but I’m working.”

  “You’ve been working steadily since I came on the floor, since I finished rounds. You need a break, and I need to explain.” His voice had the hint of an order, the kind he was used to giving and having others promptly obey.

  She glanced at him and realized he was not going t
o take no for an answer. “All right.”

  She took time to clean her brush meticulously and put it back in its plastic holder, then unbuttoned her paint-smeared smock and tossed it on a nearby chrome chair. She rolled down her shirtsleeves, gave her hair an ineffectual pat.

  A brief smile touched the corners of his mouth. “You look fine.”

  Joy felt annoyed that her unconscious gesture seemed to imply that she gave an importance to her appearance at his invitation. She wished she had not accepted it, but Dr. Wallace was already waiting for her at the solarium door. There was nothing to do but join him.

  As they passed the nurses’ station, Joy was aware of curious glances following them. She could just imagine the ones which might be exchanged once they stepped inside the elevator and the door closed behind them.

  Downstairs Joy was once again aware of the curious glances from fourth-floor staff members who were in the cafeteria as they entered together and made their way from the coffee dispenser to a booth.

  Dr. Wallace placed one of the mugs on the Formica top in front of her, then slid into the seat across from her. He took a sip, made a face, then grinned.

  “Should have remembered how strong this stuff is at this time of day,” he murmured. “Shall I get you something else? Tea? Juice?”

  “No, it’s fine. I’ve grown used to this hospital brand by this time. Although I must say, the coffee in the nurses’ lounge is much better. Ginny Stratton brings me some from there. They’ve got the formula down pat.”

  Dr. Wallace pushed his mug aside, folded his hands, and leaned forward on his elbows.

  “Now, about that apology I owe you. After your presentation we—all of us on the selection committee—spent a great deal of time studying your submissions.” He halted. “You are quite good, you know. But there was more—and we all noted it—aside from the professional skill. There was a quality, something no one could define, that cast the deciding vote. I didn’t see that at first. That’s what I wanted to apologize about. I’m sorry.”