A Montclair Homecoming

by Jane Peart

  If it was Evan…She’d cross that bridge soon enough. She couldn’t avoid him forever.

  The following morning Joy went to the hospital and checked the physicians’ schedule at the nurses’ station. She saw that Evan had left that morning after a five-hour surgical procedure and wasn’t expected back until evening rounds. That gave her some time.

  She went to the solarium, intending to work on the mural. She had one miracle remaining to paint. The blind man. She still had not found the right model. She had outlined a composite figure of the man, but that was all. She stared at the unfinished panel blankly. For the second time since she had begun the mural, she felt blocked, uninspired. Joy seemed to have lost her momentum since she had been away. She knew it was mainly because she was unfocused, distracted by her uncertainty about her relationship with Evan.

  She recalled Ginny Stratton telling her how helpful Sister Mary Hope had been when she was trying to break up with the married doctor. Now that the sale of the Montrose property insured that Joy could take her trip to Europe—and even stay there longer than she had ever hoped she would be able to afford—she didn’t want anything to keep her from going. Falling in love had not been in her plan. It would be good to talk to someone about the conflict she had about Evan’s love and her own dreams.

  She knew Molly had said to pray, but she needed advice as well as divine guidance. She also needed to talk to someone who knew Evan. Sister Mary Hope was the logical person. Yes, she needed to speak with her.

  Joy left the solarium and went down to the second floor. She knocked at the office of the chaplain.

  Sister Mary Hope greeted Joy with a warm, assured smile, invited her to sit down in her cozy office, and offered her some tea.

  Stumbling a little at first, Joy finally confided the situation, her own doubts and fears. “Evan says he loves me, and I do have a great deal of feeling for him. I just don’t know if it’s really love or if it’s strong enough for the commitment he wants me to make.”

  The nun listened sympathetically, nodding understandingly as Joy poured out her feelings. It crossed Joy’s mind that Sister Mary Hope may have also been in love at some time herself. She was certainly young and attractive enough.

  Finally Sister Mary Hope said, “I’m glad I’ve seen your work, Joy, so I can fully appreciate how important it is to you. You are very talented.” She paused. “A dream is a hard thing to let go of, and you’ve evidently had this one for a very long time.” The woman regarded Joy thoughtfully. “To let go of a dream may be easier than relinquishing a real possibility. But you’ve been around a hospital long enough to realize how demanding a doctor’s life is and the toll it must take on their families—while an artist is largely responsible only to himself or herself. Am I getting to the core of what is keeping you from accepting Dr. Wallace’s proposal?”

  “Yes, I think so. I feel so mixed up about it.”

  Sister Mary Hope smiled. “That’s natural, my dear. You’re still very young and have a great deal of life ahead of you. I believe love is giving yourself to somebody, really giving and caring for that person more than for yourself. It means being concerned with the other person first, before yourself. Until you honestly feel you can do that, it is better to wait.”

  Joy wished she could write all that down and hoped she would remember it when she talked to Evan.

  Sister Mary Hope’s phone rang, and she excused herself to answer it. When she put down the receiver, she apologized. “I’m sorry, Joy; I have to go. I’m needed in the ward. I hope our talk has helped a little. Please feel free to come again if you’d like.”

  They walked out together and Joy thanked her. It had helped but Joy wasn’t quite sure how. She did feel less agitated at the thought of seeing Evan. Maybe she could explain it so he could understand that the time for them wasn’t now. While he had met his goals, she still had to test her wings. There was a wide gap between where they each were in life. Maybe it was necessary for her to hold on to her dream even if it was only a stopping place on a longer journey to a more permanent destination, a place in life that she could not yet foresee.

  Joy wandered back into the solarium. She didn’t really feel like painting, but she knew she should start working on the painting of the blind man. Checking her notebook, she recalled that she had planned to give this scene a background of stately cedars, since after regaining his sight, the man had thought that other men were trees walking. She made a few halfhearted attempts at drawing some rough sketches of the trees, but they turned out mostly to be meaningless doodles, so she gave up and decided she was too distracted to create anything worthwhile. To her surprise it was already getting dark outside. She couldn’t figure out where the afternoon had gone.

  Joy stepped out from the warmth of the hospital into the early evening. More snow had fallen during the afternoon, drifting over the benches and settling onto the lampposts that lined the streets. The air was cold and there was an expectancy in it. She shivered a little, recognizing the feeling. She had it sometimes, as though something were about to happen.

  Then she saw Evan’s car. He tapped the horn lightly, and she realized he had been waiting for her.

  “Hello, Joy,” was his curt greeting when she came over to the car and he rolled down his window. “Get in, I’ll drive you home. We need to talk. Your phone has a funny habit of not being answered. Maybe you’d better check with the phone company.”

  Evan pulled out of his parking space. They made the short distance in silence. He braked in the usual place under the tree in front of the circular staircase. He turned off the ignition and turned toward Joy, reached for her hand.

  “I’ve been through about a half-dozen scenarios since you left. I can’t tell you how it felt to get back here from the conference and not be able to see or even call you. I know I’m in love with you, Joy. I don’t know why that should bother you so much, unless you aren’t sure I really love you.” His fingers tightened on her hand. “So one of the possibilities might be that I’ve been married before. Maybe that troubles you. So I wanted to be sure you understood about Susan, that I’m not still mourning her, nor am I looking for a substitute for what I’ve lost.” He paused. “Our marriage was wonderful, unique in its own way. We were both young, ambitious, focused on our careers. Now it’s over. It happened in the past. When I remember it now, it’s only with gratitude for what it meant for a brief time in my life. There is no sadness that should—or would—shadow the future, our future.”

  Joy did not know what to say. Evan’s next words made anything she might have said unnecessary.

  “If I came on too strong, too soon, I’m sorry. I promise not to pressure you or rush you into any decision. Until you’re ready to change things between us, can’t we go on as we have?” He pressed her hand. “Well, that’s all I had to say. It’s up to you where we go from here. Okay?”

  “I’m going to France, Evan. Alone. I don’t know how long I’ll stay. I can’t make any promises.”

  “I hear what you’re saying and I’m trying to understand. Letting you go scares me.” He paused. “But I’m willing to play by your rules. I just don’t want to lose you, Joy.”

  She looked into the eyes that were so full of tenderness and caring, filled with such hope and longing, and her heart melted. She wished she could say what he wanted to hear, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know what her future held or if Evan would be in it. All she really knew was she couldn’t give up her dream.

  Evan walked up the steps with her to the little balcony, held out his hand for her key, and unlocked the door. When he handed it back, he leaned down and kissed her.

  “I love you, Joy.”

  She returned his kiss and started to say, “I love you, too.” But she stopped herself. It would only make things harder for both of them. So she just murmured, “Thank you, Evan.” And he turned and left.

  Exhausted by her emotional day and still tired from the long trip, Joy fell asleep without eating. Her alarm was buzzing wil
dly when she finally woke up. It was only at the last minute that she remembered that her car was still not functioning. She had to run to catch a bus so she was late getting to the hospital.

  She decided to stop in pediatrics before going up to fourth to see if Gayle could meet her for lunch. She had a great deal to talk to her about.

  The minute she stepped off the elevator, she felt something was wrong. The ward was bustling with a kind of hushed activity. She saw the group of doctors and nurses clustered in consultation outside one of the rooms. Was that Debbie’s room? Slowly a cold certainty washed over her. Joy was frozen to the spot. She recognized one of the doctors as Dr. Broadman, head of pediatrics. A man in his late fifties, he had been a pediatrician for years. He must have had many patients die. Yet he looked stricken.

  Then she saw Gayle. At the sound of the elevator’s closing doors, she turned. Her face was drawn, her expression blank. She did not even acknowledge Joy.

  Joy remembered Jean Braden saying, “No one gets used to a child’s dying. It’s unnatural somehow. No matter how sick they were. No matter how long you’ve been in practice.” She recalled Jean’s concern about Gayle not accepting that inevitability in some cases.

  Joy felt tears rush up into her own eyes. What Gayle was experiencing couldn’t be shared. It was too deep. Joy had only known Debbie a short time, but those sessions of painting her as Jarius’s daughter had been precious. She had become very fond of the little girl. Thank God, she would never be forgotten— she would live in the mural forever. Joy was grateful that it had been her brush and God-given talent that made that possible.

  That afternoon as Joy left the hospital, a few large, wet flakes began to fall out of a gray sky lumpy with clouds. Joy felt as melancholy as the weather. She knew Gayle must be grieving dreadfully, and her heart ached for her friend. She had not tried to go back to pediatrics, look for her to try to comfort her. Death was Gayle’s enemy. She would have to fight it in her own way. In spite of her fierce resistance to it, the young doctor would have to come to terms with it.

  Feeling sad for her friend, wishing she could do something to ease her pain, Joy stopped at a florist’s and ordered a mixed bouquet of daffodils and baby blue irises to be delivered to Gayle’s apartment. She enclosed a little note:

  Hyacinths for the soul. Thinking of you with affectionate concern.

  Always your friend,

  Joy Montrose

  chapter

  22

  “I’VE GOT YOUR model for you,” Ginny told Joy, coming into the solarium one morning.

  Joy, who had been staring at the unfinished panel, whirled around. “Who?”

  “His name is Todd Nelson. He’s a musician. A classical guitarist. His eye was injured in an automobile accident—he went through the windshield, I think, and the glass splintered. It was pretty bad, I guess. He’s just undergone surgery, and it’s uncertain whether he’ll recover the sight in his eye.”

  “Is he willing to pose?” was Joy’s question.

  “I’ve told him about the mural and about you. He’s anxious to meet you”—Ginny winked—“and see the mural, of course. So? Wasn’t I brilliant to find him for you?”

  Joy gave Ginny a knowing look. “As long as you aren’t trying to play matchmaker.”

  “Who, me?” Ginny laughed. “Shall I bring him in?”

  “Sure, why not?” Joy said, smiling.

  Todd turned out to be a wonderful model and an interesting person. He was young and tall, and his injured eye was covered with a white bandage. He seemed to be making a conscious effort to be optimistic, but Joy could sense that he was troubled about his prognosis. However, he was enthusiastic about his music career and empathetic to Joy’s feelings about her art. He had been to Europe before the car accident and gave Joy several good travel tips about inexpensive places to stay and places to go.

  “We rented bikes and had a wonderful trip through Provence,” he told her. “I know you’d enjoy something like that.”

  “First I’m going to London, to the Tate and National Galleries, then of course to Paris,” Joy told him. “To the Louvre, naturally. After that I plan to join a painting group going on a tour to the south of France. Then maybe I’ll branch off by myself.”

  The modeling sessions with Todd became something Joy looked forward to every day, and she was almost sorry when the panel was completed.

  It would be several more weeks before Todd would know if the operation on his eye would be successful, but he promised to keep in touch with Joy and let her know.

  The day he left the hospital, he came to say good-bye. She gave him an impulsive hug, saying, “I’ll be praying for another miracle.”

  He grinned. “Thanks, Joy. I think maybe the miracle’s already happened. Posing for the panel has restored my spirit. I’ve been composing a new song.”

  Joy felt happy about the panel, considering it to be perhaps the best of the five. Except for the centurion. In her heart Joy thought that was the best painting she had ever done.

  She did not know what Evan really thought of it. Since her return from Mayfield he had kept his distance. He never came by the solarium anymore. As he promised, he was meeting her terms. He took nothing for granted. He always called ahead to invite her, in the most casual way, out to dinner or to a movie or a concert. When they were together, he never brought up the subject of marriage. On the surface at least, he seemed to have accepted the fact that Joy was going on with her own plans.

  For all his well-maintained cool, Joy knew she had hurt him. She made an appointment to talk to Sister Mary Hope again.

  “I never meant to hurt him. I never meant to have him fall in love with me. It simply happened. I just had to choose. And what I’ve chosen has hurt him badly.”

  “Sometimes we can’t avoid hurting someone else, even when we don’t want to. Or being hurt ourselves,” Sister Mary Hope said gently. “You did what you felt was the honest, right thing. That’s all anyone can be expected to do. Surely Dr. Wallace knows that life deals all of us unexpected blows. It’s a measure of his maturity that he has accepted your decision.”

  Joy longed to confide in Gayle. But Gayle was remote, locked in her own battle to accept her loss. She turned down Joy’s suggestions for having lunch or supper together. Joy ached for her friend but finally thought it best to leave her to work things out herself.

  She did, however, talk to Ginny Stratton, who had dealt with her own struggle to get over her dead-end affair. “Everyone gets hurt at some time or other. There are no guarantees that life is going to hand out happiness like Popsicles. I guess it all evens out somehow.”

  “That’s almost exactly what Sister Mary Hope said!” Joy looked at her in astonishment.

  “So I’m getting some wisdom in my old age,” quipped Ginny, rolling her eyes.

  Maybe it would just take time, Joy decided. Once she was gone, Evan would get over his hurt.

  The mural was to be dedicated in the first week of May. When the date was set, Joy was still putting the finishing touches on each one, applying the final glaze. Understandably, she was apprehensive. Even though she believed the panels were her best work, even though she knew she had poured herself into them. Still, to have them open to public, possibly critical opinion was daunting. Every brushstroke had been a statement of faith. Yet as every artist knows, the finished work does not always measure up to the original vision. There were some things Joy might have changed, especially about the early panels, if she had the opportunity. But the panel of Jarius’s daughter had become a memorial to little Debbie, and Joy could not help but secretly be especially proud of the centurion.

  As the date drew nearer, Joy occupied herself with travel plans. She had an agent map out an itinerary which would allow her time on her own before meeting the painting group with whom she was going to tour in France. She shopped for clothes that would be easy to pack—washable, not easily wrinkled— and good, practical walking shoes. The woman at the travel agency assured her that no
wadays almost anything she forgot would be available and easy to buy overseas.

  Sometimes Joy could hardly believe that all this was really happening, that she was actually going to fulfill her dream.

  She missed Gayle terribly. Even though it had been over a month since little Debbie’s death, Gayle remained sealed in her inaccessible cocoon. Joy did not feel free to intrude on her friend’s grief, but she worried and prayed for her. She hoped they could renew their friendship before she left for Europe.

  Invitations to the dedication ceremony had been beautifully designed and printed and were being delivered to community leaders and other dignitaries. Joy went by Dr. Fonteyne’s office to pick up a batch so she could send them out to people on her own list.

  “You should be so proud, Joy,” said Dr. Fonteyne’s secretary, Sylvia. “Everyone who sees the mural raves about it. To be truthful, I wasn’t sure what it would really be like even after you showed me the sketches, but you’ve certainly outdone yourself and exceeded everyone’s expectations.”

  Pleased but humbled by all the praise, Joy thanked her. “It was a wonderful time for me. I’ll miss the hospital and all the staff. Everyone’s been so kind.”

  “We’ll miss you, too, Joy.” Sylvia gave her a pointed look. “Some more than others, I expect.”

  Joy felt herself blushing. Had Sylvia heard rumors about her and Evan? Probably. Well, it couldn’t be helped—and anyway, now it was over. She needn’t worry about it anymore.

  Joy had not been home long and had just started to address some of the invitations when the phone rang. It was Gayle.