by Robin Kirman
Sounds to satisfy a need, this was her trade—to offer up some kind of rousing statement about Julie Patel, one that would distract from the fact that the event everyone was there to mark was, in reality, a senseless death. Words in place of sense, in place of truth—very little to do with what this Crimson editor still believed he might wring from her. Such revelations would only please people like Christine Friedlander. Gossip for old vampires: nothing to bring rest for the living, nor justice for the dead.
25
When Georgia returned from the hospital at three, grocery bags in hand, Violet babbling in the sling beneath her chin, a new message was flashing on her answering machine.
I’m trying to reach Georgia Calvin: I hope this number is correct.
The voice was a man’s, the accent Pakistani or Indian. Not a nurse from the hospital or an insurance agent (always her first assumptions): to these people, she was known exclusively as Reese. This was someone who’d known her in the past.
Mr. Patel, was her next thought: thanking her for the donation she’d made to his daughter’s foundation, calling either as a matter of course, without knowing who she was—the girl who’d sent his family flowers for nine years—or else, knowing full well, as a gesture of appreciation.
My name is Mr. Kadam. This is regarding an associate of mine, Rufus Storrow….
She set the groceries down onto the table. Violet clamored at her chest; she placed a hand, half consciously, over the baby’s mouth, and stepped closer to the phone.
I’m very sorry to bother you, Miss Calvin, but the man left India suddenly; we had some business unresolved, and I’m unable to contact him. He let me know of your relation and I wondered if he might be staying with you. If you’d be so kind as to return my call.
The baby’s mouth was wet against her palm; coming back to herself, Georgia lowered Violet into her playpen and took the groceries to the fridge.
Storrow in the U.S. She’d learned as much two weeks before from that Crimson reporter, but the rest of this message was perplexing: Might Storrow be staying with her? the man had asked. God knows what Storrow had said to lead to that conclusion: that they remained involved, emotionally, romantically? The last she’d heard from him, Storrow had been intending to marry. Vaguely, she recalled a photo he’d presented inside Mrs. Chandar’s Mumbai flat, the pretty figure posing beside him. What had become of the future Mrs. Storrow? Was there such a woman out there in the world, wondering, like this caller, where her husband might be?
That she could allot a moment to such considerations, that she could find room for concern for anyone but Violet or Mark, this was a sign of progress, surely. More than all the trembling efforts at normality—leaving Mark alone long enough to buy groceries for dinner, pick up a movie for the evening at Blockbuster—this was a sign that she was almost back to functioning as a human being again.
She could permit herself some cautious optimism, Poole had told her, when, for the second time since Mark’s last adjuvant chemo treatment, his blood work had come back clean. Though Poole still felt obliged to offer warnings at each checkup—Mark’s immune system hadn’t yet recovered; the cancer could recur at any time—he’d been encouraged enough to allow Mark to return home. For the past fifteen days, she’d been blessed to wake to the sight of her husband’s clothes lying on a chair, to the sound of him humming in the shower, or muttering nonsense to Violet in the next room.
Now that their lives no longer revolved around that hospital she loathed, Mark meant to keep it that way, going so far as to insist she leave him behind with Poole that morning, for the time required to run the several tests he needed, including a glucose exam that could run up to two hours. We’re out of food and Violet needs her nap, he’d told her, an excuse, as much as anything, for her to go home until four thirty, when he’d be through with being poked and bled and inspected, and she could find him dressed in his own clothes again and munching a stale muffin in the main lobby café.
When, by 4:45, Mark still wasn’t where he’d promised to be, Georgia returned to the cancer center and searched the front desk for Ginette. Of all the nurses, Ginette was the one on whom she’d come to depend, the one Georgia could count on to make certain Mark had that extra blanket or pillow that he needed, or that no one kicked her out of the doctors’ lounge when she went in to nurse Violet. Ginette was a mother six times over, born in Haiti, where Georgia and Mark had spent ten months through Médicins sans Frontières. It was the basis for a bond strong enough to compel Ginette to put aside her other business and go find out right away what might be holding matters up.
“The doctor’s in there now,” Ginette informed her and didn’t try to stop her when Georgia headed for Mark’s room. To hell with it: she was a doctor’s wife and had long established herself here as impatient with the rules.
Inside the room, she found Mark as she’d left him, still in that hospital robe that seemed an insult to a grown man, that made him look—made all those bald and shriveled cancer patients look—so much like the babies they’d begun as, like Violet, helpless in her arms.
“There’s been a delay,” Mark explained. “I just got word, I’m sorry, I’d have told you to stay home.”
“What sort of delay?”
“They pumped me full of sugar, so now my temp is up half a degree. It’s nothing; they’ll keep me here until it goes back down.”
“What did Poole say about it?”
“Exactly what I told you.”
“This couldn’t be an infection?”
“Just an excuse to spoil the day.”
“And you don’t feel sick?”
“I feel perfect.”
Even in that robe, it was true he did look healthy: his weight was up, his color returning; brown bristles darkened his skull and jaw.
“What movie did you get?” Mark asked her, though they both knew Poole well enough to know there would be no movie later; Mark would end up held for observation overnight.
Of course, that didn’t mean she ought to worry. Dr. Poole preferred to be prudent, even discouraging—uneasy with that whole messy, stubborn condition known as hope. But it was also true that Mark had a habit of understating his problems, sparing her what fears he could.
For Mark’s sake, she matched his cheer, but privately, she sensed a panic coming; the prospect of another night in an empty bed made her breath weak. She resolved to find someone to watch Violet and to spend the night right here with Mark on one of those awful hospital recliners.
On the return drive, she tried calling Mrs. Leahy, the home-nurse who’d assisted her for a few days after Violet’s birth. Leahy was out of town, visiting her sister.
“It’s Friday evening,” she reminded Georgia, which was probably the reason the other sitter wasn’t answering her phone. A weekend night, on such short notice, no one would be free to come, even if she were willing to leave Violet with a stranger, even if Mark would forgive her if she did.
At six thirty, after she’d fed Violet, Georgia called to check on Mark again; when he wasn’t picking up his cell, she grew nervous enough to phone Poole on his private line. Interrupting him at home, she received word that Mark’s fever was coming down when Poole had left him in another doctor’s charge.
“Call and ask for Dr. Brant,” Poole instructed. “I’m assuming Brant meant to release him.”
But Dr. Brant was with a patient, according to the unfamiliar nurse Georgia was forced to deal with this time: Ginette, like Poole, had gone home for the day.
“My husband was supposed to be discharged; I’d like to speak with him. The name is Reese, Mark Reese.”
Ten minutes later, she was told that Mark was napping. “Do you want me to get him up?”
She considered it: nothing, she felt, could calm her down except Mark’s voice. But Mark had to be tired; with Violet crying in the night he couldn’t get the rest he wouldn’t admit that he still needed. “Don’t bother him,” she said at last. “When he’s awake, though, please tell him t
o call me and let him know I’m on my way.”
As soon as she’d hung up, she dialed a number she hadn’t used in months, and never to request the favor she required tonight.
“Dad, it’s me. Any way you could drive in? Mark’s in the hospital again and I’d like to be there with him.”
“I’ll be over in an hour.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Dad.” Not since childhood had she felt such appreciation for her father: for the man’s long-standing refusal to be banished from her life, for his arranging to be close by without the least encouragement from her. Two months before, he’d moved to Providence, where he was living with a young RISD professor—near enough to help out, he’d let Georgia know, though she hadn’t accepted his offer before. Officially, she was still angry over his calling Charlie—the humiliation that he’d caused, not to mention the implicit insult to Mark—but, truth be told, she didn’t regret her father’s intervention. As a result, she and Charlie were back to speaking and the voice of her old friend had been a recent source of comfort.
The time was around seven when Georgia finished giving driving directions to her father. Over the next hour, she bathed Violet and put her down to sleep. At eight, when her father still hadn’t arrived, she cleaned the kitchen and changed the sheets on her and Mark’s bed; by eight thirty, the house was all in order and her overnight bag was packed and leaning by the door. She phoned her father, who was now officially late, but got no answer.
At nine o’clock, he called her back.
“Sugarplum, I’m sorry. I was almost there.”
“What do you mean? Where are you now?”
“The hospital.”
“With Mark? Is something wrong with Mark?”
“No, no, not Mark. It’s me. I’m at McLean. A fender bender. Nothing to worry over, but I’ve got a concussion and they won’t let me out of here without someone to take me home.”
On the ride to the hospital, with Violet, who was enraged at being woken, wailing in the seat behind her, what Georgia most wished to do was laugh. Anger was pointless, as it was pointless to blame a man who was so desperate to be loved—as Mark sympathetically described it—that he’d run his car right off the road, derailing himself and his daughter both. It was slapstick, finally: her father’s manipulative antics had moved beyond merely annoying; they’d become absurd.
Mark would see the humor in the story, she was sure; on her way to McLean, she’d resolved to make a pit stop, to keep her father waiting a while longer so that she could drop in on Mark and relay events firsthand: let him know why, instead of staying with him, she was needed to look after two babies tonight.
Entering the cancer ward for the second time that day, she heard her phone ringing again.
“Hello, Miss Calvin? This is Raj Kadam.”
The accented voice was the same she’d found that afternoon on her answering machine. “How did you get this number?”
“It was left behind in Mr. Storrow’s office, among his things. He’d spoken of you, too. As I mentioned, I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s important that I reach him.”
Already she regretted getting caught on the line, felt a foreboding, a desire to steer clear. “Storrow and I, we’re not in touch. I’m afraid he gave you a very wrong impression.”
She left off, no longer listening to whatever the stranger had to say: Dr. Poole was standing ahead of her, past reception, in the hospital hall. Poole, who was supposed to be home with his family, was here instead, without his doctor’s coat, dressed, disturbingly, in ordinary clothes. He was speaking with another doctor and they were standing only a few feet from Mark’s door. She snapped her phone shut and called out Poole’s name; at the sight of her, he cringed—scarcely perceptibly but she had seen it and so she smiled, not because she felt like smiling, not at all, but as a test. When he failed to smile back, her knees wobbled and she clutched Violet so tightly that the baby squealed.
“It’s an infection,” she told Poole, as if she were the doctor, she the one who knew.
“Yes. But we’re treating it. Let’s not get alarmed.”
It was this reassurance that she found most alarming.
What had happened to the Dr. Poole she’d come to know and trust, ever-pessimistic Poole: It’s progress, yes, but keep in mind, the odds are poor…pancreatic cancer is among the hardest types to treat…we still have a ways ahead of us, let’s not forget. Had Poole now told her Mark was in peril, that she was facing one of those horror stories where a man comes into the hospital healthy and contracts some fatal disease, if he’d told her this, she might have been able to catch her breath. It was Poole’s refusal to present bad news that came as the most fateful news of all.
“He’s going to recover from this,” Poole assured her, and already she could predict the outcome of the next thirty-six hours, up to the moment when Ginette drew her into her arms to inform her that her husband was dead.
26
His parents’ van was parked in the lot beside the dock: James Flournoy, Delivery and Repair, painted in neon orange. A brand-new van, his mother claimed, by way of refusing Charlie’s offer to buy her one that would be only for her, as an investment in her business. We’ve got everything we need, really, Charlie; it’s good enough. Even from a distance, as he drove his rental Prius into the spot beside it, he could see a dent across the van’s back bumper, rust above the wheels.
His mother didn’t stir when his car pulled in: she was seated in the van’s driver’s seat, head tilted back, catching a nap. He hoped she hadn’t been waiting here too long. From the airport, he’d called to let her know his flight had been delayed, but then roadwork on the highway cost him another hour, and now hardly twenty minutes remained before he’d need to board the ferry. No time to fulfill his promise: to take his mother out to brunch, at whatever barely decent restaurant they might manage to find here at the tip of the North Fork.
He stepped from his car and over to the van’s window. His mother’s head was tilted toward him; her eyes were closed, her mouth open, her breathing deep. A sign of depression—wasn’t it—to sleep like this in the middle of the day? If not depression then exhaustion, or perhaps it was just age: her auburn hair was clouded with gray; tiny red veins bloomed among the freckles on her cheeks. An old woman’s complexion. But his mother wasn’t, really, so very old. In Manhattan and Palo Alto, women her age still attended yoga and Pilates classes; they flirted with valets and waiters and walked around in strappy heels. Even at twenty, his mother hadn’t done these things.
He rapped on the window and his mother gave a start.
“Charlie!” Grappling with the door handle, she tried jumping down to meet him, but her seat belt strapped her in. She seemed puzzled at finding herself stuck.
“I’ll come around.” He boarded the passenger side, and she freed herself and caught him in a hungry, bony hug. The bar of the brake kicked his shins as she rocked him back and forth. Three years had passed since he’d seen his mother, since he’d smelled her still-familiar smell, mixed with the reek of ammonia and grease inside the van.
He apologized for being late. Up ahead, beyond the guardrails, he could see the ferry passing back across the sound. Ten minutes to dock, fifteen more unloading, and then the boat would be shoving out again. “I should have taken an earlier flight. We’ll just have time for a short walk.”
The sky was gray and the air heavy; rain might be coming, but it hadn’t started yet. He’d have liked to stretch his legs, after the six-hour flight and two-hour drive, but his mother was tired and preferred to sit. A small patch of rocky beach stood beside the asphalt lot. They climbed down and settled together, on the stones, to watch the ferry make its way up to shore.
“Can’t you take a later boat?” his mother asked him.
“Cutting it close as is.”
“Close for what?”
He was sure he’d told her before about his speech at Harvard, but he reminded her again—“another university engagement”—he left it at
that, omitting all references to the memorial, the matter of Julie Patel. His mother had never learned about the murder or his relation to anyone involved. So many events intervened that she knew nothing of either, and a ten-year-old story seemed too irrelevant to tell.
“Will it be like the talk you gave on TV? The Barnetts said their son saw you on a few months ago.”
February: his proud debut on Charlie Rose. He hadn’t bothered to inform his mother of any of his TV stints, for which he now felt a pang of regret. “It was nothing; it all is, really.”
“Well, I know Chip was impressed anyhow. You remember Chip Barnett? He’s in business school now. His mother told me he tried calling you a few times.”
“I must have missed it.”
“Yes, I explained that, but they keep insisting how much he’d like to speak with you.”
“All right, you let them know I’m sorry and I will. I’ve just been pretty busy these days.”
His mother studied him; a frown puckered the loose skin around her mouth. He wasn’t the only one disturbed by the figure he’d encountered on this dock, by what changes the last three years had wrought.
“Are you sleeping enough?” she asked.
“I’m fine, just took a red-eye last night.”
“A red-eye—is that some kind of pill?”
He smiled, choosing not to correct her, not to sound like the smart-ass his father made him out to be. Her concern for him was unaffected and uncomplicated; his response should be the same. “Mom, you don’t need to be worried about me.”
She had enough to worry over, after all, with a husband who was an endless source of strain and a son on active duty overseas. Luke, whose appeal to reenlist had been granted two years earlier, had since been stationed at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. From what little Charlie gleaned from his mother, Luke was doing well there: the discipline of service had rid him of those troubles, which, until then, his mother wouldn’t admit that he’d been having. Well, if his brother had righted himself again, Charlie was glad to know it, though the military was a dangerous cure. Luke could always be called into a war zone, a fear his mother never voiced, but that must haunt her still.