The Look of Love: A Novel

by Sarah Jio

“The last time we talked was last fall, and you were going through that awful breakup with Chris,” I say. “I’m glad to see you so happy.”

  “Thanks, Jane,” she says. “I can’t even explain it. I’ve never been with anyone I’ve clicked with like this, which makes me think that I’ve never really known love until now. Does that make any sense?”

  I nod. “It does.”

  Katie looks ahead to the record store. “A lot of people believe they’re in love when they’re not. I certainly did. Remember how much I wanted to marry Chris? I thought he was it. But looking back, I never had the type of connection I have with Josh. Nothing will ever compare to the way he makes me feel. And I didn’t even know I could feel this way; then, bam—I meet him in a coffee shop in Ballard one Sunday morning, and my world is changed forever. That’s how love goes, I think. It just hits you upside the head like Popeye with a baseball bat.”

  I grin. “Like Popeye with a baseball bat, huh?”

  “Well, that’s how it felt for me,” she says. “It was intense.” She pauses for a moment. “Jane, I want you to be in our wedding. I was going to call you this week, but running into you is even better. Would you? It would be such an honor to me if you’d say yes.”

  “Of course I’ll say yes, Katie.” I don’t tell her about my gift. I don’t tell her that the love I saw between her and Josh is so powerful, being in its very presence weakened me. I am only happy for my friend.

  After taking Sam on a quick walk, I call Dr. Heller. “Something happened today,” I say.

  “Another episode?”

  “Yes, but it was stronger than anything I’ve experienced.” I tell her about Katie and Josh. I describe the fogginess of my vision, the way my eyes clouded over almost completely.

  “Interesting,” Dr. Heller says. “And it sounds like you still believe that these symptoms have something to do with love.”

  “I know you think I’m nuts, but I do. At least I think I do.”

  “Well,” Dr. Heller says, “I’d like you to come in, and soon. I want you to have another MRI. There’s a clinical trial that I’ve been watching closely with you in mind. It may give us some entirely new information about what’s going on in your temporal lobe. Jane, I’m worried that these episodes are doing more damage to your brain than we think, and if there’s an opportunity for intervention, I think we should take it. There may be treatment options we haven’t considered before.”

  I can’t help but think of the way my vision changed in Dr. Heller’s office shortly after her interaction with Dr. Wyatt.

  “Dr. Heller, there’s something else, something I didn’t tell you about the last time I was in the office.”

  “Oh?”

  “I didn’t want to say anything because it was about . . . you.”

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  “That day, my vision clouded while I watched you speaking to Dr. Wyatt. Do you follow?” I pause for a moment. “You love him, don’t you, Dr. Heller?”

  There’s a silence, and for a moment, I worry that she’s hung up the phone.

  “Please,” I finally say. “I hope I haven’t offended you. I just thought you should—”

  Dr. Heller clears her throat. “Jane,” she finally says. Her voice falters a little. “All you have to know is that I could never, ever love Dr. Wyatt. And there is nothing more for us to discuss on the matter.”

  “Of course,” I say. “I got it wrong; I see that now.” But I know that I haven’t. Love knows no bounds. Whatever restrictions Dr. Heller has placed on her love, it was still there, as clear as day. I saw it.

  “All right, I’ll see you at an appointment soon, Jane,” she says in a distant, distracted voice. The mere mention of Dr. Wyatt makes her emotional, and Dr. Heller is never emotional.

  I say good-bye and set the phone on my coffee table, then pull out the scrap of paper with Cam’s number on it. I stare at it until the digits appear to dance.

  “This is Jane,” I greet him after he picks up on the third ring. “Jane from New Year’s Eve. I own the flower shop.” My voice is jumpy and sporadic, and my palms feel suddenly sweaty.

  “Right, Jane. Hi. I thought you blew me off.”

  “No, sorry,” I say. “My assistant forgot to give me the message until today. I . . . I wanted to get back to you.”

  “I’m glad you did,” he says confidently, with a touch of amusement, which instantly annoys me. “I wanted to see if you’d have dinner with me one night.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Yeah, you know, the meal that people eat every day around six or seven, or, more fashionably, at eight or eight thirty?”

  “You’re funny,” I say sarcastically. “And what makes you think I’ll say yes to having dinner with you?”

  “Because I’m arrogant,” he says. “And I know you like me.”

  “You are arrogant,” I reply.

  “I have to work out of the New York City office for the next three weeks, but I’ll be back the first full week of March. Let’s meet that Wednesday night. We’ll start with drinks. Lowell’s in the market? Five thirty?” He pauses, then continues, “I’ll take your silence as a yes. See you then.”

  I set the phone down and shake my head while simultaneously grinning. On the coffee table is today’s copy of the Seattle Times that I picked up from Mel’s newsstand earlier. I flip open the newspaper and my eyes scour the front page, then flip beneath the fold to a headline that reads: WOMAN REACHES PEOPLE WITH FLOWERS. The photo is grainy and black and white, but I recognize the woman immediately: Colette.

  I scan the first few paragraphs of the story:

  A native of Paris, Colette Dubois was raised in a flower shop on the Left Bank. When she came to Seattle in 1972, she brought her love of flowers with her and began working in the flower shop at Swedish Hospital. That position soon turned into a unique position at the hospital, “special supervisor of floral affairs.”

  “Basically what I do,” she says, “is make sure that the hundreds of flower arrangements that arrive at the hospital each day get to the people they’re supposed to.”

  And then there are the patients who aren’t sent flowers. Dubois finds a way to brighten their day. “We have a team of donors and volunteers who source flowers from weddings and special events and repurpose them for people in the hospital who need cheering. There are a lot of things I don’t understand about life, but over the years I’ve learned one thing: Never underestimate the power of flowers to reach someone’s soul.”

  When asked what her favorite flower is, Dubois offers a quick response. “Gloxinia,” she says. “It’s the flower that represents love at first sight.”

  Chapter 9

  220 Boat Street #2

  Lo takes a long look at herself in the mirror. Thirty is approaching, not that age matters much to her. She’ll still be sexy at forty, fifty, sixty-five. She knows that. It’s her good genes. Her mother, after all, has a boyfriend twenty years her junior.

  Men. Lo knows them well: what makes them tick, what makes them quiver. She’s had a lot of them, after all. Young ones. Old ones (before her self-imposed rule of forty-two, that is). Rich ones. Poor ones. She lets them in her bed but never into her heart.

  And then there’s Grant. He walked into the flower shop like an arrow, or a perfect sword lily, and she felt it pierce her. She felt him.

  Lo sighs, circles her eyes with a black eye pencil, then smudges the edges before applying mascara in swift strokes.

  Rain pelts the roof of her Lake Union houseboat. It would be a nice night to stay in, with a glass of wine and a good book. Normal people do that. But Lo is not a normal person. Lo has the need to fling herself into the world. To be on the arm of a man. To be adored. Jane asked her once why she filled her schedule with so many dates. She asked her, point-blank, if she was uncomfortable being alone, if she peppered her lif
e with men and noise to quiet her own voice, to numb some sort of pain. But Lo shrugged off her friend’s words. She changed the subject. And then she went home and put on a tight Helmut Lang dress and went dancing with a man named David.

  She slips on her heels when she hears a knock at the door. It’s Grant, here to take her out to dinner at a secluded restaurant in West Seattle, where no one is likely to recognize them. After all, he is still married. This is a fact that nags her like a swollen mosquito bite on the farthest corner of her back that she can’t quite reach.

  “You look stunning,” he says, standing in the doorway. He’s wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt with the top button open, dark jeans, and a pair of Italian leather shoes. His smile makes her melt in a way no other man’s has.

  “You don’t look too bad yourself,” Lo quips.

  “Ready?”

  She nods, locks her door, then takes his hand. Her heels clack along the dock. She likes the way his hand feels in hers. She likes the way she feels standing beside him.

  At the restaurant, they slip into a dark booth in the far corner. Instead of sitting across from each other, they nestle in on the same side, and Grant reaches for Lo’s hand under the table, knitting their fingers together. They eat, they drink, but mostly they’re lost in this secret moment, this delicious, connected place. They’ve barely touched their wine, and yet both of them are drunk, on love and desire.

  “What are we doing?” Lo asks. “This . . . What is it?”

  Grant doesn’t hesitate. He kisses her hand. “It’s love,” he says. “I know it.” He closes his eyes tightly, then opens them again. “I know it, I know it, I know it.”

  She smiles. “I do too,” she says. The words fly out of her mouth, and in a surprising way, she hardly recognizes her own voice. In fact, she hardly recognizes her own feelings. And it frightens her. She looks away from him and refolds the napkin in her lap.

  “Is it already ten?” Grant says then.

  It could be ten or eleven or three in the morning. Lo doesn’t know; nor does she care. Time is frozen, somehow. She glances at her cell phone. “Yeah.”

  He rubs his forehead. “I have to get home. My alibi was that work dinner I had earlier. If I stay out any later, I—”

  “I know,” Lo says quickly. “I get it.”

  He runs his hand along her thigh and pulls her closer to him. “Don’t be sad, baby,” he whispers. “We’ll figure this out.”

  She nods and looks away. She knows his situation is complicated, to say the least. He’s going to leave his wife just as soon as his attorney helps him formulate an exit plan, one that won’t leave him hemorrhaging money or cut him out of shared custody of his two daughters.

  “You know what this feels like?” Lo says, as Grant pulls out his wallet and sets cash on the table.

  “What?” he asks, taking her hand in his again.

  “It feels like we’ve been climbing a mountain,” she explains. “Everest. We started out at the same base camp and began our climb together. But I climbed faster. I always do. I made it to the top, and I can see you down there on a ledge below. I keep wanting to throw you a rope to help you up. I keep wanting to yell down for you to keep climbing.”

  “I’m climbing,” he whispers in her ear.

  “But what if you run out of oxygen? Or what if your gear fails you? Or what if—”

  “What if I’m attacked by angry mountain ants?”

  “Yeah, angry mountain ants,” she says with a smile.

  Grant returns her smile, then presses his nose against hers. Their eyes lock. “I will never, ever stop climbing to you,” he whispers.

  They are perfect words. And it should be enough, this promise of his. But Lo finds herself wanting more. She can’t help it. She wants all of him. Every lazy Sunday morning. Every glimpse of the moon from the bedroom window. Every good-morning and good-night.

  His cell phone buzzes, and he pulls away, their moment shattered. “It’s home calling,” he says. Lo knows that “home” means his wife, and she hates it. She hates the secrecy. She hates his unavailability. She hates all of it.

  “Right,” she says, turning away. She won’t let him see her tears. She thinks of her favorite Billy Joel song, “And So It Goes,” the one Jane’s mother introduced her to. The lyric, “In every heart, there is a room, a sanctuary safe and strong.” Yes. This is where she will tuck away her love, her fear that it will not be actualized. No man has entered this room in her heart.

  But then Grant whispers three words in her ear that make her want to hand him the key: “I love you.”

  “I love you,” she whispers back.

  The words are simple and sure. And they change everything.

  Chapter 10

  March

  Dr. Heller shines a light into my eyes. “And how has your vision been lately?”

  I shrug. “Just a few flare-ups; nothing major after that incident with my friend Katie at the market.” I remind her of the intensity of the feeling and how I struggled for balance.

  “You know,” I continue, “it’s all starting to make so much sense. I was a shy kid. I hated making eye contact with people. I kind of went through life with tunnel vision. I kept my head down. I didn’t know it then, but when I became curious about people, it activated my gift. It caused me to see things I didn’t want to see.”

  Dr. Heller nods, but she doesn’t look entirely convinced, and I know she’s still jarred by what I told her about her and Dr. Wyatt.

  I pause to remember my first episode, on the morning my father left our family. I was too young to understand it then, of course, but I saw love, real love, though the lens of heartbreak. I recount it to Dr. Heller.

  “It’s an interesting coincidence,” she says, reaching for my chart. “But I believe there is a medical, scientific explanation here that we haven’t explored before, especially in light of your most recent brain scans. You see, the tumor on your optic nerve seems to be growing. I don’t want to alarm you, but I’ve recently consulted with the physician at Johns Hopkins who’s finishing up the clinical trial I mentioned at your last visit. He and I have looked at your scans together, and we believe you may be suffering from a very rare and serious condition called Crane’s syndrome, which eats away at the temporal lobe slowly at first, but then, like a cancer, increases in speed.” She lets out a sigh that tells me she’s concerned, perhaps very. “Jane, our biggest worry for you at this juncture is that, not unlike seizure activity, these episodes may be damaging your brain function. My hope is that with intervention, we can stop them from happening, stop the progressive damage to your brain.”

  I clasp my hands tightly in my lap. “And if we don’t . . . intervene?”

  “I believe it’s our only hope,” Dr. Heller says honestly.

  There’s a knock at the door. “Come in,” Dr. Heller says. A moment later Dr. Wyatt and the nurse, Kelly, walk in.

  “Kelly, take her vitals, please,” Dr. Heller says before turning to Dr. Wyatt. He’s jarringly handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and the type of sculpted face and brown eyes that would make him a good candidate to play a handsome doctor on TV. “Did you hear from your colleague?”

  Dr. Wyatt nods, then turns to me. “Jane, we’ve consulted with a top neurologist at Hopkins, an old mentor of mine. He thinks you’re in true danger of cognitive decline if we don’t”—he pauses to look at Dr. Heller—“if we don’t operate.”

  I shake my head. “Operate?”

  Kelly straps the blood pressure cuff to my arm as Dr. Heller exchanges a knowing look with Dr. Wyatt. “Jane,” she says. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. But there is a procedure that we believe will stop these episodes from continuing. It involves cutting off blood flow to the tumor residing on your optic nerve. We think you’re a great candidate for it.”

  My heart beats faster as Kelly takes my blood pressure. I look a
t her, then at the two doctors beside me. My vision begins to cloud. I rub my eyes.

  “Jane, are you all right?” Dr. Heller says, her face awash with concern.

  “It’s happening again,” I say. “I told you that I saw—”

  “Lie down,” she says quickly. “Kelly, get her some water.”

  Kelly nods and runs out the door. Dr. Wyatt takes a step back. “I’ll leave you two now,” he says. “Let me know if you need me. I’ll be down the hall.”

  Dr. Heller gives him a grateful smile, then turns back to me. “I’m worried, Jane, that if we don’t put this operation on a fast track, your health is only going to decline.”

  “How much time do I have to decide?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “But the longer you wait, the greater the risk.”

  My mind is swirling with the consequences of the medical ultimatum I’ve been given, and there is only one person who can help me make the decision. According to the Seattle Times, Colette must be here in the hospital, working wonders with flowers.

  “I’m looking for a staff member,” I say at the reception desk to a dark-haired woman with a prominent nose and gold hoop earrings. “Her name is Colette. She runs the flower program for the hospital, I think.”

  “Oh, yes, Colette,” the receptionist says warmly, looking up from her computer and pointing. “Her office is just down the hall, across from the gift shop.”

  “Thank you,” I say, walking ahead to a single open door. I peer in without knocking. Inside, there are plentiful flower arrangements and some balloons. I notice one that reads, “You Are a Champion.”

  Colette stands in the corner. She’s wrangling an unfortunate arrangement of carnations onto a cart. I grimace at the overuse of baby’s breath. “Oh, hello, Jane,” she says, smiling, when she looks up and sees me.

  “Hi,” I say, taking a step forward. I feel timid in her presence. “I didn’t know that you worked here until I saw the article in the Times. I . . . there’s something about flowers, isn’t there? And green eyes. We’re a certain type of woman, aren’t we?”