"I'll tell you what," said Helen, ignoring her son. "I'll have my brain tumor looked at if you have your cataracts fixed. Do you want some coffee?"
"I don't have cataracts," said Aunt Mary stubbornly. "Just half a cup."
"Ma-a," whined Russ.
"One of these days you're going to fall down the steps and break a hip. Then where will you be?" asked Helen over her shoulder as she half-filled a mug. "Careful. Hot," she said, sliding the mug across the table to her aunt.
"I wish you wouldn't treat me like a three-year-old," said Aunt Mary, working up a head of steam of her own.
"I wouldn't, if you'd act like an adult. But this thing you have about real doctors—"
"Ma, I wish someone would listen to me because—"
"Hi, everybody," said Becky as she strolled, yawning, into the kitchen. "You making breakfast, Mom, or are we on our own today?"
"On your own, I guess. I got up late."
"Okay," Becky said with a shrug. She pulled a box of Cheerios down from the cupboard. Moby, the stray cat they'd found hanging around The Open Door, heard the rattle of cereal and hopped onto the marble slab, where he began to whine piteously for a handout.
"Becky, how many times do I have to tell you," said Helen wearily, "no cats on the counter."
Aunt Mary came to the poor black cat's defense. "He goes on the counter when you're not in the room, anyway, dear. Why fight a hopeless battle?"
"Ma, even Moby comes before me. All I want is—"
"Some Cheerios?" asked Becky. "Here, twerp, have a handful," she said, threatening the box over his head.
"Screw you, Becky," said Russ, shoving her arm away.
"Russell Evett! Is that how your mother raised you?"
"Why don't you ask her," snapped Russell to his great-aunt.
"Stop it! Everyone just—shut up!"
Helen hurled the words at her family like a hand grenade, blasting them all into stunned silence. Immediately she realized that she'd never told any of them—much less all of them—to shut up before. Not in the lean years; not in the sad years; not in the first six days of the headache. But today, Saturday, the seventh day...
"I have to call a doctor," Helen said abruptly, pushing back tears of remorse. She turned on her heel and walked out of the kitchen.
****
"Well, Mrs. Evett, I really don't know what to tell you," said Dr. Thomas Jervis. The ear, nose, and throat specialist whom Helen had begun to see two weeks earlier was a kindly man of late middle age, heavily set, with twinkling blue eyes and thick gray hair that would someday turn white, at which time he'd be able to moonlight in malls as Santa Claus.
His looks alone made him easy to trust; but more than that, he had come highly recommended, which is why Helen was so dismayed when he confessed to being baffled.
"As we know, nothing in your medical history suggests a predisposition to headache," he said. "Nor did the preliminary X-rays turn up anything. Now that we have the MRI results, you can definitely dismiss those fears of a brain tumor," he added with a gently ironic smile. "I'd consider blaming your headache on a ‘sick' building, but you say you've worked there for years with no ill effects."
Sitting across from her at his paper-strewn desk, the physician rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You also say you're not stressed, but—have you had counseling since your husband's death?"
Helen shook her head gingerly; the pain was too intense for her to do it vigorously. "I'm not stressed," she said once again. "The preschool's doing wonderfully; I have no money problems. My daughter's a treasure and my son— well, he's fourteen. What can I say?
"It's true I have no love life," she added, fiddling with the handbag in her lap before she looked up again. "But that doesn't mean I'm sexually frustrated," she said forthrightly.
Dr. Jervis nodded, then said, "Since you watch your diet, don't smoke, and exercise regularly, it's my opinion that psychotherapy is the most logical avenue for you to pursue. I wish you'd think about it. You sound as though you have a lot on your plate. You could be more frazzled than you know, young lady," he said with a fatherly smile.
"I don't need a psychologist," Helen said simply.
Dr. Jervis sighed. "You've lived through a horrible experience, Helen. There's no shame in wanting to deal with it."
Helen shook her head, convinced that a shrink was the wrong way to go.
"In the meantime," said the physician without arguing further, "I'm going to prescribe something for the headache." He slid a prescription pad in front of him, then scribbled something on it as he said, "We'll start with a very low dose; I want you to read the precautions carefully. If you have any numbness, unusual coldness, or pain in your fingers, let me know at once. Do you know whether you're allergic to ergotamine?"
Shocked, Helen cried, "Oh my God!" and stood up so suddenly that she knocked over her chair. "How dare you?" she shouted, slamming her purse on the astonished doctor's desk. "Are you insane?"
Unaccountably, she burst into tears. "How could you!" she croaked, and then she ran out of his consulting room, through the waiting room, past the receptionist, down four flights of stairs without even thinking about waiting for an elevator, and out to her car.
Helen was shivering too violently to line the key up with the ignition slot; only then did she realize that she'd left her coat behind. Somehow she got the car started and the heat going. Utterly shocked and dismayed by her bizarre behavior, she sat parked in the lot of the medical building for a full ten minutes, too angry—and mortified—to go back for her coat. Once she stopped shivering, she put the car into gear.
Once she stopped shivering, she realized her headache was gone. She was convinced it was for good.
****
"Aunt Mary? These are for you. I'm so sorry for the way I've been acting. But that's over now."
Helen handed her aunt an armful of scented pink tulips and kissed the surprised old woman on her fuzzy cheek. "It's gone. The headache's gone," she explained, beaming. "Dr. Jervis said there was nothing wrong with me. It must've been psychosomatic—because ten minutes after he told me that, I felt fine."
She'd sent a second batch of tulips with a note of apology to Dr. Jervis, who seemed far too kind actually to have her hunted down and arrested for assault.
That left Becky and Russell and poor uncoddled Moby. Helen made a double batch of chocolate-chip cookies for the kids that night, humming the whole while, and offered the cat a mound of chopped liver.
It felt so good to feel good again.
Chapter 4
Peaches Bartholemew gave Katherine a glass of warm milk, read her The Cat in the Hat, and sang her an extralong lullaby. For the thirtieth day in a row, there would be no kiss from Mommy tonight, no snuggle-buggle in the rocking chair with her. A peck from Daddy, once again, would have to do.
"Daddy will be right in to say good-night," said Peaches, tucking in the bathed and sweet-smelling child with a kiss of her own. She turned down the Snow White lamp next to the crib, and the room dissolved into soft shadows and glowing light. "Night-night, sweetie."
Katie rolled her head to face the wall. She blinked once, twice. And that was all.
Leaving the door ajar, Peaches tiptoed away and stood outside the nursery, relocated on the day after the funeral from the third to the second floor. She waited long enough to be sure that Katie wasn't going to try escaping from her room again—lately the possibility that the child would hurt herself was very real—and then she went downstairs to tell Nathaniel Byrne, working in the library, that his daughter was in bed.
It had been the father's practice to kiss his daughter good-night before she got ready for bed, but after his wife's death, Nathaniel Byrne moved the kiss to after Katie was all tucked in. That way, he told Peaches, her father would be the last thing Katie saw before she slept. It never occurred to him to take over the bedtime routine altogether.
Peaches knocked softly on the heavy paneled door. When there was no response, she knocked again.
>
"Yeah," came the preoccupied voice on the other side of the door. "Come in."
She opened the door part of the way. Nathaniel Byrne was parked behind a stack of reading material piled high on a Regency mahogany library desk that sat, flanked by leather armchairs, alongside a gas-fueled fireplace burning with a small, dull flame.
Peaches had been at the Central Park Zoo watching Katie on the day the Byrnes won a bidding war at Christie's for the desk, one that had topped out at twenty-six thousand and change.
"Nat had it coming," an exhilarated Linda had said to Peaches afterward. "That was our cancelled trip to Aruba—and, of course, the cost of the guilt trip I laid on top of that."
So there he was, twenty-six thousand dollars poorer and apparently none the wiser: handsome as a movie star and brilliant at buying and selling stocks, but dumb as a doughnut when it came to family.
Peaches waited, as she always did, for him to break from the spell of his charts and reports. She admired that in him, that ability to lock on to a subject with such intensity; it's how you got things done.
"Ah ... Peaches," he said at last. "What's up?" He pitched his pen on the glossy publication that was spread out before him, took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes tiredly, and ran his hands through his thick dark hair.
"Katie's all tucked in," Peaches said softly. "Just wanted you to know."
"So early?" He looked at his watch and muttered in surprise. "Uh-oh. Or not. Okay. Just give me a couple of minutes to finish running this screen ...." He began tapping the keyboard of a computer humming at his elbow.
"Just so you know," she repeated, smiling.
He looked up and returned her smile with a remarkably boyish one of his own, and Peaches pulled the door carefully closed. After that she went to her private quarters— which had been relocated to the second floor along with the nursery—and opened the book she'd been studying for the past couple of weeks, an in-depth study of stock-market theories. She was halfway through a chapter on the Elliot Wave when she heard the telltale creak of the top stair at the second-floor landing.
Finally, she thought, and went back to her book.
A couple of minutes later, there was a soft knock at her door.
"Peaches? Are you dressed?"
She got up from the tufted damask chaise that sat in front of a pretty, unlit fireplace and opened the door to him. "Is everything all right?" she asked, reflecting the concern on her employer's face.
He didn't bother to answer her question. "Can you come downstairs?" he asked quietly.
She went out into the hall with him and they walked in silence over the magnificent Oriental runner that spilled down the steps to the main hall, itself highlighted by a large and priceless Persian rug that had been in the family for generations. As she expected, Katie's father did not lead her to the library—reserved exclusively for his work—but suggested instead that they go into the music room.
The music room was Katie's favorite: It was the sunniest in the house, and it was where she and her mother had sung Raffi songs at the piano. Ever since the funeral, the child had more or less camped out there; the evening's toys were still scattered at one end of the room. Automatically Peaches began picking them up, but Katie's father said, "Never mind those now."
He went over to a built-in, glass-front cupboard that he'd had the cook convert to a liquor cabinet. His idea had been to have his nightly cocktail in the music room while Katie played with Peaches before dinner; but that plan, like all the others he'd devised to spend more time with his daughter, had gone by the board. He was managing to get home earlier since the death of his wife—but inevitably he took his briefcase straight to the library and didn't emerge until halfway through dinner. If he emerged at all.
"Anything to drink?" he asked Peaches, taking down a decanter of whiskey. Peaches declined and he half filled a tumbler for himself, then began pacing the room. He was clearly upset, which only made him look more handsome: intensity sat well on his chiseled face.
He paused to down his drink, then went back to the makeshift bar. "Katie was asleep—obviously," he said as he poured himself a refill. "The time got away from me. Did you know that she keeps a dog-eared photo of Linda under her pillow?" he asked. "You had to know about it."
Peaches, addressing his back, said, "I didn't see how it could cause any harm, Mr. Byrne."
He turned around and gave her a wry look. "For god's sake, Peaches, call me Nat. You and Linda were thick as thieves. I don't see why I have to continue to be given this formal treatment."
"No, sir," Peaches said evenly. Her cheeks flushed pink; she looked away.
"Well, whatever," he said quickly. "If it makes you feel uncomfortable." He came over to the cushy, slipcovered sofa where she was ensconced and dropped into the Queen Anne wing chair opposite. "Katie was sucking her thumb," he said as he leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs, his hands cradling the tumbler. "Did she used to suck her thumb?" He was surprisingly intent on the answer.
Peaches hesitated, then said, "Not before—"
"Damn it," he said, with a sharp nod of his head. "I should have seen this coming. I can lose myself in my work, but what's a three-year-old supposed to do? My instinct was to keep her home, keep her safe ... away from prying questions."
He didn't take his eyes from Peaches's face. "You can tell me this if anyone can, Peaches. Have I screwed up by keeping her isolated?"
He looked so unsure of himself that Peaches allowed herself a reassuring smile. "No. Keeping Katie around familiar faces was the right thing to do—for a while. The trouble is, there aren't that many faces here," she said, gently alluding to his chronic absence. "With all the best intentions in the world—"
"I'm blowing it. I can see that." He put his drink down and fell back in his chair, deflated. "I thought that bringing my work home would make the difference. So much for the telecommuting age. You still have to read; to concentrate. Tell that to a three-year-old," he said in a rueful mutter.
"At that age she needs stimulation.. . engagement," Peaches said gently.
He dropped his head back on the armchair and closed his eyes, then sighed. "I'm not shipping her off to Switzerland, no matter what her grandmother says."
He didn't care for his mother-in-law, Peaches knew. Linda used to shrug and say, "His choice," and go off herself to visit her mother. It suited them both.
"Too bad my folks are gone," he mused, still without opening his eyes. "They'd have gotten a kick out of Katie. She's so much like her mother. Oddly enough, they were nuts about Linda." He smiled dryly and said, "I remember one time Linda was shopping with my mother on Boylston Street when some punk grabbed my mother's purse and took off. Damned if Linda didn't take off after the creep, screaming for help the whole time. A couple of good Samaritans helped her tackle the guy—Boston's like that— and she got written up in the Globe as a feisty citizen. She never showed you the clipping?"
Peaches said, "She never even mentioned it."
"No. She wouldn't," he decided. "Linda never had time for looking back. For that matter, she never bothered about the future, either; she lived entirely in the present ...."
His voice turned suddenly dark and cold and furious. Which is probably why she didn't give a shit about consequences!"
He snorted and said bitterly, "Sorry. It's the whiskey." With a visible effort he pulled out of his foul mood and sat up straight. "You're a good listener, Peach," he said with a tight smile. "I don't know where Katie and I would be without you."
Color flooded her cheeks again. She looked down, then made her eyes meet his. "Don't hold those last strange months against her. Even if she wasn't the perfect wife ...."
Peaches paused to compose herself and went on. "Even if she wasn't, she was still a devoted mother to Katie. That's what we ought to focus on," she said softly. A tear broke loose and rolled down one cheek. "We have Katie."
Nathaniel Byrne's jaw settled into a firm straight line, a kind of underline to th
e resolve in his sea blue eyes. "Yes," he reminded himself. "Katie."
He took a deep breath, apparently to clear his head. "So: preschool, do you think?" he asked in a different voice altogether. "Can we risk it? Katie should be okay there— probably. Wouldn't you say?"
Peaches had to smile; her employer could be charming in his helplessness when he wanted to.
"Katie would be fine," she said. "Maybe I can even put in a few hours as a teacher's aide. Sometimes the schools allow it. I assume you want to try to get into The Open Door preschool."
"If that's the one Linda was so keen on."
"I still have the application somewhere. I'll call Helen Evett first thing tomorrow; I hope we're not too late."
She added, "They may still want to test Katie—although, maybe not. Mrs. Evett saw samples of Katie's work when she was here."
Katie's father became indignant. "For God's sakes, we're not talking about med school here. Besides, Katie's as bright as a new copper penny. It's obvious."
Peaches smiled and added, "You also have to realize that Mrs. Evett may insist that someone visit the facility before she accepts Katie."
"Whatever it takes," he said, resigned. "Just tell me when and where."
"I will."
Relieved to be done with the subject, he glanced at his watch. "Huh. It's not all that late," he decided. "I think I'll work a little longer."
He excused himself with a quick smile and was halfway down the hail when he backtracked and ducked his head through the door of the music room. "Peach? You will come with us, won't you?"
Peaches, cradling an assortment of stuffed toys and plastic parts, laughed and said, "Wild horses couldn't keep me away."
****
Helen Evett was in the middle of an argument with her plumber when the phone rang.
It was Peaches Bartholemew, who accepted Helen's belated, awkward condolences with reassuring grace. "I'll be sure to pass on your sympathy to Mr. Byrne," the nanny said. "It's awfully nice of you to be so concerned about Katie; I can see why your preschool has a reputation for caring."
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