by Ann Tatlock
“Yes.” He smiled. “But if you give me half a chance, you might decide I’m not such a bad person.”
Jane smiled in return. “I suppose you hear a lot of lawyer jokes.”
“I hear my share.”
“But it’s the family business?”
“Believe it or not, it is. My father and his brother both went into law and eventually started their own firm. Now my cousin, my brother, and I are all partners in the firm. We all have the same last name, so we might have called it Pearcy, Pearcy, Pearcy, Pearcy, and Pearcy, but we decided that would be a little too redundant. So we simply call it The Pearcy Law Firm, and we let that cover all of us.”
Jane laughed aloud and Jon-Paul Pearcy joined her. “It must get a little confusing for the secretary,” Jane said, “when someone calls and asks to talk to Mr. Pearcy.”
“That it does,” Jon-Paul said with a definitive nod. “Especially since both my brother and my cousin are juniors. So we have David Pearcy Sr. and David Pearcy Jr. and Stephen Pearcy Sr. and Stephen Pearcy Jr.”
“My goodness! Your poor secretary must be pulling out her hair!”
Jon-Paul looked serious and waved a finger at Jane. “I think you might have just solved the mystery of why Marion wears so many wigs.” He chuckled and played a few lively notes on the piano to punctuate his joke. “But we all have our own area of specialty. Mine is disability law.”
“Oh, I see. So you have clients here at the VA?”
“I’ve had some clients here but—oh, you’re wondering what I’m doing here playing the piano.”
“Yes, I guess I am.”
“Well, it’s because of my sister Carolyn. She’s a nurse up on four. I try to get out here about once a week or so to have lunch with her in the cafeteria. Sometimes I end up waiting for her to break away from the floor, so I figure I might as well spend the time entertaining the troops.”
“I think it’s great that you do. And it’s really nice that you come out and have lunch with your sister.”
“Well, otherwise—the way both our schedules are—I’d never see her, even though we both live right here in Asheville.”
Jane smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. He turned his eyes away, seemed to be listening to something. The elevator doors opened, and a young man in maroon-colored scrubs stepped out and marched deliberately to the piano.
“Hey, Jon-Paul,” he said as he casually rested both arms atop the instrument.
“Hi, Gus,” Jon-Paul greeted him. “What’s going on? You on break?”
“Yup.” The young orderly nodded and pulled a cigarette out of the breast pocket of his uniform. He stuck it in his mouth but didn’t light it. It moved up and down as he spoke. “Carolyn sent me down to tell you she’s going to be a little late. She said if you can’t wait, she understands, but she hopes you will, since Melissa is joining you for lunch.”
“No problem,” Jon-Paul said. “Any idea how long?”
“Twenty minutes tops,” Gus replied, the cigarette flapping. “Believe me, Jon-Paul, it’ll be worth your wait. That Melissa, she’s a looker.”
“Yeah?”
The orderly let go a long whistle. Then he looked at Jon-Paul and seemed chagrined. “Well, sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“No problem, Gus. Hey, thanks for passing along the message.”
“Sure thing.” He rapped the piano with the knuckles of one hand. “Well, gotta get the smoke in before my break’s over. Then it’s back to bedpans and mopping floors. I’ll tell ya, it’d be nice to have a cushy job like yours. One that would impress the ladies too. Well, take it easy, counselor.”
When he left, Jon-Paul turned back to Jane. His cheeks were slightly ruddy. “I love my sister dearly, but she has one irredeemable fault.”
“Oh?” Jane said. “What’s that?”
“She’s always setting me up on blind dates.” Jon-Paul paused, frowned, and finally chuckled. “No pun intended.”
Jane cocked her head. “All right.”
“Well, enough of that. So Jane, what brings you to the VA?”
Jane looked at her hands, stealing a moment to think before answering. How much to say? “My fiancé is here,” she said at length. “He was wounded in Iraq.”
Jon-Paul leaned closer. “I’m sorry,” he said somberly. “Will he . . . do the doctors say he’ll be all right?”
“Well”—another glance away, then back—“he was shot in the neck. He’s paralyzed. They don’t expect him to regain much movement.”
“I’m so sorry. Really. If there’s ever anything I can do . . .”
His voice trailed off. Jane nodded and attempted a smile. “Thank you. Well, I’d better go visit with Seth. Have a good time at lunch today.”
“Yeah, thanks. Say, what time is it anyway?”
Jon-Paul pulled back his sleeve to look at his watch. Except that he didn’t look at it. Instead, he pushed a button that released the crystal covering the face. With an index finger, he tenderly touched the hands of the watch beneath.
And with that, Jane understood his joke about the blind date. Jon-Paul Pearcy, player of Moonlight, was blind.
8
Did you think about what I asked you to do?”
Jane felt her jaw tighten. Seth hadn’t even bothered to say hello when she walked into the room. He had simply glanced up from his wheelchair, then looked away. “Of course I thought about it,” she said.
“Well?” he asked quietly.
“Well what? I wasn’t considering whether or not I would do it, because I won’t. What I can’t understand is how you can even ask me. I can’t . . .” She was angry now. She stopped herself, not wanting to slip into a tirade, not wanting to say things she would later regret. She slumped down in the one chair in the room and looked at the floor.
After a moment Seth said, “I was hoping you’d see it my way.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
She took a deep breath. “This isn’t like you, Seth. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
He almost smiled then. He latched on to her gaze. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not the Seth you knew, Jane. That’s just it. I will never be the same person again.”
“Then maybe you can be someone different but just as good.”
“It’s not possible. There’s nothing left.”
“You’re left! You are left. The you inside. That’s something.”
“But I’m trapped. I can’t—”
“And you might get better. You’ve already regained some movement. You might regain more.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It has to be enough.”
“What? That maybe someday I can bend an elbow or flex my wrist? It’s not enough, Jane. I’ll never have my hands back.”
“So you want to give up?”
“Yes.”
She slapped the chair’s armrests with both hands. “How can you do this to me?”
“Jane, I—”
“You’re only thinking of yourself! What about your parents? What would it do to them if you . . . if you gave up?”
He shut his eyes, opened them, said quietly, “You will all go on. I know you will. You’ll be all right.”
Jane cried out in frustration. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you’re talking like this. You’ve never been a quitter before. Now look at you. You’re not the only person who’s ever had a spinal cord injury, you know. Other people are injured and then go on to live perfectly happy lives—”
“Stop it, Jane. Just stop. I don’t want to hear it. You don’t have a clue what it’s like. You’re not the one in this chair, unable to move, unable to do anything . . .” He didn’t finish. He turned his face to the wall.
She stood abruptly, crossed her arms, and moved to the window. For a long while she leaned a shoulder against the glass and looked out at the drizzling rain. “You were always the one who
believed in a loving God,” she said. “I was always the one who didn’t know for sure. What about your loving God now, Seth? Has He stopped being loving because you were wounded? Or have you decided He was never really there after all?”
Minutes passed. Dirty drops of rain slithered wormlike down the glass. Voices drifted in from the hall, and a medicine cart clanked across the linoleum. Somewhere, a nurse’s bell rang and rang again. When Seth finally spoke, Jane turned away from the window to look at him.
“When we got off the plane in Germany,” he said, “we were put in buses and taken to Landstuhl, the military hospital. It was raining, like today, only it was cold. The rain was like ice. Everything was gray.”
Seth moved his gaze to Jane, as though to see if she was listening. She nodded for him to go on. He looked away, up toward the ceiling, and started again. “I didn’t know the other guys on the bus, but everyone was wounded to one extent or another. A couple of guys had had limbs amputated back in Iraq. One guy was blind, I think. At least he had bandages over his eyes. The person next to me had been burned pretty bad. And of course a few of us had been shot. Most of the guys tried to joke about it, saying things like our injuries were our ticket out, our pass to go home, blah blah blah, you know, like something good had happened to us. We were the lucky ones because we were getting out. Still, a couple of the guys were crying. They tried to be quiet about it, but I could hear them. I couldn’t talk at all because of the tube in my throat. I could only listen. What I really wanted to do was put my hands over my ears, but of course there was no way I was going to do that. It was like I was trapped in concrete. I was still inside my body, but I couldn’t make it move anymore. So I just had to lie there and listen to the jokes and the men crying and the rain beating against the windows.”
He swallowed hard. Jane watched as a crimson streak snuck up the side of his neck and fanned out across his cheek. Whether red was the color of anger or sadness, or both, she didn’t know. She waited. He blinked a few times while moistening his lips with his tongue.
“When we finally got to the hospital,” he went on, “the bus pulled up to the emergency room entrance, and a whole crowd of people came out to meet us. They opened the rear door of the bus and started taking guys out. I was just lying there waiting and watching them work. They worked with this kind of quiet efficiency that I found both comforting and frightening. I mean, I knew I was in good hands, but I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be part of this incoming paddy wagon of wounded soldiers, you know? I just kept thinking, Can somebody get me out of this picture? I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t belong here. Somebody take me back to where I belong.
“But like it or not, I was there, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Finally my turn came to be lifted out of the bus. One of the nurses was holding an umbrella over the door, but she couldn’t keep out the cold and the rain. I looked up at the faces around me. A priest was there. I could tell by his collar he was a priest. He came up to my stretcher, and he leaned over me and said, ‘Seth, you’re safe now. You’re in Germany.’ And I remember thinking it was too late. There was no use pretending I was safe and that everything was all right. It was far too late for that.
“Then, just as they started to take me away, the priest raised his hand and made the sign of the cross over me. He was wearing the same kind of rubber gloves the medical people were wearing, like not even the priest could touch us with his bare hands or he’d catch our bad luck or something.” Seth paused and sniffed out a laugh. “So I watched his hand making the sign of the cross over me, and for the first time in my life I thought, ‘Maybe it’s all a lie. Maybe everything I ever believed is a lie.’”
Jane was beside his wheelchair now, gazing down at him. She wondered at his sudden calm. His expressionless eyes refused to meet hers but stared dully up at the ceiling. They looked like two round patches of frozen earth. Jane leaned down and pressed her cheek against his. “I’m so sorry, Seth,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened. But I promise you, we’re going to be all right. We’re going to make it all work somehow.”
She pulled back and waited for him to meet her gaze. But he went on staring at the ceiling, as though she weren’t there.
9
On the first floor of the VA Medical Center, just beyond the lobby, was a small canteen called The Bistro. Vending machines lined the back wall. A dozen tables with corresponding chairs were bolted to the floor. The wall between the corridor and the canteen was full of windows so that one couldn’t pass The Bistro without being enticed to stop and have a snack.
Jane stopped, but not because she was hungry. She stopped because she saw Truman Rockaway, alone at one of the tables, drinking from a pint carton of chocolate milk.
He raised a hand toward her, beckoning her in. She entered the canteen and sat down across from him. They were the only two people in the room.
“Got milk?” he asked, lifting the cardboard carton.
He smiled. She smiled in return. “I haven’t drunk chocolate milk since I was a kid.”
“We ought to remedy that. My treat.”
“Well . . .”
“I insist. After all, chocolate is a natural antidepressant, you know.”
She looked at him, chewed her lower lip. “Is it that apparent?”
“It doesn’t have to be apparent. It can be deduced. You’re in a hospital visiting your fiancé who is upstairs in the spinal cord unit unable to move from the neck down.” He rose and rummaged around in the pocket of his slacks while he walked to one of the machines. He dropped a series of coins into the slot and pushed a button. A carton of milk nose-dived off the shelf behind the glass and landed with a thud in the lip of the machine. Truman retrieved it and set it on the table in front of Jane. “Drink up, young lady,” he said.
“Thank you, Truman.”
He settled himself back down at the table as she bent back the spout. She took a long drink and nodded. “Tastes good.”
“I drink it every day.”
“You go straight for the hard stuff to drown your sorrows?”
He laughed. “I guess I do.”
They were quiet for a time, lost in their own thoughts, downing their chocolate milk. Finally Jane asked, “Where are you from, Truman?”
“Here and there,” he said. “But originally? I’m from Travelers Rest, South Carolina.”
“Oh yeah? I used to know someone from there. She was one of our cooks.”
“What was her name?”
“Laney Jackson.”
Truman thought a moment, shook his head. “It doesn’t sound familiar. But anyway, I haven’t been in Travelers Rest for a long time. So Laney, she cooked for your family?”
“Well, kind of. My dad and my grandmother ran a bed-and-breakfast in Troy. They still do. We have our own apartment at the back of the house, with a private kitchen and everything. Anyway, when I was a child, Laney was one of the cooks who took care of the guests. She left Troy years ago, though, and I’ve lost touch with her.”
“Uh-huh.” Truman finished his milk, crushed the carton with one hand, and tossed it toward the open trash can. It went in.
“Two points,” Jane said.
“I should have played basketball,” Truman quipped.
“Yeah, if you’d gone pro, you’d be rich.”
“You’re right. Instead, I became a doctor, and I can tell you, not all doctors are rich.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Truman folded his hands on the table and seemed to study them. “Have you seen Seth today?”
Jane nodded. “I just left his room.”
“And how was he?”
“Depressed.”
“That’s normal. Everyone in his situation goes through that. It’s part of the healing process.”
“I know.” Jane drew in a deep breath. “I’m trying to be patient. But he’s so different. I’ve never seen him like this before. It’s like he came back from Iraq a
totally different person, not just in body but . . . I don’t know, in soul too, I guess.”
Truman tapped the table with the soft balls of his hands. “Tell me about him, Jane.”
“Tell you about Seth?”
“Yes. What was he like before?”
As Jane thought about his question, a smile spread slowly across her face. “He was just about the greatest guy in the world. Oh, I know, probably every woman says that about her fiancé, but I really mean it. He was a great guy. Everyone liked him.”
“You met him in Troy?”
“Yes. We grew up together. I’ve been in love with him since second grade. It took him a little longer—well, about fifteen years longer—but he finally noticed me.”
Truman smiled. “I’m glad he did.”
“Me too.” Jane nodded her head absently for a moment. “It was Christmastime, and Gram and Dad were hosting our annual open house. Dad always grumbles about it, but Gram does it every year anyway. Practically the whole town comes through, just to mingle and drink eggnog and listen to Christmas carols on Gram’s old phonograph. I think it’s kind of a nostalgic trip back in time for most people, since the house is so old and full of antiques. Anyway, in . . . let’s see, it must have been 2002, Seth came to the open house with his parents. For whatever reason, he’d never been in the Rayburn House before. That’s the name of our B&B. Fortunately for me, he was taken with the woodwork.” She laughed lightly. “Seth’s a carpenter. He says he’s addicted to wood the way a hillbilly’s addicted to moonshine.”
Truman laughed out loud, a deep throaty laugh. It made Jane smile.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I gave him the grand tour of the house, attic to basement. He pointed out things I’d never even noticed before or maybe had stopped seeing a long time ago. You know, the shape of the balusters on the staircase, the hand-crafted trim between the walls and the ceiling, the little rosettes carved into the woodwork above one of the fireplaces. I guess you could say he ended up giving me a tour of my own home. Well, afterward we sat by the fire in the parlor for a long time, talking about everything from spiral nails to cordless saws to what we planned to do with our lives. As they say, the rest is history.”