Abby shook her head. Abby was shorter and more matronly looking than Meg. She had a fuller bosom and larger features, taking after their father more than their mother. She had darker hair, but the same cerulean eyes. Her darker complexion hid any of the freckles that were a family characteristic. In the early days, he and Abby got along, even liked each other a lot, but after he and Meg moved to California, the strain of distance took its toll. Abby’s visits became more and more infrequent, each one driving a wider wedge between them. He knew, for one thing, Abby wasn’t happy with the modern-day transformation in male-female relationships and the way Meg was embracing it. Abby held what was becoming a more and more old-fashioned belief that the husband was totally responsible for the wife’s happiness or unhappiness. Therefore, she blamed him for any misfortune that befell the family and especially befell Meg.
Scott thought she looked out of place seated in the midst of Meg’s shark friends anyway. Her hair style was too simple and certainly not the creation of a Fabio or a Niko or some other high-priced designer of coiffeurs. Her face was naked compared to the faces surrounding her with their elaborate and expensive makeup; her wardrobe lacked the glitz of the designer styles the others wore; and the only jewelry she donned was her Timex and wedding ring. Abby looked like a stranger in a strange land. Which was surely the way she now felt, he concluded.
“You have a lot of nerve showing here,” Sharma snapped. It was more like she spit the words.
“She still happens to be my wife,” Scott replied. “Look,” he said, gazing from one end of the hateful montage to the other, “I don’t care what you all think about me. The truth is I did not hurt Meg and I don’t know where Justine is.” He held up his hand, pinching his thumb and forefinger close to each other. “I’m just this far from going completely to pieces.”
“What a pity,” Sharma said.
“Sharma,” Brooke chastised. He saw she wanted to end any possible confrontation. “We’re in the hospital.”
“I don’t care. His dramatics aren’t going to get him one iota of sympathy from me,” Sharma flared. She looked up at Scott scornfully. “I called Meg that night and you answered the phone. I knew it was you even though you wouldn’t respond. You simply hung up, but I’ve already told the police and the district attorney I will so testify in court,” she said smiling.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, you sick bitch.”
“Just the part where I twist the knife into your balls,” she retorted.
“Sharma!” Patricia cried.
Scott shook his head and stepped back.
“Could I speak to you alone, Abby? Please.”
“Tell him to go fuck himself,” Sharma advised.
Abby got up and joined him in the corridor.
“How can you sit there with those…creatures?” he began.
“You once thought these people were very special, Scott,” she reminded him. “I remember Meg telling me how you chastised her for being an Eastern snob when she resisted socializing with some of them.”
He closed and opened his eyes, something he always did when he couldn’t escape responsibility for an act or a word. It was as if he thought he could blink and erase the unpleasantness.
“Abby, I didn’t do it. I swear to God, I didn’t.”
“Whether I believe you or not is not important, Scott.”
“It is to me,” he said.
“How come? Six months ago you couldn’t care less about what I thought or didn’t think.”
“That was six months ago.” She nodded but kept her arms tightly folded around her body and remained stiff, a statue in ice. He let out the deep breath he was holding. “Did you get to speak to any of the doctors?”
“The pressure was relieved, but she hasn’t regained consciousness. She could be in a coma for a long time. There’s just no way of telling.”
He nodded.
“I want to go in to see her, talk to her,” he said.
“She’s in a coma,” Abby reminded him with some bitterness.
“She’ll hear me,” Scott said. He took another deep breath. It was so hard to breathe in here, he thought, stifling.
“What about Justine?” Abby asked. Scott shook his head.
“As long as the police believe I’m their only suspect, they won’t look where they should,” he said.
“And where is that?” Abby asked quickly.
“I don’t know, Abby.”
“If you didn’t do this, who did?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You have an idea?”
“There’s something I’m checking out. It’s too early to say yet. But before this is over, you’ll see that I’m innocent.”
“I hope so, Scott. It was bad enough you broke her heart with your extramarital business and your…”
“I know,” he said. “Please.”
Abby stared at him a moment, her eyes warming, her shoulders relaxing.
“I think I was the last to speak with her,” she said, her voice cracking.
“What? When?”
“The night it happened.”
“What time was that?” he inquired.
“Eleven-thirty my time.”
“Eight-thirty, Pacific. That’s very important, Abby. Did she say anything, tell you she heard anything in the house…”
“No. She sounded very tired, very lonely. She just wanted it all over. I know she was downstairs when we spoke because she said she was going to go up to check on Justine.”
“Did you tell this to the police?” Abby shook her head. “You should, Abby. Where are you staying?” She didn’t have to reply. “No, not with Sharma. Christ.”
“She was the one who called me, Scott. You didn’t. She’s been very thoughtful and forceful; she had me picked up at the airport and made things easier. She got me a meeting with all Meg’s doctors right away…made sure Meg has the best doctors. Thank God she was there to do it. You weren’t,” she added. It was like driving the final nail into a coffin.
Scott sighed.
“You better call the police, Abby, and tell them about your phone call,” he said and went to ICU.
“I’m going to call him Little Bit,” Justine announced proudly when Grandma returned. She was sitting on the floor in front of the dog house with Little Bit asleep in her lap, the puppy’s snoot over her knee.
“Little Bit? What a funny name. Why are you calling him that?”
“Because he’s just a little bit of a dog,” Justine said. Grandma’s eyes widened with approval. She was very impressed and said so.
“Oh, what a good idea. You’re a smart little girl, maybe the smartest little girl Grandma’s ever had visit. Oh, I know you’re going to be happy and love your new home and your new family.”
“I don’t want a new family,” Justine said. “I want to take Little Bit home to Mommy.”
“But Mommy isn’t home anymore, dear. Dr. Goodfellow showed you. She’s in Heaven now and she’s looking down at us and hoping you will be happy and well cared for again. Now you don’t want to make your old mommy sad, do you? You know what happens when the people in Heaven are made sad?”
Justine shook her head.
“They moan and they groan and then they cry thousands and thousands of tears. That’s why it thunders and lightnings and why sometimes it rains so hard we have floods.”
Justine stared up at Grandma. What she was saying made sense. For the first time, Justine noticed Grandma had come in carrying something under her arm—a big book.
“Look what I have here,” Grandma said when she saw Justine’s eyes focus on the album. She held it out. “It’s a picture album, full of pictures of your new mommy and daddy and your new home. Want to see it?”
Justine struggled with the opposing forces at work inside her. Curiosity, fascination with pictures, drew her to want to look in the book, but instinctively, she felt that as soon as she succumbed she would be closing the door a little more on any possible return to Mommy. Mommy was really g
one, forever, just like Daddy.
Grandma sat on the bed and patted the space beside her. Then she opened the album on her lap. Justine hesitated.
“Oh, what a nice-looking man and woman,” Grandma said. “And what a pretty house. There’s a big yard for Little Bit to play in and is that…yes, it is. They already have swings and a seesaw and even a little merry-go-round. See.”
Justine rose as slowly and as carefully as she could so as not to wake the dog. He whimpered, opened his eyes, but closed them again once Justine sat down on the bed next to Grandma and settled him comfortably in her lap once more. She stroked him gently and peered over Grandma’s roller-pin arms to look at the pictures.
The man and the woman looked younger than her mommy and daddy. She didn’t think they were better looking, but they were good looking. The woman had the same shade of light brown hair as Mommy did. In the first picture, the picture with them standing together and hugging each other, the woman was wearing a long, flowing skirt that looked like one of Mommy’s skirts. The breeze made her hair float off her shoulders. Her eyes were bright and her smile soft, loving, very attractive. The man was looking at her and trying to look at the camera, but it was as if he couldn’t take his eyes off her. They couldn’t have looked more loving.
As if she heard Justine’s thoughts, Grandma mentioned this.
“Don’t they look like they love each other a lot?” she asked. Justine nodded. “They do. They never fight or have bad arguments and they won’t get divorced and live apart from each other so that you and other children they will have will have to travel from one to the other.
“You know what happens to children when their parents live in separate homes?” Justine shook her head. “They get confused, terribly confused, because they don’t know who they’re supposed to love more. The mommy wants them to love her more, so she complains about the daddy all the time when they’re with her, and the daddy does the same thing when they’re with him. How do you think that makes the children feel?”
Justine didn’t know what to say. She continued to stroke Little Bit.
“It makes them feel horrible because they don’t want to hate their mommies or hate their daddies just because the mommies hate the daddies and the daddies hate the mommies. They wish they lived in a home like this one,” Grandma said, turning back to the album. “See the pretty house with the little picket fence, the colorful flowers, the nice trees and hedges, and the nice sidewalk. I used to play hopscotch on a sidewalk like that when I was a little girl.”
Grandma looked up and at Justine, a big smile on her face, her eyes wide and bright. “You know what hopscotch is?” Justine shook her head. “Maybe I’ll be able to show you before you go. Would you like that?” Justine nodded. Grandma turned back to the album.
“And here,” she continued, moving her puffy forefinger with its thick, yellow fingernail down the page, “see the backyard, all the playthings.” She turned the page. “Oh my, what’s this?” she cried, pointing to a picture in the top corner. “Do you see what I see? It’s in the backyard already.”
Justine gazed down and opened her mouth, amazed.
There was a little dog house.
“And you know what you will do when you get there? You will paint Little Bit right above the door so he will know it’s his new home, too. Wouldn’t you like to do that?”
Reluctantly, at first, but now with more desire, Justine nodded she would.
“Let’s look at your new room. Oh my!” Grandma exclaimed. “It looks just like this room only it’s much bigger and there are many more toys. Look at your little desk, and is this what I think it is?” she asked, pointing to the corner of one picture. “What does it look like to you?”
“A television set,” Justine said.
“Your own television. You can play all your own television games and watch your own shows whenever you want. Isn’t this nice?”
Justine nodded; it was nice. It was…wonderful.
“I’m going to leave the album with you so you can look at it whenever you want,” Grandma said, closing the cover. “In a little while, I’ll come back with Little Bit’s puppy food and you will feed him for the first time, okay?” Justine nodded, excited. “And then you know what we’ll do? We’ll go in the backyard here and let Little Bit do his pee pee and do do and you can run and play with him until he gets tired.”
“Is he going to sleep here tonight?”
“Oh, yes. We’ll put some old newspaper down so he can piddle if he has to, okay?” she whispered. Justine nodded. “Good. In the morning, Doctor Goodfellow will come to see you to get you ready for your trip with Little Bit.”
“My trip?”
“To your new home,” Grandma said, clapping her hands together. “All right,” she said, standing. “I’ll be right back with Little Bit’s puppy food.” She went to the door and looked back. “What a lucky little girl you are,” she said, smiling. “I wish all my little girls could be as lucky as you, but so many of them are stuck in horrible homes with parents who fight and make them miserable.
“But,” she said smiling again, “little by little, inch by inch, we’re changing that,” she said and left.
Justine stared after her for a moment and then looked down at her puppy. Was there a dog anywhere with as cute a pair of ears? She loved the way he wiggled his nose and whimpered, even as he slept. Carefully, she placed him beside her on the bed and turned back to the album that lay closed on her other side. She looked at it for a long moment, and then finally, despite her guilty feelings, she put it in her lap and opened it up to look at the pictures of what Grandma had correctly told her was to be her new home.
In every picture of them, the new mommy and daddy did look happy. The mommy always wore pretty, bright clothing and smiled widely, looking up out of the picture as if she were looking at Justine. It was the same with the daddy. His smile and his eyes were directed at her. She could almost hear their laughter. She hadn’t heard her own mommy and daddy laugh together for a long, long time.
There were other pictures of the house: the cozy little kitchen with its yellow flowery wallpaper, the living room with its circular sofa and fireplace, over which were Christmas stockings filled with candy canes and little presents, and the new mommy and daddy’s big bedroom with a painting of a little girl and a dog much like Little Bit playing in a green field. It did look like a wonderful place to live.
And if Mommy was really in Heaven forever and ever, and Daddy was never going to come back…
Little Bit opened his eyes and struggled to his feet, wobbling on the bed.
“Look, Little Bit,” she said, embracing him and placing him in her lap, “look at your nice new house.”
Scott stared down at Meg. The blow to her head and the subsequent operation had done something to the area around her eyes, creating very dark circles, as dark as death. When you’re this close to being a corpse, he thought, you start taking on the characteristics. His gaze followed the I.V. tubes to the bags of drugs and saline solution. She was plugged into so many different things, she looked like a switchboard. He returned to her face. It was expressionless, not a face in repose, not a face dreaming, not even a face suffering a nightmare or reliving the horror of what had happened; it was bland, her lips just a little bit loose in the corners. She’s in limbo, he thought, floating in that corridor between life and death.
He sucked in his breath and stepped closer. As he did so, he was aware of the nurse watching his every move. They knew who he was and what he was accused of doing. Did they expect him to try to kill her here, too? They did, and the realization that they were looking at him as potentially lethal sickened him. Strangers no longer gazed at him with indifference. When his back was turned, they were whispering, and while they looked at him, their eyes were full of accusation and fear.
He started to put his hands on the side railing, but stopped, anticipating it would bring even more attention. Instead, he lowered his head and stepped a few inches closer.
“Meg,” he said in a loud whisper. “I’m here. I’m sorry for what happened to you. You’ve got to believe me that I didn’t want this to happen, never wanted it. I’ve screwed up our lives; I know, but I never dreamed that this could happen to you or to me. I was stupid. I should have expected the worst. I have no excuse except my own weakness.
“I want you to get better, Meg. I need you to get better, not for my sake, but for Justine’s. I’m going to find her again. I promise you that. And bring her home to you. So you see, you’ve got to recuperate. Justine needs you. I realize that now. She needs you more than she needs me.
“I’m so screwed up I’d only ruin things for her anyway. Get better, Meg. Please.”
He didn’t realize how long he was standing there with the tears streaming down his face until the nurse touched his arm.
“Mr. Lester, you’ll have to leave now. I’m sorry.”
“What? Oh. Yes. Has there been any sign, any change, any indication of change?”
“Nothing substantial yet, Mr. Lester. But we’re hopeful,” she added.
He nodded and started to turn away. Then he stopped and gazed at Meg once more.
“Scott,” she had asked once, “what would you do if I died?” It was during the early years together. They had been curled up on the sofa, Meg lying against him, as they watched a rerun of Love Is a Many Splendored Thing on the old movie channel.
“I’d die, too,” he said. “Oh, my body would be alive, but all the things that matter inside would be dead.”
She liked that and, boy, did they make love that night.
What happened to that love, that feeling? He killed it with his self-indulgence, his pursuit of pleasure, which he had mistaken for happiness.
What good was all this knowledge now? he wondered. He’d be better off if he were the one in the hospital bed. In a true sense he was; he was right there beside her, only he had been hit over the head some time ago. Drugs flowed into his blood-stream, too.
He looked around at the other critical patients hooked up to life-saving equipment and medicines.
“I’ve been in ICU so long, I feel at home,” he muttered.
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