She went to the ladies’ room and he stared at his phone messages, lifted the receiver to return a call but instead dialed the thrift shop. It was closed. Due to inclement weather. Judith had recorded the message. Again he dialed his home and again the answering machine picked up. Where was she in this inclement weather?
He slammed the phone down and decided, with irrational certainty, that he knew exactly where she was. He imagined her with Jeffrey Kahn in the garden of his isolated home, staring up at the storm-swept sky. Sadness and anger commingled. Anger triumphed over sadness. He picked up his attaché case, dimmed his office light and left.
Nancy waited for him at the elevator. She had loosened her hair. It floated to her shoulders, the color of ice. He thought that if he lifted a single silver tendril it would be cold to his touch.
They did not speak in the cab that carried them to her apartment. They were silent as she opened the door, as he followed her in. The small rooms were blanketed in heat and she hurried to open the windows and allow the rain-cooled breeze to sweep in.
‘I’d forgotten how good rain could feel,’ she said and leaned forward. She held her hands out to the rapidly falling droplets, and because she laughed, so did he. The downfall was steady and thunder rumbled in the distance.
‘At last,’ she murmured and moistened her face with the drops that glittered on her fingers.
‘At last,’ he agreed.
She lifted one hand to her cheek and lightly touched his chin with the other. Instinctively, he gripped her wrist and at once released it, reminding himself that the rules of the strange games they had been playing for so many weeks had not changed.
She stepped back. ‘I’ll take a quick shower,’ she said. ‘The takeout menus for Bombay House are on the table. You order.’
‘Yes. OK,’ he said.
He studied the choices, struggling with a decision. Samosas? Mulligatawny soup? Always it was Judith who decided what to order, knowing his preferences as she knew his preferences in all things. The intrusion of the thought unsettled him. He opted for the more familiar foods, placed the order with the restaurant and wandered into the living room, glancing at the books on Nancy’s shelves, the pictures on her walls. There were the framed museum reproductions and battered copies of Modern Library editions. College leftovers, Judith would call them. Her words, when she made such comments, were judgmental but not meant to be unkind. She was rarely unkind but she had been trained to analyze and assess. In literature, as in life, furnishings gave clues to the nature of characters. She had written papers analyzing the domestic realms of Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, the unhappy suburban households of Cheever and Updike. The placement of a couch, chairs set at a distance from each other, a canopied bed or a sagging cot offered clues about the quality of a marriage.
Visiting his parents’ home for the first time, Judith had immediately discerned that his father’s small den had only one chair, that his mother slept in an alcove on a bed that was narrow and unwelcoming, evidence of the separate lives they had lived.
‘Such a waste. Things could have been so different. For you. For them,’ she had murmured. ‘She could have forgiven him.’
He had agreed then, and yet he himself had withheld forgiveness and retreated into an unshared room, an unshared bed.
‘Jeffrey Kahn and I …’ Judith had said, and too swiftly he had silenced her.
He had feared what else she might say. He had feared his own response. He had feared that their marriage, so dangerously wounded by loss, could not sustain yet another fissure. He had been wrong. So very wrong.
He thought to call her cell phone again, but the bathroom door opened and he glimpsed Nancy disappearing into her bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.
He walked down the hallway to Lauren’s bedroom. Her treasures, a family of china rabbits, brightly jacketed books, a collection of sea shells, neatly arranged on the bookcase and bureau that had belonged to his daughter. The familiar candy-striped comforter covered the bed and a faded Raggedy Anne rested on the pillow, a replacement for the tattered teddy bear that had been Melanie’s nocturnal companion from earliest childhood. That bear, he knew, was in a carton that contained her baby blanket, her favorite books and a photograph album, which Judith had thrust into a corner of her closet.
He moved across the room. The magenta rug was soft beneath his feet. He went to the window that overlooked a narrow urban alley. The curtains that matched the cheerful comforter hung straight. In Melanie’s room they had been tied back with sashes so that they would not obscure her view of the apple tree just below her window. She delighted in shouting out its progress.
‘There are leaves,’ she had called to them. ‘Come see. Leaves.’
‘There are flowers. White flowers.’
One morning he had sprinted up to a low-hanging branch and plucked a cluster of blossoms which he had placed on her pillow as she slept. The tender memory tugged at his heart and he turned away.
The doorbell rang and he went to answer it. A smiling Indian youth handed him two insulated bags and his smile grew even broader as David pressed a large bill into his hand, declining the offer of change. He placed the fragrant containers of food on the kitchen table and turned to see Nancy in the doorway holding out two glasses of wine.
Her hair was damp, her face rosy from the shower. She wore a long-sleeved white belted robe, sheer enough to reveal the fullness of her breasts, the narrowness of her waist, the slight plumpness of her thighs. She smiled shyly, uncertainly.
He took the glass from her and answered the question he read in her eyes. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘So beautiful.’
He marveled at her daring, at her courage, even as he castigated himself for the false encouragement he might have offered her. How wrong he had been to open his arms and welcome her into his embrace when she entered his office that morning. Regret had haunted him throughout the day. He understood that it was possible – no, probable – that she had misunderstood his intent. His spontaneous gesture of relief and gratitude might have been perceived by her as an acknowledgment of a new commitment between them.
He moved toward her, steeling himself against a possible surge of desire, but all he felt was the weight of sadness, a pathos he could neither ignore nor deny. He was a man in late middle age, staring at the luminous body of a vulnerable young woman. It shamed him that he had, inadvertently, yet reprehensibly, encouraged her in a false hope, a dangerous fantasy. It was, he knew, a triple betrayal. He had betrayed himself, betrayed Judith, betrayed the lovely and lonely young widow who stood before him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘So sorry. You have been a wonderful friend to me. I care deeply for you. As a friend. You understand what I am saying?’
‘Yes.’ Her response was a barely audible whisper. ‘I thought … I was wrong.’
She turned and left the room. He sat on the soft gray couch and waited. Minutes later, she stood before him, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair tied back. Her eyes were dangerously bright and he hoped that she would not weep. She did not.
‘I should go,’ he said.
‘But the food …’ She pointed to the kitchen and they both smiled wistfully.
‘No longer hungry,’ he said truthfully. ‘Freeze what you don’t eat. You and Lauren will have a feast.’
‘Yes. We will. Thank you.’
He took her hand and raised it to his lips. ‘I’m grateful,’ he said. ‘For everything.’
She nodded. ‘As I am.’
They smiled at each other in a mutuality of relief and regret.
He knew that she would weep when he left. He himself felt close to tears, yet weak with relief. He had been honest. She had been brave. There had been neither drama nor recrimination, only acceptance. Acceptance. The word teased. Of course. He remembered Judith telling him that Evelyn, her therapist, claimed that acceptance was the final stage of grief. Perhaps he and Nancy, together, through their long weeks of sharing, had reac
hed the final stage.
He kissed her on the cheek. She touched his hand lightly and he left, closing the door softly behind him. He waited in the hallway until he heard the click of her deadbolt. He wanted her to be safe.
Standing in the shelter of her building’s canopy, listening to the drumbeat of the falling rain, he scoured the street for a cab. His cell phone rang. Judith, he thought hopefully. Judith, worried because he was so late arriving home, because it was raining, because she cared. About him. Only about him.
He flipped his phone open. A peal of thunder obscured the voice he had difficulty recognizing until she said her name.
‘Denise. David, it’s Denise.’
Another bolt of thunder and then her muffled words. ‘Brian,’ she said. ‘Accident. Parkland Hospital. Come. Please come.’
His heart pounded. His hand trembled. He clutched the phone tighter, but deafened as he was by terror, he could barely hear her.
The thunder was still. Lightning flashed, illuminating his phone pad.
‘Alive? Brian. Is he alive?’ His words dropped like stones into the sudden quiet.
‘Alive. Yes, thank God. He’s alive.’ She spoke more clearly now, her words tumbling over each other as he struggled to process them. ‘Serious,’ she said. Had she prefaced it with ‘not’? Yes. ‘Not serious.’ ‘Alive.’ Another roll of thunder sounded but it did not obscure her plea.
‘David. Just come. We need you. You and Judith.’
The urgency in her voice propelled him into action. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. I – We … We’ll be there as soon as possible.’
He darted into the street, indifferent to the sheets of pouring rain. Miraculously, a cab appeared. Miraculously, the driver knew where Parkland Hospital was. David sank back and dialed Judith’s cell phone.
Pick up, he commanded her mentally as his cab raced through the silent rain-swept streets, with her phone ringing again and again.
Judith, always a careful driver, did not shift her eyes from the road before her as the storm intensified. Her phone rested on the seat beside her, easily available, a precaution repeatedly stressed by David, ever worried, ever vigilant. Thunder rumbled and a flash of lightning splintered the new darkness. She leaned tensely forward and decelerated into the slow lane. Her phone rang just as she switched her turn signal off. She thought to ignore it but, glancing down, she saw that the caller was David. She pulled on to the shoulder, trembling with gladness. His call, his worry about her, was a sign of his caring. How foolish she had been to believe otherwise.
‘David, I’m on my way home. Traffic is OK. The road is fine. No flooding. I’m driving carefully.’
Breathlessly, she offered him words of reassurance, words to assert their new normalcy, to affirm that they were joined in togetherness, their concern for each other a durable bond.
His answer came slowly, his voice barely audible, his words hampered by the stutter of his boyhood. ‘Judith, l–listen to me. Listen. There’s been an … an a–accident. Accident. Denise called. Brian. Brian is hurt. He’s in Parkland Hospital. I’m on my way. Meet me there. Parkland Hospital.’
She struggled to hear him over an explosion of thunder, a flash of lightning, the tympanic beat of the pummeling rain. She captured discrete words. Brian. And yes, accident. Then Parkland Hospital. She shivered and tried desperately to string them together, to understand what he was telling her.
‘What?’ she screamed into the phone. ‘What are you saying?’
But the connection was lost. The phone was silent, inactive. Her battery was dead.
‘Brian,’ she repeated, her voice clogged by terror. ‘Accident. Parkland Hospital.’
‘No!’ she screamed as the words came together, as she understood what their junction meant. Cars sped past her, their headlights flashing across the dark ribbon of the unlit road.
‘No! No!’ she shouted into the darkness. This was not happening. It could not be happening. Tragedy had already infected them. It should have immunized them from any repetition.
She bit her lip, tasted blood upon her tongue as reason overcame denial. Control asserted itself. She activated her GPS, pumped in Parkland Hospital and, with robotic obedience, followed the disembodied navigating voice, careful to drive slowly as the rain wept its way across her windshield, willing herself to remain dry-eyed.
‘You have arrived at your destination,’ the omniscient navigator advised her. She stared at the illuminated sign that read PARKLAND HOSPITAL and, with her heart sinking, she parked and raced into the building.
THIRTY-ONE
David waited for her in the reception area, his face pale, his shoulders slumped, a posture so ominous that she paused and swayed from side to side, paralyzed by fear. He sprinted toward her, steadying her, his arms enfolding her quivering, rain-soaked body. He spoke. Judith saw his lips moving, but she did not listen. She would not listen. Unheard words had no power, no validity. She should not have listened when that very young doctor, with awkward temerity, had told them that Melanie was dead. She had willed him to silence and thought to block his mouth with her clenched fist. His words denied would be death denied. She had, of course, recognized the absurdity of such a fantasy. Dead was dead. It could not be negated. Magical thinking did not trump reality.
Yet it was the luxury of fantasy she invoked again in this unfamiliar hospital’s glass-enclosed reception area, decorated with flowering plants that did little to mask the mingled odors of disinfectant and anxiety. She leaned against David, her hands pressed to her ears, so that she might block the sound of his voice, the import of his words. She felt his breath against her face, the pressure of his touch as he pried her hands loose. She heard his voice, newly firm, newly clear, the stutter vanquished.
‘He’s all right, Judith. Our Brian is all right. Just a minor injury. Nothing serious. Nothing dangerous.’
She collapsed in his arms, so weak with relief that she could not stand. He led her to a seat on a narrow couch and sat beside her, using his white handkerchief to wipe away the commingled tears and raindrops that streaked her face. He held her close until she stopped trembling, his hand resting on her head.
‘I was so frightened,’ she gasped.
‘I know. So was I. Scared to death.’
Relieved survivors of anticipated grief, they recognized the commonality of their mutual terror. They were partners in memory, the paths of their separate pain, so long divided, now merged. Her sobs came in rhythmic release. Cradled in his embrace, all control abandoned, she allowed her tears to flow freely. Calmed, she rested her head on his shoulder, laying claim to his comfort, his reassurance. She smiled. He smiled. On this stormy night, fortune had smiled on them. They had not lost their son. They had not lost each other.
‘A minor injury?’ she asked, repeating his words.
‘A cut on his forehead. They’re stitching it up now. There was a lot of blood and that was what freaked Denise out. She’s with him now.’
‘An accident. You said an accident. What happened?’ she asked because now he could safely answer.
His words came slowly and Judith listened intently, soothed by the familiar gentle cadence of his voice. ‘They were driving back from New Hampshire, Denise at the wheel, when the storm intensified. Sheets of rain and a wild wind strong enough to shake the car, she told me. They were on that winding stretch of highway, the one that we try to avoid because it’s always treacherous, always badly lit. She was concentrating on the road when Brian began to wheeze and she saw that he was deathly pale. He was gasping for breath. She didn’t know what to do. There was no place to pull over so she accelerated, hoping for an exit. Looking at Brian, her eyes off the road for a split second, she didn’t see that a huge branch had come down right in their path. She drove into it, crashed against it.’
Judith trembled. ‘They could have been killed. Both of them.’
‘They were lucky. They were thrown forward. Brian’s head hit the windshield but they were wearing their seat belts. Otherwis
e …’ His voice trailed off. He could not complete the sentence. ‘Otherwise’ would have to suffice.
‘Yes. Lucky,’ she agreed. She would not dwell on the ‘otherwise’.
‘Very lucky, because the car behind them stopped and the driver was a doctor. He saw that Brian was having difficulty breathing and knew he was having an asthma attack. He had medication and an inhaler in his bag and administered it right there. It saved Brian’s life. Crazy how the accident turned out to be a blessing.’
‘Crazy,’ Judith agreed.
David sat back, exhausted, and Judith took up his white handkerchief, replicating the lightness of his touch as she, in turn, wiped his eyes. They sat in silence, hand in hand, draped in their own fatigue, their posture that of weary travelers recovering from a long and arduous journey.
‘Judith! David!’
Denise rushed toward them, her voice resonant with relief. Her red-framed glasses were askew and her wild bright hair framed her face. The thin white cardigan she wore over an unevenly buttoned plaid sundress was inside out. Judith thought her beautiful in all her disarray.
‘Brian wanted to make sure you were all right. We were so worried about you driving through the rain, Judith.’
Her words tumbled over each other as her eyes darted from Judith to David.
‘I’m fine. We’re both fine,’ Judith said.
She stood, opened her arms wide and, for the first time, she embraced the wonderful, disheveled girl whom her son loved. Their faces pressed close, they smiled. They were family to each other, mother and daughter, bonded in happy embrace. The suffix in-law was disowned. Law did not bind. Love did. Judith and Denise were bonded by their love for Brian, their recognition and understanding of each other.
David stood apart from them, reluctant to intrude on their new intimacy. He stared at his slender wife, strands of silver threading her dark hair, and the vibrant young woman who would marry their son. He was suffused with calm. The recent past, laden as it was with sadnesses and silences, was a closed chapter. There would be no explanations, no revelations, no trading of reprisals and recriminations. No forgiveness was necessary. All was understood. The dark time had ended. They stood at the precipice of a new season, a new chapter.
After Melanie Page 30