He nodded, the overhead light winking in his little gold earring as he moved his head. She could see him struggling to pull himself together and stop the flow of tears, and she was touched by his bravery and his trust in her.
Back on the sixth floor, they wheeled him into the treatment room of the adolescent unit. If circumstances had been different, she would have used the opportunity to teach Pete Aldrich how to perform this procedure, but her fury with the resident hadn’t yet subsided enough to even acknowledge his presence in the room. Quickly and carefully, she inserted the large-bore needle into Jordy’s chest, attached a syringe, and pulled back on the stopper. The relief in Jordy’s face was immediate, but his comfort was short-lived. By the time Vanessa had finished the procedure, the cardiothoracic surgery resident was next to her, ready to insert the wide, metal- tipped chest tube. Vanessa held Jordy’s hand while the surgeon did his job, and the boy cried out in pain.
Only when Jordy was finally sedated, breathing more easily and, at least to some small extent, free of pain, did Vanessa become aware again of the throbbing in her head.
She walked out into the hall and saw Pete Aldrich at the nurses’ station, and she marched toward him, her rage building with each step. She stopped at the counter and put her hands on her hips.
“Don’t you ever make unilateral decisions like that again,” she said. There were others around—nurses, medical students, a couple of patients. A few of them continued with their work, as if they hadn’t heard her. Others turned to stare, startled by the irate tone of her voice. “Tests and studies are only part of medicine, Dr. Aldrich. You need to learn to listen to the patient as well, something you seem incapable of doing. And you need to listen to the nurses, who are with these kids twenty-four hours a day and know them better than you ever will. You have a nice little rhythm strip, nice blood work.” She gestured toward the chart. “So nothing can be wrong. Meanwhile your patient is dying, and when he does finally succumb, you can take your lab reports with you to bed at night to comfort you.”
Vanessa turned on her heel and walked down the hall, not slowing her pace until she’d reached her office. Inside, she shut the door and sat down at her desk. She felt sick to her stomach and her skull was splitting in two. She couldn’t recall another time when she’d publicly lambasted a colleague. She’d come close, but she’d always been able to summon the last-minute control she’d needed to bite her tongue, at least until she could get him or her behind closed doors. This time, though, the thought of control hadn’t even passed through her mind. Not until now. She’d really lost it out there.
Her eyes suddenly stung with tears that took her by surprise, and she fought them with a vengeance. Just two more hours to survive in the hospital, she told herself. Then she’d be home with Brian. Then she could let her defenses down.
Her tears didn’t start in earnest until she pulled into the driveway and saw Brian in the garage, tinkering with one of his tennis rackets. They were tears of relief this time. Between her nightmares and agonizing over how to handle the Zed Patterson situation, the past five days had seemed like five months.
She blotted her eyes in her rearview mirror before getting out of the car, but Brian knew. His smile faded the second he saw her.
“Oh, baby,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “What’s the matter?”
For a moment, she didn’t speak. She sank gratefully into the softness of his sweater.
“Just a shitty day,” she said finally, her lips against his neck.
He drew back from her and looked hard into her eyes. “Forgive me, Van, but it looks like it’s been a shitty five days.”
She nodded. “I’ve missed you,” she said huskily. “And my head hurts. And my stomach’s upset. And Terri Roos spent half an hour on the phone with me this afternoon, telling me how godlike Zed Patterson is. And one of my kids got really sick. And I chewed out a resident in front of the world.”
He was leaning against the painted garage wall, holding her, stroking her hair. “What can I do to make it better?”
She sighed. “Can we just sit for a while? Let me unwind?”
“Of course. I’ve already built a fire in the den.”
He walked ahead of her into the house. She took a minute to wash her face in the powder room off the kitchen. By the time she reached the den, Brian was playing a Kenny G. disc on the stereo, and the sultry strains of a clarinet filled the room.
“The roses you sent were beautiful.” She stopped to pick up the stack of mail resting on the chair by the doorway, then sat next to him on the sofa.
He put his arm around her shoulders as she began sifting through the envelopes.
“Why don’t you look at the mail later?” He tried to extract the stack from her hands, but she held tight.
“I need a good, mindless activity right now.” She came to a postcard picturing a spectacular white castle and turned it over, smiling. “J.T.,” she said. “In Germany.”
“What does she say?”
Vanessa read the card out loud.
“’Frank and I are settling in. I’m very happy, although I don’t think I’ll ever get used to being a military wife. I’m not quite used to being a wife, period. The down comforter is great—a super wedding present. Thanks! We use it every night and it makes me miss you, ‘Nessa. You and Brian have to visit us here. Pleeze! I love you, J.T.’”
Vanessa bit her lip. J.T. Only twenty-one. Born around the same time as Anna, and probably the closest thing she would ever have to a daughter she could know and love. “She’s too young to be married and living so far from her family,” she said.
“Frank’s her family now,” Brian pointed out.
Vanessa stroked her fingers over the picture of the castle. J.T. Gray had long ago changed Vanessa’s life. Vanessa had even stolen the little girl’s surname—with the blessing of J.T. and her parents, of course. What a relief it had been to rid herself of the name ‘Harte’.
“When can we visit them?” she asked.
“Summer?”
She nodded, tears welling once more in her eyes, and Brian hugged her with a laugh. “You really are in a misty mood tonight,” he said. Once more he reached for the stack of mail on her lap, and once more she resisted him, suspicious now.
She sorted through the remaining pieces of mail until her hands froze on a lavender envelope with a silver return address sticker. Claire Harte-Mathias. Two forwarding addresses were pasted to the front of the envelope.
“Oh, crap,” she said. “Just what I need.” She stood up, struggling vainly to tear the envelope in two as she walked toward the fireplace. She pulled open the screen, but Brian was next to her in a few quick strides, and he caught her arm in his hand.
“Don’t burn it,” he said.
“Yes.” She pulled free of him and reached again for the screen, but he grabbed the envelope from her hand.
“I won’t let you, Van. You—”
“You don’t have any right to tell me what I can or can’t do with her damn letter.” She reached again for the envelope, but he held it behind his back.
“Please, Van. Just put it away somewhere. Or let me keep it in my office if you don’t want it around. Someday you might change your mind.”
She held her hand out, palm up, and said coldly, “Give it to me.”
He resisted another few seconds before handing it over. She drew back the screen, slipping the envelope into the fire, and together they watched the lavender paper blacken and disappear behind the tongues of flame.
The clarinet music filled the room, soft and bittersweet.
“Do you remember what Marianne said when you quit therapy?” Brian asked quietly.
“No,” she said, although she remembered very well. She wished now, though, that she had never shared Marianne’s parting words with Brian.
“She said that—”
“I know what she said.” Vanessa took her seat on the sofa again. Leaning back, she closed her eyes, remembering.
“You’re not ready to terminate therapy.” Marianne had spoken calmly, but she’d sat on the edge of her large brown leather chair, as she always did when she wanted to make a point.
“I’m fine, now,” Vanessa had insisted. “Nothing really bothers me anymore. And I finally have a relationship I haven’t screwed up.”
“Yes, you’ve made very good progress. But I’m concerned your problems will reemerge when something happens to trigger those old feelings.”
“But I’ve dealt with those old feelings.” Vanessa had felt impatient, annoyed with Marianne for not acknowledging all the work she’d done.
“Yes,” Marianne had said, “but you haven’t confronted the people who hurt you. In your case, Vanessa, it’s a necessary step.”
Brian sat down next to her. “She said you needed to confront the—”
“Brian.” Vanessa opened her eyes. “Not tonight. Please.” She touched his cheek. His face was tight with worry. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just want to live my life now. In the present.”
“All right, Van.” He rested his cheek against her hair.
She drank in the smell of him, sinking her fingers into the softness of his sweater, and tried to forget about them all—Zed Patterson, Claire Harte, even J.T.—the conspiracy of reminders suddenly poised to attack.
15
VIENNA
AMELIA WAS PROPPED UP in her bed reading a novel when Claire brought in the tray laden with tomato soup, half a cheese sandwich, and a dish of applesauce. The late-morning sun played across the pink comforter and white flannel sheets. Amelia looked much better than she had the night before, when she’d been battling the flu. Claire had come over to nurse her through the fever and had been stunned by her friend’s pale, weepy weakness.
“Want some more water?” Claire picked up the empty glass from Amelia’s night table.
“Please.” Amelia’s damp gray hair was combed back from her face, and she’d taken the time to put on lipstick after her shower. She grinned at Claire. “God, I could really get used to being waited on.”
Claire carried the glass into the bathroom and began filling it at the sink. She caught her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror and was surprised by the tired, red look of her eyes. There was a small, round magnifying mirror jutting from the side of the cabinet, and she turned it toward her for a closer look, only to find the entire mirror filled with green.
She let out a shriek, dropping the glass on the edge of the sink, where it splintered into a thousand pieces.
“Are you all right?” Amelia called from the bedroom.
Claire couldn’t answer right away. She sat down on the edge of the tub and closed her eyes. “Just broke the glass,” she called back. “Sorry. I’ll clean it up.” But she made no move to get up. Instead, she slid sideways along the edge of the tub until she reached the wall, and she leaned against the cool tile, waiting for the panic to pass.
What was wrong with her? The mirrors were everywhere. Small mirrors, usually filled entirely by the color green or, on a few occasions, by a mixture of colors that shifted in the glass until she averted her eyes—which she did quickly. The vision was invariably accompanied by a strong, sudden, incapacitating nausea, like the nausea holding her captive right now in Amelia’s bathroom.
It was minutes before she felt ready to get up from the tub. She hung a washcloth over the small mirror and carefully picked up the larger shards of glass before leaving the room.
“Broom in the hall closet?” she asked Amelia as she passed through the bedroom.
“Uh-huh.” Amelia looked up from her soup. “Sorry you have to do that.”
“It’ll teach me to be more careful next time.” She got the broom from the closet, took it back into the bathroom, and began cleaning up the splinters of glass.
It was Saturday, and Jon was in Baltimore for the weekend, attending the Accessibility Conference. She had stayed behind, since one of them needed to meet with Gil Clayton to talk about the workshop he’d be presenting at the SCI Retreat. It felt odd to be separated from Jon and to imagine him handling a conference alone. Watching him drive off in the Jeep the day before, she’d felt an unfamiliar emptiness. She didn’t let herself sulk, though. She would have a good quiet weekend, she told herself, the meeting with Gil her only obligation. But then Amelia had called, achy and feverish. Usually, that wouldn’t have been enough to reduce Amelia to tears, but yesterday had also been her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary—or it would have been, had Jake lived. That, in combination with her illness, had been enough to flatten her.
So, Claire had spent the night with her. She’d listened to Amelia’s grief over Jake’s death. It had been three years, but Amelia’s pain was still alive, and Claire couldn’t bear to see her suffering through it. She tried to talk her into watching an old Steve Martin movie, something that would make her laugh, but Amelia was too lost in the past to concentrate on anything other than her own misery. Claire let her talk herself to sleep, then made up the bed in the guest room and fell asleep herself.
When she checked her home answering machine this morning, there was a message from Randy. She had spoken to him a few times on the phone since the night of the play. He’d invited her to lunch once, but she’d declined. Not yet. Let Jon get used to the idea of this friendship-over-the-phone first. She’d been surprised by Jon’s jealousy, by an insecurity she’d never seen in him before. She told him about each of the phone calls, almost verbatim. She hoped that the more open she was about Randy, the more she could convince her husband that he had nothing to fear.
Jon would listen politely, then gradually shift the conversation to work and the foundation, subjects that, ever since that night on the bridge, couldn’t hold her attention as securely as they once had.
She looked forward to Randy’s calls. He talked about Cary, his ten-year-old son, and she talked about Susan. Randy seemed to be a devoted father, although he rejected that compliment vehemently.
“I haven’t been the greatest dad to him,” he’d said. “I’m trying to make up for it, though. I was a workaholic. I focused practically all my energy on myself and the restaurant and not enough on my family.”
With each call, each conversation, Claire felt the closeness deepening between Randy and herself. She could listen to that warm voice on the phone for hours. The attraction was not physical. Not sexual, at any rate. Yet she wanted him close to her. She wanted him in her life and had even considered fixing him up with Amelia. After last night, though, she knew it would be a while before Amelia was ready to let another man take Jake’s place in her heart.
“The play’s over,” Randy had said that morning on her answering machine tape, “and Cary’s got a bad cold this weekend, and LuAnne doesn’t want to let him visit. So, looks like I have some time on my hands, and I woke up with a yearning to see a Siparo carousel horse. I was wondering if you—and Jon too, of course—would like to join me for a trek to the Smithsonian this afternoon.”
She’d called him back, telling him that Jon was out of town and that she wouldn’t be able to go because she had to take care of Amelia. But now Amelia looked 100 percent better.
“You go home,” Amelia said after Claire had gotten up the last of the glass. “I’m fine now.”
Claire sat down on the bed, cross-legged. “You sure?” She was picturing the Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, the display of carousel horses. She wanted to go.
“My temperature’s normal. I’m normal.” Amelia laughed. “I was out of it last night, wasn’t I?”
Claire reached out to stroke the back of Amelia’s hand. “It was a hard night for you.”
“Well, I think I’m going to sleep away the afternoon, so there’s no point at all to your being here.”
Claire offered to go to the grocery store for her or do a load of laundry, but Amelia wouldn’t hear of it. Claire might have insisted had she not felt the pull of an afternoon with Randy and a herd of wooden horses. She called him again fro
m Amelia’s kitchen, and a few hours later, she was riding in his car on the way to the Smithsonian.
It was odd to stroll through a museum with a man at her side, a man whose arm occasionally brushed against hers, whose eyes were nearly at the level of her own. It was odd not to have to think about negotiating narrow doorways and locating elevators. It was freeing, and she felt a pinprick of guilt for noticing the difference at all.
There were several examples of carousel horses lining the walls, and Claire didn’t have to say a word to Randy for him to know which was the finest, the most striking, the most beautiful of them all. He went immediately to the prancing chestnut stallion, even before reading the plaque that identified it as a genuine Siparo.
“It’s stunning.” Randy ignored the sign admonishing him not to touch and rested his hand on the carved saddle. He admired the windblown golden mane of the horse’s tucked head. “Is this gold leaf?”
“Yes.” She cupped her palm beneath the horse’s muzzle, remembering what it was like to watch her grandfather painstakingly set the thin sheets of gold on the sticky varnished surface of a mane. “Butterfly wings,” she said.
“What?”
“My grandfather said the gold was as thin as butterfly wings.”
“Oh.” Randy smiled. “Where are the rest of the horses your great-grandfather carved?”
“Some are in museums, some on carousels around the world. The closest is in New Jersey. Some of them belong to collectors.” This was not her favorite topic. Her family had been shortsighted in not holding on to any of their treasures. Not one of Joseph Siparo’s horses had been kept in the family.
“And the carousel your grandfather built in the barn? What happened to it?”
Claire moved to another horse, a heavily armored Stein and Goldstein. Beautiful in its own right, but not a Siparo. “After my grandparents died, my mother sold the farm and donated the carousel to Winchester Village Amusement Park in Pennsylvania. I haven’t seen it since I was twelve.”
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