by Kate Ledger
“Just rest, sweetheart,” Emily said. “You don’t have to do anything.”
The sleepy voice: “Okay.”
They sat for forty minutes as the car idled and the air conditioner blew a chilly stream around their legs. She wadded a sweater and wedged it between Jamie’s head and the door as a pillow. She was rehearsing again. We changed. Or reassurance: This is not because of you. This time she imagined, It started before you were born. When Caleb—well, you know. And then, despite herself, she found herself wondering. God, what would it have been like, if he’d lived? If she’d had the chance to know him? Certainly everything would have evolved differently. Jamie might have turned out softer, easier to be with. And what, Emily thought, would have happened to me? Her eyes welled up, startling her, and she had to blink to clear them because then the men were coming out of the apartment building. The tall one walked toward her, came to the window and returned her keys, and she signed a clipboard. “I suppose I should have looked at it first,” she said.
“No worries,” he said, sliding the pen into a groove on the clipboard. “Ain’t nothing but a bed.” And that was true, after all, it was just a bed.
She was going to leave then. The errand was complete, she had her keys, and it was time to take Jamie back home. Perhaps if she’d just stayed in the car and left, the rest wouldn’t have happened. But she felt drawn to take a look at the new bed, and she felt another urge to check on where the building maintenance had placed the crate, and she had another compulsion to peek in again on the apartment, which was hers and which she hadn’t seen in two days. At that same moment, Jamie half-opened her eyes and mumbled, “I have to pee,” and Emily responded, “You do?” and decided that if they took two minutes to stop inside, it would not be the end of the world.
She hunched Jamie to her, gripping her across her shoulders, the woven blanket over Jamie’s back like a shawl, and they made their way across the guest parking lot and into the building. “We’ve done our errand,” Emily was saying just to fill in what seemed necessary information. “We’ll just use the bathroom. Then we’ll head back.”
“Whose apartment?” Jamie asked, and even though Emily’s heart stutter-skipped, Jamie didn’t look like she cared.
“I don’t know,” Emily hedged, doing her best not to lie, and considering it a half-truth when she added, “Somebody new.”
Inside the apartment, Emily escorted Jamie to the bathroom. They passed the paper-wrapped crate that the maintenance guys had dropped off just inside the doorway. It was tipped against the wall. Jamie was slow on the toilet, and there was only a travel packet of tissues from Emily’s purse to use as toilet paper. But then when she was ready to leave, Jamie looked altogether out of it and wanted to lie down. “I don’t want to sit in the car. My stomach hurts.”
“Lie down here?” Emily asked.
“Please. Let me just lie down.”
And that was how they wound up staying longer. Gently, Emily helped Jamie down the hallway and settled her on the bald, new-smelling bed in the L-shaped back room. She tucked the woven blanket around her. What she felt at that moment fluttered like something unexpected. Was it just the opportunity to be useful? Or was it being able to respond to a simple request with a yes? She brushed Jamie’s bangs from her forehead, the skin beneath her hand as warm as before, and her heart felt so full of love for her daughter, she thought she might burst. This was what Will had brought her to, this moment, she thought as she looked into Jamie’s flushed face. Why had she never felt this before, this ripped-apart feeling, for her little girl? Why not just let her sleep a little bit instead of marching her back to the car?
“I’ll be right back, sweetheart,” she said. “I promise.”
As her daughter slept, she sat in the living room the way she had all week, except it felt different, more real and less like some kind of fantasy. She went to the wide living room window, pressing her hand against the glass, looking out over the trees embroiled in their red and orange transformations. Her phone rang then, and she turned away and knew that Will was calling her back. He’d be on the road back to his shoot or back home, but she was eager to tell him that she was taking steps in the right direction—all baby steps, she knew—but that she was going to be okay.
“I’m downstairs,” he said, sounding tired. From all that driving, she thought.
Her skin prickled all along her arms. “You didn’t get my message!” she exclaimed in a loud whisper. “I told you not to come. I have Jamie with me. She’s sleeping.”
“I didn’t,” he said, sounding disappointed. “I didn’t hear the phone. And now I’m here.”
“You can’t stay,” she said in a whisper.
“I really didn’t get the message.”
“Listen, I’m coming down to let you in so we can talk. But you can’t come into the apartment. Okay?”
Leaving the apartment door unlocked, she ran down the stairs to let him into the building. At once, the sight of him filled her with pleasure. She waved and watched him cross the parking lot, his easy, loping walk, moving as if his hinges had been overoiled. He was wearing one of his rumpled shirts, a soft-colored plaid, wrinkled as if he’d never heard of hanging anything in a closet, let alone ironing. His shirt had come untucked, and she had the wonderful desire to tuck it in for him. How had she fallen for this person? It amazed her, and yet he’d managed to change her.
“It’s the worst time,” she told him, “but I’m so happy you’re here. Jamie’s sleeping, poor kid. Please, please come upstairs just for a few minutes. I want you to just peek inside the door.” She refrained from taking his hand, but she led him up two quick flights. He looked slightly bedraggled, a little five o’clock shadow, a little tired around the eyes. All that driving, she thought. It wore on her, too. “I told Simon on Friday,” she said, again in a whisper. “It was hard, and sad, but it went okay, I think.”
She pushed open the door of the apartment, listening for Jamie. There was no sound from the bedroom. With a quick motion to him to wait a moment, she left Will in the doorway and went to check: Jamie was still asleep, lying on her side on the bed. She went back to where he stood with one hand against the doorjamb. She stood close to him, not daring to kiss him, but taking in the smell of him and thinking how that smell had so many meanings for her by now. It was connected to so many times in her life. “Isn’t this beautiful?” She gestured so that he could see into the apartment all the way to the tremendous windows across the living room. “I wouldn’t say I owe it all to you, but you did help me discover some things, and I’m—” She smiled with a full, unguarded smile. “What do you think?”
“It looks like a very nice place,” he said. Was he tentative? She did not have any reservation. She’d made the right decision for herself. “Hemily—” he began.
“Listen,” she said, leaning against the door, whispering. “I don’t know where things are going between us, but I’m open to it. You’ve taught me a lot. Really.” He looked embarrassed. She wouldn’t let him interrupt. “And wait—don’t say anything,” she said. It was time for the surprise. “I wanted you to see this.” She pointed to the large package, tipped against the wall just inside the apartment. She went to one end of it. “Look,” she instructed.
She tore a single strip of paper away, ripped right down the side. The exposed area revealed a wooden crate, and beneath the protective wood slats there was a layer of filmy protective wrap. She tore through that too, so that he could see the many different shades of blue, the blurry image of himself, his eyes closed, his head tucked.
“I had to have it,” she said. “She’s very talented. Anne. I almost couldn’t keep it a secret. I called Maya, and she arranged to have someone drive it down here, and then I almost called you and spilled the beans.” Gushing, she didn’t notice his face, which was still.
“Oh,” he said slowly. “It was you. We had no idea.”
She took his hand. His head was ducked, his eyelids shading her from seeing his expression.
Was he going to cry? She was both nervous and eager for his emotion. She could handle it.
“Hemily,” he began again. There was a tightness to his cheek, along his jaw. The scar of his old dog bite seemed to grow more complex for a moment, and just as she thought how well she knew that spot on his face, she knew what was coming. “I don’t know how to say this—” he said. She steeled herself, not breathing, but she was a master of public relations. She knew a letdown from a mile away. “I had to come down here to tell you in person—there was no other way.” Before he said another word, she realized he’d driven all the way from Philly and not from Alexandria, and that perhaps all along he’d intended to help her with her errand, but he’d also had more to say. “It’s Lindsay. She just showed up at my door. We’ve been talking all weekend, and we think—I think—there’s just too much history for us to walk away from. Our whole marriage, you know?”
Her pulse lulled. Finally, she let herself breathe. “But you’ve gone different directions,” Emily reminded him.
“You’re a wonderful woman, Hemily.”
“Please stop saying my name.” A swimming wall rose in front of her eyes, blinding her, but she was grateful not to have a view of the apology on his face.
“I think the world of you.” Every word was another dagger. “You’re smart, and you’re strong, and I swear, you’re in my heart forever. But Lindsay’s my wife, and whatever reservations I’ve had, I feel we—she and I—have to work through it. Our daughters are growing up and leaving. We’re having to discover ourselves again, you know? And we’ve probably done a bad job of it, and I’m sorry to have dragged you into something. I just didn’t know.”
“Oh, please.” Despite herself, she was the one who had begun to cry.
“Hurting you was the last thing I wanted to do.”
“Oh God.” She smeared her hands across her cheeks, trying to hide the tears.
He reached out and rubbed a hand against her upper arm. “Y’okay?”
For some reason, it made her giggle. This long-winded speech. He’d probably rehearsed it. He’d probably been working on it for hours. Was she okay? Of course not. She wiped at her eyes again, but there was no hiding the fact that she was blubbering. Pointing at the painting, she asked helplessly, “What am I going to do with this?”
“I don’t know. You can resell it—or return it? I’m sure Maya will take it back.”
But they were beyond pondering its fate. She could not have formulated a plan anyway. Unable to stop crying, she wanted him gone, and she shook herself away from him, stepping inside the door, getting ready to shut it. “Good-bye,” she said, as he continued to try to make sure she could cope. “Good-bye. I’m okay. It’s all right.” She shut the door against him, locked it and leaned against it. And then he was gone. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying—except from the surprise, which was like being thrown into dark water. It wasn’t as though they were in love. Or were they—madly, deeply—and she hadn’t noticed until the moment he was leaving? Will had opened her up, like you open a fist, finger by finger. Why are you crying, you idiot? For all the changes at the eleventh hour. For the shock of being blindsided. For having imagined what it would be like to be released from the sorrow she’d been carrying around for so long and for not knowing what to do with herself in the world if she could be free of it. As though her spine gave out on her, she sagged, slumping down to the floor. She sat, unable to move, her legs splayed, and cried into the apartment’s emptiness.
Then, gripped by an impulse, she looked at the package propped against the wall. She walked to the painting in its protective wrapping, and with a deft motion tore away all the rest of the brown paper. Grabbing through the wooden slats, she reached for the filmy protective plastic, shredding with clawlike fingers. Her teeth were gritted, and her hands were shaking, and she made little grunts as she ripped and tore. She grappled with clumsy fingers for her keys in her pocket and pulled them out. And then, with a fistful of them poking between her knuckles like a caveman’s flints, she gouged at the canvas. She stabbed at it just once, and it ruptured like skin. Just once. That was all she would allow herself. But she’d ruined it. Her anger felt small and petty as an ember, almost adolescent, but it felt good, too, and she stepped back with satisfaction, breathing deeply, when the thing was destroyed. Then there was a sound from deep in the other room that made her halt. She’d almost forgotten about Jamie, lying on the bare bed, until she heard the plaintive voice calling her. It surprised her like a hand shaking a sleeping shoulder, and it stirred something that felt utterly primal—an instinctive alarm—that she hadn’t felt, it seemed, since the night they’d rushed Caleb to the emergency room. She turned toward the voice, which rose from the dark of the bedroom, from the delirium of fever.
“Mommy? Mommy?”
PART FIVE
The sun vaulted high above the Wasatch Mountains, and Simon was sweating against the inside of his collar and under his arms. He wrestled the corners of his carry-on suitcase across the backseat of the taxi, lowering it onto the curb in front of the Salt Lake Hotel. Looking up, he noted a mounted sign for the pain conference. The Indian driver wore the blue turban of a Sikh. With a long, elegant neck, he turned around, his arm over the passenger headrest.
“I’m very sure you will impress them with your finding,” the driver called over his shoulder, his buoyant accent like timpani notes. Since the airport, he’d listened to the story of Simon’s father, the astounding car accident with no repercussions. He’d emitted a whistle when Simon described how Jack Whitby had left the office rubbing his hand against his back, blinking with disbelief. The cabbie said, “Ah yes, of course,” when Simon reached the part about phoning a long list of chronic pain patients, beginning with the ones in the most pain of all.
Simon had described it all, aware of the way the driver was listening with more than passive attention. The more he narrated, suddenly in a setting far from his office, the more convinced he became about his discovery.
“This is a problem that has no nationality, no religion, no language of origin,” the driver pondered philosophically as Simon dipped into his pocket for his wallet. It seemed he wanted to continue discussing it. “If there is one thing we all experience at some time, it is pain. It has the capacity to drive us, to instill us with motivation.”
Simon glanced toward the mountains where the trees, like a welcome mat before the range, were just beginning to turn yellow and auburn. The driver said, “In my religion, it is mandatory to face tragedies in the world head-on and do whatever is possible within one’s means. I have no doubt your news will be very well received.”
Simon leaned into the cab with his fare, three bills together, fluted down the middle. “Keep the change,” he said.
“Thank you,” the driver responded, sounding as though he’d expected it.
“You’ll hear about this stuff,” Simon said enthusiastically. “I promise. It’ll be in the papers and on the news.”
“I have no doubt that I will.”
Simon dragged his suitcase up the curb and into the lobby of the hotel. Inside, he blinked as his eyes grew accustomed to the lighting.
“I’m here for the pain conference,” he said to the concierge, who pointed to a reception table in the corner and to a woman in a pink sweater who stood beside it, holding a clipboard.
“Dr. Simon Bear,” he said to the woman—Bev, according to the tag pinned beside the V-neck of her pink sweater. She consulted page after page on her clipboard, peering through EZ-Read glasses that hung on a beaded string around her neck.
“I called,” Simon insisted, rocking on his heels. “I spoke to someone. I paid. They said I could get on the list even though it was late.”
“Your name again?” Bev asked.
It occurred to Simon then that he’d forgotten his ditty bag at home. The plaid nylon pouch, with his toothbrush, razor, shaving cream, styptic, was still sitting on the edge of the bathroom sink. He’d been packing it when he rea
lized that Emily would be gone when he came back after the weekend, and he’d simply walked out of the room and left the bag, half packed and gaping open, on the sink. He marveled that his life had taken this turn, and that from here on in he would have to make a phone call to his wife, wherever it was she was staying, to orchestrate how they would take care of Jamie. Who was responsible for what, who got what. Divided up, the details became tedious and overbearing. He couldn’t think about it. Not now. Don’t think about it. There was too much he needed to do in Salt Lake City. He’d come this far to get the therapy into the public eye, to get knowledgeable, sophisticated people in the field to take note of it. This was an opportunity he couldn’t allow to slip away. There was plenty of time for the rest of it. He’d immerse himself in the details of getting divorced—don’t think about it—as soon as he was back in Baltimore.
As Bev flipped through the pages, squinting through the half-frames, he remembered also that he only had accommodations for one night of the two he intended to stay. By the time he’d called, the hotel nearest the conference center had been booked. An international gymnastics competition was occupying vast numbers of rooms at nearby hotels. He would have to hope another room opened up. He wasn’t worried. Emily insisted on a written itinerary, every step mapped out when they traveled. He preferred to wing it. But he’d postponed booking anything because he hadn’t determined a strategy for the conference, how he’d introduce the infusion therapy. What if he booked himself at one hotel and then found the best people to associate with were staying elsewhere? Location might make all the difference, and he wanted to be able to be flexible. But now it seemed he might have screwed himself by not taking care of the arrangements beforehand.
