Fortune's Daughter: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  When no one answered the door right away, Rae considered leaving. She leaned over to the window; with her face pressed against the glass she could see through the house to the kitchen—the back door was ajar. There was already the sound of a siren somewhere close by when Rae walked around to the garden, although the ambulance didn’t arrive until Rae had covered Lila with her sweater and knelt down beside her. She screamed to the attendants when she heard them bang on the front door; they rushed the stretcher to the back of the house and found Rae kneeling over Lila, who was sprawled on the cold patio, unconscious. As the attendants lifted Lila they couldn’t help but notice the gashes in the slate next to her, left by her fingernails when she tried so hard to hold on. And although it grew less noticeable with time, from that day onward the slate was scarred by fine lines, like the marks you find on wrists that never quite heal.

  It wasn’t until three days later that Lila was aware of anything, and then it was only a dream. She was in a place where the sunlight was blinding and tropical. The sky itself seemed white, and it took a while before she realized that it wasn’t the sky at all but a thousand snowy egrets. The landscape was flat, and there were enormous trees that dripped moss into a bayou. In the water there were huge flowers, each one larger than the largest sunflower. And even while she was dreaming Lila knew that there was no place on earth where egrets fly straight toward the sun, nowhere where the water in a bayou is turquoise, where tropical flowers are as cold and as white as milk.

  It occurred to Lila that she might be dying. She had always thought death would come for her in the form of a man dressed in black silk. He would be waiting in an alley on an icy night, lanterns would burn, and wolves would howl so horribly that the sound would send shivers down the spines of children as they tossed in their sleep. It seemed impossible for the end to happen here, in this tropical place. The only escape was to wake up, and she seemed to be stuck here, in this dream. When she did finally manage to wake up it was agonizingly slow. The bayou dried up and receded by inches, leaving behind a gray tiled floor that seemed to have ripples in it, perhaps because she looked at it through the curtain of an oxygen tent.

  Richard had sat at her bedside for three days, waiting for her to die and blaming himself. At the end of the third day he seemed to have shrunk a little—he was wearing the same clothes, but they were all too loose for him now. Rae came to the hospital after work and relieved him so that he could go home and shower and sleep for a few hours on something other than a hardbacked chair. She had been there for nearly two hours when she heard the sound of something moving against the bedsheets—it was Lila, struggling to lift her arm under the weight of the IV. Rae leaned closer to the bed, and as soon as Lila opened her eyes Rae rang the buzzer on the wall.

  “Don’t call for the damned doctor,” Lila said, but her voice wouldn’t rise above a whisper and Rae couldn’t hear her through the oxygen tent.

  “She’s awake,” Rae called shrilly when the nurse responded through the intercom.

  Lila tapped on the oxygen tent with one finger and Rae leaned toward her.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Lila said. “Don’t call the damned doctor.”

  “You don’t know how worried we were,” Rae said.

  “Nobody has to worry about me,” Lila said, but her voice betrayed her, and when Rae pressed her hand against the plastic tent, Lila didn’t move her hand away.

  While Lila was being examined, Rae went out to the hallway of the Intensive Care Unit and telephoned Richard. He was there in less than twenty minutes, and he told Rae it was all right for her to leave. Lila’s doctors cornered him in the hallway. They advised him that even though Lila’s heart attack had been mild, there was always the chance of a second, more brutal attack. Richard nodded when they told him her recovery might be slow; he really tried to listen, but all he wanted was to see her. Although when he finally went into her room he was suddenly shy, a twenty-year-old all over again. He stood near the door, ready to back out into the hallway.

  “If you don’t want me here, I’ll understand,” he told Lila. His voice sounded hoarse, even after he’d cleared his throat. “Maybe you don’t want me to be your husband any more.”

  For the first time Lila realized that she was in pain. She pushed the oxygen tent away and signaled for him to come closer. Richard stood by the side of the bed.

  “I’ve been going crazy,” he said.

  While Lila was unconscious Rae had brought her a potted blue hyacinth. In the overheated hospital room its scent was hypnotic—you could almost imagine yourself on the East China Highway during that one week in April when everything suddenly began to bloom.

  “They’re going to release you at the end of the week,” Richard said. He still could not look anywhere but the floor. Yesterday he had forgotten to call his father, and when it was midnight in New York Jason Grey had phoned him. As soon as he’d heard his father’s voice he’d started to weep, and ever since then he couldn’t seem to control himself.

  “I’m glad my doctor is talking to someone,” Lila said. “He hasn’t told me a thing.”

  “I don’t want to lose you,” Richard said.

  When neither of them spoke they could hear the/click of the IV as glucose dripped into Lila’s vein. Lila tried to think about her daughter, left alone for days in the dresser drawer, but all she could see was that flat, white landscape of her dreams. It was so lonely there you could die of it, it made you want to turn and throw your arms around whoever it was you loved best.

  Richard pulled up a chair and sat close to the bed.

  “We can start over,” he said.

  Lila shook her head.

  “Sure we can,” Richard told her. “Even people who get divorced get back together sometimes, and we never even got divorced.”

  “Maybe we should,” Lila said. “Maybe that’s the answer.”

  Richard leaned toward her. “Is that what you want?” he asked. “A divorce?”

  On the day he picked up that bucket of water he did it so easily, as if it was nothing more than a china cup. She knew she shouldn’t have stood there for as long as she did, she shouldn’t have looked at him twice.

  “Why do you keep asking me such stupid questions?” Lila said.

  Richard knew that it was now all right for him to lean over and take her hand. “I’ll come and get you Friday,” Richard said. “I’ll close the shop and take you home.”

  The pillow under Lila’s head was so soft it made her sleepy. As soon as Richard left she planned to close her eyes, she might even be able to sleep for an hour before they brought her dinner in on a tray. As she fell asleep she’d tell herself that she’d given in because he’d just badger her anyway until she agreed. But she had already begun to count the days until Friday, and really, after all these years together, she just couldn’t imagine going home without him.

  In the twenties, when the block was owned by the Three Sisters, pelicans nested on the roof and foxes came to sleep on the veranda at midday. The chaparral in the foothills was thick with manzanitas and wild morning glories. The aqueducts from Owens Valley had been completed, but you could still feel the desert every time you walked out your front door. Everyone was thirsty all the time—you could finish a pitcher of water and still have the urge for more, you just couldn’t get enough to drink.

  The Sisters regretted coming to California the instant they stepped off the train. The smell of citrus groves and the hollow clanking of oil riggings just made them more homesick. At night they dreamed of New Jersey and cried in their sleep. One sister had been persuaded to leave her fiance behind, the other two had both passed thirty and they’d assumed they had nothing more to lose. But the odd afternoon light coming in through the windows was enough to frighten them so badly that they lost their voices from two until suppertime. Every day the real-estate boom grew closer to their estate; they could hear cottonwoods and eucalyptus being chopped down, and all night long, workmen hammered out the wood frames of new bungalows.
In time the Sisters became fiercely protective of their property and they built an iron fence whose gate had only three keys. But they could never tolerate the luxury of their house, and the fact that the brother who had brought them out to California had designed it only made them more bitter. They fired the gardeners, drained the turquoise-colored cement fountain, sold the pair of screaming peacocks at auction. Most of the furniture was taken away in huge wagons, and the screening room was torn down before they had viewed even one of their brother’s pictures. After a while their brother stopped inviting them to parties at his own house up in the hills. Instead he sent them handwritten notes once a month, and although he received polite replies he soon gave up altogether. In the end the Sisters rarely left the confines of their property.

  Except for one. The youngest of the Sisters ran away and was married for a brief time. Years later she returned quite suddenly, and she lived on the estate long after the two older ones had died. Because no one in the family had left a will, the city claimed the estate and sold it off, parcel by parcel. But no developer seemed to want to touch the house itself—it stayed empty and intact until the Long Beach earthquake split the foundation and tumbled the turrets onto a grove of Hawaiian palms. In the neighborhood, people liked to say that the youngest sister had given birth to a child during her time away from the estate, a true heir who would one day return to claim the property. Then they would all have to move out of their houses and the block would once again be planted with eucalyptus and juniper trees and thick old rose bushes imported from New York and France. People actually seemed to look forward to this time when they’d be removed from their houses, either because it seemed so unlikely or because they were so tired of working in their fruitless backyards that they were willing to give it all up just to see somebody succeed.

  For the most part people who owned houses on Three Sisters Street had the sense that their homes didn’t really belong to them. Yet since Lila had come back from the hospital she felt more at home than she ever had before. The bungalow seemed simple and clean, and when the afternoon light came in through the windows it was so sharp it took your breath away. It was the nights that were difficult, because at night Lila could tell that she was losing her daughter. It was a case of neglect: she just didn’t have the strength to will her daughter to life. Every night the baby was more transparent and her skin grew colder by the hour, even after she’d been covered with a towel to keep her warm. When it was very late, and everyone in the neighborhood had been asleep for hours, Lila could hear her baby struggling for breath. But there was nothing she could do. Richard wasn’t sleeping on the couch any more, he was right there beside her, and because she was afraid of waking him all Lila could do was bite her lip and listen to her baby’s chest rattling.

  She knew that the kindest thing to do would be to let her daughter go. It seemed so simple and rational when she thought about it during the day. But at night she couldn’t bring herself to give the baby up, and sometimes she took a terrible risk—she dragged herself out of bed and went to open the dresser drawer. But each time Lila held the baby the weight in her arms was lighter, and after a while she realized that her daughter could no longer open her eyes.

  Richard insisted on treating Lila like an invalid and she didn’t try to stop him. He’d changed his schedule and hired another mechanic so he had to go into the shop only in the afternoons. In the mornings he made certain Lila stayed in bed; he brought her tea and muffins and magazines. Her visions and headaches had never returned and her doctors insisted she was getting stronger, but after lunch, when she was alone in the house, Lila found herself listening to her own heart, waiting for an irregular beat. It was awful to want so much to be alive; it left you with no pride at all. When Rae phoned and said she could arrange to leave work early Lila found herself agreeing and let her come visit, although when Rae got there Lila wouldn’t talk to her—the most she would tolerate was being read to from the L.A. Times. Rae would let herself in the front door with a key Richard had hidden under a terra-cotta flowerpot, then go to the kitchen and get one glass of milk and one glass of lemonade before going into Lila’s room. Richard left a chair for her near the bed, and she kept her feet raised on the edge of the mattress. She usually began by reading the headlines, then the editorial page, the horoscopes, the TV listings for that night. Reading aloud reminded Rae of those nights when her mother would read her recipes listed in French cookery books as they dined on baked beans and hamburgers. Maybe that was why she felt homesick whenever she left Lila’s house, and she looked for excuses to stay. If Lila fell asleep while she was reading, Rae went into the kitchen and finished reading the newspaper, and then, if there were no dishes in the sink to wash, she simply stood by the window and watched the light.

  Even when Lila didn’t fall asleep there were times when she didn’t seem to notice Rae was there. But once, as Rae was reading the TV listings, Lila sat up straight and turned to her.

  “I may be trapped in bed, but I don’t have to listen to this garbage,” Lila said. “Who in their right mind would read the plot summary of Charlie’s Angels?”

  “I think it’s kind of interesting,” Rae said. “The way they can reduce everything to one sentence. It’s in my line of work—if I ever do anything more than file and answer the phone.”

  “Anything but TV listings,” Lila said, and Rae felt as though they’d had some sort of breakthrough that afternoon. It was almost as if they’d had a real conversation.

  The next day Rae brought a book of baby names instead of the Times.

  “I can’t seem to find a name I like,” Rae explained.

  “I’m sorry,” Lila said, “this is not an appropriate thing to read to a sick woman.”

  But once Rae began, the litany of names was mesmerizing, and when she left off—at girls’ names beginning with M—Lila felt disappointed. All through the weekend Lila looked forward to hearing the rest of the names, but on Tuesday Rae was late. At three thirty Lila actually got out of bed and went to the window to wait for her. For no reason at all she felt slighted, and as soon as she saw Rae’s car pull up she got back into bed. When Rae came in with the tray of lemonade and milk, Lila pretended to be sleeping. Rae waited till four thirty, but Lila still refused to open her eyes, she closed them so tightly they hurt.

  That night Rae began to have strange little spasms and her womb tightened until it was hard as a rock. Suddenly the birth of her baby seemed much too near, and by the time she called her doctor’s service she was so hysterical that she lost her voice and had to croak out what her symptoms were. Her doctor insisted it was nothing for her to get alarmed about, only Braxton Hicks contractions—false labor. Still, the contractions changed something—it was no longer possible to imagine that this pregnancy would go on forever. She was really going to have this baby.

  After that Rae couldn’t concentrate on anything. At work she filed contracts into the wrong folders and disconnected everyone who tried to reach Freddy. One afternoon Freddy invited her along to a screening of a Canadian film—in it a woman named Eugenie was widowed after following her husband to a place that was so far north the snow was twelve feet deep; she fought off wolves with a shotgun, and loneliness with strong Indian tea. As she watched Rae was reminded of her own mother, Carolyn, and by the time the picture was over she was in tears.

  “Give me a break,” Freddy said when the lights came back on.

  “Seriously?” Rae said as she wiped her eyes with the cuffs of her blouse. “You’re not going to distribute it?”

  “This is a picture for Canadians,” Freddy told her. “In Toronto they think sitting around and waiting for spring is exciting.”

  Maybe it was because business was so bad, or because Rae felt the sort of daring that comes when you think you’re about to lose your job anyway—Freddy had certainly never promised her a job to come back to after the baby was born—but when Rae went back up to the office she forged Freddy’s signature and bought rights to Eugenie. When she dr
ove to Three Sisters Street after work Rae was still flushed with the excitement of having done something rash. Not even Lila’s flat-out refusal to let her read aloud from the book of names could dampen her spirits. But it didn’t last long—on the way home Rae stopped at the Chinese take-out place, and while she waited for her order she had an overwhelming sense of disappointment. The only man she had ever loved would never be true, the labor coach she wanted wouldn’t even discuss names for the baby, and the coach she had was so distracted he hadn’t even talked to her in a week, he just left her notes taped to the refrigerator: She’s in a good mood today or Watch out—she woke up on the wrong side of bed for sure. When she got back into the car the smell of eggrolls on the seat beside her made her feel queasy and even more distraught. Parking the Oldsmobile, all she could think about was the fact that her own mother was three thousand miles away, and she backed into a Mustang and had to leave a note wedged in behind one of the windshield wipers with the name of her insurance company.

  She was still making a list of everything that had gone wrong since last summer as she crossed the courtyard, but halfway to her apartment she stopped cold. Just ahead of her, standing in the shadows, was the wild black Labrador she had seen in the courtyard before, just after the heat wave. Rae knew that the one thing she should not do was run. She stood there and held the brown paper bag of Chinese food to her chest. The air seemed cold, not like April at all, and even from this distance she could hear the dog growl. Anyone could see it was underfed; when it began to walk toward her, Rae could count its ribs.

  “Good dog,” Rae said.

  Jessup had told her once that dogs always brought down deer by attacking their delicate legs. They had been driving along the Skyline Drive, to see the changing leaves, when they sighted a pack of dogs, running through the woods, after prey. Rae had been surprised that Jessup knew anything about deer, she’d doubted him until they heard the dogs yapping wildly, and then she’d begged him to step on the gas and get them out of there, fast.