My mother’s coat wasn’t there.
Why was my father home so early from work at his factory? He was never home this early.
I heard a muffled cry and looked into the living room. He was sitting on the sofa, a duplicate of a Chesterfield sectional he had custom made in his own factory to my mother’s specifications. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands.
“Daddy?”
He looked up slowly. His tears were still trapped in his eyes, but they looked like they would soon drown him.
“She left us,” he said.
The words made no sense.
“Who left us?”
“Your mother,” he said, and leaned farther to pick up an envelope. “When I returned to the office after lunch, there was a message from your mother waiting for me. ‘I left a note on the kitchen counter. Don’t expect anything more.’ So I hurried home and found this,” he said, holding the envelope up but not really offering it to me. “A printed-out good-bye note. She’s gone,” he said.
“Where did she go?”
He shook his head. “She doesn’t say, but she makes it clear that she is not returning. She took most of her clothes and shoes and almost all her jewelry. She mentioned someone else.”
“Someone else?”
“She loves someone else,” he said. “She’d rather be with him. I think they left the country.”
Left the country? And forgot about me? I thought. Just like that? I had no clue that she was in love with someone else, and from the way my father was reacting, neither had he. How could she leave all this, us, the home she had rebuilt? Everything had her signature on it, especially me. She had practically molded me out of clay.
“Who did she leave with?”
He shook his head, and then suddenly, his tears broke loose, and his body trembled. I thought he would shatter right before my eyes. For a moment, I couldn’t move. I rushed to his side. He put his arm around me and buried his head into my small shoulder. I was holding on to him as hard as I could, clutching him as if I thought he would disappear.
He caressed my cheek with his lips and held me as tightly and as closely as I was holding him.
“Now we have only each other,” he whispered in a voice that sounded like it came from a stranger. “But every time I look at you, I will see her, Scarletta. I promise. I will see her.”
From the tone of his voice, I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
Pru
THE MOMENT I entered my second-floor apartment after work, my eyes went to the small dark-walnut stand to the left of the door in anticipation. As I had feared, it was there again.
The answering machine was blinking.
I knew the message wasn’t from my boyfriend, Chandler. Before I had left the hospital, he called to tell me he was coming over with Chinese. He was quite aware that after an afternoon shift, I wanted to get home and have a warm soak and then a glass of Pinot before dinner. We went out only on the nights before my days off. He rarely suggested otherwise. After nearly five months of dating, we practically knew when each other held a breath.
I was holding one now, practically mesmerized by the blinking light. Of course, it could be a number of other people or businesses who had left a message. There were so many annoying promotions and giveaways. Why should I always expect the worst?
Nevertheless, I touched the playback button as if it was red-hot.
Hi. It’s Scarletta. I’d love to borrow that beautiful pearl necklace someday. I look forward to seeing you wearing it. How are you going to explain it to Chandler? Men are so susceptible to jealousy. That’s why they’re the weaker sex. Maybe you shouldn’t wear it. Maybe you should flush it down the toilet.
I think I would if I had a catch like Chandler.
The message ended with a small sound, like a swallowed laugh.
There was something vaguely familiar about the voice, the accent, but not enough for me to confidently identify it. She never called when I was home, and she never called my mobile. All I had as far as contact with her were these phone messages. Was that deliberately her plan? How did she know when I was gone? Was she out there, watching my apartment building, just waiting for me to leave? Why was she afraid to talk to me? Even if I left to buy some groceries or fulfilled another chore on my day off, a message would often be there when I returned. It was more than infuriating. It gave me nightmares.
After listening, I stepped back as if the machine was about to explode. This particular message convinced me that it had to be someone at the hospital, even though I couldn’t recall anyone named Scarletta. But I didn’t know every employee on every floor, of course. There were more than two thousand physicians and around ten thousand employees. Maybe it was time to tell the police or at least reveal it to Chandler. Of course, that was probably what she wanted, though, commotion. Bringing the police to the hospital, especially the cardiac floor, to interview other employees would surely not endear me to them, especially now.
The hospital was no place for the dramatic intrigues of the employees anyway. There was enough with the patients. All those nurses and assistants who were still angry about how I handled Douglas Thomas’s wrong medication would amplify the derogatory talk already going on behind my back. I certainly didn’t want any of them to know I had this problem. They’d giggle about it for sure, spreading the idea that I had somehow created this situation for myself, which they thought was typical for me. To most of them, I was a born loser, despite my efficient, professional, and intelligent nursing, but then again, I made sure they didn’t know that much about me and certainly nothing about my social life.
More than one member of the staff implied that I was a little too familiar with my patients. They believed that I was too worried about being more popular than everyone else. No, I thought, if they found out about this, there’d be no empathy; there’d be no compassion for me. In fact, if they realized how anxious I was and how this was upsetting my life, their eyes would drip with satisfaction. Some of them could easily have their picture next to bitch on Wikipedia.
I had no doubt that once he found out about these deliberately vexatious messages, Chandler would be as intense about it as he was about anything else he deemed important. Talk about someone being anal, if he was fixed on something, it practically consumed his every breath and thought. Were all attorneys like that? He’d surely insist that we involve the police and might even worry about my being alone, here or anywhere.
He’d say something like “Stalkers today cannot be ignored. There are no pests, just perverts.” He’d surely try to put the fear of God in my heart. He’d have me studying every shadow, listening to every footstep behind me. The whole thing would take over my life completely, which I was sure was just what Scarletta wanted. I’d never give her that satisfaction. Daddy often told me that when you act like sheep, they act like wolves.
No, I was convinced I was doing the right thing. This was something I had to solve myself. The police, even Chandler, should be the last resort. I was an independent woman, proud of my ability to take care of myself. I wasn’t compensating for any inferiority complex, either. My parents wanted me to be self-sufficient. My father taught me that most mistakes are made because we’re too dependent on this one or that one. And my mother’s advice was “Bring a man into your life slowly. Compromise is certainly important in a relationship, especially marriage, but don’t surrender your self-respect. Don’t be too reliant. Always be in charge of yourself, Pru. Any man who doesn’t respect that is not the man for you.”
If I pointed out how reliant she really was on my father, she’d say, “Do as I teach, not as I do.”
Her advice resonated even more now. Her words streamed across the walls of my apartment like breaking news on an electronic billboard.
I hadn’t lost my self-confidence. One time, this telephone stalker would make a mistake, I thought while I was erasing the message. Hearing it once was enough, and right now, I didn’t wan
t anyone else, especially Chandler, listening to it and telling me she sounded insane and not simply malicious. Admittedly, he’d be saying what I was thinking but keeping buried and locked up in some chamber in my mind for now.
Don’t let it take over your life, I told myself. That’s exactly what she wants, to get inside you so you carry her everywhere you go.
Anxiety and fear quickly metamorphose into rage. I felt the heat rising from my stomach, up through my breasts and to my face, which I was sure was crimson. One time, she’d leave a call-back number, or maybe she’d get enough nerve to ask for a meet and suggest a location. I’d meet with her. Oh, yeah, I’d meet her, but with a hatchet. The more she called, the more vicious my fantasies were.
I knew that when I eventually did reveal this, the obvious questions would be asked. Don’t you have an unlisted number? Why didn’t you change your number?
Yes, I had an unlisted number, but what good did that do you these days? Those robocalls still came through, and whenever I put my number down for a purchase or something that required it, some company sold it for as little as a dime, along with the numbers of other customers. As far as changing my number went, I had done it since the calls began, explaining it to Chandler by telling him that I was getting annoying robocalls. He was getting them, too, so there was no doubt or question about why I had.
The solution to this was far beyond something as simple as changing a telephone number anyway. I wanted to catch her on my own and confront her, now maybe in front of other employees, and really embarrass and destroy her. I hoped she would continue to call. I prayed for it. I just had to be patient and wait for her to make a mistake and say something that made her identity clear.
I took off my dark-blue cashmere hoodie, one of my Christmas gifts from Chandler, hung it on the coatrack hooks attached to the light-blue-painted wall, and looked around my one-bedroom West Hollywood apartment in a building off Santa Monica Boulevard.
I had a living room furnished with a dark blue U-sofa sectional and a matching Empress armchair. The apartment came with a brown-ebony carpet, dramatic sheer white drapes on the two windows facing the street, and a large brushed-bronze ceiling fixture. I had an arc bronze floor lamp standing at the right corner of the sofa. I’d been living here nearly a year and had not yet put a picture on the living-room walls. I had none on the walls in the small dining room and none in my bedroom. There was a calendar on the one available wall in the kitchen. It wasn’t that I didn’t like art. I just had trouble making some personal decisions. It was as if I had two people inside me always disagreeing about what was beautiful and what was trite.
When I looked around, I realized that my mother, if she were alive, would throw a real shit fit right now. I had left a plate with the remnants of a turkey and cheese sandwich on the coffee table and a nearly empty glass of wine beside it. A copy of People magazine was on the floor, torn-open third-class mail splattered over the table, and the curtains on the windows half open on one side and wide open on the other. The windows needed to be washed. The room cried out for a good vacuuming, too. You could smell the dust. I kept talking about ripping up the carpet and putting down a wooden floor. My lease permitted it, and I could certainly afford it, but I hadn’t yet worked up the energy and enthusiasm to shop for a new floor.
Sometimes I thought I was deliberately being untidy, like some recalcitrant, spoiled teenager who hated to be told what to do and would often do the exact opposite for spite. Why was I doing that now? Could you defy your mother even though she was long gone?
I started for the bedroom, paused, and turned to clean off the coffee table and pick up the magazine.
“Satisfied?” I asked the image in my mind.
That wasn’t the end of it. The sight of the dinner dishes in the sink stunned me for a moment. What did I do, black out last night? Lately, I was so bad when Chandler wasn’t able to see me. I couldn’t blame it entirely on a late shift, either. At times like this, I wondered if I should give in and either move into his place or have him move into mine. Ironically, I, who was someone who took care of needy people at work, needed more taking care of than I’d admit. But commitments had been a serious issue for me for as long as I could remember. Whenever Chandler proposed something like it, I felt myself start to tremble inside. I’d smile and shake my head, mumbling, “Not yet. Give me time.”
I knew he didn’t need any more time. He could have moved in with me or asked me to move in with him only weeks after we had first met in the hospital cafeteria. I instantly felt how drawn to me he was the moment he had seen me. His sapphire eyes brightened when he turned his head quickly to look at me after getting his food.
I held his gaze and smiled to myself. What woman wouldn’t admit, at least to herself, that she was flattered when a man looked at her like that, even a fat, ugly, old man? You still felt like a star, someone tracked by a spotlight everywhere you went.
He followed me to my table, and after I had sat, he asked, “May I?”
There were plenty of empty seats around us. I almost pointed that out, but instead, I shrugged and said, “Sure.”
I could have promised him a new kidney or something from the way he reacted, quickly taking his seat before I could change my mind. I had nearly laughed. He was as exuberant as a teenage boy. It made the hospital cafeteria feel more like a high school one.
He was handsome in an interesting way, I thought. His chestnut-brown hair looked recently trimmed but not conservatively so. It was longer in the back than the hair of most of the professional men I knew. He had the front almost puffed into an old-fashioned pompadour, and his sideburns were just a little long. I thought he was easily six foot one or so and very fit-looking in his dark blue suit. It looked custom made. His cobalt-blue tie had tiny white beads. When he smiled, his firm lips hardly changed. If there was any imperfection to be noted, it was that his nose was a trifle too sharp. But it was like complaining about the potato chips when you were given a seat on a private jet.
“Chandler Harris,” he said, and offered his hand. I gave him mine, and he held it a second longer than I had expected.
“Pru Dunning,” I said. “Visiting?” I didn’t think he was a doctor. If he had anything to do with the hospital, he was probably in management. That had been my initial guess.
“Yes. An important client,” he replied. “But it’s not only that. I really like the old guy. He had a stroke, I’m afraid.”
“Sorry. Who’s his doctor?”
“Cutter.”
“Yes, a good man. Why is the patient your client? What do you do?”
“Lawyer. Not like in The Good Wife. I’m mostly boring business stuff, but sometimes an exciting negotiation. What floor are you working?”
“You make it sound like prostitution,” I said, and he laughed.
“Sorry.”
“Cardiac,” I said.
“Well, it’s not hard to see how you could win someone’s heart,” he quickly replied.
Maybe I blushed. I didn’t feel it. I remember thinking he was sincere. This wasn’t just a pickup line. So I smiled, thanked him modestly so as not to seem arrogant. I knew I was attractive. I remember my father telling me that any attractive woman who acts startled and surprised when she’s given a compliment is a true coquette, a flirt who knows how to do more than bat her eyelashes or put an invitation on her lips. “The trick is to walk the line between conceit and appreciation. Don’t act like you get the compliments daily.”
“So what drew you to nursing?” Chandler asked me. He held his smile, usually the facade of someone making small talk, but I thought he was really interested. “It is one of the most altruistic professions. No big money.”
I raised my eyebrows. Actually, he sounded like someone doing a research paper now. I remember feeling a little disappointed.
“Money’s important, but sometimes I think it was just part of my nature to become a nurse. It was inevitable. As a child, I hated to see anything suffer, even ants that had in
vaded our house.”
All my life, I had been sensitive to the way most people rattled off questions just to fill uncomfortable silences. This man wasn’t one of those people, I thought. Rarely did I reveal anything very personal about myself. But I recalled how much I wanted to back then.
“Once, when I was only about five, my father cut his hand fixing a pipe under the kitchen sink. He was handy that way. I saw the blood and, unlike others my age, didn’t panic or freeze. I rushed to the cabinet above the counter where we kept our first aid, hopped up, took out the antiseptic solution and Band-Aids, and was at his side in seconds. He was rinsing it off. I’ll never forget the look on his face. There was surprise, of course, but he could see something deeper in me. He let me clean his wound, dry it, and apply the Band-Aid. I remember the self-satisfaction, the feeling of accomplishment that comes from doing something really worthwhile. When I was older, I studied first aid more seriously, and from there . . .”
“To cardiac nurse,” he said. “I’m impressed. Someone for whom her work is truly who she is and not simply a means to an end—end meaning a way to make a living.”
“So you don’t look down on idealistic people?”
“No, no.”
“Most lawyers I know do.”
He laughed and kept his smile. His eyes twinkled. Everyone wears armor when he or she first meets a stranger. It’s only natural to be self-protective, to be careful about what you didn’t and did reveal about yourself. His armor was falling away fast.
I remember thinking that I could fall in love with a man like this.
“How long have you been in nursing?” he asked. When I hesitated, he added, “You look like someone who just graduated.”
The Silhouette Girl Page 3
