by Lisa Tucker
“Fuck,” he yelled, and he heard Dorothea start to cry. But he couldn’t do a thing about it because now he was remembering when the car finally skidded to a stop and he’d reached over to touch Ellen. She was already dead, and he knew it, but he couldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t accept it. He took Ellen’s hand and said, “Now this is what I call seriously screwed up.” It was something she always said when things went wrong. Like the toilet overflowing. Like the time their Visa got charged twice for their bedroom furniture. Like Lizzie melting a crayon in the radiator.
He was crying too now, but he was also cursing because he was so pissed. He could handle the constant throbbing in his foot and the slivers of glass that still worked their way out of the flesh of his arm, but this was too fucking much. And he’d been so sure it was over. It had been over for months and months. Why had it suddenly come back now? Was this the price of letting himself pretend he was a human being for not even two weeks?
He sniffed hard, stood up and stuck a towel around his waist. He had to get out of this bathroom. He needed a drink.
As he walked, he heard Ellen’s voice: “I really think we should go on the highway.”
“This will be quicker.”
“You always say that, but it never turns out to be true.” She turned around and smiled at Lizzie. “Daddy always says, ‘I discovered a shortcut.’ Discovered, like he’s Lewis and Clark.”
The accident was only seconds later. There was no choice to torture himself with—different road, different result—because they weren’t even to the highway entrance yet. The torture was much simpler. That was the last thing his wife would ever have a chance to say. That was her last smile.
He walked into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of scotch and drank until he choked. Then he waited until the coughing died down and drank again. He heard Dorothea go into the bathroom, the flushing of the toilet, then the sound of the bedroom door closing behind her. He already knew he would have to make this up to her, but right now, he couldn’t deal with it.
He was back on the couch, still crying a little, but at least he was getting drunk too. The pictures were fading, though it was different than it used to be. In the past, when the accident images stopped coming, they were always followed by the usual memories: Christmases and birthdays and ordinary days that were somehow just good. He used to worry that if those normal memories ever left, it would mean he’d stopped caring, but now he knew that wasn’t true. This was what he thought about, as he sat on the couch in the dark, watching the shadow of headlights pass across his window. He would never stop caring as long as he fucking lived. He would always, always, always miss his baby girl and his beautiful wife, Ellen, and the family they had been.
He drank until he couldn’t hold the bottle anymore. He heard it drop and he knew it was spilling on the rug, but he didn’t give a shit. The last thing he remembered thinking was that Dorothea would find him passed out like this, half naked. He wanted to get up and cover himself, but he couldn’t move.
When he woke up the next morning, he felt like the back of his head had been nailed to the couch. He closed his eyes, but he could still feel the sun streaming in the window, so he pulled the blanket over his face. And that’s when he realized Dorothea had covered him. “She deserves better,” he muttered. He tried to think about something really nice he could do for her today, but he couldn’t think yet. He had to sleep a while longer.
The next time he woke up it was afternoon; he could tell because the sun wasn’t beating on him anymore. He sat up and the headache was still there, but he had to get going. Dorothea would be anxious to get to the hospital to see Jimmy.
He stood up with the blanket around his shoulders and went into the kitchen to get some Tylenol. He’d already swallowed two with a handful of water from the faucet when he turned around and saw the piece of paper sitting on the kitchen table.
He’d never seen her handwriting before, and he just stared at the letters themselves for a moment, thinking that her handwriting was like everything else about her. Elegant, understated, humble, very pretty.
Dear Stephen,
I am very grateful for your help and your kind attentions. Please do not interpret my leaving as meaning anything about your essential goodness, which I have been the beneficiary of on so many occasions since we met. Even last night, I know that your goodness kept you from telling me that the sentiments I was expressing were making you so very uncomfortable. I don’t have words to express how sorry I am. Because of my lack of experience, I’d convinced myself that you felt as I did. It was wishful thinking, the silly dream of an ignorant and often silly person.
I know that to stay for even another day would put you in an unbearably awkward position. This is the one and only reason I am leaving. Though I would also be embarrassed to face you this morning, I find as I write this that it is far harder to say goodbye.
Your kindness to my brother and myself will never be forgotten.
Dorothea
He sat at the table for a very long time, holding the piece of paper in his hand. Of course he was going to go after her. He would start with the hospital and figure out what to do from there. For one thing, he had to apologize. He also had to make sure she was all right.
It wasn’t until he went into the bedroom and discovered that she’d left behind her saddle oxford shoes that he finally accepted the other reason he was going. He sat on the floor and held them to his chest and he felt like he could almost hear Ellen saying it was okay. You’re alive, it wasn’t your choice. But you’re alive, Stephen, so quit being dumb. What else can you do but live?
PART FOUR
The Master of Dreams
fourteen
LUCY HAD ONLY been out of the ICU for a few days when she asked Charles if he was planning to sell their house. She was afraid she already knew the answer, but she was hoping she could change his mind.
He was sitting in his usual chair by her bed, lightly stroking her face. He didn’t say yes; he said they would discuss it later. “We can stay where we are until you’re better.”
Where they were was The Beverly Hills Hotel, where Charles had taken Dorothea and Jimmy the same night it happened. His mother had flown home from Florida immediately, and she was staying there too, along with a nanny he’d hired.
Talking was difficult for Lucy—she still had the feeding tube down her nose, and her throat was still sore from the tube that had been in her mouth for days—but she tried to explain to Charles that her feelings for the house hadn’t changed. The house was where she’d brought her newborn babies home, nursed them and changed them and watched their first steps. It was where she and Charles had danced on the balcony in the moonlight the night when, an hour after nine-month-old Jimmy’s fever broke, they learned that Charles had won an Oscar for Joan. It was where her little boy had drawn his first picture and her little girl had sat on phone books to play the first few notes of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
The skull fracture and contusion hadn’t affected her memory; she wanted Charles to know that too. She could do more than pass the neurologist’s simple tests. She could remember her life.
He listened but all he said was, “Let’s not worry about this now.”
Lucy began to cry then. Unfortunately, this wasn’t unusual. Since she’d regained consciousness, she’d been crying constantly. She cried because of the pain, because the morphine left her depressed, because she had terrible nightmares, because she was worried about her children. Especially about the children. Charles had been with her nearly every minute she’d been in the hospital, but that meant he was almost never with Jimmy and Dorothea. The new nanny came with excellent credentials, he’d assured Lucy—but so what? Her babies didn’t have their mother or their father either. Her babies must be scared to death.
The other problem with Charles always being with her: she still hadn’t had a chance to ask the doctors how bad the damage really was. The neurologist had to talk to her to know if she could follow w
hat he was saying, but all of the other doctors only talked to her husband, mostly in the hall outside the room, where Lucy couldn’t hear. Whenever she asked Charles what they said, he told her not to worry, everything would be fine. She tried to believe him, even though she overheard him explaining to Ben Zaleski, his former assistant who was directing Tell Laura I Love Her, that delaying the filming for months, even a year, wouldn’t make any difference. “Lucy can’t do this project.” Ben must have questioned him, because Charles got angry. “This is the least of my concerns right now,” he hissed. “At this point I don’t care if she ever makes another movie again.” He was facing the window; he didn’t notice the tears being squeezed from her tightly closed eyes.
This time he did see her tears, but he told her again not to worry. Even if they did move to a new place, it would all work out.
“But it wasn’t the house’s fault,” she whispered. “The house tried to help.”
Lucy knew it sounded ridiculous, but she believed this. The house had protected Dorothea in the closet, and warmed Lucy in the sun when she was so cold from losing all that blood. Most important, it had brought her Dorothea’s beautiful voice through the monitor, a sound Lucy still associated with making it through all this. If indeed she was going to make it. Even that she wasn’t sure of.
She’d already had two abdominal surgeries. Both arms and her right leg were immobilized in casts. They were planning to start skin grafts on her back tomorrow. Her back was burned, that was all Charles would say about it. She kept hearing something else in his voice, but maybe it was her imagination. Maybe she was going crazy.
“My sweet,” Charles said now, and brought his lips down to the fingers poking out of her cast. “Please let me handle all this.”
“But—”
“Hey there, Miss Lu Lu.”
Janice walked in before Lucy could finish. She’d been by every day. Lucy tried to act happy to see her, but the truth was, she felt as numb about her old friend’s visits as she did about the letters of support and flowers and teddy bears that had come from all over the country. Charles, on the other hand, seemed genuinely glad Janice was there. Janice even gave him a quick hug hello before sitting down in the chair at the foot of the bed.
Normally, Janice talked nonstop, obviously trying to distract Lucy, but this time Lucy said she had to ask Janice something.
“You’re a social worker,” Lucy said slowly. “Would you please tell my husband … I don’t want him to sell our house.”
Lucy knew that under normal circumstances, Charles would have been annoyed with her for involving anyone in their private business. Of course he didn’t feel that way now, or if he did, he didn’t show it. His only reaction seemed to be aimed at Janice. The two of them seemed to be communicating something with their eyes.
“I wouldn’t even think about this yet,” Janice finally said.
“But I am,” Lucy said.
“Here’s an idea,” Janice said, and winked. “Make your husband buy you a new house right on the ocean. Tell him this is what your friends want.”
Charles wouldn’t consider a beachfront house five years ago. He wanted views of the ocean, for Lucy, but he didn’t want to be part of the crowd of industry people in the Malibu Colony. He also worried about their (then future) children drowning. The pool was bad enough.
But this time, he laughed and said it was a good idea.
Lucy didn’t know how it happened, but all of a sudden, she heard herself start to scream. The sound seemed to come from her mouth with no more volition than the fluids that pumped in her body through the IVs and the nose tube and out through the catheter that embarrassed her every time Charles sat there and watched while the nurse changed the bag. The only thing she could move freely was her left leg, and she watched as the leg kicked out so hard the lunch tray the nurse had brought for him went flying.
She was every bit as surprised as Janice and Charles, who had jumped out of the way as the private duty nurse burst in, holding a syringe. The nurse had already given Lucy the shot when the orderlies arrived to clean up the mess. Lucy felt bad watching them scrubbing the roast beef and potatoes from the floor and the walls.
Was she really going crazy? Is that why she’d been screaming and kicking like a madwoman? Is that why her husband was whispering about her right now? She couldn’t hold her eyes open anymore, but she wasn’t asleep. Every time they said “poor Lucy,” she heard them. Poor Lucy, poor Lucy, poor Lucy. Janice’s voice: “ … how bad the pain must be.” Charles: “ … doctor about giving her more.” Janice: “ … not long now.” Charles: “ … stand to see her suffer like this.” Janice again: “ … not long now.”
From which Lucy concluded she really was about to die.
By the time she realized it wasn’t true, it had all become connected in her mind, until losing her house was almost synonymous with dying. Before, she hadn’t wanted to move, but she would have done it without hesitating if Charles had insisted. He was her husband and she had never defied him on anything important, much less something he felt as strongly about as this.
He didn’t have to tell her what this meant to him. Even as he took out the real estate agent papers for her to sign, she knew how badly she would hurt him if she said no.
She didn’t want to hurt him. She still loved him as much as ever. If anything she loved him more now because her love had turned desperate. She’d been in the hospital for almost two months, and even though she no longer feared dying, she didn’t know if she would ever be herself again. She still couldn’t use her right arm or walk without crutches. She was still having a seemingly endless series of grafts to heal the burns. She didn’t even know what she looked like anymore because Charles had had them remove the mirror in her bathroom. And worst of all, she didn’t know who she was.
Who did Charles see when he looked at her now? As she watched him walking back and forth, trying to persuade her to sell the house, she thought about that day, when he’d suddenly appeared to her while she was being stabbed and beaten. She couldn’t tell him about that because he’d been so relieved when one of the doctors said head-injury victims rarely remember the events that precede their trauma. This was especially true in Lucy’s case, the doctor claimed, because she was probably unconscious from very early on.
But still, it hurt Lucy when she discovered that Charles had been assuming she was raped. She’d come into the ICU hemorrhaging, but not from rape, the doctors explained to Charles—after the third abdominal surgery—because her bladder and uterus had both been damaged from the same line of deep stabs that had ripped through two arteries. Charles told Lucy about this because he thought she would feel better knowing she hadn’t been sexually assaulted in addition to everything else.
He was wearing the black glasses she loved. The expression on his face was so gentle and kind; yet when he asked her why she was crying, she told him to leave her alone. And when he tried to reach for her anyway, to comfort her, she shrank away from his touch. It was quickly becoming a pattern: the more she ached for him to touch her, the more likely she was to rebuff all his attempts. Sometimes she told him she was in pain from the grafts or the physical therapy, but other times, she didn’t offer any explanation. She knew her husband well enough to know he was too proud to ask for one.
When he started to withdraw from her, she focused on the positive effect that at least he was spending more time at the hotel with the children. She still hadn’t been able to see Dorothea and Jimmy, but Charles put them on the phone with her every few days and she’d started to live for those calls. Jimmy was much quieter than before and she worried that he was taking her absence even harder than she expected. Dorothea, though, seemed to have a thousand things to say about life in a hotel. They served giant salads in big pink bowls. Grandma let them eat breakfast outside under a big tree. They had the best chocolate cake in the whole world. Daddy wouldn’t let her go swimming in the pool. The nanny, Susannah, bought her candy at the little store.
“’Bye, Mommy,” she would say, about every third time. The other two she would hang up suddenly because she was giggling or Susannah was calling or a favorite cartoon was starting or any of the hundred things that demanded a two-year-old’s attention. It was such a relief to Lucy: her little girl seemed all right.
But now Charles was claiming that Dorothea was one of the reasons Lucy had to agree to move. “Please think about our daughter,” he said, trailing off, as he set the papers on the tray and sat down on the chair farthest from Lucy’s bed.
He’d already asked Lucy how the little girl would ever be able to go into her closet again. Lucy had reminded him that they were planning to put Dorothea in a bigger bedroom anyway, now that she was out of her crib. He didn’t reply because, Lucy felt sure, this wasn’t really about Dorothea. This was about his own feeling of powerlessness.
The police still hadn’t caught the two men. Charles had said many times that he wanted to kill them for what they did to her. He’d used every contact he had to put pressure on the detectives assigned to the case, but it hadn’t made a difference. Nothing he’d done had made any difference.
Buying a new house was something he could do for his family, for her. It was that simple, that urgent. Lucy understood all this, but she also understood that no matter where they moved, they might not be any safer. Plus, going back to Malibu was the only chance she had to have her old life back. A slim chance, she knew, but a chance.
Still, she would have done what Charles wanted if she hadn’t let herself become convinced that dying and losing her house were somehow the same. Even as she told him no, she felt her loneliness intensify until she had to put the back of her hand in her mouth to keep from sobbing for him. He’d picked up the papers without saying anything, and now he was walking away. She wanted him to come back to the chair where he used to sit, near the head of her bed. She wanted him to kiss her fingers and stroke her face. Most of all, she wanted him to understand that because of who she was, who she had been, she really would have died for him that day. No matter what she’d become, a pathetic victim that everyone had to keep secrets from, a pitiful woman who cried whenever she was in pain, that day, she’d been a warrior in his cause. If only he understood this, then maybe he could tell her what she really needed to know: if it had been worth it.
