Heartwood

by Belva Plain

  Was that one failed exam the cause of everything that followed? Laura wondered as Molly crunched contentedly at her feet. Did that destroy his courage so much that he never got it back?

  But that was ridiculous. Because life was full of failures, and overcoming them was what made you grow. One single fall could never destroy your courage—or your self-confidence—unless they had been shaky all along. So there had to have been something in Robby from the start, a weakness she had missed in the smart, handsome, but untested young man she had loved and married. She still loved him, but now it was a love mixed with pity. And that was not a good thing for any spouse to feel.

  “I’m glad Robby and Katie and I are going to my home for Thanksgiving,” Laura told Molly. “It will be good for Robby and me to get away from here for a few days.”

  That was when the phone rang. And in an instant the world spun one hundred and eighty degrees. When it stopped, there was no ground beneath her feet.

  “Laura, do you think you could get an earlier flight out here?” It was Jimmy on the phone, his voice too controlled, too calm. “Dad has had a heart attack.”

  Chapter Eight

  The next few hours were a blur of activity punctuated by phone calls. There was a call to the airline to change her flight time, and more calls to cancel the tickets for Robby and Katie, who would be staying home now because Laura didn’t know how long she’d be needed in New York. There were calls with Jimmy and Janet for updates on her father’s condition—he was stable—and with Phil who reported that Iris was in shock and he was almost as worried about her as he was about their father. There was a call from Steven, who was on his way from Washington with Christina. This had prompted a second phone call from Phil because Iris was upset about Christina coming.

  “Mom doesn’t like Christina, and she doesn’t need this right now,” Phil said. “What the hell is Steve thinking?”

  “Maybe that he does need Christina right now?”

  “Well, he shouldn’t have done it, because Mom’s in bad shape, and this is too much for her. I don’t care if she is being unreasonable. When are you going to get here?”

  It was the same question Steve asked when he called her twenty minutes later. Jimmy phoned to ask her again an hour after that.

  And throughout it all, the terrible fear, the phone calls and the unpacking and repacking—no need for the springform pan now—Laura tried not to let herself think about the fact that Robby had gotten his way, after all; he wouldn’t be spending Thanksgiving with her family.

  –—

  Her plane left that evening. Laura sat upright in her seat, not even trying to sleep, because she knew it was out of the question. She’d called Janet for the last time from a telephone in the airport and learned that her father was “resting comfortably” and she clung to the words. She blocked all thoughts of a scarily sick Theo lying on a narrow white bed, with the smells and sounds of a hospital swirling around him, and instead she forced herself to imagine him “resting comfortably” in a sunny room with a pile of his favorite books on the bedside table and music by Verdi playing gently in the background. For the six hours that the flight lasted she hung on to this fairy tale, until the plane finally started circling for its descent at Kennedy Airport.

  It was early morning when she landed. Assuming that everyone in the family would be at the hospital, she hadn’t expected anyone to meet her. But as she walked out of the gate she heard someone call her name. She turned and saw a young woman with bright blond hair. Her small face was dominated by round hazel-colored eyes and a full mouth. A slight overbite kept her from being truly pretty, and the pantsuit that she was wearing was a shade of purple that could only be described as electric.

  “I’m Christina,” she said as she came to shake Laura’s hand. So this was Steve’s girl. “You’re Laura. I’ve seen pictures of you all over your parents’ house. Stevie and I just got here a few hours ago, and he thought you’d like to have someone pick you up.”

  “Thanks. That was very nice of you. And Steven,” Laura said, thinking to herself that her brother, who was no fool, had probably seen how upset his mother was, and he’d grabbed this opportunity to keep his lady love out of her hair.

  “Sure. Let’s get over to baggage claim,” said Christina and she led the way, walking amazingly fast on high-heeled shoes that looked like stilts.

  Christina was an excellent driver, negotiating the mazelike exit from Kennedy Airport with ease. Laura suspected that she was probably equally good at most mundane tasks. Laura’s brilliant brother, Steve, on the other hand, couldn’t balance a checkbook and regularly locked himself out of his car and his house. Laura began reassessing Steve’s disastrous choice.

  When they were finally clear of the airport, Laura drew in a deep breath and asked the question that she’d been refusing to think about on the plane. “How did it … the heart attack happen? Do you know?”

  “Like I said, Stevie and I just got here ourselves so we weren’t around when he had it. But the way I understand it, your mother and father were putting groceries in the refrigerator when he felt the pain. She called your brother James, who told her what to do for him until the ambulance got there and they brought your father to the hospital out in Westchester until he wasn’t in danger anymore. Then your brother and your sister-in-law—I think her name is Jane …”

  “Janet.”

  “Right. They had your father moved to the hospital where they work in Manhattan.”

  “And Dad … is all right …?”

  There was a pause. Christina was trying to figure out what to say. A cold finger ran down Laura’s spine. She wanted to cry, but if she started, she wouldn’t stop and what good would that do?

  “Before I got on the plane, Janet told me he was doing well … Did something happen during the night? Did he take a turn for the worse?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. Your dad is going to make it.”

  “Thank God.”

  “But there was some damage. The doctor … the cardiologist told your mother and your brothers that this morning … he said there will have to be some big changes. Your father can’t work anymore—it’s too much for him. And there was a whole lot about his diet and he’ll have medicine he has to take …”

  “But he can live with this.”

  “If he takes good care of himself.”

  Laura leaned back, the tears wouldn’t be stopped now. It wasn’t a death sentence. Theo could live with this. “Thank you,” she said. “How did Mom react?”

  Again there was a pause.

  “Christina?”

  “Look, it’s none of my business, but … your father has been asking … for details about what happened …”

  “He would. I’m sure everyone knows that he’d want to have as much information as he could.”

  “But your mother … she said no one should tell him about … the damage.”

  “What?”

  “She doesn’t want your dad to find out. She’s told everyone, including your father’s doctors, that they can’t say a word about it.”

  Her mother was giving crazy orders like that? She was in bad shape. Very bad shape.

  “The thing is, your father really wants to know,” Christina continued. “He keeps asking and asking. I think it would help him to know what he’s facing.”

  “Of course it would! Mom isn’t thinking …” Suddenly, Laura felt a need to explain this bizarre behavior to a person who was a stranger to the family. “She can’t imagine life without Dad, so she’s panicking.”

  “Oh, I understand. I’d be insane if it was Stevie.” Christina’s hands tightened on the steering wheel at the thought. “My life started when I met him. That’s how I feel—you know?”

  “I guess.”

  But Laura didn’t know. That was a guilty little secret she’d always kept to herself. Even when she was newly in love with Robby, she hadn’t needed him the way her mother had always needed her father. And, it seemed, the way Christi
na needed Steve.

  –—

  They were approaching the George Washington Bridge now; Laura looked out the window at the tangle of traffic as drivers tried to cut each other off to get to the entrance three seconds earlier than the person in the car next to them. Suddenly, Christina said, “When we met, your mother didn’t like me.”

  Oh God. “I’m sure she—”

  “It’s okay. It was all my fault. I got off on the wrong foot with her. You see, I was scared. Stevie really didn’t tell me much about your family before we went to visit them … well, you know how he is.”

  Laura nodded. She knew exactly how “Stevie” was and how little help he would have been in preparing his girl for the ordeal of meeting his parents.

  “I knew your father was a doctor and your mother was a teacher at a university, and I’m not very well educated, so I was okay with them not thinking I’m smart enough for Stevie, which I’m not …”

  “Most of us aren’t.”

  “But when I saw those candlesticks and that ring your mother wears … I wanted her to know that I wasn’t some hick who doesn’t know the value of nice things. So I said the ring was probably worth about twenty thousand, and that was the wrong thing to do. Stevie told me so later. He said his mother didn’t like to talk about money and what things cost.” Christina chewed her lip. “That was the problem.”

  “What was?”

  “You have to be really rich not to care about what something costs. Stevie never said his mother came from that kind of money.”

  “She didn’t. You know that ring you admired? My grandfather had to pawn it during the Depression. My mother loves that story, get her to tell it sometime.”

  “Are you kidding? I’ll never talk to your mother about that ring again. I learned my lesson.” Christina chewed her lip again. It seemed to be a nervous habit. “I just wish I could convince her that I’m not after Stevie for a meal ticket. And please don’t try to tell me she doesn’t think that, because it’s what I’d think if I were her. And it’s true, I do love beautiful things—like her candlesticks, and all those pictures on the walls in her house … I wish I could afford things like that. But I know I won’t, certainly not if everything works out with Stevie and me. Making money doesn’t matter to him. He loves what he does and I’d never ever try to make him be any different.”

  “Really? Because I think he has lots of room for improvement,” Laura joked.

  Christina didn’t laugh. “I don’t. Not at all. Stevie is a great man. What he does is … well, it’s downright noble!”

  Laura wished her mother could see Christina at that moment. Her small jaw was set and her big eyes looked fierce. Steve might have started out as her protector, but for as long as they were together she would protect him even more.

  –—

  They had reached the city; Christina swung the car onto the West Side Highway. “By the way, if you can do it, you need to get your mother out of that hospital,” she said as she deftly avoided a large station wagon that had crossed into her path without signaling. “She spent all last night there and she won’t go home and she gets mad when anyone suggests it.”

  Chapter Nine

  Iris sat in the hospital waiting room and braced herself. Soon, one or more of her children would come in and try once again to convince her to go home—her family and the doctors all wanted her to do that. “You have to sleep,” they kept saying, as if sleep was a possibility. “Theo wouldn’t want you exhausting yourself like this.”

  They walked into the room, and they pulled up chairs next to hers—heavy metal chairs that dragged noisily over the bare linoleum floor—and they leaned into her with their worried faces and they gave her all the reasonable arguments for leaving. But this thing that had happened was beyond reason. It was beyond thinking. This called for screaming and fists driven into walls with howls of pain. Theo had had a heart attack. Theo could die. He could die before she did. She’d always known that one of them would go before the other but she’d never considered the possibility that it might be him. Even though he was older than she was. Because she didn’t know how to live without him. That was what she wanted to tell her sons and her daughter-in-law and the doctors in their white coats when they stuck their faces so close to hers and made all their reasonable arguments. I don’t know how to live without him, do you understand?

  He had come into her life when she was twenty-eight years old. When she thought she was too old to get married, and had resigned herself to it. And then the miracle had happened and he had fallen in love with her. He’d been wounded past endurance, but he had seen something to love in her. And if a part of that love was gratitude for a safe haven, and if she had loved him more than he had loved her, so be it. He had loved her. And he had given her the only life she’d ever wanted; he’d made her his wife. And even now, when she had so much—a career, and children, and grandchildren—she still needed to be his wife. She knew that because there had been times in the past when she’d thought she’d lost him. And she’d felt that she’d lost her reason for being.

  My mother wasn’t like that, she thought, as she stared at the hideous tan walls of the waiting room. Mama loved Papa, she was a perfect wife. But there was always something she was holding back. Papa knew it too. He was like me, he finally accepted being the one who loved more.

  There was a sound behind her. The waiting room door was opening. Next, someone would sit next to her, leaning in and taking her hands, speaking gently. Would it be Steve, looking bewildered because he’d never known her to be so stubborn? Or Jimmy in his rumpled white doctor’s coat offering a sedative to take the edge off? Janet would offer that too, only her white coat would be crisply starched. Or maybe it would be Philip, with his charming smile trying to coax her to take a nap like a little child. It didn’t make any difference which one of them it was, they had nothing to say to her.

  The person who entered the room did not sit next to her. She felt a presence standing over her and looked up. For a second she thought it was Anna who had come back. But her mother had been gone for years. She looked up again at the face that was so like Anna’s. “Laura,” she said.

  “Mom, you’ve got to go home for a few hours.” Laura didn’t reach for Iris’s hand and her voice was not gentle. “Everyone is spending too much time worrying about you. And it’s not good for Dad to see how frightened you are.”

  I can’t leave him!

  “It doesn’t matter what you want,” her daughter went on, reading her mind. “Get some sleep so you don’t look so exhausted, then come back and let Dad see you smile. You have to seem strong even if you’re not. That’s what we all need from you right now.”

  Once, years ago, when she was in despair over her marriage and could barely move through the days, her mother had come to her. She’d given a command—go out and get your hair done and put on a pretty dress. “You must learn to act,” Anna had said. “Put a smile on your face. Put one on if you have to paste it on.” Iris had been furious, but she had done what Anna said, and she and Theo had patched up the marriage that was so worth saving. Laura was looking at her exactly the way Anna had on that day.

  Iris drew in a deep breath. “Jimmy … and Theo’s cardiologist … they want to tell your father that his heart … that it’s been …” She stumbled over the words.

  “That his heart is damaged.”

  “I don’t want them to say that to him.”

  “Do you think he doesn’t suspect it? He’s a doctor.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be said. Not yet.”

  “Maybe for you it wouldn’t. But for him … have you ever known him to keep the truth from a patient? He always tells them the worst right away. He says they deserve that respect. That’s what he wants for himself now. And you know it.”

  Laura’s young face looked so much like that other one, the one Iris had resented and loved so very much. She was saying exactly what Anna would have said. And Anna had been right—almost all of the time.r />
  “All right. Yes. I know that is what he would want.”

  It didn’t matter how you felt; her mother had said that too. You put on a show for the people you loved. Iris had never been much good at that. But now it was time to start.

  “I’ll go home and change,” Iris said. “But I won’t have time to lie down. Tell Jimmy to wait until I get back and then they can give Theo the news. I want to be with him when he hears it. But I need to change my dress and fix my hair first. And I’ll put on some rouge so I’m not so pale.”

  “Good. Dad always likes to see you at your best.” But suddenly there was a quiver in Laura’s stern voice. Her eyes were filling up and she turned away quickly to hide it. She was as scared as her mother. She needed Iris to pretend to be brave too.

  “Laura,” Iris heard herself say, “I will never fall apart again. No matter what happens. I promise.”

  Laura nodded.

  “Now, can someone drive me home?”

  “Yes. I’ve already asked her.”

  –—

  “I can’t believe you told Christina to drive your mother back to the house!” Janet exclaimed later. “Of all people!”

  “They seem to be getting along, don’t they?” Laura said. Iris had gone home as promised, and returned to the hospital wearing Theo’s favorite dress. Now she and Christina were sitting together in the waiting room talking quietly.

  “But Mom doesn’t even like her,” Jimmy said.

  “Mom and Christina are the same kind of woman.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Janet protested.

  “I am, and they are. In the way that counts.”

  “You’re a magician,” Jimmy said.

  “No,” Phil said. “She’s just smarter than the rest of us.”

  –—

  Iris kept her word that day. She stood by calmly while the cardiologist told Theo how much and what kind of damage there had been to his heart muscle. She listened as the man outlined the kind of care her husband would need when he came home. She never flinched or cried. She remained serene. She knew her daughter was proud of her; she thought her mother would have been too.