Still Life

by Joy Fielding

  “You notice he didn’t deny it,” Drew pointed out after their father had finished his coffee and left the house.

  “Shut up, Drew.”

  “You shut up.”

  “You really think he knew that company was about to go under?” Casey demanded of her twelve-year-old sister. “How could he possibly know that?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You don’t know anything,” Casey insisted forcefully.

  “Neither do you.”

  “I know our father.”

  “Yeah, right.” Gulping down the last of her orange juice, Drew stomped from the room.

  Casey sat there for several seconds, not moving, then lowered her head to the glass tabletop and burst into tears. It wasn’t the fight with her sister that was making her cry. Fights with Drew had become a daily ritual, like brushing her teeth and combing her hair. No, Casey cried because she knew Drew was right: despite their father’s feigned indifference and his too-easy smile, he’d never denied doing anything illegal.

  Something else Casey realized Drew was right about: she didn’t know her father at all. She’d given her fantasies power over her instincts. A difficult habit to break, she thought now, opening her eyes.

  It took a few seconds for Casey to realize the darkness she was seeing wasn’t quite as black as it had been before she’d fallen asleep. It took even less time to realize that she could make out shapes—the end of the bed, the chair in the corner, the dim light of the moon sneaking in between the slats of the thick Venetian blinds, casting an eerie spotlight on the tiny TV suspended overhead.

  She could see.

  Slowly, Casey worked her eyes from side to side. There was a chair at the side of her bed, and another one against the far wall. A small bathroom was located to the right of the door to her room, its toilet half visible. The door to the hallway was closed, although a thin band of fluorescent light was visible at the bottom. Outside the door, she could hear the familiar sounds of the hospital at night—patients groaning, nurses scurrying across the corridor, clocks ticking down the minutes till morning.

  Casey heard footsteps approaching and saw a shadow interrupt the line of light along the bottom of the door. Was someone standing there? Were they about to come inside? Who was it? What did they want with her in the middle of the night?

  The door opened. Casey flinched from the sudden flash of blinding light, as if the sun itself had exploded in front of her eyes. A figure entered the room and approached the bed, letting the door swing shut behind him. Was it one of her doctors? Had one of the monitors to which she was connected somehow alerted the staff to the fact she could see?

  “Well, well, aren’t you a mess,” a voice said, a vaguely familiar whine to its cadence.

  Who was here? Casey wondered, a wave of panic washing over her as the figure drew closer.

  “All these tubes and wires. Not exactly flattering. But then, what goes around comes around, I guess.”

  What are you talking about? Who are you?

  “You put me through hell, you know.”

  Would somebody please tell me what’s going on? Who is this man?

  “Did you know the police have questioned me three times since you got yourself run over?”

  I got myself run over!

  “Apparently, a mother’s word isn’t enough for our esteemed men in blue. Apparently, mothers lie for their sons all the time, an officer actually had the gall to tell me, as if I might not be familiar with the concept. I’m only a lawyer, after all. Albeit, currently unemployed.”

  Dear God—Richard Mooney.

  “For which I have you to thank.”

  What are you doing here? What do you want?

  “I thought I’d see for myself what sort of shape you were in. Normal visiting hours didn’t seem like a very good idea, what with the police still hovering. And I see you’re still breathing.”

  Still breathing, Casey repeated, wondering if he could actually hear the rapid beating of her heart.

  “I guess we’ll just have to take care of that.”

  What? No!

  “My mother always said to finish what you start.” He pulled the pillow out from behind Casey’s head and quickly lowered it to her face, forcefully pressing it down against her eyes and nose and mouth.

  And suddenly Casey was screaming, screaming as loud and as long as she could, screaming until there was no air left in her lungs, and no strength in her broken body. “Somebody help me!” she shouted, feeling the last of her breath seep from her body even as she heard Warren’s footsteps racing down the corridor, and knew he would be too late to save her. Casey lay in her bed, unseeing eyes staring at the ceiling, and understood she’d been dreaming. Richard Mooney wasn’t there. Warren wasn’t rushing to her rescue.

  There was nothing but darkness.

  Nights were the worst.

  That’s when the dreams came, the nightmares surfaced, and the ghosts visited. How many times had she dreamed she could see, only to wake up in the same black hole into which she tumbled that late March afternoon? How many times had she dreamed she could speak, only to awaken to silence? How many times had she fantasized she could move, walk, run, dance, only to find herself strapped to her bed by invisible chains, her once strong, vibrant body a dungeon from which there was no escape?

  How long before she went crazy, before she willingly sacrificed her sanity in order to escape this hell on earth? Who had done this to her, and why—what difference did any of it make? Hadn’t her father always insisted that results were all that mattered?

  “That’s the way, Casey,” she heard her father say now, his voice filtering through the night air. “Shift your weight. Get that right hip dropping before you swing the club.”

  How easy it had been for her—the effortless shifting of her weight from one foot to the other, the instinctive dropping of her right hip, the graceful swinging of the 5-wood, as if her arms and the club were one, the gentle arching of her back as her hands brought the club up and over her left shoulder.

  “It’s a stupid game,” Drew had complained, watching Casey on the practice range. Casey had just completed her first year at Brown and had returned home for summer vacation. Ronald and Alana Lerner had taken off three days later for Spain, leaving the girls with the housekeeper.

  “Dad always says golf isn’t a game—”

  “Oh, please,” Drew groaned, cutting Casey off mid-sentence. “If I have to listen to any more crap about golf being a symbol for life, I think I’ll throw up.”

  “It’s true. You can tell a lot about a person’s character from the way they play golf.”

  “Dad cheats,” Drew said matter-of-factly.

  “Dad’s a scratch golfer. He’s been club champion for five years in a row. He doesn’t have to cheat.”

  “Nobody said he had to. He does it ’cause he wants to.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know what they say about him,” Drew said smugly. “I overheard these guys talking at the club. They said that whenever Dad loses a ball in the woods, he just drops another one and says he found it.”

  “They’re just jealous….”

  “They said that one time he hit a ball on a par three, and nobody saw where it landed, and Dad said he saw it sail over the green and went off to find it. While he’s looking for it, this guy finds Dad’s ball in the hole. He got a hole in one! And just as this guy’s about to shout out the news, Dad yells ‘I found it!’ and holds up another ball. So, this guy just pockets Dad’s ball and doesn’t say a word.”

  “Dad got a hole in one, and this guy didn’t tell him?”

  “Cheaters never prosper.”

  “It was probably an honest mistake.”

  “Why are you always defending him?” Drew asked.

  “Why are you always attacking him?” Casey countered.

  “You’re so blind,” Drew said, leaving Casey alone on the practice range.


  Casey could still see Drew slumping toward the clubhouse, her fifteen-year-old body just starting to fill out and take shape. Soon the oversize sweatshirts and ratty jeans would be replaced by low-cut, tight-fitting T-shirts and shorts so short they attracted the ire of some of the older women members, resulting in such clothing being deemed inappropriate and banned from the clubhouse. As was one of the junior pros, who was subsequently caught with Drew in a decidedly nongolfing position.

  Ronald Lerner was duly embarrassed. “Remember,” he’d chastised his younger daughter. “Boys will be boys, but girls will be sluts, if they’re not careful.” Drew wasn’t careful, but she was happy. She’d finally found a way to get her father’s attention.

  Not that it lasted. Nothing held Ronald Lerner’s attention for very long.

  “Where’s your father?” Casey heard her mother ask, Alana’s voice coming at her from the far corner of her hospital room.

  “I think he went out.” Casey stopped packing up her things and turned toward her mother, who was standing in the doorway. It was unusual for her mother to leave her room, although the drink in her hand was as constant as ever.

  “What are you doing?” her mother asked. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “I’m moving into town,” Casey reminded her. “Into my own apartment.” She didn’t elaborate. There was no point. Her mother wouldn’t remember. She’d already told her several times that the business she and Janine had started together was beginning to take off, and she wanted to live in the city. “I told you.”

  “Everyone always leaves me,” Alana said, managing to sound like the injured party.

  “I’m sure Dad will be home soon.”

  “How come we never do things together?” There was more than a hint of recrimination in the slur of her mother’s words.

  Because you never ask, Casey replied silently. Because you’re always drunk or asleep or out of town. Because you’ve never shown the slightest interest in me. Ever. In all these years.

  Because …

  Because …

  Because.

  “You hate me,” her mother said.

  Casey said nothing. She was thinking that it was the longest conversation she’d ever had with her mother.

  It was also the last.

  Three months later, Alana Lerner was dead, perishing beside her husband when the small plane he was piloting crashed into the bay one heavily overcast afternoon. The autopsy revealed high levels of alcohol in both their bloodstreams.

  “So what now?” Drew asked, pulling up a chair beside Casey’s hospital bed and resting her hands behind her head. “We divvy up the spoils?”

  “Not exactly.” Casey braced herself for the explosion she knew would follow.

  “Why don’t I like the sound of that?” Drew brought her hands down, leaned forward in the chair. She was almost four months pregnant with Lola and not yet starting to show, although her breasts were noticeably fuller beneath her white sweater. “You’re saying he left everything to you?”

  “No, of course not. The estate’s pretty evenly divided.”

  “But?”

  “There are conditions,” Casey began.

  “What sort of conditions?”

  “They’re for your own protection….”

  “Skip the bullshit. Get to the point.”

  “The point is that Dad appointed me executor of the estate.”

  “He appointed you,” Drew acknowledged, her foot tapping restlessly on the floor.

  “I wish he hadn’t.”

  “I’ll just bet you do.” Drew jumped up, began pacing back and forth. “So, you can just release my money, right?”

  “Dad wanted you put on a monthly allowance,” Casey sidestepped.

  “An allowance?”

  “It’s a pretty substantial amount.”

  “An allowance,” Drew repeated. “Like a child.”

  “You’re only twenty-one, Drew.”

  “And you’re barely twenty-five. What kind of allowance did he put you on?” Her eyes filled with bitter tears. “I thought so. This stinks, and you know it.”

  “Why don’t we sit back, take a few deep breaths …?”

  “This whole situation would be a lot easier if you’d just died,” Drew said.

  “Whoa,” Janine said, coming out of the bathroom, a fresh coat of blood-red lipstick on her lips. “What kind of thing is that to say to your sister?”

  “She has every right to be angry,” Casey said as Drew melted into the far wall.

  “Why don’t you just give her the money?” Gail suggested, materializing by the windowsill to deadhead a pot of bright orange geraniums.

  “I tried that,” Casey reminded her friend. “I gave her over a hundred thousand dollars to buy into that gym franchise she was so desperate to have. It went belly-up in less than a year.”

  “If I remember, you also gave her another fifty thousand …” Janine began.

  “Which went straight up her nose,” Gail said.

  “Maybe you could make her a partner in your new business,” Janine suggested, a residue of bitterness clinging to her bright smile.

  “Come on, Janine. I thought we were past this.”

  “And I thought we were friends.”

  “We are friends.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  No, no, no. I don’t want to hear this.

  “The patient is a thirty-two-year-old woman who was the victim of a hit-and-run accident approximately three weeks ago,” Dr. Peabody announced suddenly, reading from his clipboard as he entered the room trailed by Warren and Drew, both wearing hospital uniforms.

  “How is the patient doing today?” Warren asked, looking over her chart.

  “This whole situation would be a lot easier if she’d just died,” Drew told him.

  Wake up. Please, wake up.

  “We should clear out,” Gail said. “Let the doctors do their job.”

  “This test could take a while,” the doctor explained.

  “We’ll grab some coffee. Can we get you anything, Warren?” Janine asked.

  Casey heard her husband release a deep breath of nervous air. “No, nothing, thank you.”

  “Try not to worry,” Gail urged. “Like the doctor said, if she can hear, it could mean she’s on the road to a full recovery.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Warren said.

  Wait. What are you talking about?

  Seconds later, Casey heard equipment being wheeled into the room. She listened to the drone of doctors’ voices, the scribbling of notes. Minutes after that, she felt hands at her head, and earphones being fitted over her ears.

  In that instant, she understood that it was no longer night, and the ghosts had all gone home. It was morning, and she was fully awake.

  This was really happening.

  TWELVE

  “ ‘Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors?’ Huh? Could you say that again?” Janine asked. “Okay. One more time. ‘Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time….’ No wonder you always hated this book. I’ve only read the first sentence and already I’m totally confused. Is it even in English? I thought George Eliot was supposed to be from England.”

  The sound of pages being turned.

  “Yes. It says right here in the introduction that Eliot was born on November 22, 1819, in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, and is considered the best of the English Victorian novelists. Even better than Henry Fielding, at least according to Henry James, who reviewed the book in 1873. There are a bunch of comparisons to War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov, and some professor named Geoffrey Tillotson says Middlemarc
h is ‘easily the best of the half-dozen best novels in the world.’ Of course he said that in 1951, when Valley of the Dolls had yet to be written. Anyway, to continue: ‘Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea.’ Oh, dear. I don’t know about this. National ideas have never been my strong suit.”

  More pages being turned.

  “Did you know that George Eliot was actually a woman whose real name was Mary Anne Evans—of course you did—and that her aim in writing Middlemarch was to illustrate every aspect of provincial life on the eve of the Reform Bill? Apparently, she wanted to show ‘the effects of actions and opinions on individuals widely separated in rank.’ Which I guess could be interesting, if only Mary Anne Evans had a touch more Jacqueline Susann in her. Let’s see. Where was I? ‘… already beating to a national idea.’ Yada, yada, yada. Really, this part isn’t very interesting. I think we can skip it. ‘Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude.’ I have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. You better wake up soon, or I’ll be in a coma right beside you. Come on, Casey. You don’t really want to have to listen to another six hundred pages of this stuff, do you?”

  A laugh, followed by footsteps. Someone approaching the bed.

  A giggle. “What are you doing?” Gail asked. Another giggle.

  “Making good on my threat.”

  “You’re going to read her that whole thing?”

  “I’m hoping I won’t have to. I’m hoping she gets so irritated, she wakes up and hits me over the head with it.”

  “Do you think she understands what you’re reading?”

  “If she does, she’s one up on me,” Janine admitted. Deep sigh. The sound of a book slapping shut. “But now that the tests indicate Casey can definitely hear, her doctors think we should be doing even more to try to stimulate her brain, and what could be more stimulating, I ask, than Middlemarch? Dammit, I don’t know if this is good news or bad.”