Miracle

by Deborah Smith

  He didn’t turn toward her. He got back into the car and shut the door so hard that the window rattled. He threw the car into gear. Amy lurched forward one step but brought herself to a halt, pride stabbing at her. His wife frowned at her, then cupped the flowers to her face and leaned back on her pillow, shutting her eyes. His wife.

  The car pulled away with the nearly soundless precision of a mechanical work of art. Amy watched it until it rounded a bend in the road. She felt as if every organ inside her body had been rearranged.

  “Mademoiselle?” the housekeeper called, then called again. “Would you like to come to the house? It is starting to rain again. You can wait in my quarters until it stops.”

  Wait in the servant quarters. Hide beside the gate, in a ditch. Be nobody. Be nothing. Be absorbed by wanting what can’t be had. No. No more.

  Amy found her voice. “Thank you, but no. I can’t stay. I have a long way to go. It’s a real long way to where I’m going.”

  And I’ve got a lot to do if I want to get there.

  When she walked off the plane in Atlanta, Amy found Mary Beth waiting. Mary Beth wasn’t supposed to be waiting. She wasn’t the sentimental type who’d greet a pal at the airport after only a week’s absence. Amy stopped in the aisle and stared at the grim expression on her roommate’s face.

  “Let me guess. We’ve been evicted from the apartment for hosting that lingerie party. I knew the vice squad would get us for buying underwear with zippers in it.”

  Mary Beth slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Honey, I hate to tell you this—”

  “Who died?” An ominous feeling turned Amy into stone.

  “Your stepmother.”

  Amy sank onto a railing beside the aisle. Maisie.

  True to her nature, Maisie had died without fuss. She had simply fallen off the top of a 30-foot ladder while adjusting one of the vents in the ceiling of her chicken house. Her head had struck a concrete block that she’d propped against the ladder’s base. The coroner said the fatal hemorrhage was probably quick.

  There was only one note of drama, but a perfect one, one suited to Maisie’s love for the tabloid newspapers she’d bought every week at the grocery store for as long as Amy could remember. Amy strangled on a hysterical urge to laugh as she stared into Maisie’s coffin, surrounded by the cloying scent of gardenias and the antiseptic funk of the funeral home. She could see the tabloid headline in her mind: Fowl Play—Maniac Chickens Maul Owner’s Dead Body.

  She gulped her bile. The mortician had done a terrific job of fixing the damage. Maisie appeared to have no more than a bad case of acne. But of course, beneath her eyelids there were no eyes.

  Swaying, Amy clutched the side of the coffin. The room was empty. Maisie’s church friends had visited earlier, judging by the guest book on a stand by the door. The carpeted-and-brocaded silence made Amy’s skin crawl. She touched Maisie’s hand then drew back, jolted by the coldness and hardness.

  This was her first experience with the death of a family member. She’d only been a baby when her mother died. Her thoughts flew back to Sebastien, wondering how he had been able to stand it when his family was killed in the car accident. How had he felt when he’d seen their maimed bodies? And later had he stood over their coffins and been sickened by this awful imitation of life? How in God’s name could a little boy deal with such a thing? How, then, could he go into medicine as a career, knowing that his whole life would revolve around the sick and dying?

  Amy fought a rush of loneliness and confusion. Touching Maisie’s hair, she whispered, “Love you, Mams.”

  She turned and stumbled from the room, winding the fingers of one hand into the skirt of her dress, holding numbly to her purse with the other. Pop was slumped on a claw-footed sofa in the hall. Even dressed in his best brown suit he looked like a long-haired bum who’d just wandered into someone’s nice parlor. He gazed at the patterned carpet beneath his feet and didn’t move.

  “Come on, Pop.” Amy bent over him and touched his shoulder. Tenderness rose inside her, but fear held it in check. She spoke without emotion. “I’ll fix you some dinner.”

  “Don’t need it.”

  “Let me drive you home. I’ll stay overnight, and we’ll come get your car in the morning.”

  “Don’t want you to do that. Don’t need you. Need Maisie.”

  “Pop, I know—”

  “I found her. I found her in the chicken house. Layin’ there, her face all, all … I’m gonna sell the chickens.”

  “That’s a good idea. Now come on, let’s go home.” She slid her hand under his arm and tugged.

  He jerked the arm away and glared up at her. “I don’t need you. You said you were never coming back. Too late to come back, now.”

  “I’m trying to help you, Pop.”

  He began to cry. “You hurt Maisie’s feelings by not ever coming to visit. You didn’t think about anybody but yourself. Mean-tempered little shit. I don’t need you. You don’t love me.”

  She stepped back, stunned by the sight of him crying. Guilt filled her, but rage grew alongside it. “I want to love you, but you won’t let me.”

  “Twist the truth! What do you want? To give me some more money? Well, forget it, all right? Don’t crawl to me and expect forgiveness.”

  She wanted to shake him. She wanted to scream and bury her head in her hands. Stop looking for acceptance, she told herself. It never makes sense.

  “I give up, Pop. I’m not doing either of us any good here. I won’t be back tomorrow for the funeral. I’m going to visit a friend, in New York.”

  “I don’t want you here. You show up here, I’ll throw you out! Get! Get out of here!”

  Slowly she moved back from him, straightening her shoulders, lifting her chin, freezing inside. Her grief mingled with bitter resolve. Her life was twisting again, but now she was in control. Dignity, pride, honor—she wouldn’t give them up for anyone, ever again. She was no longer a victim, or like sweet, dumb Maisie, a passive martyr. She was going to New York, where Elliot was filming a television special. She would stay with Elliot and take care of him, because she was important to him, and that meant a lot to her. But Elliot was going to take care of her, too, in ways she had just begun to plan.

  Sebastien was appointed head of the transplant unit at Sainte Crillion on a January day when icicles fringed the stone fountains of Paris and added a crystal beard to the snarling stone lion who guarded the hospital’s front entrance.

  Sebastien’s appointment was no surprise to anyone, even with his outburst of violence toward a fellow physician. The staff and his fellow surgeons had expected it to come sooner. So had Sebastien. Still, at age thirty-six, when most heart surgeons were just establishing themselves, he held one of the most respected positions in the European medical community.

  “You know what some of the older physicians are saying, don’t you?” Marie’s father asked him on the day that the appointment was announced. “They’re saying that you were selected in part because you’re my son-in-law.”

  Sebastien continued to gaze out a window toward the boulevards below, his hands clasped behind his back. He felt calm and reflective; he was at a brief peace with himself as he savored the moment. The loneliness of his life had never seemed more justified; the barrier reef that surrounded his emotions, more necessary. Idly he slid a finger over the back of one hand, caressing the dry, overscrubbed skin that was a surgeon’s trademark. “Ironic, isn’t it, since being your son-in-law has disadvantaged me.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Christian’s chair squeaked as he shifted.

  Sebastien reveled in the tension. “I have my informants, too, you see. I know that my father has lobbied you incessantly to keep me from being made head of the transplant team. I congratulate you on having the nerve to ignore him. Or was it simply that you could no longer ignore my qualifications without appearing foolish?”

  “You bastard. You ungrateful bastard.” The older man slapped a hand on his desk. “Watch yours
elf, Sebastien. A man who has no friends should at least cultivate his relatives.”

  “I find that my relatives have ulterior motives.”

  “You mock my honor. You mock your father’s love. He may be misguided, but is it a crime for a father to want his legacy perpetuated through his most-deserving child? He wants only the best for you: power, prestige, family—”

  “I have satisfied his requirements, then. I owe him nothing. He wants what suits him best, not me.”

  “Oh? With all your talent and arrogance, why can’t you at least manage to give him a grandchild? Why can’t you give my daughter a baby?”

  Slowly Sebastien swiveled his head. He met Christian d’Albret’s eyes and held them until a warning had been fully and effectively conveyed. A month ago Marie had lost another baby, their fifth. Thank God, this one had miscarried very early, not like the first one or the fourth, which had both reached six months. Sebastien ground the knuckles of one hand into the other. Her specialists, having conducted every test possible over the past few years, still found nothing wrong.

  Nature culls her mistakes. Sebastien winced. He and all his siblings had been mistakes, the products of a marriage that should never have taken place. If his sister had not borne two healthy children in the past three years, Sebastien would have allowed himself the morbid thought that nature, in keeping him from becoming a father, was simply correcting its error in the second generation. Perhaps the sins of the father were only visited upon the sons, the bearers of the family name.

  Sebastien found himself pondering sins and curses, then angrily discarding such nonsense. He tried to concentrate on Christian d’Albret, who was now detailing some minor point of administration that had no importance to the practice of surgery, particularly transplant surgery, where the protocols were shaped by the skills and personalities of the members of a small, elite team.

  Sebastien already knew how he would run the new unit: He would treat his doctors and nurses with respect but demand complete dedication. Home, family, friends—all must be a distant second to the incredibly complicated work at hand. He expected no more of them than he expected of himself. He never left the hospital before midnight, and many times he didn’t go home at all, catching a few hours’ sleep on the cot in his office. He saw Marie no more than two or three nights a week.

  “I think that your most crucial staff problem will be burnout,” Christian was saying. “Transplant patients inspire such personal involvement … and so many of them die. You must give your staff ample means to retreat.”

  “I have selected people who understand the risks and the demands, people who live for their work.”

  “But each of them needs a sanctuary, Sebastien. Even you, believe it or not, need something besides your career.”

  “No.”

  Christian exclaimed in dismay and continued lecturing him. Sebastien tuned out the sound. Marie’s father was the perfect type to head a hospital bureaucracy; it was from him that Marie had gotten her passion for rules and her colorless view of life.

  Christian finally came to an awkward stop. When Sebastien didn’t comment, he leaned back in his upholstered executive chair so heavily that it groaned. “Forgive me for bringing up the subject of children a few minutes ago. But I can’t help but think that you spend so much time at the hospital in order to avoid Marie. You blame her for the problems, and that angers me.”

  “I don’t blame her.” Sebastien returned his attention to the window, while peace deserted him and frustration twisted his stomach. Each of Marie’s miscarriages carved a larger wound than the last one and strained their cool relationship even more, it was true. But he didn’t fault her; instead he felt cheated by some vindictive fate or by his own failure, some enormous failing he had only to discover and fix. “She suffers. I know how much she wants a child.”

  “And what will you do if she never produces one? What is there to make your marriage worthwhile besides children?”

  “There will be children. Have patience, Christian.”

  “You will not divorce my daughter, you understand? Not if you want to keep your position here.”

  “Don’t insult me with a limp threat. I would be welcome at any hospital in Europe.”

  “But there is only one Sainte Crillion, the best of the best, with a new transplant unit that could bring you worldwide recognition. No, Sebastien, I think you won’t jeopardize what you’ve built here … and what you could accomplish in the future.”

  “I’ll live my life as I wish, Christian, without your permission. But rest assured, I have no intention of divorcing Marie.”

  “I don’t hear love speaking, I hear complacency. You and Marie—”

  “Have an understanding. And it works quite well. She understands the liabilities of marriage to a heart surgeon. She has always understood that my work demands most of my time and energy. She enjoys the prestige. She has her own life.”

  “She is very unhappy.”

  “Unhappiness is the state of most lives, eh? Enough.” Sebastien shrugged, trying to sidetrack the anger that was winding through the muscles of his shoulders. He shut his eyes and made himself concentrate on the soothing, silken glide of his shirt and the heavier weight of his coat. He spent more time at his boxing than ever before, and the workouts plus maturity had added bulk to his chest and shoulders. He knew that he looked brawny and intimidating—and vain, many of his colleagues claimed.

  “What are you thinking?” Christian asked in a disgusted tone. “What are you feeling? I can never tell. That’s a great talent of yours, Sebastien. Goddamn arrogant surgeons. So tough. They hide everything so well. And you are the best, I admit it.”

  Sebastien shook his head. “I am only reveling in my new position of power,” he said in a sardonic tone. But his emotional state was as fierce and vivid as the torrent of sleet that slashed across the window. He was thinking of a night seven years ago on a hilltop in the moonlight, when a naive American girl had made life seem so carefree and simple.

  Annette had relaxed since having her children, because they put her in a position of power. Sebastien was deeply pleased to have her friendship again, though it came at his own expense. She had contributed something to the family that he couldn’t—grandchildren. And her ambitions benefitted because Philippe de Savin adored them.

  “You should hear how he talks to them!” she told Sebastien over lunch at her club. Gripping a lapel of her dusk-blue cutaway jacket like an orator about to make a speech, Annette leaned across her venison cutlets and winked. “He calls them Puppy and Kitten! Imagine! Papa using whimsical nicknames!”

  “I’m glad that his attention pleases you.”

  “And I’ll tell you something else.” She clinked her wineglass to Sebastien’s. “He’s become more open-minded. He’s turning the shirt factory in Lille over to me. I’ll be in charge of the entire operation.”

  “Congratulations. You deserve much more than that.”

  “Oh, in time, Sebastien, in time.”

  When they finished lunch and rose to leave she grasped his hand. “Don’t drive back to the hospital this second. Come see the children. Come to the nursery with me while I gather them up.”

  Sebastien agreed reluctantly. He avoided children, even Annette’s. “I have only a few minutes.”

  “That’s enough. Good God, how will you ever be a father if you can’t stand children?” She frowned at him.

  He decided to let her mistaken assumption pass. “So far, that question has not urgently required an answer.”

  “Oh, I give up! I’ll never decipher you.”

  “Mystery is part of my charm.”

  “ ‘Hardly. There’s no mystery, only stubborness. Come along, stone face.”

  The club’s nursery was too bright; the cheerfulness of it weighed him down as he followed Annette into a suite of rooms filled with toys, children, and sunlight. She clapped her hands at the blond two-year-old who sat in the midst of candy-colored building blocks. “Jacques! It’s
Maman! And Uncle Sebastien! No, you haven’t forgotten him, even though he hasn’t come to see you in months.”

  Sebastien hid a grimace that leapt from deep discomfort. He hadn’t been surprised when Annette had named her first child after their brother. He approved, in fact, but the name was never easy to hear. Little Jacques laughed and held out his arms. Picking him up, Annette kissed him heartily then thrust him into Sebastien’s arms. “Now, Sebastien, you hold him while I retrieve Louise. She’s in a crib in the infants’ room. Try not to look so stem. You’ll frighten him.”

  “Wait, Annette—”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She left Sebastien holding his nephew, who squirmed and stared at him with dark eyes that grew wider with each second. The silence hummed with uncertainty; Sebastien realized that he was gripping the boy against his chest in an almost fierce hold. “You have your father’s coloring, but those eyes, mon petit, those eyes …”

  The child had his grandmother’s big, haunting eyes. She had given those ancient Celtic eyes to the de Savins. Sebastien looked into them and saw her, remembered her dying. He saw Antoine, Bridgette, Jacques—and himself. Himself. Doomed to survive alone, doomed because he had grown up afraid to let anyone come too close again.

  Doomed. He told himself it was a ridiculous, morbid notion. But suddenly the room felt too hot; Sebastien had the disturbing thought that he was being smothered by the scent of babies and the light, high laughter of the older children. His throat ached. To his horror, his eyes burned with tears.

  Shocked, he held Jacques at arms’ length. The boy dangled there, looked frightened, then began hiccupping. “Stop it,” Sebastien ordered, his voice raw. Jacques began to cry loudly. Calling an attendant, Sebastien set the gulping child in her arms. “Tell his mother that I had to leave. I detest cranky children.”