Miracle

by Deborah Smith

  Sebastien came to her with soothing murmurs, then cleaned both her and the rug. She pulled a pillow against her face to muffle weak, indignant sobs. “This flu usually disappears as quickly as it comes,” he whispered, sitting down beside her to caress her hair. “Try to sleep, love.”

  “I want to take care of you. I wanted everything to be perfect. We don’t have very much time left. It’s all ruined.”

  His patience deserted him. He grasped her chin, turning her face toward him. “Goddammit, you’re ruining it by being too hard on yourself. Do you think I’m going to desert you if you’re not always strong? Why is it fine for me to have faults, but you have to be some kind of Joan of Arc, always riding to my rescue?”

  “It’s why you loved me in the first place. You wanted me because I tried to save you from yourself.”

  “And you did. You do.” He gently wiped her face with a damp washcloth as she stared up at him in puzzlement. “Dear Miracle, do you think I would be capable of putting aside everything else to take care of you this way if you hadn’t already accomplished your rescue mission? If I’m able to be human, to give and deserve love, it’s because of you. God knows what I would have become if we’d never met. God knows what I did become before I found you again.”

  “Oh, Sebastien.”

  “You’ve done your duty, Joan of Arc. You continue to do it, just by loving me and wanting me to love you in return. Now please, let me take care of you. It’s what I’m best at myself, believe it or not.”

  “I believe it,” she said tenderly. “It’s why you became a doctor, isn’t it?”

  “It was the earliest motivation, yes. Somehow … it became lost as the years passed.” His expression hardened, and he looked sad.

  “You miss your work, don’t you? It was your whole life. I’m beginning to understand how much it hurts you to be away from it.”

  “I thought I’d die when I was forced to leave my career. But then I realized that I’d been dying because of it. I’ve needed this time to get my perspective straight.” His eyes filled with tenderness as he studied her. “When I return to medicine, it won’t be my life’s only focus. I’ll be a better doctor, because I’ll be a complete person. Because of you.”

  He held her hand while she fell asleep. By the next morning she was recuperating, eating dry toast and watching him thoughtfully over cups of honeyed tea. “Since you’re a great doctor, I’m trying to be a great patient. You see?”

  He winked. “Your attitude certainly smells better.”

  That night, in honor of her recuperation, he offered her brandy with her tea. Soon she was smiling at him impishly and beckoning with a crooked finger. When he took her in his arms she felt a greater gentleness and confidence than she’d ever known before. They made love slowly, simply, but every sensation seemed full of portentous meaning. She tried to decipher it but lost track in the flood of emotion. Afterward she lay with her head on his shoulder, his warmth spreading through her, great changes whispering just beyond the edges of her control.

  He met her three weeks later, in Illinois, after she finished her work in the movie. They had three days before her first club date, in Chicago. She was booked in an unending grind of shows for the next four weeks. Her agent was thrilled.

  She and Sebastien drove to the state’s rugged northwestern corner and rented a cabin overlooking a steep ravine filled with wildflowers, a waterfall, and majestic granite boulders. Even in June the nights were crisp; they built a fire in the cabin’s fieldstone fireplace and put the mattress by the hearth. Wrapped in quilts, they made love there with the slow, thorough attention of connoisseurs sampling the last bottle of a vintage wine.

  She slipped away during the night and went to the bathroom. Behind a closed and locked door she washed herself and scrubbed between her legs with a white towel until she burned. Desperation fed her frantic examination of the towel. There wasn’t even a tiny red trace of reassurance. She had begged her body to show some evidence of it by today. There was no reason for the delay. She always took her pills. She hadn’t been careless.

  The pristine towel mocked her. She threw it on the floor and sat down beside it, hugging her knees. Over the past two days she had searched her memories through the years with Elliot, trying to recall whether her pill-regulated cycle had ever been late before. It hadn’t. She hoped, for both her and Sebastien’s sakes, that there wasn’t a baby. She had agreed to honor Sebastien’s wishes. What now?

  Compromise. But there might be no way to compromise on this.

  Shivering, she got up and tiptoed through the cabin. Beside the mattress she paused, looking down at him as he slept. He lay on his back, the quilts twisted around him like a patchwork landscape that had been wrenched by earthquakes, his turbulence and powerful spirit evident even when he was at rest.

  In her own way she was as strong as he, but if what she feared came true, she didn’t know if strength would help. Wrapping herself in a blanket, she went to the cabin’s front deck and sat on the edge, grateful that the darkness hid her and that the rush of the waterfall a few yards away muffled her crying.

  He woke up and came searching for her, a long quilt bound around his waist and trailing the wooden floor in a graceful train that was suitably, and disturbingly, majestic. Unaware of his effect on her anxieties, he knelt down beside her and touched her damp face, then crooned a word of sorrow and took her in his arms.

  “Nothing to cry over, dear Miracle,” he whispered, rocking her. “We’ll only be apart a little while longer. It’s only a temporary setback. Only a temporary parting. You know that. Now convince me that the time will pass quickly, or I’ll kidnap you.”

  She thought she’d die from missing him, even before he left.

  There was something he felt he had to do, Sebastien told her on the last day of his visit. He conceded that it was impulsive and impractical, but he’d already chartered a private jet for the trip.

  He wanted the two of them to fly down to Atlanta for the day. He wanted to see her father, at the nursing home. “Why?” she asked, bewildered.

  “Perhaps the visit will help me deal with my own father.”

  “You met Pop ten years ago, and that was enough for me. I don’t want you to see him again. He’s pitiful. I’m ashamed of him in a different way, now.”

  “Be fair, love. I’m ashamed of my father, also, but I took you to see him.”

  While in Paris she had talked Sebastien into taking her to the hospital one night. She had needed to put Philippe de Savin in perspective for her own peace of mind. When she had seen him—thin, frail, paralyzed, unconscious—she could hardly imagine the commanding patriarch Sebastien described, the man who had alienated or destroyed most of his family because he had refused to live by anyone’s traditions but his own. She felt that she understood him, to Sebastien’s shock. No one understood his father, he told her.

  She had touched one of the blue-veined hands, examined it with her fingertips, noted the strength and grace still evident in it. Her father’s hands were like it; so were Sebastien’s. She kept that observation private and told Sebastien that his father and hers were more alike than not, products of their own disappointments, their own inability to see the world outside their grand expectations.

  So now Sebastien insisted on seeing Pop. She dreaded the visit. On the chartered jet she paced and fidgeted, not soothed by Sebastien’s reassurances.

  At the nursing home they located Pop by a sunny window, dressed in one of the jogging suits Amy had bought for him during an earlier visit. He was strapped into his wheelchair because he couldn’t sit up without help. His face was slack and tranquil. He’d had several small strokes over the past year; his few coherent thoughts were expressed with garbled sounds and weak movements of one hand. One side of his mouth hung downward, and the skin around it sagged like wax that had been warmed and allowed to melt a little.

  She kissed his pale, mottled forehead and watched his hand flutter; she felt sure that he recognized her, but
whether he was pleased, she couldn’t tell. All her life she’d had that problem with him, so it didn’t depress her now.

  “They cut his hair,” she said, frowning as she touched the short, red-gray strands. She called a nurse’s assistant over and asked about it. From the first she’d told the staff to leave his hair alone. “We hired a couple of new attendants,” the woman explained. “One of them took Mr. Zack down to the barbershop by mistake. Just didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to.”

  “I want it left alone. He likes it long.”

  “We’ll let it grow.”

  After the assistant walked away Amy promised, “It’ll grow back, Pop.”

  He made a noise. It might have been an oath or a laugh. She glanced at Sebastien, who was watching them both closely. “It was his sign of rebellion,” she said with a choked voice. “He ought to be able to keep it, even in this place.” She patted Pop’s shoulder then pointed to Sebastien. “This is Dr. de Savin, Pop. You met him once a long time ago. At a medieval fair up in the mountains. Remember?”

  He blinked sluggishly and said nothing. Sebastien took Pop’s hand and introduced himself, squeezing gently. Poignant hope rose in Army’s chest, but Pop looked at him with vague, curious eyes that soon moved away absently, then rested on her. “Ellen?”

  He said the name with startling clarity. Amy felt goose bumps on her arms. To Sebastien she whispered, “My mother’s name was Ellen.” To Pop she said in a patient voice, “I’m Amy.”

  “Ellen.” His hand wavered, crept forward, prodded her stomach with a bony knuckle. “Baaaah-be. Don’t dah.”

  Amy felt the blood drain from her face. Baby. Don’t die. She cleared her throat and told Sebastien, “My mother died when I was born. He’s just gettin’ confused.”

  Her hands trembled as she took his and held it on her knees. He repeated the warning, his crooked mouth having trouble with it but still managing to say it louder than before. Amy stroked his hand fervently. I’ll let Sebastien worry about curses. I refuse. Stop it, Pop.

  He said the words again, then shifted in his chair with growing agitation. Sebastien put a hand on Amy’s shoulder, and she jumped. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him!”

  “Calm down, love. Just talk to him.” Sebastien leaned forward and placed his other hand on Pop’s knee. “She is not Ellen,” he said in his deep, attention-holding voice. Pop stared at him. “She is not Ellen,” Sebastien repeated. “She doesn’t have a baby. She’s not going to die.”

  Pop was mollified. His eyelids drooped, and after a few seconds he returned to staring benignly out the window. “I think he loves you more than you know,” Sebastien told her, stroking her shoulder. “He obviously loved your mother very much.”

  “Maybe so, but I think he’s always resented me because I was the reason she died. I was a big mistake, right from the beginning.”

  “Look at me” The fierceness in his voice startled her. He grasped her face between his hands and frowned harshly into her eyes. “We are more than we were expected to be. So to hell with how we got here. I love you.”

  “Oh, Doc, I love you, too.” Amy hugged him and concentrated on thinking positive thoughts. She would not let their future be affected by anyone’s morbid memories—not Pop’s, not Sebastien’s, and especially not her own.

  She had sold Pop’s place more than a year ago to cover his nursing-home bills. She’d given most of the furnishings to the Salvation Army and put the personal items—his circus memorabilia and the paintings—into storage at a warehouse. Sebastien wanted to see them, and she took him reluctantly.

  “It makes me feel bad to look at them,” she explained. “Just reminds me of too much, I guess. I spent so many years watching him paint and drink and smoke dope.” Inside the small storage room she opened a wooden crate and gestured toward the canvases. “Flip through ’em and see what you think.”

  When he came to the ones of her, he stopped. “Of course he loved you. It shows here.”

  “You have a kinder eye than mine.”

  “When we furnish our homes, I’d like to have some of these framed. They should be displayed.”

  She kissed him gratefully, but shook her head. “I can’t imagine putting these paintings out where they can see me.”

  “See you?”

  “I feel like Pop’s watchin’ me when I look at these. And I’m not sure whether it’s good watchin’, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think it is.”

  She gently laid a hand along his cheek but looked at him with reproach. “You can be awful magnanimous about my father’s sentiments.”

  “While still being utterly cynical about my own father’s? Yes, but you see, dear Miracle, that’s why you and I are so wonderful together. We want the best for each other. Without deception or dishonesty.”

  Guilt made her look away quickly. “I do want the best for you,” she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him, not yet.

  In the back of her mind she considered the B-movie quality of the scene. All she needed was a white handkerchief to wave as she watched the big jet taxi away from the gate. A gold-and-pink sunset streamed across the horizon; standing by the concourse’s windows, she rested her forehead on the glass and thought that the sunset would break her apart with its beauty.

  She didn’t cry, though she knew she would later. She tried to think in terms of beginnings, not endings. That was how Sebastien had wanted it too. That was why he’d waited until they reached the gate to give her the ring—a large sapphire surrounded by diamonds, with their initials and the date engraved inside the band. And he’d given her a sterling-silver cross that had belong to his mother. It was a Celtic design, delicately ornamented with a circle surrounding the crucifix. He told her that to the ancient Celts the circle had represented both the sun, and as a symbol of endlessness, eternity.

  He had placed it around her neck on a woven sterling chain, and now, as she watched the jet leave, she clasped it in her fingertips. It was warm in the sunlight, a promise of faith and, knowing Sebastien, of protection.

  This doctor knew how to deliver news with style. “You guessed right. The bunny has gone toes up.”

  Amy stared dully at a painting of frolicking lambs on the obstetrician’s office wall. “Could we try CPR on it?”

  “Welcome to the world of improbable odds. You’re part of the two percent failure rate for the pill.”

  “A few weeks ago I was sick. I throw up everything but the kitchen sink for two days. I took my pills, but maybe they never hit home.”

  “It’s possible. How do you feel about being pregnant?”

  “Worried.”

  “I’m sure that you know what your options are.”

  “Yeah.” She looked down at the flat abdomen covered by her sundress. She had tried to disassociate herself from the life that might be inside her. At the same time a deep, loving conviction had been growing along with that life. Bittersweet certainty made goose bumps rise on her skin. She put a hand on her stomach and said softly, “Hello, there. Your daddy wants you as much as I do. He just doesn’t know it, yet. But don’t get upset. Everything’ll be fine.”

  “I guess I know which option you picked.” The doctor sat back in her chair and began scribbling notes on a pad. “You’re healthy, and everything seems okay with the pregnancy. Go see your regular ob/gyn when you get back to Los Angeles.”

  “I’ll be traveling a lot in the next few months. That’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “Not if you take care of yourself and arrange to have regular checkups.”

  “Can do.”

  “Will the baby’s father be around?”

  “Nope.”

  “He’s not interested?”

  “Oh, he’d be very interested, if I told him. But I can’t do that to him right now. It’s complicated.”

  Her hand became a fist. She would tell him when she was further along, when he had his family’s situation under control, when he might let
himself see shades of light instead of shadows. Until then, she could only take care of her health and think good thoughts for the baby inside her. This baby would not be born under a father’s curse.

  The cool autumn day turned rainy before noon; it was not a good day to be working the docks at a warehouse and shipping company, especially one that was poorly managed, losing money, and should never have been purchased by his father’s officers in the first place. But Sebastien liked the release of pent-up energy that came from lifting heavy boxes of automobile parts onto the wooden pallets that lined the docks.

  Here he confronted forces he understood. In a peculiar way they reminded him of performing heart surgery: His hands were guided by instinct, his energy could burst through obstacles, he made decisions and watched them spring immediately into action. Stacking boxes made him ache to be in an operating room again. He smiled to himself at the strangeness of the comparison.

  He was no businessman, and he didn’t pretend to be. Statistics bored him when they were attached to profit margins rather than blood pressures. There was nothing human about them, nothing touchable, nothing he could use to fix a damaged body and observe its owner’s recuperation with a sense of the most primal victory, life over death.

  When called upon to make a business decision he had to sort through advice from a dozen executives, weighing each one’s points with painstaking skill but no talent; he was forced to hide his uncertainty behind a facade of confidence, lest they suspect his vulnerability and take advantage of it. How different from surgery, where he had known every answer before the question!

  Today his frustration was at a peak. He took fiendish pride in the way the managers crept around him in their white shirts and dress slacks, trying to look useful and hide their dismay. None of his father’s executives had ever donned canvas overalls and labored alongside the dockworkers. The dockworkers grinned at him now that their initial shock had worn off. They were enormous, brawny men of bawdy good humor. Sebastien remembered his mother’s people in the fishing villages of Brittany, and felt at home.