The shorter of the two nurses stepped forward; her wide smile produced the deepest dimples Lily had ever seen.
“I’m Melinda and this is Trisha. You’re here to visit Eavan Murphy, is that right? Lily nodded.
“Come, we’ll take you to her room.” Trisha said. As they walked up the wide hallway Lily was amazed to see that the walls were saturated with rainbow-colored murals of animals, children, and fairy-tale characters. Lily nodded and smiled at the parents who were walking up and down the hallways with their children, many of whom were connected to intravenous drips that hung from rolling stands. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how heartbreaking it must be to see your little one go through a serious illness or injury. Lily’s heart went out to all of them and she felt immeasurably grateful that her own little girl was healthy.
The nurses stopped in front of room 405. “Here’s the room. If there’s anything you need, please let us know. Oh, and do you mind taking a photo with us?” Before Lily could answer, Melinda and Trish moved closer to her. Trish pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, extended the arm that held the phone, and rapidly clicked the camera three times.
“That should do it, thanks so much.” The two nurses giggled as they walked toward their station.
There were six beds in the room: three on each side of the dormitory style room. Lily had to fight back tears because the children looked so helpless in their large hospital beds. Two of them were bald—side effects from the rounds of chemotherapy they had received—and wore knitted caps to keep their heads warm. Parents, whose faces were etched with worry and eyes bleary from countless sleepless nights, surrounded their beds. One child was crying as the nurses stuck him with a needle for a blood test. One by one the adults looked up and were surprised to see Lily Lockwood smile at them as she walked to the far end of the room.
A little girl with two long blonde braids that framed her heart-shaped, freckled face was propped up in bed quietly listening intently to a story her mother was reading to her. Lily stood a few feet away, not wanting to interrupt. She listened to the familiar brogue and saw Margaret’s animated face as she softly read to Eaven. Margaret stood up when she noticed her famous employer quietly standing nearby. “Miss Lockwood, what a lovely surprise.” She leaned in to her daughter. “Eaven, this is Miss Lockwood. You remember, I take care of her little girl.”
Eavan’s blue eyes widened when she saw what Lily was holding. Her little arms were already outstretched in anticipation when Lily handed her a beautiful doll with long blonde hair.
“Oh how nice, but you shouldn’t have!” Margaret looked back at her daughter. “What do you say to Miss Lockwood, darlin’?”
“Thank you so much! This is the prettiest doll I’ve ever seen in my whole entire life!” Eaven hugged the doll. “Do you think it would be all right to braid her hair so that it looks like mine?”
“Of course. Here, I’ll do it for you.” Lily took the doll and braided its hair so that it looked identical to its new owner.
Lily visited with them for another hour. She was intrigued by how smart and funny Eaven was. Lily was dutifully impressed by the bandages that covered the incision on the child’s tummy when Eaven proudly revealed them to her.
When it was time to leave, she gave Lily a big kiss and thanked her again for visiting. Margaret walked Lily out of the room to the elevator.
“I am glad that Eaven is doing so well. It must have been scary. I can’t even imagine.”
“Oh you have no idea,” said Margaret. “When my husband called me last night, I could hear Eaven screaming in pain. Thank goodness Mr. Jamie was able to come over to take care of Daisy Rose and I was able to leave. We got Eaven to the hospital just before her appendix burst. I can’t even bear to think about what might otherwise have happened to her.”
Lily squeezed her hand. “Well you don’t even have to think about that, thank goodness.”
“The doctor said if she continues to do as well as she’s doing, we can bring her home tomorrow afternoon.”
“Take as long as you need to be with her.” Lily said, to Margaret’s relief.
“You know, Miss Lockwood, I feel so lucky to have found steady employment working for a person as kind as you. When people find out you’re my boss, they always ask me for “the inside dirt. I tell them that Lily Lockwood is a fine woman, a wonderful mother, and a good employer. Now I can happily add that you’re also considerate and compassionate.” Then Margaret did something she had never done before: She hugged her boss.
The driver slammed on the brakes and Lily’s phone fell from her hands. Lily retrieved it and tightened the seat belt that she had neglected to secure when she first got into the cab.
Lily thought about the events that had taken place the night before. Had Jamie not been available to take care of Daisy Rose after Margaret’s hasty departure, he would not have been there when she got home and they would not have made love.
She sighed when she thought about the conversation she’d had with her friends earlier in the day. They had not been wrong in their opinion of Jamie. She had told them on many occasions—probably too many—the events that had led to her break-up. Suddenly she found herself thinking about that fateful night that turned out to be the beginning of the end in her relationship with him. She and Jamie had been invited to a Hollywood party at producer Harvey Leder’s house in Bel Air. Jamie had recently landed the coveted lead role in the movie, Standoff in Sante Fe and the party was a pre-production meet-and-greet for the actors, their significant others, and the director before principle shooting was to begin a few days later in New Mexico. The director and producer wanted everyone to get to know each other before they went on location.
During the party, when Jamie was off speaking to the director, Lily headed for the bar to order a Mojito. A pretty blonde girl walked over to her. She was about 5’8”, with long, stick-straight hair, and a smokin’-hot body. She introduced herself as Natalie, Jamie’s love interest in the upcoming movie.
“I’m so glad you’re okay with me and Jamie.” Natalie smiled and took a sip of her Martini
“Excuse me?” Lily said.
“Okay with the talk we had. I mean—he said you were.”
“What talk?” Lily asked. Her radar was going off in all directions like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
“Well, it was after I found out that I got the role of Cassandra. I was actually at The Coffee Bean. You know, the one on Cross Creek Road in Malibu?”
Lily nodded.
“Jamie came in. We knew each other from the auditions and found out we’d both been cast! Amazing, huh? So, anyway, he sat down and we talked for a couple of hours. I told him it was important to me that my character and her relationships be authentic. So I was candid with him. I told him I have to be completely committed to my character; I’m the type of actor that has got to be in the moment for it to work.”
“Meaning?” Lily asked.
“Well, if I have a love scene with an actor in a film—as I will in this one—I make sure to fuck him beforehand. A lot. This way we’re really comfortable and take all our passion and chemistry and put it into the film.”
Lily felt the blood rush to her head.
“So when he thought it was a great idea, I asked him if his girlfriend would mind. He told me that you were a real pro in the business and would be cool with it. I thought, wow, she must be rad!
When the party ended, as Jamie and Lily were driving home, Lily told Jamie everything Natalie had said. “You’re joking, right?” Jamie laughed.
“No, I’m not joking. That’s what she told me.”
“Babe, she was just pulling your chain. It’s not true, I swear,”
“Then why would she have said it?”
“Why do people say shit? I don’t know. Ask her.”
That evening when Jamie was in the bedroom packing, his clothes were all over the place, and his suitcase was open on the bed. The reality hit Lily: He was going away for six weeks and wou
ld be alone with a girl who’d already told Lily she planned to have sex with Jamie and that he was definitely into it.
“I don’t believe you, Jamie, when you deny what you obviously said to that girl.”
“I don’t give a shit what you believe.” He started throwing the clothes into the suitcase. “Lily, be smart and just leave me alone.”
“Jamie, I’m not stupid. Why would she say that to me, knowing I would confront you about it? Why would anyone do that to another person? You’re lying!”
“Lily, you’re a spoiled bitch who doesn’t know when to shut her fucking mouth,” he yelled. His face was beet red, and one large vein was bulging from the left side of his neck.
“I want you to admit the truth!” Lily screamed just as loudly. Jamie slammed his fist against the wall, leaving a huge hole.
He stood in front of Lily, grabbed both her wrists, and through clenched teeth said, “You listen to me, Lily. If I wanna fuck someone, I’ll fuck them. And you can’t do shit about it!”
Early the next morning Jamie got into a town car that would take him to the airport and into Natalie’s arms.
Weeks later, while Lily sat at her mother’s bedside in the University hospital I.C.U, the news about Jamie and Natalie hit the wires and it became a feeding frenzy of gossip. Lily had to endure seeing footage of them together whenever she turned on the TV. Photos of them walking hand in hand and kissing appeared on the cover of every tabloid lining the checkout counters of every supermarket in the country. Of course Jamie denied that anything had happened between them and told Lily that the whole thing was a publicity stunt concocted by the executive producer and studio. True or not, Lily had had enough and finally ended their relationship.
She willed herself to shake off the memory of that time, which still made her sick to her stomach. She had decided that morning that if she and Jamie were going to give it another try, she would have to forgive, forget, and pray he changed as much as he claimed to have. This could be a second chance for them. They could start over with a clean slate. Hopefully, with time, she would forget the bad stuff they’d gone through and they could be a real family. Didn’t everyone deserve that?
Lily looked out the cab window at the traffic on 8th Avenue. She checked the street sign and realized they were only near West 33rd Street and still had another 20 blocks to go. She glanced at her phone and saw that it was already 6:45 p.m. Shit, her call time at the theater was 7:00 p.m. and with this traffic, she would definitely be late. Leaning closer to the front seat, Lily said, “Excuse me, do you think it might be better to take 6th Avenue to 47th Street, then swing over to Broadway to avoid this traffic?”
“Sixth Avenue is a friggin’ mess. Lady, I’m the professional here, so unless you want to switch seats, let me do the driving, huh?” he snarled.
Lily leaned back, shook her head, and smiled. She remembered another taxi ride she’d taken with her mother and Aunt Donna many years earlier. She must have been around eight years old, since it was before she started acting and before Daisy had sold her first book. They were riding in a taxi going uptown from Greenwich Village, which for them was a luxury. They hardly ever took cabs, since they couldn’t afford them. Even though Daisy worked two jobs, money was always tight for the single mother. So the mother and daughter were frequent travelers on the subway. So much so that by the time Lily was five years old she could recite all the #1 Line subway stops, in the correct order heading uptown. She would recite them to the same tune as the ABC song. Lily proceeded to sing it to herself:
Christopher Street, 14th, 18th,23rd, 28th, 34th-Penn Station! 42nd –Times Square! 50th, 59th-Columbus Circle! 66th-Lincoln Center, 72nd, 79th and 86th Streeeeeet!
But this one night, she was dressed up in her finest, as were her Aunt Donna, and her mother, because they had gotten free tickets—orchestra seats—from a friend who was in the Broadway musical, Les Misérables. Daisy had helped the actress by getting her an audition for the show with a casting director at Johnson-Liff Casting who happened to be a regular customer at the restaurant where her mother was the hostess four nights a week. The woman landed a role in the chorus and the tickets were her way of thanking Daisy. The show was coincidentally playing at The Broadway Theatre, the same theater where Lily was currently headed.
Twenty-one years earlier, the three of them had ridden in one of the big old-fashion yellow cabs, the kind you don’t see any more in Manhattan. It was the model that had had a small pull- up metal seat behind the driver, and faced the other passengers in the back. Lily was proudly seated on it, facing her mother and Aunt and watching the traffic out of the rear window.
They were stuck in a major traffic jam on 8th Avenue. The taxi sat without moving for a good ten minutes. When they finally did move, it was only a few feet and then traffic was stopped yet again. Impatient drivers honked their horns loudly which did nothing but add to everyone’s tension. Daisy was visibly nervous and checked her watch every few minutes.
“Are we going to miss the curtain going up, Mommy?” Lily asked
“Oh honey, I certainly hope not. We left the house with plenty of time to get there.”
Donna checked her watch for the hundredth time. “ Pali, I don’t think we’re going to make it on time.”
“One thing I know for sure— Lily is not going to miss any part of her first Broadway show!” Daisy handed the driver a five dollar bill, opened the passenger door, and got out. She waved to Donna and Lily, “Hurry up, ladies, we’re on the move. Les Miz or bust!”
Holding hands and laughing gleefully, they ran up Eighth Avenue. People walking on the street smiled and moved aside, allowing the giggling trio to pass. They were out of breath, but right on time, when they finally arrived at the box office. Within minutes, Lily was seated between her mother and Donna, eagerly waiting for the curtain to rise. After the show, Lily knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what she wanted to be when she grew up. She was bitten by the acting bug and all these years later she still felt the same.
Lily glanced out the passenger window at the traffic, which fortunately had opened up. The driver was able to reach Broadway fairly quickly. “Can you turn on to 53rd and stop at the stage door on the left?”
The driver looked at her in the rear-view mirror and his whole demeanor changed. He actually smiled.
“Hey, I know you. You was that actress on that TV show. Damn, what’s the name of it? My wife loves it. Me, I can’t stomach all that drama crap. All the kissing—the crying—it gives me a headache. I told my wife, ‘Selma that shit don’t happen in real life.’ She tells me ‘Shut the fuck up, Harry.’
Lily bit her tongue so she wouldn’t laugh. Oblivious, the driver continued, “What was the show called again? Wait don’t tell me. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Oh you know—shit— that hospital show.
“Uh huh, that’s right.” It had been a few years since she’d starred in St. Joes and Lily actually missed it, especially the cast and crew. Her manager, Franny, had called last week to tell her that because the ratings had gone south since her departure, they were asking for her to return. They promised her a great storyline and a big fat paycheck. Initially she dismissed the idea. She thought about Robbie. What if he wanted to get in touch with her and she was back in LA? Even Lily knew how ridiculous that was. Surely if he wanted to find her—anywhere on the planet— he certainly could. There was only two more weeks until her play closed and she needed to decide what she was going to do next. She promised Franny she’d give it serious thought and would let her know by next week. She got out of the cab and walked through the stage door, clocking in at 7:00 p.m. on the nose.
After the show, Jodee stopped by Lily’s dressing room and knocked on the door.
“Hey, girl, you decent? Well maybe after last night I shouldn’t use the word decent…”
The door quickly opened, Lily, still in her robe, shushed her friend, grabbed Jodee’s arm, pulled her into the room, and closed the door.
“Now was that necessary?�
� Lily sat down in front of the mirror and continued to take off her stage makeup.
“Oh yeah, absolutely necessary until you come to your damn senses.” Jodee sat on the corner of the dressing table, picked up one of the many perfume bottles from the antique silver tray, sprayed it on her wrists, and inhaled. “Okay, this one—I’m borrowing.” Lily took it out of her friend’s hands and placed it back where it belonged.
“Listen, I understand that it’s a bit of a shock to everyone, but they’ll just have to get over it. And be nice to Jamie when you see us together.”
“Now I know you’re out of your damned mind.”
Lily picked up the perfume bottle that her friend coveted and held it up. “I’ll tell you what. If you behave and are your charming self when you see Jamie, this is yours to keep. Deal?”
Jodee jumped to her feet and shook Lily’s hand. “Deal.”
She snatched the perfume bottle out of her co-star’s hand before her she could renege.
“Done. But I’ll tell you right now, you’d better come up with some pretty fancy bribes to shut the other two up.”
As Lily applied her street makeup, she looked at her friend in the mirror. “How bad was the shit they said about me after I left?”
Jodee smiled. “Well, how bad is bad? You know, it’s all relative.
Lily looked at Jodee and said, “On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the kindest and 10 being the three of you at your bitchiest.”
“An 11, definitely.” Lily frowned and Jodee gave her friend a hug.
“Listen, after everything that’s happened between you and Jamie, give us a little time to get used to the idea. We love you and we’ll come around.”
The Silver Cord: The Lily Lockwood Series: Book Two Page 4
