He pushed a button and a voice came on, in the crackle of static. “Severe storm watch along the New England coast until two A.M. Traveler’s advisories posted for Cape Cod and the Eastern Seaboard.”
Fred’s face clouded in worry. “I don’t know, Laura, whether we should venture out.”
“Are we safe here?” she asked. “The house, I mean.”
“Oh yes. Nothing about hurricanes. Some snow probably, and rain, and a lot of wind. Once we got off the Cape and a little inland, we’d be okay. But it could be rough going for a while.” He cocked his head toward the stairs. “We could stay here. I’d sleep upstairs. Leave you safely down here.” He smiled, acknowledging the possibility of more intimate arrangements.
Again, that inner startle of wonder and desire. The adventure of the whole thing. And it was stormy outside. At best, it would be an uncomfortable drive.
“You could call your mother,” he went on. “I’m sure she’d agree it was a wise course to wait.” He looked toward the refrigerator. “I have food in the freezer. Wine.” He gestured toward the stairwell, lined with bookcases. “We have books to read, jigsaw puzzles. I could even put on some music and we could dance for old times.”
She smiled. “’For old times.’” She remembered them dancing at Charley’s. So long ago. And now, this reconnection with Fred—it was a gift, defying time. “Okay. I’ll call.”
Carlena answered.
“Carlena, it’s Laura.” She didn’t have time to say more.
“Oh, Laura. I’ve been frantic. Your mother’s in the hospital. She’s in a coma.”
She sat down on the window seat, felt the blood leave her head. “Tell me.”
“She’s been sick all day, throwing up. Then I couldn’t wake her up. I called the doctor. He sent an ambulance. He said, ‘Call the children.’ I called the others. I couldn’t reach you.”
“I’ll be there, Carlena. We’re starting out now.”
She hung up the phone. “My mother. She’s in a coma, in the hospital. We’ll have to go.”
Commiseration etched his face. “Of course. We’ll take it slow. After we get off the Cape, it should be fine.”
He held his arms out and she went to him, rested in the circle of his embrace. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I know. Thanks.”
At the door, about to leave, she thought of Trace. He should be alerted in case he had to come. “I’d like to call my husband. He should be home now,” she said to Fred, who was standing peering out into the storm.
“Go ahead.”
She rang the number, but he wasn’t home. She tried the office, but he wasn’t there, either.
Trace hurried into his office, but the phone had stopped ringing. He hoped it wasn’t the dean.
He put the poem down on his desk—a lined sheet of paper he’d found under a drawing pad in the middle drawer of Annie’s desk. If Laura had been home, he probably would never have wandered into Annie’s room like that. When she was home, she seemed to take over most of the grieving, just as she did the shopping and cooking.
With her gone and Bart and Paula moved into their own place, he’d gotten lonely and, wandering around the house, had found himself in his daughter’s old room. It didn’t look the same, since they’d moved the water bed out, put in an old double bed they’d had in the attic, swapped Annie’s orange paisley throw for an antique crocheted spread that had belonged to Laura’s grandmother. He’d gone along with all that, though he’d thought it a little hasty of Laura, changing it so quickly. She hadn’t even asked if he was willing. He’d felt it would be childish, cowardly, to ask for delays—“Please wait. I’m not ready yet.”
Inside the room, he’d sat down at the maple desk chair, opened the middle drawer first, leafed through a stack of letters, some blue buckram-covered notebooks, a box of slides, a few report cards. He’d not happened upon the journal that Laura had had such a fit about. It wasn’t abhorrent to him that his daughter had expressed herself in that burst of “Fuck off.” Not that he cared for such terms. He thought the angry expletives of the young entirely too limiting to the language—the easy way out, besides.
He wasn’t looking for anything special, he told himself, leafing through the contents of the drawer—maybe just some sign of her, some reminder of the particularities of her life. There it was, that piece of paper, sticking out from the pages of a drawing pad she’d evidently used in last spring’s art class. Was it calling to him? He pulled it out and read it, then read it twice more, gratitude pouring from his body like sweat.
Laura couldn’t have found the poem or she’d have told him. It gave him some satisfaction that he’d found something of Annie’s first. Though he’d share it with her as soon as she got home. She’d be touched by it, as he was. They would be glad together.
His daughter’s gift to them—to him, maybe especially to him, alone in the house for nearly two weeks? That crazy notion always came when he was alone—whether that squabble he’d had with Annie the day before she died had somehow made her less willing to fight for her life, even caused her death. As a philosopher, a student of reason, he knew better. As a grieving father, he didn’t.
It was a simple matter—Annie wanting to take the car. He didn’t even remember what she wanted it for—to take Roger on some errand, or go to Estes Park for a magazine and some shampoo. She’d asked Laura, who’d said, “It’s all right with me, if Dad doesn’t need it.”
Well, he did need it. There was a prominent scholar in the area and it was his last chance to drive over and have a talk. “I’m sorry. I’ve arranged to visit a philosophy colleague in Colorado Springs.”
“Dad! Did you ever hear of vacation? I give up!” she’d said, her eyes blazing with anger, her face almost as red as the shrimp-colored T-shirt she wore, and stomped out the door. The next day, she died. “I give up!” kept running through his mind.
So what was comforting about the poem—in addition to the fact that it was a lovely poem and quite astonishing, really—was that she had written it before that exchange, though goodness knows, she’d been cross at him enough those past months. If there was any unconscious sense of impending death, at least that had preceded the argument about the car. What fragile things we cling to, he thought.
He looked at his watch. Where was Kate? She was never late. If anything, she came early, was almost embarrassingly eager to talk with him. He looked at the poem again. It had nothing to do with Aristotle, but he wanted to show it to her anyway.
He heard her footsteps coming down the hall, and there she was, her presence somehow always more than he’d expected—the way his heart lifted when he saw her. “Come in, Kate.”
“Sorry I’m late. I knew some of the doors were locked after six and it took me awhile to find one open.” She shrugged off her heavy jacket and put her books down on the low filing case that doubled as a table by the extra chair. She was wearing jeans, that same blue sweater that matched her eyes. A gold chain with some kind of symbol he didn’t recognize hung around her neck. With a characteristic gesture, she flipped her hair back over her shoulders and sat down, picked up a manila folder from the pile of books, and looked up at him. “I have a bone to pick with Aristotle,” she said.
He was amused. “You wouldn’t be the first,” he said. “What’s your complaint?”
“He’s so unreadable! Of course I knew that before, but this last chapter—” She flung her hand toward the dark green-covered book on top of the pile. “Does he ‘suffer in translation,’ as they say?” She wrinkled her nose and her glasses slipped another half inch down her face so that she was looking at him over the top of them.
“I wish I could let him off the hook,” Trace said. “But he’s difficult in the Greek, too—a poor stylist. There’s even a question whether what we have is notes one of his students wrote down, rather than his own work.”
She sighed in resignation. “Well, I don’t feel so bad then. I thought maybe it was just me.”
“Not at
all. You’re in excellent company.”
“I know that,” she said, her quick smile acknowledging her pleasure in being with him.
He felt his face flush. “Well, thank you,” he stammered, forgetting all about the poem.
When they had gone over together the most recent section of her work and she had jotted down on her pad the material she would aim to cover before their next conference, his equanimity was fully restored and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to say to her, “I have something I’d like to show you.”
“What is it?” Her eyes scanned his desk, the nearby table.
“This,” and he pulled out the poem of Annie’s, written in her own hand on a piece of lined notebook paper.
She took it, a question in her eyes. “Yours?” she asked.
“My daughter’s.”
“Oh.” A look of sadness crossed her face and she took the paper, held it up to catch the light and as she read along she softly spoke the words into the stillness of his small office and he sat back in his chair and listened as she read:
“I’m quite a child you know
lost in between the popcorn and the lace
and never in my life have I
approached you without
first retreating.
All the better, I believe
for you, at any rate.
You wait, you’ll see just what I mean
when I shatter into thousands.
You’ve never been so scared
in all your life,
And never so rewarded.”
She stopped and he watched as silently now she read again across the lines and down the page. When she looked up there were tears in her eyes. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s a little uncanny too, isn’t it? When did she write it, do you know?”
“Not exactly. Before we went away. It was tucked into a drawing pad in her desk. I found it there—this afternoon.”
“Oh. Thank you for letting me read it. It must be very precious to you.” She leaned forward, handing him the paper but reading it again even as she did so. “Do you know who it’s written to? Who is the ‘you’ in the poem?”
He took it from her, his eyes scanning the now-familiar words. “I’ve wondered that, of course. Obviously someone important to her. Gordon maybe, or her mother. But…” He spoke softly because he had not yet fully claimed it, and its value as preceding her fall would be the same in any case. But then it was as though he looked through a lighted scrim and saw his daughter nodding, encouraging him with her smile, and he knew that what his mind had been struggling with, playing with, all afternoon was true, that Annie cared for him this much, was even promising gifts from this so terrible event, and he said, his voice strong now, “I think it’s to me.”
He looked at the young woman in the chair opposite his. “Do you think so, Kate?”
“Oh yes, I do, Dr. Randall. From what little you’ve told me, that’s what I guessed. I think it’s to you.”
It was almost midnight when Fred and Laura reached the edge of town. A light snow was falling.
“Want to go right to the hospital?” Fred asked.
“Yes.” She directed him through the darkened streets. “Up that hill.” She had come here times without number when Will was sick, more recently to visit Rachel.
He pulled up at the brightly lit door. A sign indicated VISITOR PARKING in an adjacent lot. The lot was almost empty. “You go on in,” Fred said. “I’ll park. I’ll find you.”
She hurried into the large vestibule. The hospital was hushed. A woman sat at a desk behind a sign—INFORMATION.
Laura went to the desk. “My mother, Rachel Taylor, she was brought in this afternoon in a coma. I just arrived from out of town. Her room number?”
The woman nodded sympathetically, addressed her computer screen. “Three oh seven. Take the elevator down that hallway.” She pointed. “Get off at the third floor. Turn left.”
“Thank you.” She hurried to the bank of elevators, pushed the button.
Fred came in the front door. His eyes scanned the room. When he saw her, he went over to the elevator.
“Third floor,” she said. “Three oh seven.” The elevator came, the door slid back, and they got on.
“Any word?” Fred wondered.
“I didn’t ask.”
At the third floor they got out, walked to the left, following the door numbers. “Three oh three…three oh five…” Down the hall a nurses’ station stood in an island of light. A woman bent over a book. She didn’t appear to notice them.
“Three oh seven,” Laura said.
“I’ll wait here,” Fred squeezed her hand, and Laura, heart pounding, entered the room.
A low light illumined the area around her mother’s bed. Rachel appeared to be sleeping. She stepped to the bedside. Her mother’s color was good, her breathing regular.
“Mother,” she whispered. Her mother stirred but didn’t waken. She went back out of the room, beckoned to Fred, and they approached the nurses’ station.
The nurse looked up. “May I help you with something?”
“I’m Laura Randall, Mrs. Taylor’s daughter. I’ve just come from out of town. I was told she was in a coma. Can you tell me…”
The nurse nodded. “She has come out of the coma. Her condition is stable at the moment. We’ve taken some blood. The results will be available in the morning.”
“Oh… So she’s…all right?”
The nurse addressed them both. “At present. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep? We don’t expect anything to develop over the next few hours.” She looked down at her chart. “We have your phone number. We’ll call you if there’s any change for the worse.”
“Oh, thank you,” Laura said, and they moved away from the desk. “I’ll just go tell her good night,” she said, and slipped once more into the room—still the quiet breathing—and put a light kiss on her mother’s forehead. “See you tomorrow,” she whispered, and went out to rejoin Fred.
In the car, she put her head back against the seat. “Oh,” she whispered, and allowed herself some quiet tears of relief.
*
The windows of the house were dark as they approached.
Fred turned off the motor, put his hand over hers. “Do you want me to come in with you? Will you be all right?”
“You don’t need to, thanks. Unless you want to sleep here. What will you do?”
“I’ll go to Ginny’s. I know where the key is.” He opened his door. “I’ll walk to the door with you.”
“Thanks.” She got out, waited for him to join her.
Hand in hand, they proceeded up the flagstone walk, covered now with a thin layer of snow. The wind had died down, but a light snow was still falling. When they reached the house, Laura put her key in the lock, turned to look back.
Beneath the white dome of the streetlamp, snowflakes fell, drifting stars of light.
“When I was growing up, I loved to look at the snow under that light,” she said. “I’d stand at the front window and imagine it was a fairyland and I was a princess, dancing in the falling snow.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “You are a princess,” he said gravely, and kissed her, and passed his hand over her head in the knit cap and said, “Good night. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He went down the walk, got in his car, and drove away.
Laura went in, hung up her coat, crept up the stairs, got ready for bed, and climbed in. The sheets were chilly and for a long time she lay awake, thinking of Rachel, and of Fred, playing through the events of the day—her heart full from its richness and for the journey safely made. And yet… And yet… What if they had stayed? She drifted off to sleep, holding to herself the memory of Fred’s arms around her, her lips to his.
The smell of smoke reached Bart as he slept, became a dream of fire. Then the shrill beep, beep of the smoke alarm.
“Paula!” He grasped her shoulder. “Paula! Wake up! There’s a fire!”
“Wh
at? What?” She came to slowly. “What’s the noise?”
“The smoke alarm. Wake up!”
Immediately, she was out of bed, her feet on the bare floor, reaching for her robe hung over the nearby chair. “Where is it? I don’t see any fire!”
It was true. The smoke was seeping up through the floor, curling along a wall. “It’s coming from downstairs,” she said.
“I know it.” He was jumping into his pants, pulling a sweater over his pajamas, groping with his feet for his shoes. He banged on the floor, shouting, “Fire! Fire!” through the crack in the floorboards.
“That’s Jimmy’s room,” she said. “He won’t understand.”
“Damn!” he said. “You call nine-one-one. I’m going downstairs,” and he was off, his feet clattering on the stairwell as he went.
In the entrance hall, he pounded on the door of the apartment below. “Fire!” he shouted. “Ray! Susan! Your place is on fire!”
He remembered that their bedroom was in front of the house, two rooms away from Jimmy’s. The smoke might not have reached them yet. They probably didn’t have smoke alarms anyway. He’d suggested it to them once: “An old house like this could go up in a hurry.”
“Yeah,” Ray had said. “We should do something about it.” Bart guessed they hadn’t, any more than they’d cleaned up the backyard or taken the barrels of debris out of the basement. “Feel free to store stuff down here,” Ray had said when they first moved in.
“Thanks,” he’d said, and vowed to himself, Not this guy, thank you. Not with all the junk you have down here.
He banged again on the door. No response. “I can’t wake them!” he called to Paula, who came running down the stairs. “The fire truck’s on its way,” she said.
“Keep knocking here.” He ran out of the entrance hall and onto the front porch and banged on what he thought would be the bedroom window. “Ray! Susan!” he called. Should he break the glass? Try the front door once more. He ran back inside. The smell of smoke was coming through the door. He tried to open it. Locked, of course. “Stand back!” he said to Paula, and he ran against the door, hitting it with his shoulder. The wood creaked, but nothing gave way. He pounded again. “Open up! Open up! Your house is on fire!”
Such Good People Page 27
