What a Mother Knows

by Leslie Lehr

  Michelle smelled the half-eaten plate of jambalaya on his desk and felt her stomach growl. She spotted the bowl he kept chocolate Kisses in, so she tiptoed around a few boxes of books. It was empty. “No chocolates?”

  “Didn’t know you were coming,” he said. “Good thing you did, though. That must have been a nasty fall.”

  “Then why aren’t you looking at my shoulder?”

  He tore his eyes away from a pizza-shaped image. “Once you were in the MRI machine, it seemed prudent to do a brain series.”

  “No wonder it took so long in there.” Michelle turned away so he couldn’t see what she was really thinking. She didn’t want him to know that she’d felt comforted by the immobility. There was nothing she could do in that white cylinder but rest. It felt safe, like the coma. Except for the screaming in her ears.

  “You were lucky today. After the accident, it took months for the swelling to go down and your brain activity to return to normal. There may still be an increased risk of hemorrhaging.”

  “But how am I doing now?”

  “You need to see me again in a few days. And you could benefit from more therapy.”

  “I tried that. Starting when I was a kid and my mom tried to kill herself, and again when Nikki got depressed and started crying at night. She refused to go, so I went. Didn’t make me feel better, though.”

  Dr. Palmer pulled the scans down from the light boxes. “I meant physical therapy. More than once a week.” He saw her blush at the misunderstanding. “Don’t be embarrassed. You’ve been through a lot. People who avoid psychotherapy are often the crazy ones.”

  “What were you in for?”

  He pointed at her in mock anger. “You didn’t read my book?”

  “I’ve been busy,” Michelle said.

  He gestured for her to sit, then flashed a penlight in her eyes. “So I gather. You could benefit from a bit more rest, Mrs. Mason.”

  “You sound like my husband.”

  “Is that good or bad?” Dr. Palmer looked up from his clipboard.

  “I’m too tired to think about it,” she admitted. “But do I really have to read the book to find out your secret?”

  Dr. Palmer shook his head. “No secret. When I was a kid, my brother was jacking a car and his finger got torn off. I played lookout.” Their eyes met, then he went on. “One of my mama’s jobs was cleaning a building with a therapist’s office, so—”

  “Let me guess: after years of therapy, you channeled your guilt into fixing people?”

  “That’s what the book jacket says, but it wasn’t so obvious at the time. Not until I did a stint at juvie hall and broke my mama’s heart.”

  “What happened to your brother?” Michelle asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s a trucker now. We don’t talk much.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Dr. Palmer slipped the pen back in the pocket of his lab coat and returned to the light boxes. “You can’t control other people’s actions. Only your reaction.”

  “And sometimes not even that,” Michelle added, following him to the next film of her shoulder. On the image, ribbons of red nerves wrapped around her rotator cuff, then extended down the thin white bones of her arm. “So, what’s the verdict, Dr. Palmer?”

  He pointed his pen at the shoulder joint. “There’s definitely an extension of nerve tissue here. You had a burst of motor movement prompted by the neurological regeneration. There was a cortisol release when you had to break your fall.”

  “Cortisol is the stress chemical, right?” Michelle knew the name from the research she’d done when Nikki started crying at night. Cortisol burned tracks in the brain, making people more sensitive to depression, more prone to reoccurrences of it.

  Dr. Palmer aimed his pen back at the image of her brain. “See these nerve pathways here? Some are dormant, but some are just being built. When you had to protect yourself from the fall, your instincts kicked in—”

  Michelle interrupted. “I was only protecting the memory card.” He turned to look at her, but it was hard to explain, even to herself. When she was first pregnant, she made Drew promise that if they were ever on a sinking ship, they would save each other first. She could always have another baby, right? But as soon as Nikki was born, she felt differently. “I was protecting Nikki’s privacy.”

  “Maternal instinct, then.” Dr. Palmer said. “In any case, the nerve bundle in your arm was already under construction. Physical stimulation could aid the process.” He began to knead her shoulders. “Your husband should massage you every night.”

  Michelle weakened beneath his touch before she could murmur a response. “He’s in New York.”

  A ripple of concern washed across Dr. Palmer’s face. “Well, your mother could do it. She’s in town, isn’t she?”

  Michelle hesitated to answer. But it felt good to confide in him. Until now she hadn’t realized how much she censored herself with Tyler. Before she could say anything more, the double doors swung open, and Bree brought in the folder with prints from Michelle’s disk.

  Music wafted in from the waiting room and overwhelmed the gurgle of air filters that echoed around the open room. When the doors closed, it faded.

  Bree handed Michelle the folder with the memory card clipped to the outside. “We’re out of matte paper, hope it’s okay.”

  Michelle nodded, grateful to avoid talking about her mother. When the nurse went across the room to help patients using the weight and pulley machines, Michelle changed the subject. “Why don’t you play music in here?”

  “We do,” Dr. Palmer said. “But we had strict orders to avoid the radio in the hospital, so I thought you preferred quiet.”

  “No. Maybe my husband didn’t want me to hear Roadhouse. But my son blasts it in the car—and aside from his taste in music, it doesn’t bother me.”

  “Good. Sensory information might help trigger your memory.” Dr. Palmer looked up from massaging her shoulder and called to Bree as she checked on Robocop at the weights. When she left to put music on, he looked back down. His fingers hit a pressure point.

  Michelle squirmed and dropped the folder. The color prints landed face up on the floor. They both squatted down to gather them. Michelle was panicked. “Please don’t tell anyone about these.”

  He picked up the birthday picture and smiled. “Ah, your missing limb.”

  “That’s not funny,” Michelle said, stacking several on his desk.

  “I wasn’t joking. She’s very beautiful, like her mother.”

  Michelle blushed and showed him the self-portrait of Nikki looking so grown-up. “Don’t you want children?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But I think wanting the woman is more important. And after all the work my mother did, I couldn’t waste time at singles bars. By the time I finished my residency, the good ones were all taken.”

  The way he smiled made Michelle wonder if that included her. She rushed to fill the silence. “I can’t imagine you’d have trouble now: a handsome doctor with a book?”

  “You sound like my mother. But she still cooks dinner whenever I want, so what’s the rush? It’ll happen when it happens.” He set the first picture aside to look at the next one.

  She reached to close the file, but he was on her right side and beat her to it. They both looked at the photo of Nikki and Noah kissing. Passion rose like a hologram from the glossy photo paper. Nikki looked straight at Michelle, her eyes glowing with innate knowledge. Noah looked blissed-out, with his neck stretched so that his lips reached hers, his black eyelashes curling from closed lids. Michelle turned to Dr. Palmer, who was mesmerized. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  He looked up. “I believe in love at first smell. Pheromones are responsible.”

  Michelle looked back at the picture. “So you think this could be real? Not a fling? They only met a few weeks before the accident. Could they have fallen in love that quickly?”

  Dr. Palmer shrugged. “What do I know about love?”

  �
��What does anyone know?” Michelle said softly.

  Smooth jazz rose in the background. The mood relaxed as patients using the weight machines across the room began to murmur to each other. Dr. Palmer led Michelle to the padded bench at the table with the electrical box, then attached electrodes to her arm. “Ready?”

  She nodded, opening the folder to distract herself with the vivid prints.

  “Your daughter has quite an eye.”

  “She took photography at school,” Michelle said, then her mood darkened. She hoped Nikki was still taking pictures, somewhere. Something burned. “Ouch!”

  “Sorry.” Dr. Palmer turned the dial lower. He tipped his head at the picture of Noah on his Harley. “Bet his mother would like that. What’s she like?”

  “I have no idea. She looked like one of those sad women who lay in the dark all day watching reality TV.”

  “You haven’t spoken with her?” He felt her wrist for her pulse, then adjusted the electrodes.

  “She’s suing me.” She waited, but he didn’t look up. “Her ex-husband called me a murderer. What would I say: I’m sorry?” She shut the folder. “I wonder if they even know about Nikki? What if she was just another notch on Noah Butler’s guitar?”

  He turned on the voltage again and started low. “You’re judging a dead boy?”

  “A dead man,” Michelle corrected. “He was nineteen, legally an adult.”

  “What about your daughter?” He moved the motorcycle shot aside to the one framed around their kiss. “She looks confident there. As if this shot was proof.”

  “Of what?”

  He scowled as if she was playing dumb. “That he loved her.”

  “Dr. Palmer—” Michelle started.

  “Wes.”

  “Wes. What could I possibly say that would make his mother feel better?”

  “I didn’t suggest apologizing for her sake,” he said quietly.

  Michelle felt the tears coming. She reached for the voltage knob and cranked it higher. Let it burn. She liked this feeling. It distracted her from the heaviness in her heart. The sweet scent of burnt flesh tickled her nose.

  Dr. Palmer switched off the power. “What are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing,” she answered. “It’s not about me.”

  He yanked the electrodes from her arm. “You’ve been using that excuse for a long time, haven’t you?”

  Michelle held her singed arm protectively. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.” He called the nurse over.

  Michelle stood up. Her knee caught the power cord, and the electrical box crashed to the floor. He didn’t help her retrieve it, which made her more furious. She couldn’t expect him to understand. He didn’t have children. She slammed the box on the table. “Must be nice to know everything.”

  “I just want to help.”

  Michelle held her arm out. He was supposed to help—he was her doctor. Bree ran up with the first aid kit and set it on the table. She took out a cool pack and reached for Michelle’s arm, but Dr. Palmer waved her away. Michelle winced as he cooled the burn, then patted salve on it, but it was clear by Bree’s surprised expression that Michelle was wrong. He didn’t have to help this much.

  She pointed to the memory card clipped to the file. “If you really want to help, could you keep that until the trial?”

  He looked at her for a moment, then unclipped the blue disk and dropped it in his pocket. “Of course,” he said. “For your daughter’s privacy.”

  Michelle waited, but he said nothing more. He went back to dressing her wounds with bandages. They would blister soon, then burst—painful reminders that he was right. This was about her, whether she’d killed Noah Butler or not.

  20

  A puddle splashed the curb as Cathy pulled her minivan to the front of Holy Cross Hospital. Between swipes of the windshield wipers, Michelle could see the Virgin Mary statue beckoning her toward the entrance of the small building. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “No problem,” Cathy said. “But who’s this doctor? I don’t blame you for switching if that other guy burned your arm, but we had a deal. No more medical bills until my husband gets paid.”

  “It’s just a consultation,” Michelle said. A station wagon honked, then passed and turned into the mall entrance across the street. Michelle could see toddlers strapped into car seats, tiny fingers smearing Cheerios against the rain-streaked windows. She missed those days.

  Michelle peered at the concrete building rising up in the clouds and pushed up her hood.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Cathy asked.

  “Good question,” Michelle said. “See you in an hour?”

  “Don’t be late. I have a school committee after lunch.” She leaned across to open the passenger door. “Good luck.”

  Holy Cross Hospital was as gray and dreary inside as the sky outside. Scarlet stained glass windows cast bloody shadows across the tile floors. Michelle stamped her wet shoes then submitted to the elderly volunteer in a wheelchair guarding the lobby with a pump of hand sanitizer. When the admitting nurse pointed to Dr. Braunstein’s sign-in sheet, Michelle declined. “It’s personal.”

  The nurse sat up, immediately alert. “Are you the one who called?” A woman at the desk in back looked up from the computer. Michelle heard whispering behind her as two nurses in green surgery caps looked up from the coffee stand. A sitcom star breezed past, but the nurses didn’t flinch. Infamy trumped fame. The nurse pointed down the hall. “Second door on the left.”

  Michelle thanked her and started walking. Her heels echoed too loudly on the tile. She tried to keep the past separate from this moment, as if it hung on a lanyard around her neck, but with each step it tightened like a noose. She stopped at the door plaque that read: Laura Braunstein, MD. She felt faint. She had no idea how this woman felt.

  Maybe she was being selfish, like Jack when he described his affair to his wife. The confession had made him feel better, but it broke Julie’s heart. What if Michelle’s presence made Noah’s mother feel worse? She turned to leave.

  A watercolor print next to the small office portrayed the sun shining on the ocean. Michelle studied the golden glow shimmering across the waves, and recognized it as a religious work symbolizing God’s infinite power. She changed her mind. But the possibility of forgiveness wasn’t the only thing that made her stay. The picture frame was the perfect size for the photograph of Noah. His good looks and high spirit would surely give his mother a moment of comfort. Michelle checked her reflection in the picture glass, counted to ten in French, and knocked.

  Dr. Braunstein sat behind an enormous desk in the small, tidy room where she dictated patient notes into a tape recorder. Michelle stood in front of her, feigning interest in the diplomas from NYU and the plaque from the Women’s Leadership Council hanging on the paneled wall behind her. She barely resembled the woman Michelle had seen sleepwalking out of the law office. Perhaps the other certificate, from the American Society of Anesthesiologists, explained it. Or maybe she was simply more at home here.

  The woman had the kind of posture Michelle’s mother would commend, and her broad shoulders filled her surgical scrubs with scalpel-sharp precision. Her graying ponytail was practical as opposed to lazy, and her face was as bare of makeup as it was of emotion when she finally looked up.

  “Good morning. I’m Michelle—”

  “I know who you are,” Dr. Braunstein interrupted. She sipped coffee from a mug branded J&J, a pharmaceutical logo. “What I don’t know is why you’re here.”

  Michelle felt her pulse in her throat. “May I call you Laura?”

  “No.”

  Michelle was pinned by the doctor’s gaze. She wanted to wash off her lipstick, to pull up her sleeve and show her bandages. Most of all, she wanted to sit down. A leather armchair faced the desk, but she didn’t dare ask. “I brought you a gift.”

  A nurse knocked and leaned in the open doorway. “Dr. Braunstein? You’re due in the OR in five.” Michelle turned a
nd spotted the small bulletin board on the wall behind her, directly across from the desk. It was empty except for a baby picture and a photograph of a mother and son making a sandcastle on the beach. Michelle turned back. Better not to speculate. The nurse shut the office door, trapping her like prey.

  Michelle pulled the folder from her purse and set it on the desk like an offering. “I’m truly sorry about—” She forced herself to say the name, to make him real. “About Noah.” Dr. Braunstein said nothing, so Michelle rushed in to fill the silence. “I wish I could say something about how wonderful he was.” She tried to remember Noah beyond the baseball field. “He was certainly handsome.”

  When Dr. Braunstein saw the photo of her son, her eyes softened. Her cheeks inflated slowly, melting her cool facade until her smile shone like the sun across the water in that seascape in the hall. She came out from behind the desk, then pinned his picture to the bulletin board. “Let me tell you about my son.”

  Michelle burst into tears. Dr. Braunstein gave her a Kleenex, then gestured toward the armchair. Michelle collapsed into it. This was the punishment, she knew. To learn what she had cost this woman.

  Dr. Braunstein leaned against the desk, smiling at her son’s image as she spoke. “Noah was a surprise. His father and I had already broken up when…the term Noah would apply is ‘booty call.’” She chuckled.

  Michelle sniffled. She liked this woman. In a different life they could have been friends. The thought squeezed her like an iron lung.

  “I felt responsible for depriving him of a two-parent family, so I let him take his father’s name. But they were never close—Guy Butler is a hard man to please. Do you remember him?”