Where Dolphins Go

by Webb, Peggy

  "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing's wrong. I just need help cleaning Brett's closet.” There was response, and Susan thought she’d lost the connection. “Jo Lisa, are you still there?"

  "Yeah. I'm here."

  "Can you come and help me or not? If you're busy, say so and I'll do it myself." Her sister said string of words that that made Susan’s ears burn. “Bye, Jo Lisa.”

  “Wait . . . I'll be there. Just give me time to put my clothes on."

  o0o

  Twenty minutes later, Jo Lisa came in wearing jogging shorts and a tank top that said "Eat Shit and Die." Turquoise earrings dangled almost to her shoulders.

  Susan laughed. "You didn't have to dress up for me."

  "Smarty pants . Just give me that garbage bag and shut up."

  "Here." Susan handed her a garbage bag. "You start with the shirts."

  "We're organizing all this stuff?"

  "I'm giving them to the Salvation Army, and I thought I'd save them some work."

  Susan took out Brett's good blue suit and was surprised when it didn't trigger any bad memories. It was merely a blue suit that nobody was using.

  Beside her, Jo Lisa worked with the shirts, complaining every breath.

  "The very idea, organizing this mess. You'd think I was some stupid secretary or something."

  "Just hush up, Jo Lisa. Nobody here believes a word you're saying."

  Still, as Susan took down a pair of pants, she was glad her sister had come. Jo Lisa brought the same kind of comfort Susan felt when she tucked her son in at night then settled into the corner of her sofa under a fuzzy throw, even in summer. Air conditioning often left her feeling chilled.

  "I had no idea pants could get so wrinkled just hanging here." She shoved two pairs into her sister's hands. "Here, hold these."

  "What are you doing?"

  "Smoothing them out." She shook the wrinkles out, then folded them neatly and put them into one of the bags.

  "We're putting them into garbage bags, for God's sake."

  "We don't have to put them in there all wadded up."

  Susan took another pair of her husband's pants from her sister and shook them out. A small shiny object slid out of the pocket and rolled onto the floor.

  "What in the world?"

  Susan and Jo Lisa bent down at the same time, but Susan was closer. She scooped the object up. Light from the window caught the tiny heart-shaped rhinestone and sent sparkles across the white wall.

  "It's a button." Susan turned it over, inspecting it. "A rhinestone button." She held it toward her sister, then dropped both button and pants and put her hand on her sister's forehead. "Jo Lisa . . ." Jo Lisa's skin felt clammy and her pupils were dilated. "Is something wrong?”

  o0o

  Everything was wrong.

  Jo Lisa stared at the telltale button.

  "Here, sit down." Susan led her to the bed. "Let me get you some water."

  After Susan left Jo Lisa picked up the button. She wanted to rant and rave and tear her hair out. She wanted to be in L.A. where she belonged, in a sleazy nightclub with lecherous old men leering at her body. She wanted to strip off all her clothes, even the G-string, then stand naked in the thick blue vapor like a sinner awaiting death, stand there until she became a part of it, until she and the vapor both dissolved into nothingness.

  Instead she sat on the edge of the bed with the button clenched in her fist and her fist pressed to her mouth.

  She heard Susan coming back with the water. Quickly she slid the button into her pocket, then awaited her sister, her excuse already forming on her lips.

  "My period started yesterday," she said, taking a long drink of the cool water. "You know what a nightmare mine can be."

  "I know. Why don't we leave this for a while, go in the kitchen and have a bite to eat. That sometimes helps."

  Jo Lisa put her hand into her pocket to assure herself the button was still there. As she followed Susan, she prayed to a God she didn't even believe in that her sister would never discover its terrible significance.

  Curt was sitting with Tyler's wife in Tyler's house enjoying a before-dinner drink from Tyler's wine cellar.

  "To us," he said, clicking his glass against Jean's.

  She didn't repeat his toast, but that didn't matter. Curt wasn't toasting them, anyhow. He was toasting himself.

  . After the drinks, they drove to Curt's place for dinner. He'd insisted and she hadn't protested. In fact, she'd said very little.

  “Nice night for a drive." It wasn't much in the way of conversation, but somebody had to say something.

  "I'm sorry I'm not very good company tonight."

  "Most women talk too much. Give me a good quiet companion any time."

  "Thanks, Curt. You're gallant."

  Curt liked compliments. He’d have preferred sexy, but gallant would do.

  By the time he and Jean arrived, the caterers he’d hired had come and gone. Pleased,

  Curt sat at the candlelit table for two, close enough to rub his thigh against Jean's. She didn't say anything, didn't even smile, but neither did she move her leg away.

  "Have some more wine." Smiling, he filled her glass to the rim.

  o0o

  Jean didn't try to stop him. It was perfectly obvious to her what Curt was doing. The seduction game was as old as time, and she was a willing object. Why not? At least Curt wanted her.

  She drank the wine too fast, and when he slid his hand up her skirt she felt a slight awakening. It wasn’t anything to turn cartwheels over, but she figured it was about as close to excited as she was going to get.

  "Why don't we skip dessert?" he said.

  "Sweets are fattening, anyhow. It seems that everything pleasurable is fattening." She could play the game too.

  "I know something that's not."

  It had been inevitable from the beginning.

  Jean went to his bedroom and lay down on his bed. There were no preliminaries, no pretense, no promises. That was fine with her, too.

  By not thinking too much, she managed to get through it. When he asked, she even told him it was good. That could have been a lie. Or maybe not. She hardly knew the difference anymore between what was real and what was imagined.

  Ttangled in the rumpled sheets she watched Curt sleep. Who was she to expect promises, to dream of a future, she who had let her own son die?

  She eased from the bed, went into the bathroom, and drew a hot bath. Then she spent a long time scrubbing her skin. Afterward she lay down beside Curt, smoothed the sheet, and folded it neatly under her chin.

  If she could keep everything in its proper order, she would be all right.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Panic seized Jean. Standing in the aisle of Belk’s Department Store with racks of new fall clothes swaying around her like autumn leaves, she bent over to keep from fainting. Her face felt hot as the blood rushed back to her head.

  "Jean?" Maggie appeared beside her holding three angora sweaters and two wool skirts. "Are you sick?"

  "Get me out of here, Maggie."

  "Here, take these." Maggie thrust the merchandise into the hands of a startled sales clerk and hurried from the store, one arm held protectively around Jean's waist. She maneuvered through the crowded mall and into the back booth of a small coffee shop.

  "I'm sorry, Maggie. I never should have come."

  "Nonsense. I can't shop for a fall wardrobe without you. It's tradition."

  A waitress came to take their order, and Maggie gave it without consulting Jean. "Two lemonades."

  The tears started without warning. Jean dug into her purse for her handkerchief.

  "Jean?"

  Jean wiped her tears and blew her nose. "I hate this feeling of never being in control."

  "It's going to get better, honey."

  "When?" Immediately ashamed of herself, Jean reached for Maggie's hand. "Forgive me, Maggie. I have no right to shout at you like that. You've been wonderful to me. Everybody has."
>
  "You're referring to Curt, I suppose?"

  "Yes."

  Maggie's eloquent silence expressed her disapproval more clearly than anything she could have said.

  "He's thoughtful and attentive." Maggie's staunch silence began to irritate Jean. She sought to shock. "And he's a great lover."

  "You're losing Paul, you know. He's mesmerized by that Riley woman."

  Jean stared at her lemonade, unable to talk about the woman who'd been there for her husband when she hadn't.

  “Look, I admit that she was good for him in the beginning," Maggie said. "She helped bring him out from behind that wall he'd built. But the last thing Paul needs is to have a sick child on his hands. Maybe even a dying child."

  Jean felt the blood drain from her face. Her hands trembled as she reached for her lemonade.

  "Oh, God, Jean. Sometimes I'm such an idiot."

  "It's all right, Maggie."

  They quickly changed the subject, but it wasn't all right. Later, driving home, Jean wondered if anything in her life would ever be all right again.

  Inside her empty house she was careful not to linger in front of the oil portrait of Sonny, careful not to pick up his favorite stuffed teddy bear and press it to her breast. Still, feint echoes of his childish laughter followed her up the stairs.

  She neatly stowed her purse and shoes, then padded to the bathroom and opened the medicine chest. The Valium was on the bottom shelf. Her hand trembled as she reached for the blessed anesthesia. With her hand on the bottle, a fresh stream of tears inched down her cheeks.

  Angry, she wiped them away. She couldn't go on turning to the swift oblivion of narcotics.

  Her hands were still shaky as she sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone.

  "Curt? I need you. Can you come over?"

  "Give me half an hour, sweet. I have one more patient to see."

  "I'll be waiting."

  She hung up the phone, then stripped to white lace and lay down on the bed.

  God had no right to take away her child in the fall when the leaves were turning gold.

  o0o

  "He's not ready, Paul."

  "He's ready, Susan. He doesn't need the buoyancy of the water anymore: his leg muscles are strong enough to hold him up."

  "What makes you think you can do what the therapists can't?" The tiny aluminum walker Paul had brought stood between them. Nearby, Jeffy sat on the edge of the pool tossing herring to the dolphins.

  "I'm a doctor, dammit."

  "Does that make you God?"

  Paul looked as if he'd been slapped. Susan wanted to take the words back, but she couldn't. All she could do was be miserable. Her period was late, she was falling in love with a man who was still married to another woman, and her son was going to die if he didn't have surgery soon.

  "Susan . . ." Gently Paul caught her shoulders. "What's this all about?"

  "I saw Dr. Freelander yesterday."

  "And?"

  "He said Jeffy's still not stabilized enough for surgery." She still felt the awful news like a blow to the head. "I'm so scared.”

  He gathered her into his arms, and she leaned against him and allowed herself to need. For just a little while, she told herself. With Jeffy at a crossroads, she couldn’t afford to depend on anybody else.

  "Susan, the first time I ever saw you I was impressed by your courage. You're a fighter. Don't quit now. Fight for your son."

  She allowed herself another moment of weakness, then stepped back, the distance between them significant in her mind, necessary. I am strong. She didn’t have to say it aloud. All she had to do was believe it, herself.

  “Use the walker, Paul. You're the doctor. But if he fells and hurts himself, I'm going to scratch your eyes out."

  His eyes crinkled at the corner with laughter, Paul picked up the walker, then sat down beside her son so he'd be on Jeffy's level.

  "Jeffy, remember how you walk with Fergie in the pool?"

  Jeffy nodded, hanging on Paul's every word.

  "I'm going to put you in this walker, and I want you to pretend you're in the water and that Fergie is swimming right beside you. Okay?"

  Paul couldn't have handled her son more tenderly if he'd been Jeffy's father.

  Jeffy clung to the walker, his eyes big with fright. "I can't," he told Paul. "My legs won't move."

  Susan wanted to snatch her son and run. How many more times would he have to struggle to do the things other little boys took for granted? The obstacles he had to conquer would test the wills of adults, let alone a child's.

  "You can do it, pal,” Paul said. “Come on, give it a try. I'll be right here."

  "Promise?"

  "I promise."

  "Cross your heart?"

  "Cross my heart." Paul made the appropriate motions. Beside them, Fergie leaped out of the water and spun in the air. "Fergie wants you to try, Jeffy. Do it for Fergie."

  As if the giant dolphin understood, he swam silently to the edge of the pool and took up watch.

  Shaky and uncertain, Jeffy lifted his right leg, then his left. Susan watched as the little walker scraped along the concrete apron of the pool. Jeffy's progress was slow but sure. The beauty and the pain of it almost overwhelmed her.

  "I did it! I did it!"

  His triumphant words were directed toward Paul, not to her. What was she doing? Making this man a part of their lives? This man who legally belonged to another woman? This man who could vanish at any moment and leave both of them devastated?

  What was she doing to her son?

  Paul glanced at her and froze. Did he see her agony?

  "Hey, sport. I think that's enough excitement for today." He scooped Jeffy out of the walker. "How about going inside and letting Bill show you the baby dolphins?"

  She watched as he carried her son inside. When he came back he tipped up her chin. "Do you want to talk about it?"

  “Am I that transparent?”

  “That’s one of the things I…admire about you.”

  Admire. Had he meant to say love? Had she wanted him to?

  "You've become important to Jeffy, Paul. Perhaps too important."

  His fingers played softly over her face as he stared at her. A surgeon's hand. How would she live if his hands weren't touching her?

  "I've asked Jean for a divorce. She said no."

  "Why, Paul?"

  "She's not ready, yet. Give her time, Susan."

  "What about me?" She hated herself for that question, hated that it made her sound weak and needy.

  "I know it's been hard, Susan." He tucked a stray curl behind her ear. "I want to take you to public places, but I don't want you to be hurt again."

  "I don't want to hide forever. I won't."

  Paul smiled. "Then tonight we'll go out and celebrate."

  "Jeffy's triumph?"

  "Yes. And ours."

  She loved it that he thought being with her was cause for celebration.

  "Let's go to the Grand Biloxi. I want you to meet my sister."

  o0o

  Paul Tyler walked in right in the middle of Stormy Weather. Jo Lisa nearly forgot the words. Furious that Susan hadn't warned her they were coming, she somehow managed to get through the song.

  They sat at a center table only three feet from the stage. God, he was gorgeous. Sexy. And from all she could learn, he was regaining his position as a prominent surgeon. Add successful and brilliant and rich to his list of credentials.

  An old rage filled her.

  “My, what a pretty child Susan is," Aunt Willie Mae used to say while Jo Lisa stood on the sidelines feeling like an ugly duckling. "Jo Lisa, you're going to be the death of me," Bessie used to say. "Why can't you be more like Susan?"

  As she stared at their table, Jo Lisa held the microphone so hard, her knuckles turned white. She was jealous, jealous of her sister. The last time she'd felt that way, they'd all paid a horrible price.

  God, if you're really up there, let me get through this set the
n get the hell out of here, pardon my French.

  She segued into Night and Day, then finished with Crazy.

  The devil must have been laughing with glee when she chose the songs for her first set. Maybe the old fork-tailed rascal had won the first round, but he wasn't about to win the second. As soon as she put down the microphone, Jo Lisa hotfooted it to her dressing room.

  The dressing table mirror told her exactly what a state she was in. Her face was flushed and her eyes were flashing fire. She threw a robe over her dress, then picked up a powder puff and attacked her face.

  Damned Biloxi heat. Even in the fall you couldn't beat it.

  "Jo Lisa?" Susan stuck her head around the door frame. "They said you were back here."

  "If you want to talk, come in and shut the door." She cinched her belt tighter.

  Susan looked like a tousled angel when she walked into the dressing room.

  "I thought you saw us when we came in. Paul wants to meet you."

  "I don't socialize with the customers."

  Susan's color got high. "I don't care whether you approve of what I'm doing or not. Paul wants to meet you, and I want you to go out there and act civilized for half a minute so he can say hello."

  "What does he have in mind, Susan? Checking me out to see if I'll be a good sister-in-law?"

  "Jo Lisa, why do you insist on making this so difficult?”

  "Do you want to hear difficult? Has he said anything about divorcing his wife, or does he plan to keep you somewhere in a back alley the rest of your life?"

  "I'm not going to stay and listen to this."

  Jo Lisa caught her sister's arm as she started for the door.

  "You listen to me, Susan. What happens if you fall in love with him? Answer me that. Is he going to divorce his pretty little society wife then? And what if you get pregnant? Have you ever thought of that?"

  "We're careful."

  "A lot of mistakes are out there right now wondering how come they never see their daddies."

  Susan stormed toward the door.

  Jo Lisa wanted to let her go, but in the end blood proved to be stronger than common sense.

  "God, Susan. I'm such a bitch." She wrapped her arms around her sister and leaned her forehead against Susan's. "Be careful. That's all I ask."

  "I will. I promise."

  Jo Lisa closed her eyes, then drew a deep breath. "Now, where's this wonderful man you want me to meet?"