For the first time since they’d been together, Charlie began to worry that she was a speeding train and he was a sputtering car, falling behind. He’d never tell her, never want to mar her happiness, but the thing was, though April seemed to have embraced motherhood, he wasn’t so sure about being a father now that he had a baby. He knew it was selfish, but April was spinning away from him, into her orbit of babies. He couldn’t help thinking that he hadn’t had her to himself long enough. At night, April remembered Charlie like an afterthought, reaching for him at night while he slept, ruffling his hair as she glided by, lost in her own thoughts. She used to be voracious for sex, but now she was tired or she just wanted to read one of her parenting books. When they did make love, she seemed far away, her eyes open and watchful, one hand on her stomach. Afterward, he reached for his wife and held her. When the baby cried, Charlie said, “No, let me.”
He got up and stood in the baby’s room. It was flooded with moonlight and Sam smelled of powder. Sam had deep blue-black eyes and a dusting of dark hair, and as Charlie rocked his son, Sam put a tiny hand on Charlie’s shoulder and Charlie felt a shock. His son. He was holding his son. “Sam,” he said, “Sam,” and the baby yawned and then studied him, as if at any moment they might share an incredible secret.
Charlie took two weeks off to be with his infant son, but most of that time he ended up doing the housework, tackling laundry piles that seemed to be mating and breeding; cooking whatever was fast and easy and wouldn’t use much cutlery or dishes; tidying up and vacuuming the rugs. Then he’d stand over the crib with April, the two of them mesmerized by Sam, who slept and cried and wet his diapers with astonishing regularity. Charlie would bend low into the crib, inhaling. He’d lift his son up and burrow his face into the baby’s soft belly.
“Me and my men,” April said.
“Does he look like me?” Charlie asked. “Do you think he has your eyes?”
April laughed. “Don’t be silly. He’s the image of me.”
The first week Charlie went back to work, he thought he’d feel relieved. No laundry to tend to, no meals to cook. But, while putting up sheet rock, he kept thinking about the color of Sam’s eyes, as blue as a brand new pair of jeans. He kept imagining his son’s face. “Take over, I have to leave,” he told his foreman.
He drove home taking the shortcuts. He bounded into the house, and when April and Sam weren’t there, he went to all the places he thought they might be. The park. The playground. And finally to Johnny Rocket’s, where he found them in a booth. He was hot and sweaty, his heart skipping. “God, you look terrible. You feel okay?” April said. Charlie sat down and took his son’s tiny hand. “Now I feel just fine,” he said.
The Nash family. He loved to say it. He put it on the answering machine: “The Nash family isn’t home right now.” The Nash family went for pizza every Friday at The Leaning Tower of Pizza. All the waitresses knew April and gave the Nash family extra cheese on their pie. They fussed over the baby and teased Charlie. The Nashes went to drive-in movies (the Cape being the one place where they still existed), and while Sam slept in the backseat, Charlie and April held hands, stuffed themselves with popcorn, and watched double features. If the movies weren’t very good, they didn’t really mind. They went to the beach, spreading out soft blankets under a huge umbrella. They went to Manhattan to visit Charlie’s parents, who cooed over their grandson and pushed his stroller all through Central Park, from the zoo to the duck pond. They hugged April and told her she was too thin, even for New York City standards, and had she seen how great the parks were here? Had she thought about going back to school?
April laughed. “This is my school,” she said, smiling down at Sam. When her friend Katie started up a new bakery, the Blue Cupcake, April took a job to help out, just for a few hours a day. The place was small and homey, with wood tables and comfortable chairs, and every time Charlie walked in, the air seemed soaked in sugar. April could bring Sam in his carrier, and he’d sleep or play with his toys. She could sit at a table and have muffins and sip tea and talk to the locals.
AT FIRST, SAM GREW like a tumbleweed. At three he was reading. At four, he was the smartest one in his preschool, a small, sturdy boy in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, curled up in a chair, trying to write a story with a pad of paper and a blue crayon as thick as his thumb. He liked musicals, especially Grease, and he would sing for hours into the toy tape recorder April and Charlie had bought him. You’d never look at them and think, This is a family with a problem.
You’d never look at Sam and think, Oh, what a shame, he’s so sick.
FOUR
ISABELLE’S EYES JERKED OPEN. She gulped air and gave a good long cough. Her mouth tasted as if she had been chewing on cans. Everything was blurred and white—walls and curtains and ceiling, the starchy sheet and waffled blanket thrown over her, a faint blue stain on the hem, all of it swimming in front of her. She blinked at two bolts of orange before she could remember the name for what they were. “Pitcher,” she said aloud. Her voice sounded funny and faint, as though it had been smothered in cotton batting.
A hospital. She was in a hospital room.
She tried to move and pain shot through one leg. She felt like throwing up.
A crash. She had driven into a car accident.
She tried to sit up, wincing. She reached for the pitcher on the right, and her hand touched air. Someone had put her in a hospital gown, and her right leg was throbbing, but before she could examine it further, a doctor with a bright red T-shirt under his lab coat strode into the room, a young nurse trailing behind him. He smiled brightly when he saw her, as if they were old friends. “What day is it?” he asked her.
“Saturday,” she guessed.
“Give the lady a prize. You got here Friday.” His smile broadened. “You are one lucky woman. Your car crashed and you managed to get out and walk away,” he said cheerfully.
She started pleating the sheet with her fingers. “I walked away?”
“Oh now, now, don’t look like that,” he said. “You’re going to be fine, Isabelle.”
He knew her name, but she hadn’t the foggiest idea what his was. Isabelle struggled to remember him, to remember anything, but all there was, was here, in this hospital room. “My eyes,” she blurted, panic fluttering through her. “I’m seeing double.”
He nodded casually, as if she had told him she were having baked chicken for lunch. He took out a tiny flashlight from his pocket and shone it in her eyes, and when she drew back, startled, the nurse put one hand on Isabelle’s back and kept her still. The doctor clicked the light off and popped it back in his pocket. “You bumped your noggin. We’ll run some tests. Tomorrow, if your vision’s okay, you can go home.”
“What happened to the other people?” she asked. She saw them, the woman in the red dress, the boy, running.
“What other people?” He studied her leg. “Those bruises? They’ll fade in a week.”
“The other people in the crash. What happened to them?”
He scribbled something on a chart. “You’d have to ask their doctor.”
“Who’s their doctor?” she said, but he turned abruptly, striding out of the room.
“Wait!” Isabelle grabbed at the nurse’s sleeve. “Can you get me a newspaper?”
“Reading would strain your eyes right now. You just concentrate on getting some rest,” the nurse said, patting Isabelle’s shoulder.
“Someone can read it to me—” Isabelle said, and then seeing the look on the nurse’s face, blurted, “What about a TV? Can I get a TV?”
“I’ll send someone,” the nurse said, and then she was gone.
Isabelle slept on and off through the night, riding a wave of pain-killers. She dreamed she was freezing in Siberia. People were stuffing snow around her so she couldn’t move. She jerked awake. Nurses were packing ice under her armpits, along her thighs. “It’s to bring your fever down,” a nurse said.
“Where are they?” Isabelle said, her voice a ra
sp.
“I’m sure your family will be here in the morning,” the nurse said. Isabelle felt a prick in one arm. She fought, struggling to stay awake, but then the world went cold and white again.
When she woke the next morning, she was cool and dry. Someone had put her in a clean gown. The sheets and a soft white blanket were pulled over her. Her sight was still doubled, and she had a throbbing pain orbiting her head.
A specialist came in to look at her eyes, a woman so disinterested that Isabelle felt affronted. “Follow my finger,” she ordered Isabelle, waving her hand around in a blur so that it was all Isabelle could do not to get dizzy. “Touch your index fingers together.” She shone a light in Isabelle’s eyes and then stepped back. “Your sight should be fine tomorrow,” said the doctor. “You just rest now.”
Rest. How was she supposed to rest? She couldn’t read, no one had come around about the TV, and she didn’t have her cell phone to call anybody.
Luke. Had anyone called him? Had they even been able to find him? Was he too busy screwing his girlfriend? He wouldn’t know she had been leaving him, not unless he’d been home and had seen the note. And even then, he wouldn’t believe she could ever leave. He couldn’t imagine there was ever anything he could do that he couldn’t talk her into forgiving him for.
He was dead wrong.
She begged quarters from a nurse and made her way to the hall. She passed a newspaper and picked it up, but the nurse was right, the words were a blur.
She called her friend Michelle first and as soon as she said her name, there was an intake of air. “Oh my God, Izzy! Luke just told me. I’ve been frantic. How are you?”
“Luke told you?” Isabelle asked. How did Luke know? Two tables spun in front of her. “I’m fine. At least I think I’m fine.” Her voice grew small, as curled as a fist. She was about to say it again, louder, with more impact, because Michelle hadn’t responded. “Can I stay with you for a while?”
“Of course you can. God, when I heard about it—”
“What did you hear? What did Luke tell you? I don’t really know anything. Are the other people okay?”
There was an odd, funny silence. Isabelle twisted the phone cord around her hand. “Michelle?” she said.
“All that matters is you’re all right,” Michelle said finally. “I’m coming right out there.”
“No, no, I’m coming home soon. There’s no need.”
Behind Isabelle, a man coughed and sneezed. “Tell me what you know,” Isabelle said.
“I don’t know what happened to the other people,” Michelle said. “I just know it was a terrible accident and we’re all so lucky you’re okay.”
Isabelle turned and the man tapped his watch. “Did the newspaper have anything?”
“I didn’t get the paper or see the news.”
Isabelle held the phone closer to her face. Michelle was a news junky. She would no more think of not buying two different newspapers every morning than she would consider not brushing her teeth. “Can you turn on the news now?” and then she heard the dial tone. Michelle had hung up.
She called her other friends, Lindy, Jane, Ellen, and asked immediately what they knew about the crash, and though they all knew Isabelle was in the hospital, the rest of the details were fuzzy. “So there was nothing in the papers?” Isabelle asked. “No one told you anything?”
“I didn’t see a paper,” Jane said, and Isabelle felt something snaking up along her spine.
“Can you turn on the news now?” Isabelle said.
There was that funny clip of silence again. “Doorbell,” Jane said. “I have to go.”
“Wait!” Isabelle cried, but Jane was gone.
Isabelle pressed the phone against her cheek. She managed to make her way back to her room and sank into the bed, suddenly exhausted. She rolled onto her side, her lids drifting shut. Maybe she’d wake up and, just like the bad TV movies she sometimes watched, it would all turn out to be a dream.
“Hey.”
She rolled over and opened her eyes. Luke. Blurry Luke. She could make out a stuffed bear with a polka dot bow in his arms.
“I am so sorry,” he said, his voice pained, and she averted her face. She didn’t know if he was talking about the accident or about them, but really, what did it matter? She thought of all the times he had been nice to her after she had found earrings in the house or sworn she smelled perfume. How he had taken her out to a fancy dinner, how he reeled her back in so tenderly that she didn’t notice the sharpness of the hook. She hated herself for the sudden sharp pang of yearning she felt, the way she wanted him closer. Go away.
“The cops called me.” He set the bear on the bed. “A detective wanted to talk to you, but the doctor nixed that, and good for him. There’s time for that later.”
“A detective?” Isabelle said. She tried to sit up more.
“Routine. Lay back down, baby.”
“Don’t call me baby. What was the detective’s name?”
Luke shrugged. He made the bear’s head swivel. “Izzy, feel better soon,” he made the bear say in a high, squeaky voice. He lifted both the bear’s paws so it seemed as though the bear were waving at her. “Do you want me to call anyone for you?” he asked, and Isabelle shook her head. “Do you want me to call your mother?”
Isabelle shook her head. Her mother would think this was God showing Isabelle the error of her ways. Her mother would take one look at the situation and say I told you so, and Isabelle wouldn’t really be able to argue with her.
“What happened to the other people?” Isabelle asked. “What did the cops tell you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t ask?” She looked at him, astonished, and tried to sit up. “Why didn’t you ask? I need to know if they’re hurt, if they’re alive—” As soon as she said it, she felt an electric current of panic. He took her hand and she yanked it from him. “What do you know?” she accused.
“I read your letter,” he said quietly. “That’s what I know.”
“I don’t want to go home with you,” she said. “I know what you did. I know who you are now. I didn’t know before, but I know now.” She shifted so that the bear tumbled to the floor. Luke picked it up, hesitated, and then tucked it under one arm. “You’re a liar and a philanderer and a cheat,” she said. “You’re a father.”
Luke looked away but he didn’t say anything. He sat in the chair beside the bed. “Of course you’ll come home with me,” he said. “We can work this out.”
“No we can’t. Not this time.” She looked away from him. And then she couldn’t help it. She looked back. “How could you do this, Luke?” she said.
“Let me make it up to you,” he said. He tried to take her hand again, and she made a fist and slid it under the sheet away from him.
“Your car’s totaled,” he said. “The doctor said you’re lucky to be alive, that it’s a miracle you got out of the car.” He leaned toward her. She looked at him, then shut her eyes and tried to sniff his neck to see if he had the other woman’s scent on him. “Come here,” she ordered, and he did. She could smell his aftershave. Pine and musk. She had always loved it, but now all she could think about was someone else’s nose pressed up against Luke’s neck. “You wear too much aftershave,” she said, and he frowned.
“I went crazy. I was so worried. So scared … it all made me realize—” Luke said.
“Don’t. Please don’t.” She waved her hand at him. “I’ll rent a room. I can get my job back until I have a place to go.”
“Isabelle, please listen to me.” He reached over and grabbed her foot under the sheet. “Stay with me until you find another place. I’ll stay in the spare room. I’ll stay in the kitchen if that’s what you want. Please. Just come home. Let me take care of you.”
“I know how you take care of me,” she said bitterly. “I’m staying with friends.”
“But I’m your friend. I’m more than your friend, I’m your husband. I�
��m the one you need to stay with.” He leaned closer. “I’m not seeing her anymore, I swear,” he said. “There’s no one in my life but you.”
“You’re not seeing the mother of your child?” She gave him a stony stare and he stood up from the chair. “Okay, then. You stay in the house and I’ll be the one to leave,” he said. “I’ll find a place. I can stay in the back room at the bar if I have to. Look at you. You’ve been in a terrible accident. You can’t look for an apartment now. The only thing that makes sense is for you to come back to the house.”
“I don’t want you there,” she said. “Can you do that?”
He lifted his palms. “Anything. Anything you want.”
“Fine. Now will you please leave?”
“I’m not leaving you,” he said. “I’m staying right outside. You need me, you tell the nurse to come get me. I’ll be right here.”
With whom? Isabelle thought, but she kept her mouth shut.
He set the bear on the bed again, settling him so it looked as if the bear were watching over Isabelle. “He’s not leaving, either,” Luke said.
That afternoon, while she was pouring herself some water, she noticed her vision had cleared. There was just one pitcher now. Startled, she looked around the room, at the orange chair, the door, the window. Everything was singular again. One hospital bed. One pitcher. One glass. One Isabelle.
She could see. She could get up and look for the woman and the boy. She started to gently swing her leg over the bed, when a resident came in.
“Leaving so soon? Was it something I said?”
Defeated, she lay back against the bed. “I see only one of you,” she announced.
He smiled and took blood. He made her touch her fingers again and follow his tiny flashlight with her eyes. “I have good news,” he said. “Your husband can take you home tomorrow morning.”
No way was she going to let Luke take her home. Instead, she called Michelle, who came that Monday morning with a light summer dress, underwear, and bright green flip flops for Isabelle to change into. She also brought her new baby, Andi, held against her in a Baby Björn. “I’m glad I didn’t see Luke here. I’d have had to slug him,” Michelle said.
Pictures of You Page 5
