by Nancy Thayer
Joanna fiddled with one of Christopher’s socks which had gotten twisted around his foot. “I just can’t let that matter as much.”
“Why not? Because he could make you happy?” When Joanna didn’t reply, Bob continued: “That’s not healthy thinking, Joanna. That’s superstitious.”
“You can say that, Bob, but I’ve tried—” Her voice broke. Taking a deep breath, she began again. “I’ve tried as hard and as long as I know how to live life the way I want it, to make my dreams come true, and all I’ve done is wreak a terrible havoc and damage to people’s lives. No, I can’t live for my own happiness anymore. I need to make amends somehow. I need to make someone else happy.”
“At the expense of your own happiness.”
“Yes! If that’s what it takes!”
“And what about Jake’s happiness?”
“Maybe he’ll be willing to wait. A year or two. A lot can happen in a year or two.”
“Yeah, like he’ll find another woman.”
“I have to take that chance.” She sighed. “Besides, we’re constantly in touch while we’re collaborating on FH. So could I please stop mooning around like an orphaned cow and concentrate on finding a decent office?”
“Back to my original point: you won’t be able to find an office you like because you’re so unhappy. Look, at least think about talking to Madaket about all this.”
“No! Are you kidding? Did Madaket talk it over with me before she ran into the fire? I’m not mentioning Jake to her, and if you’re any kind of friend, Bob, you won’t, either.”
He held up his hands, palms-out in surrender. “All right. Just as long as you know what you’re doing.”
Christopher was squirming now, uncomfortable on the hard surface. Joanna lifted him into her arms.
“Look. This place is fine,” she said. “I’ll probably take it.”
“It’s available immediately.”
“Great. Give me a day to think it over. I’ll call you.”
They went back down the stairs and Joanna went through the ritual of strapping her baby into the stroller. Just before they set back out in the downpour, she turned and gave Bob a peck on his cheek. “I’m grateful that you care about me,” she said. “I appreciate it. I’ll be fine.”
But once she and her son were tucked back into the Jeep, a familiar melancholy settled over Joanna, and she felt her face pulled into despondent lines. Driving back to the shack at Quidnet seemed to take longer with each trip. Now with rain streaming down and the windshield wipers clicking monotonously, the road stretched on forever. Christopher fussed, frustrated and bored beneath his various safety straps, then subsided into sleep, exactly what Joanna didn’t want him to do. He was cranky if he didn’t get a long afternoon nap, but Joanna needed to change into dry clothes and get some work accomplished, which she couldn’t do with the baby left out in the car, but if she took him out of the car seat, she’d wake him, and then he’d be fussy and demanding and incapable of falling back to sleep with his schedule so interrupted. Even if Madaket played with him in the living room or bedroom, he’d be noisily fretful, and Joanna at her crowded desk in her cramped bedroom would be wrought with guilt … babies made the smallest act complicated.
Madaket had said she’d bike from the doctor’s office out to Squam to check her garden. Anyone else would be forced inside by this rain, but not Madaket. Joanna decided to drive out and pick her up.
By the time she came to the Squam Road, the rain had diminished to a spattering of fat drops and the sun was making its first appearance in days. The long ruts in the dirt road were puddled with water, which splashed up against the sides of the Jeep. She turned onto her private driveway. Bushes and shrubs, lushly swollen with rain, drooped against the sides of the Jeep. Her stomach tightened. Never again would she enter her property without thinking of Todd and Doug, especially Todd, so young and handsome and vital—so greedy for all life had to offer, and who could be enjoying all life had to offer if she’d only given him one of the rubies. So much had been lost here; she thought this particular segment of earth would always be haunted by the loss of so many possibilities. She remembered the delight she’d felt each time she saw her sturdy storybook house standing forthright against the sky. Now there was only empty space.
As she brought her Jeep to a halt, the sun flashed out from behind clouds. The outlines of the charred black rectangle of earth where the house had once stood were softened and obscured by the lacy tangle of grasses, vines, and wild berry bushes reclaiming the land.
At the far end of the property, Madaket was standing in her garden. It had been untouched by the fire, and healthy green shoots gleamed in even rows. Someone was with her. Gardner. They were absorbed in conversation. Both were wearing yellow rain slickers, which gleamed glossily in the misty light. Joanna turned off the engine and slid out of the Jeep as quietly as possible, trying not to waken Christopher. The air smelled fresh and sweet.
“Looks pretty good,” Joanna called, crossing the gravel to the grassy lawn. “Hi, Gardner.”
The physician waved. Madaket smiled. Her hair was growing back nicely, lying full and gleaming over the curves of her skull, shining like ebony beneath her rain hood. But something else had happened … Joanna couldn’t quite figure it out … something about Madaket had changed. The wretched scar was still as shiny as always, and yet Madaket looked … well, beautiful.
Something had happened.
Joanna stopped. Stood still, waiting.
“Joanna,” Madaket said, her eyes brilliant, her face more alive than it had ever been. “We have something wonderful to tell you.” She took Gardner’s hand and together they walked toward Joanna.
Twenty-eight
Joanna stood waiting in the sodden, quickening earth. Madaket smiled shyly at Joanna, then turned her gaze at Gardner, who said with a quiet pride, “Madaket and I are in love.”
“Oh, wow,” Joanna exclaimed. “Wow. My gosh, Madaket.” Searching the young woman’s face, she found sheer happiness shining there. “Oh, this is amazing. It’s lovely. Oh, Madaket, Gardner. I’m stunned. I’m knocked off my feet.”
“So are we,” Gardner admitted.
“Well, let’s go home and get inside where it’s warm. I’m soaked and frozen, and I want to hear everything, and I can’t think properly out here in all this damp.”
“We’ll meet you at the shack,” Madaket said.
“Great.”
Joanna hopped back into the Jeep. “Christopher,” she said to her sleeping son, “you’ll never guess what happened. The most amazing news. Madaket and Gardner are in love. I’m just dazzled! What do you think?”
Her little boy only snored, and she drew up in front of their shack, and stepped out, and lifted Christopher out, and his head fell heavily against her shoulder; not even the wet slick surface of her raincoat against his bare cheek woke him up. In their bedroom she settled her baby on his tummy and gently stripped off his hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants, and tucked a blanket over him, and stood for a while, watching and listening, as she always did, partly to be certain he was comfortable, but more simply for her own pleasure.
She pulled off her own rain gear then and wrapped herself in a bulky, fleecy sweater. She could hear Madaket in the kitchen, making coffee, but when she went out into the large open living room, she found Madaket and Gardner standing by the stove, entangled, kissing. She cleared her throat.
The lovers drew apart and they all carried in coffee mugs and sugar and a pitcher of milk and napkins, and Madaket poured the coffee and Gardner sank onto the sofa and watched her every move with the happy obsession of a man who cared in all the world only about putting his hands on her again. Finally Madaket sat down beside him, and they smiled at each other and held hands, looking as if they’d just discovered uranium and had been struck idiotic by their find.
“All right,” Joanna said, sinking into a rocking chair. “Tell me.”
Gardner and Madaket smiled at each other.
&nbs
p; “We’ve hardly told each other yet,” Madaket said shyly.
“We’re going to get married,” Gardner said.
“Married!”
“Well, not immediately,” Madaket said soothingly. “Not until the fall at least.”
“But I didn’t even know you two liked each other!” Joanna protested. “This is all so sudden.”
“I fell in love with Madaket the moment I saw her,” Gardner admitted softly, flushing bright red to the tips of his ears. “At my office. When I came out to the reception room and met her.”
“Remember how he came running out the side door and told us he would stop by to check your blood pressure?” Madaket’s face glowed with pleasure as she spoke.
“I would have come by to check your blood pressure if you’d lived at the other side of the island,” Gardner confessed. “I was still engaged to Tiffany, but we were both unhappy. We weren’t even really in love, Tiffany and I. We were infatuated with a vision of what should be. I thought it would all be worth it, and Tiffany is really a nice person, and goodhearted, and deserving of love … but when I saw Madaket it was like … like a blind man seeing for the first time. I knew then, really knew, what I was missing with Tiffany. It really was love at first sight,” he concluded happily.
“Did you feel this way, too?” Joanna asked Madaket.
“Oh, no. I mean, how could I? He was a doctor. I was a housecleaner. It never occurred to me that he even saw me.” She turned to gaze adoringly at Gardner. “Whenever he came to the house, I always enjoyed seeing him. I looked forward to his visits. I liked listening to him—he has such a nice voice. And I liked looking at him. His beautiful hair and, well, he has such a nice”—crimson darkened her face; her scars glowed—“body,” she whispered in conclusion.
“And we got along,” Gardner pointed out, rescuing Madaket from the embarrassment of her admission of desire. “We talked a lot, and had so much to say to each other.”
“That’s true, yes,” Madaket agreed. “And you were genuinely interested in what I knew.”
“We’re very compatible,” Gardner declared.
“But it was when I was in the hospital in Boston that I knew.”
“Knew that you loved Gardner?” Joanna asked.
“Knew that Gardner loved me.” Now her other hand went to Gardner, and he reached for her and they sat close to each other, both hands clasping. “Even when I was not quite conscious and partly blinded by pain, I knew. I could tell by the way he touched me.” Tears welled in Madaket’s eyes. “And when I could see, I could see his face, when he looked at me. I could see how he cared.”
Joy burst like fountains within Joanna’s heart. “I wondered,” she said to Gardner, “why you were at Mass General so often. I guess I just assumed you gave that kind of attention to all your patients.”
“I’m afraid I rather ignored my other patients for a while,” Gardner confessed. “But I needed to see her. To see for myself that”—his voice roughened with emotion—“she stayed alive, and returned to health.”
“We spent so much time talking. Well, I spent so much time listening, at first. It helped the time pass. It kept me from focusing on my pain. He told me about his family, and their pets, and medical school, and his vacations as a child, and even Tiffany. He even talked about Tiffany.”
“How did you know Madaket wanted to hear all that?” Joanna asked. “How did you know how she felt?”
“She reached for me,” Gardner said. “The first day her arms came out of the troughs, she reached for me.”
“We held hands,” Madaket said. “Sort of. I could feel—something—his steadiness, his strength, even through the bandages and the wounds.”
“But I didn’t want to tell her how I felt, to talk about the future, until she was strong, and well, and back where she felt steady. I wanted her to have real choices. So I waited until now.”
“This is all so marvelous,” Joanna said. “I’m so happy for both of you.”
“It’s an amazing thing,” Madaket said thoughtfully. “I don’t know if I can explain it, how it feels to realize that someone you’ve known and admired suddenly becomes someone you love and desire.”
“I think I can understand,” Joanna replied. And she thought of telling Madaket about Jake, about Jake and his declaration of love and his offer of marriage, and her own surprising eager emotional response; but Joanna waited. Now was the time for rejoicing in what Madaket and Gardner had found.
In spite of her best intentions, Joanna discovered she could not wait very long. Something in the way Gardner and Madaket brightened when they saw each other, in the way they couldn’t stop touching one another, made Joanna wild to be with Jake, and one day only a week after Madaket and Gardner had told them about their marriage plans, Joanna interrupted them.
“Madaket. Gardner. Could I talk with you a moment?”
They’d just finished lunch and were all roaming between the shack’s kitchen and the crowded living room.
“Sure.” Madaket sank onto the sofa, holding Christopher on her lap, and Gardner settled so close to her he seemed to be vying with the baby for that spot.
They looked at her expectantly. Joanna took a deep breath. “Last month Jake asked me to marry him. I didn’t tell him yes—I told him I had to think about it.” She skated over the truth; someday she’d tell Madaket everything, so that Madaket would know that she truly came first in Joanna’s life. “I’ve thought about it, and I’ve tried to be rational about it, and I’ve arrived at the knowledge that in fact I do want to marry him. Desperately.” She felt her face flush and tears rush to her eyes. “Oh, God!” she laughed. “I really love him!”
“That’s wonderful, Joanna,” Gardner said.
“Well, for heaven’s sake, Joanna,” Madaket exploded, “what are you waiting for? Think how Jake must feel! Why not call him and tell him?”
Joanna looked at Madaket and saw only happiness in her eyes, and she heard only impatience in Madaket’s voice. Madaket was not threatened by Joanna’s love for Jake. She was purely happy, and baffled by Joanna’s reluctance, and even bossy in the way that one can be only with one’s family. So there was to be no either/or in the love between them, no choosing between people. There was to be no leaving, no loss. She smiled at Madaket, and reached for her hands, and met her eyes. “You’re right. Yes, I will. Right now!”
She rose, intending to head for her bedroom and the privacy of the phone there, but suddenly, struck through with an idea, she paused.
“No,” she said slowly, speaking to herself as much as to the others as the plan unfolded in her mind. “I don’t think I will call him.” She turned and looked at Madaket, a smile of conspiracy in her eyes. “I think I’ll leave Christopher in your care, and take the first plane to New York, and show up on Jake’s door, and surprise him.”
“What a good idea, Joanna,” Madaket said.
Joanna was gripped by a sense of urgency. “I’d better hurry. What time is it? Madaket, will call you the airlines and make me a reservation on the first plane out of here? I’ll pack.”
“Sure, Joanna. Here, Gardner, hold Christopher.” Madaket grabbed up the phone while Joanna raced into her bedroom. She grabbed a canvas carryall from the top shelf in her closet and filled it with clean underwear, socks, and a silk shirt; she would wear her jeans and loafers and silk sweater and navy blazer on the plane. Then she reached for her robe and was struck with paralysis. She would spend the night with Jake—she hoped. But she had no nightgowns that were even slightly sexy. The silk nightgown Claude had given her after the fire had gotten stained with breast milk, and the cashmere robe was stretched from constant wearing and soiled from baby spit.
Madaket stuck her head into the bedroom. “Bad news, Joanna. The last shuttle to New York has already left. I tried to connect you through Boston, but nothing will get you there tonight.”
Joanna stared at Madaket. She could wait, of course. She’d waited a week already. She could take tomorrow to go shopping
, to buy some attractive new nightgowns
“Charter a flight,” Joanna ordered. The words were out of her mouth almost before she thought them.
“Right!” Madaket replied, her face lighting up with a smile.
Joanna turned back to her closet and tossed the old nightgown and robe into the bag. Jake didn’t want to marry her because she had great clothes.
She rushed into the bathroom to gather up her toiletries. Perfume, toothpaste, toothbrush …
“I’ve got someone!” Madaket called. “He wants to know how soon you want to leave.”
“Now!” Joanna called back.
“You got it!” Madaket yelled.
Joanna hastened to her bureau, opened the top drawer, and grabbed up the satin jewelry bag she’d bought to hold the few pieces of costume jewelry she’d purchased or been given since the fire. She tossed the bag into her carryall, added her cosmetics bag, and checked her reflection in the mirror. She was clean, alive, glowing; she’d never looked better.
“Let’s go!” she announced. Madaket bent over Christopher, zipping him into a lightweight hooded sweatshirt.
“Shall we take my car?” Gardner asked.
“Can’t,” Madaket replied. “We need the baby seat. But you drive. I’ve got the car keys.” She tossed them to Gardner and they all rushed out into the bright spring evening.
Madaket settled Christopher into his car seat and fastened the seat belts, then crawled into the front seat beside Gardner. Joanna sat in the back, talking to Christopher. “I have to go off again, little guy, but you know I’ll come back soon, I always do. And Madaket will take good care of you.”
Christopher blew bubbles and shrieked and banged his hands on the plastic beads on his car seat so that they rattled and clattered. He seemed to have picked up Joanna’s mood.
The evening air as they sped through it was cool but clear. “You’ll have an easy flight,” Madaket predicted as they hurtled along the road toward the airport.
“I hope so. God, I wish I could just be there. I feel really a little insane. Like I’ll explode, truly explode, if I can’t get to Jake right now.”
