“That’s what this is about?” I asked, feeling close to tears, my head throbbing so badly that I felt tears might break me. “Your wedding?” His smile slipped away, quickly replaced by the oh-so-familiar frown of disappointment. I sighed. “I really do have to get back. Kelly needs me.”
“I know,” he said, his voice coming out barely louder than a whisper.
When I got back to the waiting room, Beverly was wrapping herself in her fur coat and dragging her husband out by the arm. “What did you say to her?” I whispered to Kelly.
“What did Dad want?” she asked back, as if she hadn’t even heard my question.
“Do I have Mom’s smile?” I asked her.
She thought about it for a moment, and then she said, “I don’t know. I’ll have to find a picture. It’s hard to remember her smiling.”
Thirty
By noon, Dave was moved into a room, and the doctors determined that he did indeed need a triple bypass that would be performed the next day.
Kelly asked everyone to leave, because she was planning on spending the rest of the day with Dave. Alone. “Do you want me to watch the kids?” I asked. “Bring you anything?”
“No.” She shook her head. “The kids are going to Beverly’s.”
“Beverly’s?” I asked, wondering exactly what she’d said to her mother-in-law while I was in the atrium with our father.
“They love it there. They’ll think it’s a vacation.” She paused. “Can you please come back tomorrow morning, and sit with me? During the surgery.”
“Of course.” I nodded. “And if you think of anything else, just call me.”
“It’s scary,” Will said to me, as we walked carefully over ice patches in the parking lot.
“He’s going to be all right, though? Don’t you think?”
“He’s tough,” Will agreed. “And he has so much to live for.” We got into the car, and I put my hands in front of the vents to warm them. “But I mean, Jesus Christ, he’s my age,” Will said. “Just to think that it can all be taken away from you. Just like that.” I thought of the briefcase in the bar, of the way the money felt, of the disgusted feeling that Will felt when he’d touched it. “It’s not the same, Jen,” he said, as if he could read my mind. “Life. Life is short. Life is delicate.”
I thought about what my father had said, about me being so similar to my mother. “I always thought I would die young,” I said, feeling almost a little relieved that the truth, my fear, was finally out there, out in the open. “I mean my mother did, and I already had that lump.”
“It was benign,” Will said.
“But still.” I shrugged. “Your destiny is your destiny.” I paused. “I mean, didn’t you ever think you might die in a car accident, after what happened to your parents?”
“No.” He shook his head. “It was an accident. A fluke.” He put his hand on my leg. “Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place,” he said. “God forbid.”
“We can’t help who we are. What we’re made of. I mean, maybe Dave just has bad luck of the draw. I think his father had his heart attack in his forties.”
“He’ll pull through,” Will said. “I know he will.”
Neither one of us said anything else for a while. I stared out my window, at the white, frosty world swirling by, so white with snow that it looked like the world was blank, like there was nothing out there. Will gripped the steering wheel hard and stared straight ahead. When he turned into the driveway, he stopped and cleared his throat. “Is that Lisa?” he asked. “On the porch?”
I looked up and saw her, the red peacoat, the red hat. She was sitting on our stoop and shivering.
“Oh thank God you’re all right.” Lisa rushed toward me as I got out of the car. “When you didn’t stop by this morning, I tried to call. I left you five voice mails.”
I opened my purse to look for my cell phone and realized I must have left it in the bedroom. “I’m sorry,” I said. “My brother-in-law, Dave, had a heart attack. We were at the hospital.”
“Oh shit,” she said. “Is he okay?”
“He will be. We hope.”
Will walked in through the garage, and Lisa and I followed behind him. “I’m going to make some coffee,” he said. “You ladies want some?”
“None for me.” Lisa sighed. “Coffee’s on my no-no list now.”
“I’ll have some,” I told him. He leaned in for a quick kiss and went toward the kitchen, while Lisa and I sat down on the couch in the living room.
“Wow,” Lisa said. “I’m amazed.”
“Why?”
“You two. The way he looks at you.” She shook her head.
I thought about the Will who had touched me last night and then about Will in my dream, about the money in the case, the way Lisa had said, only a few months ago, That permanent disbarment is some serious shit. Then something Lisa had said a few minutes earlier struck me funny. Coffee was on her no-no list now. Since when?
“Lisa,” I said. “Are you—?”
She cut me off before I could finish. “I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “Well.” She laughed, sounding almost giddy. “I know how it happened. But it was only one night. Last month. And it’s not like we were trying.”
“Does Barry know?” I asked her.
“No.” She shook her head. “Not yet.” She reached out for my hand. “I’m terrified it will happen again.”
“It won’t,” I told her. “You don’t know that.”
I thought about what Will had said in the car. “It won’t,” I told her, feeling so sure in my heart that for her what had happened really had been a fluke. “Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.”
After Lisa left, Will and I sat close on the couch and sipped our coffee. I leaned into him, the warmth of his body radiating over me. I thought about Lisa, and the new little life that had sprung up inside her, that I knew was going to bring her back to life, too. I considered that if I got pregnant, our little babies would grow up together and play together and go to school together. It all seemed like a very nice fantasy, if I didn’t let myself think about the other half, about what people in Deerfield believed that Will had done. Or the absolute truth, whatever that might be, of what Will had actually done.
Part of me wanted to know this truth, and part of me didn’t want this moment, this one small fantasy, to end. Will put his hand on my leg. “I’ll take the rest of the day off,” he whispered. “We can get back into bed.”
“No, I shouldn’t. What if Kelly needs something?”
“We’ll take the phone with us,” he said, stroking back my hair, kissing my neck.
He might be a criminal, I thought. You don’t even know him at all. He leaned over and kissed me on the mouth, softly at first, then harder.
I stopped thinking, and I kissed him back.
* * *
I was lying naked, on my side in the bed, Will’s arm around me. I stared at my phone on my night table, willing it to ring, willing Kelly to need something. It stayed silent.
I heard Will’s soft and easy breathing in my ear. Don’t fall asleep, I willed myself, and then, when it was clear that I was going to, I chanted Kelly’s name, over and over again in my head.
But in the seconds before sleep, I had a thought not about Kelly, Kat, Lisa, or even Will. But about myself. About this strange feeling I had, a feeling that settled in my stomach and washed over my body, a sudden and intense melting, like sunshine hitting snow.
I was lying in a bed. I looked around. White walls, small TV hanging from the ceiling, and a sign by the door, “St. Francis Hospital: Rules for Visitors.”
“Do you know where you are?” a woman asked.
“Yes.” I nodded. “What happened?” I asked. “Where’s Dave?”
“Dave?” she said. “Can you tell me your name? “
For a minute, I was stumped. Who was I? Lisa? Kelly? And then I caught a glimpse in a mirror hanging over a sink, and I was myself. Jennifer Daniel
s Levenworth.
“Do you know your name?” the woman repeated.
I nodded. “Jennifer,” I said. “Jennifer Daniels Levenworth.”
“Very good,” she said. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
I remembered Will’s hand running up my thigh, and then feeling him inside me. But I wasn’t going totell her that, so I said, “Dave. My brother-in-law had a heart attack. That’s why I’m here. Isn’t it?”
She shook her head. “Do you remember getting your hair washed at the salon? Pierce Avenue, I think.”
I nodded. “That was months ago,” I said. I heard Jo’s voice in my ear. “Isn’t that your husband?”
“Yes,” she said, seeming oddly perplexed. “It was. “
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Ethel,” she said. “Ethel Greenberg.” I looked at her. She was no Ethel Greenberg. She was middle-aged with red curly hair, and verging on morbidly obese.
“You’re not Ethel,” I said.
She pointed to her name tag, which clearly read in bold red letters “Ethel Greenberg.” “I’m a social worker,” she said. “I’ve been checking in on you. Trying to help your family and your friends. Your husband.” I looked around for him, for Will. “He went home to get some dinner,” she said, as if she could read my mind. “But he’s been here with you, a lot.” She paused. “You’re lucky, you know, to have someone like that.” I thought that I should ask her why I was here, and how long I’d been here, but before I could say anything, I heard a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Ethel said. I looked up, and there was Will. Tall, handsome, curly-haired Will. “There he is,” Ethel said, smiling. “He can’t stay away.”
He saw me staring, and he ran toward the bed. “She’s awake,” he said to Ethel. Then to me, “You’re awake.”
“Yes.” Ethel nodded. “It’s only been a few moments. I’ll go get the nurse and leave you two.”
Ethel waddled out, and Will took her place by the bed. He buried his head in my chest, and when he sat back up, he was crying. “Jen,” he said. “Jen. Jen.” He paused. “I’ve been so scared of losing you.”
He put his hand on my earlobe and fingered a star earring.
“Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes,” I sang softly.
“You heard me,” he said. “You heard me sing it when I put them in your ears last night.” He paused. “Ethel said you could hear us, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Of course I heard you,” I said. “In Il Romano.” In the dim wash of candlelight, I’d watched the stars glow.
“The doctor said you were dreaming. You were dreaming, Jen. You were here last night. You’ve been here for a while.”
I shook my head. “I’m so tired,” I said. “I’m sorry. I need to sleep. “
He squeezed my hand and leaned down and kissed my cheek. “Just promise me you’ll wake up,” he said.
Thirty-one
Jen,” Will said, shaking my shoulder. “Wake up.” It took me a moment to react, and then I opened my eyes and looked around. Blue curtains, maple hardwood floors, blue damask comforter. My bedroom. The first glow of daylight peeked through the window. “What time is it?” I asked.
“Almost seven,” he said. “You slept all night. You must’ve been exhausted. I tried to wake you for dinner, but I couldn’t get you up.”
I sat up, realizing that my stomach was empty, that I hadn’t eaten anything since dinner at Il Romano. “I’m starving,” I said.
“Do you want me to make you something. Eggs? While you get ready to go to the hospital.”
The hospital. The dream came back to me and hit me, crushing me like a boulder rolling all too quickly down the side of a mountain. And then I remembered what Ethel had said, about that philosopher who’d dreamed he was a butterfly,and then when he awoke, wondered which it was, if he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. The mind plays tricks on you, Ethel had said. Sometimes things are not as they seem.
“No, no eggs,” I said. “I’ll just grab a granola bar.”
“Well, at least let me make you some coffee.” He paused. “And I can come with you, if you want.”
“No.” I shook my head. “You should go to work. I’ll be fine.”
He hugged me and whispered into my hair, “If you need anything, you call me.”
“I will,” I agreed.
While Will went downstairs to make coffee, I called Ethel and left her a message, telling her I was stopping over in forty-five minutes. It’s not so much that I wanted answers—though I did—but that I wanted to see her, see that she was still there, in her converted garage among her shelves and shelves of pill bottles. I wanted to make sure she was real.
I rang the bell on Ethel’s garage first, and when she didn’t answer, I walked up to the front door of the house and rang that one. Two rings later, she opened the door in her bathrobe, holding on to her cup of coffee. “Jennifer,” she said, sounding surprised to see me.
“I left you a message,” I said.
She held open the door and ushered me to come in. “What is it?” she asked. “Is everything all right?”
“I need you to tell me what you meant, that thing you said about the man and the butterfly.” She looked perplexed. “The man dreaming he was a butterfly—”
“Oh, that,” she said.
“I mean, how do you know the difference?” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I’m not sure I know the difference.” I wondered if this was real, standing here with Ethel, or if I was dreaming now, if what was real was me in the hospital for whatever reason.
“Oh, Jennifer. We need to get you off that herb,” she said. “I meant for it to calm you, and look at you, you’re a mess over these dreams. I want you to stop taking them immediately.” She paused. “And I want to check your meridians, see where all this anxiety is coming from.” She put her hands over my stomach. They were warm and solid hands. “Could be the liver.”
I wondered when Ethel checked my body, my meridians as she called them, with her electrical impulses if she could figure out why my dreams had gone crazy, telling me the truth about other people, or maybe just the truth about myself. “I have to go,” I told her. “My sister’s husband is having surgery this morning, and I promised her I’d be there.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “I have an opening on Friday. Stop back then, and we’ll check everything out.” She paused. “You should embrace your dreams, Jennifer. You’re very lucky. People who dream can figure things out, can dig deep into their subconscious in ways that other people cannot.” She paused for a minute, as if wanting to let what she’d said settle in the air. “Namaste.”
I saw Beverly and Stan first, sitting in the waiting room, Beverly huddled into her husband, her fur coat on her lap. “Where’s my sister?” I asked. Beverly ignored me, and Stan pointed in the direction of the atrium. I nodded a quick thank-you toward him, then stopped. “If you guys are here, where are the kids?”
“With your father.” Stan shrugged.
I pictured Caleb, Jack, and Hannah throwing simultaneous tantrums, in a circle around Sharon, and my father sitting idly by. But I didn’t know that for sure. I had absolutely no idea what kind of grandparent my father really was, a thought that made me feel a little sad.
In the atrium, Kelly sat in one of the red chairs my father had been in the day before. “Hey,” I said, waving. “You all right? I saw Beverly and Stan in the waiting room.”
She shrugged. “It’s her son. I can’t tell her not to be here.”
“I know.” I nodded.
“Do you remember waiting here, when Mom was in surgery?” I nodded again. “Do you remember how it felt?”
“I was terrified,” I said. “But I pretended not to be because you were so calm.”
“I wasn’t calm,” she said. “I wasn’t calm.”
“Dave’s going to be fine.” I reached out for her hand.
We sat there for a little while in silenc
e, until I finally said, “Do you want me to get you something to eat, or some magazines to read?”
She shook her head, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe some magazines. To pass the time.”
“I’ll go down to the gift shop.”
“Tabloids,” she said. “Something really trashy.”
“Of course.”
I remembered my way to the gift shop, just down the hall from the atrium. I remembered Kelly and I had walked in there together, just after our mother came out of surgery. We’d pooled a week’s worth of lunch money and had bought her a miniature teddy bear with a “Get Well Soon” stick balloon in its hands.
Our mother had gushed over how much she loved it, over how it made her feel better already, and I could still remember the nausea I’d felt swelling in my stomach, seeing the bandages across her chest, the stiff way she sat up in the bed.
I shook the memory away. I hated it when the bad ones came, when the good ones seemed to be buried in my mind so deep that I had a hard time locating them, even when I wanted to. Her voice. Her smile.
Then I looked up, and at the other end of the gift shop by the door, I saw the woman from my dream. The faux, fat Ethel Greenberg. She was dressed in a red tent dress that clashed with her red curly hair. She caught my eye, and she smiled, then walked out the door. I turned to run after her, to glimpse her name tag, but by the time I got to the hallway, she was already gone.
As I walked back into the gift shop and picked through the tabloids, I considered my options.
A. I was dreaming now. In reality, I was the one in the hospital.
B. I was awake now. My dream last night had been a combination of things my psyche had dug up, a fat woman I’d probably seen in the hospital yesterday. I had been taking an herb for the last several months that somehow allowed me to experience moments of my friends’ lives.
Either possibility felt mildly insane. I could not be dreaming now. How could I be? Everything felt so real, the smell of Lysol and urine in the hospital corridor, the sounds buzzing over the intercom.
The Transformation of Things Page 20
