"Mother, please don't say anything either of us might later regret. You know, I wondered why you and Dana seemed so...so approving of my decision to go back to college. I thought that maybe things had changed...that maybe you were at last able to think of me as someone who was more than a daughter and a mother—" she hesitated; her voice dropped—"as someone other than Dr. Ralph Volmar's widow."
"For God's sake. Mother!"
"I'm sorry, Dana, but that's really what this is all about, isn't it? It's not that Karim is married or looks ‘foreign’; it doesn't matter that his divorce will be final in October or that— unlike some of the sons of your friends, Mother—he served his country in Vietnam. The problem is that he's not Ralph, and neither of you can bear the thought of my wanting to be with him instead of devoting the rest of my life to good works."
Dana stared at her mother in disbelief. "Listen to you! A woman your age! It's...it's.…"
"It's what, Dana? Unseemly? Lord, the arrogance of youth. The human sex drive isn't like an automobile, you know. It can't be stopped and started at the driver's will—and, oh my goodness, it offers more extras than Henry Ford ever dreamed of! In fact, after listening to what the women I counseled had to say on the subject, I decided God must have added them on to give himself a laugh after a long hard day of creation."
"Elizabeth! That's quite enough! This isn't the sweet girl I raised that I'm hearing! What has this man done to you?"
Startled by the high threadiness of her mother's voice, Beth looked across to see her liver-spotted hands trembling against her cheeks, as if to ward off any more unwelcome revelations.
"Oh, Mother, Karim hasn't done anything to me. At heart, I never was that sweet, docile girl you cherished. Daddy knew that; you never wanted to."
Her mother began to weep. Dana slid out of her chair and bent to hug her grandmother's frail shoulders. When she looked up at her mother, her expression might have been carved in marble. Beth was grateful for the intervening floral centerpiece's blurring of its impact.
"What did you expect her to say?" Dana demanded. " 'You have my blessing, go forth and be happy'?"
"That would have been nice."
"She's old. Mother! You owe her more than this!"
"Respect is what we owe, Dana; love, we give unqualified."
Dana's eyes clung coldly a moment longer before breaking away in disgust. She smoothed her grandmother's white halo of hair, murmuring words Beth was unable to distinguish.
As Beth quietly pushed back her chair, she recalled a favorite phrase of her father's that described the way she felt. Sent to the showers.
You knew it wouldn't be easy, Beth scolded herself as she drove home, eyes blurred by tears. But knowing wasn't the same as experiencing, and the remark Georgina made during her phone call later that evening, when Beth complained of being in the doghouse, hadn't helped a bit.
No dog ever had a grander house, honey-bunch.
At the time, delivered in that husky, wry-toned voice, it had seemed almost amusing. The trouble was that Beth, knowing her particular doghouse could be sold out from under her at any time, still had no idea where she would go. Nor, she suddenly realized, had Karim offered her one.
July and August in Turkey; college opening in September; his divorce in October.…
After that, her life's calendar was as uncertain as those early maps depicting mariners sailing off the edge of the world. Like them, she wanted to cry out and pound her fists on the rail, hoping for God, for somebody to reach down and lift her up.
You grabbed the reins from him, what did you expect?
The answer came sooner than she expected. She had slept badly, waking often to peer at the red digits glowing from her bedside clock, each time dismayed by how little time had passed. When the phone rang at five, her first reaction was relief at being rescued from this shoddy imitation of a night's rest; her second was the dread everyone feels at being phoned at an unnaturally early hour.
"Mom?"
Thank God, Andy was all right.
But on the heels of deliverance came its opposite. Oh, Lord, not the children or Housa!
"Andy?"
"I'm at Murry's, Mom. Dana stayed over, and she heard something breaking in the bathroom. She's had a stroke."
Beth stared stupidly at the receiver. "Dana has?"
"No, no, Murry. The ambulance is on its way. It's too early to tell how bad it is, but.… Look, I think you'd better meet us at the hospital."
"I'll be there as soon as I can." She heard murmurs in the background.
"Mom? Do you want Dana to pick you up?"
"No!" Her refusal burst out more forcefully than intended. "No," she repeated. "I think it's important that each of us be able to operate independently. There's no knowing.…"
"Good point," Andy rejoined briskly. "I hear the ambulance now. Mom, you're sure?"
"Yes, dear. Forget about me; your grandmother is your first priority."
By the time Beth arrived, the hospital protocol was well underway. Dana was in the admissions office supplying the necessary information culled, she later said, from the well-ordered papers in her grandmother's desk. Her mother's vital signs were already being monitored in a room in the Volmar wing. How pleased Mother will be, Beth thought. The bronze plaque honoring Ralph's medical contributions earned a fleeting glance as she hurried to join Andy and Hilton Ormsbee, her mother's doctor, who paced the corridor together. The squeak, squeak, squeak of their shoes on the waxed linoleum set her teeth on edge.
Seeing Beth, Hilton smiled and beckoned. If he's smiling, it can't be too bad.
"Andy tells me your mother never said anything to you. She promised she would."
"Said anything about what, Hilton?"
"Hilton's been treating Murry for hypertension, Mom, but you know how she is—when she's feeling all right, she decides nothing is wrong."
Beth nodded. If it weren't for the diarrhea that once took her by mortifying surprise in Beth's company, she would have concealed that problem, too.
"I suspect she hasn't been following my instructions, Beth. I know she's outraged at the cost of the new prescription I thought she should have—I can't blame her, it is outrageous—so I'm calling her pharmacy first thing to see if she renewed it. Fortunately, she cares enough about her appearance to watch what she eats."
Beth thought of the cream-rich quiche they had for supper. "I wish you had told me, Hilton."
He shrugged. "She asked me not to, Beth."
Beth exchanged a glance with her son. He and his partners would have put her health first. According to Andy, Hilton Ormsbee—who was as young a man as her mother would tolerate inspecting her aged person—was sound enough, but too inclined to bow to his elderly patients' prohibitions. She had refused to consider the female physician Beth herself consulted, and did not appreciate Beth pointing out the illogic inherent in her acceptance of women as nurses but not as doctors.
"But she's going to be all right?" Beth asked.
"Well, it depends on what you mean by 'all right'," Dr. Ormsbee said. "She's already regained consciousness—"
"Thank God."
Beth turned, startled to hear Dana's voice, unaware of her arrival. She stood pale and oddly huddled, close to her brother's side. On the side away from me.
"—but there's no knowing how soon she'll regain her speech and the use of her limbs—did I tell you her left side is the one affected? Unfortunately, considering her age, there's a chance of permanent disabling—" Beth heard Dana's indrawn breath—"but it's too soon to start worrying about that. One thing I should say, and I'm sure Andy will agree, even if she recovers most of her physical abilities she'll need to be carefully monitored."
"She will be," Dana said. Beth did not need to ask by whom.
"I'll stay with Mother today, Dana. If there's any change, any improvement, I'll call you at work."
"But Mother, I—”
"Dana, go to your office, take a nap afterward and come back this evening.
You were up most of the night; you'll be no use to anyone if you're exhausted."
"But Murry's house—the broken glass in her bathroom—"
"I can hire someone to do that. Please, dear."
Dana's mouth tightened, but her eyes dropped, conceding temporary defeat. "Is it all right with you if I at least go in to kiss her goodbye?"
Beth sighed. "Oh, Dana. Of course it's all right."
A few minutes later Dana left, edging past her mother in the wide doorway without a word. Beth pulled what passed for a lounge chair as near to her mother's bedside as the metal safety bars would allow. As she eased into it she could hear Andy and Dana talking in the hall. Although their voices were hushed, the intensity of the exchange carried fragments of Andy's deeper-pitched side of it to Beth's dismayed ears.
"What do you mean 'pack her off to Valley Fields’—have you ever seen it, Dana? We're not talking about the Black Hole of Calcutta, you know..."
"Yes, it may be possible for her to live at home if Mom has someone to relieve her at night, but you can't expect her to give up.…"
"Liaison? For God's sake, Dana, you sound like some Victorian maiden lady. And he's not 'that man'; he has a perfectly good.…"
His voice dropped. A few minutes later a staccato click of heels informed her of her daughter's departure, and a few minutes after that Beth heard a faint rustling of bed clothes. Alerted, she leaned forward eagerly as her mother's eyes opened.
"Mother? Mother? It's Beth, darling. I'm right here. Talk to me!"
Muriel Tomlinson stared at the ceiling, unaware or unheeding of her daughter's whispered encouragement. Her lips parted, but the faint yelping sound that emerged from her sadly twisted lips made no sense.
"Andy? Quick! She's trying to say something!"
Andy moved quickly to his grandmother's bedside.
"Alf, alf, alf..."
"Good!" He turned to his mother. "That's good, Mom. Look, I'm going out to ask the floor nurse to page Hilton. Keep listening, try to make sense of what she's saying; try to get her to look at you...”
Beth tried, but her mother's eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, her fingers plucking- at the sheets.
"Alf, alf, alf..."
Over and over, and then Beth knew. Ralph. That's what she was trying to say. Ralph, the love of her mother's life, whose enduring hold on the women who worshipped him threatened to rob his widow of the love so newly found.
When Andy returned, his misinterpretation of his mother's tears was understandable. "Buck up, Mom. Any effort to talk at this early stage is a very promising sign." He squeezed her shoulder. "You'll see her through this—that's what you do best."
Beth looked up at him numbly. A regular Lady of Good Works, that's me. Maybe Lady of Lost Causes is more to the point, Beth thought as she dialed Karim's number from a phone in the hall outside the hospital cafeteria.
"Hello? Karim?" The din in the cafeteria crescendoed in a deafening clatter of dropped metal trays and cutlery followed by a succession of soprano screeches in a language Beth was unable to identify. She stuck a finger in her free ear. "Darling, I can hardly hear you...I'm sorry you couldn't reach me, I've been at the hospital. It's my mother.…"
"I'm so sorry, Beth," Karim said after she described the situation. "I suppose this means.…" His voice, heavy with foreboding, trailed off. It wasn't hard for Beth to supply the missing phrase.
"I'm afraid so. Andy was encouraged by her attempt to speak, but the speed and extent of her recovery is uncertain at best. All things considered I'm afraid I have no choice."
"There's always a choice, Beth. Not now of course, but later perhaps."
"Karim, I really don't think—"
"I said 'perhaps,' my darling. Don't rob me of hope—you know what they say about it."
Distracted by the fierce-looking unshaven youth at her elbow waiting impatiently for the use of the phone, Beth pleaded ignorance.
"Think spaniel. Large spaniel," he prodded.
Springer? "Springs eternal!" Beth blurted. She chuckled. "Oh, Karim, thank you for that. It's the first laugh I've had in two days." The young man began muttering in Spanish. From the dark sound of it, Beth was glad her knowledge of the language was limited to expressions of courtesy and inquiries about the drinking water. "Tell me again, when does your plane leave?"
"Nine-thirty Thursday evening, but the limo to Bradley leaves from Southbury at six.
"Cancel the limo. I'll be your chauffeur, and we can have dinner together in the airport lounge. Six o'clock, you said?"
"See what I mean about hope, Beth?" She fancied she could hear his smile. "Make it five, so I can hold your hand over coffee for as long as possible."
Beth surrendered the phone with an apologetic smile, relieved to see that the object clutched in the man's grimy hand was a shiny business card rather than the business end of the pocket knife she had imagined there. As she retreated, she heard him exclaiming that he would be late for work. "My wife, she have two boys, what you call them, tweens?
Preconceptions. She shook her head, annoyed with herself for falling into that old trap, one she thought her counseling experiences had cured her of. She wasn't wrong, however, about her daughter's reaction to her phone call later that day. After expressing delight at the report of Muriel Tomlinson's slow but steady improvement, Dana's delight was no less plain on being told of her mother's decision about the trip to Turkey.
"I'm sorry, Mother."
Beth didn't need to see her face to know she was smiling. I swear, if she says anything about it being for the best...
She didn't.
"I will, however, be driving Karim to the airport Thursday evening," Beth continued in an even tone. "Can I count on you to be here with Murry?"
"Of course you can!" No hesitation; no let-me-look-at-my book evasion."Uh, Mother? Did Dr. Ormsbee say when she might be able to return home? She must be fretting terribly about her garden!"
Beth's heart went out to her. Poor Dana. The possibility of her elegant grandmother being permanently disabled was more than she could face. It comforted Beth to learn that her cool, ambitious daughter had at least one chink in her armor. She would have liked to think there might be one for her, too, but she wasn't a greedy woman; and for the moment her mother needed it more than she did.
Chapter Seventeen
By Thursday afternoon, when Beth left the hospital to pick up Karim at his new Peabody quarters, her mother's speech, though still slurred, had improved enough to express the frets about her garden that Dana had anticipated.
"Tell her it's flourishing," Beth instructed her daughter, taking her aside in the corridor outside Muriel Tomlinson's room.
"But it's been so dry—”
"Dana, this is no time for strict truths. Just go in smiling and let her enjoy a private stretch of—what's that term they use now?—quality time with you. Weather reports can wait."
In fact, judged by non-gardening standards, the day was superb: a continuation of the preceding three and a half and, according to the weather report on Beth's car radio, one of the ten best of the year.
A gardener out of duty rather than pleasure, she welcomed the clarity of the dry air, warm enough so that a heightened humidity would have made it uncomfortable. Karim had his own reasons for appreciating it.
"The last time I flew to Turkey, thunderstorms traveling up the Eastern seaboard delayed the departure for seven hours, most of which were spent transferring from gate to gate through a terminal awash with howling toddlers and discarded food containers."
"Now, Karim," Beth chided, "that was years ago."
"My memory tells me it could have been yesterday," he rejoined. "Did I tell you I missed my connection in Frankfurt? Twenty-six hours for a ten-hour trip."
Beth waved her hand at the clear sky. "Well, that won't happen today."
"All the more reason to wish you were coming with me."
"Karim, please—"
"I know. Dwelling on it only makes it worse, but I
decided not to turn in your ticket. " He reached into his breast pocket. "May I?" He opened the flap of her purse and stuck the envelope inside. "I made reservations for us at the Hotel Konak in Istanbul for the last two weeks in August."
"But you know I can never—"
"Never say never, dear girl. The information's on a card clipped to your ticket, including a telephone number."
"But—”
"I've had my say for now. Look! Isn't that a vineyard?"
Beth slowed as Karim pointed to a stretch of gently rolling countryside planted with vines stretched along rows of fence-like supports. Clusters of ripening grapes could be glimpsed among the leafy shoots.
"There are a half-dozen wineries in Connecticut now; this is the oldest." She laughed. "Our gentleman farmers used to go in for dairy cows, but I guess they decided vineyards were classier."
"Once, on my way back home from Turkey with my father," Karim said, "we detoured through France. It was late September, and the grape harvest was well under way. I remember a stone courtyard roofed by a wisteria vine that rose out of the paving like huge writhing snake. The vintners shouted greetings at us as they strode beneath it, and the air was heavy with the aroma of the freshly pressed juice.…"
Caught in his memories, his words trailed off. He turned to her and smiled. "Autumn is vintage time."
She met his eyes. A warning blare from a passing car returned her attention to the road. "Then we must stop in for a tasting when you return."
After Karim's bags were checked through, they headed for the airport restaurant from which, thanks to its vast sound-proofed windows, huge airplanes could be seen lifting off and landing in eerie silence. Beth dutifully consumed the expensive overcooked entree she ordered— runway robbery, she thought—but afterward it was only the warmth of his hand, held as they sipped their coffee, that she remembered: the slide of his flesh on hers, the shape of his fingers, the deep scar twisting below the knuckle of his thumb.
"In 'Nam, I was responsible for making maps of the terrain from aerial photographs," he said when she asked if it were a war injury. "I never saw combat, just the horrible results of it. I got this at age ten in a game of mumblety-peg. Hardly a battle scar," he added with a wry smile. But Beth kissed it anyway, because it was part of him.
And Be My Love Page 22
