Mountain Song

by Ruby Laska

  “Oh.”

  Claudia gently pried her son’s arms from her neck so he could see Bea. He peered over the edge of the bed curiously, then grinned when Bea raised her hand and rested it on his tousled blond hair.

  “Hello, Sugarsnap.”

  “I’m not a sugarsnap, Gramma Bea. I’m a boy.”

  “Ah. Right you are. Still, I sure am glad you came to see me. Maybe now your mama will start talking sense again.”

  Jack shot a curious look at his daughter, but Claudia evaded his glance. She smoothed the pillow and cranked the bed so Bea could sit up a bit.

  “The most sensible thing for me to do is to get back to my job, now that Dad’s here,” Claudia said uneasily. “You know that, Bea.”

  “Company won’t last much longer without her, Mom. I want to get her working on a whole new line. Time to make a splash in the business pages again.”

  “Oh, Dad,” Claudia chided, blushing at her father’s praise.

  Some small thing, a tiny shift in the air, a sound at the door, alerted her senses. And without even turning, she knew.

  “Excuse me.”

  Andy.

  He hesitated, hearing voices in the room. He had meant to come earlier in the day, but kept putting it off, not knowing what he was going to say to Claudia. A dozen times he’d checked Bea’s chart, satisfying himself that her recovery was proceeding smoothly.

  It was time for him to see for himself.

  He eased into the room, sorting the jumble of bodies and voices packed into the small space.

  A tall, silver-haired man in a yellow golf shirt bent over Bea, holding her hand. He turned when Andy entered the room, straightening and appraising him frankly.

  “Hello, Dr...”

  “Woods,” Andy automatically offered his hand, receiving a strong, firm grip in return. “Andy Woods.”

  Recognition lit Jack’s face, and he held onto Andy’s hand a moment more before letting go. His expression darkened, and he looked at Andy carefully, boring into him with troubled eyes.

  “A pleasure,” he muttered.

  He didn’t sound happy. Then again, why should he be? The last time they’d spoken, Andy had been broken, desperate, pleading to speak to Claudia. Jack had been firm, brief; it was out of the question. Please don’t call again.

  Andy had come to hate the man who dismissed him so easily, whose cold voice conveyed the contempt he held for the bum who’d dared to love his daughter.

  But now, he found it impossible to summon up that cold hatred. It was gone, a fire doused until all that remained was a miserable pile of scorched rubble. A child—his child—had been involved. That changed everything. Changed the lengths, certainly, a man would go to in order to protect his daughter.

  “Likewise,” Andy said, trying to keep his voice steady. So this is how they would play it: civilized, pretending neither of them knew the secret that filled the room with its terrible presence. “My colleague Dr. Dupree did an excellent job with the surgery, and Bea’s strength and courage certainly helped. I think we’ll see an excellent recovery.”

  “What happened to Gramma Bea?”

  A voice, small and plaintive, rose from the cramped corner behind Claudia.

  A child’s voice.

  Andy’s heart skipped as he watched Claudia move a step back, her hands splayed protectively at her sides, a look of sheer panic in her eyes.

  Nobody else moved or spoke.

  “Mama, you’re squashing me!” A round face appeared at her hip as small hands tugged her skirt out of the way.

  “I’m sorry, pet,” Claudia breathed, her eyes never leaving Andy.

  Walk away, Andy’s mind screamed. Pretend you saw nothing. He had done his duty, and then some. No one could argue that. He was the one who had been wronged, deceived. He’d never asked for this disruption of his perfectly good life...

  His gaze traveled from Claudia’s face down her rigid body, to the small hand and big, curious eyes in a round face. Without even being aware of moving forward, Andy closed the distance between them, knelt down. The boy pushed his way past his mother, regarded him with open curiosity.

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “Yes. I am. Your great-grandma...”

  He looked like his picture. His eyes were brighter, bigger, in person, and fringed with the most perfect set of black lashes Andy had ever seen. His hair was messier, sticking up on one side where he might have napped on it. A trace of a smudge above his lip gave him a raffish, comical look. Chocolate milk, Andy would wager. “…She needed her leg fixed up.”

  “You fix it?”

  “No, I didn’t do the surgery. But a friend of mine did.”

  The boy’s lips turned down the slightest bit at the corners.

  “How come? You didn’t learn how yet?”

  For a moment there was quiet, and then Andy smiled.

  He couldn’t help it.

  “Well, see, all of us doctors are in charge of different things. Fixing legs, that’s not really my area.”

  Paul looked at him sympathetically. “S’okay. I bet if you practice they might let you sometime. Don’t feel bad that you don’t know how yet. It’s prob’ly like with my training wheels. Right, Mama?”

  Andy glanced at the hand hanging helplessly by her son’s ear, saw the tension in the nails dug into the white flesh of the palm. Didn’t dare look up.

  “Right,” she said faintly.

  He could still get away. It would be messy, but doable. They already thought he was a jerk. No, worse. Their opinion of him couldn’t get any lower, as a matter of fact, so why didn’t he just stand and walk out the door?

  “What’s this for?” Paul asked, and then his small fist shot out and took hold of the stethoscope draped around Andy’s neck. He was so close Andy could feel his breath, sweeter than he’d ever imagined, on his cheek.

  “That’s...” Weakly, he unhooked the instrument, pressed it into the boy’s hands. Was startled at the sudden warmth in his grasp. “It’s a tool I use for listening to people’s hearts.”

  Paul’s eyes widened. “Cool! What else you got?”

  Andy hesitated. From the bed came the sound of Bea clearing her throat.

  “A whole bag of tricks, I’m sure,” she said, and Andy was almost certain he detected a bit of mischief in her voice. “Go on now, Andy. Leave me to catch up with Jack. Show the boy around your hospital.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “And he had this thing,” Paul said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve after a deep draw on his milk.

  “Use your napkin, honey, not your sleeve,” Claudia chided softly.

  She was on autopilot. Every word she spoke, every step she took, every gesture felt like someone else had made it. She could barely remember how she’d gotten here from the hospital. There had been that interminably long time that Paul was gone, following Andy out the door like a little puppy, excited by the prospect of a tour of the hospital. She had counted seconds as her father’s voice mixed with Bea’s in a swirl of comforting familiarity while she hunched in her chair, hugging her arms to her chest, waiting, waiting.

  For what? When Andy had finally returned with Paul, she had no idea how much later, they had both been grinning, Andy wearing a dazed expression as though it was him, not her son, who had just had a chance to explore untold wonders. Andy seemed almost oblivious to the abrupt interruption in conversation as the three of them waited expectantly for him to say something.

  “Sorry Mama. This thing, you know, that is in your body, right in here.” Paul jabbed at his chest with a thumb. “‘Cept his was plastic. He uses it to show people stuff.”

  “A heart?” Jack queried, buttering a roll. How her father found the appetite to eat, she had no idea. He hadn’t said one word to her about Andy, even though she was certain he’d known right away who he was.

  Was everyone going crazy? Or were they all trying to make her crazy? It certainly felt that way. Nothing was going the way it was supposed to. Tomorrow couldn’t come
soon enough, with its promise of the flight, the return home, where she could begin to pretend this had all been one long nightmare.

  “Not a heart.” Paul frowned in concentration. “I know how to draw a heart.”

  “Of course,” Jack said gravely.

  Paul brightened, remembering. “I know. If you smoke a cigarette, it gets all black and dirty and sick. Dr. Andy said it’s terrible to smoke. I’m never going to smoke,” he added with conviction.

  “A lung!” Jack said triumphantly.

  “Yeah! A lung. It was funny looking.”

  “I bet.”

  “You ever see a lung, Mama?”

  “No,” she said faintly.

  The waiter mercifully arrived to take their order. Lifting his eyebrow at Claudia, Jack conferred with the waiter and finally ordered for everyone. Claudia toyed with a fork, dragging the tines along the starched fabric of the tablecloth.

  “Can I go watch the fish until dinner, please, Mama?”

  “May I,” she corrected, following his excited gaze to the large glowing aquarium that lined a wall of the restaurant. “Yes, I suppose.”

  Paul wiggled out of his chair and threaded his way among the tables to the tank. The restaurant was a lively, noisy place, full of couples and families. But even with her father there, Claudia felt very much alone.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said abruptly. “Now that you’re here, and everything seems to be fine with Bea.”

  Neither of them spoke for a minute. The waiter slid drinks in front of them, and Claudia took a grateful sip of her hot tea. Despite the unseasonable warmth of the evening, she felt cold in her light dress.

  “Are you sure that’s what you ought to do?”

  She glanced up, searched for clues in her father’s faded blue eyes, read only concern there.

  “I don’t understand. I—why would I stay?”

  “Shall I spell it out, Honey? That earnest young man...”

  Claudia bit her lower lip. “I thought you’d be, well, angry. About...Andy.”

  “Do you want me to be angry?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. I mean, that’s him. Andy.” She couldn’t bear to be any more specific: her son’s father, the one who wanted no part of him, who dared nonetheless to lead Paul off like the Pied Piper and dazzle him, to appeal to a little boy’s sense of curiosity and wonder.

  “I know who he is, Claudia.”

  Claudia bent her head, concentrated on the invisible design she was tracing. “I don’t understand. Why aren’t you upset?”

  From the corner of her eye she saw her father shrug. “What would be the point? Things happened a long time ago. People made mistakes.”

  Who? Her, certainly, though her family had never been cruel enough to rub her face in it. Oh, their disapproval and disappointment in her had been plenty noticeable, if wordless, during those long months when her body swelled and her heart broke.

  Though their ire disappeared like smoke the day Paul was born, when her father and her sisters and their families shared her joy with all their hearts. Never again did any of them speak of the matter of his conception.

  “I always felt like I...” Claudia struggled with her words, wanting to find the right ones. “I let you down. You know, coming home expecting a baby. Disgracing the family.”

  “You never disgraced us.” Jack’s response was sharp, quick. When he continued though, his voice was gentle. “We were just so worried about you. You were such a young girl, still...maturing, still growing up. You surprised us all with your strength when Paul came.”

  Claudia allowed herself a small smile. Her one triumph, the one thing she could be proud of for the rest of her life. Paul.

  But the smile melted away as she thought of the long road ahead, as Paul would discover that his father hadn’t wanted him, his father had thrown away the chance to be a part of his life. That all that was left of the brief love that created him was the child support check that would arrive, she knew, promptly every month.

  “Do you love him?”

  “What?”

  “Andy. Do you still love him?”

  Claudia clenched her fist around a fold of the tablecloth, struggled to take a breath. “I—whatever makes you ask that?”

  Again, her father shrugged, though now he was watching her carefully. “The way you two looked at each other. Or rather, avoided looking at each other today.”

  “It’s just awkward,” she said. “The whole situation is so awkward. You can’t expect us to, you know, just exchange pleasantries after everything that’s happened. I never meant to see him again,” she added.

  “I know. Count on your grandmother to rig that one. You got to hand it to the old gal.”

  “You sound like you’re on her side! What has she told you?”

  “Nothing. Come on, Sweetheart, you were there. I never expected him to walk through that door. Though it might have been nice if I’d had a little warning.”

  “You and everyone else! She didn’t give me any warning, just let him walk into the room five minutes after I got to town and—and—”

  “And fall in love with you all over again?”

  “I—I didn’t say that.”

  “Claudia.” Jack reached across the table and grasped her hands, pressing her fingers lightly until she finally relaxed a little. She looked up into his eyes, wanted so much to give in to the comfort she saw reflected back. “If you do love him...Well, I suppose it’s not really my business, but I would hate to see you walk away without doing your best to make it work.”

  Tears pooled, but her father held on, not allowing her to brush them away. They fell soundlessly to the table, staining the fabric.

  “Dad, don’t you see? It’s not me. It’s...him. Andy doesn’t want us. Doesn’t want to be a father.”

  “I saw him with Paul. Give him a chance. You had nine months to fall in love with Paul before he was ever born. A man doesn’t know what it means to be a father until he holds a child in his arms for the first time.”

  Claudia shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut. How she wanted to believe that. But her heart had been damaged enough, buffeted around in the storm of the week’s events.

  “Sweetheart,” her father continued, his voice strong and gentle at the same time. “It’s been hard, without your mother. I’m not making excuses, but there were many times I didn’t know the right thing to do. A grown man, with three girls and a business to run...well, I made so many mistakes. With you, I thought if I just tried hard enough, I could protect you from ever getting hurt. I tried to give you things, all the pretty things a young girl likes, thinking it might make up somehow for your mama being gone.”

  “Oh, Dad, you never needed—”

  “Hush. This is important. The worst mistake I ever made was turning Andy away. All those times he called, pleaded with me to put you on the phone. I thought if we just sent him away, closed the door on his memory, it would be better for everyone. But it isn’t. That boy—” He gestured at Paul, who was watching the glimmering shapes of the tropical fish with fascination— “deserves better. He deserves a father. Now you go and get him one.”

  Finally, he released her hands, waited as she dug in her purse for a tissue.

  “It’s too late,” Claudia said softly, dabbing at her eyes. “He doesn’t want us anymore.”

  Andy raised the flask to his lips and drank deeply, the potent liquid burning a path down his throat. Outside his picture window, twilight slowly melted into night. Clouds scudded across the few stars that studded the sky.

  He took another swallow. Andy wasn’t well acquainted with the comforts whiskey could provide. But tonight seemed like a night that called for a little fortification.

  He held the flask up, turning it in the lamplight. It was made of old silver, tarnished and faintly etched with his father’s initials. One of the few treasures the man had ever had, along with the pocket watch his wife had given him on their wedding day.

  Andy patted his pocket
, feeling the reassuring shape of the watch. It was a good one, perhaps the last beautiful thing his mother bought in her life. She had given up everything to be with his father: a wealthy East coast family, her friends, the beautiful home she’d grown up in—all of it left behind when she came west with her husband to pursue a dream that, year after year, dimmed until it was nothing but a distant memory.

  Yet with all her disappointments, Andy remembered her as happy, surrounded by the mountains she loved.

  Once she was gone, Andy’s father worked all the harder, as if the hours of toil could somehow make him forget her absence. When he died, Henry Woods had few dreams left. Just one, in fact.

  “I did what you wanted, Pop,” Andy said softly, setting the flask gently down on the coffee table. “I’m a successful man.”

  The words tasted bitter on his lips. Success. No one could argue that he’d achieved it. Dozens of people would attest to that, every supervisor he’d ever had, every professor, every intern he’d directed. But after all this time, surpassing everyone else’s yardsticks, why did Andy still feel as though he would never measure up?

  Damn it, he knew the reason. Two reasons, actually. Both with golden hair and the softest skin he’d ever touched.

  He seized the flask, drained it. Nearly coughed as the fiery liquor did its work, then mastered the impulse.

  And still he could not get Paul and Claudia out of his mind.

  Why had he allowed the boy to follow him out of that room, around the hospital? Why hadn’t he turned around and left the minute he saw the small hand shoot around his mother’s skirt, followed by a pair of enormous curious blue eyes?

  “I’m an idiot,” Andy muttered. And yet, no amount of alcohol could keep his mind from identifying the truth.

  He’d wanted to be with Paul. Alone, just the two of them. To see what he was like. Hear his voice, marvel at the mannerisms that were eerily familiar, like Claudia’s in miniature.

  And there was more to it, wasn’t there? The minute Paul had slipped his small hand into Andy’s big one, something had broken inside him. Some walled-up place was exposed, and emotions came pouring out that Andy couldn’t even comprehend, much less master. All he knew was that he wanted to show Paul his work, his hospital. To connect with him. To impress him.