"I like her," Alex said when she left.
Claire nodded. "But she wouldn't say anything definite about Emma."
"It's her job not to say anything definite unless she's definitely definite."
A small smile played on Claire's lips. "I'm so glad you're here."
Alex moved closer and put his arm around her, and Claire let her head rest against his. So it was the two of them, drooping with weariness but still there, that Emma saw when, beyond the win-dowless hospital room, dawn was brightening the sky and she opened her eyes.
"Who's that.''" she asked, her voice thin but clear.
Claire started. She can talk; oh, thank God, she can talk. But why doesn't she — P She leaned forward. "It's Alex, darling, you know who he—" She stopped at the confusion in Emma's eyes. "His name is Alex Jarrell," she said quietly, masking her fear. "He's a good friend."
Emma looked at him without curiosity; then she looked at her mother. "I was thinking how you used to sing to me when I was sick," she said, as if continuing a conversation. "All those songs. 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary.' That was my favorite. It made me happy."
Claire had sung that song the afternoon before, when Emma was in a coma. Now she sang it again, leaning forward. Alex held one of her hands; with the other, she took Emma's and held it tightly, as if she could send through it her love and all her energy, enough to make Emma stay awake, enough to make her well. Her voice was small but true, and it flowed sweetly through the room.
Emma sighed. "Remember when you'd make pies, and I'd sit on the counter and watch you.'' You'd put the top crust on and pinch it all around in little ruffles, and then you'd hold it up with one hand underneath it and cut with a knife around the edge, and the extra dough would be like a long ribbon, falling, falling onto
the counter, and I'd squeeze it all together so you could roll it out again and make little jelly tarts—remember?—because there wasn't enough left for another pie. Little squares with raspberry jam or orange marmalade in the middle, and you'd fold them into triangles and press the edges with a fork so they'd stay together, but some jam always leaked out anyway, and it would burn in the oven and make an awful smell and we'd have to clean it. But you'd always let me have one of the tarts as soon as they were cool, sometimes two, and they were so good."
Her eyes were wide, but she was not looking at Claire; she was looking up, at something only she could see. "We made a snowman once, I remember, it was bigger than me, and it was cloudy outside, but the sun came out, just a little bit, poking through the clouds, and you were in the sunshine and I wasn't and neither was the snowman, just you, so bright, like gold, and you looked so beautiful and you were laughing. You looked happy, too."
"I remember," Claire said softly. She was terrified because Emma seemed farther away than ever, but she kept her voice even and spoke almost lightly. "You were five. Almost six. You made his mouth out of grapes, and his eyes were two prunes, and he had red yarn for hair, and we put a book in his hand and a straw hat on his head."
"The professor," Emma said with a little giggle. "He melted awfully fast."
"We made another one the next year. Even bigger."
"Oh," Emma said incuriously. She was silent. "I liked it when you put the sewing machine on the table in the living room—remember.'' There were pieces of fabric and pattern pieces, too, all over, sleeves, and a front and back, and parts of the skirt, and one day you made soup, it was cooking on the stove, and it was freezing outside, a really cold winter day, and all the windows steamed up, and it was so cozy, like being in a warm cave, just the two of us. That was a happy day."
"And you came over and hugged me." Claire's eyes were filled with tears. "And you said, 'I love you. Mommy.' "
"I'm sorry," Emma said, still looking at whatever she saw beyond the ceiling. "I'm sorry I wasn't nice to you, Mommy. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Her voice was fading away.
"Emma," Claire said urgently. "Don't go away. Tell me, when weren't you nice to me.''"
"All those things I said when you . . . when you didn't want me to . . ." She sighed.
"Didn't want you to what? Emma, come back, come back; you're talking about the last few months, aren't you? It's all right, Emma; it's better to talk about the present than the past. Because then we can talk about the future. Emma, do you hear me?"
"Didn't want me to see . . . didn't want me to go out with . . . didn't want me to be a . . . the . . . girl. Can't remember. . . The Older Girl. Other. Awful. Dead. The Dead Girl. Magazines, you know, photo sessions. You know."
"Not the dead girl, Emma; it wasn't anything like that; it was something much different. You'll think of it later. And you were always nice to me, Emma. We've always loved each other. I remember that."
Emma turned her head and looked at her mother. Their eyes held for a long moment. Then Emma began to cry. "He said bad things to me."
Claire gave a swift glance at Alex, who was watching her and Emma with complete absorption. "Should I force her to remember?"
"I think it's all right," he murmured, and Claire turned back to Emma. "Who said bad things?"
Emma's head rolled back and forth. "Said I wasn't his girl. Said he hated me. Didn't love me.''
"Who said that?" Claire asked again.
"I'm finished," Emma said clearly. "I told the waiter. I'm finished."
No, no, no, Claire thought. I don't believe it. "Emma, what did you mean? What did 'finished' mean?"
"Dinner. And . . . everything else."
"What else? What else?" When Emma was silent, Claire put her hand on Emma's head and turned it until their eyes met again. "Emma, did you try to kill yourself because of what he said to you?"
Emma looked bewildered. "What?"
"Did you want to die? Did you try to kill yourself?"
"Why?" Emma frowned. "Can't remember."
"What can't you remember?"
"Ran away. Everybody was watching."
"You ran away from dinner?"
"Through the restaurant. Everybody watching. You ruined everything."
"That's what you said to him.'"'
"You ruined everything. I ran away."
"And then what.^ What happened in the hotel, Emma.^"
"Can't remember."
"You went through the lobby. Did you talk to anyone.^"
"Can't remember. Oh, yes, somebody told me what room."
"Told you your room number.^ Why didn't you remember.'^"
"Too sleepy. So sleepy. Heavy and sleepy and I fell down."
"Then how did you get to your room.^"
"Can't remember. Oh, somebody. Red uniform. He took off my shoes. Put me on the bed. The quilt was warm."
"And then what.^ Did you get up after he left.-'"
"Get up where.^"
"Get out of bed. Go to the bathroom. Take any pills to help you sleep."
''Already asleep," Emma said with a touch of impatience. It was the first note of animation they had heard in her voice. "Couldn't move; too heavy, sleepy, I felt so sick." She lay still, the tears running silently down her face. "I'm dying."
"No, darling, you're not. You're not." Claire paused. "You didn't want to, did you.'' Last night.^"
Emma looked at her, wide-eyed. "Why.^" she asked clearly. "I only wanted to love."
"The best answer," Dr. Marks said. She had come in quietly and was standing behind Claire. "Excuse me," she said, and moved forward. "Hello, Emma, I'm Claudia Marks and I'm your doctor while you're here, and I need to take your temperature and a few other things. It won't take long, and then you'll have your mother back again. Please," she added to Claire and Alex.
Claire kissed Emma's forehead. "We'll be right back," she said, and she and Alex returned to the waiting room, Hannah and Gina were there, playing word games on pads of paper.
"I brought some more food," said Hannah, gesturing toward the coffee table. Alex told them briefly about Emma while Claire sat on the edge of the couch, her hands clasped in her lap. It was twenty minutes before
Claudia Marks came to them. Her face was radiant. "She's going to be fine," she said.
TWENTY
T
H E police called on Brix on Christmas night. He had been at a party in one of the town houses a block from his own. It had not been a great evening; most of the time he had sat in a corner, drinking Scotch and water and looking at girls, trying to get interested enough to take one of them home with him. It was not like him: everyone commented on it and tried to get him to lighten up. But he couldn't; he couldn't even concentrate on the girls—he was having trouble concentrating these days, and, anyway, he was drinking steadily and he'd done coke all day—and after a while he stopped looking and wandered off, forgetting to say good-bye to his host. Outside, he pulled on his coat and walked a little unsteadily on the winding walk that followed the undulating line of town houses to his own door, identical to every other door in the complex. From the corner of his eye he saw a police car parked at the curb. Somebody's making too much noise, he thought vaguely. Disturbing the neighbors; shame on them. He walked up the front steps and stared at the door, making sure it was his. "Thirty-eight," he muttered. That was his address, so this must be his door. He reached into his pocket to pull out his keys.
"Mr. Brix Eiger.?"
He swung around. A policeman was there, standing a little too close to him. Another policeman sat in the car. "Got the wrong guy," Brix said. "I haven't made any noise; haven't made a sound. I've been somewhere else. Very quiet."
"We want to ask you some questions about Emma Goddard," said the policeman, and Brix felt the earth slide out from under him.
He stopped himself from falling, turning it into a stumble. He was trying to think, to get his leaden mind working, "Whoops," he said as he straightened up. "Had a little too much Christmas cheer, looks like. Emma.'' I haven't seen her. I know she's been in the hospital, but I didn't go; we had a fight, you know, lovers' fight, whatever, and I thought, better stay away. I sent her flowers, though; I hope she got them. She didn't call, so I guess she's really mad at me." He paused. "So, that's all," he added lamely. "I can't tell you anything about her."
"We'd like you to come with us, Mr. Eiger."
"What.^ Where.^ Oh. You mean—" He was sounding stupid, Brix thought. He couldn't afford to sound stupid. They wanted to take him to the police station for questioning. Maybe he should say no. If he didn't know anything about Emma, would he say no.'' Probably not; the smart thing was to cooperate. They were always easier on people who cooperated. "Sure," he said cheerfully. He looked at the badge on the policeman's uniform. "Janowski. Well, let's go meet your friend."
"Sergeant Janowski," the policeman said in a neutral voice, and stood aside to follow Brix to the car.
"Detective Fasching," Sergeant Janowski said to Brix, introducing the man in the driver's seat, who was not in uniform.
"Detective," Brix said, trying to be friendly as he got into the backseat with the sergeant. "Like an Agatha Christie novel, isn't it.'' Well, I'll be glad to help you and your friend, but this can't take too long; I've got a date in half an hour." He had nowhere to go and nothing to do for the rest of the night, but his mind was working now and he figured he could handle these two guys without any trouble, but if he didn't give them a deadline, they'd never stop asking questions because that was how they got their kicks.
In fact, he had rehearsed this meeting. The only difference was, when he'd practiced it the first few times, he'd been sure Emma would be dead. Now, from persistent phone calls, he knew she was alive and she'd be fine. Christ, he thought, she had the constitution of a horse; only two days since their dinner and
already she was on her way to being fine. So he wasn't sure exactly how this would go, but he knew he was ready, and he knew he was smarter than a couple of cops off the street.
In a small room at the police station. Detective Fasching sat on the corner of a metal desk and Sergeant Janowski leaned on a windowsill. In a corner, hidden by a folding screen, a young woman sat at a computer terminal. Brix sat between the two policemen; he had been nudged into a straight chair near the desk, and he turned his head as he talked to them, as if he were at a tennis match. "We need to know everything you can tell us about the night you had dinner with Miss Goddard at the Luberon Restaurant. That would be last Tuesday night."
"Everything.'* That's kind of tough." They knew where he and Emma had had dinner. They'd been talking to people, looking for things. If they knew that much, why didn't they know she'd tried to commit suicide.^
Because she'd told people she hadn't. And like a bunch of idiots, they believed her. An overemotional teenager, an empty bottle, despondency over a lovers' quarrel—they must have heard about that from the maitre d' and the clerk at the hotel—and still they believed her. Well, then, he had to try something else.
He shook his head. "I can't tell you everything; it wouldn't be fair to Emma. She was upset and said things she wouldn't want repeated, you know, things that showed she was really out of control."
"For instance," said Detective Fasching.
"Look, I told you, she wouldn't want—"
"But we want, Mr. Eiger, and it would be best if you just told us what happened and stopped telling us what Miss Goddard would or wouldn't like. What made you think she was out of control.'*"
Brix shrugged. "Well, like, one minute she was telling me these crazy stories about how she used to talk to her dog, you know, have conversations with it, and then she started in on how she knows what men want and she's the only one who does, you know, like maybe the dog told her. It didn't make a lot of sense." He paused. "And then, a little later, she almost fought with the waiter when he tried to pull the table out for her, you know, when she wanted to go to the bathroom; she was shoving it, like it was
in her way, but he was trsing to help her, except that she really couldn't control herself. She really ran to the bathroom, too; everybody was looking at her. In fact, when she got back, I told her to stop drinking because it would only make things worse, but she said I'd gone to all that trouble to plan the dinner and she was going to do it the way I'd planned it, the whole thing. I think she was trying, even though we weren't getting along very well right then, she was trying to, you know, get me to say that everything was all right."
"Why weren't you getting along very well right then.^"
"Because she wanted to get married and I didn't. I mean, someday I probably will, but not now, and anyway, she's too young. I told her that; I guess I shouldn't have. It's not just her age, it's that she doesn't know anything. She's like a little kid, happy when things go her way and then having a tantrum when they don't. That's what she did at the restaurant: she had a tantrum and she ran out. She even left her coat, she was in such a hurry."
"Was she sick when she left the restaurant.^"
"Sick.'' Of course not; I told you: she ran out. She'd had too much to drink—I guess maybe I did, too, but it was supposed to be a Christmas dinner just for the two of us, so I ordered some really fine wines—anyway, she drank more than she should have, but she wasn't sick, just out of control, that's all."
"What does that mean: 'out of control'.'"'
"Just what it says. She couldn't control what she said—lots of really nasty things came out of that pretty little mouth—and I don't think she could control what she did, which is why I told her she should stop drinking. But it was like she didn't even know what she was drinking. Like she didn't have any idea what she was doing about anything. And I thought, she takes pills and if she doesn't know what she's doing, she could take too many of them. In fact, when she was in the bathroom, I looked in her purse so I could take her pills out and keep them for her until she was in better shape, but they weren't there."
Brix stopped, pleased with himself, and waited for the next question. When it did not come immediately, he made a show of looking at his watch.
"You didn't go with her when she left the restaurant.^" Sergeant Janowski asked.
"Well, no, and I'm sorry about t
hat. A gentleman shouldn't let a lady wander around New York alone. But, you know, like I said, she'd spouted some pretty nasty things at me and I wasn't feeling too mellow about her, so I let her go. I asked if she was all right, though, when I got to the hotel, and they told me she'd gone to her room. I thought she was sleeping it off, which was what she needed, so I went to my room and I didn't call her. Until the next morning, that is."
"When was that.^" the sergeant asked.
"Around seven. I thought we'd have breakfast and try to patch things up; we had to work together, after all; she was—she is— the model, you know, for one of the cosmetics lines we make in the company my father and I own. But the clerk told me she was gone, she was in the hospital; her mother had come to get her."
The two men gazed at him in silence.
"Of course I called the hospital," Brix said, conscious of the gaps in his story. "They said she was alive, but no one could see her. And then today they told me she'd be fine, so I guess my prayers were answered. And that's all I know. Cross my heart."
He wished he could take back those last, flippant words, but they hung in the air, and the officers let the silence stretch out while they gazed steadily at him. "Miss Goddard had almost three milligrams of Halcion in her stomach," Detective Fasching said at last. "Do you know what Halcion is, Mr. Eiger.''"
Brix nodded sadly. "Emma told me she took it; that's what I meant when I talked about the pills she took. It's a powerful drug and I told her so, but she said she needed it to sleep. I don't know how often she took it, but I always told her a glass of warm milk was better for her." He smiled, but neither of the policemen returned his smile. "Is three milligrams a lot.''" Brix asked, thinking he should have asked that first.
"Enough to kill her if she hadn't been found as eady as she was. The bottle that was found by her bed—"
"There was a bottle.''" Brix cried.
The officer's mouth tightened in a quick flash of contempt. "The bottle was labeled for ten pills. There's no reason to assume she still had them all; she probably had taken some at other times, but even if she did, and even if she took them ail, they wouldn't add up to three milligrams. The only conclusion we can reach is
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