The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  “What?” she asked over the sound of a crowded bus jerking its way down Fifth Avenue.

  “Never mind,” I said, latching my pail.

  “So,” Margie said, blowing out a puff of smoke. “How’s your captain?”

  “He’s not my captain. His fiancée is here. From Charleston. I doubt I’ll be seeing much of him until he leaves.” Are you going to let me finish? I kept hearing his words, asking me to let him finish his sketch of me. And each time I heard them I had to remind myself to say no.

  “Um-hmm,” she said, a knowing smile tilting her lips.

  I looked at her cigarette and she handed it to me. I took a long, calming drag, then handed it back to her. “He has a fiancée. Why would you think I’m interested in him?”

  She looked at me fully. “Because when you talk about him there’s something about your eyes.”

  There’s something about your eyes. I startled. “He said the same thing. When he told me he wanted to finish the sketch of me.”

  She raised a plucked eyebrow as she took another drag from her cigarette and didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.

  Eager to change the conversation, I checked my watch. “I need to get going. But first I need to ask a favor.”

  She leaned back, narrowing her eyes. “This won’t involve me going on a blind date in your place, will it? The last time that happened I got stranded on Coney Island with a short, bald man who only spoke Russian and called me Martzie.”

  “I know. And I still owe you. This favor doesn’t involve blind dates or Russians—promise. I need you to look up a name for me in the newspaper archives. Harry Pratt. He might be an artist. I found a few of his sketches in the attic, and I believe his family might have once owned the hospital building. He might be related to Prunella J. Pratt—I found a ball gown in an armoire with her name embroidered on the inside.”

  “Prunella?”

  “I know. It’s not the sort of name that rolls easily off the tongue, is it? I had an aunt named Prunella. Must have been popular way back when.”

  Margie took one last puff of her cigarette, then crushed it under the toe of her shoe. “Thank goodness its popularity had waned by the time we came along.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “Why are you so interested in the Pratts?”

  “I’m not really sure. Curiosity, maybe. The sketches are so good that I’m wondering if he might have become a renowned artist.”

  “And?” she prompted. Margie was the one person in the world who knew me enough to know when I was holding something back.

  “And I think I’ve heard the name Pratt before. I didn’t think so at first, but then I had a memory of my mother and me standing in front of the building when I was small. I think she called it the Pratt mansion.”

  “Interesting,” she said, raising both eyebrows. “I rather like searching through the archives. If I turn up something interesting, I might even forgive you for the Russian.”

  “You’re a peach. I owe you dinner.”

  “I’ll put it on your tab.”

  We hugged good-bye and went our separate ways—she back to the library while I headed to the hospital, trying to lose myself in the sounds of the city instead of hearing Cooper’s voice echoing in my head. There’s something about your eyes.

  I was reaching for the outer door of the hospital when I heard my name called.

  “Dr. Schuyler?”

  I recognized the soft Southern voice before I turned around, and prepared myself. “Good afternoon, Miss Middleton. What can I do for you?” She wore an elegant light blue suit that matched the color of her eyes, the tightly fitted bodice hugging her tiny waist. A stylish hat with netting sat perched at an angle on top of her neat chignon, and impeccable white gloves and silk stockings completed the look. I tried not to think about my own bare legs and hands, or straggly hair that stuck to my forehead after my walk from the park. Sighing inwardly, I remembered Dr. Greeley saying that he wanted me to make myself available to Miss Middleton, to answer any of her questions about where to eat. And shop. Like I would know. I doubted we ate or shopped at the same kinds of establishments.

  Her blue eyes remained icy despite her smile. “I was hoping we might have a chance to chat—woman to woman.”

  “Of course,” I said, trying to remember the names of all the shops Margie was always telling me were the places she’d go once she married her rich husband. “Let’s go inside and out of the sun . . .”

  “No. I’d rather not. I’d prefer privacy. Why don’t we walk down the block together?”

  I looked at my watch, not bothering to hide my impatience. Some of us weren’t women of leisure who didn’t march to the hour hands of a clock all day. “All right. But I’m afraid I can’t be long. I’m due back in five minutes.”

  Her smile widened. “Not to worry. What I have to say won’t take long.”

  Attempting to hide my reluctance, I walked toward her, her arm claiming mine as soon as I was close enough. We began to walk in the same direction I’d just come from, our sides pressed against each other as if she were afraid I might try to escape.

  “It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?” she asked as we strolled leisurely down the sidewalk.

  “It’s a bit warm,” I said, wondering why she was wasting my time talking about the weather.

  “Not if you’re from Charleston. The heat and humidity in the summer are like a wet blanket that’s been resting on coals. It takes some getting used to if you’re not a native like Cooper and me. We were born and raised in Charleston. As a matter of fact, my family has been in Charleston for over two hundred years—isn’t that something? We’ve had a cotton plantation on the Waccamaw River in Georgetown County since the Revolution, which means we have a lot of family connections. Important connections that can make or break an art gallery or even an artist.”

  She paused a moment to smooth the loose hair under her hat. “Has Cooper told you that we’ve known each other since we were in diapers? We have so much in common. Our families are even next-door neighbors at our summer retreats on Edisto.”

  We continued to walk, but I was becoming less and less aware of my surroundings as she spoke, understanding seeping through me like water through sand.

  “Cooper and I are two of a kind, Kate. May I call you Kate?”

  I nodded numbly.

  “You see, Kate, the best marriages are those that are made between two people from the same world. They understand the same things.” She turned her face toward me and her eyes seemed bleached by the sun. “That’s how I know that Cooper and I are meant for each other.” She placed a slender gloved hand over her heart. “Of course, it helps that he’s mad about me and I’m mad about him.”

  I stopped suddenly, causing an old man in a worn brown suit that smelled of pipe smoke to stumble into me. He said something under his breath as he walked past, but I was too focused on Caroline’s perfect face to care. “Then why didn’t you come? The moment you knew Cooper was here, you could have come. But you waited.”

  Her face seemed carved from marble, her skin bloodless. I knew her answer before she spoke, by the way she hesitated and didn’t meet my eyes. “Because your letter said that . . .” She stopped. “Because there was a chance he might lose his leg, and I didn’t think I could stand to see him that way. See him as . . . less than a man.”

  I stared at her dumbly, unable to think of a single word to respond.

  She tugged on my arm and we continued our walk back the way we’d come. “His mother doesn’t travel, but she asked me to come. I had already packed my bags and was preparing for the journey when your second letter arrived, letting us know that his leg had been saved. So, you see, I was prepared to come regardless.”

  Because his mother asked you to. It was pointless to argue the obvious, so I kept my mouth shut. None of this was any of my business. Captain Ravenel was a patient of m
ine. A patient whose leg had been saved and who would be out of my life forever in a few short weeks.

  We’d reached the front of the hospital again and stopped. I quickly slipped my arm from hers. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  She smiled like a patient mother with a wayward child. “Because I don’t want you to be hurt. I see the way you look at Cooper and I just want to make sure you understand that you’re not his kind. He’s grateful to you for helping to save his leg, and might even think he’s a little in love with you because of it, but that won’t last. As soon as he is back in Charleston, everything will return to normal and he’ll forget all about you. I just wanted you to know that.”

  I felt the blood rush to my face. “I think you’ve misunderstood, Miss Middleton.”

  “Have I?” She smiled brightly, and I noticed that she had a small chip in her front teeth. I was relieved, somehow, as if this slight imperfection were like a chink in her armor. As if any of this really mattered at all.

  “I’m late,” I said, moving past her.

  She caught my sleeve. “We’re getting married on November tenth, and I’ll be wearing his mother’s wedding veil. The engraved invitations have already been ordered.”

  I pulled my arm away and hurriedly jerked the door open. I’d wanted to turn around and ask her why she hadn’t said that she loved him and that he loved her, but I hadn’t. I hadn’t because I was afraid that the emotion coursing through me wasn’t disbelief, but hope.

  I sat at Dr. Greeley’s desk with bleary eyes, my cravings for a cigarette reaching mythic proportions. My father had been a heavy smoker, and although nobody had ever said it was linked to his death from lung cancer, I wasn’t completely convinced it hadn’t been. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t crave them.

  Dr. Greeley was, presumably, at home in his comfortable bed, finally giving me an entire evening where I didn’t have to creep around corners or tiptoe down hallways. He’d left a stack of charts and reports for me, enough to ensure that I wouldn’t get any sleep. I rubbed my face, eyeing the full ashtray on the corner of the desk, then picked it up and dumped it into the trashcan.

  My head had been throbbing ever since my confrontation with Caroline Middleton. It had taken nearly an hour before my shock and embarrassment had turned into righteous anger. How dare she? How presumptuous of her. I was a doctor. It was expected that a certain level of intimacy would form between a doctor and a patient. It was unavoidable. But I was always a professional first. A healer. Not a woman so desperate for a husband that I would steal another woman’s fiancé. I certainly hadn’t gone to medical school to find a husband. I ground the heels of my hands into my throbbing temples, wishing I’d thought to grab a couple of aspirin before holing myself up in the airless office.

  I stacked another folder on the edge of the desk and had just decided to take a break and find aspirin when Nurse Hathaway knocked on the door. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Doctor, but Captain Ravenel is having another one of his nightmares.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, smoothing my skirt as I stood. After that horrible conversation with Caroline Middleton, I’d sworn to myself that I wouldn’t see Captain Ravenel again, to prove to her that I could stay away. And, if I were to be honest, to prove to myself that I could. But I was the doctor on duty, and he was a patient. I couldn’t very well say no.

  “I won’t be too long,” I said, walking past her. “If anybody needs me and it’s not an emergency, tell them I’ll be back shortly.”

  I could hear Cooper’s shouts as I reached the top landing and hurried toward his room. The sickly scent of fear assailed my nostrils as soon as I entered, emanating from the thrashing form on the bed. The bedside light was on, its bulb flickering like a movie projector. Most of the bedclothes had slid to the floor, revealing a bare-chested captain clad only in what appeared to be light blue pajama bottoms. A gift from his fiancée, no doubt.

  He was glowing with sweat, his head moving back and forth on the pillow, his arms lashing out at an unseen enemy. “Get down, goddammit, get down!” His voice was raw, as if he’d been in the thick of battle for hours.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Captain Ravenel?”

  He continued to thrash, making me stand again to avoid his flailing limbs. “No, no, no, no.” His voice weakened as his shoulders hunched forward, and for a moment I was with him on the beachhead, half-immersed in salt-flavored water, the waves tinted red with the blood of my fellow soldiers.

  “Cooper?” I said softly, desperate to bring him back from the dark places his nightmares brought him.

  “Victorine?”

  I took one of his hands in mine. “Yes. It’s me. Victorine. You’re safe now. You can stop fighting.”

  His eyes were open, but I knew he wasn’t seeing me as he lifted his other hand and brushed my face with the tips of his fingers, as gentle as a butterfly. “Victorine,” he said, his hand falling and capturing my free hand, his voice lighter.

  “Yes. Go to sleep now. Nobody is going to hurt you.”

  “Stay,” he whispered, his eyes closing.

  The words fell from my lips before I could recall them. “I’ll stay. For as long as you need me, I’ll stay.”

  His breath slowed to an easy rhythm, his hands tightly clasping mine. Just a few minutes. I’d wait for just for a little bit, until he was in a deep sleep, and then I’d leave. With my hands still held tightly to his, I found a comfortable spot on the headboard to lean against and lifted my legs on the bed. I left the light on and began counting ceiling tiles again, trying to ignore the heaviness of my eyelids. Just for a minute, I told myself as I finally allowed them to close.

  When I opened them again, the room seemed dipped in black ink. A warm body pressed against my back, a heavy arm pinning me to the bed. Disoriented, I rolled to my back as the body behind me shifted. I blinked, waiting for my eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. Looming over me, I saw the outline of Cooper’s head.

  I was about to close my eyes and go back to sleep when the realization of where I was and with whom struck me. I tried to rise but found myself restrained by a firm hand on my shoulder.

  “Don’t worry. You haven’t been asleep very long.” I heard the smile in his voice.

  I tried again to rise, but he continued to hold me down. “It’s not yet dawn. You don’t have to go.”

  “Of course I do. I shouldn’t be here.”

  “This is your room. I feel guilty for kicking you out.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it. I shouldn’t be here. With you. And you don’t have a shirt on.”

  “You noticed?”

  I could feel the warmth of his skin, his chest close enough that if I leaned forward just slightly I could press my lips against the soft skin under his neck. No. I jerked back, his hand holding me tightly.

  “I just wanted to thank you. I know tonight isn’t the only time you’ve come to me during one of my nightmares. Nurse Hathaway told me that you’re the only one who can calm me down.”

  I relaxed into the pillow, the Southern slurring of consonants somehow reassuring in the blackened room. “I didn’t think you knew it was me. You always call for Victorine.”

  “My muse,” he said.

  “You mean Manet’s muse.”

  His face hovered over mine. “No, mine. Ever since I saw that miniature, she became my muse. I named her Victorine. The dark-haired beauty with green eyes.” Gentle fingers brushed my throat, lifting the heavy ruby stone. “Where did you get this, Kate?”

  I should go. But there was something otherworldly about this room in the summer night, my bones suddenly limp in the languid heat. His voice soothed me like a hypnotist’s, and I found myself suspended in the darkness, where morning and war and fiancées didn’t exist. Where my career aspirations seemed very far away. I placed my fingers over his and it was as if he knew my touch, an
d I knew his.

  No! The word was so loud in my head that I imagined I’d shouted the word. I struggled to rise but he held me back. “Don’t go. Please. I know you’ve felt it, this connection between us. I can’t explain it. You look just like the woman in the miniature, the woman I’ve always called my Victorine. And you wear her ruby necklace.”

  “It might not be the same . . .”

  “Kate. Don’t. You and I both know it is. Please stay. Just a little longer. And tell me how you came to own this necklace.”

  I lay back down, unable to walk away from him no matter how much I knew I should. He lay down, too, our faces only inches apart. I took a deep breath, smelling the laundry detergent clinging to the pillowcase and the alluring smell of man and sweat and him. “It belonged to my grandmother, and then to my mother. It passed to me when my mother died. She never wore it, although several times when I was a little girl, I’d see her take it out of her jewelry box and put it on for a little while. But she never wore it outside the house.”

  His fingers lifted the stone from my throat, feeling its heft, turning it around in his hand, the brush of his skin against mine like tiny flaming matches. “It’s a large stone, probably worth a great deal.”

  “I never really thought about it until I showed it to my friend Margie—she keeps it in her apartment for me. She said the same thing and she and I agreed that it didn’t make any sense. You see, my grandmother was a baker’s wife. I never could figure out how a baker’s wife would come by such a beautiful and expensive piece of jewelry.”

  He gently rested the stone against my neck, then placed his arm around my waist as if it belonged there. He was silent for a long time, and I wondered if he’d gone back to sleep. “What are we going to do, Kate?”

  For a moment I imagined the ruby crushing my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs, feeling for the second time since I’d met Captain Cooper Ravenel suddenly bereft.