Curtly then she repeated Herb’s words, heard Peter’s gasp of disbelief, his protest of denial.
“She was fine yesterday. She was great.”
“This is today, Peter, and she’s not fine, she’s not great. The doctors think her condition is grave. I’ll meet you at the hospital. How long will it take you to get there?”
“A half hour. If the freeway isn’t tied up. I’m on my way.”
A half hour. Then he wasn’t in Palm Springs seeing to a problem on a shoot. But of course, she had known that all along. He was with Karina who had answered his phone with flirtatious laughter, with the sexual arrogance of a lover fully aware of her power. Driving to the hospital, Elaine seethed with anger at her son who had submitted so easily to the careless demand of the woman with flame-colored hair, who had kept a promise tarnished from its inception. “I’ll try for tomorrow night,” she had heard him say the night before Lauren had been admitted to the hospital. “No, I’ll do more than try. I’ll be there. I promise.” He had had no right to make such a promise.
She raced through the hospital corridors to Lauren’s room and wordlessly drew up a chair so that she might sit beside Herb whose gaze was fixed on his daughter’s face, her fair skin blanched of all color. Her eyes were closed, her brow damp with sweat.
“You reached Peter?” he asked.
She nodded, still flushed with fury at her son.
But her anger melted when Peter entered Lauren’s room. His shirt was misbuttoned, his tie hung loose. He was pale, his features contorted with misery, his eyes dull. He nodded to Herb who turned sorrowfully away. Licking his parched lips, he approached the bed. Lauren was in a deep sleep, large patches of snow-white gauze affixed to her frail arms.
“The bandages are because of the blood transfusions,” Elaine told Peter, as though this knowledge might somehow reassure him.
His eyes remained fixed on Lauren. He knelt beside the bed, took her hand in his own and pressed it to his lips. He kissed her fingers one by one. She did not stir.
“Lauren.” He whispered her name. “Lauren.” His voice was louder. “Lauren!” Louder still. He would shout her into wakefulness, into health.
He rose only when a young doctor approached the bed to monitor Lauren’s breathing, to press a stethoscope to her heart, to lift her eyelids and train a light on her eyes which immediately fluttered shut, her expression unchanged. The resident glanced at the IV tube with its steady trickle of shimmering fluid and adjusted it slightly.
“Should she be sleeping like that?” Peter asked.
“She’s in a light coma. Probably a reaction to the trauma of the hemorrhage. It could have been induced by the anesthesia. That happens sometimes,” the doctor replied gravely.
He made an entry on the chart that hung at the foot of the bed.
“But she’ll be all right?” Peter was insistent.
“It’s too early to make any predictions.”
The reply was perfunctory. The doctor was already moving to the door, impatient to complete his rounds. He was too young, Elaine thought, too inexperienced. He did not yet know that it did no harm to offer hope, to address anxiety with gentleness. She had often heard Neil speak to the families of patients on the phone, addressing their concerns with calm and patience, always allowing the candle of optimism to flicker bravely.
“When will it not be too early?” It was Herb who asked the question and perhaps because his voice broke and his eyes were red-rimmed, the young doctor spoke more softly.
“A few hours. Perhaps a day. Perhaps longer. I’m sorry, sir. I can’t be more specific than that.”
“I understand.”
Herb stood beside his daughter’s bed, smoothed the fair hair.
“She had braids when she was a little girl. Long golden braids that fell to her waist. Did you know that, Peter?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“What else don’t you know about Lauren, Peter?”
The two men looked at each other, Herb’s eyes heavy with disappointment, Peter’s glazed with shame. Elaine pitied both of them. She stared sadly at Lauren who lay motionless on the high hospital bed, her head resting on a pillow covered, improbably, with a pillowcase patterned with pink primroses. This, after all, was California, she thought bitterly, where flowers blossomed even on hospital linen.
Peter’s cell phone rang but he glanced at the caller’s number and did not answer it. Karina, Elaine guessed. She glanced at her son who stood at the window, looking down at the graceful palm trees that lined the path to the hospital. Sunbeams danced on the fronds that swayed in the desert wind.
“Our kids were born in this hospital,” he said softly. “Renée and Eric both. What am I going to say to them? Oh God, Mom, what am I going to say to them?”
“Nothing yet,” she replied with a calm she did not feel. “We don’t know anything so there’s nothing to say. I’m going to pick them up from school and today we’ll follow the schedule that Lauren gave me. We’re going to act as though everything is normal. But Peter, come home for dinner. You, too, Herb. Renée and Eric will need you. They’ll need both of you.”
The two men nodded and then, to her surprise, Herb put his hand on Peter’s shoulder and together, father and husband took seats beside Lauren’s bed.
Elaine was relieved that Renée and Eric seemed relaxed as they climbed into the car after school. They quarreled briefly about who would sit in the front seat. Renée prevailed, and they chattered happily about student council elections, about an improv group that had performed in assembly that day as Elaine maneuvered the car into a slow lane. Why, she wondered, did Los Angelinos drive so fast? Was everyone in the city in a hurry?
“Those actors were really cool,” Eric said.
“Cool and weird,” Renée agreed. “Grandma, when is Mom coming home from the hospital?”
“Soon, I think,” Elaine replied vaguely, her heart pounding although she kept her voice neutral. “Your dad and Grandpa will be home for dinner. What kind of dessert should I get?”
An ordinary question for an ordinary day, designed to divert them, and immediately successful.
“Apple pie,” Renée said.
“Peach,” Eric countered.
She drove them to the temple for their religious school classes, went to the bakery and picked up a pie, half apple, half peach, and returned to Canyon Drive where she called Peter at the hospital.
“No change,” he said, speaking so softly she could barely hear him. “How were the kids?”
“Fine. I told them you’d be home for dinner.”
“And I will be.”
She called Lisa and described Lauren’s condition.
“It’s unusual,” her daughter said carefully. “But it happens. Bleeds like that sometimes occur after surgery because of a weakness in a blood vessel. But the transfusions should have taken care of that. The doctor is right that the coma is the result of the physical trauma. That or the anesthesia. He’s right on target. I think Lauren will be fine, Mom.”
“I hope so. And Lisa, when all of this is over, let’s talk about your trip to Russia. I want to go with you.”
“You’re sure?” Lisa asked.
“I’m sure. You know your grandparents came from Russia. Dad was born there and came to the States when he was really young. He had only very vague memories but it would be interesting to visit their village while we’re over there. I might get some ideas maybe for the memorial mural I’m working on. I did tell you about the mural, didn’t I?”
“That would be interesting,” Lisa agreed. “And I assume you also want to meet your new granddaughter,” she added dryly.
Elaine flinched at the coldness in her daughter’s voice. Another maternal sin, she thought. This one of omission. Her children’s emotional ledgers grew more crowded by the day. The debit column overwhelmed. The words she had said and the words she had not said. Their perceived exclusion from the circle of parental intimacy. And now her mention of the village of Neil�
��s birth when Lisa’s thoughts were concentrated on the child she would take into her heart, into her home. Elaine sighed. The circle was unending. She was guilty before her sons and daughters as they, in turn, would be guilty before their own children. There was no foolproof formula, neither for life nor for parenting. She and Neil had made their mistakes. Their sons and daughters would make their own. Carefully, struggling against the surge of her own irritation, she answered Lisa.
“Of course I’m excited about meeting your daughter, my granddaughter. And Lisa, I’m glad her name is Genia. That was my mother’s name.”
“Oh, Mom, you’ll love her. Her picture is so cute.” Lisa was appeased. “Keep me informed about Lauren. I’m sure she’ll be out of danger very soon.”
“I will. Of course I will,” Elaine assured her but she was uneasy when she hung up. Lisa’s very reassurance implied that Lauren was, after all, in danger.
She hurried to pick up the children and thought of the frenetic pace of Lauren’s life, the role of the freeway mother endlessly changing lanes as she sped from one activity to another.
Peter and Herb arrived for dinner, dutifully ate the lamb chops and broccoli although they had little appetite. They pecked at the pie but Maria carried full plates back to the kitchen. Peter helped Eric with his homework, played Junior Scrabble with Renée, patiently answered their questions. Their mother would be home soon. She couldn’t talk to them on the phone because she needed a lot of rest.
“That’s what Ellen said.” Renée nodded wisely. “She sits next to me and she told me that her mother slept a lot after her operation. But she’s fine now. She’s the class mother. Do you think Mom can be our class mother next term?”
“Maybe,” Peter said even as he and Herb looked sadly at each other.
The phone rang. Peter answered it, frowned and carried the phone into the next room but still his voice was audible.
“I told you I’d call when I could. I can’t talk now. I’ll try to call later. Try. I can’t say for sure.”
He spoke curtly. The caller had to be Karina, Elaine knew, but on this night he would not be seduced into making promises that he could not keep.
He and Herb returned to the hospital, the children went up to bed and Elaine took up her sketch pad. She worked steadily and then called Renee Evers.
“I’d be interested in arranging for some studio space,” she said. “If things work out.” If my daughter-in-law regains consciousness, if she does not die. She banished the thought and continued. “I could do some bookends for you and I want to do some tiles for a mural. My own project.”
“Just let me know when,” Renee said and Elaine hung up, pleased that she had made the call, that she could perhaps anticipate the onset of normalcy, of a return to the world of her work, the stylus tight between her fingers, the breath of the open kiln hot upon her face.
The phone rang yet again and she answered it. Let it be Peter telling me that everything is all right. The wish, unspoken, was her silent prayer.
But it was a woman who spoke softly into the phone.
“This is Karina Mendelowitz. Is Peter there?” That remembered voice, breathless now, untinged by laughter, hesitant.
“He’s at the hospital. With his wife. I’m Elaine Gordon, his mother.” Her words were calculated to wound.
“I’ve tried to reach him on his cell phone. He’s not picking up.”
“No. He wouldn’t.” She offered no quarter.
“I spoke to him earlier. When he was at home. But it’s urgent that I speak with him again.”
“Hospitals are strict about the usage of cell phones.”
“Will you tell him I called?” It was more plea than question.
Elaine glanced at her watch. Peter would not be home for hours. The children were asleep. They could be left with Maria.
“Karina, Ms. Mendelowitz, where are you now?”
Karina hesitated. The question surprised her, Elaine knew. She herself was surprised by her own daring in asking it.
“At Jason’s, a coffee shop on Balboa. Not far from Canyon Drive. Why?”
“Actually, I know where it is. I’d like to meet you, to talk to you,” Elaine said. “I could be there in fifteen minutes.”
Again, a moment of hesitation. Elaine waited.
“All right.” A whispered assent threaded with uncertainty.
Elaine told Maria that she would be going out for an hour and drove, too swiftly, to Balboa. Speeding down the broad boulevard, she reflected that Neil would not have approved of her action. Always, he had insisted, in his calm and careful manner, that parents had no right to interfere in the lives of their adult children. She had acquiesced, deferred to his professional insight, unwilling to quarrel with him. She had contained her anger at his oh so sensible edict, restrained her impulse to intervene, to protect one child or another from a dangerous decision. But she would restrain herself no longer. There was too much at stake. She knew what she had to do.
She remembered suddenly that during their courtship she and Neil had quarreled bitterly. They had parted in anger and did not speak for days. She had been certain that they would never speak again. Plunged into despair, she cut classes, lay on her bed and turned her face to the wall. She did not eat and although her parents asked no questions their faces were pale with misery and from behind her closed door she heard their worried murmurs. He had phoned at last, his own voice husky with sadness and fear. Later, much later, she had asked him why he had called. “Because your mother phoned me. She told me how miserable you were. I wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” he had confessed and she had understood that it was her mother’s interference that had led to their reconciliation, to the life they had built together.
“Would you have called me if she hadn’t phoned?” she had asked and he had not replied.
She had never reminded Neil of that. Neil, the trained and accomplished psychoanalyst would perhaps not have approved of the long-forgotten interference of her immigrant mother who saw only her daughter’s misery and acted instinctively. As she herself had done when she spoke with Karina.
But did she have her mother’s certainty, her clarity? Her mother had thought only of protecting her daughter and had taken the only path open to her. She had known exactly what she wanted to say to Neil. But what, after all, would Elaine say to her son’s lover? Would she issue a plea, utter words of castigation? She did not know. She was trespassing on treacherous emotional territory. She gripped the steering wheel with sweat-dampened palms and drove recklessly through a red light.
But I must do something. She spoke the words aloud as she parked and entered the dimly lit café. That, she understood, must have been how her own mother had felt. A parental mandate, maternal intuition. A child’s happiness must be protected no matter the risk. And she was bent on protecting not only Peter and Lauren but the children, Renée and Eric, who tossed restlessly in their sleep, fearful for their mother, unaware of the jeopardy that threatened their magical world.
Karina was seated at a small table in the rear. The copper-colored hair that framed her narrow fine-featured face, caped the high collar of her black linen jacket. With her high cheekbones and almond-shaped hazel eyes, she had a Modigliani beauty. She sat very erect, unsmiling, her gaze guarded, as Elaine approached.
“Karina?” Elaine held out her hand and Karina extended her own. Their palms brushed in acknowledgment of an uneasy truce.
“Elaine. May I call you Elaine?” Karina asked, her slightly accented voice flat and without affect.
“Yes. Of course.”
Elaine took the chair opposite her and waved the approaching waitress away although her mouth was dry, her tongue tufted with anxiety. Karina stared down at her half-eaten sandwich, toyed with a crust of bread and crumbled it between her fingers.
“How is Peter’s wife?”
“Lauren. Her name is Lauren. But you must know that. She’s very ill. She’s in a coma. Peter is with her. Which is why he hasn’t return
ed your calls.” She spoke very slowly, each word a bullet on a steady emotional trajectory. She wanted to wound this woman, to pierce her carapace of calm.
“I know. I have a friend who’s a nurse at the hospital. She told me.”
“Then why have you kept calling?”
“I’m worried about Peter.”
“He’s coping.”
“Is he?” She smiled bitterly. “Then I suppose I shall have to do the same. But then I’m very good at coping.”
“I’m sorry. I know that your life hasn’t been an easy one.”
“I’m not looking for your pity. I don’t need anyone’s pity. Actually, you could say that I’ve been fortunate. I was still young enough when we emigrated from Russia to be educated here, to develop my talent. I’m a writer, a very good writer, I think.”
“I know that. Peter told me that he admires your work.”
“I have had some success. And that is very important to me. My writing is my passion. It is more important to me than anything in the world. It absorbs me totally. I know you will understand that because Peter has told me how you were deeply involved in your own work, that you spent hours and hours in your studio.”
She leaned closer toward Elaine, as though inviting her complicity. Elaine stared at her in surprise.
“But my work was never at the center of my life,” she protested. “My husband. My children were always more important to me than my studio life.” My husband. She recognized, with sudden insight that she had placed Neil first. She had not said, as she might have, My family. And yes, it was true. Neil had always come first in her life. She had loved her work, cherished her children but for better or for worse, her husband had been her passion. She would not apologize for that. Not to herself, not to others.
“And now there is this documentary I am working on with Peter,” Karina continued as though Elaine had not spoken. “It has absorbed both of us, Peter and myself, for so many months now. It is the kind of work Peter always wanted to do and for me it is more important than anything else I have done. It brings to a focus my family’s situation and by extension the situation of many Russian Jews—the disorientation, the loneliness. The challenge of building a new life, of rescuing a vanished culture. I wrote my heart into it. And Peter was so involved that he would call me sometimes in the middle of the night to suggest a change, to introduce a new idea. We have everything scheduled, Peter and I, everything coordinated. Interviews, reminiscences. Locations. Staff. This is the week we begin shooting so that we will be ready to edit and screen for distributors well before the Cannes festival. The camera crew is ready to begin earlier than we thought. Perhaps even tomorrow. Which is why I must speak to Peter.”
Open Doors Page 21
