Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  “We’re going to get her through this one,” Ed says.

  Polly nods. She believes him. That is why Ed Reardon feels married to her. She believes him and only him, and in the face of this agony against which he is powerless, Ed momentarily believes in himself.

  The bedroom is airless and dark.

  “It’s all right,” Polly says to Amanda. “He’s here.”

  Ed sits on the edge of Amanda’s bed. He knows it’s Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia as soon as he sees her. Amanda tries to smile at him, but she has to struggle for each breath. Before he examines Amanda, Ed slips on a pair of surgical gloves.

  “For her protection,” he explains to Polly, and Polly nods, satisfied, even though what Ed’s told her is only partially true. He’s been advised to wear gloves when he examines AIDS patients, particularly when he thinks he may have abrasions on his hands.

  “Who’s that?” he asks of the poster above the bed as he slips the stethoscope under Amanda’s pajama top. “An escaped felon?”

  “Bruce Springsteen,” Amanda says. The words are liquid; it’s hard for her to get them out.

  “Bruce Springsteen!” Ed says. He looks at Polly, who is biting her lip, then looks back at Amanda. “Can’t he afford better clothes than that? The guy must be a millionaire and everything he has on is torn.”

  Amanda smiles faintly as she leans back on her pillow. Ed pats her leg.

  “We’re going to try and fix you up over at Children’s Hospital,” Ed says.

  Amanda nods, but Ed can see she doesn’t believe him the way Polly does. She’s smart, this girl, and she’s tired.

  Polly follows Ed out into the hallway.

  “I don’t want her admitted,” Polly says. She has this crazy feeling that if they take Amanda to the hospital, they may never see her again.

  “I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t absolutely necessary,” Ed says. “You believe that, don’t you?”

  Polly nods, and Ed goes downstairs to talk to Ivan and arrange to meet them at the hospital. The grandfather is gone now, to take the boy out and away from all this. The grandmother looks older than Ed had first thought. She puts a hand on Ivan’s shoulder when Ed tells him Amanda has to be admitted this morning, and she says, “Go ahead. We’ll be here with Charlie.”

  Ed Reardon gets to the hospital before they do. He meets with Ellen Shapiro, who helps get a room on the already crowded ward. All they can do here is monitor Amanda and try to keep her free of infection. When the Farrells arrive, Amanda is examined in the emergency room, then is taken up to the ward in a wheelchair, while Polly and Ivan are faced with the paperwork at the admitting desk. Ed has managed to get Amanda a private room, but Polly is shocked when she sees the sign on the door. BLOOD AND BODY FLUID PRECAUTIONS, it reads.

  “No one will be wearing gloves or masks unless they have to draw blood or insert Amanda’s IV,” Ed tells Polly.

  Polly and Ivan walk slowly, with leaden movements. When they go into her room, Amanda looks terrified. They can hear her breath rattling in her chest.

  “I don’t want to stay here!” Amanda says. She sits up with effort, she looks as if she might try to make a run for it, even though she’s hooked up to an IV.

  “I’m staying with you,” Polly says. “I’m not leaving until you leave.”

  This calms Amanda, and she leans back, exhausted. Ivan sits on the other side of the bed and asks Amanda for a list of what she might like brought from home. Amanda begins by telling him she wants her cassette player and her own pajamas. When she’s finished, Ivan repeats Amanda’s list so he’ll remember it: “True Blue,” “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Thriller.” Polly goes to the window and stands with Ed Reardon. They don’t talk to each other. They watch cars out in the parking lot, and after a while Ivan joins them.

  “She’s asleep,” Ivan says.

  When they go into the hallway, Ed Reardon says they can spend the night, although Amanda is so exhausted he suggests that they stay in the lounge rather than in Amanda’s room, as Polly did the last time Amanda was in the hospital.

  The last time was for appendicitis.

  “I told her I’d bring her cassette player tomorrow,” Ivan tells Ed.

  “You can bring whatever she wants from home,” Ed says. “We want her to be comfortable. Let’s get something to eat while she’s sleeping.”

  Ivan nods and he and Ed start to walk toward the elevator. Polly doesn’t follow them, so Ivan walks back to her. She refuses to leave, she says she’s not hungry, and she’s in the exact same place where they left her half an hour later, when they return with a sandwich and coffee, both of which she ignores. Late in the afternoon, Ed goes to call his office and then to check in with Ellen Shapiro. While he’s gone, Ivan gets a chair out of the lounge for Polly, but she won’t sit down. She’s on guard, she can’t afford to sit down.

  “You don’t have to stay,” Polly tells Ivan. Ivan’s been up all night and one of them should be there for Charlie. It’s a shock to suddenly think Charlie’s name; Polly hasn’t thought of him once all day.

  “I don’t want to leave you here alone,” Ivan says.

  “I’m not alone,” Polly says. “I’m with Amanda.”

  Not long after Ivan leaves, the resident who’s been monitoring Amanda comes out and tells Polly that Amanda has woken up and is asking for her. Amanda is breathing easier and she looks a little less scared. Polly sits on a hard-backed chair and reads from a gossip magazine the resident has brought them. Luckily, the magazine is filled with personal details about all of Amanda’s favorite singers, and Amanda listens quietly. As she reads, Polly could swear she smells a combination of blood and sugar, but maybe it’s just the scent of her own terror. No child should be as quiet as Amanda is, no little girl should look as pale. When the resident has to change Amanda’s IV she slips on surgical gloves.

  “I know I didn’t hurt you,” the resident says jokingly to Amanda. “I’m the best IV inserter in the hospital. I’m the Cyndi Lauper of IVs.”

  When Amanda starts to doze, the resident suggests that Polly get a pillow and blanket for herself at the desk. “There’s a couch in the lounge,” she tells Polly. “Go get it before someone else does. She’ll be out for the night.”

  Polly nods and goes out, but she’s already decided to spend the night in the hall outside Amanda’s room. She quickly goes to the lounge to get herself a cup of coffee, and while she’s at the machine she breaks into sobs. There are several parents there, trying to get some sleep while they can, so Polly covers her mouth and takes her coffee back out into the hall. Ed Reardon is there, waiting for her.

  “I have to go home,” Ed says.

  “I know,” Polly tells him.

  “I don’t want to,” Ed says.

  He goes in to check on Amanda. When he comes out, Polly realizes she hasn’t called home. She doesn’t want to talk to Ivan or her parents or Charlie. She doesn’t have room for them.

  “Take a walk with me,” Ed Reardon says.

  Polly shakes her head.

  “She’s asleep,” Ed says. “Take a walk with me for ten minutes.”

  Polly can’t remember the last good night’s sleep she’s had. She can’t recall if she’s had anything to eat today or whether or not she’s peed in the last ten hours. She follows Ed Reardon down the hallway; she tries not to think that every step she takes is a step away from Amanda. When they go outside the fresh air is dizzying; there is a low cover of clouds, and tonight there won’t be a single star in the sky. Polly feels faint. As if he knew this, Ed Reardon puts his arm around her and guides her through the parking lot. When they get to his car, Ed opens the passenger door for Polly. As Ed gets in behind the wheel, she shifts away from him and leans her back against the door.

  “Sometimes you just have to get out,” Ed says.

  The car is an old Volvo station wagon. In the back there are two car seats for Ed’s youngest children; there is popcorn and sand on the carpet and in the cracks of the seats. Ed Reardon real
izes that he should have taken their other car and left the station wagon with the children’s car seats for Mary. But he wasn’t thinking this morning. He’s not thinking now.

  “Are you all right?” he asks Polly.

  “No,” Polly says.

  “I’ve been lying to you,” Ed Reardon says. “I’ve been letting you think there were possibilities, that this wasn’t terminal. I can’t lie to you anymore.”

  If Polly could close her ears the way she closes her eyes, she would. She is having trouble breathing. She leans toward Ed Reardon and holds out her arms to him. Ed pulls Polly onto his lap and wraps his arms around her. He feels incredibly warm to Polly; she can feel the heat from beneath the blue-and-white-striped shirt he wears. She leans her face against his neck and she feels like a vampire, desperate for what he has. They stay that way, holding each other, for a long time. Other cars leave the parking lot, and in a little while it begins to rain. When Ed Reardon strokes her hair, Polly feels safe. Their breath, which is fogging up the windows, is creating its own cocoon. A grid of rain crosses the windshield and the sky has grown so dark that it might as well be midnight. What they’re doing is more intimate than making love; they don’t exist without each other. Polly can no longer tell where Ed Reardon’s heat leaves off and hers begins. The way she feels makes Polly believe that things can be alive. She’s desperate to believe in something. She falls asleep in his arms, and when she wakes up, twenty minutes later, she’s panicked in the dark, she doesn’t know where she is until she feels Ed holding her tighter.

  “You’ll feel better now,” Ed tells her.

  Polly kisses him and when he kisses her back she can tell he’s been waiting for her. She kisses him as if she would die without him. This is the kiss Amanda will never have. Polly doesn’t want to stop, she wants never to stop, but she knows she has to. She slides over to her own seat, feels in her pocket for a tissue, then blows her nose.

  “Temporary insanity,” she says. It’s supposed to be a joke.

  Ed Reardon looks straight ahead. “Not insanity,” he says.

  Polly looks at him and feels her desire for him all over again. She takes his hand, then lets go.

  “I’m going in,” she says.

  “I’ll go with you,” Ed says.

  “Go home and get some sleep,” Polly tells him. “We need you too much for you to be tired.”

  She gets out of the car, knowing Ed is watching her, just in case she turns back. She continues to feel their kiss; a heat lingers in her mouth and deep inside her. Much later, as she sits beside Amanda while she sleeps, Polly can still feel the heat. It’s so pure that when she leans down and kisses Amanda’s forehead, the heat is transferred to her daughter, exactly where it belongs.

  CHAPTER 12

  After he leaves the hospital, Ivan gets onto Storrow Drive, heading west to 93, but when he gets to the Copley exit he turns off and drives to Marlborough Street. It isn’t Adelle who answers his ring on the intercom but the night nurse, who tells him that Brian is sleeping and can’t be disturbed. And yet, Ivan feels good just walking in the dark down Marlborough Street, where the old streetlights barely cast a shadow. It is good to think of Brian sleeping, dreaming of something other than pain. Just before he reaches his parked car, Ivan looks up, past the black roofs; it’s a relief to see familiar stars. But as he watches, the clouds move in, they close up the sky. Ivan can smell the rain before it comes, he can feel the dampness in the pit of his stomach. He can’t allow himself to think about his daughter in the hospital, he won’t think about the strain of each of her breaths, the rattling sound of each gasp. He just drives, and he thinks about stars all the way home. He gets it into his head that he should buy Brian a telescope, a small one they could set up at the window. He has a frantic desire to get the telescope right now; he’d do anything to escape walking past Amanda’s empty room, but he just keeps driving, and before he knows it he’s reached Morrow. He hasn’t paid any attention to where he’s been going, but he’s home anyway, and it’s not really as if he ever had a choice.

  In the morning, Ivan collects the few belongings Amanda’s asked for and packs them into her gym bag. He can hear Al and Claire and Charlie having breakfast down in the kitchen, but he doesn’t have the stomach for food. They can hear him too, rummaging through the drawers in Amanda’s room, going through her box of cassettes.

  “You still make the best coffee I ever had,” Al says to his wife.

  “Now I know you’re a liar,” Claire says. “I couldn’t find any filters. It’s instant. You hate instant.”

  They are both watching Charlie for his reaction as they tease each other.

  “Did you hear that, boy?” Al asks Charlie. “She set out to trick me, didn’t she?”

  Charlie looks at his grandfather blankly. “I guess so,” he says.

  It seems to Al that everyone has forgotten that Charlie exists. When Ivan came home from the hospital he didn’t talk to anyone. He sat out on the porch, then went upstairs to bed before ten.

  “I’ll drive you to school,” Al tells Charlie.

  “That’s okay,” Charlie says. “I’ll take my bike.”

  “Does your mother allow you to do that?” Claire asks.

  “Sure,” Charlie says.

  He gets his books and goes to the door.

  “Don’t you say anything?” Al asks him.

  Charlie stops at the door. He’s wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday, a pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt on which a dinosaur rides a skateboard. He slept in the T-shirt and the fabric is a mass of wrinkles. Polly has forgotten to do the laundry, and there’s not one clean thing in Charlie’s bureau that fits him. Even though his grandmother plans to do the wash that afternoon, Charlie hates his mother for not doing the laundry. For some reason he’s afraid he’ll never see her again.

  “How about a good-bye?” Al says. “How about a see-you-later-alligator?”

  “See you,” Charlie says as he slips out the door.

  Al finishes his coffee, cursing to himself.

  “Don’t say anything,” Claire warns him. “Don’t tell Polly and Ivan how to run their family. Don’t say a word.”

  “If you can’t tell your own children what to do, who can you tell?” Al says, indignant.

  “Anyone else,” Claire advises him.

  The kitchen has already been cleaned up from breakfast when Ivan comes down.

  “I’ll be back this afternoon,” Ivan tells his in-laws. “Six at the latest. Tell Charlie I should be home by suppertime.”

  “Tell him yourself,” Al says.

  “What?” Ivan says, figuring he’s misread his father-in-law’s hostility.

  “You heard me,” Al says. “You tell him. It’ll be the first time you’ve spoken to him in two days.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Ivan says.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Claire tells Ivan. “Go on to the hospital.”

  “You’ve got two children,” Al says. “In case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Charlie knows we have to take care of Amanda first,” Ivan says. “You’re the one who’s too stupid and selfish to understand. Polly’s always said that about you, and like an idiot I defended you.”

  “Well, she was right,” Al says. “I was selfish. I left my family and they took me back, and I’ve been paying for it ever since. Haven’t I?” he says to Claire.

  “You fool,” Claire says. “This isn’t the time.”

  “I’m an old man, and I may be stupid, but there’s one thing I know,” Al tells Ivan. “Don’t you dare forget about that boy.”

  Ivan shakes his head, disgusted. He grabs Amanda’s gym bag, gets his keys from the counter, and goes out, slamming the door behind him. It takes a while for the Karmann-Ghia to start and when it does the engine sounds like a motorboat. He makes the turn onto Ash, still furious with Al. It’s easy for Al to give advice; he’s so free with it, it must be. The last time Al was on his case was when he heard t
he conference Ivan was supposed to go to was in Orlando. Why didn’t Ivan take the kids with him so they could go to Disney World? And in fact, several of the astronomers he knows took their families with them, made a vacation out of the trip. Ivan had thought the kids were too old for Disney World, he forgets how young they are sometimes because they’re both so much more sophisticated than he was at their age. If he had to name what is important to him in his life he could do it in three words: Polly, Amanda, Charlie. He guns the motor of the Karmann-Ghia, knowing that he’s lying to himself. There’s something else he loves: science. He didn’t want to take Charlie to Disney World because of science, he didn’t want his son to be sidetracked by pretense: fake submarines and plastic sea monsters and talking stuffed bears.

  Ivan wants everything that seems marvelous to Charlie to be pure science, the way it was for him growing up. This is the gift he’s given to Charlie, it’s a gift Charlie was ready for, wanted, delighted in. They’ve communicated with lightning bugs in bottles rather than words, constellations sighted instead of what they feel inside. Ivan has always stressed how much there is to marvel at, whether it was a colony of ants they’d found or a rare mushroom. Now what is he supposed to tell Charlie? Is it marvelous that an entire immune system can be attacked by a single virus? Do egrets and ants and shooting stars make up for that?

  Ivan goes straight where he should turn if he’s getting onto 93. He guns the motor again and rolls down his window. He keeps an eye on the bike path that runs parallel to the road, separated from traffic by a strip of grass. Lots of kids bike this way to school, but Ivan finally spots Charlie on his black Raleigh, his books tied to the back of the bike, looseleaf paper flapping out of his notebook as he pedals.