Читать книгу Cloud Nine - Luanne Rice - Страница 11

Sarah sat in a paper smock waiting for Dr Goodacre to see her. Each monthly visit required long intervals of patience. He was a neurosurgeon, and most of his cases were, or had been, life-or-death. If you had a brain injury, you wanted Dr Goodacre. He saw the head-on crash victims, the motorcyclists who spun out without their helmets, the children who dived into shallow water and broke their necks, the riders who flew off horses and severed their spines, the people who woke up with brain tumors.

His nurse, Vicky, walked in. She looked tense, driven. Opening a cabinet, she rummaged through with a fierce expression on her face. Sighing, she gave up, slammed the door, tried a drawer. She was small and slender, with auburn hair and a great figure, and Sarah thought she was probably very attractive away from work. But the pressures of working for Dr Goodacre made her seem impatient and rather mean.

‘Hi, Vicky,’ Sarah said.

‘Oh, hi,’ Vicky said, abstracted.

‘Has he got you running around?’

‘He needs a prep kit, and he needs it last Christmas, you know?’

Sarah laughed. She had watched Dr Goodacre in action for the last nine months, and she knew exactly what Vicky meant. The quality that made him the doctor you wanted to save your life probably made him a nightmare as a boss.

Sarah sat at the edge of the exam table, watching Vicky flee from the room. She had wanted to ask about how long she had to wait, whether they could turn up the heat a little, but she held back. Her journey through illness had taught her to overlook certain details. She had trained herself to focus on the most important matters, let the small things fall into place.

Finally Dr Goodacre walked through the door. He was tall and extremely thin, dressed in a dark suit covered by a white lab coat. A pale yellow tie was visible at the neck. He had short dark hair, and in spite of his round wire-rimmed glasses and lack of beard, he resembled Abraham Lincoln. Without smiling, he reached into a compartment behind the door and pulled out Sarah’s chart.

‘Hi, Doctor,’ she said.

‘Hello, Sarah.’

‘Everyone seems so busy today.’

‘Mmm.’

Frowning, he began to read. Sarah was unafraid of his severe expression. She understood it was just his manner, the way he protected himself from feeling too much about his worst cases. Dr Goodacre had saved her life, and she adored him with all her heart.

‘Any pain?’

‘Only when I touch the scar.’

‘Numbness? Tingling?’

‘No.’

‘No more seizures?’ he asked, reading.

‘Not since July.’ Sarah closed her eyes, saying a prayer. She hated seizures. She had had three, including the one that alerted her that something was wrong. Nine months before, she had been perfectly healthy, running seven miles a day, training to run in her first marathon. One day she woke up on the floor of her shower. The hot water had run out. She couldn’t remember getting in, and she didn’t know how long she had been lying there. It took all her strength to crawl to the phone and dial 911.

At first they thought she had had a stroke. She couldn’t move, could barely talk. Her limbs felt heavy, and she had double vision. Cardiologists swarmed around her, hooking her up to heart monitors, ordering EKGs, CT scans, and EEGs. The EEG revealed seizure activity, and the heart doctors had handed Sarah over to the neurosurgery department for further tests. Within a day, they had found the brain tumor.

‘Okay,’ he said, laying down her chart. He leaned close to look into her eyes. She smelled his spicy fragrance and smiled.

‘If I had a boyfriend, I’d want to buy him that cologne,’ she said.

‘Sit up straight and close your eyes,’ he said without smiling back. ‘Hold your arms straight out in front.’

She did as she was told, knew he was watching to see whether she could keep her arms and hands steady.

‘Now hold them straight out to the sides.’

Like wings, she thought, like a plane flying to Maine.

‘Touch your nose with your left index finger. Now your right. Eyes closed! Very good.’

Sarah felt like a small child being tested by the school nurse. With her eyes closed, smelling Dr Goodacre’s familiar scent, she felt safe. She had first come to him for a second opinion. The first doctor, at a small hospital across town, had told her she had osteogenic sarcoma, the most deadly tumor possible. He had suggested that treatment would only prolong the inevitable, that even with surgery she would have only ten weeks to live. He had suggested she go to Paris, eat her favorite foods, say good-bye to the people she loved. Telling her this, he had held her hand. He was elderly and respected, and he had spoken in sonorous tones of regret.

He had sent her home. In shock, thinking of Paris and Mike and death ten weeks away, Sarah had curled into a ball. Was this what her mother had gone through? Crying, Sarah had prayed to her. Weak and sick, she had needed the visiting nurse to check on her. Meg Ferguson had come to call. Six days into her death sentence, Mike had left for Maine. Ten days into it, pouring her terrors out to Meg, Sarah had listened to Meg’s compassionate, logical reason: Get a second opinion.

A second opinion: the light in the dark, the hope after total despair. Suddenly Sarah saw with total clarity that she wasn’t ready to accept the prognosis. Her mother had been too isolated on the island to fight her disease, but Sarah wasn’t. Sarah was a mother, her son had run away to Maine, she didn’t want to go to Paris, she couldn’t be dying of a brain tumor. She couldn’t – could not – die just then. Sarah could not. She could almost hear her mother begging her to fight. And so Meg had gotten Dr Goodacre’s name and number. And Sarah had called him.

‘I’m thinking about taking a trip,’ she said to Dr Goodacre now.

‘You are?’ he asked, examining the back of her head.

‘To Maine. To see my son.’

‘Ah,’ he said, probing her scar. Her tumor had been located in the meninges, the lining between the skull and the brain. It had clung to the sinus nerve, making it a challenge to remove surgically without paralyzing or killing Sarah. But Dr Goodacre had done an amazing job: he had gotten ninety-nine percent of it out. To get inside, he had cut a large flap in her scalp. U-shaped, it looked like a big red smile on the back of her head.

‘Remember I told you about him?’ she asked. ‘Mike? He left for Maine right about the time I met you?’

‘At college?’ the doctor asked, squinting at the incision.

‘No, to live with my father.’ Sarah closed her eyes. She tried not to feel hurt. Just because Dr Goodacre meant so much to her, why should he remember the mundane details of her life? With all his patients, that would be impossible. But just knowing she had thought the word ‘mundane’ in connection with Mike made her feel worse, and she drew inward.

‘Are you asking me if you should go?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘I see no reason why not,’ he said. He leaned against a low cabinet, and for the first time since entering the exam room, he really looked at her: into her eyes, as if she were a whole person, not just a collection of parts to study and assess. ‘Have you asked Dr Boswell?’

‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘Should I?’ Dr Boswell was her oncologist. While she was very important to Sarah’s care, had administered two courses of chemotherapy and overseen the radiation treatment, Dr Goodacre was the One. He was the one who had identified her tumor as large-cell lymphoma, eminently less deadly than osteogenic sarcoma, offering her the possibility of long-term recovery. He was the one in whom Sarah had placed her faith, to whom she entrusted her hopes and fears.

‘I’ll have Vicky give her a call,’ Dr Goodacre said, making a note on Sarah’s chart. ‘If she has no objection, neither do I.’

‘Really?’ Sarah asked.

‘You know the road we face, Sarah. You’ve done everything we’ve asked of you, and you’ve responded well.’

‘I just don’t want a recurrence,’ she said, shivering. Did that sound dumb? Did anyone want a recurrence?

‘I know. We can’t predict … your tumor was very difficultly situated, and it is rather aggressive for a large-cell lym–’ He cut himself off. The look on his face said it all. Dr Goodacre gave Sarah credit for her intelligence and powers of intuition, and he didn’t have to spell it all out. She might survive and she might not. Sarah knew the anguish of cancer: She had watched her own mother die in bed on Elk Island. She had watched her father wither and almost disappear with grief.

‘I’d like to see my son,’ she said quietly, without emotion. ‘I’d like to go home.’

He nodded. ‘Be alert,’ he said. ‘If you have any symptoms of numbness or tingling, you should call me immediately. But I see no reason for you not to go.’

‘Thank you,’ Sarah said, glowing as if she had just won a race.

‘I’ll see you back here in a month,’ Dr Goodacre said as sternly as ever. Preparing to leave, on to the next case, his hand was on the doorknob.

‘Dr Goodacre,’ Sarah asked, needing to summon up a little courage. She had never asked him anything personal. ‘How’s your father?’ The last time she was there, she had heard Vicky saying his father had had a heart attack.

‘Better,’ Dr Goodacre said, pausing. He gave Sarah a curious look, as if he wondered how she knew to ask. ‘But he lives in Florida, and I can’t be with him. It falls to my older brother to look after him.’

‘Does your brother do a good job?’ Sarah asked.

‘He’s an angel!’ Dr Goodacre said with passion. He broke into a grin, staring straight into Sarah’s eyes. Full of intensity, he looked at the ceiling, then back at Sarah. She understood how it felt to love someone far away, to worry yourself sick about him, to trust his care to another human being. In a way, Dr Goodacre’s brother was looking out for him – Dr Goodacre – too.

‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘That you have such a wonderful brother.’

‘I wish everyone had someone like him,’ he said.

Sarah had never seen the doctor this way, and she nodded. He lingered for a moment, then walked away. The door closed softly behind him.

Alone in the room, Sarah closed her eyes. She felt her heart beating fast. Her exercises calmed her, so she held her arms out straight in front. Then out to the side again, like before. Sarah had never had a brother like the doctor’s, had never had an angel in her life. But then she thought of Will Burke holding her at the fair, flying her home.

Taking her to see Mike.

Will drove up the long driveway. The road up Windemere Hill zigzagged through a forest of pin oaks and white pines. Snow had fallen the previous night, and the branches drooped low. At the top, the drive opened onto a wide, snow-covered lawn lined with white-capped boxwood hedges. It was late Friday afternoon, and he was there to pick up his daughter.

Julian’s imposing stone mansion lorded over the wintry scene. Two old Ferraris were parked in the turnaround, and a Porsche 356 was visible in the carriage house. Will parked his car, trying not to feel resentful that one guy should have all this, and Alice and Susan too.

Expecting Susan, he was surprised to see Alice walk out the front door. The sight of her made him catch his breath. She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, with her creamy skin and wide, almond-shaped blue eyes, silky golden hair, a shapely, feminine figure. She walked through the snow in short black boots.

She was wearing sleek gray workout clothes, revealing her body. In the fifteen years since their daughter’s birth, she had never stopped trying to obliterate the slight roundness left in her tummy. Unable to help himself, Will checked to see if it was still there: It was.

‘She asked me to tell you she’ll be a few minutes late,’ Alice said hurriedly, her arms folded in front of her, her breath making white clouds.

‘No problem,’ Will said. He got out of the car, leaned against the door. He wore jeans and an old green sweater. The air was freezing cold, and he had to fight the urge to offer Alice the leather jacket he had thrown in the backseat.

‘Her asthma’s been terrible lately.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s completely psychosomatic. We all know that. She works herself into attacks just to interrupt whatever’s going on. I’m not blaming her, she’s been through a lot, but she needs to be the center of attention.’

‘I did when I was fifteen,’ Will said, smiling.

‘Like that ever stopped.’

Was she kidding? Will couldn’t tell. Her expression was stern, and she was staring at his boots. They were a pair of old Dunhams, the brown leather well worn and scuffed, recently resoled. He wondered if she remembered buying them for him their first winter in Fort Cromwell, five long years before.

‘I wanted to ask you about Thanksgiving,’ Will began.

Her head snapped up. ‘Thanksgiving? She stays with me. We have plans –’

‘Whoa,’ Will said, raising one hand. God, the smallest conversation became so tense, every point felt like a negotiation. He couldn’t help thinking of other years, when a conversation about Thanksgiving with Alice revolved around Fred being John Alden in the school play, Susan playing a Pilgrim girl, whose parents’ house they should go to, whether they should have mince or pumpkin pies or both for dinner.

‘You know she stays with me on holidays, Will. It was part of the agreement.’

‘Yes, I know. Relax, Alice. I was just asking.’

‘My God. Everything is such a damn battle,’ she said, folding her arms even tighter.

‘It’s no battle. I just wanted to let you know I’ll be out of town.’

‘Fine.’

‘Good.’

‘Where out of town?’ she asked, glancing up, some new emotion in her cornflower-blue eyes: worry? Will had heard about wives who ran out on their marriages, started whole new lives, then developed intense curiosity about their ex-husbands’ behavior. Was this what he was seeing in Alice? He somehow doubted it.

‘I have a charter to Maine. I thought you should know, in case her asthma gets really bad or she needs me for something else. You know?’

Alice nodded, her stern face back.

‘She’ll be okay,’ Will said. ‘Secret’s going to be fine.’

‘Secret? Jesus, Will!’ Alice exploded. ‘We named her Susan. You wanted to give her a name with strength, after someone she could look up to …’

‘Susan Mallory,’ he said, thinking of his grandmother.

‘My God. Don’t be indulging this “Secret” crap. It’s really unsettling, if you want to know how I feel about it. Julian thinks she needs more professional help.’

‘That’s a good sign that she doesn’t,’ Will said, feeling aggressively immature. ‘If Julian says she does. Didn’t you tell him we went through that when we first got to Fort Cromwell?’

‘Of course I did. He knows Dr Darrow.’ Splaying her fingers with frustration, Alice revealed some of her jewels: the largest diamond ring Will had ever seen, and a wedding ring-style band of diamonds and emeralds. Will exhaled slowly.

‘Hi!’ their daughter called, bursting through the front door with her knapsack, duffel bag, and a small package.

She stood there like a star who had just burst onstage: radiant smile, theatrical pose, boundless energy, arms open wide to greet her adoring public. Her parents were too upset to applaud or even smile, but Will tried. He gave a half-smile, holding out his left arm to embrace her as she ran through the snow.

‘Hi, Secret,’ he said.

‘Jesus,’ Alice muttered.

‘Hi, Dad. Can we drive through town? I have something I have to drop off for a friend.’

‘You bet,’ he said.

‘I’ll need a number for wherever you’re going on Thanksgiving,’ Alice said brusquely. ‘Just in case.’

‘You’re going somewhere for Thanksgiving?’ Secret said, jerking her head back from Will’s chest, looking up at him with worried eyes.

‘Just for work,’ he said.

‘You’re going to work on Thanksgiving?’

‘I’m flying the Fergusons’ friend Sarah Talbot to Maine.’

‘That’s who you’re taking?’ she asked with apparent amazement, staring at her small package.

‘Do you have your inhaler?’ Alice asked, pulling her away from Will for a hug. Seeing his ex-wife hold their daughter brought too much back for Will, and he had to look away. Glancing toward the carriage house, he saw Julian walking out with a man wearing a blue mechanic’s uniform. Time to go.

‘You ready, Secret?’ Will asked, hoisting her bags.

‘Please,’ Alice said. ‘I hate that name. You two can play make-believe when you’re alone, but when you’re around me, I can’t have it.’

‘You don’t have to call me Secret,’ she said. ‘I’m changing it. As of midnight last night, I’m Snow.’

‘Susan …’ Alice said dangerously.

‘Well, hello,’ Julian said, walking over. He had the tall, lean look of a man who worked out or ran a lot, with a stupid ponytail that looked idiotic with the lines on his face. He had to be fifty years old, Will thought. He wore an expensive suede jacket with his race car logo embroidered on the chest.

‘Hi, Julian,’ Will said, shaking his hand.

‘You know why I’m Snow?’ his daughter asked, her voice high and tense. ‘Because of Freddie. He adored winter, it was his favorite season.’

‘Susan, honey, stop …’ Alice said.

‘Sledding, skiing. Remember when we all went to Mt Tom? How much he loved it, he refused to stop all day, even for lunch, he skied and skied until the lifts stopped running and it was dark and we couldn’t find him?’

‘I can’t bear it,’ Alice said, her face bright red.

‘He taught me how to make angels in Newport. We lay in the snow at Trinity Church, looking out over the harbor, and we lay on our backs and spread our arms and legs and waved at the sky over and over until our prints were in the snow. Remember?’

‘I remember,’ Will said, gazing into her glittering eyes.

‘Stop, honey,’ Alice said, grabbing her wrist, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Changing your name won’t bring him back.’

‘He just loved it so much,’ she went on as if she hadn’t heard. ‘Falling out of the sky, lying on the docks. He didn’t care. Snow. He died in September, so I was September, and he always kept my secrets, so I was Secret, and he loved, loved, loved snow, so I’m Snow.’

‘Oh, God,’ Alice said, burying her face in her hands and starting to sob.

‘Can’t you say something to your daughter?’ Julian asked harshly, wrapping his arms around Alice as he glared at Will.

Will didn’t speak. He took his daughter’s hands, held them in his. Looking deeply into her eyes, he tried to reach her. She was wild, crazy with grief for Fred. Will felt it too, and so did Alice. Will had been so wrecked, he had resigned from the navy before they could kick him out. The overpowering loss came over him again now. His heart pounding, he tried to pull his daughter close, but she wouldn’t let him. She faced Julian with hatred in her gaze.

‘Don’t you talk to my dad that way,’ she said.

‘Listen,’ Julian said. ‘I’ve had about as much as I’m going to take with you disrespecting your mother. If your father won’t say it, I will. You’re hurting your mother, Susan. If you need to go back to Dr Darrow, we’ll see that you do. But cut the name bullshit right now.’

Will didn’t even feel it coming. The punch started somewhere in his gut, and by the time it got to his fist, Julian was laid out on his driveway, blood from his nose turning the snow pink. Alice was screaming, the mechanic was rocking back and forth on his heels, and Susan was crying. Will’s knuckles hurt, as if he might have broken them. His head pounded, an emotional hangover starting already.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said calmly, standing over his ex-wife’s husband. ‘But I can’t have you speaking to my daughter that way.’

‘Fucking maniac,’ Julian said, struggling to sit up. ‘No wonder the navy kicked you out. Fucking menace to society.’

Will considered holding out his hand to help the man up, but he didn’t want to add insult to injury. He gazed at Julian for an instant, making sure he could move okay, that he hadn’t broken anything. He glanced at Alice, ashamed of himself for making her cry harder. Then he turned to his daughter, tried to reassure her with a smile.

‘Sarah thinks it’s a beautiful name,’ his daughter said, her eyes wide, full of panic, looking as if the world had betrayed her, as if she had just walked away from a cloister or asylum and been horrified by the real world, what she found outside. But she had said the name Sarah, and Will felt something give. The anger drained out of him. He wished he were with her now, flying wherever she wanted to go.

‘Sarah? Who’s Sarah?’ Alice asked, but no one answered her.

‘Come on, Snow,’ Will said, his hands shaking. ‘Time to leave.’

Without another word, the pair climbed into Will’s old blue Jeep, and they drove away.

The Cologne Philharmonic was playing in the Marcellus College Concert Series that night, and Julian was a subscriber. But his nose was broken, and his mood was foul, so he was lying on the sofa with an ice pack and a bottle of Courvoisier while Alice tried to read. They were in the library, listening to Sibelius. A fire crackled in the fieldstone fireplace.

When she heard Julian start to snore, Alice lowered her book. She placed it on the low tiger-maple table and gazed at her sleeping husband. He loved her so much and tried so hard. Kissing him, she tiptoed out of the room. She wandered through the enormous house, listening to the wind outside. This was her home. She kept telling herself that, walking past portraits of people she had never met. Moving here, she had believed she was going to be so happy. She had found love, and it was going to save her.

At certain terrible moments in life, she had learned to make choices. At thirty-five years, set in ways she had been establishing for years, surrounded by people she thought she knew. Building a family with a man, raising his children, using his name. Going along, not happy, not unhappy, when the bottom just fell out.

Her only son died. They were all together when it happened. The scene was a nightmare, with no one doing what she would expect them to do and no one waking up in time. Everyone reacted in unexpected ways.

Nothing would bring him back, and Alice was left with the wreckage. A daughter who couldn’t stop crying, a husband who lost his mind.

Lost in his own hell, her husband turned neglectful. Had she ever loved him to begin with? She wasn’t sure. Being ignored when she had needed him so much made her start to hate him. He took his retirement, uprooted the family, and moved them far away from anything comforting or familiar. She had begged him to snap out of it, and he didn’t even hear her. She got a job just to get out of the house. She loved her new job, she loved her new boss.

And her new boss loved her. He treated her like a queen, a lover, a woman. They had an affair, but suddenly he was her whole world, so ‘affair’ didn’t begin to describe what they felt for each other. This was right, this was what she was born for, this was what God intended. So much so, she was willing to break her husband’s heart. Break up her daughter’s family. Her son was buried, but she imagined him giving her his blessing. He would want his mother to be happy.

Did I do the right thing? She would ask herself that question for the rest of her life. She loved her new husband, cherished him with all her heart, lay beside him at night and thanked her lucky stars. She quit her job to volunteer at the hospital because she was now so rich. But there was so much pain. She saw it every time she looked into her daughter’s face; she saw the broken man she left behind and blamed herself for all his sleepless nights. She knew he had them, because she knew him better than anyone else alive.

Walking through the big, empty house, Alice couldn’t stop thinking of Will’s rage, the fury in his eyes as he decked Julian. He’d been storing it up for a long time, just waiting for the right excuse. She blamed herself. Just as she blamed herself for Susan’s crazy name-changing, just as Will blamed himself for what happened to Fred.

Her feet felt warm in her fleece-lined slippers as she strolled the dark halls like a tormented sleepwalker. With Susan at Will’s, now might be the time to look through her drawers and see what she needed for clothes. With Christmas coming, she knew Julian wanted to buy her some special things.

But when she got to Susan’s room, she stopped still.

There, standing in the hallway, leaning neatly against the walnut wainscoting, were the two Gainsboroughs that Julian had given her. Alice stared at them, the beautiful paintings in their large gold frames. The little girl, the two small dogs. She remembered what Julian had said in the car on their way to the auction, about Will not being able to afford paintings like these, and she closed her eyes.

This was too much for her. She felt the weight of her daughter’s unhappiness bearing down on her shoulders, and she sank to the floor. Cold drafts of air blew through the rooms. Hugging herself, she lowered her head. Constantly preoccupied with Susan, she was too upset to be the woman Julian had fallen in love with. She was going to lose it all: her new marriage, her security, her daughter’s respect.

Sitting there, alone in the upstairs hallway of Julian’s stone chateau, she whispered one word: ‘Help.’