Authors: Meredith Mileti

Aftertaste (29 page)

BOOK: Aftertaste

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After Chloe is in bed, I try him again, this time also leaving messages at his home and office from my cell phone. I replay his message several times, studying his diction and trying to talk myself into believing that he just sounds sleepy, and not drunk.

Finally, in search of a distraction, I fool around with some more kid recipes, concocting a breakfast cookie out of oatmeal, honey, raisins, and wheat germ that probably no kid would eat.

Maybe no adult either. When my father comes home, I give him a couple of the cookies with a cup of tea, and he innocently inquires if my next column is cooking for pets. “There aren't enough good dog biscuits around,” he says, surreptitiously wrapping the remains of his cookie in a piece of paper towel.

I'm in bed reading Fiona's copy of
Good Housekeeping,
trolling around for ideas for kid-friendly foods, when my cell rings. It's Richard's ring tone.

“Richard, thank God. I was worried about you,” I say.

“Mira Rinaldi, please,” a voice, not Richard's, asks.

“Speaking. Who's this?”

“My name is Nate. You're a friend of Richard Kistler's?”

“Yes, yes, I am. Who's this? Where's Richard?”

Nate takes a deep breath, audible and unsettling, and I can feel the rush of blood to my ears. “I'm calling from the hospital. Well, actually from outside the hospital. You know how they are about cell phones in hospitals.” Nate laughs nervously. I can hear the wail of an ambulance in the distance.

“Where's Richard? Is he all right?”

“There's been an accident,” Nate says. His voice, very young sounding, is throaty and hoarse.

“Where is he?”

“Shadyside Hospital.” And then he mumbles something that sounds like “car accident” and “ICU.”

I throw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and wake my father to tell him what's happened and that I'll call as soon as I know anything. When I arrive at the hospital, I give the attendant at the front desk my name and Richard's. She directs me to the fifth floor, the ICU.

“Are you family?” she asks, her face a mask, as she fills out a pass that will allow me access to the unit.

“Yes. How is he?”

“The nurse will let you in and can give you information on Mr. Kistler's condition. How are you related?” she asks, her pen poised over the pass.

How are we related? He helped my mother. He's been like an uncle. We made a pact at AA. We are blood brothers. “Richard is my brother,” I tell the woman. She hands me the pass.

“Fifth floor. Make a left out of the elevators. Ring the buzzer at the double doors.”

The nurse who opens the door to the ICU suite is dressed in pink, her hair covered by a paper, elastic-rimmed cap. The lights are low, her voice a whisper.

“Ms. Rinaldi?” the nurse says, squinting to read the name on my pass.

I nod. “This way,” she says, darting a furtive glance in the direction of the waiting room, a small alcove off the main area, where a man in a black leather jacket is stretched out on the loveseat, his arm covering his face.

She leads me along a wide, dimly lit hallway, stopping outside a large room separated from the corridor by a wall of glass. “What happened?” I ask her. “How is he?”

“He's unconscious, but stable for now. He's only a couple of hours post-op, so we're still watching his vitals.”

“My God. What happened?”

“He passed out behind the wheel and crashed head-on into a section of guardrail on Bigelow Boulevard. The surgery was to repair a ruptured spleen and to stabilize a splintered sternum. He also sustained a severe head injury and hasn't regained consciousness.” She places a hand on my back and gently pushes me inside.

“Squeeze his hand and talk to him. He may be able to hear you, and your presence will be comforting to him.” She moves toward the bed. The lights are dim, and the person in the bed, who I can hardly recognize as Richard, is covered in bandages. I'm unable to move. My legs are leaden, and I can feel the whooshing of the blood in my ears again.

“Richard, Richard,” the nurse calls to him, her voice loud and authoritative. “Mira is here. We found her. She's here with you now.” She's bending over him, shouting into his face, but Richard, who doesn't like loud noise, who doesn't like people invading his personal space, doesn't react at all. She gestures for me to join her on the other side of the bed.

“I'll be back in about ten minutes,” she says, her voice once again a whisper. “Ten minutes every hour are for visiting. The doctor should be around in a while and will want to speak with you.”

Richard is hooked up to a host of machines, wires and tubes dangling from several places. His face is bruised and swollen, his chin slack. I take his hand, gingerly wrapping my fingers around his, not wanting to upset him, unlike the nurse whose grasp had been firm, even rough.

“Richard, I'm here. I love you,” I whisper into his ear, bending low to brush my lips against his forehead. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't answer the phone. I should have been there. I'm here. I'm here now.” There's no sign that Richard has heard me, no encouraging pressure on my hand, no murmuring lips. I lean down into the bed, over the railings to rest my head against his, stroking his hand and whispering to him, until the nurse comes to the door and gestures to the clock over the bed.

“I need to go in and check his IVs and fluids. You can have a seat in the waiting area. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

The waiting alcove is empty, the sleeping man gone, perhaps spending his precious ten minutes in another of these horrible rooms, at the bedside of a wife, a parent, or, God forbid, a child.

I try to remember everything I can about Richard's family. His parents live somewhere in the South, Florida maybe, but I have no idea how to reach them. The door to the ICU buzzes, but the nurses' station is empty. The buzzer goes off again. This time I see a man craning his neck to look through the narrow window into the lounge. When he sees me, he holds two Styrofoam cups up to the window, as if to indicate his hands are full. Although I haven't seen his face, I recognize the leather jacket. He's the man who was sleeping on the couch when I arrived.

“Mira?” he asks, when I open the door. I nod, and he hands me a cup of coffee. “Here. I figured you could use this. I'm Nate.” He puts his coffee down on the table and begins emptying packets of various non-dairy creamers and sweeteners from the front pockets of his jeans.

“I didn't know what you take in it, so I just brought everything.” Nate sits down on the mauve sofa, opens two packets of sugar, and empties them into his coffee. “I wasn't sure it was you, when you walked in. I should have said something. I guess I'm just not thinking too clearly. I'm sorry.”

“That's okay. I'm not thinking too clearly myself.” I take a seat opposite Nate and watch him stir his coffee. “I can't believe this. When did it happen?” I take too big a sip of the coffee, which is so hot it scalds the roof of my mouth.

“Tonight, around six, I guess.”

Nate hangs his head, cups his neck with two delicate hands, and massages the nape.

“Were you with him?”

Nate looks up sharply, but he doesn't answer; instead, he runs his hands from his neck up through his dark hair, encircling a lock in between his fingers and tugging gently. It's a languid and luxurious gesture, as if he's just awakened from a nap, sleeping off the chill of an autumn afternoon. His face is expressionless, with clear white skin and a hint of a dark beard. His eyes are too blue to be real, his features finely sculpted, high cheekbones, a small pointed chin, full lips, smooth and pink and bloodless. He's young, probably no more than twenty-five or twenty-six. For an instant I see him as Richard must, his face a mesmerizing combination of man and boy.

“He wasn't wearing any shoes, for God's sake. I don't know what he was doing. He was drunk.” Nate's voice is low and angry. “He called me this morning because he thought I took something that belonged to him. We argued, and he threatened to come to where I work, so I went over to his house. I thought I could calm him down. But when I got there he was in the front yard, shoeless and drunk, shouting at me. I left, but he kept calling me on the phone. For hours he wouldn't leave me alone. I finally told him to stop calling me or I would report himâget a restraining order or something when he”âNate's voice grows softer, his anger reduced to a dull whineâ“when he crashed. I heard the whole thing.”

“You left him like that? When you knew he was drunk and upset? What were you thinking?”

Nate inhales slowly, once again meeting my gaze, the harsh and artificial blue of his eyes flashing defiantly in the dim glow of the waiting room.

“What was I supposed to do? He was being abusive.”

“I don't believe that. That's not Richard. He isn'tâI mean he doesn'tâ” Overwhelmed by the picture Nate has drawn, I have trouble finding words to describe just how unlike Richard any of this is. All I seem to be able to focus on are the absurd details of this story, and I finish indignantly, “Richard doesn't walk around in his yard barefoot!”

Nate looks at me strangely, his full, bloodless lips set in a pitying smirk.

“Listen,” Nate says, picking up his jacket and standing up. “Now that you're here, if you don't mind, I'm going to leave. I really don't belong here. Not anymore. I'll come and see him later.”

“Wait a minute,” I say, holding my arm out to keep him from leaving. “How can I get in touch with you?” He reaches into the pocket of his jacket, takes out a pen, writes his phone number on a crumpled sugar wrapper, and hands it to me. Even though it's warm in the ICU, his hands are cold, the nails tinged with blue.

He turns to leave, presses the buzzer to open the unit doors, and steps out into the hallway. I follow him to the elevators and watch as he jabs the button accusingly.

“Nate?” I call. He turns toward me. “I need Richard's phone or address book. There are people I need to call.”

Nate reaches into the front pocket of his leather jacket, takes out Richard's phone, and hands it to me. “Here,” he says, glancing at me. “But I already checked, his parents aren't in there. You are his emergency contact.”

I take the phone and slip it into my pocket. There's a sudden draft as the elevator doors open, and Nate steps inside. As the doors glide shut, I stick out my arm, causing them to bounce back abruptly, as if recoiling from my touch. Startled, Nate leans back against the wall, looking as if I meant to strike him. “What was it that Richard thought you took from him?” I ask. He stares at me for so long I think perhaps he hasn't heard me. I'm about to repeat myself when he says, in a voice that is slow and clear, “Everything.”

chapter 26

I spend the better part of the next two weeks at the hospital, becoming a semi-permanent fixture first in the ICU and then later in Richard's regular room, which he shares with an older-looking asthmatic man named Jonas.

Richard's progress is slow, and it's only because I'm here every day that I can gauge his progress at all, watching vigilantly as gradually his body begins responding, first to light and then to noise. Then, one day, almost two weeks after the accident, there's a faint pressure at the squeeze of my hand and a fluttering of his eyelids at the sound of my voice. The doctors don't say much, and when I press them, they concentrate on the positive, telling me things like that his incisions are healing nicely and he's lucky to be alive, and that his splintered sternum was millimeters away from piercing his heart. I want them to tell me when Richard will wake up, but this they don't seem to know. All they seem willing to say is that head injuries take time, and it's still too early to tell.

As far as I know, Nate hasn't stopped by to see Richard, as he said he would. Even so, when I first felt the slight pressure in Richard's grip and what I thought might be a smile at my calling his name, I called Nate and left him a message. Since then, I've called every couple of days, leaving upbeat, yet business-like updates on Nate's answering machine. Not that I really expect him to show up.

One day, Richard opens his eyes, looks at me, and groans.

“Hey,” I say, coming around the side of the bed to grasp his hand. The muscles of Richard's face struggle to arrange themselves in a smile, but only the right side of his face is cooperating, and the effect is more like a grimace. He opens his mouth and tries to speak, but soon grows exhausted by the effort. Still, I can tell by looking at him that he understands me. I brush the hair from his forehead, moisten his lips with a clean sponge, and massage his fingers as I fill him in on the details of his life over the past almost two weeks. He makes no further move to speak until I ask him if he can remember the accident, at which point a small sob escapes as he tries to turn his face away, the light in his eyes flickering dangerously. I tell him the doctors are confident that he will recover fully, and point out the blooming bromeliad in the corner of the room that his parents (or, more likely, the social worker from the nursing home in Boca Raton) sent to cheer him up. I managed to track them down through an entry in Richard's checkbook to the Palm Gardens Senior Center.

Despite himself, Richard is making progress. By the end of the following week he's strong enough to be transferred to a rehabilitation facility. It's a more hopeful place, with cheerful murals, a lovely solarium, and much more liberal visiting policies, meaning that I can now bring Chloe, who greets Richard in the mornings with a delighted squeal, which seems to cheer him. This morning Chloe and I have brought him breakfast, a Maytag blue cheese and apple soufflÃ©, fresh croissants, and a large thermos of cafÃ© au lait.

“Here, I bought you a present,” I tell him, tossing a large plastic bag onto the bed and struggling to keep a straight face. Inside are two cheap sweat suits, one blue and one brown, which I bought because the physical therapist overseeing his rehab told me he'd need comfortable, loose-fitting workout clothes. Richard, I happen to know, owns nothing that isn't perfectly tailored, so I'd gone to Walmart and gotten the pair.

“What is this hideous dung-colored thing?” Richard asks, pulling the brown sweatshirt out of the bag and holding it between his thumb and forefinger. It takes several seconds for him to enunciate this particular little gem, but the accompanying sneer is unmistakable. I let loose a loud cheer, grab Chloe, and do a victory dance around his bed, thrilled that the Richard I know and love, clotheshorse, style hound, and incredible snob, is on his way back home.

“I can't believe you bought those,” Richard says.

“I thought the green racing stripe down the leg would look nice with your hair,” I tell him, flopping down on the bed next to him and making Chloe giggle.

He snorts. “This material feels like spun straw,” he says, holding the sweatshirt at arm's length. I take the sweatshirt from him and hand him a mug of coffee.

“It's what your physical therapist told me to get. Besides, I can't really see you incorporating the sweat suit into your fashion repertoire, so I figured I'd just pick up a couple of cheap ones. We can burn them later, if you like.”

“Yes, on the front lawn. We shall build a pyre to the gods of good taste.” Richard raises his mug of cafÃ© au lait in mock salute and then, taking a long sip, rolls his eyes upward. “Mmm. Delicious. You are forgiven.” Then, he takes my hand and raises it to his lips. “Thank you, Mira,” he whispers.

Because I've been so preoccupied with Richard the last couple of weeks, neglecting almost everything else except Chloe, the move to the loft has been put on hold. My new bedroom set and Chloe's crib were delivered last week, but I've yet to set them up. The Gaggenau man has left several increasingly agitated messages on my voice mail wanting to schedule a time to install the hood to my stove. Even Ben has threatened to send me a bill because, although he still hasn't been able to hook up the water lines, he finished installing the pasta spigot weeks ago and I haven't yet made good on my promise to cook him dinner. Even Dr. D-P has been put on hold. The only thing I've done, apart from taking care of Chloe and visiting Richard, is work on my columns, mostly because I'm afraid of Enid, but also because I've found the cooking, and to my surprise, the writing, to be restorative.

I'd almost missed seeing my first column, which had come out the morning after Richard's accident. It wasn't until I listened to my voice mail the next evening, which included congratulatory messages from my father, Ruth, and Ben, that I even remembered it at all. My second column, the one on kid-friendly foods, had also escaped my notice until one morning, arriving at Richard's with Chloe in tow, I find him holding court at one of the round tables in the solarium, the
Post-Gazette
Food section spread out in front of him. He's surrounded by a bunch of little old women, whom he is filling in on the sordid details of my past.

“So sorry, dear, but bully for you for taking matters into your own hands,” a small, bent gnome tells my kneecap.

“Who needs a man?” says another, presenting me with a pen and a newspaper folded neatly around my column, which she asks me to autograph.

It's hard to be angry at Richard, who doesn't look the least bit contrite in his dusty adobe-colored sweat outfit. “Actually, you ought to thank me,” he says, when I threaten to withhold his morning cappuccino. “It's good publicity for you. A
real
celebrity chef story. You could be a sort of female Anthony Bourdain,” he tells me. “But even better.
You've
actually been to jail. Come to think of it, I'm not sure Bourdain was ever arrested. And if he was, it was drugs. Your story is definitely more colorful.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I tell him, feigning annoyance.

Physically, Richard is making good progress. He's walking with the aid of a walker and slowly regaining the use of his right side. Yet there are times when he seems to curl up into himself, when he can't or won't communicate, sitting for hours at a time, his eyes glazed over. It's as if someone's hung a “closed” sign across his face. I like to think that Richard has gone somewhere more interesting than the Shadyside Rehabilitation Center, but not so interesting that he won't eventually come home.

The doctors have diagnosed depression and are plying him with all sorts of drugs, but it will be some weeks before they can judge their effectiveness. When Richard's health insurance runs out after two weeks, it seems too soon to think of sending him home, but the social worker tells me that they can arrange for a nurse to come daily and even stay overnight in the beginning, if necessary. But Richard's house is two stories, and I worry about his managing the stairs or tripping over the cat, so I tell her to arrange instead for a hospital bed to be delivered to my loft. He can recuperate at home with me.

“You're getting out tomorrow,” I tell him the next afternoon.

He puts aside his crossword puzzle and raises an eyebrow.

When I tell him the plan, he protests. “I will not have you following me around, force feeding me, fretting over me. It's annoying.”

“Well, too bad, Richard. It's time you got back to work. You promised to decorate my apartment, and the only way I can think for you to do it is to make you live there. When it's finished, you can leave.”

Richard turns away from me and doesn't say anything more. I start to worry that I've made a mistake by initiating this forced dependence on me, but soon he begins to squirm in his wheelchair, trying to get his right side to cooperate as he struggles out of his sweatshirt, the dung-colored one. He balls it up and tries to toss it to me, but it lands inches from his seat. Then, exhausted and panting with the effort, he says, “Prepare the bonfire.”

I shove the last of the unopened boxes into the space under the stairs, into the space that should be Chloe's cozy nook. I've spent the last twenty-four hours scrambling to get the apartment set up and prepared for Richard's arrival and have been too busy to unpack all but the most essential items: the Diaper Genie; Chloe's kitchen set and Fisher Price farm; my pots, pans, copper sauciers, and assorted kitchen implements, although the dough hook is missing from the KitchenAid mixer and the shallow olive-wood bowl has somehow gotten separated from its matching mezzaluna. I have no idea where my toothbrush is, but I've spent the last half hour unwrapping and washing my china, a vintage set for twelve from the fifties by Russel Wright, because I've missed itâthe elegant sweep of the cup handles, the delicate glaze, a blue so clean and light it appears almost iridescent. I like looking at it, spread out on the open shelves in the kitchen. It makes this place, or a small corner of it anyway, feel like home.

Earlier in the day I'd been dispatched to Richard's for all his necessary items: his cashmere lounge suit and paisley silk robe and slippers; his favorite antique Wedgwood coffee cup; his collection of Steelers Super Bowl highlight DVDs; and the TV from his kitchen to watch them on; and Katherine, his elderly seal point Siamese, who had taken up temporary but reluctant residence with Richard's neighbors, a young working couple who had found it a chore to soft boil Katherine's daily egg. I open a bag and spill some fresh litter into Katherine's box and slide it into the small remaining space under the stairs. Katherine approaches, circling my legs, a trembling purr caught in her throat. She looks at me, then at the litter box, and then with a grace and agility that belies her fifteen years, jumps into the potted palm, a housewarming gift from my father and Fiona, and pees.

Richard is snoring in the hospital bed by the window, his headphones askew. In the last few weeks his hair has lost its sheen, and it now hangs in wispy, dust-colored tufts over the earpieces. The Steelers DVD, a replay of their 1975 Super Bowl victory, has ended, and the television screen is filled with black and white static. Not for the first time this week do I marvel at what I've gotten myself into. The Richard I know wears thousand-dollar suits, has his hair professionally highlighted, and drinks his morning coffee from an antique Wedgwood cup. He does not wear sweat suits or have bad breath.

I turn off the television and remove his headphones. Richard stirs, and I nudge him a little more urgently, until he opens one eye and looks at me. The expression on his face is one of nearly complete disorientation.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom, Richard?” I ask him. He hesitates. Richard refuses to use the bedpan, or the potty chair next to his bed for that matter, and I know that if I don't help him he'll try to do it himself after I'm asleep, which is dangerous given his still limited mobility. “Let's go. I'll help you.” He looks down toward the end of the bed and then around at the room before returning his focus to my face. He missed a spot shaving this morning, and there's a stubborn patch of whitish hair growing just under his chin. He reaches up and begins to pick at it distractedly as, slowly and sadly, he nods.

We make our way to the bathroom, and Richard, now fully awake and leaning heavily on me, tells me a joke.

“Three notes walk into a bar: a C, an E flat, and a G. The bartender says he doesn't serve minors. So the E flat leaves, and the C and the G share a fifth between them.”

Richard leans forward and steadies himself by placing one hand on the back of the toilet. He's a tall man, and the toilet is one of those low, one-piece models, making the angle awkward and uncomfortable. Richard's right side is still stiff and bruised. With his weakened hand he struggles to free himself, while I support him, my eyes just about level with his penis, which I try not to look at. Richard hunches over the toilet. My neck and shoulders are wedged under his arm, my head discreetly angled away. I'm sure we look ridiculous, like two teenagers playing Twister. We stand there for several moments, waiting for him to go.

This time it's my turn. “What did the grape say when the elephant sat on him?”

“What . . . did the grape say?” asks Richard through tightened lips.

BOOK: Aftertaste

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