Brass Ring (44 page)

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I have to do it, Brian. The last thing I want to do is talk about my past publicly, but I can’t live with myself if I don’t.” She raised her hands to his shoulders. “I’m going to need you to be there with me in Washington. All right?”

He nodded slowly. “All right.”

She would call Terri Roos first thing in the morning and get the name of the attorney screening the witnesses. Wouldn’t Terri be surprised? She smiled at the thought.

Brian suggested they turn on the night-light to ward off the bad dreams that were sure to come that night. But she left the light off and fell asleep easily, and she wasn’t surprised to wake up in the morning from the first dream-free sleep she’d had in weeks.

WASHINGTON, D.C

THE CLOSEST PARKING SPACE
Claire could find was three blocks from the Marvin Center. There were puddles on the sidewalk, and she walked carefully, checking her watch every minute or so. She was distressed that she was going to miss the beginning of Jon’s speech.

She had completely forgotten about this symposium at George Washington University. She had phoned Jon the day before to ask if she could work at the foundation again part-time—a proposal to which he had readily agreed. He’d thanked her for her suggestions on the retreat, saying he planned to use most of them. During their conversation, he mentioned the symposium, casually, and it was as if she’d been struck by a train. She and Jon were supposed to be the keynote speakers at the opening session. It had been arranged months earlier. Obviously, Jon was planning to do it alone. She felt as if she’d deserted him. They’d always spoken as a team. How was he going to pull this off on his own?

“I’m so sorry, Jon. I’d forgotten all about it, and you didn’t say any—”

“No problem,” he’d said, sounding far less concerned than she felt.

She hadn’t made a conscious decision to attend the keynote address, but as she sat in Randy’s kitchen this morning after he’d left for work, she knew that was what she wanted to do. She’d awakened with Jon on her mind after talking about him so much with Randy last night. It had been intentional on Randy’s part; she was certain of it. He didn’t want her under false pretenses. He wanted her to think about Jon and still choose to be with him. Randy didn’t understand that it had never felt like a matter of choice to her.

Usually the drive from McLean to the university would take about twenty minutes, but an accident had slowed things to a crawl on the highway. Jon was scheduled to speak at nine, and it was nine-fifteen by the time she stepped through the main door of the Marvin Center. She was in the hallway outside the auditorium. Three women—a blonde and two brunettes—sat behind a long table covered with flyers and the dozen or so attendee name tags that hadn’t yet been picked up.

Claire stood uncertainly a few feet from the table, shaking out her umbrella. The women looked at her, waiting. How was she going to get in? She was not a presenter. Not even an attendee. This was a predicament she had never before experienced.

She glanced at the double doors to the auditorium and stepped toward the women. “I’m not registered, but I would like to hear the keynote address,” she said as she unbuttoned her raincoat. It was warm in the hallway.

The blond woman at the center of the table shook her head. “I’m sorry. You can’t get in without a ticket.”

“Just for half an hour? I’m unable to attend the rest of the day.”

The woman was steadfast. She shook her head. “Sorry.”

A burst of laughter from the audience sifted through the cracks in the double doors. Jon was already well into his talk, no doubt. “My husband’s giving the keynote address,” Claire said. “I would just like to hear him, then I’ll leave, all right?”

One of the dark-haired women caught her breath. “You’re Claire Harte-Mathias!” she exclaimed.

Claire smiled. “That’s right.”

The blond woman stood up and reached out to shake Claire’s hand, suddenly meek. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I had no idea. Please, go in.”

Claire nodded her thanks and walked past the table toward the auditorium doors.

The auditorium was very nearly filled. The walls were lined with wheelchairs, some of them occupied, others collapsed, waiting to be returned to their owners, who were sitting in the auditorium seats. The symposium was aimed at disabled individuals and their families, and a quick glance around the room told her that the audience was not limited to spinal cord injuries. She spotted a few white canes, and on the two large TV monitors that hung above the crowd, a young woman signed the words that Jon was speaking from the stage.

There were a few empty seats in the rear of the auditorium, and Claire slipped into one of them. Jon would never know she was there. Good.

He sat in his wheelchair on the broad, empty stage. There was no dais in front of him, nothing between him and his audience. He had no notes, of course. He never used them. A handheld microphone was his only prop.

He was wearing a pink shirt she had never seen before, gray pants, and his gray tweed sports jacket. No tie. Even from this distance, she could see that he had lost weight. He looked relaxed, as he always did in front of a group.

He was okay. Better than okay. He was truly in his element. She looked around the audience. All eyes were riveted on the beautiful man in front of them. They were with him, nodding and smiling. Although he was alone on the stage, he didn’t look small. He was in total command of this auditorium.

She’d missed a good portion of his talk, but she knew what he would be saying. With this sort of group, he would talk about the different aspects of being disabled or of living with a person who was disabled. Usually, he and Claire would play off each other as they spoke, shifting easily back and forth between his perspective and hers.

He would probably describe the crash that had taken his family from him and left him damaged at such a young age. He’d talk about the loss of his identity during adolescence, when his identity had been fragile enough to begin with. And he would talk about Claire. Would he still do that even though she wasn’t sharing the stage with him? Even though they were living apart? And would it make a difference to him one way or the other if he knew she was sitting in this audience?

She didn’t have to wonder long.

“Often you hear a disabled person say that another person—or perhaps an event—was a catalyst for them,” Jon said. “Someone or something that turned them around, that set them on the road to renewal. For me, it was my wife, Claire, who lifted me out of the self-pitying funk I was in and got me to look at what I
could
do instead of what I couldn’t.”

Claire had heard him talk about her in these terms many times before, but this was the first time she’d felt her eyes burn at his words.

“But you can love someone too much,” Jon said suddenly, and Claire leaned forward in her seat. She had never heard him say that before in a lecture. She had never heard him say it at all.

“This is true, of course, whether your loved one is physically challenged or not,” Jon said, “but it’s particularly hard to avoid when the person you care about has such special needs. You love someone, so you want to do all you can for that person. They’ve suffered terribly, and you want to do everything in your power to protect them from further suffering.”

There were nods of recognition in the room, and Claire wondered where this had come from, where he was going with it.

“Those of you who are able-bodied know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You see a person you love struggling to cross the room to turn down the TV. What’s the temptation? You could be at the TV in two seconds, while it might take them ten minutes. Think of the time and energy you can save them. But there’s a cost involved. If you always help them, they’ll never learn to do it for themselves, and they’ll never have the pride and satisfaction of being
able
to do it for themselves. And they’ll never know how to do it if, some day, you’re not around. And it goes way beyond helping them with physical things. You try to protect them from emotional pain as well. We don’t want our loved ones to feel any more pain than they have to. They already feel so much! But it’s pain that makes us grow.”

Jon leaned forward himself, as if he could get inside his audience. “Let us
have
that pain.” The passion in his voice sent a chill up Claire’s arms. “Let us own it. Give us room to grow as people.” He drew in a breath. “And those of you who are disabled, or handicapped, or physically challenged, or whatever term, if any, you prefer for yourself. I bet you do it too, don’t you? Try to protect those you love from suffering? I would be willing to bet that this room is full of highly skilled, experienced, and overzealous caretakers. Sometimes we take care of each other so well that we end up hurting each other in the process.”

He had hit a nerve in his audience; Claire could see that. They buzzed and nodded and reached out for one another. In front of her, a man put his arm around the woman next to him and pulled her head gently to his shoulder. The interpreter signing on the monitor wore a bittersweet expression on her face as her hands came to a halt.

Jon was wrapping up now, but Claire was no longer listening to his words. She felt an overwhelming need to touch him, and she thought of walking to the front of the auditorium when he was finished to compliment him, to rest her hand on his shoulder. Perhaps she could call Randy and cancel her plans to meet him for lunch, then stay here and help with the symposium.

But she would do none of those things. She watched the applauding audience converge on the stage. She had no right to Jon anymore. Besides, he no longer seemed to need her. That was good, wasn’t it? Then why did it feel so bad?

She wanted to turn back the calendar. She wanted to go back to that January snowstorm, put up for the night in the High Water Hotel, and never lay eyes on Margot, never meet Randy. She wanted freedom from the torment of her memories, and she wanted the smart, softhearted man on the stage. She wished he could have been the one to help her through these last couple of months.

Tears filled her eyes as she slipped quickly through the crowd toward the exit. She walked the few blocks to her car in the light rain, not bothering to open her umbrella. Once in the car, she turned on the engine, shivering as she waited for heat to fill the air.

She blew her nose, touched up her eye makeup in the rearview mirror. She would drive to the restaurant, she thought. She would spend the day with Randy, with the man who didn’t love her enough to protect her from her pain.

SEATTLE

STARLA GARVEY. THAT WAS
the name of the Washington, D.C., attorney who was screening witnesses for the Capitol Hill hearing on the Aid to Adult Survivors Bill. Her job was to select several women—and a couple of men—whose stories were compelling and convincing and to prepare them to testify before the Senate subcommittee headed by Senator Walter Patterson.

Starla. The name didn’t invite confidence, and Vanessa fought a sense of discouragement as she placed a call to the woman from her office phone. She got through to the attorney fairly easily, but Starla Garvey sounded rushed and harried on the other end of the line. Vanessa quickly got to the point of her call: She wanted to testify to the impact that childhood abuse had had on her as a teenager. She could also speak from a professional perspective, she suggested, offering anecdotes about the kids she was seeing in the AMC program. Ms. Garvey interrupted her.

“It’s too late,” she said. She had the faintest trace of a southern accent. “I already have the witnesses lined up.”

“But you only have one witness who will be focusing on her problems as an adolescent.”

“True, but that’s not the major concern of this committee.”

“But it
should
be. It
could
be if they’d hear something to make them prick up their ears. Please. Let me meet with you.”

There was a sigh from Starla’s end of the phone line, a rustling of papers. “No promises,” she said. “I’ll see you, but you have to be prepared for the fact that I might not use you after all. Can you come in this Tuesday at ten o’clock? The hearing’s Wednesday, so we don’t have much time.”

“I’ll be there,” Vanessa said, and she hung up, marveling at the fact that she’d begged someone to let her do the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

She met Brian at a downtown restaurant for dinner that night. He was already sitting at a corner table when she arrived, nursing a glass of Perrier. He’d spent the afternoon playing tennis, and he was wet-haired from a shower and ruddy-cheeked from the game.

She told him about her call to Starla Garvey, and he listened carefully, his face sober.

“God, that’s so soon,” he said, putting into words what she’d been thinking all afternoon.

“I know. Can you get off?”

“One way or another.” He smiled at her and squeezed her knee under the table.

She ordered salmon, but by the time it arrived, she’d lost her appetite. Each time she thought about putting her story into words for a stranger’s ears, her stomach tightened. It was more than that, though. She was coming—slowly—to another decision. She looked across the table at her husband.

“I can’t confront Zed Patterson directly,” she said, “but I can confront my sister.”

Brian’s eyes widened, and he set down his fork. “Yes, you can,” he said, nodding. “Do it, Vanessa. Please, do it.”

She swept her hair back from her cheek. “It seems like the right time,” she said. “I think I need to talk to her if I ever want to get it all behind me. It’s now or never.”

“Yes. And we’ll be close to where she lives, right? Isn’t she just outside Washington? I’ll go with you, if you—”

“No.” She shook her head quickly. “I don’t want to actually see her face-to-face. I’ll call her. Maybe even tonight.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ll say my piece, then say good-bye and good riddance, and that will be it.” She clapped her hands together in a gesture of finality. “God, Brian, I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can do any of this.”