Come Little Children (13 page)

“It’s OK. There’s no girl. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Camilla snapped. She looked Laura dead in the eye. “What is going on at that house?”

“Going on?”

“Stop pretending! She told you to deny it, didn’t she?”

“Please, you’re still weak. Try to lean back.”

Camilla batted Laura away and turned onto her side.
They’re liars, they’re all liars
.

The room’s window was at an even level with the mattress. As she looked outside, her blood boiling, she could tell that they were on the second floor of the hospital, facing west.

The sun was beaming from its evening position, illuminating the town square with a glow that cast long shadows off the circumscribing trees. In front of the building she could make out a tall obelisk—some sort of memorial with little plaques circling the stone base. She was too far away to see what the plaques said, but at the moment she didn’t care. As she looked out at Nolan, continuing to ignore Laura, her attention turned to the small clusters of people going about their evening walks. They were like ants meandering up and down the burrowed streets, some of them out for exercise, others dipping into the gas station or Duke’s Saloon or the ice cream shack attached to a run-down miniature golf course—“Closed For Renovations since ’97.”

If the Vincents won’t give me the answers I’m looking for, maybe someone down there will
.

“Hey.” She felt a warm hand on her shoulder. “If there’s anything I can do…”

Camilla let out a long breath and rolled over to see Laura looking down at her, genuinely concerned. In that brief moment, her conviction wavered.
She doesn’t know what’s going on at all. The wedding isn’t for another month, maybe they keep their secrets in
the immediate family
. Then the devil’s advocate piped up:
Or maybe she’s just a good actress
.

“I’m sorry,” she replied. “You’ve done nothing but help.”

“Don’t apologize. I had a little breakdown when I started too. Accidentally used the wrong shampoo on the chaise lounge in the north parlor and completely wrecked it.”

“What chaise lounge?”

“Exactly. They threw it out the same day.”

Camilla sniggered. She pictured Laura trying desperately to scrub out a brown spot from a piece of white furniture as the
clack, clack, clack
of Moira’s heels approached menacingly down the hall.

“And you’d think I was a terrorist,” Laura said. “The only reason I survived the vote was because Jasper needed my help closing out the books and Brutus thought the chaise was, quote, ‘ugly as a puckered asshole anyway.’”

“Well, it’s good to know I’m not the only girl to get put before the grand jury her first week in.”

“See? Don’t let it get to you. That said”—Laura motioned around the room—“I didn’t spend my third day in the hospital, so way to one-up me. Oh and fair warning: they’ll probably count this as time off.”

“Time off?” Camilla snickered. “What a luxury. I’m surprised I get some.”

“You don’t. They’ll take it off your paycheck, along with your blazer deposit, the charge for repairing Mr. Yule’s coat, and maybe even the gas Peter used to drive you here.”

Camilla sunk lower on the bed.
Great, I’ll be in deeper debt than when I started
.

“Speaking of paychecks,” Laura continued, “I’m thinking of asking for a raise as a wedding gift. What do you think—better odds hitting the lottery?”

“I think anything more than a place in the family crypt is icing on the cake.”

Laura laughed, and Camilla broke a smile, which, at that particular moment, was the equivalent of a colossal knee-slap.

“Actually,” Laura said as her laughter cooled off, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. About the wedding.” Her voice wavered all of a sudden, as if she had a sensitive question that hadn’t been properly rehearsed yet. “I was wondering if you’d be willing—and I know it’s the worst time to ask, so you don’t have to say anything right away—but I was wondering if you would be willing to participate in the ceremony?”

“The ceremony? You mean...like an usher or something?”

Laura twirled a ringlet of hair. “Think farther down the aisle.”

“Umm. Candle lighter?”

“Bridesmaid,” Laura said sheepishly. “The, uh, the only bridesmaid.”

Camilla was flabbergasted. A day ago she would have been shocked to receive an invitation, and now she was being asked to join the bridal party of a person whom she was having her first serious conversation with.

“My family can’t make it,” Laura started to ramble, “and I thought since you’re, well, since you’re with us now, you wouldn’t mind. Of course, like I said, there’s no need to give me an answer right away or anything but—”

“What should I wear?”

Laura stopped twirling her hair. A smile stretched across her face and she leaned over and gave Camilla a hug, who winced when another jolt of pain jabbed into her stomach. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Laura was right about one thing: it was the worst time to pose the question, like asking a recent burn victim if he’s got a
light, or requesting a glass of water while the Titanic’s still sinking. But in the five seconds she’d had to think it over, a couple of Camilla’s own lonely milestones had popped into mind; first, going to high school prom alone, and second, having no one show up at her college convocation. She didn’t know what it was like to be alone at the altar, but she imagined it felt worse than both those experiences combined.

There was a knock on the door. Camilla and Laura turned to see a doctor hovering in the frame.

“Morning, Ms. Carleton,” he said, despite that it was five p.m. He looked at Laura. “Would you mind, please.”

Laura nodded. As she picked up her coat by the cassette player, she turned and said, “Peter should be back by six. If he’s not, feel free to call.”

“Tell him there’s no need,” the doctor said. “She’ll be out in half an hour. Now, some privacy.” As he checked Camilla’s IV and made notes on her chart, Laura mouthed another
thank you
and left.

“All right.” The doctor smiled. “How are you feeling?”

“Spectacular,” Camilla said, completely straight-faced, and watched him handle his clipboard. The answers to her questions were on those papers, if only she could see them.

“Any pain?”

“A little. Something to do with these stitches?”

The doctor motioned for her to move the sheets away. She pushed her gown aside and he felt gently around the wound, pressing in different places on her abdomen. “Good.”

He took out a pharmaceutical box from his breast pocket and set it on the bedside table. She squinted but couldn’t make out the label.

“Have you ever had similar episodes of pain? Abdominally?”

“No.”

“That’s not surprising. Endometriosis is touch and go—it happens when cells from the endometrium grow outside of the uterine cavity. Some women get recurring aches, while others, like you, might experience random bursts.

“The laparoscopy let me remove the excess tissue that was building up on your ovaries and causing the pain. You’re fine now. And if you take these as an extra precaution”—he pointed at the box on the table—“you’ll be good for a long time.”

Camilla took another deep breath and laid her head on her pillow.
Good. Nothing chronic
.

The doctor hovered by the IV cart for a few seconds longer than he had to. If Camilla wasn’t distracted, she might have suspected that he was stalling.

“Can I ask you a question, Ms. Carleton?”

“If I can ask one first.”

“Please.”

“How many heart surgeries have you done this week?”

The doctor shrugged. “None.”

“What about other physicians in Nolan?”

“I’m afraid I’m the only surgeon outside Whitehorse.”

“Really.” Camilla frowned, drumming her fingers on her chest. “I heard about the car accident with the little girl. I’m wondering if she’s all right.”

“Accident?” He scratched his head. “Do you mean the Gall DUI? No one was hurt at the scene as far as I know. Least of all a little girl.”

Camilla scratched off the last flakes of her nail polish.
Impossible
. She remembered the police blotter: “ACCIDENT ON RAYNER RD.” and a blurry shot of the pickup truck crumpled in the ditch with a tricycle’s handlebars poking over the fender. Didn’t it mention anything about the girl?
It had to!

“If that’s your only question,” the doctor started, “you won’t mind…?”

Camilla shook her head. She was only giving him half of her attention. Maybe less.

“Have you had X-rays before? Ms. Carleton?”

“Not that I remember.” That was a lie, of course. She’d had an arm X-rayed after her father twisted it once for flushing his cigarettes down the toilet, but she didn’t see how that was relevant.

“So,” the doctor said, choosing his words carefully, “you aren’t aware of any preexisting conditions?”

“Preexisting?”

“Endometriosis is fairly harmless when it’s kept in check, but sometimes it signals other disorders.”

“Disorders?” Camilla’s attention was focused on the doctor again like a laser beam. “What?…Wait—” Her hand shot across the bed and snatched the box that the surgeon had set down earlier, bringing it closer into focus. The carton read “Micronor” in friendly blue letters, and below it in tiny italics was
norethisterone
.

She laughed, tapping the box. “Funny. Moira’s idea, right? This has Moira all over it.” She held it out for the doctor. “Thanks but no thanks.”

The doctor didn’t take the box back. “The progestins will minimize regrowth of the cells that I removed.”

“Birth control? That’s going to keep the pain away?”

“It should help.”

Camilla laughed again and placed the carton in her lap. “Fine. A few birds with one stone. Why not?”

“One bird, actually,” the doctor said, noticeably not laughing. “The pill counteracts the endometrium. It seems—and this
is why I asked about the X-rays—your body has its own objections to pregnancy.”

The doctor put down his clipboard and the room suddenly seemed very quiet. The sounds from the hallway and outside the window were distant, and they faded even further when the doctor opened his mouth and said what he had been hesitating to say the entire time.

“Endometriosis can be related to uterine malformations.” He held up a scan and Camilla saw her own skinless reflection in the glossy photo paper. She shrunk back, noticing a twisted difference from her anatomy textbooks.

“The earlier,” the doctor continued, “can cause pain.”

“And the latter?” Camilla forced the question, still eying the scan.

“Infertility.”

All sounds of the outside world vanished. It was like the two of them were on a distant planet in the cold, pressured silence of deep space. Her mind was firing on all cylinders to keep up with the sudden shot of information.

Only two more words echoed in the void of silence: “I’m sorry.”

The doctor stood up and left, leaving Camilla completely alone, numb, trapped in her own broken body.

10

The Wedding

T
he sun wasn’t up and Camilla was already penciling in her final touches of eyeliner. Her bedroom softened with the pullulating colors of dawn—from purples to reds to auburns—as the stars turned off and the full moon hid behind its orangey niqab. Even the birds weren’t awake yet, minus one clumsy magpie that was fumbling around outside of the window, cawing like it had a throat tumor the size of a tennis ball.

She blinked a few times and set her eyeliner on the vanity table. Beside it, the cardboard box of Micronor was bent back, revealing the last pill in the entire sheet of pop-out capsules. A full month had passed since her surgery, and the empty carton of birth control was empirical proof of the slow weeks gone by.

Camilla squeezed out the pill and slipped it past her lips. She closed her mouth, forcing herself to swallow, and felt the tablet leave a lump in her throat.

She hated the birth control. Examining herself in the mirror, she noted the places where she had already lost precious pockets of weight: almost twelve pounds in twenty-eight days, gone. Even the corset that she had on couldn’t string up as tight as it used to, which was actually a relief since her stomach was a
bit cramped and her breasts were as tender as two overripe melons. And
those
were just the physical symptoms. Mentally things weren’t so wonderful either.

In the last three weeks she was increasingly checked out. Her brain, which usually hummed like an electric generator, felt as if someone had sneaked in and sabotaged the fuses. She would catch herself staring into space for minutes—sometimes hours if it was before bed—without a single thought running through her head, and the emptiness, the darkness, was scary. She worried that one day she wouldn’t be able to find her own “on” switch again.

The parlor was getting busier and everyone’s stress levels were spiking. Pickups were coming in steadily, but more and more of the wedding arrangements were derailing only days before the big event. On Tuesday, the florist phoned and said the chrysanthemums might not arrive on time; on Wednesday, a weekend storm warning was issued for the Nolan area, forcing them to organize an indoor backup plan; and on Thursday, their lawn mower went “tits up”—Brutus’s words—meaning they had to rent a Kubota at the minimum
three hour
rate for just twenty minutes of “bushwhacking our own backyard bullshit”—again, Brutus’s phrase.

Camilla caught her blank expression in the mirror and blinked it away. She took a tube of lipstick and puckered up, painting on a wet, maraschino-cherry coat like Georgia O’Keeffe.

This was more primping time than she’d had in the last three weeks combined. Lately she was used to rolling out of bed and stumbling downstairs to the embalming room, lifeless as the corpses she was working with, and on the
really
low days, she’d pretend to be sick so she wouldn’t have to leave her room at all. Deep down she wanted Peter to catch on so she wouldn’t have to spell out the symptoms of depression for him—
Saying it
makes it real
—but deeper down she knew it was better to keep it hidden. She’d seen how mental demons destroyed relationships before, and if she could just keep it at bay it
might
disappear.
It just might
.