Evenfall (27 page)

“Sooo, Mrs. Murphy,” he says, skimming through the paperwork. “How are we today?”

“About the same, thank you,” Gert says. She releases Andie’s hand.

“Meaning?” The doctor closes the folder and leans forward.

“On a day-to-day basis, I’m fine. It’s just these…” She waves a hand. “…little spells.”

“Hmmm. Had any recently?” He unfurls his stethoscope from around his neck and steps next to her.

“One or two,” Gert admits. The doctor presses the stethoscope against Gert’s chest and listens for what seems like an eternity to Andie, then moves it around to her back and listens there.

“And we have you on, what?” He removes the stethoscope from his ears, checks Gert’s file, and scribbles a note in it. “Metoprolol?”

Gert nods.

“And are you finding yourself fatigued while on it?”

“A little,” she says. “But it’s manageable.”

“Good. I’d like you to continue to take it, but frankly, I
think we need to take additional steps here. I’m not comfortable with the fact that you’re still having these episodes, and I’d really like to get to the root of the problem.”

Andie steps forward. “I’m sorry, but I’m a little lost here. What’s going on?”

The doctor glances at Gert, and she gives a slight nod.

“Okay, your, uhhh,…”

“Aunt,” Andie supplies.

“Right. Your aunt came to see me…,” he glances at the file, “approximately eight months ago, complaining of heart palpitations, dizziness, and shortness of breath. We did an EKG to see what was going on, and it came back normal. An X-ray showed no fluid in the lungs. She refused further testing, so we started her on a beta blocker, which was supposed to help control the problem, but it sounds like it’s not working.”

“So what do we do?” Andie asks. Behind her, Gert snorts at her use of the pronoun, but Andie keeps her eyes focused on the doctor.

“Well, frankly, I’m at a bit of a loss,” he says. He rests his foot on the chair again. “Afib isn’t all that uncommon in someone your aunt’s age. But the medicine should be controlling the symptoms. The fact that it’s not is a bit worrisome.”

Andie shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Afib—atrial fibrillation—simply means that the atrial part of the heart is beating too fast. If that’s what she has, the medicine should control it. The fact that it’s not…” He trails
off, stroking his chin. “What I’d like to do—what I wanted to do in the beginning—is order some more tests. But your aunt, as you probably know, can be difficult to persuade.”

“I’m sitting right here,” Gert says irritably.

“I’ll persuade her,” Andie says. “What kind of tests are we talking about?”

“Well, I’d like to do another EKG, and an echocardiogram to check heart function. And maybe some bloodwork, to look for anemia, or thyroid problems.” He ticks them off on his fingers.

“Okay,” Andie says.

“Ideally, I’d like to admit her. Then we could monitor her over a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour period, and have a better idea of what’s going on.”

“Absolutely not,” Gert says.

The doctor sighs. “Well, these tests should at least help us rule some more things out. I’ll see if we can get you in today, so you don’t have to come back.” He scribbles another note in the file, stands, and heads for the door. He pauses with one hand on the knob. “So, any questions?”

“Any idea what it is, if it’s not the afib thing?” Andie asks.

“None that I’d like to speculate on just now.”

“But you must have some idea.”

The doctor looks at Andie. “If I had to bet money—and I’m not a betting man—I’d put my stake on a dropped heart beat. For some reason, it’s just not showing up.”

“Well,” Andie says. “That doesn’t sound too bad. Right?” She looks at Gert, still sitting quietly behind her, then back at the doctor.

“Let me put it this way,” he says, lowering his voice. “If you can’t persuade your aunt to listen to reason, the next time she faints, she might not wake up.”

THE afternoon passes by in a slow blur. Andie traipses with her aunt from department to department, the sharp smells of alcohol and disinfectant lodged in her nostrils. Her aunt submits to the tests, grumbling only once, when the technician fails to find a vein on her second try. She tells the unfortunate woman to go practice on an orange.

By the time they’re finished, Andie has no problem persuading Gert to let her drive home. The spot where her aunt had blood drawn is starting to bruise, an ugly, purple mark. When they’re on the highway Andie glances over. Gert’s eyes are closed, her shoes slipped off. Andie lets her be as the miles tick by, but when they get off at the exit, the McCallister farm spread beneath them like a quilt, she clears her throat.

“I’m resting, not dead,” Gert says, keeping her eyes closed.

“Yeah, well, that can change if you don’t start listening to the doctor,” Andie says.

“Doctors,” Gert says irritably. She shifts in her seat, sits up, opens her eyes. “Just because they have penises, they think they have all the answers.”

“Aunt Gert!”

“Oh, don’t look at me as if you’ve never heard the word. Most of the men I worked with thought that their getting out of bed each day was enough to hang the moon. And I’m sure the women doctors of today are just the same.”

“Okay, fine,” Andie says. “But he’s worried about you, and so am I. Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“Why?” Gert asks. “What difference would it have made?”

Andie’s about to protest, but the words sit uneasily in her throat. She thinks of her life eight months ago, the hours spent at cafe tables, the markets, the dust motes drifting down through the palazzo. Neal’s affair had not begun eight months ago. Or maybe it had, but not for Andie.

“You should have told me,” is what she says instead. “I should have known.”

They’ve reached the cottage’s driveway, and as they bump over the pitted gravel lane, wild rose branches and forsythia reach out to scrape against the car’s side. Just ahead of the car, a turkey stops in the middle of the driveway, perfectly still. Eight babies muddle around her, darting this way and that, until she turns and leads them off into the undergrowth.

The two women watch until the last chick has disappeared, and then Andie takes her foot off the brake and they creep their way to the house.

“Well, thank you for coming,” Gert says. “I hope it wasn’t too trying.”

“Want me to come in and help you get settled?” Andie asks.

Gert snorts. “Please. Despite what that young cub of a doctor seems to think, I am perfectly capable of getting myself inside.”

“Just take it easy, okay? I know you think he’s an idiot, but he really seemed worried that you have this dropped heartbeat thing.”

“I don’t,” Gert says. “I’m fine, so please don’t worry, Andrea.”

“Aunt Gert, a few weeks ago you fainted practically on top of me. You look—no offense—exhausted. Something’s not right,” Andie says. She never contradicts her aunt, but since she’s started, she might as well keep going. “If you don’t think it’s a dropped heartbeat, okay, but tell me what you think it is, please. Because you know something is wrong.”

Gert’s already opened the car door and swung her legs to the ground, but now she leans back against the seat. The two women sit for a long time, listening to the start of the evening sounds around them: the rustle of the tall grass in the cooling wind, the slowing of the crickets’ song, the long, liquid silences that run beneath everything else. Gert rubs her eyes, and just when Andie thinks she’ll never speak, she does.

“It’s regret, mostly,” she says, before turning and gazing out again through the open car door.

Andie waits patiently, but when Gert doesn’t say anything more, she reaches across the console and touches her on the shoulder.

“Aunt Gert?” she says, and when her aunt turns it’s as if she’s coming back from some far-off place, a distant voyage. She looks at Andie’s face. “Oh, it’s not so bad as all that, Andrea,” she says, patting Andie’s hand. “I’ve had a fine life, don’t get me wrong. And you have always been the best part of it. But there are things I’ve left undone, and now, when it’s far too late, I find it…difficult…to live with that lack.”

Andie doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing.

“Take it from me. There’s not always time to go back and fix things the way you should, so you need to get it right the first time. You need to pay attention.”

“To what?” Andie asks. Her aunt smiles, but it’s a sad smile. She lets go of Andie’s hand, leans over, and kisses her niece on the forehead as if she’s a child.

“It’s not to what, Andie. It’s never to what. It’s to whom.”

FROM my window in the attic I watch the station wagon as it winds its way along the dusty track of the driveway. I follow its path to the road, watch it dip and rise and finally be lost to sight on its journey to the hospital. I can hear Neal Roberts moving about in the rooms beneath me. He’s in the spare bedroom now, looking, no doubt, for something small and precious he can slip into his pockets. The silver snuffbox that sat on my grandfather’s desk in the living room is missing, as is the small oil landscape that graced the parlor’s mantel. I have an idea as to where they have gone.

In the distance, thunderclouds gather and roil. It’s a ways off yet, but a storm is coming, tonight or tomorrow at the latest. I think of Nina, hope that wherever she is, she’ll take shelter. The fool dog’s petrified of thunder.

The air snaps and sparks around me, white hot. I feed off the energy of the coming tempest, feel my anger burn and grow. A hairline crack appears in the window, spreads into a diamond pattern. Neal Roberts is coming up the stairs. I hear him talking on his sleek black phone, barely larger than a book of matches. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I think we should move fast on it. It’s not going to happen otherwise, and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

A pause.

“Well, once she sees the size of the check I don’t think that will be a problem. The place is an albatross anyways.”

I bar the door to him, make the molecules of wood swell until it jams tight against the doorframe. He tugs at it, braces himself, and pulls on the handle with all his might. When he’s straining his hardest, I let the wood go back to its natural shape. The door flies open and he falls against the wall, cursing.

I wait, like a spider in its web, and soon enough his head peers cautiously around the corner. He’s watchful in a way I didn’t expect, until I remember Andie warning him about a hive. My energy reaches a fever pitch, so high even Neal can hear the humming, but he doesn’t turn back.

He pokes about, peering into corners, lifting dust sheets to see what’s beneath. Andie’s painting rates only a cursory glance, but he combs through my grandfather’s ship’s log. A maple tea caddy catches his eye. A silver berry spoon makes its way into his pocket. I wait all the while, until he’s close, so close I can feel him breathing. He notices the crack in the windowpane and stoops to peer at it. I set the molecules of
the glass to vibrate in time with my humming. The window shatters, spraying the room with ice-sharp particles.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, backing away. Drops of blood slowly ooze from his face. Bits of glass sparkle at his shoulders and cuffs. I let the humming grow louder so that it fills the room. I have never been this strong, this angry, and I am drunk with it, with the power I command. As he stands and scrambles toward the door, I cause his cigarette case to fall from his pocket. It bounces once and pops open, spraying cigarettes across the floor.

It must be instinct, but he makes a mad grab for them, scooping them up in fistfuls as they roll beneath his feet. He’s reaching for the last one when it lands in a crevice, a tiny indentation between two boards. I see him look at it, considering, and then he slips his index finger into the hole and pulls up.

No
, I roar. I mean to breathe wind and fire, but what comes out are little puffs of smoke. They swirl about the room and disappear. Neal reaches down, pulls out the dirty gray bundle, and unwraps it. He holds his discovery up to the light. His bare fingers touch the metal as he turns it this way and that, and suddenly I’m gasping, fighting to stay. The blackness overwhelms me, blots everything out, and I’m on the verge of disappearing when Neal wraps the ring back in its cloth and stuffs it in his pocket.

My fire has burned away. I’m barely a spark, a single red-hot ember struggling not to be extinguished. Neal looks around at the mess, at the glass that shines in the sunlight, then clatters down the steps. I want to weep, to curse his name, but all I can do is watch him go.

WALKING home from the cottage, Andie hears Gert’s voice over and over again in her head.
It’s never to what, Andie. It’s to whom
. The hours at the hospital and the conversation with her aunt have left her in a kind of daze, the kind she gets when she wakes from a nap. She wants to take a cool shower, to slip into some fresh clothes and curl up on the porch with a glass of lemonade and Hartt’s
History of Italian Renaissance Art
. She wants to lose herself in its pages of frescoes and marble sculptures, stone palazzos and quiet courtyards, until she drifts off to sleep.

What she does not want to do is talk with Neal. He comes bounding down the hall stairs as soon as she opens the door. She’d forgotten about their fight until now, and she braces herself for the inevitable aftermath. But he surprises her.

“Hey, there!” he says, giving her an enthusiastic hug. “How’d it go?”

She winces at the sound of his voice so close to her ear. When he releases her, she leans against the front door and rubs her forehead.

“That bad, huh?”

“No, it went all right. I just have a headache.”

“I’ll bet,” he says. “Look, I’m sorry I was such a dick this morning. I don’t know what got into me.”

“It’s okay.” Neal apologetic is so far from what she expected, she’s willing to let the whole episode go, but he keeps talking.

“No, it’s not. Here you are all worried about your aunt, and I’m just thinking about me. It’s just that since I got here, you’ve been so distant, baby. You’re making me crazy.” If she’s ever going to tell him about Cort, now is the time, but then he leans in and starts to nuzzle her ear and she finds she just can’t do it.