Flashback (1988) (25 page)

He turned on his heel and stalked from the room. The nurse looked down at Annie and shrugged helplessly.

“I’ll be back a little later,” she said.

“I want her to get some Valium,” Norman ordered when they were out of earshot. “No, no, on second thought, make it Haldol, one point five by mouth every eight hours. Give her the first dose now.”

Doreen tavalley hesitated.

Norman smiled at her and patted her on the shoulder.

“Hey, Doreen, don’t worry, he said. “This is absolutely routine stuff. Nobody
wants
to go to a nursing home, but some people have to. And listen, I didn’t get to be chief of staff in this system by not caring about my patients. If anything, I care
too
much.

“Believe me, it’s all for the best. The Haldol will calm her down, and by this evening she’ll he a thousand times easier to reason with. You just watch. Okay? … Now, about my in-service talk next Thursday. What do you say we…

16

The 1938 Fleet monoplane cut through the warm midday air like an arrow, soared over the dense forest panoply and then across the broad, grassy field. It dipped and looped like a yoyo, barrel rolling again and again, sunlight exploding off the hand-polished, crimson butyrate paint of its wings. At the far edge of the meadow it nosed upward, streaking toward a solitary puff of cloud in an otherwise flawless sky.

From his spot on a large boulder, Zachary watched intently as his fingers, through minute movements of the stick atop his radio control, choreographed the flight.

A stall, a spin, a roll out, a second pass over the field; Zack had built the Fleet as a high schooler, and although he had sometimes gone a year or more without the opportunity to fly her, he had kept the engine and the finish in perfect condition.

With a final, wide bank, he eased the model upwind and set her down sweetly in the grass. The plane was, as always, fascinating to watch, and this day, with any luck, she would be more than just a hobby. This day, she would be a tool to help him unlock the tortured silence of a young boy.

“Hey, Ace, that was a nifty piece of flying.”

Suzanne, dressed in snug white shorts and a Dartmouth T-shirt, stood on a small rise, looking as if she might have just drifted down from the sun. She had a plaid blanket draped over one arm and a wicker picnic basket hanging from the other.

“You know,” he said, squinting up at her, “about twenty minutes ago I started getting this funny feeling you might show up.”

“Do we have time for lunch?” she asked, making her way down the slope.

Zack glanced at his watch.

“About forty-five minutes. I’m glad you’re here.”

Suzanne stretched on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

“Me, too,” she said. “Can I set this food out, or is Cheapdog lurking somewhere?”

“No, no. Mop-face and the Fleet out there are avowed enemies. Sort of like sibling rivalry. He’s home digging up the yard.”

She spread the blanket and set out dishes of fried chicken, smoked fish, and salad. Then she extracted a small portable radio, set it on the grass, and fiddled with the dial until she found WEVO. The announcer was thanking his guests for participating in
Midday Roundtable
and inviting listeners to stay turned for a special edition of
Music of the Masters
.

“You must think I’m a little crazy for the way I’ve been acting around you,” she said as she poured lemonade. “I wanted to apologize.”

Zack shrugged.

“No need,” he said. “You’ve had a few more important things to deal with than me.”

“Perhaps. Just the same, I’ve been acting like a jerk, and I’m sorry.”

He reached over and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand.

“Fair enough,” he said. “If that’s what you need, then apology accepted. There, do you feel better?”

“Zack, I … I want to explain.”

“Hey, I don’t require any—”

“No, I want to.” She studied her hands. “At least I think I do.”

For much of the night she had sat with Helene, struggling to come to grips with the past.

“Nothing matters except the truth,” her friend had said. “Nothing matters except how you really, truly feel. Right here, in your gut. I go out the way I do, see men the way I do, because I honestly know, in my heart, that I hate being alone. Otherwise I’d stay at home or join the Ammonoosuc Valley Quilters. Believe me I would. You don’t have to do it my way, or anyone else’s way for that matter, but your own, Suze. But—and it’s a big but—you can’t keep fighting your feelings. You can’t fight who you are. If you think you care about the man, tell him who you are, where you’ve been. If he can -deal with it, fine. If he can’t, that’s his problem.”

It all had made so much sense while they were talking. Now,
Suzanne was not so sure. There was more than a little to be said for living the safe life.

The meadow, abutting the low hills southwest of town, glowed verdant and golden in the dry afternoon sun. For a time they ate in silence, save for the deep, cultured voice of the WEVO announcer, who was extolling the virtues of an English composer whose name Zack missed.

“Zachary,” Suzanne said suddenly, “the other night was the first time I’ve made love in more than three years.”

“Well, you certainly haven’t gotten rusty,” he replied. “I would also guess that whatever the reason for those three years of celibacy, it wasn’t a lack of offers.”

She smiled at him wistfully.

“You’re sweet. Actually, there haven’t been that many. I haven’t been able to trust any man enough even to be encouraging.”

“If you’re trying to make me feel special, you’re doing a great job.”

“You
are
special.… Zack, my husband—my ex-husband—did an incredible hatchet job on my life, and then left me for dead. The scars that formed just don’t seem to want to heal. I don’t put all the blame on him for what happened. I could have put my foot down when I figured out what was going on. I could have gotten out. But I stayed. I always told myself it was for Jen, but looking back, I realize that I simply couldn’t admit to myself how blind I had been—how badly I had misjudged the man I had married. And I couldn’t accept that he didn’t care enough about me to change.”

“You were young.”

“Twenty-three, if you call that young. And not a very worldly twenty-three at that. Paul was a Ph.D. Brilliant, handsome, charming as hell. Already an associate professor at thirty-five. Every woman in school had a crush on him. Unfortunately, what they didn’t know—what I didn’t know—was how sick he was inside. He was a sociopath, Zachary. A womanizer, a drug addict, and a glib, an unbelievably glib liar. He used me. In every way imaginable, he used me.”

She searched Zack’s eyes for any signs of judgment or revulsion, but saw only sadness.

“You don’t have to share any more of this if you don’t want to,” he said, taking her hand.

“No, I’m okay. Much better than I thought I’d be. You’re really very easy to talk to.

“For several years,” she went on, “Paul stole prescriptions from the hospital, made them out to his women or his cronies or to people who didn’t even exist, and signed my name. He had my signature down even better than I did. He hit up a dozen or more wholesale houses and worked his way through just about every pharmacy in the state.”

“Jesus …”

Suzanne gazed off toward the mountains to the south and began rubbing at her eyes.

“Are you okay?” Zack asked.

“Huh? … Oh, sure. I’m fine. Fine.”

She fished through her purse and put on her sunglasses.

“Where was I?”

“You were telling me about the prescriptions. Listen, if you want to change the subject, it’s perfectly—”

“No, no. It feels good to be able to talk about it.” She reached beneath her sunglasses and again rubbed her eyes. “Besides, there’s not that much more to tell. Somehow Paul must have found out that the DEA people were on to me, because a week before they showed up at our door, he emptied out our bank account, sold everything we had of value, and took off. No note, no call, nothing. Jen was only two at the time. A year or so later, I heard that he was teaching at a medical school in Mexico. Somebody else said they saw him at an international conference in Milan. But by that time all I wanted was never to hear his name again.”

“What happened to you?”

“Pardon?”

“I asked what happened to you. Suze, are you sure you’re all right?”

“Is the glare bothering you?”

“No. Why?”

“Nothing … nothing. What did you ask?”

“Suzanne, let’s just leave it for another time—”

“No! Now, wh-what was it?”

She continued to stare off at the mountains. The muscles in her face had grown lax and expressionless. Her hands had begun to tremble.

Zack studied her uncomfortably. He glanced at his watch. Barbara Nelms and her son were due in ten minutes.

“Suzanne?”

She did not respond.

“Listen,” he said, shutting off the radio and putting it back into the wicker basket, “I think maybe you’ve shared enough for one day.” He began repacking the leftovers. “I’m just happy you felt able to talk about it with—”

“You know, ridiculous as it may sound,” Suzanne went on fluidly, “I’m not sure I know exactly what happened next.…”

Zack looked at her queerly. The lifelessness was gone from her face and her voice, and she was as animated as ever. He battled back the urge to again ask her if she was okay.

“… One minute, I was suspended from the hospital, sitting in lawyers’ offices, fighting with the child welfare people and trying to fend off the DEA animals, and the next I was here in Sterling, putting in pacemakers.”

Zack studied her for any lingering sign of distraction, but saw none. It was as if a cloud had passed briefly across the sun and then had suddenly released it. He forced concern from his mind. She seemed, as she had claimed, to be absolutely fine.

“Did Frank have a hand in that?” he managed.

“I guess. One day he called, the next day he came down and interviewed me, and the next day, it seemed, the pressure that had been on me from all those sides began to disappear.”

“Well, good for Frank.” Zack felt his tension recede. “We haven’t been getting along too well lately. I think I’ll have to try a little harder.”

“I’m not really sure if it was him or Ultramed,” she said, “but someone got the wolves off my back.”

“That’s a horrible story.”

“Except for the ending, it is.”

“Call that part of it the beginning,” Zack said.

“I hope telling you all of that helps you see why I’ve had a little problem with letting a man back into my life. And also why I feel obligated to support Ultramed wherever I can. Thanks to Paul, loyalty has moved ahead of just about everything else on my list of qualities that matter in a person.”

“I understand.”

She kissed him—once, and then again. The last drop of his worry vanished.

“So,” she said, still cradling his face in her hands, “just be patient with me, okay?”

“Just once in more than three years, huh?”

“Yup.”

He repacked the last of their lunch and pulled her down to him.

“As soon as we have a little time, I’d like to help you improve on that average.”

She brushed her lips across his neck.

“In that case, just don’t stop trying. My horoscope told me to be on the lookout for a tall, dark stranger who did coin tricks.”

He ran his fingers slowly down the back of her thigh and over her calf.

“Thanks for the picnic,” he said.

“Thanks for dessert. And listen, good luck with the Nelms boy. I hope this works out. If you get anywhere today, I think we should consider writing up our technique for some journal. We can title the article ‘Pediatric Neurology Alfresco.’”

She pushed herself to her feet.

Zack walked her to her car and watched until she had disappeared down the hill. Then he returned to the field, absently humming a passage from
Fantasia on Greensleeves
by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Toby Nelms looked chronically ill. His skin was midwinter pale, with several small patches of impetigo alongside his nose and at the corner of his lips. He was thin as a war orphan and carried himself with a dispirited posture, his gaze nearly fixed on the ground. But it was the listless, dull gray of his eyes that worried Zack the most. They were the eyes of utter defeat which he had encountered so many times in terminally ill patients—the eyes of death.