Green City in the Sun (108 page)

     And he had replied, in a voice so strained that Deborah heard the pain even all these years later, "Because I found out that she had done an unforgivable thing. She had done something that I cannot abide in a woman who supposedly loves a man. She had lied to me."

     The ringing of the telephone startled her. Deborah turned away from the French doors and saw that she was alone. The steward had built the fire and discreetly left. And the telephone was ringing.

     Jonathan!

     She picked it up, suddenly wanting him, only to hear the hotel operator's voice saying, "I am sorry, madam. But there is no answer at this number. Shall I try later?"

     She thought a moment. Their office was closed on Wednesday afternoons, but he might be in surgery. So she gave the man the number of their answering service. It could page him, tell him to call her.

     There was no use standing by the phone; it took half an hour to get calls connected to California. So she went and sat on the sofa, curled her legs under her, and gazed into the fire.

     On that other rainy night, a year ago, she had stared into the fire in Jonathan's fireplace, feeling a sort of numb shock at hearing what he had just said.

     "It's a thing with me," he had gone on to explain, his voice growing relaxed now that he had eased into it, now that he felt comfortable and safe with Deborah. "All my life, ever since I can remember, I have detested lies. Perhaps it's because of my strict Catholic upbringing. I can forgive almost anything as long as a person is honest about it. But to tell me she loved me and to let me believe a lie, a lie which she later admitted she had no intention of ever correcting, I was beside myself with anger and pain."

     "What was the lie?" Deborah had asked.

     "It's not important. What's important is that knowing that I believed untruths, she was going to go to the altar with me. And knowing that the cloak of dishonesty covered us, she was ready to live a married life with me. It doesn't matter what the lie was, Debbie, only that she lied, and I found out from another source."

     Deborah had closed her eyes and held tightly to him.
Yes, it does matter what the lie was
, she thought.
I must know if it was as big as mine.

     Her own lies had frightened her after that. Deborah had come close, that same evening, to telling Jonathan everything. But their relationship, having moved from the easygoing world of friends to the fragile, oh, so important plane of lovers, was too new, too breakable.
I'll wait
, she had told herself.
I'll tell him when it's safe.

     But it never got safe. Deborah discovered to her dismay that as their
relationship grew stronger, as their love for each other deepened, as he suddenly became the most important thing in her life, her opportunity had slipped away. Until finally they had set the date for their wedding and she was going to stand at the altar with lies.

     When the phone rang again, she looked at her watch. It had taken only five minutes.

     "This is Dr. Treverton," she said to the answering service. "Can you page Dr. Hayes for me?"

     "I'm sorry, Dr. Treverton. Dr. Hayes cannot be reached. Dr. Simonson is taking his calls."

     "But do you know where Dr. Hayes is?" "I'm sorry. I don't. Shall I page Dr. Simonson for you?" She thought a moment. "No. No, thank you." And she hung up, deciding to try Jonathan again in the morning, when it would be night in San Francisco and he was sure to be in the apartment. She left a request with the front desk for an early wake-up call and drifted off into a troubled sleep.

I
WONDER IF YOU REMEMBER ME
, D
R
. T
REVERTON," THE MOTHER
superior said to Deborah as they walked along the lane leading to Grace House. "I was Sister Perpetua then. And I believe I was the last person to see your aunt alive."

     "I remember you," Deborah said, marveling at the memories the walk from the gate was producing. Grace Mission had been her first home, the only childhood home she had really known. And it seemed wrong somehow that a nun in blue robes should be standing on that familiar veranda instead of a white-haired woman in white lab coat, with the ever-present stethoscope around her neck.

     A bronze plaque was on the wall by the front door: GRACE HOUSE, EST. 1919. Deborah was surprised to find that the house was no longer lived in.

     "We keep our administrative offices here," Mother Superior said, "and a small visitor center. You would be impressed to know how many people come from all over the world to visit the home of Dr. Grace Treverton."

     The living room had been converted into a small museum, with glass
cases and framed letters and photographs on the walls. Locked in a display case was Grace's war medal; next to it was the insignia of the Order of the British Empire, given to Grace by Queen Elizabeth in 1960, when she had been made a Dame. There was even an antique supply cabinet filled with old medical instruments, medicine bottles, and faded diagnostic notes.

     Deborah paused before a photograph of Aunt Grace standing at the base of Treetops with Princess Elizabeth, in 1952, and her eyes misted over. It was as if Grace hadn't died at all but lived on.

     "All this really belongs to you, Dr. Treverton," Mother Superior said. "After you had left for America, I found storage boxes full of keepsakes. I had thought you would be coming back for them. I even wrote to you in California. Did you not receive my letters?"

     Deborah wordlessly shook her head. She had thrown those letters away—anything bearing a Kenya stamp—without opening them.

     "And then we decided to share these things with the world. Of course, if you wish to take anything away with you, it is your right, Dr. Treverton."

     Fifteen years ago Deborah had left Kenya with the only mementos she had wanted. Among them had been her aunt's turquoise brooch. Unfortunately that stone had been stolen from Deborah during her first year in medical school. A fellow student, one of the few other women in the class and an unhappy person, had admired the stone to the point of asking Deborah if she could buy it from her. When it came up missing, Deborah knew who had taken it but had no proof. The same girl dropped out of school a few weeks later and returned to her home up north in Washington. At the time Deborah had been upset over the stone's loss; as the years passed, however, she had come to accept the impermanence of all things—possessions, relationships—and had decided that the turquoise had been meant to be passed along.

     Deborah turned to the kindly spoken nun, whose black face sharply contrasted with the white simple of her habit, and said, "These things do belong to the world, as you say. I have no need of them. May I see Mama Wacheranow?"

     As they crossed the lawn, Deborah said, "Do you know why she is asking for me, Mother Superior?"

     The nun frowned slightly. "It was not an easy decision for me to make, sending for you, Dr. Treverton. Because you see, I am not sure she is asking for you. The poor woman is so terribly distraught. She came here on her own, you know. She appeared one day, very tired and in ill health—we estimate her age to be well over ninety—saying that the ancestors had instructed her to come here to die. She lapses into moments of lucidness, but most of the time she seems to be confused. Her mind moves to and from different points in time. Occasionally she will even wake up and asked for Kabiru Mathenge, her husband! But she has called out the Treverton name so many times, and she is so insistent on such occasions and so agitated as to require medication that I thought a letter to you might help. I pray that once she has seen you, she will rest more easily."

     Inside the bungalow they were greeted by a young nursing sister in a blue uniform and blue veil and taken to a bed at the end of the sunlit ward. Wachera was asleep, her dark head resting peacefully on the white pillow.

     Deborah stared down at her, prepared to feel anger and bitterness toward this woman who had been so cruel to her. But strangely, all Deborah saw was an old woman, frail and unthreatening. She didn't remember Wachera's being so
small
....

     "She usually wakens later in the day," the young African nurse said. "Can we telephone you?"

     "Please. I'll be at the Outspan."

     "Let me offer you some tea, Dr. Treverton," the mother superior said. "We feel so honored to have you visit us."

     Deborah talked for a while with Mother Superior, drinking Countess Treverton tea and discussing Mama Wachera.

     "Her grandson visits her quite often," Perpetua said. "Dr. Mathenge is a good man. His wife died a few years ago. Did you know that?"

     "Yes. But I don't know how she died."

     "Malaria, it was. Just when we thought we had conquered it, now there's a new strain that is resistant to chloroquine. Dr. Mathenge is carrying on the work he and his wife both had been doing. We pray for him daily. Dr. Mathenge is taking healing and the Lord to the people of Kenya."

     Afterward Deborah visited the eucalyptus glade, where the Sacrario
Duca d'Alessandro was still maintained by an old caretaker, the light still burning inside. Deborah liked to think that her grandmother and the Italian duke dwelt in a kind of eternal, spiritual lovemaking.

     T
HE RAIN WAS
coming down hard by the time she returned to the Out-span Hotel. She went straight to her cottage, bypassing the dining room where lunch was being served. As she closed the door behind her, cutting off the wind and driving rain, and began to remove her damp sweater, Deborah received a shock.

     "Jonathan!"

     He rose from the sofa. "Hi, Debbie. I hope you don't mind. I told them I was your husband. A bribe got me the key to your room."

     "Jonathan," she said again, "what are you doing here?"

     "You sounded so strange on the phone the last time we talked that I got worried. I decided to come and find out what's going on."

J
ONATHAN OPENED HIS ARMS TO RECEIVE HER.

     But Deborah hesitated by the door. She hadn't planned to tell him so soon. She had wanted time, to think and to prepare. So she went to the phone and asked for room service. As she ordered salad, fruit, sandwiches, and tea, she kept her eye on Jonathan. He looked tired.

     By the time Deborah had hung up and was removing her sweater, Jonathan was on his knees lighting a fire.

     This was a familiar scene, one which they had enacted many times in their apartment on Nob Hill. Coming in out of fog or rain, shrugging out of wet clothes, Jonathan started the fire, Deborah made the tea, and then came the hours of warmth and coziness, just the two of them, talking quietly, reviewing the day—patients, surgery, plans for their new office. It was within such golden circles of firelight that their love for each other had grown and strengthened and bound them together.

     But now the fire smelled wrong because the wood was foreign, and Jonathan kept his leather jacket on; the tea was brought by an African room
steward, who served in silence while Deborah remained standing, ready with the five-shilling tip; and then, when she was alone with Jonathan again, she didn't go sit next to him on the sofa, sliding under his arm, curling her legs up and leaning into his body. She stood by the fireplace, looking at him, suddenly afraid.

     "What's happened, Debbie?" he asked at last.

     Deborah struggled for self-control. "Jonathan, I lied to you."

     His expression didn't change.

     "You asked me what a dying old African medicine woman was to me. I told you I didn't know. That was a lie. She's my grandmother."

     He remained perfectly still, staring up at her.

     "At least," she added, "I thought so at the time."

     The fire cracked loudly, and a red-hot shower of sparks went up the chimney. Outside heavy rain had turned the day as dark as night. It pelted the veranda roof; it drenched the forest that grew at the bottom of the sloping lawn. Deborah went to the low table in front of the sofa and poured two cups of tea. But they remained untouched.