More Than Friends (13 page)

J.D. stopped short and glared at him. "I'm supposed to forget it? I'm supposed to condone it? Is that what Annie did? My God, poor Annie."

"We'll work it out."

"She's too good for you, Sam." He set off again. Sam kept pace. "I won't let one stupid mistake ruin my life."

"It ruined Michael's."

"Not yet."

"He loved you," J.D. argued in a hoarse whisper as he swung past the receptionist.

Sam caught the door in the middle of its neat MAXWELL, ROPER and DINE

and followed J.D. into the lobby. "He will again."

"Not if I can help it," J.D. vowed. He jabbed the elevator button and, when the door didn't open, continued to jab.

"That would be too bad."

"Yeah, well, that's the way it is. I don't forget it when friends stab me in the back."

Sam thrust a hand through his hair. He was agitated and upset, which pleased J.D. immensely. As far as he was concerned, their friendship was over. He stared at the digital readout above the elevator door, refusing to demean himself by paying Sam further heed.

In a quiet voice Sam said, "It was one time, J.D. My mind was off somewhere between Dunn v. Hanover and Annie, and Teke was thinking of you, not me. It was over before either of us knew what was happening, and we're paying the price, believe me, we are. If you think I'll ever forgive myself, you're wrong."

J.D. kept his eyes where they were. He refused to react.

"Annie and I thought it better not to tell the kids."

"I disagree. They should know what they're dealing with."

"Don't say anything, J.D. It'll make things worse."

"They have a right to the truth."

"The whole truth?" Sam asked. There was warning in his voice. "You want them to know about those little trysts you've had?" J.D. glared at him. "You bastard."

"Does Teke know about those?"

"You know she doesn't." He had worked damn hard to make sure of it. He liked being able to satisfy himself with other women. It made up for the monotony of his relationship with Teke. "Are you threatening to tell her?"

Sam shook his head, but there was an anger in him that infuriated J.D. all the more. He didn't know what Sam had to be angry about. He was the one who'd been cuckolded.

But Sam was angry indeed. "I'm saying you're a fine one to be getting up on your high horse over this. You haven't been faithful to Teke all this time, but she's been faithful to you, and I've been faithful to Annie. What kind of hypocrite are you?"

"I didn't make it with my best friend's wife," J.D. said as the elevator arrived. He stepped inside, half expecting Sam to follow and argue his case in front of the people there. But the door slid shut, leaving him with those three people, no Sam, and a headful of rage. Teke felt as though she were in a netherworld of unhappiness. Not having slept more than a handful of hours in the past two nights combined, she was

dead on her feet. She had changed clothes and freshened up with the toiletries J.D. had brought, but she needed a shower. Worst of all, despite the removal of the respirator, she was growing more discouraged. Michael's condition hadn't changed.

Increasingly, in the hours she spent by his bedside, talking to a body that wouldn't respond, she found herself thinking about what would happen if he never woke up. Or if he woke up paralyzed. Or if he woke up with the mind of a three-year-old.

Thought of any one of those possibilities set her to shaking. So did sight of Sam. And Grady. He was the worst, the worst! He kept coming, standing there in the hall, reminding her of another life. But, damn it, that life was over. He had no business haunting her. Grady had been her strength once. Now she had none. What she needed was Annie, but Annie didn't want her, and Teke couldn't blame her for that. Teke had been a friend of the very worst kind.

"Hi, Mikey," she said weakly. She ran her fingers along his arm.

"How're you doing?" She had said the same words, asked the same question, hundreds of times. Her voice was like a broken record, sounding more warped with each repetition. "Your mouth looks good, honey," she tried now. For lack of anything more intelligent to do, she was starting to speak all her thoughts aloud. "I'm glad they took the respirator away. You didn't need a tube in your throat. Now you won't be frightened when you wake up. There'll just be the IV needles, but they'll come out as soon as you can eat. Aren't you hungry?

Wouldn't you like a Double Whopper?"

She took a weary breath and fell silent. Talking was a strain. If only Michael would show that he heard, she could talk forever, but he refused to do that.

Her head flew up when J.D. burst into the room. "I just had a swell time at the office," he said.

She wasn't so exhausted that she didn't hear his sarcasm. It coated his words, the same way something terrible controlled his features. He grasped the rail and faced her across Michael's still form. "First, I had a little visit from Virginia, who said she thought you were having an affair with Sam. Then I confronted Sam, and he confirmed it. You tramp."

She felt a sudden, odd calm. Fatigue, perhaps. Or numbness. Most surely relief. It was better that he know the truth.

"How could you do this to me?" he cried, sounding more angry than hurt. "Didn't I treat you well? Didn't I give you a house and clothes and children and food? Didn't I please you in bed?" Technically he did, if reaching orgasm was the measure. If foreplay and after play counted, there was little pleasure. Their lovemaking had lost its glow years before.

"How often?" he asked sharply. "How often did you do it?"

"Once."

His eyes narrowed. "With Sam, maybe, but with other men? Were there little bang jobs in the woods with the landscaper, or backstage with that bearded high school drama teacher?"

His words cut to the quick in that they painted the picture of a whore, which she didn't consider herself at all. Still, she welcomed whatever insults he wanted to throw. She deserved the punishment. She was guilty of betraying him with Sam. He had a right to be angry.

"Huh?" he prodded. "Or didn't I hit on the right scenario? Was it in the bathroom of the gas station while the car was being serviced? Or, goddamn it, in

my own bed with the exterminator?"

"You know it wasn't," she murmured.

"No, I don't. I don't know anything! You're in Constance all day long, doing what I assumed were perfectly innocent things, while I'm in Boston earning the money to support you. I trusted you, Teke." Her eyes dropped to Michael. It occurred to her that they shouldn't be talking this way within his earshot. Then she realized the folly of that. He hadn't appeared to take in anything she had said before. She didn't think that would suddenly change. And if it did? If harsh, frank, even crude words could bring him from his coma, she was all for it.

"Well?" J.D. asked. "Aren't you going to defend yourself?" She raised one shoulder and let it fall. That was all the energy she could muster. "How?" she asked. "What I did was wrong. It was only one time, but it was wrong."

"Damn right it was, and look at the consequences." Her eyes were on Michael. "I've been doing that every single second since it happened."

"You put him here." When she nodded, he amended that to, "You and Sam." He straightened and took an audible breath, the kind Teke had come to associate over the years with the passing of judgment. She wasn't surprised when he said, "My parents were never wild about you. From the very first, they had doubts. They thought I was marrying beneath my station, and they were right. You never did fit in as well as I'd hoped you would. Oh, you looked pretty enough when we went places, you never did me any harm, but you weren't an asset, not like some wives. Some wives help their husbands' careers. You never did."

Of all the little digs he'd gotten in over the

years--I think your hair needs another combing, or

The children should have new sneakers if we're going to the country club cookout, or Don't you have a dress that's a little more elegant?--that was a new one. "How was I supposed to help your career?"

"By talking to people. Impressing them." J.D. went on. "You've aged well. I'll give you that. I can understand how you turn men on." She had never defined herself that way. "I don't--"

"I can even stretch my imagination to see that with the kids in school all day, it must get lonely for you sometimes. I mean, the company of other women might be fine for planning little to-dos, but the rest of the time you're home and I'm at work. If you'd said you needed something else, I might have accommodated you." His voice turned cruel. "But to go behind my back and do it with my best friend, how low can you go, Teke? How desperate can you get? Was he good? Did you like it with him?"

The discussion was starting to sicken her. "I wasn't--"

"He's athletic, is that it? He's taller and more coordinated than me. Was it a challenge? Something you'd been thinking about for years? All those times in Maine when we were sitting around in bathing suits, were you thinking about it then? Did you once stop to think about Annie?" I wasn't thinking at all, she wanted to cry, but he was ranting on, and she let him. The doctors and nurses were elsewhere. The sooner it was all out, the better.

"When we made love, you and me, were you thinking about him? Or about someone else? Well, I wasn't, Teke. I was thinking of you every time we made love"--his voice grew tighter and lower-"which wasn't all that often lately, was it? If I didn't suggest it, we didn't do it. So why was I always the

initiator? Because you were putting out for other people." She had already denied there had been anyone but Sam. She didn't have the strength to do it again.

"What a bitch. You're a lousy wife, Teke. You're a lousy mother." That stirred her. Mothering had always been her strong suit. It was what she had wanted to do from the time she had known mothering existed. "I've always done everything right until now," she said in her own defense.

"But you blew it!" J.D. told her. "None of the rest counts now. Look at Michael. Look what you've done to him. You betrayed him, just like you betrayed me. Face it, Teke, you're a lousy mother." She couldn't let it stand. "No. I made one mistake."

"You're a failure."

"One mistake, and I'll make up for it. I'll spend the rest of my life at it, if need be."

"May not be too long, if he dies."

She felt a sharp pain in her middle. "Shhh, J.D."

"He could. Or be a vegetable for the rest of his life. How you gonna handle that? They don't stage art auctions for patients in long-term vegetative states!"

"He won't be!" Teke cried. It was one thing to think the worst, another to hear it said aloud.

"How do you know?"

"I won't let him be!" she vowed.

"You're into playing God now? Come off it, Teke. You're not doing anything but standing here in an endless daze. What good are you doing Michael?"

Fighting for composure, she swallowed hard. "He knows I'm here. I'm showing him I love him."

"You're showing him what a waste you are. You could be doing something to help him wake up. You

could be asking the doctors about alternative therapies. You could be prodding them to do more. You could be trying some of those techniques yourself. But no, you'd rather stand here like an upright corpse. You look like death warmed over," he muttered.

Teke barely heard the last. Her eyes were on the part of the sheet beneath which lay Michael's uncasted leg. Her heart was beating faster. "Did you see that?" she whispered excitedly.

"See what?"

"He moved his leg."

J.D. looked that way, but the sheet was still.

"Come on, baby," Teke urged, leaning close to his face, "do it again. You can do it. Try it again."

"Nothing," J.D. said after a minute, but Teke wasn't accepting that. She ran around the bed and out to the nurse's station.

"He moved!" she said to the nurse there. "It was his leg, just for a minute, but I'm sure he moved! What does that mean? Can we make it happen again?"

The nurse returned with her to Michael's room, where J.D. quickly said,

"There's been nothing. My wife must have imagined it."

"I did not imagine it," Teke told him. "I've been standing here so long with nothing, that even the tiniest movement would look huge." To the nurse she said, "My husband and I were arguing. Michael must not have liked what we were saying. Could that have done it?"

"Could have," the nurse said, but she didn't sound overly sure.

"It was probably another muscle spasm," J.D. said.

"No," Teke insisted, refusing to be denied this ray of hope. "I've seen those. This was different. It was

more purposeful." She leaned down. "Come on, Mikey. Do it again. I know you can. Do it for me."

J.D. snorted. The minute the nurse left the room, he said, "You're the last person he'd do it for."

"Then you try," she cried, discouraged all over again and, at that moment, feeling an intense dislike for her husband. "You accuse me of doing nothing. Well, you're not doing much of anything yourself." J.D. straightened his shoulders. His eyes were cold. "I'm working--I'm making the money to pay for your mistake. I'm also picking up the pieces for you at home. Nothing gets done there while you're here. In case you've forgotten, you have two daughters, too." He looked disgusted. "You've made a mess of things, Teke. A real mess." With that he turned and left.

"I haven't," she protested, but with no one to hear, the words sounded empty. She looked down. Michael wasn't moving. She was so sure he had responded. So sure. But he looked exactly the same as before.

"Yes. I have."

Her eyes filled with tears, and she was suddenly too tired to fight them. So she cried softly while she held Michael's hand and thought about all the things she had wanted for him. She had wanted him to play basketball, and make videos, and call girls. She had wanted him to sail around the world in schooners like the one he had fallen in love with on Labor Day weekend. She had wanted everything good to happen to him, because he was her son, he was an incredible kid, and she loved him.

She was weeping softly, thinking that none of that might ever happen, when a movement at the door caught her eye. It was Grady, as wavy now through her tears as he had been through that long-ago storefront window.