Souvenir (16 page)

Twenty-three

C
ARSON APPROACHED THE DOOR TO THE SHED SOLEMNLY, GLAD THAT
V
AL
and Wade had planned a two-hour endurance run for her workout. He wanted time alone here before he let Val see the place—and he’d have to let her see it. They were going to be married, which meant letting her into every part of his life, or so he believed marriage was supposed to require. Whether he could allow her to tour the darker, less concrete places remained to be seen. After that strange, awkward meeting with Meg earlier this afternoon, he was starkly reminded of just how much there was to him that Val didn’t know. Nothing about Meg, or how long he’d waited without hope before moving on.

Two years. He didn’t know any other guy who, once he’d lost his virginity, had remained celibate for so long. But he just hadn’t been…willing. Even his first encounter after Meg, with Lisa Kline, a high school classmate of theirs, wasn’t something he’d sought out.

She’d bought him a beer after a set one Saturday night when the band, newly assembled, played a dive bar in Jacksonville.

“I
thought
that was you!” Lisa said. Her hair was blonder and her breasts bigger, but she looked otherwise the same as she had when they’d all been in Lou Davis’s trigonometry class together.

“It’s me, all right,” he said. He’d thrown down a few Jack and Cokes already; he wasn’t his most articulate.

She smiled, that big, friendly, I-screw-the-band smile he would become too familiar with in the months and years to come. “You guys are just
so
great. I mean, way better than I usually see here.” She swigged from her own long-necked bottle and wiped her mouth. “What are you doing after?”

He’d thought he was going back to the roadside motel with George, but instead he went out back with Lisa. They’d kissed, sloppily, both of them glassy-eyed, and then Lisa pulled her denim skirt up around her waist and leaned over, putting her hands on the edge of the wooden landing.

He just stood there, looking at her tanned ass with its thin, white Y of a tan line.

“Come
on
, baby; you know what to do,” she said.

He did. He moved behind her and dropped his jeans.

As soon as she’d gone, he curled up on the steps and passed out. That was the start of his post-Meg love life, the first of many indignities dulled by binges of alcohol or drugs. Thank God he was done with all that.

The broad arms of an ancient cypress tree stretched overhead, filtering late-afternoon sun that dappled the scrubby path beneath his bare feet—dappled his feet, too, and arms and shoulders…he stood still and watched the play of shadow and light on his forearms, the motion provoking a new melody in his mind, distant and faint but worth paying attention to. Songs came to him in all sorts of ways; once he’d been entranced by the low drone of a prop jet’s engines, which had translated into a song one critic described as “hypnotizing and erotic.” Another time the germ of a tune came from the shush of rain pelting the canvas patio awning at his Seattle condo, which he’d be vacating permanently next week.

The melodies would whisper to him for days or weeks or even months, sometimes, and build on themselves, become fuller and more dynamic, and then the lyrics would begin to come, as if in response to whatever the music had stirred in him. He’d been writing music long enough to recognize the process, to understand how the songs were reflections of his psyche; any musician who claimed to be able to make music on a lark was either bullshitting or creating soulless pop music as disposable as tissues.

Humming, he put his hand on the shed’s doorknob, turned it, and pushed. Humidity had swelled the wooden frame and the door stuck stubbornly at first, then gave way, opening into the dim, musty-smelling front room. First he simply peered inside, leaning in with his hand on the doorframe. If anyone had been in there since 1990, he couldn’t tell. The room appeared exactly as he’d left it, as if he’d stepped out to take a turn driving the tree shaker, or go pick up a pizza. He and Meg had gone for pizza scores of times, the two of them hopping into his Ranger pickup, its door panels rusting out, and getting an extra-large pepperoni and mushroom takeout from a little pizza shack at the corner of the highway, inexplicably named Vladimir’s.

God, she was beautiful at eighteen…she’d hated her freckles, wished for curly hair and bigger breasts—women were never satisfied with their looks—but he wouldn’t have changed one spot or strand, had no desire for her to be anything other than who she was. They would take the pizza upstairs, feed each other, and he would get distracted by her bottom lip as he brushed it with his thumb, or the way she licked sauce from the corners of her mouth. She’d laugh at him, tease that he was a sex fiend—and at nineteen he was, of course. But he’d believed with every cell that his lust and love for her were inseparable, inspired by the perfection of their physical, mental, and emotional fit.

Closing the door behind him, Carson stood on the multicolored rag rug and let the memories wash over him: Meg at the table in only his T-shirt, eating scrambled eggs he’d cooked for a late dinner, telling him all about her first day of college—junior college, before Brian, before she’d transferred to U of F; Meg up on a ladder with hammer in hand and nails in her mouth, nailing window trim; Meg asleep on his bed, her accounting textbook—the epitome of boredom, she’d said—facedown on her chest; Meg coming upstairs the morning of her wedding, renewing, then dashing, his last remaining hope—he’d felt at first that he’d willed her there that morning, a specter conjured from his longing and frustration and anger. And maybe he had. Now he thought maybe if he’d just gotten over her right away instead of carrying a torch for those eighteen months, she’d have had no power over him that morning, or any time since.

This cascade of history, this waterfall of plans made and futures imagined then destroyed, was exactly what he’d feared would come if he went into the shed—and was why he’d avoided the place every time he visited before. He knew his mom was waiting for him to clear it out when he was ready—and he hadn’t been ready. Plunging into the past today was healthy, though. Necessary. It was only right that he go to Val whole.

If he could.

He moved through the front room and then the kitchen, touching the surfaces, recalling the textures of the four years he’d lived there before leaving for good. The kitchen table, made from a door salvaged from some other farm, sanded and painted by Meg, later witnessed many long nights of coffee and bourbon and his pitiful beginnings at writing the songs that had begun lodging in his soul. He’d started on guitar, which he’d been playing somewhat poorly for years. When he began to see his potential, he brought in a piano that had belonged to the widow who lived up the road, past the Powells’.

That piano was the only thing he’d moved from here, having it sent first to his tiny Los Angeles apartment, then to the San Jose house, and finally to his Seattle condo—where it would soon be crated and moved to the house he and Val were buying in Malibu. He thought of how, in his escape from Florida, he’d gone as far away as he possibly could go and still pursue the music. As if three thousand miles were enough to buffer his awareness of Meg’s presence, of her promise to love another man till death did them part.

He opened each of the six cupboard doors, all of them painted a robin’s egg blue that she’d said would contrast well with the honey-stained pine of the floors and walls. Though the cupboards were mostly empty, vestiges of his bachelorhood still remained: a box of Frosted Flakes, three cans of baked beans, spice tins of curry and red pepper flakes and saffron. His Seattle kitchen, outfitted with every gourmet ingredient and gadget, would sneer at this humble assortment of foods and the three aluminum pots that had served every culinary need at the time.

He would miss his condo, the murky but soothing light of the damp afternoons, gray-blue with a shimmery wash of orange as the sun dropped toward Puget Sound. The sunny Malibu house, fabulous in its linearity, its glass expanses overlooking the ocean, was so exposed, so energized. It suited Val perfectly.

She loved those edge-of-the-land spaces. They were in her blood, part of her character. She loved the kinetic vibe, the daringness of a house perched on a cliffside—like her at the crest of a towering wave. Val was a woman always ready for adventure, and he admired this in her beyond all. Admittedly, he was more vibrant in her company; he’d found the experience of running with her and her gang a real charge, in the beginning. It wasn’t sustainable for him, though, and he’d told her as much. “So you’ll just, like, join in when you’re in the mood,” she’d said, unperturbed. That was another thing he admired: her independence. She didn’t cling—which was good, but he had to admit that a
little
bit of clinginess might be nice, just every now and then, just enough to make him feel…essential.

Catching himself staring into the cupboards, Carson checked his watch, startled to see he’d lost the better part of an hour here, musing. He shut the doors and turned toward the stairway, looked up into the loft. Might as well get it over with.

Up he trod, the fifth and tenth steps creaking like always. At the top of the stairs, he paused, taking in the bed, dresser, love seat, armoire—furniture all scarred and worn but so familiar. More familiar, somehow, than the far more expensive, more stylish furnishings that populated his condo now, furniture he’d been living with for twice as long as he had these pieces in front of him.

Though he couldn’t fail to recall Meg in his bed, he was most concerned right now with the small box on top of the low, four-drawer dresser. Made of layers of heavy paper and painted a delicate pattern of black, red, blue, and yellow by an uncredited Asian artist, the box was a Christmas present from Meg. He went to it, ran his fingers over the top, then looked up, out the window in front of him, the brilliant green treetops of his heritage all he could see.

Drawing a deep breath—more resignation than dread, he opened the box. Only one object waited there, one small piece of his past, of their past, which until today he’d thought of as coiled and waiting like a rattler: her gold chain. He drew it out, impulsively wanting to run downstairs, jump in the Land Rover, and track Meg down to return it to her.
Here, I’m done with this
, he might say. Or,
I think you should keep this now.
Or,
I wanted you to have this souvenir of our past, no hard feelings.
He was sure she hadn’t saved anything from then.

But it was clear from her skittishness earlier that a second encounter wouldn’t be welcomed—probably she wouldn’t welcome his gesture, either. She had undone one circle of gold in favor of a different, smaller one, one which he’d noticed still encircled her finger today. She was done with the past—and he should be too. Maybe he’d mail her the chain, let her decide what to do with it. For now, he enclosed it in his hand and then dropped it into his pocket so that when Val came in later for her tour, the whole place would be safe for her curious, loyal, and devoted eyes.

Twenty-four

M
EG STOOD AT THE MATERNITY FLOOR’S NURSES’ STATION EARLY
T
HURSDAY
evening, replacing a chart, when Clay came to the counter. “Triplets,” he said.

“What?”

“John Bachman and I just delivered triplets, two boys and a girl. You should see them.” He was beaming.

Melanie Harmon, a brilliant, organized Haitian immigrant who was the nursing supervisor, said, “That’s the second set this month. What’s in the water?”

Meg wondered that too, only not about the increase in multiple births; that, she knew, had more to do with fertility treatments. But the disease that might be manifesting inside her muscle fibers, where did
it
come from? And why was there no way to get rid of it?

Clay reached into his pocket and took out his prescription pad. He stood at the end of the counter, writing, while she forced her attention back to the subject of one of her patients who had just checked in. She told Melanie, “She’s a ways out, yet—but she’s very eager, and every member of her family is here, I swear it. Her brother was just trying to interview me on video.”

“First baby?” Melanie asked.

“How’d you guess? First for her, first grandchild for the grandparents, etcetera.” She wanted to share in their excitement, but it was failing to reach her through her fog of dread. Brianna’s words would not leave her head; for the last two hours, whenever her attention was not focused on a task, she heard the refrain
respiratory paralysis, and death.

“So you’re sticking around?” Clay asked, moving to stand next to her.

Maybe not.
“Yes—but I’m hoping she’ll progress quickly.” Quick delivery or slow, she would miss yet another of Savannah’s softball games and had arranged with Rachel’s mother for Savannah to ride home with them.

She felt Clay’s arm brush hers, then the pressure of him pushing something into her left jacket pocket. “I’m stuck here too,” he said. “Serving on that hurricane preparedness committee. We’re meeting at seven.”

Unless
, Meg thought,
we end up in surgery.
She sent up another prayer for her patient to have a medically uneventful delivery, thinking of the infant girl who would join them soon, slippery and pink and outraged. The father, an EMT, would “catch” her—a plan long arranged, and one for which Meg was thankful. If all went well, she’d have little to do besides supervise.

Melanie told Clay, “Make sure somebody knows to stock up on
chocolate
.”

“Got it,” Clay laughed. “I’ll put it on the list, right after morphine and bottled water.” He put his hand on Meg’s shoulder. “See you ladies later.”

“See you,” she said as he left them. She felt in her pocket, found a folded square of paper. So now he was passing her notes. On any other day, she would have been flattered at the very least, maybe even pleased. Brian was not a note-writer, unless e-mail and text-message reminders to do or buy or find something counted as notes. She held the paper with the tips of her fingers and wondered how long it might be until her left hand began acting like her right.

“Mmm,” Melanie said, watching Clay go. “That is one fine man.”

Meg looked too. He
was
fine—more tennis player in his looks than surgeon, his sandy hair worn long around his ears and neck, strong forearms exposed by rolled-up sleeves. His surgical skills were admirable, as well; he was going to be very successful, with his good looks and sociability and genuine concern for the patient. Too bad she wouldn’t be around to see him reach his prime—nor to follow him, if she should ever want to, along the path he was cutting into the dark forest of her feelings. If what Brianna and Lowenstein suspected—what she, too, suspected now was true, it would not be long before she wouldn’t be able to hold any man’s hand, kiss any man’s lips…or reach out to move a strand of Savannah’s hair from her face. With this last thought, panic grabbed her stomach and squeezed it hard, her protest—
No!
—pressing for escape behind clenched teeth.

Meg grasped for a normal moment as if it could save her, saying, “Melanie, do I need to remind you that you’re already married—and to a doctor?”

The nurse said, “Sure, today. But who knows what’ll happen tomorrow?”

Meg didn’t want to know. “I’m going to the lounge. Page me when my services are required.”

On her way, she stopped in the neonatal intensive care nursery. The triplets were tiny but looked healthy and strong, odds-beaters. Too often, they started out on life support, one or more of them at a clear disadvantage, competitive for their mother’s resources even before they were born. These three, though, looked like they stood a good chance to fend for themselves. The girl, in her pink knit cap, waved a fist and pursed her lips, already demanding service.
Go, girl
, Meg thought. The boys—likely identical twins—lay alert, taking in their surroundings with their fuzzy newborn vision. She touched the girl’s tiny rosebud fist, thought of her own daughter and of the babies she might have had after, if she’d stuck with Carson. Brian hadn’t been sure he wanted
any
children; after Savannah, he said they were done—and Meg had no desire to change his mind.

She remembered how she and Carson used to laze in the lake, floating on their backs with the washed blue sky above, and talk about what they’d name their kids. She liked Savannah for a girl’s name, Austin for a boy; Carson had teased, “Sure, and then we’ll have Denver and Cheyenne and Sacramento.” She dunked him then, holding him down until he started to untie her swimsuit. He came up laughing as she hurried to retie it, saying, “What? I thought you wanted to get started now.”

The memory felt as close as yesterday, yet as unreachable as the stars.

W
HEN SHE WAS ALONE IN THE TINY CLOSET OF A ROOM USED FOR THE DOCTORS’
lounge, she reached into her pocket and drew out the folded paper Clay had put there. The note, written on his prescription pad, read, “Western courtyard, 5:30? Strong coffee and tuna salad, my treat.”

He was a sweet man…but what was he getting out of this interest in her, an older, married woman? Not that it mattered; whatever he thought she offered, she wouldn’t have it much longer. “Rain check,” she said, refolding the note and putting it in her pocket.

She’d just put her feet up when her pager began to beep. “That baby is
not
here already,” she groaned. But no, it was Savannah. She reached for the phone on the table beside her and dialed Savannah’s cell number.

“Hi, honey. What’s going on? I got your page.”

“We
have
to go to Orlando tomorrow—I just got a fan club e-mail saying Carson McKay’s doing a one-night-only show at a
club
!”

“Sweetheart, it’s been a really stressful week—”

“Mom! You said the next time he was in the area we’d go. You
promised
.”

There, the classic guilt-wringing move every child was somehow born knowing how to execute. She had promised, but that was when she thought attending one of his concerts would be a safe, distant experience, where they would be two anonymous fans in the midst of thousands. “I know, but—”

“Come on, just think how cool it would be. A
club
, not one of the big arenas; we could sit up close. He might recognize you—maybe you could get us backstage, since you know him.”

“
Knew
him,” Meg said.

“Whatever. We wouldn’t have to meet him. But it would be
so
cool to go. Please? Please please please
please
? If I had my car already, I’d drive myself—”

“Not to Orlando, you wouldn’t.”

“Okay, then you have to take me. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

Meg thought of how little they did together, how little they’d done together over the course of sixteen rapidly passing years. There had seemed to be so much time back when Savannah was tiny. She’d believed she could balance school, then career, with her duties as mother and wife, believed in the have-it-all myth promoted by Enjoli commercials and Geraldine Ferraro’s almost-success. The money, hers and Brian’s, made it easy to solve problems. A good nanny, housecleaning and yard crews, repair services, private schools—all these things were supposed to allow her time to focus on family life when work was done.

Funny how things were never as simple as they appeared they’d be.

She hadn’t intended to choose obstetrics, knowing it was one of the more demanding fields in terms of family-time interruptions, but once she’d done her rotation, she found that it intrigued her beyond any other option. She thought she could make it work.

But coordinating all the household help took a lot more time and effort than she expected. Then there were professional obligations—meetings, conferences—and extended-family obligations—to the Hamiltons in particular, who weren’t content unless they came for dinner often. And then she had to fit in the social invitations Brian insisted they accept. Savannah was always her first priority, but how often did that manifest as making sure someone else was tending her daughter? If ALS
was
now destroying the neurons that allowed her to walk and eat and breathe, how long before she simply wasn’t able to do anything with Savannah?

“Okay, okay. We’ll go.”
And stay way in the back, in the darkest possible spot
.

“Really? Seriously?”

“Really seriously. Can you buy the tickets? My purse is locked up right now, but go to the desk in the den, and in the middle left-hand drawer is a file folder with my other credit cards—just use any one of them.”

“You are the best mom!”

“I’ll remember you said that. Oh, is Rachel coming?”

“No, she has etiquette class and her mom won’t spring her.”

“But you’re still planning to sleep over there Saturday, right?”

“Yeah—but I meant to tell you: her parents won’t be home until after like eleven. They have some snob party to go to. Is it still okay?”

“Will Angela be home?”

“I think so. She just broke up with her boyfriend, so she’s being all antisocial.”

“All right then,” Meg said. “I suppose you all are old enough to be trusted for a few hours.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for
ever
.”

“I know; all I can say is, wait until
you
have a teenage daughter, and then talk to me about trust.”

How easily those words slipped out, as though her future as a grandmother of a teen—a teen girl, no less—was guaranteed. What a swell habit that future-speak was, so optimistic, so reassuring—and how false, considering how no one could peer ahead in time and discover the date to be inscribed on their headstone. She might be killed by lightning tomorrow night; the forecast was for strong storms, after all. Or Savannah might go off in her new Honda next month, or next year, and slam herself into a tree or a truck, God forbid. There was no telling. How funny it was that everyone gave so much thought to their unknown, unknowable futures, and so little thought to each real and tangible moment of
now.

“So when will you be home?” Savannah asked, words Meg had heard from her daughter too many times.

“By ten, I hope. I have a new mom in labor; first babies often take a while.”

“How long did I take?”

Meg smiled. Savannah always loved to hear the story of her own birth, as though it allowed her to differentiate hers from the hundreds of births Meg attended. As though she feared Meg could somehow lose her details in the crowd of so many others.

“Oh, days,” she said, choking back a sudden urge to cry. “You were the slowest baby ever.”

“But once you were in the hospital, after your water broke?”

“Twenty-and-a-half hours. I was seriously considering contacting the post office to change my official address.” A tear leaked out in spite of her joke.

“
Mom.
Okay, well, I’m gonna go buy our tickets. And we need a hotel, right?”

“You know how to do that?”

“Duh. Expedia, Travelocity—I’ll find us someplace luxurious and relaxing. You can get a massage or whatever.”

“That,” Meg said, admiring her daughter’s take-charge capability, “would be lovely.”

Barely three minutes after she’d hung up with Savannah, her pager buzzed again, this time with a message to call Brianna. She dialed the number stoically. In a brief, brisk voice Brianna’s nurse assistant began to lay out Meg’s Friday schedule with Andre Bolin, the Orlando-based specialist.

“In Orlando, tomorrow?” Meg interrupted.

“Yes, Dr. Davidson was able to pull some heavy strings for you.”

There’s fate for you
, Meg thought. “All right; I have to be there tomorrow anyway.”

She’d have a battery of tests beginning at nine
AM,
after which time she was to meet with Dr. Bolin, who would do yet another reflexes exam and review whatever test results they would have by that time. “You are so lucky,” the nurse said. “Anybody without these connections would have to wait
months
to see him.” Meg wrote down the places and times and said, in a voice thick with sarcasm, “I am lucky, aren’t I?” She knew the nurse meant well—and was right, in the limited context of her statement. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to swallow her self-pity this time; no matter how deliberately she tried, this time it would not go down.

B
EFORE
M
EG LEFT THE HOSPITAL AT
9:15,
SHE CALLED
S
AVANNAH
. “D
ID
you get us a room?”

“Yep, we’re all set.”

“See if they have space available tonight—it turns out I need to be in Orlando tomorrow morning.”

“Cool—I’ll miss my math quiz. Oh, Mom—you’re on your way home?” Meg said she was. “Did Dad call you yet?”

“No. Why?”

“Nothing. Just park in the driveway instead of the garage, okay?”

“…Okay.”

Fifteen minutes later, she understood why. The moment she climbed out of her car, the far left of their three garage doors began to roll open, and Brian stood in the doorway. His expression was the cat’s who’d just swallowed the canary; behind him was a glossy champagne-colored SUV. A Lexus, facing out, its cat’s eye headlamps and chrome grille glinting at her.