29

It is not yet nine, and already it is hot. Peter can feel his shirt sticking in patches to his skin, under his jacket. He has just emerged onto the sidewalk, from the subway. It is not far from West Eighty-first Street, down and across to Rockefeller Center, but this morning the trip seems endless.

Usually Peter ignores it, his movements through it automatic, his thoughts deliberately elsewhere. This morning it seemed to him like hell: a screaming journey through the underworld, the passengers deafened, jostled, imperiled. Standing in the station, breathing in the sour damp smell of the tunnels. Standing in the cars, surrounded by mute and immobile bodies crammed, sweating, side by side. A short woman in a raincoat had stood so close to Peter that her wiry gray hair brushed the underside of his chin. Next to him, holding on casually to the greasy metal pole, was a muscular young black man in a faded red T-shirt and voluminous lowered jeans. His bulk swayed ominously against Peter on the turns, and his heavy-lidded eye, full, it seemed, of hatred, slid toward him, then away. All around Peter was the physical press of strangers, the intimate unwanted knowledge of their limbs and odors.

He dreads his conversation with Caroline. He can feel the anger she directs toward him. There is anger all around him.

Peter pushes through the heavy doors into 30 Rockefeller Center. Once inside he is part of a throng, walking across the long cathedral-like lobby, with its lofty ceilings, its deep tenebrous spaces. Its stylized chrome pseudo-Aztec details, the polished mineral surfaces, all this celebration of style is heartening, in a way more austere modern architecture is not. Those slab-sided featureless buildings ignore humanity; this art deco ecclesiastical style condescends to it, but at least acknowledges its existence. It pays homage to human endeavor. Peter usually finds this thought comforting, but not today. Today nothing comforts him.

Streams of moving people surround Peter; he walks quickly among them, through them. The banks of elevators stand in niches, the ceilings here low, the space intimate, like confessionals. Peter pushes the elevator button with the side of his briefcase, impatient at the wait. It is unbearable to wait here, among this press of people. Everything is unbearably slow.

The doors slide open before him, the crowd presses forward and Peter moves to the back of the car. He turns to face the door; the car fills, the doors shut, the car rises in silence. Peter looks at the others and realizes that he is the oldest person there. He must be early, he thinks, to arrive with all the young thrusters. But when he looks at his watch, it is quarter of nine. Of course, he thinks, it’s the end of August. Anyone with seniority is away now, on vacation. As he would have been. He sees Tess’s face, the bloom of bruising. Each time the realization is new to him, bewildering, sickening.

Directly in front of Peter stands a tense young man, with a long narrow head. His tightly curled blond hair is cut very short. He seems unaware of Peter behind him, and stands too close. On the gray shoulder of his suit is a light shower of white flecks. His ear, inches from Peter’s nose, flares out from the side of his long head. The curled cartilaginous flesh looks naked: pink, translucent, indecently intimate. The man smells very clean, soapy. Peter can hear the man breathing, a slow, determined tidal rhythm—in, out, in. Peter feels his teeth clench, grind slightly. He shuts his eyes, not to look at the ear.

Peter gets off on the thirtieth floor. Here it is air-conditioned, and too cold. The secretaries wear sweaters all summer. In the summer, the thermostat is set at sixty-eight, but in the winter it is seventy-two. If you reversed them you’d save billions of dollars of fossil fuel, but Americans insist on this, being too hot in the winter, too cold in the summer. A convention, a holdover from the fifties, when we were rich and oil was cheap.

His office is dim and cool, but stuffy. The closed-in air feels dead. The blinds are pulled down, the lights are off. He turns them on, revealing one wall of teak bookcases full of law books. One wall with windows behind two green leather wing chairs. Behind his desk, hanging on the wall, are his framed degrees: Harvard, Columbia Law. Peter puts his briefcase down on the desk.

He sees Emma’s stubborn jutting chin, her unfriendly eyes. She will hold him off forever. This is how she is: whenever they argue, she withdraws afterwards into cold silence, and waits for Peter to make the next move. She will wait for days, mute, stubborn, implacable. When finally Peter has worn out his anger, when he does make a move, reaches out his hand, takes her in his arms, she yields at once, turning silky, remorseful. But until he speaks she will not.

In her family is the story of a nineteenth-century husband—a minister?—who announced his plan to go to New York to hear the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind. “Nathaniel,” said his wife—Ezekiel or Obadiah, whatever Old Testament name it was—“if you go to hear that hussy, I’ll never speak to you again.” And he did, and she didn’t, is how the story is told. Years later, when the wife lies dying, her husband leans over and whispers something into her ear. She turns her face to the wall and, without speaking, she dies. Emma’s family is proud of that story, as though it reveals integrity instead of intolerance, as though it were a victory, not a failure.

Emma’s family is all like that, thinks Peter angrily. They’re all censorious, stubborn, unforgiving. Worse, they are proud of it. Emma’s father is the most judgmental old buzzard Peter has ever seen; Everett thinks being self-righteous makes him good. He has still never met Francie’s new husband, Carlos.

Peter goes down the hall to get coffee. He needs fortifying before he calls Caroline. At the little kitchen niche carved discreetly out of the formal hallways, he fills his mug at the Mr. Coffee machine. His mug is a tan one from Starbucks, where he has never been.

In his office he closes the door and sits down at his desk. He takes a bitter black swallow and picks up his phone. He punches in the numbers of Caroline’s brief atonal tune. He listens to the sound of it, those unnatural plinks. Why not real notes? Why not the regular musical scale? While the phone rings he closes his eyes. He feels himself gathering his energy to confront her, feels himself clench.

“Caroline? It’s me. Amanda there?” He speaks quickly and briskly.

“She’s here but I think she’s still asleep,” Caroline says. Her voice is cool.

“I see,” Peter says, vexed at once by her response. He waits, but she says nothing more. “You’re sure of that? Would you like to go and check?”

“I think she’s asleep,” Caroline repeats flatly.

“Well, I’d like to talk to her when she wakes up,” Peter says. “Would you have her call me?”

“I’ll tell her,” says Caroline, not promising.

“What time do you think that will be?”

“I have no idea,” says Caroline.

Peter says nothing. He is determined not to have a fight with Caroline. “Well, please ask her to call as soon as she wakes up. It’s important. How’s she feeling?”

“She’s not up yet,” repeats Caroline. “I don’t know.”

“Thanks,” says Peter, and hangs up.

He picks up his mug. His hand, holding the thick pottery, is trembling. He looks at his fingers, concentrating, to stop the tremor. He can’t. He sets down the mug and spreads his fingers in the air, the palm down. Damn you, Caroline.

Above the deep fustian red of his blotter floats his hand. The thickened fingers fan tautly outward. The hand itself is broad, coarse. The skin is folded and wrinkled. Dark veins trace a knotty delta of soft ridges beneath the skin. Sparse hair, pale and shining, like dune grass, drifts across the back of his hand. From the wrist upward, the hand trembles, in a steady quiver. He can’t stop it.

Peter opens his briefcase. His jaw aches, and deliberately he unclenches his teeth. He will not go on like this. He will not put up with Emma’s coldness, he will not permit her to turn against his daughter. He will not tolerate certain things. Never again, she said, and meant it. He has married a woman with a cold heart.

He takes another swallow of the bitter coffee. He feels that his life is starting to fly apart. He feels the air around him is being fractured; invisibly, constantly. Shards of his life are hurtling outward. There is something that he needs to do, some action he must take.

He sees Tess’s face again, again he’s washed with disbelief. He goes back to that night. He remembers the first moment of wakefulness, lying in bed, startled, listening, uncomprehending. He had not yet known: he could weep, now, for his own blissful ignorance, that moment, before the dreadful one of understanding. The mad circling red glare of the light on the police car. The weighty hovering of the helicopter. The stretcher being lifted up into its dark belly. The doors closing over it. The tennis clinic, he thinks. Christ. His own anger. His own anger. He puts his head into his hands, covering his face.

During the day, Peter usually calls Emma often. This morning he does not, working determinedly through the hours. Each time he thinks of Emma he sees her tightened mouth, the little tense twin peaks made by her lips when she is angry. Never again, she had said. She had meant it, but she is not the only one to make decisions.

Halfway through the morning, John Norman, another partner, appears. Tall, diffident, red haired, Norman stands in the doorway.

“Do you have any time today?” he asks. “I’m going to have to argue this case in front of a jury, and I’d like to discuss it with you, when you have a chance.”

“Right now,” Peter says, pushing his chair back from his desk. “Have a seat.”

He’s glad for a diversion, glad to have a physical presence to talk to. In his shirtsleeves and suspenders, Peter leans back in his chair, listening, watching Norman’s long intelligent face. Norman sits down in a green leather chair and crosses his legs. He is pale skinned, with pinkish eyes and a rosy, rubbery lower lip. He has never presented a case to a jury. Jury cases have only recently become common in patent law, and Peter has more experience in them than many of his partners.

“I’ll tell you how I would see it,” Peter says. “I’d make it clear to the jury that there’s a question about whether or not the government should properly have issued a patent. That’s where I’d start.”

In the middle of Peter’s explanation the telephone rings.

“Excuse me,” he says. Emma, he thinks, and picks it up while it is still ringing.

“Hello?” he says, eager.

“Dad?” Amanda’s voice is remote.

“Hi, sweetie,” he says, uncomfortable. “Can I call you back in a little while? I’m in a meeting right now.”

“I’m just leaving,” Amanda says. “I’ll be back this afternoon. Mom’s taking me out to brunch.”

“No, wait a minute, I need to talk to you,” Peter says. “How can you be about to go out if you just got up?”

“I got up a while ago.”

“Didn’t your mother ask you to call me as soon as you woke up?”

There is a pause.

“She told me to call,” Amanda says carefully.

“Well, I asked her to tell you to call as soon as you got up. So please don’t go out,” Peter says, his temper rising. “I need to talk to you before you go.”

“Dad, we’re leaving right now,” Amanda says. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Peter stands up at his desk. “Amanda, I’ve just asked you not to leave,” he says. “I need to talk to you.”

“But we have to go now,” Amanda says, sounding anxious. “Mom has an appointment afterwards.”

Norman rises tactfully and catches Peter’s eye. He waves and mouthes, “I’ll be back.” He leaves the office, closing the door quietly behind him.

Peter sits down. “All right, let’s talk now.” He waits until the door is shut. “Amanda, I want you to come with me and visit Tess in the hospital.”

There is a silence.

“No,” Amanda says.

Instantly Peter stands up again. “Don’t tell me no, Amanda,” he says. He feels his chest swelling, anger pumping it up. “I know you don’t want to go, but you have a responsibility here.” He speaks loudly, he knows it is too loud, but he can’t help it. He was unprepared for the call, distracted by Norman’s presence, unsettled by Amanda threatening to go out. Angry at Caroline for sabotaging him.

“I don’t want to go,” Amanda says.

“I’m sure you don’t,” Peter says. “But you have a moral obligation, Amanda. I want you to go there.”

“Dad,” Amanda says, “I don’t want to go.”

“I don’t care if you don’t want to go!” Peter says, loud again. “I want you to go there! Do you hear me?”

Amanda says nothing.

“Amanda?”

She does not answer.

“Amanda,” Peter says. He is now furious: she is directly disobeying him. “I want you to go. You put her there, you go there! Do you understand what you’ve done? You can’t walk away from this. You are involved.” Don’t say it’s your fault, he tells himself. Don’t say it.

There is silence, then the muffled sounds of movement.

“Peter?” It is Caroline. “What on earth are you saying to Amanda?”

“I want her to come with me to the hospital to see Tess.”

“That is out of the question,” Caroline says firmly. “She’s not going to. She’s still in shock. She can’t go trailing all over New York.”

“But she can go trailing out for brunch,” says Peter. “She’s well enough to do that.”

“That’s right,” Caroline says.

“Caroline, this is serious,” Peter says. “Amanda can’t pretend this doesn’t exist. What she has done is terrible. Do you understand that? It may be irreparable.”

Hearing himself say the word, Peter feels his throat thicken: irreparable. His eyes sting. He feels things sliding, worse, out of control. What if this were true?

“Amanda has to come in and be part of this,” he says. “This is a part of her life. It’s part of my life. I want her present, I want her to understand what has happened, I want her to see it. She’s part of it. She can’t simply walk away. And I forbid you to encourage it.”

“You can’t forbid me to do anything. You have no control over me whatsoever,” says Caroline. “Amanda is my daughter and she’s in my custody. She is not going to the hospital with you; that’s a sick, morbid idea. You want to punish her for something that was an accident, something she never meant to do. You want to torment her and bully her, and I won’t let you.”

Peter turns to look out the window. The building across the street is covered with a skin of mirrored glass, which reflects his own building. The other building itself is weirdly invisible in the landscape, the blue sky behind it matching the blue sky in its reflections. Staring out, Peter is staring disconcertingly in at himself. His own window lies somewhere in that mirrored grid, reflected back at him, as his own rage is reflected back at him by Caroline.

He takes a deep breath and begins, talking calmly. He has prepared for this. “Caroline, if you cross me in this,” he says carefully, “I will sue you for custody. I will show in court that, under your care, Amanda has been consistently smoking marijuana, which is an illegal drug. I will recount to the court the tragedy that has resulted because of her habits. I will prove you to be absent, a poor moral influence, and an unfit parent.”

There is a long pause.

“I promise you I will do this,” Peter says, and means it.

There is another pause.

“You despicable shit,” Caroline says.

There is silence.

“Put Amanda on the phone,” Peter says, keeping victory out of his voice. There is another pause, more telephone handling.

“Hello?” Amanda says miserably.

“I’m going to come and pick you up this afternoon at four,” Peter says. “We’re going up to the hospital.”

“Dad,” Amanda begins.

“Here is why I want you to go,” Peter says. “I want you to think about someone else besides yourself. I want you think of Tess, and of Emma.” His voice breaks on the last word. “This is something that’s happened, and we all have to go through it together. I know you didn’t mean to do it, but you’re a part of it. You can’t walk away, Amanda. You can’t walk away.” Here he feels his chest fill again, and he cannot go on.

There is a long pause.

When Amanda answers, her voice is small and dismal. “Okay.”

“Tell your mother,” Peter says, and hangs up.

He looks at his watch: only twelve-fifteen. Christ. He’s exhausted, wrung out. Done for the day. He feels like going home, but there is nothing for him at home. And there is nothing for him at the hospital but Emma’s hostile silence. There is nothing for him anywhere, nowhere he can go for relief. There is no relief.

At exactly four o’clock Peter pushes Caroline’s buzzer. The door opens almost at once.

“She’s ready,” Caroline says viciously.

Amanda is waiting: she looks awful. There are big dark circles under her eyes, and her skin is pale and unhealthy. The dreadful green streak in her hair is now showing dark roots. She is wearing a wrinkled T-shirt and a blue-jean skirt. On her feet are heavy black sandals. He loves her.

“Let’s go,” he says.

“Bye, Mom,” Amanda says forlornly.

Caroline stands in the doorway, her arms folded. “Bye, Amanda,” she says. She looks at Peter. “I will never forgive you for this.”

“You’ve never forgiven me for anything,” Peter says.

Caroline shuts the door, hard.

In the elevator Peter turns to Amanda. “I appreciate your coming, Amanda,” he says. “I know it’s hard for you.” He sounds cold and formal, he thinks unhappily, like a lawyer.

Amanda watches the elevator door. “Thanks,” she says.

They take a taxi up to the hospital. It is still hot, it has gotten hotter and hotter all day. Riding uptown to pick up Amanda, Peter started sweating again. The sun feels malevolent. Emma claims it’s the vanishing ozone layer, but she always says this as though it is his fault, so he always denies it. Anyway, it’s always hot in August. Still, the dead glare feels somehow ominous, he has to admit.

Their cab is old and cramped, without air-conditioning. Peter rolls the window down as they rattle up Park. The air feels gritty and used. He feels grubby. He still hasn’t spoken to Emma, not since last night. Never again. Never again. Amanda’s hand lies next to her on the dirty seat. Peter reaches over and takes it. It is moist and limp in his fingers. If you can hear me squeeze my hand. He feels his breath choke in his throat, fights it down. He carries Amanda’s hand to his mouth, and kisses the back of it: the skin is smooth, and unexpectedly sweet smelling. Faintly damp with sweat.

He smiles at Amanda. “Your hand smells nice.”

She looks startled, then gives him a small smile. “Thanks.”

Peter kisses the hand again and puts it back on the seat. They are going up Madison now: you have to overshoot the hospital by several blocks on Madison, then go west, across to Fifth and down. Coming south along the park on Fifth, they stop at the light at 100th Street. A Latino couple is walking on the pavement along the park wall. A short dark-haired woman in a loose T-shirt, tight skirt and high heels, pushes an empty stroller. She walks with wide casual strides. Beside her is a black-haired man, carrying a child on his shoulders. His arms are folded over the child’s legs, which hang down his chest. Latin men, thinks Peter, carry their kids around on the street. Italians do it, and Spaniards, South Americans. Not WASPS, not the English, not Germans: it was women who carried their babies. At least WASPS hadn’t before Snuglis and women’s lib, when men had started changing diapers. Peter’s father would never have carried him in public. To say nothing of Emma’s father, the old buzzard. He had probably made his poor wife walk one step behind him on the sidewalk.

The Hispanic woman looks up at the child and speaks. The child answers and leans over, wrapping his arms down around his father’s skull, cradling his father’s jaw. The father says something, his teeth bright in his dark face. The child rides trustfully above the crowd, safe from the perils of the lower regions. He rises and falls comfortably, with each step of his father’s. The child’s small heart, the very beating center of him, is pressed against his father’s head. Peter cannot take his eyes off the family, the three of them. They seem so happy.

The cab draws up at the entrance to the hospital, behind another cab. Peter takes his wallet from his breast pocket.

Amanda, looking out the window, says, “There are Emma’s parents.”

Peter looks up: he had forgotten they were coming. The Kirklands are slowly climbing the steps. They are moving uncertainly: how meek they look here, Peter thinks, surprised, touched. How frail they seem, timid, even, outside their own territory. Mr. Kirkland, in a wrinkled gray suit, looks thin and stooped. Mrs. Kirkland, in a droopy skirt, clings awkwardly to his arm. They are climbing the broad shallow steps diagonally, yawing uncertainly off course, as though set by an unknown tide.

Peter pays the cabdriver and he and Amanda start up the steps behind the Kirklands.

“Hello, Everett,” Peter says politely.

Everett Kirkland swivels belligerently to face him. “Oh, hello,” he says, frowning.

“Hello,” says Mrs. Kirkland anxiously. Neither of them looks at Amanda.

“You remember Amanda,” Peter says, putting his hand on Amanda’s arm and drawing her forward as they all mount the steps.

“Hello, Amanda,” Mrs. Kirkland says, smiling miserably.

“Hello,” says Amanda.

Mr. Kirkland stares at Amanda.

“Everett, this is my daughter, Amanda,” Peter says reprovingly, reminding him.

“Hello,” Mr. Kirkland says briefly, withdrawing his eyes.

They walk inside in silence.

“Over here,” Peter says, leading them to the elevators. Going up, the car is crowded and silent. On the seventh floor they get out, the Kirklands straggling uncertainly behind them.

“This way,” Peter says. He takes firm hold of Amanda’s hand, and marshals them down the hall to Tess’s room.

As Peter comes in the room he sees a white-coated shoulder. Beyond it is Emma’s pale face. She is talking to the doctor.

Peter pauses. There are too many of them to come in while the doctor is there. But Peter is already inside, and he wants to see the doctor himself. He doesn’t want Amanda to stay, but he doesn’t want to make her wait out in the hall with someone who won’t even speak her name.

Peter shoulders his way gently in, past the doctor. He sees Emma’s face lift, sees her eyes seek his miserably. Then she sees who is with him: Amanda. Her eyes deepen angrily, her mouth sets tightly.

“Hello, Doctor Baxter,” Peter says loudly. He hopes the Kirklands will realize that they should go and wait in the hall, but he doesn’t turn around to see.

“Hello,” says Doctor Baxter earnestly. He pushes his tortoiseshell glasses further up on his nose with his middle finger. The bald part of his skull is shiny.

“How are things going?” Peter asks. He wonders if Amanda is still right behind him. He can’t tell, and he doesn’t want to turn around, he feels he must keep his gaze on Emma and the doctor. He doesn’t know if he hopes Amanda is there or not. Does he want her to hear this? He’s not sure what he wants. Things are flying out of his control.

Doctor Baxter says, “I was telling your wife that I see some improvement in the pupillary response, today.”

“That’s good news,” says Peter, nodding, though he hardly knows what it means. Amanda has moved in next to him and is standing on one side of him. Facing him, on the other side of the doctor, standing across from him, is Emma. He can feel her, like a blast furnace, sending off waves of heat and fury. She is deliberately not looking at him or Amanda, she is staring fixedly at the doctor.

“Well,” says Doctor Baxter, raising one finger in a cautionary way. “It’s good, but it’s too soon to tell much. It’s still early days yet. Early days.”

Such a strange phrase, Peter thinks. It’s early days. Ungrammatical. How had it evolved? And what is the pupillary response? He knows he knows what it is. He cannot find it. “What is the pupillary response?” he asked.

“Each day I test your daughter’s pupils with a light,” says the doctor.

“Tess is not his daughter,” Emma says neutrally.

“I’m sorry. Your stepdaughter’s eyes,” says the doctor.

“It’s quite all right,” Peter says, furious.

Doctor Baxter pulls out the pencil-sized flashlight from his breast pocket. He turns it on, as though the light itself will reveal something. “Up to now, her pupils have been unfocused. But today I can see a shift. They have begun to draw together, toward the light, as eyes do normally.”

“Good,” Peter says forcefully, nodding. This is marvelous. He wonders where the Kirklands are. Are they standing tactlessly right behind him, listening? Is the consultation over? Is Doctor Baxter about to leave? Is he leaving because there are too many people here? Should Peter tell Amanda to wait outside? What if Emma tells Amanda to wait outside? He will slap her face.

Doctor Baxter nods solemnly at them both, pushing his lips outward slightly in a preoccupied pout. The front of his head gleams. Peter wonders if he does anything to make it gleam. What would you do to bald skin? Put lotion on it? Oil? Wax it, like a floor? Is it something Peter will have to learn? The doctor shifts deftly away from them, anxious to leave.

“We’ll see how she is tomorrow,” he says. He lifts the flashlight to put it back in the breast pocket of his white jacket but misses. He frowns slightly, pouting again. On the second try he makes it, tucking it in neatly. He nods at Peter and Emma. “Good-bye,” he says, and slides past them.

Peter stands facing Emma, who still does not look at him or Amanda. She follows the doctor out to the hall, where her parents are waiting.

“Hello, Daddy, Mummy. Come on in,” Peter hears her say, and they all file back into the room. They stand awkwardly.

“Hello, dear,” Mrs. Kirkland is saying. “How is she? Did the doctor give you good news?”

“Yes,” says Emma. “Come and see her.”

Emma leads them to the bed. She has still not yet looked at Amanda.

Peter takes Amanda’s hand again. He glances at her: her eyebrows are raised, aloof, her eyelids lowered, as though she is bored. As he stands next to her he catches a faint whiff from her body. Has she not bothered to shower? Damn Caroline, he thinks, damn her, damn her.

Emma leans over one side of the bed, her mother over the other. Mr. Kirkland stands stiffly beside his wife, looking at Tess, but not leaning over. Tess lies on her back, one arm flung across her stomach, the other down at her side. Today her face seems more swollen; is that possible? Maybe it’s just that he’s looking at her as an outsider, as these newcomers would see her for the first time. But she looks terrible. The battered nose, the cheeks. The greenish brown bruises. Christ.

“You see,” Emma says, “you heard Doctor Baxter. The pupillary response is getting better. That means her eyes are beginning to focus.” Tess’s eyes are now closed, no one can see her pupils.

The air-conditioning is on high, and it is too cold in the room. Amanda gives a sudden shiver. Peter squeezes her hand, to comfort her, and to keep her from pulling away.

“That means,” Emma begins. She stops. “That means that the brain—” But the words are too terrible, and she cannot go on. Doctor Baxter’s coolness, his caution, his deliberate flight from them all, make this tiny glimmer of hope seem suddenly pathetic in the face of the reality—Tess’s battered features, her silence. Emma puts her hands to her face and hunches over, her head lowered onto her chest. Peter is at the foot of the bed, and can’t reach her unless he drops Amanda’s hand.

Mrs. Kirkland leans across the bed, across Tess. “Dear,” she says. She touches Emma’s head. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

Emma turns her head away from her mother’s hand, jerking as though she’d been bitten. She turns away from her parents, toward the window, and begins to cry. The others stand motionless while Emma weeps.

Peter lets go of Amanda’s hand and steps around the bed to Emma. He puts his arm around her, taking hold of her shoulders, and for a moment he feels her lean against his arm, but at once she stiffens.

“Get out,” Emma says, hissing.

“Emma,” Peter says, warningly.

She raises her head. “Get out of here.”

“Emma,” Peter says, now angry.

Emma turns to Amanda. Her face is distorted with grief, tears are running down her cheeks. Her eyes are red, like an animal’s. “You get out,” she says. “How dare you come here.”

“Emma,” says Mrs. Kirkland.

“Don’t say that,” Peter says. “This is my daughter.”

Emma stares at him. She raises her arm, pointing at the bed. “This is my daughter,” she says.

“Emma,” says Mrs. Kirkland again, nervous.

“Get out,” Emma says.

“Don’t tell me that,” Peter says. “I am Tess’s stepfather.”

“I want you out of here,” Emma says, her eyes wild. “I want you out.” Her voice is rising.

“Emma, look,” Peter says. He steps forward and puts his arms around her. She shakes him loose and turns away.

“Please don’t touch me,” she says. “Please don’t ever touch me again.”

“Don’t say that,” Mrs. Kirkland says.

Emma turns to her father. “Tell him to leave.”

Peter takes Amanda’s hand again. “Don’t go too far, Emma,” he says. “Maybe you already have.”

Emma laughs terribly. “Maybe I already have?” she asked. “Look at my daughter.” She waves her hand again at Tess. “How dare you say things like that to me. How dare you bring her here.”

“Emma,” Peter begins. He stops, and closes his eyes. There is nowhere left to go. “Okay, Amanda,” he says. “Good-bye,” he says to the Kirklands.

“Don’t go,” says Mrs. Kirkland uneasily.

“Go,” says Emma. She has crossed her arms on her chest.

Peter leads Amanda into the hall. Outside the room he looks first left, then right. He can’t remember which way the elevator is.