Saturday evening Susan sat on the floor with Jefiy's favorite books spread around her. She'd made a small nest of sofa cushions for Jeffy, and he was propped up nearby.
"See the frog, Jeffy." She pointed to a colorful illustration in a book called Tommy, the Hopping Frog. "Say frog." He stared blankly at her. "Come on, sweetheart, you can do it. Say frog." She smoothed his hair back from his forehead. "Do it for Mommy, sweetheart."
Nothing. Not even a flicker in his eyes.
Susan wrestled with a crushing sense of defeat. If she gave up, they were both sunk.
She turned the page. "Look at this picture, Jeffy. There's the little frog with a new friend, Susie the duck. Can you say duck, Jeffy?"
He stared at the page. The sound of neighborhood children at play drifted through the open window.
"Tattletale, tattletale, Joanie is a tattletale."
"Cut that out, Ross, or I'm telling."
"Tattletale."
"I'm telling!"
Susan went to the window and looked out. Children frolicked in their yards, strong sturdy children with healthy hearts. Before his stroke Jeffy had played with them. He hadn't romped and run, but he had stood on the periphery calling in his high, bright little boy's voice, "Throw me the ball, Ross. Throw it to me."
And now he couldn't even speak.
Months ago when he'd first had the stroke, Dr. Free lander explained what had happened.
"It's not that he's lost the ability to speak, Susan. His first garbled attempts at speech scared and depressed him, so he quit trying. His speech will come back if he tries. The same is true of his motor movement. If he tries, Susan, he'll walk again."
Leaving the window, she sat down beside her son and picked up another book.
"This one has trees and flowers and birds and all the things you love, Jeffy." She pointed to a rose. "See the pretty rose. Can you say rose?"
Outside her window a brash young teenager called to his girlfriend, "Hurry up, Martha. We'll be late to the movies."
Jeffy stared at the picture of the rose, then looked up at Susan. A tiny tear formed in his eye and trickled down his cheek.
She pulled him into her lap and cradled him close. "You're going to talk again, sweetheart. I promise you."
o0o
It was Wednesday and Susan would be coming.
Paul turned on the radio and made himself a pot of coffee, then tried not to think about why a woman he barely knew was his first waking thought.
"Well, fishing fans," the disc jockey said, "you'll be glad to know that this is a great day to take to the sea. The sun is shining, the fish are biting, and WOWL is here bringing you the best in Country hits. And now here's Garth Brooks with his latest . . ."
Paul flicked the radio off and sat hunched over the table with a cup between his hands. He really ought to eat something.
There was an empty box of Nabisco shredded wheat in his cabinets and half a pack of oatmeal. He forced himself to eat the oatmeal, then went into his bedroom to dress.
The blue shirt was already half over his head when he changed his mind and reached for the white.
You look exotic in white, Paul, Jean used to say. Mysterious. Sexy.
He flung the white shirt onto the bed and put the blue one on.
What was the matter with him? A scarecrow trying to look sexy because Susan Riley was coming to the center. He must be losing his mind.
o0o
"You like her, don't you, Paul?"
"Who?"
"Susan Riley."
"What makes you say that?"
"That's the third time you've gone to the window," Bill said. "She won't be here until four."
The last time Paul had looked, it was five minutes till four. Turning toward Bill, he strived for nonchalance.
"I was just checking on Fergie. He seemed restless this morning."
"That's because Martha calved last night. Fergie's a father."
In the dolphin pool Fergie set up a commotion. Paul turned back to the window and saw Susan Riley at her car, bending over her son.
“Then I’d better get out there and see about him.”
Who was he trying to fool? As hurried toward the pool, keeping Susan in his peripheral vision, he hoped he looked as if he were going about business as usual..
"Something wonderful is going to happen today, Jeffy,” he heard her say. “ I just know it is."
For a moment Paul was caught up in her bright expectations. And then he remembered what happened when life got too good.
Today, no matter what happened he wouldn't get involved.
o0o
Big sometimes scared Jeffy. Big rooms. Big people. Big dogs.
But not that big fish. It smiled at him. And talked to him.
He was glad Mommy brought him here. He smiled last week to tell her. He hoped she understood.
The big fish jumped in the water. His face got wet. He liked that. The fish was playing with him. He wished he could get in the water and play with the fish. If only he could ask his mommy.
She was squatting beside him, making up a funny story about the fish called Fergie. He loved his mommy's stories.
The man who fed the fish wasn't talking, but he was watching and listening. Maybe he liked Jeffy's mommy's stories too.
The big fish threw a ball to Jeffy. He tried his best to catch it, but his hurt hand and arm wouldn't move.
"Did you see that?" his mommy said. "I think Jefiy tried to move his left arm."
The man called Paul didn't say anything.
His mommy bent over him. "Catch the ball, Jeffy. You can do it."
The big fish threw the ball again, and his mommy lifted his arms, but they weren't quick enough. The ball landed by his stroller with a wet plop.
"That's all right, sweetheart. We'll catch it next time."
Mommy threw the ball back to the fish. The man didn't move. He didn't say anything. Would he send them away and not let them come back? Jeffy wished he could tell them how much fun he was having.
His mommy touched her cheek against his. She always smelled nice, like flowers. "Try, Jeffy. Please try."
His bad arm wouldn't move. He was trying. Didn't she know that?
"Try, sweetheart. Try."
The big fish jumped and splashed water on him again. He might not get to come back if he didn't do something.
Jeffy stared into the water at the wonderful big fish that was his friend. He was scared. After that bad thing had happened to him and he couldn't move, he'd called for his mommy. But nothing came out except a funny croak. It scared him so bad, he didn't try anymore.
He squinched his eyes up tight and forced his lips to move.
"Fi . . . ish," he said.
"Did you hear that? Did you hear him?" His mommy hugged him, then jumped up and hugged the man. She was always hugging somebody.
"Jeffy spoke!"
The man got tears in his eyes.
o0o
Tears. Over a little boy who said fish. Paul surreptitiously wiped the moisture away. He hadn't even cried at Sonny's funeral.
"He spoke. Oh, Paul." Susan flung her arms around his neck once more. He held onto her.
What could he do? The woman was crying. Her tears wet his neck and the front of his shirt. Paul felt his defenses crumbling.
"I know this is silly." Susan leaned back and wiped at her eyes. "Crying when I ought to be laughing."
Paul didn't think it was silly at all. He thought it was feminine and endearing.
"I don't know whose shoulder I'd be sobbing on if you weren't here. Thank you."
"You're welcome." She shouldn't thank him yet. She was still pressed close to him, and her body was surprisingly lush for a slim woman. Not only was his heart stirring back to life, but the rest of him was as well.
He guessed he could let go now, but he selfishly held on a while longer. He'd thought that part of him was dead, buried forever in a small casket with brass handles. He should be thanking her.
"Jefiy." Abruptly Susan left him and squatted beside her son. Paul felt deprivation and a warped kind of jealousy. "Say it again, sweetheart. Say fish."
"Fi . . . sh."
"And water."
"Wa . . . ter."
"Mommy."
"Mommy!"
"You're talking. You're talking." Susan lifted her son from the stroller and swung him high in the air. He squealed with laughter, while Fergie breached the water and spun in a shining circle, squeaking his approval.
They didn't need him anymore. Paul hadn't known that would hurt until he started back toward the office.
"Paul. Wait." He turned, and Susan Riley was smiling at him. "Do you have to go?"
"Yes." He hoped she didn't see how he lied.
"Oh . . ." Selfish bastard that he was, he loved it that she sounded disappointed. "Jeffy and I are going off to celebrate with ice cream. I had thought perhaps you could join us."
"Sorry."
"Another time, then."
"Another time." Another lie. There could never be another time for them. She made him want too much.
o0o
Baskin-Robbins was crowded with sunburned children from the beaches screeching their orders at the three harried teenagers behind the counter.
Susan lifted Jeffy out of his stroller so he could see the displays of ice cream. "What do you want, sweetheart? They have cherry and strawberry and chocolate. You like chocolate, don't you?"
"Cho-co-late." His little mouth was still twisted from the stroke, and he struggled with the big word.
"Chocolate, it is. How about strawberry?"
"Yes. Straw-bewy."
They grinned at each other.
"Let's go hog wild and get some cherry too. This is a celebration."
Susan got their order in a big paper cup, then settled Jeffy into his stroller and wheeled him toward an empty table.
"Look at that funny-looking kid, Mama." A little girl with red pigtails pointed at Jeffy. Her mother tried to shush her. "What's he doing in that baby stroller?"
"Hush, Evangeline."
Susan wanted to jerk her son up and run. The table she was headed for suddenly seemed miles away.
"Is he a freak, Mama?"
"Evangeline, I'm going to jerk a knot in you if you don't shut up."
Jeffy's little face got stony. Susan squatted beside the stroller. "Let's eat outside in the sunshine, Jeffy. How does that sound?"
He gazed solemnly at her with big tears running down his cheeks. Oh, God. What had she been thinking of, exposing him to public humiliation? What if he never talked again?
"Hang on tight now." She straightened his little baseball cap. "You're in a rocket ship headed for the moon."
Ice cream dripped over the edges of the cup and made sticky splotches on her fingers as she took her son away from the thoughtless cruelty of a normal child. She was near tears as she struggled with the stroller and the ice cream and the heavy glass doors.
"Here, let me help you." A man with two children in tow reached out and opened the door.
"Thanks." She didn't even bother to look at his face. Strangers. Would she be dependent upon their kindness the rest of her life? She squeezed the handle of the stroller so hard, her knuckles turned white.
Outside the sun beat relentlessly down on them. Jeffy's baseball cap would protect him, but Susan would burn and peel. She didn't care.
Parking the stroller near a stone bench, she sat down. "Here's your ice cream, sweetheart."
He stared at the dripping cup.
"Hmmm. Doesn't it look good? We'd better eat it in a hurry before the sea gulls come along and gobble it all up. That one looks mighty hungry." A sea gull swooped toward them. His eyes still bright with tears, Jeffy regarded the bird.
Say something, Susan wanted to scream. Instead, she dipped a spoonful of melting ice cream and held it toward Jeffy.
"Mommy . . . am I a freak?"
He was talking again. Even while her heart broke for him, she wanted to sing Hallelujahs.
"No, darling. You're not a freak." She spooned ice cream into his mouth, then kissed his sticky cheek. "You're my chocolate Jeffy boy, and I'm going to gobble you up."
She pretended to nibble at him, and he squealed with laughter. Susan wished she could forget so quickly.
o0o
Dr. Dudley Freelander loved his job—seeing babies and small children through the delightful years of childhood, then launching them into the exciting world of adulthood, healthy and ready to take on life's challenges. He loved his job—except when he had to be the harbinger of bad news.
He polished his glasses twice before pressing the intercom and asking his nurse to send Susan Riley in.
"First the good news," he said, making a careful steeple of his fingers. Susan's smile saddened him more than tears. If anybody had a right to tears, this woman did.
"Jeffy's making remarkable progress with his speech, so whatever you're doing, continue. It's working."
"The dolphins are responsible."
"I'm glad that worked out. You're keeping up his regular therapy?"
"Yes."
He polished his glasses once more, buying time.
"Susan, Jeffy is not strong enough to withstand conduit replacement surgery. Until we stabilize him on his blood thinner, we risk another stroke or severe bleeding."
"He's going to get better." She thrust her chin forward.
"Susan . . . you've always known the odds."
"We're going to beat the odds. Already Jeffy is talking, and he's going to walk too." The only sign of her anxiety was in her hands. She twisted a small lace-edged handkerchief round and round. "You'll see. Soon he'll walk into this hospital for his surgery."
"I hope so." But he wouldn't put money on it. He'd seen cases like Jeffy's. Sometimes the patients breezed through the first surgery, then didn't live to the second. Either that, or didn't survive the second. He came around his desk and put his arm around her shoulders. "Take care of him, Susan. Call me if there is any fever, even the slightest elevation in temperature." There was no need to tell her why. She already knew the great danger: bacterial endocarditis.
When the door closed behind her, he bowed his head. It never hurt to have the Great Physician on his side.
o0o
In the daylight hours Susan could keep her fears at bay. It was during the bleakest hours of night that they prowled her mind.
The night after her visit with Dr. Freelander, she shoved aside her sheets and tiptoed into Jeffy's room. He was asleep in his small bed, curved into himself like a kitten.
With a mother’s tenderness she pushed aside his downy hair and rested her hand on his forehead. No signs of fever. She closed her eyes, trying to rein in all the emotions that ripped through her, love and fear, hope and desperation, loneliness.
Everybody thought she was strong. Her mother even bragged about it to others. "Susan is a rock. No matter what happens, she smiles on through.”
Didn't they know? Couldn't they see?
It was all an act.
She bent to kiss her sleeping son. He never stirred. With an expertness born of experience, she circled his tiny wrist and found his fluttering pulse.
Satisfied, at least for the time being, she tiptoed from the room and climbed back into bed. Unable to sleep, she pulled the covers up to her waist then lay watching the moon outside her window. It tracked across the inky sky, sending changing, pale patterns of light onto her walls and ceiling.
Time. Sometimes she wanted to grab it in her fists and subdue it. She wanted it to move backward before an April three years ago when Brett had given her the clock then driven off into the ocean. But more than that, she wanted it to move all the way back to the night of Jeffy's conception. She wanted egg and sperm to be perfect, to come together to form a perfect, healthy child.
Was it her fault?
The moon moved across the sky. At least she had her child.
Before she closed her eyes, she left the bed and went to check on Jeffy. One last time.
o0o
"Are you trying out for the Betty Crocker award, or what?"
Bessie stood in the doorway of Susan's kitchen watching her daughter mix another batch of cookies. Jeffy sat crooked in his high chair nearby, giving in to his paralyzed left side, chocolate smeared from ear to ear.
"I'm just making cookies, Mother."
"That makes every Wednesday for the last three weeks. Who's eating all those cookies? As if I didn't know."
"Don't start, please."
Bessie wasn't about to let her own daughter back her down. "I don't know why you keep cooking for that doctor, Susan. From all I hear he still frequents the you
know whats, and you yourself said he hardly ever has a word to say when you go down to that fish place."
Susan set the plastic mixing bowl on Jeffy's tray. "Here, darling, you can lick the bowl while Mommy speaks with Grandma." Jeffy dug in with his good right hand while she crossed to Bessie and stood with her back to her son, talking quietly. "Paul Tyler's a wonderful man, and he may not say much, but he's very kind to Jeffy and me. The least I can do is take him a few cookies. Besides, he likes them."
Bessie didn't like the way Susan looked when she talked about that man, all flushed and bright-eyed.
"He ought to spread a little of that kindness around to his wife. Lottie said she saw her at the grocery store the other day, nothing but skin and bones. If Paul Tyler's all that kind, why isn't he home taking care of his wife?"
"Mother, I will not discuss Paul Tyler and his private affairs. Certainly not in front of Jeffy."
"Well, then." Bessie gathered up her straw bag with the pink flamingos across the front. It was a favorite of hers. She'd got it that time she and Lottie went down to Florida and lay out on the beach like two sausages sizzling in the sun. It was big and roomy and held everything she wanted to put in it.
"I guess I know when I'm not needed."
She had to give her daughter credit. Susan was quick to make amends.
She put her arm around Bessie and escorted her to the door.
"You know I appreciate everything you do. Jeffy and I couldn't manage without you."
She never intended for them to manage without her. As soon as she got in the car she pulled a notepad out of her purse and wrote another letter to Jo Lisa. Not that the first one had done any good.
Neither one of her children cared a speck about what she had to say. Of course, she wasn't about to let that stop her from saying it.
o0o
The Vegas Folies Club offered just about everything a man could desire—good drinks mixed stiff enough to put hair on the chest, half-naked waitresses who didn't mind a friendly pinch, a small dance floor dark enough so nobody could see what you were doing, and a strip show guaranteed to knock your socks off.
Garvin Schultz was proud of his establishment. Let the society snobs turn up their noses at him. He knew how to cater to the common man.
He cruised through the crowd with a good Havana cigar stuck between his teeth and five carats' worth of diamonds on his pinky ring and the initial S that hung around his neck on a thick gold chain. He knew the importance of good props. If you wanted to be successful, you had to appear successful.
Moving from table to table he spoke to regulars and strangers alike.
"Evening, Mick . . . Linda."
"How's everything here? Betty taking care of you?"
"Good to see you back, Carl."
The lights dimmed and the gold lame’curtain came up on the round stage. Jo Lisa Markham stood in the center of a blue spotlight, her feet planted apart and her hands on her hips. She wore a blue feathered headdress, blue sequined shoes, and blue on everything in between.
It was everything in between that always took Garvin's eye. The woman had a body that wouldn't quit. Her face was nice too. Smooth magnolia skin, thick honey- colored hair, and eyes such a pale shade of green, they were almost spooky.
Southern women. God, how he loved them.
Not that it did him any good. Jo Lisa had lovers, all right. Everybody in this town did. But she seemed to delight in picking the wrong guy.
The music started, and Jo Lisa began to strip. She looked bored with the whole act, but the audience didn't seem to notice. Or to care.
By the time she got down to her G-string and pasties, Garvin could barely control his excitement. The other girls didn't bother him. But Jo Lisa . . . There was something about her bored look, so at odds with the way she moved, that had him sweating like a pig.
Watching her, he nearly chewed off the end of his cigar.
The crowd was on its feet stomping and screaming as Jo Lisa wound up her act. The spotlight dimmed, smoky blue, and a fan backstage blew over the dry ice, sending clouds of vapor swirling around her. She seemed to vanish in the clouds.
Garvin loved that part of her act. The dry ice had been his idea, and he thought it added a real touch of class. The crowd yelled for more, but Jo Lisa never came back to take a second bow like the other girls did. At first Garvin had taken her refusal as an act of insolence. It probably was, but it also preserved her mystique.
To the audience she remained untouchable and unattainable . . . just as she always had to Garvin.
But he had a plan.
Wiping the sweat off his brow, he hurried to her small dressing room. He was disappointed to find her already in her robe. She was sitting at her dressing table hunched over a piece of yellow notebook paper.
"What're you doing, sweetheart?"
"Don't you ever knock?" She crumpled the paper and tossed it among the clutter of stage makeup and oversized powder puffs.
"I don't have to. I own the joint and everything in it."
"You don't own me."
"It's not for lack of trying."
"Is there a point to this visit?"
Garvin was enough of a showman to know the importance of good timing. He took his cigar out of his mouth and studied it for a while, then strolled across the room and straddled a chair.
"I've been thinking ..." he said.
“That's an improvement."
He smiled. Sweet women bored him.
"Do you still want to be a singer?"
For an instant, he saw a flicker of interest that made her eyes glitter, but Jo Lisa quickly squelched it. Assuming her bored expression, she reached for a cigarette.
"I don't play Twenty Questions. Cut to the chase."
"I've been thinking about adding some singing to your act. You know, something slow and smoky. Teasing. Kind of like the stuff when Hollywood had real movie stars. Betty Grable. Jane Russell. Marilyn Monroe. You’d be a show-stopper."
He smiled at her, going for the kill. "We could go a long way together, baby. I could make you a star."
Jo Lisa just stared at him. He'd expected at least a question or two. Maybe even a smile. But she was just waiting like some madonna.
"Well, don't bowl me over with your excitement, Jo Lisa. There are other girls here, you know."
"Yeah, Garvin, I know." She stood up slowly, and as always, it gave him a jolt of excitement. Onstage she didn't appear tall, but up close she seemed to tower over him, especially since he was sitting down.
Her dressing gown trailed ostrich plumes like a molting bird as she breezed past him and reached for her purse.
"Jo Lisa, what do you think you’re doing?"
"I'm leaving."
"Dressed like that?"
"Who cares? This is L.A."
She slung the bag over her shoulder and marched toward the door.
Garvin’s pressure got so high he thought he might prove his doctor’s right and have a stroke on the spot.
"Where are you going?” She kept on walking like she’d gone deaf in both ears. “Jo Lisa! Come back here. You've got a second show to do."
"Get some other girl, Garvin. Make her a star." She opened the door, then flung back over her shoulder, "I'm going home."
The door slammed shut, and he sat in his chair staring at himself in the mirror over her dressing table. Nobody had ever walked out on Garvin Schultz. What was wrong with her? Didn't she care about her career?
It took him five minutes to get his rage under control. Another three before he could get out of his chair. Finally, he walked over the mirror.
“Who does she think she is?” He was rearranging his thinning hair over a bald spot when a crumpled piece of yellow paper caught his eye.
Garvin picked it up. Forget about privacy. Everything in this club belonged to him, including correspondence left lying around.
Dear Jo Lisa, the letter said. I don't know why you left the way you did. The least you could have done was stay for Brett's funeral. But that's all over and done with. It's not what's already happened that's driving me crazy, it's what's about to happen.
Susan's gone off the deep end over that doctor I told you about, and him with a wife who needs him. You've got to come home, Jo Lisa. I can't handle this by myself. Please! If you love your sister, please come home."
The letter was signed, Bessie Markham.
Garvin stared at it for two seconds before wadding it up and flinging it across the room.
His star act had flown the coop and was heading home to Mississippi..