During the cold days of January and the blustery days of February, Paul was there for Bill and Maggie and Beth Ann. He found the best psychologist available, and while they were in counseling sessions, he took Timmy to his basketball practice and tutored him in math. It was the least he could do in return for the nurturing Bill had provided during his time of need.
When the earth began to green and the breezes began to warm, he visited Jean's psychiatrist. Dr. Hiram Goldberg was more than an acquaintance; he was a trusted friend.
"How is she, Hiram?"
"If you're asking me if Jean’s stable enough to live alone, I'd say no." Hiram polished his glasses. "I don't know, Paul, maybe I'm not the one for her. Maybe you should get somebody who doesn't know you so well, somebody who won't hurt because you're hurting."
"Does it show that much?"
'To me . . . and probably to Jean. Maybe it would be best if you made a clean break from her, got somebody in her family to move in with her so she can get over this thing."
"I'm the only close family she has." He stood up and shook his friend's hand. "Thanks, Hiram."
When he left the office he drove by Hope Methodist Church hoping for a glimpse of Susan. Drove by twice. Like a lovesick teenager. Then he went downtown and bought Jean a silver Porsche.
He wondered what the less fortunate did to salve their consciences?
o0o
"I'm leaving."
"You can't go, Jo Lisa."
"I'd like to know why in the hell not."
Bessie pursed her lips and went into the kitchen to get herself a cup of tea. If her oldest daughter—who knew good and well such language was offensive to her mother—was going to sit there and say such things, she had no choice but to ignore her. She zapped a cup of water in the microwave, got the tea bags out of the sugar bowl and the sugar out of the flour canister, and made herself a bracing cup of tea. Then she sat down at the kitchen table and crooked her finger into the teacup like a lady. She'd always prided herself on being a lady.
"Mother." Jo Lisa posed in the doorway, hip-slung.
If she was doing it to get Bessie's goat, then she was bound to fail. In the months since her oldest daughter had been home, Bessie had learned patience.
"Are you going to sit there pouting, or can we talk?"
"What do you want to talk about, Jo Lisa?"
"I'm trying to tell you that I'm leaving, but as always you don't listen." Jo Lisa pulled out a chair and straddled it, propping her chin on the back. "You always listen to Susan."
"She never uses back-street language."
"Shit!"
"See. That's just what I'm talking about."
Jo Lisa got up and shoved the chair against the table so hard, it bumped, then she stalked out.
Affronted, Bessie sat drinking her tea. Jo Lisa would cool off in a minute, and when she did she'd come back and sit down and say whatever she wanted to say.
The front door slammed. Bessie set down her teacup.
"Jo Lisa?" There was no answer. She got up from the table and hurried after her daughter. "Jo Lisa!"
Jo Lisa was already on the front porch. She hesitated, then finally turned around.
"Where are you going, honey?" Bessie said through the screen door.
"Over to New Orleans to hunt for a job."
"You have a nice job."
"I might as well be embalmed as spend the rest of my life at that so called nice job." Jo Lisa picked up a garbage bag from the front steps. "Here. I brought you some old clothes for your bingo club's rummage sale."
"You're leaving? Just like that?"
"I'll be back in a week or two to get the rest of my things and settle the rent."
"Consider somebody besides yourself. What about Susan and Jeffy?"
"I'm going over now to tell them good-bye."
Jo Lisa left without so much as a fare-you-well, her gold high heels clicking smartly on the wooden steps. Bessie stood watching her. Lord, where had she ever learned that walk, sashaying her hips? And how many times had Bessie told her high heels looked cheap with britches?
But when had Jo Lisa ever listened to her?
Bessie took the garbage bag into her bedroom and began to sort through the clothes. There was a perfectly good black skirt that she had no intention of putting up in a rummage sale. Lottie had a niece about Jo Lisa's size who would be only too glad to get a nice skirt like that. She put the skirt aside, then took out a denim blouse. One of the buttons was missing, but if she cut the others off and put a different kind on, she might be able to wear the blouse herself.
She got the scissors from her sewing basket and snipped off the buttons. Then she put them in a jar. Who knew when they might come in handy?
o0o
Susan had bought flowers and was planting her spring beds. Bessie said it was a little too early, but Susan needed to stay busy, and more than that, she needed the beauty in her life.
It was an unusually warm day, almost like summer, and Jefiy sat on a quilt nearby playing with his dolphin box.
A taxi pulled into her driveway and deposited Jo Lisa, wearing leopard print leggings, gold high heels, and dangling rhinestone earrings. The taxi driver stayed long enough to watch her walk across the yard before pulling into the street. She stopped beside the quilt and swung Jeffy high in the air, then took his little hand and led him to the flower bed.
Susan looked up and brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. "Hi, what's up?"
"My dander and my sap both. I'm leaving."
"I wish you could stay."
"It's time to move on, Susan."
Jeffy tugged at Jo Lisa's hand. "Aunt Jo, can I see the shiny things in your ears?"
"Sure thing, mister." She plucked her earrings out and handed them to her nephew. He walked back to his quilt and became absorbed in holding the earrings in the sun and watching rainbows dance across his white shirt.
"He's going to miss you, Jo Lisa. We all will."
"Mother will be relieved, and think how much easier it's going to be for you at church. I thought old Erma Jane was going to have a stroke that day you let me sing Just As I Am. " Jo Lisa pulled a cigarette out of her shoulder bag and lit up. "I don't want you to think I've reformed or anything, but I'm going to miss you, too, kid."
The sisters studied each other for a long time, then knowing how Jo Lisa hated sentimentality, Susan turned back to her flower beds. "Stay in touch this time, Jo Lisa."
"I'm not making any promises, but I'll try."
"Try to come home more often ... at least at Christmastime."
"God, Susan, Christmas is a hundred years away."
"I know. But I like having my family with me on major holidays."
"Careful, kid. You're beginning to sound like Mother."
"Mommy!" They both stiffened at Jeffy's cry of distress.
It was a weak sound, like the mewling of a newborn kitten. Clutching his stomach, he bent over the quilt and vomited on Jo Lisa's earrings.
They ran to him, Susan with dirt flying every which way, and Jo Lisa with her gold bag bouncing against her hips. Susan caught her son just as he collapsed.
"Help me, Jo Lisa."
o0o
Paul was making rounds when he saw Susan following the small gurney down the hall. Her sister was with her, practically holding her up.
Fear gripped him. Not Jeffy. He started down the hall at a trot. Then, halfway there, he stopped. He was no longer a part of their lives. He wasn't Susan's lover or Jeffy's doctor.
A friend is someone you can hold onto, he'd told Jeffy. Lately he hadn't even been their friend.
He stood watching the doorway through which they had disappeared, then heartsick and knowing exactly why, he turned away. He finished rounds, but always the sight of that small form on the gurney was in the back of his mind. Rather than go home and face another silent meal with Jean, he went down to the hospital cafeteria.
Through the roast beef and baked potato he mentally rehearsed all his reasons for staying, but during dessert he knew there was only one. He sat in a quiet corner of the cafeteria lingering over his coffee until he knew that visiting hours would be over. Then he took the elevator upstairs. He didn't have to ask which room. It was emblazoned in his memory.
He eased open the door, then stood silently watching. Jeffy lay against the pillows, so pale and still that Paul had to look at the machines to see if he were breathing. Susan sat beside the bed with her back to the door, bent over Jeffy, holding his tiny hand. Her hair parted over her neck exposing the vulnerable spot that Paul so loved to kiss.
He stood outside the door watching, filled with longing and despair. Now that he was there, what would he say to her? He'd been a fool to come.
He turned to leave and his watch clicked against the door handle. Suddenly Susan was staring at him . . . and he at her. They couldn't seem to get enough of looking. Then they both moved. He stepped into the room and opened his arms. With the unswerving trust that had always been a part of her character, Susan came to him, came without question and without judgment, simply came to him and stood quietly with her heart pressed close to his.
Afterward he would wonder if he made the sound intentionally. But for the moment he was too full of conflicting emotions to do more than hold her, rocking her gently in the cradle of his arms.
The tiny form on the bed never moved.
They might have stayed that way three minutes or thirty. Paul lost all track of time.
At last, Susan leaned back so she could see his face.
"It's viral hepatitis," she said.
"Very treatable."
"That's what Dr. Freelander said, but . . She wrapped her arms around him and leaned on his chest. "Oh, Paul, I feel responsible . . . and guilty."
"That's the curse of every mother who loves her child."
Of one accord they walked toward the small bed. Standing there with their arms around each other watching Jeffy sleep, they fell silent.
Paul felt like a man set adrift in a leaky boat, banished from a place he loved and yet irrevocably bound by memories so achingly sweet, the place he held dear would forever be a part of him. Beside him Susan stirred, her soft arm brushing against his. And he knew that she was the place, she and Jeffy, and that he longed with every fiber of his being to return to that sweet, familiar port.
Memories flooded him until he was drowning in them. How she kept the front porch light burning for him—and how eagerly he watched for its beam in the darkness.
Sometimes she would be at her desk poring over musical scores for her choir; other times she would be in the kitchen, humming as she baked some delicious, tempting treat. Often there would be no lights burning inside, and she would surprise him by stepping out of the dark, filled with a scorching passion that left them gasping.
On the hospital bed, Jeffy stirred. Susan bent over him, brushed his hair back from his forehead, and pressed a kiss on his pale cheek. When she straightened back up, she was strong and full of resolve. He could see it in her eyes, her stance, the set of her shoulders.
"I don't want Jeffy to see you, Paul. He's too fragile to have to go through another good-bye."
"You're assuming that I will leave."
"Are you still with Jean?"
"Yes. But it's not working ... for either of us."
"I have no intention of being a part of that triangle again."
"I know I have no right to be here, Susan, but I had to come. I had to find out about Jeffy . . . and about you. How are you doing?"
"I'm surviving. I'll always survive."
"That's your gift, Susan. Courage."
"Or my curse."
The moment of his going came to them in flashes of bittersweet memory. You're strong, he'd said. Jean's not.
Paul took both her hands in his. "If you ever need me for anything, Susan, anything at all, please call."
o0o
Too full to speak, she merely nodded. Paul left as quietly as he had come.
Susan lost all sense of time as she stood gazing at the door.
I'm calling you, Paul. Can't you hear?
o0o
On the fifteenth day of March, the lawsuit against the renowned Dr. Tyler made front-page headlines. All the facts were there, of course, that charges were also being brought against Blake Medical Center and Dr. Curtis Blake, but the focus was on Tyler. An enterprising reporter had done his homework, and Tyler's career was traced from his days in medical school through the pioneering of the Tyler technique to the tragedy in ER the day Paul had lost his own son.
Paul folded the paper and put it in his briefcase so Jean wouldn't see, but later in the day she called him from the art gallery, crying.
He hurried to his partner's office. "I have to go and get Jean. Can you cover for me, Luther?"
"She saw the newspaper?"
"Somebody told her."
"Why can't they let decent people alone?" He waved Paul toward the door. "Go."
Paul found her sitting in her office, rocking back and forth in the swivel chair, hugging herself.
"Jean?" He stood in the doorway. "Are you all right?"
"You didn't have to come." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I'm not going to do anything foolish."
"I didn't think you would."
The distance that separated them was more than the small space from desk to doorway: it was a vast wasteland of misunderstandings and collected hurts.
"Do you want some coffee?" Jean left her desk and went to the coffeemaker.
"No, thank you. If you're all right, I need to get back."
Holding onto her coffee cup she walked back to her desk with the care of someone negotiating a mine field. She set down the cup and saucer, then dug into her purse for a compact. Paul watched from the doorway while she repaired the damage to her face. Finally satisfied, she closed the compact with a loud click.
"I'm not crying about Sonny, you know." He said nothing, waiting. "I can deal with death; it's life I'm having a hard time handling."
"Jean, I need to get back to the office. Can we have this discussion another time?"
"What other time, Paul? We've been together now for almost six months. We never talk."
"I'm not going to argue."
"That's the whole trouble. You don't care enough to argue. You shut me out, Paul. You won't talk about the lawsuit. You won't talk about having another child."
"I'll be home late, Jean." He turned to leave.
"That's it. Just walk away. If you walk away this time, Paul, keep on going, go straight to Susan Riley."
"This has nothing to do with Susan Riley."
"It has everything to do with Susan Riley. I can't compete with a perfect memory, Paul. I won't compete."
He went to her and put his arms around her. "You're upset now, Jean. We'll talk when I come home."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
o0o
It was another promise he was destined to break. That night there was a pileup involving six cars and a busload of children going to a church youth rally. All available doctors were called to the ER battlefield.
When Paul finally eased into bed beside Jean, it was 4 A.M. Careful not to disturb her, he rolled onto his side and tried to sleep.