It was a day made for bad news, a gray, drizzly day full of gloom and shadows. The warm spell that had settled over the seacoast like a familiar, fuzzy blanket stole away in the middle of the night, leaving behind a harsh chill.
Susan stood outside Jeffy's room listening to Dr. Freelander deliver the bad news: Jeffy wouldn't get to go home that day as they'd anticipated. Only a minor setback, the doctor said. A few more days, and he'd be ready to go.
A few more days. To a child that could be an eternity.
Before going back inside to tell her son, she called her mother.
"Jeffy can't come home today, so I thought we might do something special to cheer him up. Can you stop by the house and pick up his dolphin in a box?"
"I'll do better than that," Bessie said. "I'll call Jo Lisa and have her bring it. She can always cheer him up."
"Don't disturb her if she's sleeping. She works so late at the club . . ."
"Stop worrying over everybody else. Jo Lisa will be there . . . wearing rhinestones, no doubt. And I'll think of something. Maybe bake a batch of those chocolate chip cookies he likes so well."
"Thanks, Mother."
"I'll see you in a little while. Keep a stiff upper lip, Susan."
Susan hung up and leaned against the wall. She was so tired of keeping a stiff upper lip.
Resolutely she squared her shoulders and went down the hall to tell Jeffy the unhappy news. As always, fear squeezed her heart when she saw him lying so still against the covers. She tiptoed to his bed and stood over him, watching the rise and fall of his breathing.
He came awake slowly, like a reluctant turtle peeking from its shell.
"Mommy?"
"Yes, darling?"
"Can I go home?"
"Not today, sweetheart, but Aunt Jo's coming to see you."
"Will she sing to me?"
"If you want her to."
"She sings funny songs."
Susan smiled. When Jo Lisa made up songs, she didn't strive for beauty; she sought humor. Her extemporaneous songs were so funny that she'd have Susan and Jeffy both holding their sides with laughter.
Crazy, wonderful Jo Lisa. What would either of them do without her?
Susan helped Jeffy with his breakfast, then sat by the bed reading the paper and waiting for her sister. Paul's trial was still front-page news. Reading it, she ached. She'd seen him with Jeffy, seen his wisdom, his tenderness. He would never have deliberately performed surgery on a child merely for the sake of getting back into the operating room.
She wished she could sit on the witness stand and say so. She wished she could sit beside Paul and hold his hand and tell him she believed in him.
"Jeffy?" Jo Lisa stuck her head around the door frame, holding the dolphin box aloft. "This crazy old thing called me up on the telephone this morning and said he had to get down here right away. Can you imagine why?"
"No."
Susan watched her son's face light up. Quietly she left his bedside and walked to the window.
"He said he had worked out this routine for the three of us and thought if we practiced it we might make it to television."
"What's my part?"
"You get to hold the box . . . and this magic wand." Jo Lisa whipped a small gold-tipped black wand from behind her back. "Now . . . put it in your hand like this. And when you wave the wand, Aunt Jo and the dolphin will sing."
"Together?"
"Yes, together . . . What's that funny face, pal? Don't you believe me?"
"Nahh."
"Try it. Wave the wand . . . That's right."
While Jeffy concentrated on waving the wand just right, Jo Lisa slipped her hand into her pocket and turned on a small tape recorder. The dolphin language of squeaks and clicks sounded in the room. Jefiy's eyes got big.
"How'd you do that, Aunt Jo?"
"Don't you believe in magic, pal?"
"Maybe."
"Try waving that wand again."
The dolphin's chatter segued into a squeaky alto voice and Jo Lisa joined in. Enchanted, Jefiy kept waving his wand.
Watching them, Susan's heart hurt for her sister. Jo Lisa was wonderful with children. A natural. Why was it that her sister shunned connections? Surely someone somewhere had offered this warm, loving person something more than a brief tumble in his bed.
"It sounds like a circus in here." Bessie came through the door bearing cookies in one hand and a small package in the other.
"It's magic, Gran'ma."
"Can I interrupt this magic for a cookie break?"
Bessie took up court beside the bed. Jo Lisa and Susan shared a cookie with Jeflfy, then stood apart at the window.
"Where in the world did you get the dolphin recording?"
"I called Bill McKenzie. He was kind enough to stop his work and help me make a tape of the sounds."
"You did all that this morning?"
"Nothing's too much for my nephew."
At the bedside, Bessie handed Jeflfy the small package.
"What is it, Gran'ma?"
"A rainbow."
"A rainbow?"
"You don't believe me? Open the package."
Bessie helped her grandson tear into the paper. He stuck his tiny hand into the box and came up with a row of rhinestone buttons strung together with red yarn. As if nature sought to compensate one of God's children, the sun broke through the clouds and shot sparks off the buttons. A rainbow appeared on the white hospital walls.
"Look, Mommy. A rainbow." Jeflfy held the string of buttons aloft, bright rhinestones, shaped like hearts.
A memory stirred. Beside her, Jo Lisa went very still.
Jeffy swung the buttons and rainbows danced on the walls. Mesmerized by the string of rhinestone hearts, Susan walked slowly toward the bed.
"What unusual buttons, Mother. Where did you get them?"
"From Jo Lisa's blouse."
Time spun backward, and she saw the heart-shaped rhinestone button tumbling from Brett's pants pocket.
At the window, Jo Lisa made a sound like a small animal in pain.
Slowly Susan turned to face her sister. Horror was stamped on Jo Lisa's face, and pity and guilt. Susan clutched her heart with one hand and the bed rail with the other.
"Jo Lisa?" she whispered.
"Susan." Jo Lisa held her hand out in entreaty. "Please .”
Please, please, please. The truth flooded Susan and she was drowning, drowning as surely as Brett had when the ocean closed over his car. Scenes from her past played across her mind like a torn, jerky movie reel. Brett and Jo Lisa together ... the way they'd sometimes look at each other at family dinners and break into smiles when nobody else was laughing, the times he'd driven her to work then come home late because of car trouble, their abrupt disappearances, the spontaneous errands they'd invented, going to pick up ice cream for everybody then coming back disheveled and flushed.
Susan covered her face with her hands. Oh, God. Not Brett and Jo Lisa.
"Susan." Bessie put a hand on her arm. "What's the matter with you? Are you sick?"
How could she be sick? Her son was the one sick. She had to be healthy and strong and wise and calm.
Across the room, Jo Lisa made a move toward her.
"No." Susan held her hand out to stop her sister.
"What's the matter?" Bessie's tone had changed from concern to suspicion.
Susan didn't want a scene, not in front of her son. From somewhere in the deepest recesses of her being she dredged up enough courage to get through the moment.
"I'm all right, Mother. I just need a little air. Do you mind staying with Jeffy until I get back?"
"All I've got is time. Take as long as you want."
Susan hurried from the room without looking at her sister. If she saw Jo Lisa's face one more time, she might scream. Blindly she made her way down the hall and into the elevator. People were staring at her, and it wasn't until she got to the car that she realized tears were streaming down her cheeks. She didn't bother to brush them away; she merely drove. Drove and drove and drove until finally she was back in her own front yard, back at the house that had been her home with Brett, the home he and Jo Lisa had defiled.
The numbness began to wear off and rage took its place. Susan barreled from the car and raced toward her flower beds. Their beauty mocked her. How could she have been so naive, so trusting?
Sinking onto her knees in the dirt, she began to jerk flowers out by their roots and fling them into a heap.
"No, no, no," she screamed. Crawling on hands and knees she went from bed to bed, leaving a wake of devastation.
"Susan." Jo Lisa had come up behind her and was standing with her hands clenched at her sides. A yellow taxi disappeared down the street.
“Go away.”
"I can't, Susan. I have to explain."
"Explain? EXPLAIN!" Susan stood up, dragging two gasping flowers in her hands. Their roots trailed dirt down the side of her slacks. "How can you explain sleeping with my husband?"
Jo Lisa paled. Susan was without mercy.
"That is what you did, isn't it, Jo Lisa? You slept with my husband?"
They stared at each other, sisters who had suddenly become strangers, enemies. Jo Lisa took a step backward.
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Susan. I never meant to hurt you."
Until then, Susan had hoped she was wrong. With the admission on her sister's lips, there was nothing she could do except believe.
"He never loved me, Susan. He loved you. He always loved you."
Susan felt like a mongoose charmed by a cobra. She wanted to run but she couldn't. Mesmerized she stood in the dirt listening to her sister.
"It was just sex with us, Susan. That's all. It never meant anything to him ... to either of us."
"Why? WHY?"
"It was all my fault. I chased him until I wore down his resistance. I used to corner him after work and cajole him into having a beer before he came home. One thing led to another and he ended up in my bed."
"How could you do that to me? I loved you, Jo Lisa. I always loved you."
"It's easy for you to love, Susan. You're perfect."
"I'm not perfect; I'm human. Do you hear me? I'm human. I don't want to be perfect anymore and to have courage and be called strong. I want to scream and rage and claw your eyes out." Susan sagged, and the flowers dropped from her hands. "I want to claw your eyes out, Jo Lisa," she whispered. Sobs shook her.
Jo Lisa hugged herself. Thank God. If she had touched Susan, she wouldn’t be responsible for what she’d do.
"I'm sorry, Susan. I'm so sorry."
"He was my husband, Jo Lisa. Mine. And you took him."
"You always had everything . . . the looks, the talent, the love and respect of our mother, the perfect little home, the perfect man. I was jealous, Susan. I had to prove to myself that just once I could be better than you . . . and so I took your husband."
A dark cloud passed over the sun, and rain began to fall, a light mist at first, and then gradually a downpour. Sodden and sad, Susan and Jo Lisa faced each other, their chests heaving with emotion. Rain slashed them, standing out like rhinestones on Jo Lisa's pale skin. Her eyes, dry and empty, glowed like green lanterns in the gray day.
Susan's once-proud flower beds became muddy puddles, and the dirt she'd collected in her rampage liquefied and ran in brown rivulets down her arms and over her shoes and down the sides of her slacks.
Jo Lisa's beautiful body was clearly defined by her wet clothes, and Susan envisioned her husband's hands on her sister. She closed her eyes to shut out the vision, but it persisted. She saw the two of them tangled together in hot, sweaty, clandestine love. Had he taken Jo Lisa in the backseat of the car where he'd first made love to Susan? The car. Oh, God, the car. . . . He'd driven it off into the ocean, and Jo Lisa hadn't even stayed for the funeral.
She opened her eyes and looked straight at her sister.
"You killed my husband."
Jo Lisa went deathly white.
"You killed him." Susan stalked her, relentless. "He came home that day, came home and brought me a yellow clock." She moved closer, her hands balled into fists. "He was wearing those pants . . . the ones with the rhinestone button in the pocket." She was so close now that she could smell the feint musky scent of Jo Lisa's perfume. God, how she hated that perfume. How she hated her sister.
'You killed him." She smashed her fist into her sister's face.
Jo Lisa sucked in her breath, then her chin went up defiantly.
"No, Susan. I didn't kill him. He came to my bed and I gave him what he wanted. He was so eager for me, he tore one of my buttons. He gave you a clock, Susan, but he gave me a everything else."
Jo Lisa turned and walked away, her hips swaying in the tight wet jeans and her high heels sinking into the sodden ground. Susan sank to her knees and beat her fists on the ground.
Jo Lisa kept on walking.