DELLA
August 29, 2008
Just as Della’s planning period ended, the phone at her desk rang. She hoped it was Anne, who was on her way home from an interview in Atlanta for that bell ringing program in England, and since Della was the one who convinced her to make a move, she couldn’t resist answering it.
“Hello, this is Della Limehouse,” she said.
“It’s me.”
“I’m so glad you’re taking matters into your own hands, Anne.” Della balled her free hand into a fist. “How did it go?”
“Della,” Anne said. “I need you to do something for me right away.”
“Sure. What?” Della could hear Anne’s old Saab rumbling down the highway.
“Listen to me,” Anne said. “Please go check on Lish as soon as you can.”
“Okay,” Della said. “I mean, I don’t get out of here until four this afternoon. Why do you sound so freaked out?”
“I don’t know,” Anne said. “It’s just something in Lish’s voice. Drew is at some conference in California, and she called me a little while ago, but she couldn’t even get any words out. I don’t have a good feeling. I just want you to go over for a little bit this morning if you can. I’ve got a five-hour drive before I’ll be home.”
“So you’re telling me that something is going on with Lish that can’t wait until four?” Della nervously rubbed her forehead as a large pack of seventh graders piled into her room just before the third-period bell sounded.
“That’s my next class,” Della said.
“Della, do this for me, okay?”
“Okay.” Della exhaled as her students claimed their seats. “I’ll see if I can get someone to cover for me here.”
By eleven a.m. Della was knocking on Lish’s front door. Where is Rosetta? she thought. There was no answer, but she could hear the screams of the baby from upstairs. The window was open, and the baby was calling in a chant that seemed both rhythmic and horrible. It rose and fell every few seconds.
When it was clear that no one was going to answer, Della lifted the urn of the potted ficus on the right side of the front door and pulled out the hidden house key. She had to try it a few times before the large brass lock slid back.
“Lish?” she called as she followed the screams of the baby up the stairs.
The baby was writhing beneath a soiled blanket in her bassinet. Her face was red, but her lips were pale. Lish sat in a glider chair on the other side of the nursery looking out of the window as though she hadn’t heard a sound. Della looked out and saw that Mary Jane was half-dressed in only a shirt and underwear, sitting on a bench, trying to coax a lizard into a bucket while Andrew straddled one of the lower limbs of the loquat tree. He threw a Matchbox car down to the ground and it made a crashing sound.
Della grabbed the baby and pulled her close. “Lish?” She squeezed her cousin’s shoulder as the baby continued its rhythmic wail. “Lish, what’s going on?” Lish flinched, grabbed the top of her head with both hands, and shook it back and forth.
“Lish!” Della said. “Lish, look at me.”
With her hands still grasping her head, Lish looked slowly up at Della as though she vaguely recognized her, then she turned away and shook her head again.
Della turned to the wailing baby, watched her pale legs kick furiously, and wondered what she needed. What could she do to calm her for a moment? She just needed a moment without the screams so she could get Lish’s attention. When Della changed her small diaper, she saw that feces had dried around Cecilia’s bottom, and beneath it was an awful rash the color of a cranberry. It looked like the bedsore she saw on Papa the day they discovered the nursing home had been neglecting him. As the baby wailed, Della examined her round, little mouth. Her gums were dry. Her tongue had no saliva on it.
Della gasped. This baby was dehydrated. Her heart started to race.
“Lish, talk to me,” she called. She grabbed her cousin’s knee. “Cecilia needs to eat. Do you have any formula?”
Lish continued to hold and shake her head. “I can’t stand up. It will hurt too badly.”
“Can you nurse her?” Della asked. She knew Lish was a purist; Andrew and Mary Jane were both breast-fed solely for the first twelve months.
Della tried to hand the wailing baby to Lish. Her tiny hands were curled into fists and her toes were spread out like little fans. She was so tense and miserable. Hungry. Della wondered when she had eaten last.
Lish pushed the baby away. She shook her head no and then she grabbed the back of her neck. “I can’t make it stop,” she said. “It’s been hitting me over and over.”
“What?” Della said. “Make what stop?”
“The pelts,” she said. “The pelts on the top of my head.”
The baby continued to cry. It was a dry, hoarse cry. Della could no longer bear it. She took the infant in her arms and ran across the street to Nana’s old neighbor, Martha Emerson. Martha was bedridden, but she still had all of her help—a round-the-clock nurse and a housekeeper who cooked and cleaned every day.
“Please,” Della said to the housekeeper. She suddenly remembered her name from childhood. “Miss Janie. Can you watch those children across the street? There’s an emergency, I think. I have to get this baby some food.”
“Sure,” said the woman (who seemed elderly herself ). She walked slowly across the street and toward the garden where Andrew was chasing Mary Jane with the lizard.
Della found Lish’s car keys in the foyer, strapped Cecilia into the baby seat, and raced to the Harris Teeter, where she bought formula and a bottle as the baby wailed. Della’s home was closer to the grocery store and it seemed time was of the essence, so she made a snap decision and raced to Radcliffe Street, pulled into her driveway, and ran into the house.
Peter was on the piazza, replacing a rotten spindle. “Hold her,” Della said as she thrust Baby Cecilia into his arms. She filled the bottle with warm water, put two heaping scoops in, and shook, then she ran out to the porch and handed it to Peter. The infant girl began to suck at the plastic nipple as he took his place in the rocking chair and tilted the end of the bottle higher and higher with each ounce she gulped down.
He looked to Della, whose heart continued to pound. Who was only now aware of her hands trembling as she leaned back against the railing and breathed deeply.
“What’s going on?” Peter did not take his eyes away from Cecilia. He must have remembered from Cozy’s infant days that the nipple must be filled with milk or she’d take in air.
“Something’s wrong.” She looked at him. The top of his wide forehead, the protruding veins of his skilled hands, with some muck from the rotten wood of their piazza beneath his fingernails.
“It’s Lish. She’s not coherent or something.” Della bit her bottom lip until it turned white. “She wouldn’t respond to me or the baby crying, and the kids were running wild in the backyard.” She tried to catch her breath and think clearly. “Drew’s out of town. I’ve got to get back there, Peter.”
He nodded. “I can call it a day,” he said. “Leave the baby here, and go see about Lish.”
She swallowed hard. Her mouth was dry. “Okay,” she said. “Do you think you could pick up Cozy at three?”
“No problem.” Baby Cecilia grasped his rough forefinger with her little hand. “I’ll fish the old stroller out of the shed.”
“And can you call my work and tell them there’s a family emergency?”
“Sure,” he said as he propped the baby on his shoulder and patted her back. She belched and relaxed. Then he walked toward the kitchen where the telephone was as Della raced out of the house and into her car.
Before she put her keys in the ignition, she ran back in the house. “One more thing, Peter!” she called from the foyer.
He was hanging up the phone and he turned around so she could see the baby against his chest.
“What’s she doing now?” he asked.
Della looked at her little face. She pressed her hand gently down on her warm back. It was rising and falling slowly. “Snoozing, I think.”
“Like riding a bike, baby. I’ve still got the touch.” He grinned tentatively and swayed back and forth.
“If I’m not back in an hour, please give her some more formula. I’ll call you if it’s going to be longer than that.” Della scurried toward the door and then turned back again.
“If she’s wet, change her and use a clean dishrag for a diaper. She’s got a terrible rash and should be changed right away.”
He looked her way, put his finger to his lip to shush her, and nodded.
When Della arrived back at Lish’s, the front door was wide open. She called to her cousin as she stepped inside. There was no sign of anyone—not the kids, not the housekeeper, not Lish.
In the kitchen, mold grew on three plates of what must have been lasagna from a few days ago. There was a bowl of curdled milk with a few bloated Cheerios floating on the surface. A couple of flies darted back and forth between the trash can and the moldy plates. The refrigerator door was slightly ajar, and as Della went to close it, she saw the thick droplets of condensation on an uncovered chicken carcass and an unclosed carton of organic milk.
Before she raced upstairs, she took a quick look out of the back door and spotted Lish curled up with her knees to her chest beneath the loquat tree. She rocked back and forth with her head face down.
Della ran out to her. “Lish?” She saw that she was in a camisole and some flannel pajama bottoms. Her fingernails were bitten down to the nubs and her right thumb was bleeding. A mosquito landed on Lish’s shoulder and started to nip her; she did not swat it away.
Della sat down, brushed the insects off, and started to gently rub her cousin’s back. “I’m here. Talk to me.”
Minutes passed and Lish continued to rock. Della noted a prominent vein protruding from the side of her cousin’s long, thin neck; she watched the afternoon sun filtering through the loose strands of her rich brown hair. From across the street, Della heard Andrew and Mary Jane. As she craned her neck, she spotted them chasing one another behind the white picket fence of Mrs. Emerson’s front yard. George, the gardener, sprayed them with the hose from time to time, and they shrieked with laughter. Janie was on the porch smiling and clapping.
On the opposite side of Lish, Della noticed a hole Lish must have dug with a stick in her pristine garden. It was a few inches wide and went down a good four or five inches. The soft, freshly dug dirt smelled like pluff mud and low tide.
It was humid and miserably hot. Probably still in the mid-nineties. The limbs of the tree seemed to sag from the heavy air, and the rotten fruit that had fallen to the ground was decaying on the grass around them. Della cleared her dry throat. “You’ve got to tell me what’s going on, Lish. I can help. I’ll do anything I can to help you.”
Lish shook her head. She seemed unable to speak. She looked up once and her eyes were pink and swollen. She started to rub the top of her head with her dirty fingertips.
“There is a pounding on my head. It won’t stop. I can’t sleep.” She turned to look Della dead on. “When I stand up, it’s unbearable.” She looked back down. “It’s terrorizing me.”
“A pounding?” Della’s bright blue eyes raced back and forth as if she was speed reading.
Lish shook her head and then her eyes seemed to glaze over. She leaned back against the trunk of the tree and closed her eyes. “Leave me alone, Della. I need to sleep.”
When Anne pulled into the driveway a few minutes later, Della was holding Lish’s hand as she seemed to be in some kind of a waking trance beneath the tree. She put her cousin’s hand gently down and ran out to meet Anne.
“Where is she?” Anne peered over Della’s shoulder.
“She’s in the back, in a kind of waking sleep, I think.” Della’s face was pale.
“What happened?” Anne asked. “When did you come by?”
“When I got here late this morning, the baby was screaming and the kids were running around the yard. Lish was just sitting in the glider in the nursery. It was like she wasn’t really there.” She reached out and squeezed Anne’s hand. “The baby’s mouth was dry. There was hardly any saliva. I don’t know when she’d been fed last.”
Anne’s round green eyes bobbed up and down as Della stared into them. She turned her head from Lish to Della over and over.
Della followed her eyes to the backyard. She cleared her throat. “Anne, the baby had a rash that was worse than anything I’d ever seen. It was raw, and she was caked in feces.”
Bile rose in Della’s throat as she recalled it. She thought she might gag, but she took in a deep breath of the heavy air as Anne paced back and forth wringing her long, freckled hands. She closed her eyes and Della thought she might be praying. Then she looked up, tucking her red hair behind her delicate shoulders. “What should we do now, Del?”
“Okay.” Della spread out her fingers, attempting to make sense of this and take charge. “I’ll call Drew and you call Rosetta. We’ll call her obstetrician, and if need be—” She paused and looked up to the carriage house, where the tall, blonde MUSC resident was bolting up the stairs in her white medical coat. “Todd Jervey.”
Della hoped the young woman didn’t see Lish in the backyard. She wanted to protect her somehow. She wanted to pull down a screen over 18 Legare, and she remembered Nana closing the shutters when Papa was weeping in the crow’s nest. “He’s having one of his spells,” she used to say.
“Did she talk to you?” Anne asked as her eyes anxiously followed the medical resident into the carriage house.
Della nodded. “She says something is hitting her head.” She exhaled as they watched the young woman in the carriage house throw off her coat and pull a wine glass down from the cabinet.
Anne unclasped her delicate hands and touched Della’s bony elbow. “Maybe she just needs a decent night’s sleep. She probably hasn’t had a consecutive eight hours for six weeks now.”
Della nodded and turned back to Anne. “I think there’s more going on here than that.”
In Lish’s Day-Timer in the upstairs office, they found the numbers they needed. Anne went to call Rosetta on her cell, while Della spotted Lish’s fancy iPhone and attempted to call Drew. Della and Peter were the last people on the planet who didn’t have cell phones. It used to be something they’d admired about one another. At art shows and book signings they’d say, No one can track us down at a moment’s notice. Or they’d pipe up sarcastically when a friend or colleague gave an exasperated sigh when asking for their number, How did we ever live before cell phones? Now she found it rather embarrassing. It took her whole minutes to navigate this foreign device. When he didn’t answer his mobile, she paged him. He called back ten minutes later.
“Why’d you page me, honey?” He sounded as if he was out of breath. “You knew my presentation was this afternoon.”
“This is Della, Drew.”
“Della?”
“Yes. Something’s wrong.”
She heard him breathe in and out, in and out and then, “What do you mean? Are the kids all right?”
“It’s Lish,” Della said. “She’s curled up in a ball in the backyard in a kind of catatonic state. The kitchen’s disgusting. We don’t think she’s fed the baby for a while. Maybe a day even. How long have you been gone?”
He cleared his throat. “Three nights,” he said. “I don’t understand. Where’s Rosetta?”
“I have no idea. Anne’s trying to reach her now.” She tightened her grip on the phone. “Something is truly amiss here, Drew. I think Lish needs some kind of medical help, maybe even psychiatric help. I don’t know.” Saying those words out loud made Della teary. She felt the perspiration burn beneath her arms, and she willed herself to keep her voice strong. “You need to get home right away.”
“She’s just tired, Della.” She could hear him tapping rhythmically on something. He said a muffled, “Thank you. Yeah, see you there,” to someone. Now he was back. “It’s exhausting. Taking care of three. Don’t go jumping to any drastic conclusions on me now, okay? Let me talk to her.”
Della walked the phone out to Lish, whose eyes were now closed.
“She’s sleeping, I think,” she said to him.
“Don’t wake her. Just have her call me as soon as she’s up. I’ve got my final presentation tomorrow morning, then I’ll catch the first flight out.”
Della’s ears popped as she swallowed hard. “You should catch the red-eye tonight. I don’t think you understand what I’m saying, but you’ve got to believe me.”
“Look, Della,” he said. “I know you’re concerned, and I appreciate you being there. Just have Lish call me when she wakes up, okay? I know how she works. It’s exhaustion.”
“No, it’s more than that—” Della heard the click of his phone. “Drew?” He was gone. She was so angry and scared, she was seeing little black spots. How could he not hear the urgency in her voice? She looked down at the sleek, thin device. Where the heck was the Shut Down button? Should she shut down the phone? If she didn’t get a cell phone soon, she was going to start feeling downright disenfranchised.
Anne stood in the doorway with three pronounced lines across her freckled forehead. “Rosetta said Lish kicked her out day before yesterday just after she let herself into the house like usual.”
“Seriously?”
Anne nodded. “She said Lish pointed to the door and told her to get out for no apparent reason. The kids were crying and saying, ‘Mama, we want Rosetta to make us pancakes.’ She said they followed her out to the front gate and begged her to come back, but Lish kept saying no and pointing to the street corner where Rosetta catches the bus.”
“This is nuts,” Della said. “Did she say anything else?”
Anne lowered her voice. “She said Lish hasn’t been right since she came home with the baby. That she’s been sleeping a lot and letting the baby cry for a while before she nurses her. She’s been short with the kids. Rosetta says she mentioned it to Drew a couple of weeks ago, and he said he would see about it.”
“This is unbelievable.” Della leaned against the wall, and one of the oil paintings of the Morris Island lighthouse tilted slightly. “Drew is convinced she’s just exhausted. He wants her to call when she wakes up.” She straightened out the painting and turned back to Anne. “I don’t agree with him. I think it’s something else.”
Anne peered out the window at Lish and back to Della. “What should we do?”
Della looked up at the ceiling and around at the familiar crown molding of the upstairs hall. How many days had the three of them run up the stairs and down the corridor in a game of chase or hide-and-seek. “Settle down!” Nana would call. “Don’t disturb Papa.” Papa was often on the third-floor crow’s nest, listening to an album on his old phonograph. He’d volunteered to fight in World War II, well into his mid-thirties, and when he came home, he was never quite the same. “He got real sad after the war,” Nana had told them once when she was tucking them into the king-size bed in the guest room they shared from time to time. “And then when he lost his son, well, that about did it. He hasn’t been able to shake it for more than a few days since then.”
Now Della squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again. “I’ll get Peter to take Andrew and Mary Jane to our house for the night.”
“I’ll keep the baby,” Anne said.
“Okay,” Della said. “There’s formula and a bottle at my house. I’ll stay here with Lish until she wakes up. We’ll call Drew. Then I’ll see what kind of state she’s in.”
Anne nodded and they headed to the nursery where they found a well-stocked diaper bag to which they added blankets, baby soap, powder, a pacifier, and a pair of white pajamas with pink and green polka dots.
Della walked to the doorway and watched Anne zip up the bag. “Sometime you’ll have to tell me how that interview went.”
Anne sniffed the rank air of the nursery and shook her head. “It’s not what’s important right now.”
“Say something, please.” Della grabbed Lish’s shoulders. She’d woken up an hour ago, but she’d swatted away the phone every time Della handed it to her.
When Della called Drew back, he exhaled and said, “I’ve arranged to have my presentation moved up to eight a.m. I’ve booked a noon flight out. Don’t do anything until I get home, okay?”
“Not okay,” she said. “I don’t think you’re hearing me, Drew. Your wife needs you now. This is more than exhaustion, and it’s scaring me.”
Drew exhaled. “Della, I’ve seen this before with Lish. If you can just get her to have a good night’s sleep, she’ll be a new person tomorrow. I need you to hang in there.”
Della was beginning to feel a little crazy. Could sleep be all Lish needed? Had this happened before?
“Call you later,” he said before she could respond. You’re a lot of help, Drew. A real rock. She shook her head in disbelief.
Della called the middle school principal and told her she needed a sub for tomorrow. She didn’t offer an explanation, and she didn’t pretend to be sick. She was thankful that she was not questioned.
“I’m calling your OB,” Della said as Lish sat at the kitchen table and scraped at a cut on her shin with her unfiled fingernails.
The on-call physician, a Dr. Chang, called back. She had a kind voice, and Della explained it all to her.
“She may be worn out, or there could be another medical cause,” the doctor said. “Let’s see if she’ll talk to me.”
“This is the on-call obstetrician.” Della handed the phone to Lish.
Lish managed to find her voice for a moment. Her hands trembled as she held the receiver to her ear. She answered “no” four times and then handed the phone back to Della.
“If she’s not better after a good night’s sleep, I’m sure her doctor would like to see her in the morning,” Dr. Chang said.
“But—”
“Look, Ms. . . . I’m sorry. Tell me your name . . .”
“Limehouse.”
“Ms. Limehouse.” She cleared her throat. “I’m not sure I can discuss this with you. I’m not her physician, and you’re not an immediate family member.”
“I’m the only one here.” Della tugged on the phone cord. “I need some guidance!”
“If you’re that concerned, you should take her to the emergency room,” Dr. Chang said. “They can properly assess the situation. All right?”
“Okay.” Della nodded, and the doctor said a quick “Good-bye.”
Outside a squirrel scurried across the wrought-iron fence, and two mourning doves took flight. They landed on the telephone wire and began their soft five-note coos.
Suddenly Lish scampered up to the nursery, holding her head; Della quickly followed her. She watched her pad around the room until she turned to Della and screamed, “Where’s my baby?”
“Let me explain,” Della said, but Lish ran past her and grabbed a silver letter opener at the desk just outside of the nursery. She turned to Della, her legs wide and firmly planted, her arm outstretched with the sharp end of the letter opener pointing toward her cousin. “Give her back!” Lish screamed, and she lunged at Della.
Della grabbed her wrist, but she couldn’t stop the letter opener from cutting through the sleeve of her shirt and the surface of her shoulder.
She pushed Lish back, took a look at the wound, put her hands up and said, “Please, Lish. Listen to me.” But Lish came right back at her with the letter opener, which Della dodged. When she saw Lish lunge again, she ran back down the stairs and out of the house. She jumped in her car and locked the door.
She grabbed the steering wheel as if to steady herself and watched her knuckles whiten. When Lish didn’t come out of the house, Della reached for the cell phone, which she was glad she’d tucked in her skirt pocket. Without hesitating, she called Mrs. Jervey, who still lived in Todd’s old family home on South Battery. Mrs. Jervey gave Della Todd’s mobile number, and she dialed it right away.
“Hello?” a deep voice said before the third ring.
“Todd, this is Della.” She sucked her teeth and continued to firmly grasp the steering wheel. “I need your help.”
When Todd arrived, Lish was slumped against the bottom of the staircase with her head between her knees. She rubbed the top of her head as if she had just hit it on the corner of a table. She’d put the letter opener down a few minutes before when Della offered her a sip of water. Della had discreetly grabbed it and put it on top of a chest in the living room.
Lish took a small sip of water and looked up at Todd. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, and her pupils were dilated. Yet she looked him in the eye and seemed to recollect who he was.
“Todd?” she said. “Thank you for coming.” She pressed her fingertips into her skull. “I can’t find my baby, and I have this awful thumping on my head.”
Della took a step toward her. “Remember what I told you about the baby?” She talked as calmly and gently as possible. “The baby is with Anne. She went for a little visit, and she’ll be back soon. The children went to a sleepover at my house.”
Todd helped Lish lie down. He put the glass of water by her side, stood up, and rubbed the back of his sunburned neck. Despite his beard and a couple of extra pounds, he still had his boyish look—a thin frame, fair skin with freckles, and strawberry blond hair.
When Lish closed her eyes, Della looked at Todd. It had been ten years, but his soft hazel eyes were familiar and comforting to her. He tugged at his bearded chin as if to think for a moment and then looked back at her. “I think we should take her to the emergency room.”
Della swallowed hard. “I know Drew doesn’t want that. He thinks she’s exhausted. He wants me to wait until he gets back tomorrow.”
Todd shook his head. “Della, if he saw her, he would want her to be checked out. We need to run an organic etiology— to rule out a medical cause for this. There could be a metabolic or thyroid problem.” He looked at Lish and then back to Della. “It’s pretty unlikely, but a brain tumor is another possibility.” He grasped her thin shoulder. “And the letter opener incident shows that she could be a threat to herself or someone else.”
Della had not considered any of those things. She was sure Drew hadn’t either.
“Can we call Drew first?” she said. “Maybe if you talk to him . . . ?” She lifted her shoulders and threw her hands up as if in a plea.
“Sure,” Todd said. He popped the knuckle of his forefinger. “I’d be happy to.”
They paged Drew twice and waited for him to return the call. Della paced the floor and Todd walked around the house, noting Lish’s framed articles and a high-profile cover story the local paper ran about the loquat baby food she’d created. Next to it there was a photo of the handsome couple in Venice at San Marco Square, embracing one another amid the pigeons.
An hour passed without a response from Drew. When Lish started to stir, Todd watched her intently from the foyer. Suddenly she sat up on the sofa, looked at Della, and said, “Get out of my house,” then began to weep.
“Okay,” Della turned to Todd. “Let’s take her.”
Lish didn’t fight them, and she walked willingly into the emergency room. Right away, she was recognized by the attending physician and the head nurse, who whisked her out of the crowded waiting room and into a bed where they pulled a gray curtain around her.
Della and Todd told the attending doctor, a young guy by the name of Rob Suarez, what they knew. He nodded and seemed to give Todd a knowing glance. “We’ll draw blood and do a metabolic panel,” he said. “We should know in an hour or so if this is something organic. If the blood sugar and electrolytes are normal, I’ll call in Dr. Swan, the attending psychiatrist, who may want to talk to you, Mrs. Limehouse.”
Della nodded. “Okay. I’ll be here.”
Todd sat with Della in the waiting room, and they watched an obese woman pacing back and forth with a steaming cup of coffee in one corner and an elderly man holding the hand of a young girl in another. He was whispering to her in Spanish. Her eyes were big and nearly black, and when she looked up she met Della’s stare head on. Della smiled at the beautiful girl. Who knew what they were waiting for? The girl looked back down to the pattern of her skirt—circles upon circles of lavender and yellow.
“Have you eaten?” Todd asked.
“No.” Della became suddenly aware of her empty stomach.
He nodded toward the sliding door that led to the street.
“Let’s pick up a quick sandwich. This always takes much longer than you might expect.”
As he led the way next door to an all-night pizza and sub joint, she looked up at him and let out a nervous chuckle. “Well, I never thought we’d meet again under these circumstances.”
He gave her a tenuous smile. “Listen,” he said. “This is life. You take it as it comes.”
He held open the door of the little dive. It smelled like beer, cigarettes, and pepperoni, and Della had a faint memory of eating there in the middle of the night when she was in college.
Todd pointed to the meatball sub on a menu. “This is good. Wanna try?”
After they got their food, they walked back to the hospital and took a seat on a bench in a little garden outside of the emergency room.
Della looked at the meaty sub, the parmesan cheese oozing out of the white bread. She took a sip of her Coca-Cola and looked at him. She wanted to ask him what would happen to her cousin tonight, and what he thought was really going on. But she decided to wait. She knew he wouldn’t want to speculate until they ruled out the medical possibilities. She watched him unwrap his sub.
“So the whole eating-healthy thing hasn’t made it onto your radar yet?”
He chuckled and took a hearty bite. A little smudge of tomato sauce was in the corner of his mouth, and he wiped it away with a thin napkin.
“Nah,” he said. “I don’t grind my own flour or anything yet. I’ve spent so many late nights in the lab or the psych ward that I’ve learned to survive on anything that’s open after midnight, and that’s not usually the unprocessed stuff.”
Della nodded. The sub was surprisingly delicious.
“Yeah, we can’t afford all of that stuff. It’s great and all if you’re wealthy, but one trip to Whole Foods and my whole paycheck is gone.”
He nodded. “Oh, don’t tell me the famous author doesn’t make enough to buy organic?”
Della exhaled. “Famous? What’s the definition of famous? Receiving a seventy-two-dollar royalty check, maybe, every four months?”
He popped open a bag of chips and his hands seemed strikingly familiar to her, the freckles across the knuckles, the scar on his thumb where she knew he once caught a fishing hook on a friend’s bad cast. He looked up. “I don’t know why you say that with a hint of disdain, Del.” He took a bite, and she could hear the loud crunch. “You look to me like you’ve got the life you always wanted.” He leaned forward. “I’ve seen your good-looking husband and your beautiful little girl. Mom sent me that article in Coastal Magazine about you all, the one about artistic couples of the low country.” He took a sip of his Sprite. “Plus, you’re managing to do the thing you always wanted.”
Della nodded. She noted a bat swooping between the corner of the hospital and the parking garage. A city bus lurched to a stop and a couple of third-shift workers exited its doors.
Della thought of her crumbling home just down the road. She thought of the finger-length roaches ducking in and out of her utensil drawer and the yard full of scrap metal and the stray cat lounging on the front stoop. She thought of her dinosaur of a computer and the novel she was only a third of a way through. She was too close to it to know, but she suspected it was the weakest of the bunch.
What made her think she could write about a stalker who committed murder? Had she ever stalked someone? Had she ever been a witness to a murder? Or shadowed a detective who arrived just after the scene of a crime? No, no, no. She was an idiot to try and write one of those kinds of books. And what were her intentions? To make money? To remake herself as a plot-driven novelist?
Her mother, if she were alive, would immediately peg the manuscript as her daughter’s attempt to sell out. An unsuccessful one. But Kate Brumley, the highly anthologized poet, was an abysmal mother, Della admitted now. She never needed to worry about providing for her daughter because Nana was the present and responsible grown-up in Della’s life. What did Katie Brumley know besides how to catch the eye of a strung-out beatnik at a shabby hotel in Paris with her well-proportioned curves and her piercing blue eyes? Or how to string a few words together so that they captured the kind of out-of-body experience one felt during an LSD trip? The older Della got, the more she disdained her mother.
She watched the third-shift employees in their hair nets, gray-green scrubs, and thick-soled shoes as they took their turns moving through the wide revolving doors.
Todd cleared his throat. “You’ve done very well. You can’t deny it.”
“Oh, yeah?” She looked at his gentle face, his hazel eyes glistening from the light of the street lamp. His head was tilted with a half grin, expecting her to agree with him. “Right now it feels like a façade.” She exhaled. “I’ve got too much on my plate, you know? And none of it is what I really want.”
“What’s on your plate?”
“Well, I’m teaching English full time to middle school kids to make ends meet—grammar, sentence diagramming, recess duty, nasty parents, the whole nine yards. I love the kids, even the entitled ones, but it’s tough working a nine-hour day, then coming home, taking care of a child, and writing at night. I have to write a book every twelve months that will sell only a few thousand copies. I sit at book signings where half the people don’t even look my way—or worse, ask me for directions to the bathroom.” A car honked in the distance. A radio blared suddenly and then faded. “I’m a mid-list writer. It’s not exactly something an author aspires to. In fact, it’s kind of a curse.”
He balled up the empty paper bag from his meal and tossed it in the trash.
“Aside from making sure your cousin is okay, and I think she will be, what do you want?”
Yes, that was Todd. The consummate mental and emotional surgeon—aiming the scalpel at your heart when given the slightest opportunity. She remembered their long walks on the beach, how he would probe and probe her about her motherless childhood, about her desires, about how she felt when he took her in his arms. She used to find it wearisome. To answer all of those questions. She missed the spontaneity she’d had in previous relationships, and she was annoyed by his constant need for her to self-reflect.
But that was in her twenties. Tonight, just outside of the emergency room where her cousin (on whom she relied in a way she couldn’t quite explain) was being poked and prodded in search of a medical cause for her mental state, Della was overwhelmed with the desire to take stock. She was about to turn thirty-eight, and she was not at all where she thought she would be at this point in her life. She wanted to tell someone how she really felt.
She took a deep breath and let it go. “The truth is, I just want to raise my daughter the best way I know how.” She looked up into the night air above them. “And I want more kids. I love raising children. I know that sounds awfully 1950s, but it’s the truth. It’s the best thing I’ve ever experienced.” She crossed her legs and tapped her foot as he waited for her to continue. “And I want time. Just a little time. Time to write a novel I can be proud of. Time to read. Time to take a walk.” She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “And I’d settle for central heating and air and neighbors who don’t deal drugs, you know?”
He nodded, peeled the lid off of his disposable cup, and tilted it up. Then he surveyed the street, looked back at her, and said, “You do have too much. You’re going to have to think of a way to cut some things out.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I’m all ears, Dr. Jervey. Tell me how to simplify my life and make twice as much money, will you?”
As she watched him rub his chin, Lish’s cell phone rang. Della pulled it out quickly and looked hard for the Talk button. She punched it as soon as she spotted it.
“Drew?” She pulled the phone to her ear.
“No,” said the voice on the other end. “It’s Anne, Del. Where are you? How’s Lish?”