Belonging (47 page)

“I will,” Joanna promised, but she found it hard. It was such a drastic change to have energetic Madaket reduced to a silent hull. If it had not been for the way Madaket played with Christopher, Joanna would have been seriously worried.

Instead, she really did try to be patient, and because it made her restless to simply sit in the hospital room, she set up a makeshift workstation there, and while Madaket held Christopher, Joanna made notes and memos which she had faxed from her hotel to the network in New York. Jake had hired a new secretary for Joanna, an older, efficient, quiet woman named Louise, and most mornings and afternoons Joanna began and ended her day in long conversations with Louise. Justin mailed her the proofs of her first book. Every day when Joanna walked from the hotel to the hospital, she carried Christopher in
her arms, a diaper bag over one shoulder, and a loaded briefcase on the other. And it was odd, but she was very happy as she walked. She felt quite balanced.

Two weeks passed this way. More and more of the bandages were removed, revealing new, thin, fragile skin stretching tautly over the burned area. This skin was tight and dry, Madaket said; the itching drove her wild. At first the nurses and Joanna, and later Madaket herself, helped soften the new skin by smoothing on lanolin cream.

The morning finally came when Joanna arrived to find Madaket sitting up in bed, squeezing a rubber ball.

“I see they’ve given you some toys to play with,” she laughed, depositing Christopher on the bed and bending over to undo his snowsuit.

“Physical therapy,” Madaket replied. “I’m supposed to keep squeezing it so the skin growing over my knuckles won’t pull and hurt when I move my hands.”

“I’m glad to see you’re diligent about it.”

“The faster I get well, the sooner I can go home.”

“Can it be you’re bored with this lovely hospital?” Joanna teased. When Madaket only groaned in response, she continued, “The Latherns are off to Europe for a month, and they’re giving us their house to stay in while we decide what to do.”

Madaket flashed a look of concern that was balm to Joanna’s heart: she cared about this, she had healed enough to care about something.

Madaket asked, “Aren’t you going to rebuild on your property?”

“Yes, of course. But we have to live somewhere while the new house is being built.”

“Oh. Right.” Madaket relaxed against her pillows.

“Madaket,” Joanna said, curling up at the end of the hospital bed and idly moving Christopher’s feet and hands in a kicking and waving game he enjoyed, “do you think we could talk a little now?”

Madaket shrugged. “All right.”

“I mean, are you feeling that you’re on the way to recovery?”

“I guess. Whatever that means.”

Joanna looked at Madaket, who was staring at the blank television screen hanging from the ceiling. “There’s so much we have to talk about. The fire. And your animals. And Todd.”

“What is there to say?” Madaket asked, her voice monotonal.

Joanna thought a moment. “A lot. There’s a lot to say. We haven’t talked about how sad it is that Todd is dead. You haven’t told me what this means for your life.”

“I don’t understand.” The young woman turned her black-eyed gaze to Joanna.

“Madaket. I thought you loved Todd.”

“I did.” She drew in a long, shuddering breath. “And it sucks that he’s dead.” She flashed a passionate look at Joanna. “That’s all I can say about his death. I can’t … I don’t want to … deal with it now. I can’t. I just … can’t.”

“I understand, I think.”

Madaket looked down at her hands. She’d stopped squeezing her rubber balls and now began again. “I did love Todd. I adored him. I idolized him. He was like some kind of god to me. But he could be a jerk. He was kind of an idiot, too.”

Shocked, Joanna let an uncomfortable laugh escape. “Why do you say that?”

“For one thing, he really thought he was going to find some more jewels. I did, too, at first, but after a few nights digging in the sand I could tell we wouldn’t find anything else. But he was so—romantic—about it!”

“I need to tell you, Madaket—” Joanna hesitated, afraid to cause some sort of emotional upheaval that would cause Madaket to deteriorate back into her invalid self; but from sheer need she plunged on. “I overheard you talking with Todd the night of my dinner party for Justin. I overheard him trying to convince you to steal any other stones you found.”

She’d expected Madaket to be embarrassed or angrily to protest her innocence, but the young woman only smiled ruefully and said, “Oh, Todd was always talking about that.”

“But it seemed—it seemed he was seducing you so that you’d come around to his point of view.”

Madaket was still smiling, and nodding her head. “That’s another thing he did all the time. It didn’t mean anything. I knew it, I always knew it, and on some evolved level of his Neanderthal mind Todd knew it, too. Todd was just a lover. Put him near a female and he’d try to get in her pants. Rather like the stories I’ve heard about my father.”

“But would you have—?” Joanna stopped, afraid to upset the other woman.

“Would I have helped him steal? If he had promised to love me, would I have helped him steal?” Madaket grew thoughtful. “I don’t think so. I never took him seriously. I knew what he was like. I never told him I would.” Again her dark eyes rested
on Joanna. “Did you think I’d steal from you?” Without waiting for Joanna’s answer, she continued, talking slowly, musingly, “Perhaps I would. If it would bring back Todd. What can I say? I
didn’t
steal from you. I certainly didn’t know what Todd and his father were planning. They didn’t give me a hint.”

Joanna felt tension lift off her shoulders. She inhaled a cleansing breath. “Good. I’m glad to know that. I needed to hear that from you. Todd is—was—so persuasive. And you did seem so—so much in love.”

“I think I was only infatuated.” Her face grew wistful. “It was fun flirting with him. I’m going to miss that.” A shudder ran over her visibly, and she put her hands up, covering her face. When she spoke, her words were muffled. “I’m so sorry that he’s dead.”

“I want to tell you what I did, Madaket. I sold the two rubies you and Todd found, and got seventy thousand dollars for them. I’ve already given half of that to Helen and Chrissy Snow—and I’m giving the other half to you. Thirty-five thousand dollars. For you to use however you wish.”

Madaket regained her composure and with great care wiped the tears from her face. Solemnly she stared at Joanna. “Wow. That was really generous of you. I’m sure Mrs. Snow and Chrissy can use that. But, Joanna, you don’t have to give me that money. It’s not necessary.”

Joanna smiled. “It’s necessary for me.”

Madaket nodded thoughtfully. “I can understand that, I guess.”

“You could make a down payment on a piece of property on Nantucket.”

At this, Madaket looked surprised, and then she dropped her eyes to the bed, and Joanna sensed a shrinking in of her spirit, as if Madaket were actually shriveling before her eyes.

“Madaket?” Reaching over, she touched the young woman’s arm. “What is it?”

Madaket had been sitting up in bed with her legs stretched out underneath the sheets and now she brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, hugging them, defending herself. She looked very young. “I thought … it was only that you said … you’ve said several times, when I was in the bubble, that I’d always live with you. That I would be, well, like your family.”

“Oh, but I meant that! I mean that. I do!” Hastily Joanna slid off the rumpled sheets, picked a startled Christopher up in one arm, and moved to the top of the bed, to sit
down next to Madaket, whose spirits suddenly seemed as fragile as her new skin. “It was only that I overheard you telling Todd that you’d buy property of your own, if you could. But you don’t have to use your money for that. You can save it and use it for whatever you want in the future.”

“Thank you,” Madaket said softly.

“Oh, Madaket, I meant everything I said. I do love you like a daughter, and I do want you to live with me and stay with me always.”

“Thank you,” Madaket said again, and this time she raised her dark eyes and looked at Joanna. Her breath came out in a long shiver. “I’m glad.”

Joanna felt tears rise to her own eyes. “I’d hug you, but I’d probably knock your bandages askew,” she said frivolously, and Madaket chuckled and Christopher eased the tension of the moment by shrieking gleefully and waving his arms at Madaket, who took him in her hands and bounced him on the bed.

“So you see, we did have a lot of things to discuss,” Joanna said, modulating her voice to a commonsense tone. “A lot of things to set straight. I’m sorry if I insulted you by asking if you were planning to steal anything you found, but it was something I needed to know. I’ve never had anyone I could completely trust before.”

Madaket looked levelly at Joanna. “Well, now you do.”

Joanna smiled. “And so do you.”

Twenty-six

As the month of March progressed, Madaket’s face and hands and chest healed completely. The new skin, stretched so thinly over her wounds, broke open in several places, was dressed with bacteriostatic medicines, and grew again. The unmitigated itch of all this made Madaket irritable, and she was also restless, bored with the hospital, eager to get out of there, and she mentioned this, it seemed to Joanna, a hundred times a day.

“Soon,” the nurses promised. “Very soon.”

“I kind of like it here,” Joanna told Madaket one late afternoon as she prepared to return to the hotel. Sunlight as pale as sheets of parchment fell from the windows into the hospital room. Christopher squirmed and wriggled on the bed as Joanna bundled his limbs into his puffy snowsuit.

“You do? You’re kidding!” Madaket scoffed.

“I really do. It seems kind of—homey.”

“Wait a minute,” Madaket said. “Hold on. Homey?
Homey
?” She held out her hands to hold Christopher one last time before he left for the day, and automatically Joanna handed him to her.

Then, pulling on her coat and floppy hat and gloves, she looked around. “Yes, homey. I guess what I mean is, it makes me think of the network. I’ll take you in to see it sometime. Then you’ll understand. It’s got the same marvelous electric sense of urgency, people hurrying through corridors, phones ringing, people arguing and laughing and shouting for each other, equipment and cables everywhere, huge message boards with thousands of notes thumbtacked to them.”

“Have you read some of the boards here?” Madaket asked. “Charts for things like ‘fasting bloods.’ Like something from a vampire movie.”

“You’re just stir-crazy, and I don’t blame you.” Joanna pecked a quick kiss on the top of Madaket’s bristly scalp, and took Christopher from Madaket’s arms and, calling goodbye to the nurses as she went, set off through the labyrinthian hospital halls, down the elevator, and out to the streets.

After the warmth of the hospital, the frigid air hit her skin like a slap, but as
Joanna detoured around taxis and cars in the hospital’s courtyard and turned down the narrow canyon of Fruit Street, she felt the sheer motion warming her blood. And then she came to North Grove Street and stood, suddenly overcome with a heady sense of the fullness of life. Holding Christopher against her, her briefcase and diaper bag pulling at her shoulders, she stood on the sidewalk and just looked and listened, breathing in the sensations of the city as if they were expensive perfumes. Beneath her feet the cement walk shuddered from the thunder of traffic along Storrow Drive, while overhead a subway car rumbled its way to the Charles Station T stop. Sirens wailed, horns honked, taxi drivers cursed and spat tobacco out the window, buses migrated past her, hissing and howling like steel-skinned dinosaurs. It was fabulous. She loved it, and felt tears sting her eyes, tears of homesickness for New York.

Christopher wriggled against her impatiently, and so she sniffed and turned down the street, heading for her hotel. She saw a homeless woman hunched over a grate against the cold. She put a twenty-dollar bill in her cup.

During the last two weeks of March, as Madaket’s strength returned, so did her impatience, and the day came when Joanna arrived at the hospital to find Madaket pacing the halls in her hospital gown and the new robe Joanna had bought her. Joanna had given much thought to the selection of this robe; wool would chafe Madaket’s skin, and Madaket would scorn anything satiny or sexy. Joanna had thought she’d found the perfect garment in the thick velvety terry cloth in a luscious shade of deep turquoise. But the robe’s simple span of unbroken color somehow counterpoised in unfortunate contrast Madaket’s ravaged hands and face. The burned area was at last entirely covered with new skin, and the doctors predicted that eventually that area would be paler than Madaket’s original skin, but now it was still a savage glare of crimson. There was no color on earth that could help that.

Partly to entertain Madaket and keep her thoughts off her raw and itching skin, but also with the hopes of encouraging the young woman to envision her future, Joanna attempted to interest Madaket in various projects. She spent hours at a travel agency, garnering sheaves of glossy travel brochures, which she took to the hospital and spread all over Madaket’s bed. “Let’s plan an itinerary, and when you get out of here, we’ll spend a few months roaming the world. Where would you like to go? Paris? London?”

“I don’t think I can face the thought of traveling anywhere yet, Joanna,” Madaket
said somberly. “I’ll have to get used to people flinching from the sight of my face, or staring horrified at me, before I can travel.”

“Sounds like you need to develop thicker skin,” Joanna said. “Hey. That was a joke. Come on, smile.”

Madaket grinned and rolled her eyes.

Another day, Joanna said, “What would you think about starting college in the fall? I’ll pay your tuition. I’ll help you study for the high school equivalency exam.”

“I’ve never been interested in college.”

“All right, then, what about career-oriented courses? In the culinary arts? Or homeopathic medicine?”

“Joanna, to do any of those things, I’d have to live off island. And I don’t want to do that. I never wanted to do that. I just want to be on Nantucket. I just want to go home.”