Flirting With Pete: A Novel (24 page)

Miriam caught her hand and forced her to stop. “Not for me. Look. I have only two bookings this week anyway, and they’re small. AnneMarie and Tyler are working them. You need to spend time with your father, or looking for another job.”

“I won’t get one.”

“Yes, you will. I’ll give you a great recommendation.”

Jenny knew that even a recommendation from the
pope
wouldn’t help. People didn’t want her around. It didn’t matter whether it was because of her hair or her freckles or her name, she didn’t fit in like other people did. She couldn’t talk easily, or smile easily, especially with new people, who would surely take one look in her eyes and see the truth of what she was.

Miriam had been special. But Miriam was leaving.

“You can work the DeWitt wedding next Sunday. Okay?”

Jenny nodded. She gave the table a dull swipe and hung the cloth by the sink. Then she let herself out into the fast-falling night and set off for home, and she refused, absolutely
refused
to think about all that might happen before she saw Miriam again, but the thought came anyway— not only came, but multiplied, then crowded in on her with such intensity that her legs began to wobble. She hadn’t gone a block when she had to sit down on the curb.

She hugged her knees. She put her cheek down and squinted, making Main Street a blur of light and dark that might have been London, or Paris, or Wyoming just south of Montana, and she thought about Pete.

She started to rise, but sat right back down. She didn’t know if it was better to stay here and imagine he was waiting for her at home, or to get there and find out he had left. He had said he would stay, but that was before he’d had a chance to think about what she had told him. Now that he knew some of the truth, he was probably gone. And she didn’t blame him. She was bad news,
bad
news.

She pulled the pins from her hair and shoved them one by one into the ground, pounding them down with the heel of her hand. She stopped only when a small figure slid down to the curb and a small hand touched her leg.

She managed a smile. “Hey, Joey Battle, what’s up?”

“Nothin’.” His skin glowed pale, almost bluish, with freckles as iridescent in the night as she knew her own must be. “Who made you get
your
haircut?” he asked.

“Me.” She tried to lift his backward baseball hat and take a look at his hair, but he held the plastic band firm on his forehead.

“Mine looks
dumb,
” he told her. “She chopped it all off ‘cause she says it was getting too hard to comb. Well, I’m wearin’ this hat to school, I don’t care
what
she says. She says your daddy’s coming home. That he killed your mama. Did he?”

Jenny pressed her knees together and tucked her elbows into her middle.

“Did he?” Joey prodded.

“No.”

“Then why’s he in jail?”

“Because the jury said he did it.”

“Why?”

“Because he said he did it.”

“So did he?”

“No.”

“Joey? Joey Battle, where are you?”

Quick as a flash, Joey flew down the street. Jenny turned her back, hunched her shoulders, and ducked her head so Selena wouldn’t see her and know where Joey had been. She waited until the sound of scampering footsteps tapered off and died. Then, with her shoulders still hunched and her stomach in knots, she set off for home.

Left, right, left, right. She walked evenly, setting one foot in front of the other, and tried to walk tall, like the magazine instructed, only her shoulders wouldn’t go back, and when she tried to clear her mind of worry, Darden’s face barged right in— Darden and no job and no long hair and no escape—

She broke into a run, arms pumping, hair coming alive in the lowering mist, and didn’t let up until a stitch in her side slowed her down, but even then she didn’t stop. She had to know if Pete was waiting for her. Had to know. He was the only bright thing left for her.

By the time she got home, she was frantic. She ran through the shrouding mist, up the side steps, and into the kitchen. He wasn’t there. She ran through the hall, room to room through an encroaching chill— first floor, second floor, every nook, every closet, even under the beds in case he was playing a joke, though she knew he wasn’t cruel that way.

Breathing hard, she drove her hands into her hair. If he was gone, that was the end of it. No comfort, no warmth, no last shot at the kind of happiness other people had. If he was gone, her dreams were dead.

Shaking with cold dread, she wrapped her arms over her head, scrunched her eyes shut, and took a breath from the deepest, most wretched part of her.

Then her eyes opened wide on an image of the pine tent out back. Whirling around, she raced from the room and into a large human shape.

Boston

Casey was shaking as she put the last page of the manuscript facedown on the pile. A small part of her reaction was from the abrupt appearance of that large human shape, but the better part came from the idea that Jenny’s father had gone to prison for killing her mother. Casey had never treated a client who was connected to a murder. Death, yes. She often helped clients adjust to the death of a parent, a spouse, or a close friend. But murder was a different can of worms. It involved a level of violence that Casey had never experienced. Her parents had never fought; they had never
talked
. As odd as that was— as many times as she had attached various psychotherapeutic terms to their particular form of dysfunctionality— she figured that leading separate lives was preferable to the sort of hatred that led to murder.

But Connie had written that Jenny was kin. That made this particular murder personal.

No. Casey stopped herself. What Connie had actually written was,
she’s
kin. For all Casey knew, “she” referred to someone who had written the journal as a piece of fiction, and “how to help” referred to getting it published. Casey couldn’t help with that.

Nor, though, could she turn her back on Jenny Clyde. Jenny’s world was closing in. Her desperation was growing. Casey had to know what had happened to her.

Something told her that Jenny was real. But something else felt odd— something in the part she’d just read. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

Already on edge, she jumped at the sound of the phone. It was a muted ring that came from the kitchen. There was no phone here in the living room, which was where she had been since Emily Eisner’s departure. Nor was there a clock here, though she guessed it to be nearly ten. Meg was gone for the night, and Casey’s friends didn’t usually call this late.

Uneasy, she set the journal pages aside, ran out and through the hall to the kitchen, and snatched up the phone.

Ten minutes later, after a speedy drive through mercifully mild traffic, Casey ran up the stairs of the nursing home, through the door, and on up to the third floor. Her mother’s doctor was at the desk there, waiting for her as he updated Caroline’s chart.

Her heart pounding, Casey stopped short. The doctor was dark-haired and slight, a quiet, formal man. Though she knew that the formality was as much a cultural as a personality trait, she guessed that it served to protect him from personal involvement. Few of his patients recovered. They might linger as Caroline was doing, but in time nearly all of them died.

Casey eyed him with caution.

He gave a small smile meant to reassure. “She’s all right. It went on longer this time, but she came through it herself.”

Casey sagged in relief. Two years before, when Caroline had been vegetative long enough for the odds of recovery to be slim, Casey had signed orders that resuscitative measures were not to be taken. She had consulted with other doctors before taking that step, had talked with the minister in Providence who knew Caroline, had argued the pros and cons with Caroline’s friends. Intellectually, Casey continued to stand behind these orders. She wasn’t sure, though, what her emotions would be if Caroline died when she might have been saved.

“If she came through it herself,” Casey told the doctor now, “I think that means something. She isn’t any more ready to die than I am to let her go.”

The doctor’s smile grew sad. He remained quiet.

Casey crossed the short distance between them. She did respect this man. Otherwise, she would have taken Caroline from his care long before. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” she invited.

“We’ve been through this before, you and I.”

“With infections.” There had been a handful of those over the years. “Not with seizures. Seizures are new.”

“Yes, they are.”

She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. “You think she’s trying to die?”

He moved an eyebrow in a shrug. “That’s often the case.”

“Why didn’t she, then?”

“By definition, a persistent vegetative state is one in which what the patient’s body does has nothing to do with intelligent life. Vegetative functions continue to work. Same with reflexive responses. Those reflexive responses were likely behind your mother coming out of this particular series of seizures.”

“Series?”

“Yes.”

“More than one?” Casey asked, disconcerted.

“Three, four, five small ones in the last hour.”

“But small ones. And she pulled through. I
do
think that means something.” She turned to go to Caroline’s room, but turned back. As always, she felt a seesawing between the mind and the heart. Casey accepted that there might be a discrepancy between what she
wanted
to be the case and what
was
the case.

She folded her arms. “If you’re right,” she asked softly, “what happens now?”

“Perhaps nothing. She could get past this bump and stay as she is a while longer. You’ve read the case studies.”

Casey had, indeed. She had learned about Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, and dozens of others who had lived for years with artificially provided food and drink. She knew how medical bills piled up. She knew of the toll taken on the families of those in a prolonged vegetative state.

She had her own way of coping. It was actually a perversion of her father’s scavenger-hunt theory. He believed that self-knowledge came with opening doors to all of the rooms in one’s life. She didn’t agree with the “all” part. She was a totally functional woman. She was professionally successful, personally active, well adjusted, rational, and happy. If the contents of one room in her house were filled with pain, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to change that, she entered that room when she had to, but otherwise kept the door closed.

She visited Caroline often. When she was here, she was entirely involved. When she left, she closed the door behind her. It didn’t always stay shut, but when worries seeped out, she did her best to contain them again.

Was that cold and unfeeling? Perhaps. But she didn’t know what else to do. The pain, the frustration, the helplessness of thinking about Caroline all day, every day, for more than a thousand days and counting, would have destroyed her.

Right now, though, she was here, and she was curious. “If you’re right, and my mother is trying to die, won’t she try it again?”

“Possibly.”

“With seizures?”

“Not necessarily. I’ve had patients who experience an episode of status epilepticus— a period of continual seizures— but get through it and then never have another seizure. Different things can signal a change in condition. Patients in a persistent vegetative state generally exhibit circadian sleep and wake cycles. Your mother does. We can get her to react to a glaring light when she’s awake but not when she’s asleep. One of the signs of approaching death could be a change in this reaction. She could spend more time sleeping and be harder to rouse. This would suggest a change in her metabolism. Her limbs could grow cooler, which would suggest a change in her circulation. If her autonomic functions begin to falter, oral secretions may collect at the back of the throat, which would make her breathing louder and more labored.”

“Swell,” Casey remarked.

“But she isn’t suffering,” the doctor said with more feeling than he had showed to that point. Clearly, his concern in explaining the situation was Casey. “You have to keep that in mind. She does not feel pain. She does not feel any sensation at all. Her brain is functioning at too low a level for that.”

“Then again,” Casey pointed out, “if what is happening to her now is the first step in a reawakening, she could begin to feel pain.”

“We’ll know if that happens. Even if she can’t speak, we’ll know, and if not me, then the nurses. I never fail to be awed by their instincts. They are always the first to know when a patient is getting ready to make a move.”

Make a move. He meant die. Casey had heard that from nurses and the family members of patients right here on this floor, and more than once. Nurses did know, which was why she had no intention of asking them now. She didn’t want to know the answer.

So she nodded to the doctor in silent thanks, pointed down the hall, and set off.

All was peaceful and dim in Caroline’s room. If there had been a disturbance that night, the only evidence of it was the Valium drip hanging from the IV pole by the head of the bed. Caroline was propped on her side, held there by two well-placed pillows.

Kissing her cheek, Casey came away with the scent of eucalyptus. It was familiar and soothing. She chose to see it as a sign of life.

“Hi, Mom,” she whispered. “So. I’m told there was a little excitement in here.”

She took Caroline’s hand, but it didn’t feel any cooler. She studied her face, but, eyes closed, it was as restful as usual. She listened to her breathing, but heard no laboring.

“Just keeping them on their toes with those seizures?” She smiled. “That is typical of you. Like letting me learn the hard way to check the gas gauge on the car.” Sixteen, newly licensed, and driving locally, hence in no danger but that of frustration, Casey had run out of gas on the one day when Caroline hadn’t said a word in reminder. “But I don’t blame you. We’re paying a lot for you to be here. Okay.” She corrected herself. “It’s not us, not directly. But still, you put the money in all those years when your health was perfect. You deserve the best now.”