Once Upon a Day (7 page)

She didn’t respond for a moment. Then she smiled. “But this means there is a reason for the rudeness, doesn’t it? It’s not as incomprehensible as you said.”

He gave up then, though he was still annoyed at the idea of her trying to understand that prick Phillips. Come to think of it, it bothered him how hard she was trying, period. All day, he’d watched her trying to figure things out and trying to adapt and trying not to panic and trying not to cry and trying to breathe deeply and trying to stay positive. So much trying, and for what? The world she was struggling so hard to understand was ultimately pointless, which he knew as well as anyone. There was no reason for fifty percent of what happened in life, and the other half wasn’t really important.

Not that any of this was an excuse for what he said to her. He’d been an ass on the way home from Wal-Mart, and he still felt bad every time he thought about it. She was sitting in the front of the Checker, talking about a subject that was obviously very important to her: the wonderful qualities of her father. Charles O’Brien, according to his daughter anyway, was the most intelligent, humane, patient, loving, thoughtful person imaginable. He lived by the highest principles. He would never cheat or steal or deceive, not because he would get caught, but because it was immoral.

Stephen would have bet good money Charles O’Brien didn’t deserve all this praise, but he didn’t mind listening to it. He remembered when his own daughter, Lizzie, used to talk like her daddy was the greatest guy on earth, like there was nothing he couldn’t do for her. Of course she was only four years old. He thought she’d have plenty of time to figure out she was wrong.

“Father always says the pure-hearted person would rather lose the world than lose his soul,” Dorothea said. Stephen was still listening. No reaction yet. But then she continued, “He himself would rather die than violate one of his principles.”

He felt so angry that he spoke before he could stop himself. The words he used were bad enough, but his tone made it even worse.

“He’d rather die?” Stephen’s voice was dripping with sarcasm,
but he laughed harshly. “Good for him, since I’m sure he doesn’t know a damn thing about what death is like.”

“But no one knows what death is like,” she said, so quietly he could barely hear her.

“Some people know enough not to make idiotic statements about dying for principles.” His hands tightened around the steering wheel. “Doctors, for instance. Anyone who’s ever lost a person they loved. Hell, anyone who has an imagination, even if they haven’t suffered themselves.”

“Father has suffered though.”

“I’m sure he has,” Stephen said, and laughed again.

She waited for a full minute or more. Maybe she was giving him time to calm down a little. More likely, she was composing herself, gathering her courage,
trying,
as always.

“I don’t think you want to laugh the way you have at me.” Her voice was surprisingly steady. “It seems cruel, and you’re not a cruel man.”

He hit the brakes as a Pontiac cut in front of him to get in the left turn lane. “Shit,” he mumbled, but he knew he wasn’t cursing at the car. Finally he said, as much to himself as to her, “Maybe I am.”

“No,” she said firmly. “You just made a mistake. That’s what Father always said to Jimmy and me when we hurt each other. He said our goodwill was a given, so what else could it be but a mistake?”

He was a little surprised. Her father sounded like an old-school moralist and “mistake” wasn’t the word that kind of person would normally use for bad behavior. Maybe Charles O’Brien made excuses for his children, which would be understandable, Stephen thought. A lot more understandable than Dorothea making excuses for what Stephen himself had just done.

He told her he was sorry and took a long breath. “I’m sure your father has suffered. In any case, I had no right to talk to you that way.”

“Oh, he has. He lost his wife, my mother, when Jimmy and I were small children. Grandma used to say he never completely recovered. Then Grandma herself died not even two years ago,
though she was eighty-seven, and as Father said, she’d had a long, good life.”

Dorothea paused for a moment before glancing at him. “But I hope you won’t feel too bad about this. You’ve been very kind to me all day, and I know it can’t have been easy for you. From the moment you picked me up at the bus station, you’ve seemed very tired. I think if you get some rest, you won’t feel so despondent.”

He had the strangest feeling then, as if he were hovering above his own life, and seeing it, for once, with something like sympathy. But of course it was her sympathy he was feeling. Her recognition of what had become for him a near perpetual state of exhaustion.

When they arrived at his apartment, she told him they both must go straight to sleep. He was expecting her to look around, to zero in on the picture of Ellen and Lizzie on his stereo and ask who they were, to force him with her curiosity to say what had happened. He was so grateful that she hadn’t; he knew this was why he’d talked so much as he was changing the sheets. Dorothea stood there with her arms crossed tightly against her chest, naturally uncomfortable being with a man in his bedroom (as later, Stephen knew he should have realized), while he told her a very long story about the ridiculously expensive house Jay Phillips had purchased a few years ago because he hoped to impress the other residents, but no one liked him enough to come to any of his parties, and finally he sold it and bought a condo in Aspen instead.

She didn’t interrupt, but the second the story ended she said, “Stephen?”

Her voice was a tiny squeak, and he turned to look at her. He was sitting on the freshly made bed and she was still standing. And she wasn’t just blushing; her entire pale face had been transformed to bright pink.

“Of course I’ll be on the couch,” he said quickly, stumbling over his own feet, he jumped up so fast.

She tried to tell him she didn’t want to take his room, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He mumbled something about the location of
the towels and toothpaste in the bathroom and then he bolted into the living room. He didn’t turn on the TV or take off his shoes or let himself flop down on the couch until she came out of the bathroom and he heard the bedroom door close.

He was finally relaxing about twenty minutes later when he realized she was standing in the doorway, looking at him. He had no idea how long she’d been there. The television was on, some sitcom. He’d been flipping channels, not really watching.

“I just wanted to ask . . .”

“Yes?” he said, muting the TV and sitting up. She was still wearing her fifties skirt and sweater, but she’d changed into one of the new pairs of socks and she didn’t have on her shoes. But her hair was the main difference. It was no longer twisted on top of her head, but hanging down almost to her knees. He wondered when she’d last had a haircut, if ever.

“Do you have a book I might read?”

“What kind of book?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, looking at her hands. “It’s just that I’m finding it difficult to sleep.”

He pointed at the set. “Would you rather watch TV? I’m sure there’s something decent on.”

“Oh, I’d love to. I’ve never done that before.”

“Never?” he said, more out of habit than real curiosity. At this point, nothing she told him seemed all that surprising.

“May I?” she said, pointing at the chair by the window. He nodded and she sat down. He noticed her hair almost touched the floor. “Actually, that’s not completely true. I have watched television, as Jimmy has told me so many times. He finds it very annoying that I can’t remember, because you see he was six when we left California and he remembers everything. But I was four, and no memories have come to me.” She paused and her voice became sad. “I suppose it was annoying.”

He knew she was worrying about her brother again. He told her Jimmy would be all right, to make her feel better, but also because
he believed it. Even Phillips said the Zoloft seemed to be working. Whatever had happened to cause the breakdown—and it wasn’t hard to guess, given the places Jimmy had been living, that it probably had something to do with drugs—once Dorothea took him home, he could get healthy and figure out what he wanted to do next. Maybe he would avoid cities completely and just paint. He had real talent, even if his style ran a little to the macabre.

“Thank you,” she said, and smiled. Her smiles were so genuine, they were nearly impossible to resist.

He smiled back, but then he looked away and picked up the remote. “Let’s see what we can find.”

It was eleven-thirty when they started watching television and two a.m. when he finally turned off the set, telling her they really needed to go to sleep. The entire time Dorothea’s eyes barely left the screen, even during commercials. She didn’t ask any questions either. He glanced at her occasionally, wondering what she was making of all this. He’d never been more aware of how crude television had become, with all the Viagra ads and toilet humor and sexual innuendos. Too bad she couldn’t have started like he had with
The Brady Bunch
and “relief equals Rolaids.”

“You must be tired,” he said.

“Oh, I am. I’ve never stayed up this long in my life. And I mean never ever.”

“How does it feel?”

“Great!” she said. “This was tremendously fun.” “I don’t know if I should be proud of myself,” he said. “I’ve turned a person who would talk about the meaning of the word ‘theory’ and casually mention Einstein into someone who can watch an hour of Jay Leno and an hour and a half of an Adam Sandler movie.” He shrugged off his own comment, but he did feel a little guilty.

“Yes,” she said.

“What?”

“Yes, you should be proud of yourself.” She stood up, and he
watched her hair fall down her back. “That’s what Father told Jimmy and me and I think he would say the same thing to you. As long as you’re trying your best, you have nothing else to worry about.”

His own parents had said something similar when he was in medical school and overwhelmed by the work. Of course they were extremely disappointed when he gave up his practice and even more so when he told them about the cab. They said he was only driving the cab because of the car accident, and he knew they might be right; he even vaguely remembered a psych lecture on “repetition compulsion” after trauma. But he also knew it didn’t make any difference. How could it matter why he was driving the cab when nothing made any difference anymore?

“And what if I’m not trying my best?” he said quietly.

“Then you will tomorrow.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. She smiled. “Tomorrow
is
another day.”

He knew she was probably quoting the book
Gone With the Wind,
but after she went into the bedroom, and he’d turned off the lamp and lain down on the couch, he found himself thinking about the movie. He’d watched it because it was one of those films Ellen had always wanted to watch. He couldn’t say whether his wife would have liked it, but he knew she would have wanted to discuss the differences between Scarlett and Melanie and what they should and shouldn’t have done. It was something he always thought was cute: the way Ellen talked about characters in movies and books as if they were real people.

When he found himself wondering if Dorothea did that too, he rolled onto his back and cursed, sure he’d be awake all night now.

The grief counselor he’d seen after the accident had told him it was normal to feel like you were betraying your spouse. “When you start a new relationship,” she said, “any kind of new relationship, even if it isn’t romantic, you can feel you are leaving behind the old one, and this can seem like a betrayal.”

He’d been so positive this wouldn’t apply in his case because he’d never have another relationship. How could he, when his own life
had ended the same day he’d lost his wife and daughter? He was a walking ghost now, and ghosts don’t get involved with human beings. They might drive cabs, and drive them safely, but they don’t practice medicine because that too involves relationships. It was something Stephen had always believed: that being a doctor, unless you’re an asshole like Phillips, requires a heart.

The irony of this day, Stephen thought, the irony of meeting Dorothea, was that she had single-handedly reminded him of both his life as a doctor and his life as a human. And by bringing her back here, to his apartment, he’d only made the situation a thousand times worse.

He’d been awake for more than an hour, but now that he’d decided that, he felt himself getting sleepy. As he drifted off, he wondered if she liked pancakes.

H
E WOKE TO
the sound of her singing. She had a sweet, clear voice and his first reaction was to close his eyes and let himself doze off for a few more minutes. But then he remembered. He jumped up and rushed down the hall.

“Are you all right?” he said, knocking on the door.

“Yes, I’m fine.” She opened the door, and he saw it was true. She wasn’t flushed and gasping for breath. “Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

When he asked how long she’d been up, she said since the sun rose. It was after ten-thirty now; incredibly, he’d slept almost eight hours. She was already fully dressed in one of her outfits from Wal-Mart: a khaki skirt and button-down blue blouse. Her hair was already knotted on top of her head—trapped, he thought, and then wondered why that word occurred to him to describe a hairstyle.

He asked her if she was hungry and she said a little. Then he thought of something. “Do you like pancakes?”

She smiled. “Yes. Actually, they’re my favorite.”

A half hour later, she was seated on a bar stool in his kitchen, watching his pathetic attempt to make blueberry pancakes. Maybe he was nervous, or maybe he was just out of practice, but everything seemed to go wrong. First the butter burned in the pan, then he didn’t drain the blueberries enough and the batter turned blue, then he knocked a plate off the counter with his elbow and it cracked in half and, finally, he had such a hell of a time getting the syrup open that he broke the cap. He didn’t realize how much he was cussing until later, after they’d eaten and after he’d showered, when he walked into his bedroom to get another shirt and found her sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at herself in the mirror, repeatedly saying the word “shit.”