Small Blessings (29 page)

Other than that Iris had been left alone. She'd thought about asking the cheerful woman to call her psychiatrist and ask if she could see him today on an emergency basis, but then had decided not to. Where would she go, what would she do, if he said no?

Iris's ER cubicle had no walls. White cotton shower curtains hung on all sides of her. If she blurred her vision, Iris could imagine that she was floating in the clouds, somewhere—as poor, dead, drunken Judy Garland used to sing—
away above the chimney tops, where troubles melt like lemon drops.
Iris closed her eyes and was about to drift off into just such a place when a different young woman came in, as brisk and efficient as the first one had been cheerful. There was a smear of blood on the front of her smock. “I'm Dr. Laura Bennett, Ms. Benson,” she said, in a voice that could have been generated electronically, it was so impersonal. “You evidently fainted because you were drunk and hadn't eaten for a while. You had a blood alcohol level of two-point-oh, and you were extremely dehydrated. We're going to fully hydrate you, and that's about all we can do here in the ER. When we've got you able to stand again, it will be up to you as to whether you want to go into treatment or go home. Do you understand?”

The doctor's steel gray eyes were serious. She had no time for Iris; she had lives to save. Only TV ER doctors had time to be nice to drunks. “Yes,” Iris said. “I understand.”

“You can leave as soon as you feel able to stand. If you decide to go home, it would probably be a good idea to get something to eat from the hospital cafeteria. If you decide you want to go into treatment, let the front desk know, and they'll get in touch with your psychiatrist. I assume you are seeing a psychiatrist?”

“Yes,” Iris said. “I am.”

“Good,” the doctor said firmly. “I hope things go well for you, then. But that's up to you.” With that she turned, glided through the white curtains, and was gone.

*   *   *

Russell felt the dark forces of complexity closing in around him. In his mind, he realized, Rose Callahan had become
his
Rose, and now Tom Putnam wanted to talk about her. “Yes?” he said cautiously.

Tom was almost himself again. “Last night,” he said in a firm voice, “Agnes and Henry and I had Rose and a student to dinner. It was just a casual, impulsive invitation, but when Rose was leaving, I asked her to have dinner with me on Saturday. You know, like a date.”

“A
date
!” Russell just stopped himself from gripping the arms of his chair.

Tom held up his hand. “Yes, I know. I only buried my wife on Tuesday, but the thing I need you to understand is that I think Marjory would be all for Rose Callahan and I sort of, you know, getting together.”

“She would?”

“Yes, she would. You see, I think Marjory liked Rose. Really
liked
her. In a way I've never seen her like anybody else. I think she wanted Rose in our lives. In
my
life, even.”

Russell was completely uninterested in what Marjory had wanted. He wanted to hear about Rose. “Go back to the dinner invitation,” he said.

Tom looked bleak. “Well, she said no.”

“She did?”

“Yes. No to dinner, anyway. But then she invited me to play some one-on-one basketball this morning. And I accepted, and we were playing, and then somehow something happened and she kissed me.”

“She
kissed
you?” Again Russell resisted obvious physical reaction. The less he gave away of what was really going on in him, the better.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

A childhood phrase invented when Russell was still struggling with the concept of truth came out of him. “For true life?”

Tom frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

Russell felt a bit light-headed. “Nothing. So what happened next?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. I … I just walked away.”

Russell wanted to make certain he had heard correctly. “You walked away?”

“Yes. I behaved like a complete dolt. Which I am. With women, at least. That's why I came to talk to you. You've had so much more experience with women than I have.”

Not with this woman,
Russell thought.
And she's the one woman who matters.

Tom was still talking. “What I wanted to ask you was do you think she's interested in me—you know, as a man—or was she just being kind?”

Just as he used to as a child when preparing to lie, Russell crossed his fingers behind his back. “She was just being kind.”

“Oh.” If it were possible, Tom looked simultaneously disappointed and relieved. “You think?”

“I do.”

“Well.” Tom smiled ruefully at Russell. “I have no idea if that's the answer I was hoping for or not. But I guess it's the one I'll have to live with.”

Russell kept his fingers crossed. “Sorry.”

*   *   *

Rose gave the sheaf of flyers for the “Talking Writing” series another whack to bring them to order. They had, she thought, turned out nicely.

The series had been Susan Mason and her committee's idea. “Talking Writing” involved the authors scheduled to give evening readings at the college throughout the academic year spending an afternoon hour sitting around the Book Store, drinking coffee and talking informally with whoever wanted to talk with them. The series had the Creative Writing Department jumping up and down, and Admissions reaching out to area high schools to suck in prospectives. How co-curricular could programming get?

Today, as soon as she got off work, Rose would make the rounds of the college bulletin boards and post the flyers. Then she would go home and start looking for her next job.

The morning in the gym came back to Rose, with all its awkward, disturbing moments compressed into a movie trailer. She felt her toes curling in her sandals, just as they once had in the presence of Jimmy Mason, a high school quarterback on whom she'd had a humongous crush. Why, oh why, had she
kissed
Professor Putnam? And why, in her heart of hearts, did she and her curling toes want nothing more than to kiss him again?

*   *   *

Rose still had a good dozen flyers left by the time she headed for her last and most far-flung stop, the bulletin board down by the soccer field. It was approaching six o'clock. Golden, slanted sunlight flooded the groomed gravel road that took her past Russell's house and the president's, then wound down toward the college lake. The field was off to the right and up a slight rise. Rose reached the bulletin board to find that a crowd was gathered. In her rush to get the flyers designed and printed, she'd completely forgotten that the college soccer season started today.

The scoreboard across the playing field showed the college up 2–1 with seven minutes left in regulation. Rose made her way down to the front of the bleachers. Her plan was to scan them for an empty seat, but instead she got stuck watching the team move the ball rapidly and expertly down the field. Imagine, speeding along, controlling a ball so completely without using your hands! Perhaps, if she hadn't been scarfed up by basketball, she might have played soccer more seriously. But then, why shouldn't she give it a serious try now? Soccer was everywhere these days. There had to be a low-level adult league close by that would let her practice with them. She was already in pretty good shape and—

Something tugged at her shirt.

“Rose,” a voice piped up from south of her hip bone. “Rose. We're watching soccer.
Please
come sit with us.”

It was Henry, of course. Who else did she know besides his father who could make her heart go quite this funny?

*   *   *

Illogically, considering the ruckus it caused inside him, the sight of Rose Callahan filled Tom with joy. He'd been stunned to see her, too stunned to come up with an acceptable reason for Henry
not
to ask her to sit with them. He could hardly explain to the boy that he'd made a fool of himself this morning in the gym and simply needed more time to recover before he faced Rose again.

Tom watched her kneel down to talk with the boy, putting a hand on his shoulder and tousling his hair while Henry gestured animatedly at the field behind her. The two were so easy together, so comfortably themselves in each other's company. It would be perfect if his own relationship with Rose could be the same, only—well—different. Why, why,
why
had he not kissed her back this morning? Why had he stood there like a complete blockhead and let her walk away? If he'd kissed her back and she'd pulled away, at least he would now be one hundred percent certain that Russell had been right in his assessment of their relationship, instead of just, say, ninety-seven percent certain. There would have been no options open to him besides forging ahead with their “friendship,” whatever that constituted when one party teetered on the brink of perhaps—however inappropriately—falling in love with the other.

Now Rose was before him, papers in one hand, Henry firmly attached to the other.

“Hello, Professor.”

Tom managed what felt like his usual smile and patted the seat beside him. “Won't you sit down?”

Rose hesitated. “I was just posting some flyers. I hadn't planned on staying. I don't want to intrude.”

“But Rose!” Henry all but bellowed. “We
want
you to stay. You sit there and I'll sit on the other side of you, so I can explain the
rules
to you!”

Still Rose hesitated. All Tom could think about was how much he wanted her to stay. Why shouldn't his muddling give way before that one simple truth?
Why?
“Henry's right,” he said. “We want you to stay.”

Color flooded into Rose's face. “Well then, I guess that settles it. I'm staying.”

Just as the two of them sat down, a great roar arose. The college had scored a hard-won goal. All around them, the crowd rose in unified exaltation and began the Wave.

“What are they
doing
?” Henry wanted to know.

“The Wave,” Tom shouted, impulsively hugging the small, mysterious child.

And just like that, he, Rose, and Henry were laughing, standing, flinging their arms high into the bright, warm air.

*   *   *

The three of them walked back up the hill toward the Quad holding hands. Henry was in the middle, and every fourth or fifth step, cued by some jointly felt impulse, Tom and Rose swung him high in the air between them the way all children crave to be swung. Those around them smiled to hear Henry's high-pitched glee, then turned and whispered to one another.

The day was just falling into dusk. Hospitable lights were on in the president's house. Beside it, Russell's grand house remained a dark and formal directive to stay away.

Henry was in full chatter mode, going on and on about soccer and how he was going to play it professionally one day now that he knew the rules. When they reached the intersection at which the road to Tom's house went one way and the road to Rose's house went another, unextended invitations hung shyly in the air.

“Well,” Rose said, after a pause. “I'll say good night, then.”

Henry was not a cautious issuer of invitations; at least, not to Rose. “Can Rose come home for supper, please? I can split my food with her, so it's not any trouble and Agnes doesn't have to fix anything extra.”

Tom's heart flopped yet again. Wherever Henry had come from, he certainly had been taught to think of others. Before he could answer, Rose had put her stack of papers down on the ground and taken Henry's hands in hers. “Thank you, Henry, but I have some things at home tonight that I better see to.”

“Tomorrow? Can you come tomorrow?”

Rose looked up at Tom. There was much they should talk about, he supposed, but that didn't mean they couldn't just let this moment be. He shrugged his permission.

Rose turned back to Henry. “How about this?” she said. “How about I come over about ten tomorrow with my soccer ball, and we go out on the Quad and I can see your moves?”

“Really?”
Henry gave a little jump.

“Really.” Rose smiled first at Henry and then at Tom.

“Is that okay, Dad?” Henry's eyes were fastened on Rose.

Tom had to exercise great discipline to avoid whooping it up as it dawned on him that Henry had just called him “Dad” for the first time. Inside, his heart seemed to grow larger and stronger until it filled his entire being. “Of course. Maybe I'll come with you.”

“Okay!” Henry sounded as though it really
would
be okay, as though he didn't need to keep Rose all to himself.

Rose was still smiling. “Okay, then. Tomorrow it is!” And with that she turned and walked away. Ten paces down her road, she turned and waved. Henry and Tom, who were standing hand in hand and watching her go, waved back.

Only after she disappeared did Tom realize that Rose had left her flyers on the ground. He scooped them up and tucked them under his arm.

*   *   *

Russell hung there, feeling rather like his own ghost, behind the heavy silk drapes of the largest of the guest bedrooms that marched across the front of the Dean Dome.

When he saw Rose walking hand in hand with Henry and Tom, he felt something inside him break and something else inside him quicken. Just like that, he was on fire with a confusing and consuming jealousy. Rose and Henry, it seemed to Russell, should be walking with
him.

Rose's smiling face floated before Russell, beckoning to him like his own private Star of Bethlehem. Or, perhaps, his Star of Perdition.

Russell suddenly fixed on those bottles of Wild Turkey, still stashed at the back of a pantry shelf.

He took a deep breath and resolutely put them out of his mind, knowing full well that they would regularly pop back in until he either settled himself or poured their contents down the sink.