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C
HAPTER
11

T
wo days later, as if in defiance of his father’s reminder, Nicholas began to flutter his eyelids rapidly. The following morning he opened them. Although he was still unable to recognize anyone or understand what was going on around him, Claire remained positive. There was life and movement behind his intense expression, she was certain. Her quiet prayers were being answered, their boy was fighting to come back to them.

Amid Nicholas’s progress, Michael tried to make inroads at Craig Hospital, just a few miles from their home. But despite calls from hospital board members, even offers of financial donations, he was unable to move Nicholas through the crowded wait list. There were simply too many patients and too few beds, no matter who was asking.

“This is bullshit,” he said as they stood facing each other in the visitors’ lounge—the familiar scene for the brief exchanges that punctuated their overlapping visits. “There are no strings I can pull, not a fucking thing I can do to get him in there.”

“A little patience, Michael.” Claire knew he had none when it came to situations out of his control—business or otherwise. His perceived opponents always morphed into the great fuckers of the western world, Asia, or the planet. This, from a man otherwise known for his Murrow-esque eloquence and elegance. But it was always better to try and check his frustration early on than let it run. “A spot will open up eventually,” she offered, as much for her own mollification as his. “People get better and move on.”

Michael studied her mouth as if trying to lip-read a madwoman. “We can’t keep him here for three months, Claire. He needs to start recovering in a rehab hospital. And no spot is going to magically open up in time if it hasn’t already, with what I’ve been through.”

“Have you talked to Teddy?”

“Yeah, I’ve talked to Teddy. He and practically every other doctor on staff at Cedars Sinai have called on our behalf. And nothing. It’s ridiculous the way they run these places.” He looked out the door toward Nick’s room.

Claire reached her hand out across the two or so feet that always seemed to divide them, and rested it lightly on his forearm. Not an extravagant gesture, just the merest insinuation of what had been.

“How can I help him if no one will let me?” he asked.

“I know.” Claire kept the space between them, but gripped his wrist, connecting them in the only way she could anymore. “I feel helpless, too. Every day.”

They stood side-by-side and rigid like paper dolls, gazing in the direction of their truest connection. “Nick’s the kid who always gets picked first,” Michael whispered. “For every team.” His voice dripped with pain and he closed his eyes. “He needs to know that I’m trying everything.”

Claire slid her hand from his wrist and laced their fingers, hoping if they could hold each other up like this, they wouldn’t both drown in their sorrow.

After a moment Michael’s posture stiffened and he pulled his hand free. As he appeared to refocus, he fixed his attention on the magazine table and stepped away from her, the tenderness of the moment recalibrating in an instant. “You know, I’ve had it,” he said, wiping his eyes, “dealing with all of the rumors and questions.”

“What?” She still felt the warm weight of his fingers against hers.

Michael picked up
The Post
from the table and slapped it into her hand. The paper was already folded over to the Society column with its snapshots of the Art Museum Gala. Claire eyed him nervously. He was a looming building again, casting his long shadows. She skimmed through the account of the evening
. Most elegant soirée in recent memory . . . enormous success . . . fabulously attended.
All the bold-faced names. The compliments abounded, but Claire held her breath as she read on, her anxiety beginning to inch up her throat as she reached the third paragraph.
Gala co-chairwoman Claire Montgomery did not attend because of the family crisis involving her son’s tragic hospitalization. Many of the patrons in attendance expressed their best wishes to the Montgomerys as they persevere through this difficult time.
On the surface, it was adequately benign. But for those with keen enough vision to read between the lines, it dangled volumes.

“Damn it,” Claire said, knowing Michael was dead-on in his assessment that the mere mention would only spawn further gossip.

“She might not have alluded to your
pal
in this
tragic
mess, but other people are. And I’m tired of the heads-up phone calls and the veiled sympathy from your friends’ husbands. This whole thing, it’s such an unmitigated, fucking, tragic—” He’d begun pacing, the muscles of his neck tensed, his hands fidgeting anxiously with some invisible object.

Claire flung the paper at his feet, the boundary between her hope and anger blurring. “Michael, I’m sorrier than I’ll ever be able to express that I did this. And sorry the whole world apparently knows about it now, too. But I don’t know what to do other than to just try and get through this together.” She looked into his eyes. “Can’t we please try to do that?”

Michael’s cheeks were drawn in tightly, as if he were sucking an aspirin tablet. “Persevere like the paper said?” He slipped his cell phone from his sport coat pocket with a shaky hand. “I’m going to try Teddy again. Maybe there’s something he can do for Nicholas out in LA.”

“Michael,” Claire shouted out after him as she watched him disappear, again, past the nurses’ station. “LA?”

C
HAPTER
12

T
he kids who could now freely come to see Nicholas were a wonderful boost—so upbeat in their brief but frequent appearances. They’d hug Claire hello, but their visits were focused on their friend, and Claire could blend into the background as they launched into one-sided conversations about concerts they’d go to or parties they’d have once he was better. The boys brought their iPods and played new downloads for Nick in the speakers they’d set up. The girls brought stuffed animals and balloons and filled the room with their hope. But many of the others who showed up—the not-so-close family friends—brought a more complicated vibe, and as the days lumbered past, Claire realized that the stigma of what she had done seemed to be taking on a life of its own. Jackie still stood in as best she could as a buffer against the phone calls and spontaneous hospital visits, but it was becoming obvious that more “facts” had begun to leak in certain circles, and the fabric of her insulation was wearing thin.

After seven or eight voice mail messages on her cell—all variations of “I don’t mean to be indelicate here, sweetie, but I’m having a hard time believing what I’m hearing”—Claire just stopped listening to them. What good would it do to return the calls and try to deny what she knew she couldn’t? Better, she thought, to go with a no-comment approach, and let Jackie update the sincerely concerned about Nick’s progress. Claire thanked the few lucky stars she had for her sister’s steadfast presence and unshrinking ability to play sentry. She needed her focus and energy for her son, and if she didn’t confirm the rumors with answers, eventually, she rationalized, they’d lose their steam. She could crawl back out of her hole and reconnect with the world when Nicky was through the worst, and when the spotlight was no longer so harsh. Easier living through avoidance—she’d learned it from Michael, a champion at the game.

Of course sometimes there was just no avoiding reality. On her way home from the hospital the week following the society column flare-up, Claire stopped to pick up a late lunch for herself at Pasta Pasta Pasta—long past the midday social hour there. As the counter girl packed up her salad, Claire heard the door chimes ring. She turned to see a committee friend of many years walk into the small café. The woman stopped just a few feet away, her jaw tensing above her tightly wound scarf. She stared at Claire, as if Claire had just lost a limb and was out in public for the first time.

“Hello, Judy,” Claire said, rolling the top of the paper bag down until the Styrofoam container belched from within. “It’s good to see you.”

“Oh. Claire. Yes, it’s so nice. I didn’t think I’d be seeing you out and about and . . .” she paused with her mouth open, seemingly balancing some unspoken words on her tongue. “Everyone feels so horrible, and I’m just meeting Renee here.” Her eyes were focused on Claire’s elbow. “I hope your son is coming through all right?”

“Thank you.”

The woman stepped in closer to Claire. “So, where are you staying now?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“Staying?” She could feel the dampness of her palms transferring onto the paper bag. “When I’m not at the hospital? I go home. To my house.”

“Oh! Really? I’d just heard that . . . well . . . Anyway, it’s so nice you’re out. I’ll be sure and tell Renee I saw you.” She continued past Claire to the counter.

Claire slogged to her car, her appetite lost.

Michael was pulling out of the driveway as she pulled in.

 

Soon enough the phone calls and visits began to taper. The looky-loos had grown nervous, Claire imagined, when she gave it any thought at all, that the scent of scandal might somehow cling to their own reputations if they commiserated with the
adulteress
who had made the worst possible choice in lovers. And she was relieved. The only person she wanted to hunker down with and be completely honest and ugly and raw about the whole awful mess was the only person she couldn’t reach. Michael slept in the guest room on the nights she returned from the hospital, retreating into his isolation, guarding his resentment or vulnerability—or whatever it was that seemed to be propelling him ever deeper into a fugue-like state about their marriage—with fierce resolve. And with each milestone Nicholas reached—reestablishing cycles of sleeping and waking, focusing on objects—Michael expressed dismay at the slowness of the progress, gripping his half-empty glass. So she resigned herself to waiting for a breakthrough.

And at the end of the next week there was a shift. Late on a Friday afternoon Michael arrived at the hospital, appearing calmer to Claire, his edginess rounded out somehow. “It’s nice out,” he’d said to her with an actual smile. “Why don’t we take a little walk in the gardens?” His cell phone was nowhere in sight and his tone was pleasant, almost buoyant. “We should talk.”

Claire looked at him with surprise, seeing a spark of the old Michael, and feeling as if she’d been asked out on a second date. She ducked into the tiny bathroom near the nurse’s station and looked at herself in the mirror. Things weren’t looking good, she knew. And neither was she. But still. He wanted to talk, and the idea that he might finally be moving through his anger, remote as it was, was a beguiling beacon. Combing through her hair with her fingers, she noticed a bright strand of gray at her temple. She grabbed it between her thumb and index finger and plucked it from her scalp.

She met Michael in the hall and they walked outside. Bright mounds of impatiens rimmed the sculpture garden, and a sunset readied itself in the distance. She considered floating the idea of counseling as they made comfortable small talk, but she was also poised for whatever might help them to move forward.

They sat down on a wooden bench in the courtyard, their knees gently brushing. She looked at Michael’s profile and saw a nick on his jaw where he always shaved too closely. Maybe this was what they needed to do first, feel their way back to the pace of just being side-by-side again. “Do a little blood-letting this morning?” she teased.

Michael let out a soft laugh and placed his hand on her thigh, causing Claire to fill up like a wind sock puppet, caught in a surprise gust of intimacy.

“Teddy got Nicholas in at Rancho Los Amigos,” he said after a beat, beaming.

“What?”

“It’s one of the best rehabilitation facilities in the country for traumatic brain injury.”

“I know what it is, I’ve read all about it.” She pulled her knee away and turned to face him. “But it’s in LA.”

“Teddy’s tight with one of the neurologists there, and he was finally able to call in a favor. He’s going to make sure Nicholas gets the best staff.” Michael took his sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. “They can take him in a few days.”

“What are you talking about? This sounds like a done deal.”

“It
is
a done deal.”

And just like that, Claire felt herself falling down the rabbit hole. “LA?” She pushed herself up and stood in front of him, squinting through the glare of the sun. “How could you do this without even discussing it? You can’t just ship him away,” she cried, ignoring the smattering of other visitors in the garden. “He needs his family around him.”

“No one’s
shipping
Nicholas away. You can stay out there with him until he’s ready to come back.”

The heat seemed to tighten around Claire’s head, occluding her vision and leaving her woozy. She hated Michael in that moment, the way all women hate an irrationally behaving husband. “Oh. So that’s why you show up here in such a pleasant mood— because you’ve figured out a convenient way to get rid of me? Stash your problems a thousand miles away so you can continue avoiding them?”

“Claire,” he said, his tone unwavering, “that’s not what’s happening here.”

She blinked rapidly until her vision sharpened back into focus, leaving her instantly ashamed and surprised by her reaction. But the fact that he had not discussed such a major decision with her, that he hadn’t even let her know it was on the table, was insensitive. And so typical. Her mouth hung slack as a short list of Michael’s increasingly unilateral decisions came to mind: his declaration on Nicky’s tenth birthday that their boy would be following the Montgomery family tradition of attending Andover, despite her reservations; his long-term rental of the Cape house two years later—which was lovely and wonderful, but which he hadn’t once consulted her about; and his stunning announcement the previous year that he had scheduled a vasectomy. Any concern or disagreement she voiced, Michael had met with a persuasive, lawyerly response, a long list of pros that could sway even the most resistant opponent—followed by a forgiveness-inspiring bottle of wine and a shoulder rub. Sometimes she hated herself for acquiescing, especially on the boarding school issue, but mostly it was just more sensible to agree. Conflict was not something she enjoyed, and compromise was key to a good marriage. But there would be no Caymus this time. “Michael,” she said, squaring her shoulders, “
Craig
is the right place for Nicky.”

He shook his head deliberately. “This is for the best.” No disdain, no rage.

“But he can’t make that trip yet; he’s not strong enough. He should be near his home, in a familiar setting. And how could you make this kind of decision without even talking to me first?”

“Teddy’s got it all arranged, Claire.”

“Nicholas is
our
son.” Tumbling like Alice deeper into a place where nothing was how it should have been, she wondered when it would end, when she would land.

“Teddy pulled a lot of major strings. It’s the best TBI program available. And Nicky needs to get started. You know this.”

She waved her arms in front of his Ray-Ban-shaded eyes, feeling the sting of all those one-sided conversation she’d let slide, and all of the other little mayhems of their marriage. “Do you see me, Michael? Hello! Do I count at all? Do my opinions count?”

Michael removed his sunglasses. “Would you please—”

“Would I please
what?
Bite my tongue like I always do and cave to what
you
want?” Michael remained seated while Claire paced in front of him. All of her hopes and the white-hot accumulation of her frustration and guilt escaped like gas into air, fueling the inevitable explosion. “I’m so tired of being invisible to you, Michael. We used to be a team, you used to care about my opinions. But you started tuning me out and disappearing from this marriage long before Nicky’s accident. You’ve been running ‘the Michael show,’ when it should have been ‘the Michael and Claire show.’ ” She leaned in close to his face, her hands clasping the backrest on either side of his shoulders. “Is it really a surprise that I fucked him? At least he saw me.” She hurled the words and hoped they’d shatter all around him.

Michael winced, but his voice remained controlled in his response. “It’s the best solution for Nicholas right now, Claire.”

Bells from a nearby church tolled.

“I asked you a question, Michael.” She was on her knees in front of him now, crying. “DO YOU SEE ME?”

“Yes, I see you. And if you could for just one moment separate yourself from the situation,
you
would see that this is what’s best for
our
son. A top facility with top doctors, available to us NOW.”

She sat back on her feet and placed both hands on the ground, gathering her balance. Righting herself from the tumble.