The Distance Between Us (31 page)

He laughs when he realizes I’m serious. “You’re crazy. I’m way too drunk to play the piano.”

“That’s certainly never stopped me.” I pick up the bottle and my empty glass and rise to my feet. “Are you coming? I’ve had a brainstorm. Once I’m unemployed, I intend to open a new music salon in town. I’ll be considered the Nadia Boulanger of Bolton, Illinois.”

“Who’s Nadia Boulanger?”

I roll my eyes. “Your education has been appalling. Let’s just hope you have enough talent to offset that deficiency.”

He indicates his damaged fist. “What about this? I’ve got a gimp hand, Hester.”

“That makes two of us, dear. Come along.”

We almost make it to the music room before the phone rings for the umpteenth time. We stand in the living room and listen to the message, and halfway through it I thrust the things I’m carrying into Alex’s hands and run as fast as I can to pick up the receiver before the caller hangs up.

“H
urry, Alex!” I call across the living room, hoping my quavering voice will carry through the door of the small bathroom off the study. “We have to leave right this moment!”

I’m in a panic. The last phone call was from a nurse at the emergency room; she told me that Arthur has apparently had a massive heart attack, and is now in surgery.

“Alex!” I cry again.

“I’m coming!” he yells back. “Just a sec!”

I’d leave him, but I’m too much of a wreck to drive myself, and Alex offered to act as my chauffeur. But he insisted he needed to relieve himself first, and he’s been in the bathroom for
days.
I have my coat and shoes on, and somehow I’m holding my purse, but when any of that happened is beyond my comprehension.

The doorbell rings behind me, and I spin around to answer it. I have no idea who this could be, and I don’t care.

“I’ll be outside!” I holler. “I’m pulling out of the driveway in fifteen seconds!”

“Dammit, Hester!” he bellows. “I’ll be right there! Don’t go anyplace without me, okay?”

I fling the front door open and find Alex’s friend, Eric, gawking in at me through the glass on the screen door. I step out on the porch to confront him.

“We don’t have time for you right now, Eric.” My voice is far
colder than the wind; I make no effort to warm it. “There’s been an emergency, and we’re leaving.”

Alex is suddenly beside me. “Eric?” He’s got his flannel shirt on at least, but he’s still barefoot and standing on one leg, struggling to pull on a sneaker. “What are you doing here?” He sounds thunderstruck, as if this tall boy on our porch with the idiotic orange antenna sprouting from his head is the living Christ.

I dig through my purse in a frenzy, searching for my car keys. “We don’t have time for this, Alex. We need to go immediately.” I can’t find the keys and I explode. “Goddammit! Where are
my fucking
car keys?”

I don’t believe I’ve ever said that word in my entire life.

Alex puts a firm hand on my shoulder. “I’ve got them, Hester. You gave them to me already, remember?”

“What’s wrong?” Eric asks in a small voice.

“Arthur’s had a heart attack.” Alex has managed to get both shoes on, at last, but neither is tied, and the tongue on one of them is mangled up in the laces.

Eric blinks. “Arthur Donovan? Her husband?”

“Yes,
Arthur Donovan, my husband!” I snap, stepping around him. “We’re leaving now, Alex.”

I walk toward the carriage house as fast I’m able, then glance back after a few steps to see if Alex is following. He’s still standing beside Eric with a vulnerable, addled look on his face, but when he meets my eyes his confusion vanishes.

“I’ve really gotta go,” he says to Eric. “Sorry, man. Can you come back later?”

“Sure.” Eric frowns and takes a closer look at him. “Hey, you’re drunk as shit, dude. You can barely stand up straight. You really shouldn’t be driving like that.”

“I’m okay.” Alex sees me nearly prancing with impatience and finally moves in my direction.

He trips on something invisible on the sidewalk and falls down facefirst in a snowbank.

“Shit,” he says, rolling over and looking up at the sky.

“For God’s sake!” I scream. “Would you please stop mucking around?”

Eric helps him to his feet and takes the keys from him. “I’ll drive. Neither of you guys should be behind the wheel of a car right now.”

Alex is brushing himself off in what seems like slow motion. A broad, astonished grin nearly splits his cheeks apart. “Are you sure? Don’t you have other stuff to do?”

I stomp on the sidewalk.”
Somebody
drive! I don’t care who!”

“It’s fine,” Eric says, leading Alex toward me by the elbow. “It’s cool.”

Caitlin and Martha are in the waiting room at the hospital when we arrive. They’re seated side by side, facing the door, and when they see me enter they vie with one another to see who can give me the more spiteful frown. I walk over to them with Alex and Eric at my heels.

Caitlin rises to her feet. She doesn’t bother with a greeting. “Dad’s in surgery right now.” She hesitates. “He’s already been in there for over an hour, but we were told that it doesn’t look good, and he might be in there for the better part of the day.”

Her voice is even more curt than usual; no doubt she believes Arthur’s heart condition is somehow my fault.

“Hello, dear.” I’m calmer now than I was at the house, and as I was filling out the necessary paperwork at the front desk after my arrival, I promised myself I was going to remain in control—and civil—for the duration of this ordeal. “Yes, I know, the nurse filled me in about the particulars.”

The waiting room walls are mostly windows on all four sides, and I feel as if I’m in an ant farm, peering out at the halls. The only other person in the room besides us is an elderly gentleman in the corner, sleeping with his head propped against one of the windows. The nurse’s station and the elevators are next to the open door, and the large, terse woman I spoke with when I arrived is still seated at her desk, studying us with a suspicious eye.

Apparently Arthur had his heart attack in the faculty dining room at Carson and was brought here by ambulance. The nurse
told me the paramedics had to revive him en route, twice, when his heart stopped.

I feel as if I have a fever. My head is throbbing, my mouth is dry and a thin layer of cold sweat is covering my skin. As much as I’ve grown to loathe Arthur in the last year, one thing is certain: I do not want him to die in this dreadful place, with his chest opened up under hot bright lights, and tubes sticking from his body, and the smells of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant filling the air.

He’s Arthur Donovan, and he deserves better than that.

Oh, Arthur.

Don’t you dare die on me yet, old man. If anything kills you, it should be me.

Caitlin glares over my shoulder at Alex and Eric. “You two don’t belong here. This is a family matter.”

I face her down. “Alex is with me, Caitlin, and he isn’t going anywhere. And Eric drove us here, and will likely need to take us home, too.”

Martha shifts in her chair. “Good God, Hester, you’re
drunk!
I can smell it from here.”

I look down at her with as much courtesy as I can muster. “Hello, Martha. How are you holding up?”

The question seems to startle her. She studies my face for a long time, and her lovely pointed chin quivers. “Not well,” she mutters at last, reluctantly. She pauses again before forcing her next words out. “And you?”

I have some idea what those two syllables cost her, and for an instant the blistering hatred I feel for her cools the tiniest bit.

I shrug. “About the same.”

She nods and drops her eyes. “I know.”

She picks up a
New Yorker
magazine from her lap and pretends to read.

Thank God that’s over. As long as she stays quiet and continues to ignore me from here on, there’s a chance she may live to see the end of this day.

Caitlin was attempting to flay Alex with her gaze as Martha and I were speaking, but now she returns her attention to me.

“I understand Paul’s in jail.” She snorts. “I assume you had something to do with that?”

I unbutton my coat. “You assume incorrectly. Paul assaulted Evan this afternoon in their shack, and Evan called the police.”

She grunts. “I see.” A flicker of what might be amusement passes through her eyes. “With any luck they’ll execute him.”

“Amen,” Alex whispers behind me.

Caitlin stiffens, and I intervene before she can begin her attack.

“Hush, Alex,” I say over my shoulder. “Why don’t you and Eric go get some coffee?”

“Okay.” He touches my arm. “But I’ll check back in a few minutes and see how you’re doing.”

I smile at him. “Thank you, dear. Please do.”

The boys exit, in a hurry, and I watch them through the glass as they pass out of sight down the hall. Eric clearly has no desire to be here, and is probably regretting his decision to function as our designated driver. In the car on the way here he was quiet; when Alex asked him if he needed to be someplace else anytime soon, he said he was supposed to meet some young lady named Sofia for supper, but he could change those plans if necessary. Alex’s jaw tightened at this information, and for the rest of the ride he was silent, too.

Poor Alex. No amount of jealousy on his part will alter Eric’s sexual orientation, and wishing for things to be otherwise will only make him miserable. Still, it’s good to see that Eric has apparently forgiven him, and is willing to be friends after all.

I wonder what made him change his mind since their conversation this morning.

“Hester?”

Caitlin recaptures my attention. My mind is wandering about like a ferret.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

She makes a face. “Don’t call me that, please. I wouldn’t want anyone to think we were close.”

Martha snickers into her magazine.

It seems the gloves may be coming off, after all.

No. I recall my resolution, and keep a bridle on my temper. I will not make a scene.

“Very well,” I sigh. “What shall I call you that will meet with your approval?” I remove my coat and sit in the row facing them.

Caitlin stares down at me for a moment then sits again as well, in the chair next to Martha.

“Caitlin will do,” she mutters. There’s a long pause, and when she speaks again, she’s slightly less antagonistic. “Anyway, I hate to say this, but do you think we should attempt to bail Paul out of jail so he can be here?”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. It seems the decent thing to do, don’t you think?”

I shake my head. “As intoxicated as he was this morning, I’m fairly certain the police won’t be releasing him for many hours yet, even if we were foolish enough to post his bail.”

She leans forward. “So you
did
see him earlier today.”

“Yes. He stopped by the house before his brawl with Evan, to bully me into evicting Alex. He also insisted I relocate myself to the gulag.”

I almost tell her about Paul’s confrontation with Alex in the street, then decide not to. The fewer people who know about that, the better.

Caitlin sniffs. “You
should
evict Alex, Mother. You had no business letting him move into the house in the first place.”

It’s clear she wants a fight, and it’s all I can do not to give her one.

I search in my purse for a mint. “Let’s not argue, please. This isn’t the time or place for it.”

The reality of that statement creeps up on me, and I take a shaky breath as another wave of anxiety over Arthur surges through my chest.

Dear God. I really may never see him again.

I recoil from that thought, and nearly retch. Life without Arthur in my house is acceptable, but life without Arthur at all is unthinkable. I couldn’t bear to lose him. Not this way.

The night Caitlin was born, Arthur was on tour in Australia. (Caitlin was premature by over a month, and so caught us by surprise.) When I reached him with the news, he immediately cancelled
the rest of his performances and flew home to be with us. He came stumbling into town two days later, exhausted from the journey but carrying roses for me and a koala bear and kangaroo mobile for Caitlin’s crib, and he cried as he held her for the first time.

When Jeremy got in a fight in second grade with an older, bigger boy who gave him a black eye, I had to pry the phone out of Arthur’s hand to keep him from challenging the other boy’s father to a duel. And when Paul got a severe case of food poisoning, Arthur sat by his bed in the hospital all night, reading to him and watching old westerns on the television, and pestering the night nurse with anxious questions about Paul’s condition.

My Arthur.

Arthur in my bed, Arthur in the shower. Arthur lifting me off my feet and kissing me on the staircase at the conservatory, the day I was given tenure. Arthur attempting to dance, Cossack-style, at a Russian festival in St. Louis, and knocking four other men down, like dominoes, when he fell. Arthur pursuing me around the house with his violin, playing sappy, gypsy love songs by way of an apology for an argument we’d had; Arthur on the front porch with three-year-old Jeremy, trying to teach him solfeggio syllables for an aria by Bizet. Arthur in the kitchen one midnight, wearing nothing but a Batman beach towel and a pair of dress socks, lecturing Paul about upholding the dignity of the Donovan name by respecting the family curfew rule—then bursting into laughter when he realized how absurd he looked.

So many, many good moments, just like these. Thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands. Can this truly be the end of all that?

If it is, I won’t be able to stand it.

What good is my life without Arthur?

Unfortunately, Martha chooses this exact moment to drop the magazine in her lap and begin to blubber. “I simply don’t know what I’ll do if Arthur dies,” she sobs. “He’s my whole life.”

Caitlin and I stare at her for a moment, then we look at each other and she rolls her eyes.

Martha puts her face in her hands and convulses with grief, and
there’s no power in the universe that can make me hold my tongue any longer.