The Transformation of Things (27 page)

“Kelly,” Beverly interrupted me. “I’m going back to see him first, and then you can go.”

“But I think I should—” Kelly started.

“Dear, I’m his mother. Someday when your children are grown, you’ll understand. I’ll come back out for you when I’m finished.” She walked toward the area the doctor had indicated, not even waiting for a response.

“Why do you let her walk all over you like that?” I asked.

“I don’t,” Kelly said. “She’s just upset, and …” I thought about the party dress, about Beverly’s insistence that Will shouldn’t be around the children.

“That’s your husband,” I said. “That’s your husband in there.”

“Oh, Jen, don’t you think I know that?” Tears welled up in her eyes again.

“You’re strong,” I said to her. “Be strong.” She sat back down in the chair and buried her head in her hands. “Kel,” I said, “Dave wants you in there, not his mother.”

I felt a tap on my shoulder, and looked up to see Sharon’s big nose, practically in my face. “Jennifer, when you’re done with your sister, your father has gone to the atrium and would like you to go speak with him.” I glared at her. “Well,” she huffed, holding her hands in the air. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Kelly looked up. “She’ll be there in a minute, Sharon.”

Sharon walked back to her seat, and I shot Kelly a look. “What?” She shrugged. “If I’m going to tell Beverly to go to hell, the least you can do is talk to Dad.”

“She’s right,” Will said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“No.” I sighed. Because I knew having Will there would only make things worse.

As Kelly walked back to attempt to see Dave, I wandered toward the atrium.

I still remembered where it was, still remembered sitting on a long green couch sharing a yogurt with Kelly while our mother was in surgery, still remembered the feeling of dread, the sinking like a weight in my stomach, the sinking that came with knowing that life as we knew it would never be the same again.

The atrium had been updated in the past twenty years. The green couch had been replaced with two red velour armchairs, the cold white tile replaced with warm maple hardwoods, looking oddly similar to my living room.
How strange,
I thought,
hardwoods in a hospital.

My father sat in one of the red armchairs, and other than him, the room was empty. I guessed it was too early in the morning for patients or visitors.

I tried to recall the last time I’d talked to him, the two of us in a room alone, and I couldn’t. It might have been just before I met Will and just before he met Sharon. I’d gone back to his house for dinner one night, and Kelly and Dave had canceled at the last minute. He’d made steak, and the two of us had sat in relative silence, knives clanking against the edge of my mother’s china. “How’s work?” he’d asked.

“Good,” I’d said. “You?”

“Good.” He’d nodded.

And now here my father was, sitting in a red chair, wanting to talk to me. “Jenny.” He stood up when he saw me. I tried not to look at him, tried not to meet his eyes, to see the disappointment that I knew would be there. “Why don’t we have a seat?”

“I’m fine,” I said, not wanting to give in, even the smallest bit.

“Okay,” he said. He wrung his hands together.

“Look, I know you and Sharon are getting married, okay. So if that’s all, I should get back.”

“Your sister told you?”

“Yeah,” I lied.

“You know I love Sharon,” he said.
Good for you,
I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. “And I loved your mother, too. I did.”

“You had a funny way of showing it,” I said, my dry laugh coming out dangerously close to a sob.

“It was hard for me.” He closed his eyes. “Watching someone you love in so much pain. I couldn’t … Seeing your sister out there like this, it’s killing me.” I felt his words intensely, and turned my head so he wouldn’t notice the tears welling up in my eyes. I wished for a moment that I could dream about my father, that I could be him for a night, feel the sharpness of his pain the way he felt it twenty years earlier.

“Okay,” I said softly. “I really should get back.”

“You’ve made up with your sister?” I nodded. “Good.” He put his hand on my shoulder, and it was such an odd gesture coming from him. His hand was large, the skin wrinkled, dry, and cracked. The hand of a stranger, and yet the weight of it on my shoulder did not feel strange at all. “I just want you to know. I never cared that you were married to a lawyer or a judge or … I just wanted you to be happy. Are you happy, Jenny?” He didn’t pause long enough for me to answer; his
words tumbled out, hastily, as if he’d been holding them in so long that, finally, now that they were escaping, there was no stopping them. “I know I could’ve been a better father. I know I’ve made mistakes. But I’ve always loved you and your sister.”

Love was a funny thing. That much I knew. “Okay,” I whispered, part of me believing it, the other part of me really wanting to.

“I’m sorry if I don’t always say it. If I haven’t been there as much as I should’ve been.” He sat down, as if suddenly it was too much for him to keep on standing, as if he was too old. When I looked at him, he did seem old. His hair and beard were nearly all white, his belly sagged out over his jeans, the skin under his eyes fell in folds. When had he gotten so old? “I know I handled everything all wrong with you girls after your mother died.” He paused. “It’s just you—you remind me so much of her. You always did. Your hair, eyes. Your expressions.” He put his head in his hands. “You have your mother’s smile.”

“I do?” I sat down next to him. I never thought of myself in terms of my mother, only in terms of what I’d lost when she’d left me. I never thought that I was like her in any way except for a genetic curse, and then I felt this new pain, this inability to remember her completely.

“She would’ve been so proud of you, both of you girls.”

“Do you really think so?” I whispered.

“I do,” he said.

“Thank you for telling me this,” I said, because this new information about my mother felt like a gift. He nodded and smiled, and I smiled back.
My mother’s smile.

“I want you to come to my wedding. You and Will. July 20, down in Boca.”

Dave had just had a heart attack, and my father was thinking about his wedding? I wondered if Sharon had put him up to this, if she’d told him to get me when my defenses were down. I could just imagine her whiny little voice.
What will everyone think if Jenny doesn’t come to the wedding? It was bad enough that she missed the engagement party.

“That’s what this is about?” I asked, feeling close to tears, my head throbbing so badly that I felt tears might break me. “Your wedding?” His smile slipped away, quickly replaced by the oh-so-familiar frown of disappointment. I sighed. “I really do have to get back. Kelly needs me.”

“I know,” he said, his voice coming out barely louder than a whisper.

When I got back to the waiting room, Beverly was wrapping herself in her fur coat and dragging her husband out by the arm. “What did you say to her?” I whispered to Kelly.

“What did Dad want?” she asked back, as if she hadn’t even heard my question.

“Do I have Mom’s smile?” I asked her.

She thought about it for a moment, and then she said, “I don’t know. I’ll have to find a picture. It’s hard to remember her smiling.”

Thirty

B
y noon, Dave was moved into a room, and the doctors determined that he did indeed need a triple bypass that would be performed the next day.

Kelly asked everyone to leave, because she was planning on spending the rest of the day with Dave. Alone. “Do you want me to watch the kids?” I asked. “Bring you anything?”

“No.” She shook her head. “The kids are going to Beverly’s.”

“Beverly’s?” I asked, wondering exactly what she’d said to her mother-in-law while I was in the atrium with our father.

“They love it there. They’ll think it’s a vacation.” She paused. “Can you please come back tomorrow morning, and sit with me? During the surgery.”

“Of course.” I nodded. “And if you think of anything else, just call me.”

“It’s scary,” Will said to me, as we walked carefully over ice patches in the parking lot.

“He’s going to be all right, though? Don’t you think?”

“He’s tough,” Will agreed. “And he has so much to live for.” We got into the car, and I put my hands in front of the vents to warm them. “But I mean, Jesus Christ, he’s my age,” Will said. “Just to think that it can all be taken away from you. Just like that.” I thought of the briefcase in the bar, of the way the money felt, of the disgusted feeling that Will felt when he’d touched it. “It’s not the same, Jen,” he said, as if he could read my mind. “Life. Life is short. Life is delicate.”

I thought about what my father had said, about me being so similar to my mother. “I always thought I would die young,” I said, feeling almost a little relieved that the truth, my fear, was finally out there, out in the open. “I mean my mother did, and I already had that lump.”

“It was benign,” Will said.

“But still.” I shrugged. “Your destiny is your destiny.” I paused. “I mean, didn’t you ever think you might die in a car accident, after what happened to your parents?”

“No.” He shook his head. “It was an accident. A fluke.” He put his hand on my leg. “Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place,” he said. “God forbid.”

“We can’t help who we are. What we’re made of. I mean, maybe Dave just has bad luck of the draw. I think his father had his heart attack in his forties.”

“He’ll pull through,” Will said. “I know he will.”

Neither one of us said anything else for a while. I stared out my window, at the white, frosty world swirling by, so white with snow that it looked like the world was blank, like there was nothing out there. Will gripped the steering wheel hard and stared straight ahead. When he turned into the driveway, he stopped and cleared his throat. “Is that Lisa?” he asked. “On the porch?”

I looked up and saw her, the red peacoat, the red hat. She was sitting on our stoop and shivering.

“Oh thank God you’re all right.” Lisa rushed toward me as I got out of the car. “When you didn’t stop by this morning, I tried to call. I left you five voice mails.”

I opened my purse to look for my cell phone and realized I must have left it in the bedroom. “I’m sorry,” I said. “My brother-in-law, Dave, had a heart attack. We were at the hospital.”

“Oh shit,” she said. “Is he okay?”

“He will be. We hope.”

Will walked in through the garage, and Lisa and I followed behind him. “I’m going to make some coffee,” he said. “You ladies want some?”

“None for me.” Lisa sighed. “Coffee’s on my no-no list now.”

“I’ll have some,” I told him. He leaned in for a quick kiss and went toward the kitchen, while Lisa and I sat down on the couch in the living room.

“Wow,” Lisa said. “I’m amazed.”

“Why?”

“You two. The way he looks at you.” She shook her head.

I thought about the Will who had touched me last night and then about Will in my dream, about the money in the case, the way Lisa had said, only a few months ago,
That permanent disbarment is some serious shit.
Then something Lisa had said a few minutes earlier struck me funny. Coffee was on her no-no list now. Since when?

“Lisa,” I said. “Are you—?”

She cut me off before I could finish. “I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “Well.” She laughed, sounding almost giddy. “I know how it happened. But it was only one night. Last month. And it’s not like we were trying.”

“Does Barry know?” I asked her.

“No.” She shook her head. “Not yet.” She reached out for my hand. “I’m terrified it will happen again.”

“It won’t,” I told her. “You don’t know that.”

I thought about what Will had said in the car. “It won’t,” I told her, feeling so sure in my heart that for her what had happened really had been a fluke. “Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.”

After Lisa left, Will and I sat close on the couch and sipped our coffee. I leaned into him, the warmth of his body radiating over me. I thought about Lisa, and the new little life that had sprung up inside her, that I knew was going to bring her back to life, too. I considered that if I got pregnant, our little babies would grow up together and play together and go to school together. It all seemed like a very nice fantasy, if I didn’t let myself think about the other half, about what people in Deerfield believed that Will had done. Or the absolute truth, whatever that might be, of what Will had actually done.

Part of me wanted to know this truth, and part of me didn’t want this moment, this one small fantasy, to end. Will put his hand on my leg. “I’ll take the rest of the day off,” he whispered. “We can get back into bed.”

“No, I shouldn’t. What if Kelly needs something?”

“We’ll take the phone with us,” he said, stroking back my hair, kissing my neck.

He might be a criminal,
I thought.
You don’t even know him at all.
He leaned over and kissed me on the mouth, softly at first, then harder.