Thorns of Truth (13 page)

Rachel shrugged. “City Hall won’t give her the time of day. Not with all the AIDS activists finally getting people to vote with their heads instead of their hang-ups.” She tried to sound unconcerned, but Kay clearly wasn’t buying it.

“That’s not all,” she reported in an ominously lowered voice, and whisked an envelope from a pocket of the baggy vest that hung to the knees of her cotton trousers. “Get a load of
this.
”

Rachel, with a sinking heart, scanned the sheet of paper Kay had thrust at her.

It was a copy of a letter addressed to Sister Alice, in response to her petition, from Philip Scanlon, executive director of the Community Health Fund. Scanlon had written that he, too, was deeply concerned about the morality of today’s youth, and would do what he could to help Sister Alice in her efforts to address this unfortunate decline. Platitudes that would have been nothing more than words on paper, except for one thing: Community Health was the East Side Center’s principal financial backer.

“It’s never been any secret what we do here.” Rachel crumpled the letter, wishing it were as easy to make the problem itself go away. Making reference to the fact that, like many independent clinics, they referred their patients to private physicians for all surgeries, including abortion, she added, with more than her usual dose of irony, “Anyway, we’re the good guys, remember?”

“Just remember, nice guys finish last,” Kay—their resident one-woman Greek chorus—was quick to remind her. “Our CHF grant comes up for renewal in September. If Sister Alice has her way, we’ll be out of a job. Because, without that money, this place wouldn’t survive a month.”

Rachel clutched her head in mock despair. At the same time, she found herself thinking,
God, what if Kay’s right?
She groaned. “I can’t think about this right now. Not with sixteen calls to return, and a meeting uptown in less than an hour. Monsieur Henri arranged for a tasting, and I promised the man I wouldn’t be late. Lord, what is it with these caterers? You’d think a buffet supper for forty was a NASA launch.”

Kay shook her head, smiling. “The party’s in four days. You’re
supposed
to be running around like a chicken with your head cut off.”

“I never said I was Martha Stewart.”

“I’m sure your daughter would agree.”

“So would my husband.”

“Maybe. But at least you still have one.” Kay cast her a bitter half-smile—a reminder that even the most solid-seeming marriages weren’t iron-clad. Sixteen years ago, when Kay, after a string of disastrous relationships, married steadfast-seeming Simon Lieberman, a stockbroker with a large firm of his own, no one had cheered harder than Rachel. But shortly after their tenth anniversary, Simon had divorced her for a much younger woman … leaving Kay to joke acidly that her husband was better at long-term investments than personal commitments. Only Rachel knew how bitterly she’d grieved.

She sighed, thinking of Brian. The meals they used to prepare, bumping elbows and laughing as they sipped wine amid the flour and cucumber peels. When was the last time they’d so much as sat down to dinner together?

Maybe she could steal a moment to call home, just a quick hello to let him know she was thinking of him.…

Glancing at her watch, Rachel saw that she had just enough time for the calls that couldn’t wait. Mason Gold, for one. A harried district attorney, sure, but he would always spare a minute for an old friend in need of a favor. She’d ask him to do a little fishing down at City Hall to see what, if any, reaction there had been to Sister Alice’s petition. Next, Philip Scanlon at Community Health Fund—as if that two-faced old buzzard would part with a single grain of inside information.

That meant waiting until after lunch to get in touch with Brian. She sighed again—this time in frustration—before heading down the corridor in the direction of her office.

Striding past the L-shaped reception area, which was already packed at eleven-thirty in the morning, Rachel was acutely aware of the activity that hummed around her like an electrical current: phones ringing, the front door buzzing, voices chattering in Spanish, babies crying, doctors and nurses bustling in and out of examining rooms. Sounds and voices that normally filled her with a sense of accomplishment, the feeling that, yes, despite the headaches and gadflies, they
were
making a difference.

Yet here she was, so tightly wound she felt on the verge of snapping—a pent-up frustration that had nothing to do with fanatical nuns, or spineless board presidents, or even her own hectic schedule. Because, damnit, this was
not
what she wanted. She was a
doctor,
not an administrator. How had she ended up in an Anne Klein suit instead of scrubs? Juggling a budget forever stretched too thin, writing grant proposals, lobbying for funds, not to mention constantly recruiting the best and the brightest—doctors and nurses willing to work for little or nothing.

What had happened to doing what she loved best, taking care of pregnant women and delivering babies? How long since she’d seen tears of gratitude in the eyes of an exhausted patient who’d just given birth, or cradled a newborn infant still slippery with its natal fluids?

She missed even the frustrations. Struggling to convey in her limited Spanish that, no, it wasn’t a
woman’s
orgasm that caused her to become pregnant. Refereeing the fights that occasionally broke out in the waiting room—usually between a teenaged girl about to become a mom and a boyfriend reluctant to be a father. Even the occasional emergency—a placenta previa spontaneously hemorrhaging, or a C-section that couldn’t wait for an ambulance to arrive—had given her a heady sense of her own power—the greatest of all, the power to heal.

You’re tired and overworked,
she told herself.
What you really need is a vacation … a couple of weeks on a beach somewhere, doing absolutely nothing.
When her head had cleared, she would once again see how much more valuable a contribution she was making this way. How many more people she was helping.

But that still wouldn’t change how she felt. How deeply she missed the hands-on doctoring she’d loved since she was an intern. Even in a field hospital in the middle of a jungle, with men dying in her arms, and nothing but coffee and adrenaline to keep her going, she’d felt more connected. More
alive.

And what about Brian, what this was doing to
them
? It was as if all she could see right now was the surface glare, and underneath swam a whole ocean she wasn’t prepared to confront. Unspoken resentments, and unfulfilled desires that would need more than a month in the sun to remedy. She didn’t dare think about the possibility that, if things didn’t change, one day it might be too late. Even the most patient husband had his limits, she knew. And even the strongest of passions, left untended, could wither and die.

Who would know better than she? Years ago, as newlyweds, they’d nearly been torn apart by a series of misunderstandings and mistaken assumptions. Yet Rachel couldn’t bring herself to believe Brian would ever leave her. It wasn’t possible. Any more than life without him would be.

Even so, she felt her chest constrict.

There was Iris, too. Her daughter, she knew, was
not
getting better—in some ways she was worse—and Rachel continued to worry about whether she was doing the right thing. Going along with this misbegotten engagement, throwing this party— wasn’t it, she acknowledged deep down, a little like rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking
Titanic
?

Stop it. You’re being melodramatic. Didn’t
 
Dr. Eisenger say she was okay now?
He’d been experimenting with the dosages of her medication, he had explained, which could easily have caused her to react as she had at Brian’s party. It made sense, yes. Rachel herself knew how tricky it was prescribing antidepressants. And Iris
did
seem better. So maybe marrying Drew, whom they
all
loved, would be a good thing after all.…

In the partitioned office she shared with Kay, Rachel sank into the swivel chair behind her piled desk. Just for an instant, she allowed herself the incredible luxury of simply closing her eyes. In the swimmy darkness, where fragments of light danced like fireflies, the biblical quote popped into her head:
Physician, heal thyself.

Nice idea, she thought. But what do you do when you’re caught on a treadmill and there’s no way to stop? When you’ve put your husband on hold so many times he no longer bothers to call?

The party, she thought suddenly. Wasn’t it an opportunity of sorts? A chance to demonstrate that her family
did
come first? She would make it wonderful, the best ever. She’d make the apartment glow, see that every detail was perfect. Candles everywhere. And music, the lovely mellow jazz she and Brian used to listen to on nights out at the Blue Note and Village Vanguard. The food would be carefully chosen with Henri; the champagne crisp; the floral arrangements from Gramercy Flowers, dazzling and fragrant.

It would be only a small start, not even equal to a romantic weekend in the Hamptons, but maybe it would show Brian how good things could be once again. How, with a little luck, and a lot of patience, even a marriage that had been blown off course could be brought safely to shore.

Late Saturday afternoon, with her guests due to arrive in less than an hour, Rachel, who’d been doing exactly what Kay had envisioned—running around like a damn chicken with its head cut off—finally stopped long enough to take stock of all she’d accomplished. Standing in the living room, by the row of windows that overlooked Gramercy Park, she gazed about in wonder. Even with rain coming down outside in sheets, this apartment, which had stood listless for so long, seemed to glow as if sunlit. Gone were the drooping potted plants her well-meaning housekeeper was forever overwatering, and the piles of newspapers and magazines awaiting the proverbial free time when she could read them. The freshly waxed oak floor shimmered, and the marble fireplace had been polished until it shone almost as brightly as the mirror above it. Even the faded colors in the antique paisley shawl folded over the sofa back, just back from the dry cleaner’s, seemed brighter and richer somehow.

Not even on Hanukkah, she thought, with the menorah lit in the window, had this room looked so beautiful. Now, for the first time in months, she could truly appreciate its vaulted windows and high ceiling; its lovely mirrored panels at either end of the fireplace, which on sunny days painted pale, fledgling rainbows on the cream-colored walls and balding Turkish carpets.

Today was not one of those days. The rain that had been pouring down all afternoon had left the sky the color of soggy cardboard, and turned the streets to soup. From where she stood, Rachel could see cars and taxis flying along Lexington Avenue on wings of muddy water. Pedestrians clutching the collars of their raincoats battled through the driving torrent, umbrellas held in front of them like shields. Only the postman, in his plastic-covered hat and poncho, darting out from under a dripping eave, looked more miserable.

But just listen to Iris in the next room: singing her heart out! As if she hadn’t a care in the world. Her pure, sweet soprano made Rachel think of a canary they’d once had. One summer day, Iris had accidentally left the cage door open, and it flew out a window. She’d been inconsolable, Rachel remembered. Blaming herself, refusing even to
think
of getting another bird. Until Drew had brought over a parakeet, a bright-blue fellow with green-tipped wings Iris had named Sky. And then it was as if the tragedy had never happened.…

Drew and Iris. They were already looking for an apartment large enough for the two of them, and had talked about getting married next summer. In the meantime, Iris seemed to prefer Drew’s studio, cramped as it was, to her old room here. Rachel didn’t take it personally, nor did she object to their sleeping together. She’d have to have been blind, after all, not to know they were intimate.

The truth was, Rachel would have sacrificed almost anything to see her daughter looking so radiant—eyes shining, cheeks aglow, laughing at the smallest of jokes. Iris had even begun painting again, the floor around her easel awash in half-finished watercolors, the oversized shirts she wore speckled with every color in her paintbox. There was a lovely landscape of the park pinned to the corkboard wall in the dressing room off her bedroom that she used as a studio, and several more tucked away in her portfolio. Not even this weather had dampened her sunny mood. As Rachel listened, Iris’ voice seemed to float, light as the air itself, in a song from an old Anne Murray album she’d come across while sorting through the CDs.

God, don’t let her ever stop singing.…

“Dear, would you like this on the dining-room table, or over by the sofa?” Mama’s voice—light, brisk, yet somehow intrusive—caused Rachel to whirl around.

She found her mother poised in the doorway to the dining room, cradling a vase of artfully arranged flowers from her garden—asters, hollyhocks, dahlias, mustard-yellow yarrow.

Mama seemed more drawn than usual … or was it just the watery light on her thin face making her look like a Goya portrait? She was wearing a simple crepe dress the pale lavender of the sachets Mama tucked into drawers at home, her only jewelry a strand of opera pearls. Rachel felt a tug of yearning— for the kind of closeness she’d always wanted with her mother, but forever seemed to fall short of. The kind Mama and Iris shared. At the same time, she couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit irritated. Why had Mama insisted on bringing flowers—as lovely as they were—when Rachel had specifically
told
her she was having a florist deliver the arrangements she’d so carefully chosen?

“Over there is fine,” Rachel told her, distractedly waving a hand in the direction of the refectory table behind the sofa. Not wanting to seem ungrateful—her mother
had
meant well— she added with a smile, “Henri’s cordoned off the kitchen and dining room. No trespassing … not even for a cup of tea. He was very insistent.”