A Novel Death (6 page)

"Yeah. He was gay."

He glared at me. "You know what I mean."

"Right. What you mean. It's always about you, isn't it? It's never been about me. What about my voice?"

We stared at each other. I didn't have one. My role had been to follow Colin around the world on his sabbaticals and guest lectureships, providing healthy food, fresh clothing, and emotional support for four children and a media star.

As if he were reading my thoughts, he said, "It's not like you were ever Susie Homemaker. As far as your performance in the past year, I'd give you a three out of ten. I even have to iron my own shirts!"

Poor baby. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm working too."

"You mean trying to sell books?" He rolled his eyes. "Not that you have a lot of options."

"Oh, right-I forgot to go to law school."

But he was shaking his head at me sadly. "You could have at least finished your B.A. You always were too undisciplined."

I could have pointed out to him that in those days we weren't ever in the same place for a year, but I chose another direction. "As I remember, I was working on my B.A. when you threw a little roadblock in my way. Several of them, as a matter of fact." I knew he hated to have me bring up the facts of our courtship: the charismatic teaching assistant and the pretty sophomore enamored of archaeology and undiscovered places; my fear that if I didn't marry him before he went off to New Mexico for two years, I would never see him again. It wasn't his fault that I got pregnant before the ink on the thank-you notes had dried. But it ended my academic career.

"I'm not going there," he said firmly.

"You know what, Colin? Here's another metaphor. You're like an elephant who sat on a tulip and then got up and complained that it was squashed."

I knew he would not like the elephant comparison, and he didn't. Blue eyes narrowed, he stared at me for a long time, thinking. "I'll say this plainly, Delhi. I'm moving out. It's over."

I crossed my arms, as if trying to keep myself from flying apart. I felt the same dizzy unreality as the afternoon I was twelve and skidded on wet leaves on my bike. I was thrown over the handlebars onto the concrete, badly scraped and my arm broken, but for a moment, I didn't realize that it was me lying on the ground.

"I'll pay the rent and utilities for the next year, although I won't be living here." He straightened up, back in professional mode. "I'll come over when the kids are home for the holidays. There's no reason for them to suffer."

"What happens after a year?" I had barely enough breath to ask.

"I'll decide then. It could go either way"

"Will you be getting another place?"

He shook his head with pity at my naivete. "I already have one."

And that was that.

Or so I remembered.

As always, the food at Patsy and Ben's party was spectacular. Although my nieces, Tara and Annie Laurie, complained that there was nothing to eat, I knew better. Endive leaves wrapped around garlicky goat cheese, golden passion fruit stuffed with crabmeat, and tiny brown quail quarters like mummified baby arms. Caviardecorated smoked salmon on black bread-I went from table to table, sipping white wine and unashamedly sampling everything.

When I was finally satiated, I went looking for Patsy. I found her kneeling in her all-white kitchen pulling bottles of champagne out of the refrigerator. Her blond hair was pulled back in an impeccable French braid that dramatized her beautiful profile. Ingrid Bergman. Did that make me Goldie Hawn?

She turned as I came in, thinking I was Ben, her face furious. "Can you believe it?" she cried. "Those idiots didn't chill enough champagne! Oh-Delhi. You finally got here"

"I was outside talking to people." I tried to make it sound like it had been hours instead of fifteen minutes.

She peered behind me. "Colin's still outside?"

"No. It's just me. Colin and I are no longer an item."

She put down the green-gold bottles. "What are you talking about?"

"He's taken his business elsewhere."

"Del!" Ben came up behind me, crushing me in a strong hug. No air kisses for this man. Tanned and muscular with black curls and a bony face, he was a man to whom life had kept its promises.

Now he ran his hand down the length of my hair. "Gorgeous, as always. How's business?"

"Fine. Believe it or not, people still buy books."

"Ben, I need you-"

Instead of responding to his wife, he kept his eyes on me. "Terrific! Give me your card. I know some people who are interested in buying. One guy, a friend of my partner's, has a temperature-controlled library in his brownstone. All original manuscripts of Poe and Melville. Letters signed by Abraham Lincoln, stuff like that."

I doubted I would ever have anything to offer that kind of collector, but I reached into my woven bag and pulled out several of the cards I had designed and printed up myself. They showed Raj, my seal-point Siamese, sniffing at a pile of classics, with the message Got Books? My information was on the back of the card.

Ben grimaced. "What's this? If you're going to be in business, you need something professional. Something that says-"

"Oh, don't waste your breath." Patsy was finally standing up, a row of Piper Heidsieck bottles behind her like obedient ducklings. "Delhi, are you saying that Colin left? Who's the woman?"

"No woman."

She raised her eyes to heaven. "There's always a woman. And if you don't believe it, you're just as bad as Mama was about David Livingstone."

When one of my brother's girlfriends, Jennifer or Tiffany, answered the phone, my mother clung to his assurances that she was just the maid.

Ben winked at me. "It's his loss."

"I'm sure it is, but we've got to get this champagne outside. Did the Mellons get here? Or the Krikjmas?"

"No idea." He bent to help her lift the dark green bottles. I was sure that Patsy saw it as one more failure. No degree, no career, and now no husband. And, of course, the thing that no one ever talked about.

Patsy's money came both from her own accounting firm and Ben's holdings. He had gambled on the gentrification of Park Slope, Brooklyn, years earlier, buying up buildings cheaply, then doing the same in underrated parts of Manhattan. David Livingstone had made a fortune with his movies, which had titles like The Tomato That Ate Akron and Plant You Now, Dig You [Up] Later. I was the only one who had inherited my parents' talent for hand-to-mouth living.

"But you know what?" I said to their backs. "I'm happy. For the first time, I'm doing what I want."

By the time I reached Stony Brook and University Hospital, visiting hours had ended. But it wouldn't have mattered. Margaret was in Intensive Care. Her prognosis was guarded, and only family members were allowed up to see her. The fact that she had no family members didn't sway the receptionist. I left, determined to try again on Sunday.

My last thought before sleep was of the pointing sneaker. It had to be more than a random piece of the scene's kaleidoscope. And most probably, it belonged to Amil. But where he was and why his shoe had been left in the bookstore aisle, I couldn't guess.

The next morning I dressed more carefully than usual, in a navy T-shirt and khaki skirt. I tamed my hair into a tight French braid and traded my woven bag for a leather Coach purse, a gift from my oldest daughter, Jane. It wasn't until I was closing the front door that I realized I had turned myself into my twin, Patience. But why not? One look from her chilly eyes and empires fell. By the time I parked in the multilevel garage and crossed the path to the hospital, I was convinced I had a moral imperative to visit Margaret.

The receptionist at the information desk had a froth of white hair and a happy face pin on her pink smock.

I made my case.

She didn't agree.

"But she has no family," I argued. "I'm the same thing." While she pondered that, my identity slipped and I whispered, "You don't even have to give me a pass. Just tell me which room."

At her outraged look, Patience came back. "I have to speak to somebody then."

"But-it's Sunday! The Fourth of July." Inspiration. "Come back tomorrow!"

"This can't wait. Who's her doctor?"

"I'll check." Bending away from me, she crouched and punched in numbers; I stepped back to let her know I wouldn't try and eavesdrop. After a minute, she looked up, relieved. "Dr. Gallagher will be down. She has some questions anyway."

Patience and Delhi both thanked her.

Ten minutes later, a large-boned young woman approached us, giving me a puzzled look. No doubt she was expecting a deranged lunatic, instead of a woman holding a Coach bag.

She was almost six feet tall in blue scrubs, with a scraped-back ponytail and a friendly face. "Uh-I'm Dr. Gallagher?"

"Hi! I'm Delhi Laine. Sorry to trouble you but, how's Margaret doing?"

She nodded at the question. "The good news-if there is any-is that her vital signs are steady."

"What's the bad news?"

She sighed. "She's not responsive. There's a test we use-and she's not scoring well on it. The police report said she fell off a ladder?"

I nodded. "A library ladder."

"You mean she was inside? I was picturing her like, falling from a roof. What could she have landed on? You don't get a wound that deep just by hitting the floor."

"Could she have hit her head on the corner of another bookcase?" It seemed unlikely.

"Wrong angle."

"Could someone have come up from behind and hit her?"

"Only if he was ten feet tall." She grinned. "No, she was definitely hit from above. But I probably shouldn't be speculating anyway."

"When do you think she'll be conscious?"

"Well." She looked troubled. "She should have been already, if she's ever going to be."

"Really?" I felt the blow to my stomach. I hadn't realized there was a time limit. "But don't people sometimes stay in comas for a long time?"

"Yes, but this isn't a coma. We don't know what the problem is."

"When can I see her?"

"Really, there's nothing to see." She was edging away.

"Could you at least call me if there's any change? She really doesn't have any family." My voice choked and I had to stop.

Dr. Gallagher gave me a smile redolent of wheat fields. "Sure."

When I handed her the Raj card, she looked at my cat and said, "Cute!"

Since the university was just across the road, I decided to take a chance and see if Bruce Adair was in his office. Most faculty wouldn't be. Even those who stayed to teach summer school would be on chaise lounges somewhere. But Bruce was not exactly a beach bum. And if anyone knew how I could find Amil, he would.

Bruce has the nicest office in the Literature Department. His full name, Bruce Malcolm Adair, Ph.D., glows in gold letters on the frosted glass door-he paid to have it painted himself-and he has a window overlooking the Quad. It is the lair of a powerful Scottish warrior. But although Bruce has the necessary intellect, severe scoliosis kept him under five feet tall; he is primarily interested in combat of the mind. As I knocked on the fancy door, I had a vivid memory of Bruce standing next to Colin at a Christmas party, shaking a finger far up at him to make a point. It was one of the few times Bruce was not surrounded by a bevy of fawning young women. I wondered again what his secret was.

Bruce no longer writes poetry himself, if he ever did. What he likes to do is mentor a deserving but obscure poet, and write brilliantly about him or her, starting them on the road to Pulitzers and MacArthurs. He is happy in his kingmaker role. He has also published essays in journals that Jack Hemingway can only dream about. Bruce would never grab a book out of a colleague's hand.

"Come in!"

Bruce was positioned at his large walnut desk, the prized window to his left. Because of his height, bookshelves lined only the lower half of the walls. On the painted upper half were portraits of Keats, Shelley, and Yeats, holograph pages of their poetry, and soft color photographs of misty English landscapes. Two of the photographs had been taken and hand-tinted by me. It had been during my artistic phase, when I was casting around for something meaningful to do-besides ironing. It had come after the painting on china, but before the macrame.

"Delhi?" Bruce has intense blue eyes that bulge when he is excited. They are the most noticeable feature in his pleasant rosy face. I saw that he had clipped his white beard short for the summer. "My God, it is you. What have you done with your amazing hair?"

"It's here." I turned to show him. "Just subdued."

"Sit, missy." He indicated a shellacked blond wooden chair with a slatted back that faced his desk.

I sat. "Is this where you grill students?"

"I grill no one. These days they grill me. Mostly about the A that I `forgot' to give them, which they really really need, Dr. Adair!"

I smiled and he grinned back. He could have asked me how Colin and the children were, or gestured at my photographs to show he still appreciated them. But Bruce does not believe in normalizing chatter; he prefers to keep people off-balance. So he gave me an interested look and waited.