Oxygen (18 page)

“You don’t mind paper plates, do you?” she asks, fanning out white, crimp-edged Dixie plates and lighting the tapers. “I love it. Candlelight and hot dogs—only in Texas. Elsa should be here any minute. She almost canceled her plans today to stay home—a miraculous concept. You’re her idol, you know, a female doctor living in a swank apartment in the city. Not some stodgy suburban housewife like her mother.” She squinches her nose up in humor, such a characteristic Lori expression, connected with a thousand shared experiences. Like the way she hitches up her right shoulder whenever she exaggerates the truth, bites her lip in contemplation, or laterally flares her hands before she offers her frequently obstinate opinion on what’s right or wrong for the people she loves. I am flooded with a sense of belonging, to be so intimately aware of another person’s unique watermark on the world, connecting us like the secret insignia of clans.

The front door slams with a clank of the brass knocker and Elsa bounds into the room. I know it’s Elsa—she has my little sister’s face. Otherwise I would barely recognize her from the girl I saw two years ago. I don’t see any of my sister in the billowing figure of my niece—the miraculous mixing of genes has strayed far from the lean, functional physique of the Heaton line. I wrap her in my arms so tight she lifts into the air. Her hug invokes the luxurious sensation of falling into a plush comforter, round and warm and inviting. No wonder Lori’s worried.

“Aunt Marie. Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re here. I couldn’t believe it when Mom said you were coming today. My Spirit Club had a car wash so I had to go out before you woke up. We made tons of money, though—over two hundred dollars. But I swear tomorrow I won’t leave the house so we can talk. Well, I mean, I have to go out tomorrow night, but that’s, like, just for a few hours.”

She has no idea how beautiful she is, I can tell. Her hair, wet from what must have been a water fight after the car wash, has been haphazardly swept into a tangled knot skewered with a gnawed pencil. Her T-shirt clings to her cleavage. Only her voice, the part of her I know best, is still childlike. Truly, the fecundity of young womanhood has been launched, and she seems delightfully unaware.

Lori raises an eyebrow at me from across the table. “Hi, sweetie. Grab a plate and sit down. Have you eaten anything yet?”

“I gotta run, Mom. Sierra’s picking me up in twenty minutes to go to the mall with her and Dakota.” She plucks a chicken leg off the serving platter and gives me a kiss, fragrant with suntan lotion and Juicy Fruit gum.

“Sierra and Dakota,” I comment, as Elsa bounces out of the room, Lia following in her wake like an adoring fan. “Is it a family or a geography class?”

“You should hear the lineup of Neil’s baseball team. It stops just short of a world atlas. So, maybe you could rent a car and follow her—tell me what goes on at the mall.”

“She hasn’t gotten into any really dicey stuff, has she?” I have to remind myself I usually hear only one side of Elsa’s world.

“Maybe I should be asking you! I mean, what would I have done with a body like that at her age? Our parents were blessed with two scrawny, flat-chested wallflowers. Whatever happened to the ‘Heaton Late Puberty’ gene? Maybe it’s hormones in the milk—it makes me want to give them Coke. Do they talk about that at any of your fancy medical meetings?” She sweeps the dining table clear of paper plates and knots the red plastic ribbons on the trash bag with a fierce tug. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and Lia will stay little forever.”

“How can that much time have passed? All this year on the phone, I’ve been picturing her as a child,” I say, stacking up the emptied plastic cups.

“It’s been two years since you’ve seen her, Marie. Two years of estrogen and internet chat rooms. And Abercrombie and Fitch—or whoever decided it was indecent to cover your navel. Biggest problem is that she
is
a child. She just doesn’t look like it anymore. Maybe it used to be easier when girls got married in adolescence—less open ocean to navigate between childhood and moving out.”

“You’re kidding, I know.” She shrugs her shoulders and keeps clearing the table.

“Of course I’m kidding. Most of the time. Or at least the few hours of the day when she doesn’t seem to hate me. Did you and I argue with Mom very often, though? I can’t imagine she ever contemplated spyware.”

“They didn’t have spyware when we were growing up. What makes you think she hates you?”

“Oh, just the fact that fifty percent of our dinners and breakfasts end up with all the napkins being used to wipe tears instead of spilled milk. I feel like I’m walking on glass around her. I hand her a hairbrush because I assume she hasn’t gotten around to it yet and she bursts into sobs.”

“Here. Let me take it.” I pull the trash bag out of her hands.

She sighs and releases her hold on the garbage. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear me vent. Just remind her there’s more than one side to her issues.”

“I do. And it does me good to hear somebody else’s problems for a change. Do you want me to take this out back?”

“It’s a toss-up. In here it starts to smell, outside the dog rips it up all over the yard. And you thought only doctors faced tough choices. My life is filled with fascinating dilemmas like this. Just stuff it under the sink for now and come sit down with me. Want some ice cream?”

“Just water,” I say, jamming the trash into the overstuffed can and coming back to sit next to her.

She divides the last of the pitcher into two plastic cups and sets one down in front of me. “Now, you complain for a while. I’m tired of hearing myself moan.”

“Trust me on this. You’d rather hear yourself,” I say, my pulse notching up at the threat of revealing that my medical-legal nightmare has escalated to a realm I’d thought reserved for perpetrators of corporate frauds and investment schemes, if not just common thieves.

Lori is quiet, tracing tiny crosses and circles in a pile of spilled table salt, then she leans toward me over the table and takes my hand in hers. “I know you didn’t leave Seattle just to appreciate our summer weather. And I know they don’t give away extra vacation time at that hospital. Is there any settlement in sight yet?”

I shake my head and focus on the lacy crystal patterns of salt. “That’s a long way off. It’s gotten more complicated in the last few weeks.”

She gives me time to tell her more, then asks, “Complicated in what way?”

“You know the dream I told you about? The one about her heart?”

Lori waits, open, ready.

“I was right. Jolene had a heart problem. They found it in the autopsy. She had a coarctation of her aorta—a kink in the biggest blood vessel leaving her heart.”

She groans and covers her eyes with her hands. “Oh God. Is that why she died?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But it gives the other side a reason to blame me. I missed it. I didn’t know about it before I put her to sleep.”

“Did anybody else know? She’d been seen by other doctors, right? You said she’d been sick off and on since she was three or four.”

“She was mentally retarded—that doesn’t automatically make anybody look for a heart defect. Her mom didn’t say anything about her heart when I talked to her before the operation. There’s no record in her chart that anybody knew about it.”

“So why do you get the blame? Besides, you just said you’re not sure this is why she died.”

“I’m not. I mean, I might have put in an arterial line at the beginning, but—when I’m objective about it, really think it through—I still don’t think it explains her death.” I tuck my hands together between my knees, torn between leaving the room and telling her about the criminal investigation. “There’s more.” I stop, and bite my lip. After a minute I twist my mouth into a false smile and add, “I think I’m not ready to talk about it right now.”

She looks so sad, as if my inability to share this represents her failure. “How are you getting through your workdays?” she asks gently.

“Honestly?” She nods for me to continue. “Every time I introduce myself to a new patient I wonder if they’ve heard about what happened. I feel like a charlatan. I can’t take care of children anymore—I can’t stomach the idea of telling some mother that her baby would be safe with me.” I look up at her again, see the concern in her eyes. “I keep seeing her mother. Seeing her face when I walked into the waiting room to tell her what had happened. I keep imagining that if I could talk to her again, find out how she’s surviving this, I could somehow fix it. Not fix it—I know it will never be fixed—but, I don’t know, somehow take part of her pain into myself.”

Now I have brought Lori near tears, spilling my tragedy into her own turbulent life. I see her struggling to respond when the garage door suddenly squeals up on its metal rails and we both jump. She sighs. “Gordon’s home.” Then she leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “So here’s what I want to know, Marie. Who’s taking care of you during all of this? Who’s listening to this when you come home at the end of the day?” Then she walks into the kitchen, smoothing her hair, to greet her husband.

The refrigerator opens and closes, and I hear the hiss-pop of a bottle cap, the brush of cloth against cloth. Murmured fragments of words crescendo and fade through the walls. After a few minutes of silence Lori comes back into the dining room, followed by Gordon, my brother-in-law of sixteen years.

“Hey, Marie. A house call from the doctor at last. How are you?”

“Great,” I say, forcing a smile. “Great. Wish I’d brought some of our Northwest weather, though.”

“You guys just need to discover real climate control. Be as proud as us to build houses with windows that don’t even open. No kidding, though. It’s good to see you. The Heaton progeny need to get to know their smart aunt better. Got to get you down here more often, now that Southwest Airlines flies to the hinterlands of Seattle.” He gives me a one-armed hug, and swings out the chair at the head of the dining table, then leans back in it, loosening his tie. Since I saw him two years ago, Gordon has increased his belt size by nearly the same percentage his hairline has receded. Lori sits down in the chair next to him and rests her hand on his sleeve.

“So how is it in the land of nod? Still putting people under, are you?” Gordon asks.

Lori winces and interrupts him. “Gordon’s always so fascinated by your job. I think it’s because he’s terrified of anesthesia.” She rubs his arm. “I saved dinner for you, honey. Hungry?”

She sets a plate full of microwaved barbecue on the table. As he leans forward to take a bite I watch the throb of his temporal artery snaking across his brow and wonder what his blood pressure is.

“I’m not terrified of anesthesia. But I’m sure Marie deals with plenty of people who’d rather be anyplace but unconscious under a knife. Don’t you?” Gordon asks.

I draw in a breath to answer him but Lori deflects the conversation again. “Tell Marie about the idea for your new project, Gordy. That one you want to start on the Holtman property. I thought I might drive her by there tomorrow.”

Gordon beams at her, then looks down at the whorled patterns of wood on the dining room table and raises his palms above the reflecting surface, as if preparing to conduct an orchestra. He clears his throat and draws his eyebrows together, apparently mesmerized by his internal vista. “Imagine you’re an artist,” he finally begins. “Imagine that you’re a sculptor, or a woodcarver, or a weaver.” His eyebrows are rising higher with each image. “A fiddle maker, a potter, a…a whatever. You’ve got talent.” He clenches his fist in front of me. “And vision. Skill. You can create beautiful, one-of-a-kind works of art.” He fans out the fingers of his thick hands and looks me right in the eye. “But how do you create your art and still have the time—and the business savvy—to find the market for it?”

“Well.” I try to sound optimistic about what might be coming. “I don’t know. I never really thought about that problem before.”

“No. Of course you haven’t.” His forefinger jabs the top of the table. “You doctors are always too busy shopping at Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue or some such. So maybe you hit a street fair now and then for some pottery toothbrush holder or soap dish, or you go to a fancy-pants gallery where the painter has to whack off half his price to the gallery owner in commissions before he even slips a dollar into his own pocket. Am I right? Am I right?”

I nod at him after an inquiring glance toward Lori, who stares into her empty plastic cup. “Now, what if you could get your buyers to come to you—in masses—instead of a random trickle lured in through some homegrown scrap of advertising you stuck on a telephone pole?”

I open my mouth to answer but he slaps both beefy palms down on the table so the silver candlesticks shiver. “Now. Look up.” I widen my eyes in anticipation, but this proves to be short of the physical reaction to his vision he’s hoping to provoke. “No. Up. Up. Look up.” He points at the ceiling. I shift my eyes toward my hairline and notch my neck back a degree. He seems happier.

“Staircases are winding up amid platforms and alcoves. Wooden staircases, branching and twisting and spitting you out into the very studios, the laboratories of creative invention, for hundreds of craftsmen. And women, of course. Turn left, and an ironsmith is forging one-of-a-kind andirons or towel racks. Turn right, and watch angora goat hair being carded and dyed and woven into a handspun scarf. Behind you a kid is silk-screening dragons and unicorns onto the panels of box kites. No sir, you won’t find that at Neiman’s.” His hands fall back into his lap as if the weight of his ideas has drained them of strength.

I look at Lori again, and with a quick pursing of lips she lets me know it’s my moment to respond. “Wow. Gordon. What an idea. I mean, it’s a great idea. Christmas would be huge—handmade gifts and all. I’d love to see it while I’m here.”

“And I’d love to take you to see it. But I can’t. It doesn’t exist.” He taps at the serpentine pulsation along his temple. “Only here. Only exists right here. Until I get the investors together, that’s where it stays.”

“Oh. Well, it does sound like a great idea, though.”

“That it is. That it is. And a great investment for anybody who acts early. Get your money working for you in the ground stages of this and you’ll see it skyrocket. I know that for a fact. This is my business. Spent my whole life in it—well, you know that—and this one’s a winner right out of the gate. Right from the blocks. You’ve got to think of your money as one of the artists—working to craft a unique thing of beauty. Can’t go wrong, if you look at it like that.”