Painting Naked (Macmillan New Writing) (33 page)

“Did she buy it?” Tom asks.

“Hook, line, and sinker,” I say.

We emerge from the tunnel that runs beneath Boston harbor. Colin had clenched his fists every time I drove him through it. His face lost its color and his lips formed a thin line. The first time it happened, I thought he was angry. Turns out he was scared.

Couldn’t handle being tied up with emerald satin, either.

“I like the sound of your Claudia,” Tom says. “She’s a brave woman.”

Signs for Logan Airport flash by. Airplanes drone low overhead. Tom navigates the ever present maze of construction and says he’ll be in Europe some time in the New Year. “I’ll call you at Sophie’s if I get to London,” he says, pulling up at the international departures terminal. He opens the trunk and lifts out my suitcase. Sets it down on the curb.

“I appreciate this,” I say, “but you don’t have to come inside.”

“I’d like to keep you company.”

“No, but thanks all the same,” I say, shrinking from the memory of other farewells. Colin walking backward, face crumpled with emotion. Me at the barrier, waving and wanting another kiss. Him, stepping forward, and a man in uniform barring the way. Watching his train disappear because he said my car wouldn’t make the journey to Boston.

A problem at the lodge that couldn’t wait.

Tom puts his hands on my shoulders the way Harriet did. “Take care of yourself, and take care of Claudia,” he says. “I’ll miss you.”

After checking my luggage, I browse airport bookstores in search of something to read on the plane. A familiar name catches my eye. Paul Lamont, Lizzie’s favorite author. Is this another thriller? I read the back cover. Sounds more like a love story, so I toss the book in my basket along with two bars of chocolate and a magazine.

To my surprise, Paul Lamont’s bittersweet novel holds my attention from the very first page and I arrive at Heathrow on the trailing edge of a smudgy winter dawn, stiff and tired, eyeballs scratchy from reading all night.

If nothing else, it kept me from panicking.

I take a taxi from the airport and it drops me at Guy’s Hospital. Sophie told me only immediate family are allowed to visit patients in the ICU, so I pretend I’m her sister and almost snatch my pass from the volunteer’s startled hands. Dodging crowds, I race along corridors and try to keep clear of orderlies pushing gurneys. The lifts are taking too long, so I climb three flights of stairs to the ICU and find Hugh, unshaven and bleary-eyed, slumped in a chair outside Claudia’s cubicle. He pulls me into a clumsy hug and I feel the dampness of tears on his cheeks.

Am I too late?

“Sophie’s with her now,” Hugh says. Arm resting on my shoulders, he guides me toward a gap in the curtain. “Go on, Mum’s waiting for you.”

Lights blink, monitors beep, and a nurse bends to adjust the clamp on a tube that runs from Claudia’s nose and mouth to a machine on a trolley. Another makes notes on a clipboard and hangs it at the foot of Claudia’s bed.

Sophie looks up and I rush into her arms. We sway back and forth, murmuring platitudes and clutching one another. I whisper it’s going to be okay. She rubs my back and sobs into my shoulder.

Loss is easier when you’re young, Tom said.

“What happened?” I say.

“Not here,” she replies.

Claudia’s eyes are closed, but her lips quiver. She can’t speak because of the tube in her mouth. I take her hand in mine, stroke the brittle skin, run my fingers over the bones in her wrist. When had she gotten so old? So frail? Is this the same woman who prowled my beach last summer in a muu muu covered with parrots and palm trees, sat up half the night sketching raccoons, and told me to forgive Edith? I kiss her wrinkled brow and tell her I love her, then follow Sophie through the flowered curtains that hang from u-shaped tracks on the ceiling.

She nudges Hugh awake and he shuffles into Claudia’s cubicle to take our place. We head for the waiting room and help ourselves to strong tea and stale pastries from a vending machine. Sophie collapses in a brown leather armchair. I throw myself onto a slip-covered couch whose soft pillows are a pleasant surprise, and wish I could fall asleep.

“Okay, give it to me straight,” I say. “And don’t hold anything back.”

“I was in the living room,” Sophie says, “going over a job order when Mum came downstairs and stretched out on the sofa, saying she didn’t feel well. We’d eaten curry and a ton of Christmas pud the night before, so I didn’t pay much attention because I figured she had indigestion. God knows, I was still burping up a storm. Then Mum told me her chest hurt, like something heavy was sitting on her breastbone.”

A man in a rumpled suit enters the room and pours a cup of tea from the urn. Distractedly, he nods at us, then leaves looking as worried as we do.

Sophie takes a deep breath. “I told her to stay put while I fetched the car, but when I got back, Mum was upstairs brushing her teeth and about to take a bath. So I threatened to call an ambulance if she didn’t cooperate; then I brought her to Guy’s. After that, it was all a blur. Mum was whisked off to an examining room. The walls were a pukey pale green. She had a cardiologist and three nurses. One of them stuck electrodes on her chest and plugged her into some sort of machine, another hung an IV drip, and the doctor put tubes up her nose.”

I shudder. “When did Hugh get here?” From Sophie’s garbled explanation on the phone, I learned her brother had left on Christmas Eve for a skiing holiday in Austria and she’d had a tough time tracking him down.

“Yesterday,” Sophie says. “The nurses said Mum was doing better. They’d moved her out of the ICU and into the cardiac ward by then, so I felt okay about leaving for an hour to fetch my brother from the airport. When we got back, Mum’s bed was empty. I freaked. Good thing Hugh was here because I was a gibbering idiot at this point.”

“Where was she?”

“Back in the ICU, where they could keep an eye on her,” Sophie says. “Apparently, Mum decided she was fit enough to go home, so she ripped out her tubes and when all the monitors went off at once, the nurses rushed in and found her on the floor. She went into atrial fibrillation and they spent two hours bringing her out of it.”

“Christ.”

“Remember when our mothers used to tell us to always wear clean knickers in case we were hit by a bus?” Sophie says.

I nod.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” she goes on, “because they cut your clothes off with surgical scissors. Mum will be furious when she finds out they shredded her favorite track suit.”

For the first time since leaving home, I smile. “Then let’s go to Marks and Spencers and buy her another one.”

London

December 2011

We take turns at Claudia’s bedside, reading to her and rubbing her chapped lips and hands with aloe which is all we’re allowed to use. Working in shifts, we rotate back to Sophie’s house to shower and change our clothes, feed the dogs, and gather up more books and magazines to keep Claudia entertained. She’s beginning to look better. More color in her face and her eyes seem a bit brighter than usual.

“How long can you stay?” Sophie asks.

“As long as you need me.”

A look of relief sweeps across Sophie’s tired face.

Finally, after three days, I reach the bottom of my suitcase and discover Colin’s pink shirt wrapped around my funereal black shoes. Is this Lizzie’s idea of a joke? Of course not, Jill. Get a grip. She never saw the damned shirt, except for that picture above my desk. I unroll the sleeves. Sand trickles out; a tiny shell tumbles from the cuff and bounces on Sophie’s spare bed.

Is there no end to the memories?

Did anyone, Hugh or Keith, call Colin to tell him about Claudia?

Jeez, I hope not. Last thing we need is him showing up.

I run downstairs to make tea and glance at the calendar on Sophie’s desk and realize it’s New Year’s Day. Her message light is blinking. I hit
PLAY
and listen to an angry woman complain that Sophie had blown off her New Year’s Eve dinner party.

I erase the message.

Claudia’s condition improves, and by the end of another week she’s well enough to be moved back into the cardiac ward, but not without dire warnings from her doctor.

“Pull that stunt again,” she says, adjusting Claudia’s drip, “and we’ll strap you to the bed.”

Dressed in a pale blue bed jacket with satin ribbons, Claudia looks more like Barbie’s grandmother than the woman in Wellington boots who rescued squirrels and roared around Cornwall in her ancient Morris Minor. Soft curls frame her face and a hint of blush dusts her cheeks. Is that lipstick I see?

Sophie nudges me and grins.

I pull Paul Lamont’s book from my bag and turn to page one.

“Let me see that.” Sophie leans over my shoulder. “Hey, Ian’s making a film with this guy.”

“I didn’t know he was an actor as well.” I look for a picture of the author, but don’t find one.

“No, silly. He’s written the screenplay for one of his thrillers and Ian says it’s going to be a blockbuster. The next James Bond, but with more violence and sex.”

“Just what we need.”

Claudia pipes up. “That nice young doctor told me to wait at least six weeks before having intimate relations,” she says. “Do I really have to?”

Sophie blushes. She grabs a pillow and threatens to suffocate her mother. I keep reading aloud, and as Claudia tells Sophie to mind her own business, I feel as if something huge and horrible has just been lifted from my heart.

But when Claudia nags me into visiting Edith, I know she’s really on the mend. “Do you have her address?” she says, pulling her handbag from the night table. “Because if you don’t, then it’s in here somewhere. Now promise me you’ll go?”

“Of course, I will.” At this point, I’d walk barefoot over glass for her.

I help Sophie get her business back on track. We take orders, cook massive amounts of food, and hire substitute caterers for the functions we can’t handle. In between, we visit Claudia. She’s getting better, slowly, but not yet well enough to come home.

Finally, Sophie takes a day off, so I borrow her car and drive south to Brighton. A steady rain stutters on the pavement as I park the car and stumble onto the beach. Mounds of pebbles threaten to twist my ankles, salt spray dampens my face. The wind whips my hair into knots and numbs my fingers. I pull up my collar, shove both hands in my pockets. Down by the water, a woman attached to a leash is being pulled along by a dog the size of a pony. Two pale-faced boys share a cigarette beneath an umbrella. Maybe if I hang out here long enough, visiting hours will be over by the time I get there.

As sharp as ever, and still bitter about the past.

Claudia will have my guts for garters if I chicken out now.

The nursing home’s director is an angular, middle-aged woman who introduces herself so quickly I don’t catch her name.

“Didn’t you get our letter?” she asks, when I explain why I’m here.

“What letter?”

The woman opens a diary. “It was sent just before Christmas.”

“Air mail?” I say.

She sighs. “Surface. We’re on a strict budget.”

No wonder it never showed up, probably still hasn’t arrived or Tom would’ve called to let me know.

“So, you obviously didn’t receive it,” she says.

I shake my head.

With an air of being quite used to this sort of thing, the woman tells me Edith died on December 21st. “This must come as a shock, but it was very peaceful, and believe me, she wasn’t in pain.”

No heart attack then. Not like Claudia. I feel a sense of relief and ask, “Did she ever say anything about me?”

“Not till your letter arrived.”

I stop fidgeting and lay both hands on my lap while the woman, whose name I’m still trying to remember, sorts through piles of paper on her desk.

“That letter meant a lot to your aunt. We were surprised because we didn’t know she had any living relatives. Anyway, she left this for you.” Leaning forward, she gives me a padded envelope. “I was waiting to hear from you before sending this.” Then she stands and walks to the door. “You’d probably like to be alone for a bit,” she says, before slipping away.

The envelope is soft and thick, its surface worn and wrinkled as if it’s been used several times before. I remove the tape and pull out a small, tissue-wrapped object with a plain white card attached to the top:
THIS BELONGED TO YOUR MOTHER
.

I tear off the last piece of paper. A slender chain forms a puddle of gold in my hand; an oval gold locket nestles on top.

With clumsy fingers, I pry it open, blinking through my tears. Inside the locket are two tiny pictures, grainy black-and-white images of infants, and I only recognize myself because of the ridiculous lace bonnet. I lift the other picture from its shallow nest and turn it over. On the back, in faded brown ink, is a single word.

Katie.

Clutching my treasure with one hand, I hang onto my chair with the other. The room tilts and sways. I close my eyes and count slowly to ten, then open them again. The room has stopped spinning.

There’s a soft knock on the door and the nursing home’s director comes in with a tray of sandwiches and tea. “I thought you might need this,” she says.

I remember her name. “Thank you, Ms. Holt.”

“Daphne,” she says, lifting the teapot. “Please call me Daphne. Shall I pour?”

After buying a bunch of narcissus for Claudia, I drive back to London, straight to the hospital. She’s alone, looking tired. The nurse on duty tells me she had too many visitors today.

“I’ll only be a few minutes,” I say, holding up my flowers. “Long enough to give her these.”

She nods approval.