Rescue (28 page)

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Sheila asks.

“Not positive, but I think it is. She may not be able to handle more than a minute or two.”

Sheila has on a short white jacket with a long black T-shirt and a pair of jeans. She has her hair down and behind her ears.
He has no idea how this will go. It is a risk, maybe a terrible one. If Rowan can’t handle the meeting, the consequences for
both of them could be serious and long-lasting.

Webster steps to one side to allow Sheila into the room. “Rowan, this is Sheila Arsenault.”

Sheila takes a step forward. “How are you?” she asks Rowan.

His daughter cannot speak. It’s as though her vocal cords have been paralyzed. She seems to want to say something, but can’t.

With Rowan alert, Webster sees the uncanny resemblance between the two women.

Sheila takes a step closer to the bed. She tilts her head and looks right at Rowan. “Is it OK if I sit down?” she asks. From
Rowan’s point of view, Sheila must look intimidating. Webster notices that his daughter is still clutching the hat.

“Sure,” Rowan says, finally finding her voice. With her good arm, she hitches herself a little higher against the pillows.

“You had a nasty accident.”

No one has said the word
mother
or
daughter
yet. Sheila might be a friend of Webster’s who’s just stopped by. He wonders if either Rowan or Sheila is registering the
similarities between them.

“You look well,” Sheila says.

Webster is expecting the summons from Rowan any minute now, and even he is beginning to think this meeting may have been a
bad idea. Rowan, in the bed, resembles a cornered animal.

“The doctors say she’ll be able to go home in a couple of days,” Webster explains.

“Just in time for your graduation,” Sheila says.

Rowan seems surprised that Sheila knows about the graduation. “I hear you’re a painter,” Rowan offers.

“I am,” Sheila says, setting her purse on the floor beside the bed. While Sheila sits, Webster stands at the foot of the bed
so that he can see his daughter’s face. To be ready for any signal. How small his personal universe is.

“My dad says they’re very good.” Rowan hitches herself up farther. She’s still holding the hat, but not clutching it. She’s
revealed her bald spot but appears not to know it.

“Your dad is very generous,” Sheila says. “I recognize you, but you’re so different. You’re beautiful.”

Rowan’s blush is instantaneous. Webster holds his breath for a two-beat. This could go in any direction now.

“How tall are you?” Sheila asks Rowan.

“Five nine. And you?”

“Five ten, or I used to be. Who knows now? They say you start to shrink.”

“You looked very tall when you were standing.”

Sheila smiles.

“Our hair is the same color,” Rowan says.

Sheila nods. “That’s one of the first things I noticed. Yours was much lighter when you were a baby.”

And there it is. Connection made. A history together, even if Rowan knows little about it.

“This is completely weird,” Rowan says. “I have, like, a million questions.”

“I have two million,” Sheila says.

No mention yet of abandonment or guilt. Anger or remorse. That will come, Webster knows. But maybe not today. Each of them
smart enough to avoid it. Now, instead of a stranger, it’s as though a long-lost aunt has come to visit.

Sheila takes off her white jacket, either hot or maybe just sweating from nerves. Rowan sits straight up in the bed and bends
forward, showing Sheila the bald spot. “What am I supposed to do with this?” Rowan asks. “I have to be at graduation in three
days.”

Sheila takes the question seriously. “Won’t that cap you have to wear—the mortarboard—cover it?”

“But then you have to toss them in the air at the end,” Rowan says.

Sheila tilts her head again. “May I?” she asks, reaching for Rowan’s hair.

Rowan nods yes.

Sheila fingers Rowan’s hair and inspects the bald spot again. “You could cut your hair,” she suggests. “Do one of those short,
spiky things. Your hair is thick enough. Then just wear the bald spot as part of the new cut. There’s no way you can really
hide it. I was thinking you could do some sort of comb-over, but that would be worse in the end.”

Rowan runs her fingers through the ends of her hair. “I’ve always had long hair,” she says.

“Have you?” her mother asks.

“Since twelve, anyway.”

“Maybe it’s time for a change.”

“Do you know how to cut hair?” Rowan asks Sheila.

“I don’t,” Sheila says. “But I can find someone who does.”

“They’ll come here?”

“I’ll arrange it that way, if the nurses will let me.”

Webster, baffled, can only watch. He knows this is surface, that there will be pitfalls ahead, perhaps an entire crater. Odd
how females bond over crises in appearance. With guys, it would be sports.

Sheila, having checked that the haircut would be all right with the nurses, arranges for a hairdresser to come to Rowan’s
room that afternoon. Webster steps outside the door when the hairdresser
arrives, and he’s pretty sure that Rowan doesn’t even notice his absence. He watches for a moment. The nurses have put Rowan
in a wheelchair and covered her with sheets. Sheila sits on the bed and observes as the hairdresser fingers Rowan’s hair.
She asks if Rowan is sure she wants to do this and nods when Rowan bravely says yes. Sheila explains what she has in mind.
Webster, watching the tableau, thinks: She might have been a good mother after all.

After the physical therapy and the visit by Gina and Tommy (Webster and Sheila hear giggling from the room as they stand in
the hallway), Rowan reports that the little physical therapy they gave her was brutal and that she has a lot of work to do
on the shoulder. Because the nurses have encouraged Rowan to walk as much as possible, Webster strolls with Rowan along the
corridors. Once he takes her outside to see the summer evening. Rowan sucks in the fresh air. From Webster’s vantage point,
the spiky hair doesn’t hide the bald spot, but it makes it less noticeable. Webster asks Rowan what she thought of Sheila,
but Rowan is less forthcoming than Webster hoped. He doesn’t know if Rowan wants to keep her feelings about her mother to
herself, or if she herself can’t quite sort out this new development in her life.

“The nurse told me that the medics paralyzed me for the ride in the helicopter. Did you do that?”

“No,” he says. “The airlift medics do that.”

“The nurse said that she’s known patients who recover from the original injury, but stay paralyzed.”

Fucking nurse. “I’ve heard that, too,” Webster says. “But I don’t know of anyone that’s happened to.”

“But you knew this when they paralyzed me,” she says.

“I did. I didn’t like it, but it’s standard procedure with a head injury prior to an airlift.”

“So you must have been scared,” Rowan says.

“I was terrified.”

She hugs him with her good arm. “I’m sorry,” she says.

When Webster arrives the next morning, he finds that Sheila has beaten him to it. She is sitting close to Rowan in the chair,
and the two are talking. Rowan’s eyes express wonderment and awe, and he can hear her giggle through the glass. Because he
doesn’t want to interrupt the pair, he meanders through the hallways, checking back every twenty minutes.

The second time he peers in, they are still talking.

The third time he nears the room, he can see that Rowan is laughing. Webster wonders if Sheila is telling her stories about
what Rowan was like when she was a baby.

The fourth time he walks by, their heads are closer together, and each is serious. He walks into the room.

Both Sheila and Rowan look at him as if surprised to see him. Sheila sits back in her chair. Rowan says nothing.

“Did I interrupt something?” Webster asks.

Rowan shrugs.

“Anybody want anything from the vending machine?” Webster, in desperation, asks.

Rowan and Sheila shake their heads.

“OK. I’m going for coffee,” he announces.

He gives them fifteen minutes. When he reenters the room, Rowan is crying.

Fuck.

Sheila turns to him and makes a downward motion with her hands, as if to say,
Don’t get upset. Everything is not as it seems.

Rowan reaches for a tissue and blows her nose. “If you hadn’t sent her away, we’d have been a family all those years.”

Sheila holds up a hand before Webster can respond. “Your father did the right thing by sending me away,” she says to Rowan.
“I might have killed you. It’s sort of a miracle I didn’t.”

“So you’re not angry that he sent you away?”

“I have been at times,” Sheila says. “But there’s no doubt in my mind that he did it to save your life.”

“I didn’t save anyone’s life,” Webster says, setting his coffee cup on the ledge under the window. “It happened, and it can’t
be taken back. We’ve all been damaged by it.” He pauses. Does he believe that? Yes, he does.

“Rowan and I have a lot of catching up to do,” Sheila says. She stands.

“You’re going?” Rowan asks with dismay.

“If my watch is right,” Sheila says, “the physical therapist is going to come grab you in about five minutes. Besides, I have
to return to my house. I don’t want to leave, but I really have to.”

Rowan throws off the covers and sits at the edge of the bed. Her legs are thin and white. Webster is always amazed by how
much muscle mass can be lost in so short a time.

“When you go across that stage,” Sheila says, “you keep your chin up and forget about that bald spot. Besides, it’s growing
back in already.”

“It is?” Rowan asks, fingering her head.

“I’ll call you as soon as I get back. I have to run to check out of my room at the inn, or I’ll be charged the extra day.”

Rowan looks wildly at her father, as if to say,
Fix it.

“Stay the extra day,” Webster suggests to his ex-wife. “Unless you positively have to be back. Follow us to Hartstone. You
can get a room at the Bear Hollow Inn.”

Where they had their wedding lunch.

“Or if that’s full, we’ll find you another place. Wouldn’t you like to see this sad, pathetic, bald creature graduate?”

“Yes,” Sheila says. “Yes, I would.” She turns to Rowan. “Are
you
asking me?”

“I am,” Rowan says.

S
heila, having arrived at the house early from the Bear Hollow Inn, zips up the back of Rowan’s dress, a chore that used to
be Webster’s, Rowan always pleading, “Don’t look.”

His girls. It’s on the tip of his tongue. Webster remembers thinking it years ago one afternoon when he found Sheila and Rowan
asleep together on the ground. But Sheila is no more his than the neighbor’s lawn mower is. Still, there’s something about
the scene before him—a mother and a daughter helping each other with last-minute arrangements—that pleases him.

Rowan is nervous. Webster knows it’s partly the hair, partly a slight unsteadiness on her feet, partly the idea of seeing
her friends again.

It’s been fifteen years since all three of them have been in this house together. But Rowan doesn’t remember that.

Webster watches Sheila give Rowan her graduation present, a short necklace of powder blue stones and hammered silver balls.
Even as Sheila hands the package to Rowan, the gesture seems tentative. As if she shouldn’t be giving her daughter a present.
The easy joy that Sheila took in Rowan just two days earlier appears to have left her.

“What do you think?” Rowan asks, standing before him in
her light blue dress with a part of one sleeve cut to make room for the cast.

“You look fabulous,” he says. “Very smart and chic.”

Rowan wrinkles her face. “What do you know about smart and chic?”

Sheila adjusts her white jacket and fiddles with the waistband of her trousers. Webster catches a glimpse of a silky top under
the jacket.

In the hospital, Webster told Rowan that his graduation present to her would be a four-night trip to New York City for her
and Gina when Rowan is fully recovered. They could see museums, go to plays, eat out. “You won’t drink,” Webster warned. “You
can’t drink. You understand that.”

“I do.”

“My father used to say to me that I’d never been anywhere,” Webster said. “He’d be glad that you’re doing this.”

“But, Dad, don’t you want to go instead of Gina?”

He did. “I’d be a bore,” he said. “I’d want to take long walks and visit other rescue squads. And I’d want to be in bed by
ten. You’ll have much more fun with Gina.”

“She’s going to
flip out
when she hears about this,” Rowan said. “Thank you so much.”

It has been arranged that Rowan will go to graduation first with Tommy because they have to put on their robes and line up
for the procession. They will march out onto the field to the notes of “Pomp and Circumstance,” just as Webster once did.
He feels for the parents of the one student who won’t be there. When Webster told Rowan about Kerry, she cried for an hour.
He worries that Rowan might not be able to handle the inevitable
moment of silence. He worries about her standing in the hot sun. The doctor has warned both of them to be aware of the possibility
of seizures. For the next two weeks, Rowan cannot be alone.

Webster and Sheila will go a bit early to graduation as well in order to snag a pair of seats near the front. Metal chairs
will be set in rows before the stage. As soon as Webster sits down on his, one leg of the four will sink into the soft grass.
Webster has his camera and has charged it for pictures afterward. He wants one of Rowan up against the bare patch of wall,
but she might be embarrassed with her odd haircut and in Sheila’s presence. And wouldn’t Webster then be obliged to ask Sheila
and Rowan to pose together, a request riddled with mines? He’ll get Rowan after the ceremony, in her gown and in her dress.

“That’s clever,” Sheila says, noticing the silver box on the windowsill over the sink. “It really tells the weather?”

“It was my birthday present to Dad,” Rowan says, lifting it from the sill. She explains its various features. She gives it
a little shake and sets the cube on the table. “This side shows the future,” she says. She tilts her head to read it.
“Go slowly and be careful,”
she reads. “Bummer. I already got that one. Whose future is it, anyway?”