Skipping a Beat (3 page)

I paused on the top step. I hated to be rude, but I couldn’t risk inviting Mike inside. Not even after everything we’d been through together. Mike glanced at the front door, then at me, but he didn’t say anything. Maybe he already knew; most people did by now.

“Is Becky going to walk again?” Mike asked, casually sitting down and leaning back on his elbows as he stretched out his legs, like it was completely natural to carry on our conversation out here rather than inside.

“She thinks she will,” I said as I plopped down next to him. “But I don’t know what the doctors say.”

“Jesus.” Mike let out his breath in a long, whooshing sound, then winced and clutched his side, despite his claims that his ribs didn’t hurt. “Being in a wheelchair is the worst thing I could imagine. I’d go crazy.”

“I guess you don’t know until it happens,” I said. “Becky handles it really well, especially for a kid.”

“No. I’d go crazy, Julie,” he repeated. “To not be able to move? To have to depend on other people for help?”

He suddenly sprang up and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, like he was reassuring himself he could still control his body. Mike was in constant motion. I hadn’t noticed it at school, but that afternoon I saw: His leg jiggled, or his fingertips thrummed a beat on a table, or his hand wove endless paths through his curly, dark hair. That was probably how he stayed so skinny, despite the fact that he’d gobbled most of the ice cream and raided the refrigerator to make himself two turkey-and-cheese sandwiches at Becky’s.

Already, I was learning his mind was as hungry as his body. Mike told me he’d read half a dozen books about self-defense, not because he was worried about being attacked but because he read
everything
. That’s how he knew about the vulnerable spot in the middle of the throat: Hitting it hard enough with the side of a rigid hand would stun just about any assailant.

Mike tore through his homework, devoured books at the library, and gobbled up newspapers and biographies of business leaders and World Book encyclopedias. He even read the ingredient lists on the packages of everything he ate (alas, this little habit of his ruined my love affair with hot pink Hostess Sno Balls). He’d skipped third grade, and he’d completed all the high school math courses by the end of tenth grade.

Everything about Mike was quick. Weeks later, when I lay my head on his bare chest for the first time, I thought he was nervous because I could feel his heart beating so rapidly. But that was his normal heart rate; Mike was just wired differently than anyone I’d ever met.

Maybe I would’ve fallen in love with Mike anyways, because of the unexpected parts of himself that he’d revealed the day Jerry attacked me: his bravery, and the way he’d joked about how brilliant I’d been to hang on to the chocolate ice cream: “I mean, if you’re going to use something as a weapon, for God’s sakes, use the strawberry! Strawberry’s kind of scrappy, but chocolate’s too mellow. It’s always getting stoned and sitting around listening to Led Zeppelin. You never want chocolate to have your back in a fight.”

But there was something else—something he said that day on my front steps—that seemed to pierce me all the way to my core.

Mike frowned at the horizon, as if it wasn’t really me he was speaking to. “Someday I’m going to have enough money to do whatever I want. I’m going to have my own company, and my own house, too, not something the bank owns. I’m not going to end up in this crummy town like everyone else.
Nothing’s
going to stop me.”

I stared at him, unable to speak. Mike had just put into words everything
I
desperately wanted, like he’d peered into my brain and scooped out my deepest, most secret wish. It wasn’t so much the money, though at that point I couldn’t even imagine owning a house. Funny, because now we have two—in D.C. and in Aspen, Colorado. But the security that came along with money … well, I ached for it. The sick, unsteady feeling I’d had ever since my dad had changed—the sense that quicksand was inching closer and closer to me, biding its time before it could suck me down and cover my head and suffocate me—disappeared as Mike spoke.

I looked at him, this scrawny, twitchy guy with crazy curls and jeans with a ragged hole in the knee, and a rush of certainty enveloped me like a warm blanket: With Mike, I’d always be safe, in every way possible.

“See you in school tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got that history test.”

He nodded, then looked down at his feet. “You always sit by the window, right?”

“Right,” I said, surprised.

“Except last week.” He took a deep breath, like he was gathering himself, then lifted his blue, almond-shaped eyes to meet mine. “Shelby Rowan took your seat first. You looked at her for a second, then you went to the back row. You were wearing a white sweater that day.”

I stared at him, speechless. Mike had been watching me? He remembered what I wore? He hadn’t shown any fear when he attacked Jerry, but right now, he looked nervous. He was worried about my reaction, I realized with a jolt.

“You sit in the front row, too, right?” I finally said.

Mike shook his head. “I’m right behind you, Julie. I always have been.”

Like today, when I desperately needed him there.

I felt a hot rush of shame. “Sorry.”

Mike shrugged, but I saw hurt flash across his face. “If you don’t play football, no one notices you. God, I hate high school. Do you know how many days until we graduate? Four hundred and thirty-eight if you count holidays and weekends and summer vacation. I’ve been counting down for years.”

It was true; our school did revolve around football, and half the town came out for the Friday night games. Suddenly I remembered: Mike had two older brothers. And they’d both played football; I’d heard their names being chanted by cheerleaders during games.

“I’ll save you a seat tomorrow,” I blurted.

“Good,” Mike said, and then he smiled. His teeth were a little crooked, but on him it was appealing. “I should get going. Will you be okay?”

I nodded. “The sheriff said Jerry’s probably already left town. Apparently he was planning on leaving anyway. He just ran into me first. So”—I gave a tight little laugh—“I don’t have anything to worry about.”

But I was still scared. The touch of that finger was seared into my skin like a burn. And somehow, Mike knew.

The next morning at seven-thirty, he was outside my house with his overstuffed backpack on his thin shoulders, waiting to walk me to school. From then on, we were inseparable.

“High school sweethearts?” people always exclaim after they ask how we met. “How wonderful!”

And it was. For a long time, at least, it really was.

Three

THE FIRST PERSON I saw after I whipped through the hospital’s revolving door made me want to spin right back around onto the sidewalk. Dale, the top lawyer for Michael’s company, had planted himself in the middle of the lobby, next to a young couple holding a screeching newborn baby. I didn’t blame the baby; Dale had that effect on me, too.

Maybe if I ducked my head and sprinted—

“Hi, Julia.”

“Oh, Dale!” I squeaked. “I didn’t see you there!”

Did the Learning Annex offer a course in the art of the convincing lie? I really needed to take one; even the bobble-headed baby seemed to pause between outraged wails and give me the stink eye.

“Where’s Michael?” I asked. I’d talked to Kate on the drive over, and she’d reassured me that Michael was awake and talking. “He won’t
stop
talking,” Kate had said with a laugh. “That’s how I know he’s okay.”

Still, there was something in her voice, some off note …

“Hang on a second.” Dale reached out and grabbed my forearm. I looked down at his thick fingers with the coarse black hairs on the knuckles and remembered the fancy dinner party when I’d knocked my glass of ’82 burgundy all over a snow white tablecloth. Dale had chortled, “You can take the girl out of West Virginia, but you can’t take West Virginia out of the girl.” I’d laughed along with the rest of the table, but for the balance of the night, I kept catching myself twisting a lock of my hair around my right index finger. It was a nervous habit from childhood that I’d finally broken in my twenties.

“Which way is he?” I asked, wrenching my arm away and suppressing a shudder.

Dale ignored my question. “There’s something you should know.” His eyes darted around furtively, as though spies might be lurking everywhere in candy striper uniforms. “Michael is … well, he’s …”

“What?” I asked impatiently. “He’s conscious, right? He’s okay now.”

“Yeah, but …” Dale’s voice trailed off again.

Sheesh, you’d think Dale was the one who’d toppled over in the conference room and conked his head on the floor. Not that I was taking any satisfaction from that image. Nor was I embroidering it to include someone sitting astride Dale’s chest and slapping his cheeks to revive him—
violently
slapping; Dale would stubbornly remain unconscious for quite a while …

Priorities
, I reminded myself. “Dale, where is he?”

Dale sighed, like I was thwarting his attempts to make pleasant conversation possible, and pointed to a hallway. “He’s in the Cardiac Care Unit.”

I hurried down the long corridor, my shoes briskly tapping against the linoleum as I followed the signs posted on the walls. Finally I found the heavy gray swinging door leading to the CCU. I lifted my hand to push it open, then froze.

I hadn’t stopped moving, hadn’t even stopped to think, since I’d seen the flurry of messages on my BlackBerry. After begging Patrick the blusher to cover the fund-raiser, I’d leapt into the car Kate had sent over with Michael’s driver. During the ride to the hospital, I’d talked nonstop with Kate, who’d filled me in on all the details. She’d used the office phone to call 911 as soon as he hit the floor, and when Michael was revived, the dispatcher marked the time, so doctors would know how long he was without oxygen. I was still marveling at Kate’s ability to juggle the 911 operator while sending me text messages from Michael’s BlackBerry
and
using his cell phone—sometimes I was convinced she had more than the usual allotment of fingers and thumbs, not to mention brains. Then again, Michael needed an extraordinary assistant to keep up with him. He’d gone through seven before finding Kate.

Now, the empty hospital corridor felt too quiet, and my stomach clenched up like a fist. The antiseptic smell—Lysol, probably, mixed in with some bleach—filled my nose and mouth and lungs and made it difficult to breathe. The shaky tone in Kate’s voice, Dale’s hesitation … exactly what was waiting for me on the other side of that door?

I heard Dale walk up behind me, and I snapped out of it, pushing through the door a little too quickly. I nearly bumped into a pretty, dark-haired nurse who was frowning down at a clipboard as she headed toward a circular workstation in the middle of the large room.

“I’m Michael Dunhill’s wife,” I began.

“Oh!” the nurse said, nearly dropping her clipboard. She quickly looked me up and down, which I’m used to by now. Lots of women check me out to see what kind of woman a man like Michael, who could presumably have anyone, chose to marry. I automatically sucked in and straightened up, hearing the voice of the image consultant I’d hired in a moment of insecurity reverberate in my brain:
A string is pulling the top of your head toward the ceiling! Do you feel it, darling? Stretch, stretch!
If anything, the image consultant—bronzed, whippet-thin, and a perfect advertisement for her own services—had sent me scurrying toward my secret stash of Sara Lee in the freezer faster than ever. No, I’m definitely not a trophy wife, even though I’ve shed a size and become two shades blonder since leaving West Virginia. On my best days, I’m more like a bronze medal wife.

“Mr. Dunhill is in that room, but if you want to talk to the chief of cardiology first, I can call him.” The nurse gestured toward one of the small rooms that ringed the unit. Through the glass wall, I could see Michael lying on a narrow cot, covered by a stark white sheet and surrounded by hulking gray machines.

Something is wrong
. The panicked thought roared through my mind until I realized what it was: I just wasn’t used to seeing Michael lying down.

I needed to get a grip or I’d probably end up lying on the bed next to Michael, and I wasn’t even wearing nice underwear, like generations of mothers have ordered us to do in case of just such a scenario. I was wearing a girdle. Sure, it had a cute name (Spanx) and came in fun colors and was advertised by skinny, playful women, but I wasn’t fooled. Anything squeezing me this tightly was either a hungry python or an old-fashioned, no-nonsense, kill-the-evidence-of-those-Sara Lee-cakes girdle.

“I’d like to talk to the doctor first,” I said, and the nurse pressed a button on a phone and spoke quietly into it.

“Mrs. Dunhill?” A short, slim man in a white coat came through the swinging door moments later. “I’m Walter Kim, chief of cardiology. I’m overseeing your husband’s care.”

I couldn’t help wondering if he’d have shown up so quickly if Michael had been, say, a garbageman instead of one of the hospital’s big donors. “Did he have a heart attack?” I asked. “They just told me he collapsed …”

Dr. Kim shook his head. “Michael suffered a cardiac arrest. His heart simply stopped beating. We don’t know why. Sometimes it happens out of the blue to healthy, young people. The heart’s electrical circuitry just misfires.”

“But he’s okay now,” I said. “He’s fine, right?”

The doctor hesitated. “We’re monitoring him closely, and we’ll need to keep him here for a while. But yes, it seems he was one of the lucky ones. He was clinically dead for more than four minutes, but I’ve seen cases where people have been in full cardiac arrest for as long as six or seven minutes, and they’ve been fine. Other patients have suffered some brain damage after less than two minutes. Everyone comes out of something like this differently.”

“He just bought that defibrillator a few months ago,” I said, shaking my head.

“Good for him,” Dr. Kim said. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m sure you’re eager to see him now.”

“Right.” I smiled and slowly walked into the room.

“Hi, honey,” I said, moving to Michael’s side. I’d gone for a cheery, confident tone, like a junior high school soccer coach might use during halftime to rally the troops, but my voice came out too loudly in the sterile white room, and I flinched.

I reached for Michael’s hand, which felt warm. Strange, because the room was cool. An oxygen tube ran into his nose, and a few wires snaked from under his gown to a big heart monitor machine next to his bed.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“At least I wasn’t attacked by a vicious carton of ice cream,” Michael said. Then he winked.

I blinked in surprise. It was our old private joke, the one that had grown dusty from neglect. We used to whisper it whenever we were given a pop quiz in school, or when we ended up sitting next to half-deaf Roy Samuels and his wife—who obligingly stage-whispered the dialogue—at our town’s lone movie theater. But we hadn’t repeated our joke in … how long?

I stared at Michael. He wasn’t demanding his cell phone, or railing at having to stay in bed, or clicking through endless e-mails on his BlackBerry. Even when Michael had a raging case of the flu two years ago, he’d dragged himself into work while the poor interns raced around squirting Purell on everything he touched.

For the first time in my memory, my husband was absolutely still.

“I love you,” Michael said. He stared meaningfully into my eyes while he said it and squeezed my hand.

I glanced at the nurse refilling Michael’s jug of water, and Dale standing vigil in the corner, not even pretending not to eavesdrop. Everyone was staring back at me. Was it because I looked as stunned as I felt, or … oh, my God!

“I—I love you, too,” I responded belatedly. The words felt rusty and awkward in my mouth. Why was Michael looking at me so adoringly? Was he putting on a show for the nurse in case she talked to the press? I felt wooden and self-conscious, like I was on a movie set and the cameras were rolling but no one had given me my lines. How was I supposed to act?

“They need to keep me here for a few days,” Michael said.

“I know,” I said, relief gushing through me as I latched on to something practical to talk about. “Is that okay? Because we can get Dr. Rushman here in a minute, and maybe he can override—”

Michael squeezed my hand again, and I stopped babbling. “It’s fine.” His eyes stayed fixed on mine. Those blue eyes were among the few remaining parts of the skinny teenage boy he’d once been. His thick curls were meticulously shaped now, and his teeth were bonded and whitened. Michael was still thin—still twitchy, too, and he always ate like every meal was Thanksgiving—but protein shakes and daily workouts with his personal trainer had broadened his shoulders and chest with a layer of muscle.

“I’ll bring in a laptop,” Dale said. He glanced around and snorted, not unlike, say, a large farm animal, if one were pressed to come up with an example off the top of one’s head. “Have you moved to a nicer room, too.”

“It’s not necessary,” Michael said. “But thank you.”

There was another uncomfortable silence; at least,
I
was uncomfortable. Michael was stretched out like a sunbather on a Caribbean beach. All he needed was to trade in his IV for a fruity drink with a little umbrella.

“I should run home and get your toiletries and a robe,” I said when the silence had stretched out too long. “Is there anything else you need?”

Michael shook his head. He was smiling a dreamy, private smile, like someone had just whispered a delicious secret into his ear.

“It’s amazing how little I need,” he said. “Why didn’t I ever realize that before?”

Dale theatrically cleared his throat.

I get it, Dale
, I thought in exasperation. So Michael was acting oddly—there had to be a simple explanation. Maybe he’d been medicated; the faraway look on his face was probably the work of Valium. God knows, every time I swallowed a Valium before an airline flight, I became as loopy as a clown at a kiddie birthday party. That could explain all the moony looks Michael was giving me, too.

Except—why would they give him Valium for cardiac arrest?

“So I’ll just go get your things,” I repeated, then cringed as I heard how eager my voice sounded.

“Hurry back, okay?” Michael said. “We have so much to talk about. So much.”

His eyes hadn’t left my face the entire time I’d been in the room, and by now I felt almost frantic. The man lying in bed looked like my husband, but he was an impostor.

“Be right back,” I promised Michael. My hand slid away from his and I walked to the door, feeling guilty about the relief that flooded through me as I put space between us.

One thing I’ve learned about opera is that it’]s synonymous with passion. It’s in the tremulous power of the violins, the lines of the libretto, the crash of fingers against piano keys, and the impossible arc of the soprano’s aria. Some of my favorites—
La Bohème, Fidelio, La Traviata
—tell the story of lovers who defy jealous rivals, or scheming interlopers, or layers upon layers of misunderstandings and lies, to end up together against all odds. Even if the ending is sad—and it often is, because death is almost always a main character in operas—it’s bittersweet, because love usually triumphs.

But one opera is different. In Rossini’s
Barber of Seville
, a beautiful young woman named Rosina is wooed by Count Almaviva. The Count doesn’t want Rosina to love him for his title alone, so he pretends he’s a drunken soldier (because obviously women can’t resist
them)
. Later the Count, who could clearly use a few tips from eHarmony, dons another disguise and tries to pass himself off as a substitute music teacher for Rosina. Finally she discovers who he is and agrees to marry him, defying the creepy older guy who wanted her. She and the Count are blissfully happy. But unlike other opera characters, they aren’t left frozen in time when the curtain drops.

Mozart picked up their story years later in an opera called
The Marriage of Figaro
. By now, the Count and Rosina have been married for years. The passion they once shared is gone. The magic has evaporated from their marriage, and they barely talk to each other.

I adore Mozart, but I no longer go to see that opera.