SUMMER of FEAR (31 page)

"It would only be a guess, so I'd rather not make it. It's an
unpredictable neoplasm—we see them accelerate, then stabilize, then accelerate
again."

"Do you ever see them go away?" asked Joe.

"No. Look, Isabella will be in Recovery for an hour, then I'd like
to move her to ICU for the night. She'll be ready for a quick hello in a couple
of hours. After that, maybe you all should get some rest, too."

"Thank you," I said.

"You're
welcome," said Nesson, then he padded back through the double doors and
out of sight.

Her head was
wrapped in bulky white gauze that formed a turban. Both eyes were swollen; the
left was already turning purple underneath. She was still on oxygen, fed to her
by a plastic tube in her nose.

She became aware of me as I stood beside the bed. Her vitals issued
across the monitor elevated in the corner. I put my cheek against hers and
listened to her breathe.

"You're not going to believe this," she said. Her voice was
slow and remote. "But... I'm going to get better. I dreamed it when I was
under...
that they were taking all the
bad... things...
away. I'm going to
be...
okay."

No stutter, no mistakes.

"I love you," I said.

"I'm so
glad...
you're here."

"Are you still my baby?"

"I'll be your baby
as... long... as ... you...
want me."

"How about forever?"

"Forever...
sounds just
right."

I was surprised,
even through my exhaustion, to see Karen Schultz walking across the hospital
lobby's floor late that afternoon. Her heels clicked officiously on the tile,
and she had picked me out of the intensely quiet crowd before I realized who
she was.

She smiled briefly at the others, shook hands as I introduced them, then
directed her tired eyes at me. "Russell, car we talk?"

I followed her outside. The temperature was ninety degrees, according to
a mall sign across the street. I watched a tiny woman pushing a wheelchair
containing a large man up the ramp, zigzagging up toward the medical tower.

"How is she?"

"Fine. They got most of the tumor."

"Oh, Russell, I'm so happy to hear that." At this point, she
wiped a tear from her cheek and stared off toward the freeway. "I just
never know what to do
about...
in
situation; like this."

"It's good of you to come. You could leave some flowers maybe, or a
note."

"No. That isn't why I'm here." Karen hugged herself and walked
to the far edge of the outer patio, where a dysfunctional wheelchair lift
waited, neglected and unrepaired.

I waited and lighted a cigarette.

"Look,"
she said, returning to face me. In the harsh afternoon light, Karen Schultz
looked a hundred years old. "I've
been...
life
is...
full of compromises
sometimes. I'm a single girl who needs her job and likes her job, and if I've
given Winters occasional shit about his decisions, well, that's what he pays me
for. What I'm saying is, I don't act out of spite against anyone in our
department—I like our department and I think we do a good job.
But..."
Karen's voice vanished as she
looked out toward the mall. "Couldn't they find an uglier place for a
hospital?"

"I guess not."

Karen's eyes looked pained but inscrutable. "Look, you talked to
Chet, right, about
the...
irregularities?"

"That's right."

"Do you appreciate what they mean, or have come to mean?"

"They mean Martin's building a case against me and my daughter for
a crime we didn't commit."

"Yes. But you're a step behind, Russ. In practical terms, do you
know what this means?"

I couldn't help but wonder whether Karen had seen Martin's videotape of
me and Alice Fultz. What earthly good could it have done Parish to reveal it
now? "I'm not sure how to handle Martin," I said.

"Russell, I'll tell you. Do you know a good criminal
attorney?"

"Yes."

"Hire him."

This bad and somehow inevitable news seemed to come at me from some
blind spot in my mind. "Do you think Parish is going to take his case to
the DA?"

"Russell, he already has."

I sat with Isabella three hours that evening while
she slept.

As I gazed at her swollen, sleeping face, at her once-Iovely head now
bound by gauze, at the clear plastic oxygen mask banded across her nose and
mouth, I could only wonder at how far this woman had come, how compromised and
torture was the flesh of her body, how betrayed she had been by life.

I heard one of the nurses steal in behind me, but when I turned to see
her, I found myself looking into the doleful dark eyes of Tina Sharp, from
Equitable.

"May we speak?"

"Outside," I said.

We stood in the hallway. Tina Sharp wore an unpleasant perfume. She
carried a briefcase. Her eyes were on the verge of bulging, and they looked
watery and weak.

"I'm sorry to have to track you down like this," she said
"You answered neither my calls nor my letter."
22

"I couldn't face you."

"I understand. I only wanted to inform you that the resection just
performed on your wife is not covered under the plan."

"Yes, it
is
covered under the plan."

"No. Mr. Monroe, as you know, we could not cover the
radiation-implant operation because it is not one of our approved procedures.
Nor, according to our contract, can we cover any expenses incurred
as a
result of an elective, cosmetic, or non-plan-approved surgery
. Today's
operation, unfortunately, was just that."

"So now, I'm another eighty grand in the
hole."

"I believe it will run closer to one hundred, Mr. Monroe. I didn't
think you should bear that cost without knowing in advance that you would have
to. If you had simply contacted me earlier, this would not have to come as the
shock I know it is. I tried."

I looked at Tina Sharp. She could have been, and probably was,
somebody's mother. And daughter.

"Well," I said. "There have been plenty of shocks lately.
Thanks for coming down here."

She offered her hand, which I shook. It was cold and
dry.

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Monroe. I know the facility will work with you
on a repayment plan that will suit both parties."

"Thank you, Ms. Sharp. You've been a wonderful balm in an hour of
need."

"I wish Equitable could have been there for you," she said.
"I'm sorry we had to let you down."

She turned and walked down the hallway toward the elevators.

Back in Izzy's
room, I sat and stared at the framed picture of her that she always brought for
hospital stays—she considered it good luck. It stood on the bedside stand,
leaning against flowers brought by Theodore. The picture is just a snapshot by
an amateur, but the color is good and Izzy is caught just as she sees the
camera—half surprise and half composure—regarding the photographer from beneath
the black curls of her hair and the scalloped brim of a wide black hat. Her
neck and shoulders are visible, bared by a strapless dress. Her smile is
demure, confident, restrained. She shows no teeth, but her lips are beginning a
happy rise and her eyes—to anyone who knows Isabella—are, I swear, reflections
of a contentment so deep, it could come only from the center of her heart. For
most people, it a picture of a woman in her prime. But for me, it is the image
of one life we did not get to finish; it is a reminder of one future that will
not take place as we had imagined; it is an ambassador from dreams that have
passed. Thus, it is a thing of great beauty and great pain. We were newlyweds
ourselves then, and the friend who took that picture understood the core of
Isabella happiness, because on the back is written the simple caption

Mrs. Monroe!!

At that moment,
sitting beside Izzy in the hospital room, would I have liked to go back to the
time that picture was taken? 0h, truly. But I couldn't stay, because although
perfection is a nice place to visit, no one lives there for long. I would
rather have the chance to live that moment through, forward up to now with all
the standard disappointments and struggles, all the commonplace raptures that
lovers can expect, with all the simplicity of hope that picture holds. But I
chose the woman, not the dream, and her path I will try to make my own. This is
the promise I made, and that I intend to keep.

But while I looked at Izzy and her picture, a deep and specific rage
began to form inside me, at Martin Parish—for what he had begun that night of
July 3 and was attempting to finish
at the expense of Isabella.
Never
had I been more needed.

Never again would
Isabella need more love and care and understanding than in the days to come.
And what could I do from behind the bars of Orange County Jail? How could I
possibly raise bail with no money in the bank and the modest equity in our
home? What about the medical bills?

I thought of calling an attorney—I know plenty of lawyers. But if I was
to admit myself to the great maw of the criminal-justice system, when might I
be free again? And if I was to submit to the machinery of the courts, wouldn't
it be, on some level at least, a confession that I was willing to play this
deadly game on Martin Parish's terms?

No. I called no attorney that night. Instead, I began to conceive a
counteroffensive, one that would take as its keynote the very one that Martin
believed was his alone: audacity. If I was to deal with Martin Parish, it would
not be through the achingly slow gears of the bureaucracy.

The ICU nurses eased me out around eight. I rose from Isabella's bedside
with a sense of purpose in my desperation, and not a little meanness in my
heart.

Joe and Corrine were still sitting in the waiting area, but Grace and
Theo were gone. Instead, Amber sat across from Isabella's parents. An uneasy
detente prevailed over them, grouped together as a family might be, but only a
simpleton would not have noted the rigid set of Corrine's back; the contrite,
hand-folded isolation of Amber; and the intense attention brought by Joe to a
magazine about cars.

"Where have you been?" I said, boring straight into Amber's
gray eyes as if I could differentiate truth from fiction in them.

"Taking care of business."

"Grace and your dad left," said Joe.

A pause in the conversation implied Amber's invasion.

"I wanted you all to know I care about Isabella," said Amber.
"I'll go now."

"No. You're coming with me."

They all looked to me. I looked at
Corrine, then Joe. "This is necessary." "I don't
understand," said Corrine.

"What are you going to do, Russ?" "I'm
going to try to keep myself out of jail."

I took Amber by
the arm and guided her out. The night was compressed and heated, and the air
felt dirty. Across the street from the Medical Center, the bright red sign for
the World Hotel had gone haywire, now proclaiming,
world hot.

"You seem to have a purpose," said Amber.

"Martin Parish was in your room the night Alice died. He beat her
to death. We need to prove it."

"You're goddamned right we do, and you
saw
him."

"I saw him leaving. I need hard evidence now. He's trying to frame
Grace and me. But he was there, and he has to have left
something.
Whatever it is, I need it."

"You sound desperate."

"How I sound doesn't matter."

She took my arm and stopped us. "Russ? She's okay. She's
okay."

"Yes, she's perfect." The image of Izzy's swollen, blackened
face sat right behind my eyes. She looked as if she'd been beaten half to
death, maybe closer. Her pain was everywhere now, even in the air around me.

"You don't have to lie to me about her."

"She's perfect."

"Are
you
okay?"

"Get
in."

I opened the door for her, then slammed it shut on
her dress. It protruded from the steel like a caught animal. I cracked the door
and she gathered it in, looking at me from the interior. Her expression was of
fear and pity, two emotions I've never been eager to provoke from a woman. A
wave of shame broke over me—my face went hot and for just a second everything
blurred. What I wanted at that moment more than anything in the world was for
no one on earth to know me.

I drove
fast.

Once I was on the freeway, I called Chet Singer's
home number and pleaded my case to him. I told him I needed his official
presence at the scene of an as-yet-unofficial crime, in order to gather
evidence against Martin Parish for the murder of Alice Fultz. He said no.