Summer's End (22 page)

“He left earlier this afternoon. He was with Pilar all night. They performed surgery, you know.”

“On her legs?” Deanna felt herself trembling again.

“No. Her head.”

“Is she all right?”

There was an endless pause. “She is better. Come, you will see for yourself.” She stood aside to help her up, but Deanna was steady now and furious with herself for the time she had just wasted.

She was led down a long peach-colored hall and stopped at last at a white door. The nurse looked long and hard at Deanna, then slowly opened the door. Deanna took a few steps inside and felt the air freeze in her lungs. It was as though she could no longer breathe.

Pilar was wrapped in bandages, and covered with machinery and tubes. There was a severe-looking nurse sitting quietly in one corner, and at least three monitors were feeding out mysterious reports. Pilar herself was barely visible through the bandages, and her face was badly distorted by the various tubes.

But this time Deanna did not faint. She dropped the valise where she stood and advanced into the room with a firm step and a smile, as the nurse who had brought her in watched. She exchanged glances with the nurse on duty in the room. The woman approached, but Deanna didn’t notice. She continued to make her way toward the bed, praying for strength and fighting back tears with a heartbreaking smile.

“Hi, baby, it’s Mommy.” There was a soft groan from the bed, and the eyes of her child followed her steps. It was easy to see that Pilar knew her and understood. “Everything’s going to be just fine. Just fine….” She stood next to the bed and reached for Pilar’s one undamaged hand, and gently, almost so lightly as not to touch her, she took the hand in both of hers, lifted it to her lips, and kissed the fingers of her little girl. “It’s all right, my darling, you’re going to be fine.”

There was a gruesome sound from the girl in the bed.

“Shh … you can talk to me later. Not now.” Deanna’s voice was barely more than a whisper, but it was firm.

Pilar shook her head. “I …”

“Shhh. …” Deanna looked distressed, but Pilar’s eyes were too full of words.

“Is it something you want?” Now Deanna watched, but there was no answer in the eyes. Deanna glanced at the nurse. Could she be in pain? The nurse approached, and together they watched and waited as Pilar tried again.

“Gl… ad … youuu … came.” It was a thread-like, fragile whisper from the bed, but it filled Deanna’s heart with passion and tears. Her eyes filled. She forced herself to smile while she went on holding Pilar’s hand.

“I’m glad I came too. Now don’t talk, baby. Please. We can talk later. We’ll have a lot to say.”

This time Pilar only nodded yes, and then at last, closed her eyes for a while. The nurse told Deanna when they stepped into the hall that except for when they operated and she had been given an anesthetic, Pilar had been awake the entire time, as though she were waiting for someone, for something, and now it was easy to see why.

“Your being here will make an enormous difference, you know, Madame Duras.” Pilar’s nurse spoke impeccable English and looked terribly crisp. Deanna was relieved at her words. Pilar
had
been waiting for her. She still cared. It was stupid that at a time like this that should matter, but it did. She had feared that even in direst circumstances, Pilar might still reject her. But she had not. Or had she really been waiting for Marc? It didn’t matter. Deanna walked softly back inside the room and sat down.

It was more than two hours before Pilar woke, and she only lay there watching her mother, her gaze never leaving Deanna’s face. At last after their eyes had seemed to hold for hours, she thought she saw Pilar smile. Deanna approached the bed again and gently took the girl’s hand once again.

“I love you, darling. And you’re doing just fine. Why don’t you try to get some more sleep?”

But her eyes said no. They stayed open again for an hour, watching, only watching, staring into her mother’s face, as though drinking it in, as though she were reaching out with the words she couldn’t find the strength to say. It was another hour before she spoke again.

“Doggie….” Deanna looked puzzled, and Pilar tried again. “Did … you … bring my … doggie?” This time Deanna could not stop herself from crying. Doggie, the treasure of the years when she’d still been a child. Doggie, so old and dirty and bedraggled, and finally retired to a remote shelf somewhere in the house. Deanna had never been able to throw it out. Doggie brought back too many memories of Pilar as a child. Now Deanna watched her, wondering if she still knew where she was, or if she had drifted back to some distant place, to childhood, and Doggie.

“He’s waiting for you at home.”

Pilar nodded with a tiny smile. “O.K….” The word was feather soft on her lips as she drifted back to sleep.

Doggie.
It brought Deanna back a dozen years as she sat in the narrow chair and let her own thoughts wander back to when Pilar had been three, and four, and five, and nine … and then too soon twelve, and now almost sixteen. She had been so sweet when she was little, so tiny and graceful, the little girl with the golden curls and blue eyes. The delicious things she had said; the dances she sometimes had done for her parents when she played; the tea parties she’d held for her dolls; the stories she’d written, the poems, the plays; the blouse she had made Deanna one year for her birthday from two chartreuse kitchen towels … and Deanna had worn it, very seriously, to church.

“Madame Duras?” Deanna was jolted back from a great distance at the sound of the unfamiliar female voice. She looked around, startled, and saw a new nurse.

“Yes?”

“Do you not wish to rest? We can make you a bed in the next room.” Her face was very gentle, and the eyes were wise and old. She patted Deanna’s arm with her hand. “You have been here for a very long time.”

“What time is it now?” Deanna felt as though she had been living in a dream for hours.

“Nearly eleven.”

It was two
P.M.
in San Francisco. She had been away from home for less than twenty-four hours, but it felt more like years. She stood up and stretched.

“How is she?” Deanna looked intensely at the bed.

The kindly nurse hesitated for a moment. “The same.”

“When is the doctor coming back?” And why the hell hadn’t he been there in the five hours that Deanna had been at Pilar’s side? And where was Marc, dammit? Wasn’t he coming? He’d whip these morons into shape and then things would start to move. Deanna glared at the monitors, irritated at the hieroglyphics they wrote.

“The doctor will be back in a few hours. You could get a little rest. You could even go home for the night. We have given Mademoiselle another injection. She will sleep now for quite a while.”

Deanna didn’t want to leave, but it seemed as though it might be time to put in her appearance at her mother-in-law’s house. She could find out if they had located Marc and see what was happening with this doctor. Who was he? And where? And what did he have to say? The only thing Deanna knew now was that Pilar was critical. Deanna felt desperately helpless, sitting there for hours, waiting for an explanation, or a sign, something to herald encouragement or good news … someone to tell her it was nothing. But that would have been difficult to believe.

“Madame?” The nurse watched her sorrowfully.

Deanna looked almost as wan as Pilar as she picked up her bag. “I’ll leave a number where I can be reached, and I’ll be back soon. How long do you think she’ll sleep?”

“At least four hours, perhaps even five or six. But she will not be awake before three. And I promise … if there is a problem, or if she wakes and wants you, I will call.”

Deanna nodded and jotted down Marc’s mother’s number. She looked agonizingly into the nurse’s eyes. “Call me immediately if … I should come.” She couldn’t bring herself to say more but the nurse understood. She clipped Deanna’s number to the chart and smiled into Deanna’s very tired eyes.

“I will call. But you must get some sleep.”

Deanna could never remember feeling so tired in her life, but the last thing she planned to do was sleep. She had to call Ben. Talk to the doctor. Find out about Marc. Her mind raced and she felt dizzy again. She steadied herself against the wall, but this time she did not faint. She merely stood for a long moment, looking at Pilar. Then, with eyes flooded with tears, she left the room, her suitcase in one hand, her coat over her arm, and her heart dragging behind her.

She found a taxi at a stand across the street from the hospital and sank back into the seat with a sigh so loud it was almost a groan. Every inch of her was tired and painful and sore, every fiber in her body was tense and exhausted, and her mind never seemed to stop its constant whirring: Pilar as a baby … Pilar last year … Pilar at seven … Pilar in her room. In school. At the airport. With a new hairdo. Her first stockings. A red bow. It was a never-ceasing film she had been watching all day, sometimes with the sound track, sometimes without, but it was a vision she couldn’t escape, even as the cab sped through Paris to the rue François Premier.

It was an elegant neighborhood, conveniently located near Christian Dior. The street was as pretty as any in Paris, quite close to the Champs Élysées. When she was younger, Deanna had often escaped in the afternoon to look at the shops and have an espresso at a café before returning to the austerity of life at her mother-in-law’s, but now all thought of those days slipped from her mind. She rode blindly along, exhaustion enveloping her like a blanket drenched in ether.

The driver was smoking a Gauloise
papier maïs
and singing an old song. He was too happy to notice the gloom in the backseat, and when he stopped at the address, his eyes met Deanna’s with a lure and a smile. She didn’t notice. She simply handed him the money and got out. The driver only shrugged and drove away as she plodded toward the door. It had not gone unnoticed that her mother-in-law had not been at the hospital all evening. The nurse said she had been with Pilar for two hours in the morning. Two hours? That was all? And left her in that appalling condition all alone? It proved everything Deanna had always thought. Madame Duras had no heart.

She rang the doorbell with two quick, sharp jabs, and the heavy wooden outer door swung open before her. She stepped over the high threshold and closed the door behind her, making her way quickly to the tiny elegant cage. She always felt as though there ought to be a canary in that elevator and not people, but today her thoughts were far from flip as she pressed the button for the seventh floor. It was the penthouse; Madame Duras owned the entire floor.

A faceless maid in a uniform was waiting at the door, when Deanna stepped out.
“Oui, madame?”
She looked Deanna over with displeasure, if not disdain.

“Je suis Madame Duras.”
Deanna’s accent had never been worse, and she didn’t give a damn.

“Ah, bon.
Madame is waiting in the salon.” How sweet. Pouring tea? Deanna felt her teeth grind as she marched behind the maid toward the living room. Nothing was unusual, nothing was out of place. No one would have believed that Madame Edouard Duras’s granddaughter lay, possibly dying, in a hospital two miles away. Everything appeared to be in perfect order, including Madame Duras, as the maid escorted Deanna into the room. Her mother-in-law was wearing dark green silk and an impeccable coiffure, her step was firm as she walked toward Deanna with an extended hand. Only her eyes betrayed her concern. She shook hands with Deanna and kissed her on both cheeks looking with dismay at the expression on her daughter-in-law’s face.

“You’ve just come?” Her eyes glanced immediate dismissal to the maid, who instantly fled.

“No. I’ve been with Pilar all evening. And I’ve yet to see the doctor.” Deanna pulled off her jacket and almost fell into a chair.

“You look very tired.” The older woman watched her with a face set in stone. Only the wily, old eyes suggested that someone did indeed live behind the granite of her face.

“Whether or not I’m tired is beside the point. Who the hell is this Kirschmann and where is he?”

“He is a surgeon and he is known all over France. He was with Pilar until late this afternoon, and he will see her again in a few hours. Deanna”— she hesitated, then said more gently—“there is simply nothing more he can do. At least not for the moment.”

“Why not?”

“Now we must wait. She must get her strength. She must … live.” Her expression showed pain at the word, and Deanna ran a hand across her eyes. “Would you like something to eat?”

Deanna shook her head. “Just a shower and a little rest. And” —she looked up with an expression of agony in her face— “I’m sorry to just march in like this. I haven’t said any of the appropriate things like ‘good to see you,’ ‘how are you,’ but
Mamie
, I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

“I understand.”

Did she? Deanna wondered. But what did it matter now if she did or not.

“I do think you should eat, my dear,” Madame Duras was saying. “You look very pale.”