The Doctor's Wife (61 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Brundage
86
MICHAEL IS KEPT in the hospital for a week and Annie stays with him there, sleeping on a pullout chair in the room. They spend the hours together playing cards, listening to music. She is grateful for this time with him, this time to recover, to reckon somehow with all that’s gone on.
The new year promises change, and on a cold winter morning in January the moving truck arrives on schedule. It’s hard for Annie to believe the day has finally come. Packing the house has been oddly therapeutic, organizing all of the pieces of their history into boxes, each thing a small token of the life they’ve shared, both good and bad.
She is ready to move on.
The empty rooms of the house sing with light. It really is a beautiful old place, she thinks, feeling a little sorry now that they have to leave it behind. She walks into her bedroom and takes a last look around. Through the window she sees Henry and Rosie chasing Simon’s dog across the field. They are laughing, their breath white as smoke in the cold air. Standing there, she has the strangest feeling that Simon is in the room with her. She imagines his hand flat on the rise of her belly, weightless as a cloud.
The horn of the moving truck blares and she goes downstairs. Outside, the men are closing up the truck. Michael hands the driver a map. The men get into the truck and the truck pulls away. They stand there with the sun in their eyes, watching it vanish.
“You okay?” Michael asks.
She nods, but she is suddenly choked up. It’s harder to leave than she thought.
“Look on the bright side,” he says. “We’ll have a Blockbuster
and
a Starbucks.”
and
a Starbucks.”
This makes her laugh. She takes a last look around, her eyes sweeping across the open landscape. And then he holds out his hand, and she takes it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am profoundly grateful to my editor, Carole DeSanti, for her incisive nurturing of this book and for her generous spirit and patience. Thank you to Karen Murphy, for her clarity and inspiration and kindness. Thank you also to Patty Bozza, Bonnie Thompson, Lexy Bloom, Nancy Sheppard, Carolyn Coleburn, Gretchen Koss, and all of the others at Viking who had a hand in bringing this book into the world. I am indebted to my agent, Linda Chester, for believing in this novel and for fearlessly pushing for it, and also for her friendship and her faith in my work. Thank you also to Gary Jaffe and Laurie Fox of Linda Chester & Associates, for their warmth and assurance whenever needed, and to Kyra Ryan for her excellent advice on early drafts of the book. Thank you to Joe Veltre, Kathy Green, and Michael Carlisle at Carlisle & Co., and Laurie Horowitz at CAA, for their enthusiasm and support.
A very heartfelt thank-you goes to James Michener and the Copernicus Society of America, for granting me a fellowship; and thank you to Frank Conroy, for selecting me. Thanks also to Connie Brothers, for her unflagging compassion and guidance. I’d also like to thank the following editors who have published my work in the past: Constance Warloe, Jim Clark (at
The Greensboro Review
), Peter Stine (at
Witness
magazine), and James McKinley (at
New Letters
).
The Greensboro Review
), Peter Stine (at
Witness
magazine), and James McKinley (at
New Letters
).
I owe the following people my deepest gratitude for their unrelenting encouragement: my parents, Joan and Lyle Brundage, for never giving up on me, no matter what; Dorothy Silverherz Rosenberg, for her continued inspiration; Paula Lippman, my soul mate; Beth Abrahms, my surrogate sister; and to all my friends and family who have shown an interest in my career, in particular: Florence and Karel Sokoloff; Millie and Martin Shapiro; Paul Scott; Amy Diamond; Phyllis Abrahms; Sally Abrahms; Betty Sigoloff; Helen Beck and Arnold Abramowitz; Sue Turconi; Richard Morris; John and Lori Rosenberg; Dan and Meg Milsky; Nancy Stone; Maxine Glassman; Karen Cohen; Joanie Gruen; Pat DuMark and Jamie Grace.
Thank you, Marc and Christine Heller, for sharing your stories. Thank you to all the doctors out there in the world who never stop doing what’s necessary, who never stop taking care of strangers.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER OF SECRETS,
DARK MOTIVES, AND AN ADOPTION BURIED
IN THE PAST...
DARK MOTIVES, AND AN ADOPTION BURIED
IN THE PAST...
Somebody Else’s Daughter
BY ELIZABETH BRUNDAGE
COMING IN JULY 2008
978-0-670-01900-7
978-0-670-01900-7
TURN THE PAGE FOR A SNEAK PEEK...
Viking
A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
www.penguin.com
A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
www.penguin.com
Summer, 1989
We left San Francisco that morning even though your mother was sick. It was a pretty day, the sun shimmering like a gypsy girl’s tambourine. I thought it would be good for her to get out into the sunshine because it had been a long few weeks of rain and her skin had gone gray as oatmeal and she had this dull look flaming up in her eyes. You were sleeping in your little rocking seat and I had your things all packed. We didn’t have much. It was time to go, but Cat wanted me to wash her hair first, said she couldn’t go out looking like that. Holding her head in my hands I could feel her bright with fever. From behind, she looked like a healthy schoolgirl, just her sweet body and that long yellow hair. Then she’d turn around and you’d get pins in your heart. I wrapped her head in a towel and said, you take your meds today, Kitty Cat, and she nodded with her long face, the kind of woman you see in the museum up on the old canvases, a woman washing clothes or out in the fields, a strong body with large capable hands and this wisdom in her eyes because she knows more than you. She hated the idea that she was sick, and even with you so small she was still shooting drugs. Dope kept her comfortable. It had always been her favorite thing to do and that’s the truth. You could see it just after she’d put the needle in, like an angel her face would go hazy and beautiful like so much fog. She dreamed of horses, she said. She told me she’d come into the world wanting to ride, wanting to be near the big dark creatures. Horses understood her, people made her nervous. This was your mother; this was the woman I loved.
We made you one night in a broken house, your mother riding my hips and howling with pleasure, and then six weeks later she’s throwing up and wanting strange foods from the Iranian down on Willard Avenue. Months passed and her belly went round and tight. At the clinic they said she had a weak heart and HIV. Maybe her baby wouldn’t get it. They didn’t know. They gave her some pills and told her to come back every three weeks. She quit dope that afternoon, and took the pills and started going to church. She told me she had begged Jesus for a miracle. She believed in miracles, she said; she believed in Jesus. She liked to light the candles and sit in the darkness and think and then she’d get down on her knees and press her palms together. I’d watch her sometimes in the trembling blue light, among the other whispering strangers.
This one day we were walking through the park, leaning and kissing, that smell at the nape of her neck, the nape, like vanilla, like I don’t know what, heaven, and then she’s down on all fours in labor and this crowd comes around and she’s white as fucking God and the next thing I know we’re in a taxi with this Pakistani barking orders and I’m just wondering how we’re going to pay for it. At the hospital they gave Cat a C-section on account of the HIV. They let me stand there and hold her hand and when I saw you for the first time I started to cry, I couldn’t help it. You were bundled in a little blanket and you had on a little hat and you were the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I handed you to your mother and she was trembling and a little frightened and it made me want to crawl up next to her and hide my face in her heart. The nurse explained that there was a chance you’d be all right; they wouldn’t know for a few months, we’d just have to be patient. I promised Cat that everything would be okay, I’d make sure of it, but she shook her head. “I’m sick,” she said.
They made her talk to a shrink. I waited out in the hall and I could hear her crying. I didn’t know what to do. I went down to the waiting room and bought a candy bar and sat there. There were some old books on the table, old paperbacks. One had a girl on the cover who looked like your mother. The book was
My Antonia
and I vaguely remembered reading it in high school. Later, I gave it to her, and she snapped it out of my hands and told me to leave her alone. We had this thing between us; she didn’t think she was smart enough for me, which of course wasn’t true; she was the smartest person I ever knew, the kind of smart you don’t get in school. I’d gone to a fancy prep school where my father was a teacher. I’d grown up in a crummy faculty house with people coming and going, writers mostly, nasty drunken poets who always ended up sleeping on the couch. It was one of those poets who turned me onto dope, among other things. “We’re calling her Willa,” your mother declared when I walked in that night. She was sitting up in bed, her eyes shining, holding the book in her shaking hand. I could tell she’d liked it, and we named you after its author. We brought you home and the very next day they sent someone over from Child Services and it was that same woman who suggested we give you up. She brought two cases of formula and some diapers. She looked around our apartment, her eyes grim. Cat served the woman tea in one of her mother’s old china teacups; it had little rosebuds on it, and your mother had saved it for a long time, keeping it carefully wrapped in newspaper so it wouldn’t get broken, but the woman wouldn’t even touch it. She kept on us, trying to persuade us to let you go, to give you a better life, but we put her off.
My Antonia
and I vaguely remembered reading it in high school. Later, I gave it to her, and she snapped it out of my hands and told me to leave her alone. We had this thing between us; she didn’t think she was smart enough for me, which of course wasn’t true; she was the smartest person I ever knew, the kind of smart you don’t get in school. I’d gone to a fancy prep school where my father was a teacher. I’d grown up in a crummy faculty house with people coming and going, writers mostly, nasty drunken poets who always ended up sleeping on the couch. It was one of those poets who turned me onto dope, among other things. “We’re calling her Willa,” your mother declared when I walked in that night. She was sitting up in bed, her eyes shining, holding the book in her shaking hand. I could tell she’d liked it, and we named you after its author. We brought you home and the very next day they sent someone over from Child Services and it was that same woman who suggested we give you up. She brought two cases of formula and some diapers. She looked around our apartment, her eyes grim. Cat served the woman tea in one of her mother’s old china teacups; it had little rosebuds on it, and your mother had saved it for a long time, keeping it carefully wrapped in newspaper so it wouldn’t get broken, but the woman wouldn’t even touch it. She kept on us, trying to persuade us to let you go, to give you a better life, but we put her off.
I tried to find work. I could get work here and there. For a little while things were good between us, and Cat was all right and I sometimes forgot that her blood was tainted. She would do things, buy peaches, and there they’d be, fat and round on the counter, or she’d make a meal and set the table, like we were a real family. I don’t know; I couldn’t deal with it. It was a time in my life when I didn’t know any better; I didn’t know who I was. Sometimes I wouldn’t come home for a few days and it would be just her and you and she’d know when I walked in stinking of dope, the whole thing, the cigarettes, sometimes women, and she’d just hold me because there was nothing else to do. I know it sounds pathetic to you, who we were, but it’s the truth and I can’t change it. There’s a vivid transition when you come in from being high, and the walls have this mustard tint like old tapestries, and your body feels drained, beat up from the inside, and everything feels like déjà vu, like you’ve made this big circle and instead of moving on you’re right back where you started. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain, and I’m not good with words even though they shoved Tolstoy down my throat at Choate and fucking Whit-man; I have a box of quotes someplace—I’d even memorized some of it— fucking useless information. Anyway, later on, weeks, maybe months, she started feeling sick and it was like crashing into a wall of bricks, and for a long while you see the pieces of your life floating all around you, the burning embers of your totally fucked-up world, and it comes to you that you haven’t made much of your time, and you haven’t done all that much and it’s almost over. It’s like you can hear them cackling about you up in heaven, the big mistake you’ve turned into.
Other books
Tempt Me by Shiloh Walker
The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim by Scott Alan Roberts
Dead of Knight: A Zombie Apocalypse Survival Tale by Beard, Stephen J.
Gifted Curse (Curse Trilogy) by Owens, C.M.
Silent Cry by Dorothy J. Newton
Ride the Rainbow Home by Susan Aylworth
Dead By Dusk by Heather Graham
El salón dorado by José Luis Corral
My Secret Diary by Wilson, Jacqueline
The Islands at the End of the World by Austin Aslan
