The Good Goodbye (16 page)

Someone from the college had been here earlier. A man in a navy suit and a muted gray tie. He met us out in the hall, a beribboned basket of orange flowers in his hands. He set it down on the nurses’ station before shaking my hand, then Theo’s.
If there’s anything we can do,
he’d said.
Anything at all.
His concern seems genuine. It’s not fair to suspect him of ulterior motives, but I do. Theo took his card. Theo promised to stay in touch. I just waited impatiently for the man to leave so I could go back to Arden.

The door slides open. This time it’s the nurse arriving to scrape the dead flesh from Arden’s body. She carries a tray of sharp instruments. I avert my gaze as she sets it down. She reaches up to tug the curtains across the glass. “Why don’t you take a little walk, Mrs. Falcone? I’ll be a while.”

I hesitate. It’s probably better if I’m not here. She can do her job without worrying about me. I’ll go to the family lounge, return some phone calls. “You have my number?”

“Yes.” She’s already moving to the tray of instruments, her mind narrowing in on the task at hand.

Doctors in white coats cluster by the central desk. One’s talking as the others listen, their expressions earnest and intent. Baby doctors, learning to fly. One of them laughs, actually laughs. I long to grab his shoulders and shake him.

I’m about to step into the family lounge when I hear my name. Turning, I see Vince headed down the hall toward me. “Fancy meeting you here.” He’s a different guy now that Rory’s doing better. “I got you coffee, give you a break from the crap in the cafeteria.” He extends a paper cup.

“Thanks.” I lean against the wall.

He leans beside me. “How’s Arden?”

“The nurse is with her now.”

“So no change?”

I shake my head. I peel open the lid of my cup and sip: black, with a little sugar. It’s delicious, a rich roast. This reminds me just how awful the coffee is here. Vince sips from his own cup I know is black. I can feel the heat radiating from his body, smell the faint spice of his cologne, which Gabrielle gives him every birthday and which he dutifully wears. He’s wearing a blue shirt and I know that if I look at his eyes, they’ll appear more blue than green. I take another sip. “How did it go for Rory?”

“She slept through the whole thing.”

A relief. As selfish as it is, I still wish my daughter would wake up, if only for the briefest of moments, to register the nurse working over her.

“So where’s Theo keeping himself? I haven’t seen him all morning.”

I glance to the window. Drizzle paints the glass. It must be a new storm front. It can’t possibly be the same one stalled overhead. But if the weather had broken, I hadn’t seen it. I haven’t seen the sun in days. “He had to go in to work for a few hours.”

He nods. “What do you think? Can Liz handle opening Double by herself tomorrow?”

Tomorrow’s Tuesday, our slowest night. “Sure.” Liz had decided to close the restaurant Saturday night. She’d spent the day calling customers and canceling shifts and deliveries. She told me not to worry, that most of the diners had rescheduled for another night.
Most.
I try to unhook my thoughts from Arden and the hospital and the events lined up before us—hourly nurses’ checks, doctors’ night rounds, Foley bag emptied, IVs checked and changed out. I find I don’t give a damn. I really don’t give a damn.

“Wow, Natalie. I didn’t think you could be so mellow about this.”

If it’s a dig, I don’t care. “We can’t afford to keep it closed.”

“Maybe not, but that’s not the real problem.”

I glance at him and he shrugs. “Haven’t you noticed? Liz hasn’t been riding the line cook as much. She’s not coming in as early and she’s not asking as many questions.”

I think about that. Vince has always been able to see what people aren’t saying. I’m the one with the creative sense. We should have stayed with our strengths. “You think she’s looking for another job?”

“Yep.”

“Well, that’s great timing.” I can’t help the disappointment. Liz is my friend, but I’m not surprised to learn she’s capable of disloyalty. The restaurant business is brutally competitive. You have to look out for yourself, especially if you’re female. Ignacio had been loyal, though. All the way through. I miss him. I’d been shocked when Vince told me he’d caught him stealing from us. A single bottle of wine—expensive, true—and I’d been willing to overlook it. Surely Ignacio had had his reasons but Vince had been adamant about firing him. Vince had had to handle it. We both knew I couldn’t do it. “I guess we’ll work it out.”

“I got a call from Mitchell the other day.”

I groan. “Don’t tell me Liz is going to work for him.” Mitchell had been furious when I quit as his executive chef so I could open Double. He didn’t speak to me for more than two years.

“Not that I know of.”

“Good. I hope she knows better.”

“Oh, come on, Nat. He’s not so bad.”

I give him a look. Vince knows better than most how soul-sucking those five years working for Mitchell had been for me. Mitchell lied. He took shortcuts. He treated people with total disdain. It’s not just me. Everyone hates him. Ever since I left, Mitchell hasn’t been able to keep an executive chef longer than a year. The last one left after a week. “He is that bad. He’s worse.”

Vince shrugs. “He seems to know how to run a business.”

“It’s all going to catch up to him sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Well…”

Gabrielle comes around the corner, and Vince stops talking. She’s in black today. It makes her skin look like porcelain. “There you are, Vince. I’ve been looking for you.”

Vince immediately straightens. “Rory okay?”

“She’s fine.” She glances to the cups Vince and I hold, then up to Vince. “I just wondered where you were.”

They walk off.

Twenty years ago, when Vince returned from Paris with Gabrielle, I found myself covertly eyeing her, trying to discern what it was that had attracted Vince so powerfully. Was it her exotic accent, her angled cheekbones, and her lovely eyes that flashed with confusion whenever we used an idiom she didn’t know? The simple fact that she seemed so completely besotted with him? Or was it something more substantial, her emphatic way of doing things, her single-mindedness and focus, her intellect? A combination of it all? I had no regrets, none at all, as I planned my life with Theo, but still I found myself turning over and over what it was that Vince saw in Gabrielle that he hadn’t seen in me. She was so achingly young. I knew Vince’s predilection for novelty. I predicted they wouldn’t last. But they had.

Which isn’t to say things had been fairy-tale perfect. Gabrielle got silent with disapproval when Vince and I worked late into the night. He complained about having to be home at a certain time, or having to follow her rules about Rory, but there had never been anything serious. Until six months ago when Vince took all our lives, our hopes and dreams, and dashed them sharply against the rocks.

I watch the two of them now walk down the hall, a foot of space yawning between them. They’re overly polite with each other. They don’t make eye contact. They don’t smile at each other. Of course, what has there been to smile about, especially now?

Hours later, Theo lets himself into Arden’s room. His jacket’s beaded with water; his hair’s damp. It must still be raining. He sweeps the curtain behind him, the metal rings rattling. “How’s our girl?”

I shut off the flashlight and close my book. “Holding her own.”

Theo goes over to her and looks down. “Dr. Morris been by?”

“Earlier.” Surrounded by a cluster of white-jacketed people who hovered around Arden’s bed, discussing her accident, her admission, her current numbers. “She checked the drain to see if it’s why the pressure isn’t dropping, but she says it looks fine. She might try increasing the dose again. She wants to consult another colleague before she decides.”

“You hear anything from Gallagher?”

“No. What do you think it means?”

“No idea. I’ll call him.”

Yes. That would be good. I want to hear something, even if it’s that he’s learned nothing further. I need to know that progress is being made somewhere. “Did you stop by the house?”

He shakes his head. “But I did stop to see the boys at school. They were out for recess.” In the dimness, I can see him smile. “Henry was chasing a little girl around the playground. You know what that means.”

I did indeed. “Did she have red hair?”

“I didn’t notice.”

It had to have been Lily. Henry’s had a crush on her for months. He’s very seriously requested a cell phone of his very own so he can make private calls to her; he’s asked me how much engagement rings cost. Oliver is still oblivious of girls, though I’d noticed them jostling to line up beside him for recess. I miss my boys with a sudden and fierce stab of pain. “I should have gone with you.”

“I wish you had, but you’d never have left Arden alone.”

“I miss the boys.”

“We can ask your mom to drive them up for the night. They’d all love it.”

We’ve been over this, back and forth a million times. I look to Arden. “Henry and Oliver can’t see her like this. They can’t.”

“I don’t know, Natalie. They’re more resilient than you think.”

“Maybe.” But if I’m to be completely honest with myself, it’s me who isn’t resilient enough to answer the questions they’d be sure to ask. Letting the boys come now suggests things are far more serious than I can allow myself to believe.

“You’ve been in here for hours, haven’t you?” Theo says. “Go get something to eat. Take your time. I’ve got this.”

This—what is this? This is nothing. This is sitting in a dark room surrounded by machines, talking to myself. This is waiting for a child who might never wake up. She doesn’t even smell like Arden anymore. She smells like hospital, sterile and wounded.

I step out into the bright hallway. Emotion swirls around me. I press my hand against the wall.

“Mrs. Falcone?” a nurse calls over. Her face is creased with worry.

“I’m fine,” I say, automatically.

In the elevator, I turn on my cell phone. My mom’s called, my dad. Christine. Liz. A friend from culinary school, a couple of chefs, our neighbors, someone from the college. So much sympathy. I’ll listen to their messages later. The door wheezes open to let in two men wearing white lab coats. They use terms I don’t recognize. They sound pompous. They’re enjoying displaying their prowess. I want to laugh.
Want to impress me? Save my daughter.

The elevator doors open and I stop in the hall to phone my mom back.

“Hi,” I say, when she answers. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, yes. The boys are fine. We’re having a grand time. I don’t think they’ve eaten a single vegetable in days.”

I miss the days when getting my twins to eat vegetables seemed my biggest challenge. “You can grate zucchini into their spaghetti sauce. They’ll never know.” I do it all the time, slip bits of the less discernible vegetables into their food. Bell peppers I roast to peel off the telltale skin, all sorts of squash, cooked carrots, and spinach chopped fine. “They’ll eat celery if you give it to them with peanut butter.” Oliver’s onto my tricks. He narrows his eyes as he dips his fork into his food but he never says anything. My son and I share an unspoken pact. He doesn’t mind vegetables. It’s Henry who’s the holdout. “How’s school going?”

“Oh, fine.” My mom’s broad midwestern accent sprawls though, the way it does when she’s unhappy or stressed. “They were thrilled to see Theo at school today. They couldn’t stop talking about it.”

“Theo says Henry has a little girlfriend.”

“Oh, yes. But we’re not supposed to know about that.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“So how’s Arden, honey? Is the medication working?”

“Not yet. The doctor might adjust it.”

“The pressure hasn’t gone up, right?” This fragile straw of hope. It could be so easily snapped. “That’s the important thing. It’ll go down. Just give it some more time.”

My mother doesn’t know. None of us do.

I’m surrounded by peachy beige—the walls, the countertops, the floors—punctuated by aqua. Are these colors supposed to reassure and calm me? They do the opposite. I want lemons and cold milk, purple plums and endive. I crave colors that declare themselves and thrust themselves forward, that sweep me along with their energetic rush. These colors tell me to give up. They tell me that there are bigger things at work and that I might as well sit down on this dirty beach and press my forehead against my folded arms.

“You sound so tired, sweetheart,” Mom says. “I don’t know how you can sleep in that chair.”

I am bone tired, but that’s not it. “Theo thinks we should rent a hotel room and trade off.” Currently, he and Vince are sleeping on opposite couches in the family waiting room. Gabrielle haunts the corridors; I encounter her sitting in the empty cafeteria or standing by windows looking out into the rain. She isn’t sleeping, either. Her devotion has surprised me. Gabrielle’s never struck me as the nurturing type. It’s not that Gabrielle hasn’t paid attention to Rory over the years. She has—in spades—but it always seemed to me more out of a need to do the right thing than because she really enjoyed Rory’s company.

“I think that’s exactly what you should do,” my mother says.

“It’s farther away. The hotel across the street is undergoing renovations.”

“It’s not D.C. Surely it wouldn’t take you but a few minutes. You need your rest.”

I don’t want to talk about it anymore. “Mom,” I begin.

“What, honey?”

Someone used paint thinner to set the fire. The police think it was Arden. Theo says she was depressed.
Mom will be horrified. She will sit down hard in her chair and put her hand to her throat. She might cry. She might threaten to call my father and have him talk to the detective, which would be useless and might even make things worse. There’s nothing she can say that will make me feel better. In the end, I’ll be the one struggling to reassure her. “Nothing. Just…thanks. Thanks for taking care of the boys.”

The cafeteria’s largely empty, just a few pairs of people sitting at the round tables. We must be at that in-between time. The hot food and salad bar lines are closed—no doubt the cooks are having a smoke out back and putting up their feet before getting ready for the dinner rush. I select a yogurt floating in a bowl of watery ice and pay for it at the register, the cashier leaning on one elbow to ring me up. I eye the coffee urn and think regretfully of the cup I’d left behind in Arden’s room. Whatever was in those big metal urns at this time of day would be thick and bitter.