The Kiss (32 page)

“I love you, my darling,” she whispered into the phone. And after they hung up, she lay on her bed and thought about him for a long time. She wished that she could put her arms around him and hold him and comfort him, but at this distance all she could do was love him and send him good thoughts.

Bill got up the next morning at six o'clock. He had never gotten up out of bed after he talked to her. He had just rolled over and gone to sleep in his clothes, and he woke up when the alarm went off. He was jet-lagged and tired and he could hardly move. He rang for an orderly to help him get into his chair again, and make his way into the shower. Half an hour later he felt better, and he called Isabelle before he left the room.

“How do you feel, sweetheart?” she asked, sounding concerned. He sounded brighter and in better spirits than he had the night before.

“A lot better than last night. I was wiped out.”

“I know you were.” She was smiling. Teddy had
woken up in good spirits, and it was a beautiful September day. It was noon for her.

“I'm sorry if I whined at you last night. I felt like a kid in boarding school.” She smiled as he said it, he had sounded that way to her too.

“I know. I wanted to fly over and bring you home,” she said sympathetically.

“That's what mothers do. Fathers just tell the kid to shape up. It's a basic difference between the two sexes. The girls always got homesick when they went to camp. Cindy always wanted to pick them up early, and I thought they should stick it out.”

“Who won?” Isabelle sounded amused. It was a softer side of Cynthia she had never heard him talk about, and she liked her better for it. She would have said the same thing. She had never sent either of her children away until Sophie went to university, and Isabelle thought that was too soon. She had wanted her to stay in Paris and go to the Sorbonne, instead of going to Grenoble.

“She did, of course. I was always away and couldn't enforce my rules. By the time I'd get back, they'd be home.”

“Good for her.”

“Well, I'd better get going, and see what tortures they have in store for me. I'm sure they've honed it to an art form here.” But he was in no way prepared for the intense regimen they had planned for him.

After the moderate therapy they had started in London, this was like joining the Marines. He did calisthenics as best he could, from his chair. They had
him lifting weights to strengthen his upper body, and working with exercise machines. There was special therapy for his neck, a long workout in the pool, and special exercises for his legs. He had half an hour for lunch, and barely had time to get to the cafeteria, or speak to anyone, and by five o'clock when he got back to his room, he was so tired, he could hardly move. He couldn't even get out of his chair to get on the bed, and he had to ring for an orderly, who smiled when he heard Bill groan.

“Had a good workout today, Mr. Robinson?” He was a young African American who had trained with the Jets, and been injured himself five years before. He was studying to become a physical therapist. Bill was encouraged to see that there was no sign of his previous injuries and he was in fantastic shape, he was only twenty-six years old.

“Are you kidding?” Bill looked at him miserably. “I think they tried to kill me today.”

“You won't even feel it a couple of weeks from now. It'll be a piece of cake for you.” It was hard to imagine, and he offered to give Bill a massage. And after he left, Bill decided to skip dinner and stay in bed. He was dozing off, when there was a knock on his door that roused him again, and he asked sleepily who it was. When he opened his eyes, a young man in a wheelchair was already in his room.

“Hi. I'm Joe Andrews. I'm in the room next to you. Can I talk you into a basketball game at eight o'clock?” Bill groaned as he looked at him, and then laughed. Andrews was sitting at ease in his wheelchair, and
appeared to have the use of only one arm. He was a handsome boy and looked to be in his early twenties. He'd been in a car accident that had killed four other people six months before.

“A basketball game? Are you kidding? You could use me as the ball. I don't think I'll ever be able to sit up again, let alone move.”

“It's tough at first,” Joe Andrews said as he smiled at him. “It gets easier after a while. It's a great place. Six months ago I was strapped to a body board, and all I could move were my eyes. I thought I'd be happy if I could just scratch my nose.” It was sobering to think of him that way, and with another moan, Bill sat up.

“You've got age on your side,” Bill pointed out to him, but he had always been in great shape until he got hit by the bus. “I'm an old man.”

“There's no such thing here. The captain of the basketball team is eighty-two, he had a stroke. He played for the Yankees sixty years ago.”

“I'm out of my league. I should have just enlisted in the Marines.”

“It would have been easier, but it's not as much fun. There are some really nice-looking women here.” It was like going to college in a funny way, and Bill decided instantly that he liked the boy. He had laughing eyes, and a nice smile and bright red hair.

“Sounds like you've been busy here.” Joe hadn't been, but he was looking again at least. The girl he'd been engaged to had been killed in the car accident, but he didn't mention it to Bill.

“I go to New York on weekends. Maybe you'd like to come with me sometime. It takes twenty minutes on the train.”

“That's a thought. Right now, I don't think I can move.”

“Why don't you come watch? I'll introduce you to some of the guys.” He was determined to bring Bill into the center of things. Joe was the senior floor rep, and he had volunteered to do just what he was doing with Bill. It was important for morale to get clients involved in more than just their own therapy. It was what had saved Joe's life. When he'd gotten to the rehab center, he'd been contemplating suicide after the accident. And now he'd come through the worst of it, and was on his way, and back into life.

“What about the girls?” Bill teased.

“Are you married?” Joe asked, drawing him out. He was great with people, and Bill could see he was a really nice kid. It saddened him to see him sitting in a wheelchair.

“Nope. I'm getting divorced.”

“That's too bad. There are a couple of girls on the team. One of them is eighteen.”

“I think I'd like to stay out of jail, if I can manage it. How old is the other one?”

“Sixty-three.” Joe grinned.

“I'll take her. She's more my age.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifty-two. Going on ninety today.”

“Have you had dinner yet?”

“I thought I'd skip it tonight.” He had skipped it
the night before too. It was just too much trouble to go out again once he was in his room.

“That's a bad idea. I'll pick you up at six-thirty, you can decide about the game after that.” He didn't ask, and before Bill could object, Joe had left his room.

He had done his job well, and in spite of himself, Bill was back in his wheelchair at six-fifteen, and he felt better than he had an hour before. He'd showered and shaved and combed his hair. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and he and Joe looked like two kids as they headed to the dining hall together. Joe seemed to know everyone on the way, and introduced Bill to everyone he could. Bill knew by then that Joe was twenty-two, from Minneapolis. He had graduated from college, and wanted to go to law school the following year. He had two sisters and an identical twin who had been in the accident with him. His twin and his fiancée had been killed, and both people in the other car. Joe's twin had been driving, when the other car hit them head-on, on a snowy night. A lot of the people at the hospital had tough stories, kids who had just been fooling around and doing nothing more serious than most kids did, a woman who'd been shot in the spine during a convenience store robbery when she stopped in the middle of the day to buy Cokes for her kids, people who'd had accidents and traumas of all kinds. Many of them were not only in physical therapy, but getting psychiatric help as well, like Joe and the woman who'd been shot in the spine. When they left the hospital, the idea was that they would be able to lead full, productive, astonishingly normal lives.

There were two hundred residents, and another
three hundred or more came to the facility on an outpatient basis every day. But the ones who lived there formed a core of people for the most part who cared about each other and became like family during their extended stays. The noise in the cafeteria reminded Bill not so much of college, but of a cocktail party in full swing. Everyone was laughing, talking, making plans, and either bragging about their victories of the day, or complaining that they were being worked too hard. But Bill realized he hadn't seen that many smiling faces in a long time. It wasn't at all what he'd expected when he arrived.

“There's a tennis tournament next week, if you play.” Joe filled him in as he talked to about six people at once, at least four of them girls. But he wasn't unusual there, there were a lot of good-looking young guys in wheelchairs, Bill guessed that about half of the people he saw were in their twenties and male. The other half covered a wide range of ages, and less than half of them were women or girls. Three-quarters of the population were male. They seemed to get into more trouble, or had worse luck, drove their cars too fast, took greater risks, or played dangerous sports. But there were also a number of men and women Bill's age. And at their table there was a beautiful girl whose face was exquisite and whose speech was slurred. She was a model and had fallen down a flight of marble stairs at a shoot and gotten a tremendous head injury. She'd been in a coma for eight months, and as Bill talked to her, he realized how fortunate he and Isabelle had been. The girl's name was Helena, and her best friend in the rehab center was a young ballerina who'd
been in a car accident, and was determined to dance again. They were people who had faced remarkable challenges, and were making an astonishing effort to overcome the hands they'd been dealt. Bill was overcome with admiration for them.

By the time dinner was over, he was feeling better again, and Joe and Helena had talked him into coming to the game, but he didn't want to play. He just wanted to watch.

“They're pretty good,” Helena smiled at him and commented in her slurred speech. She was in a wheelchair too, but only because she had vertigo from her head injury and sometimes fell with no warning. She felt safer in the chair. Bill was struck by how beautiful she was, and thought she looked like Isabelle. He knew from Joe that she'd worked in New York, Paris, and Milan, and been on the cover of
Vogue
and
Harper's Bazaar
before her accident. According to Joe, she was doing really well. “Next time you should play,” she encouraged Bill.

“Why don't you?” he teased, she was taller than several of the men, he could tell by her endless legs. She was wearing shorts and sandals as she sat in the chair next to his, and her toes were impeccably pedicured, and she had bright red polish on her nails. A lot of the young men were keeping their eyes on her, but her boyfriend was the photographer she'd been working for the day of the shoot, and he was incredibly devoted to her. They were getting married when she got out of the hospital, and she was wearing an engagement ring Cynthia would have described as the size of an egg.

They sat watching the game side by side, and there
was lots of screaming and shouting and encouragement for both teams. Everyone seemed happy and excited no matter who scored. The fact that they were playing at all was a victory for all of them. And Bill was impressed by the spectacular gym.

“Are you married?” Helena asked casually. Everyone knew she was engaged, and crazy about her fiance. She was just curious about Bill. He was a handsome man, and in another life she would have been attracted to him, but she was happy now with her fiance.

“Divorced. Almost. In a few months.”

“That's too bad,” she sympathized. “You'll be very popular here,” she grinned. But Bill thought he'd never seen so many good-looking men in one place, and most of them half his age. He wasn't worried about it, he didn't consider himself available. He was in love with Isabelle. “Do you have a girlfriend?” He was about to say no, and then decided to be honest with her.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to marry her?” She cut right to the chase.

“No.” And then he threw caution to the winds. He had no need for secrets here. “She's married to someone else, and she's going to stay that way. It's just as well now.”

“What does that mean?” She looked intently at him, and missed seeing one of the major scores in the game. The din around them in the gym was deafening, but she was more interested in what Bill had just said.

“It means that she doesn't need my problems added to her own. She has a sick kid. She doesn't need a husband in a wheelchair.” It seemed obvious to him.

“Why not? What difference does that make? You'd better get over that. Is that how she feels?”

“Probably not. But it's how I feel. I'm not going to be a burden to her.”

“That's nice of you. What about them?” She pointed to the guys in the game, crashing into each other, rolling around the court at full speed, with wide smiles and sweat running down their faces. They were having a great time. “Do they look like a burden to you?”

“I'm not married to them. But maybe I'd think so if I were. Look, Helena, I can't dance, I can't stand, I can't walk down the street, I don't even know if I can still work anymore. I can't inflict that on someone else.” And he didn't even mention to her that the last time he had made love, he had failed.

“What were you? An ice skater?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him. She was a bright girl, and he already liked her style.

“I'm in politics.”

“Is that something you can't do sitting down? That's news to me.”

“You know what I'm talking about.”

“Yeah, I do. I used to feel that way too, and then I figured out how stupid it was. I talk funny now. I forget things sometimes, I fall down in the middle of talking to someone. Pretty embarrassing. And I don't know if I can work anymore either. But I'll be goddamned if I'm going to give up my life over it. I'm better than that. I can do other things. I still look halfway decent,” she said modestly, and he rolled his eyes, they were friends now. Friendships here formed quickly,
it was like shipboard, and the bond they had in common held them fast. “I'm still smart, even if I sound stupid. And if that's not good enough for someone, then to hell with them. My fiancé doesn't give a damn about all this, and if he did, I wouldn't want him anyway. Maybe you should give the lady a chance to make up her own mind.”