The Tolling of Mercedes Bell: A Novel (44 page)

The nurse’s care provided Mercedes with her only respite from the chamber of horrors. She juggled work at her office and his, keeping her job alive and winding his down. She’d been foolish to think she could shield Germaine. Mercedes had not given a name to the illness, but Germaine watched and heard and withdrew. What she saw didn’t need a name.

Now a new specter loomed, one that threatened the very foundations of their relationship. What more could be added to the macabre theater her life had become? She kept walking. She must keep up her endurance while she still had the use of her own faculties.

She stopped in a deli for some minestrone soup and a piece of fresh focaccia. She took the food back outside to eat by the lake, unaware of others.

“Mind if I join you?” a male voice inquired. It was Darrel, with his own lunch in hand. He sat on the bench beside her. “I was behind you in line, and I have some good news.”

She looked up at him earnestly. No news he had could possibly assuage her torment, but it was welcome nonetheless. She managed a smile.

“I was just on the phone with counsel in the Taylor case and I think we may be close to a good settlement.”

“That
is
good news. Have you talked to Rand yet?”

“Yes. He knows we can’t refuse the offer, but he wants to talk to Jack first.”

She put down her soup. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

“He’s home from the hospital, though, right? Do you think I could call him or perhaps come over? I know you said the recovery would be slow.”

“Jack is very ill, Darrel. He has a nurse with him at all times. He’ll be collecting disability soon and he has to close his law practice.”

“I had no idea. I—”

“No one has any idea. I’ve kept it that way for a reason. I can bring you a copy of the doctor’s orders if you need proof. I can appreciate that it’s just my word you have to go on, but Jack is in no condition to be consulted about anything.”

“What’s the prognosis?”

She shook her head and stared straight ahead at the lake. “There isn’t one. Please settle the case without him, and please keep this conversation confidential.” Turning to Darrel, she saw the question in his eyes. She couldn’t bear to hear it or to lie to him, either, so she looked away again.

They finished their lunches in silence.

G
ERMAINE FOUND WAYS TO KEEP
herself busy at school and afterward for as long as possible to minimize her time at home. Mercedes was glad to see her building a fortress of her own life independent of her parents. She would need it. They were lately in the habit of going out for dinner together at the end of the day, as long as Jack had a nurse present to care for him. It was their time together, as it had been in the days before him.

H
E WAS IN BED WHEN
they arrived home that evening. According to the nurse, he’d been speaking more coherently in the afternoon and had rallied enough to sit on the deck and eat a small meal without assistance. These were baby steps, but light-years of improvement from two weeks earlier.

Germaine went straight to the master bedroom to see her stepfather, who seemed to be asleep. Mercedes stepped past her, turned on a lamp at the writing desk, and kicked off her heels. The long plastic tube snaked through the house up the hallway from the dining room where the big tank resided, and across the bedroom floor. It encircled Jack’s head, looped over his ears, and went up his nostrils, streaming oxygen into his troubled lungs. His color was no longer ashen, but his breathing was raspy. Germaine’s curiosity drew her to the foot of the bed.

“He looks better,” she whispered. Mercedes stood behind her, wrapping her arms around her growing daughter, feeling Germaine’s silky hair fall against the front of her dress. If only there were some way to shield her. If only she didn’t have so many if-only’s on her mind.

His eyes opened sleepily and gradually focused on the figures at the foot of the bed.

“Hi,” Mercedes said.

He raised a hand and waved.

“My girls.”

Germaine remained where she stood, wary but interested. Mercedes kissed her head and walked over to Jack’s bedside. She knelt on the carpet beside him to assess his condition. A stew of emotions boiled inside her. And still she felt great longing and love for this enigmatic man.

She patted his arm. He looked into her eyes with recognition. Unexpectedly he asked, “How was your day?”

“Full of surprises. How was yours?”

“Okay. Nice afternoon.”

“I heard you ate lunch outside.”

He smiled faintly. “Big achievement.”

Germaine climbed onto the bed and sat beside him. He regarded her tenderly. “And you, young miss?”

“Are you getting better now?”

“You bet.”

Mercedes averted her gaze. She got up and left the room, saying over her shoulder, “That’s good.”

“Could you get me a glass of water?” he asked his stepdaughter.

She left the room promptly, keen to help him. Mercedes was washing her hands in the bathroom when Germaine returned to Jack with the glass.

“Where have you been?” a shrill voice demanded. Mercedes turned to see Jack pushing himself up onto his elbows. His eyes were open wide in terror, darting all around the room as if it were a torture chamber. Germaine nearly dropped the glass.

“You left me here for days! I’ve been tied down to this bed for days!” he shouted. The exertion drained his energy and he fell back into the pillows.

“No, Jack,” Mercedes interceded. “You haven’t. You’ve had a nurse with you all day, and Germaine just now went to get you a
glass of water.” She took the glass from the badly frightened girl and put it on the marble top of his bedside table. “Thank you, Honey,” she said to Germaine.

Jack glared at the girl and then at her mother, as though he were under attack.

“No nurse has been here,” he uttered in a deep, accusatory voice. He narrowed his eyes intensely, as if to bore a hole into Mercedes. Then a demonic leer broke across his face. “You think you can trick me but you can’t. I just untied the ropes and now I’m free.”

Germaine looked at her mother in terror.

Mercedes kept a firm grip. In a tone straight from Eleanor, she commanded: “Get hold of yourself, Jack! Look around—there aren’t any ropes. This is your home, for heaven’s sake! You’re safe, and people are here to take care of you morning, noon, and night.”

She stood behind Germaine and put her arms around her. “Germaine is your stepdaughter. She was very kind to bring you water. You should say thank you.”

He stared at both of them, perhaps reevaluating his accusations.

“Drink your water.” She pointed to the glass. “You probably need it.”

He stared at the glass, which he seemed to be seeing for the first time. He picked it up shakily and took one sip, then another.

“Thank you,” he said, in little Jackie’s timid voice. “Sorry.”

“You’re welcome,” Germaine said meekly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her mother whispered into her ear, and she hurried out of the room.

Mercedes sat down on the edge of the bed. She could hear Germaine on the phone talking to Eleanor; that would occupy her a good long while. Deciding to take advantage of Jackie’s compliant nature, she led him into the bathroom, where, like a most unusual five-year-old, he was showered, shampooed, shaved, and then wrapped
in two bath sheets. He sat on a chair at the sink while his wife helped him brush his teeth. The ordeal seemed to exhaust him.

She combed his silvering hair. He had acquiesced entirely, and now he put his arms around her, leaning his head against her abdomen. She fought back tears and held him to her for a long moment. He was lost; but in spite of their unraveling circumstances, the love she felt for him was not.

She helped her big child into clean pajamas and settled him in bed, gave him his medication, and turned out the lamp. She sat beside him and rubbed his back, wondering which of them she was really trying to soothe. Until they could have a frank, adult conversation, there would be no answers to her nagging questions. It was only Jack who knew what he had done—only Jack who could explain why. As of now she was trapped in a twisted reality, as if she had stepped into an Escher illustration where the stairs that seemed to go up really went down; where the doors that seemed to open to the outside really opened inward, into dark places of suspicion and fear.

N
ONE OF THE LEDGERS BALANCED.
Jack’s law practice was fraught with obfuscation, a maze of insurance policies, elaborate estate plans, complicated real estate transactions and tax matters no one could decipher. Emerson had disappeared. Matthew Spencer grappled with the bookkeeping. Melanie was working her way through the client list, calling one by one to tell them that Jack was ill and would be unable to represent them any longer. Mercedes was immersed in documents and photographs, delving into Jack’s past and keeping the household bills current.

The monster she kept chained up all day strained to be released. Here lay Jack, the master of the disability policy, disabled. He was clean, fed, medicated, and surrounded with comfort, even with love,
in a beautiful home. He was financially secure. Soon, tax-free money would begin pouring in the door from all his insurance policies. Everything was working perfectly—for Jack, and for as long as he lived.

As he slept, she felt strangled by doubt and confusion. The need for secrecy was pushing her fear into a tiny corner.

Germaine was in bed with her nose buried in a book. Mercedes lay down beside her, thoroughly drained by the day and wanting to escape into Germaine’s book with her. She closed her eyes. Germaine began to read aloud the enchanting story of Anne of Green Gables. She read for a long while, then stopped. Mercedes took the book from her and resumed where she had left off. This was their world, and no one could spoil it. She read another chapter and put the book aside. Germaine had curled up in a ball next to her. She turned out the light.

“Mom, why is Jack going crazy?” Germaine asked.

“He’s still very ill, darling. Some of the germs are in his brain. He can’t help it.”

“He’s so weird and scary now.”

“I know. The doctor said he’ll soon get more clearheaded. We just have to be patient.”

Inside she felt like screaming. Patient was the last thing she wanted to be.

After kissing her daughter goodnight, Mercedes carried Jack’s soiled laundry downstairs to the washer. Although she knew that AIDS could not be casually transmitted, she had a horror of Germaine being contaminated by anything Jack touched. She felt like boiling and bleaching every cloth that touched his person.

The basement lighting was poor. Dark blanketed the room save for the circle of light in front of the washer and dryer. The pipes made their comforting noises in the blessed quiet of night. She saw
the shelves, laden with banker’s boxes, where the history of Jack’s law practice and much of his personal life was incarcerated. She strained to read the labels, but it was no use in the poor light. She walked slowly up the wooden stairs, poured herself a glass of wine in a crystal goblet, and ran a bubble bath in Germaine’s bathroom.

Each hellish day had its pockets of light. John’s candor, Darrel’s faith in her, dinner and reading with her daughter, a glass of wine, and a bath: those were six things to live for. Sufficient unto the day are the joys and sorrows thereof.