The sun began to set, pink and orange. I observed every nuance of both the change of day, Nan’s shifts and murmurs, Star’s snuffling surrender to safety.
Then I had a moment of distress. A dark silhouette loomed on the other side of the window, shoulders hunched up like a mad cat. He was face to face with me, on the porch. Virgil Reed. I hoped he hadn’t seen me startled. I pointed down the porch toward the French doors at the other end of the room. We walked beside each other toward them, the glass between us. An odd tuneless duet.
I unlatched the door and had some trouble opening it until he pushed from the other side. It angered me that he would do that—push his way into my house.
He raised his eyebrows.
“Yes, she’s here. She’s asleep on the sofa.”
He took a step to pass me. I stepped in front of him.
“No, no, no. Not yet. I have to talk to you. Today is the second time I’ve rescued your daughter when she could have met with disaster.” Yes, I said that. I was furious, and even more so because he was making me nervous. “You don’t take care of her. And that is completely unacceptable.”
He stared at me.
“You have to start watching her!”
“I am sorry, Miss Lee.”
I was shocked. Nonsensically, I’d begun to believe he didn’t have a voice. But it was low and—attractive. But that changed nothing.
“You should be. I’ve nearly had heart attacks.”
“She wanders away. I’m so immersed in my work, and I forget—”
He took a step forward. I blocked him. It was my house.
“Listen to me. She is not much more than a baby. She wouldn’t last for a minute in this freezing water, she’s so light her clothes would pull her under. And she isn’t visible from the height of a car seat.”
A lecture, a lashing. He looked at me pensively as I spoke. He wears a big beard that hides a great deal of his face, his mouth entirely. It’s blond, but a darker shade than his hair. Green eyes. A straight nose. He took his scolding without protest and became less of a monster in those minutes, more—I don’t know yet. Something.
“You’re right,” he said.
My face tingled. “You’re mocking me.”
“No. You are right. I’ve been preoccupied. I will do better.”
I stepped aside and let him enter. We arrived at the sofa, and he slipped his arms under Nan and carried her back down the length of the room, with me beside him. Star ran, too. I paused to lift him, to prevent him from following Virgil Reed outside.
“I gave her a meal,” I said.
“Thank you.”
He pulled the door shut behind him.
CHAPTER 20 Maud, Philadelphia, Thanksgiving 2001
ACAB WAS WAITING WHEN MAUD got downstairs, and she tipped the doorman as he held the door for her.
“Happy Thanksgiving!” everyone said at once.
She registered on her brief passage between the building and the car that it was a relatively warm day, perfect for standing along a parade route without freezing, but she’d have to save that for another year. If she’d been home the night before she would have taken Clemmie up to the Museum of Natural History to watch the balloons being blown up for the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. Heidi had always taken her when she was a girl, and they’d had the spectacle nearly to themselves. Now, like so many of the things about New York that had seemed like private secrets, it had become an event, and was packed with parents and children and teens out on their own, reminiscing about their childhoods. Her father, Moses, dated this shift to Ed Koch’s I Love New York campaign. Before then the subways were covered with graffiti and tourists stuck to the greatest hits; the museums, Empire State, the Statue of Liberty. He had liked the dirty, gritty city, so different from Livingston, New Jersey, where he’d grown up. Now the Upper West Side had mall stores, and Central Park was crowded after dark. Upsides and downsides, which seemed to be the reality of adulthood.
As soon as Maud settled into the cab she grew anxious again. She’d managed to push Dr. Straight’s recommendations to the back of her mind overnight, having developed a capacity for compartmentalization to endure Heidi’s hospital stays and blue periods. It had helped her be away from Clemmie all day at work. When she shifted to focusing on whatever she’d suppressed, though, it was apt to come roaring at her with extra force. She pictured Heidi with a wooden stick between her teeth and a clamp from temple to temple, her body jerking. Then she pictured her in a dead quiet ward where she was checked on only for a few minutes a couple of times a day, never a breath of fresh air. She’d thought she was going to be on a farm! Nurturing plants in a greenhouse and lying on fresh grass with baby goats. That was a vision of the real Heidi, the one Dr. Goodman indicated might be liberated by ECT. Yet Maud hesitated about approving the treatment.
She gave the driver an extra-large tip for working on Thanksgiving and exchanged greetings of the day with everyone she passed inside the hospital. Some visitors were dressed up, likely on their way to happier places. Maud only wanted to go back to the silent apartment and read Agnes’s notebooks. To earn that, she’d sit with Heidi for a decent amount of time.
Heidi’s room was in shadows, and her body in the bed was still. A hard sob formed in Maud’s chest and hurt her, but she couldn’t make it budge.
“Hi, Hei,” she said cheerily, absurdly. How would cheeriness help matters? “Happy Thanksgiving,” she added just as brightly. It was how people talked to the ill.
She pulled the chair up to the side of the bed. “It’s Thanksgiving, Mom. I think they have a special lunch for you. I’m going to stay and eat it with you. I hope they have stuffing, the kind we like. Pepperidge Farm! Do you think that’s a real farm? What would they grow, the herbs? Maybe the chickens. I hope not the chickens, though. Just the herbs. Did you tell me that in England they say herbs with the h spoken? Then would you say ‘a herb?’ I always say ‘an herb.’ I’d like to go to England…”
She rattled on, letting each thought spring from the last according to a convoluted set of turns in her mind. She was like a mouse running a maze for the first time, with no idea where she was going. It didn’t matter, either. No one was timing her or watching her. She was on her own, and there was no piece of cheese waiting for her at the finish line. The food came and the orderly helped Heidi to sit up to eat.
“Should she go to the bathroom first?” Maud asked.
“She doesn’t go to the bathroom.” The woman lifted the lid off the plate of turkey, gravy, and yes, stuffing. She cut the turkey into tiny pieces. Maud considered saying she’d do it, but she felt intimidated and wanted to see how Heidi ate first. She felt the same way she had when she was faced for the first time with giving Clemmie a bath. She’d asked Heidi to do it, afraid she might make a mistake with the tiny creature.
She doesn’t go to the bathroom. It was obvious now that she knew. The smell in the room, and her inability to rouse herself. They couldn’t take her every hour, like a puppy.
“Has she ever spoken to you?” Maud asked.
The orderly put some food on the fork. Maud vacated the chair for her.
“Thank you, Miss. She’s said a couple of words here and there.”