Change of Heart (14 page)

Margaret lay by the pool in the hot midaftemoon sun. She could hear cars whizzing past on the expressway and thought that the sound had become part of the inside of her head—the whirring rush of California. How unlike New York's din, the jolting stop and start, loud screechings of brakes, howls from irate drivers, obscenities and laughter and screams of terror and joy punctuating the daily ritual. She missed the excitement of it, but the steadiness of California's zipping pace was probably soothing under the circumstances. It wasn't every day one's daughter sat perched on the edge of a heart transplant.

It's really my doing, she thought. I encouraged it, I pushed her. Walter might have even dropped the whole thing and let Sharlie drift off into death. He'd fought so hard for her all these years—maybe he was finally just too tired.

But there was Brian, too, of course. She had a partner in guilt there, and that was comforting. Someone else who refused to let Sharlie die in peace, who nagged and prodded and cajoled until the poor girl had to give in just for a few minutes' respite. Margaret knew that while she lay there listening to the low buzz of cars speeding past, Sharlie heard the hum of voices—do it, do it, reach out—so you're tired, tired of pain, tired of fighting, tired of trying. Force yourself this one last time—have to, for me, for us, for mother, for Brian, if you love us … Hummmmm.

Margaret was frightened. More terrified than she had ever been in her whole life, but it was different terror this time. She'd always been afraid. Afraid of her father, afraid of Miss Newhouse, afraid of doctors and servants and waiters and even children. Maybe even especially children, because she always thought that with their own special antennae they
knew
about her. Nothing was hidden from the round, penetrating eyes of a child. There was never any chance of hiding from Sharlie, of course, but she was always a frighteningly perceptive creature.

Margaret sighed and rolled over, enjoying the sudden heat baking her back. She pulled herself up on her elbows and surveyed the pool area. One other person, a young man, a boy really, probably about sixteen years old, in one of those tiny bikini bathing suits that shows every bulge.

He was cleaning the pool with an elongated butterfly-net contraption, and as he slowly swept along the surface of the water, the long muscles in his arms rippled and his body glistened in the reflection of the turquoise liquid. No hair on his body at all—or perhaps it was so blond it just didn't show.

The boy was intent on his work, and Margaret decided he wouldn't bother looking at a postmenopausal, decrepit old wreck like herself. So she loosened her bathing-suit straps carefully. Just as she tucked them between her breasts, she looked up to see the boy staring at her with hungry admiration. She was startled, she could only stare back at him foolishly while the whirring noise from the expressway intensified to a roar in her ears. Finally the boy dropped his eyes and walked back toward the motel. But as he turned, Margaret saw the minute rayon swimsuit straining with the boy's erection. For one moment she wondered how the young brown hands would feel on her breasts, if they would be soft and gentle.

Through her sun-baked sensations of guilt and sardonic self-contempt, Margaret realized she had never before allowed her waking imagination to consider a sexual encounter. After all, she was an old lady already. And yet … and yet … the boy had stared at her so ravenously. His bathing suit could barely contain all that youthful lust.

Suddenly the old anger surfaced like a silver blade, slicing up into her conscious mind. Walter had gradually killed that precious part of her over the years, with his heavy body suffocating her, trapping her beneath his pounding hips, all her tender dreams of romantic kisses ground into the sweaty sheets as his teeth pressed against her mouth and he crashed into her most secret, sensitive center, intruding with pain and scraping heat. She had known he wanted to please her. He always used to ask how it had been for her, and she would say, “Fine. It was fine.” But after a while he didn't ask her anymore. He would come to her bed occasionally, an uninvited gate-crasher who had spoiled the party for her for the rest of her life.

Would those young brown hands feel cool on her burning skin?

“Hey, Harvey, don't let me down,” Diller said into the phone. “I've been everywhere except the zoo, and I'm going to raid the ape cage if I can't come up with something in a day or so.” The voice at the other end grumbled in Diller's ears. “Harvey, I don't think you understand. Her father's good for a few mil, and if I pull a miracle, we might just have ourselves a research center.”

The voice grumbled some more. Diller smiled. “Gotcha right in the old test tubes, hey buddy? See what you can do for me. Find me an organ full of piss and vinegar and I'll set you up in a nice quiet lab for the rest of your life.”

He hung up the phone and passed his hand across his face, yawning. He'd been up until three last night with the Davis baby—four hours inside the heart of a two-month-old infant. He liked the challenge of working on babies. He still got a kick out of rebuilding a newborn child, giving it a chance for life—more so than some of the old farts he worked on who really ought to donate their money to medical research instead of tossing it away on expensive operations that only prolonged the agony for another few months. But after hours of rearranging valves the size of an ant's eyelash, he'd just as soon perform his next operation on a full-grown elephant.

What the hell was he going to do about her? She was fading in and out, and each day there were longer outs than ins. He'd gotten so desperate he'd even talked with Elizabeth Rosen about the girl's will to live, hoping that the psychiatrist would tell him she'd hang on a little longer. But Elizabeth was far from encouraging—as he'd already discovered was her tendency in several respects. She said she was beginning to question whether they should perform the surgery even if they found a donor—ambivalence toward heart transplantation, confusion about her future, guilt and despair toward the people she loved, all conspiring to sabotage a successful recovery.

Damn, damn, dammit. There just weren't all that many millionaire's kids who needed Diller's particular skills, and if he blew this one, there might never be another chance to finance the center.

He picked up the phone again and asked the operator to connect him with Dr. Vogel in Phoenix. Maybe Phil had found him a flat EEG since yesterday.

Brian ran down the hallway with legs that felt as if they were functioning in slow motion. His body ached from the desperate effort to push them faster. Letters formed words inside his head, as if from a typewriter:
Why is it you can never find a doctor when you need one?
No, that wasn't right. It was something else. A postman. A doorman. What?

After what seemed like hours of propelling himself through white emptiness, he slammed against the desk at the nurse's station. Nurse Wynick glanced at his face and, before Brian could open his mouth, took off at a run toward Sharlie's room. He kept pace alongside, and she snapped, “The button, man. Don't waste time coming to get me. Push the
button.”

“Broken,” he puffed, and they entered the room where Sharlie lay unconscious, gasping, as if she'd been the one doing all the dashing around, when she'd only sat up in bed to brush her hair. Her cheeks were pale blue, and her lips were filmed with froth.

Brian watched helplessly from the foot of the bed while Nurse Wynick hooked up the oxygen. After a moment he heard himself say, “Please, please …”

Nurse Wynick glanced at him, read the frustration in his face, and handed him the phone. “Get them to page Diller,” she said.

Once again they all sat in the waiting room down the hall from ICU. Walter shoved jigsaw puzzle pieces around on the coffee table, but after five minutes of collecting the edges he said, “Oh, screw this,” and scrambled everything together again. He glanced at Margaret, but she didn't look up from
Sense and Sensibility.
Brian was staring out the window, his face sorrowful—a young man turned middle-aged practically overnight. Walter had known it would happen. Didn't he tell them all? God damn women. God damn them all.

They get their hooks into you. What if Sharlie'd been a son? First of all, no son of his would have gotten stuck with Margaret's weak genes. Probably a strapper like young Brian over there. Poor Sharlie was Walter and Margaret jumbled up and reborn in the most unlucky amalgam.

Holy Christ. If he'd had a son, the kid might have inherited Walter's healthy body and Margaret's sexlessness. Jesus, he might have been a raving
fag.

Walter forced himself to begin arranging jigsaw pieces again. He would not sit around and whine to himself about what might have been. For all he knew, it could have been worse.

But what could be worse than that beautiful little girl lying in there unconscious? He felt an obstruction in his throat and closed his eyes against the water burning behind his lids. What's the matter with me? he pleaded. Can't think anymore, can't plan anymore, can't face the future. Suddenly I'm a heap of Jell-O—no guts.

He tried to track down the exact moment of abdication. His memory fastened again on the dining room scene, and he took a deep breath. This time he would think it through instead of fleeing the images as fast as his cerebral circuitry would take him.

It was his fault. That was the crux of the matter. It was Walter's fault that Sharlie lay there waiting for the ghouls to cut her open and stick some dripping hunk of meat into her chest…

At that moment Diller appeared in the doorway, his expression solemn and weary. Walter sat staring up at the surgeon, and it appeared to him that the doctor spoke directly to him, the brilliant eyes piercing Walter's face with accusation.

“I think we'd better face some facts here.”

Walter watched Margaret and Brian snap to attention.

“She's losing ground very quickly, and there's no donor. I have to tell you I think we've got one more day. If that. I'm sorry.” He stood there for a long moment, the shadows in his face lending him the aura of a tragic figure from some ancient drama—the noble god brought down by hubris, still dignified in defeat. Except that the golden hair seemed slightly stringy, as if it could use a washing.

Diller left the room, and suddenly Walter started to choke and shudder. The tears came flooding down his face, spilling onto his clenched hands and splashing in puddles on the floor. He looked at Margaret's blurry image through the water, and his words came out in twisted, heaving bursts of sound.

“I'm sorry … she … Sharlie's … all my fault …”

Then Margaret was beside him, holding his hands. He put his arms around her, and they clung together, rocking back and forth.

Two hours later Margaret followed Diller into his office, ignoring the irritation on his face when he swung around to find her standing behind him. She'd waited for him to finish surgery, terrified that at any moment she'd be summoned to Sharlie's room for the last time. She wasn't about to waste one precious second explaining her way into his inner sanctum.

“No word, Mrs. Converse,” he said. “I assure you, I'll let you know the moment—”

Margaret felt her own heart knocking inside her chest and wondered quickly if that was how Sharlie's felt, hammering away in a perpetual state of agitation. “Doctor Diller, I want this conversation to be absolutely confidential. Now and always.”

He nodded. He'd always pegged Margaret Converse as one of those cold, eastern bitches with no ass and no sex. He looked at her with interest now, noting the flushed face, the urgent quaver in her voice. He motioned for her to sit. Her hands trembled as she gripped the arms of her chair.

“I don't know if there's a precedent. I don't suppose so …” she began.

He nodded again, curious now, encouraging her to go on.

“Is there any way, I mean … I don't care if it's legal or not, Walter could always fix it later. I want to be my daughter's donor.”

Well, here it is, Diller thought. He'd seen it on a dozen faces before, during the long, gruesome wait for a stranger to die in just the proper manner. He'd seen the guilt in faces that needed to make the gesture but never quite forced out the words. But this woman's fear, he could see, was only that he might turn her down.

“You're not serious,” he said to her, knowing full well that she was.

Margaret looked at him silently.

“You're asking me to commit murder.”

“No,” she shook her head vehemently. “I realize that's impossible, and I don't want to jeopardize your career. All I ask is … well, guidance, in my own …”

“Suicide.”

“I prefer to think of it as a gift. But I want her to get the maximum benefit from my heart. I would hate to … well, go through with it and bequeath her a damaged one.”

The woman is crazy, Diller thought. Look at her sitting there as though she's discussing a birthday present for her kid—a new pair of earrings or something.

“Mrs. Converse, the strain …”

“No!” she interrupted him fiercely. “I mean to do this with or without your assistance. I'll find a way on my own if I have to. I've read what I could find, which isn't much, but I do know my tissue type is more likely to be compatible with hers than somebody outside the family.” She crossed her arms against her stomach as if it hurt her. “The thing is, I don't like pain. I never have had much tolerance, not like my daughter. I'm not a brave person, Doctor Diller, and I was hoping … well, I didn't want it to be undignified. I don't want to be crying or screaming or any such thing.”

Diller stared at her incredulously. He wanted to get on the phone with Elizabeth Rosen right now and find out what she had to say about this woman, but just then his intercom buzzed. He picked up the receiver.

His eyes flickered up at Margaret's face, but he quickly looked away from her intent gaze. His voice was noncommittal. “How soon? … No, get a commercial airline. Fogelsohn will tell you how to arrange it … They'll give you a ballpark on the tissue match … No, not soon enough. Push it. We're in trouble … Thanks, Harve.” He hung up the phone and faced Margaret in silence.

“A donor for Sharlie?” she asked.

He nodded. “Possibly. We won't know until we get the complete work-up, but the preliminary tests from New York are encouraging.”

Margaret took a deep breath, then murmured, “New York … Sharlie would like that.”

Diller smiled for the first time. “Come all the way out to California so you can find yourself a heart from Queens.”

“Is it someone … young?” Margaret asked tentatively. Then, before he could answer, she cut in, “No. Don't tell me. I don't want to know anything about it.”

“Mrs. Converse, please don't get your hopes up. Not until there's a lot more information. More often than not, these things are blind alleys.”

Margaret nodded and rose stiffly. She held out her hand to Diller, and he took it. She remembered thinking it was a very soft, almost feminine hand … but of course he must protect them carefully.

“If the donor doesn't work out—” she began, but he interrupted quickly.

“We'll face that if we have to. For the moment, let's just forget our conversation.”

They stared at each other, both thinking how impossible that would be. Then Margaret headed for the door, back straight, legs moving in perfectly controlled strides, not one step the slightest fraction longer than the last.

Brian had walked quietly out of the waiting room, closing the door on Walter and Margaret as they clung together. He moved automatically, like a sleepwalker, down the hallway to Sharlie's room, then sat down next to her bed.

He held the lifeless, clammy hand and stared at the mask on the pillow. He remembered his pleasure in watching her face change, feelings and dreams playing over her mouth and eyes like an assortment of clouds passing across the sky—white, fluffy, mischievous clouds; gray, sad, rainy clouds; and now and then just clear open sky and shining, sparkling sunshine. He had delighted in the rippling reflections of her moods and sometimes called her, teasingly, the Woman of a Thousand Faces. Sharlie responded by comparing herself to Lon Chaney, exasperated by the inability to conceal her feelings. And besides, she protested, how was she supposed to maintain an aura of mystery in their relationship if he could read her face like the menu in a fastfood restaurant?

He liked to sneak looks at her while she was watching television, how her face would take on the expression of whoever filled the screen. She protested that this only happened when she identified with a particularly compelling character, but there were times he pointed out to her she seemed to find
that
lady very compelling—the one in the advertisement there for underarm deodorant or toilet paper. She would stick out her tongue, throw a pillow in his direction, and pull her hair over her face so he couldn't watch.

But now the features were expressionless, a wax form belonging to some stranger. He had lost her so many times already, and once more they'd told him sorrowfully that she wasn't going to make it, not unless something awful happened to somebody else very soon, and even then …

Brian closed his eyes, asked his vague God for forgiveness, and prayed fervently for someone to crash into a tree outside the hospital and die a quick, painless death, brain instantly crushed and heart beautifully, perfectly intact.