Change of Heart (19 page)

Brian drove more slowly than usual. Barbara must be pacing the airport lobby, chain-smoking and glancing at her watch every thirty seconds with that quick gesture—arm stretched to push back the sleeve, then crooked back so she could see the large face of her watch, a man's size, so that she wouldn't have to put on the hated glasses to find out what time it was.

Sharlie's the same, he thought, stopping for an amber light, which he would ordinarily have sped through. He smiled at the improbability of any resemblance between them. But Sharlie, too, preferred to squint rather than submit to her own myopia. The first time he'd caught her in glasses was at the movies, when she'd been forced to surrender to the subtitles of
Swept Away.
She'd slipped them on surreptitiously and whipped them off again before the credits had finished. She responded to his teasing by maintaining that the world seemed more palatable just slightly blurred. And besides, she'd protested, indicating a nearby apartment house, wasn't it more tantalizing to read Superior Promises than Supt. on Premises?

Oh, yes, he thought, pulling into the parking area of the airport. Let's just sit here in the car and think about Sharlie. Maybe the boss missed her connection in Chicago.

But Barbara was standing by the telephones, exuding clouds of smoke from her Lucky Strikes. Brian, striding toward her, thought uncomfortably that she looked a lot like Mount Etna.

“Hello, dear,” she said, reaching to give him a cool kiss on the cheek. “Traffic?”

He nodded, and decided he was better off not apologizing. “Good trip?” he asked, picking up her suitcase and leading her toward the glass doors.

“Shitty, thank you,” she said. “Why do they assault us with those asinine occult films when there's no way to escape except by jumping out at thirty-five thousand feet? Really, I don't find prepubescents who use their brain waves to knock down walls and lop off their parents' extremities particularly diverting.”

“You don't have to watch,” Brian said.

“Oh, come on, with all those jerks oo-ing and ahhing up and down the aisle? Irresistible.”

“First Amendment,” Brian said, smiling and opening the car door for her. She rolled her eyes at him and slid into the passenger seat. They were silent until they got to the exit toll booth. A tall brown-skinned blond took Brian's ticket and told him he owed eighty-five cents. He paid, and as they pulled away, Barbara said, “Why is it everybody in the godforsaken state is so fucking wholesome?”

“You'll get used to it,” Brian said.

“I won't be around long enough to get used to it.”

They were silent again until finally Brian said, “Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.”

Barbara lit another cigarette. “Don't mention it. Your father going to be here?” Brian shook his head, and she looked at him closely. “I guess if you're a farmer, it's tough to write off a trip to California as a business expense.”

Brian was silent.

“You did tell him you were getting married,” she said.

He didn't answer.

“Now that is unconscionable.”

Brian heard the combativeness rising and cut her off quickly. “Hey, look, I'll send him a note in a couple of weeks.”

She shifted in her seat, visibly working to restrain her displeasure. “Are you taking a honeymoon?”

“The weekend. We're not going anywhere.”

“Oh,” Barbara said. Brian heard the effort to sound indifferent.

“I hope to be back in the office within ten days,” he said. “It depends on how she weathers the excitement.”

“Oh,” Barbara said again.

Brian laughed and said, “You know, I'm so glad to see you.”

“You sound surprised.”

“What I meant was, you should have canned me.”

“I admit the thought has occurred to me now and then.”

“I was wondering if maybe you had it in mind this trip,” he said slowly.

“Don't be a schmuck.”

“No, Barbara. I don't know what's going to happen.”

She interrupted him again. “Shit, whoever knows what's going to happen to anybody? We'll manage.”

They stopped at a traffic light, and he turned to her. “You have been, you
are
the most incredible—”

“Shut up,” she said tersely. Brian accelerated as the light changed to green. Her last words had sounded genuinely angry, but after a moment she murmured disconsolately, “I was looking forward to getting a peek at your daddy. Who knows? I might have spent my twilight years with the old codger, out in the boondocks.”

Brian laughed, imagining Barbara sloshing through the mud in her Guccis, pitchfork in one hand, cigarette in the other.

She peered at him. “That's the look of a happy groom. You
are
a happy groom?”

He nodded.

“Sure?” Her voice was soft and concerned. Brian swallowed against the sudden tight place in his throat.

“Hey, Morgan,” she went on briskly, “I don't want to get you pissed off at me, but I did come three thousand miles, and that gives me a certain latitude. You doing this crazy thing for the right reasons?”

“Are there any?” he asked.

She shook her head and laid her hand on his arm. “Just want you to be a happy kid,” she said lightly.

The hospital chapel was spilling over with flowers. Walter had rounded up a hundred white roses, but the nurses thought the effect was too sterile and colorless. They raided the day's crop of incoming bouquets—a rose from this vase, a bird-of-paradise from that—and confiscated the leftovers from those patients who had checked out. The effect was startling, as if someone had joyously flung a wild assortment of color against the altar.

Spectators crammed the aisles. The hospital staff, dressed in white or green, far outnumbered friends and relatives, but some of the nurses had pinned flowers in their hair, and the doctors wore makeshift boutonnieres. Walter had chosen a pale-pink shirt, and when Sharlie touched his collar with pleasure, he smiled sheepishly, proud of his flamboyance. Margaret, preoccupied but stunning in a raw silk silver-gray suit, stared blankly down the hall away from the chapel entrance. Sharlie stood trembling in her white dress, face feverish, eyes shining. Over the protestations of Mary MacDonald, she had chosen a very simple, long-sleeved, high-collared gown that fell in soft folds to midcalf. She wore no veil, but gathered her hair back and pinned it with a gardenia. She peered through the chapel door, eyes widening at the sight of so many people waiting to watch her march to the altar. She put her open palms against her cheeks and started talking in long, compulsive streams.

“I hope they have an extra donor hanging around OR. I don't think Udstrom's going to make it through this. Oh, Lord, please don't let Mary play ‘Here Comes the Bride.' She
promised,
but I know she's gonna do it, I just know it, and I pleaded with her for some nice stately Bach … Mother?”

She watched Margaret forcibly withdraw her gaze from some far-off place.

“What
are
you thinking about, Mother?”

Margaret's smile was so remote that Sharlie just shook her head and clutched at her bouquet. She'd insisted on pink roses because too much white was boring, and secretly she imagined the red ones looked like a splotch of blood against her dress. When she'd ordered the pink ones, that's when Walter had crept out to the department store to buy his fancy pink shirt. With French cuffs, no less, so he'd bought a pair of gold cufflinks as well.

Mary had begun to play the preprocessional music they'd agreed on. Sharlie, finally silent, stared up at her father as he stepped closer to her to give her his arm.

“Well, Chuck …” He was smiling. Sharlie felt the tears beginning. She blinked hard, took her father's arm with one hand, her mother's with the other. As they passed through the doorway, the quiet music swelled into resounding chords. The guests stood and turned toward the rear of the chapel, and the strains of “Here Comes the Bride” bellowed forth from beneath the stubby fingers of Mary MacDonald. Sharlie groaned, and looked toward the altar. Without squinting, she could make out Brian's tall form, resplendent in his new dark-blue suit.

The ceremony was a blur, but she remembered a few isolated details—the honeybee that flew in the window and cheerfully dive-bombed the roses behind the minister; the curly brown hair at the collar of Brian's shirt, so reassuringly familiar; the warm glimmer of the rings, slipping easily onto fingers stretched toward one another, fingers that didn't seem to be attached to anyone she knew. There was an intensity to these images and yet a fuzziness overall, as if the event itself weren't really happening, only little pieces of it—bright, sparkling mosaics that didn't fit together cohesively but were beautiful and astonishing on their own.

After what seemed like both a moment and many hours it was all over, and they were striding down the aisle, laughing and elated, past the grinning faces of the crowd.

At the reception the fact that they were married began to come into focus (perhaps, Sharlie thought wryly, because she'd finally relented and put on her glasses). And so many people took her hand and congratulated her that after a while she began to believe something momentous had happened.

It was hot, but they had decided to forgo air conditioning in order to celebrate on the grounds outside the solarium. In the midst of the initial flurry Mary MacDonald, her perspiring face glowing pink, pulled her aside and said, “I'm sorry, I tried. I did. But when the time came and I saw the doors open and your face there with your parents, well, I couldn't help it. It was sacrilegious to play anything else, and my fingers just …”

Sharlie implanted an enthusiastic kiss on the flushed cheek. “You were wonderful.”

But Brian grabbed his new bride's arm and pulled her around to face Barbara Kaye.

“Very nice,” the older woman said with an appraising smile.

Sharlie smiled back, not knowing exactly what Barbara thought was “very nice.” “Brian's missed you,” she blurted, and then looked helplessly at her husband. “I'm sorry, is what I mean,” she went on. Barbara looked confused. “I mean, that I kept him away from the office. With all this …” Barbara took her hand, and Sharlie wondered how a person with normal circulation could possess such a cool, unsweaty palm on a day like this.

Meanwhile Brian, out of the corner of his eye, spied Walter approaching, holding two glasses of champagne. He was already at Brian's shoulder before he suddenly recognized Barbara and stopped in his tracks. But Barbara had seen him also. Brian watched her expression take on a familiar delighted pugnacity.

“Hello, Mister Converse,” she said, her voice carefully respectful except for the slightest stress on the
mister.
Walter stuck his hand out automatically, forgetting about the champagne. It spilled out over Barbara's pale-beige skirt, leaving a dark stain in the expensive fabric.

“Oh, Christ,” Walter said, handing Brian the other glass and swiping at the mess with his handkerchief.

“You make a habit of raining on my parade, don't you?” Barbara said.

“Send me the cleaning bill,” Walter muttered, wadding up the handkerchief and stuffing it into his pocket.

“It doesn't matter, really,” Barbara said. And to their astonishment she began to unzip the skirt and pull it down over her hips. The silken material folded into a neat little bundle, which she crammed in her handbag. She stood regarding Walter, triumphant in her tennis shorts.

“I've got a T-shirt under this,” she said, lifting a corner of her elegant blouse. Walter snorted in admiration.

“Jason Lewis challenged me to a game after the reception. I hear this place has pretty decent courts.”

“You any good?” Walter asked.

“I could make you run.”

“I'll just bet you would,” he said, smiling.

“I have a whole pile of prehistoric bones to pick with you,” Barbara said.

Walter took her by the arm and nodded at Brian and Sharlie. “Excuse us. I owe this lady a glass of champagne.”

They walked away, leaving the newlyweds open-mouthed behind them.

Once the initial crush of well-wishers had dissipated, people began to settle into comfortable knots of three and four, some sitting barefoot on the grass with faces lifted to the sunshine. Brian and Sharlie, in their first moment alone together, stood watching them happily when Dr. Diller suddenly appeared, champagne glass in one hand, the arm of a leggy redhead in the other.

“Back to work,” he said to Sharlie. “Just wanted to offer my congratulations in person.”

“If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be standing here, much less married.”

Diller shook his head self-deprecatingly, aware of the green eyes at his shoulder that never left his face for an instant. He raised his glass.

“To Sharlene—long and healthy wedded bliss.” He drained his glass, showed them his dazzling teeth with an automatic smile, and strode off toward the solarium, redhead in tow.

“Doesn't count,” Sharlie murmured, but before Brian could ask what she meant, two X-ray technicians descended upon them, offering their slightly drunken felicitations.

Soon after that, Mary MacDonald reappeared. Brian had gone off to see if he could dig up a beer, leaving Sharlie with one of the nurses from ICU. Without interrupting the conversation, Mary took Sharlie's hand. Sharlie felt the pudgy fingers slip toward her wrist and knew that her old friend was making a quick pulse check.

“Honeymoon time,” Mary said, looking around. “Where's your husband?”

Sharlie echoed, “Husband …” as if the word weren't part of her vocabulary.

“Sadie, Sadie, married lady,” the ICU nurse said. Sharlie smiled, her eyes searching the clusters of guests until she located Brian's curly head.

As they drove through the gate, trailing a noisy assortment of tin cans and instrument trays from their rear bumper, Sharlie began to experience real panic. Severed from this place that had sustained her during so many crises, where she'd been nurtured by life-giving machines, attached by complex electronic umbilical cords, she was free, at least for the weekend. What on earth would they do if something happened to her so far away from the mysterious wizardry of the medical center?

She stared at Brian, and he took his eyes off the road for a moment to look back at her. His eyes reflected hers perfectly—dazed, bewildered and terrified.

“Well, that makes two of us,” she said, laughing.

The hotel was only just outside of town. Brian made Sharlie lie down on the bed as soon as the bellhop disappeared.

“To sleep,” he said.

“Perchance to dream,” she murmured groggily. “I couldn't possibly. I'm much too hyped up…”

He sat on the edge of the bed and watched her eyelids droop.

“I'm going to squish my beautiful dress,” she said, eyes closed. “Oh, well, maybe I'll just rest for a minute…”

Brian stayed next to her for a long time. She looked to him like the lovely princess who slept under the glass dome until Prince Charming finally showed up. What was it, Snow White? As he looked down at her, it seemed as though the faint aroma of flowers rose from her body as she breathed. His gratitude at having her all to himself made him feel fierce, and he imagined himself roaring and beating his chest like some primitive jungle beast.
Mine. She's mine, and no visiting hours or resident or nurse or even death will snatch her away from me today.