Good Intentions (22 page)

“I don’t know what else to say.”

“You’re the one who started this whole thing, and then you think that a simple apology is going to set things right again.”

“Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me that we choose our emotions?” she asked, immediately wishing she hadn’t. “You can choose to be upset or you can choose to accept my apology,” she continued, thinking: What the hell, I might as well go all the way. Philip shifted his position, resumed his angry pacing.

“You have a very convenient memory. Tell me, why is it you’re always able to quote me when it suits your purposes?”

“Can’t we just drop it?” Renee pleaded, the beginnings of the argument crowding back into her brain.

“I come home from work after one hell of a day to be accused of deliberately missing dinner with you for sex with a client. And I’m not supposed to get upset?”

“I didn’t accuse you of anything.”

“No? What did you say exactly?”

“I don’t remember
exactly.”
Renee tried to look past him to her reflection, as if the figure in the window might be able to come up with a better response, but Philip was in her way. She thought of Kathryn and Debbie, and hoped they were both sound asleep. “I thought I asked you where you’d been all night. It’s almost eleven o’clock. We were supposed to have dinner with Mike Drake and his wife at seven. I was concerned when you didn’t show up.”

“I’ve already explained that I got tied up with a patient.”

“I called your office at five o’clock and again at six, six-thirty, seven, and every half hour after that. I called before I left my office and when I got to the restaurant. I called between courses, and again after coffee.”

“And you think that’s the sign of a healthy woman? Of a healthy marriage?”

Oh, please, don’t call the marriage into question, Renee thought. Instead, she kept her voice steady and said, “It’s the sign of a concerned wife. Of a wife whose husband was supposed to meet her for dinner at seven o’clock and never showed up. I was afraid that something might have happened to you, that maybe you’d been in an accident …”

“That I’d driven off a cliff?” he asked, sarcastically. “I think you were afraid I was with someone.”

“Were you?”

“Yes. I’ve already told you that.”

“A patient.”

“Yes. A suicidal patient.”

“A woman?”

“They usually are.”

Renee was almost too upset to be angered by the insensitivity of his remark, but not quite. Despite her good intentions, she found her voice rising in anger. Don’t bite, she tried to say. When you rise to the bait, you always lose. “Philip, that dinner was important to me. We’ve already missed a number of important dinners with my partners and Mike Drake has done a lot over the years to help build up my practice. You knew how important it was to me …”

“More important than my patient’s life?”

“No, of course not more important than someone’s life.” Renee tried to peer past him to the woman who would be reflected in the glass (surely she would be calm), but Philip remained stubbornly in her path. “But you could have at least called me, warned me that you might be late, that you might not show up …”

“What was I supposed to say? ‘Excuse me, lady, please don’t jump until I get back—I have to call my wife and
tell her that I might be late for dinner’? How about ‘Look, lady, if you’re going to jump, would you do it soon because my wife has an important dinner engagement tonight and she doesn’t want me to be late’? How about either of those?”

Renee knew she should stop now, not allow herself to be sucked in further, and she determined not to answer, so she was surprised to hear a voice (my God, her voice! idiot!) breaking into the stillness. “If it were the first time,” the voice started, the sound of tears not far off. “But, Philip, it seems that whenever we have somewhere to go that relates to me, we never make it.”

“I’m a doctor, Renee. I can’t always predict my timetable.”

“You don’t seem to have a problem with your schedule when the function relates to you.”

“Are you saying that I deliberately missed dinner tonight?”

“No, I’m not saying that.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“That it’s not the first time.”

“No, and it probably won’t be the last. Jesus, Renee, I’m talking about a patient’s life, and you’re upset because I missed dinner. Can you really be so selfish? What’s happened to you?”

“I just think that …”

“You don’t think, Renee. That’s your problem. You’re worried about your sister or you’re angry at Debbie for some unknown reason, or you’re worried about your practice or impressing your partners, so you take it out on me. As usual. You don’t care how the things you say might upset me. My feelings aren’t important to you.”

“That’s not true. Your feelings are everything to me.” Renee brought her hand to her head. She was becoming dizzy. Was there any truth to what he was saying? She didn’t know anymore.

He was suddenly sitting on the cushion next to her, his hands touching hers, his voice soft and conciliatory. “You’ve changed, Renee,” he was telling her. “You take on too much. You can’t handle it all. Look at you. You’re exhausted. You look like hell.” He said all this kindly, as if he were thinking only of her own good. “You have no compassion,” he was telling her compassionately. “What happened to the girl I married?”

Renee felt a sharp stab to her chest. Was he threatening to leave her? Was he saying that unless she shaped up, he would ship out?

“You’ve been fighting in the dirt for too long,” he continued, as she struggled through her panic to pay attention. “When you fight in the dirt long enough, you can’t help but get dirty. You’re too good at what you do, Renee. You’re not happy unless you’re in an adversarial position. You relish discord. I strive for harmony. I don’t know. Maybe we’ve just been fooling ourselves.”

Renee snapped back to attention, her whole body alert. “What are you saying?”

He stared into her eyes and his eyes were alive and clear despite his proclaimed fatigue. “I love you, Renee,” he said slowly, “but I don’t know if I can live with what I see happening to you.”

There was a long pause, during which Renee tried to think of what she could say to make things right again. Tell me, she thought. I’ll say it. I’ll say whatever you want. Just don’t leave me. I’m nothing without you.
You’re my life. There is no life without you.

“I love you, Philip,” she whispered as he took her head in his hands and began kissing the sides of her hair. She looked awful, she knew. He had told her so. How could he bear to kiss her? How could he bear to look at her?

He bent his head toward hers, kissing the sides of her lips, licking at her tears with his tongue. “You have to decide what your priorities are,” she heard him say just before his mouth covered hers.

From out of the corner of her eye, Renee caught sight of Philip’s image in the window as he bent over to kiss her. The thought crossed her mind that he looked like a Mafia chieftain bestowing the kiss of death on a doomed member of the clan. Renee felt his lips pressing down tightly on hers, and banished the unpleasant observation from her mind.

L
ynn leaned her head back against the car’s black leather interior and closed her eyes. “Are we there yet?” she asked.

Marc Cameron laughed quietly. “You sound like my boys. Just another few minutes.”

She kept her eyes closed, opening them again briefly when they stopped for a red light at Military Trail. They were heading west, away from the ocean, and Lynn thought that the scenery in her mind was probably a good deal more interesting than anything she could see outside her window. It wasn’t until she saw Gary staring back at her from behind her closed lids that she forced her eyes open wide and kept them that way for the remainder of the ride.

Would she ever forget the look on Gary’s face when he walked into that tiny store to find himself confronted by his once and future wives dressed in identical outfits? She glanced at Marc, who looked back at her and smiled. She hadn’t told him. Maybe she would one day, when the pain wasn’t so fresh in her mind. And her heart. When she could see the humor behind the
humiliation, then maybe she would tell him. Right now, it was still too awful to think about, let alone voice out loud. Even Gary had refrained from mentioning it when he came by early that morning to pick up the kids. He hadn’t even come inside, just stood fidgeting in the doorway until Megan and Nicholas were ready to go, his eyes looking past Lynn as he told her he would have the children home again by five o’clock. It was half past nine when Lynn watched his car pull away from the curb. An hour later, Marc Cameron pulled up in her driveway, and now they were on their way to see his father in a place called Halcyon Days. Lynn wondered what she was doing here, realizing how often lately she asked herself that question. She decided the answer was irrelevant—if this was where she was, it must be where she wanted to be.

“Does your father know you’re bringing a visitor?” she asked as they turned south off the main thoroughfare down a long, twisting, unpaved road lined on either side with ancient royal palm trees.

“I thought I’d surprise him.” Marc Cameron shook his head. “I have a few surprises for him, I’m afraid.”

“Oh?”

“I saw a lawyer this week about getting a power of attorney over my father’s finances. Then I consolidated all his accounts in one bank, so I can keep track of them, and I had a long talk with the bank manager. As of now, my father is on a strict allowance. No more Lincoln convertibles, no more trips to Greece for the nurses. He’s not going to like it.”

“You did the right thing.”

“Yeah? Then why do I feel like such a shit?”

“It’s hard when you have to start being a parent to your parents. It’s not a role we’re prepared for.” The image of her mother in the last months of her life, diapered and unable to feed herself, forced itself on Lynn’s consciousness as Marc pulled into the newly resurfaced parking lot in front of the large four-story pink building that was known as Halcyon Days. He pointed across the lot to where a long blue car with a white canvas top sat glistening in the bright sunlight. “There’s the famous baby-blue convertible.”

Lynn glanced gratefully in its direction, the image of her mother gradually receding. “It’s hard to miss.”

“Check out the license plates,” he said as they approached the automobile.

“PEACHES?” Lynn tried not to laugh.

“Custom plates no less. Apparently Peaches is the pet name some of the nurses have for him. He’s not going to like having his popularity curtailed.”

“You did the right thing,” Lynn assured him again. “You just couldn’t sit back and let him throw his money away.”

“Why not?” he asked, and Lynn understood he’d already had this discussion with his conscience many times. “It’s his money. What right do I have to tell him how to spend it?”

They stood in the parking lot outside the pink stucco building. “You have a responsibility to see that your father is protected in his old age, that he has enough money to look after himself. And you have a responsibility to yourself to make sure that he doesn’t become a financial burden on you. Marc, you’ve told me yourself, writing isn’t the most secure profession. You have enough
pressures on you as it is without having to worry about supporting your father, especially when he has more than enough money to take care of himself. You can’t let him squander it all away. You’re doing the right thing,” she said again.

She knew he was going to kiss her even before he started moving toward her. What surprised her was the speed and passion with which she responded. “You promised me you wouldn’t do that anymore,” she said, breaking out of the embrace.

“I lied.” He took her arm and guided her inside the building.

Marc’s father was sitting on an old green vinyl armchair looking out his window at the parking lot below. Lynn realized he must have seen them arrive, and consequently couldn’t have missed their rather public display. But the senior Cameron made no acknowledgment of their presence as Marc and Lynn approached his chair.

“Keeping an eye on your new car?” Marc asked, his voice deceptively light.

“Who’s that with you?” Ralph Cameron asked, his words slurred and difficult to understand (whozatwityou?), the result of his stroke.

“This is a friend of mine, Dad. Lynn Schuster.” Marc motioned for Lynn to move closer, and Lynn placed herself directly in front of Ralph Cameron’s line of vision, not quite as embarrassed as she thought she should be.

The old man lifted his graying head slowly, and with obvious difficulty, toward Lynn, allowing a smile to come into his eyes. “Schuster?” he repeated. “Are you any relation to the comedian Schuster?”

The words all ran together (areyanylationtothecomedianschuster?) and it took Lynn a few seconds to replay the question so that she understood it. She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Used to be on the Ed Sullivan show a lot. Had a partner. They did a skit about Julius Caesar. I remember …”

“No, no relation,” Lynn said.

“How are the boys?” Marc’s father asked (haretheboys?), and for the first time since entering the small private room, Lynn allowed her eyes to wander. She saw the photographs of Jake and Teddy on the end table beside the single bed, and thought them an interesting combination of both their parents, as Marc was undoubtedly an interesting combination of both his mother and the old man who sat before her, his face now cruelly twisted but attractive nonetheless, traces of his youth not entirely banished. When he talked, he gestured sporadically with his right arm, his left arm remaining stiff and still on his lap. But though his movements were slow and awkward, and his words difficult to follow, there seemed nothing wrong with his faculties. While his speech made his thoughts appear random and strange, Lynn understood that his mind was still sharp. His eyes were the same shade of blue as his son’s, and standing he would be almost as tall as Marc, although the stroke had robbed him of his bulk, rendered him delicate and thin. “Why didn’t you bring them to see me today?” the old man was asking.