Heart of the Matter (2 page)

She thought about her brother’s theory now, as she turned back toward the stove, pouring a dozen perfectly symmetrical silver-dollar pancakes. She wasn’t an accomplished cook, but had mastered all breakfast dishes thanks to her very first job, waitressing at a diner, and her infatuation with one of the short-order cooks. That was a long time ago, but to Jason’s point, she still felt more like that girl refilling coffee than the woman and successful attorney she had become.

“You are such a reverse snob,” Jason said, ripping off three paper towels to use as napkins and then setting the table.

“I am  not,” Valerie retorted, turning the term around in her brain, sheepishly admitting to herself how often she drove past the stately homes on Cliff Road and assumed that the people inside were superficial at best, and at worst, unflinching liars. It was as if she subconsciously equated wealth with a certain weakness of character and shifted the burden of proof on these strangers to show her otherwise. It wasn’t fair, she knew, but there were a lot of things in life that weren’t fair.

In any event, Daniel and Romy Croft had done nothing to prove her wrong the night she met them at the open house at school. Like most families at Longmere Country Day, the private elementary school in Wellesley that Charlie was attending, the Crofts were intelligent, attractive, and affable. Yet as they skimmed her name tag and made adroit small talk, Valerie had the distinct feeling that they were looking past her, right through her, scanning the room for someone else—someone  better.

Even when Romy spoke of Charlie, something rang false and patronizing in her tone. “Grayson just  adores  Charlie,” she said, purposefully tucking a strand of white-blond hair behind her ear, then pausing, hand in the air, seemingly to showcase the mammoth diamond on her ring finger. In a town full of big rocks, Valerie had never seen one quite this impressive.

“Charlie really likes Grayson, too,” Valerie said, crossing her arms across her flamingo-pink blouse and wishing she had worn her charcoal suit instead. No matter how hard she tried, how much money she spent on her wardrobe, she always seemed to choose the wrong thing from her closet.

At that moment, the two little boys ran across the classroom hand in hand, Charlie leading the way to the hamster cage. To even a casual observer, they were best buddies, unabashed founders of a mutual admiration society of two. So why, then, did Valerie assume  that Romy was being insincere? Why couldn’t Valerie give herself—and her own son—more credit? She asked herself these questions as Daniel Croft rejoined his wife with a plastic cup of punch and rested his free hand on her back. It was a subtle gesture she had come to recognize in her relentless study of married couples, one that filled her with equal parts envy and regret.

“Honey, this is Valerie Anderson . . . Charlie’s mother,” Romy prompted, giving Valerie the impression that they had discussed her prior to this evening—and the fact that there was no father listed in the school directory alongside Charlie’s name.

“Oh, sure, right.” Daniel nodded, shaking her hand with boardroom vigor as he made fleeting, apathetic eye contact. “Hello.”

Valerie returned the greeting, and a few seconds of empty chitchat ensued before Romy clasped her hands and said, “So, Valerie, did you get the invitation to Grayson’s party? I sent it a couple weeks ago?”

Valerie felt her face grow crimson as she replied, “Yes, yes. Thank you very much.” She could have kicked herself for not RSVPing, feeling certain that not responding in a timely manner to an invite, even to a child’s party, was among Romy’s chief pet peeves.

“So?” Romy pressed. “Can Charlie come?”

Valerie hesitated, feeling herself caving to this impeccably groomed, endlessly self-assured woman, as if she were back in high school and Kristy Mettelman had just offered her a drag of her cigarette and a ride in her cherry-red Mustang.

“I’m not sure. I’ll have . . . to check the calendar . . . It’s next Friday, right?” she stammered, as if she had hundreds of social engagements to keep track of.

“That’s right,” Romy said, her eyes widening, smile broadening, as she waved to another couple just arriving with their daughter. “Look, honey, April and Rob are here,” she murmured to her husband.  Then she touched Valerie’s arm, flashed her one last perfunctory smile, and said, “It was  so  nice to meet you. We hope to see Charlie next Friday.”

Two days later, holding the tent-shaped invitation, Valerie dialed the Crofts’ number. She felt a surge of inexplicable nervousness—social anxiety, her doctor called it—as she waited for someone to answer, followed by palpable relief when she heard the automated recording prompting her to leave a message. Then, despite all of her big talk to the contrary, her voice rose several octaves as she said, “Charlie would be  delighted  to attend Grayson’s party.”

Delighted.

This is the word she replays when she gets the call, only three hours after dropping Charlie off with his dinosaur sleeping bag and rocket-ship pajamas. Not  accident  or  burn  or  ambulance  or ER  or any of the other words that she distinctly hears Romy Croft say but can’t begin to process as she throws on sweats, grabs her purse, and speeds toward Massachusetts General Hospital. She cannot even bring herself to say them aloud when she calls her brother from the car, having the irrational sense that doing so will make everything more real.

Instead, she simply says, “Come now. Hurry.”

“Come where?” Jason asks, music blaring in the background.

When she does not answer, the music stops and he says again, more urgently, “Valerie? Come where?”

“Mass General . . . It’s Charlie,” she manages to reply, pressing the gas pedal harder, now going nearly thirty miles over the speed limit.

Her grip on the steering wheel is sweaty and white-knuckled, but inside, she feels an eerie calm, even as she runs a red light, then another. It is almost as if she is watching herself, or watching someone  else altogether. This is what people do, she thinks. They call loved ones; they speed to the hospital; they run red lights.

Charlie would be delighted to attend, she hears again, as she arrives at the hospital and follows signs to the ER. She wonders how she could have been so oblivious, sitting there on the couch in her sweats with a bag of microwave popcorn and a Denzel Washington action flick. How could she not have known what was happening at the palatial home on Albion? Why had she not followed her gut about this party? She curses aloud, one lone, hoarse  fuck, her heart filled with guilt and regret, as she peers up at the looming brick and glass building before her.

The night becomes hazy after that—a collection of disjointed moments rather than a smooth chronology. She will remember leaving her car at the curb despite the  NO PARKING  sign and then finding Jason, ashen faced, inside the glass double doors. She will remember the triage nurse, calmly, efficiently typing Charlie’s name before another nurse leads them down a series of long, bleach-scented corridors to the PICU burn unit. She will remember bumping into Daniel Croft on their way, and pausing as Jason asks him what happened. She will remember Daniel’s vague, guilt-filled reply—They were making s’mores.  I didn’t see it—and her image of him typing on his BlackBerry or admiring his landscaping, his back to the fire and her only child.

She will remember the first horrifying glimpse of Charlie’s small, motionless body as he is sedated and intubated. She will remember his blue lips, his cut pajamas, and the stark white bandages obscuring his right hand and the left side of his face. She will remember the beeping monitors, the hum of the ventilator, and the bustling, stone-faced nurses. She will remember her raw appeal to the God she has all but forgotten as she holds her son’s good hand and waits.

But most of all, she will remember the man who comes to examine  Charlie in what feels like the middle of the night, after her worst fear has receded. How he gently uncovers Charlie’s face, exposing the burned skin beneath the bandages. How he leads her back to the hallway where he turns to her, parts his lips, and begins to speak.

“My name is Dr. Nick Russo,” he says, his voice deep and slow. “And I am one of the leading pediatric plastic surgeons in the world.”

She looks into his dark eyes and exhales, her insides unclenching, as she tells herself that they would not send a  plastic  surgeon if her son’s life were still in danger. He is going to be okay. He is not going to die. She knows this as she looks in his doctor’s eyes. Then, for the first time, she considers how Charlie’s life has changed. How this night will scar him in more ways than one. Feeling a fierce determination to protect him no matter what the outcome, she hears herself ask Dr. Russo if he can fix Charlie’s hand and face; if he can make her son beautiful again.

“I will do everything I can for your son,” he says, “but I want you to remember something. Will you please do that for me?”

She nods, thinking he will tell her not to expect miracles. As if she ever dared to do so, even once in her whole life.

Instead, Dr. Russo holds her gaze and says the words she will never forget.

“Your son  is  beautiful,” he tells her. “He is beautiful  now.”

She nods again, both believing and trusting him. And only then, for the first time in a very long time, do her tears come.

3   

Tessa

Sometime in the middle of the night, I awaken to the solid warmth of Nick beside me. With my eyes still closed, I reach out and run my hand over his shoulder, then down his shirtless back. His skin smells of soap from his usual postwork shower, and I feel a wave of attraction that is quickly expelled by an even greater dose of fatigue. Par for the course since Ruby was born—and certainly since she was joined by Frank. I still love having sex with my husband, as much as ever once we’re under way. It just so happens that I now prefer sleep to most everything else—chocolate, red wine, HBO, and sex.

“Hi there,” he whispers, his voice muffled against his pillow.

“I didn’t hear you come in . . . What time is it?” I ask, hoping that it’s closer to midnight than to the kids’ automatic seven o’clock wake-up, more unforgiving than any alarm clock and without a snooze option.

“Two-thirty.”

“Time to see a dentist,” I murmur.

It is one of his endearing exchanges with Ruby:  What time is it, Daddy?  To which Nick grimaces, points to his mouth, and replies:  Tooth hurty. Time to see a dentist. A real crowd-pleaser.

“Uh-huh,” Nick says distractedly, clearly in no mood for conversation. But as I open my eyes and watch him turn and stare intently at the ceiling, my curiosity gets the better of me. So I ask, as casually as I can given the nature of the inquiry, whether it was a birth defect—which comprises a significant portion of Nick’s work.

He sighs and says no.

I hesitate and tentatively guess again. “A car accident?”

“No, Tess,” he says, so patiently that it gives away his impatience. “It was a burn. An accident.”

He adds this last bit as a disclaimer. In other words, it was  not child abuse—sadly, far from a given; Nick once told me that about ten percent of all pediatric burns are the result of child abuse.

I bite my lower lip, my mind racing with the usual possibilities—a boiling pot from the stove, a scalding bathtub, a house fire, a chemical burn—and I’m unable to resist the inevitable follow-up. The question of  how. It is the question Nick resists the most, his typical reply going something along the lines of:  What difference does it make? It was an accident. Accidents are just that. They happen.

Tonight he clears his throat and resignedly gives me the facts. A six-year-old boy was roasting marshmallows. He somehow fell into the fire and burned his hand and cheek. The left side of his face.

Nick’s speech is rapid and detached, as if he’s simply relaying the weather forecast. But I know that this is only an act—a well-practiced cover-up. I know that he will likely be awake much ofthe night, unable to fall asleep from the adrenaline of the night’s events. And even tomorrow morning—or more likely, afternoon—he will roll downstairs with a remote expression, pretending to be engaged with his own family, while he dwells on a little boy’s hand and cheek.

Medicine makes a jealous mistress, I think, an expression I first heard during Nick’s first year of residency, from a bitter doctor’s wife who, I later learned, left her husband for her personal trainer. I vowed then that I would guard against ever feeling this way. That I would always see the nobility in my husband’s work—even if that meant a certain measure of loneliness.

“How bad is it?” I ask Nick.

“It could be worse,” he says. “But it’s not great.”

I close my eyes, searching for the silver lining, knowing that this is my unspoken role in our relationship. Nick might be the eternal optimist at the hospital, brimming with confidence, even bravado. But here at home, in our bed, he relies on me to bring the hope—even when he’s silent and self-contained.

“Are his eyes okay?” I finally muster, remembering that Nick once confided in me the enormous complexity of repairing what everyone believes to be the window to the soul.

“Yeah,” he says, as he rolls onto his side, toward me. “His eyes are perfect. Big and blue . . . like Ruby’s.”

His voice trails off as I think that this is a dead giveaway—when Nick compares a patient to Ruby or Frank, I know he has begun to obsess.

“And he has a pretty decent doctor, too,” I finally say.

I can hear the smallest of smiles in Nick’s voice as he rests his hand on my hip and

replies, “Yeah. He does have that going for him, doesn’t he?”

***

The following morning, just after Nick has returned to the hospital, I am making breakfast while I endure the standard mealtime whine-a-palooza, compliments of my firstborn. To put it mildly, Ruby is not a morning person, another trait inherited from her father. In fifteen minutes, she has already complained that Frank is “looking” at her, that her banana is too mushy, and that she prefers Daddy’s French toast from the griddle to my toaster variety.