Hope Street (19 page)

“It wasn’t? What happened, did she force you? Did she rape you? What do you mean, it wasn’t what you wanted?”

He cursed under his breath. “Okay, yes, I was willing. What I wanted was
you.
But you made it very clear over the past year and a half that that wasn’t an option.”

“Don’t lay this on me,” she retorted. “I didn’t betray you.”

“You locked me out, Ellie. I was going crazy.”

“You were horny.”

“Yes, I was horny,” he retaliated, his anger rising to match hers. “I felt as if I had no wife anymore.”

“You had a wife who was hurting, who was broken—”

“I had a wife who shrank from me whenever I touched her. How do you think that made me feel?”

Tears burned Ellie’s eyes. She’d been so hopeful about his homecoming. But this man who came home, this man who looked like Curt and sat at her dining-room table—he couldn’t possibly be the man she’d trusted with her heart and soul, the man she’d promised to love as long as they both lived.

“Why are you even telling me this? Why didn’t you just lie to me?”

“I couldn’t lie to you. I love you, Ellie.”

“You sure have a funny way of showing it.” She shoved away from the table and stormed into the kitchen, carrying her wine. Not that she could taste it, but if she drank enough of it, maybe it would numb the pain a little.

Pain. She’d grown so used to it that not suffering had been like waking up to a new world. Now she was back in the old
world, the pain world. She’d climbed out of the hole and Curt had shoved her back in.

He didn’t follow her into the kitchen. Standing by the sink, staring at her ghostly reflection in the dark window above it, she heard muted thumps and movements. He was moving around the dining room, taking care of things. Blowing out the candles, stacking the plates. She closed her eyes, clung to her wineglass and hugged her ribs with her free hand, as if that arm could hold her together.

Moira Kernan. His old colleague, his friend, that aggressive bitch.

Ellie knew her assessment wasn’t fair. She’d met the woman a few times and she hadn’t been bitchy at all. She’d been smart and funny.

And she’d been in Boston when the negotiations on this deal had begun.

She heard footsteps behind her and opened her eyes. Curt’s ghost had joined hers in the window’s reflection. He stood behind her, keeping his distance. No hugs tonight, no affectionate nuzzling.

“Did you sleep with her in Boston, too?” Ellie asked. Why she was pressing him for more information, she couldn’t say. Hearing the details only made the pain worse.

“Yes.”

His answer told her why she’d had to ask. She needed to know that he’d been unfaithful to her right here, in her territory, on her turf. He’d sneaked behind her back while she’d been at home, in this house, in their bed.

“Do you love her?”

“No.”

“Then what? You used her?” Could he be that selfish?

“I didn’t use her. She doesn’t like attachments. It was just…a thing.”

“A thing.”

“Sex. No strings attached. No emotions.”

“Like hiring a prostitute, only no money changed hands,” Ellie said bitterly.

“It was not like hiring a prostitute. She’s an old friend. She saw I was in bad shape. She offered to help.”

“How charitable of her.” Each word snapped from her, like brittle twigs breaking off the branch of a dead tree. “I know, you’re trying to be mature and civilized about this, and you want me to be mature and civilized, too. We’re having this charming little chat, you’re telling me you slept with another woman and I’m supposed to—what? Thank you for your honesty? Congratulate you for scoring? I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to deal with this, Curt—except to tell you this hurts as bad as losing Peter. Something else has died—and you killed it.”

Unable to say another word, she abandoned the kitchen, walked up the stairs, entered Peter’s clean, tidy bedroom and closed the door.

She didn’t feel safe in here. The pain was just as excruciating. But she figured that as long as she remained in that room, Curt wouldn’t come after her….

C
URT STARED AT THE SCREEN
without really absorbing the images that paraded past his eyes. A few photos of Katie’s graduation from college. A scene from Ellie’s parents’ fiftieth anniversary party a month later. A photo of him perched on a ladder outside the house, cleaning the gutters along the roof’s edge, while Ellie held the ladder steady below them.

Moments in a marriage, he thought. Judging by the evidence Katie and Jessie’s movie presented, no one would guess that Curt and Ellie were drifting further and further apart, that the foundation of their marriage was developing cracks that would soon expand into chasms, jeopardizing the entire structure. If Ellie had known that less than two months after that afternoon when he’d cleaned the gutters, he would have sex with another woman, would she have knocked the ladder out from under him?

The screen went black, and large white block letters appeared: Eleanor Frost’s Excellent Adventure. The sign faded, replaced by footage of Ellie’s parents, seated next to each other on the peach-hued brocade sofa in their living room.

“Africa!” Ellie’s mother sounded astounded. “All of a sudden, out of the blue, Ellie decided to go to Africa!”

Beside her, Ellie’s father shook his head. “She never seemed interested in Africa before.”

“All of a sudden, she told us she was going to go to some medical center in—what was the name of that city? Kinshasa?”

“Kumasi,” Ellie’s father corrected her. “It’s in Ghana.”

“Ghana. Right. Where is that, anyway? Somewhere in Africa, I know. When she told us she was going, I was so shocked you could have knocked me over with a feather. I know that’s a cliché, but that’s how I felt. Absolutely shocked.”

“She never said a word about Africa,” Ellie’s father chimed in. “Never in her whole life that I was aware of.”

“But you know Ellie. She gets an idea in her head and there’s no talking her out of it.” Ellie’s mother reflected for a moment, then added, “Maybe she went to Africa because she was bored here at home.”

“I think she went because she wanted to save the world. You know Ellie.”

“Yes, maybe that was it.” Ellie’s mother smiled. “Either she wanted to save the world or she was bored. One of those two things, that’s my guess.”

Ellie chuckled, and Curt found himself grinning at her parents’ inanity. Of course her parents couldn’t have guessed the real reason Ellie had gone to Africa—to save the world, sure, but also to get away from Curt, from the shambles he’d made of their marriage. Ellie had gone to Africa to put thousands of miles between herself and the husband who’d betrayed her.

Not that she’d ever said so to Curt. A few weeks after he’d come home from California, she’d stunned him with her announcement. He’d been waiting for her to take some appropri
ately dramatic action: demand that he move out of the house, perhaps, or that they see a marriage counselor, or that they get a divorce. She’d issued none of those expected demands, though.

He’d sensed that something had gone cold inside her. But she hadn’t slipped back into her depression. No retreat into moping, compulsively gobbling Goldfish crackers or staring moodily at the screen saver on Peter’s computer while she listened to his hip-hop music. She’d appeared full of vigor and purpose, as energetic as she’d been before Peter died.

She’d gone to work each morning, come home each afternoon, fixed supper, watched a little TV with Curt and then retired to bed, she on her side, he on his, like tolerant, well-behaved strangers. She’d kept their conversations focused on impersonal matters—the sprinkler system needed to be winterized, and she wanted to get her car in for a tune-up before the season’s first snowfall, and did Katie need any financial assistance from them? Those New York rents were insanely high, and her internship at the TV station paid ridiculously little.

Then one evening, she’d said, “I’m going to Africa.”

She’d learned about the program through an old friend of hers from Children’s Hospital, researched it further online and submitted an application. Of course she’d been accepted. A woman with her credentials—they wanted her yesterday. How soon could she get there?

She’d had to arrange for a sabbatical with her school, but the superintendent had found a replacement and given her the semester. In mid-January, while Jessie was still home from college on her winter break, she and Curt had driven Ellie to Logan Airport and waved her off.

Sure enough, the TV screen displayed one of the photos Jessie had taken of Ellie at the airport, standing near the security check
point, wearing khaki slacks, a sweater and a fleece jacket and holding up her passport. In the picture she looked happy, but also a little scared. Or else maybe Curt was reading into her expression the fear he’d felt that day, that she would never come back. That fear had remained with him the entire time Ellie was gone, and with good reason. She’d returned to the United States the last day of July that past summer, but she never really did come back.

“Ellie traveled to Kumasi, Ghana, to work at a pediatrics clinic in an outlying village.” Katie’s voice emerged from the television’s speakers while a map of Africa appeared on the screen, followed by a map of Ghana, followed by a street map of Kumasi. The civics-lesson illustrations ended with the appearance of photos that Ellie had sent home via e-mail while she’d been in Kumasi. Curt had seen all these photos—she’d sent them to him as well as the girls, attached to brief, cheerful notes describing her work and living situation. One photo showed the clinic where she’d worked, a bland, boxy white building constructed of stucco or cinderblock—hard to tell from the picture. Another showed the residence adjacent to the clinic, where she’d lived with the other volunteers. Another showed her in an open-sided, roofless Jeep, her hair held off her face by a colorful scarf and her eyes shielded from the bright sun by dark glasses. Another showed her sitting on the concrete front steps of the clinic, dressed in cargo shorts, a tank top and sandals, with a chubby brown toddler perched on her lap and several other children seated around her on the steps. She’d cut her hair at some point, and in that photo it was short and breezy.

Jessie’s voice took over the narration. “After a few weeks in Ghana, Ellie learned to coexist peacefully with snakes—” a photo of a green snake slithering up the side of a palm tree appeared “—and exotic insects.” Another photo showed a
brightly hued butterfly resting on a palm frond. “She developed a taste for mango—” the next photo depicted her with several other volunteers in the residence kitchen “—and since Kumasi is located in a major cacoa-producing region, she also enjoyed a lot of chocolate.” The next photo showed Ellie and a starchy older woman with thick gray hair proudly displaying a chocolate sheet cake. A single candle protruded from its center, and “Happy Birthday, Adrian” was written across it in white icing.

“Most important, of course, Ellie had the chance to help children who weren’t like the privileged middle-class children she treated back home. She assisted in surgeries, gave physical examinations, vaccinated children and worked with their families on general health issues.” A series of photographs showed Ellie in various poses with her patients. In one, a toddler hugged her leg. In another, she held a thumb-sucking youngster high in her arms. In another, she leaned over a bed, where a toothy little boy lay waving at the camera. In yet another, she sat on the floor in a play area filled with toys and children, several of whom were climbing on her while she laughed.

“Ellie also developed close friendships with her fellow volunteers,” the narration continued, accompanied by a series of photos of adults: the starchy older woman with whom she’d presented the cake in the earlier photo; in this photo, the woman stood beside a desk in a cramped office. A trio of college-age girls, vamping for the camera. A tall, thin African man in scrubs. A sixty-something white woman with wiry gray hair and a bulldog face. A white man with sun-bronzed skin and long hair framing his face in rippling waves, standing beside the Jeep, a stethoscope dangling around his neck and his face set in a serious pose. The same man, standing with Ellie in front of the resi
dence, his arm resting on her shoulders. In that photo he was smiling. So was Ellie.

Curt leaned forward, his pulse drumming inside his head. “Pause the movie,” he said.

“What?”

“Hit the pause button.”

Ellie did. Curt stared at the photo.
Tell me, damn it,
he wanted to shout.
Just tell me if you fell in love with the guy.
All he said was, “That was the doctor, right?”

“Adrian Wesker,” Ellie said.

Curt took a deep breath, and another. Why did he need to know? What did it matter? Ellie was leaving him. Whether or not she loved some other man—whether or not she was still in love with him—was irrelevant. Once she and Curt were divorced, she would be free to fall in love a million times, with a million other men. He couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

But…he had to know. Call it a compulsion. Call it the same masochistic urge that made a person touch a sore again and again, just to determine if it still hurt. He’d already lost Ellie before she’d gone to Kumasi. He’d probably lost her the day Peter died. If she fell for some other man—someone who hadn’t been by her side, trying to prop her up during the long, dark days of her overwhelming grief, trying to reach her, trying to nudge, push or drag her back to sanity—he had to know.

“Tell me about him,” he said. “Tell me about Dr. Wesker.”

Five months ago

“A
DRIAN NEEDS YOU
,” R
OSE
announced, barging into an examining room, where Ellie was scrubbing an infected sore on a little
girl’s hand. The girl was sniveling and flinching, even though Ellie was rubbing the wound as gently as she could.

“Why don’t we soak this for a bit, and then I’ll come back and dress it,” Ellie said, half to Rose and half to herself. “That won’t hurt you, sweetie. We’re just going to stick your hand in a bowl of warm water—” she prepared the bowl as she spoke “—and you can suck on this lollipop while you soak, and when I come back I’ll put some ointment on it and bandage it up.” She placed the girl’s hand in the bowl and glanced at Rose. “She’ll need a dose of amoxicillin, too. How’s our supply?”

“Adequate. Adrian’s in the surgery. Go.” She waved Ellie out the door.

Ellie raced down the hall to the clinic’s small operating room. Any surgery that required general anesthesia was performed in one of the hospitals in the city, but Adrian could perform minor procedures that required only local anesthesia.

Ellie stopped outside the room to scrub at the sink, then shouldered through the swinging door. She was greeted by the frantic screams of a boy of about nine, who sat on the table, wearing only a pair of briefs. Adrian stood beside him, his face gleaming with perspiration. “Calm the boy down!” he shouted to Ellie above the boy’s howls.

Ellie immediately moved to the table and hugged the boy. “What’s going on here?” she asked in a soothing voice. “What’s your name?”

“Abrafo,” the boy whimpered, hiding his tearstained face against her shoulder.

“Abrafo.” She stroked his wiry black hair, then peered past him at Adrian. “What are we doing for Abrafo today?”

“Removing a mole from his back,” Adrian told her, his terse tone reflecting his exasperation. “If he deigns to let us.”

Ellie turned back to Abrafo, easing his head away from her chest so she could gaze into his terrified eyes. “That’s nothing, Abrafo. You won’t feel anything. Just a little pinch when Dr. Wesker gives you a shot.”

“He’s cutting an animal!” Abrafo wailed.

“No, honey. Just a little piece of skin. He’ll give you a shot to numb the area—that means you won’t feel anything else—and then he’ll use a little tool called a scalpel to remove this skin, and then he’ll sew a stitch or two and put a bandage on it. That’s all.”

“It’s an animal,” Abrafo said. His skinny shoulders trembled against her hands.

“No, it’s a…oh!” She let out a laugh. “It’s not that kind of mole, the little furry animal that burrows in the ground. A mole on your skin is a dot of discolored skin. Sometimes it forms a little bump. Look—here’s a mole.” She extended her arm and displayed the small brown mark that had adorned the side of her wrist for as long as she could remember. “When it’s in a place where it won’t get inflamed, doctors leave it alone. But if it’s raised, or it can get irritated, doctors sometimes remove the mole so it won’t cause you any trouble.”

“This mole—not an animal?”

“No, Abrafo. It’s just a little dot, like this.” She let him touch her wrist.

He issued a final, shuddering sob, then relaxed in her arms. She grinned at Adrian above Abrafo’s head. “Let’s lie down, now, so Dr. Wesker can get rid of that little dot of skin. Okay?”

Clinging to her hand, Abrafo lay on his stomach. A few hiccups emerged from him as Adrian swabbed antiseptic on the mole—larger than Ellie’s, slightly raised and located near where the waistband of his trousers would likely rub it raw. The actual
surgery took no more than five minutes, and while Adrian sutured Abrafo Ellie placed the excised mole into a sterile envelope to be sent to the hospital for a biopsy. It looked benign to her, but the biopsy was a routine procedure whenever a mole was removed.

Once the surgery was completed, Abrafo shook the sterile towels surrounding the surgery site from his back and jumped happily down from the table, announcing that he was going to get dressed. Ellie could barely contain him as he bounded toward the door. As he swung through it, Ellie caught him, scooped him into her arms and carried him down the hall to a waiting area where his mother sat, holding his clothes. “Everything’s fine,” she assured the mother as she lowered Abrafo to his feet. Her arms had developed some extra muscle over the past few months from carrying children around.

After accepting thanks from Abrafo’s mother, Ellie pivoted and jogged back down the hall to the surgery, where she found Adrian peeling off his gloves. “If I didn’t stink of iodine, I’d give you a hug right now,” he told her as he tossed the gloves into a trash receptacle. “I intend to give you one later. Maybe your magic will rub off on me.”