A Theory of Relativity (49 page)

A Theory of Relativity

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That first Keeferless weekend drained away fast, in a fury of rehab.

With the practiced economy of a man who had moved often, Gordon shopped for towels and a shower caddy, a blind for the front window, sheets and a toothbrush. He bought Keefer a Barney toothbrush and cup.

On the second Keeferless weekend, he had to physically restrain himself from jumping in the car and driving north. Perversely, he promised himself he would not visit Tall Trees until visiting did not feel like running for cover. He spent the evening reading the dust jackets of books he could not afford at a mammoth Madison bookstore. Saturday yawned before him. He slept late and drank his tea on the porch, reading a letter from his aunt about the little monster costume she was sewing for Keefer for Halloween. Nora had been seriously drawn to a cute little devil pattern, picturing Keefer’s delight at a rubber pitchfork, but she finally reckoned—-and didn’t Gordon agree?—that it would give the Cadys fits. He slept away most of Sunday, avid for the call that finally came, summoning him to a solid week of sub dates.

That Friday, after picking her up, he treated himself and Keefer to fish fry at the Avenue Bar. The phone was ringing when he pulled into the drive of the old house. He could hear it through the open window, but he didn’t bother to rush. Once he’d disengaged Keefer from her car seat and thrown himself against the front door three or four times until it gave way, there would be no one on earth so persistent they would not give up. But the phone kept on ringing. Twelve rings. Fourteen.

Gordon had no answering machine. He made a mental note to drive out to the mall and get one first thing. He was probably missing jobs.

This very moment, his mother was probably sending Mark out to get Nora and prepare for a rescue mission.

He answered on the seventeenth ring.

“Oh Gordon.” The voice was a watery blat, a wavering inhuman noise made by something that had endured mean damage, as if the oscillating structures that gave sound form had been wrenched. It sent a current along Gordon’s forearms. “Oh Gordon, God help me.” He did not know the voice. “Oh Gordon, Delia’s in a coma.” It was Craig Cady.

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Sweating, gasping, tearing a box of spaghetti open through the cel-lophane window on the front when he couldn’t manage the top, spilling stiff noodles out onto the floor so that Keefer would have something to play with and not wander toward the cellar stairs, Gordon tried to piece together a chronology from Craig’s gutturals and whimperings.

Delia had given birth not long after five to a healthy baby boy. She had come through the birth exhausted but game, holding out her arms to her son, asking that he be named Hugh, after her late father. Craig and Alexis had left her in the care of the high-risk team, watching as the baby was weighed. Gordon couldn’t follow Craig after that. It was . . .

Gordon pressed the glow button on his watch. The misty underwater light told him it was only eight o’clock now.

What had happened in three hours that a university hospital could not prevent or intervene to repair?

And why was Craig calling him?

“Listen, Craig,” Gordon said finally, “you have to find somebody to be there with you. Is Diane there? Is Ray around?”

“The wedding,” Craig answered, his voice clotted with weeping,

“the wedding is tomorrow.”

“What wedding?”

“His sister. Caroline.” Gordon had not known Caroline was actually divorced yet.

“Ray’s sister? Are you sure?”

“They . . . Florida. I called . . . a big storm.”

“And your mom, where’s your mom?”

“All weather,” Craig cried, “there are all these storms.”

“Okay, okay, listen,” Gordon soothed him. Listen? Just what the hell did he plan to say? At least Keefer was here with him, instead of reeling with Craig through forbidding, antiseptic corridors. “Where are you? I mean, it was the university hospital, wasn’t it? Is Alex there with you?

Can I just . . . talk to somebody else for a minute?”

“God help me,” Craig wailed thinly, “God help me. God help me.” In the end, Gordon drove sleeping Keefer, still clutching a fistful of uncooked spaghetti, through the downtown night to the massive medical center parking lot, where Craig waited in the hollow of a lighted Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:12 PM Page 331

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shelter near the main door. Alexis, violently shuddering, stood half hidden by her stepfather’s bulk, a scarecrow in Craig’s navy blazer. Craig needed to be back upstairs; neurologists were gathering for a consult.

Alexis stayed with Gordon. From a pay phone, lacking any better idea, Gordon called his mother. Lorraine, probably lacking any better idea herself, said she was throwing on clothes, she would be down in a few hours. Gordon felt he ought to object, but could think of no good reason to deny himself the stalwart center of his mother’s presence. The lights and smells of the hospital lobby, the artificial daylight through which children slid, squealing, in their socks, so wired they were oblivious to the haggard or rigidly masked faces of their parents, these worked a malign spell on his senses. Twice, he’d had to correct himself after calling Craig “Ray.”

He suggested they might sit in his car, or take a ride. But Alexis said she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He and the two girls sat in a huge, marine blue cafeteria among doctors and nurses in smeary scrubs.

Keefer and Alexis munched soggy french fries. Gordon downed two acrid cups of coffee. At midnight Lorraine and Nora burst through swinging panel doors, Lorraine carrying in one arm a six-pack of Diet Pepsi, and in the other three of Gordon’s old team windbreakers. She opened one of the sodas for Alexis.

“Tell me what is going on here,” she said.

“My mom had the baby and she went into a coma,” Alex began, in a clear, small voice. She got up from her chair and circled the table, sitting down beside Lorraine and leaning into her breast. “She was really sick all week, and they said they had to take the baby out because the baby could die.”

“So she had an operation.”

“No, she started to have labor right after that.”

“Gordie, was this caused by her multiple sclerosis?”

“From what Craig says, the thinking is that she had an aneurysm in her brain,” Gordon told her, slipping into the bath of welcome exhaustion by the relief of her presence, “and that’s all I know. I have no idea if it was related.”

They sat for another hour, Alex and Gordon playing ticktacktoe and Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:12 PM Page 332

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hangman on paper napkins. Keefer fell asleep across Nora’s lap. Lorraine suggested they find someone in charge and make inquiries, but Gordon balked, reluctant to search out their way to the obstetrical floor and accost a nurse. Who would they say they were? Ex-family?

Finally Craig appeared, flushed and tearful but coherent. Delia’s condition was uncertain but critical. The baby was fine and weighed nine pounds. Delia had suffered from gestational diabetes. Delia may or may not have had a stroke caused by an aneurysm in her brain. No one believed Delia had ever had MS, but they were doing tests, all kinds of tests. He thought he would be able to drive Alexis home. He thought he would be okay to do that much. Alexis could probably care for Keefer.

“That’s not going to happen,” Nora told him firmly. “Alexis is a child whose mother is very sick, and you have to be here, and she can’t be on her own at home.”

“I guess you’re right,” Craig admitted, balling his fists against his reddened eyes like a huge kid. “I don’t know what to do, is all. I don’t think I should leave her. Leave my wife.” Lorraine pondered, tucking tendrils of her hair behind first one ear, then the other.

“Well, I guess we’ll take them home, then.”

“I can give you my keys,” Craig said. “Gordie knows where it is.”

“I mean home to Tall Trees,” Lorraine said. “We’ll take these girls home with us. You know my telephone number, Craig. You will call us when Delia is better. I suppose Alex needs her things. Do you need your things, Alex?”

“I have my period,” Alex said softly, miserably.

“Oh, I don’t mean those kinds of things,” said Lorraine. “I mean your . . . your CD records and things like that. Not things we can pick up any old place.”

“I don’t need anything,” Alexis said, “but I don’t want to leave my mom.”

“Craig is going to look after your mom. We’re going to let him, so he doesn’t have to worry about you guys. And this whole place is filled with people who are going to look after your mom and your new baby brother. Did you get to see him? Is he cute?” Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:12 PM Page 333

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“He’s very cute,” said Alexis, “small.”

They turned as one to face Craig. Craig patted the side of Alex’s face. Nora patted the big man’s arm. All four of them staggered to the parking lot, Lorraine somehow organizing, on the way, an emergency sticker for Gordon’s car, which they would leave behind. There was no question of him driving. There was no question of his going back to his place. Lorraine handed him her cell phone, prompted him to call whatever school he was expected at on Monday and leave a message that he’d been trapped by a family crisis. They bundled him into the back, with Keefer’s car seat and her bag of water ba-bas and pull-ups. Alex sat on his other side. Both girls sank immediately, suddenly, into sleep.

And even before they hit the highway, Gordon was dozing, as well.

There came a dim awareness of changes in atmosphere, neon lights, another parking lot, the car door ajar, the key signal’s tone, the radio blaring then sinking, his mother’s voice, then his aunt’s, excited chatter and sighs, all the familiar ease with which plans and routines were struck down in the path of fire, replaced by new imperatives about which there could be no question. There was no question that Alexis would be going to school. No question of him showing up for the job he’d committed to. The lights would burn in his farmhouse. No one would come to turn them out. Why was he leaving? Where was his part in this exodus? He could not question. He belonged to the clan who owned the territory of loss, were the masters of disaster, the postdocs of posttraumatic procedure. Who was he to question them?

Lorraine was shaking his shoulder. He was stumbling over the familiar hump of the doorstop at his parents’ house, Mark holding him first by the shoulders, then close, in his arms. Water, gulped at the bathroom sink, from his cupped hands. His childhood bed, Keefer a damp bundle between him and the protecting wall. His aunt’s hands, smelling of peat and pie, tucking a quilt around them.

Something had begun, had turned in space and accelerated, the McKennas’ practiced gift for locating themselves at the epicenter of the most unaccustomed adversity. Gordon could not rouse himself.

He drifted, wondering whether he should try to pray, if he dared pray for Delia’s recovery, whether he would be struck dead. Bless me, for I Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:12 PM Page 334

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some . . . swelling. Maybe she even had a stroke. But she’s not dying, Mom.”

“Good morning, Alex,” Lorraine said forcefully.

The girl’s blue eyes were shot red, rayed with dried rivers of mascara. “I need some help,” she whispered.

“That Walgreens bag is right on the night table in the room where you slept, and everything’s in there, toothbrush, some underthings. I left out an old pair of my daughter’s sweatpants, and I’m afraid a shirt of mine is all I have. It’ll probably fit you.”

“Can I take a shower?” Alexis asked, cringing from Gordon. “Is my mom okay?”

“We’re just finding out,” Lorraine said. “Towels are in the closet next to the bathroom door.”

“Allie, hi!” caroled Keefer.

“Hi, shortcake.” Keefer planted a big smooch on Alex’s knee.

Poor Alexis was a hostage, Gordon thought, a villager under fire.

Craig Cady called at four. Delia’s vital signs were solid. His mother was en route. His voice had recalibrated into its customary cadences. If they would like, Alex could bring Keefer home on the bus. He would be forever grateful to them all. Nonsense, Lorraine replied, Mark would drive them all back—she turned to Gordon, treated him to a rueful, elaborate toss of her head—but not until tomorrow or the next day.

Tomorrow, then. No, today is impossible, Lorraine said. Alexis was fine, both girls needed some good food and rest.

“Well,” Lorraine said as she hung up, “they’ll get the rest at least.” Just before they left on Monday morning, Lorraine, who’d wept on relinquishing her granddaughter, stirring Keefer into an impromptu tantrum, drew Gordon aside behind the burning bush in the side yard.

She wrapped her arms around him and clung. “Gordon, I don’t want you to think I have any rancor about Delia or any secret desire for her to get sicker.”

“I don’t think it’s a secret, Mom.” What was making him so cruel?

His loathing of self for the self-same thoughts, expectations, fantasies?

Lorraine threw back her shoulders. “Gordie, I do not wish some Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:12 PM Page 335

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have sinned. It has been fifteen years since my last confession, and even then I was making it up, just repeating what Tim told me to say; it was only to please my parents. A coherent statement of fears and hopes was too remote; he could not manage to escape his torpor. He heard his father’s voice, Mark’s even, sonorous voice, and let himself sink, drowned in guilty joy. He’d made it home safe, with Keefer’s thumb like a plushy hook in the hollow of his ear.

It was afternoon when Gordon jerked awake, confused, shaken, overtaken by his own smell, pungent as cooked meat. He looked for the daffodil border from his apartment on First Street, the stippled wall of the farmhouse. But there was a framed print of the bridge at Saint Andrew’s . . . his room, his boyhood room. Keefer was gone from the bed, but he could hear her chirping in the kitchen, asking for peanut body. Alexis, Lorraine cautioned him, when he surfaced, was still asleep upstairs on the daybed they’d installed in Georgia’s old room. Craig had not phoned. Diane Nye had phoned. Even had they wanted to leave Caroline on her wedding day, they would be weathered in, at Tampa.