A Watershed Year (16 page)

Paul sat down in a chair near the bed and seemed to see Nana Mavis for the first time.

“She looks so small,” he said quietly. “So frail. When we were growing up, I thought she was a giant. A giant in orthopedic shoes. Remember those big black shoes she always wore? With that rubber tread on the bottom like a waffle iron?”

Lucy nodded. Rosalee brought the three children back into the room and asked each one to say a quick prayer for Mavis. Sean stood quietly at the foot of Mavis’s bed, looking chastened.

“Where’s Cokie?” Rosalee suddenly asked.

The kids looked at their father, who looked at Lucy, who made the sign of the cross again and turned back to Mavis.

“She’s out with some friends,” Paul said. “Away, actually, for a few days.”

Rosalee looked puzzled, but the doctor came in before she could ask any questions. She asked everyone else to wait outside. Ten minutes later, she opened the door and waved them all into the room.

“It seems her heartbeat is slowing, but she’s hanging on,” Rosalee said. “It could be another day or two.”

Paul bit his lip. “I’d better get the kids home,” he said.

“I’ll stay, Ma,” Lucy said.

“No, you go, honey. I want to spend some time with her alone. I’ll call you if anything changes.”

Back at home, Cokie was asleep, and Lucy’s answering machine gave her nothing but a blank stare. Louis had said he would call, but maybe he already regretted approaching her. That would be a first. Normally she had a first date before the phone call that didn’t come.

THE NEXT MORNING, Lucy came downstairs to find that Cokie had fixed her breakfast: toast, an omelet, juice, coffee. Cooking tools she had never used—when had she acquired a whisk?—littered the limited counter space, contributing to the air of neediness that Cokie had brought with her. Once used, these tools would have to be cleaned, returned to their places, recognized for their efforts.

“I hope the eggs in your fridge weren’t too old, because they looked a little gray,” Cokie said in an oddly cheerful way.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Lucy said, trying to remember when she last bought eggs. “I thought you needed a break from taking care of other people.”

“I guess I don’t mind messing up someone else’s kitchen. Now eat before the omelet gets cold.”

They sat at one end of Harlan’s dining-room table, which Cokie had set with place mats and the china Lucy had inherited from the same great-aunt who had left her $10,000. Cokie did all the talking.

“So I sat there thinking,
What’s really going on here?
and then it hit me. It’s not the money or the kids or Paul. It’s my energy. I’ve been on a low-carb diet, and it’s just sapping the strength right out of me. This is the first piece of bread I’ve had in eight weeks, and let me tell you, it’s like water in the desert.”

“Did anyone call for me last night?”

“Good thing you asked, because I forgot to write it down. The first time, he didn’t leave his name. The second time, we had a nice conversation. He seemed to know who I was. I think his name was Louie.”

“Louis.”

“Is he one of your students? He sounded like a teenager.”

Lucy buttered her toast and took a bite, ignoring her. It embarrassed her, somehow, to imagine what Cokie would think of Louis, who looked even younger than his thirty-two years.

“Oh, and there was another call,” Cokie said. “From a woman with a strange accent. She said she’d call you back today.”

“Yulia?”

“She didn’t say.”

“I better run,” Lucy said. “Thanks for breakfast.”

It was raining, so she threw on a long black raincoat and a beret to keep the water off her hair, which was sure to inflate to the size and texture of a toy poodle. Her hair had always functioned as a fairly reliable psychrometer, expanding and retracting along with the relative humidity. She left the house in a blur, with Cokie standing at the kitchen sink, scrubbing a frying pan. She made it to class just as her students were walking in and got them started on a discussion of the Iraq War, knowing it would tie them up for at least fifteen minutes; then she ran down the hall to her office to call Yulia.

“It’s Lucy. What’s going on? My sister-in-law said you called last night?”

“Good news,” Yulia said. “We move ahead. All paperwork is okay. You go to Murmansk in June.”

“That’s great. How’d it happen so fast?” she said, her breath coming in small bursts. Emotions pummeled her—fear, excitement, love, confusion—in quick succession, leaving her with the stomach-clenching feeling that she had just jumped from a great height.

“I have connections,” Yulia said. “And so you know, I use name of colleague on paperwork.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, technically, I should not be involved in adoption of relative. I have another call. We talk soon.”

Lucy heard a dial tone before she could even say good-bye. She went back to her students, who were having a heated debate, even though they all seemed to be on the same side. She tried to follow the arguments but kept drifting away on a tide of what-ifs. What if Yulia couldn’t pull this off? What if her brother-in-law interfered? What if Lucy went all the way to Russia only to find out that Mat wouldn’t be
coming home with her? Would it be like losing Harlan all over again? Could she shoulder another anvil, or would it crush her completely?

“Professor McVie?”

“Yes?”

“I think we’re out of time.”

She looked at her watch. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “Check your syllabus for the next reading assignment.” The students shuffled out of the room as Angela walked in carrying a pair of frog-shaped rubber boots.

“Nice boots,” Lucy said with a sigh.

“Vern actually tried to wear these to school today. They’re two sizes too small, and I just about had to cut them off his feet. I thought they might fit Mat in a few years.”

“Assuming the adoption goes through,” she said, packing up her book bag.

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“It’s a little complicated.”

“You’ve been walking around in a daze for weeks. Just give me the story. You know you want to.”

Angela sat down at the large central table and folded her arms, waiting. Lucy paced, telling the story from the first meeting in Yulia’s office to the last phone call.

“You can’t go through with it,” Angela said.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve seen him, seen him playing and heard him talking, and now I can’t start over. I think about him all the time, in that children’s home, eating gruel or whatever they feed them. He needs me, Angela. Not some couple in Boise with a tire swing in the front yard, but me. I can’t explain it, but I have this connection to him. I can’t just write him off and pick some other child. What if someone asked you to trade in Vern? Just say good-bye and start over with another kid.”

Angela looked at the rubber frog boots. “This isn’t a good day to ask me that question,” she said, standing up to go. “I hear what
you’re saying, but I’m still worried.” Then she paused. “Heard from Louis lately?”

Lucy flushed and began rooting around in her book bag for some Chapstick.

“Tell me,” Angela said, sitting back down. “Tell me, tell me, tell me. Everything.”

“You’re embarrassing me,” she said.

“Oh, get over it,” Angela said, an edge to her voice. “Grow up and look at what’s in front of you. That man won’t wait around forever.”

“I know,” she said, her temples pulsing. “I’m going to call him right now.”

“You do that,” Angela said as she left the room. “Chocolate-covered peanuts don’t keep you warm at night, and they’re lousy at conversation. Take it from someone who knows.”

ON THE DOOR of Lucy’s office was a note from Dean Humphrey’s secretary.

“The dean would like to see you in his office at ten thirty. Cheryl.”

Lucy threw down her book bag, dialed Louis’s number, and got his answering machine. She hated leaving messages—always wanting to edit and rerecord what she had blurted out—but she didn’t want him to think she was avoiding him.

“Hi, it’s Lucy. My sister-in-law didn’t tell me about your call until this morning. She’s a little wrapped up in her own problems right now… Oh, and my great-grandmother’s dying. Did I tell you that? That’s where I was last night, at the nursing home… and I’m just not sure—”

The machine cut her off.

She thought about calling back, but she couldn’t be late for her meeting with the dean. Dean Humphrey had been known to lock his door and leave if his appointments didn’t show up on time.

THE DEAN’S OFFICE usually smelled of drugstore aftershave and decaying books, but this time she detected something that reminded her of cows. The dean motioned toward his new leather couch, which squeaked as she sat down on it and every time she shifted, as if it were some kind of primitive lie detector.

“Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,” he said, looking back down at some papers on his desk.

“Dean, Dean, Dean,” she replied. Dean Humphrey’s first name was, in fact, Dean, which she and Harlan had always found hilarious.

“I know you’ve had a rough time this year,” he said, “but you haven’t published in quite some time, and your tenure review will begin soon. You know how it is, Lucy. The committee will insist on it.”

“You’re right. I know that. I had every intention of writing an article this year and updating my thesis to submit to a publisher next year.”

“Good plan.”

“Yes, except that things have come up and…”

The dean waved his hand, making it obvious that he didn’t need to know any more.

“I don’t usually do this, but I’d like to see an article ready to submit for publication on my desk by the end of the semester, or I’m afraid you’ll be looking elsewhere. If your student evaluations were outstanding, that might take the pressure off the publishing a bit, but they’re just average. Frankly, you’re still here because of your recent troubles and because we like you. You’ve got great potential, Dr. McVie, but it’s not showing. Do you read me?”

“Very clearly. I won’t disappoint you.”

“I hope not, Lucy. You have an original mind. Now use it.”

nine

L
ucy soaked in the bathtub, hoping that a research topic would offer itself to her like a gift. She couldn’t lose her job before Mat’s adoption was final, and certainly not after. But she had a full course load this semester, and she couldn’t be traipsing around in dank cathedral basements or whitewashed monasteries. She sank a little lower in the tub, letting the warm water close around her. She took her wet washcloth and laid it across her collarbone, trapping the warmth, protecting her heart.

Searching for her research topic would be like searching for a forgotten name, something she couldn’t think about too directly, or it would elude her. She felt as though the sharp edges of her mind had been scraped dull with worry. But she knew something was there, some fragment she had come across in her reading on the granting of sainthood, something on which she could frame an argument.

Cokie rapped loudly on the door. “Hey, are you just about done? Because I’m meeting a friend for dinner, and I’d like to take a quick shower.”

Lucy stuck her head under the water and didn’t answer, but now she had soap in her eyes. Another knock startled her as she was rinsing shampoo from her hair.