Acts of Love (16 page)

It had been a month since he had read one of her letters or even thought about her. A long month, Luke thought. Maybe it isn't the company of one or another woman that I've missed; maybe it's her letters.

He had put a marker in the box where he had left off reading and he pulled out a few of the letters behind it. Folded inside the first was a piece of a column torn from a newspaper, and Luke found himself looking at Tricia's photograph and her name beneath the title “Behind Closed Doors.” In the second item, it was Jessica's name, in boldface, that leaped out at him.

Famed Broadway and Hollywood actress
Jessica Fontaine
is hospitalized with devastating injuries suffered in a train derailment in Canada. Insiders say she is an invalid who has lost the power of speech. Her agent has no comment.

Written in the margin, in a shaky handwriting, were the words “This is not true.”

I missed that, Luke thought, but then I never read this stuff until I met Tricia. He opened the letter. It was written on the same blue stationery and in the same handwriting as the one he had read when he first found the box, telling Constance about the train wreck. That one had been dictated to a nurse and so, it seemed, was this one.

Dearest Constance, I don't imagine you'll see this in Italy, but who knows what papers reprint this garbage and maybe you did read it, so I'm sending a copy with my commentary.
It isn't true.
I haven't lost the power of speech and I'm not an invalid and the doctors say I won't be one. I have some broken bones and torn tendons, and so on . . . I guess that's not dramatic enough for a gossip columnist. I can't imagine how someone can make a living putting rumors and outright lies into newspapers where readers will assume that they're true. What an awful way to live.

Luke thought of all the times he had been amused and entertained by Tricia and had not bothered to ask her the source of her items. He felt ashamed and folded the letter and put it away, as if turning his back on Jessica's accusing voice. The next letter was still in the nurse's handwriting.

My dear, dear Constance, I miss you, and it's only a few days since you left my bedside. It was magical to see you, and of course totally unexpected since I had written you, quite firmly as I recall, that you were not to come, that you weren't strong enough for such a trip. But when did you ever obey orders?

Luke imagined the scene in his mind: two women in a room at twilight, one in a chair, leaning forward, holding the hand of a woman lying partially propped up, bandaged, her eyes closed, or perhaps just opening. Everything else fell away. All the conflicts and pleasures of his day in the theater, Tricia, Claudia, all of it vanished. He felt he was in that hospital room with his grandmother and Jessica, and when he took up the letter again, it was almost as if Jessica were talking to him, as well as to Constance.

We talked a fair bit, didn't we? A lot of it I can't remember. I'm having trouble remembering little day-to-day things . . . they float through my mind like bits of confetti, here for a drifting moment, then gone, then, maybe, back in a day or two with other images swirling about, overlapping, blurring together . . . good heavens, I'm babbling. My nurse is writing this—of course you know that, from the handwriting—and she is so wonderfully kind that she writes anything I say, even the words that wander in and out like people trying to find their way through an unfamiliar neighborhood. More babbling; forgive me.

Even though I miss you, I'm glad you've gone back to Italy; you looked so pale that last afternoon we were together, and one time when you thought I was asleep I watched you and I could see that your animation and vigor were an act—still acting, dearest Constance, and how good you are at it!—that you were in fact exhausted and needed to be home.

So there were many things we never talked about and one of them was the train accident. It was strange and quite scary that whenever I tried to talk about it I started shaking. Yesterday, I don't know why, I brought it up and the nurse brought me newspapers with stories and photos of the derailment. I can't imagine surviving it. So many didn't, they say . . . more than fifty. I know I will never fathom the mystery of why I survived and others did not.

There were other mysteries: how quickly the police and medics came, and hundreds of others I'll never know about; the kindness and concern and stubbornness of the doctors and nurses who kept trying, through all my operations, to put back together—or try to—all my broken bones and dislocations and severed nerves (well, yes, there was more going on than just those three fractures I told you about in my other letter). But everyone says I'll be all right—they've said that over and over. With luck, they say, I'll be absolutely all right. I'm trying to believe them. Someday, when I get back to the stage, I'll thank all of them publicly, every doctor, every nurse, every nurse's aide. Until then, I thank them silently every day when I awake and see the sunlight. But for now, I'm very tired, dear Constance, so I'll say good night. I love you and thank you so much for coming here; it meant the world to me, as I kept saying until you told me to stop, that you got the point. But it did . . . the world . . . Jessica.

Luke looked up from the letter, repeating its phrases in his mind. He could almost hear Jessica's voice, an actor's voice.
When I get back to the stage, I'll thank all of them publicly . . .
But she never got back to the stage. She was not forgotten—revivals of her films, and videotapes of many of her performances shown on public television, kept her brilliance alive and were still used in acting classes—but the world of the theater closed around the space she had left and after a period of shock and a sense of loss, they all, like Luke, went on with their lives. Jessica Fontaine was gone.

Why? What had happened to her? Everyone had asked that question six years ago, at the time of the accident. Luke had asked it himself. But now it seemed more important than ever that he find the answer.

He opened the next letter in the cluster he had taken from the box. The stationery had the imprint of a condominium complex in Scottsdale, Arizona. The handwriting once again was Jessica's, though more slanted and slightly stiff, as if each stroke had been drawn with attentive care.

Dearest Constance, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, forgive me . . . you wrote and called, so many times, and I ignored you. I cried when I read your letters, and when they told me you were on the telephone, but I couldn't talk, not to anyone, because I couldn't think of anything worth saying; it all seemed such a waste of time. I did what everyone in the hospital told me to do, I ate and slept, I went to physical therapy twice a day, seven days a week, but I never spoke except when I absolutely had to. All my life I've depended on words, and loved them, but in the hospital they seemed weak, stupid, all empty air.

At first I tried to joke about what had happened in the accident, to make light of it, but the more I did, the darker everything got and finally there was no light at all, no warmth, and no hope, because it wasn't possible to deny what I had become. I don't want to bore you with medical jargon, but you've asked so many times that I'll tell you. I was in shock when I was rescued, with a concussion and three fractures. One is a fracture/dislocation of my hip and so far I've had three operations to repair the hip joint and fit everything together again. The doctors say I'll probably need ä hip replacement, because of degeneration of the bones; that's one of the prospects I have ahead of me. The other two fractures are in my femur and upper arm, including a torn rotator cuff, and they don't seem to be healing properly, even after two surgeries. I had cuts on my face and body from flying glass, and I lost a lot of blood. I'm so thin I look like a refugee from a famine, and I know that my face shows all the pain and the painkillers I've been taking. I can't say for sure because I'm afraid to look in a mirror.

I've been having different kinds of therapy; one of them is called passive therapy, where I lie on a table while a therapist lifts and bends and stretches my completely limp arm and leg. This is supposed to keep everything from freezing up while the torn tendons heal. If I did the exercises myself before they heal, “firing up” my muscles, the stitches could tear apart. So day after day I lie there and watch my scrawny arm and leg being manipulated by a strong, beautiful young woman who has her whole life ahead of her, while mine is over. I can't imagine why she bothers. Why does anyone care about this shell or spend time on it? Why do they pretend all this pushing and pulling will make a difference?

Oh, Constance, who am I? I always took such joy and pride in my body—so strong and responsive—and my looks and my energy and my control of my life—I could do anything, I thought—and now I look at the flat shape of my body barely disturbing the sheet on my bed and I don't recognize it.
I don't know whose body it is.
And I don't know where I belong. The world is so drab, with no colors or curves or angles, just a flat smear of
things . . .
meaningless and a waste of time. I'd run away, but I can't run. I'd put myself to sleep forever, but I can't seem to do it. So every night when I go to bed for the two or three hours of sleep that I manage before pain or terrible dreams wake me up, I pray I won't wake up. But I always do. Why does such a wreck of a body keep working?

I'm doing my therapy at a place called the Landor Clinic, the best of its kind in the world, people say, as if I care, and I got here by being pushed in a wheelchair to and from the airplane and then to this townhouse, which I bought sight unseen because it didn't matter where I lived. The main thing is that the master bedroom is on the first floor so I don't have to deal with stairs.

The doctors are talking about two years of therapy, and by then I'm supposed to be recombined, renovated, restored, rebuilt, rehabilitated, and retreaded . . . something like a tire, I suppose, ready to roll again. They're lying, of course, to keep me motivated—that's their big word—at therapy and eating and sleeping and all those important things. But nothing is important. I know that, even if they don't.

I'm sorry for dumping all this on you—I tried not to—but I don't have anyone else and I can't bear the loneliness and darkness without at least talking to you on paper. I look at the pen in my hand and feel it touching you. I need that so much; I hug it to me. I'll try to be more cheerful next time. All my love, Jessica.

Luke looked up, shaken, almost in tears. He had grown so accustomed to her optimism, her exhilaration at being alive, her wry humor and sharp insights—in fact, he had almost come to depend upon them—that he could not believe this was the same woman. Devastated, he thought. Broken. And without friends or family to keep her from hitting bottom. No wonder she vanished from New York. But . . . what happened after the two years? People recover, even from the worst of accidents, and pick up their lives. What kept her away?

Dear Constance, I'm not ready to talk on the telephone, maybe soon, but not now. My nurse was too abrupt, and I've chastised her, but please don't insist. Can't we just have letters for a while, as we did long ago? I'll answer all your questions, though I haven't anything interesting to write about except my rigid routine—I'm as organized as if I punched a time clock every hour on the hour.

My nurse—Prudence Etheridge, a scuba diver from Sydney who is working her way around the world, a year in every city—pushes my wheelchair to the car twice a day and drives me to therapy, then brings me home, stopping off at the supermarket, or the pharmacy for yet another prescription, or a bookstore. She wants to take me to movies, too, but the thought of watching a movie makes me ill. Twice a day she holds me up while I shuffle around the large room that is living room, dining room and kitchen, and when she loosens her grip I panic and grab her, and she says, in her broad Australian accent, “Miss Fontaine, you are infinitely better than you think you are.” Of course, she's trained to say that sort of thing.

Lately she's been prodding me to take an evening art class in a community center and last night I let her take me there. I did some sketching and began a watercolor—I did it as a hobby, you know, in another life—and it was the first evening that the hours didn't seem to drag on endlessly. I did a watercolor at home this morning, a child in a garden, and the time flew by again. So I think I'll go back to the class, and keep going as long as it's interesting and fills the hours.

One thing I don't have to worry about is money. I managed to put away a great deal in my years on the stage, all efficiently invested by a fund manager in stocks and bonds and real estate. And there's the money from the Canadian railroad, a huge amount. I wouldn't have sued them in any case, but they made their offer and, over my lawyer's objections (he thought I could get much more), I accepted it.

But aside from money, what's gone is . . . everything. The theater, New York, the long walks I loved, the people I knew, the house I just bought and fixed up so beautifully, the future. My life. I start shaking when I write that; I want to scream. What am I doing here? This isn't me, this isn't where I belong, this isn't how I fill my days and nights.
Where is my life?

Prudence gave me a needlepoint, framed and ready for hanging. It says,
The only answer to “Why me?” is “Why not me?”

Do you believe that? I don't want to. A random world, incomprehensible, bitter, cruelly indifferent . . . with no pattern, ever, to the bad things that happen to us, or the good ones, either. Unless . . . Lately I've started wondering, in the long nights when I can't sleep, if my life has been too easy. I never had a bad review (even in that awful film that everyone hated), I never had a time when there was no work because no one wanted me. Maybe, when everything goes so well, something bad happens, to even the score, so to speak. Well, I'm even. They've done their worst, whatever gods are interested in making us pay for happiness, and now I suppose they'll leave me alone. Now, when it doesn't matter anymore.