Heart of the Matter (17 page)

So I ask the question more concisely, going out on a limb this time. “How was Antonio’s?” I say, inhaling garlic again.

His silence is telling, and I look away before he can answer, glancing up at a cobweb in our chandelier, feeling somehow embarrassed for him—for both of us. It is the way I felt when I once walked in on him in the middle of the night, reclined on the couch, his jeans unbuttoned, one hand down his boxers, quietly moaning. I tried to creep out of the family room unnoticed, but tripped on one of Ruby’s toys, both of us caught. He opened his eyes, looked at me, and froze, saying nothing. The next morning when he came down for breakfast, I expected him to make a joke about it, but he didn’t. The idea of my husband masturbating didn’t bother me, but his silence on the subject made me feel separate, the opposite of intimate—the same way I feel now.

“It was fine.”

“So you already had dinner?” I clarify.

He quickly replies, “Just a little bite to eat. Was craving Antonio’s.”

“Did you bring me anything?” I ask, hoping that he simply forgot to remove the white to-go bag from his backseat. I am ready to dismiss my whole theory if he can just produce that bag.

He snaps his fingers with regret. “I should’ve. I’m sorry. I figured you ate with the kids?”

“I did,” I say. “But I’d never turn down Antonio’s. I could eat that ravioli for dessert.”

“No doubt,” he says, smiling. And then, clearly in a hurry to change the subject, he asks how my day was.

“Fine,” I say as I try to remember how I filled the last twelve hours. My mind goes blank—which can be a good sign or a bad sign, depending on your perspective, your life at the moment. Tonight, it feels like a bad sign, along with everything else.

“And the kids? They’re down for the count?” he asks, a throwaway question.

“No. They’re out on the town.” I smile to soften my sarcasm.

Nick smiles, nearly laughs.

“How
was your
day?” I ask, thinking that my mother is right. He is the one with something interesting to talk about. He is the one who had better things to do than come home on time tonight.

“The graft went well,” he says, our conversation falling into autopilot.

Four words for a four-hour surgery.

“Yeah?” I ask, craving more details, not so much because I want the medical report, but because I want him to
want
to share with me.

“Yeah. Textbook graft,” he says, slicing his hand through the air.

I wait several seconds until it’s clear he has nothing more to offer. “So,” I say. “April said she saw you at the hospital.”

His expression becomes animated, nearly fierce, as he says, “Yeah. What the
hell
was
up with that?”

“They didn’t know the surgery was today,” I say, wondering why I’m offering April and Romy an excuse—when I basically agree with Nick.

He snorts. “Even so.”

I nod, my way of taking his side, hoping that the alignment will fix whatever is brewing between us, “I heard they brought wine,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Who brings
wine
to a waiting room?”

“In the morning, no less.”

He unbuttons his coat, shaking his arms free. “You should cut her out of your life,” he says adamantly.

“Cut April out?” I ask.

“Yeah. You have better things to do with your time.”

Like, being with my husband,
I want to say, but restrain myself. “She has her good points,” I say. “I really think she was trying to help.”

“Help who? Her negligent friend?”

I shrug lamely as he continues, now on a roll. “They deserve to get their asses sued.”

“Do you think that’s a possibility?” I ask.

“No way,” he says.

“Did the kid’s mother discuss it with you?” I ask, intrigued more by the interpersonal side of his work than the medicine.

“No,” he says curtly.

“Would we?” I ask. “Would you?”

“I might,” he says, showing his vindictive side. A part of him that I don’t particularly like, but still admire, right along with his bad temper, blind stubbornness, and unabashed competitiveness. All the hallmarks of an acclaimed surgeon—the very traits that make him who he is. “I might sue for no other reason than that offensive bottle of wine . . . And that look on her face . . . What’s her name? Remy?”

“Romy,” I say, marveling that the man managed to learn the name of every muscle and bone in the body, endless Latin medical terms, and yet he can’t commit a few names to memory.

He continues, as if talking to himself. “That fake smile she has . . . I’ve just finished a grueling surgical procedure and there she is grinning, wanting to chat me up about private schools.”

“Yeah. April said she’s going to write us a letter,” I say.

“The hell she is,” he says. “No way. I don’t want a letter from her. I don’t even want Ruby around those kind of people.”

“I think that’s a bit of a generalization,” I say, my own frustration and anger starting to displace the forlorn feeling in my chest.

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe not. We’ll see.”

“
We’ll
see?” I say. “So that means
you’ll
look into it? Consider it?”

“Sure. Whatever,” he says. “I told you I would.”

“Did you look at the application today?” I ask, knowing that I am not really talking about an application—I’m talking about his connection to our family.

He looks at me and then says my name the way he says Ruby’s name when he’s asked her to brush her teeth for the tenth time. Or more often, when he’s heard
me
ask her to brush her teeth for the tenth time.

“What?” I say.

“Do you know what my day was like?”

He doesn’t wait for me to answer.

“I glued a kid’s face back together,” he says. “I didn’t have time for kindergarten applications.”

“But you had time for dinner at Antonio’s?” I say, skipping the intermediate stages of anger and feeling rage rise in my chest.

He stands abruptly and says, “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Of course you are,” I say to his back.

He turns and gives me a cold, hard look. “Why do you do this, Tess? Why do you manufacture problems?”

“Why don’t you want to come home?” I blurt out, expecting him to soften. Tell me that I’m being ridiculous.

Instead, he shrugs and says, “Gee. I don’t know. ‘Cause you make it so pleasant around here.”

“Are you for real? All I
do
is try to make things pleasant for you. For
us.
I’m trying
so
hard here,” I shout, my voice shaking, as my day comes into sharp focus. My grocery shopping, photo downloading, cooking, parenting. All the things I do for our family.

“Well, maybe you should stop trying so hard. ‘Cause whatever you’re doing, Tess, it doesn’t really seern to be working,” he says, his voice angry but as controlled and steady as his hands were during surgery. With a final disdainful glance, he turns again and disappears upstairs. A moment later I hear him start the shower—where he stays for a very long time.

16

Valerie

Are
you a doctor, too?” A loud voice interrupts Valerie’s thoughts, reminding her that she is still at Antonio’s, waiting for Jason’s lasagna, which she would’ve forgotten to order without Nick’s reminder right before they finished their own dinner and he left for home.

She looks up and smiles at Tony, hovering nearby.

“A doctor?. . . No,” she says as if the notion is ridiculous. In fact, it
is
ridiculous, considering the fact that the only failing grade in her life came in high school biology class when she flat refused to dissect her fetal pig that her football-playing lab partner insisted on calling Wilbur. She can still remember the dizzying smell of formaldehyde and the sight of the feathery taste buds on its pale pink tongue.

Tony tries again. “A nurse?”

It occurs to her to throw him off his line of questioning by simply saying, “A lawyer,” but she knows he’s curious about her connection to Nick and the wine has softened her usual guardedness. Besides, there is something about Tony’s open, affable manner that makes her think he can handle the truth.

So she nods in the direction of the hospital and says, “My son’s a patient at Shriners.”

“Oh,” Tony says softly. He shakes his head regretfully as Valerie wonders whether part of that regret is not over her answer, but his question, the fact that his light small talk has somehow derailed into somber terrain. “How’s he doing?”

Valerie smiles, doing her best to put him at ease, practicing for a conversation she knows she will have again and again in the months to come. “He’s hanging in there. He’s had two surgeries so far . . .” She pauses awkwardly, forcing another smile, unsure of what else to say.

Tony shifts his weight from one foot to the other and then leans over to rearrange a salt and pepper shaker on the table next to hers. “Dr. Russo’s his surgeon?”

“Yes,” she says, feeling somehow proud of this fact, as if their affiliation reflects on her parenting.
Only the best for Charlie,
she thinks.

Tony looks at her expectantly so she continues, offering more detail. “One surgery on his hand. And one on his cheek. This morning.” She reaches up to touch her face, feeling the first jolt of anxiety since she left Charlie nearly two hours ago. She glances down at her cell phone, faceup on the table, the ringer on high, wondering if she could have somehow missed a call from Jason. But the screen remains reassuringly blank, a scene of a two-lane highway winding under blue sky and fluffy white clouds, disappearing into the distance.

“Well, then you know by now—Dr. Russo is the
best.
You and your son have the
best,”
Tony says so passionately that Valerie wonders if he has firsthand experience with patients or their parents. He continues with reverence. “And he’s so modest. . . But the nurses who come here—they’ve all told me about his awards. . . the kids he’s saved . . . Did you hear about the little girl—the one in that plane crash up in Maine? Her dad was a hotshot TV executive? It was on the news—about two years ago?”

Valerie shakes her head, realizing that she will never again have the luxury of ignoring such a story.

“Yeah. It was one of those little single-engine numbers. They were flying to a wedding . . . the whole family . . . and the plane went down about a quarter of a mile off the runway, right after takeoff. Crashed into an embankment and everyone but that one little girl died right away from smoke inhalation and burns. The pilot, the parents, the little girl’s three older brothers. Tragic,” he says, looking mournful.

“And the little girl?” Valerie asks.

“Orphaned and alone. But she lived. She made it. ‘Miracle girl’ the nurses call her.”

“How bad were her burns?” Valerie asks, her leg jiggling nervously.

“Bad,” Tony says. “Real bad. Eighty percent of her body, something like that.”

She swallows as she contemplates
eighty
percent, how much worse it could have been for Charlie. “How long was she in the hospital?” she asks, her throat suddenly dry.

“Oh, jeez,” Tony says, shrugging. “A long, long time. Months and months. Maybe even a year.”

Valerie nods, feeling a wave of pure heartbreak at the thought of the accident, the unfathomable horror on that embankment. As she begins to imagine the flames engulfing the plane and all those people inside, she shuts her eyes to stop the images from coming.

“Are you okay?” Tony asks.

She looks up and sees him standing closer to her now, hands clasped, head bowed, looking strangely graceful for such a squat, burly man. “I shouldn’t have . . . It was insensitive.”

“It’s okay. We were very lucky in comparison,” Valerie says. She takes her last sip of wine, suddenly desperate to get back to the hospital, just as a cook from the back emerges with a to-go bag. “Lasagna and house salad?”

“Thanks,” Valerie says, reaching for her purse.

Tony holds up his hands and says, “No, no. Please. This one’s on the house. Just come back and see us, okay?”

Valerie starts to protest, but then nods her thanks and tells him she will.

***

“How is he?” she asks Jason as she walks through the door and finds Charlie in the same position she left him.

“Still sleeping. He even slept through his dressing change,” Jason says.

“Good,” she says—because he needs his rest and because every minute of sleep is a minute not in pain, although she sometimes thinks his nightmares are worse than anything else. She kicks off her shoes and puts on her slippers, part of her nightly ritual.

“So?” Jason says. “How was it?”

“It was good,” she says quietly, thinking of how fast the time flew by sitting there with Nick, how pleasant and easy it felt. “We had a good conversation.”

“I meant the
food,”
Jason says, raising his brows. “Not the company.”

“The food was great. Here.” She tosses him the takeout bag as he mumbles something under his breath.

“What?” she says.

He repeats himself more slowly, loudly. “I
said
—I think someone has a crush on Dr. Beautimus.”

“Dr.
Beautimus?”
she says, standing to close the blinds. “Is that some slang term I don’t know about?”

“Yeah. Dr. Beautimus. Dr. Dime-piece.”

She laughs nervously and says, “Dime-piece?”

“A perfect ten,” Jason says, winking.

Valerie rolls her eyes and says, “I think
you’re
the one with the crush.”

Jason shrugs and says, “Yeah. He’s hot. But I’m not trying so hard to deny it.”

“I don’t go for married men,” she says emphatically. “I didn’t say you were
going
for him,” Jason says. “I just said you have a
crush
on him.”

“I do
not,”
she says, envisioning Nick’s dark eyes, the way he squints with a slight grimace whenever he’s making a point or being emphatic. It occurs to her that she might sound unduly defensive, that she shouldn’t protest quite so hard—especially given the fact that she and Jason often banter about hot guys, such as the bachelor who lives across the street and occasionally mows his lawn shirtless, and that some of them happen to be married.