No Time to Wave Goodbye (27 page)

“Not scared exactly,” Vincent said slowly.

“Don’t be scared. We’re going to just lift you onto this board and start a line and get some fluid in….”

“Why?” Beth demanded. “Why not just put him in the helicopter?”

“We’d start a line in hell, ma’am. And we don’t put him on the board until we do a flashlight check to see if there’s anything going on with his spine and his brain….”

So, excruciatingly slowly, the medics did just that. “Looks good,” the woman said quickly. “Okay, buddy. Here we go.” Vincent looked up at the person shining lights on him. It wasn’t Ben. Green guys with double lights above their eyes were lifting him onto a bed and carrying him. One held a full bag of fluid above his head.

Cool.

This was also pretty funny, considering.

The Martians were landing.

Thoughtfully, they had brought his mother. She looked pale but she smelled so clean.

The pilot told her, “We’re going directly to St. Luke’s in San Francisco, ma’am.”

“We’re ready,” Beth said evenly. As though Vincent weighed nothing, the soldiers strapped him to a board and loaded him like lumber into the aircraft.

“His hands and feet don’t look too, too bad,” said the medic, gingerly removing Vincent’s gloves and touching his fingers, removing his sodden boots and socks. Beth could tell that the medic was lying. “Can you feel my hand, Vincent? Can you feel this?”

“What?” Vincent answered. The medic was pinching his finger as hard as she could.

One of Vincent’s feet was huge and red and one was small and shriveled, but both looked diminished, poached. Beth breathed in and out slowly.

As they sped over the hills toward the gold-beaded net that was the lights of San Francisco, Vincent told Beth about Bryant Whittier’s desperate, hopeless death, about the small house and the eerie clearing.

Doctors were waiting on the rooftop at St. Luke’s when the helicopter set down. They hurried through the doors and down the elevator to the ER. Three nurses rushed Vincent through the double doors while another ushered Beth into the treatment area partitioned off by a bright yellow curtain. Beth stepped outside while the team cut off Vincent’s clothes and doctors began the slow warming process of his limbs. When Beth stepped back inside, Vincent was wearing a brightly
patterned blue hospital gown. He still smelled of smoke and sweat and his cheekbones reigned over a face so dirty and gaunt that only the grin and the game face he put on for Beth bore a resemblance to the son she knew.

Eventually, the ER resident said, “You’re a lucky guy. A few degrees colder and you’d have been way worse off than you are. This goes fast. You’ll be practically as good as new, with a little luck, in six weeks or so. So, you going to make a movie about this, huh? Who’s going to play me?”

“Not for anything in the world,” Vincent said. “I’m thinking romantic comedies, although my girlfriends have told me I’m neither funny nor romantic.”

The doors closed.

Beth retreated to the cafeteria, where she ate something off every glass shelf, from toast to a grilled cheese to chocolate pudding. She read a magazine article about fitness after forty and gave up when she got to the lunges. Then she spent fifteen minutes in the washroom cleaning her own face and putting on lipstick and mascara. Finally, she called Pat and learned that the family were all on their way to the Marlborough Hotel on Powell Street. Some of them were in Sarah Switch’s truck, others in Bill Humbly’s car. The twenty miles from Durand to the city might take an hour, Pat said, mostly because the reporters’ trucks combined with San Francisco traffic had the road backed up like the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago on the night of a home game.

“I thought they would put on lights and sirens,” Pat said, sounding as disappointed as a kid who’d missed the parade. There was a huge whoop then, as Humbly and Switch did exactly that and began to muscle their way through the parallel silver grid of cars.

Beth relaxed. Tonight, their lonely room at the Lone Star Inn would be empty.

She walked past the hospital room, 112—the one to which a floor nurse had said Vincent would be moved. There was a cushy reclining chair inside and someone bustling around, setting up stands and affixing
what looked like wings to the bedside. Beth wandered on, covertly glancing at half-opened doors the rooms of which seemed nearly empty. Thankfully, a quiet hospital night.

Having killed as much time as she could, she went back to the door of the emergency room. She asked, “Is Vincent Cappadora awake?”

“You’re his mother. We met before,” the nurse said. “Well, he is sort of. He’s groggy. We’ve kind of knocked him out on purpose. They have a lot of work to do. But you can wait in his room for him. I’ll get another chair in there. Or a cot if you like.”

“That’s okay,” Beth said. “I can sit in the chair that’s in there. I peeked inside. It looks pretty comfortable.”

From one of the hospital’s tiered windows, Beth glanced down at the street. It was nearly midnight, and news trucks and throngs of reporters clogged the street in front of the hospital. She supposed there would be more back at the Marlborough Hotel as well as back in Durand. Beth had already heard about a one-hour special planned by Katie Couric that would include an interview with everyone from Bill Humbly to, Beth supposed, Roman the dog.

Briefly, Beth thought of Claire and Blaine Whittier and whispered the tag end of a prayer for them.

“The one chair is fine,” Beth said again.

“For both of you?” the nurse asked.

“Both of who?” Beth asked. “You aren’t getting Vincent to sit up tonight?”

“I meant you and his brother.”

“His brother’s in there? Are you sure? I just came past,” Beth said.

“So did he, the other way,” the nurse told her.

Beth walked back down the hall to the door and leaned in through the small opening. When she let her eyes adjust to the gloom, she saw that the big leather chair indeed was now occupied. Ben sat there quietly, his hands in his lap. He still wore his dirty wind pants, but his shirt was clean, his hands and face washed, his hair wet-combed.

At that moment, she heard a gurney rattle up behind her.

Vincent was wheeled past, a white sheet pulled up to his bare
chest, the blue-flowered hospital gown over his shoulders. Both hands were wrapped in gauze and secured to individual boards and his ankle was suspended on a thick, formed foam block. The doctor with him explained to Beth that the fracture on his ankle was serious, but would mend. The packs on his hands and feet would bear watching and would be changed throughout the night. “We’ll hope for the best,” the doctor said.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that your son could lose a finger or a toe. Or more. I hope not,” the doctor admitted. He and the nurse began to guide Vincent toward the room. For a moment, Vincent opened his eyes.

“We did it, Ma,” he said, his voice something above a croak and below a squeak.

“You did it,” Beth said.

“Now
you can be proud of me.”

Beth smiled and said, “Naaah.” She kissed Vincent’s forehead but did not follow him into his room. She heard Vincent cry out as he and his structure were shifted onto the bed. Still, she hung back.

Beth listened as a nurse told Ben, “We’ll bring you a pillow once we get him situated. And a blanket.”

“Can I help?” Ben asked.

“When he wakes up, yes,” the nurse said. “You! Hey, you’re the dad of the little baby. How is Baby Stella?”

“She’s great. She’s with her mom at the hotel and she’s just great. Perfect. Thank you,” Ben said.

“I’ll bet you can’t wait to run back there and cuddle her,” the nurse said. “She’s beautiful. I saw her picture on TV.”

“I can’t wait. But I’m going to stay here tonight with Vincent,” Ben said. “I’ll stay here until morning.”

“Your mom’s here …”

“I have to be here too,” Ben said.

“You guys must be close.”

“He’s … uh, well, yeah. He’s my brother. Stella wouldn’t be here without him,” Ben said. “Come to think of it, maybe I wouldn’t either.”

As Beth watched, unseen, Vincent grimaced and wrinkled his nose, tossing his head in opiate sleep. Ben leaned over and brushed his brother’s face, as though to banish whatever disturbed him. Then Ben sat back and put his feet up on the railings of the bed, his eyes watchful, flicking between Vincent’s face and the blue screen of the monitors. Quietly, he said, “It’s okay, Vincent. Shhhhhhh.”

Beth’s eyes blurred. She fled for the elevators and grabbed a cab to the hotel.

“Where’s Ben?” Eliza asked as soon as Beth ducked into their adjoined rooms. “He just … left.”

Eliza lay curled on the bed with Stella sleeping between her and Candy; Pat had passed out on a kind of cushy chaise in one corner.

Candy looked around. “I don’t know. I didn’t hear him say anything but about wanting a cheeseburger. And somebody brought about fifty cheeseburgers from the Air Force base. Those should be luscious.”

“He’s at the hospital,” Beth said. “He’s with Vincent.”

“How is Vincent?” Candy asked.

“His ankle will be fine. They’re not sure about frostbite and if he’ll lose …” Beth glanced at Eliza. “Toes or fingers.”

“No!” Eliza said and the baby cried out briefly. “I’d give up my own fingers!”

“It’s what he wanted to do,” said Candy. “You married into kind of a good family.” Eliza smiled.

“Where’s Kerry?” Beth asked.

“Well, she’s decided to revive her career instead of teaching high-school chorus and giving up opera,” Pat said, suddenly waking with a broad yawn. “She told me if we found Stella she’d never let anyone take a photo of her, except you, Bethie. For the rest of her life. But she just took a long shower and said she was going down to the lobby to have cocktails courtesy of CNN.”

“She looked beautiful, like the old Kerry,” Eliza said.

“You’re might pretty, baby,” Candy put in.

“She’s the prettiest thing I ever saw. She’s the most beautiful baby on earth. And thank you for the sweet dress, Mama.”

“That was a gift from someone,” Candy said. “And I meant you. But I hope they’re okay tonight. Blaine especially.”

Beth said, “It’s going to be a long time before they’re okay.”

The next morning in Durand, after she’d stood next to Lorrie Sabo while she introduced Roman to TV audiences all over the world, telling them that it was “absurd” to think that she would let Vincent pay her for finding Stella, Sarah Switch slipped away to the trailhead that led up to the little house on Bryant Whittier’s land.

Despite her stealth, news crews caught sight of her.

They had already put two and two together when a helicopter churned over them toward the mountain field and made ready for whatever they could catch on film when it returned.

Claire and Blaine waited with Sarah Switch as soldiers gently handed out a red-blanketed stretcher with straps firmly holding down a motionless form. From the top, a thatch of Bryant Whittier’s dark chestnut hair whipped in the artificial wind. The morning was soft and springlike. Claire Whittier covered her face and wept. Beside her, Blaine stood tall, her dry eyes impenetrable. Claire confided in Switch that, beyond her relief over the baby, she was unable to think of anything except that this might have been the moment of her twenty-fifth-anniversary toast in Tuscany.

Whittier had the right wife, Switch thought. She wondered again if she should have honored Claire’s plea to bring her husband’s body down before police visited the crime scene. It would be a choice she would regret and a lesson she would never forget. The sheriff would not again accept that something that seemed unambiguous and unequivocal actually was.

As they waited for the ambulance to finish loading her father’s body, Blaine Whittier said, “Mom, Dad made a choice. And you do have me.”

Alone, later, although she wept at the unbearable details of his lonely
death, Blaine Whittier hated her father for torturing her and Claire. She would hate him even more a week later when the snow melted.

Then, police and recovery volunteers, headed by Switch and Humbly, searched and dismantled the little house. Beneath it, they found a cross, handmade from logs and bound with rawhide thongs, crushed deep into the soil. Under that, swaddled in a nearly disintegrated white wool blanket, were remains quickly identified as those of Jacqueline Whittier. The coroner’s opinion was that Jacqueline had died by misadventure, although no one could say for sure, after two full years in the ground, how she got the blow that fractured her skull.

The story that had ended in cozy glory took a sinister turn and exploded.

Blaine decided to take her junior year abroad, in Italy, where eventually Claire would visit her.

When Claire opted to sell the house in Durand and return to Chicago to be near her parents, she asked Blaine what she should do with the mountain summerhouse. Blaine suggested her mother donate it to some children’s charity, in Jacqueline’s name.

And she wondered if her junior year abroad might turn into forever.

“B
ye,” Beth said to Pat, who was headed for his first night back at the restaurant. They had come back from California several days earlier but Pat had taken his time about going back to work. “Is it going to feel weird?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, but kind of, Bethie,” Pat said. “I used to think of it as my second home. Hell, I used to think of it as my first home sometimes. But now, it’s like, it’s my job. I’ll probably stay there for a while. Dad can close. He’s only been back a week. Hasn’t seen any of the crowd. Except Charley Two. Those guys practically threw a parade for us.”

“That bother you?” Beth asked. “All the fuss, I mean.”

“I’m not looking forward to it, after seeing this mug of mine on TV for the past two weeks. Then again, who wouldn’t be happy? We’re lucky to have friends like the friends we have.”

“We are.”

“What I’m scared of is women, to be honest.” Pat paused to glance in the hall mirror. “I’m wearing suits I couldn’t fit into for ten years. Nice ones, too. I could get mobbed. Tragedy’s good for weight loss.”

“So I hear. But don’t even joke about it, Paddy.” She smiled then. “On the other hand, go ahead. We should smile. Go out and get ’em, stud. I’m just going to sit here like a lump of flesh.”