Southampton Spectacular (34 page)

“I don’t care,” Pauline kept saying. She was shaking her head constantly as she talked. Sometimes looking up, sometimes looking at the ground. But always shaking her head. “I don’t care, they’re not going.”

“We’re here to pick up the kids,” Nina said again.

“Mrs. Dunn sent us,” Barnes repeated.

“I don’t care,” Pauline said.

It took nearly twenty minutes of this. Back and forth, like a bad game of checkers. But in the end Pauline seemed to lose her resolve all at once. Perhaps she was fearful of becoming marginalized or even fired outright by the newly assertive Tracy Dunn. In any case, Nina was allowed to help Ned into the back of the maroon Honda Accord; he sat there in silence, wondering at this latest development in his too-eventful life. He understood that his older brother had been in an accident, which was bad. On the other hand, he also understood that James was alive, and that they were now being taken to see him. And without Pauline in the car. Which bordered on fantastic.

Barnes put Frankie carefully into the baby seat in the back of the Honda next to Ned, and then Barnes struggled for a good five minutes to fasten the array of buckles and straps around Frankie’s pudgy, flailing limbs. Frankie watched (and participated in) this process with evident delight, kicking his legs and waving his arms constantly.

Pauline, meanwhile, walked back to the house in a huff. She emerged a few minutes later carrying a little daypack. Without a word or even a glance at Nina or Barnes, she walked over and climbed into the passenger side of the tiny, beat-up, fifteen-year-old Volkswagen Golf that the Dunn family used for quick trips to the beach, or to the late-night delicatessen, or to the liquor store. The Golf could not strictly be called a family car, because it had only two doors, a back seat filled with litter, and a passenger-side seat with a broken seatbelt. Jerry Dunn was the only one who ever drove it. His wife had wanted to send it to the junk pile long ago, but Mr. Dunn would not budge. In a fit of pique, he had even gone so far as to have the engine overhauled, so that now the little car had far more horsepower than it needed. Despite the overhaul, the car had begun making a chattering, rattling noise last year; this noise grew louder every month, and Tracy Dunn had begun calling the car the Gopher, a derisive name that caught on fast with anyone who saw or heard it rattling by. Jerry Dunn, contrary as ever, had searched for a new nickname, one as dissimilar from gopher as he could think of. After several days of consideration, he had decided that he – and everyone – would begin calling his little car the Condor.

After sending Barnes and Nina on their way, Devon walked back to the E.R. waiting room. She had given everyone their pep-talks and their assignments, and for a minute she was overcome with a feeling of unbearable weariness. So she sat in the first plastic chair that she found empty and then simply let herself crumple down into a lump. Like an army colonel who finds himself momentarily free of wartime duties, and who allows himself the luxury of briefly bowing his head. Of taking a deep, less-than-steady breath. Of closing his eyes, and humming a song that his mother used to sing to him.

In another minute she felt all right. Or close enough to all right. Which was important, because there was more to do.

Assuming Barnes would be successful in his seduction of Pauline – which was a huge, lump-in-the-throat assumption – there was still the matter of Jerry Dunn’s reaction to consider. Devon wanted him mad at Pauline, and of that she felt she could be sure. But she
didn’t
want him flying into an actual rage. If Jerry Dunn felt as if he had no one on his side – not his wife, not his children, not even his own mistress, Pauline – then uncontrolled rage might be close behind.

He needed an ally.

Devon rose from her chair and walked over to her parents. They both still had magazines open on their laps, but now they were looking at her. Waiting for her to come to them if she needed anything.

“Everything under control?” her father asked.

“You’ve been doing very well,” her mother said. Cynthia Hall’s face was full of pride. “With Mrs. Dunn, especially. Are you going to go in and visit James?”

“In a minute,” Devon said, acknowledging the compliment with a nod.  She turned to her father. “Dad. Question.”

“Go.”

Devon hesitated for a split second. In the last moment before speaking, she lost sight of how to ask this favor from her father without going too deep. There were other questions she wanted to ask, but those were for later. Now was the time for helping the Dunn family. For creating stability. So Devon plowed ahead, but awkwardly. “Is there any way – ” She stopped. Shook her head and tried again. “Can you go in there and be Jerry Dunn’s friend?”

Both of her parents frowned. Or
would
have frowned, if they had not both been keeping such tight control over themselves. But Devon saw the twitch in both of them, and she made a mental note to involve her mother in these questions, too. The
other
questions. About the names up on the wall in the Racquet Club. Later on, when all of this stuff was under control.

“I can try,” Peter Hall said. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Other than his child being in intensive care, that is.” He gave Devon a knowing look. “What kind of friend do you want me to be?”

Devon smiled. She seldom gave her father much credit for perception of unspoken things, but now she reminded herself that he was not so far behind her mother in this respect. “The ‘strong family’ kind of friend,” Devon said. “The kind that reminds him what’s really important.”

Her father looked confused. “He needs to be reminded of that
now
? Didn’t he just go through almost losing his eldest son? As we speak, I believe he’s standing at his bedside.”

“Right, which is why this might turn out to be sort of a long-term assignment.” Devon rocked her head back and forth slowly, like a star witness debating how much to reveal. “It can’t hurt to have somebody on your side,” she said finally. “Somebody sensible,” she added. “In case anything
else
happens.”

Her father sighed. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give it a shot.” He stood and put his magazine back on the pile on the table. Then he lowered his head for a second, as if trying to remember what one said to a scared, grief-stricken, alcoholic, adulterous father when one wanted to strike up a conversation.

He seemed to think of something, and he headed for the E.R. doors.

The nurse at the window tried to say something to him as he passed, but Peter Hall didn’t seem to hear her. He continued through.

Ned and Frankie were finally both secured in the Honda, and Nina took a moment to lock up her own car. Pauline was waiting in the Volkswagen. As Nina climbed into the Honda’s driver’s seat, Barnes came over. She looked up at him with concern.

He looks strange
, she thought.

He was nervous, which was to be expected. But Nina thought he looked keyed-up, too. As if he were about to play in one of his beloved soccer matches, but against a team he wasn’t sure he could beat. “Ready?” she asked.

“Yup.” He stood there for another moment, not saying anything else. Nina began to wonder what was going on. Maybe Barnes was simply too nervous to go through with it. But then he spoke up again. “See you in a little while,” he said. And then he did something that she found very odd. He bent at the waist like a waiter and planted a little kiss on top of her head. Like a parent saying goodnight.

She
smiled
. “Don’t worry, honey,” she said, once Barnes had stepped away. “I won’t think less of you. This is just business.”

But Barnes didn’t smile back. He looked at her silently for another minute, and then he said, “Hands.”

Nina held the steering wheel, and Barnes shut the Honda’s door and jogged over to the Volkswagen.

The Honda’s motor was already running, and the doors and windows were all closed, but Nina could still hear the Condor’s over-charged engine snarl to life when Barnes started it up. She listened to him wrestle with the standard transmission for a minute, and then they pulled out of the Dunn driveway together, a little two-car convoy headed for the hospital. Nina was in the lead with the children. She was already trying to get a conversation going with Ned, who was responding well. Any environment without Pauline was a good one, and he began telling Nina about an especially exciting story his mother had been reading to him the day before.

Nina checked her rearview mirror as they started out, wondering absently how Barnes would proceed. Maybe today he would do no more than break the ice.

Get to know your friendly neighborhood psycho. Learn her hometown. Exchange a few pleasantries. Surely you have a number of things in common. Sew the seeds for a relationship that’s bound to flourish later on.

Except that she didn’t think Pauline would want to talk to Barnes at all in her current mood, no matter how charming he tried to be. Their car was so noisy that he would have to shout to be heard.

Nina checked in her rearview mirror again, and the Volkswagen was no longer behind them. She didn’t think anything of it. She told herself that Barnes was probably just taking a longer route. Stalling for time, planning his big move.

Which he was, of course. But not the way Nina thought.

Devon and Cynthia were waiting silently now, the two of them alone in the waiting room except for a scattering of relatives of other patients. Devon’s head was too full of doubts and possibilities and questions to do anything but sit, and her mother knew enough simply to stay next to her, one hand on the back of her neck, rubbing occasionally, as if searching for knots of bunched nerves and muscle. Saying nothing.

They looked up at the sound of the outside doors opening, and there was Nina. She came into the waiting room like a breeze on a hot day, Frankie in one arm and Ned holding onto the other, all three of them grinning like sweepstakes winners. The kids had put Nina in a good mood. She felt now as if things were going to work out. Somehow.

“These boys are pretty cool,” she said, and handed Frankie to Devon's mother without being asked. It seemed the most natural thing to do. Cynthia accepted the ten-month-old without argument and immediately began bouncing him on her knee. Frankie giggled appreciatively. As so often happened in Frankie’s world, today was turning out to be yet another extraordinarily funny and delightful day.

Bouncing on a knee?

My God, you’ve got to try this.

Ned was still talking eagerly to Nina, telling her story after story, and it was difficult to tell which tales had come from books or from his own experiences. The two worlds overlapped more often than not. He was speaking so quickly that he seemed to be in a race against some sort of impossible deadline.

“And
then
Danny
said
you
better
not
a
nd
I
said
or
else
what?
And
then
Danny
…”

“Nice going,” Devon said to Nina when Ned paused for breath. He quickly resumed, but then Cynthia Hall swooped in with the practiced technique of an old hand. And without any pause in Frankie’s bouncing. “What
were you telling her?” she demanded of Ned, with wide-eyed wonder. “Can you tell
me
?”

Ned obliged her with renewed enthusiasm, and Nina and Devon were allowed to talk.

“No problem with the nanny?”

Nina made a see-saw motion with one hand. “At first. But we wore her down.”

Devon glanced at the exit doors in case anyone else might be about to come walking through. “So where are they now?”

“No idea. They went another way. I assume they’ll be here pretty soon. She wasn’t in a very good mood.”

“They took the Condor?”

Nina nodded. “That thing is a mess.”

“All right. I’m going to go talk to the admitting nurse. Pauline shouldn’t be allowed onto the main floor.”

“You think she’ll even want to?”

“She might try to go see Mr. Dunn. I don’t know. I want to be ready either way.”

Cynthia Hall glanced up from the children, and she put a hand on Ned’s arm to hold him in mid-sentence for a moment. “Can I do anything else?”