Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) (21 page)

“Kurt’s a diabetic.” A pause, while Amanda let the implications sink in, but Claire continued to be confused. Finally the actress took pity on her and spelled it out. “Over time that can sometimes have a severe effect on some very important nerves.”

Claire could finally read between the lines and Kurt’s sagging shoulders. Amanda was saying Kurt - kick-boxing, weapon-wielding, snarling-in-the-face-of-death Kurt Price - was impotent, and had been for some time.

“I’ve told him over and over again that he can do other kinds of movies. Comedy, for example. He’s naturally funny.” Amanda addressed herself to her husband’s back. “Or do a serious movie. Gain some weight and let everyone see you with a gut, like Sly did.”

Kurt spoke without turning around. “And has Hasbro sold an toy action figure modeled on him since then?”

Amanda let out an exasperated sigh. “If you’re still so set on shoot-’em-ups, then you could play the older friend, the one who doesn’t get the girl. Maybe even the one who gets killed. Or go with your image, but parody it. Make fun of yourself before someone else does. If you’re not careful, that’s what your movies will be - parodies - without you planning it. You could stop talking about getting pec implants and just embrace the truth. You’re not who you were. But you know what, Kurt? It doesn’t matter. How many times do I have to tell you that it doesn’t matter to me? And it doesn’t matter to your daughter. And she is your daughter, no one can take that away from you.” She went up behind him and kissed the back of his neck, softly, as if they were alone in the room. He allowed her to take his hand and lead him to the couch, but he wouldn’t raise his head to look Claire in the eye.

“Let me show you a picture of Zach,” Claire said. She wanted Amanda and Kurt to understand what they had traded their secret for. “Do you think he looks like your daughter?” Claire handed over the photo of Zach that Lori had given her, the one guaranteed to melt the heart of any parent, biological or otherwise.

Together, Amanda and Kurt regarded it for a long while. Kurt looked sad and tired, but Amanda’s expression was unreadable. “There may be a resemblance,” she said finally. “Perhaps more than that.” A tiny muscle flickered near her eye. So there were some things even an actress couldn’t control. She looked up at Claire with the smoke-colored eyes that had been projected on a thousand movie screens. “If they took Emily’s bone marrow, wouldn’t it hurt her?”

Even though her heart was racing, Claire tried to keep her voice calm and reassuring. “First of all, they would just test to see if there was a match. And all that requires is a blood draw.” This child of Amanda and Kurt’s, this Emily, she was Lori’s daughter, too, Claire was suddenly sure of it. And she would prove to be a match. Claire’s bones lightened as she imagined Zach well again. “If she does match, it’s not like a real surgery, where they open you up and take out an organ. They just suck out some bone marrow from the hip, under anesthesia. There’s some soreness for two or three days afterward, but that’s about it. In a couple of weeks, the body naturally replenishes the bone marrow that was taken, just like it would with a blood donation.”

Amanda let her breath out in a sigh, and then was silent for a long time. She looked at Kurt and he gave the smallest perceptible nod. She said, “We’ll consent to a blood test. And if Emily is a match, and she agrees, we will also consent to her donating.”

GONFSHN

###

Claire drove straight to the hospital. On the seat beside her was a small silver-framed photograph of Emily that Amanda had given her after Claire asked if she could take the girl’s picture. The actors didn’t want to tell their daughter anything until it was clear that she was who Claire knew she must be - Lori’s daughter.

She walked quickly down the cancer ward’s long corridor, scarcely taking in the sights and sounds of terribly ill children. When she reached Zach’s room, she found him curled on his hospital bed, the IV lines running into the plug in his chest. His eyes were closed. Lori lay beside him, but started up when she saw Claire. She eased herself out of bed without speaking, and they walked into the hall.

“I think I’ve found her,” Claire whispered.

With trembling fingers, Lori took the photograph. She studied it for a long time, then the picture fell to the floor with a clatter. “She is a beautiful girl. But she’s not mine.”

“How can you say that? You can’t tell just be looking a picture!”

Was this it then? Claire wondered as she walked through the hospital parking lot.
 
Amanda had promised to make arrangements for Emily’s blood to be drawn tomorrow, but was it already over tonight? Claire tried to tell herself that Emily could still be Lori’s daughter, that they still had to wait until the blood was typed. But somewhere inside, in a place deep past reasoning and logic, Claire found herself believing Lori. If Lori said Emily wasn’t her daughter, then the girl wasn’t. That meant that the Liebling’s child had been dead and buried for eight years. And with her was buried all hope of Zach surviving. Claire’s chest ached. There was a river of tears dammed up inside her.

As Claire drove home from the hospital, she realized she was only a couple of blocks from Ginny’s apartment. What had happened to the young woman? Despite his promise, Dr. Gregory had never called to report if Ginny had been admitted to another hospital.

She parked in the lot and went up the worn cement stairs. An orange and black sign was taped to Ginny’s door. “Apartment for rent. Inquire with manager in unit six.” The yellow curtains to her apartment were open, but the apartment was empty. Every trace of Ginny was gone.

When Claire knocked on the door to unit six, a frowzy woman with a bad perm and a cigarette perched on her lip answered the door.

“I’m a friend of Ginny Sloop’s. Where is she? Did she go home?”

The woman shrugged. “That’s what her father said.”

“Her father?”
“He called me up and said the girl had decided to go home. He told me I could take all her stuff and sell it or give it to Goodwill, didn’t make no difference to him.”

Relief washed over Claire like a wave. “So she went back to Eastern Oregon then.”

“That’s right. Her daddy said she decided to have those babies there and raise them up with the help of her family.”

“He said she was still pregnant?” Claire asked, staring.

The woman exhaled a cloud of white smoke into Claire’s face. “Little thing’s not due for another month, now is she?”

###

Claire parked on Terwilliger Boulevard. For as long as Portland had had streets, Terwilliger, with its stands of tall trees and breath-taking views of the city, had been the preferred route for local runners and the favorite place to park for local lovers. Below them, the city lay cupped between the hills. The wide, dark ribbon of the Willamette river wove through the sparkle of hundreds of city lights.

Doug Renfro, the parking lot attendant from the Bradford Clinic, sat still and silent beside her. She had called from a pay phone near Ginny’s old apartment. They had arranged to meet at eight p.m. at the foot of the long hill that led to the clinic. Before going home, she had stopped by the liquor store.

Claire had to tell Charlie what had happened in fits and starts, waiting for moments when Max was occupied. Charlie’s eyes filmed with tears when she learned that there was now no hope for Zach. Claire saw how Max made a point of not noticing the expressions on the faces of the adults around him. They ate dinner together in silence. While Max watched a children’s video, Claire told Charlie her plan to wrest the truth about Ginny from Doug. Charlie had her doubts that Claire would learn anything, but they both agreed that they had to know what had happened.

“Are you cold?” Claire asked Doug now. His hands were stuffed in his coat pockets, even though the evening was warm enough that Claire had rolled down her window a couple of inches. “I could run the heater if you want.”

Doug shook his head without answering. He hadn’t said much on the phone, either, just agreed in monosyllables that he wouldn’t mind seeing her again.

She had filled a fat thermos with a batch of Long Island Iced Tea, which through some miracle combination of five kinds of hard liquor resulted in something that could be sucked down as easily as a soft drink. Her plan, such as it was, was to get Doug good and drunk, so drunk that he might tell her all he knew about what had happened the night Ginny gave birth. Maybe he didn’t know anything.
 
She remembered that Vi had written it was three in the morning when Ginny started to bleed and wouldn’t stop. Doug had probably been sound asleep.

Then again, maybe he knew a lot. A few days before, when Claire had pulled her keys from her coat pocket, a slip of paper had fluttered onto the floor. She had picked it and stared at the strange handwriting for a minute, puzzled. It took her a while to remember who Doug Renfro was. She realized that was the thing about Doug. He was forgettable. He sat in his booth all day and watched people drive in and out. They might talk to him for a minute, or if there were two of them in the car, they might continue their conversation as if he wasn’t there at all. Claire knew. She had had that kind of job before, cashiering at an all-you-could eat restaurant, where you didn’t even need to eavesdrop to hear bitter arguments and protestations of desperate love.

Long Island Iced Tea might not be the best approach to loosening Doug’s tongue, but at least it would be quick. And with luck she could get Doug drunk enough that he wouldn’t be interested in exploring her body and discovering that her pregnancy was really a throw pillow she wore strapped across her belly.

She filled two paper cups to the brim and handed one to Doug, along with a straw. While she waited for the alcohol to have its affect, Claire told him stories she made up on the spot about growing up in California, basing them loosely on lyrics to Beach Boy songs. She turned herself into a surfer girl with a tan, two things she could never hope for in a million years. Doug only grunted at her tales, but she thought there was a kind of approval or interest hidden in the guttural sounds.

“How about you - where did you grow up?”

“I’m local. There’s not much to say about that.” His straw sucked air. “Any more where that came from?” He turned in his seat and held out his cup, and she noticed his left hand was still in his pocket. At least he wasn’t trying to slip it around her neck. Yet.

“Is it interesting, working at the clinic?” Claire asked.

“I could tell you some stories.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her and she hoped that meant he was loosening up.

“What kind of stories?”

He leaned a little closer. “More than one famous woman has come in to Dr. Bradford with a flat belly and come out with a baby and a birth certificate that says she’s the mother.”

“Oh really? Like who?” She thought he might say Amanda Price, but evidently he wasn’t loose enough yet to name specific names.

“Let’s just say some pretty famous ones, including some whose names you would definitely recognize. You get to see a lot where I sit. Pretty much everybody takes you for granted, you know, like they do the guy who cleans the floors. You’re just an extension of the mop. Or in my case, the little striped arm that lets them get where they want to go. They only notice you if they need something. Like once a girl begged me to hide her and her baby. I’m sitting there reading a magazine and suddenly there she is in a hospital gown with no back and a little itty-bitty baby in her arms. There’s still blood running down her legs and she is begging me to hide her. As if I had a way to do that.”

Was Claire imagining sadness in Doug’s voice? “What did you do?”

“Dr. Bradford was there about ten seconds later, so there wasn’t much I could do, was there? Vi - that’s the head nurse, did you meet her? - Vi told me all about how hormones will make a woman say things she doesn’t mean.”

“Do you think that was true? That she really didn’t mean it?” Claire asked. She imagined what it would be like to be that girl with the baby and no place to hide.

He lifted one shoulder. “Who knows? Maybe Dr. Bradford talked her into doing something she decided she really didn’t want to do. Maybe he didn’t even talk her into something, just took the baby. I learned a long time ago that Dr. Bradford is all secrets, he is layers and layers of secrets. Maybe some I know, maybe some Mrs. Bradford - the first Mrs. Bradford - knew, maybe some nobody but him knows.”

“The first Mrs. Bradford?” Claire echoed.

“The real one. Two years ago last month, she died of a heart attack. Six weeks later, Dr. Bradford married one of the nurses from the clinic. He expects me to call
her
Mrs. Bradford, now. But she didn’t like me when she was working there, and she for sure doesn’t like me now that I’m living two hundred feet away.”

“You said only Dr. Bradford knows all the secrets. Do you know any secrets, Doug?”

“What kind of a question is that, Lucy?” He was definitely warming up now. He had turned to face her in his seat, and now he leaned forward and tucked a curl behind her ear. “I like your hair like this.” Aside from the pillow, Claire had come more or less as herself - with her hair down and in her Mazda. He had commented on the change in cars when he got in. She should have thought to borrow the Firebird again from J.B. - a parking lot attendant probably had little do all but memorize cars. “I’ll trade you,” he said now. “I’ll trade you a secret for a kiss.”

His tongue was in her mouth, his teeth knocking against hers, before she could argue. He smelled like Ivory soap, and he tasted only of Long Island Iced Tea and what Claire thought was Crest, so at least she had that to be thankful for. With his right hand, he tried to pull her toward him. Maybe Mata Hari had done this willingly, but Claire was having a hard time staying in character. Unbidden, she thought of Dante, of his dark curls and the way one of his front teeth had been broken and then mended with a flash of white. Claire remembered the last time she had been with him, and without planning to, she tore her mouth away. Humming with desire, Doug leaned over her. Reflexively, she put both hands on his chest. Doug put his arm around her waist and tried to pull her closer, but instead his hand grabbed the pillow. Claire pushed him so hard that he fell halfway back across the seat, his right hand still holding the pillow. His left hand came out of his coat pocket. Claire jerked back when she saw it.

Gray and shiny with scar tissue, it was half the size of a normal hand. It retained enough of the look of a hand so that it was eerily familiar, like a money’s paw or a raccoon’s human-like hand.

They spoke at the same time.

“You’re not pregnant?”

“What happened to your hand?”

Only then did Doug notice his shriveled hand was still on display. He quickly thrust it back into his pocket, his expression unreadable. “My first mother got herself pregnant in college and decided to make some money off the deal. She got her thirty pieces of silver off Dr. Bradford, who sold me to my second mother. Then when I was two my second so-called mother was doing her ironing while I played on the floor. The phone rang. She left me alone while she went to answer it, and while she was gone I pulled on this long dangly cord to see what was on the end.”

“Oh, no,” Claire breathed.

“The iron fell flat on my hand. They say you can’t remember anything that happened when you were that little, but I do. By the time she heard me screaming, it had burnt right down, through the skin and the tendons and the muscles. Down to the bones.” His words were matter-of-fact, but Claire could hear the pain that underlay each one.

“After my second mother ruined me, she decided she didn’t want me, either. She just drove up to the clinic and left me on his doorstep and drove off. It’s like I was some toy that she broke the wheel off of. Since she couldn’t put me in the trash she did the next best thing and tossed me on Dr. Bradford’s doorstep. He didn’t want a little two-year-old boy child with a crippled hand either. But putting me out on the street might have led to too many questions. So he got his wife to raise me. The first Mrs. Bradford. The real one. She was like the only mom I ever had.” Doug’s voice was low and full of bitterness. “Except for Mrs. Bradford, Vi was the only one there who was nice to me. After she got her daughter, I told her about what happened to me. She understood, you know. And now she’s dying, too.”

“Dying?” Claire interjected, surprised. It was hard to think of Vi, with her impractical high heels and bright intelligent eyes, as dying.

“She’s got lung cancer. Dr. Bradford’s new wife has been filling in for her again, just like the old days when she used to work there.”