compromise on four.”
“Good idea,” he said. “They’re talking about five or six for the usual patient. Not someone in…your condition.” He actually smiled when he said those words, giving her hope that her pregnancy would not continue to be the great unbroachable subject.
“How did it go with your mom?” he asked.
“It was really good to be with her,” she said, missing her mother a bit already. “She bought me five thousand different types of vitamins and a few aromatherapy candles and gave me foot massages every night.”
“I’m glad it was a good visit.” He glanced at her, then smiled the smile that put that provocative crevice in his cheek. “You are a really cute pregnant woman,” he said.
She laughed. “Thanks,” she said. That was the warmest thing he’d said to her in ages. “And thanks for doing this, Liam,” she said. “I know you don’t want to.”
“You’re welcome,” he said with a brief nod of his head, acknowledging that she was quite right.
Carlynn met them in the foyer of the nursing home. Liam greeted her with a stiff, but cordial, hello, and Joelle gave her a hug. The older woman felt more frail than ever beneath her arms, as though her bones might crack if she squeezed her too hard. The three of them walked in silence down the corridor to Mara’s room.
Mara was sitting up in bed, getting her face wiped by an aide who had just fed her lunch. She smiled and, when she spotted Liam, let out a little cry of delight. He was first to reach her bed, and he leaned over to kiss her. Mara lifted her right arm up as though trying to hug him, although she could not quite master the maneuver.
“Liam!” Joelle said. “Look at her arm! She’s trying to hug you with it.”
Liam stepped back. “She’s been doing that for the past few weeks. They’ve brought the physical therapist back in to help her work with her arm a bit more.”
Joelle remembered the last time she’d seen Mara with Carlynn, when Mara had appeared to massage the older woman’s palm with her right hand. Was that the day the use of her arm had improved? She didn’t dare suggest that to Liam, at least not right then. She knew he wouldn’t think Carlynn’s visit had anything to do with an improvement in his wife.
“Hi, Mara.” Joelle stepped forward to give her a hug, noticing how Mara’s silky hair brushed against her cheek. “Your hair’s getting longer, sweetie,” she said. “I haven’t been around to cut it in a while, but it looks really pretty. Maybe we should leave it this way. What do you think, Liam?”
He nodded. “I like it,” he said, then he turned to Carlynn. “So, what do we do now?” he asked, the impatience barely concealed in his voice.
Carlynn leaned on her cane in the center of the small room and looked around her, as though trying to make a decision. “Okay,” she said finally. “Here’s what I suggest. Liam, could you see if you could find another chair for in here? Then you and Joelle can sit while I massage Mara’s hands again.”
Liam left the room without a word, and Joelle exchanged a look with Carlynn.
“It’s all right,” Carlynn said, knowing what she was thinking. “He’ll be fine.”
Liam brought back one of the hard, straight-backed chairs from the cafeteria across the hall and set it near the recliner that was next to the bed.
“You take the recliner, Jo,” he said, and she sat down. Then he sat in the smaller chair and looked at Carlynn, waiting for his next instruction.
Carlynn sat on the edge of Mara’s bed, poured baby lotion onto her palm and began to massage Mara’s hands, as she had the last time she’d visited the nursing home with Joelle.
“Joelle and Liam,” she said without looking at them, “please talk about memories you have of your time with Mara. Any situations you can remember that involved the three of you.”
“What’s the point?” Liam asked, and Joelle felt like kicking him.
“I want her to hear you talking about things that involve all three of you that she would also remember, if she were able. We want to stimulate that memory bank in her brain.”
Liam wearily rubbed the back of his head, his eyes closed, and Joelle doubted he was going to put much effort into this exercise. Obviously, it would be up to her to start. Resting her head against the recliner, she stared at the ceiling and thought back over the years to some of the many memories they shared.
“I remember the party Rusty and I gave where I was hoping to fix Mara and Liam up without their knowing it,” she said. She smiled at Liam, and he looked at her. “I remember the exact moment when it clicked for both of them.”
“When?” He looked curious.
“We were all sitting around my living room, remember? And everyone was playing instruments. And you and Mara had your guitars. And you started playing that song…I don’t remember the title…the Joan Baez song that goes, ‘Show me the something, show me the—’”
“‘There But for Fortune,’” Liam said.
“Right. And you were singing, and suddenly Mara started singing and playing the same song, in perfect harmony with you, and you two were looking at each other across the room, and it was like there was this invisible thread connecting you, and neither of you knew anyone else was there. And I was thinking,
Pursing his lips, Liam nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “it was a good call on your part. And you were playing a pan and a spoon, right?”
“No, I had the comb and the tissue paper,” she said. “Rusty had the pan and spoon. The instrument of least effort.”
“Rusty was a pill,” Liam said. “It’s good you ditched him.”
“He ditched me,” she said, “but never mind.”
