she’d be angry if the coat got wet, so I took it off and stuffed it into a little ball. The neighbor’s daughter, who walked me home every day because she was nine years old and responsible, helped me jam the coat inside my Snoopy book bag. “You little fool,” my mother had said when my friend left me at the door, “you’re going to catch pneumonia.” I had run up to my room and thrown myself on the bed, angry that I had disappointed her yet again.
But then again, this was the woman who let me take a bus across downtown Chicago when I was five because she thought I was trustworthy. She had tinted clear gelatin with blue food coloring because that was my favorite color. She taught me how to dance the Stroll and how to hang from the monkey bars with my hem tucked a certain way so thouln€†at my skirt didn’t fall up over my head. She had given me my first crayons and coloring book, and had held me when I messed up, assuring me that the lines were for people with no imagination. She had turned herself into someone who was larger than life; someone whose gestures I practiced at night in the bathroom; someone I wanted to be when I grew up.
The night closed around us like a choked throat, suffocating the twitched sounds of the squirrels and the whistling grass. “You weren’t all that bad as a mother,” I said.
“Maybe,” my mother whispered. “Maybe not.”
chapter 30
For the first time in years, Nicholas’s gloved hands shook as he made the incision in the patient’s chest. A neat red line of blood spilled into the hollow left by the scalpel, and Nicholas swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. Anything but this, he thought to himself: climbing Everest, memorizing a dictionary, fighting a war from the front line. Anything had to be easier than doing a quadruple bypass on Alistair Fogerty himself.
He did not have to look under the sterile drapes to know the face connected with the hideously swabbed orange body. Every muscle and line had been etched into his mind; after all, he’d spent eight years absorbing Fogerty’s insults and rallying to meet his boundless expectations. And now the man’s life was in his hands.
Nicholas picked up the saw and switched it to life. It vibrated in the circle of his hands as he touched it to the sternum, carving through the bone. He spread the ribs and he checked the solution in which the leg veins, already harvested, were floating. He imagined Alistair Fogerty standing in the background of the operating suite, his presence hovering at Nicholas’s neck like the stale breath of a dragon. Nicholas looked up at his assisting resident. “I think we’re all set,” he said, watching his words puff out his blue paper mask as if they had meaning or substance.
Robert Prescott was on his hands and knees on the Aubusson rug, rubbing Perrier into a round yellow spot that was part vomit and part sweet potatoes. Now that Max could sit up by himself-at least for a few minutes-he was more likely to spit up whatever he’d last eaten or drunk.
Robert had tried using his baby-sitting time to go over patient files for the next morning, but Max had a habit of pulling them off the couch and wrinkling the papers into his palms. He had gummed one manila binder so thoroughly it fell apart in Robert’s hands.
“Ah,” he said, sitting back on his heels to survey his work. “I don’t think it looks any different from the rosettes.” He frowned at his grandson. “You haven’t done any more of that, have you?”
Max squealed to be picked up-that was his latest thing, that and a razz sound that sprayed everything within three feet. Robert thought he had lifted his arms too, but that might have been wishful thinking. According to Dr. Spock, whom he’d been rereadingon. t‡ in between patients, that didn’t come until the sixth month.
“Let’s see,” he said, holding Max like a football under his arm. He looked around the little parlor, redecorated as a substitute nursery/ playroom, and found what he had been looking for, an old stethoscope. Max liked to suck on the rubber tubes and to hold the cold metal base against his gums, swollen from teething. Robert stood up and passed the toy to Max, but Max dropped it and puckered his lips, getting ready to cry. “Drastic measures,” he said, wheeling Max in a circle over his head. He switched on a
Robert heard the jingle of keys in the door and jumped over the walker so that he could push the Stop button on the tape deck. He slipped Max into the Sassy Seat that was balanced on the edge of the low walnut coffee table and handed him a colander and a plastic mixing spoon. Max stuck the spoon in his mouth and then dropped it on the floor. “Don’t say anything that might give me away,” Robert warned, leaning close to Max, who grabbed his grandfather’s finger and pulled it into his mouth.
Astrid walked into the room, to find Robert thumbing through a patient file and Max sitting quietly with a colander on his head. “Everything’s all right?” she asked, sliding her pocketbook onto the nearest chair.
“Mmm,” Robert said. He noticed that the file he was supposed to be reading was upside down. “Not a peep out of him the whole time.”
When the hospital grapevine made it known that Fogerty had collapsed while doing an aortic valve replacement, Nicholas postponed his afternoon rounds and went straight to his chief’s office. Alistair had been sitting with his feet propped up on the radiator, facing out the window toward the stacks and bricks of the hospital’s incinerator. He was absentmindedly breaking the spiked leaves off his spider plant. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, not bothering to turn around. “Hawaii. Or maybe New Zealand, if I can stand the flight.” He swiveled in the wide leather chair. “Do call out the eighth-grade English teachers. Definition of
Nicholas sank down into the chair that sat across from the desk. “What?” he murmured.
Alistair smiled at him, and Nicholas suddenly realized how very old he seemed. He didn’t know Alistair at all, out of this context. He didn’t know if he golfed, or if he took his Scotch neat; he didn’t know if he had cried at his son’s graduation or his daughter’s wedding. Nicholas wondered if anyone knew Alistair that well; if, for that matter, anyone knew him, either. “Dave Goldman ran the tests,” Fogerty said. “I want you to do the surgery.”
Nicholas swallowed. “I-”
Fogerty held up a hand. “Before you humble yourself, Nicholas, keep in mind that I’d rather do it myself. But since I can’t and sincerad?€† you’re the only other asshole I trust in this entire organization, I wonder if you might pencil me into your busy schedule.”
“Monday,” Nicholas said. “First thing.”
Fogerty sighed and leaned his head against the chair. “Damn right,” he said. “I’ve seen you in the afternoon; you’re sloppy.” He ran his thumbs over the armrests of the chair, worn smooth by the habit. “You’ll take on as many of my patients as you can,” he said. “There will have to be a leave of absence.”
Nicholas stood. “Consider it done.”
He watched as Alistair Fogerty turned his chair to the window again, charting the rise and fall of the chimney smoke. His echo was simply a whisper. “Done,” he said.
Astrid and Robert Prescott sat on the floor of their dining room under the magnificent cherry table that, with all the leaves in place, could seat twenty. Max seemed to like it under there, as if it were some kind of natural cave that deserved exploration. Spread in front of his chubby feet was an array of eight-by-ten glossies, laminated so that his saliva wouldn’t stain the surfaces. Astrid pointed to the smiling picture of Max himself. “Max,” she said, and the baby turned toward her voice. “Ayee,” he said, drooling.
“Close enough.” She patted his shoulder and pointed to the picture of Nicholas. “Daddy. Daddy.”
Robert Prescott straightened abruptly and slammed his head on the underside of the table. “Shit,” he said, and Astrid poked him with an elbow.
“Your language,” she snapped. “That’s not the first word I want to hear from him.” She picked up the portrait of Paige she had shot from a distance, the one Nicholas had balked at the first day he’d left Max. “This is your
