She signed it, practically threw the clipboard back at him, and then said she needed a minute.
The doctor slid the curtain shut. Sylvie peered down at James. He looked so damn old and small. And even though she should have concentrated all her energy on what the doctors were about to do to him and that she might, possibly, lose him, in that moment, the only thing she could think about was what she’d brought up the night before. What he’d done. All she could think about was what the woman’s name was. She wanted to shake him awake and ask him.
She hated herself for even thinking it. She hated herself for how numb she was, too—numb to fear, numb to the possibilities. She knew she should be sobbing at his bedside, cooing soothing words to him, making promises for their lives, but her anger pushed those parts of her away. She shoved out of James’s curtained-off area and went into the ICU waiting room. It was smaller and more intimate than the vast holding pen of the ER, with a stained-glass window and church pew shoved into the corner, a crucifix of Jesus on the far wall. Scott was lying on the twin bed the hospital put out in case visitors wanted to rest. His head nestled on the flat, dingy pillow.
When Scott saw her, he sat up, laying a copy of Maxim on his lap. She stood over him quivering, taking in his enormous, filthy jeans, his headphones, that permanent apathetic look on his face. James might have been an inert, unresponsive receptacle for her anger, but Scott wasn’t.
“Did you see Dad?” Scott asked. “Is he okay?”
“You could at least brush those knots out of your hair once in a while,” she exploded. “And put on something that covers up all those tattoos. I don’t want to be seen with you. You look like a criminal.”
And then she whirled around and took the stairs all the way to the main level. In the lobby, nurses pushed heavily pregnant women in wheelchairs. Elderly people dragged their IV poles outside for some fresh morning air. A man, a woman, and two kids pushed by her for the elevator, holding a big bouquet of flowers and smiling. Sylvie smiled back at them as if she wasn’t going through what she was going through. As if the person she was visiting was suffering from something minor, too.
Sylvie realized she had been leaning against the upstairs hallway console table for quite some time, clutching a small jade bear sculpture between her hands. Scott bumped around on the other side of the bathroom door, getting ready for a shower. It was silent outside now; the biblical rain must have stopped. She thought of a phrase her grandfather sometimes used to say—après moi, le deluge. Some French guy coined it, some great leader. It meant that after he was dead, he didn’t care what mess he left behind for his country to clean up. France could be flooded or raided or crumble, and it would be okay with him—it was someone else’s problem.
Scott pulled the nozzle to start the shower. Sylvie shut off the hall light and slipped into her room.
Chapter Ten
It was clear the following day, as though the world had never known rain. Joanna went out into her front yard and looked around. The world had been transformed overnight. It was now green, earthy. The sun threw heat onto her shoulders, and the wind smelled like lilacs. A UPS truck trundled down the street, the brown-suited driver’s knees and forearms bare, having shed his wintry long underwear.
Joanna called her mother and told her that Charles would be coming to Maryland, too, something that still surprised and puzzled her. Why did he want to come all of a sudden? Why the sudden interest? He’d never come before. She’d helped Catherine move to Maryland by herself, while Charles was off on some work project. She’d never burdened him to accompany her to Catherine’s medical procedures. Part of her was embarrassed to show Charles the poky little house her mother had inherited. It was bad enough bringing him into the split-level in Lionville, although Charles was very diplomatic about it, never remarking about the house one way or another. Another part of her just figured he wasn’t very interested in going to Maryland, in getting to know her mother. Which was fine, too. Catherine was a handful; she and Charles didn’t need to bond.
But what was wrong with Joanna—didn’t she want him to come? Her mother was, thank goodness, too distracted to detect anything was off. She’d just spoken to a friend at the sail club, a man named Robert, and was trying to get Joanna to promise that they’d make a trip there the night before the biopsy. “I’ve told him all about you,” Catherine pressed. “I’d like you to meet him.”