Heart of the Matter, Page 2

  “Charlie really likes Grayson, too,” Valerie said, crossing her arms across her flamingo-pink blouse and wishing she had worn her charcoal suit instead. No matter how hard she tried, how much money she spent on her wardrobe, she always seemed to choose the wrong thing from her closet.

  At that moment, the two little boys ran across the classroom hand in hand, Charlie leading the way to the hamster cage. To even a casual observer, they were best buddies, unabashed founders of a mutual admiration society of two. So why, then, did Valerie assume that Romy was being insincere? Why couldn’t Valerie give herself—and her own son—more credit? She asked herself these questions as Daniel Croft rejoined his wife with a plastic cup of punch and rested his free hand on her back. It was a subtle gesture she had come to recognize in her relentless study of married couples, one that filled her with equal parts envy and regret.

  “Honey, this is Valerie Anderson . . . Charlie’s mother,” Romy prompted, giving Valerie the impression that they had discussed her prior to this evening—and the fact that there was no father listed in the school directory alongside Charlie’s name.

  “Oh, sure, right.” Daniel nodded, shaking her hand with boardroom vigor as he made fleeting, apathetic eye contact. “Hello.”

  Valerie returned the greeting, and a few seconds of empty chitchat ensued before Romy clasped her hands and said, “So, Valerie, did you get the invitation to Grayson’s party? I sent it a couple weeks ago?”

  Valerie felt her face grow crimson as she replied, “Yes, yes. Thank you very much.” She could have kicked herself for not RSVPing, feeling certain that not responding in a timely manner to an invite, even to a child’s party, was among Romy’s chief pet peeves.

  “So?” Romy pressed. “Can Charlie come?”

  Valerie hesitated, feeling herself caving to this impeccably groomed, endlessly self-assured woman, as if she were back in high school and Kristy Mettelman had just offered her a drag of her cigarette and a ride in her cherry-red Mustang.

  “I’m not sure. I’ll have . . . to check the calendar . . . It’s next Friday, right?” she stammered, as if she had hundreds of social engagements to keep track of.

  “That’s right,” Romy said, her eyes widening, smile broadening, as she waved to another couple just arriving with their daughter. “Look, honey, April and Rob are here,” she murmured to her husband. Then she touched Valerie’s arm, flashed her one last perfunctory smile, and said, “It was so nice to meet you. We hope to see Charlie next Friday.”

  Two days later, holding the tent-shaped invitation, Valerie dialed the Crofts’ number. She felt a surge of inexplicable nervousness—social anxiety, her doctor called it—as she waited for someone to answer, followed by palpable relief when she heard the automated recording prompting her to leave a message. Then, despite all of her big talk to the contrary, her voice rose several octaves as she said, “Charlie would be delighted to attend Grayson’s party.”

  Delighted.

  This is the word she replays when she gets the call, only three hours after dropping Charlie off with his dinosaur sleeping bag and rocket-ship pajamas. Not accident or burn or ambulance or ER or any of the other words that she distinctly hears Romy Croft say but can’t begin to process as she throws on sweats, grabs her purse, and speeds toward Massachusetts General Hospital. She cannot even bring herself to say them aloud when she calls her brother from the car, having the irrational sense that doing so will make everything more real.

  Instead, she simply says, “Come now. Hurry.”

  “Come where?” Jason asks, music blaring in the background.

  When she does not answer, the music stops and he says again, more urgently, “Valerie? Come where?”

  “Mass General . . . It’s Charlie,” she manages to reply, pressing the gas pedal harder, now going nearly thirty miles over the speed limit.

  Her grip on the steering wheel is sweaty and white-knuckled, but inside, she feels an eerie calm, even as she runs a red light, then another. It is almost as if she is watching herself, or watching someone else altogether. This is what people do, she thinks. They call loved ones; they speed to the hospital; they run red lights.

  Charlie would be delighted to attend, she hears again, as she arrives at the hospital and follows signs to the ER. She wonders how she could have been so oblivious, sitting there on the couch in her sweats with a bag of microwave popcorn and a Denzel Washington action flick. How could she not have known what was happening at the palatial home on Albion? Why had she not followed her gut about this party? She curses aloud, one lone, hoarse fuck, her heart filled with guilt and regret, as she peers up at the looming brick and glass building before her.

  The night becomes hazy after that—a collection of disjointed moments rather than a smooth chronology. She will remember leaving her car at the curb despite the NO PARKING sign and then finding Jason, ashen faced, inside the glass double doors. She will remember the triage nurse, calmly, efficiently typing Charlie’s name before another nurse leads them down a series of long, bleach-scented corridors to the PICU burn unit. She will remember bumping into Daniel Croft on their way, and pausing as Jason asks him what happened. She will remember Daniel’s vague, guilt-filled reply—They were making s’mores. I didn’t see it—and her image of him typing on his BlackBerry or admiring his landscaping, his back to the fire and her only child.

  She will remember the first horrifying glimpse of Charlie’s small, motionless body as he is sedated and intubated. She will remember his blue lips, his cut pajamas, and the stark white bandages obscuring his right hand and the left side of his face. She will remember the beeping monitors, the hum of the ventilator, and the bustling, stone-faced nurses. She will remember her raw appeal to the God she has all but forgotten as she holds her son’s good hand and waits.

  But most of all, she will remember the man who comes to examine Charlie in what feels like the middle of the night, after her worst fear has receded. How he gently uncovers Charlie’s face, exposing the burned skin beneath the bandages. How he leads her back to the hallway where he turns to her, parts his lips, and begins to speak.

  “My name is Dr. Nick Russo,” he says, his voice deep and slow. “And I am one of the leading pediatric plastic surgeons in the world.”

  She looks into his dark eyes and exhales, her insides unclenching, as she tells herself that they would not send a plastic surgeon if her son’s life were still in danger. He is going to be okay. He is not going to die. She knows this as she looks in his doctor’s eyes. Then, for the first time, she considers how Charlie’s life has changed. How this night will scar him in more ways than one. Feeling a fierce determination to protect him no matter what the outcome, she hears herself ask Dr. Russo if he can fix Charlie’s hand and face; if he can make her son beautiful again.

  “I will do everything I can for your son,” he says, “but I want you to remember something. Will you please do that for me?”

  She nods, thinking he will tell her not to expect miracles. As if she ever dared to do so, even once in her whole life.

  Instead, Dr. Russo holds her gaze and says the words she will never forget.

  “Your son is beautiful,” he tells her. “He is beautiful now.”

  She nods again, both believing and trusting him. And only then, for the first time in a very long time, do her tears come.

  3

  Tessa

  Sometime in the middle of the night, I awaken to the solid warmth of Nick beside me. With my eyes still closed, I reach out and run my hand over his shoulder, then down his shirtless back. His skin smells of soap from his usual postwork shower, and I feel a wave of attraction that is quickly expelled by an even greater dose of fatigue. Par for the course since Ruby was born—and certainly since she was joined by Frank. I still love having sex with my husband, as much as ever once we’re under way. It just so happens that I now prefer sleep to most everything else—chocolate, red wine, HBO, and sex.

  “Hi there,” he whispers, his voice muffled
against his pillow.

  “I didn’t hear you come in . . . What time is it?” I ask, hoping that it’s closer to midnight than to the kids’ automatic seven o’clock wake-up, more unforgiving than any alarm clock and without a snooze option.

  “Two-thirty.”

  “Time to see a dentist,” I murmur.

  It is one of his endearing exchanges with Ruby: What time is it, Daddy? To which Nick grimaces, points to his mouth, and replies: Tooth hurty. Time to see a dentist. A real crowd-pleaser.

  “Uh-huh,” Nick says distractedly, clearly in no mood for conversation. But as I open my eyes and watch him turn and stare intently at the ceiling, my curiosity gets the better of me. So I ask, as casually as I can given the nature of the inquiry, whether it was a birth defect—which comprises a significant portion of Nick’s work.

  He sighs and says no.

  I hesitate and tentatively guess again. “A car accident?”

  “No, Tess,” he says, so patiently that it gives away his impatience. “It was a burn. An accident.”

  He adds this last bit as a disclaimer. In other words, it was not child abuse—sadly, far from a given; Nick once told me that about ten percent of all pediatric burns are the result of child abuse.

  I bite my lower lip, my mind racing with the usual possibilities—a boiling pot from the stove, a scalding bathtub, a house fire, a chemical burn—and I’m unable to resist the inevitable follow-up. The question of how. It is the question Nick resists the most, his typical reply going something along the lines of: What difference does it make? It was an accident. Accidents are just that. They happen.

  Tonight he clears his throat and resignedly gives me the facts. A six-year-old boy was roasting marshmallows. He somehow fell into the fire and burned his hand and cheek. The left side of his face.

  Nick’s speech is rapid and detached, as if he’s simply relaying the weather forecast. But I know that this is only an act—a well-practiced cover-up. I know that he will likely be awake much of the night, unable to fall asleep from the adrenaline of the night’s events. And even tomorrow morning—or more likely, afternoon—he will roll downstairs with a remote expression, pretending to be engaged with his own family, while he dwells on a little boy’s hand and cheek.

  Medicine makes a jealous mistress, I think, an expression I first heard during Nick’s first year of residency, from a bitter doctor’s wife who, I later learned, left her husband for her personal trainer. I vowed then that I would guard against ever feeling this way. That I would always see the nobility in my husband’s work—even if that meant a certain measure of loneliness.

  “How bad is it?” I ask Nick.

  “It could be worse,” he says. “But it’s not great.”

  I close my eyes, searching for the silver lining, knowing that this is my unspoken role in our relationship. Nick might be the eternal optimist at the hospital, brimming with confidence, even bravado. But here at home, in our bed, he relies on me to bring the hope—even when he’s silent and self-contained.

  “Are his eyes okay?” I finally muster, remembering that Nick once confided in me the enormous complexity of repairing what everyone believes to be the window to the soul.

  “Yeah,” he says, as he rolls onto his side, toward me. “His eyes are perfect. Big and blue . . . like Ruby’s.”

  His voice trails off as I think that this is a dead giveaway—when Nick compares a patient to Ruby or Frank, I know he has begun to obsess.

  “And he has a pretty decent doctor, too,” I finally say.

  I can hear the smallest of smiles in Nick’s voice as he rests his hand on my hip and replies, “Yeah. He does have that going for him, doesn’t he?”

  The following morning, just after Nick has returned to the hospital, I am making breakfast while I endure the standard mealtime whine-a-palooza, compliments of my firstborn. To put it mildly, Ruby is not a morning person, another trait inherited from her father. In fifteen minutes, she has already complained that Frank is “looking” at her, that her banana is too mushy, and that she prefers Daddy’s French toast from the griddle to my toaster variety.

  So when the phone rings, I happily retrieve it, feeling relieved for civilized adult companionship (the other day, I was excited when a pollster called) and even more so when I see Cate’s name light up my caller ID. Cate Hoffman and I met nearly sixteen years ago at an off-campus party the first week of our freshman year at Cornell, when we were formally introduced to the collegiate world of beer pong, quarters, and “I never.” Several drinks into the night, after being asked too many times if we were sisters and acknowledging a certain full-lipped, strong-nosed, blond-highlighted resemblance, we made a pact to look out for each other—a promise I made good on later, saving her from a leering frat boy, then walking her back to her dorm and holding her hair out of her face as she puked in a bed of ivy. The experience bonded us and we remained the best of friends for the next four years and beyond graduation. Since our mid-twenties, our lives have diverged—or, more accurately, mine has changed and hers has stayed very much the same. She still lives in the city (in the same apartment we once shared), is still serial dating, is still working in broadcasting. The only real difference is that she is now in front of the camera, hosting a cable network talk show called Cate’s Corner, and, as of very late, has achieved a modicum of fame in the New York area.

  “Look, Ruby! It’s Auntie Cate!” I say with exaggerated cheer, hoping that my enthusiasm will rub off on my daughter, who is now in mourning because I will not add chocolate syrup to her milk. I answer the phone and ask Cate what she’s doing up so early.

  “I’m headed to the gym . . . on a new fitness regime,” Cate says. “I really need to drop a few.”

  “Oh, you do not,” I say, rolling my eyes. Cate has one of the best figures I’ve ever seen, even among the childless and airbrushed. Sadly, people no longer confuse us for sisters.

  “Okay, maybe not in real life. But you know the camera adds at least ten pounds,” she says, and then changes the subject with her usual abruptness. “So. What’d you get? What’d you get?”

  “What did I get?” I ask, as Ruby moans that she wants her French toast “whole,” which is a radical departure from her usual demand that her toast be unveiled to her in “tiny square pieces, all the same exact size, no crust.” I cover the phone with one hand and say, “Honey, I think someone may have forgotten the magic word?”

  Ruby gives me a blank stare, indicating that she does not believe in magic. To this point, she is the only preschooler I know who has already questioned the veracity of Santa Claus, or at the very least, his travel logistics.

  But magic or not, I hold my ground until she amends her request. “I want it whole. Please.”

  I nod as Cate eagerly continues, “For your anniversary? What did Nick give you?”

  Nick’s gifting is one of Cate’s favorite topics, perhaps because she never graduates beyond the “thanks for last night” floral arrangements. As such, she says she likes to live vicariously through me. In her words, I have the perfect life—words she delivers in what vacillates between a wistful and an accusatory tone, depending on her latest dating low.

  It doesn’t matter how many times I tell her that the grass is always greener and that I’m envious of her whirlwind social schedule, her hot dates (including a recent dinner with a Yankee outfielder), and her utter, blissful freedom—the kind of freedom you take for granted until you become a parent. And it doesn’t matter how often I confide my standard complaints of stay-at-home motherhood—namely, the frustration of ending a day no further ahead than where you started, and the fact that I sometimes spend more time with Elmo, Dora, and Barney than with the man I married. None of this registers with her. She still would trade lives with me in a heartbeat.

  As I start to reply to Cate, Ruby unleashes a bloodcurdling scream: “Nooooo! Mommy! I saaa-iiiid whole!”

  I freeze with the knife in midair, realizing that I’ve just made the fatal mistake of four hor
izontal cuts. Shit, I think as Ruby demands that I glue the bread back together, even making a melodramatic run for the cabinet where our art supplies are housed. She retrieves a bottle of Elmer’s, defiantly shoving it my way as I consider calling her bluff and drizzling the glue over her toast—“in a cursive R like Daddy does.”

  Instead, I say with all the calmness I can muster, “Now, Ruby. You know we can’t glue food.”

  She stares at me as if I’m speaking Swahili, prompting me to translate for her: “You’ll have to make do with pieces.”

  Hearing this bit of tough love, she proceeds to grieve the toast that might have been. It occurs to me that a pretty easy fix would be to eat the French toast myself and make a fresh piece for Ruby, but there is something so thoroughly maddening about her expression that I find myself silently reciting the advice of my pediatrician, several how-to books, and my stay-at-home-mother friends: do not surrender to her demands. A philosophy that runs in marked contrast to the parenting adage I normally subscribe to: choose your battles—which I confess is secret code for hold your ground only if it’s convenient; otherwise, appease the subject in order to make your life easier. Besides, I think, as I prepare for an ugly gridlock, I am trying to avoid carbs, starting this morning.

  So, my cellulite settling the matter, I purposefully set Ruby’s plate on the table before her and announce, “It’s this or nothing.”

  “Nothing then!” Ruby says.

  I bite my lip and shrug, as if to say, Bring on the hunger strike, then exit to the family room where Frank is quietly eating dry Apple Jacks—one at a time—the only thing he’ll touch for breakfast. Running my hand through his soft hair, I sigh into the phone and say, “Sorry. Where were we?”