Healer (29 page)

Sunday night the wind wakes Claire up from a sound sleep. “Shoulder winds,” she’d heard them called, because they swept through at the turning of seasons, blowing down the valley channel hard enough to fell trees that hadn’t survived winter. It should inspire her with the anticipation of full spring, but they sound too lonely, howling and buffeting the house. Now and then she hears the crack of a tree limb, now and then the clatter of the old barn.

She gets up to make some tea, forgetting that she risks waking Miguela. But when she steps into the hall she sees a candle burning on the dining table, Miguela sitting up already, bundled in Addison’s jacket. Claire goes back into the bedroom and finds a bathrobe she hasn’t worn in years, brings it downstairs and folds it over Miguela’s chair.

“I am sorry. Did I make noise?” Miguela asks.

Claire shakes her head. “The wind.” She bundles her own robe around her neck. “Do you want some tea?”

“No.” But then she starts to get up. “I can make you some?”

Claire puts a hand on Miguela’s shoulder. “I’ll get it.” She brings two cups back to the table with a saucer for the tea bags. “Were you reading a letter?” she asks, indicating a worn envelope in Miguela’s hand.

Miguela picks it up, folds it along a smudged crease and holds it in her lap. “No. Only thinking.”

“Are you comfortable enough? The bed is okay?”

“Yes, the room is very nice.”

Claire lowers her tea bag into her cup and watches the color bleed through the hot water, caught in the strangeness of sharing her house with someone she knows so little about. “I wish I could pay you more
right now. I know you’re probably trying to send money home.” She leans forward over the table and sets her teacup on the saucer; the sound of glass on glass is jarring. “It’s very helpful to have you here right now—with Jory. That’s the main thing, just being here with her when I’m at work.”

Miguela nods. “It is a hard age for a girl. A special age.” Her eyes are too far outside the low light for Claire to see them clearly. “I am not sending money home.”

“You said you had a friend here. Someone else from Nicaragua.” Miguela shakes her head, either unclear about the question or denying it, Claire can’t tell. “I thought you said you’d followed someone here. When I first met you.”

Miguela opens her mouth as if she has just recalled the conversation; a flicker of surprise crosses her face, perhaps that Claire would remember such a small detail. “She is not here now.” She hesitates a moment and adds, “No one will come to your house.”

Claire hadn’t meant the question to sound so self-concerned, but feels a tinge of relief at the answer that makes her press on, admit that while she does not need to hear everything, she has to trust what she does hear. “Miguela. I hate to ask you this.” She hesitates, not knowing any easy way to put it. “You told me once that you had never had a child. Is that right?”

Miguela’s face is perfectly still, as if she is holding her breath, holding her heartbeat. Claire feels a little ripple crawl up the back of her neck, thinks it could as easily be guilt about pressing her on such a personal topic (the breach it requires of a physician’s secret, the fierce certitude that women hid births for reasons only God could know) as a revelation that Miguela is quite capable of deception, may even have cause to hide this particular truth from Claire. Another gust of wind buffets the windowpanes and a tree branch tumbles against the roof. Something scuttles inside the wall.

Finally Miguela answers, her voice almost toneless, her face unusually still. “I had a child. But I lost her.”

Claire drops her face into her hands, a rush of heat flowing out from the center of her chest. “I’m so sorry.” She rubs her palm down
her face and looks up. “And I’m sorry I had to ask you.” After a moment she stands up and puts the extra bathrobe in Miguela’s lap. “Please. This is for you. And if you need anything—we live so far from town here. If you want to go into the store for something… tell me. Okay?”

“Thank you,
doctora.
”

“Claire. Just Claire.”

• 26 •

When he calls on Thursday evening, Claire hears the change in Addison’s voice as soon as she answers her phone. “I want you to come to Seattle, can you? This weekend?”

She walks over to shut her bedroom door. “As in tomorrow? I don’t know, Addison. I don’t know how early I can leave the clinic. It’s been really busy. Plus I
think
I’ve talked Jory into trying a dance class.”

“A dance class?” The way he says it Claire can tell this usurps whatever else has got him so excited.

“Well, it’s kind of an experiment. A woman here who teaches jazz—don’t get your hopes up yet. Jory sure hasn’t.”

“But still. I mean, it’s a start.” Then he seems to recollect what made him call, winding up again. “Drive out later if you need to, then.”

Claire sits on the end of the bed, glancing at the clock, the sun breaking over the horizon in a bright rectangle on the floor; she’s running late. “What are you so excited about?”

“Hmmm, still up in the air, but maybe good news. At any rate, it would be a nice weekend for all of us.” She hears a question mark at the end of this that she knows wasn’t planned, waits long enough to catch the rhythm of his breath, wishing she hadn’t become habituated to disappointment. “Let me talk to Dan. And the dance teacher.” Addison doesn’t say anything, holding on until she breaks. She walks to the window to feel the sun on her face, warm for only a moment before
it’s swept behind a cloud. “All right. I don’t know when we’ll be able to leave here, though.”

The clerk smiles as soon as Claire says “Boehning”. He hands her an embossed cardboard folder, gilt-imprinted with the name of the hotel, the Mayflower Park, with two room keys inside. A bellman has already put their bags onto a cart and is headed toward the elevator, describing the services and shops nearby. Jory gives Claire a wickedly happy grin. They pass a small bar off the lobby, a few steps up into a den of wood and brocade, intimate round tables lit with shaded lamps.

The elevator rises past the lower numbers to the twelfth floor, the highest; the bellman keeps his eyes in soft focus on the opposite wall. Claire’s temper rises with the car. By the time Addison has tipped the bellman and shut the door she can barely look at him. She stands at the window watching a scarf of white fog draped between the Olympic mountains and the sea. In the Macy’s display window across the street a row of identical mannequins in bright bikinis lounge on a plaster beach. Two women push through the double glass doors carrying armloads of shopping bags; a startling reminder that people still buy things other than food and electricity.

Addison has unlocked the door between their adjoining suites and Jory already has the television on and the bed stacked with pillows, queen of her private space.

“Warn her not to eat anything from the minibar,” Claire says over her shoulder. She hears the door close and a moment later Addison’s arms are around her waist. When she does not give he tenses and pulls away. After a minute of silence Claire says, “Adjoining suites? My week’s paycheck wouldn’t cover one of them. I hope you have some pretty big news.”

Addison slips his hands in his pockets. “You haven’t even kissed me hello.”

She turns around and leans forward on her toes just enough to tap her lips against his, then walks into the bathroom, runs hot water over a washcloth and presses it against her eyelids. He comes in behind her and closes the door, as if Jory could hear through the walls. “It is big. Or it could be big.”

Claire takes the cloth away from her face. “It’s funny. I’m kind of wishing you wouldn’t even mention it until you know for sure.”

“I called Ron Walker.” She waits for him to go on, water dripping down her cheeks. Addison cups his hand along her jawline and wipes away black streaks of mascara with his thumbs. “He’s interested.”

Claire sits on the cold rim of the marble tub, feels her heart skip ahead, almost angry that her body will go where her mind doesn’t want to. “How interested?”

“Interested enough to be paying for this room. We’re meeting him for dinner tomorrow night.” He drops his head a minute, and when he raises it again to look at her she sees a lightness playing in his eyes she has missed for months. “He said this is exactly the kind of project he’s been looking for.”

“I didn’t even bring a dress. Why didn’t you warn me?” Claire says, letting a small surge of excitement build inside her.

“You look great.” He leans over and kisses her, locks his fingers around the back of her neck. “Go buy a dress. Buy some new jewelry to go with it.”

“I haven’t paid the credit card bill this month.” Even before he responds she starts the question she didn’t intend to ask him. “Does he know everything about the vascumab trials?”

His eyes grow quiet again. “I don’t know how to do anything else but chemistry, Claire. He has all the information he needs to make his own decision. If he’s in, we’ll be repeating all the animal studies again.”

Claire pulls her hands away. After a minute she gets up and steps past him to the sink, picks up the wet washcloth, gone cold now, blushed with the pink and beige of her makeup. Addison keeps talking to her, watching her face in the mirror. “I don’t blame you.”

“Blame me for what?” Claire asks, hearing the clip of distrust in her voice and wishing Jory would come in unexpectedly, or the phone would ring, or the maid knock—anything that would give her an excuse to change the subject for a while. She turns the water on full until it’s hot again and wrings out the washcloth, her hands red, her knuckles white. Addison doesn’t answer her, but when she catches his reflection
she sees his exuberance dimming. And something deeper in his face, some sadness that snags at the garment of their union.

“Buy a blue dress, will you? Something like that one you got in London?”

She turns around and faces him, because the subject
has
changed, because she wants to have these two precious nights together in their city. “If it makes you happy I’ll look for a blue dress.”

They make it a good day. Even Jory is careful to stay in the moment of now. She walks between them, sometimes even holding their hands before remembering she could possibly be spotted. They go to the Seattle Art Museum and walk up to Pike Place Market, where Jory is given ten dollars to spend at the bead store and another dollar to have her fortune cranked out of a mechanical gypsy. She shows it to neither of her parents before tearing it into small bits and dropping it through a sidewalk sewer grate. Before they left Hallum, Claire promised her she could visit friends on Sunday, but Jory hasn’t called anyone. Claire reminds her and Jory says she’ll think about it, giving Claire a please-don’t-bring-it-up-again look. And so they become tourists, on vacation in this city they used to own.

Addison takes them into Mario’s and has Claire try on every size 8 blue dress, which she turns into a game of America’s Next Top Model for Jory’s amusement. She finally picks out a simple belted shift at Nordstrom, the color of the sky just before the last sunlight goes. Addison approves although, he says, it doesn’t match her eyes as well as the London dress had. By the time they get back to the hotel Claire feels happy, remembers the short-lived thrill that accompanies the unwrapping of new things, like the euphoric taste of chocolate at the end of a fast. She is looking forward to the dinner now; it’s been months since she’s been to a good restaurant—any restaurant—and not spent more time looking at the prices than the food choices. She takes extra care with her makeup and hair, grooming she has quit giving much attention to in Hallum. The dress looks even better in the flattering lights of the hotel suite than it had under the fluorescents in the dressing room. Addison zips it up the back and pulls out his pocketknife to snip the
tag, but she spins around and holds his wrists against her chest. “Not yet. Not till we know. Leave it for a good luck charm.”

He folds his pocketknife into his closed fist and brushes her hand against his chin. “You’re still not wearing your ring. Even in Seattle?”

She smiles, keeping her eyes at play over his face. “It’s in a better place.”

Ron Walker stands up as soon as they enter the small dining room. “Did Addison tell you Campagne is my favorite restaurant? We used to come here on my birthday,” Claire says, taking his hand. The walls are painted soft green and the angled evening sunlight casts reddish gold across the dark mahogany floors. The maître d’ pulls out her chair, the waiter stands one step away ready to accept their drink order. They are at a corner table beside the window. In the center of the clean white cloth, a glass vase holds two bloodred tulips. She unfolds her napkin and sits back in her chair, taking in the colors, the guests, the pleasantly abstract paintings on the walls; remembering the pleasure of allowing a meal to fill an entire evening, the luxury of being served.

“You should have brought your daughter,” Ron says. “She’s here with you, isn’t she?”

“She’s eating pizza in front of the TV. She’s in heaven.” Claire pulls the vase close to smell the flowers, but the blossoms are still too tightly closed. Walker selects a bottle of wine. Addison drinks quickly at first; Claire can tell he’s on edge, but Walker seems completely relaxed. He asks Claire about the clinic; it’s clear he considers Dan nothing less than a miracle worker. “He started that place just for the farmworkers, but then word spread. He’s pretty much the only safety net in the valley, until you’re dying and the hospital has to take you in.” He fills Claire’s glass. “Preaching to the choir, I know. I’m glad you’re there. Dan likes to think he’s going to have this much energy forever but he looks worn out to me.”

They are halfway through dinner before Walker finally turns the conversation to vascumab. Addison has said less and less with each course, with each glass of wine, and then Claire watches him visibly expand as they begin to discuss pharmaceuticals—inflating with hope. Or pride, she thinks. Much of it justifiable pride. Walker describes himself as the ideal angel investor—educated enough to bring money to a
smart opportunity, uneducated enough to stay out of a bright scientist’s way. But from the questions he asks and the industry comparisons he makes, it is obvious he’s read every scrap of information Addison sent him.