The Secret of the Nightingale Palace (19 page)

“Tell me about your wife,” Anna said.

“Ex-wife.”

“Did you have kids?”

“No. She has two kids now.”

“Why did you break up?”

“It was more like ‘Why did we marry?' We both came from medical families. Both her parents were psychiatrists. Her brothers were physicians. She became an ob-gyn. My dad went into research. My mother worked in his lab. My sister is an eye surgeon. It's kind of dull after a while, isn't it?”

“Not really.”

“It's not easy to explain the dissolution of a marriage.”

“Do you hate her?”

“No.” He rubbed at his eyes for a moment, then asked, “Do you have ex-boyfriends?”

“Yes.”

“The experience is kind of like that. And then there's this other aspect, which is almost financial. You feel like you made an enormous investment in a risky venture, and then you lost it all. So you feel rather stupid as well.”

The weariness in his face reminded her of the way he had looked that morning, exhausted after a night of seeing patients, but he seemed sadder now. She said, “There's just no end to all the things we can feel stupid about, is there?”

“Unfortunately, no.” He picked up her hand, the one with Ford's ring on it. “Was this your husband's?”

“Yes,” Anna said, and then, because she felt embarrassed, she asked, “Do I have
fucked up
written all over me?”

He laughed. “Don't we all?”

Anna held up her hand so that they both could get a good look at the ring. “I'm trying to figure out a graceful way to take it off permanently—I don't even wear my own wedding band anymore—but it seems like there should be some ceremony to it.”

“I could throw it out the window with some ceremony,” he offered. His tone was sweet and light, a little hesitant. When she didn't respond, he added quickly, “Or not.”

“I guess not.”

In the silence that followed, the individual notes of the piano music flew through the air like phrases of a conversation less awkward than theirs. When Naveen did finally speak, he seemed to have considered his wording very carefully. “I'll just be frank here. You haven't slept with anyone, then, since your husband died?”

She thought about Pierre. “I tried once, but no. I haven't. No.”

“Is that what you're looking for, then?” he asked.

He was gazing at her so directly that Anna's mind went blank. “Is what what I'm looking for?”

“Sex?”

His abruptness made her laugh, but she saw that he wasn't joking. There was something guarded in his expression, and she understood that he wasn't propositioning her; he simply wanted to know the answer. She turned her eyes away and tried to focus on the only thing that had any color in this room, the bookshelf on the opposite wall. Was sex what she wanted? Well, she did yearn for a moment that would permanently separate her current existence from the years when she was married. Nothing could do that so well as the act of finally putting another man's body between hers and Ford's. Wasn't that why she had thrown herself at Pierre? And why had that ended so badly? Anna still didn't know. Was she repelled by men entirely? Or had there simply been a mismatch with Pierre? Here in Indiana, perhaps things could unfold more simply. She liked Naveen, and he seemed to like her well enough. Their lives had no other connection, and once Anna and Goldie got back on the road, they would never have to meet again. She thought it best, under such circumstances, to be completely honest. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I know that's not very romantic.”

“Well, at least it's on the table.” She couldn't miss the shift in his tone. The warmth that had developed over the hours of their conversation veered into something more businesslike, the voice he might use while ordering a lab test or calling in a prescription. The piano music had ended, and he stood up, walked over to the CD player on the kitchen counter, and put on some new music—Johnny Cash this time. Just next to the stereo lay Anna's drawing of the begonia. Naveen noticed it and picked it up. “This is nice,” he said. He glanced at her for a moment, then looked down at the paper again. “That's the first thing I noticed about you when I met you this morning. You were sleeping on the waiting room sofa and there were drawings all around you—behind your back, under your head, on the floor.”

“I'm compulsive,” Anna said. At the hospital that day while Goldie slept, she had drawn nearly a dozen panels. “My family and friends think I'm an addict.”

He kept his eyes on the paper. “Each leaf is so precise and perfect,” he said, as much to himself as to her, and then he asked, “Does drawing make you happy?”

It had been a long time since she had thought about her work in such terms. “I guess it does,” she said. “And it stabilizes me. If I stopped drawing, I'd be completely unbalanced.”

He looked at the begonia itself, then back at the picture of it. “In some places, the drawing is just a suggestion of nature, and in other places it's so realistic. If I could do this, I'd never stop, either.”

Anna didn't know how to respond. In her need to draw, and in her concern over her inability to do much else, she had lost appreciation for her own skills. Even when Sadie gave her the monthly sales figures for
Shaina Bright,
she failed to make a connection between the comic's success and her own role in it. Now, watching Naveen look at the picture, Anna felt a sudden, unexpected surge of feeling. It began as simple relief, but then all the grief and joy of her life seemed to merge together, creating one impossible knot of hope and despair. By the time Naveen returned to the sofa, Anna was shaking with emotion. This was not the equilibrium she had meant to convey. After all, they had, only minutes earlier, defined the very practical terms of this encounter.

But Naveen saw Anna's face. His own expression, which had maintained its aloofness until just that moment, softened instantly. He knelt beside her on the sofa and gazed into her eyes with such absorption that she felt as if this were the first time they had actually looked at each other. Then he unfolded her arms from around her legs and gently pulled off her sweater. He saw the fine lines of the tattoo that spread along her shoulder then, and like someone reading a poem, he let his eyes move slowly across it. “That's lovely,” he said. He touched his fingers to Anna's lips, and when he leaned closer and brought his mouth to hers, Anna discovered kissing again. In one flash, she remembered every single moment with Ford. In the next, she forgot him completely.

 

Given the circumstances, Goldie was in a remarkably upbeat mood when Anna arrived the next morning at eight. “The food is vile, but the staff couldn't be friendlier,” she told Anna. She had more color in her face this morning, and she had eaten most of her breakfast.

“That's what they say about the Midwest,” Anna reminded her. “People are apple cheeked and friendly.” She had stopped at the café in the lobby. Now she sat in the armchair, drinking coffee and breaking off pieces of scone. “Do you want some?” she asked.

Goldie looked at her granddaughter as if Anna had suggested they buy a condo in this city. “I'm getting out of here today. Help me get dressed.”

“Did the doctor tell you that when he came in?” Anna knew very well that Goldie could not have seen the doctor yet this morning. The night before, they had lain in bed talking for hours. Later, after a little sleep, he had gazed at her, smoothing back her hair with his hand. The morning had made them formal with each other, though, and when he got into the shower at seven thirty, she had fought the urge to duck out without saying good-bye. Instead, she politely knocked on the door, then peeked in.

“Um. I'm going to go on over to the hospital,” she told him.

He stuck his head out between the shower curtain and the wall. “What?”

“I'm just going to go,” she yelled.

Anna could not fully gauge his reaction, but he seemed unconcerned that she was leaving. Steam filled the room, and his head was covered with suds. “Okay. I'll see you there,” he'd said.

Goldie pushed herself up in the bed. “He hasn't been by yet. They tell me that he'll make his rounds about nine. Even the nurse said she thought I could leave today.” Her gaze fell on Anna. “You look worn out,” she said. “Are you going to be able to drive?”

Anna glanced down at her skirt, which was wrinkled and dotted with stains of yellow curry. She hadn't bothered to go back to the hotel to change, which meant that she had moved into her third day in this outfit. “I thought maybe I'd do some laundry this afternoon,” she offered lamely. “I didn't expect that we'd be leaving so soon.”

“So soon? Are you crazy? We would be halfway to California if I hadn't ended up in that suitcase.”

“We're not in a hurry.”

“You might not be in a hurry, but I've got to catch a flight to Dubai, remember?”

“Let's read the paper.” Anna had found a copy of
USA Today,
and she handed the front section to her grandmother. Goldie would not actually read much of the paper, but a few minutes spent absently scanning the headlines usually calmed her.

Anna must have dozed off, because Naveen's voice woke her. “Mrs. Rosenthal?” he said, stepping through the door with a nurse. Anna sat up stiffly. He looked down at his clipboard, then up at Goldie, then over to Anna. “Hello,” he said politely, before turning back to Goldie. “And how are you this morning?”

“Well, I can't say I prefer this to Biarritz,” said Goldie, “but we've been having a nice time, haven't we, Doris?”

The apple-cheeked nurse responded by gently squeezing Goldie's arm, proving Anna's point about the midwestern disposition. “Everyone on the floor loves Mrs. Rosenthal,” she told Naveen. “My assistants argue over who's going to check on this special lady.”

“Doris, you flatter me!”

The doctor smiled, but seemed to barely register the conversation. He didn't look at Anna, either. He picked up the end of his stethoscope and listened to Goldie's heart and lungs, then, apparently satisfied, moved his hands along Goldie's arm, pushing here and prodding there. “You need to tell me if any of this hurts,” he said.

“Pain? I can deal with pain. Who hasn't been sore a few days of their life? I'm getting out of here today.” Goldie looked defiant.

The doctor stopped and turned to her. “I don't have a problem with soreness, but if you feel an urge to scream, you let me know.” He lifted the end of the sheet and took out one of Goldie's feet. Anna had always found her grandmother's deformed toes extremely disconcerting, like the shaky foundations of an otherwise formidable building. But Naveen, unaffected, gently massaged them.

Goldie seemed to relax. “You're a good doctor,” she told him.

It was hard for Anna to fully absorb this conversation. The fantasy elements of the scene were like something out of
Grey's Anatomy
: sexy doctor, preoccupied patient, the patient's worn-out but turned-on granddaughter with her smudged lipstick and tousled hair. In the fantasy, the doctor and granddaughter would find an excuse to disappear together, racing down the hospital halls until they discovered an empty broom closet into which they would duck for another ten minutes of loud and heaving but somehow undetected passion.

In real life, Anna experienced none of that swelling fervor. Instead, she felt embarrassed and edgy. It would take some time before she could consider the psychic implications of what she'd done—the fact that she had now, in that most physical and intimate way, moved beyond Ford. If that realization remained too absolute for her to bear, she did allow herself to experience the normal discomfort that follows a one-night stand. Although she'd been involved in some complicated entanglements during college, she had never slept with someone she'd only met that morning. She didn't have moral problems with such behavior. Rather, sex had always seemed awkward enough to begin with; she could never fathom getting physically involved with someone she didn't even know.

And now, she had—the man standing in front of her, a divorced, bespectacled Indian New Yorker with molasses-colored skin, a fondness for Roald Dahl and poetry, and an ugly Indiana apartment. Oh, and he was examining her grandmother, too, and her grandmother was flirting with him.

“I bet you're the best doctor between New York and San Francisco,” Goldie gushed, then added, “I'm fine, and I'm leaving today.”

“We'll see about that,” he told her, but he didn't sound dismissive. He moved around the bed and began to examine her right leg.

“You are such a nice man. Where are you from?”

“New York.”

“But you seem like a person of Indian descent. Am I correct?”

“You are.”

“Well, I love India. Did you ever hear of the maharani of Baroda?”

He glanced at her over his glasses. “I've heard of maharanis and I've heard of Baroda.”

Goldie smiled nostalgically. “She was a dear friend. She had a gorgeous home in Palm Beach, and I was a guest at her palace in Baroda.”

“Nice,” Naveen said.

“She made the most divine curry out of lamb meatballs. Do you know that dish? Curried lamb meatballs?” The doctor shook his head. Goldie looked at Anna. “Did you ever make them? Remember? I sent you the recipe.”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet? Are you insane? I must have sent it ten years ago. Lamb meatballs. They melt in your mouth. They're divine.”

The doctor turned briefly and looked at Anna. “Do you cook, Ms. Rosenthal?”

Anna kept her eyes on her grandmother. “Sometimes.”

“She's a wonderful cook,” Goldie said, “although she hasn't cooked for me in years. Now we just eat whatever junk we get on the road. We haven't had a decent meal since we left New York.”