Authors: Mad Dash
“Did you call Chloe so you could say good-bye?”
“Hm?”
“In case you don’t make it tomorrow?”
He looked at her disapprovingly.
“I can make light,” she said, “because I’ve
had
a laparoscopy. Remember that uterine fibroid?” He turned pale, she noticed, every time the subject of his surgery came up. “That was nothing. Truly.” She took his hand, stroked the knuckles across her cheek. “Are you glad I’m back?”
“What do you think?”
“Gimme the words.”
“I’m glad you’re back.”
“I’m glad you came down and got me.”
“Wolfie told me to. He’s very wise in the ways of women.”
I’m glad we’re three, she thought. It’s much better than two, and three times better than one. “We’re going to be fine now,” she said confidently. “Because it’s not true that we have nothing in common. Think of it—we both like life. We like where we live, we like our friends, our jobs.”
“You like your job? What about forest ranger?”
“No, I’ve given up on that, too much science again. But I did finally figure out the perfect job for me.”
“What?” he asked, sounding cautious.
“Wine bottle label designer. Wouldn’t that be me? I would be so
great
at that.”
He blinked rapidly, searching her eyes for a sign she was joking, she was serious—she loved it that he hardly ever knew. She cut the suspense by snickering, and his face cleared.
“No, yes, I do love my work. You were right about that, but I think I had to watch Greta give it up to appreciate how much it suits me. Just because I fell into it accidentally doesn’t make it an accident, something random like, I don’t know, landscape architect—although I would be
fabulous
at that. But what
luck
, really, that I fell into my life’s work.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t. You defied your father to do what you love. You don’t give yourself enough credit for that.”
“I missed you.”
They pressed their foreheads together.
“I missed you,” she whispered back.
“I had enough time to make a sensible new life while you were gone, but I didn’t. Things never fell into place. When you’re gone, it’s like gravity…gravity…”
“Gravity ceases to exist,” she suggested.
“Yes,” he said, but so carefully, she knew she’d gone too far. “Was it the same for you?” he asked.
“Yes. Well, no. But women are better at being alone than men. I had a good time in the beginning, but it didn’t last—and it was very short, the good time, an illusion, really, smoke and mirrors. Childish imaginings of a life on my own.”
“I like your hair like this.” He had his hand in it, softly rubbing her scalp.
“You’re my rock. Your name should be Peter.”
“You said rocks are sedentary.”
“Yes, but that’s the beauty of rocks. You’re my ground, my base. I should never have left you. Although I’m glad I did, because if I hadn’t we wouldn’t be saying these things right now.”
She decided not to tell him she’d known all along that leaving him would only be an interlude. “Known”—no; assumed, then, and on a deep, barely aware plane, that she was playing, that this wasn’t real. She was scaring herself on purpose, letting herself be seduced by the perverse lure of disaster. Sometimes the deep, comforting assumption that it was pretend disappeared or hid from her, and those were the panicky times. “That night at Dr. Fogelman’s,” she said. Horrible; that time it wasn’t playing. “I
hated
that night.”
“Maybe therapy isn’t for us,” Andrew said.
“Oh yeah, this is much better. Gallstones.”
“Big as a golf ball.”
“I wish I could stay right here. Don’t want to get up.”
Andrew smiled with his eyes closed. “Stay.”
She sighed, rose. Their five minutes were up. She leaned over him for a good-night kiss. “Here we are in a hospital in Virginia, but as far as I’m concerned we’re home. You’re my home.” She rubbed her cheek against his whiskery face. “My love.”
They kissed again.
Her face looked yellow in the fluorescent light over the bathroom sink. She could be the sick one. She peed; washed up; wished for a toothbrush.
She turned all the lights out except the one in the bathroom, and left the door open only a crack. It was still too bright, and nobody was making much of an effort to be quiet in the hall. Hospitals, gack. Amika had made up the bed next to Andrew’s for her; she climbed in and lay quiet, testing the slant she was on. She pressed the button on the side, enjoying the low hum and the slow, mechanical descent until she was flat.
“Are you awake?”
Eventually Andrew made a noncommittal humming sound.
“I was thinking. Something Cottie said. She said—marriage is like an old tree. It starts out a sapling…no, it starts out an acorn, a passionate little acorn, and slowly, slowly it grows and sends out its branches and leaves, and every year new buds. All the things you did together, every trial you lived through, they’re scored into that old trunk. The tree is the thing, not the acorn or the sapling or even the strong
young
tree. After all is said and done, you want the old tree, no matter how misshapen it’s gotten from ice storms and lightning strikes or bugs and what-have-you.”
Andrew didn’t speak.
“I’m paraphrasing.” She yawned. She punched her pillow into shape and turned on her side. “Night.” And drifted to sleep.
Andrew dreamed of a tree framed in a window. At first it was the oak tree outside his bedroom window when he was a boy. Then it changed, became an old, gnarled, knobby child’s book illustration of a tree. Someone was chopping it down. He couldn’t see who, he could only hear the rip of the saw,
zz-zit, zz-zit
, back and forth, cutting through the tender, stubborn trunk. Sadness filled him, and fatalism, that nightmare inability to move or change anything. A voice: “It was Lincoln, you know, who said marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it’s purgatory.” Dr. Fogelman?
The dream turned a corner, as if he were driving, and at the end of a lane a house appeared. Not the cabin, not the house in D.C. A wooden house, square, with four windows, door, and chimney. Dash had painted it Lantern Glow. She was standing on Fogelman’s other side; the doctor had his arms around their shoulders. “You know where that wood came from, don’t you?” he said. “You know what this is, don’t you?” Neither of them wanted to give him the satisfaction, but they couldn’t deny it. It was too obvious. Behind his back, they touched hands. “The House of Love,” they singsonged in unison.
T
he last place Dash expected to see Cottie the next morning was in the corridor on the far side of the nurses’ station, the equivalent of about a city block from her room. Striding along at such a vigorous, arm-swinging pace, Dash had to hustle to catch up to her.
“Hey, lady! Where’s the fire?”
Cottie wheeled around, already grinning. Over the regulation blue-striped hospital gown, she had on her own red wool bathrobe—Shevlin must’ve brought it to her. She held out her arms. Dash came into them gingerly, but the older woman gave her such a powerful squeeze, she laughed and lost her fear of hurting her.
“You look fabulous.
Look
at you,” she marveled, holding Cottie’s elbows. “What a fraud. You’re not even sick.”
“That’s what I said. Let me out of here so I can get something done. I left sixteen tomato plants sitting in a tray in the hot sun on the kitchen counter, and do you think Shevlin’s going to remember to shove ’em over to the side? Much less water them?”
“I don’t
think
so,” Dash said, catching her exuberance, laughing again with her, both so glad at how things had turned out. Cottie did look good, pink-cheeked, practically glowing—nothing like impatience to get out of the hospital to turn your medical condition around.
“How is your husband?” she demanded. She took Dash’s arm and they set off at her speed-walker’s pace for her room.
“He’s in surgery.”
“Right now?”
“This minute, so I can’t stay long. I just wanted to see you, plus I couldn’t sit still in the waiting room or his room.” Sometime in the night all of Andrew’s anxieties had migrated from him over to her. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous, it’s not even a complicated operation.”
“When does he get to go home?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Me, too. Shevlin’s scandalized. ‘They kick you out in one day no matter what you’ve got,’ he says, but me, I couldn’t be happier. The sooner the better.”
“I thought they were going to put in a thing, a pacemaker or something.”
“Not right away, in a week or so. And even that’s outpatient.”
“How does it work?”
“It’s a gizmo they put in right here, right under the skin, like a pack of cigarettes.” She pointed to a place above her left breast. “When my heart goes too fast, like yesterday, I get a shock and it resets it.”
“Wow, that’s incredible. Isn’t it amazing? Cottie—you could live
forever.
”
Her laugh sounded pleased but self-conscious, as if she’d already thought of that.
“Here’s me.” They turned into a beige-painted replica of Andrew’s yellow room. The curtain around the bed on the near side was drawn, but not all the way; tiptoeing past, Dash caught a peripheral glimpse of a tiny, white-haired lady, asleep with her mouth open. “Heart,” Cottie mouthed, quietly pulling the extra chair from the old lady’s side over to hers so she and Dash could sit next to each other.
“I really can only stay a minute. I told him I’d be there when he wakes up.”
“I know, I know.” Cottie was all but rubbing her hands together. Her eyes sparkled. She leaned close. “Owen says he
hit
him.”
Dash covered her cheeks with her hands. It was so much more exciting now, with Cottie to share it with—and being in the
past
—than it had been when it happened. “I was right there. He socked him in the jaw. Owen
fell.
”
Cottie put her hands on her knees and rocked.
“I know we aren’t supposed to enjoy that sort of thing, we women. It’s absurd. It’s not civilized.”
Cottie made a grinding sound in the back of her throat. They leaned toward each other, shoulders shaking.
“I guess I won’t be seeing much of you anymore.” Cottie pulled a long face.
“Oh, you’ll see plenty of me. But, no, not as much,” she admitted. “I’ll be going home with Andrew.”
“I’m so glad.”
“I want you to meet him. It seems strange that you never have.”
“What’s strange to me is that you’ve never met my daughter.”
“Is she coming in today?”
“Shortly. Owen and Shevlin went to pick her up at the airport.”
“What do you think will happen?” Dash asked. “With Owen and Danielle?”
“That I do not know. They need a push, that’s for sure. Especially him.”
A push, Dash thought, or else three beers. “I hope it works out,” she said. She had such a fondness for Owen, now that she’d lost all interest in him. She wanted only the best for him, like a best friend’s son or a favorite nephew. She looked at the clock and jumped up. “I should go. I’m a jack-in-the-box, I can’t be still.”
Cottie got up, too. “I want to hug you again,” she said, and did.
Dash felt teary, patting the back of her fuzzy red robe. “I don’t know what I’d’ve done without you, Cottie. All these months.”
“Me, too.”
“We were lucky to find each other.”
“I know, I think of that. Good timing.”
They hesitated in the doorway. Dash had a question she hadn’t known she wanted to ask until it popped out. “Would you get married again if something happened to Shevlin?” Mo wouldn’t. The last time they’d talked, she said, “I wouldn’t marry God.”
Cottie looked tickled. “Well, honey, I can’t claim I’ve never
thought
about it. First I said no, never again—that was when I was young. Then in middle age, I said never say never, and maybe I would. So as not to end up old and alone. Which is funny, since now that I
am
old, I’m back to no.”
“So you wouldn’t? Why not?”
“Oh, it’s too much trouble. It takes a lot of energy I don’t have anymore.” She leaned back against the wall. “The forgiving and forgetting, all the attention you have to pay. How big your heart has to be.” She looked Dash up and down. “Would you?”
“Yes. I love marriage. Although,” it occurred to her, “I guess I could just be in the middle-aged yes phase. But I
know
I’ve got enough energy for it.”
“Oh, honey.” Cottie took her hands, squeezing them between her big ones. “Your man is so lucky. In for good times.”
Dash blushed.
The elevator was down on the first floor, according to the dial; she decided to take the stairs. Naturally the elevator bell pinged as soon as she got to the door to the stairwell. She glanced back just as Owen, Shevlin, and a woman—Danielle—stepped out of the elevator into the hall. They didn’t see her. They turned and headed off in the opposite direction, toward Cottie’s room.
Why, she’s lovely
, Dash thought. Clutching her purse in one hand, holding her father’s arm in the other. Petite and shiny-haired, taking short, fast, anxious steps. Owen towered over her, protective but not touching. He reminded Dash of Shevlin with Cottie, that same delicate solicitousness.
Go with her
, she telegraphed to the back of Owen’s head.
Go to Atlanta.
It would be worth it, all the trouble it would cause, the energy it would take. The forgiveness and forgetfulness. The big heart—especially that. All worth it.
She would tell Mo that. Not that she wanted everyone in the world paired up at the end, like a Shakespeare comedy—although she
did
—but Mo needed to be reminded that yes, certainly we are all ultimately alone, but how much kinder to yourself it can be to look that fearful truth in the eye with the one you love. Your mate.
Amika was coming out of Andrew’s room as Dash went in. “Oh, hi—I left the referral on the table. And I asked Dr. Brooke, who said it would probably be better to wait a couple weeks to start, till he’s a hundred percent and has all his strength back.”
“Start what? Who’s Dr. Brooke?”
“Oh, the allergist. Your husband wanted to know if he could start the tests right away. For his dog allergy? Dr. Brooke thinks he should wait and get well, then see an allergist in D.C., so he left a name, it’s on the paper. Tell Mr. Bateman, will you? He asked me to ask.”
“Thanks. I will.”
Dash sat on Andrew’s bed. Pointless tears started as soon as she picked up the pink referral slip Amika had left on the bedside table. It was the nicest thing he’d ever done. She wanted to tell somebody, she wanted to say it out loud in a weepy voice, “It’s the nicest thing he’s ever done.” All so that she could keep Sock. Oh, Andrew.
If he had made this concession, this lovely, loving gesture for her the night she’d stormed out of the house, would it have changed everything? Or only postponed it? The latter, she thought. She’d have been touched, grateful, moved, but Sock was always just a surrogate, a ringer. A pinch hitter in the ball game of her discontent.
Not that she was counting, but with this piece of paper Andrew had moved out in front. She wasn’t used to that. They’d been reunited for less than a day, and already it was two to nothing. She didn’t know what she would do for him to even the score, not, of course, that there was a
score
, but she looked forward to thinking of something good. Some sweet, spontaneous kindness, an act of selfless love that would awe and humble him, like an allergist’s referral. A gesture of the big heart.
For now, though, he was ahead. By
three
to zip if you counted the next gift, and she did. She got to go downstairs and greet him in Recovery.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Jerry Cederblom, professor of philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, for his insights into the workings and politics of a small college’s history department. I’m sure he made it all up, of course; I’m sure the dramas and intrigues at Mason-Dixon College never went on anywhere Jerry ever worked.
Thanks also to Rodney Clark, portrait photographer extraordinaire, who was so generous with his time and so patient with my questions.
Sally Kim’s kindness, clear thinking, and brilliant editing chops helped make the writing of this book a pleasure, or as close to it as any of them ever get. Thank you.
Finally, thanks to Amy Berkower at Writers House, for generosity and support, loyalty, patience, tolerance, charity, mercy, and any other cardinal virtues I’ve forgotten. You’re a lifesaver.
About the Author
P
atricia
G
affney lives in southern Pennsylvania with her husband of twenty-eight years and their two dogs, Finney and Jolene.
Also by Patricia Gaffney
The Goodbye Summer
Flight Lessons
Circle of Three
The Saving Graces
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Patricia Gaffney
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Shaye Areheart Books with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gaffney, Patricia.
Mad dash : a novel / Patricia Gaffney.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Midlife crisis—Fiction. 2. Married women—Fiction. 3. Middle-aged women—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.A296M34 2007
813’.54—dc22 / 2006039295
eISBN: 978-0-307-40529-6
v1.0