Home Again Page 7

  No way.

  He threw the covers off his body and plucked the needles from his arms. He tossed his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He was getting the hell out of this place. They weren’t gonna cut his heart out and sew in someone else’s. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—live that way. He’d die the way he’d always lived. Full tilt, taking no prisoners.

  He took a single step, just that, and pain exploded in his chest. With a cry, he crashed to the floor. His arm flung out, caught a table and sent it sprawling. Water splashed the floor. Plastic cups and pitchers banged on the linoleum.

  He lay there, unable to breathe, gasping for air like a mackerel. And hurting. Christ, even with the drugs, he was hurting like he’d never hurt before.

  Suddenly he understood. He was dying. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Soon. It didn’t matter whether he wanted the surgery, didn’t matter that he’d be a freak when it was over. He had no choice.

  He twisted around and crawled back to the bed. Grabbing the metal bed frame, he hauled himself upright and collapsed on the mattress.

  He slid back under the covers and closed his eyes. It hurt so badly, he wanted to cry.

  If only he had someone to talk to, someone real, who cared about him. Someone who was the kind of friend Francis and Madelaine had once been.

  Madelaine.

  How many nights had he lain awake in the dark, wondering how his brother was doing, what Madelaine had become? How many times had he picked up the phone to call them both, only to hang up before anyone answered?

  He sighed heavily. Madelaine. Even now he could bring her face to mind, the thick brown hair that fell in waves to the middle of her back, the slashing eyebrows and Gypsy-tilted eyes, the rounded curves of her body. Most of all he could remember her laugh, throaty and soft.

  Back then, she had laughed all the time.

  Back then. Before he’d walked out on her.

  The last time he’d seen Madelaine, she sat hunched on the end of the tattered sofa, looking so out of place in his family trailer, her cashmere sweater drooping sadly across one shoulder, her cheeks stained with tears.

  He allowed himself to remember it all again, and with remembrance came the burning shame. The lies he’d told her, the words that fell like poison from his lips, the feel of the blood money in his hand, the lingering memory of her perfume—baby powder and Ivory soap.

  And now the ultimate revenge was hers.

  His life depended on the woman he’d betrayed.

  Chapter Five

  Madelaine sat on the edge of Lina’s bed. Here and there she could see patches of the pale blue Laura Ashley striped wallpaper she’d put up so many years ago, but most of the walls were covered with posters of rock groups Madelaine had never heard of. Thousands of tiny tack holes in the expensive paper, each one an imprint of Lina’s emerging personality.

  Madelaine lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, thinking of her daughter. For a second all she could bring forth in her mind were long-gone images—puffy baby cheeks and laughing blue eyes, a pair of fat legs waddling across the dining room floor. A toothless first-grade grin.

  Did all mothers feel this way? Did all mothers keep a portrait of their babies inside their hearts, expecting grown girls to still smell like talcum powder and baby shampoo?

  Ah, she’d made so many mistakes. She should have told Lina the truth about her father years and years ago. Even last year, when she’d seen Lina sliding downward, she should have guessed at the cause and come clean. But she’d been so damn afraid of Lina not loving her anymore. So afraid of her baby leaving home …

  It had been wonderful when it was just the two of them, the baby and the mother in the quiet house, making cookies and reading bedtime stories.

  Long-forgotten memories crept into her mind of the days when she’d been a teenager going to college and raising a baby alone. Images of that horrible apartment of theirs on University Avenue, with the windows that didn’t open and the radiator that never worked … the rickety steps to the purple front door … the car that stalled on the corner of Fifteenth and University every morning … the nights when they both ate Raisin Bran for dinner and she hoped the milk was still fresh. Yet, even in the worst of times—during the eighteen-hour workdays and nighttime study sessions—Madelaine had always had Lina right there with her. A curious-minded toddler slung on an exhausted resident’s hip. Back then, it was just the two of them against everyone….

  But the world had intruded, had come forth with its sticky fingers and demanded Lina’s presence. That was the beginning of the end—when Lina had begun to grow up and ask questions and see Madelaine’s faults. Maybe if Madelaine had attended public schools, had grown up with girlfriends around her, she would have known how to handle the daily traumas. But her father would never have allowed such a thing. Would never have allowed Madelaine to mix with what he called the riffraff. Every day of her childhood had been spent alone, dreaming about friends who would never visit and excursions that would never take place. She didn’t know anything about proms or mixers, and less about rebellion.

  She didn’t know anything about teenagers who were scared and belligerent and confused.

  All Madelaine knew about was hiding, pretending, smiling when the ache was so strong and deep that sometimes you couldn’t breathe. And she didn’t want her baby to learn that skill.

  Sighing, she got to her feet and stood there, uncertain. What was she going to do when Lina finally came home?

  If she came home.

  Madelaine shivered. She wouldn’t think that way, wouldn’t keep listening for the phone or the doorbell, waiting for the worst to happen. Wouldn’t keep worrying that Lina would do what Madelaine had done so many years ago.

  She moved toward the tape player that sat on Lina’s desk and thumbed idly through the tapes and compact disks stacked beside it. At the bottom of the pile was the old Helen Reddy tape they used to listen to.

  She picked it up, dusted off the clear plastic cover, and snapped it open. Then she put it on the machine and hit Play.

  The music slid through the room on a tide of bittersweet memories.

  “No fair, Mom,” said a shaky voice.

  Madelaine spun toward the door. Lina looked incredibly young and vulnerable, a child in grown-up clothes, her makeup smeared down her pale cheeks. She was so petite, her bones as fine as a baby bird’s, her face small and heart-shaped. The jet black of her unruly hair contrasted sharply with the pale, pale cream of her skin. Skin that offset her electric, cornflower-blue eyes.

  Madelaine gave her a tentative smile. “Hi, ba … Lina. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Lina shoved a hand through her spiky black hair. “Yeah, right. Wanted to say happy birthday again, huh?”

  Madelaine moved slowly toward her daughter, but halfway there, she stopped and instead sat on the bed, gazing up at her sixteen-year-old daughter.

  “I have some explaining to do,” she said at last.

  “Yeah.” Lina yanked a chair from beside her desk and sat down. Hunching forward, she rested her elbows on her knees and drilled her mother with an angry look. Four silver earrings sparkled in a ladderlike curl up her left ear. “So explain. Tell me about my dad.”

  Dad. The word was the nick of a razor. Madelaine flinched. He wasn’t a dad; a dad stuck around, protected his family and helped when the baby had a fever or a nightmare. A dad didn’t walk out on everyone.

  Lina sighed dramatically. “Look, Jett is waiting for me outside—”

  “You’re dating a boy named Jet?”

  “Are you gonna talk or not? Otherwise—”

  “I met your … father when I was about your age.” Madelaine tried to smile. “It’s a story you’ve heard a million times before. I got pregnant and he … he couldn’t leave town fast enough.”

  Lina’s blue eyes narrowed. “Did you ever hear from him again?”

  Madelaine tried not to remember how long she’d waited for a phone call, a letter, an
ything. Tried to forget how she’d cried every Christmas for years afterward. “No.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Madelaine knew this was the question that would ruin it all. No matter how she answered, it would be wrong. If she lied, Lina would hate her, and if she answered truthfully, Lina would contact her father. Only he wasn’t the kind of man who’d welcome a midnight “Hi, I’m your daughter” call—if he’d wanted to know his child, he wouldn’t have left in the first place.

  If Lina found him, he’d break her heart. A word, a gesture, a little laugh—anything that meant he didn’t care—would kill Lina.

  “Well?” Lina demanded.

  Madelaine knew she had no choice; this was something she should have done a long, long time ago. But she couldn’t just throw his name out there. Madelaine had to speak to him before Lina did. The thought of it—just the thought of picking up the phone and calling him after all these years—terrified her. It would change everything. God help us all. “I can’t tell you his name right now, but—”

  “Don’t.” Lina jerked to her feet and kicked the chair away.

  “Let me finish. I can’t tell you his name right now. But I’ll …” It took everything she had inside to form her next words. “I’ll contact him and tell him about you.”

  Lina’s eyes widened. A tiny smile plucked at her mouth. “You mean he doesn’t know about me?”

  Madelaine thought of all the ways she could answer that question—some angry, some bitter, some sad. In the end, she chose simple honesty. “As far as I know, he doesn’t know you were ever born.”

  Lina bit down on her lower lip to stop a smile. Madelaine could see the excitement on her daughter’s face, shining in the bright blue eyes. Lina wanted so desperately to believe that her father was a good man, a loving father who’d been robbed of his chance to parent. “I knew it.”

  Madelaine stared at her. Lina hadn’t considered what the words really meant, and Madelaine was glad.

  “You promise you’ll tell him?”

  “I’ve never lied to you, Lina.”

  “Only by omission.”

  Madelaine winced. “I’ll tell him.”

  “He’ll want to see me,” Lina said, and Madelaine could hear the desire in her daughter’s voice, the need.

  Madelaine got to her feet, moved cautiously toward her. When she was close enough to touch her, she stopped, and though she wanted to stroke her baby’s hacked-up hair, she didn’t move, didn’t lift a finger. “He might disappoint you, sweetheart.”

  “He won’t,” Lina whispered.

  Madelaine couldn’t help herself. She reached out. “Baby, you have to understand—”

  “I’m not your baby! It’s you he doesn’t want. You. He won’t disappoint me. You’ll see.”

  Lina turned and ran from the room, slamming the door behind her. Madelaine heard her footsteps thundering through the house, then the faraway click of the front door closing.

  And she was left, all alone in the room, listening to Helen Reddy. You and me against the world.

  Hillhaven Nursing Home lay stretched across the narrow suburban street like a half-toppled pile of children’s building blocks. On a low hill above the tree-lined road, it gazed serenely down on the quiet cul-de-sac. Cropped grass, burnished to an autumn brown by last night’s cold snap, rolled alongside the cement driveway. Behind the six-foot ironwork fence, a few elderly men and women wandered through the dying gardens, talking softly among themselves.

  Francis eased his tired Volkswagen up to the curb and parked at an awkward angle. Leaning over to the passenger seat, he plucked up his Bible and black leather bag, then climbed out of the car. Cool, rain-sweetened air ruffled his hair and sent a wayward lock into his eyes. He stood there for a moment, watching the goings-on in the yard. He could hear the familiar thump-scrape of metal walkers being pushed along the sidewalks and the distant, motorized whine of a mechanical wheelchair. Orderlies in crisp white uniforms milled casually among the patients, stopping here and there to offer assistance.

  He walked up to the entrance and went into the yard. The gate closed behind him with a clang that cut through the conversations. A dozen heads turned to him, and he saw expectation light up every pair of eyes—all of them hoping, hoping, it would be a family member visiting.

  “Father Francis!” Old Mrs. Bertolucci squealed, clapping her gnarled, arthritic hands.

  He smiled at her. She looked so pretty right now, the sunlight tangled in her white hair, joy in her rheumy eyes. The left half of her face was paralyzed, but it didn’t detract from her beauty. He’d known her for fifteen years—like so many of the people who resided here, she’d lived and worked in Francis’s old neighborhood. He’d taken Communion alongside her for years, and now he was here to give it.

  One by one, they shuffled toward him. He smiled. This was what he lived for.

  And in that instant he felt at peace, blanketed once again by the comforting heat of his faith. He was meant to be here, had always been meant to be here. It was now, doing the work of the Lord, that he felt whole and content.

  He knew that tonight, when he lay alone in bed, listening to the wind through the eaves and the rattling of the windowpanes, he would be vulnerable again. The doubt would creep through the ragged curtains and nibble at his soul, and he would wonder and worry…. He would think of Madelaine and Lina and all the choices he had made in his life; he would think of how he’d encouraged Madelaine to keep the truth from Lina, and the shame would suffocate him. And most of all, loneliness would close in on him like the walls of a fortress. But for now he was happy. It was why he’d hurried over to the home, an hour early. Here and now, with the white collar taut around his throat and a Bible tucked under his arm, he felt safe.

  He knelt on the hard carpet of grass, and they gathered around him, all talking at once.

  Fred Tubbs hacked out a cough, then pulled a worn pack of cards from his breast pocket—the same pack he’d been brandishing for years. “Time for a quick game of cards, Father?”

  Francis grinned. “You cleaned me out last week, Freddy.”

  The old man winked. “I love to play cards with a man who has taken a vow of poverty.”

  “Well, maybe just one hand …” Francis said, knowing he’d spend hours in the recreation room, playing cards, looking at the same family photographs he’d seen a million times, rereading Christmas cards and letters from loved ones who never had the time to visit.

  And they knew it, too—he could see the joy in their faces, the pleasure of simply being remembered on this sunny autumn afternoon.

  He got to his feet and took hold of Mrs. Bertolucci’s wheelchair. They were still talking to him, one at a time now, in their crackly, paper-thin voices as they moved toward the front door. Me started up the ramp, then paused, looking around. “Where’s Selma?”

  Silence. And he knew. The usual sadness welled up in his chest.

  “Yesterday,” Sally MacMahon said, shaking her dyed head of jet-black hair. “Her daughter was with her.”

  There was a murmur of relief that Selma hadn’t been alone.

  “We thought maybe you could say a special Mass for her, Father,” Fred said. “Miss Brine said it would be fine—in the rec room at four o’clock.”

  Francis reached out for the man and squeezed his rail-thin shoulder. He glanced at the faces around him, one by one, at the wrinkled, age-spotted skin and thinning hair, at the thick glasses and hearing aids and strands of Kmart pearls, and knew what they needed from him now.

  Faith. Hope. Strength.

  And he had it to give. The smile he gave them was slow and came from the depths of his heart. “She is beyond her pain now,” he said softly, believing the words that he’d repeated many times before. “She is with God and the angels and her husband. It is we who feel the pain at her passing.”

  Mrs. Costanza laid her purplish, big-knuckled hand on Francis’s arm and looked up at him through watery eyes. “Thank you for coming, Father,” she
said in her rickety voice. “We needed you.”

  He smiled at her lovely, time-ravaged face and remembered suddenly that she used to give him flowers from her corner shop on Cleveland Street. It was a hundred years ago … and it was yesterday. “And I need you all,” he answered simply.

  Carefully holding her cup of morning coffee, Madelaine waved at the nurses as she made her way down the wide, linoleum-floored hallway. She turned in to her office, a small, box-shaped cubicle, decorated in the English country style. Bold floral drapes in shades of burgundy and green parenthesized the small window. Heavy mahogany bookcases, filled to overflowing with hardback and paperback books and mementos from grateful patients, lined one wall. Plants huddled on the windowsill, and photographs of Francis and Lina hung in beribboned groupings on the green-striped wallpaper. A nineteenth-century dining room table served as Madeline’s desk, its glossy surface dotted with photos of Francis and Lina.

  She sat at her desk and began thumbing through the stack of papers there. Before she got halfway through it, someone knocked at the door.

  She didn’t look up. “Come in.”

  Dr. Allenford, the transplant team’s cardiovascular surgeon, pushed through the door and strode into her small office. “I don’t suppose you have another cup of coffee?” he asked as he sat down in the floral visitor’s chair.

  She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  He shoved a hand through his steel-gray hair and sighed. “Ah well, Rita’s been after me to quit drinking so much.”

  Madelaine chuckled and waited for Allenford to get to business.

  “We’ve got a new transplant patient.”

  Madelaine never tired of hearing those words. Suddenly she wasn’t exhausted or depressed at all, she was itching to hear more. “Really?”

  “Don’t look so excited. He’s a bad risk. Former drug user, world-class partier and woman chaser—if the media is to be believed—and he definitely has a bad attitude.”

  “Oh.” Madelaine edged back in her seat and studied the man who had taught her most of what she currently knew about heart transplants. Allenford was one of the top doctors in his field, driven, ambitious, and gifted. If Chris said the patient was a bad risk, he knew what he was talking about.