“You know the moment of conception, then, huh?” Rebecca smiled, almost warmly.
“Yes.”
Leaning forward, Rebecca rested her elbows on her desk. “If conception actually occurred twelve weeks ago, that would probably make you around fourteen weeks pregnant.”
“Fourteen weeks? What do you mean?” Joelle asked.
“We count from the first day of your last period. Usually, that’s a couple of weeks prior to the actual date of conception.”
“I never knew that,” Joelle said, bewildered to suddenly find herself two weeks further along than she’d thought she was. “I’ve worked in the maternity unit all these years and never knew that.”
“Well, it’s the ultrasound that will give us the most accurate reading on how far along you are.” Rebecca cocked her head to one side. “I just need to make sure you know you can still have an abortion at fourteen weeks.”
Joelle shook her head. “How could I do that after trying for so long to get pregnant?”
“Yes, of course,” Rebecca said. “I just want to be sure you know your options.”
“I do,” Joelle said. She glanced at the wall of framed diplomas near the window of the office. “I wanted to ask if you would be my obstetrician,” she said.
Rebecca nodded. “Of course.” She looked at her watch and stood up. “How about we start right now. Do you have time for your first prenatal exam?”
Joelle was relieved. That was the invitation she’d been hoping for. She needed to know the baby she’d been neglecting, at least from the perspective of prenatal care, was healthy. “I haven’t felt any movement,” she said, getting to her feet. “If I’m fourteen weeks, shouldn’t I be feeling something?”
“Not yet, but you will soon enough.” Rebecca guided Joelle toward one of the small examination rooms. “Let’s see what the sonogram tells us.”
Rebecca left her alone in the room, where Joelle undressed, put on a blue gown and climbed onto the table.
In a moment, Rebecca returned to the room. After a gentle examination, she began to squeeze warm gel on her stomach.
“I’ve been having some pain down here.” Joelle moved her hands along either side of her groin. “A pulling sort of feeling.”
Rebecca nodded. “Ligament pain,” she said. “That’s normal.” She began sliding the transducer back and forth over Joelle’s belly as an image formed on the monitor.
Joelle had never been able to make out those blurry fetal pictures, but Rebecca was an excellent interpreter.
“This is the head,” she said, pointing to the image in the center of the screen. “These little buds will become his or her arms and legs. Look, you can see one of the hands already. And most importantly, here’s the heart.”
“Oh!” Joelle lifted her head to get a better look at the pulsing speck of life on the monitor. “How beautiful! How big is it?” she asked. “The baby? The fetus?”
“About three and a half inches long,” Rebecca said. “And you are most definitely fourteen weeks, Joelle.”
“Oh, God.” She closed her eyes and let her head fall back on the small, flat pillow. “I feel so guilty for waiting this long to see you. To get prenatal care. Fourteen weeks!”
“Would you like a due date?” Rebecca did not seem to be listening to her ruminations. Instead, she was fiddling with a chart on the counter.
“I figured it would be in mid-January,” Joelle said.
“How about January first?” Rebecca said. “A New Year’s baby.”
A New Year’s baby. It would be just her luck to make the papers as having the first baby of the new year.
“You won’t be able to keep this a secret too much longer,” Rebecca said.
Joelle looked at her. “I plan to move before it becomes that apparent,” she said, then added quickly, “Please keep that between you and me, Rebecca. No one knows. I haven’t turned in my resignation or mentioned it to anyone yet.”
Rebecca frowned as she slipped the transducer back in its holder. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “You can’t leave. You’re an institution in the Women’s Wing.”
“Thanks,” Joelle said, staring at the ceiling, “but I want to go.”
Rebecca wiped the gel from her stomach with a towel. “You don’t need to name names,” she said, “but could you please tell me if the baby’s father will be involved during this pregnancy? Will you have support from him? Does he live somewhere else? Is that why you’ll be moving, to be closer to him?”
Joelle shook her head. “No,” she said. “The father won’t be involved.”
He’s married, she wanted to say. He’s overwhelmed by life already. I can’t burden him with one more thing. He can barely look me in the eye, much less be a father to my child.
“Where are you going?” Rebecca asked as she helped Joelle to sit up.
“I don’t know yet,” Joelle said, turning to dangle her legs over the side of the table. “Someplace I can start fresh with this baby.”
“Are you running away from something?” Rebecca probed.
“I don’t know.” Joelle shrugged. “No. Yes. Maybe.” She smiled an apology at the doctor for being so evasive. “The important thing is, can you be my obstetrician until I leave, Rebecca? I mean, without telling anyone? Or will that put you in too much of a bind?”
“I’ll be your doctor,” Rebecca said. “But people love you here, Joelle.” It seemed odd to hear the word love come from those ordinarily cool and dispassionate lips. “I hope you have a very good reason for going.”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
As she was unlocking the outside door to her condo that evening, Tony, one-half of the gay couple who lived downstairs, poked his head out his front door.
“Joelle!” he said. “Come join us for dinner. We made stuffed portobello mushrooms and we got carried away. There’s more than we can eat.”
“Oh, thanks, Tony.” She smiled at him with a shake of her head. “Not tonight, I’m afraid.”
“Well, we’ll save you some, then,” Tony said, disappearing inside his condo again.
She walked up the stairs and into her own condo, remembering the last time she’d eaten with her neighbors. She’d made a huge pot of fish stew and invited Tony and Gary over to help her eat it. The three of them had stayed up half the night, drinking a little too much and singing oldies off-key. She liked those guys. They were by no means her closest friends, but they had potential. If she were staying in the area, maybe they would have liked being honorary daddies. Maybe even her labor coaches.
You’ve been watching too many sitcoms on TV, she told herself as she lifted the telephone receiver to check her voice mail. She had one message, the mechanical voice told her, and she pressed her code to hear it.
“Hello, Joelle, a.k.a. Shanti Joy,” a woman’s voice said.
Joelle frowned. Carlynn Shire?
“This is Carlynn Shire,” the woman said, answering her question. “I’ve been thinking about you, and was wondering why I haven’t heard from you. How is your friend doing? Would you still like me to see her? If you would, give me a call.” She left her number, and Joelle wrote it down on the cover of a catalog resting on the kitchen counter.
How strange, she thought with a bit of annoyance. Apparently Alan Shire had neglected to tell Carlynn he had asked Joelle not to call her. Yet, she was pleased to hear the older woman’s message.
Setting down her purse and appointment book, she dialed the number.
“Shire residence.” It was a man’s voice. For a moment she was afraid it might belong to Alan Shire, but then she remembered the man who had called to set up her first meeting with Carlynn. This was most certainly his voice.
“This is Joelle D’Angelo,” she said. “May I speak with Carlynn Shire, please?”
“Please hold for a moment,” the man said, and several minutes passed before Carlynn came on the line.
“Hello, Joelle!” she said. “How are you?”
??
?I’m all right, Carlynn, but I have to say I was surprised to hear from you.”
“Why is that?”
Joelle sat on a stool at the counter. “Maybe you didn’t know this,” she said carefully, “but your husband contacted me. He told me you were retired and having some health problems and would rather not be seeing people. That’s why I didn’t call. I didn’t want to bother you again.”
There was a moment of silence on the line. “Alan called you?” Carlynn asked.
“No, he came to see me at the hospital where I work.”
“And he said…?”
“He said you’re retired and ill, that healing takes too much out of you, that—”
“Oh, horsefeathers,” Carlynn said. “He’s an old worrywart, isn’t he? He’s right that I’m retired, and he’s right that I’m ill, and there are few cases I’d be willing to take on these days, but you touched me with the story of your friend Mara. I would truly like to see her, Joelle.”
“Thank you,” she said, liking Carlynn a great deal for remembering Mara’s name. “But, Carlynn…” She hesitated, wondering if she should bring this up. “Another thing your husband said concerned me. He said that talking to me would remind you of… I know you lost your sister right around the time I was born.”
“That was a very long time ago, Joelle.” Carlynn sounded completely unconcerned. “It overjoys me to see that a life I touched back then has flourished in spite of what I lost. So put that right out of your mind.”
“All right, I will,” Joelle said, thinking that Carlynn seemed quite capable of making her own decisions, despite her husband’s concerns.
“Okay, then,” Carlynn said. “So, dear, when shall we see your friend?”
15
CARLYNN FOUND ALAN SITTING AT THE TABLE ON THE TERRACE, his feet up on one of the other chairs, a book in his lap, although he was not reading. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the gardeners working in the side yard.
She sat down on the other side of the table, and Alan glanced at her, then nodded in the direction of the yard.
“Crazy old man,” he said.
“What?” she asked. “Who?”
“Quinn,” he said.
She followed his gaze to one of the taller cypress trees, and saw the elderly man standing on a ladder, his head buried somewhere beneath the branches of the tree. She could see his weathered dark hands working the pruning shears. She shook her head.
“He can’t hold still, can he?” she said with a smile. “Quinn!” she called. “Come down from there. You’re going to kill yourself.”
He didn’t respond, and she knew that he had either not heard her or was going to pretend that he had not. She knew Quinn would rather die by falling out of a tree than by the slow, miserable route she seemed compelled to endure.
“I need to talk with you, Alan,” she said, shifting her gaze back to the terrace.
“Should you be out here in the sun?” Alan turned to ask her, his eyes masked behind his sunglasses.
“I don’t plan to be out here long,” she said. “I just wanted to understand why you would talk to Joelle D’Angelo behind my back.”
“Who?”
“You know who. The social worker who wanted me to see her friend. Why are you interfering in my business?”
“I think it’s my business, too, don’t you?” he asked. The sunlight on his head made the thick shock of his hair even whiter.
“Not really,” she said.
“Well.” He closed his book and set it down on the table. “I went to see her because A) you’re not well, and B) you’re not thinking straight.”
“I know I’m not well,” she said, “but there’s nothing wrong with my thinking.”
“There has to be if you’re willing to take on a healing,” he said. “For the last ten years I haven’t had to worry about you. I don’t want to start that up all over again.”
“You’re operating out of fear, Alan,” she said. He always had. “I know your intentions are good and that you’re trying to protect me. To protect all we’ve built together. But this girl— Joelle—needs me.”
“And without you, what will happen to her? Will she explode? Die? What? You’re not going to heal her friend. There’s nothing in the universe that can be done to help a woman that brain-damaged. You’re just giving Joelle false hope.”
“It’s not her friend I’m interested in.” She looked down at her hands. They were not so yellow today, or perhaps it was the sun that made them look a bit less like the hands of a woman dying from hepatitis. “I’ve been thinking a lot about my sister lately,” she said. “I may be going to see her soon.” She smiled, knowing she would irk Alan with that sort of talk. She’d always liked the open-ended nature of spiritual questions, while Alan, ever the physician, had no patience for them.
“Well,” Alan said, “if you see her, send her my regards.”
Carlynn leaned toward him across the table. “I’m not particularly proud of the life I’ve led, Alan,” she said. “I need to find a way to set it right.”
“And this is it?” he asked. “Helping the social worker’s friend?”
“Yes,” she said, rising to her feet. She rested one hand on his shoulder and bent low to buss his temple. “Please don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be very careful. I promise.”
16
JOELLE SLOWED HER CAR TO SKIRT A GOLF CART PARKED AT THE side of the road. She and Carlynn were driving north along the Seventeen Mile Drive, heading toward Pacific Grove and the nursing home. “Was Alan upset about you coming with me today?” she asked as they passed the pricey and beautiful Inn at Spanish Bay.
“You have to forgive Alan,” Carlynn said, without answering the question directly. “He’s very overprotective of me.”
“Has he always been that way?” Joelle took her eyes from the road to glance at the older woman.
“Not in the beginning,” Carlynn said. “But once people began going to great lengths to try to see me, hoping I could heal them, he really worried that I was either overdoing it, or that some loony person might try to kidnap me or heaven knows what.”
Joelle smiled to herself. It was funny to hear someone who claimed to be a healer refer to anyone other than herself as loony.
“Are you…forgive me for prying,” Joelle said. “Is your illness very serious?”
Carlynn nodded. “I have hepatitis C,” she said. “Apparently I contracted it thirty-four years ago, when I was hospitalized after the accident and needed a transfusion. But it was silent until a couple of years ago.”
Joelle remembered that hepatitis C was serious, but knew little more than that. “What about treatment?” she asked.
“I’m done with that,” Carlynn said. “I had a couple of rounds of the best drugs medicine has to offer, but the side effects were horrendous and the treatment simply didn’t work for me. I could go through it again, but frankly, I’d rather live a comfortable six months or so than a miserable year or two.”
“I’m sorry,” Joelle said. “It sounds as though it’s been pretty frustrating for you.”
“Well, I feel fairly good these days,” Carlynn said with a nod. “So much better than I did when I was taking those drugs. Then I could barely get out of bed.”
“Seeing Mara might tire you out terribly, though.” Joelle suddenly wondered if she should have paid more attention to Alan Shire’s concerns.
“I’d like to do some good before I die,” Carlynn said.
“You’ve already done a great deal of good, though,” Joelle said.
Carlynn smiled and turned to look at her. “I want to see Mara, Joelle,” she said firmly but kindly. “And that’s the final word.”
She obviously didn’t want sympathy, so Joelle changed the subject.
“How long have you and Alan been married?” she asked. They were nearing the Pacific Grove gate, and Carlynn waved at the toll taker as they passed by.
“Forty-three years. We met when I was in medical school. I was kee
ping my abilities to myself back then, but he sensed there was something different about me.”
Joelle glanced at her again and saw that she was smiling, perhaps at the memory. Today, Carlynn wore a yellow T-shirt beneath denim overalls, a blue-and-yellow-striped scarf tied at her neck, tennis shoes and small, round sunglasses. She looked very thin, yes, and her skin was probably more yellow than it should be, but otherwise it would be hard to guess that this was a woman with a terminal illness.
“I envy you for being married so long to someone who cares enough to protect you,” Joelle said as she turned in the direction of the nursing home.
That coy little smile again. “Yes, I’ve been lucky. And I’m sorry about your divorce. It must have been difficult for you.”
“Yes, it was,” she said. “I think I told you that we were unable to have children. So, my husband found someone he could have children with.”
“Oh, my, I am sorry.” Carlynn shook her head. “Alan and I could have no children, either, so I know how you must have felt.”
“But Alan didn’t leave.” Joelle turned the corner into the parking lot of the nursing home.
“No, I think our generation was quite different from yours. And Alan and I were bound together by so much… So very much.” Carlynn looked lost in her own thoughts for a moment, then she suddenly sat up straight in the seat. “Is this the nursing home? Let me shift my mental gears, then,” she said, taking off her sunglasses and folding them in her lap. “Let me sit quietly. I want to get ready to meet your Mara.”
Joelle parked the car and turned off the ignition. “Shall I leave you alone?” she asked.
“Just for a few minutes,” Carlynn said. “I’ll open my door so I don’t suffocate.” She giggled like a little girl as she opened the passenger-side door.
“There’s a bench by the front door of the building,” Joelle said. “I’ll meet you there, all right?”
“Fine.” Carlynn leaned her head against the headrest, folded her hands around her sunglasses in her lap, and closed her eyes.
Joelle walked slowly up the path to the bench near the front door of the nursing home. This whole situation was starting to feel a bit hokey to her now. The so-called shifting of mental gears, the sitting quietly to prepare herself for meeting Mara. The healer herself dying of hepatitis. Maybe Alan Shire had been trying to protect Joelle from being suckered. Whatever. It was too late now to change her mind.