The Shadow Wife

  “The answer is no, Joelle,” he said. “No, I won’t be there, and no, you may not bring her to see Mara. Don’t ask me again. I have enough to deal with right now.” He hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

  He walked from the den to the bedroom, still angry, and with an added sense of having escaped from a great threat. If he yelled at Joelle, he was safe. That aching longing he had for her, the love and admiration, didn’t exist when he was chewing her out. And he thought now that he would be able to sleep tonight.

  Around three in the morning, though, he woke up with a start, feeling much as he had the night after they’d made love, when he’d turned away from her with the hope of saving himself.

  18

  San Francisco, 1956

  LISBETH WAS TERRIFIED. DR. PETERSON HAD BORROWED GABRIEL Johnson’s tennis racket the day before and now wanted her to return it to him at San Francisco General. That was why she was locked in the stall in one of the first-floor ladies’ rooms at the hospital during her lunch break. The tennis racket rested against the tiled wall while Lisbeth stared at herself in the mirror, trying to get her breathing under control.

  What would she say to him? She’d never had a problem talking to him over the phone, and lately their conversations had grown even longer. But over the phone her voice did not give away her size.

  She thought about Gabriel often when she was in bed at night, and she talked to him in her head all the time when she was alone. She told him everything about herself, which made it hard for her to remember that he did not actually know her as well as she felt he did.

  A few weeks ago, he’d suggested she call him Gabriel instead of Mr. Johnson.

  “I’d feel strange calling you by your first name,” she’d said.

  “I want you to,” he’d answered in that deep voice that she loved. He had this way of making her feel like his equal, as though that was very important to him. As though the chief accountant of a big hospital and a medical secretary were on the same level.

  “Okay, Gabriel.” She’d smiled, relieved, actually, since she called him that in her imagination all the time and was always afraid she’d slip while talking to him on the phone.

  Her fantasies of Gabriel had become so intense, such a glorious part of her quiet existence, and she feared they would come to an end once he saw her. Touching up her makeup in the ladies’-room mirror, she pressed powder to her forehead and nose and rubbed a circle of rouge onto her cheeks. She didn’t want to look as though she’d made herself up especially for this meeting, so she skipped a fresh application of lipstick. She patted her petal curls into place. It was a stylish haircut, but what did it matter when the face that it framed was as round as a bowling ball? In her fantasies, she would meet Gabriel Johnson after losing sixty or seventy pounds. When, exactly, that would be she didn’t know. In the past six months, she’d added another ten pounds to her two hundred, and she was beginning to have difficulty finding a uniform for the doctor’s office that fit her.

  She thought of simply leaving the racket with someone at the hospital’s reception desk, but as much as she didn’t want to be seen by Gabriel, she was longing to see him, to see the man who had facelessly filled her fantasies and her dreams for the past year and a half.

  The woman at the information desk was an elderly volunteer, and the name tag attached to her collar read Madge.

  Lisbeth smiled at her. “I’m looking for Gabriel Johnson’s office,” she said.

  “Is he the bookkeeper?” the woman asked.

  “The chief accountant. Yes.”

  “That’s the business office.” The woman pointed a misshapen finger toward the bank of elevators in the corridor. “Second floor. Take the elevator and turn right, and his office is there on the corner.”

  Lisbeth felt nauseous in the elevator, and she knew the perspiration was returning to her nose and forehead. By the time she turned the knob of the door to the business office, her hand was shaking.

  There was no one sitting at the reception desk when she walked into the business office. She stood, waiting, for an uncomfortable moment, the racket at her side, before spotting an open door halfway down a narrow hallway.

  “Hello?” she called, hoping the person in that office would hear her, but there was no response.

  She walked down the hall and knocked on the open door, peering inside the room at the same time. A colored man sat at a desk, and he looked up at the sound of her knock.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for Gabriel Johnson.”

  The man had been writing something, but now he set down his pen.

  “I’m Gabriel Johnson,” he said.

  “No—” She stopped herself. She wanted to tell him that he couldn’t possibly be Gabriel. She wanted to tell him he was wrong, or to ask him if he was playing some sort of trick on her. But that voice. She recognized it, the depth and gentleness of it. She was stunned beyond speech, though. Gabriel—her Gabriel—was colored?

  “Ah, I see you have my racket,” he said, standing up. “You must be Lisbeth.”

  “Yes.” She tried to smile, holding the racket toward him. Her fantasy instantly evaporated, leaving a huge empty space inside her chest. She refused to think of herself as a bigot, but a romance with a colored man was out of the question. Her knees were full of jelly, and she was glad when he motioned toward the chair opposite his desk.

  “Please, sit down, Lisbeth.”

  She handed him the racket, then sank into the chair. Suddenly, she understood why Gabriel played tennis on Dr. Peterson’s private court. He would not be welcome at most of the courts around town.

  Gabriel sat down again, resting his racket on the desk. He smiled at her, and she saw so much in that smile. She could see an apology there, and understanding, along with a deep well of sadness.

  “I should have told you in our phone conversations that I was a Negro,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, “I should have told you that I was fat.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she laughed out loud at herself.

  Gabriel laughed, too. In fact, he roared, then shook his head, taking off his horn-rimmed glasses to wipe his eyes. “I would say you are every bit as lovely as your voice,” he said.

  What else could he say? she thought. He was trying to take the awkwardness out of the moment. She was certain, though, that he felt the same sting of disappointment at seeing her that she felt at seeing him.

  “Hey,” he said suddenly. “I wanted to show this to you.” Lifting a framed photograph from his desk, he handed it to her. It was a picture of a sailboat, and it looked very much like the sloop her family had once owned. She looked from the picture back to him.

  “Is this yours?” she asked. “The boat you told me about?”

  He nodded. “What do you think?”

  “It’s a beauty,” she said. “It reminds me of the boat my father used to take me out on.”

  “I love it,” he said, taking the picture back from her and placing it again on his desk. “I feel so free out on the water.”

  She remembered that feeling well, although she’d not experienced it in a long time. “Where did you learn to sail?” she asked.

  “My father taught me, too,” he said. “On an estuary in Oakland.”

  She remembered him telling her he was originally from Oakland, but now she pictured his childhood home in the section of that city where the colored people lived.

  “Is that why you went in the navy?” she asked, recalling that he had told her he’d served in the war.

  “Yes,” he said. “You have a good memory. And I recall that you grew up along the Seventeen Mile Drive. And you have a twin sister.”

  “Right.”

  “Identical or fraternal?”

  “Identical,” she said, although it felt like a lie, since she was nearly twice her sister’s size.

  “Amazing to think there are two of you.” He smiled. “Are you alike in other ways, as well?”
br />   Lisbeth bit her lip. She did not want to talk about Carlynn. She did not want to draw attention to the twin who had always received it. Yet, she longed to pour her heart out to this man who seemed so interested in her. She drew in a breath.

  “We are nothing alike,” she said. “Carlynn’s a doctor. She graduated from medical school last June, and now she’s an intern here at SF General.”

  “So, you both have an interest in medicine.”

  It seemed ridiculous that he was comparing Carlynn’s being a doctor to her being a secretary in a physician’s office, but he was actually right. She loved it when Dr. Peterson talked to her about his patients, especially when he spoke of those he seemed unable to help, and she often pressed him for the medical details of those cases. Sometimes, she wanted to ask Carlynn to come over and just sit with one of those patients in the waiting room, just touch his or her hand gently, to see if perhaps she could make a difference.

  “Yes, we do,” Lisbeth said. “But I could never be a doctor.”

  “Why not?” Gabriel asked.

  “I’m just not…as smart as she is. I know that supposedly we have the same brain. But somehow…she’s just smarter than me, that’s all. We went to different schools.” She didn’t want to sound small and bitter. Besides, education was not the primary difference between herself and Carlynn. “And she has this…ability…” She spoke slowly, not certain how much to say. Carlynn was still very secretive about her gift. “She will be a gifted physician,” Lisbeth said simply.

  “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit,” Gabriel said. “Whenever I talk to you, I’m struck by how concerned and well educated you are about Lloyd’s patients.”

  “Thank you,” she said, touched by his kindness. Then, suddenly, she shook her head.

  He leaned forward on his desk. “Why are you shaking your head?”

  Don’t cry, she told herself. Don’t cry in front of him.

  “It’s just that—” She stopped herself short. Could she say this to him? She had little to lose at this point. “You’re so nice. And I…talking with you on the phone…I’ve allowed myself to imagine…well, we have common interests, and so I allowed myself to foolishly think we might…”

  “Me, too.” His smile was warm, his teeth very white against his milk chocolate-colored skin, and he suddenly looked beautiful to her. “Though I guess I knew that when you met me, it would be over. I’m a Negro, to begin with. I’m what…ten years older than you?”

  “I’m twenty-seven,” she said.

  He groaned. “Eleven years older, then.”

  And I’m fat, she wanted to add, but managed to stop herself.

  “Is it impossible?” he asked.

  She raised her eyes quickly to his. “You mean…?”

  “Is it impossible for us to go out together?” He looked ill at ease for the first time, and she felt like hugging him to make him comfortable again. “I mean,” he continued, “how would you feel about that? Would it be awkward for you to be seen with me?”

  She shook her head. “No.” She hoped she was being honest in her answer. “No. I wouldn’t care.”

  “What about your family?”

  Oh, God. “My sister wouldn’t care,” she said, hoping that was the truth, as well. “But my mother…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Your mother?” he prompted.

  “She thinks…well, she sees…” She started to say colored people, but he had referred to himself as a Negro, and she decided she should use his language. “She sees Negroes as servants or manual laborers.”

  He nodded. “Not unusual,” he said, and she picked up a hint of some old, deep anger in his voice.

  “But—” she shrugged with a laugh “—she already detests me, so I guess I shouldn’t worry about that.”

  “Detests you? Why on earth?”

  “I…oh, it’s a long story.”

  He suddenly picked up his phone and pressed the intercom button.

  “Nancy?” he said. “No interruptions.”

  Hanging up the phone, he stood and closed his office door until it was almost completely shut, but not quite, and she was grateful for his sense of propriety. He sat down again.

  “When is Lloyd expecting you back?” he asked.

  She looked at her watch. “At around one,” she said.

  Gabriel picked up his phone again, and with a jolt, Lisbeth noticed he was missing two fingers on his left hand, both the pinkie and ring fingers. They’d been sliced off right down to his hand, and she wondered what he had been through. Had he lost them as a child or an adult?

  Gabriel dialed a number. “Lloyd? It’s Gabe,” he said. “Lisbeth Kling is here and she’ll be late getting back to you. Yes, it’s my fault. I need to keep her here a while longer. We have some things to discuss.” He smiled across the desk at her. “Sure, thanks.” He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair.

  “Now we have time for your long story,” he said.

  She told him everything, letting out the secrets and sadness of her childhood years. She spoke of her love for her sister despite her feelings of bitterness and resentment, emotions she usually tried hard to keep hidden. She cried, but only a little, when she spoke about how hard it was to go home these days. She needed to spend time at Cypress Point, she told him, the way someone else might need food or medicine, but she had not yet figured out a way to prevent her mother’s insults from ruining those visits for her.

  Never before had she chronicled the hurt in her life in quite this way. She’d never allowed it to spill out to another soul. Gabriel’s face was full of sympathy and understanding, and she had the feeling he had experienced the same sort of ostracism she had. Not from a mother, perhaps, but from the world at large. Somehow, though, he had overcome it, and she wondered if he might be able to teach her how to do the same. His gentleness, his attentive listening, was seductive and comforting, and by the time she had finished her story she was in love—with Gabriel the man, not Gabriel the fantasy.

  “Don’t answer now,” he said as he walked her to the door after their long conversation. “But I would love to go out with you. Sailing, or out to dinner, or just about anywhere. Do you have a phone?”

  “I can only use my landlord’s phone in an emergency,” she said, thrilled, but by this point, not surprised, by his invitation. “I can call from Dr. Peterson’s office, though.”

  Stepping back to his desk, Gabriel jotted down a phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

  “I’m giving you an open invitation,” he said. “If you decide you want to go out with me, please call. I’ll leave it up to you.”

  “Dr. Kling. Call the front desk.” The voice came over the hospital loudspeaker, and Carlynn looked up from the chart on which she was writing. She was accustomed to being paged these days, now that she was an intern. The pages were often from Alan, of course, but he was good about using the paging system for business only, keeping their personal relationship out of the hospital. They had been dating for six months now, and after their initial conversation about her “gift,” Alan had found ways to bring her in on cases. A couple of times he’d even spirited her into patients’ rooms in the middle of the night so that she could sit with them while they slept, her hands on their bodies. She’d discovered, though, the mere touching of the patients alone did not seem nearly as effective as when she was able to look into their eyes and speak with them. She and Alan were both fascinated by trying to determine when her skills would work and when they wouldn’t. What made the difference? She truly could not say.

  In front of others, they were Dr. Shire and Dr. Kling, but they often couldn’t wait until the end of the day, when they could discuss cases, pore over Alan’s books on the subject of healing, and sometimes, when the serious business of medicine was set aside, laugh together. Alan was fairly good-looking, but he was more scientist than Prince Charming, and she was no empty-headed fairy-tale damsel. Their brains and their passion for their work drew them toge
ther and solidified their relationship, so that when they finally did sleep together, it was almost as an afterthought. There was love between them, of that Carlynn had no doubt, but it was not a romantic love, and she told herself that was fine. Next to Lisbeth, Alan was her best friend, the person with whom she could be entirely honest about her gift. If they ever married, something they had spoken about a time or two, he would make a wonderful father, and she was longing to have children. She could ask for little more than that.

  Quickly, she finished writing her note in the chart, then picked up the phone to dial the operator.

  “This is Dr. Kling,” she said when the operator answered. She waited to hear her say that Dr. Shire was on the line for her, but the operator surprised her.

  “Lisbeth Kling on the line for you,” the operator said.

  “All right.” Carlynn frowned, a bit concerned. It was rare for Lisbeth to disturb her at the hospital. “Put her through, please.”

  “Carly? I’m so sorry to bother you at work.”

  “That’s all right. What is it? Are you okay?”

  “I’m here in the hospital. I’m fine, though,” she added quickly. “I came here on business for Dr. Peterson, and I need your advice, Carly. Do you have some time?”

  Carlynn looked at her watch. “I’ll meet you in the front lobby in five minutes,” she said, then hung up the phone.

  The lobby was large, in need of new furniture and very crowded, but she quickly spotted her sister near the entrance and sat down next to her on one of the sofas. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I met him,” Lisbeth said. Her face glowed with excitement. “Dr. Peterson’s tennis partner.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. But I need to talk to you about him.”

  Carlynn glanced at her watch again. It would soon be time for afternoon rounds, but she would just have to be late. She moved closer to her sister.

  “Talk to me, then,” she said.

  “Oh, Carlynn,” Lisbeth grabbed her arm. “He’s wonderful.”