chapter 26
Phoebe pushed back away from Ryland, so she could see his face. “What do you mean? That I’m not special? That I’m not—” The word from Mallory’s fairy tale came to her. “Not extraordinary?”
Why did this particular topic keep coming up? She didn’t understand. And why did it hurt more, each time it did?
“Well, yes, but—”
“Stop it!” said Phoebe. “Stop it!”
It was as if a tiny pinprick had been bored into her skin, something that would have healed on its own without too much trouble, except that it wasn’t being allowed to scab over. Instead it was being poked, irritated, enlarged, and made worse. First Mallory. Now Ryland.
Phoebe spoke rapidly. “What Mallory said was that I’m nothing without, you know, my family and money and—you know. Whereas my mother, well, she’s so amazing just all on her own. Extraordinary. My mother’s extraordinary. I know that!”
Ryland cupped Phoebe’s face. “Do you believe Mallory, then? That you’re not extraordinary?”
His eyes had never been so intense.
“I guess,” Phoebe said slowly.
“So you’re ordinary. Just say it, in so many words. You’ll feel better.”
Phoebe chewed on the inside of her cheek. She had talked with Benjamin about this, and she had been calm then. She could be calm now. She had to be. She had to explain to Ryland what she really thought. She had to make him understand. It felt so—so vital.
She reached automatically for her inhaler. She felt him watching her, still calmly, as she had her puffs and then, a few minutes later, she returned to the conversation, groping again for words, the right words.
She said, “Spending all this time with my mother at the hospital . . . I’ve had time to think about her. And about us—me and her, our family.”
“And what have you thought?”
“She thinks I’m special. My mother. I’m not, okay, maybe I agree with Mallory that I’m not very amazing, in the larger sense, not extraordinary. But my mother thinks I am—my dad too, of course—and that, well, that does something to me. I can’t really explain it.”
“Try.”
Oddly, as Phoebe searched now for words to explain how safe she had always felt in her family, it was as if she was herself rebuilding that shaky floor beneath her feet.
“My parents love me,” she said. “And that gives me something foundational, a confidence that’s very basic. It has nothing to do with money or an impressive family. That’s what Mallory didn’t understand.” Or you, either. “It’s just about love, unearned love, even.”
“What do you mean, unearned love? Say more.”
“Well, I guess it’s basic,” she said. “Think of babies. There’s no reason to love a baby for anything but the fact that it’s there. The baby doesn’t do anything to earn love, except being little and cute, which all babies are automatically. So, the baby is ordinary, right? But it feels special and fabulous before it even understands language, just because everybody is cooing over it and cuddling it and feeding it and loving it.”
Phoebe paused. “If somebody loves the baby and takes care of it, then automatically, the baby believes it’s special. And that conviction gets, sort of, baked permanently into its feelings.”
“But then the baby grows up,” Ryland said. “And finds out it’s not special. It’s just a regular human being like millions of others. Nothing extraordinary. What then?”
Phoebe dug deeper and, miraculously, found an answer. “Well, that’s the thing. Maybe life teaches the baby—not a baby anymore—that he or she isn’t extraordinary. But because of all that love right from the start, deep inside, he or she can never really believe it completely. He or she is secretly convinced of his specialness. That’s what early parental love gives to you. It’s primal. It’s probably why the human race survives.”
She had said it. She knew she had somehow blundered her way into the truth, or at least, her own truth. She drew in a deep breath that she felt all the way to the bottom of her lungs.
Ryland said nothing.
“It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?” said Phoebe. She smiled shyly. “I sit there by my mother’s bedside, and I know that I’ll be the first thing she wants to see when she opens her eyes. She gave me this primal belief in my specialness when I was an infant, just by loving me. I don’t deserve it, I completely don’t deserve it, but I have it anyway.”
“And nothing can take it away?” Ryland reached out. He stroked Phoebe’s back. It felt good, but she had the fleeting thought it was the kind of indifferent caress you might give a stray cat.
“That’s where I keep landing on this,” said Phoebe. She laughed a little; but now there was a sob in it too. “I’m absolutely nothing special and I know it. Mallory’s right.” You’re right. “But deeper down, my ego doesn’t believe that, and, well, that’s just how it is.”
“So. Because your extraordinary mom loved you when you were a baby, that set your own value high within yourself, is what you’re saying.”
Phoebe frowned. He hadn’t understood after all. But she now knew how to explain. “No, not exactly. I didn’t know my mother was Catherine Rothschild. I was a baby, I knew squat.”
Then Phoebe had a thought and it was this: Even if Catherine died tomorrow, even if Drew did also, she would still have had their love. Nothing that happened in the past could be taken away. This was an amazing gift. The past was done and over and settled; you couldn’t get it back, but still, whatever good you had gotten from it, spiritually, emotionally, would be yours for your lifetime.
Phoebe discovered that she was babbling this out, in a flurry of excitement. “God,” she finished. “I’m totally incoherent, but do you see what I’m saying? Do you?”
She looked up into Ryland’s impassive face.
He did not reply for a full minute. Then, slowly, he nodded. “I believe so.” He spoke drily. “You’re saying that my sister’s words about you not being worthy of your mother and family resonate in you. You know they’re true. But at the same time you have a—sorry, Phoebe—a stupid infantile ego that stubbornly refuses to face reality.”
Phoebe blinked. Then she laughed. It was a shocked, uncertain laugh. She searched Ryland’s face. Was he joking? “I—I guess you can look at it that way. That wasn’t quite what I meant. At least, I don’t think it was. Maybe—maybe it’s true.”
There was silence. The good feeling—the floor—that Phoebe had had as she thought about her parents’ love was rapidly receding again, replaced by uncertainty. She tried to cuddle up close to Ryland.
“Ryland?” she asked tentatively. “What are you thinking?”
It took him a moment to respond. “I’m remembering something else my sister said about you, before I met you. It fits in with what you were just saying.”
Phoebe now just felt tired. So tired and empty. “What is it?”
“She said that the big psychological struggle of your life was your relationship with your mother and, in a more abstract sense, with the Rothschild family history. She said that you would use every excuse you could find to not look at it straight on and take it seriously.”
Phoebe sat up. “I am taking it seriously. That’s what I was just talking about. It’s nothing to do with the Rothschilds—I was talking about parents and children and love and how in any family—”
“No, actually. It seemed to me you were still talking about how you could be a bratty toddler—just as my sister said—and that was okay.”
Phoebe was very, very still. Then she got up. “No,” she managed. “You totally misunderstood me.” Suddenly she felt as if she were alone with a total stranger.
A hostile stranger. But why? Why? Was what she had said so terrible? It must have been. Even if she couldn’t understand why.
Was he right after all? Was Mallory?
She couldn’t stop herself from talking. “Look,” she said desperately. “I don’t understand why Mallory harped on this and I—I don
’t understand why you are now too.”
Then fury overtook her.
“The big psychological struggle of my life, Ryland? I mean, seriously? The way I feel now, if I get to be intimidated by my mother and worry about living up to her expectations, that would be a wonderful problem to have and I hope I get to have it, and her, for thirty or forty more years.”
She glared.
“I see,” said Ryland.
But then, abruptly, the fight went out of Phoebe. Did he really think she was a bratty toddler? Why hadn’t he understood her? Was she wrong? Stupid?
“Phoebe,” said Ryland. His voice was very soft.
She looked at him. Then she turned away and looked for her backpack. Finally she spotted it on the kitchen counter. She went there and picked it up. And then, when she turned toward the door, meaning to leave, she found that Ryland was up also, and he was standing directly in her path. With his arms out.
She couldn’t help herself. She burst into tears and flung herself, wordless, fully into his arms. He could say anything he wanted to. Anything he needed to. She would listen. If only he would hold her, if only he would be there for her, she would listen.
“Phoebe,” he said quietly. “Let’s go to bed. I think I’ll be better able to communicate with you there.”
Phoebe felt herself go very still.
“Please, Phoebe. Let’s try again.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Phoebe.”
It felt so good to be in his arms. To be held like this. And he did love her. She knew he did.
“All right,” Phoebe said tentatively.
CONVERSATION WITH THE FAERIE QUEEN, 14
“You should not try to speak, my queen. I have been given permission to say a few words, just to reassure you. All is well. I am making progress, if slowly, with the girl. I am almost there. And my sister remains at the house quietly with the woman, taking care of her, just as she was doing before you collapsed. My sister may have taken advantage of the situation, but she is being entirely useful and obedient at last. Are you not, sister?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. It’s just the way my brother says. And I apologize again for upsetting you the last time we spoke. And to promise that I will only stay in the human realm for a little longer to care for the woman.”
“We must leave now. My queen, be calm. Everything is proceeding as it ought. The girl has been fighting me, it’s true. She is strangely strong, just as my sister said she was. But she is alone now, confused, vulnerable, and very near to complete despair. I am pushing her hard. She will break soon. Very soon. I can feel it. Very soon, she will give us what we need.”
chapter 27
It was in the fifth week of Catherine’s coma, just after noon on a fiercely, hurtfully bright Sunday morning. Phoebe had been at the hospital with her father until the small hours of the morning, and had then left her mother’s bedside and gone with her father across the street to the hotel suite he’d rented. But even though she was tired, Phoebe was unable to sleep. She eventually left Drew a note, pulled on a short, dark, sleeveless dress, which was the only thing she had at the hotel that wasn’t dirty, and come back to Catherine.
She had been there, alone, ever since.
To call Catherine’s room “private” was stretching a point. Like the other rooms in Critical Care, it had a wall of glass where it faced the nurses’ station. But Phoebe had long since stopped noticing or caring that her every move could be observed. She washed her hands and forearms carefully at the sink, counting to thirty as she rubbed with the antiseptic soap. Then she pulled a chair up next to where Catherine was lying in bed at the center of a bewildering number of attached machines, kicked off her silly high heels, and put her hand loosely, stroking, on Catherine’s upper arm.
“Hi, Mom,” she whispered. “It’s me.” Phoebe thought of that poor swollen brain inside her mother’s head, and added, “It’s Phoebe. Your daughter. Who loves you.” Catherine might have memory issues. Brain injury was tricky that way. Phoebe wasn’t sure if these memory problems came into play only after the comatose person woke up, or during the coma itself, but there was no harm in playing it safe.
“Dad’s sleeping,” Phoebe said. “That’s your husband, my father, Drew. Drew Vale. I hope he’s sleeping, anyway. It’s pretty early in the morning. Sunday morning.”
She transferred her grip to her mother’s hand, squeezing it gently. It was hard to believe that her mother would need these little extra prompts about who was who. Why wouldn’t Catherine Rothschild be the sharpest coma patient there ever was?
Beyond the anxiety that lived in Phoebe always these days, she was aware of restlessness and of a desire for something she couldn’t name. She began the sort of typical aimless chatter she’d been using lately with her mother.
“Your heartbeat looks good, Mom. And your blood pressure. You’d be amazed how much I’ve learned about reading these machines. I know exactly what all of them do and I know what your readings ought to be.
“I watch everybody and everything all the time here. I’m like a hawk. The other day, on grand rounds? One of the interns was going to peel back your eyelid. I know—icky. But that wasn’t the problem. If they have to check your eyes, they have to check your eyes. It was that he didn’t put on gloves! So I stopped him. He said he’d just washed, but I didn’t care. How was I supposed to know that for sure? You can never be too careful, I told him, and he agreed with me. And he put on gloves.” Phoebe trailed off. The last thing she’d meant to do was describe her new obsession with germs. There was no reason to risk getting Catherine all bothered about it too. “Anyway.”
She hadn’t liked watching that intern peel back Catherine’s eyelid. For some reason, it was worse than seeing somebody take Catherine’s blood, or even do things to Catherine’s feeding tube. She squeezed her mother’s hand again. And then suddenly, vividly, she had a flashback to being in the bathroom in the house on Nantucket that last night, when she had not confided in her mother about Ryland, even though she had sort of wanted to.
She looked down at her mother’s face. It was one of those times when Catherine didn’t look as if she were in a peaceful slumber. Her forehead was deeply creased and her neck muscles looked tight, as if she, herself, were being prevented from speaking.
Catherine’s eyelids twitched. For a moment it was almost as if she were going to open them. “Mom?” said Phoebe. “Mom?”
Nothing happened.
Phoebe counted the lines across Catherine’s forehead and at the corners of her mouth. She touched her mother’s soft cheek, cupping it in her hand. “Mom,” she said, softly, uncertainly. “Oh, Mom. I miss you.”
An urgent feeling swelled in her. Catherine was fifty-nine years old. She was in a coma. What if they had no more time? What if there would never again be a real conversation? What if this opportunity to tell her about Ryland was the only one Phoebe would ever have? If Phoebe grabbed this chance, did that make her selfish, immature, unethical, small, stupid, and just plain wrong?
“I need to tell you something, Mom,” Phoebe said aloud. “I wanted to tell you before. When we were in the bathroom on Nantucket, and you said that thing about how sometimes it’s a boy that comes between best girlfriends? Remember that?
“Well, maybe you knew and maybe you didn’t. Maybe you were guessing. But you were right. There is a boy—a man—in my life, and it caused problems between me and Mallory. My best friend, Mallory Tolliver, remember her? We’re not friends anymore. Can you imagine that, Mom? Mallory’s not even coming to school these days. I hear she’s home taking care of her mother. And she’s being homeschooled over the Internet or something.
“But you know what, Mom? I keep expecting Mallory to show up here, at the hospital. To sit here with me and Dad. She was like my sister. And I can’t believe she doesn’t care enough about you to come. Or even to call and ask me how you are! Not that I’d take the call.
“I know I was wrong in how I acted with her. I lied t
o her. But it’s not really about that. It’s about how she sees me. She doesn’t actually like me much. But you know what? The person I always thought she was—that person would have understood me. And she’d, you know. She’d still care about me. But she doesn’t, so that means she was never who I thought she was.”
Phoebe discovered she was crying. “I’m sorry to bother you with this, Mom,” she said. “Please don’t think I care as much about Mallory as I do about you. You’re the main person I’m worried about. You’re the main person I love. It’s just that I miss her too.” She got up. “I have to go get a tissue. I’ll be right back.” She went back to the sink, where she blew her nose and then carefully washed up again, including rinsing her face. She caught the eye of a nurse who stopped in the doorway.
“Everything okay?” said the nurse.
Phoebe nodded. “Fine. Thanks.” She stood back while the nurse entered and began checking Catherine’s vital signs.
“Your mother is holding her own here,” said the nurse. “And it would be good if you got some rest. It doesn’t help your mother if you don’t. You have to keep your chin up.”
Phoebe hated that expression. “Thanks,” she said, but did not move. When the nurse left, Phoebe went back to Catherine’s side. She pulled the chair close and put her head down on the bed as close to her mother’s as possible and held her hand again. Now, she realized, she was tired. So tired.
But she still hadn’t told her mother about Ryland. She had ended up talking about Mallory instead. And—oh, God. How could this be? She didn’t want to talk about Ryland. The very thought made her feel empty. She reviewed all the words in her head. The right words to tell Catherine.
I have a boyfriend. I love him. I know I do. But—but—he keeps trying—I keep trying—and it’s not working out, and last night he said to me—he said—
She couldn’t say it out loud. But still it had happened. Things had been said that she knew were true. Everything Ryland had said to her was true.
It’s not the things that are happening with your mother that cause you to be this way, Phoebe. And it’s not inexperience. The problem is you, Phoebe. You have to face it.