The Girls of August Page 4

  “This way,” Baby said, and it dawned on me that a power shift had just occurred. This was her place. She knew its mysteries…what could kill us, what could delight us. Holy crap. Baby Gaillard was in charge.

  She sauntered off the dock, overnight case in hand. When she hit the beach, she kicked off her flip-flops and turned toward us. “Just leave all that luggage be. We’ll get it in as time allows. Not like there are any pirates out here.” And she giggled.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Barbara muttered, “but I’ll bring the wine.”

  We trundled south along the beach, in the heat and the mosquitoes, and just when all of us, save Baby, thought this was some sort of horrible joke, the house—the beautiful, beautiful white-shingled house—came into view.

  Splendid, it was absolutely splendid, nestled among the trees, sea oats and beach rosemary and red rugosa roses spilling wildly all about.

  “Wow!” Barbara breathed.

  “Amen,” Rachel said.

  “It’s beautiful,” I whispered. The photo had not done the house justice and, for a moment, I was seized with envy, wishing this stately, if weatherworn, two-story Cape with its big ocean-facing windows and wide wraparound porches belonged to Mac and me.

  This was a house, I decided, that echoed the ages: stories, laughter, tears, storms, ghosts. Its crowning achievement? A widow’s walk complete with an antique lightning rod in which was embedded a cobalt globe that seemed to pulse in the late summer sun. If the Kennedys had been Southerners, this would have been their Hyannis Port, I thought.

  For a moment we stood there, taking it all in. Us. The great house. The mighty and beautiful Atlantic. The wide beach and deep jungle. I looked behind me. Our footprints in the sand signaled, to any critter that cared, our presence.

  “They look like the only footsteps this beach has seen for a hundred years,” Barbara said.

  “Oh, no,” Baby trilled, hefting her case into her other hand. “Mine and Teddy’s were all over this place just last week, getting the house set up for us.” She spun around, surveying her queendom. Her confidence and cheekiness had returned in full bloom. “Seems like everywhere you look, you see Teddy, doesn’t it? There. There. There. And there.” She pointed to the trees and the footprints, the ocean and the house. The child behaved and sounded like a lovesick virgin. She patted her heart to drive home the point that Teddy was all hers.

  For reasons that had to do with old love affairs and icy Kentucky roads and the fact that we’d never again share sweet, sweet moments with dear Melinda, I felt my Irish rise.

  “No,” I said, a tangled knot of stubbornness stealing my good manners. “Everywhere I look, I see Mac. Just Mac.”

  Barbara uncharacteristically snorted.

  And Rachel? She actually saved the moment. “Come on, Baby Big Boobs. Show us our new digs.”

  Chapter

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  2

  Perhaps it was the sun, the heat, the boat ride, all that sand, the stunning house—I don’t know—but as the others ascended the steps that would take them into the cool sanctuary of Tiger’s Eye, for that is how the neatly hand-painted sign in yellow and turquoise identified the place, I was suddenly caught up in a confluence of things past, memories from long ago that felt urgent and new.

  I was a girl again, twentysomething, a newly minted Pink Lady. My memory was clear and unflinching: I had volunteered to be a Pink Lady because I had decided that the last thing I should do as a single woman was go straight home from teaching third-graders, where I would, as recent history had taught me, sit in front of the TV with a pint of Chunky Monkey, adding poundage to my loneliness.

  A coworker at Harrowbrook Elementary—Mrs. Blakely, a fifth-grade teacher and a woman known to look down her nose at just about anything that breathed—accused me in the teachers’ lounge of volunteering for the sole purpose of meeting a doctor. “That’s a poor way for a woman these days to behave,” she had admonished me as she grabbed a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut and nibbled at its tender edge.

  I didn’t respond to the old crow. I didn’t have to because she was 100 percent wrong and I didn’t feel like wasting a single brain cell on her. I was not trying to meet a man, much less one who would become a doctor. I’d been a serious student. Teaching was for me not just a job. For the few years I did it prior to opening my catering business, teaching was my avocation, a dream realized. Perhaps it had been my unconscious mind’s way of telling me I wasn’t going to have any kids of my own so I’d best bask in the glow of other people’s children. And volunteering as a Pink Lady really was a favored alternative to spending nights alone. I felt that, in a very small way, I was doing something meaningful, helping out people who were facing some pretty steep battles.

  I was nervous that first evening on the job. And my nerves manifested in my inability to do anything right. My first assigned task was that of greeter. What could go wrong? Just sit at the info desk, be pleasant, and hand out maps to folks in need of directions.

  The first person to approach was an aged man who walked with a pronounced limp and whose face appeared paralyzed in a permanent wince. His left arm was crooked at a crazy angle, and I feared that he’d dislocated it. Perhaps he’d fallen off a ladder. Or maybe a chair had gone out from under him as he attempted to change a lightbulb or reach for something on a top shelf. I was all about answers and alarmed that a sick person who was obviously in need of treatment had come in through the wrong entrance. By the looks of him, he was lucky to be alive.

  “Sir, let me help you,” I said. “I’ll get someone right away to wheel you over to emergency.” I reached for the phone, but then saw an orderly loping down the hall. “Orderly!” I called, sounding more desperate than I meant to, but I knew no one’s name.

  The old man looked at the young man in white who was heading our way and then snapped his head toward me. “Orderly! Orderly! Listen, lady, I don’t need no orderly, and I didn’t walk in here to get insulted by the likes of you.”

  The orderly, whose name I would learn later was Larry, held up his hands and walked backward, laughing, as though entertained by the old man’s grumpiness.

  “Sir,” I stammered. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were hurt.”

  “Why? Because I’m old? Let me tell you something. I KNOW where the hell I’m going. Yes, sir, I do.” He began to limp down the hall that led to the bank of elevators. “Gonna see my son. Emergency room! I’ll emergency room you, you stupid, know-nothing broad.”

  I couldn’t help it. Horrified, humiliated, and hurt all in one great moment, I began to cry. Before I could reach for the tissues, a tall, sandy-haired resident, whose lopsided horn-rimmed glasses were downright charming, leaned across the desk and handed me a handkerchief.

  “Don’t let Mr. Phillips get to you,” he said in a deep South Carolina drawl. “He’s mean to everybody. It’s what keeps him alive.”

  I accepted the handkerchief and dabbed my eyes. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.”

  “Probably because that guy is an asshole and assholes make all good people weep.” He smiled, broad and unassuming. He pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose, but they remained askew.

  I laughed and the jangle of nerves at the base of my skull unknotted.

  “So you’re the new Pink Lady,” he said.

  “I didn’t know news of my arrival had preceded me,” I said, handing him back the handkerchief.

  “Usually it’s not big news. But we haven’t had a new Pink Lady as pretty or as young as you since Vandy Medical Center opened its doors all those many years ago.” He slipped the tearstained hanky into his lab coat’s breast pocket, an ingratiating, gallant move in my book. And I couldn’t help myself: I liked the dimples. He stifled a yawn—those legendary hours residents kept were no doubt taking a toll—but his blue eyes remained full of mischief. “I’m Mac McCauley. Resident. Family practice.”

  “Madison Nash,” I said, fully aware that the good doctor was flirting. But I
decided as his pager went off that with his earnest sweetness he was the sort of guy who made a better best friend than boyfriend. After all, boyfriends were supposed to be slightly dangerous, always on the brink of leaving. That way they kept you wanting more. It was messed up but true.

  Dr. McCauley checked his pager. “Gotta run,” he said. “Catch you later, Madison Nash.”

  I found myself rather breathless in his wake.

  The rest of my three-hour shift, thankfully, proceeded without incident. I handed out maps and restocked the candy bowl and even managed to make my way to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee.

  My timing was perfect. In the back, under an array of bright fluorescent lights, Mac sat with a pretty young woman also cloaked in a lab coat, probably a fellow resident, and I could see that they were engaged in animated conversation. I decided I had been wrong. He hadn’t been flirting with me after all. He was just friendly. A guy like him wouldn’t go for the likes of me anyway. He wanted someone who studied brain cells, not lesson plans. And then, I admonished myself, I was not here to find a man. I was here to help people.

  “Remember that,” I said under my breath as I headed for the coffee station.

  * * *

  It didn’t take me long to figure out where I felt I belonged, where I felt I might be able to do some real good: the children’s cancer ward. That’s probably because, of all the people I dealt with at the Vandy Medical Center, the children who were facing death were the bravest souls I would ever come across.

  The CCW is where I met Tiffany Hodges. It’s also where I met Teddy Patterson.

  Beautiful and terminally ill Tiffany Hodges. Twelve years old. Childhood leukemia. Acute lymphocytic leukemia, to be exact. Acute because it was moving fast, racing through her body like a winged demon, turning the lymphocytes in her bone marrow into death cells. She didn’t stand a chance. But still, we—because humans are basically positive creatures who believe that fundamentally the world is a fair and just place—hoped for a cure, a remission, a full-blown saint-sanctioned miracle.

  I met her in late spring, when the dogwoods were still in bloom. She was sitting by a window in the CCW’s sun-room, a drawing pad on her lap, a tin of watercolors on the table beside her. She was bald and thin, her pale skin tinged with the lightest lavender possible. As I approached, she looked up and smiled. Radiant, her eyes sparkling, she said, “You’re new here.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  She held up the drawing pad. “What do you think?”

  She’d painted a giant yellow bird with bright-green eyes and purple lips stretched into a wide grin. The bird was perched atop the largest of the blooms in what appeared to be a field of giant sunflowers.

  “You’re quite an artist,” I said, and I meant it.

  She blushed. “I just do it for fun.”

  “Well, you’re awfully good,” I said, admiring the drawing. “Mind if I join you?”

  She studied the painting for a moment, dabbing off a bit of brown paint from the center of the big flower. Then she looked at me, direct and unafraid. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Is it because I have cancer and you feel sorry for me?”

  “No. It’s just…I’ve been on my feet all day and you’re here all alone. Maybe you want some company.”

  “I’m pretty happy no matter what,” she said. She closed the lid on her paints. “Most do-gooders stop coming here after a while. They can’t cut it.”

  “Maybe I’m not a do-gooder. Maybe I’m just hanging out.” I appreciated her directness even though it was unnerving.

  “So, what’s your name?” She gazed at her painting as though sizing it up.

  I tapped my tag. “Maddy.”

  “It says, ‘Madison.’”

  “Well,” I said, sitting in the chair opposite her, “my friends call me Maddy.”

  “So, Madison”—she ran her hand over the smooth surface of her head and then looked at me with an intensity usually reserved for cross-examinations—“what’s your favorite color?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “My mood.”

  “Hmmm…me too.” She blew on the drawing, I suppose to dry the paint, and said, “Today my favorite color is yellow.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Even without hair, she was such a pretty little girl. And her face betrayed no pain, no fear.

  She set her painting on the table and looked out the window, which perfectly framed a sprawling old oak tree. In its near branches, a female cardinal offered a seed of some sort to her male partner. “Because you can walk through it. Yellow doesn’t end. It just goes on and on and on.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I suddenly found that I was in way over my head with Tiffany Hodges. Was she seeing her own death? Was she quietly refusing it? Or was she simply talking about her favorite color?

  “Would you like one of these?” I asked stupidly. I reached into my pocket and withdrew some hard candies. She chose two—butterscotch and cherry.

  “Thanks,” she said and then again turned away from me, staring out the window into a distance I could not determine. “If you don’t mind, I’m just going to sit here for a spell.”

  “No. I don’t mind at all. I’ll catch up with you later,” I said, standing.

  Twilight shadows were beginning to gather. The light glowed warm and golden on her face, and she looked beatific, or at least at peace with whatever might or might not come next.

  I turned, ready to sprint down the hall, feeling that I had somehow fallen short in my job as a Pink Lady, fearing that those damned tears were imminent. Wasn’t I supposed to offer confident cheer and support? Why did I feel Tiffany was onto me, knew that I didn’t have a clue about what she faced and, indeed, had already faced? How did she know that though I had worked hard to carve out a career for myself—however inglorious, given that many of my students’ parents did not seem to value teachers, indeed, perceived us as the enemy—I didn’t know squat about the human heart?

  I made a hard left, my intent being to leave the ward at the speed of light. But instead I found myself frozen in place, stunned to be returning the gaze of a man who was, despite a small scar along the cleft of his chin, bone-chillingly handsome. He looked like the kind of man who knows that the world is truly his oyster, that it speaks to him more kindly than it speaks to others. In short, he looked dangerous, as if no woman would ever keep him. And as I stared at him—his dark, wavy hair was combed directly back with every strand in place—I realized that it wasn’t his looks that I found so compelling. It was his confidence. A surety smoldered in his steady gaze, which was too sophisticated to betray his thoughts. How could he seem mysterious yet guileless at the same time? He was a wonder, this one. There I stood, in defiance of my own advice, smitten at first sight.

  “So, she got to you, did she?” he asked, nodding his head in Tiffany’s direction.

  “You could say that,” I stammered.

  “She has a way about her…I don’t know. It’s like she unlocks your secrets and shakes them in your face, but without malice.”

  He looked at me with what I interpreted as frank earnestness, offered me his hand, and said, “I’m Teddy Patterson. I don’t believe we’ve met before.”

  Oh yeah. This guy was way more dangerous than Mac McCauley. As I slid my palm into his—a seal sliding into water—I felt myself fall into something that resembled ladylike lust.

  Teddy seemed to take in the totality of me—my intellect and passion, my mind and heart—with those aquamarine eyes, and my whole body, against my will, blushed. His hand was much larger than mine, and that fact alone made me feel wanted, less alone. I must not have possessed much self-esteem to let the size of the man’s hand turn me into jelly. In retrospect, I believe I was experiencing nothing more than a small but persistent hormonal storm. However, no one could have convinced me of that as we stood gazing at each other in the antiseptic glow of the CCW.

 
For a time it was glorious. He worked long hours as a resident, and he was singularly focused on his soon-to-be career as a pediatric surgeon, a career that I felt dovetailed beautifully with my desire to have four children. But despite that clear-eyed commitment to our careers, we managed to spend plenty of time together. Coffee breaks at the hospital. Dinners when we both had evenings off. Long late-night walks along neon-lit city streets. Then there were the movies and random parties.

  Within a month our pronouns had changed. We like piña coladas. We don’t like to do anything before ten on Sundays. Yes, we will be happy to come to your Halloween party. Within two months we were a bona fide couple. Within four I couldn’t help myself: I sometimes dreamed of baby names. Claudia. Tobias. At six months, when I thought about the future, for the first time in my life, I saw happiness. I saw a life built out of the desires of two people in love. I saw children and houses and holidays and all the family trappings wrapped in shades of yellow, for I believed in what Tiffany Hodges had said: Yellow doesn’t end. It just goes on and on and on.

  I met people—Rachel, Oliver, Hugh. Mac and I became dear friends, and I did recognize but didn’t fret over the fact that I was perpetually delighted to see him. All of us hung out together, had dinner at each other’s apartments, gossiped about mutual friends and enemies.

  And then came the Christmas party held at the Hermitage Hotel, that grand old dame bejeweling downtown Nashville with its ornate columns and arches, its gleaming paneled rooms alight with chandeliers and sconces and candles and cut crystal vases.

  We’d pretty much overtaken the hotel—a band called Rufus and the Sliders played top forty in the ballroom. When they tired of dancing, residents, doctors, wives, girlfriends drifted into the comfort of giant couches in the magnificent, skylighted lobby. Those who’d had enough of the music and wanted to talk quietly or intently drifted into the Oak Bar for martinis or sodas.

  We were dressed to kill in silks and tweeds and stockings and all manner of finery that glittered. I wore a black ruched dress that fit me like water on steel. It was cut low in front, lower in back. I was taking a chance in this dress. It was a take-no-prisoners statement, but still decorous, only hinting at danger.