For perhaps an hour, nestled in the water up to his chin, Carter involuntarily played thoughts of her through his mind. She wanted him to be more like Kelly, whom she referred to in small talk with other doctors’ wives as the “ambitious one,” not because he was happy, but because he inherited her drive. He went to Harvard on a hockey scholarship and stayed to finish law school. With his specialty in mergers and acquisitions, Kelly had profited handsomely from the eighties. Carter had other ambitions, though they were less clearly defined. He knew they had something to do with living freely, but he was not always clear about the free from what or free for what. The freedom he had first glimpsed in sobriety had somehow gotten away from him over the years. When he had been in treatment, the barriers had seemed so clear. Now that he had removed the alcohol and drugs, what held him back was more elusive.
He shivered. The water in the tub had chilled. He didn’t want to call. By this hour she was probably blitzed. But he figured that talking to her might be the best way to get her off his mind.
She answered. His dad never did, even if he sat within arm’s reach of the phone. “It’s never for me,” he said, and he was usually right.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Where are you?”
“Just got home.”
“They said you left the hospital hours ago.”
“I stopped at the gym on the way home.”
“There’s something wrong with your machine. It cut me off then didn’t answer when I called back. Did you get my message?”
She sounded coherent. He couldn’t hear her smoking. Carter thought he might still be able to redeem himself. “No, I just walked in. I wanted to talk to Dad.”
“He’s here. We just finished some birthday cake. I wanted to eat out, but he said he was too tired, so what could I do? Fortunately Meyer’s had an extra cake. He picked up some Chinese on the way home from the clinic.”
How romantic. “May I talk to him?”
He heard the click of her lighter. “Are you angry with me?”
“No, Mom. I simply wanted to wish him a happy birthday.”
“Well, you sure waited long enough to do so. It’s almost over.”
“Mom,” he whined. He hated when it got to the point where he whined for her to stop. “May I please talk to Dad?”
“The doctor wants me to go in for some tests this week.”
So that’s why she called. She was often sick, not in a serious way, but usually with some minor condition that required a doctor’s attention and excused her to submit herself to his care. That made her feel better.
“What for?”
He heard her inhale on her cigarette. “It’s fairly routine,” she said vaguely.
Probably a biopsy. Her own mother had died of cancer. She wouldn’t say the word.
Some people grind their teeth. Carter chewed his tongue. When he didn’t know what to say—or, worse, when he knew but couldn’t bring himself to say it—he moved his molars up and down over his tongue, a motion that made it appear he was chewing gum. He found himself chewing his tongue now.
“May I speak to Dad?”
“You’re angry with me?”
“No, Mom. I’ll say a prayer that the tests turn out okay.”
Silence, then his voice, weary but not angry. “Hi, Son.”
Always “Son.” Carter couldn’t remember the last time his dad had called him by his name. Even with Kelly around, they were both “Son.”
“Happy birthday, Dad.”
“Oh, thanks. Not much to do about it, I guess.”
Carter heard the newspaper rustle on the other end. Already at a loss for words. He groped for the mundane. “How’d you celebrate?”
“Hmm? Oh, the nurses baked me a cake, made me wear a silly hat and blow out candles. Chocolate, my favorite.”
“Mom said you just finished cake there.”
“Lemon.”
He never stood up to her, but he always managed to make clear his annoyance. Stay away from that. “Have you taken out the Porsche yet?”
“No. Roads are clear of ice, but still too much salt and sand down.”
A silver, mint condition ’74 Targa was his baby. He moped in the winter when he had to drive a Mercedes 350 sedan.
“You’ll be out there soon.”
“Say, one of the nurses had this joke. Masochist says to the sadist, ‘Tell me my faults.’ Sadist says, ‘No.’” Pause. “Masochist says, ‘Tell me again.’”
He chortled. Carter gave him a courtesy laugh. “Not bad, Dad.”
Silence weighted the line.
“So, what’s the weather doing down there?” Carter asked.
“Steady rain. Snow’s almost gone. Guy on TV says you’ve got rain mixed with snow.”
“Mostly snow. Wouldn’t be so bad if people would learn how to drive.”
The newspaper rustled. Carter made an excuse about having to take something out of the oven, and his dad sounded relieved.
Later, Carter lay awake in bed staring into the darkness at the ceiling he couldn’t see and listening to the couple in the apartment above his. He had never met either one of them but had come to know them through the sounds he overheard. Theirs was a faithful pattern of shouts, sometimes thuds, followed by her sobs. Finally, he listened to their bed grunt and groan with their love.
After the noises upstairs had finally faded out—or Carter had become accustomed to the sound, the way people who live near tracks no longer hear the trains passing—he had fallen asleep. The phone woke him. Sister Mary Xavier.
The previous morning, she had summoned Carter to her office with a blue Post-It note on his door: See me. His first fear was that he had screwed up somehow. It was entirely possible that Sister X had received a complaint from an insurance company about his delinquent chart entries, though in the past she had praised his ability to stay a step ahead of the auditors.
He had knocked reluctantly at her office. The door was imposing: a large slab of carved walnut that depicted scenes from the life of the Virgin: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, and so on. The door had once adorned the chapel sacristy of a convent in Italy. Sister Xavier had bought it at an auction. While Carter waited, he studied the carved figures of Mary and Jesus at the wedding at Cana.
He heard no reply. Perhaps she had not heard his knock. He rapped on the door again, louder. From within came the hiss of an aerosol can, the slam of a desk drawer, then Sister Xavier’s sharp command, “Entrez!”
The interior of her corner office matched the splendor of its entrance: oil paintings on loan from the Walker Art Center lined two walls of cherry wainscoting; floor-to-ceiling windows on the other two walls filled her office with views of the river and university. She sat—or, rather, reigned—behind an enormous oak desk, framed by a high-backed leather chair. “Carter. Good morning. Coffee? Help yourself.”
“Why not? Thank you.” Carter pulled himself a cup from her antique brass espresso machine. He spied the ashtray tucked away on a lower shelf of her bookcase. The hairspray that hung in the air stung his eyes.
“Carter,” she began before