Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship (9781609417291) Page 15

  “Spaghetti squash with raisins. Okra. Vegetarian lasagna I couldn’t even get the dog to eat.”

  “Might do them some good to try someone else’s cooking.” She kicked the pile of dirty clothes into a tighter pile in the corner. “They might learn to appreciate mine. And the world won’t end if they miss a soccer practice or two.”

  “Tell that to Tess.”

  “Tess needs to know it.” She gave the pile of shirts a last, vicious kick. “Do you even miss me, Paul? Or do you just miss having your shirts show up on hangers, and a home-cooked meal on the table every night?”

  “I miss having a partner in this marriage.”

  “So do I.” Striding past the bureau, Kate crushed the phone between her cheek and shoulder and swept up old newspapers and candy wrappers, dumping them in the garbage at the other end even though she knew the maid would be coming soon. “The kids will do just fine for a week in your mother’s care—”

  “My mother? The woman you wouldn’t allow to stay here when the kids were young? You said she stank of smoke. She swore too much. She let them stay up too late, didn’t keep them on a schedule—”

  “You don’t even want to come, do you?” She swept up two pairs of her shoes, then shoved the closet open with her foot. She slammed the shoes onto the closet floor, as hot tears bit at the back of her eyes. “You have a chance to have a week alone with your wife for the first time in fifteen years, and you’re just standing there waving as it passes by.”

  “Here’s what I want to know: Is this how it’s going to be from now on, Kate? You taking off whenever the mood moves you?”

  “I’d rather take off whenever the mood moves us.”

  “You haven’t even asked me about the kids. About how your actions have affected them—”

  “I’m not your freakin’ father, Paul. I’m not leaving you and the kids to go meditate on a mountaintop.”

  “Good. Because I want my old wife back. The one who takes care of her responsibilities. After this past week, I don’t know who the hell you are.”

  Her joints went loose. She dropped onto her bed, abruptly, bouncing as she landed. She waited through the crackling connection for him to whisper a hoarse apology, tell her that he was simply overwhelmed, that he remembered, too, what they’d had, what they’d shared, a long time ago.

  “Apparently, you’ve forgotten me.” She gathered a handful of silk. “Or maybe you’ve just stopped…”

  Loving me.

  She let the phone fall upon her lap. It slid across the silk of the red negligee and tumbled onto the floor. She heard him calling her name with increasing irritation. When she didn’t respond, he broke the connection.

  A hundred years later, Sarah stepped into view. She picked up the receiver, placed it in the cradle, and sank to her knees in front of Kate.

  Sarah’s hands were warm and still moist from the shower. Her face was soft with compassion, framed by tight wet curls. “It’s not good news, is it?”

  Kate shook her head.

  I don’t know who the hell you are.

  “Oh, Kate.” Sarah tightened her grip. “I really don’t want to leave you here alone.”

  Kate stood up numbly. She walked to the bureau and pulled open the drawer beneath the television. The day before yesterday, she’d gone to a sari seller and sat shoeless on a white cotton mattress while the seller tossed bolster after bolster of brilliant fabrics upon it. She tugged out the freshly stitched sapphire-blue Punjabi suit she’d had made—chosen because it reminded her of the color of Paul’s eyes.

  “Then take me with you, Sarah,” she said, un-self-consciously stripping off her negligee and kicking it under the bed. “I need a little perspective.”

  The lobby bustled with activity. Two men argued with the concierge. Porters lugged medical bags to a waiting van. A cluster of doctors talked heatedly near the doors. An Indian woman in a traditional sari stood apart from it all, calmly smoking a cigarette, and watching with an expression that conveyed boredom and amusement at the same time.

  Kate trailed out of the elevator behind Sarah, still battered from the conversation with Paul, now numb, as if she were moving within a cotton cocoon. Sarah strode into the confusion of the lobby and headed directly to the clutch of doctors by the door, then grazed the arm of a broad-shouldered American.

  This must be the infamous Colin O’Rourke. As if from a very distant place, Kate eyed him. She’d been too bleary to get a bead on him when he’d examined her when she first arrived at the hotel. She knew Jo would expect a report. Sarah didn’t have any photos of the doctor, and after he’d left her, it had been painful to even bring up his name, never mind milk her for a physical description. Given his antics in the jungle, they’d all pegged him as a gritty Clive Owen type. Someone craggy-handsome. Stubbled and sweaty. A dirty-under-the-nails loner, intense in his work.

  Certainly not anything like the khaki-wearing all-American turning to her now, with his pristine pressed shirt and Brooks Brothers yellow tie. Just a few wrinkles away from the corporate uniform.

  Like Paul’s.

  No. I can’t think of that now.

  Colin grasped Kate’s hand and granted her an easy smile. A blinding smile. Clearly, a bleach-strip-enhanced smile. “Last time I saw you,” he said, raking her face with his striking gaze, “you were dreaming of unicorns.”

  “I’m feeling better now.”

  “You look better. How do you like Bangalore? I heard you went into the jungle to ride elephants.”

  “Camped overnight, actually. Heard tigers roaring beyond the ditch.”

  It seemed like a very long time ago, and oddly unimportant.

  “I haven’t done that in years,” Colin said. “Which preserve did you go to?”

  He was very good at pleasantries, Kate thought, as they chatted under Sarah’s nervous scrutiny. But all the while, Kate was thinking, Is this really the legendary Dr. O’Rourke? Sarah could have met his type on the campus of any university that had an NCAA lacrosse team. A little older than herself, he was lean and strong, but with a grain-fed bulk. He just looked so… American. He sure as heck bore no resemblance to the whip-lean international relief workers she’d encountered, perpetually underfed and constantly in motion.

  Like Sam, who suddenly arrived in all his tall, dark, and handsome glory. “It’s all settled,” Sam said, speaking to Colin. “My car is available for whatever you need.”

  Sarah’s face stiffened. “Your car, Sam?”

  “It’s a damned inconvenience,” Colin explained, “but I asked Sam if we could commandeer his car. One of the vans broke down, stranding some important equipment. We’ve already had to reschedule this twice. Something like this happens every time I do one of these gigs.”

  “I volunteered,” Sam explained, eyeballing Sarah. “I’ve no plans, so I figured I’d join all you merry crusaders.”

  “It just burns me.” Colin scraped his hand through his hair. “Something always gets in the way of the work. In this case, we can fit the people in the cars we have, but not all the gear. And we’re so late that if we wait for a new car to come on Bangalore time, there will be that many fewer kids we can treat.”

  Kate sensed an undercurrent of guilt in the flurry of details, but she was still too numb to sort it all out.

  Sam gestured to his white rental car, idling just outside the hotel. “Sarah, you and Dr. O’Rourke can ride with me. Just like old times.”

  Kate asked, “Is there room for me? I’d love to see the real India.”

  Sam, Colin, and Sarah exchanged swift glances. A wordless three-way exchange that absorbed her bazaar-bought Punjabi suit, her damp messy hair, and her inexperience. She’d seen wordless three-way exchanges like this before. At cocktail parties, whenever she responded to the query “What do you do for a living?” with the bland truth, “I’m a housewife.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Kate?” Colin asked. “It’s very primitive. There’ll be things you might not want to witness. And
we’ll all be working like lightning to get to every patient.”

  Sarah slipped a hand around her elbow and drew her close to her side. “Kate can help me. I could always use another set of hands.”

  “Well”—Colin shrugged and gestured to the front desk—“let me see what’s holding us up.”

  As soon as Colin was out of earshot, Sam turned on Sarah. “Bloody can’t help yourself, can you?”

  “Me?” Sarah tightened her grip on Kate. “You can’t bloody help yourself, Sam, interfering in everything—”

  “You’re on the first real holiday you’ve taken in years, and within days you’re working again.”

  “It’s for a—”

  “—good cause. I know. It always is.” Sam rolled his wrinkled sleeves above his elbows. “Did you ever consider just sitting in one place and sipping a drink, maybe twirling the umbrella in it?”

  “Did that once. The Paraguayan sugarcane liquor, remember? It left me unconscious for days.”

  “You’re exaggerating. And you were cracking funny that night.”

  Kate stood like an observer at a tennis match, watching their fevered back-and-forth with increasing interest.

  “You could always skip the booze,” Sam suggested, “and just lie on a beach, take in the sun.”

  She pinched her freckled forearm. “I don’t have your skin. I’d burn to a crisp.”

  “You’d rather bloody burn yourself out working.”

  Sarah cocked her head, nearly dislodging the pencil-pierced roll of hair at her nape. “You are aware that I already have a mother and a father? Seven brothers as well?”

  Sam planted his hands on his lean hips. “Then you should know how to relax.”

  “Take me out for a beer later.”

  “Oh, I’m sure the good doctor has you booked for this evening, like every other.” Sam eyeballed Colin, who strode across the lobby toward them. “Give him a few more days and maybe he’ll whisk you away from the business altogether.”

  Colin, oblivious to the tension stretching between Sarah and Sam, slapped his hands together. “Good news. We’re free to load up and follow the van.” He handed Kate a slip of paper. “For you. I heard them take the message at the front desk and figured you’d want it now.”

  Kate sucked in an uneven breath as she took the paper. She held it in her hands like a communion wafer. Relief quivered through her. What a fool she’d been. She never should have worried. Fifteen years of marriage couldn’t be shaken by one week apart. Of course Paul would call her again, right away, apologizing. Maybe even promise to join her.

  Gripping the message, she followed the crowd through the hotel doors into air thick with humidity. She tossed her bag in the car, settled in the passenger seat next to Sam, and reverently unfolded the paper.

  To a crushing disappointment.

  Sarah suddenly gripped her shoulder. “Kate? Is everything okay?”

  She swallowed, nodded her head, and refolded the paper. “It’s nothing. I thought it might be from home.” Into the bag at her feet, Kate tucked the message, along with her hopes. “It’s just from Jo. No explanation. She just wants me to call.”

  “Oh.” Sarah groaned. “Things must be going badly.”

  “With what?”

  Sarah said hastily, “Sam, you got the directions?”

  “Of course I have the bloody directions.”

  Sam pulled into traffic, keeping on the tail of the swift-moving white van they were to follow.

  Kate sat for a moment, knowing something was wrong. Knowing something was out of place. Something else, something beyond her own marriage.

  “Sarah,” Kate said, “what do you mean, things must be going badly?”

  “It’s nothing.” Sarah leaned forward, peering out the window. “It’s green. Kate, you’d better help Sam navigate the lights.”

  “You,” Kate murmured, “are a terrible liar.”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you. Watch, Sam—the rickshaw.” Sarah gripped the back of the seat as they swerved. “What the heck. Jo can’t get to me here. And maybe you can help.”

  “Help?” I can’t even save my own marriage. “Help how?”

  “It’s Grace, Kate. Jo has custody of Grace.”

  “What?!”

  “I’m sure Rachel had a reason.”

  “But…” Kate struggled to break free of her own issues, to remember Rachel’s child-care arrangements. “But why didn’t Grace stay with her grandparents?”

  “They’re pretty bad off, apparently. Medical issues.”

  “But why would Rachel want Jo of all people—”

  “You know, you and Jo really ought to sit down and talk. The two of you just don’t understand one another. Trust Rachel, Kate, I’m sure she put a lot of thought into who was going to care for her daughter—”

  “As much thought as she did when she was inseminating herself with a stranger’s sperm?”

  “Whoa!” Sam cut off another driver to a cacophony of beeping. “Did somebody say ‘sperm’ in my car?”

  “Rachel had a daughter,” Sarah explained, “through artificial insemination.”

  Sam shook his head. “You Americans.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense!” Kate grasped the dashboard to keep herself from surging into the door with every swerve. “It should have been me. I should have been charged with Gracie, and Jo should have jumped out of an airplane!”

  Then Kate would have gone on in blissful ignorance, in the pleasant, if not very exciting, routine of her marriage.

  “ ‘You Americans,’ what’s that supposed to mean?” Sarah, ignoring the seat belt, gripped the back of the front seat to confront Sam. “Is artificial insemination any worse than, say, the Hindu practice of suttee? Or the Malawian tradition of sexual cleansing—”

  Sam raised his finger. “The difference is choice, Sarah. The difference is choice.”

  “Colin,” Sarah said, slapping his arm, “help me here.”

  “I’m with Sam on this one. I once had a patient from L.A. ask me to reconstruct his entire jaw just so he could look more like Judy Garland in his drag-queen show. Haven’t come across that in any developing country.”

  Kate, ignoring the conversation, grappled with the news. “The lawyer must have mixed up the envelopes.”

  “Jo checked.” Sarah tucked a drying, frizzing curl behind her ear. “And, Colin, if you think that’s strange, you haven’t been to Bangkok.”

  “Actually, I have. The thing I remember most was standing outside the Grand Palace and there was this Thai kid selling food for the pigeons. I bought a bag, and in the thirty seconds I spoke to him, he lifted my watch, my wallet, and my hotel key card. Absolutely amazing.”

  “The Thais are some of the best cons,” Sam added. “Almost as good as the Gypsies in Madrid.”

  Kate tried to concentrate while the car swerved and Sam launched into a story about European Gypsies. Why hadn’t Rachel given her Grace? The only reason Kate could come up with was that Rachel thought she’d screw it up. So Rachel sent Kate skydiving, knowing it would trigger a series of events that would have Kate end up a world away from her husband and abandoned children, who were probably cursing her right out of their lives.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  She hunched in the car, balling herself up against the violent swerve-and-sway of Bangalore traffic. Tuk-tuks and rickshaws flew by. As they reached the edge of the city, cows grazed on the verges and wandered into the street. They passed hulks of abandoned trucks rusting by the side of the road. Around her, the conversation danced from comparing the driving skills of Americans and Southern Indians, and the cleverness and ingenuity of spare-parts dealers in sub-Saharan Africa. The conversation went to places she’d never been, to subjects she knew nothing about.

  What had started as a niggling sense of panic had grown, by the time they reached the clinic, into a throat-tightening anxiety attack. It didn’t help that a huge crowd gathered around the squat building, and the mob raced t
oward them as the cars approached. Young boys clambered on the hood. Women, crying out in Hindi, held their babies up to the windows. Thin-ribbed babies. Babies with oddly deformed feet. Babies with cleft lips so deep they split through the nose.

  Sarah squeezed Kate’s shoulder, sensing her panic but mistaking the source. “It’s always like this. The news travels that doctors are coming, and the mothers bring their children hoping the doctors will be able to look at just one more patient.”

  Sam parked the car carefully on the grassy verge. He got out and started shouting, waving his arms, and urging the crowd to make way. Colin and Sarah edged their way out and started unloading the trunk. Kate sidled out, took what equipment they gave her, and followed them blindly through the throng into the clinic, where a dozen medical workers busied themselves setting up two makeshift operating rooms.

  She dropped her load where they directed. Young doctors barked orders at one another, cursed at the flickering of lights as more and more equipment drained the system. Colin, all business, directed the placement of the instruments. Sarah fussed with a clipboard’s worth of paperwork. Sam hauled in another load, then disappeared into a back room, promising to hook up a mobile generator.

  Kate stood in the middle of the room, awaiting instructions, but she was buffeted by rushing medical workers until she retreated, knock by little knock, to an unobtrusive place against the wall. She became piercingly conscious of the curious stares of the locals, whose gazes went from the brilliant sapphire silk of the traditional Indian attire to her blond hair.

  And there stood Sarah—little Sarah, the baby of the crowd—the one they were always helping out Stateside. Sarah worked her way through the throng while a translator dogged her footsteps. Sarah leaned into the sore-ridden face of an ailing child, smiling and tugging a lock of his hair, as she sent an orderly to fetch a particular antibiotic. When she reached Kate’s side of the room, Sarah glanced up casually and said, “I’ll give you something to do in a minute, Kate.” She swiped a piece of hair off her face. “I’ve got to triage these cases first.”