The year of the Lucy

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WILL MARTIN met them at the Emergency entrance and, after a cursory examination, sent Roman up to X-ray.

"Good job of first aid, Mirelle," he commented. "Has he had anything to eat today?"

"Not that I know of."

"He did have a slug of bourbon," Steve reminded them.

"He was so cold when he got in," Mirelle added.

"Won't hurt. I'll give him a general. Between the broken arm, stitches and shock, I think it'll be smarter. You better go make the admissions department happy and sign away a second mortgage."

Mirelle fumbled in her wallet for the hospitalization card.

"How long will he be in?"

"Day or two," said the doctor with a shrug and walked off to the nurse's station.

While waiting for the X-rays to be processed, Mirelle and Steve stayed with Roman, saw him comfortable in a hospital room on the adult side, Roman announced with pleasure. Martin had ordered a pre-operative shot and Roman was shortly euphoric.

"The coffee shop's open," said the floor nurse hospitably when the operating room orderly had arrived to wheel Roman's bed away.

"Momma?" called Roman, craning his head around to see her.

"Yes, Ro?" Mirelle went quickly to his side.

"You'll be here when I wake up?" His eyes could barely focus on her.

"Right here," she assured him.

"Okay, then," he mumbled, relaxing again.

"Neither of us had any breakfast, Steve. Let's go eat."

"Any idea how long it'll take?" Steve asked the floor nurse.

She shrugged. "Not long, but I'll page you when he's brought down. Ordinarily he'd be sent to the recovery room a while but as today's Sunday, he'll come down to his room instead. Your husband looks green, Mrs. Martin. You'd better feed him," she added over her shoulder as she walked away.

Mirelle looked at Steve and agreed.

"Come on."

"She needn't have said that." Steve swallowed hard. "Hell, to think that the kid walked down the hill… Oh, God, Mirelle, with a broken arm and that leg wide open."

Mirelle stared at her trembling husband. She pulled him into the elevator and punched the coffee shop floor.

"You're over-reacting badly, Steve. And it's not just Roman. Does it have anything to do with Ralph?" she asked very gently.

His horrified look was all the answer she needed. She steered him into the coffee shop and ordered quickly from the waitress standing at the counter. The woman nodded and gestured towards the empty tables. Mirelle guided Steve to a secluded one by a window.

"You always look that way whenever Ralph's wound is mentioned. Now I know that Ralph couldn't have been so badly wounded, in spite of your mother's tale. So what is the real story?"

Steve took the arrival of coffee as an excuse to delay his answer. He sipped half a cup before he began to talk, but the intensity of that tightly controlled voice startled Mirelle. She'd never seen him this way.

"I'd always wanted a paper route, too, but my mother wouldn't let me have one. She was afraid of what might happen!" Steve's fist came down on the table in frustrated emphasis. "She was always afraid of this happening, or that occurring. And she damned near killed both her sons with her fears."

"She thought she was doing the right thing, Steve," Mirelle said softly, wondering why she was defending her mother-in-law. But Steve sounded so vicious, so totally unlike himself.

"She was. Only she did it the wrong way." Steve shrugged helplessly. "And there were both of us, unprotected when we needed protection the most and not enough sense to know how to get it."

"But, Steve, you must have got over it. You were decorated."

Steve made an impatient, vulgar noise. "So I carried a mortar up a cliff that couldn't have been scaled and pinned some krauts down… in full view of a general, as it happened," he looked at Mirelle and covered her hands with his, "but I wasn't the only guy doing unusual things, and I'd been in combat a long time by then. I'd learned, the hard way, all the things Roman can do now.

"I never told you about breaking my arm, did I? In basic training." He made a disgusted noise deep in his throat and his eyes looked out at some far distant point. "Yeah, I broke my arm and sat there, crying like a baby for my mother! I sat there for nearly four hours until it dawned on me that mother was not going to come help me this time. We were on maneuvers and for all I know I'd be sitting there yet but I had the good luck to be 'captured' by the 'enemy'. And when the medico asked me how long it'd been broken, I was soashamed that I lied, and said I'd knocked myself out in the fall and only just come to before I got captured." There was deep disgust and bitterness in his face when he looked at Mirelle. "No, I could never have done what Roman did this morning: got up in the bitter cold and walked myself home."

"And Ralph?" Mirelle asked gently.

Steve let out a sour laugh. "Ralph got a flesh wound, a lousy little flesh wound in the arm. But he sat down and waited, too. For mother to come succour her little boy. And damned near died of frostbite and pneumonia. He could have walked two miles to the nearest town-we'd occupied it and it was French anyhow - and got help. But he lay there, among the dead, waiting until he was damned near a corpse, too."

Mirelle couldn't think of anything to say to ease Steve's bitterness or reassure him. She'd often thought that Ralph's injury had been minor, just as she'd known that Marian Martin had over-protected her children, but she hadn't realized how seriously the woman's attitude had handicapped her sons. It accounted for Steve's attitude toward injuries of any kind and the self-sufficiency that he'd insisted all three of his children develop. The latter was almost a mania with him.

The waitress appeared with the coffee pitcher and a sympathetic smile, and the second cups of coffee took up more time.

"I'll bet she's forgotten to call us," Steve said finally, anxiously glancing at his watch. "Let's get back to his room." He paid the check and they went.

"He's not down yet," the nurse told them.

"But it's over an hour," Steve said.

"Oh, don't worry, really," she said reassuringly and continued briskly on her rounds.

They had waited another fifteen anxious minutes before Roman was wheeled in. Will Martin, still in his surgical gown, entered right behind him.

"Nasty breaks, but they should heal well," Will said.

"They?" Steve asked.

"Sure, broke both bones in the forearm. I'm a little concerned about that open shin wound. It was mighty cold out there this morning. So I think we'll keep him here at least two days." Then Will caught sight of Steve's expression. "Oh, for God's sake, Steve. I'm not anticipating trouble, but I am a cautious bugger."

"How long before Roman's conscious?" Mirelle asked.

"Oh, he's been round once, but I've ordered sedation, so he won't be with us much today."

"I'll stick around a little while," Mirelle said, throwing her coat over the chair.

"I'll get on back to Mom and Dad," Steve said.

Responsibility flooded back to Mirelle. "Oh, Lord, Steve, and there's no dinner meat defrosted. Nothing ready."

"I'll take everyone out to eat," Steve reassured her.

"Please tell them how sorry I am that their visit's been spoiled."

"Hon, this isn't your fault," Steve said gently.

Will Martin snorted and, waving a hand in farewell, left the room. Steve kissed her, looked down at the still form of his son, and then resolutely he bent and kissed Roman's cheek. He left without a backward glance.

Mirelle yanked the one upholstered chair into a position where she could watch Roman's face and composed herself to wait.

Roman woke a half-hour later, long enough to satisfy himself that his mother was where she'd promised she'd be, and then he dropped off to sleep again. Mirelle waited another hour, thinking that he might not remember his first awakening and believe that she had neglected him. She was about to phone Steve to pick her up when Sylvia Esterhazy peered around the door.

"Up yet?" she asked, her face anxious.

"Not totally," Mirelle said in a soft voice.

Sylvia looked down at the sleeping boy.

"I called your house to thank you for the evening and Steve told me the gay tidings. Imagine that! Walking himself home! Steve's very proud of him. So I decided that hisbravery merited a reward, and brought him some reading matter." Sylvia handed Mirelle a bundle in drug store wrapping.

"Comic books? Did you buy out the store?"

"One each of every title in stock," Sylvia said with a laugh. "I also came to take you home because hell hath broke loose there or I misread the omens."

"Which ones?"

"I don't know, Mir," and Sylvia was suddenly serious. "But Steve sounded as if he were choking on every word he said and he twice covered the phone to speak to someone. Then he asked me if I could pick you up."

Mirelle looked worriedly from her son to her friend, biting her lip indecisively.

"It's too much. It's just too much," she muttered resentfully. "I can only take so much!"

"From the look of him," said Sylvia as if Mirelle had said nothing, "I'd say that he was going to make this an all day affair. Probably easier on him. Have the nurse call you when he does wake. Or he can. He's got his own phone."

"It's not so much not wanting to leave Roman as it is not wanting to go home," Mirelle said candidly, looking away from Sylvia's sympathetic eyes.

Roman stirred and murmured, the fingers of his uninjured hand picking at the spread. He tried to lift his right arm and the awareness of weight roused him.

"Mom? Mom, I'm thirsty." Groggily he focused his eyes. "My arm's so heavy. I can't lift it." His complaint was almost incoherent.

Mirelle looked up to ask Sylvia to get the nurse but the door was already closing behind her.

"Mrs. Esterhazy's gone for something, Roman. D'you remember you're in the hospital?"

"Hospital? Why? I'm never sick." He tried to sit up and then sagged back down against the pillows as memory returned. "I really did break my arm?"

"Both bones, compound fracture," Mirelle assured him, trying to keep her voice light.

"How many stitches did I get?" Roman was awake to important details.

"Lord, I forgot to ask Will. You can when he comes in to see you tomorrow. He wants you to stay in the hospital for a couple of days, just to make sure the shin is okay."

"Is this a private room?"

"Yes," and Mirelle grinned at his awed reaction.

"My own phone, too?" for he'd spotted that now. "Is that my John? Or, gee, Mom, do I gotta ask a nurse for a bedpan?" His voice had dropped to an outraged whisper.

Mirelle had not thought of that aspect of this experience. Roman had a particular need for privacy which she had always respected.

"Honey, they're quite used to helping young men with such problems. And you'll find that you don't want to walk on that leg."

"But, gee, Mom, when a fella's gotta… Oh, Mom," and Roman was quite upset.

"Then ask for the male orderly. There's always one on the men's surgical ward. I'm sure of it." Mirelle just hoped that she was right for the relief it gave Roman.

"Can I call my friends?"

"You're here to rest, and you may find yourself sleepy most of the day… He's awake," she told the nurse who swung in the door, followed by Sylvia.

"Ginger ale, coke or orange juice, Mr. Martin?" asked the nurse who Mirelle now realized was young and pretty enough to demoralize Roman.

"Ginger ale, please. And, Mom, ask her… " Roman made the last four words into a stage whisper.

"Ask her what? Oh, yes, there is a male orderly on this floor, isn't there?"

The nurse glanced swiftly at the boy and then at the mother and assured her that this was so with only the faintest tug of a smile on her face before she left.

Sylvia deposited the bundle of comic books on the bed.

"Rewards for your exceptional valor," she said and, as if unaware of his impaired dexterity, opened the package with a flourish.

"Oh, gee, thanks, Mrs. Esterhazy. Say, how'd you know that I got hurt?"

"Snowbird," Sylvia replied, winking. "I'm taking your mother home now."

"Mom," began Roman anxiously, "you and Dad aren't mad at me for… I mean, things are kinda screwed up anyhow, with Grandmother getting so hysterical and all, and I sure didn't make things any better, did I?"

"Robert Marion Martin, there isn't anything for us to be mad at you for. Why, your father's so proud of you… oh, be quiet and read. One of us will be in to see you tonight," she said, swiftly hugging and kissing him fiercely for his bravery and his perception.

"Read every word now," called Sylvia in farewell, and the door closed on his repeated thanks to her. "That's a wonderful kid, Mirelle."

"He's worth nine of his goddamned grandmother."

"I like you better angry than despairing."

There was considerable ice under the snow and Sylvia drove slowly, without her customary verve. Mirelle was glad that Sylvia appreciated the value of silence: her presence was reassurance enough. Sylvia gave her a jaunty up-and-at-'em grin when she let Mirelle off at her drive.

The first thing Mirelle noticed was the absence of her in-laws' car. As she climbed the snowy steps to the front door, she wondered if they had all gone out to dinner in the one car but, as she opened the front door to the excited welcome of Nick and Tonia, she realized that the Martins had left.

"How's Roman?" "How many stitches?" "When can we see him?"

Steve came out of the kitchen with a drink in one hand and a big fork in the other.

"Steak," he announced. "Stiff one?" he asked, holding up his own glass inquiringly.

"Very!" She began to shed her coat and boots.

"Nick, set the table! Tonia, get glasses from the dishwasher and help your brother," Steve said in a tone of command from the kitchen. He returned with Mirelle's drink which he handed her before he went back to his cooking. Mirelle followed to see him peering in at the broiler.

"It'll take a little longer," he said, "but it will be dark on the outside, and good and rare on the inside, just the way you like it. Make a salad for me, will you?"

"There's some left over from last night."

"Fine. How's Roman?"

"Coping rather well with hospital routine once he found out that there was a male orderly on the floor."

Steve stared at her a moment, mystified, and then laughed.

"Sylvia had brought him half the comics in town so he is well supplied… at least for today," Mirelle continued.

"Sylvia has the right idea. Was he sick or anything from the anesthesia?"

"No. Only worried about upsetting everyone."

"Goddam," was Steve's vehement exclamation and, when Mirelle swung around, she saw him sucking a finger, burned on the hot rack. "When those Cub Scouts come around with hot pads, buy a dozen, will you, Mirelle? I can't find one without holes."

Mirelle shrugged, too relieved that he was not going to expand on his parents' premature departure to question him. There had been a storm in the house: that was all too apparent in Nick's ready cooperation and Tonia's unusual compliance. But Mirelle had no energy to absorb any more emotional shocks and was grateful for the omission.

By the time the steak was done, Mirelle's drink had taken effect and she ate in a kind of daze, not really attending to the children's chatter.

"Why doesn't your mother ever visit us, Mommy?" asked Tonia, apropos of nothing.

"What, honey?" Mirelle gathered her wits.

Tonia repeated the question.

"My mother died a long time before you were born."

"Well, that's too bad for I'm sure I would have liked her a lot more than my other grandmother."

Before Mirelle could reprimand her for impudence, Steve reached across the table and slapped Tonia so hard that her chair nearly tipped over.

"Steve!" Mirelle was appalled by the viciousness of the discipline.

"You are never to speak disrespectfully of your grandmother," he cried in a bellow, his face suffused with blood… "Well, what do you say?"

Tonia, gulping back her sobs, was too frightened to speak. She just held her cheek and stared at her father.

"Well?" Steve demanded, his face white now with anger.

Tears overflowed Tonia's eyes and she tried to speak but only incoherent noises emerged, which increased Steve's fury.

"Really, Steve…"

"You shut up, Mirelle. I wear the pants in this family and it's about time that was understood."

"There is no need to pound the table. And there was no need to fetch Tonia such a clout for a…"

"If I choose to punish my daughter," Steve's anger was now directed at Mirelle, "I will!"

"If you punish, yes. But do not take your anger out on her."

"Don't intimidate me, Mirelle!"

She glared at him, daring him to strike her, too, but suddenly all the aggression drained out of him. She held out her hand to Tonia and led her to the kitchen, to bathe the child's face and help her control her sobbing. The marks of Steve's fingers stood out red and fierce against the creamy skin. Mirelle crushed ice in a towel, certain that Tonia would have a livid bruise by morning.

"You cannot speak without thinking, Antonia. Daddy loves his mother," Mirelle began in a quiet voice, hoping to calm the child.

"No, he doesn't," Tonia replied defiantly, her eyes sullen. "Not the way he was yelling at her this morning."

Mirelle put her fingers across the girl's mouth. "Be quiet." She tried to ignore Tonia's instinctive flinch.

When Mirelle returned to the dining room with Tonia, Steve was gone. She and the children finished their dinners silently, Nick darting glances at his sister's face.

"You two go watch TV," Mirelle said, "unless, young man, you've got homework to finish."

"All done Friday afternoon, Mom," Nick said. "Honest!"

She heard the grate of the garage door rolling up and, looking out the window, saw Steve attacking the snow drift in the driveway. His shovelling was almost frenzied and she thought for a moment of warning him to take it easy. He wouldn't appreciate such gratuitous advice. Better to let him take his frustration and anger out on the snow. She wondered exactly what had happened before her in-laws left.

"Have I won the war, or lost another battle?" she asked herself and then went to pack a suitcase for Roman.

She fussed in the kitchen, tidying up the last of the disarrangements of her usual placement of pots, utensils and spices which invariably took place when Mother Martin visited. She made hot chocolate for Steve, timing it so that it was ready when he had finished shoveling. He came in through the laundry room, stamping snow from his boots.

"I'm bone cold," he said, gratefully accepting the steaming mug she handed him. "Can I see Ro any time or do I have to wait for visiting hours?"

"He's in a private room. You can go when you want. I packed the small blue bag with things he'll probably need or want."

"I'll change then and go see him."

She accepted his neutrality. At least he'd worked out his anger on the snow. She wondered if she'd ever find out… short of pumping Nick and Tonia… what happened when he got home from the hospital that morning.

'I wear the pants in the family.' 'Don't intimidate me, Mirelle.' The phrases, like gauntlets thrown in preface to a duel, ran through her mind. They were unlike Steve. Was he stating the difference between himself and his father? Mirelle shook her head. She gave the drainboard a final swipe with the sponge and then went down to the studio.

Nick peered at her from the gameroom door.

"Gonna do Roman a sickpig?" he asked hopefully.

"I ought to but I'm too tired to do it tonight, Nickie."

"It's only six. Walt Disney isn't even on yet."

"It might just as well be midnight the way I feel."

"Yeah, it's been a day!" And Nick rubbed the back of his neck in imitation of his father's gesture.

Mirelle tugged his hair affectionately and then pushed him back into the gameroom. Without volition she went to the Lucy and touched it tenderly, dispassionately admiring the line of the figure that seemed about to spring forward into life and movement. She could almost see Lucy completing the gesture of patting her hair in order. She turned the statue into profile and sat down on the couch, looking at it.

"Momma," complained Tonia's voice in her ear, and Mirelle woke with a start. "I wanna watch…"

"Mom, I keep telling her it's her bedtime now," Nick said.

Mirelle looked at her watch and realized that she'd fallen asleep. It was almost 9:00.

"No more TV. Both of you get to bed and on the double."

She shooed them upstairs and settled the argument as to who would sleep where. She checked Nick's closet to see if he had school clothes for the morning and found herself automatically checking Roman's room as well.

She saw them tucked into bed and, wondering where Steve could be, slowly undressed and got herself ready for bed. She tried to read a book but the print blurred, so she gave up, and reassuring herself that if Steve had been in an accident on the the slippery roads, she certainly would have had a call. She thought of Roman, she thought of her in-laws and tried not to imagine what the final scene had been like. She tried not to think at all and touched the pole of concern for Roman, swinging back to her concern for Steve until she forced the figure of Lucy into her mind. Comforted by the symbol, she managed to drift into unconsciousness.