Stealing Time

CHAPTER 36

H

eather Rose was discharged from the hospital early Friday morning. The doctors had given her the green light and there was no excuse to keep her any longer. The day before, when she'd finally awakened from her protective sleep and been fully aware of what was going on, she had at least three guards around her at all times. There was a policeman outside her door. And finally, unimpeded by the opposing will of her husband, her parents had come from San Francisco to be alone with her for the very first time since she was married nearly six years ago. These two hardworking, gray-haired people, who had labored eighteen hours a day in a dry-cleaning store so she could fulfill their dreams and attend the number one university in America, climb the ladder of success, be rich, and live in splendor the rest of her life, were there to see her shame. They sat by her bed, solemn-faced, talking quietly in Chinese and eating the food they brought in from a Chinese take-out place across the street that was not first-rate. They did not leave her room unless the nurses or the doctors or the police came and told them to go out into the hall. They left the hospital only one at a time, and only to get food and return to their post.

If Heather Rose could have hung her head, her forehead would have been knocking the ground. She knew that they, and everyone else, could see she was a walking piece of human shit. And no longer even walking. Just a lump of human shit in a hospital bed. She knew that she did not deserve to be alive. Better to have been drowned in the bathtub, better to have been pushed under a subway car. Better to have died of poisoning. Anything would have been better than the eye swollen and purple like a bursting plum, her lips deformed, her scalp split and her ribs aching so that she could hardly think straight, and the burn marks on her arms and inner thighs—all revealed for her parents and the police and the doctors and nurses to see.

Luckily for her, her parents were the only ones who did not ask what had happened to her. And she knew that as long as they lived, they would never ask her. They might see her every day, feed her and scold her and advise her to do any number of things, push her this way or that way. But they would not ask what had happened after she married Anton and went to live the rich life with him in New York City. To ask, and to receive the answers, would mean they would have to swallow her pain and be destroyed by it, and they would never do that.

When she was little, Heather's mother used to tell her that in China people would eat anything. They would eat lice and maggots and rats, scummy things from ponds and seas, crusty things from trees and fields, even stones and earth and bones. They would dry and pound into powder whatever was dreadful, frightful, or dangerous to them. They would ingest it, and in this way they would both consume their fear and acquire its power. They believed that horrors could be eaten; but sadness could not be so easily conquered and exterminated. The many sad parts of life had to be the most deeply held secrets, unvoiced and rigidly contained in an iron box of a soul. To give sadness a name was to make it unendurable for others, so the highest form of love was to say nothing. And so Heather Rose's parents prepared for her release from the hospital, bought her a ticket to return with them to San Francisco, and asked her no questions.

She was sitting up when the psychiatrist Jason Frank came to see her, very early, at a quarter past seven. Her parents quietly left the room. As soon as they were gone he said, "You're looking a lot better."

She blew air through her nose. "Today is Friday; Clinton is still President, but maybe not for long. My name is Heather Rose Kwan Popescu, I don't hear voices from outer space, and I don't think the devil lives in the television set."

The doctor laughed. "Well, that clears a lot of things up. I gather they've been asking you those questions to see if you're disoriented, or hear things that may not be there for anyone else."

"Dr. Frank, the psychiatrist, right?"

"And you have an excellent memory. Yes, I'm one psychiatrist. Have there been others to see you?"

"I'm told this is a coming attraction for me. I'll miss it, though."

"Oh, how will you manage that?"

"I'm going home in a few minutes."

"Really, are you feeling that much better?"

"Yes. They gave me brain scans and everything. I guess I'm lucky—just a concussion." She gave him a look. "I'm not a suspect. I'm the victim. If I don't know who assaulted me, I can't help the police. They, in turn, can't keep me here. Anton wants me to come home. My parents want me to go back to San Francisco."

"What do you want?"

She rubbed her arm. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

"There are many kinds of crazy," he said, as if being

crazy were no different from having red hair. "Some kinds of crazy aren't so bad."

"You said that before."

"Must be because it's true." He gave her a little smile. "We were getting somewhere last time, and then all of sudden I lost you. Something really scared you, and you went out like a light. My guess is you're terrified of your husband."

"Have they found the baby?"

The shrink shook his head. "Not that I know of."

"Oh God. I hope she didn't hurt him." Tears filled Heather's eyes. "I thought giving him back to his mother was the right thing to do."

"Yes, you implied that; but you didn't tell me who she is. That's why they can't find her."

"I don't know her name." Her tears were falling harder now. "Everything was arranged through Annie."

"Annie?"

"Annie is the family's Chinatown connection. She works in the factory, kind of manages the personnel side of the business. Annie told us about the baby in the first place. She arranged it when I decided to give him back to his mother."

"Did you tell your husband?"

"No," she wailed. "I couldn't talk to him about anything. I just did it. I don't know what I thought would happen. I just had to. . . . He's an angel baby. Oh, God, I hope he's all right."

"How did you get involved with your husband?" the doctor asked her suddenly.

She blew her nose and pulled herself together. "We met in college."

"Where was that?"

"Yale. Only number two," she said softly.

"Number two?"

"For my family there's only Harvard. After that, forget it. I'd failed. You asked about Anton. He was a senior. I was a freshman. I'd never been away from home before."

"San Francisco, right?"

"Yes. You saw my parents: very strict. I couldn't go out at all. I'd never had a boyfriend before. I guess you could say I've never had a boyfriend."

"What do you mean?"

She moved her head on the pillow.

"Did your parents approve of your husband?"

"No, of course not."

"Why not?"

She shook her head again. Any idiot should know why not.

"What did you study?"

"Oh, I had to choose business, medicine, or science."

"I thought Yale offered many more choices than that."

"Those were the choices I had." She found that she had been holding her tongue for so long it was easy to speak now. Someone wanted to know, so the words came out.

"Who gave you the choice?"

"My parents did. Will you tell the police to ask Annie about the baby? She must know where he is."

"Yes, I will."

"I loved him; I would never hurt him. He was the sweetest thing—the best thing that ever happened to me." Her throat closed, taking her breath away.

"Why did you give him back, then?"

"I found out he wasn't really adopted. I thought it would be better for him to grow up poor with his own mother than be hurt by those people."

"How did Anton hurt you?"

"Anton was my first boyfriend. No one had ever asked me before. ... I was homesick and alone, and he made it like the movies, like a dream come true." Heather looked at the doctor with her eyes streaming. "Like a dream come true."

He handed her the tissue box. "From the looks of your arms and your head the dream didn't come true."

"He never touched me."

"He didn't burn you?"

Heather's head ached. "I mean, it wasn't like the movies where there's all that kissing, rolling around . . . and then they get married." She chewed on the inside of her mouth. Maybe that would be as far as she would go.

The shrink continued listening, didn't prompt her with another question this time. She thought he had a nice face. He was handsome, almost like a Kennedy. She turned away to blow her nose, then looked over at him to see if he understood. He didn't say either way, so she had to go on.

"I thought he respected me, do you know what I mean?"

He was sitting beside her; he gave a tiny shake of his own head.

"Have you talked to him?" Heather Rose asked.

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"Oh, I can't really tell you that; then you'd be afraid that what you said would go back to him."

"You told me he said I had health problems. You told me he said I couldn't have a baby. You told me he had a girlfriend and had the baby with her."

"Maybe."

"Not maybe, you did. You see how he does things, twists things around, tells people it's my fault when it's his fault. He

couldn't

have a girlfriend if he wanted to. He doesn't want anybody to know—" She closed her eyes.

"Is he homosexual?"

"No, that's all I'm saying. I'm going home now. The lying is over for me."

"Heather, the police need to know if Anton beat and burned you. If you did it yourself, you need help. If he hurt you, it should come out. No one has a right to do that. You wouldn't want it to happen to someone else, would you?"

"You don't know him. It's not his fault. That's all I'm going to say."

A few minutes later the psychiatrist left. Heather used the phone in her room to call the Central Park South apartment where she had lived for six years. By eight-fifteen, no one was picking up the phone. When she and her parents felt certain that Anton had left for his office, they went home to get her things.