The Delilah Complex

Forty-Two

Despite having promised Dulcie that I wouldn’t go to Boston for the opening of The Secret Garden, I couldn’t stay home. I’d rented a car and left the city Saturday morning.

The fall leaves were blazing as I drove up the Merritt Parkway through Connecticut. The sky was cloudless and a pure cerulean blue, and the sun filtering through the trees made the countryside shimmer. But it was hard to let go of everything I was thinking and just enjoy the foliage or the day.

I hadn’t planned on going.

After she left with Mitch at six-thirty that morning, I went into the den, pulled out the wooden table that held a chunk of rose quartz that I had been chiseling for the past six months, put on my goggles and went to work chipping away at the stone.

It was only a hobby but usually it soothed me. Once, I’d hoped I had talent. That was before I found out what real talent was. I’d been introduced to sculpting when my father had remarried. Krista is a successful sculptor who shows once a year at a prestigious gallery on Fifty-seventh Street. Her work mesmerized me when I first met her, and taking my interest as a way to bond with me, she’d offered to teach me. I was only twelve, but I loved everything about the stone and the process and the tools. I was fascinated with the idea that the job of the sculptor-as Krista had described it-was to find the shapes hidden inside the rocks, waiting to be unearthed.

When I’m faced with a situation that makes me seek out the comfort of a mother figure, I first think of the woman who passed away in a drunken stupor when I was eight, who I had tried to save every day until she finally gave in to her weakness, or I thought of Nina, who had stepped in that same day, wrapped me up in her strong arms and never let me go.

Yet the bond between my stepmother and me was real, too, born of the stone and sustained by my love of the hobby I’d never given up.

That morning, excavating the sleeping form of a young child from a block of rose quartz didn’t keep my mind occupied. I put down the mallet and chisel, called for a rental car, packed a bag and started to figure out what to say to Dulcie when I got to Boston.

About an hour and a half out of Manhattan, I pulled off the highway in Westport, Connecticut, and drove into town to get something to eat. It was twelve-thirty. The show wasn’t until eight that night. Boston was only another three hours away. I had plenty of time.

Sitting in the local Starbucks, with a latte and a piece of pumpkin-walnut bread, I went over my decision again. By going up to Boston I was breaking my word to my daughter. But how could I stay away? This was her first professional performance. She was so nervous. I was so concerned. Even if I stood in the back and never told her I was there, I had to go.

How upset would Dulcie be if she saw me there?

I was on a seesaw. Torn between turning back and going forward. Neither direction seemed the right one, and then my cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Snow? It’s Pam.”

Pam was the operator who worked the phone service for the institute on weekends and evenings and called when there was any kind of off-hour emergency with a patient. “Hi, Pam.” My voice was already tight while I waited for her news.

“You just got a phone call. From a patient of yours. She only gave me her first name-Liz. She said it’s an emergency and it’s really critical that she talk to you.”