Chapter 2 New Frames #2
When the girls ran downstairs with their backpacks, Debra clipped a leash to Max’s collar to prevent him from running after them. Max snuffed Richard’s shoes, and Richard said, “I’m sorry, boy.” It was hard to be apart. He could text his daughters, but he had no way to reach his dog.
“Could I just take him for the weekend?” Richard blurted out. “Couldn’t he just come with the girls, since he’s their dog?”
Debra stared at him as if to say, Really? Did we not put all this in writing? The girls’ dog wasn’t going anywhere.
She followed him outside with Max on the leash, and once the girls were in the car, she peered through the windows, as though she didn’t trust the vehicle. Then with their daughters behind glass, she stepped back onto the curb and told Richard, “I should meet her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Corinne.”
Max pricked his ears, and Richard sensed danger too. “Oh no you don’t.”
All reason and responsibility, Debra faced him down. “If this is someone you’re living with, then I should meet her. I’m not exposing the girls to strangers.”
“First of all, I’m not living with her.”
“But you could. You might. You probably will.” Debra spoke as though his whole life were a foregone conclusion. “You could marry her.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m thinking about the girls.”
“Nobody’s getting married.”
“So, this isn’t serious. This is actually not a serious thing.”
“It’s none of your business. That’s what it is.”
“If she’s in my daughters’ lives, I need to meet her.”
“They saw her once, for like two seconds.”
“I should sit down and talk to her.”
“What, you’re going to interview her?”
“Dad?” Sophie opened her door and poked her head out.
Immediately Debra stopped talking and smiled at the girls and waved. She was brave and appropriate, while Richard hissed, “You are not sitting down with Corinne. Ever!”
Jesus, he thought as he drove off with his daughters clamoring to go out for dinner. What would Debra say to Corinne? What poisoned apple would she offer?
—
He tried to shake his bad mood, but the weekend did not go well. The girls fought, and Sophie talked back. Mom lets me have my phone in bed, she said. No, she doesn’t, Richard told her. How would you know? she asked him.
Then Lily was up in the night because she was hot and, as she told her mother on the phone, afraid of Richard’s house. Also, she missed Max.
See? Richard texted Debra, but she ignored him.
Sunday morning, he left Debra a long voicemail about Lily and the dog, the spirit versus the letter of the law. Then he rushed the girls to skating and forgot his coat.
Walking into Skate World, he felt an arctic wind. He knelt, struggling to help Sophie, whose lace was in a knot.
“Dad. Stop! Leave me alone.” Not fit to tie your boots, he thought.
When lessons started, his daughters flew away like birds.
Lithe and fearless they practiced spins and waltz jumps in their small groups on the ice.
First, they unzipped their coats, and then they threw them on the barrier.
Lily was working on her arabesque and laughed as though the night before had never happened.
Meanwhile Richard shivered in the bleachers.
Other parents had dressed for freezing temperatures.
They held up phones, filming their kids, but Richard didn’t try.
The whole scene made him queasy. His daughters wore white skates, black fleeces, and black leggings, each with a single stripe spiraling around calf and thigh so that, spinning, the girls looked like barber poles.
“Dad, did you see that?” Lily called out.
“Wow! Do it again!” Richard bit into a large, salted pretzel, dry as wood. Addict that he was, he drank the snack bar’s coffee, and felt the way it tasted. Stale, acrid, lame.
He texted Corinne. miss you.
His heart jumped when his phone rang just a second later, but it wasn’t Corinne calling.
“Hello?” an anxious voice inquired.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Richard?” Sylvia spoke as though she had not heard his voice in years. “Are you busy?”
“I’m at skating.”
“Skating! When did you learn to skate?”
“I’m just watching the girls.”
“Take a picture!”
“Okay.”
“Take a video on your phone.”
“I’m talking to you on my phone.”
“All right, sweetheart. We’ll talk later.”
“Wait. Mom?”
“You have your hands full.”
“No, I don’t. What’s going on?”
“Nothing! I have a little vertigo.”
Vertigo? Was that a thing? He felt guilty for not knowing, for not calling, for not thinking about his mother. She made him crazy—but that was no excuse.
“I don’t think it’s bad,” Sylvia assured him. “I’m just going to the hospital for tests.”
“The hospital!”
“They want to observe me.”
“When?”
“You remember I felt dizzy at the celebration of Jeanne’s life.”
“I meant when are they observing you?”
“I thought it was my grief, but I’m off balance now.”
“Can you walk?”
“Oh yes! But I have to hold on to something, or I fall.”
“You fell? You never told me!”
“That’s why they want me to come in. So they can observe me—and rule out other things.”
“What things?” Even as he watched his daughters glide, Richard felt a sense of dread.
“They’re admitting me tomorrow, but I don’t want you to worry,” Sylvia told him, and this meant Come here now.
“I could take an early train.” He was thinking, Is this an actual crisis, or a bid for a quick visit?
“I know you’re very busy,” Sylvia said, and this meant You’re my only child.
“Could I talk to Lew?” Richard’s stepfather was known in the family for his calm demeanor, and firm grasp on reality.
“I’m worried,” Lew said on the phone, and now Richard knew that this was serious. “She’s having an MRI.”
“Oh boy.” Richard started pacing. He didn’t even see his daughters anymore.
Sylvia chimed in, “I’m not really so concerned.” This meant I’m probably dying. “I’ve had a good life. For the most part.”
—
Richard canceled his whole Monday and took the early train to Boston. Opening his laptop in the Quiet Car, he tried to work but stared out the window where winter trees flashed past.
This was the other shoe. This was the universe clamping down. STOP. You’re not allowed to be so happy. Back to Boston with you. Then of course he felt ashamed viewing the situation as a verdict on his life. As Debra said, he thought everything was about him.
Untrue. He was anxious for his mother. Was she really sick? He thought of nothing else, except Corinne.
He watched New Jersey flashing past. Leafless trees and snowy roofs. He wondered about the people who owned houses near the tracks. What was it like, hearing trains incessantly? Was that how people in those houses marked the hours? The years? He had been losing track of time.
—
He rushed to Beth Israel Deaconess, took the wrong elevator, backtracked, and tried another. He raced down long halls past patients deathly white, until he found Sylvia at last. She was sitting up in bed.
“Mom.” He took her hands.
“Hello, dear,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“I got here as soon as I could.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“What happened?”
“It was a surprise!” she told him. “I’ve passed all my tests. We’re checking out at two. Lew went to pick up lunch. They’ve ruled out everything.”
“You don’t have vertigo?”
“I do! They’ve ruled out everything else.”
Richard dropped her hands. “That’s good news.”
“You look terrible,” Sylvia said.
“What do you mean?”
“Your eyes are puffy! What happened to your eyes?”
“I took a six a.m. train! I got no sleep—and Lily was up the night before.” He sank into the chair next to his mother’s bed. He was so relieved and so annoyed.
Of course, Sylvia looked great, well-rested, silver hair cut on the bias. She was wearing a silk dressing gown. No hospital johnnies for Richard’s mother. “Sweetie,” she said. “Who do you think just called? Debra!”
Richard started back. “What did she want?”
“Nothing! She wanted to see how I was. She was thinking of me. We had a long conversation about everything.”
“Everything?” he said uneasily.
“I know you have your differences, but Debra is a wonderful mother. You say that yourself—and I agree! She’s worried about the girls. She doesn’t know how your girlfriends will affect them.”
“My girlfriends? Now it’s girlfriends?”
“I don’t remember whether she said girlfriend or girlfriends. She’s worried about exposing Sophie and Lily.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Richard exploded. “No one’s exposing them to anything.”
“She mentioned someone named Corinne.”
“She called about Corinne? She doesn’t know her. She has never met her.”
“That’s what she told me!”
“She’s manipulating you.”
“How can you say that?” Sylvia drew herself up against her pillows.
“How can you defend her?”
“Who is this girlfriend?”
“Someone I’m seeing, that’s all.”
“But why are you seeing her?”
“Mom,” said Richard. “Listen. Debra called you behind my back.”
“She is a good person,” Sylvia said, although she knew very well what Debra and her lawyer had done to him.
“She is a controlling, angry, vengeful—”
Sylvia interrupted. “But she is still my daughter-in-law.”
“No, Mom. She is not.”
“To me, she is!” Sylvia spoke like this—although she had been divorced twice.
“Knock knock,” said a nurse, standing in the open doorway.
“This is my son, Richard,” Sylvia said, because good manners never failed her.
“Pardon my reach.” The nurse maneuvered past him to check Sylvia’s blood pressure.
“I’ll just step out,” Richard said.
Walking the corridors, he came upon his stepfather returning with take-out bags from Genki Ya.
Lew’s hair was white, but he was trim and fit; he looked fantastic for his age.
He had been a judge on the First Circuit and still read law journals, kept in touch with former clerks, monitored his blood sugar, and walked two miles a day.
“Richard! You made it! Have some lunch.”
“Let me get some fresh air first.”
“Don’t tell your mother; it will kill her,” Lew warned.