Chapter 27 Lindy
Lindy
Lindy woke to the sound of someone tiptoeing up the stairs. For a second, because she knew she was alone in bed, she thought,
David?
Then the realities all came whooshing back so quickly that they made her sit up in shock: David was gone; David was having
an affair; David might have a heart condition; Lindy had lied to Hailey and Cody and her mother and Kate; she had lied to
everybody and made Emma and Eli complicit.
And on the heels of these horrible recollections came a galloping stampede of terrors: What if she was wrong? What if David
was out there somewhere, needing help?
Because he wouldn’t do this to them intentionally, would he? To her, their kids, his sister and brother, his nieces and nephews?
The crew of them had spent hundreds of hours searching, made and posted hundreds of flyers, driven up and down the coast a
half dozen times, plus up to Bangor to alert the TV stations. They’d made a hundred phone calls and multiple trips to Cranston.
Surely, he would’ve known that, if he simply vanished, this would be their response!
Wouldn’t he?
Was she being foolish deciding that an affair with Tiffany was the only answer?
Or was she just hoping it was true so she wouldn’t have to imagine other, even more terrible alternatives?
David finished his law degree in the spring of 1985, but by then he no longer talked about making a difference in the world,
or even about philosophy. It was as if he’d lost his curiosity, his penchant for asking interesting questions. Maybe he was
just worn out, or maybe his work in the public defender’s office in Boston had discouraged him in general about humanity,
about the business of being alive.
And yet, this summer, he would be studying for the bar, spending a little time at The Cove and a lot in Boston studying with
his classmates, then going to Rhode Island to take the state exam there in July. In the fall, he would start a full-time job
as a staff attorney with the Rhode Island Public Defender, which Lindy could hardly imagine would be any more uplifting.
She had been hoping he would come to New York. She would be starting law school at NYU, and she didn’t see herself ending
up in a public defender’s office. She envisioned a downtown Manhattan firm where she would wear a very expensive suit and
very high heels every day, which would please her all the more because they would seem gauche to her mother. Lindy had an
apartment lined up with a roommate, but she would change her arrangements in a heartbeat to live with David, if he asked,
though her parents would be scandalized.
She was just so tired of living so far apart from him. He’d chosen Northeastern because he thought the program there matched
his interests better than any school in New York, so they’d spent the last three years, while Lindy finished up her undergrad,
commuting back and forth from New York to Boston, which was an even greater distance than New York to Providence.
(A negligible distance, David would say, and she would answer, in a tone as if she were teasing, But not nothing!) These past two years, they’d both been so busy that they’d seen each other only a couple times a month, if they were lucky.
That explained why she was completely surprised by the state he was in when he arrived at The Cove in mid-June. She’d been
there nearly two weeks already, helping her mother with Innisfree. They were doing some painting and redecorating this year,
and Lindy was painstakingly refinishing a pair of end tables she’d found at a yard sale, enjoying what she couldn’t help but
feel was her last summer before real adulthood struck.
She was hanging out with Kate on the porch of the yellow cottage when David drove up in his old Corolla, and when she ran
down to greet him, she sensed instantly that something was wrong. He felt angry, though he said nothing. His curly hair was wild, too long; he had a three-day scruff of beard. He kissed her briefly,
yanked his duffel out of the hatch of his car, and marched inside shouting to his mother that he was hungry. Lindy was surprised
to see he was still limping. It had been months since he’d hurt his knee; the injury had kept him on crutches through part
of the winter, and he’d been grumpy, to say the least, about being unable to run.
This was not the David that they had expected to see. This version of David had been gone a long time, and no one was happy
to see him back.
Lindy hoped he was just worn thin by studying for the bar, and that, once he got a little rest and a few hours at The Cove
under his belt, he’d relax into his more genial self again.
It didn’t happen. Three days later, he and Lindy had a terrible fight. He couldn’t believe she would even consider asking
him to come to New York just to see if he could find some random job, when his old Brown professor had pulled some major strings
to line up the job in Providence. David was registered and paid up to take the Rhode Island bar, he’d been studying his ass
off, and he’d always loved living in Providence. Why the hell would he want to move to New York? There was no way in hell
he was going to take the bar in New York! He’d have to study a whole extra year!
She couldn’t believe that, after all this time, he still didn’t make her or their relationship a priority, and New York was the center of the world and it was where they should start their life together, and certainly where he should start his career, not some public defender’s office in a tiny city in a tiny state, from where he could expect to get exactly nowhere.
He packed up his camping gear and left, telling her not to expect him back anytime soon.
He does this all the time, she told herself. He’ll be fine. He’ll be gone for a while, then he’ll come back, and he’ll be fine.
Normally, she never scolded him, never told him he was doing the wrong thing, never indicated any dissatisfaction concerning
anything about him or their relationship.
She didn’t know how she had let herself lose control like that.
Five days—two of sun and three of rain—passed. She finished the end tables and painted the bathroom, but all she was really
doing was worrying, waiting. Greta told her that no good would come of it.
“Of worrying?” Lindy said.
“Of being with David,” Greta said. “It’s time you grow up. Imagine a different life for yourself. Just try.”
And though typically Lindy reflexively did the opposite of what her mother advised, this time she found herself wondering,
much as she loved David, if her mother could be right.
But then a call came in to the yellow cottage at noon on a Tuesday, and Kate ran over to Innisfree to get Lindy. “David’s
in the hospital in Blue Hill. He checked himself in.”
Kate drove the family station wagon, Mrs. Kauffman rode shotgun, and Lindy sat perched on the middle edge of the back seat, peering nervously between the two of them out the windshield at the tree-lined highway, as if she could gain some control that way over where they were going or what was going to happen next.
She was surprised and grateful they had invited her along—she’d had the sense both were miffed over her role in David’s departure—but maybe they just needed reinforcements, with Josh and Mr. Kauffman both back in Chicago working.
David had checked himself in? Did that mean he’d harmed himself intentionally again, then changed his mind about his desired
outcome? Or had there been some accident and he’d managed to drive himself to the hospital?
Kate and Mrs. Kauffman didn’t know. The nurse on the phone had told them almost nothing. It was a three-hour drive to Blue
Hill.
“We gave him something to help him sleep,” said the doctor behind the desk inside the mint-green office in the center of the
old hospital. David, the doctor had explained, had shown up wild-eyed in the ER saying he hadn’t slept in four days and couldn’t
control the persistent, vivid thoughts he was having about ending his life. “A part of him was extremely cogent. A part of
him wanted to save himself. Which is cause for optimism in my book,” said the doctor, who had a very gentle, yet sure-footed,
way about him. Lindy was relieved to the point of tears that David had found this man, that this man had been here for David.
“Now we just need to evaluate if he has sufficient support at home to be released to his family. It certainly appears to me
like he does.” Lindy, her face hot with tears, glanced at Mrs. Kauffman, then at Kate. They were crying quietly, too, as the
doctor said directly to Mrs. Kauffman, “He didn’t hesitate to give me your telephone number, which is another good sign.”
Mrs. Kauffman straightened, clutching her handbag in her lap. Her lip trembled slightly. “We will give him all the support
he needs.”
“I can see that,” said the doctor, with a quiet nod. “I’d like to keep him here overnight so he can sleep. Tomorrow, you can
take him home.”
David, asleep half sitting up in the hospital bed, wearing a gown, looked as if he’d just fought a very hard battle.
His beard had grown in entirely and made him seem a stranger, though the way his curls spilled over his forehead was familiar, as was the shape of his eyes, the curl of his eyelashes over his cheeks.
The three women each kissed his forehead in turn—he didn’t rouse; he smelled of sweat and campfire smoke—then sat by the bed for hours as he slept.
Finally, Kate left to try to find a motel.
When she came back two hours later, Lindy’s nose caught the scent of wine.
They each kissed his forehead again, and when they walked outside, it was the three of them against the world, and the sunset sky over the bay beside the ancient, white wood-frame hospital was a shade of lavender Lindy had never seen, and the taste of the cedar- and salt-scented air was sweeter than she’d remembered.