I won't hurt you anymore, she thought. Without words, in gratitude and with love, it answered her.
Good God, it was alive, he was right. It was alive and it could hear her. It was in pain.
"It won't take very long," he said. "I'll care for you with all my heart. You are my Eve, yet you are sinless. And once it's born, then if you wish, you can die."
She didn't answer him. Why should she? For the first time in two months, there was someone else there to talk to. She turned her head away.
Thirteen
ANNE MARIE MAYFAIR sat stiffly on the smooth beige plastic couch in the hospital lobby. Mona saw her as soon as she came in. Anne Marie wore her funeral suit, still, of navy blue, and her usual prim blouse with its score of ruffles. She was reading a magazine, her legs crossed, her black glasses down on her nose, and there was something cute about her as always, with her black hair drawn back in a twist, and her small nose and mouth, and the big glasses made her look both stupid and intelligent.
She looked up as Mona approached. Mona pecked her on the cheek and then flopped down beside her.
"Did Ryan call you?" asked Anne Marie, her voice hushed and private though there were very few other people moving in the brightly lighted lobby. Elevator doors opened and closed in an alcove far away. The reception desk with its high impersonal counter was empty.
"You mean about Mother?" Mona said. She hated this place. It occurred to her that when she was very rich and a huge Mayfair Mogul with mutual funds in every sector of the economy, she would spend some time on interior design, trying to liven up places as sterile and cold as this. Then she thought of Mayfair Medical! Of course that plan had to go forward! She had to help Ryan. They couldn't shut her out. She'd talk to Pierce about it tomorrow. She'd speak to Michael, soon as he felt a little better.
She looked at Anne Marie. "Ryan said Mother was in here."
"Yes, well, she is, and according to the nurses she thinks we're trying to permanently commit her. That's what she told them this morning when they brought her in. She's been asleep ever since they stuck a needle in her arm. The nurse is supposed to call me if she wakes up. What I meant was--did Ryan call you about Edith?"
"No, what happened to Edith?" Mona barely knew Edith. Edith was Lauren's granddaughter, a timid belligerent recluse who lived on Esplanade Avenue and spent all her time with her cats, a predictable and boring woman, never went anywhere ever, not even to funerals apparently. Edith. What did she look like? Mona wasn't sure.
Anne Marie sat up, slapped the magazine on the table, and pushed her glasses up against her pretty eyes. "Edith died this afternoon. Hemorrhage same as Gifford. Ryan says for none of the women in the family to be alone. It might be something genetic. We're to be around people all the time. That way if something happens, we can call for help. Edith had been all alone, like Gifford."
"You're kidding me. You mean Edith Mayfair is dead? This really actually happened?"
"Yeah, I know. Believe me. Think how Lauren feels. Lauren went over there to scold her for not showing up at Gifford's funeral. And there was Edith lying on the bathroom floor. Bled to death. And her cats were all around her licking up the blood."
Mona didn't say anything for a moment. She had to reflect, not only upon what she knew, but upon how much of it she could tell anybody else, and to what purpose. Partly she was simply shocked.
"You're saying this was a uterine hemorrhage too."
"Yeah, possible miscarriage, they said. I would say impossible on that, myself, knowing Edith. Same with Gifford. Neither could have been pregnant. They're doing an autopsy this time. So at least the family is doing something other than burning candles and saying prayers, and giving each other the evil eye."
"That's good," Mona said in a dull voice, drawing back into herself, hoping her cousin would keep quiet for a moment. No such luck.
"Look, everybody is very upset," said Anne Marie. "But we have to follow the directive. A person can have a hemorrhage without it being a miscarriage, obviously. So don't go off by yourself. If you feel faint, or any unusual physical symptoms, you need to be able to get help immediately."
Mona nodded, staring off at the blank walls of this place, at its sparse signs and its large sand-filled cylindrical ashtrays. One half hour ago, Mona had been sound asleep when something waked her as surely as a hand touching her--a smell, a song coming from a Victrola. She pictured that open window again, the sash all the way up, the night outside bending in with its dark yews and oaks. She tried to remember the smell. "Talk to me, kid," said Anne Marie. "I'm worried about you."
"Yeah, well, I'm fine. OK. Everybody better follow that advice, don't be alone, whether they think they could be pregnant or not. You're right. Doesn't matter. I'm going upstairs to see Mother."
"Don't wake her up."
"You said she's been sleeping since morning? Maybe she's in a coma. Maybe she's dead."
Anne Marie smiled and shook her head. She picked up her magazine and started reading again. "Don't get in an argument with her, Mona," she said, just as Mona turned away.
The elevator doors opened quietly on the seventh floor. This was where they always put Mayfairs, unless there was some pressing reason to be in a special department. Mayfairs had rooms with parlors here, and little kitchens where they could make their own microwave coffee, or store their ice cream. Alicia had been in here before, four times as a matter of fact--dehydrated, malnourished, broken ankle, suicidal--and vowed never to be brought back. They'd probably had to restrain her.
Mona padded softly down the corridor, catching a glimpse of herself in the dark glass of an observation room, and hating what she saw--the chunky white cotton dress, shapeless on a person who wasn't a little girl. Well, that was the least of her problems.
She caught the fragrance as soon as she reached the doors to Seventh Floor West. That was it. The exact same smell.
She stopped, took a deep breath and realized that for the first time in her life she felt really afraid of something. It made her disgusted. She stood, head cocked to the side, thinking it over. There was an exit to the stairs. There were the doors ahead. There was an exit on the other side of the ward. There were people right inside at the desk.
If only she had Michael here, she'd push open that exit door, see if someone was standing in the stairwell, someone who gave off this odor.
But the smell was already weak. It was going away. And as she stood there, considering this, getting quietly furious that she didn't have the guts to just open that damned door, someone else opened it, and let it swing shut as he went down the corridor. A young doctor with a stethoscope over his shoulder. The landing had been empty.
But that didn't mean somebody wasn't hiding above or below. Either the smell was going away, however, or Mona was simply getting used to it. She took a deep slow breath; it was so rich, so sensuous, so delicious. But what was it?
She pushed through the double doors into the ward. The smell grew stronger. But there were the three nurses, sitting, writing away, in an island of light surrounded by high wooden counters, one of them whispering on a phone as she wrote, the others seemingly in deep concentration.
No one noticed as Mona walked past the station and passed into the narrow corridor. The smell was very strong here.
"Jesus Christ, don't tell me this," Mona whispered. She glanced at the doors to her left and her right But the smell told her before she even saw the chart that said "Alicia (CeeCee) Mayfair."
The door was ajar, and the room was dark; its one window opened upon an airwell. Blank wall stared in through the glass at the still woman, lying with her head to the wall, beneath the white covers. A small digital machine recorded the progress of the IV--a plastic sack of glucose, clear as glass, feeding down through a tiny tube into the woman's right hand, beneath a mass of tape, the hand itself flat on the white blanket.
Mona stood very still, then pushed open the door. She pushed it all the way back, so that she could see into the open bathroom to the ri
ght Porcelain toilet Empty shower stall. Quickly, she examined the rest of the room, and then turned back to the bed, confident that she and her mother were alone.
Her mother's profile bore a remarkable resemblance to that of her sister, Gifford, in the coffin. All points and angles, the emaciated face sunk into the large, softly yielding pillow.
The covers made a mound over the body. All white except for a small irregular blotch of red in the very center of the covers, very near to where the hand lay with its tape and its tubing and needle.
Mona drew closer, clamped her left hand on the chrome bar of the bed, and touched the red spot. Very wet Even as she stared at it the blotch grew bigger. Something seeping up through the covers from below. Roughly Mona pulled the blanket down from under Alicia's limp arm. Her mother didn't stir. Her mother was dead. The blood was everywhere. The bed was soaked with it
There was a sound behind Mona; and then a female voice spoke in a rasping, unfriendly whisper.
"Don't wake her up, dear. We had a hell of a time with her this morning."