Julia stood there in blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and a short black leather jacket, looking as beautiful as I had ever seen her. "I felt a little better about leaving Tess once the sitter came, so I checked into that hotel and tried to nap, but I couldn't," she said. "I thought, maybe, here-with you. I mean, if it isn't putting you out, or putting you in an awkward position. Because…"
I took her hand and gently pulled her inside. We kissed deeply. The warmth of her lips and tongue, the press of her hands against my back, the smell of her hair transported me to an emotional state in which passion and peacefulness not only coexisted, but fed one another. I felt strangely comfortable with wanting her, as if, from all time, she had been destined to be my object of desire. We separated and stood in silence, each of our hands in one another's, like schoolkids on a dimly lighted front porch. "I'm glad you came here," I said.
"A little variation on the traditional house call," she said. "I was surprised you're listed, like a regular person, in the telephone book."
"I'm pretty regular, when you come right down to it," I said.
"No, you're not," she said. "Far from it. The people you've worked with, the violent ones… can find you so easily."
"That's the best way to let them know I'm not afraid of them."
"Are you, sometimes, though?"
"No," I said. "Never. But that may just mean there's something wrong with me."
She brushed past me, into the living room.
I walked toward the kitchen. "Can I get you anything? A drink? Dinner?"
"I grabbed something at the hospital cafeteria," she said, wandering around the loft. "Please go ahead, though."
I watched her as she checked out the loft, taking in the art, touching some of the furniture. She stopped in front of the plate-glass windows. "This is one of the most beautiful views I've ever seen," she said. "How did you find this place?"
"A friend of mine used to live in this building," I said. "I liked watching the tankers."
"From her place," Julia said. She smiled.
I nodded.
She took off her jacket and walked over to my bed. "I need to sleep for half an hour or so. I'm exhausted. Do you mind?"
"Of course not," I said.
She laid down on the gray linen comforter, curled up like a cat. "Hold me?" she asked.
I walked over and climbed onto the bed, spooning myself against her, my face lost now in her hair, my hand laced into hers, held close to her breast. I could feel her engagement ring against my skin, but that seemed an artifact from a life she had lived before ours intersected.
"A psychiatrist-a woman-came by the intensive care unit to talk with me," she said.
"And…"
"I told her I won't want to go on if Tess doesn't make it," she said. "I couldn't bear to survive, thinking I let this happen to her."
"Dr. Karlstein is fighting like hell for Tess," I said.
"I believe that," she said. "And I believe she'll pull through. Otherwise, I could never have left her, not even for an hour."
We lay together as Julia slept. Before dozing off myself, I let my mind wander three, four months into the future, past the investigation, which I now believed should end with Darwin Bishop's arrest. And I could actually see Julia and myself making a life together, somehow offering Billy and Garret safe harbor from the storms they had weathered. I actually thought I might have the chance to redeem myself for losing my adolescent patient Billy Fisk to suicide.
We awakened at the same moment. Julia rolled over and faced me. "I want to know that we're together," she whispered. "I want you to make love to me."
I propped myself on an elbow and brushed her hair away from her face. "This is a complicated time to start," I said.
"We started the first time you touched my arm," she said. "The day you met me outside the house, with Garret."
"I just…"
"You can't control what you feel for me," she said, glancing at my crotch, full with my excitement. She unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, guided my hand into her panties and between her legs. She was completely shaved, and her impossibly soft skin was warm and wet. "Not any more than I can control what I feel for you."
Julia's sexual desire in the face of losing Brooke and nearly losing Tess troubled me, but I silently chastised myself for judging her. What textbook reaction, after all, would have satisfied me? Bitter rage? Isolation? Did I want to see her slip deeper and deeper into depression?
My head was swimming. Why resist Julia's needs, I asked myself, when the gods of chance and love might be giving me my one shot at happiness? Why deny my own needs? I looked into Julia's eyes and ran the tip of my finger along the cleft between her delicate folds. She sighed. And as she opened herself to my touch, it seemed a part of my soul, lost a long time, was being returned to me.
Friday, June 28, 2002
I started driving Julia back to Mass General at 1:30 a.m. We had fallen asleep again, after making love. I checked my rearview mirror a few times to make sure we weren't being followed.
"Worried about Win?" Julia asked.
"Shouldn't I be?"
"I've worried about him for so long, I sometimes forget to."
"Why do you think you married him in the first place?" I asked. "You've said you thought you were in love, but why did you fall for him? What attracted you?"
She took a deep breath. "I'm not sure it was about Win," she said. "He was charming, handsome. All that. But it was more about me. I think I was actually using him."
That sounded pretty up-front. "How so?" I asked.
"I come from a large family," she said. "Four brothers and myself. Dad was an attorney, but not a real name in his profession, nothing like that. My mother was quiet. A homemaker. She didn't have any dreams to speak of and she never seemed terribly interested in mine. Darwin was larger than life-certainly larger than my life seemed at the time."
"Your relationship with your father?" I asked. "How was that?"
"I loved him, but he spent most of his time with my brothers-their athletics, their schooling. I started modeling at fourteen, probably to compete for his attention. It grew into a lot more than I expected, but he never really cared about it. And I never developed real self-confidence from it."
"Your marriage provided that?"
"In a way," she said. "Or it seemed to. Being Win's wife meant I didn't have to figure out what else I was. Mrs. Darwin Bishop was a good enough label for my parents and friends. For most people. And for a long while, it was good enough for me, too. I borrowed his success. I even fooled myself into thinking I was contributing to it. The power behind the throne. That kind of thing."
"But you had achieved a good deal of success yourself, in modeling," I said.
"I always understood that was skin-deep, and that it would end." She looked out the window at the Boston skyline as we crossed the Tobin Bridge. "I knew from the first time Darwin hit me that our marriage would end, too. But I was… paralyzed. I never took the time or had the strength to find my own way."
"Yet," I said.
"Yet." She smiled. "Enough about me, already, Dr. Clevenger. How have you happened to stay single?"
"I was with a woman for years who was ill-mentally," I said.
"Who was she?"
"A doctor," I said. "An obstetrician."
"Is that what brought you together?" Julia asked. "Medicine?"
"That was part of it. But, in a certain way, I was using her, too," I said. "She was fragile, so I was the one in control. My being with her gave me the chance to say I was in a relationship when I was really avoiding relationships. Hiding out."
"Why hide?" she said.
"Because I had to hide-emotionally and physically-in the house I grew up in. I guess it got to be a habit."
She looked at me as if she wanted more of an explanation.
"My father used a belt, just like Darwin," I said.
"I'm so sorry, Frank," she said. "I had no idea."