Birdie seemed slightly puzzled. “No, I wouldn’t say that. But she seems to have a kinda big-sister attitude toward me. Tell the truth, Sunhaven might be the closest thing I ever had to a home and family.”
“What about Nurse Rule?”
“Well, what about her?” Wary now.
“Is she, ah, friendly toward you?”
“You talking about her being a bull-dagger?”
Carver blinked. “Right, Birdie. She ever made a play for you?”
“Oh, sure. She was all over me till I told Dr. Macklin. The two of them had a private talk in Dr. Macklin’s office, and that stopped that. We been on a business-only relationship ever since. That’s what Nurse Rule said she wanted, after Dr. Macklin talked with her. And that’s fine with me. I do what I’m told. Nurse Rule’s not the sorta supervisor you cross, if you know what I mean.”
“I know,” Carver said. “Does she hold a grudge about you going to Dr. Macklin?”
“Not any more than she seems to hold a grudge against most everyone. She’s a hard woman. But I gotta say she’s fair as she is firm.”
“You ever seen her with a man named Raffy Ortiz?”
Birdie shrank back into her chair; the canvas and wood creaked. “Never,” she said, too quickly. Fear darkened her midwestern features like a rain cloud over a wheat field.
“You know Raffy Ortiz?”
“Know him enough I can say he gives me the creeps. He’s a friend or something of Dr. Pauly. Comes out to Sunhaven and sees him every great once in a while.”
“How often’s that?”
“Maybe once, twice a month. They don’t like him to come around there.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Just everybody. I get the idea even Dr. Pauly ain’t all that crazy about Mr. Ortiz.”
“What have you heard about Raffy Ortiz?”
She stared at the ceiling for a moment, letting him know she was thinking hard. “That he’d killed somebody once. One of the residents said he thought he recognized Mr. Ortiz and he heard he’d once killed a man in a knife fight down around Miami.”
“Which resident?”
Birdie almost squirmed with nervousness. She was running on a compulsion to blab, but not about this. “I can’t recall. It was just some loose talk.”
“Is that why you’re afraid of him?”
“Of the resident?”
“Of Mr. Ortiz.”
“That, and the way he looks at me. I caught him a few times staring at me the way I used to be stared at sometimes by my father. Like he wanted to do those same things to me.”
Which might be exactly what a sicko like Ortiz had in mind, Carver thought. Birdie’s instinct for survival had been working well when she’d formed her opinion of Raffy Ortiz. A man who hurt people, and who found in their pain a dark and visceral amusement.
Carver looked at Birdie and wished it had been different for her, wished she’d had a father who felt about her as Carver did about his own daughter, living with his ex-wife, Laura, in Saint Louis. What kind of man would systematically rape his own child? Something that had developed in the human race over millions of years, something in the evolutionary process, must be missing in men like Birdie’s father-the thing that had helped ensure the survival of the species by shorting out sexual desire for one’s own offspring. It was difficult to understand or forgive such people.
Birdie had spent enough time reliving her agony, Carver decided. She’d been made a victim as a child, and would probably remain a victim all her life. He could never fully understand her pain, but he didn’t want to compound it.
“Thanks for talking with me, Birdie.” He angled his cane to support his weight and stood up. “I mean what I said. I won’t mention you to the authorities.”
She stood also, drawing the robe’s sash tighter around her waist. She smiled as if he’d just offered to buy her an ice cream cone at the carnival. She’d always have that kind of smile; it came with desperate hope. “I believe you,” she said. “Don’t know why, but I do. Guess you want me to keep quiet out at Sunhaven about our talk here tonight.”
“It’s up to you. Neither of us broke any laws by having a conversation.”
She crossed her bare feet, wriggling her toes. The nails were painted pink. “I’d just as soon we made it our secret, if you don’t mind. Nurse Rule wouldn’t like it, knowing I let you in and told you things.”
“Our secret, then,” Carver said.
He resisted the urge to pat her shoulder and made his way across the room. When he opened the door the warm night air enveloped him, carrying with it the sweet, wild scent of flowers. He could hear the growl of distant traffic, and a radio or TV tuned too loud somewhere in the building. The darkness seemed ripe with struggle, a void where humans grappled blindly with each other and with themselves.
“Mr. Carver?” Birdie said when he was ready to step outside.
He twisted his torso so he was looking back at her, his cane set firmly on the wide threshold.
“You can come back again and talk if you want. Guess what I’m trying to say is, I could use a friend.”
“You’ve got one to use,” Carver said.
He limped out into the night.
Less than an hour later he stretched out on the cool bed next to Edwina. He lay on his back, his fingers laced behind his head, and listened to the repetitive thunder of the ocean. Moonlight softly outlined familiar forms in the room-a chair, Edwina’s dresser, the tall chest of drawers-and lent them a pliant, dreamlike quality. Carver felt that if he closed his eyes he might wake up.
Edwina’s bare, pale leg stirred, rustling the white sheet. Keeping the rest of her body still, she turned the dark shape of her head on her pillow so she was facing him. Her hair splayed over white linen. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he sensed she was awake.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked.
“To see a child.”
Edwina had a knack for knowing when not to ask questions. She lay quietly. He could see, stark against the moonstruck wall, the silhouetted length of her body. Her stomach and breasts were rising and falling almost unnoticeably as she breathed, in subtle but profound rhythm with the breaking sea.
He knew she’d been physically abused by her former husband. Edwina didn’t talk much about that time in her life, and it was something Carver didn’t pry into. It had all ended more than a year before he and Edwina had become lovers, and he had never met her ex-husband. Knew his name was Larry, but didn’t know much else about him. He used to spend a lot of time thinking about Larry, hating him. He’d seen what Larry had done, and how long it took for it to be made right again.
“Can you ever really forgive someone who’s violently sexually abused you?” he asked.
“You mean as a child?”
“Not necessarily. A man and a woman, maybe. Or a man and a young girl. His daughter.”
“The two situations aren’t alike.”
“Aren’t they?”
“I don’t think so.”
He didn’t speak for a while. She was thinking about Larry. And who knew what else? She’d always be a mystery. Maybe that was why he loved her.
In the dim, cool silence she said, “A woman might forgive being abused by her husband. She can eventually understand it. And after that maybe she can forgive. I doubt it happens often. There’s usually no reason to forgive.”
“So an abusive husband is seldom forgiven. What about an abusive father? One who sexually molests a very young girl over a stretch of several years. Is he ever understood by the victim and forgiven?”
Edwina’s answer came instantly across the shadowed bed. “A father? Never. The only thing is for the victim to get as far away from the situation as possible, and never go back.”
Carver thought about what she’d said, then he slept soundly.
15
Not the phone, the doorbell.
At first Carver hadn’t been sure what had awakened him. There was a breeze sighing through the bedroom window, but it was a warm one. The doorbell was quiet now; he could hear the sea gushing on the beach.