“My hair’s different,” she said.
“People have been moving you around,” the nurse said. “Hair gets mussed up.”
“It’s shorter,” Babe said. “Did they operate on my head?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“How long have I been here?”
The nurse came across the room and spoke gently. “Here. Let me.” She took the spoon and dipped it into the soup bowl.
Babe watched the plump hands, wide and strong.
“Needing a nurse to spoonfeed me my soup—I’m not that helpless.”
“Think you can feed yourself?”
“I’m damned well going to give it a try.”
Babe took the spoon and on the second try scooped up a bit of soup and wobbled it to her mouth.
“That’s good, Mrs. Devens.”
“Look, you’ve taken me to the potty and wiped the drool off my pillow—that qualifies us as intimates. I wish you’d call me Babe.”
“Okay, Babe. And you call me E.J.”
“What’s E.J. stand for?”
“Emmajean. Is Babe your real name?”
“Beatrice.”
“Why do they call you Babe?”
“My mademoiselle called me Bébé. When I went to kindergarten the other girls thought it was a hoot—a great big five-year-old with a name like that. It got shortened to Babe and it stuck through school and college—after that it just came along with me—like an albatross.”
Something had happened to E.J.’s eyes: suddenly they were crinkled and quizzical. “You said ‘albatross.’ You don’t have any trouble remembering words, do you.”
“Am I supposed to? E.J., what kind of accident did I have?”
E.J. hesitated. “I don’t know exactly.”
“That’s bull. You do know exactly.”
“Only the doctor or immediate family can tell you. Regulations.”
Later. E.J.’s voice. “Visitors, Babe.”
Babe surfaced, opening her eyes. She saw a woman in a navy blue dress with a single strand of pearls. The woman was holding an issue of Town and Country.
“Mama?” A question, not a statement.
Webbing out from her mother’s eyes were small creases that Babe had not seen the night before. The hair was different too—chic and gray, caught loosely at the back of her neck by a tiny gold coil.
“Beatrice, darling.”
Her mother said it as one word. Beatricedarling. Lucia Vanderwalk had never accepted her daughter’s nickname and had loathed it when it caught on in the press.
A kiss.
Lucia’s hands made a protective circle around Babe’s face, small white hands with wonderfully long fingers, manicured to perfection. A little whiff of her perfume came drifting down—Tea Rose, her favorite, her only. “See who I’ve brought you.”
Lucia stepped back to make room for a man in a three-piece gray pinstripe suit. He was a big bear of an old fellow with cheerful blue eyes and curly hair, and he was holding a bouquet of pink gardenias, grinning.
“Papa.” Babe opened her arms.
With the slightly formal carriage of an investment banker, Hadley Vanderwalk III bent down and planted a gallant little kiss on Babe’s forehead. “How’s my Babe?” His lips smiled below the small moustache that had been brown last night but was gray today. “Gosh, you look dandy, kid.”
He handed her the flowers. She didn’t know what to do with them. E.J. took them and scurried off to find a vase.
Babe’s parents placed chairs near the bed. Lucia spent a moment arranging herself and Babe wondered why she looked so much older than the night before.
“You’ve been asleep,” Lucia said. “You had an accident.” The voice had changed. She still had her New York Brahman accent, but there was a darker timbre than Babe remembered. “Don’t worry. The doctors and nurses have taken excellent care of you.”
Babe said, “What kind of accident?”
Lucia dug into an enormous petit point shoulder bag and came up with tea bags, a silver teapot, lemon slices, a plastic bag of crystallized sugar that was colored like sand on a magic beach, a pint of Dellwood vitamin-D-enriched milk. “Nurse, may we have some cups and boiling water?”
Tea was laid out on the hospital table. Lucia served.
“You can drink liquids, can’t you, Beatrice?”
“Of course I can drink liquids.”
“Do you still like lemon?”
“Lemon’s fine.”
They sat sipping. Teaspoons clinked. Babe had a sense that the scene was being acted rather than simply being allowed to happen. She suspected that the only improvisations were hers.
“You haven’t told me what kind of accident,” she said.
“Things change, dear heart,” Lucia said.
Thoughts somersaulted through Babe’s mind. She knew her mother well enough to know she was hiding something. “Where’s Scottie? Where’s Cordelia?”
“Cordelia is thriving. She’s just fine.”
Lucia crossed to the dresser and took a moment staring at Cordelia’s photograph on the bureau. Babe realized that her mother was limping slightly.
“Mama, did you hurt your foot?”
“My hip. It’s been this way for quite some time.”
“But last night you were dancing.”
Lucia sat on the edge of the bed and took her daughter’s hand. “Tell me, dear heart, what was last night’s date?”
“September fourth.”
Her mother looked at her in silence and a mildness came into her eyes. “And what happened last night?”
“We celebrated the anniversary of my company. We had a huge party at the Casino in the Park.”
“And how did East Eighty-ninth Street look when you last saw it?”
“When I visited Lisa Berensen in maternity—it was a lot of quaint old rowhouses.”
Lucia walked to the window and pulled open the curtain. “Nurse, would you put my daughter in the chair? I want her to see those quaint old rowhouses for herself.”
E.J. helped Babe into the wheelchair and wheeled her to the window. Babe sat staring.
Late afternoon shadows were beginning to flood the street. Here and there spots of sunlight filtered through the moving leaves of a tree. The pale new leaves had a glowing translucence, like bone china.
Suddenly the street seemed infinite under the fading sun. Everything stopped and time seemed to hold its breath. Babe sensed an extraordinary catastrophe about to occur.
“It’s … spring,” she said.
There was a flicker of agreement in Lucia’s eyes. “Yes, dear heart—it’s spring, and a lovely time to wake up.”
Understanding came like a chop to the throat. Babe couldn’t speak. Contradictions reconciled like pieces of jigsaw puzzle slipping together: the changes in her parents, the length of her hair, her surprising muscular weakness.
“I’ve been here seven months.”
“And then some.” The firm features of Lucia’s face were frozen in careful neutrality. “Take another look out the window. Don’t you notice anything else?”
The sky was high blue with white cumulus clouds. Beneath it the sidewalks were thronged with men and women and the streets were blocked with cars and taxis. But the cars in the street had a strange look and so did the people’s clothes. There was a different skyline, rippling with changes like a flower that had bloomed overnight.
Of all the buildings on the street Babe could recognize only one old mass of masonry on the corner.
Her hands gripped the armrests of the wheelchair and she was invaded by a sense of her whole being slipping away from her.
“Do you think all that was done in seven months?” Lucia handed her daughter the copy of Town and Country. “You’ve been in coma for seven months … and seven years.”
Babe read the date on the cover of the magazine. Her breath stopped and pain caught her ribs.
“The doctors said you wouldn’t believe it right away.” Lucia’s eyes and voice were shot through with gentleness. “But you’ve come through dreadful circumstances before—your first marriage, the automobile accident. You’ll come through this.”
“It’s not true! It can’t be!” Babe’s fist struck the arms of the wheelchair. “How did seven years go by in one night? It can’t have happened! Where’s Scottie? Why isn’t he here?”