“Please wake him. This is an emergency.”
“Is it your parents?”
“No. It’s Emily.”
“Emily?” There was a reverential pause. “I’ll go down and get Scotty.”
Go down and get him? I thought about that while I waited. Either she had lied to me and he wasn’t asleep, or they weren’t sleeping together. Both prospects were interesting. I hold nothing against Linda, though she detests me the way The Other Woman generally hates the first wife. It’s guilt. There had been times when I could have made her more comfortable, reassured her that she had moved in on a moribund marriage and was only a small factor in our breakup. But I kept quiet. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.
Scotty sounded wide awake when he picked up the phone. “Maggie, what’s happened?”
“It’s Emily,” I said. “She’s been shot.”
“Dear God. Is she… “
“She’s in a coma. She’s stable, but, Scotty, her prospects are grim.”
“How are Mom and Dad taking it?”
“They don’t know yet. I want to talk to Casey. Will you waken her?”
“She’s not asleep. She’s right here. We’ve been playing chess.” I heard an extension phone somewhere in the house hang up with a bang.
“Maggie,” Scotty was saying, “if there’s anything I can do. Anything.”
“Thanks. Where’s Casey?”
“Here she is.”
“Mom?” Casey’s voice seemed tiny, too far away from me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, baby. How are you?”
“Bored. Why’d you call?”
“Aunt Emily’s in the hospital. She’s been seriously hurt. I wanted you to hear about it from me before you saw it on the news.
“It’s really bad then, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Will she die?”
“I don’t know.”
“God, Mom, you must be real sad, I mean because she’s your sister. And you already lost your brother. I never had a sister or a brother, so I don’t know what that’s like exactly, growing up with someone and then they die. Aunt Emily’s pretty weird, but I know you laugh around with her a lot.” Casey never bothers with polite bullshit. I love her. “Was it, like, some disease she picked up?”
“No. Emily was shot.”
“Oh! Gross!” She took a couple of deep breaths. “Does she look bad?”
“There are a lot of bandages, but she looks beautiful.”
“Am I going to come home?”
“I wish you could, but I think it would be best if you stay with Daddy while I take care of Aunt Emily.”
“I could help you with things.”
I heard the undercurrents. Casey is a patient, loyal soul. She hadn’t said much about the divorce, except that she didn’t want to lose her father. This holiday trip to his new house had been essential to her, reassurance that the cement between them still held firm. She would never complain to me about Scotty, or about Linda. So, I knew that if she was looking for an excuse to come home, something had happened to make her feel more than just uncomfortable. I also knew, knowing Casey as I do, that I couldn’t force an issue.
“Linda said you had been skiing,” I said. “Having fun?”
“Colorado’s okay,” she said. There was a pause. “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Remember, after the earthquake when our house was all a mess and we had to stay with Grandma? Remember how fun it was?”
I remembered. The experience had been a nightmare for all of us. “Give Dad a little more time, honey. You’ve only been there a few days.”
“You still going to Ireland to film?”
“In January.”
“You’ll be gone so long, Dad wants me to register for school here next term.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“Linda’s pregnant.”
“So?”
“Take me to Ireland with you.”
I thought about it for maybe three seconds. “Okay,” I said.
“No bull?”
“No bull. You’re old enough. Maybe you’ll learn something useful.”
She gave a teenagery squeal. “Dad, I’m going to Ireland.” Scotty’s voice in the background did not sound happy.
“Dad wants to talk to you,” Casey said. “I’m sorry about Aunt Emily. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too, baby.”
“Here’s Dad.”
Scotty’s voice was on the cusp between control and fury. “Are you nuts? Belfast, Northern Ireland, is a fucking war zone.”
I squeezed Emily’s hand. “The whole world is a fucking war zone, Scotty.”
Dr. Song burst into the room and brushed me aside. “Emily, Emily, what are you doing?” he moaned.
His face was the ashen gray of a funeral guest. I stood there, panicked, while he took Emily’s hand from me and probed her wrist for a pulse. His eyes were on the heart monitor screen. The regular blip I had been watching before I called Casey had changed to wild fluctuations, sharp peaks and profound valleys. Then, suddenly, the peaks straightened into a flat green line.
“Please, Em,” I begged. I moved over her, as if I could shield her from some outside danger. But her battles were all being fought inside. There was nothing for me to do except watch her impassive face for clues to the outcome.
After a long pause, Dr. Song sighed and tucked away his stethoscope. I thought it was all over. I was trying to cry out, plead for him to do something. He wiped sweat off his face and smiled.
“Sorry for the scare,” he said. “She’s okay. Monitor sensor slipped, that’s all. I freaked like a first-year med student when I saw the monitor going crazy. I’m sorry.”
“Em’s okay?” I had to say it myself.
“Yes. Her pulse could be stronger, but it’s steady.”
I held Emily’s hand again, still scared, afraid to be encouraged by Dr. Song’s smile or the warmth he had left on her palm. He was now happily whistling “Jingle Bells” while I was still juiced from the panic he had carried into the room. I felt like decking him.
Dr. Song had peeled back Emily’s gown to get at the sensors strapped around her chest. While he worked on the sensors, Em’s torso was bare. I’m no prude, but I felt very uncomfortable being in the room with him while Emily was naked. When I last shared a room with Emily, she had still been a modest teenager. At that time, this situation would have mortified her.
I looked at her.
At forty-four, Em still had a nice, athletic body. Her belly was flat and well-muscled, the taper of her narrow hips was graceful. Her bare breasts were larger and fuller than I remembered them, certainly larger than my own. Hers were truly beautiful, well-shaped and firm even though she was lying on her back. This fascinated me. I remembered Em slipping foam inserts into a strapless high school prom dress. Too odd, I thought, that sometime between that night and this one, she had become so voluptuous.
It took me a few moments to realize that the thin red lines under her breasts weren’t impressions made by her bra. They were surgical scars. Emily had breast implants.
The pure hedonistic extravagance of this act threw me. Not financial extravagance, because she probably exchanged freebies with another doctor to acquire these accessories. It was the unprecedented attention to herself, and her appearance that was a shocker. Why had she done it?
In transit between my news-writing job at WHCK radio in Des Moines and an anchoring spot at KMIR-TV in Palm Springs, I had traded in my father’s hook nose for a pert Marlo Thomas special. It took a lot of soul-searching before I could do it. I liked the original better, but the change was a professional, video necessity.
Emily had given me a lot of heat for undergoing this “mutilation.” So what had compelled her to enlarge her bust? A lover? The disappointment of a lover?
I realized I had begun to think about Em in a nostalgic way, as if the sum of her existence had drifted into the past. Discovering Emily’s secret voluptuousness shook me, made me wonder what else I didn’t know about her, gave her new life.
“Maggie!” I heard Scotty’s voice, anguished but very faint. At some point I had dropped the telephone receiver. I reeled it in by the cord.