Hidden Jewel Read online

  She rushed forward, and he embraced her, the crutches falling to the floor. She held him firmly, and they stood there clinging to each other for a long moment. Their embrace sent my fugitive tears flowing freely down my cheeks. After another moment I picked up Daddy’s crutches and held them out to him.

  “What are you wearing?” he asked me with a quizzical smile.

  “These are Jack’s clothes, Daddy.”

  “Why?” He looked at Mommy.

  “It’s a bit of a horror tale,” she said. “Let her shower and change. I need to shower, too. Then we’ll go to the hospital, and Pearl will tell you all of it.”

  “But where have you been, Ruby? What have you been doing?”

  “I’ll tell you everything, too, Beau. Just give me a chance to catch my breath.”

  “Are you in any pain, Daddy?” I asked.

  “Nothing I can’t endure now,” he said, shifting his eyes away shamefully. He knew I was aware of what had happened, but this wasn’t the time or the place to blame anyone for anything. None of that seemed important anyway.

  I kissed him quickly on the cheek and hurried to shower and dress, praying that it wasn’t too late to help Pierre.

  Mommy wasn’t prepared for the sight she would see in the ICU. Even I, who had seen Pierre here before, was frightened by the pallid skin and the way his ashen complexion almost turned his hair gray. His lips were colorless. The skin on the back of his hands looked wrinkled. He lay so still he resembled a mannequin. The nurse explained that he had just had a dialysis treatment.

  Mommy stood staring at Pierre. She was a few feet from the bed. It was as if the last twenty or thirty inches were impassable after the emotional journey she had just taken. Daddy stood beside her, leaning on his crutches.

  “He looks as if he’s shrinking,” Mommy moaned. “I don’t remember him being so small.”

  “It’s just because he’s in such a big bed, Mommy,” I said. “Come, talk to him. I’m sure he’ll hear you.”

  She nodded and finally stepped up to the bed. I got her a chair and she sat down, holding Pierre’s hand in hers.

  “Pierre, my darling. My sweet baby, please get well. I’m here now, here to help you,” she said. “We need you to get well, Pierre. Please try.”

  The tears were streaming down her cheeks. She leaned over and kissed Pierre’s cheek, but it must have been like kissing a corpse. His eyelids didn’t flutter; his lips didn’t move. All we heard was the beep, beep, beep of heart monitors and other hospital machinery.

  Mommy turned desperately to Daddy. He bit down on his lower lip and shook his head.

  “Where’s the doctor?” Mommy asked me.

  “I’ll go see.” I went to the nurses’ station. Dr. LeFevre wasn’t expected until midafternoon, but Dr. Lasky expected to visit his patients in about an hour.

  “We can go downstairs to the hospital cafeteria and have something to eat while we wait, Mommy,” I told her. She was just staring at Pierre.

  “No, you go ahead, dear,” she said. “Take Daddy. I must stay here now.”

  I thought the nurse might not like it, but this ICU nurse was more compassionate and understanding. She just nodded. Daddy and I went to the cafeteria. After I got us some sandwiches and drinks and brought them to the table, I began to tell Daddy about my near tragedy in the bayou and what had happened to Buster Trahaw.

  Daddy sat listening with his mouth open. “I let you down,” he said. “I let everyone down by drinking myself into a stupor and falling down the stairs, breaking my leg. There you were, doing the things I should have been doing and endangering yourself, while I lay in a stupor. I don’t deserve any good luck or happiness.”

  It was as if a transfusion of iron had been shot through my veins and into my spine. I straightened up quickly and snapped at him. “Stop this right now, Daddy. I don’t want to hear another note of self-pity from your lips. Mommy desperately needs us to be strong for her, and Pierre will need us more than ever. There isn’t any time to sit around bemoaning all the tragedy.”

  He looked up, surprised at my harsh tone, but I couldn’t help speaking to him that way.

  “When I was alone in that canoe, drifting from one canal to the other, lost and exhausted, I could think of only one terrible thing: I had let you and Pierre and Mommy down. If we just dwell on ourselves, we will become pitiful, and whatever evil looms around us will have its day with us,” I concluded sternly.

  “You, Pearl?” Daddy said, starting to smile “You have come to believe in the power of spirits?”

  “I believe in the power of the soul, yes. I believe we can do battle with what seems to be our destiny. If you don’t try, you will be carried away by the winds of darkness. I don’t believe in voodoo rituals or have faith in goodluck charms, but at least the people who do have faith in these things believe they can change their destiny. They have some grit,” I added, and Daddy laughed.

  Then he grew dark and serious.

  “You seem to have grown years older in just a few days, Pearl. I sense a greater maturity in you. It’s as if you have leaped over time.” He sat back and stared at me a moment. “This Jack Clovis, he was a great help?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You’ve become very fond of him?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “And in a mature way,” I added.

  Daddy nodded. He looked very sad again for a moment and then sighed. “It’s not easy to see your little girl become a woman. Goodness knows, no one knows the dangers that befall young people better than we now know them, but there’s a wall of innocence around a young girl. Her pains and disappointments are all small compared to what she can endure later: a boy she likes doesn’t ask her to the prom, her hair isn’t as soft or as stylish as she would like, she has a pimple on her chin.

  “I bet you’ve forgotten the time when you were in third grade and some boy said your head was far too big for the rest of you. You came running home crying that day, and Mommy was out visiting an art gallery where one of her exhibitions was being staged. I was in the office, and you came to my door in tears. I had to run a tape measure around your head and then work out the proportions to prove you weren’t a freak. How easy it was to drive the demons away from you then. How hard it becomes now.”

  “Why must there be any demons, Daddy?”

  “It just seems there always are,” he said. “But I suppose if you find the right man he will have the weapons with which to protect you. I hope you will find a man who can do better for the woman he loves than I have.”

  “Stop it, Daddy!” I ordered.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, raising his hands. “I’ll be the man you think I am.” He straightened up. “You’re right. There isn’t any time for self-pity.” He bit into his sandwich. “Tell me more about this Jack Clovis.”

  I didn’t mind. I could have talked about Jack for hours. Daddy listened and nodded as we finished our lunch. He enjoyed teasing me about Jack, but I was so sad about leaving him that I welcomed even Daddy’s joking.

  Mommy was sitting right where we left her, holding Pierre’s hand and staring at his quiet face. I had brought her a cold drink, and she sipped it through a straw, but she insisted she wasn’t hungry.

  Dr. Lasky arrived and examined Pierre. Then he met with us outside. “Physically, he’s slipping,” he said bluntly. “His kidneys remain shut down; his blood pressure is too low. Despite his youth, I am worried about pneumonia. I am sorry, monsieur,” he said directing himself to Daddy because Mommy stood with her head bowed while he spoke. “I wish I could give you a better report.”

  Daddy thanked him, and then we all sat down in the waiting room. Mommy laid her head on Daddy’s shoulder. No one spoke for the longest time. Our thoughts and prayers were with Pierre. Looking through the windows toward the northwest, I saw that the layer of thick gray clouds was beginning to break apart. I thought to myself that Jack was gazing up at blue sky now, and I wondered how often he had thought about me since Mommy and I had left.<
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  A short time later Dr. LeFevre arrived and Daddy introduced her to Mommy. I sensed her disapproval and anger when she spoke to Mommy. Her tone was coldly correct and firm, but Mommy didn’t get upset with her.

  “Of course, it would have been much more to Pierre’s advantage had you been here sooner, Madame Andreas,” she pointed out sharply, “but we must make the best of your presence now. I have spoken with Dr. Lasky and he agrees. We will move Pierre to a private room so you can spend longer periods of time with him uninterrupted. Of course you will need a private nurse around the clock,” she told Daddy. “If you like, I will arrange for that.”

  “Please do, Doctor. What do you think of his chances?” Daddy asked and reached for Mommy’s hand.

  Dr. LeFevre thought a moment. She was careful when she spoke. “As I explained, each time your son fell back into a comatose state, he fell deeper and deeper and took longer and longer to emerge, and each time he regained consciousness, it was for a shorter period. Little by little, he’s drifting away, almost like someone drowning, coming up occasionally for air, and sinking under again.” She couldn’t have chosen a more horrible comparison for my mother and me.

  Mommy’s face contorted. She groaned, and then her eyes rolled back in her head. I cried out as Daddy struggled to keep her standing despite his being on crutches. Dr. LeFevre helped us get Mommy to the sofa. I ran for a cup of cold water, and she was revived.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after swallowing some water.

  “It’s all right, madame,” Dr. LeFevre said, with more compassion now. “Such news comes like a punch in the stomach, I know.”

  Mommy gazed at her with an expression that said, “You don’t know. You couldn’t even imagine.”

  “If you’re all right, I’ll see to the arrangements for moving Pierre,” Dr. LeFevre said.

  “Thank you,” Daddy told her, and she left us. The three of us sat there, Daddy and I with our arms around Mommy.

  “It’s as if the snake had bitten both of the boys,” she muttered. “As if the poison had traveled through Jean into Pierre. It’s how they always were, remember, Beau? Once one got sick, the other followed soon after.”

  “Pierre is going to get better, Mommy,” I insisted.

  She turned to me with wet eyes, smiling at me as if I were so innocent and foolish. “He doesn’t want to get better, Pearl. That’s the problem now,” she said.

  “Then we have to make him want to,” I insisted. “I will not let him drown.”

  I got up and ran from the lounge, my own tears flying from my cheeks, my heart pounding. I charged out into the corridor, not thinking about where I was headed, and just marched quickly past the rooms, past patients in wheelchairs, past nurses and doctors. I stopped when I realized I had walked to the linen closet. The door opened and Sophie emerged. Her eyes widened with happiness when she saw me.

  “Pearl! How you been? Where you been? How’s your brother?” she asked. Her arms were filled with sheets and pillowcases.

  “Sophie. Oh, Sophie,” I said, and the dam holding back my tears broke.

  She dropped her pile of linens and embraced me. “You come in here,” she said and led me back into the linen room. “Sit down,” she ordered, forcing me to sit on a carton. “Now stop wailing and tell me what happened.”

  “Pierre’s very bad,” I said after a deep breath. “The doctor’s aren’t very encouraging.”

  “Well, the doctors don’t know everything, Pearl. I’ve seen old people on their deathbed snap their eyes open and start yelling at me for not bringing them their juice or tea fast enough. Why, once they pronounced a man dead and he got up and left the hospital, he was so mad.”

  “No, they didn’t,” I said, smiling through my tears.

  “I swear,” she said holding up her hand. Then she laughed. “I missed you, and a lot’s happened here since you’ve been gone.”

  “What’s happened?” I wiped away the tears with the back of my hand.

  “Dr. Weller was asked to leave,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “He done something a doctor ain’t supposed to do with a young lady patient. There was a big hullabaloo, but everyone tried to keep it squashed. Next thing I heard, he wasn’t a doctor here no more.”

  “What did he do to her?” I asked, holding my breath.

  “Nothing much, except make her pregnant,” she said, and then her eyes widened. “There’s talk the hospital might be sued, too. Guess you’re lucky you didn’t become his study partner, huh?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But it’s tragic for everyone.”

  “My mama says you play, you pay. Just remember, I told her, I’m not getting pregnant until I’m married. You want to come with me and get some coffee or tea or juice?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, standing. “I’d better get back. My mother and father are going to need me more than ever,” I said. “Pierre’s going into a private room with private nurses.”

  “I’ll look in on him, too,” she said. “And I’ll say prayers for him and give a donation at the church.”

  “Thank you, Sophie.”

  We hugged, and I returned to the lounge where Mommy and Daddy were still waiting for Pierre to be moved. We saw him settled comfortably in his new bed, and Daddy and Mommy spoke with the private nurse who was going to take the first shift. Mommy insisted on remaining at Pierre’s bedside for the remainder of the afternoon and relented only when Daddy said he was in too much pain to remain at the hospital.

  “We all need some rest now, Ruby,” he said. “Otherwise we won’t be able to be with Pierre as much as we like.”

  Reluctantly she agreed, and we went home. Mommy went right up to bed. She and Daddy had a light supper in their room. While I was eating, Aubrey came to tell me I had a phone call from a Monsieur Clovis. I left the table quickly.

  “Jack!”

  “I didn’t want to call too soon. How are things?”

  “Not good, Jack. Pierre is in a deep coma again, and the doctors are very pessimistic. They’re not saying this in so many words, but I think it would take a miracle for him to recover.”

  “I’m sorry. I’d like to come to New Orleans, but I don’t want to come at the wrong time.”

  “Any time you come will be the right time, Jack.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll be there day after tomorrow. Can you recommend an inexpensive hotel?”

  “You’ll stay here, Jack.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Of course you can, and of course you will,” I insisted. “We have more room than we need. If I’m not at the house, I’ll be at the hospital,” I said. There was a little pause before he spoke again.

  “This may not be the proper time for me to say it,” he told me, “but I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  I felt guilty being happy when my parents were so sad, but I couldn’t help feeling a surge of excitement when I thought about Jack coming to New Orleans. I had a better appetite when I returned to the dinner table and finished my supper. Afterward I thought about watching television or listening to some music, but decided instead to go up to my room to read for a while before going to sleep.

  The lights were out in Mommy and Daddy’s room, so I didn’t bother them, but a little less than an hour after I had put out my own lights, I heard Mommy scream. I got up and rushed across the corridor. The lights were on, and they were both sitting up in bed. Daddy was embracing Mommy.

  “What is it?” I asked, my heart pounding. I hadn’t heard the phone ring, but it could have. Was there bad news from the hospital?

  “Your mother had a nightmare; it’s all right,” Daddy said.

  “No,” she cried pulling away from him. “It’s not all right.”

  “Ruby!”

  She shook her head vehemently and started to get out of bed.

  “Where are you going, Mommy?” I asked as she reached for her clothing.

  “I’ve got to go to Jean’s grave,” she said.

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bsp; “Now?” Daddy said, amazed. “But it’s nearly midnight, Ruby, and—”

  “I have to be there at midnight,” she declared. “My dream told me so.”

  “You can’t go to the cemetery now, Ruby,” Daddy said. “Be reasonable.”

  “Don’t worry, Daddy,” I said. “I’ll go with her.”

  “But, Ruby, it’s so late, and you know there are thugs loitering around the cemeteries.”

  Mommy continued to dress. Daddy grimaced and struggled to get his leg over the edge of the bed so he could reach for his crutches.

  “What are you doing, Daddy?”

  “If she insists on going, I’m going too,” he declared.

  I turned and ran back to my room to put my clothes on.

  “At least wait for me,” I heard Daddy cry. Mommy charged out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Her face was like a mask, her eyes fixed and cold as she hurried by.

  “Mommy, wait,” I called.

  “See to your father,” she replied.

  Daddy emerged on his crutches, moving as quickly as he could. I went to help him, but by the time we got downstairs, Mommy had already driven off.

  “She’s gone mad again,” Daddy declared. He and I got into his car and followed. I drove. Mommy had already parked her car and gone into the cemetery when we pulled up behind her.

  “What is she doing?” Daddy mumbled. I helped him out. We had a flashlight in the glove compartment, but we were fortunate in that the moon was nearly full and there were only a few small clouds. The moonlight made the tombs and vaults gleam. The polished stone looked bone-white against the darkness. I stayed right next to Daddy as he hobbled along the pathway toward my brother’s grave. Mommy had lit a candle beside the vault and then had knelt and pressed her forehead to the stone. Her shoulders lifted and fell with her sobs. I left Daddy’s side and hurried to her.

  “Mommy.” I hugged her.

  “I begged him,” she whispered in my ear. “He was lonely without Pierre, but I begged him to let Pierre come back.” Daddy leaned on his crutches as Mommy lifted her head from my shoulders and looked up at him. “I had to be here at midnight, Beau. It’s the time when the door between the two worlds opens just enough for my words to follow the candle smoke through.”