And he never saw her again, Joanna thought, knowing the type of story Maisie usually told. But, surprisingly, Maisie was saying, “…and he ran back and tied the lifejacket on her and then he picked her up and took her to look for a lifeboat, but it was already going down the side.” Maisie paused dramatically. “So what do you think he did?”
He tried to save her, but he couldn’t, Joanna thought, looking at Maisie. And she drowned. “I don’t know,” Joanna said.
“He threw Helen into the boat,” Maisie said triumphantly, “and then he jumped in, too, and they both got saved.”
“I like that story,” Joanna said.
“Me, too,” Maisie said, “ ’cause he saved her. And he didn’t tell her everything would be all right.”
“Sometimes people do that because they hope things will be all right,” Joanna said, “or because they’re afraid the person will be frightened or sad if they know the truth. I think that’s probably why the parents lied to their children about Ulla, because they wanted to protect them.”
“They still shouldn’t’ve,” Maisie said, her jaw set. “People should tell you the truth, even if it’s bad. Shouldn’t they?”
“Yes,” Joanna said and waited, holding her breath for the question that was coming, but Maisie merely said, “Will you put my book away first? It goes in my duffel bag. So my room won’t be all messy.” And so your mother won’t catch you with it, Joanna thought. She took the book over to the closet, stuck it in the pink duffel bag, and handed Maisie back Peter Pan.
And just in time. Maisie’s mother appeared in the door with a huge pink teddy bear and a beaming smile. “How’s my Maisie-Daisy? Dr. Lander, doesn’t she look wonderful?” She handed Maisie the teddy bear. “So, what have you two been talking about?”
“Dogs,” Maisie said.
9
“Mildred, why aren’t my clothes laid out? I’ve got a seven o’clock call.”
It was six forty-five before Joanna made it to Vielle’s. “What happened to you?” Vielle said. “I said six-thirty.”
“I got caught by Maisie. And her mother,” Joanna said, taking off her coat. “She wanted to tell me how well Maisie’s doing.”
“And is she?”
“No.”
Vielle nodded. “Barbara told me they put her on the transplant list. It’s too bad. She’s a great kid.”
“She is,” Joanna said and took her coat into the bedroom.
“Did you bring the cream cheese?” Vielle called from the kitchen.
Joanna brought it in to her. “What are you making?”
“This luscious dip,” Vielle said, leaning over a cookbook with a knife in her hand. “It’s got deviled ham in it. And chiles.” She glanced at the clock. “Listen, the reason I wanted you to come over early was so we’d have a chance to talk before Dr. Wright gets here. So how are you two getting along?”
“You invited Richard to Dish Night?” Joanna said. “No wonder he looked at me funny when I told him I’d see him tomorrow.”
“Richard, huh? So you two are on a first-name basis already?”
“We’re not—” A thought struck her. “That’s what you called from the ER about, wasn’t it? And why you were acting so peculiar.”
“I called to tell you I couldn’t find any movies that didn’t have death in them and did you have any suggestions,” Vielle said, opening the refrigerator and getting out a bunch of green onions, “and you weren’t there, so I told him some of us were getting together for munchies and a movie and did he want to drop by.”
“Some of us!” Joanna said. “And when he gets here, and it’s you and me, you don’t think he’ll realize you’ve been matchmaking? Or were you planning to hand me the deviled ham dip and duck out the back door? I can’t believe you did this.”
“Don’t you like him?”
“I hardly know him. We only started working together two days ago.”
Vielle shook the bunch of onions at her. “And you’ll never get a chance to know him once the nurses of Mercy General get their claws into him. Do you know who asked me if he was single this afternoon? Tish Vanderbeck. You don’t see her waiting around because she ‘hardly knows him.’ If you don’t watch it, you’ll get stuck with somebody like Harvey.”
“Harvey? Who’s Harvey?”
“The driver for Fairhill Mortuaries. He asks me out every time he comes to pick up a body.”
“Is he nice?”
“He tells me embalming stories. Did you know they really like carbon monoxide poisoning over at Fairhill because it turns the corpses a pretty rose-pink, in contrast to the usual gray? He imparted that little gem Tuesday and then asked me out for sushi.”
Tuesday. The day Greg Menotti died. She wondered if his was the body Harvey had picked up. “Did you find out if there was a fifty-eight in Greg Menotti’s health insurance number?”
“Greg Menotti?” Vielle said as if she’d never heard the name before, and then, “Oh, right. Yes, I checked. No fifty-eights. I checked his address, office, home and cell phone numbers, health insurance number—”
“His Social Security number?” Joanna asked.
She nodded. “His license number was on the paramedic’s report. I checked that, too. Ditto his girlfriend’s address and phone numbers. Nothing.” She bent over to get a cutting board out of the cupboard. “Like I told you, people in extremis say things that don’t make any sense. I had a guy who kept calling, ‘Lucille,’ and we all thought it was his wife. Turns out it was his dog.”
“Then it did mean something,” Joanna said.
“That one did, but a lot of them don’t. A head trauma last week kept saying, ‘camel,’ which obviously wasn’t his wife or his cat.”
“What was it?”
“We didn’t get a chance to ask him,” Vielle said tersely, “but my guess is, it didn’t mean anything. People like your infarction aren’t getting enough oxygen, they’re disoriented, and they’re not making any sense.”
She was right. When he was dying, the author Tom Dooley had told his friend to go ahead to the airport and save him a seat on the plane, and prima ballerina Anna Pavlova had ordered her doctors to get her swan costume ready.
“Back to Dr. Wright,” Vielle said. “I’m not saying you have to marry the guy. All we’re doing is putting an option on him. They do it in Hollywood all the time.” She laid the onions in a row on the board. “You option the screenplay, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to make a movie out of it, but later on, if you decide you do want to, somebody else hasn’t snapped it up in the meantime.”
“Dr. Wright is not a screenplay.”
“It was a simile.”
Joanna shook her head at her. “Metaphor. A simile is a direct comparison using like or as. A metaphor is indirect. My English teacher spent my whole senior year drilling the difference into me.” She stopped, staring at the cutting board.
“Your English teacher should have spent time on more important things,” Vielle said, “like teaching you that when Mr. Right, or Dr. Wright, comes along, you have to—”
The doorbell rang. “He’s here,” Vielle said, but Joanna didn’t hear her. For an instant, standing there watching Vielle chop green onions, she had had the feeling, out of nowhere, that she knew what Greg Menotti had been talking about, that she knew what “fifty-eight” meant.
It must have been what she or Vielle had said. They had been talking about Dr. Wright, and—
“Come on in,” Vielle said from the living room. “Joanna’s in the kitchen. Sorry about the knife. I’m in the middle of making dip.”