“Mr. Covenant,” she insisted, “I’ll say it again. I can’t do that. The law in this state won’t allow it. Professional ethics won’t allow it.”
I won’t allow it.
Joan Covenant was as unreachable as her son claimed. She might as well have been catatonic, in spite of every conceivable drug and therapy. In fact, she would have died long ago without constant care. But she was not “nothing” to Linden Avery. If Roger Covenant believed that, he would never understand the woman who stood in his way.
His mother was Thomas Covenant’s ex-wife. Ten years ago, Linden had watched Covenant trade his life for Joan’s-and smile to reassure her. That smile had ripped Linden’s heart from its hiding place, rent away its protective lies and commitments. Sometimes she believed that everything she had now done and become had started then. Covenant’s smile had triggered a detonation which had blown her free of her own parents’ hunger for death. The new woman who had emerged from that explosion loved Thomas Covenant from the bottom of her soul.
For his sake, she would not abandon Joan.
Yet now Roger Covenant sat across her desk from her, demanding his mother’s release. If she had been the kind of woman who found the folly of the misguided amusing, she would have laughed in his face. Where did he get the nerve?
Hell, where did he get the idea?
“I’m sorry.” Apparently he wanted to be polite. “I still don’t see the problem. She’s my mother. I’m her son. I’m willing to take care of her. How can the law object? How can you, Dr. Avery? I don’t understand why she and I haven’t already left.”
She turned away for a moment to look out the window. It gave her an unilluminating view of the parking lot, where her worn old car crouched over its rust, waiting for the day when its welds would fail and it could finally slump into scrap. She had kept it only because it had carried her to her first encounters with Thomas Covenant.
If Roger would not leave, surely she could simply drive away? Go out to her car, coax its engine to life, and return to Jeremiah?
No. If she had wanted to be a woman who fled whenever her job became difficult, she should have bought herself a more reliable vehicle.
Old habit lifted her hand to press the hard circle of Covenant’s ring through her blouse. Sighing, she faced his son again.
“Let me try to be plain. Whether or not you understand is beside the point. The point is this. Unless and until you bring me a court order signed by a judge instructing me to release Joan Covenant to your custody, she stays where she is. End of discussion.” She gazed at him expectantly. When he failed to take the hint, she added, “That’s your cue to leave, Mr. Covenant.”
Don’t you understand that you’re not the only person here who cares about her?
However, she doubted that Roger Covenant cared at all for his mute mother. His oblivious manner, and the incipient madness or prophecy in his eyes, conveyed an entirely different impression.
He had explained that he had not come for Joan earlier because he had not been old enough. But he had passed his twenty-first birthday yesterday. Now he was ready. Yet Linden believed intuitively that he had some hidden purpose which outweighed love or concern.
In his unwavering insistence, he reminded her of some of the more plausible psychotics she had known in her tenure as chief medical officer for the Berenford Memorial Psychiatric Hospital. But perhaps he suffered from nothing more treatable than terminal narcissism, in which case he was telling her the simple truth. He could not “see the problem.”
This time, however, something in her tone-or in the conflicted fire mounting behind her eyes-must have penetrated his strange unction. Before she could offer to call Security, he rose to his feet as if he comprehended her at last.
Immediately she stood as well. She saw now that he was an inch or two shorter than his father, and broader in the torso. For that reason, among others, he would never evince the particular gauntness, the cut and flagrant sense of purpose-all compromise and capacity for surrender flensed away-which had made Thomas Covenant irrefusable to her.
He would never be the man his father was. He had too much of his mother in him. His carriage exposed him: the slight looseness in his shoulders; the tension which compensated for his poor balance. His arms seemed full of truncated gestures, expressions of honesty or appeal cut off prematurely. Behind his insistence, Linden heard hints of Joan’s weakness, forlorn and fundamentally betrayed.
Perhaps his real desires had nothing to do with his mother. Perhaps he simply wanted to prove himself his father’s equal. Or to supplant him
Having gained his feet, however, Roger did not admit defeat. Instead he asked, “Can I see her? It’s been years.” He offered Linden an affectless smile. “And there’s something
I want to show you.”
In spite of her impatience, she nodded. “Of course. You can visit her right now.” Strangely, his apparent emptiness saddened her: she grieved on his behalf. Thomas Covenant had taught her that ignorance-like innocence-had no power to ward itself against harm. Because Roger did not understand, he could not be saved from suffering.
When he saw Joan’s unique plight, either his incomprehension would hold against her or it would not. In either case, the experience might convince him to leave Linden alone.
For that reason, she gestured him toward the door. She had already done her rounds, and her paperwork could wait. Certainly her patients had no immediate need of her. At its heart, Berenford Memorial existed, not to heal its occupants, but to help them heal themselves.
Suddenly cooperative, as if he had gained an important concession, Roger preceded her out of her office. Now his smile struck her as reflexive; an unconscious expression of eagerness.
Closing the door behind her, Linden led him through the edifice where she did the work with which she attempted to fill Covenant’s place in her heart. His place-and the Land’s-
Inadvertently she remembered the sound of Pitchwife’s voice as he sang,
My heart has rooms that sigh with dust
And ashes in the hearth.
At times the contrast between her experiences with Thomas Covenant and her years at Berenford Memorial discouraged her. Surely her contest with the madness of her patients could not compare with the sheer glory of Thomas Covenant’s struggle to redeem the Land? Nevertheless she closed her throat and continued guiding Roger toward Joan’s room. The ache he elicited was familiar to her, and she knew how to bear it.
Her life here was not less than the one she had lived with Covenant. It was only different. Less grand, perhaps: more ambiguous, with smaller triumphs. But it sufficed.
A short corridor took her out of the Hospital’s small administrative wing and across the lobby, past Maxine Dubroff’s reception/information station. Maxine worked there nine hours a day, five days a week: an aging woman who looked like a stork and smiled like an angel, responding to everyone who entered Berenford Memorial with unfailing solicitude. She was a volunteer who had simply attached herself to Linden one day after Linden, on call in ER as she was every third night, had saved the life of Maxine’s husband, Ernie. He had been kicked in the chest by a horse: Linden had found and removed a sliver of bone from his left lung. He had recovered to teach the horse better manners; and Maxine had been at Linden’s service ever since.
She smiled now as Linden and Roger Covenant crossed the tiled lobby. In spite of Roger’s presence, Linden replied with a smile of her own-less seraphic than Maxine’s, but no less sincere. Maxine reminded Linden that she was not alone in her dedication to her work. Like Linden herself, and most of Berenford Memorial’s staff, Maxine had committed herself to a need which the county acknowledged but could not meet.