Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [57]
“Are you for real? All I do is try to make things pleasant for you. For us. I’m trying so hard here,” I shout, my voice shaking, as my day comes into sharp focus. My grocery shopping, photo downloading, cooking, parenting. All the things I do for our family.
“Well, maybe you should stop trying so hard. ‘Cause whatever you’re doing, Tess, it doesn’t really seern to be working,” he says, his voice angry but as controlled and steady as his hands were during surgery. With a final disdainful glance, he turns again and disappears upstairs. A moment later I hear him start the shower—where he stays for a very long time.
16
Valerie
Are you a doctor, too?” A loud voice interrupts Valerie’s thoughts, reminding her that she is still at Antonio’s, waiting for Jason’s lasagna, which she would’ve forgotten to order without Nick’s reminder right before they finished their own dinner and he left for home.
She looks up and smiles at Tony, hovering nearby.
“A doctor?. . . No,” she says as if the notion is ridiculous. In fact, it is ridiculous, considering the fact that the only failing grade in her life came in high school biology class when she flat refused to dissect her fetal pig that her football-playing lab partner insisted on calling Wilbur. She can still remember the dizzying smell of formaldehyde and the sight of the feathery taste buds on its pale pink tongue.
Tony tries again. “A nurse?”
It occurs to her to throw him off his line of questioning by simply saying, “A lawyer,” but she knows he’s curious about her connection to Nick and the wine has softened her usual guardedness. Besides, there is something about Tony’s open, affable manner that makes her think he can handle the truth.
So she nods in the direction of the hospital and says, “My son’s a patient at Shriners.”
“Oh,” Tony says softly. He shakes his head regretfully as Valerie wonders whether part of that regret is not over her answer, but his question, the fact that his light small talk has somehow derailed into somber terrain. “How’s he doing?”
Valerie smiles, doing her best to put him at ease, practicing for a conversation she knows she will have again and again in the months to come. “He’s hanging in there. He’s had two surgeries so far . . .” She pauses awkwardly, forcing another smile, unsure of what else to say.
Tony shifts his weight from one foot to the other and then leans over to rearrange a salt and pepper shaker on the table next to hers. “Dr. Russo’s his surgeon?”
“Yes,” she says, feeling somehow proud of this fact, as if their affiliation reflects on her parenting. Only the best for Charlie, she thinks.
Tony looks at her expectantly so she continues, offering more detail. “One surgery on his hand. And one on his cheek. This morning.” She reaches up to touch her face, feeling the first jolt of anxiety since she left Charlie nearly two hours ago. She glances down at her cell phone, faceup on the table, the ringer on high, wondering if she could have somehow missed a call from Jason. But the screen remains reassuringly blank, a scene of a two-lane highway winding under blue sky and fluffy white clouds, disappearing into the distance.
“Well, then you know by now—Dr. Russo is the best. You and your son have the best,” Tony says so passionately that Valerie wonders if he has firsthand experience with patients or their parents. He continues with reverence. “And he’s so modest. . . But the nurses who come here—they’ve all told me about his awards. . . the kids he’s saved . . . Did you hear about the little girl—the one in that plane crash up in Maine? Her dad was a hotshot TV executive? It was on the news—about two years ago?”
Valerie shakes her head, realizing that she will never again have the luxury of ignoring such a story.
“Yeah. It was one of those little single-engine numbers. They were flying to a wedding . . . the whole family . . . and the plane went down about a quarter of a mile off the runway, right after takeoff. Crashed into an embankment and everyone but that one little girl died right away from smoke inhalation and burns. The