Clear and Convincing Proof (3 page)

She led the way around the mountain of trash to the back porch, where he hesitated. “I'd better leave the shoes outside,” he said. “I'll track up your floor.”

He took off his running shoes, then followed her into the house, where she got out towels and a wash
cloth and pointed him toward the bathroom. “I could wash your clothes,” she said, “but I don't have anything you could put on.”

“They'll keep until I get home.”

When he returned, with a clean face, hands and arms, she held out a glass of iced tea. “It's about all I have to offer. Or some pretty cheap wine.”

“This is good,” he said, taking the tea, then gazing about the kitchen. About five feet ten or eleven inches tall, he didn't give the impression of being large, but his arms were corded with muscles and his shoulders were very broad. She had thought his eyes were black, but now saw that they were dark blue, with pale lashes, pale eyebrows. His hair was straight, cut short, probably a dark blond, sun-bleached. Laugh lines at his eyes looked as if they had been drawn with white ink on a russet background.

“How did you just happen to come by in the nick of time?” she asked, moving to the table to sit down. He sat opposite her and sipped the tea.

“I always come this way or a block or two over. My place is behind that mall on Coburg, four blocks from here. I didn't know you lived in this house. I thought it was vacant, going to ruin.”

“Well, it was going to ruin, that's for sure. I inherited it from my grandmother.”

She talked about the shape the house had been in when she arrived, about teaching in Cleveland, the trip out. He was easy to talk to, and, she realized, she had been starved for male company. That was a sur
prise; she had been so tired by bedtime day after day that her thoughts of men had been rare, easily ignored. The few times she thought of Ron, her former fiancé, she had felt only satisfaction of being done with him, done with that endless, go-nowhere engagement. After the first date or two, there had never been any excitement in that relationship. She had never felt the least bit threatened or exhilarated, but rather an unexamined acceptance of her role in his life, one of accommodation to his twice-a-week need for sex. They had been engaged for six years.

“After I start teaching in the fall,” she said, “fixing up the house will go faster. I'll hire someone to help out, repair or replace the roof, do a number of things.”

“Will you rent out the apartment? It is a separate apartment, isn't it? I noticed the outside stairs.”

“It is. That's way down on my list of things to get to. I haven't even started on it yet.”

“Can I have a look at the upstairs?” he asked then. “See, I have a three-room apartment over by the mall, and the traffic's getting worse and worse. I suspect that the owner of the building will sell out to a developer for a big box store or something in the coming year. I'll be house hunting then.”

“It might be that long before I get things in shape upstairs.” She started to say that her plan was to fix up the house and sell it as soon as possible, but she didn't.

“Let's have a look.”

It was worse than the downstairs had been when
she'd first arrived. She had cleaned out the refrigerator and left the door open, but had done nothing else. There were mats on the floor, rags and paper bags, fast-food boxes, pizza boxes, bottles, broken chairs and a wobbly table, and the whole place was horribly dirty. She was ashamed, humiliated to think that she owned it, more humiliated to think her mother had lived like this for years, until her death from a drug overdose.

Darren examined the apartment carefully, then nodded. They went back down to her kitchen. “Let's talk rent,” he said.

“I told you, that's last on my list.”

“Would $750 a month be okay? That's more than I'm paying now, but it's a lot bigger, closer to work and not being crowded by a mall.”

She poured more tea, got out ice cubes and shook her head. “Next year maybe.”

“I thought we might make a deal,” he said, accepting the freshened tea. He sat down again. “I could start cleaning it up and do some of the other things that need doing, like hauling away the trash, replacing the glass in those windows. In return I get a free month's rent, and I get to park my truck in the garage. And have my son with me some of the time. He's eleven and part of the reason I need more space.”

She stared at him, at a loss.

“I can furnish pretty good references,” he said, and then grinned.

“Oh boy, can you! I just hadn't considered even trying to rent it yet, not for months and months.”

“Okay, think about it and let me know.” He drank more of the tea and put the glass down, then stood up. “See you at the clinic.”

“No, wait. What am I thinking? Of course, it's a deal. It's just so…so unfair for you. To have to clean up that filth, I mean.”

“My department. Don't even think of it. Eventually I'll want a key to the outside door. I'll probably get started over the weekend. You just stay off that ladder, okay? I'll get it painted along the way.” He held out his hand. “Deal,” he said. “We can get a rental agreement, whatever it takes, later.”

They shook hands, and for the first time in her life she fully understood the old expression: to touch a live wire. She knew that he went out to the porch, that he put his shoes on, waved to her and walked out of sight, but she had become immobilized by that touch. Abruptly she sat down and looked at her hand, opened it, closed it hard, opened it.

“Oh, my God,” she said under her breath.

“W
hat it means,” Greg Boardman told Naomi on Thursday night, “is that it's a legal tangle, a nightmare. When the court granted the power of attorney to Thomas, there was another document, a power of acceptance. Since Donna had a will, the court ruled that her intentions were perfectly clear, and the terms of the will had to be satisfied. Her shares will go to their kids when she dies. Thomas said that when they wrote their wills they were still trying to get the kids interested in the clinic, and had hopes that Lawrence, at least, would get involved. It seemed a good idea, I guess, to bequeath them shares. And now that old will is the determining factor in who will control the clinic.”

Thomas Kelso's kids were middle-aged, and none
of them, as far as Naomi could tell, gave a damn about the clinic. Lawrence was a molecular biologist at Princeton; the twin daughters were both married to well-to-do businessmen in Los Angeles.

“I thought Thomas had the authority to vote her shares, even to sell them,” she said.

“He does. But if he wanted to sell them, he would have to prove it was a real sale with a bona fide buyer. There would have to be an evaluation with a real market value, and then the proceeds of the sale would have to be used for her care, and when she dies, anything left over would go to the kids. He can't sell them to me for a buck.” Very bitterly he added, “Thomas is beaten, and he knows it. He's plenty pissed.”

“Not just Thomas,” she said after a moment. Greg's craggy face was drawn and he looked tired. She knew he had not been sleeping well. His face always revealed his inner self: conflicts, concern, love, whatever emotion was uppermost was as visible to her as if written in script on his features. It was not only that he was close to his sixtieth birthday, she also knew, although that was a factor. Where he could go at his age was problematic. But he cared deeply about the work at the clinic. Everyone who went to work there and stayed cared deeply. Maybe that was a mistake, getting personally involved, caring so much. It was a disturbing thought. She pulled her attention back to what Greg was saying.

“He'll try to get the power of acceptance changed, but it will take time, and if the judge doesn't agree to the change, David McIvey will end up in charge.”

 

More and more often during the past few years Thomas Kelso had found himself pondering the unanswerable questions that he should have put behind him as a youth. When did life begin and, more important these past months, when did it end? Joyce McIvey had been brain-dead for forty-eight hours when they disconnected her life support; her body had resisted death for another forty-eight hours. When did she die? Brain-dead? Heart-dead? Which was the final death? When? If there was a soul, when did it depart? At the funeral service for Joyce, sitting apart from the family, he had regarded them soberly: David with his pretty little wife on one side of him, his two children on the other, Lorraine, his first wife, at the end of the row. The two wives and the grandchildren had all wept for Joyce, but David had been like a statue among them, untouchable, unmovable, remote.

Thomas had heard the story of how David had signed the order to discontinue life support for his mother, and then had gone straight into surgery. Had his hand trembled, his vision blurred?

Thomas felt he could almost understand David, not entirely, but somewhat. His mother had had a good life and had lived to be eighty with no major health problems. She had been happy most of her life, and her end had been merciful. A fulfilled life. An enviable one. David was merely accepting of the fact of death, and perhaps even grateful that it had been merciful. He was a scientist, a doctor. He un
derstood and accepted death in a way that a layperson could not.

But he should weep for his mother, Thomas added to himself. He should not order her death one minute and draw blood with his scalpel the next.

He did not go to the cemetery, or to David's house after the funeral. Instead, he went home, but his own house seemed oppressive, too silent, too empty. That afternoon the silence and emptiness were more like a vacuum than ever, like a low-pressure area where there was not enough air. The silence was that of holding one's breath, not simply the lack of sound.

He left the house and sat in his car for a minute or two, tracing the pattern of wear on the steering wheel cover. He had worn it down to nothing in spots. Realizing what he was doing, he stopped. The salesman had said nine out of ten Volvos ever sold were still on the road. Twenty years ago? Twenty-two? Now and then he thought he might trade it in on a new model, then he forgot until the next time he noticed that it was old. He shook himself and drove to the clinic.

He parked in Greg's driveway, walked the path to the alley, across it, and into the garden, where he made his way to the waterfall and sat on a bench in the shade, listening to the splashing water, watching the koi swim back and forth effortlessly. There, listening to the music of the water, he let his grief fill his eyes with tears. Grieving for his wife, for Joyce and William McIvey, grieving for the clinic. They had shared a vision, the four of them. Now he was the only one left, and the vision was fading.

He had not yet moved when he heard a girl's voice. “You bastard, you moved the chair farther away!”

“Maybe a little farther,” Darren said. “And does your mama know you use such language?”

“Who the fuck do you think taught me?”

Darren laughed. “The deal still goes. You walk to the chair and earn a ride back.”

Thomas could see them when they rounded a curve, Darren and a teenage black girl. Sweat was running down her face. She was using two canes, learning how to walk with a prosthetic, an artificial leg from the knee down. They rounded the curve and were heading out of sight again when she began to sway.

“I can't feel it! Darren, I'm falling!” Her voice rose in a wail.

“No, you're not. You're fine.” He had his arm around her before she finished speaking, and for a time neither of them moved. “See, what happens is that something in your head wakes up and says, ‘Hey, I don't have a foot down there,' and you feel like you're going to fall. What we have to do is convince that something in your head that it's okay, there's a working leg and foot, and it's yours, so get used to it. Ready? Just a few more steps now. Here we go.”

Thomas watched them out of sight, then he realized his hands were clenched into tight fists, and he relaxed them and flexed his fingers.

“I'll fight you, David,” he said under his breath. “I'll fight you every inch of the way.”

 

Everything was muted at the clinic that afternoon. A few appointments had been canceled. Some of the therapists and nurses had taken time off for the funeral, and some of the volunteers had excused themselves. Greg and Naomi were gone for the day.

In desperation Bernie had called Erica. “If you can just sit at the reception desk for an hour or so, I'll help out in the kitchen. Stephanie's gone to the funeral.”

Due to the reduced staff and cancellations, traffic was light that afternoon. The two interns working under Darren's supervision had their patients as usual, and Winnie Bok, the speech therapist, was on duty. A few others were there with their own flow of patients arriving, leaving. But Erica was not rushed, and she daydreamed that she had trained in physical therapy instead of education, that she now worked full-time here, consulting with Darren, joking with him in the lounge, walking home with him at the end of the day….

She chided herself for indulging in romantic schoolgirl fantasies, but they persisted. In fact, she seldom even saw him. He left the clinic every day before she finished reading, and he didn't walk; he rode a bicycle. She had not seen it the day he saved her life, but she had been too shaken to notice much of anything. Sometimes she could hear him in the upper apartment, and one time she had made dinner for two, only to find that he had already left by the time she went up the stairs to invite him to share it.
It would be different, she told herself, after he moved in. They would be neighbors, and how much closer could neighbors be, separated by a floor, a ceiling? He would drop in for a chat, for a cup of coffee; she would invite him to dinner; they would have long talks. They would find the key, or simply remove the lock on the upper door of the inside stairs.

Bernie returned a little before four-thirty. “They're back,” she said. “Stephanie chased me out of the kitchen. She's in a temper.”

“Why? What did you do?” Erica got up from the chair and moved aside as Bernie took her usual place.

“Me? Nothing. Stephanie said that Dr. McIvey plans to take over running the clinic. Believe me, if that happens, this place will clear out like the plague swept through.”

“Why? What's wrong with him?”

Bernie looked past Erica and smiled. “Hi, Shawn. How's it going?”

A tall youth had entered with a woman, his mother probably, Erica thought. The boy was wearing a neck brace and had his arm in a sling.

“Okay,” he said.

Bernie buzzed Tony Kranz and the boy started to walk toward the therapy rooms while his mother went to the waiting room. Tony met the boy halfway down the hall and they walked on together. Tony didn't look very much older than his patient. He was one of the interns who had come for his clinical practice, and to work under the direction of Darren
Halvord. The interns, Erica had learned, worked for peanuts, but they would have paid for the chance to work under Darren for a year or two. After this apprenticeship, they were considered to be prizes by other institutions.

Bernie did not have a chance to answer Erica's question. A couple of patients were arriving for their four-thirty appointments, and others were leaving, some of them stopping by the desk to arrange appointment times or just to chat a moment.

Erica picked up her purse and the book she was reading,
The Canterville Ghost,
and wandered off to the lounge. She had started coming every weekday to read and knew there would be other chances to quiz Bernie, or one of the kitchen aides, a nurse, someone. She had not met Dr. McIvey, had not even caught a glimpse of him, but every time she heard the name David McIvey, or most often, Dr. McIvey, it was with that same tone of dislike, distrust, whatever it was. Yet, Annie had married him, and apparently planned to stay with him. Curious, she thought. It was very curious.

 

A week later Thomas Kelso advised David that the bylaws of the corporation required a reorganization of the governing board of directors. They met in the directors' office at the clinic immediately after David left his surgical office.

The directors' office was a pleasant room with a leather-covered sofa, good upholstered chairs, a round table with straight chairs and windows that
looked out on the garden. In the past, the four directors had sat in the easy chairs, or on the sofa, not at the table, but that day Thomas had left his briefcase, a legal pad, pencils, water glasses and a tape recorder on the table as if to signify that this was not the companionable get-together of old friends who seldom disagreed. He was already at the table, scanning notes he had made over the past day or two when David entered.

After their greeting, which Thomas likened to a meaningless tribal ritual, he got straight to the point. “Since we have no secretary present, I'll tape our meeting. We are required to keep a record of all meetings, you see.” He turned on the tape recorder. “Now, our bylaws demand that we have four directors' positions filled at all times. After your father's death, Joyce assumed his function as vice president, along with her own duties as secretary, of course. Those two positions now have to be filled.”

David watched him with narrowed eyes. He was tired. He had been in surgery for six hours that day, and he had seen patients in the office as well as in the hospital. He shook his head. “I don't know what Mother did exactly, but whatever it was, it ran her ragged. I don't have that kind of time, as you well know. I'm a working doctor. Hire someone to do whatever she was responsible for.”

“I'm afraid we can't do that,” Thomas said. “Have you read the bylaws, David?” When he shook his head again, Thomas said, “Well, you should. But I'll tell you now what's in them. We set this up as a non
profit clinic, of course, and we agreed that the directors would receive no compensation for the work they did relating to it. We can hire people like Greg and Naomi to run it, therapists, nurses, other staff, but we, the shareholders, receive no pay. Only the shareholders can hold office, and, in fact, are required to hold office and fulfill the duties of the office or else relinquish their shares. In that event the relinquished shares shall be evenly divided among the other shareholders.”

“That's insane,” David said.

“Maybe so. But that's how we set it up, and for fifty-two years that's how it's worked.” He pulled out a folder from his briefcase and handed it to David. “The bylaws and our mission statement, our charter,” he said. “We kept it as simple as the law allowed. Why don't you look it over? It's short. Won't take you long.”

When David started to read, Thomas got up and crossed the room to stand at the window gazing out at the garden. Chrysanthemums were beginning to bloom—bright red, yellow, bronze. End of summer, he thought, that's what chrysanthemums meant. Another season, another year winding down.