As soon as he was outside, he knew he couldn't leave. He had to be near her. He moved the pickup away from the emergency entrance and found a parking space. He sat there, his mind empty, unconscious of the cold. Gradually, something nudged at the back of his mind. He got out, hunted up a pay phone, and found one in the lobby.
“Oakview Motor Lodge,” Paul answered.
“I found her.”
“Is she ⦠?”
“She's ⦠in good hands. I'm calling from Bridgeton hospital. Is Banks there?”
“In his room.”
“Tell him to get down here. Better have somebody drive him. He was looking a little shaky. Oh, and tell him to go to her room and see if he can find her insurance card.”
“Right.”
“Dr. Banks is in here. But you can only stay a few minutes.” The overbearing voice broke into my dream. It had been a good dream, too. Dad and me walking along the beach, looking for seashells ⦠.
“Jo?” A small, cautious voice.
I opened my eyes.
A huge bunch of russet chrysanthemums hovered at the edge of my bed, and above themâa small russet head.
“Becca?”
Her eyes danced. “I knew you'd make it!” She threw the flowers on the bed and reached for me.
Â
Â
I was dozing off again when I felt a familiar hand resting on mine.
“Dad?”
He couldn't speak. His eyes glistened as he squeezed my hand.
Â
Â
That evening, they came in pairs, bearing their blue visitor cards, allotting them five minutes apiece. First the Nelsons. They were happy to see me, but subdued, distractedâas if something, nothing to do with me, was preying on their minds.
Next came Maria and Jack. Smiling shyly, Maria placed a package
in my hands. I started to open it, but asked her to do it for me. The smallest activity was still an effort. Inside was a small leather-bound Bible.
“The Lord's words are in red,” she stammered.
I had paid scant attention to the Lord. Maybe it was time to start. “Thank you, Maria.”
“Hey, Jo.” Jack stepped forward. “That must have been some date!” He grinned.
“Huh?”
“Don't you remember what you said the night you left?”
“Oh, yeah.” I smiled. “Some date.” I shuddered.
“Here!” He pushed a flat package into my hand.
“What's this?”
“A video of
The Return of the Jedi
” He grinned. “Watch it with your boyfriendâwhen you're feeling better,” he added.
“Thanks, Jack. I will.” I laid the package carefully next to the Bible.
Â
Â
Mike and Polly came together. An unlikely couple. Probably paired by a hospital volunteer. They sat stiffly in their chairs, one on either side of the bed.
“How's school?” I asked Polly.
“Fine.”
I turned to Mike. “How're you making out at the garage?”
“Okay.”
Small talk was never my forte, and in my weakened condition I was glad for the five-minute curfew. I'd make it up to them later, when I was feeling stronger.
After they left, an aide came to fill my water jug and plump my pillows. The beginning of the nightly routine. “Lots of visitors,” she remarked.
“Yeah.” I sighed.
“Tired?”
“A little.”
“There's one more lurking in the hall. Shall I send him away?”
“Who ⦠?”
“Tall, dark, and ⦔
Tom poked his head in the door.
Oh, God. Was I up to this?
He didn't come any further. Just stood there in the doorway, sort of drinking me in. The aide looked from him to me, and edged around him, out of the room.
“How do you feel?”
“So-so.”
He came up to the bed, peering at me. “You look better.”
“Than what?”
“Than hanging from a pole.”
I laughed. It was the first time.
He sat down. After a minute, he said, “I came to ask you for dinner.”
“Sorry. No appetite.”
“Not now. When you're out of here.” He looked morosely around the room.
“Okay.” He'd saved my life, for God's sake. Everyone said so. Becca, Dad, Maggie, Paulâthey'd all said if it weren't for Tom ⦠Besides ⦠I felt my blood stirring like it hadn't stirred for months. “I don't know how to thankâ”
“Shh ⦔ He placed a finger to his lips. “I'll pick you up at the motel when you're released.”
“You make it sound like prison.”
“Well, isn't it?”
“Not when you've been in prison.”
He looked distressed.
Mustering the last of my energy, I said cheerily, “It's a date.”
As he backed toward the door, his smile was the same as that first day, when he forgave me for scaring away his herd.
I later learned that my visitors had been instructed by the doctor not to tell me too much in the beginning. But gradually, as the days slipped by and I regained my strength, my friends became less cautious and the story leaked out. From Tom, Paul, and Maggie, I was able to put together the pieces.
Juri, Becca's cousin, had been the originator of the plan. Having a liking for luxury and a dislike for work, he had always sponged off one relative or another. When he learned that some of his Czech countrymen yearned to leave their semidepressed homeland and come to Americaâthe land of plentyâhis scheme crystallized. Because of his aversion to employment, he enlisted the help of a couple, two former Communist spies (now unemployed), to take care of the details. Apparently, they made out like bandits. If Juri questioned any of the Milacs' practices, he was silenced easily with a bigger piece of the take. The émigrés were lured here under the guise of free passage to New York and the promise of employment when they arrived. Their passage was free all right, but the accommodations left something to be desiredâcrowded together in the hold of a leaky freighter, with next to no sanitary facilities, on a starvation diet. When they arrived in New York Harbor, they were transferred to a smaller boat that carried them to a remote part of South JerseyâBayfield. There they were rolled up in carpets,
unceremoniously dumped at an old farmhouse (the Wistar house), and forced to work in a sweatshop making elegant leather handbags until their captors extracted enough money ($20,000 apiece) from their relatives back home to pay for their cruise and lodgings. If they rebelled or if their production rate fell, they risked my fateâbecoming a scarecrow. The dead man that Jake Potter had stumbled on in the field was an émigré from Slovakia who had committed the sin of trying to call home.
One day, Juri discovered Becca's drawing of the Wistar house in her sketchbook, and decided she was getting too nosy. He convinced her aunt to take Becca to visit her grandfather in Prague. “He's getting on, you know.” Later, when he found the sketchbook missing and deduced that I had it, he informed the Milacs, and they took matters into their own hands. They already suspected me of spying on them; this merely confirmed their suspicions. I foiled their first attempt to kidnap me by dumping my attacker that night at the Wistar house. But later, when I took the boat upriver, I walked right into their hands.
I still shied away from thinking of my captivity and the persuasive methods they had used to discover my motives. Hollywood does a poor imitation. They know an American audience would never put up with the real thing.
The worst revelation came from Maggie. She had fallen into the habit of dropping by in the afternoon to keep me company until dinnertime. (Dad always ate dinner with me.) Sometimes we talked, but more often I dozed and she sat by the window, knitting. Once, when I opened my eyes, I noticed a tear sliding down her nose. My first thought was for myself, egotist that I am. Did she know something about my condition that I didn't?
“Maggie?”
She brushed the tear away and looked at me.
“What's the matter?” I asked.
She looked away.
I am going to die
, I thought. They fudged the tests, lied about the reports. As a doctor, I knew that
feeling
better wasn't necessarily
a sure sign of recovery. No use beating around the bush. “Am I cooked?” I demanded, using the medical profession's jargon for terminally ill.
To my relief she smiled. “Oh, no, Jo.”
“Then ⦠?”
“Nick ⦔
“You found him?”
She nodded.
“But that's wonderâ”
She shook her head.
“Is he ill?”
“No.” She lay her knitting aside and haltingly told me the whole story. Her son had been working for the Milacs. Nick was the foreman in the workshop who guarded the émigrés. The job earned him enough to feed his drug habit.
“But ⦔
“Yes.” Her mouth formed a grim line. “During those three years while we were mourning him, he was in Philadelphia, just fifty miles away, and for the last six months he's been working a few miles down the road!”
I could think of nothing to say.
“Where is he now?”
“They arrested him. He's in prison, awaiting trial. That handyman at the Sheffield placeâ”
“Juri?”
She nodded. “He dreamed up the whole scheme. I didn't even know he knew Nick but he kept in touch with him, and when the Milacs came he contacted Nick and brought him back to run the sweatshop.”
I wondered if Nick was the one who had jumped me. My neck tingled and I felt the pressure of those hands on my throat again. “Have you seen him?”
She nodded, turning back to the window.
“And?”
“When we came in ⦔ She paused. “ ⦠he ⦠spat on us.”
I waited a long moment. Finally I asked, “And the others?”
“All in prison. The FBI finally came in on it. Although it was Juri who dreamed up the scheme, you'll never guess who carried it out.”
“Mrs. Milac.”
“How did ⦠?”
“She was the one who worked on me. Her husband began the job, but he chickened out, and she took over.”
“Oh, Jo ⦔ Her eyes strayed to my bandages. “Well, if it's any satisfaction, they're both in federal prison, charged with espionage. He took that job at the nuclear plant to try to find secrets to sell to our enemies!”
I almost laughed. Once a spy, always a spy. But when it came to the Doughboysâer, Milacs, I'd lost my sense of humor.
“And the émigrés?”
“They were sent to New Yorkâto the immigration authorities. They'll probably be sent back where they came from.”
Sadly, I thought of the woman on the mattress next to mine who had spoken a little German.
The aide came in with my dinner. As she set down the tray, Maggie began to gather up her things. “I'll be going now.”
“Wait.” I slid out of bed and hobbled toward her. As I hugged her I could feel her body trembling. I realized I was holding a third Maggie. Not Mrs. Santa, not Mary Poppins, butâJudas's mother. Whoever she was. Nobody ever talked about her, or
her
feelings. But I had been browsing in my new Bible. Maybe I would find her.
One day I had an unexpected visitor: Becca's aunt. Dressed in a mauve suit, black-and-white silk scarf, and chunky gold earrings it was amazing she had made it from the farmhouse to the hospital without attracting a film crew.
“How are you feeling?” She drew a chair up beside the bed.
“Better, thanks.”
“We've all been so worried.”
Not certain who the “all” included, I let that pass.
“I ⦔ She looked around the room as if for help, then continued in an abrupt burst, “I wanted you to know ⦠Becca and I didn't ⦠we were completely ignorant ⦔
“I know,” I answered.
“Actually, you were part of the reason I took Becca to Prague,” she said. “After talking to you, it occurred to me if she was going to be an artist, she should see her native city, one of the great art centers of the world.”
“But what made you take off so suddenly?” I asked.
Avoiding my eyes, she said, “I suspected those people ⦠They weren't like any of the other visitors we'd had. They were furtive and ⦠churlish. I told Juri I didn't care for them. He accused me of being a snob. Then one day I saw Becca give the man a frightened
look. I took things into my own hands. I updated our passports, ordered plane tickets, and packed our bags. At the same time, Juri suddenly got the idea into his head that Becca should meet her grandfather. âHe isn't getting any younger,' he said. So it worked out very well. He actually helped us leave. He drove us to the airport.”
“Why didn't you tell Becca ahead of time?”
“I didn't want to worry her. I knew she wouldn't want to leave school. I thought I had better surprise her.”
“I stopped by that same evening,” I said. “Juri told me you had gone to Florida.”
“Florida? I wonder why he said that?”
“I don't know.”
“Juri wasn't really involved, you know,” she assured me. “He is selfish but he isn'tâevil.”
I kept my mouth shut.
“He told me he had backed their plan because he thought it was a way to help his countrymen come to this countryâ”
“Illegally,” I couldn't help inserting.
“Well ⦠but I don't think he knew that.” She drew a deep breath. “But I didn't come to talk about Juri. I came to apologize, and beg forgiveness on behalf of Becca, Juri, and me ⦔ Her eyes wandered to my bandages and looked hastily away. She continued, “ ⦠for your suffering.” She reached for my hand.
I clasped it. “I never blamed you or Becca,” I said.
“And Juri?”
Was it so important that I exonerate her cousin, too?
She countered my silence with, “But he didn't know ⦔
I released her hand. That was asking too much. If she wanted to kid herself that her cousin, boyfriend, whatever was innocent until the trial was over, that was okay. But I wasn't going to help her. “Thank you for coming,” I said, changing the subject. “Becca has been a faithful visitor. I hope it hasn't interfered with her schoolwork.”
“Oh, no.” She smiled. “Becca's a good student. To tell you the truth I'm glad she has something to do after school besides hang around with that sulky boyfriend of hers.”
“Randy?”
Our eyes met and we laughed.
“I've found a local artist who is going to give Becca drawing lessons,” she said.
“Great!”
“He's a painter of some note and he was very impressed with Becca's skills.”
At this point a nurse came in to take my blood pressure. The aunt seemed to feel this was a natural time to end her visit.
“By the way,” I said, as she rose to go, “What is your name? I know you only as âBecca's aunt.'”
“Ema,” she said. “With one âm'.”
Of course. Emma with two “m's” would be ordinary. With one “m” it was romanticâeven exotic. “Come again, when you have time,” I said sincerely. I
had
enjoyed her company. “Becca tells me you write poetry. Maybe you could bring some for me to read.”
She brightened visibly. “I will.”
Â
Â
During Becca's next visit, I asked her about the phone call.
“I wanted to tell you about Prague. It was so awesome! And I just picked up the phone and called you. But Grandfather came in, and when he found me calling long distance without permission, he was angry. He's very strict and old-fashioned ⦔
Too bad he lives so far away,
I thought.
“ ⦠So I hung up,” she explained.
“I was very worried,” I said. “I tried to trace the call.”
“You did?” She looked pleased.
“You're a pain.” I cuffed her lightly on the arm.
“Do you really think so?” She seemed positively delighted.
“Get out of here!”
Instead, she stretched out at the end of the bed, being very careful to avoid my sore feet, and began to conjugate French verbs for tomorrow's vocabulary quiz.