The Consequences (17 page)

“It's Christmas Day, Robert. You should be with your family.”

“You're also my family, Jimmy.”

Jimmy nodded, suddenly unwilling to trust himself to speak. He concentrated on finishing the glass of water, then said, “Will you call Angela for me, please? Tell her where I am and that I'm okay.”

“You're not okay,” Robert reminded him.

“Aye, well, but there's no point in alarming her. Besides, what's she going to do? She's probably snowed in, in Quincy.”

Robert took the number from Jimmy and stepped out into the hallway to call Angela Moran. He walked up and down the corridors, ignoring the glares from the few nurses on duty and the signs that said to switch off all cell phones.

Angela's phone rang nearly a dozen times before it was finally picked up. He could hear the clink of glasses and low, muted music in the background.

A voice boomed, “Hello, hello?”

“Oh, hello.” It was a man's voice, and Robert had been expecting Angela to answer. “I'm not sure if I've dialed the right number. I'm looking for Angela. . . .”

“Yes, she's here.”

Robert heard the clunk as the phone was dropped onto a hard surface, and then a slightly drunk male voice calling, “Angela, darling, phone for you!”

Footsteps rattled on wood, then clicked on marble. There was a time when Robert had been a regular visitor to the historical colonial property Jimmy and Angela had bought on the outskirts of Quincy. Rumor was John Adams had lived there for a short period. The house was magnificent, and the couple had restored it in exquisite taste. Robert could just imagine Angela—tall, thin, an overly made-up, brittle beauty—walking across the black and white marble floor to pick up the phone. “Hello. Yes?”

“Angela. Merry Christmas. It's Robert Walker.”

There was a pause, no doubt as Angela tried to remember who exactly Robert Walker was. It had been about four years since he'd last spoken to her.

“Oh, Robert. What a pleasant surprise.” Angela's cut-glass diction was perfect; she'd been a reporter in the early days of NPR. “How's Kathy?”

“She's very good, thank you, Angela,” Robert said quickly. “I'm calling you for Jimmy.”

There was a slight pause, and when Angela spoke again, there was a definite chill in her voice. “Has he asked you to call me?”

“Yes, he . . .”

“I don't want to speak to him or about him.”

Robert bit back an angry response. “I'm at Mass General, Angela,” he said firmly. “Jimmy was admitted earlier with a suspected heart attack.”

There was a pause, then Angela said, “I'm not entirely sure I believe you, Robert. Is this another one of Jimmy's pranks? He's broken my heart with his lies and his affairs, and I am afraid, Robert, that this may be just another of his tricks designed to fool me. I won't fall for it this time. If Jimmy's genuinely in the hospital, then please give him my best wishes for a speedy recovery.”

 

“. . . and then she hung up,” Robert finished. “She believed it was some sort of joke. Where would she get that idea?”

“Ah, well . . . ,” Jimmy said quietly. “Last Christmas I might have told her a little white lie to get back home.”

“A little white lie?”

“I said the apartment was flooded—a burst water pipe. I painted a very graphic picture of frozen icicles of water hanging from the ceiling. And Angela—God love her, but she has a big heart—asked me home for Christmas dinner. I think that was the last meal we had together.”

“But it was a lie.”

“A slight gilding of the truth perhaps. She wasn't very happy when she found out.”

“Why didn't you stay with Frances last year?”

“The baby was only six months old, and her mother was there. I'm afraid that the potent combination of postnatal girlfriend, mewling baby, and girlfriend's mother was too much for me to contemplate, or bear. So I told her I spent Christmas in the apartment. And she was even less pleased when she discovered the truth, that I'd spent Christmas Day with Angela.”

“I know you didn't ask me to,” Robert said, “but I phoned Frances.”

“Jayzus,” Jimmy muttered.

“She seems to think you had a fight the last time you were with her and that she'd thrown you out and told you never to come back.”

“Ah. There might have been some hard words said over her boyfriend,” Jimmy admitted. “But you know me: quick to anger, even quicker to forgive.”

“So the upshot of it is, Angela doesn't believe you're in the hospital, and your girlfriend doesn't care. How do you end up in these messes, Jimmy?”

“Stupidity,” Jimmy Moran said simply. “Just honest-to-God stupidity. I didn't realize how good I had it with Angela. I loved her—in my fashion—and she loved me, but I was prepared to throw it all away because a young one flashed her big eyes at me . . . made me feel young again.” He patted Robert on the hand. “Learn from my mistakes, Bobby: You've a good thing going with Kathy; don't be a feckin' eeijet and throw it all away for the illusion of youth. It doesn't last.”

Robert had opened his mouth to respond when the door opened and an extremely harassed-looking young doctor appeared. “Now, Mr. Moran,” he began, then glanced at Robert. “If you could give us a few moments, I just need to run some tests on your father. . . .”

CHAPTER 31

“T
hey took him down for tests about two hours ago,” Robert said to Kathy. “I keep asking them for results or a progress report, but the nurses on duty can't tell me anything.”

Kathy's voice cracked and hissed on the cell phone. “And how did he look?”

Robert ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “Terrible. Kathy, when I first saw him, I thought he was dead.”

“He's tough, Robert; you know that. He's going to pull through.”

“I'm sorry for ruining your Christmas,” he said eventually. He walked back into Jimmy's room and closed the door. In the darkness, he stood at the windows, watching the snow fall, invisible until the moment it whirled around the streetlights.

“It was ruined a long time before Jimmy got sick.”

He nodded, his reflection in the glass mimicking the movement. Then he said simply, “Yes.”

“If you'd stayed at home today, we would probably have ended up fighting.”

“Probably,” he agreed. He'd had the same thought. If Jimmy hadn't provided him with an excuse to leave the house, he knew he would have had to invent one. And he knew that if he left the house for no reason, Kathy would immediately suspect that he was going to see Stephanie. Maybe he should tell her that Stephanie had gone back to Wisconsin . . . though that might raise the awkward question: How did he know?

“Maybe this time apart has been . . . useful. Allows us both to get a little perspective.”

“Yes, yes, you're right.”

“Time to think,” she added.

“I've been doing nothing but think,” he said carefully, though he'd arrived at no conclusions. His head was still whirling with possibilities and opportunities—all he needed to do was find a little quiet time to think them through. His lack of sleep was catching up with him, and he felt fuzzy, disoriented.

“We'll talk when you get home. Maybe we'll have a little dinner together, just the two of us, and talk.”

“That would be nice. . . . Yes, it's been a long time since we sat down and talked. It'll be just like the old days.” In the early days of their marriage and for the first few years after the children came along, they would sit together every night and talk. It didn't have to be about important things—simply the mundane events in their days, items on the news, television shows they'd seen, gossip they'd heard. He wasn't sure when the ritual had begun to drift away—when the kids got a little older, he thought, or maybe when he started working later and later. Then, by the time he got home, he was so exhausted that the last thing he wanted to do was chat. Looking back now, he realized how important those conversations had been. The communication had bonded them.

“Do you think you're going to make it home tonight?” Kathy asked.

“I'd like to wait and see how Jimmy is. I don't want to leave him on his own.”

“Why is he alone? I thought Angela or Frances would be there. They're not snowed in, are they?”

“Maybe, but that's not the reason they're staying away. They've both refused to come. Turns out Jimmy told them too many lies over too many years, and that's finally caught up with him,” Robert admitted. “I'd like to stay for a while longer . . . if that's okay,” he added.

“Of course it's okay. It's snowing heavily here. It's probably better if you stay there, rather than getting back on the road. The hospital staff isn't going to kick you out.”

Robert leaned forward to stare down at the street. It was completely deserted. “Maybe I'll try to nap on one of the empty beds.” His phone started blipping, and he swore softly. In his rush to get to Jimmy, he'd forgotten to bring his charger. “Shit, I'm down to one bar,” he said quickly.

“Is there a phone in the room?” Kathy asked immediately.

Robert hit the switch over the bed, flooding the room with diffused yellow light, and squinted at the number taped beneath the telephone. “Here it is. . . .” Even as he was reading out the number, he felt sure that Kathy would phone him on it at some stage in the next couple of hours. It was her way of checking up on him, one she had used before when she suspected him of lying to her about his location. Surely she didn't think that this was some sort of elaborate ruse to spend time with Stephanie? He felt anger bubbling . . . and then he remembered that he had used Jimmy's name to lie to Kathy earlier. “Look, I'd better go and save what's left of the battery. You've got the number; call me anytime. I'll be here for the next couple of hours at least, and if I do decide to stay here, I'll give you a call.”

“Give Jimmy my love,” Kathy said and hung up.

“And what about me?” Robert whispered quietly, staring at the phone.

 

Robert was dozing in the chair when Jimmy Moran was brought back to the room by a trio of nurses in green scrubs. He smiled wanly at Robert and attempted to lift a hand to wave at him, but couldn't manage more than waggling his fingers.

Robert stood awkwardly in the corner and watched as the staff lifted Jimmy onto the bed. Two bustled away pushing the gurney while the third—a slender, Indian woman—filled in the chart at the foot of the bed. She glanced up at Robert and smiled, her teeth startlingly white against moist red lipstick. “I'm Doctor Sidhu.”

“Good evening, Doctor.” He came over to the side of the bed and squeezed Jimmy's hand in his. “How is he?”

“Don't talk about me as if I wasn't in the room,” Jimmy grumbled.

“Behave yourself,” Robert snapped.

“Your father had at least one and possibly two minor heart attacks today,” Doctor Sidhu said, making the same mistake as the previous doctor, and neither Robert nor Jimmy corrected her error. “They weren't the first, I might add, though he might not even have been aware of the other ones. I would imagine the cardiac surgeon will want to discuss a bypass—certainly a double and possibly a triple—within the very near future.”

“How near?” Robert asked.

“Within the next couple of months certainly. Maybe sooner.”

Robert held a glass of water to his friend's lips and watched him sip. When Jimmy's lips were wet, he managed to ask, “When can I go home?”

The young doctor smiled. “Well, not today, and not tomorrow, that's for sure. Maybe before New Year's—on the condition that this will be the quietest New Year you'll ever celebrate. We'll keep you under observation for a few days, monitor your vitals, and then our heart specialist will have a look at you. He'll make the final decision.” She looked down at the chart. “It says here you live alone.”

“He can come home with me,” Robert said immediately.

“I can't—” Jimmy began.

“I insist,” Robert said.

“But Kathy—”

“Will be delighted to have you too,” Robert said firmly. He looked at the doctor. “I'll look after him.”

“Well, that makes it easier certainly.” The doctor clipped the chart back onto the end of the bed and patted Jimmy's leg. “It's good to have family at times like this, isn't it?”

When she was gone, Jimmy muttered, “I hate doctors!”

Robert pulled over the chair and sat beside the bed. “What did she ever do to you?”

Jimmy did a passable imitation of her voice. “It's good to have family at times like this, isn't it? I'm fifty-two, not eighty-two. Do I look old enough to be your father?”

“Right now, you look old enough to be my grandfather,” Robert said sincerely.

Jimmy's smile faded. “I would have been proud to have a son like you, Robert. You know that.”

“Hey, there's no need for that sort of talk. I'm proud to know you too. You've taught me so much. In fact, I was thinking only this morning . . .”

“Was there drink involved in this thought?”

“Not a drop. And just as well, since I ended up driving in a snowstorm at two o'clock in the morning.”

Jimmy's eyes widened. “This has to do with Stephanie?”

“Bingo. I'll tell you about that in a minute. First, let me tell you what I was thinking.”

“Go on.”

“Next year, I need to get my act together and crack this independent production nut. I really need to settle down and get some solid work done. You know, when I started out in this business, I had such big dreams; I was going to do cutting-edge, controversial documentaries, hard-hitting exposés. . . . And what have I ended up doing?”

“Anything and everything that puts food on the table, gives you practical experience, and that you're not ashamed to put on the résumé. I told you that.”

“I remember. I didn't agree with you when I first heard it. Then you told me that Ridley Scott started out in advertising.”

“Shot the famous Hovis ad. Boy pushing a bike up a hill.”

“What's Hovis?”

“Bread. YouTube it. Fabulous advert.”

“I'm going to need a partner, someone I know and trust, someone who can look after the business while I concentrate on getting in some new work. If this music video takes off, it could be massive and bring us in a lot of new business. I won't be able to handle it on my own.”

Jimmy lay in the bed and watched him, saying nothing.

“We've collaborated well in the past. I was thinking it might be time to formalize our relationship and go into partnership together. We could set up a new company: Walker-Moran—has a nice ring to it. Well, say something,” he added, when Jimmy didn't respond.

“I'd like . . . I'd like that very much,” Jimmy Moran said, a catch in his voice. “But, Robert, I'm damaged goods. There are a lot of people in this city who'd cross the road to avoid me.”

“And many more who cross the road to ask your advice,” Robert persisted. “Will you at least think about it?”

“I'll think about it,” Jimmy promised. “But only on condition that the name is Moran-Walker.” He smiled. “Have you spoken to Kathy about this?”

Robert stretched his forearms out on the bed and locked his hands together. “Not yet,” he sighed. “I'm going to try to buy Kathy's piece of the company off her.”

“That doesn't sound good,” Jimmy mumbled. He reached over and hit the light switch, plunging the room in deep gloom. “The light was hurting my eyes,” he explained.

The two men remained silent while the room gradually brightened with a dull, metallic light reflected back off the snow outside. A streetlight cut a bar of warm amber high into the corner of the room. “Tell me what's happened, Robert,” Jimmy said finally.

“Kathy found out about Stephanie. The three of us had a . . . meeting yesterday in Stephanie's living room. If you'll pardon the expression, I thought I was having a heart attack when I walked into the room and found the two women there.”

“Been there, worn that tee shirt. It can go two ways—screaming or icy politeness.”

“We had icy politeness.”

“Oh, that's the worst sort. Nothing beats a good screaming match for clearing the air.”

“And then Stephanie rejected me, told me to go back to my wife.” Robert shook his head; he was still not entirely sure why she'd done it.

“And Kathy took you back?”

“Yes.”

“Always said she was a good girl. Takes guts to do that.”

Robert remained silent. He remembered that Maureen had said exactly the same thing. Funny, he'd never thought of his wife in those terms before.

“That is what you want, isn't it?”

“Well . . .” Robert let the word linger in the air between the two friends.

Jimmy reached out and squeezed Robert's arm. “You've been given a second chance, son; don't screw it up. Look at me—learn from my mistakes.”

“I know, I know I've got this second chance . . . but I want to take that chance with Stephanie.”

“You don't throw away eighteen years of marriage so easily.”

“I'm not. Six years ago, Kathy accused me of having an affair. I think that's when our marriage started to fall apart.”

“Bollocks. You're the one who had the affair, Bob. Kathy stayed faithful to you.”

Robert stood up and walked to the window, stuck his hands in his pockets, and stared down onto the broad expanse of white below. His breath plumed a perfect circle on the glass.

“I'm forty-nine, Jimmy. I've been given a chance to start again with a woman who loves me. I'd be an idiot not to take it.”

“Kathy loves you. Loves you enough to fight for you. If she didn't want you, it would have been so easy to let you go to Stephanie.”