Til the Real Thing Comes Along (54 page)

“You’re welcome, Dad,” David said now.

Rand Malcolm winced suddenly from what was dearly a burst of severe pain.

“Why don’t I ask them to give you some medication?” David asked.

“Don’t need any goddamned medication,” his father said, and dosed his eyes.

David looked long at his father’s face, noticing what a toll the devastating illness had taken on his once-handsome features.

“Maybe some water though, boy,” Mal said, and David
held the glass to his mouth while he sipped, then watched him lie back exhausted on the pillow, as though just the act of
lifting his head to take the water had been too much for him.

“Think I’ll nap for a while,” he said softly, and after a few minutes David could tell by his father’s breathing that he had
slipped away into sleep.

“Treat you to lunch?” came a soft voice from behind David.

“Hi, Case,” David said, without turning, and when he felt Casey’s pretty hand on his shoulder he touched it, then held it
tightly.

“Looks like he’s out for a while,” Casey said. “We can just grab something in the hospital if you like.”

David turned to look at her. Casey Baylor. No matter how much time he spent with her—and in the last weeks it had been considerable—his
first look at her each day, that perfect face, that amazing long lean body dressed in another smashing outfit, always took
his breath away. It had from the minute he’d bumped into her in the hotel lobby the day he arrived. He’d been so goddamned
exhausted from staying awake the whole night before, persuading his father to make the trip to Houston.

Maximum deterioration, Eleanor had told David when she took him away from the dinner party that night. Four weeks ago. Could
it really have been that long? Primary disease of his heart muscle, Mal’s cardiologist, Peter Acklin, had told Eleanor and
Mal when Mal had gone grudgingly for a checkup. He must be hospitalized immediately and he was refusing to cooperate. Saying
he had too much business to take care of. Had no time for any goddamned hospital. David must intervene.

David’s mind had raced during the whole dinner with Senator Spencer and Mrs. Spencer and R.J., though the circumstances demanded
that he sit there trying to behave as if he were enjoying himself. He remembered hurrying R.J. out the door and home, and
as soon as he’d dropped her off at home he’d rushed back to his father’s house, where he sat up all night urging Mal to go
to Houston.

“There are doctors there who can relieve your symptoms, prolong your life,” he’d said, praying that it was true. And when
the early morning light dawned and Mal finally agreed to the trip, a relieved David had grabbed the phone
to alert the doctors, awaken the pilots and warn them to ready the plane, secure hotel accommodations near Houston Medical
Center, and rush home to pack a few of his own things.

Getting a hospital room at the Houston Medical Center had been easier than finding the appropriate hotel accommodation for
Eleanor, who had, she said, “to maintain certain standards, even during a crisis.” And David, containing himself, told her
that if the reservations he’d made at a hotel across from the hospital didn’t suit her, she could make her own. So she telephoned
some “dear old friends” in Houston, and told David and Mal, who seemed relieved, that she would follow along in a day or two
when her life was more organized.

David had spent the first day checking Mal into the Medical Center, staying with him through dozens of tests, and finally
getting him settled quietly into his room on the seventh floor. It was a fine place to be if you had Mal’s problem, David
told himself over and over. But he was trembling when he finally made his way to the hotel to check in for the first time,
carrying the hanging bag he had run home to pack hastily the night before. He was unshaven, weak with exhaustion, with the
smell and feel and taste of hospital all over him.

“Checking in,” was all he’d been able to get out to the desk clerk. “Name’s David Malcolm.”

“Is it David Malcolm from Los Angeles?” he heard a voice ask, and he turned to see who had spoken.

The blond woman couldn’t have been talking to him. He had no idea who she…

“Casey Baylor,” she said, extending her hand. He took it. Her eyes never left his. “We went to prep school together. Hollingsworth.
I transferred in the eighth grade to a school in Europe. You can’t possibly remember.”

Sweet heaven. Remember? Was she joking? No wonder he’d written that humiliating love letter to her all those years ago. He
remembered the first moment he’d laid eyes on her in the Hollingsworth cafeteria. Even then he’d had great taste. “I do,”
he said. “I remember.”

Casey’s gorgeous face had become serious then.

“My father’s in the Medical Center,” she told him. “For bypass surgery. I hope you’re not in Houston because of medical problems.”

“Unfortunately, that
is
why,” he told her. “My father has cardiomyopathy.” That’s what the doctors had told him after they’d spent a few hours with
Mal, confirming Acklin’s diagnosis. Primary disease of the heart muscle.

“I’m sorry,” Casey said. “Maybe we can offer each other some solace.”

In his exhaustion David had looked into Casey’s eyes to see if there was some deep meaning behind those words, and when there
didn’t seem to be, he was relieved. Not only because of R.J. and the confusion he was feeling about her, but because here,
now, with Mal so ill, he had no energy, nothing left to have to feel anything for anyone else. Think about anyone else. He
had intended to go to his room, take a shower, and call R.J. that first night.

But he didn’t. Instead, after his long hot shower, he had turned on the television set and watched, he wasn’t sure what, hoping
to block out the news the doctors had given him earlier.

“The function of his left pumping chamber couldn’t get any worse. Because of his age, he’s not a candidate for a heart transplant.
There are several things we can do to improve his condition and reduce his symptoms. Most patients who have reached this stage
of his illness will not live more than six to twelve months.”

David had stayed awake that night just long enough after the eleven o’clock news to leave a wake-up call for six
A.M.,
so he could be with his father for the next series of tests that would begin that morning.

Then a week had gone by. The kind of week which, when it’s over, it’s difficult to recall what happened on which day. Was
it the day the cardiac catheter was inserted in Mal’s heart, and maybe that was Wednesday, or was Wednesday the day the doctors
decided to change all of the medication because Mal was dangerously retaining too much fluid? David knew it was a Sunday night
when he’d mentioned R.J. to Mal, because they’d had the television on, watching
60 Minutes,
and all of a sudden it ended and there was Patsy Dugan in full sequined regalia, and Freddy Gaines picking at his guitar,
the two of them singing into one another’s faces.

“This is the show that R.J. writes for, Dad,” David had said.

“Who the hell is R.J.?”

“R.J. Misner, the girl who was at dinner the night we left for Houston.”

“Don’t remember who that was,” Mal said, and turned off the television.

And then there was that other night in the hospital when it felt to David as if it must be very late because there wasn’t
a sound anywhere on the seventh floor. Eleanor had long since gone back to her friend’s house to sleep, and a restless Mal
began to reminisce about the past. His training as a pilot. The great old planes he had flown. David thought of Jeffie and
the boy’s passion for airplanes. His excitement when David had taken him to the Planes of Fame Museum at the Chino Airport
a few weeks before.

“Got models of every one,” Mal said. David remembered the collection of model planes Mal used to keep in a glass case at the
Rainbow Building.

“I know a twelve-year-old boy who would love to see those planes,” he had said. “R.J’s son. He’s a fine—”

Mal interrupted. “Eleanor says Frank Baylor’s here, and the real pretty daughter.”

It was such an obvious choice for a subject change. The point was dear. I disapprove, so I drop the subject. David didn’t
mention R.J. again.

“Casey. I went to Hollingsworth with her. Her name is Casey.”

Some nights when Mal slept. David would pace the carpeted hallway of the luxurious hospital wing. Trying to imagine life without
his father. Many nights he would stand leaning against the wall outside the room, grinning, as a memory from his childhood
flickered by. Like the tour his hurried father had given him of the Louvre. “Now there’s ‘Winged Victory,’ fella. Over there’s
the ‘Venus de Milo.’ That one’s called ‘Mona Lisa.’ That’s about it… let’s go.” Now and then a memory of his times with Mal
moved David to tears, and as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket one night, he received a sympathetic nod from a young
nurse who passed silently on her way to the nurse’s station, which was somewhere outside the corridor, making the plush-carpeted
seventh floor feel more as if it were in a hotel than a hospital.

Frank Baylor’s room was on the opposite end of the floor from Mal’s. From time to time David would bump into Casey, who was
either pacing or leaning against the wall
outside of her father’s room, probably having her own recollections. Sometimes she would stop to talk. Briefly at first, exchanging
polite inquiries with him about the progress of their fathers. Then exchanging medical information each had acquired. More
than either of them had ever wanted to know about an ailing heart. Then there were longer conversations about business.

Over the years since her father’s health had begun to deteriorate, Casey had been running Baylor Steel. It was a job for which
she was eminently qualified, having received her M.B.A. from Harvard and having been groomed for it by Frank Baylor, who,
though he had four business-school-educated sons, knew that Casey, the baby in the family, was the only one capable of filling
his shoes.

And now, as their father faced a medical crisis, Casey’s brothers—who had bargained that eventually she would marry, have
children, and lose interest in the business—were afraid of being shut out completely, and were gunning for her. The story
about the brothers’ jealousy was one that Eleanor told David one night as he drove her from the hospital to her friend’s home.
Casey would never have revealed a family disharmony like that to an outsider.

She was always remarkably poised. Even after her father’s surgery, when he developed a lung infection, a serious complication.
Late one afternoon of the third week, when Mal was asleep, David and Eleanor were about to get on the elevator to go for a
cup of coffee. It had been a tense day, with Mal insisting that they take him home as soon as possible. The elevator door
was closing when he heard Casey’s voice from down the hall. “Wait,” she said, rushing up. David stopped the door with his
hand and pulled it open.

“I hope neither of you thinks this is inappropriate,” Casey said, “but Daddy’s feeling a little better today, and when I told
Dr. Markson that the only way I fight tension at home is to play golf, he offered me the use of his country club course. Will
you join me?” she asked them both.

David held on to the elevator door, which was trying to close, and looked at Eleanor, whose face was as pinched and tense
as if it could crack.

“We can get clubs and shoes at the pro shop,” Casey urged.

“A fine idea,” Eleanor said.

There was no one else on the rolling green golf course but the three of them. At first they all walked from hole to hole without
talking to or looking at one another. Each lost in private thoughts, breathing in the clean warm smell of the day, trying
to shake off for just a moment what was going on at the hospital. After a while, Eleanor moved closer to Casey and began to
keep up with the younger woman’s leggy stride. It couldn’t have been easy. Casey was very athletic and strong. She could hit
a golf ball a long way with perfect form.

“Smart girl never to have married,” David heard Eleanor say. Casey didn’t reply.

“I’ve been married twice,” Eleanor said as they reached the fourteenth tee. David stood on the men’s tee, Eleanor and Casey
below, on the women’s. “To two of the best men this country has to offer, and you know what? They’re all self-involved, narcissistic,
and demanding.”

David was teeing up and lining up his shot.

Casey answered Eleanor softly. “I’ve always believed that you get back what you give.” she said, in a voice so absent of cynicism
or sarcasm or malice that Eleanor couldn’t take it personally, and David, who was impressed again with Casey’s dauntless poise,
hit the ball farther than he had in years.

On one of his father’s good days David brought Casey into Mal’s hospital room and introduced them. Mal was not too sick to
be impressed by the woman’s extraordinary beauty, her polite conversation, combined with what he already knew about her business
acumen from the mutual friends he and Frank Baylor shared.

“Monty Allburn sings your praises,” Mal told her. Casey seemed pleased to hear that news, since Allburn was the chairman of
the board of Baylor Steel. “Says you’re one smart cookie.” It was the most animated David had seen his father since their
arrival in Houston.

“Thank you, sir,” she said. “That’s very high praise and I appreciate it.”

Casey and Mal had exchanged small talk, and when he seemed to be tiring but too polite to say so, she excused herself and
was barely out the door when Mal said to David: “Now, that’s the right woman.”

The right woman. Lily had been the right woman for Mal, even though it looked at first as if he’d picked her
because she was a young beauty. As it turned out, her youth had been what had enabled him to mold her, shape her, “educate
her,” as he had suggested David do with the impossible Babsy. Despite his own intense dislike for Eleanor, David understood
why in his late years Mal had no doubt convinced himself that she was now the right woman for him. Knew a lot about business,
had the same political beliefs, was sophisticated, made a good traveling companion, was a perfect hostess, and didn’t demand
much.