Once in a Lifetime Read online

  For the first time Barbara smiled a small, genuine smile, and it was strange, for a fraction of an instant she looked almost pretty. "She hates publicity with a passion."

  "That must be pretty rough. They must chase after her a lot."

  "They do." Barbara smiled again. "But she's a genius at avoiding them when she wants to. On tour it can't be helped, but even then she's very adept at dodging inappropriate questions."

  "Is she very shy?" Liz was so hungry for some piece of the real Daphne. She was the only celebrity she had actually longed to meet, and now here she was, so near, and yet Daphne was still a total enigma.

  Barbara Jarvis was once again cautious, but not hostile. "In some ways, she is. In other ways, not at all. I think 'retiring' suits her better. She is very, very private. She's not afraid of people. She just keeps her distance. Except"--Barbara Jarvis looked distant and thoughtful for a moment--"except with the people she cares about and is close to. She's like an excited happy child with them." The image seemed to please both women, and Liz smiled as she stood up.

  "I've always admired her through her books. I'm sorry to come to know her this way." Barbara nodded, her own smile faded, her eyes sad. She couldn't believe that the woman she had worshiped might be dying. And her sorrow showed in her eyes as she looked up at Liz Watkins. "I'll let you know as soon as you can go back in to see her."

  "I'll wait here."

  Liz nodded and hurried off. She had lost almost half an hour and she had ten thousand things to do. The day shift was the busiest of all, it was like working two shifts instead of one, and she still had to do her own shift that night. It was going to be a long, brutal day, for her, and Barbara Jarvis.

  When the two women walked into Daphne's room again, Barbara saw her eyes open for a minute, and then flutter closed, as Barbara looked rapidly toward the head nurse who had brought her in. Barbara's face was filled with panic. But Liz was quiet and calm as she checked Daphne's pulse, and smiled as she nodded to Barbara.

  "She's coming out of the sedation a little." And almost as she said it Daphne's eyes opened again and tried to focus on Barbara.

  "Daphne?" She spoke softly to her employer and friend as Liz watched, and Daphne's eyes opened again with a blank look. "It's me ... Barbara ..." The eyes stayed opened this time and there was the faintest hint of a smile and then she seemed to drift back to sleep for a minute or two, and then she looked at Barbara again and seemed about to say something as Barbara bent near to hear her better.

  "It must have ... been ... some ... party ... I have ... a hell of a headache...." Her voice drifted off as she smiled at her own joke. Tears filled Barbara's eyes, even as she laughed. She was suddenly filled with relief that Daphne was even talking, and she turned toward Liz with a victorious look as though her firstborn had spoken her first words, and Liz's own eyes felt damp, with fatigue and emotion. She reproached herself silently for growing soft, but there was a tenderness to the scene that touched her. These two women were a strange pair, the one so small and fair and the other so tall and dark, the one so strong through her words although so tiny, the other so powerfully built, and yet so obviously in awe of Daphne. Liz watched as Daphne made the effort to speak again. "What's new?" It was the merest whisper and Liz could barely hear her.

  "Not much. Last I heard you ran over a car. They tell me it was totaled." It was the kind of banter they exchanged every morning, but Daphne's eyes looked sad as she looked at Barbara.

  "Me ... too ..."

  "That's a lot of crap and you know it."

  " ... tell ... me ... the truth ... how am I?"

  "Tough as nails."

  Daphne's eyes looked to the nurse she could see now as well, as though she wanted reassurance. "You're much better, Miss Fields. And you'll feel a great deal better tomorrow." Daphne nodded, like a small, obedient child, as though she believed it, and then suddenly her eyes seemed filled with worry. She sought Barbara again with her eyes and there was something very adamant in her face as she spoke again.

  "Don't ... tell ... Andrew. ..." Barbara nodded. "I mean it. Or ... Matthew ..." Barbara's heart sank at the words. She had been afraid she would say that. But what if something happened? If she didn't "feel better tomorrow," as the nurse promised. "Swear ... to ... me ... !"

  "I swear, I swear. But for chrissake, Daff ..."

  "... no ..." She was obviously growing weaker, the eyes closed and then opened again, with curiosity this time. "Who ... hit ... me?" As though knowing would make a difference.

  "Some jackass from Long Island. The police said he wasn't drunk. The guy claimed you didn't look where you were going."

  She tried to nod but instantly winced, and it took her a moment to catch her breath as Liz watched and checked the time on her wrist. It was almost time to end the visit. But Daphne seemed determined to speak again. "... telling ... the truth ..." They waited but nothing more came, and then Barbara bent to ask, "Who is, love?"

  The voice was soft and the eyes smiled again. "The ... jackass ... I ... didn't look ... I was thinking. ..." And then her eyes went to Barbara's. Only she knew how unbearable Christmas was for her, how painful it had been every year since Jeff and Aimee died in the fire on Christmas night. And this year she was alone, which was worse.

  "I know." And now the memory of them had almost killed her, or was it that she didn't care anymore? A horrifying thought struck Barbara. Had she stepped in front of the car on purpose? But she wouldn't. Not Daphne ... not ... or had she? "It's all right, Daff."

  "... don't let them ... make ... trouble ... for him.... Not his fault.... Tell ... them ... I said so. ..." She looked at Liz then as though to confirm it. She had been a witness. "I... don't... remember ... anything. ..."

  "That's just as well."

  And then she looked sad and tears filled her big blue eyes. "... except ... the sirens ... it sounded like ..." She closed her eyes and the tears slid slowly out of the corners of her eyes and onto her pillow as Barbara reached down and took her hand, tears in her own eyes.

  "Don't. Daphne, don't. You have to get well now." And then, as though to pull Daphne back, "Think of Andrew."

  Her eyes opened then, and she looked long and hard at Barbara as Liz pointed to her watch and nodded at Daphne.

  "We're going to let you rest now, Miss Fields. Your friend can come back in to see you in a little while. Would you like anything more for the pain?" But she shook her head and seemed grateful to close her eyes again. She was asleep before they left the room, and after walking halfway down the hall side by side, Liz turned and looked at Barbara. "Is there anything we should know, Miss Jarvis?" Her eyes dug deep into Barbara's. "Sometimes information that may seem too personal makes a big difference in helping a patient." She wanted to add "helping a patient choose between living or dying," but she didn't. "She had some awful nightmares last night." There were a thousand questions in her voice and Barbara Jarvis nodded, but the walls went up instantly to protect Daphne.

  "You already know that she's a widow." It was all that she would say and Liz nodded.

  "I see." She left Barbara then and went back to her desk, and Barbara went back to the blue vinyl couch after pouring herself another cup of black coffee. She sat down with a sigh and she felt totally exhausted. And why the hell had she made her promise not to tell Andrew? He had a right to know that his mother was perhaps dying. And If she did, then what? Daphne had more than amply provided for him from the books in the past years, but he needed so much more than that. He needed Daphne and no one else ... and If she died ... Barbara shuddered, and looked out at the snow beginning to fall again outside. And she felt as bleak as the winter landscape.

  Daphne had told her nothing about him for the first year that she worked for her. Nothing at all. She was a successful author, apparently single, working harder than anyone Barbara had ever known, with almost no personal life, but even that hadn't seemed surprising. How could she have had time for that, putting out two major books a year? She couldn't and she
didn't. But it was on Christmas Eve when Barbara had worked late that she suddenly found her in her office, sobbing. It was then that she had told her about Jeff ... and Aimee ... and Andrew.... Andrew, the child she had conceived the night of the fatal fire ... the baby who had come nine months later, when she was so alone, with no family, no husband, no friends she would see because they all reminded her of Jeff, and his birth had been so different from Aimee's. Aimee who had been born with Jeff holding her hand, with a great gust of a cry, and her parents looking on with tears of joy intermingled with victorious laughter. Andrew had taken thirty-eight hours to come, a breech birth, with the umbilical cord threatening his every breath, until both he and his mother were finally, mercifully, released by an emergency Caesarean. The doctor had reported that he made a strange, muted little sound when he first emerged, and he had been almost blue as they worked fiercely to save both him and Daphne. And when the anesthetic had worn off, she had been too sick to see him, or hold him. But Barbara still remembered the look in Daphne's eyes when she spoke of the first moment she had held him. He had lain in her arms, put there by a nurse, and suddenly nothing hurt, nothing mattered in the world, except that baby, who lay staring up at her with a determined little stare, looking exactly like Jeffrey. She had named him Andrew Jeffrey Fields. She had wanted to name him after his father, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. It would have brought too many painful memories back each time she called him "Jeff," so instead she named him Andrew. It was a name they had chosen for a boy when she had been pregnant with Aimee. And she had told Barbara too of her shock and joy when she had discovered six weeks after the fire that she was pregnant. It was the only thing that had kept her going during those lonely nightmarish months, the only thing that had kept her from wanting to die too. And she hadn't, she had lived, as had Andrew, despite his traumatic arrival. He had been a beautiful, rosy-cheeked, happy baby. And he had Daphne's cornflower-blue eyes, but he continued to look exactly like his father.

  She had rented a tiny apartment for the two of them, and she had filled the nursery with pictures of Jeffrey, so that one day he would know what his father had looked like, and in a small silver frame was a photograph of his sister. It wasn't until he was three months old that Daphne suspected that there was something different about Andrew. He was the most good-natured child she had ever seen. He was fat and healthy, but one day she dropped a whole stack of dishes as he lay peacefully in a basket on the kitchen table, and he hadn't even started. She had clapped her hands at his ear after that, and he had just smiled at her. She had felt a whisper of terror run through her. She couldn't face calling the doctor, but on their next visit she had casually asked some questions, and he had instantly known what she suspected. Her worst fears had proven true. Andrew was deaf from birth. He made odd little sounds from time to time, but they couldn't know until later if he was mute as well. It was impossible to know if it had been as a result of the shocks she had sustained right after his conception, or from the medication she'd been given in the hospital for her own burns and injuries from the fire. She had been in the hospital for over a month, heavily medicated, no one had even suspected that she was pregnant. But whatever the reason for his hearing loss, it was permanent and it was total.

  Daphne came to love him with a fierce, protective zeal and determination. By day she spent every waking moment with him, setting her alarm for five thirty every morning, so she could be sure to be awake before he was, ready for what the day would bring him and to assist him with each difficult moment. And they were many. At first she was obsessed with the potential hazards that constantly lay in wait for him. In time she grew accustomed to anticipating the constant dangers of warnings he couldn't hear, car horns he was never aware of, growling dogs and pans of sizzling bacon. But the stress she was under was constant. And yet there were endless precious moments, times when tears of tenderness and relief flowed down her cheeks as she shared her life with her baby. He was the happiest, sunniest child imaginable, but again and again she had to face the fact that his life would never be normal. Eventually, everything in her life stopped except her activities with Andrew. There were no friends she saw, no movies she went to. She devoted every single moment of the day to Andrew, afraid to leave him with anyone else, terrified that they wouldn't understand as well as she the dangers and frustrations that confronted him. She took every burden of his life onto her own shoulders, and each night she fell into bed exhausted, drained by what the effort had cost her. There were times too when her own frustrations in dealing with a deaf child almost overwhelmed her, when the urge to shout at him for what he could not do or hear made her clench her teeth and her fists so that she wouldn't slap him. It was not Andrew she wanted to hit, but the cruelty of fate that had deafened her beloved child. She labored under a silent but leaden mantle of guilt, secretly feeling that it was her fault, that she should have been able to prevent it. She hadn't been able to keep Jeff and Aimee from dying in the fire, and now she couldn't keep this final brutal reality from Andrew. She was helpless to change it for him. She read every book she could find about children who were deaf from birth, and she took him to every specialist in New York, but there was nothing they could do for Andrew, or Daphne. She faced the reality of it almost with fury, like an enemy to be fought. She had lost so much, and now Andrew had too. The unfairness of it burned within her like a silent rage, and at night she would have nightmares about the fire and awake screaming.

  The specialists she had seen had suggested to her that eventually she would have to put Andrew in a special school, that it would be best for him, that it would be impossible for him to deal with normal children. And they also pointed out again and again that, despite Daphne's Herculean efforts with the child, there were stumbling blocks that she was unable to get over. Although she knew him better than anyone else did, even she had difficulties communicating with him, and the specialists warned her that in time she would come to resent him for her failures. She was not a professional, after all, they insisted, and he needed more sophisticated skills than she was able to give him. In addition, his constant isolation from other children made him suspicious and hostile on the rare occasions when he did see them. Hearing children didn't want to play with him because he was different, and their cruelty caused Daphne so much pain that she hadn't taken him to a playground since he was an infant. But still she resisted the idea of his being with other children like him, so she kept him to herself, the two of them prisoners in her tiny apartment, as the specialists continued to badger her about sending him away to a special school.

  "An institution?" she had screamed at the specialist she knew best. "I won't do that to him. Ever!"

  "What you're doing is a lot worse." The doctor's voice had been gentle. "It doesn't have to be forever, Daphne. But you have to face facts. You can't teach him at home what he needs to know. He needs totally different skills than you can give him."

  "Then I'll learn them!" She had shouted at him because she couldn't shout at Andrew's deafness, or at life, or fate, or the gods who had been so unkind to her. "Dammit, I'll learn them and I'll stay with him night and day to help him!" But she had already done that, and it wasn't working. Andrew was living in total isolation.

  "And when you die?" the pediatrician asked bluntly. "You don't have a right to do that to him. You'll make him totally dependent on you. Give him the right to his own life, for God's sake. A school will teach him independence, it will teach him how to function in the normal world when he's ready."

  "And when will that be? When he's twenty-five? Thirty? When he's so totally used to being out of the world that he's institutionalized? I saw those people up there, I talked to them, through an interpreter. They don't even trust what they call 'hearing people.' They're all freaks, for chrissake. Some of them are forty years old and have never lived anywhere but an institution. I won't do that to him." He had sat, watching them talk, fascinated by the gestures and the expressions on their faces, but Andrew had heard none of the an
gry words between his mother and his doctor.

  For three years she had fought her private war, to the slow but steady detriment of Andrew. It had become obvious long since that Andrew could not speak, and when he was three, her renewed efforts to introduce him to hearing children at the playground were a disaster. Everyone shunned him. It was as though they somehow knew that he was terribly, terribly different, and one day she watched him sitting in the sandbox alone, watching the other children with tears running down his face, and then looking at his mother as though to say "What's wrong with me?" She had run to him and held him, rocking him gently as they both cried, feeling isolated and afraid. Daphne felt that she had failed him. A month later, for Daphne, the war was over. With lead in her heart she began to visit the schools she so desperately hated, feeling as though at any moment Andrew would be torn from her. She couldn't face another loss in her life, and yet she knew that not to do it would destroy him. Freeing him was the ultimate gift she had to give him. And at last she found the only school where she could bear to leave him. It was in a small, comfortable town in New Hampshire, with birch trees surrounding it, and a pretty little pond, and a small river that ran along the grounds, where she watched the children fish. And what she liked best about it was that there were no "students" there older than twenty. They weren't called patients, or residents or inmates, as she had heard in other institutions. They were called children and students, like "real" people. And most were sent back to their families in their late teens, to attend colleges when they could, or take jobs, and return to the families who had stood behind them for so long and waited. As Daphne walked slowly around the grounds with the director, a stately woman with white hair, she felt the weight of her loss again, knowing that Andrew might live there for as long as fifteen years, or at least eight or ten. It was a commitment that tore her heart from her. This was her last child, her last love, the only human being alive who was related to her, and she was going to leave him. Her eyes filled with tears again at the thought, and she felt the same shaft of unbearable pain she had felt for months as she had come to terms with the decision, and as the tears poured down her face she felt the director's hand on her arm, and suddenly she was in the older woman's arms, being held close in a strong comforting grasp, sobbing out the pain of the past four years, since even before the birth of Andrew.