Chapter 18. Just Enough
Susan panicked, instinctively, when she got home and heard Suzie crying.
As she ran into the main room of her apartment, her vision blurring into a sea of color, the blue of the Ninja Turtles backpack sitting on the kitchen table and the satiny brown of the bare wooden floor and the uneven white of the peeling wall, she had already begun to blame Chloe. Then she stopped to look, and it was only one of those moments that every childhood is made up of. Suzie had scraped her knee; Chloe was putting a Yu-Gi-Oh bandaid on it.
Flooded with relief, Susan grinned and then remembered to stop smiling; Suzie wasn't fond of blood and wouldn't appreciate Susan looking amused.
"Hey, honey," she said, dropping her things on the floor (not like the rest of the apartment was so clean anyway) and coming over to kneel by her niece with a sympathetic face.
"Aunt Susan," Suzie wailed, hamming it up a little to squeeze out all the sympathy she could. Susan hugged her, and smiled conspiratorially over her head at Chloe. "I hurt my knee."
"Oh, does it hurt?"
"Yeeees," she wailed.
"Let me see." Suzie lifted her knee awkwardly so Susan could see the little scrape bandaged over and kiss it to make it feel better.
Chloe seemed guilty. "We were playing hide-and-seek; she tripped."
Susan shook her head. No need to defend yourself, she would have said if Suzie weren't right there.
Later, much later, when Suzie was occupied with a bedtime snack of crackers and peanut butter, Chloe joined Susan on the couch. Susan was reading the Annals, Chloe Entertainment Weekly.
Over their magazines, in very low voices, Susan said, "What time's your meeting tonight?"
"Seven," Chloe said after awhile.
"You're going to go, right?" she said leadingly.
Chloe nodded, resigned. "Right."
Susan met her sister's eyes and knew that Chloe's optimistic resolve from their dinner in New York had already worn off, and the harshness of the regular routine was already wearing on her. She would have to be careful.
The phone rang. Chloe picked up on the second ring and said brightly, "Lewis residence." After a pause, she handed the receiver to Susan. "It's your boyfriend."
Boyfriend. When was the last time she'd heard that word? Susan was smiling when she said, "Mark?"
"Hey," he said.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I mean, I think something's wrong—"
"Mark!" she interrupted.
"Rachel's not here."
Susan checked her watch. Eight PM. "It's a school night."
"I know that! She didn't tell me or Chris that she'd be out. I bet she's running around with Andy, getting stoned or doing God knows what in that car of his…"
"Doesn't she have a cell phone?"
"She's not picking up. The phone has caller ID, so she knows when I'm calling."
"Oh." Susan sighed. "Do you want me to come over with Suzie?"
He paused. "It's almost her bedtime."
"Chloe has a meeting tonight, but when she's done I'll come over," Susan said.
"Okay."
"Love you."
"You too."
~
He looked in the door every time he passed, out of habit maybe, or maybe because she was the constant preoccupation of his thoughts, spare thoughts and the thoughts that should have been used up on other things, during surgery or meetings or press conferences.
Often Elizabeth wasn't there; their job precluded much time sitting around behind a desk with pen and paper. This time she was, and Romano felt his steps slow involuntarily to look: the head bent slightly, resting in a slender hand; the hair spilling over hand and shoulder and back; the mouth he had kissed twice now, set firmly in concentration.
He had hardly spoken to her since the second kiss, that day in the museum. It was his best chance, he thought, at self-protection. He still didn't trust Elizabeth, she of the daring eyes and sharp appetites and unpredictable affection. A woman after his own heart, which was the entire problem.
As he was thinking this, weakly defending his own choices yet again to the part of him that would always be ready to fall in love with her if she gave him the chance, she looked up and saw him lingering outside her door.
Her eyes went wide. "Robert," she said, pushing her hair back as if it were he who had caught her doing something illicit.
Romano lifted a hand, a wave that also pushed her away. "Lizzie," he said, clipping off the end of her name pointedly. "Did you talk to Edson about his dictations?"
"He'll have them in by tomorrow," Elizabeth said, her eyes glinting with satisfaction. He guessed she'd really gone to town on poor Edson, who would for ever and always be in Lizzie's bad graces.
"Good."
He left, sneaking a look back over his shoulder. She'd thrown her pen down and was watching him go.
This was ridiculous, all of this unspoken do-you-or-don't-you, watching and waiting bullshit. He considered going back in there and telling her to leave him alone; he considered going in there and pulling her roughly to her feet and kissing her. Either one would work.
He wished he knew what the hell he was doing.
And he kept wishing that all through the rest of the day until evening, when he finally finished his eighth appy of the month and went to his office to get his coat and papers. Just as he approached the door he heard the phone ring and rushed to answer it, only to hear a woman crying on the other end of the phone. It took him a few seconds to recognize Taryn's voice, because he still thought of her as a little girl.
"Taryn," Romano said sharply, but not unkindly. "Is it my mother?"
"Yes," she said, another sob hacking with her answer. "During her afternoon nap."
He sat down in his chair, so hard that his bones felt like they'd crack, and closed his eyes, listening to her cry.
Slowly her sobs turned to hiccupy breaths and she said, "Uncle Bob?"
"Yeah," he said. "I'm coming."
"Thank you."
"Hang tight. It'll take me a few minutes by car."
"Okay."
Romano hung up the phone and sat still, wrapping himself in silence. He bent his head down, staring at his lap in a futile kind of shock. He had known this was coming, and yet – he hadn't really known, so his bewildered, ambivalent grief hit him deep in the gut.
Minutes passed. He noticed without reaction, as if his thoughts were somehow separate from himself, that he was wishing Elizabeth were here. He was picturing her slipping into the room, imagining the way it would feel to hold her tightly, demanding comfort, being comforted. Funny, how hard it could be to train yourself out of a bad habit.
The phone rang again. He didn't answer, but after a few minutes his secretary came on again and said, "Dr. Romano? It's Dr. Corday on line 1."
Funny how your wishes came true at all the wrong times. He picked up and greeted her more curtly than his current mood should dictate, "Yeah."
"Hey," he heard Elizabeth's voice say breezily.
He put down his pen and leaned back in his chair, somewhat surprised by her levity, as if he'd been surprised that his pain didn't some how telepathically affect her. "Lizzie. What's sending your spirits so high?"
She was giggling, actually giggling. "I'm a bit smashed, actually."
Reluctantly mollified, he said, "Where are you?"
"At that pub you took me to before." Her voice changed, grew more flirtatious. "Nice place, don't you think?"
"Sure," he agreed.
"You're nice on the phone," she observed. "Much nicer."
He laughed, not quite kindly, everything true that he wanted to say compressed into a sour note that lingered just under his amiability. "Oh, am I."
"Why aren't you nice when I'm around, hmm?" she slurred. "All of a sudden."
"All of a sudden, what?" he said when she stopped talking.
"What? Oh, right. Yes, all of a sudden you're being quite difficult," she lectured unsteadily. "I wish you wouldn't be so difficult."
"What do you want, Lizzie?" he said tiredly.
"Plenty of things," she answered. "But I'd rather like if you showed up here right now. I want to know why you're acting like this. You ran away at the museum, why did you do that?"
"I didn't run away."
"Yes you did. I kissed you and you ran like mad."
"Why don't we wait to talk about this till you're… yourself?"
Elizabeth gave a funny exaggerated sigh. "I'm only myself when you're around, Robert." She flicked his name off the end of that sentence like a reproach, like he should already know everything she was telling him, like they were best friends and knew each other by heart.
Before she'd called, he'd have run to her in a second if he'd known where she was. But this was all wrong; she was drowning in synthetic laughter, and he felt too beaten to buoy her up. "I'd hate to take advantage of a lady while she was drunk."
She snorted. "I'm not a lady. And I'm not that drunk. Just a little. Just enough."
"Then you're not too out of it to get yourself a cab and go home," he surmised pointedly.
He heard her breath catch, despite the staticky connection. "Yes. I'm not."
"Then do that."
"Of course Robert, whatever you say," she said, recovering her sarcasm.
"I don't want to think about how much you've had to drink to make you this way – I know you could drink me under the table any day of the week, so it must be quite a bit. Just go home and we can talk later."
For a few seconds he could feel her wavering between hurt silence and pissy silence. Then she discarded both and said simply, "I miss you."
Romano softened, against his will. How could he answer that? He hadn't gone anywhere and yet he knew the feeling, that age-old sense of emptiness he used to get when he needed Elizabeth and she wasn't around. He wondered if that was what she meant.
"Okay," he said after a long time. "I know. I miss you, too."
~
It was eleven before Rachel came home, hair flying loose and tangled and face triumphant until she saw Susan and Mark waking up from their light naps on the couch.
Mark rubbed his eyes, his body fighting his attempts to wake up. "Rachel?" he mumbled.
Her mouth was gaping open, as if she'd somehow expected to sneak upstairs unseen. "Um, hi Dad."
"Where were you?"
"Out," she shrugged with that little smirk of hers.
"With who?"
"With people. My friends. And don't worry, we didn't ax-murder anyone."
"What about drugs? You can hardly blame me for being worried."
"God, Dad, what do you want to do, shut me up in my room twenty-four hours a day? I have a life, you know, it doesn't mean I'm a horrible person."
A still sleepy Susan shifted her head off of Mark's shoulder as he stood up, supporting her gently with his hand as she slumped on her side on the couch. He approached, speaking quietly and vehemently. "I know you've gotten into this stuff, Rachel, and it's stupid to lie about it."
She made an indignant noise and then said, "So you're just going to make up your mind what the truth must be before I talk, and anything else I say is obviously a lie. Really sensible, Dad."
He frowned, and then recovered himself. "You had E in your backpack."
"Fine, just believe whatever you want to believe, it doesn't matter what kind of evidence or whatever you see to the contrary!" she threw back at him as she stormed upstairs.
"Wait—" he started, his voice falling fast to a murmur.
Susan had woken up after all the shouting and was rubbing her eyes, watching Mark stand impotently by the stairway. He turned back to her, lifting his hands. His bewilderment was so enormous that it filled the room – he knew now that he might die without ever getting this right.
"Are you going to go up there?" she asked quietly, her voice still phlegmy from sleep.
"No," he said heavily, sitting down next to her and resting in a slumped position.
She reached over to rub the back of his neck languidly and, over his little noise of satisfaction, said, "What time is it anyway?"
"Eleven." He shook his head. "She's out of control, and I can't fix her."
"Fix her?" she repeated, not challenging the phrase exactly but echoing it, so that he wondered momentarily if he were still flailing in the dark here, completely clueless about what it meant to raise a child.
He withdrew from her hand and met her eyes, looking for reassurance and confirmation and finding only concern. "I can't undo sixteen years of being a bad father. I don't have long enough."
Susan examined him as if there were a million things she wanted to say, and none of them wholehearted agreement. Mark felt his eyebrows knit a little in puzzlement, but then she blinked her disagreement away and smiled hesitantly at him, opting for silence.
As if they had never mattered, all the unanswered questions melted away into irrelevance. He kissed her bruisingly, surprising her for a moment until she relaxed and giggled and kissed him back. He would never get used to how beautiful it was to see Susan smile.
