Rushing Waters (26 page)

They went into the dining room a few minutes later, since Jim and Grace had been late. Ellen had set a beautiful table with the china she'd brought with her, colorful crystal, and small vases of flowers. And the table shone with her antique silver from the silver vaults in London, which had been her passion when she'd first moved there. George had always teased her that they had enough silver to open a shop, and since she had bought it, she had kept it in the division of their respective goods, and he didn't argue about it.

The conversation at dinner was lively, Jim had a great sense of humor and a quick wit, and Grace was an able match for him. Both men were well read and had strong opinions on a variety of subjects—they went from politics to books to history to social commentary. Ellen had more fun than she'd had in years, talking to intelligent people who enjoyed each other's company, would have had much to brag about but didn't, and had an American style that she found refreshing after years of George's snobbish, stuffy friends, who based much of their self-worth on the fact that they'd gone to Eton or on who they were related to, which somehow wasn't enough.

By the time they got to dessert, they were all laughing uncontrollably at some situations Jim described in his early years as an agent, and Bob talked about writing his first novel in a broom closet on a typewriter he had borrowed at Yale. And then he confessed that he hadn't “borrowed” it, he had stolen it, and had been hiding so he didn't get caught. He had been paid $3,000 for the book, and it was his first smashing success, and went right to the number-one position on the
New York Times
best-seller list, but he never gave the typewriter back since he figured it had brought him luck.

“I still have it,” he said proudly. “The ‘t' and ‘s' keys are broken and always were. My first novel was written without ‘t's or ‘s's, and Jim finally convinced me to give it up.”

“It was like doing the crossword puzzle reading his early manuscripts, with all the words I had to guess at and couldn't figure out.” They all laughed at the image he conjured up, and Ellen was struck again by how modest Bob was. He always made his success sound like a fortuitous accident and not the result of his keen mind and remarkable skill, and he readily attributed his success to Jim and his talents as an agent.

They sat in the living room after dinner, and no one wanted to go home. She served the men brandy, and her mother a small glass of Château d'Yquem Sauterne, which she knew she loved, and had some herself. She entertained beautifully, which Grace readily gave Ellen credit for as due to her own talents and nothing she had learned from her mother.

“When she set the table as a little girl, she would disappear for hours, and pick up things all over the house to make the table pretty. She even sliced colored candles onto my soup once so it would be colorful.” Ellen laughed at the memory and admitted it was true. “And I used to build forts out of boxes as a child, for all the boys in my neighborhood,” Grace confessed. “I guess our talents show up early.”

“Mine didn't,” Bob said with a grin. “I wanted to be a fireman until I was fourteen. And then I wanted to be a policeman.”

“Well, you sort of are with what you write,” Ellen said, and he thought about it for a minute and agreed. And as they sat enjoying each other's company, Grace made a startling announcement, that none of them expected of her, her daughter least of all.

“I concluded a deal two days ago,” she said, looking very pleased, “with an old client of mine. I did an apartment for him ten years ago, at the Dakota. It was quite spectacular at the time, on two levels, with overhangs and a balcony. For once, I respected the original architecture, but we made it something very special. I was very proud of it at the time, and he loved it. It might have been my favorite job ever—I think we really got it right. He had some wonderful ideas too, and we were a very creative team working on it together.” Ellen remembered it—her mother had been deep in the project when she moved to London, and finished it around the time she married George. The photographs of it had been fabulous. The entire main floor was wood paneled, but it wasn't dark, it was very rich looking, with a remarkable patina on the walls. “He married a Swiss woman and moved to Geneva a few years ago, and he said they never come to New York anymore, so he doesn't use it. He decided to sell it, but wanted to sell it to someone who would love it as much as he did. He really doesn't need the money.” She paused for a moment and smiled at all three of them. “He called me before he put it on the market, to see if I knew of a client for it. I bought it, and I'm so happy I could scream.” She glanced lovingly at Ellen, knowing how relieved she'd be. “So I won't be going back to Tribeca after all. Life moves in strange ways sometimes. And Jim and I will almost be neighbors a few blocks apart.” She smiled at him—it seemed like a good arrangement for them for the moment. “And it's in beautiful condition, so it needs very little work. I can move in when my lease is up where I am, although I'm going to need a lot of new furniture now after the flood.” She gazed pointedly at Ellen for that, as they all exploded in excitement at what she said, and toasted her new home.

“That's fantastic news!” Bob said to her, as relieved as Ellen that she wouldn't be moving back downtown at the river's edge. Some risks were just too foolish to take, and they all agreed that that was one.

“I knew I shouldn't go back,” she admitted. “I just loved that apartment so much, and the whole area, and being on the river, but I like being uptown now too. And it's a lot easier for me with work.” And since she had no intention of retiring anytime soon, or possibly ever, that was an important convenience factor for her that she had chosen to ignore for years. “And I was always in love with that apartment at the Dakota.” It was a building full of famous creative people. John Lennon had lived there and a number of other important, well-known people.

“I can't wait to see it,” Jim said, beaming at her. It would be so nice having her nearby, and they could go back and forth to each other's apartments, only a few blocks away.

“I can take all of you in this weekend, when he goes back to Geneva. I already have the keys, and it will be mine in thirty days.” She could hardly believe it herself. The evening ended on an up note after her announcement, and Bob stayed for a few minutes after they left.

“What a happy surprise that is,” Bob said, smiling broadly at Ellen. “I hated the idea of her going back to her old apartment, just sitting there waiting for another hurricane to hit, and you know it will.”

“You didn't hate it any more than I did,” she said, relieved too. And her mother's surprise news had given her another idea. The woman who owned the apartment where Grace was living for the time being wanted to sell, and if Ellen decided to stay in New York and buy an apartment, it might be ideal for her, if the house in London had sold by then. All their plans were fitting together nicely, and she was thrilled that her mother had found a home she loved. It had fallen right into her lap at the perfect time. Fate had been kind, in so many ways, with Jim, the new apartment, and even with Bob and Ellen and his insisting they stay at Jim's after the flood.

He lingered for a few minutes before he left, and she remembered everything he had said when the evening began, before Grace and Jim had arrived. It gave her much food for thought, and they were getting to know each other well. Living through a disaster together tended to speed things along.

“Why don't we go see your mother's new apartment together this weekend?” he suggested. “I'm dying to see it. It sounds incredible, and maybe it will give me some ideas to steal for mine, if she lets me.”

“I need to take a look at it for the furniture she needs,” Ellen said practically. “She lost a lot downtown. And I never actually saw the apartment in person, only in photographs and the magazines where it was published at the time. My mother got a lot of praise for that job.”

“Of course,” Bob said, smiling, “I have the best architect and designer in the city.” He gave her a warm hug then, and brushed her lips with his, touched by a lovely evening with a woman he was coming to like and admire more each time they met. She was healing his old wounds, and calming his fears. “See you soon,” he said softly, as she smiled at him and gently touched his face with her fingertips.

“Thank you…for everything,” she said, and quietly closed the door when he left. He smiled all the way down in the elevator, and in the morning, he sent her an enormous bouquet of roses, thanking her for the dinner, with a note that made her smile when Alice handed it to her. “Thank you for a wonderful evening. You are fabulous. Always remember that. See you soon. B.” It had been a perfect evening, for all of them, and Ellen smiled broadly as she put his note on her desk where she could read it again, and as she did, she wasn't scared at all. It was a new day, a new man, a new world.

As Jane and John Holbrook had feared would happen, and had been warned, Peter had started manifesting signs of severe trauma as soon as he got home. And it got worse instead of better for a while. He lost patches of hair all over his head, almost immediately. It came out in clumps and handfuls, and he cried when he saw it in the mirror. It was so embarrassing, he didn't want to go out. He couldn't sleep at night, and would sit in front of the TV, unseeing, until morning, and they would find him asleep and slumped over, looking pale and exhausted. He never wanted to leave the house. He hardly ate, and lost fifteen pounds within a month. He wouldn't speak to his friends, and kept his cell phone turned off. He didn't want to see anyone, and his only friend appeared to be the dog. He isolated himself in his room, and wouldn't eat with his parents. They were worried sick about him, and reported each new frightening development to the therapist they had found with their doctor's help.

Gwen Jones was a very nice woman, trained at Harvard, and specialized in PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. The Holbrooks were praying she could help. She assured them that everything Peter was going through was normal, and none of it surprised her. The key was how well he would recover, and how long it would take him to come back from the dark place where he was. She said that he would always have traces of the trauma he'd been through, which might trouble him again during times of great stress or if he encountered triggers from his experience during the hurricane, but with therapy, a loving family to support him, and time, she was confident that he would do well.

The first thing Peter told her was that he wasn't going back to school when NYU reopened. She asked him if he was planning to transfer somewhere else, and he said no, with a sullen expression. His mother had already told Dr. Jones that he was often hostile and irritable now, which was completely unlike him. He had always been even-tempered, and had a happy disposition. And the therapist had noted his flat affect. He was either angry, or had no expression at all. And he had refused to see her at first.

He said that he didn't need her, and Ben was dead, and would be forever, so what difference would therapy make? He claimed he was fine, and he was anything but. And the rapid weight loss and bald patches, and sunken eyes from not sleeping, made him look frightening and strange. He hadn't spoken to Anna since he left New York, and deleted her texts without reading them. Within weeks of his return to Chicago, his parents were gravely alarmed. He was in much worse shape than they had feared. The Holbrooks had called Ben's parents regularly, and they were in awful shape too, and Adam was seeing a therapist now. He was heartbroken over the loss of his brother and cried all the time. And his asthma was the worst it had ever been.

Since Peter refused to go to see the therapist, she came to see him at his parents' home. He said he had nothing to say to her, so she sat and watched TV with him for two hours, without saying a word. And then she thanked him for letting her join him, with a friendly smile, and left. He told his parents she had annoyed him, he hadn't said she could watch with him. But he didn't object when she came back the next day, and he ignored her again.

Out of the blue, after watching TV for a week with the therapist, Peter started talking about school, and not wanting to go back to NYU. He mentioned some of his childhood friends in Chicago, but he never said a word about Ben, Anna, or the hurricane. She asked him about the dog, and he said he had been a gift from a friend. She knew the story of how Peter had saved him, and that he had belonged to Ben, but she said nothing and nodded. Mike seemed to like her when she came to visit, which helped. And she asked Peter what his favorite movies were, and brought DVDs of them on subsequent visits. She brought mostly funny ones, and they laughed together sitting on the couch in the family room, where he preferred to hang out, often sitting in the dark with the lights off for hours, listening to music and staring into space. But laughter formed the first bond between Peter and Gwen. He was actually smiling when she left, after they had spent two hours laughing at a movie he had loved as a kid. He hadn't seen it in years, although he had told Ben about it once.

They'd been watching movies and TV together for two weeks when Peter said something about his hair and how weird it looked.

“It'll grow back,” Gwen said, looking confident. “That happens sometimes when people go through something really hard or shocking, like a divorce, or a plane crash, or the loss of a relationship or someone they love.” Peter didn't speak again that afternoon, but she could see the firmly closed door opening a crack. And the next day, out of the blue, as they were watching
Star Wars,
he mentioned Ben.

“My friend died in New York in the hurricane.” He never took his eyes off the screen as he said it, and didn't look at her. She could see that his body was tense, and a thin veil of perspiration appeared on his forehead.

“I'm sorry,” she said quietly. “I know how hard it is to lose a good friend.” She had lost her identical twin sister in a fire when they were in medical school together, which was what had led her into specializing in PTSD. Losing her twin had nearly killed her, but Peter had no way of knowing. But the tone of her voice made him sense that she understood.

“Mike was his dog,” he admitted for the first time. “His parents let me keep him, because his little brother has asthma. I offered to give him back. We were in the hurricane together.” She didn't say anything and waited to see what he would say next. “We didn't evacuate when we should have,” Peter confessed, and then the dam suddenly broke and he told her the whole story as he sat on the couch and sobbed like a child.

“You couldn't know it would be the wrong decision,” she said gently. She and her twin had gotten separated and had taken different routes out of the building. Her twin couldn't know she'd chosen the wrong one, and Gwen wanted to go back to look for her, and the firemen wouldn't let her. It took her years to forgive herself for getting separated from her at the outset. “A lot of people didn't evacuate when they should have. And on the sixth floor, I guess you figured you'd be okay.”

“It sounded like the building was coming down, so I thought we should get out the next morning. We should have stayed, I didn't know how strong the currents would be. It was moving so fast, I don't even remember what happened when I jumped in. I suddenly saw Mike and grabbed him, and then they pulled me into the boat and I told them to look for Ben, but they couldn't find him. I kept waiting for them to bring him to the hospital, but they never did. I couldn't believe it when Anna's mom told me. She was my girlfriend.” He explained what the therapist already knew from his parents. “She knew Ben all her life. She probably hates me now for what I did.”

“You didn't do anything wrong, Peter. You both made a decision to make a run for it, which would have been the right decision if the building collapsed. A lot of those old buildings did. Ben didn't have to go with you. You both wanted to, and you tried it. You're not responsible for what happened after that.”

“I think I talked him into it. And I jumped in first and lost sight of him. We should have held hands or something.”

“The water would have pulled you apart in a second, just like it did with the dog—it pulled Mike away from him.” Peter hadn't thought about that, or about Ben's free will not to go with him if he didn't want to. It introduced a new element into the equation, although he still blamed himself. “What if you had died and he didn't? What do you think he would say, and feel?”

“He'd feel like shit, like I do. And we were assholes for staying.” He smiled at her. “We thought it was kind of funny at first, and like it would be nothing. We bought a lot of junk to eat, and we wanted to watch it. Anna tried to talk us into coming uptown with her, but we didn't want to. We thought they were just girls so they were chicken.” He was telling Gwen the truth.

“What's she saying now?”

“I don't know. I delete her texts without reading them. We kind of broke up when I left. I knew we'd remind each other too much of Ben. It changed everything when he died. And she probably hates me for not saving him.”

“Do you want to talk to her?” Gwen asked quietly, and he shook his head. “Do you miss her?”

“I miss him,” he said sadly, and cried again, for a long time. “I miss him so much. He was the best friend I ever had. And it's my fault he died.” She didn't argue with him and let him sit with it for a while.

“Do you think it's possible that it
isn't
your fault? Even if you don't believe it right now, will you accept my word that it really isn't, and it was out of your control?”

“Maybe,” he said after he thought about it, “but I'm sure his parents blame me for it, and they're right.”

“What if they don't blame you? What if no one blames you, except yourself? Do you think you could be wrong about it?” He shook his head then. “Do you think Ben would blame you?” Peter shook his head again and looked at her.

“He was a great guy. He would never blame me.”

“Maybe we ought to start there,” she said, latching on to a positive. “Maybe we should let Ben make the decision here. If he wouldn't blame you, he gets my vote. What about you?” He was pensive again, and seemed less tormented when she left a little while later.

It was slow progress after that, as he worked his way through it. She offered him medication to help him sleep, but he declined. He said he wanted to face everything squarely, and he was courageous about it as they talked about all the events in their daily sessions. And three weeks after she had started with him, Peter sat down to dinner with his parents. He didn't say anything or talk to them, but he ate a reasonable meal. He joined them at the dinner table every day after that, and eventually said a few words to them, and he started to gain weight back again. And the hair loss stopped soon after, and he had peach fuzz and then duck down in the bald places. And little by little, his mind followed his body and began to heal. Their toughest battle was his blaming himself for Ben's death.

With Gwen's help, Peter wrote a beautiful letter to Ben's parents, telling them how he felt, how responsible and how wrong he had been, and how guilty he thought he was. Jake Weiss responded almost immediately with a letter of incredible sensitivity and eloquence, explaining that they in no way blamed him for Ben's death, and how grateful they were that he had survived, and he assured Peter that Adam felt that way too. Peter opened their letter in Gwen's presence, as they had agreed he would, and Peter sobbed for hours after he read it, with regret and relief, and some release from the remorse that he'd been feeling. And eventually he read one of Anna's texts and saw how worried she was about him and didn't blame him either. And he spent a tearful night with his parents, telling them every detail of what had happened.

The next day, he went out with his mother to the supermarket, and downtown to dinner with his parents. He wasn't ready to see any of his old friends, but he called Anna one night and they talked on the phone. She said she had applied to Barnard as a special case and was transferring there, and a few days later he told Gwen he might apply to Northwestern, so he could graduate, although he was missing a semester and he didn't know if he'd lose too many credits if he transferred. She told him that she was sure schools were making allowances for the hurricane survivors from schools that were still closed, which was the case for NYU. They weren't even sure if they would be open for the next semester. But he was talking about going back to school, and entering the world again.

Two months after he had come home, Peter looked normal again, and acted it, although he was still deeply troubled and having difficulty sleeping, and he cried when he thought about Ben, or talked about him, but he was no longer so sure he was to blame and could see that he might not be. Gwen told his parents that it would all take time. They couldn't rush the process, he would have to heal in his own time. He still had a nasty scar on his arm from the night of the hurricane, and his mind was certainly just as marked, and needed time to heal. There might always be traces of it, just as there might on his arm, but one day it would no longer trouble him or keep him from leading a normal life.

They went to his uncle's in Chicago for Thanksgiving, as they did every year, and Peter appeared normal at dinner, although everyone had been warned not to mention the hurricane to him, or his friend's death, even to tell him they were sorry. They all followed the instructions to the letter, except his grandfather who had dementia, and somehow remembered hearing about the hurricane, and much to everyone's horror brought it up at dinner.

“I hear you were in a hurricane, Pete,” he said from across the table in a booming voice since he was deaf too. “How was it?”

“Pretty bad, Grampa. It was really scary.” He offered none of the details.

“Well, I hope you didn't lose your pants in the water and come out naked,” his grandfather guffawed, and everyone was so relieved, the entire table broke into nervous laughter, and someone changed the subject after Peter's answer.

“No, I kept my pants on, Grampa,” he said, smiling at him, and the moment passed. And his parents realized how much better he was to have been able to handle the awkward moment.

He called Anna a few times, and they enjoyed talking to each other, although it was no longer romantic, and they didn't talk about Ben. But it was nice to hear her voice, and she always asked about Mike. Peter was still seeing Gwen, and he told her three weeks after Thanksgiving that he wanted to go to New York for a day or two, and take Mike with him. She looked startled and asked him why.

“To see Anna,” he said quietly.

“To rekindle your romance with her?” From what he'd said so far, that surprised her, although anything was possible, and nothing was forbidden, except self-blame.