LITMIR.BIZ

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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_ec822c68-3f3a-5405-aa45-0c7b92ad9df6">THE PAST AS PROLOGUE

      “Spencer, do you see this?”

      “Katie, I do.”

      “Her investments are shooting out of the sky. I’ve never seen anything like it. Her fund is growing at rate of thirty-four percent a year.”

      “Joy, should we have some lunch?”

      “Stop smiling at me like that, Larry, I know what your lunch entails. I can’t. I’m knitting.”

      Giggling.

      “Did you read the paper this morning? In Ethiopia, a grenade exploded at a wedding, killing the bride and three other people.”

      “Mother, please!”

      “What? Apparently it’s custom for guests to fire their guns at weddings in wild jubilation, though grenades are apparently more rare.”

      “You’ll have to excuse my mother, Detective O’Malley.”

      “Thank you, but I’m quite entertained by her, Mrs. Quinn.”

      “Mrs. Quinn, how are you feeling?”

      “I could be better, Dr. DiAngelo. I’m tired all the time. And I wanted to show you this.” There is a pause, the sound of shoes walking across the floor. “What do you think this is? Some kind of a weird rash, right?”

      “Allie, do you think you can stop showing the doctor your ailments with the police in the room?”

      “Oh, Detective O’Malley has seen worse than this, Mother. Haven’t you, detective?”

      “Much worse, and please—call me Spencer.”

      “No, Allie, I just don’t understand you at all. Why do this now? It’s just a rash!”

      “Oh, you can talk about your Ethiopian exploding brides, but I can’t show the doctor a real problem? The doctor is here, I might as well take advantage, right, Dr. DiAngelo?”

      “Absolutely Mrs. Quinn. Let’s see what you’ve got here.”

      There is sighing, clothes rustling, a silence, an ahem, a “Well, what is it?”

      “Well, Mrs. Quinn, it’s very serious, I’m afraid.”

      “Oh, no, what is it, doctor?”

      “I’m afraid—I think—I can’t be sure, but I think it’s the Baghdad boil.”

      There is silence, a slight familiar snicker from a man’s throat.

      “A what?”

      “Yes. A tiny sand fly from the Middle East with a fierce parasite stewing in its gut that causes stubborn and ugly sores that linger for months, sometimes years.”

      There is a shrieking of incredulous disgust. “Doctor, what are you talking about? What sandflies from the Middle East? We’re in the middle of New York City! It’s just a little chafing, that’s all, very normal, just a little chafing.”

      “Larry!”

      “Yes, Joy?”

      “Stop torturing the poor woman, this is completely unacceptable. Tell her you’re an oncologist, not a dermatologist. Allison, don’t listen to a word he says, he knows nothing but cancer. He is just trying to rile you.”

      “Oh.” And then, “I find that completely unacceptable.”

      There is laughter everywhere.

      No one even noticed when Lily opened her eyes. She was propped up in bed, in her clean hospital room with beige walls, and her paintings everywhere, and white lilies everywhere because they just don’t listen. It seemed like mid-morning. In front of her was the TV, to the right of her was the open window with white lilies in front of it, with a bit of sky beyond them, her mother and grandmother were on that side, and on the other, to her left, sat Spencer. Behind him stood Katie, looking over his shoulder at the financial statements. To his right sat Joy, still knitting, the yellow sweater sizable now. Next to her was DiAngelo, standing close. Lily didn’t move, just her eyes blinked. It was Spencer who looked up from the statements, lifted his eyes, and noticed an awake Lily.

      Spencer said, “Lily, I think your broker deserves a raise. Because while you were lying about in the hospital, grafting marrow, she made you seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars.”

      “Sleeping Beauty is awake!” said her mother.

      “Lily, finally! I mean, we always said, oh, but did that child love to sleep, but I think you’ve outdone yourself,” said her grandmother.

      Lily couldn’t speak. The breathing tube was in her mouth. She moved her hand to remove the tube, and immediately started choking. “Good God,” she croaked. “How long have I been here?”

      DiAngelo put the tube back in her throat, adjusted the mask over her face, the clip over her nose, placed her hands back down on the blanket. “Since your transplant? Eighteen days. Don’t speak. Write it down on the Magna Doodle.”

      She pulled the mask, the nose clip, the breathing hose out again. Breathing, gasping. “Where’s Papi?”

      “Oh, you know your father,” said Allison. “He can’t sit still for a second. He’s out smoking. He told me this morning, let’s just go for an hour, Allie, and then we’ll take a walk in Central Park. He’s impossible.”

      Lily and her mother looked at each other for a few moments, Maui in their eyes.

      “It’s a good thing you woke up. You are about to miss your twenty-sixth birthday,” said Allison. “You can sleep through anything.”

      Lily said between breaths, “Do you see the picture I made for you?” She pointed to the oil on canvas of a little blonde girl in the close lap of a brown-haired woman on a bench in a village yard.

      “I see it,” said Allison. She said nothing for a second. “I don’t know who that’s supposed to be. Doesn’t look like me at all.”

      “Lily,” said Joy. “Come on, get up. You can’t be lying around all day. We booked a very large room at the Plaza to celebrate your birthday.”

      Lily turned her head to look at Joy inquisitively.

      Marcie came in. “Oh, look at this, I’m gone for five minutes and Spunky wakes!”

      “Yes, Spunky,” said Spencer, “get up. Because Keanu is playing in The Replacements and The Watcher. You’ve got double Keanu waiting for you.”

      Lily took the tube out. “Hey,” she mouthed. “Can you give him and me a minute?”

      They gladly filed out of the room, and Spencer came close to her, putting his head in the space between her opened arm and her neck. She held his head, caressed his grown-out hair. There were tears in his eyes he didn’t want her to see. This time it was she who said, “Shh, shh.”

      “Tell me,” she said, taking quick breaths of oxygen between her words, “did I miss anything?”

      “Nothing,” Spencer replied, his caressing hand on her face. “It is all as you left it.”

      In October Lily was off the respirator. By Thanksgiving, she was released from the hospital. She never went back to 9th Street and Avenue C. She stayed with Spencer until they found a floor-through apartment in one of the buildings in brand-spanking-new Battery Park City, all the way downtown overlooking the Hudson River, with fourteen-foot ceilings, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, plenty of closets, and a huge living room that became an art space appropriate for a girl preparing for her first gallery show. The living room had a 39th floor view of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. The whole shebang was quite something and didn’t set her back eleven million. “That’s because it has no crown molding,” pointed out Spencer.

      Once

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