Over His Dead Body Read online

  After what felt like an hour and a half Marsha came into the garage looking like a movie star in her size zero slacks, high heels, and (now) pink cashmere twinset with little embroidered flowers traveling up and down the cardigan's placket. She pushed the button on the garage door, swinging it open and blinding Cassie with the morning light. Where did all that cashmere come from? Saks, Bergdorf's, Neiman's? The girl's hair appeared to have been carefully styled by Frederic Fekkai in the last five minutes, and huge sunglasses covered half her face, enhancing rather than disguising her very good looks.

  "What's the big hurry?" Marsha complained, taking the glasses off and frowning at her mother as she rattled the car keys.

  "Where's Teddy?" Cassie demanded, feeling hurt for so many reasons, she thought her heart would explode just like Mitch's brain.

  "He's having breakfast. He'll meet us there."

  Cassie shook her head. "I don't want him in Daddy's den."

  "Well, you locked the door. How's he going to get in?"

  So they'd checked. It was war. Cassie jumped out of the car and marched back into the house. Teddy was sitting at the kitchen table wearing khakis and one of his father's expensive Italian knit shirts. He was reading the sports section of the newspaper, eating a bowl of his father's favorite cereal, the one holdout from his childhood-Frosted Flakes, with the tiger on the box. "Hi, Mom," he said without looking up.

  "Teddy, what are you up to?" Cassie demanded.

  "I'm eating breakfast."

  "I don't want you in Daddy's files."

  "No problem. I don't want to know."

  "What do you mean you don't want to know?"

  "Whatever," he said, taking a huge bite, crunching loudly, swallowing, taking another, as if actually trying to infuriate her further.

  Cassie hesitated in the doorway. Her tone softened, though her heart remained stone. "What does ‘whatever' mean?"

  "Marsha's the one who wants to know. I told her whatever, too."

  "Teddy, what are you talking about?"

  Teddy didn't look up from the page. "Nothing."

  Something about the way he said "nothing" alarmed her. Teddy had been the one with the sweetest disposition in the family. Everybody else walked all over him. It occurred to her that with the good business sense inherited from his father, maybe Teddy was the finagler. It had to be one of the three of them. Would Mitch protect his children if they went crazy with the spending? Marsha? Never. But his boy Teddy…? She considered it. Teddy was his father's favorite. Cassie couldn't see Teddy at Bergdorf's, though. He probably didn't know where it was. Not Teddy. "Well, are you coming?" she asked finally.

  "If I have to," he muttered.

  From the garage, Marsha called out, "For God's sake, what are you doing in there?"

  "Yes, you have to, Teddy. Daddy wants to see you," Cassie told him.

  "Sure he does," Teddy mumbled, lifting the bowl to drink the milk.

  Cassie closed the kitchen door quietly, headed back into the garage, got into the Mercedes, and closed that door quietly, too. Something was up between those kids.

  Marsha was busy powdering her nose in the mirror. "I don't know what you're so worried about. Teddy got all of three hundred on his math SATs. You don't actually think he could read a bank statement, do you?"

  "Marsha, what's going on?" Cassie asked.

  "Nothing." Marsha started the engine and pulled out.

  Again that "nothing."

  "Teddy is no dummy," Cassie defended her son.

  "Yes, he is," Marsha said.

  Agitated by the sibling rivalry and all the things that she didn't know about the doings of her own family, Cassie grabbed Marsha's sunglasses off the dashboard. Carefully, she put them over the scarf tied around her head so they wouldn't come in contact with those awful stitches that were pulling her face so tight, she couldn't breathe at all. She felt as if she were choking to death from those stitches, and they itched like hell. If she could rip them right out of her head and go back to her old life, she would do it.

  How cruel it was for Marsha to wave those Tiffany receipts with her signature on them at her and to look so young and great when her father was in the hospital and her mother was falling apart. Cassie was so hurt, she didn't say a single word all the way to the hospital. In the parking lot, she switched her attention to Mitch so sick in intensive care and composed herself for him. She went into the hospital lobby, determined to become the family hero. She'd bring Mitch back from the dead. He'd be so grateful for her help and support that his character would change completely. He'd give her his money to manage, and they'd all live happily ever after. With this strategy all planned out, she marched down the glass corridor into the wing that housed the Neurological Intensive Care unit.

  "How is Mitchell Sales?" she asked the tough-looking nurse guarding the nine glass rooms reserved for head traumas.

  "He's doing just fine," Nurse Helen Gurnsey said smoothly without looking at her. "His doctor has been on rounds already. Don't stay too long, honey. We have a five-minute rule here."

  Five minutes! Cassie's breath caught. What could she accomplish in five minutes?

  "You okay, honey?" Now the nurse looked up at her with just a hint of concern.

  "Yes, fine," Cassie said. She didn't want any more sympathy for the car crash she hadn't had.

  Two picture-windowed rooms down, she slipped into Mitch's cubicle, which was packed with expensive computerized monitoring devices and the spiderweb of plastic tubes that kept those oh-so-important fluids moving from plastic bags to Mitch's inert body and out of his body into more plastic bags. They still looked obscene. The respirator pumped air into his lungs, and the sound was enough to unnerve anyone. "Doing just fine" seemed to mean unchanged. The space was still too cramped to accommodate a visitor's chair, so Cassie stood by the bed and looked at the pathetic creature her husband had become.

  "Mitch?" she whispered. "Can you hear me?" She saw him lying there and was actually, truly touched by his vulnerability. It was the first she'd ever seen in him. In recent years, with his great success, he had developed a slightly sarcastic, even sneering way about him that always made her nervous in his presence. Whenever he came in the door, she could feel her body begin its dance of anticipatory agitation. It was as if he came home looking for something wrong, which made him find something wrong. It was always some omission on her part that she could never guess in advance. Right now there was nothing critical about him except his condition.

  Like yesterday, his eyes were half open. The young Dr. Wellfleet had told her that if the pupils were enlarged, maybe a blood vessel had exploded. Or something. Now that Mitch was stabilized, though, Mark Cohen, whom Cassie trusted, seemed to be afraid that more clots would form and move around-to his brain, his heart, his lungs. Maybe a whole freight train of them. Cassie thought of those blood clots traveling through Mitch's arteries that had to be badly clogged with foie gras and hollandaise. Maybe they wouldn't make it through.

  As she studied him, immobilized and helpless, a quartet of thoughts played in counterpoint in her mind: IhatethismanIlovethismanIhopehelivesIhopehedies. And then the fugue played more slowly. What will I do without him? Where will I go? Who will I be with? How can I manage my children, who think I'm the enemy? Oh God, help me please!

  Yesterday she'd been so stunned by Mitch's great fall that she hadn't been able to listen to all the things Mark had to say about those pupils and clots and vessels. But now she leaned over to see for herself what state Mitch's pupils were in. His eyes were not open wide enough for her to get a good look. She didn't want to pry them open with that picture window exposing them so clearly to view from anyone passing in the hall, so she gave him a tight little smile.

  "Honey, it's Cassie. The nurse says you're doing just fine," she said brightly, figuring that she'd just used up about four of her five minutes. Those fake signatures of hers burned in her gut and hampered her breathing. The I-hate-this-man theme came up loudly, drowning out the others
.

  "Mitch, honey. I don't have a charge account at Tiffany's, or Bergdorf Goodman. I don't have a Chase MasterCard. In fact, I don't have a single account with only my name on it. There's been some kind of mix-up." She said this very sweetly. He was in intensive care, after all.

  His eyes remained at half-mast.

  "You're doing fine," she said stoically. "Can you hear me? We have a few things to talk about."

  Fugue: Why would he talk now if he never has before?

  "Sweetheart, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand. We're going to get you out of this. Is it Marsha? She's certainly had her behaviors over the years. But steal in my name? Mitch, tell me who it is. Marsha, or Teddy? Teddy wouldn't… would he?"

  She stroked his left hand with two fingers, trying to feel some tenderness for a man who'd kept a big secret like this. Maybe this was the reason he'd been so hard on Marsha. Cassie's heart beat like a jungle drum. But why would he cover up for her to her own mother? Mitch's nails were manicured. Hers were not. She'd never been that interested. But his hand was bloated. His face was empty, slack. His color was scary. The machine breathed noisily. Tentatively, she curled his fingers around hers. "Squeeze my fingers if you can hear me," she said. "Come on, honey. Help me out."

  Nothing.

  "Mitch, you're going to be okay. I know you are. We have to establish some kind of communication here. I want you to know I'm here for you all the way. I can't stay with you. They won't let me. But I'm with you. Show me you know I'm with you."

  Nothing.

  Tears filled her eyes because he was so out of it. She told herself that people sicker than this survived every day. They had total recoveries all the time. The miracle of modern medicine. Total.

  Cassie blundered on. "Honey, can you wink? How about this. Wink once if you can hear me, and twice if you can't."

  He didn't wink. He didn't move. Nothing. Maybe a little gurgle. But then again maybe not. His torso was thick. His stomach protruded even when he was lying down. He'd gotten so fat. He had a forest of black hair on his bare arms. A tube in one nostril drew out his stomach's gastric fluids. A tube in his other nostril suctioned mucus from his respiratory system. This was disgusting to observe. Cassie tried to assign some tenderness to the lump that was her husband. She searched her memory for loving moments when they'd been happy together, when he'd held her hand or kissed her or told her she was a good woman, after all. But those memories were curiously absent in recent history. She scoured her mind for them frantically the way she scoured for her wallet throughout the house when she knew it was mislaid but present there somewhere. She was sure the absence of recent happy memories was due to her present frame of mind and that down the road when she returned to look for them, they would be there in plenty.

  Instead, the memories to which she had easy access were old scars, the two occasions she returned home from the hospital after giving birth to their two children when Mitch had looked at her with a perfectly straight face and asked her what she planned to serve him for lunch. She remembered his looks of disdain at gifts she gave him that weren't good enough, and the way he abruptly changed the subject when she asked where he'd been and what he'd done when they were apart. Recent inflicted injuries that had seemed like thoughtless slights, but not intentional hurts. She thought he'd become insensitive with success, not mean.

  "Mitch, I know you're not in a coma. This is what you always do," she said, getting impatient now. The least he could do was wink. Other stroke victims could wink.

  Whoosh, whoosh. Click, click. Not Mitch. He wasn't even going to try. He was holding out as usual. She tried another tack.

  "Mitch, the kids were going through your files. Teddy says you're going to be audited. If you don't wake up, I'm going to have to deal with this myself." There, it was out. Guiltily, she sneaked a look out the window to see if anyone was watching. She was talking to him harshly, raising forbidden subjects. He was supposed to take it easy. He was supposed to feel it was safe to come back into the world.

  A voice came up, loud and urgent. "Code, room six." Doctors and nurses rushed out. Lots of noise and urgency. Everyone converged on the room across the hall. After several intense minutes, the curtain was drawn and it was over. The second one in two days. Cassie was shocked. This was how they died.

  "Oh God. Mitch, don't leave me." The words came out a cry from the heart if ever there was one. She dropped her chin to her chest and prayed. Save this man. Oh God, save him.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE CODE YESTERDAY IN THE HOSPITAL had been for a toddler who'd fallen off his s wing five days ago. Compared with the tragedy of three dead children in two days, Cassie's problems with her own children seemed like nothing, a pseudo problem. What were they really doing that so annoyed her? Teddy had come home and appropriated his father's best sports shirts, his most colorful socks and boxer shorts from his father's closet as if he were already gone. And he was eating all his father's favorite foods from the kitchen shelves.

  Teddy also couldn't stop humming George Michael's song "Freedom." On Saturday at the hospital he had spent all his time trying to locate and hang out with his surprising choice, Lorraine, a big-boned, overweight operating room nurse who wore polyester and had a Long Island accent. The Sales family did not have strong New York accents.

  On the positive side, Teddy's having to locate this girl in the very large hospital required some social skills. He was too shy to call her on the phone, so his strategy had been to hang around in hopes of running into her. On Saturday night, after Lorraine finished up assisting the emergency repair of a ruptured spleen, Teddy ran into her and asked her out for pizza.

  Cassie heard him return home just after midnight. On Sunday morning, he ducked out at ten-thirty, earlier than he'd ever gotten up in his life. He didn't arrive at the hospital to visit his father until three in the afternoon. By then she was steaming.

  "Teddy, where were you?" she asked when he found her with all the other visitors in the head trauma lounge.

  "I took Lorraine out to brunch," he said, grinning happily despite the family tragedy.

  "Where?" Marsha asked curiously.

  "International House of Pancakes."

  She snorted with contempt at his sudden sinking to the lowest possible food denominator.

  "Shut up. How's Daddy?"

  "The same," Cassie told him, thinking that her son looked happy. After all the praying she'd done for her wonderful, terribly shy boy to meet a lovely girl, Lorraine was the thanks she got.

  And Marsha! Well, Marsha was under some kind of constant advisory alert with Dr. Thomas Wellfleet-thirty-two, unmarried, and definitely on the prowl. They had called each other on the phone. They had met for a consultation in the hospital. Afterward, they had sipped a not very good Merlot and talked on Saturday evening about the case in a very pleasant restaurant on the Miracle Mile, the posh shopping mall near their house. While their father was in intensive care, her two children were having fun. They were going out, were dating. At home, they were talking together, whispering. They became instantly quiet whenever she walked into the room. In just one weekend they had become allies. Clearly, they were hatching some plot to take over her life. Cassie dreamed that they were four again and swept away in a giant flood that covered the whole North Shore of Long Island, sparing absolutely no one but her.

  During the many hours that Cassie waited in the visitors' lounge expecting Mitch to come out of his coma and return to normal any second, dozens of other patients' relatives schooled in and out, eating, drinking, telling one another their stories, and visiting their stricken family members who were usually too sick to recognize them.

  Dr. Mark Cohen came to see Mitch several times, and each time he stayed for a few minutes to comfort Cassie. He'd sit down next to her on one of the leatherette sofas for two and talk about the past, about the changes in their lives since they'd known each other. Having children, raising them, getting busier and busier. Mitch's phenomenal success, and his own lesser one.
Each time Mark settled on the sofa, he leaned close to her and examined her face carefully with caressing fingers. It never seemed to bother him that other visitors were around or the TV set was on. He must be used to them, Cassie thought.

  After the first time he saw her on Friday, he arranged for a nurse to bring gel packs for her face every few hours. After that he had an investment in her convalescence and came to check on the results. He must have wanted a good result with at least one person in the family. On Sunday morning Mark took her for a short walk. On Sunday afternoon he took her for coffee in the hospital cafeteria. She had hers with hazelnut creamer and toyed with the spoon. She wondered how much he knew about her husband and family that she didn't know. Mitch had been a phenomenal success?

  "Thanks for the gel packs," she began.

  "Oh, forget it. It's nothing. You're looking much better today. Are you using those creams I suggested?"

  "Yes, Marsha got them for me." She got the feeling that Mark, like Mitch, was avoiding all the meaningful subjects.

  "Your doctor probably didn't tell you to, but just between you and me, it doesn't hurt at this point to start softening up the stitches. When are they coming out?" he asked, sticking to her face.

  "I'm not sure. Maybe Thursday."

  "You're looking very good, really." Then he gave her a frankly admiring nod that made her think he'd lost his mind.

  "Thanks, Mark, tell me about Mitch."

  "Honey, he's holding his own. That's all I can say for now. Have you checked into his arrangements for a catastrophic event?"

  Cassie stirred her coffee. "I don't want to go into the files just yet."