Clear And Convincing Proof

“Sure. He knows this is the best facility for hundreds of miles, maybe all the way to Los Angeles.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Erica said. “Why would he try to drive out the best therapist and get control? Be second-rate or something.”

“That’s the stickler,” Stephanie said, nodding. “No one here understands it. But that’s how she blows. I’ve got to get back to work.”

It was a glorious late summer, Erica thought when she left Stephanie to walk for a few minutes in the garden. Dahlias, zinnias, marigolds, chrysanthemums…too many flowers to name were riotous, defying the calendar. Back in Cleveland there would have been a frost by then, but here in Eugene, it was a golden time of color everywhere. Working in her own yard one day, she had asked Darren when to expect the first frost. He had laughed and said Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or maybe not at all this year. Of course, she had thought he was kidding, but it was the end of September and flowers were still in bloom.

She had made friends with Darren’s son, Todd, who had been shy and silent at first, but she had known hundreds of boys his age over the years and had known not to push. Still more child than adolescent, with sun-bleached hair and high color on his cheeks, he had the grace and directness of a child, but responded like a serious young adult to a serious adult who treated him with respect. She was very respectful with him.

When he offered to show her his collection, she had rejoiced. His collection had turned out to be an assortment of posters. He had painted his room forest green with cream trim, and on the walls he had mounted his posters: lava fields, high mountain lakes, totem poles. She had been puzzled until he said, “We collect things, Dad and me. This year it was totem poles. I take pictures and we get them made into posters. Last year it was volcanoes. I think we’ll do trees next summer. You know, the biggest, the oldest, like that. I’m supposed to do the research.”

She had decided his Christmas present from her would be a bonsai tree.

Walking in the garden that golden afternoon, she thought briefly about Dr. McIvey, but decided he could not cast a very long shadow. He would be crazy to get rid of his best therapist and the two people who made the clinic work. He was too busy with his own practice to meddle. Then it was time to go to the upper lounge and read to her patients. She smiled as she realized what her phrasing had been: her patients.

6

“Bernie, what’s going on around here?” Erica and Bernie were having coffee in the staff lounge. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing. Greg looks ill and Naomi is snapping like a turtle. What’s up?”

“I wish to God I knew,” Bernie said after a brief hesitation. She helped herself to leftover Halloween candy. “Something is. All at once Annie’s a shareholder and Dr. McIvey is spending time going through the personnel files while Naomi stews and paces. Teri—you know Teri Crusak in the office?—she said that McIvey demanded the keys to the locked files, all the personnel records, and Naomi said to give them to him.”

“I didn’t even know there were locked files,” Erica said.

“Yeah, there are. Confidential stuff about the staff. Not me. I’ve got no secrets. But others.” She shook her head. “Anyway, whatever’s in there, he’s got now.” She lowered her voice. “Stephanie said she wishes he’d eat something here. She’d season it with arsenic.”

Erica remembered something else Stephanie had said, that McIvey was out to get Darren, that he had tried to get his personnel records a few years back and had not been allowed access. Now he had them, or could easily get them.

Keeping her voice as low as Bernie’s, she said, “Stephanie thinks he’s targeted Darren. Do you?”

“Sure. And now that Annie’s going to be around even more, doing some of the stuff McIvey’s mother did, it’s like he’s stoking the fire.”

Annie and Darren? Erica lifted her cup, then put it down again. Annie and Darren. She had seen his expression that one time, the hurt and anger.

“Nothing to it,” Bernie continued, “but you put kindling on a spark and fan it a little, lo and behold! you get a blaze. Maybe he’s counting on something like that, to use as an excuse to get Darren out. Or else he’s just plain stupid, and I don’t think anyone ever accused David McIvey of stupidity.”

“Were they…? I mean before she got married, were they going out?”

“How it was,” Bernie said, “she came here when she was still just a kid, and he treated her like a kid for about a year. But she was sort of in a hero-worshiping phase, and he was the hero. Gradually he seemed to notice that she wasn’t just a kid. He backed off. He thought he was too old for her. He’s what, about thirty-eight now? I think that’s right. Anyway, we were all watching to see how long it would take for her to get through to him. About a year, a little more. Well, McIvey came along and spotted her and said, I want that, and what David McIvey wants, David McIvey gets. Like David and Bathsheba. You know the story?”

Erica nodded. Her lips felt stiff, her mouth dry. She took a sip of coffee, then said, “I can’t believe there’s anything going on now.”

“But she’ll be around a lot more, not stuck back in the office. Old Mrs. McIvey was here all hours when it was fund-raising time, showing people around, having talks with Darren.” She shrugged. “We’ll see.”

That afternoon Annie dropped in on Naomi in her office. “Are you busy? Can we talk?”

Naomi closed a folder on her desk and stood up. “Let’s go to the house. No one will disturb us there. And I could use a cup of coffee.”

They walked out together. It was a cold, sunny day, with thin cirrus clouds streaking the sky in the west. Annie stopped to sniff the air. “It’s going to rain. Back home I used to go out to the bay and watch the sky move in. I thought of it as the sky eating the ocean, moving in to eat the land. The first gale of the season was always exciting. I never got over that excitement when the first gale blew in. Our lower pasture flooded every year,” she added. A sharp memory surfaced and she saw herself as a little girl, her hair wild in the wind, saw how the cattle—black-and-white like picture-book cows—all turned to smell the ocean, the approaching storm front. She shook herself. “Not quite the same here, but I like the first storms of the season.”

They entered the house through the back door into the kitchen, and while Naomi was busy with the coffee, Annie wandered about the room, as if checking to make certain it was how she remembered from when she had lived there. The same silly salt and pepper shakers—Jack Sprat and his plump wife; the same African violets in bloom on a windowsill—they were never out of bloom, it seemed; the same yellow vase with fresh flowers…

As Naomi waited for Annie to begin, she got out mugs, sugar and half-and-half. Annie always used enough cream to turn her coffee nearly white.

Annie had come to a stop at the back door where she stood gazing out at the herb garden: rosemary, thyme, silvery-green sage, feathery fennel and dill, dark-purple basil, bright-green basil…It was like an illustration from a book about medieval convent gardens. Annie could imagine the cloaked and hooded figures out there with cutting baskets. The coffee was ready. She turned back to the room, to the table where Naomi had already taken a chair and was pouring.

Annie liked the fragrance of coffee more than the taste, she thought, as she took a seat opposite Naomi. Then without preamble she said, “Why did David give me five shares?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“He said it was a formality.”

Naomi nodded. “In a sense it is, I suppose, but there’s more to it than that. As a member of the board of governors, you certainly have a right to know the issues.” She told her most of it, leaving out only the part about Donna Kelso’s will and how her death before a court decision was handed down would change the equation. “So it was fifty percent versus fifty percent in favor of, or opposed to, a nonprofit foundation. Eventually he’ll try to find a way to force a vote for a change of mission, to turn the clinic into a surgical facility. That’s what he really wants.”

“But he gave up some of his voting power by giving me shares,” Annie said.

“He had to give up shares or take on a workload that he couldn’t possibly handle. He had no choice.”

“There’s something else,” Annie said after a moment. “He said to be sure to ask you how Mrs. Kelso is doing. Why? What does that mean?”

Naomi drew in a breath. He knew, she thought. He was letting them know he was aware of Donna Kelso’s will. His attorney might have tricks of his own to use to string out everything until the matter was settled by the death of Donna Kelso. And until then he would use Annie to maintain the impasse the equality had created.

Hesitantly, uncertain for the first time, she told Annie about the terms of Donna Kelso’s will.

“He’ll win,” Annie said when Naomi became silent. “He’ll have the McIvey Surgical Institute.” She tasted her coffee, put it down again. “It isn’t even for the money,” she said. “He really doesn’t care about money.” Abruptly she stood up. “Thanks, Naomi. I have to go. See you tomorrow.”

Naomi watched her rush away, then continued to sit at the table thinking she had never hated anyone in her life the way she hated David McIvey. She had seen Annie change from a happy, laughter-loving child into a woman with shadows in her eyes, with a strained expression when her husband’s name was mentioned and an almost total withdrawal into some other space when he was present. David McIvey had marked her. And he would drive Greg out without a moment’s hesitation, destroy Darren, destroy the clinic. All in a day’s work, inconsequential. Collateral damage, she thought bitterly. That’s what he would bring about on his march to where he was driven to go.

She agreed with Annie—it was not for the money. As a surgeon he was making a lot of money already, and apparently spending little. No yacht, no private plane, no palatial mansion. He didn’t collect art. Annie had said the condo was almost sterile, and neither of them wore expensive jewelry, except for her wedding ring. What was driving him was more compelling than money. Power? In the operating room he was a god, power enough. She stood up and took the coffee mugs to the sink where she poured out Annie’s coffee, rinsed both mugs. She picked up a wooden spoon from the counter, then became still again, looking out the back window, over the herb garden, past the screening hedge, to the upper floor of the clinic.

“God wants a larger domain,” she said under her breath. “He wants people to come from all over the world to seek the healing touch of his magic wand, the scalpel, to pay homage….” She heard a snapping sound and looked down in surprise at her hands. She had broken the spoon handle in two.

The anticipated storm moved in that evening with gusting winds and driving rain. Annie stood at a window in the living room of the condo watching the fir trees dance in the rain. When David came into the room after changing his clothes, she said, without turning to look at him, “I’m going to vote for the foundation.”

“Annette, don’t be a fool,” David said. “You will vote exactly the way I tell you to. That’s a given.”

She shook her head. “I think the foundation is a good idea, the continuity is important.” She turned to face him. He was not even looking at her, but at the mail.

“The court will not agree to such a change when one board member is incompetent and another, with majority shares, is opposed,” he said, opening an envelope. “That isn’t how the system works. There’s no point in delaying the inevitable.”

“You could have a surgical clinic somewhere else,” she said. “You could build it to suit yourself, do it that way.” He didn’t ask her how she had learned about the surgical clinic. He had not told her, and he didn’t care who had any more than he cared what she thought about it. He never asked her anything.

“I already have a facility.” He threw the mail down on the coffee table. “My father built it with every intention of leaving it to me, and I intend to use it. I played second fiddle to that clinic all my life, and now I’m moving into the first fiddler’s chair. Period.”

For a moment his face was transformed by fury like that of a thwarted child, or a wronged youth, neglected and vengeful. The expression was fleeting, and once again his expression became as unreadable as that of a Greek statue. “Annette, listen carefully because I won’t repeat this. Greg and Naomi will be out of there in three months, and Darren sooner than that. How they leave is still open. With the unanimous highest recommendations of the board of governors, or with a serious reservation included in a report by a major shareholder? Greg is incompetent, and Naomi has no training in bookkeeping or anything else as far as I can tell. And Darren has a criminal record. He’s an ex-con, a drug addict who, I am afraid, has reverted to his old habit.”

She stared at him, then started to walk across the room, toward the hall and the foyer.

“Where are you going? Dinner is just about ready.”