Too Good to Be True

Suddenly aware of how much I missed my mother, I bolted from the cabinet, past Mémé’s skinny, vein-bumpy legs, and charged toward my mother, who was sitting at the kitchen table, still in her coat. She was holding a baby wrapped in a soft pink blanket.

“My birthday present!” I cried in delight.

Eventually, the grown-ups explained to me that the baby wasn’t just for me, but for Margaret and everyone else, too. My present was, in fact, a stuffed animal, a dog. (Later that day, according to family lore, I put the stuffed dog in the baby’s crib, delighting my parents with my generosity.) But I never got over the feeling that Natalie Rose was mine, certainly much more than she was Margaret’s, a feeling that Margaret, who was seven at the time and horribly sophisticated, nurtured in order to get out of her sisterly responsibilities. “Grace, your baby needs you,” she’d call when Mom asked for help spooning yogurt into Nat’s mouth or changing a poopy diaper. I didn’t mind. I loved being the special sister, the big sister after four long years of being bossed around or ignored by Margaret. My birthday became more about Natalie and me, our beginning, than the day I was born. No, now my birthday was much more important. The day I got Natalie.

Natalie did not fail to delight. A stunning baby, she became more beautiful as she grew, her hair silky and blond, her eyes a startling sky-blue, cheeks as soft as tulip petals, eyelashes so long they touched her silken eyebrows. Her first word was Gissy, which we all knew was her attempt to say my name.

As she grew, she looked up to me. Margaret, for all her gruffness and disdain, was a good sister, but more of the type to take you aside and explain how to get out of trouble or why you should leave her stuff alone. For playing, for cuddling, for company, Nat turned to me, and I was more than willing. At age four, she spent hours putting barrettes in my kinky curls, wishing aloud that her own blond waterfall of smoothness was, in her words “a beautiful brown cloud.” In kindergarten, she brought me in for show-and-tell, and on Special Person’s Day, you know who was at her side. When she needed help in spelling, I took over for Mom or Dad, making up silly sentences to keep things fun. During her ballet recitals, her eyes sought me out in the audience, where I’d be beaming back at her. I called her Nattie Bumppo after the hero of The Deerslayer, pointing to her name in the book to show her how famous she was.

Thus went our childhood—Natalie perfect, me adoring, Margs gruff and a little above it all. Then, when Natalie was seventeen and I was in my junior year at William & Mary, I got a call from home. Natalie had been feeling crummy for a day or so. She was not one to complain, so when she finally admitted that her stomach hurt pretty badly, Mom called the doctor. Before they could get to the office, Nat’s appendix ruptured. The resulting appendectomy was messy, since infected fluid had spread throughout her abdomen, and she came down with peritonitis. She spiked a fever. It didn’t come down.

I was in my dorm room when Mom called me, nine hours away by car. “Get home as fast as you can, Grace,” she ordered tightly. Nat had been moved to the ICU, and things weren’t looking good.

My memories of that trip back home alternated between horribly vivid and completely blank. A professor drove me to Richmond International Airport. I don’t remember which professor, but I can see the dusty dashboard of his car as clearly as if I were sitting in that hot vinyl front seat right now, the crack in the windshield that flowed lazily down from its source like the Mississippi bisecting the United States. I remember weeping in the plastic seat in front of my gate, my fists clenched as the airplane crept with agonizing slowness toward the terminal. I remember my friend Julian’s face at the airport, his eyes wide with fear and compassion. My mother, swaying on her feet outside Natalie’s cubicle in the hospital, my father, gray-faced and silent, Margaret tight and hunched in the corner near the curtain that separated Natalie from the next patient.

And I remember Natalie, lying in a bed, obscured by tubes and blankets, looking so small and alone that my heart cracked in half. I took her hand and kissed it, my tears falling on the hospital sheets. “I’m here, Nattie Bumppo,” I whispered. “I’m here.” She was too weak to answer, too sick even to open her eyes.

Outside, the doctor spoke in a somber murmur to my parents. “…Abscess…bacteria…kidney function…white count… not good.”

“Jesus God in heaven,” Margaret whispered in the corner. “Oh, shit, Grace.” Our eyes met in bleak horror at the possibility we couldn’t imagine. Our golden Natalie, the sweetest, kindest, loveliest girl in the world, dying.

The hours ticked past. Coffee cups came and went, Natalie’s IVs were changed, her wound checked. A day crawled by. She didn’t wake up. A night. Another day. She got worse. We were only allowed in for a few minutes at a time, sent off to a grim waiting room full of old magazines and bland, nubby furniture, the fluorescent lights sparing no detail of the fear on our faces.

On day four, a nurse burst into the room. “Natalie Emerson’s family, come now!” she ordered.

“Oh, Jesus,” my mother said, her face white as chalk. She staggered, my father caught her and half dragged her down the hall. Terrified that our sister was slipping away, Margaret and I ran ahead of our parents. It seemed to take a year to get down that hall—every step, every slap of my sneakers, every breath was punctuated with my desperate prayer. Please. Please. Not Natalie. Please.

I got there first. My baby sister, my birthday present, was awake, looking at us for the first time in days, smiling weakly. Margaret careened in behind me.

“Natalie!” she exploded in typical fashion. “Jesus Christ hanging on the cross, we thought you were dead!” She wheeled around and charged out to smite the nurse who’d taken a decade off of each our lives.

“Nattie,” I whispered. She held out her hand to me, and you can bet that I promised then and there to make sure God knew how grateful I was to have her back.

“YOU DID WHAT?”JULIAN ASKED. We were strolling through the four-block downtown of Peterston, eating apricot danish from Lala’s Bakery and sipping cappuccinos. I’d already dazzled my friend with my story of clubbing the neighbor, completely outranking his tale of having successfully cooked chicken tikka masala from scratch.

“I told her I was seeing someone. Wyatt, a pediatric surgeon.” I took another bite of the still-warm pastry and groaned in pleasure.

Julian paused, his eyes wide with admiration. “Wow.”

“Kind of brilliant, don’t you think?”

“I do,” he said. “Not only have you taken a stand against crime in your neighborhood, you’ve invented another boyfriend. Busy night!”

“I just wish I’d thought of it earlier,” I said smugly.

Julian grinned, bent down to give Angus a piece of his pastry, then resumed walking, only to pause again in front of his place of business. Jitterbug’s Dance Hall, tucked between a dry cleaner and Mario’s Pizza. He peered in the windows, checking that everything was perfect within. A woman walking behind us glanced at Julian, looked away, then did a double take. I smiled fondly. My oldest friend, though he’d been a pudgy outcast when we’d first met, now resembled a clean-shaven Johnny Depp, and the woman’s reaction was fairly typical. Alas, he was gay or I would have married him and borne his children long ago. Like me, Julian had been burned romantically, though even I, his oldest friend, didn’t know the details of his long-ago breakup.

“So now you’re Wyatt’s girl,” he said, resuming our stroll. “What is his last name?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t invented that yet.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Julian thought a minute. “Dunn. Wyatt Dunn.”

“Wyatt Dunn, M.D. I love it,” I said.

Julian turned to flash a smile at the woman behind us. She turned purple in response and pretended to drop something. Happened all the time. “So what does Dr. Wyatt Dunn look like?” he asked.

“Well, he’s not terribly tall… that’s sort of overrated, don’t you think?” Julian smiled; he was five foot ten. “Kind of lanky. Dimples. Not too good-looking but he has a really friendly face, you know? Green eyes, blond hair. Glasses, don’t you think?”

Julian’s smile faded. “Grace. You just described Andrew.”

I choked on my cappuccino. “Did I? Crap. Okay, scratch that. Tall, dark and handsome. No glasses. Um, brown eyes.” Angus barked once, affirming my taste in men.

“I’m thinking of that Croatian guy from E.R. Dr. Good-looking,” Julian said.

“Oh, yes, I know who you mean. Perfect. Yes, that’s Wyatt to a T.” We laughed.

“Hey, is Kiki joining us this morning?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “She met someone last night and really thinks he’s The One.” Julian chorused the last few words along with me. It was Kiki’s habit, this falling madly in love. She excelled at finding The One, which she did often, and usually with disastrous results, becoming obsessed by the end of the first date, scaring the man away with talk of forevermore. If history repeated itself (and it usually did, as this history teacher knew quite well), she’d be crushed by this time next week, possibly with a restraining order filed against her.

So no Kiki. That was okay. Julian and I shared a love of antiques and vintage clothes. I was, after all, a history teacher, so it made sense. He was a gay man and dance instructor, so that made sense, too. Strolling along the crooked and quiet streets of Peterston, stopping in at the funky shops, the promise of leaves and flowers just around the corner, I felt happy. After a long, sloppy winter, it was good to be outside.

Peterston, Connecticut, is a small city on the Farmington River, accessible only by locals and clever tourists who excel in map-reading. Once famed for making more plow blades than any other place on God’s green earth, the town had gone from desolate neglect to a scruffy charm in the past decade or so. Main Street led right down to the river, where there was a trail for walking. In fact, I could get home by walking along the Farmington, and often did. Mom and Dad lived five miles downriver in Avon, and sometimes I walked there, too.

Yes, I was content this morning. I loved Julian, I loved Angus, who trotted adorably at the end of his red-and-purple braided leash. And I loved having my family think I was in a relationship, not to mention completely over Andrew.

“Maybe I should get a new outfit or two,” I mused outside of The Chic Boutique. “Now that I’m seeing a doctor and all. Something never worn by another.”

“Absolutely. You’ll need something nice for those hospital functions,” Julian seconded immediately. We entered the store, Angus in my arms, and emerged an hour or so later, laden with bags.

“I love dating Wyatt Dunn,” I said, grinning. “In fact, I may get an entire makeover. Haircut, mani, pedi…God, I haven’t done that in ages. What do you think? Want to come?”

“Grace,” Julian said, pausing. He took a deep breath, nodded to a passerby, then continued. “Grace, maybe we should…”

“Get lunch instead?” I suggested, petting Angus, who was licking the bag that contained my new shoes.

Julian smiled. “No, I was thinking more like maybe we should really try to meet someone. Two someones. You know. Maybe we should stop depending on each other so much and really get out there again.”

I didn’t answer. Julian sighed. “See, I think I might be ready. And you having a fake boyfriend, well, that’s cute and all, but… maybe it’s time for the real thing. Not that your fake boyfriends aren’t fun, too.” Julian had known me a long time.

“Right,” I said, nodding slowly. The thought of dating made a light sweat break out on my back. It wasn’t that I didn’t want love, marriage, the whole shmere… I just hated the thought of what one had to do to get to that point.

“I will if you will,” he prodded. “And just think. Maybe there is a real Wyatt Dunn out there for you. You could fall in love and then Andrew wouldn’t…” His voice trailed off, and his dark eyes were apologetic. “Well. Who knows?”

“Sure. Yeah. Well.” I closed my eyes briefly. Pictured Tim Gunn/Atticus Finch/Rhett Butler/George Clooney. “All right. I’ll give it a shot.”

“Okay. So. I’m going home to register on a dating Web site, and you do the same.”