Chapter 14
As soon as Dr. Capello was in her arms, Allison regretted the force of her greeting. His shoulders were thin and bony, sharp as stainless-steel cutlery wrapped in a paper napkin. He smelled like a hospital, like Lysol and medicine. She started to ease up on her embrace, and he whispered, “Not yet, doll face. I’ve waited a long time for this.” So she clung to him, for his sake and hers, because she’d waited a long time for this, too.
“Missed you,” Allison whispered.
“Missed you more,” he said.
She pulled back from the embrace to look at him, at this man who should have been her father had the world worked out according to a child’s wishes and not adult rules and whims. He looked mostly the same as she remembered, except in negative. The hair Allison remembered as brown with streaks of gray was now gray with streaks of brown. His tan skin was now sallow and his brown beard now white as snow. Only the eyes were untouched by time. Bright brown eyes, full of mischief and full of joy, just like she remembered.
“It’s good to have you home again,” he said.
He patted her face and she grinned, happy as a child.
How she had loved this dear old man...how she had missed him. She’d missed his whiskers against her cheek. She’d missed the way he patted her back when he hugged her, rough and tender. She couldn’t recall a single instant when he’d lost his temper with them, or raised his voice in anger. When he did yell it was, “Be careful, kids! Watch each other!” as they ran from the house to the water. And they were careful because they loved him and never wanted to hurt him. Oh, Deacon talked with his mouth full. Roland forgot his homework. Thora made messes. Allison hated taking baths and would cry when anyone gave her a cross look. For all that, they’d been a happy family, if a bit mismatched and ragtag, and all thanks to this one lovely man who gave the best hugs in the world.
“Look at you,” he said, shaking his head and smiling. “You were a cute kid, but you’re a stunner now.”
“Stop it. You’re such a dad.”
“I swear, seeing you come down those stairs gave me an extra six months to live.”
“Then I’ll go back up and come down again,” she said.
“I wish that worked,” he said.
“Surprised?”
“You’re lucky I didn’t have a heart attack when my eldest told me you were here,” he said, shaking his head. “Never. I never dreamed... Hoped, yes, but never dreamed.”
“I dreamed,” she said. “But never hoped.”
He kissed her cheek again.
“How long are you staying?” he asked.
“I have to get on the road sometime today,” she said. “But no rush.”
He didn’t seem to like that answer but he didn’t argue with her about it, either.
“You been swimming yet?” he asked.
“Swimming? The water’s freezing.”
“Never used to stop you kids.”
“We swam in summer. Need I remind you today is the first day of October?”
“Hmm...how about wading, then?” he asked. “Will you go wading with me?”
“You got back from the hospital two seconds ago,” she said, looking over his shoulder at Roland, who’d come in from the kitchen. Roland stood in the kitchen door, quietly smiling at the two of them. It was the first time she’d seen him since last night. He wore the same clothes as yesterday except he’d changed from a yellow-and-black flannel shirt to red and black. There was so much she wanted to talk to him about but that all could wait. It would have to.
“Is he trying to talk you into letting him go skinny-dipping?” Roland asked.
“It’s on my bucket list,” Dr. Capello said.
“Either get a new bucket or get a new list,” Roland said.
“Do you really think we should go to the beach?” Allison asked him.
“I’m tired and I’m dying, but I’m not dead yet. And you better believe I’m going to spend as much time on the beach as I can before I go. With or without you, doll,” he said.
He said it all so casually, as if being tired were as much his issue as his dying.
“All right,” Allison said. “If Roland approves, we’ll go wading. But just wading. You keep your clothes on.”
“One of these nights when your backs are all turned...” he said as Roland helped him into a light jacket.
“I’d prefer it if we had as much time with you as possible,” Roland said. “If you don’t mind.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t mind. I’ll keep my clothes on. But only for you. And Allison. And anyone with eyes.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that,” Roland said. “Now you two go and have fun. Allison, don’t let him in past his knees.”
Dr. Capello sighed loud as the ocean breeze.
“How old are you now, Allison?” he asked as they walked to the deck door.
“Twenty-five.”
“Stay that way, kiddo. Never, ever get old.”
Dr. Capello certainly looked older and he looked ill, but Allison couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the terrible fact that he was dying, and dying very quickly. He walked slowly, but steadily. The tide was out and the wet, bare sand was packed solid, which made for easy walking when they reached it.
“Now this is nice, isn’t it?” Dr. Capello asked as they reached the edge of the water. That afternoon it was blustery and cool, but the sun was out and the water was a bright blue.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “You come out here a lot?”
“Every chance I get,” he said. “Ten years ago, I was out here on a day like today and it was so damn beautiful I said to myself, ‘Vince, you’ve done enough. You’ve done work you can be proud of. You’ve helped as many kids as you can. Time to call it quits and enjoy your family.’ I quit working that very month. Maybe I should have quit sooner.”
“I read the article on the wall in your office. You helped a lot of kids.”
“I tried,” he said. “I certainly tried. Failed with some. Succeeded beyond my wildest dreams with others. Did my best with the rest.”
“No one can ask for more than that from a doctor,” she said.
“You could,” he said. “Couldn’t you?”
She tensed, shrugged. She hadn’t planned on having this conversation with him so soon, or ever.
“You did your best with me,” she said.
“I failed you, doll. You and I both know it. You would have been back here to visit years ago if I hadn’t. It’s all right. You can say it. I carry the guilt with me every day.”
He seemed to want to clear the air between them and she admired him for not pretending everything was okay when it wasn’t. Pretending things were good when they weren’t was one of her talents. “I wanted to come,” she said.
A gust of ocean wind blew hard into them, a taste of the chilly autumn days to come.
“Roland said you don’t feel safe staying with us, even though he’d like you to.”
“Would you feel safe here if you were me?”
“Probably not,” he said. She appreciated his honesty.
“I don’t know how it all happened. I don’t know why. But it still scares me a little,” she said. “Wish it didn’t.”
“Let me ask you this—what do you remember about that whole situation?” he asked.
“Not much,” Allison said. “There’s an entire week I’m missing in my mind. I remember everyone going to the park but me and Roland.” She hoped she wasn’t blushing. “After that...nothing much. Isn’t there a name for that? When you forget stuff that happened before an injury?”
“Retrograde amnesia,” he said. “I was afraid of that. You hit your noggin so hard it scared me, and I fixed kiddo noggins for a living.”
“I kind of remember coming to in the hospital and my aunt being there. I’d never met her before, just talked to her on the phone. I definitely remember her telling me I couldn’t come back here.”
“I can’t say I blame your aunt.” He stuffed his thin hands deep into the pockets of his too-loose khakis. “But I shouldn’t have let her take you. Not without a fight, anyway.”
“Can I ask why you didn’t fight for me?” she said, and then immediately regretted the question. This was an old man, a dear man, a dying man. Surely it was wrong to give him the third degree five minutes after reuniting.
“Fear,” he said. “It’s integrity’s worst enemy. I was afraid your aunt would fight me for you. I was afraid she’d sue me. I was afraid the state might try to take the kids away from me for letting one of you get hurt so badly on my watch. Your aunt clearly cared about you. I knew you’d be safe in her hands, and I couldn’t say for sure anymore you were safe with us.”
“So you think someone did push me?” Allison asked.
“I think so, yes. And I even think I know who it was.”
“Who?” Allison asked, forgetting in the moment Dr. Capello was old and ill and dying. “Why?”
Dr. Capello grimaced.
“Dad?”
“It’s hard,” he said. “I took an oath.”
Allison understood. The Hippocratic oath. Doctor-patient confidentiality.
“Still...” he said. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter anymore. I don’t think you’re here to have a little boy arrested for a thirteen-year-old crime.”
“No, of course not. But if you know something...”
She waited, nearly holding her breath in her nervous excitement.
“You remember Oliver, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she said.
“He was a very troubled little boy.”
“Oliver,” Allison said. “I just... I mean, I believe you. You knew his situation better than I did.”
“Try not to let it upset you,” Dr. Capello said. “He was very young, and I doubt he knew what he was doing.”
“But why did he do it?” she asked. “Do you know? I never... I know I never did anything to hurt him.”
“Jealousy, I imagine,” Dr. Capello said. “He worshipped the ground Roland walked on and everyone knew you were his favorite.”
“I was?”
“Then and now, it seems.”
Allison glared at him. Dr. Capello raised his hand, wagged a finger.
“I see I hit a nerve,” he said. “When I was a surgeon, I hated hitting nerves. Now that I’m retired, I hit them on purpose.”
“Oliver,” Allison said, refusing to let him goad her into talking about Roland. “You really think he pushed me and called my aunt? Seriously?”
“I think that boy had motive, means and opportunity. And you better believe he was capable of it. You certainly wouldn’t have been the first child he’d hurt. He had problems even I couldn’t... I tried, though. I did try everything. That’s my one comfort about that boy is that I know I did everything I could for him. Sometimes you slay a dragon. Sometimes you cut off its head and three more grow in its place.”
“It was Oliver?”
Dr. Capello exhaled slowly and gave the tersest of nods.
Allison had to turn away from him to collect herself. The article on the wall in Dr. Capello’s office mentioned a boy he’d treated and fostered, one who had a tumor that grew back. Was that Oliver? It made so much sense.
“Doll?”
“I know this is going to sound awful,” she said, “but I feel like a hundred pound bird flew off my shoulder. I wish I’d known this years ago.” She turned back to him and gave him a trembling smile.
“I wish I could have told you,” Dr. Capello said. “And it doesn’t sound awful. It sounds human.”
Allison wanted to laugh in her happiness and relief, but contained herself for Dr. Capello’s sake. She knew. She finally knew what had happened to her. Oliver. Poor Oliver, she couldn’t even be angry at him. He’d been ill, like Dr. Capello’s grandparents. Not evil, but sick.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said.
“You’re welcome. But please, don’t say anything to the kids about this. They don’t know and it would upset them. Oliver went back to live with his family right after you left us,” Dr. Capello said. “I don’t want them blaming him for something he couldn’t help. And they were heartbroken when you left us.”
“Is that why you never told anyone about the phone call?”
Dr. Capello smiled and started walking again in the wet sand. In Roland’s bedside note he’d left her that morning, he’d joked there were “no secrets” in this house. In one day she’d discovered three—the phone call, Rachel and now Oliver attacking her.
“You don’t have children, right?” Dr. Capello asked.
“Not yet.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “You remember the day I picked you up at Whitney Allen’s group home?”
“Yeah, like yesterday,” Allison said. “Why?”
“You and another girl at the house had tussled. Or rather, she’d tussled with you and you’d gone running with your tail between your legs.”
“Yes, thank you very much for reminding me.”
He patted her face again.
“You poor little thing. You broke my heart the second I saw you. Red-cheeked and trying so hard not to cry. Miss Whitney called me to see if I could do anything for you. She said she needed a doctor to make a house call, but I knew she was hoping I’d take you home with me. Don’t be hurt by that. Whitney cared about you very much, but she had three other girls in the house—all of them older than you—and they had all finally started to get along. Then a little girl showed up who needed all of her attention and everything was chaos again. It’s not easy balancing the needs of multiple kids from different backgrounds. It’s like that old circus act—the man spinning the plates, keeping them up in the air, trying to let as few crash to the ground as possible. If I had told the kids that your fall wasn’t a fall, that there’d been a call to say there was a killer in the house...well, you can imagine what kind of chaos that would cause. I needed my kids to love each other and trust each other and trust me, too. Can you understand that?”
Allison swallowed a hard lump in her throat. She could hear the note of anguish in Dr. Capello’s voice, the note of pleading. He wanted her to understand the choice he’d made. And the thing was, she did.
“Makes sense,” she said. “If it had been Thora and not me who’d been pushed and we didn’t know who did it? I wouldn’t have slept for weeks. I would have been terrified I was next.”
“So you understand,” he said, nodding. “Oliver left right after you, and I decided to keep it quiet instead of stir up the kids. Please believe me, there hasn’t been a day that passed without me wondering if I did right by you. But I can see that you turned out better than I hoped.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said. She helped Dr. Capello take off his shoes and socks and then removed her own. “I’m not doing much with myself. Between jobs.”
“You know, a house on the ocean is a fine place to sit and think and figure out what you want to do with your life,” he said.
“You think so?”
“I know so,” Dr. Capello said. “That’s what happened to me. I came here, stood on the deck, looked at the ocean, looked at a big family with kids playing in the water and I knew that’s what I wanted. And then I went out and got it. You’ll get it, too, if you stay long enough. The water will tell you what to do.” He pulled his khaki trousers up and waded into the water up to his ankles. “Heaven,” he said with a happy sigh.
Allison followed him into the ocean, wincing at the sudden shock of cold water on her feet.
“I didn’t think you believed in heaven,” she said. “Deacon said you’re a humanist.”
“Junior’s been gossiping, huh? Not surprised. That boy’s a blabbermouth—God love him, someone has to,” he said.
“We were talking about Rachel,” she said. “And why she’s the reason Roland’s at the monastery.”
Dr. Capello winced. “Sore subject.”
“Sorry, forget I brought it up,” she said.
“No, no, no.” He waved his hand again. “Better to talk about it. I love my son. I want him to be happy. I simply would prefer he didn’t devote his life to an institution that I consider to be an enemy of human progress out of some misguided guilt for a long-ago tragedy.”
Allison’s eyes widened. “Enemy of human progress? Those are some strong words.”
“Too strong, I know,” he said with a sigh. “But I’m a scientist. We can’t count on the pie-in-the-sky man to fix our problems. Mankind causes its own problems. It’s up to mankind to solve them.”
“Maybe it helps Roland feel more at peace about Rachel.”
“He’s not going to bring her back into the world by taking himself out of it.”
“He says he needs God,” she told him.
“What he needs is a damn girlfriend,” Dr. Capello said.
“Be nice,” she said, chiding him as though she was the parent now and he the child. “You have to admit there’s good reason for believing in God and heaven and hell, even if they aren’t strictly real.”
“Give me one good reason to believe in heaven or hell, I dare you.”
“Evil?” she said. “Surely Hitler deserves to burn in hell, right? Rapists? Child abusers? Nobody wants them to get off scot-free.”
“Spoken like a poet,” he said. “Not a scientist. There is no such thing as evil.”
Allison boggled at him.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
“There are evil acts, yes. I grant you that. Murder. Rape. Child abuse. Absolutely those are evil acts if by evil we mean ‘harmful to the human race.’ But they aren’t caused by a red man with a pitchfork sitting on our shoulder. Take Oliver, for instance. He harmed animals, harmed children, lied about it without compunction or remorse. All the hallmarks of classic psychopathy. Was he evil? No, ma’am. He was sick. That’s all.”
“Is that what causes people to be psychopaths?” she asked. “Brain tumors?”
“Sometimes a tumor in the frontal lobe can profoundly affect the personality. Or lead poisoning in my grandparents’ case. Most people who fit the criteria for psychopathy are simply born with it. They have atrophy in key areas of the brain—the limbic region, the hippocampus, et cetera. In layman’s terms, they are born with broken brains. That’s the worst hand any child can be dealt.”
“So not actually evil, then?”
“Not evil. Sick. He was sick, and I tried to cure him. Didn’t work but give it a couple decades and we’ll have it all figured out.”
“A cure for evil?”
“A cure for evil is possible,” he said, nodding. “Mark my words.”
“I’ll mark them,” she said. “And if you love me, you’ll live long enough to tell me ‘I told you so.’”
“I’ll do my best, doll. Count on it.”
He took her arm in his and they strolled side by side into deeper waters. The ocean was cool enough to make her wince but not cold enough to send her running.
Dr. Capello looked happy, contented, but there were moments, little ones, when she saw the fear hiding behind his mask. Once, he stopped, simply stopped, and let the water swirl around his feet while he stared and stared and stared out into the water. Side by side they watched the waves roll in and break, roll out and break again. His shoulders sagged.
“Is it hard?” Allison asked. “Dying?”
“It is,” he said, nodding. “I wish I could say otherwise. But you’ve never heard of a happy person committing suicide, have you? I love my life. I love my children. I love my house. I love this ocean. I love every grain of sand under my feet. What’s that old poem? Only a happy heart can break?”
“Almost,” Allison said, and then recited the poem to him from memory.
“It will not hurt me when I am old,
A running tide where moonlight burned
Will not sting me like silver snakes;
The years will make me sad and cold,
It is the happy heart that breaks.”
When she finished, Dr. Capello applauded. She gave him a little curtsy.
“Sara Teasdale,” she said.
“The world needs people who can recite poetry from memory. My mother could, too. Kubla Khan was her favorite to recite. She loved those lines—‘Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man...’”
“‘Down to a sunless sea,’” Allison said, finishing the quotation for him.
“Ah, sweet memories. A thousand of them came running back to me with those words.” He patted her face tenderly. “You are staying, aren’t you? I know a very nice young man who’d be thrilled if you did,” he said with a wink.
“You want me to stay so I can seduce Roland out of the monastery?”
“If you don’t mind,” he said. “I’d appreciate it.”
“I do mind,” she said. “That’s terrible.” She laughed despite herself.
“I love my son,” he said. “And if I have to play dirty pool to make sure he’s happy and healthy and living a good life, you bet I’ll do it.”
“What if he’s happy in the monastery?”
“He’s hiding in the monastery, punishing himself, and it kills me to know it. You really want that for him?”
“Well...no. Not unless that’s—”
“You said you remember the day I met you at Miss Whitney’s, right?”
“Right.”
“You remember that you asked me to take you home with me?”
“I remember,” she said, nodding.
“And I did, didn’t I?”
“You did, yes.”
“Well, now I’m asking you to return the favor. Stay here with us. A few more days, a week, a month.”
“You’re playing matchmaker. It’s not going to work.”
“It’s working already,” he said. “And yes, I am. Shamelessly. Allison, I do not want to die knowing my son is going to spend the rest of his life in that prison of his own making. It makes me sick to my very bones to think of it. He had a childhood that broke his heart and mine, and I’m not about to let him spend the rest of his life punishing himself for something he did as a child. This is my final wish, doll. Will you help me?”
Allison swallowed a hard lump in her throat at the sight of the tears in Dr. Capello’s eyes. He meant it. It did kill him that Roland had left the world for the monastery. How could she say no to this man, this dear old dying man who’d brought her home with him to his children’s paradise? And now she knew who’d hurt her, so there was no reason not to, right?
“This is dirty pool,” she said.
“I have no shame,” he said. “I’ll beg if I have to.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll stay for a few days. But just for you.”
He pulled her into his arms for a long hug.
“Just for me?” he said, his tone teasing.
“And Roland. Just a little tiny bit for Roland.”
“Just for me and Roland?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, finally giving in. “Maybe for me, too.”