The Believers by Zoë Heller Page B

Dad?"
    "'Is something up with Dad?'" her mother mimicked. "Yes, something's up. He's had a stroke. Two strokes. He's at the Long Island Hospital in Brooklyn."
    "No!"
    "He's unconscious."
    "Oh, Christ."
    "All right, don't get dramatic. This isn't fucking Oprah. "
    Rosa sighed. It was a matter of something like principle with her mother that bad news be handled with a minimum of fuss. The more dreadful the event under discussion, the more insistent she was on insouciance. Joel liked to tell the story of the time, early on in their marriage, when Audrey had miscarried on the 2 train and had called Joel from a pay phone, blood coursing down her legs, to tell him that she was "feeling a bit under the weather." Joel--not yet schooled in the art of interpreting her oracular understatements--had suggested impatiently that she take an aspirin and call him back later when he wasn't so busy. And Audrey, being the plucky little Brit that she was, had neither protested nor complained: she had simply boarded another train and taken herself off to the St. Vincent's ER. Rosa knew that she was meant to be impressed by this tale of her mother's true grit, but she had never quite understood why a young woman's refusal to ask for her husband's help in a crisis was so admirable. If the anecdote taught anything, she thought, it was the futility of her mother's show-off stoicism.
    "I've been calling and calling," Audrey was saying. "I can't believe you wouldn't bother to check your messages. Your selfishness amazes me." Rosa could tell her mother had been rehearsing this outrage. The complaint flowed like a recitation. She glanced back through the porthole at the girls on deck. Their T-shirts were billowing in the wind, like festive pennants. Chianti was doing her horrid dance again.
    "Are you there, Rosa?" Audrey said.
    "Yes, I'm here."
    "Because I can't be too long. I'm in the hospital. You're not meant to use phones in here."
    "When did this happen, Mom?"
    "I don't have time to give you the step-by-step, Rosa. The first one was in court. The other one was, I don't know, about ten-thirty."
    "What do the doctors say?"
    "What do you mean, what do they say? They say he's very sick."
    "I'll be getting in, in a few minutes," Rosa said. "I have to take the girls back uptown, but then I'll come straight to the hospital."
    "Oh, that's good of you," her mother said. "No rush or anything..."
    "Mom--"
    "He needs a calm environment, so for Christ's sake, don't be making a scene when you get here."
    "Why would I make a scene?" Rosa asked. But her mother had already hung up.

    Lenny was mooning about in the ICU corridor when Rosa arrived at the hospital.
    "Dad's having tests," he told her. "We saw him for a bit, but then they took him off again."
    Rosa studied her brother's face. "You're not stoned, are you?"
    "No."
    "I'll take that as a yes. Where's Mom?"
    Lenny led her down the hall to where Audrey was sitting with Karla in the Family and Friends Lounge, staring forlornly at the wall. She looked like a little girl in a lost-and-found booth at the fair.
    "Hello, Mom," Rosa said.
    Audrey's expression hardened. "Oh, she's finally joined us."
    Rosa looked at her sister. "Has there been any more news?" Karla, who was a hospital social worker, was the most likely to have absorbed and understood any medical information that had been dispensed.
    "They've done a scan," Karla said. "It showed there was activity on both sides of his brain, which is very encouraging. He'll definitely have incurred some damage, but from what they can tell so far, it's in the motor cortex, which suggests his speech hasn't been affected--"
    "Oh, none of them know what they're talking about," Audrey burst out. "They're all cretins--that's why they're working at this dump and not at a proper hospital in Manhattan."
    Karla took a ragged tissue from her pocket and began dabbing it at her eyes.
    "Don't start blubbing, Karla, please ," Audrey said.
    The room fell silent.
    "These people don't even