Don't Cry Now

by Joy Fielding

  “Welcome home,” said Nick, waiting for her at the top of the stairs.

  “What are you doing here?” Bonnie asked.

  “I live here,” he told her. “Are you here to see Mother?”

  “She said she wanted to talk to me,” Bonnie said, leaning over to smell the flowers of the wallpaper.

  “Come on up.”

  Don’t go, a little voice whispered as Bonnie turned over on her pillow.

  Bonnie started up the stairs, her fingers running along the wall beside her, tripping from flower to flower, like a bee gathering pollen. She reached the top of the stairs and stopped. The door to her mother’s bedroom lay open before her.

  Don’t go in there, a little voice warned. Wake up. Wake up.

  Bonnie slowly approached the door, seeing the shrouded figure of a woman sitting up in bed, her face in shadows. Suddenly, Amanda was at Bonnie’s side, tugging at her arm. “Mommy, Mommy,” she called. “Come on in. We’re having a party.” She produced a large, pointed paper hat and held it over her head. Immediately, blood poured down, soaking Amanda’s hair, covering her face and shoulders.

  “No,” Bonnie moaned, tossing from side to side in her bed.

  “It’s just spaghetti sauce,” Amanda giggled, strings of spaghetti twisting through her hair, like tiny snakes.

  “Have some,” Nick said, pushing a large wooden spoon toward Bonnie’s mouth.

  “Too many onions,” Bonnie said, swallowing, her stomach instantly cramping.

  “Bonnie,” her mother called weakly from the bed. “Bonnie, help me. I’m not feeling very well.”

  “Too much apple pie,” Bonnie told her. “We should have Dr. Greenspoon take a look at you.” She reached the bed, tried to make out her mother’s face in the shadows. Again, her stomach cramped. She doubled over, cried out.

  “Bonnie, what’s wrong?” Nick asked with Rod’s voice, then again from somewhere beside her, “Bonnie, Bonnie, what’s wrong? Bonnie, wake up.”

  Her mother shifted in her bed, her face slowly emerging from the shadows.

  Bonnie strained to see her, stretching forward in her bed, her heart pounding wildly, pains shooting through her stomach. The pains woke her up, intensifying as her eyes opened and she realized she was no longer dreaming. In the next minute, she was on her knees in the bathroom, throwing up into the toilet, Rod beside her, smoothing her hair away from her face.

  “It’s okay,” he was saying later, sitting beside her on the tile floor, holding her in his arms, rocking her gently back and forth, in much the same way she had held Lauren just days ago. “It’s okay. You’re okay now.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Bonnie groaned. “What was that?”

  “You must have caught whatever bug Lauren had,” he said.

  “I never get sick,” Bonnie protested.

  “It happens to the best of us.”

  “No,” Bonnie said, letting Rod help her to her feet, lead her back into the bedroom. “It’s just a bad dream. I’ll be fine in the morning.”

  “Get some sleep,” Rod said, tucking Bonnie into bed and kissing her on the forehead.

  “It’s just a bad dream,” Bonnie repeated, eyes closing as soon as her head touched the pillow. “I’ll be fine in the morning.”

  18

  “It’s just a few more blocks,” Bonnie told them. “We’ll be there in a minute.” She glanced quickly over her shoulder at Sam and Lauren in the backseat of her car, the abrupt motion sending a fresh wave of nausea spiraling like a corkscrew through her body. Don’t you dare throw up, she warned herself silently. You are not sick. You never get sick.

  So what was last night all about?

  Last night was about a lot of things, she told herself, concentrating on the road ahead. Last night was about Dr. Greenspoon saying too little, and Nick saying way too much. Bonnie jerked the car to a stop at a red light. How dare her brother come into her home, uninvited, unannounced, and proceed to take over her kitchen and disrupt her life, oozing charm and spaghetti sauce and impertinent questions. Did you know you have a grandfather, Mandy? Where did he get off calling her daughter Mandy? Nobody ever called her that. And now the child was insisting she liked it. Last night when Bonnie was putting her to bed, she’d asked Bonnie to call her Mandy instead of Amanda. Like Uncle Nick does, she’d said. No wonder she’d been sick.

  She should never have let him stay. As soon as she saw Nick standing there in her kitchen, she should have ordered him from the premises, told him he was no more welcome here now that he was out of prison than he’d been before he went in. That’s what she should have done. Why hadn’t she?

  “Is that it?” Lauren leaned forward in her seat, her elbows pressing into the front seat, her warm breath on the back of Bonnie’s neck as she pointed toward the sprawling white structure ahead.

  “That’s it.” Bonnie turned into the long winding driveway.

  “It looks pretty nice.” Lauren bounced back in her seat, Bonnie’s stomach lurching with every vibration.

  What was she doing back here? Bonnie wondered, looking for a place to park. Why hadn’t she stayed in bed, as Rod had advised before he left for the studio? Because it wouldn’t have been right to let Sam and Lauren come here on their own, she’d told him, and besides, she wasn’t sick, despite feeling flushed and faint. She took several long, deep breaths. I will not throw up, she said silently, pulling into an empty space at the far corner of the long lot, watching the scenery blur. I will not throw up again. I am not sick. I never get sick.

  She shut off the car’s engine and pushed open the door, swallowing the outside air in one sustained gulp. But the air was heavy with humidity and provided no comfort. Within seconds, Bonnie was coated in sweat, her bare arms glistening with perspiration, as if she’d been freshly varnished. “It’s hot,” she said as Lauren stepped out of the car.

  “Not really,” the girl said.

  “Are you feeling all right?” asked Sam.

  “Fine,” Bonnie insisted, bringing her hand to her forehead. Why was she feeling her forehead? She didn’t have a temperature. She wasn’t sick. She’d merely eaten too much last night. Something in her brother’s infamous spaghetti sauce hadn’t agreed with her, the same way that something in the dinner she’d prepared earlier in the week hadn’t agreed with Lauren.

  You must have whatever bug Lauren had, Rod said.

  “Which way?” Lauren asked, as they stepped through the front door of the Melrose Mental Health Center into the expansive lobby, Sam lingering, falling behind as they walked to the nearby bank of elevators.

  This was your idea, Bonnie wanted to remind him, still surprised he’d suggested it.

  They stepped into a waiting elevator, several people already inside, the correct button already pressed. The doors closed, Bonnie’s stomach sinking to the floor as the elevator lifted. She unbuttoned the top button of her striped shirt, pushed her hair away from her face, wiped some perspiration from her upper lip.

  The elevator bounced to a stop. Water rose to the top of Bonnie’s throat. She swallowed it down, once, then again, bolting from the elevator as soon as the doors opened, running toward the ladies’ room across from the nurses station.

  “Are you okay?” Sam called after her.

  She got to the bathroom, closed the door, and fell to her knees in front of the toilet, her body racked by a painful succession of dry heaves. “Jesus,” she muttered, trying to catch her breath, gasping for air. “How long does this go on?” Another spasm shook her, pummeling through her insides, like a boxer’s fists. Tears stung her eyes as she collapsed against the bathroom wall, her hair sticking to her neck and forehead, her body shaking, one second hot, the next cold. “I am not sick,” she said out loud, forcing herself back to her feet, confronting her image in the mirror above the sink. “Do you hear me? I am not sick.”

  Maybe you aren’t, her ghostly image seemed to answer.

  Bonnie splashed cold water on her face, and smoothed back her hair, pinching her ashen chee
ks in hopes of restoring some color to them. She pulled a small paper cup from its dispenser beside the sink and poured herself some water, trusting herself with only a tiny sip. “You’re fine now,” she admonished her reflection. “Understand? No more nonsense.” She pushed her shoulders back, took one last deep breath, and opened the rest room door.

  Sam and Lauren were nowhere around.

  “Sam?” she said, attracting the attention of an elderly gentleman wandering the halls in his pajamas.

  “Did you call me?” he asked.

  Bonnie shook her head, then wished she hadn’t, the motion upsetting her already delicate equilibrium. They’d obviously gone ahead without her. And why shouldn’t they? she asked herself, walking slowly toward Elsa Langer’s room. The woman was their grandmother, for heaven’s sake, even though they had little recollection of her, and she probably none of them. Still, they didn’t need Bonnie to make introductions. Probably she should just wait for them in the waiting area.

  Too late, she thought, as the door to Elsa Langer’s room swung open before her. “Remember me?” the old woman asked from her wheelchair, allowing Bonnie just enough room to step inside.

  “Hello,” Bonnie said absently, her attention focused on Elsa Langer, who was sitting up in her bed, propped up against several pillows, her lunch on a tray in front of her, Sam sitting in the chair beside her bed, Lauren standing beside her, both studying her blank face, seemingly mesmerized.

  “I’m Mary,” the woman in the wheelchair said. “I don’t think we were properly introduced the last time you were here.”

  “I’m Bonnie,” Bonnie told her, eyes riveted on Elsa Langer. Sitting up, the old woman looked even more fragile than she had lying down, her body a mere skeletal outline of a human being, her skin all but disappearing into the whiteness of her bedclothes and sheets, her eyes blank and unseeing, like empty sockets.

  “You came at lunchtime,” Mary said. “I already finished mine.” She indicated her empty tray. “Chicken soup, macaroni and cheese, and vanilla custard. That’s what I ordered. I don’t know what they ordered for Elsa.” She wheeled herself over to Elsa Langer’s bed and lifted the top off her lunch tray, revealing a singularly unappetizing-looking arrangement of soft beige foods. “Yep, same as me,” Mary said. “But she won’t eat it. She never eats unless I feed her.” She lifted a spoon from the tray, like a conductor raising his baton.

  “Can I do it?” Lauren asked immediately. “Please?” she asked the woman in the wheelchair.

  “Maybe,” the woman said. “Who’s asking?”

  “My name is Lauren,” Lauren told her. “Elsa Langer is my grandmother.”

  “Lauren, you said?”

  “Yes, and this is my brother, Sam.”

  “Sam?”

  Sam said nothing.

  “Didn’t know she had grandchildren,” Mary stated, staring at Bonnie. “Isn’t it funny? You live with someone for years, you think you know everything about them, and then you discover you didn’t know them at all. Don’t you think that’s funny?” she asked Bonnie.

  Bonnie ignored the question. “I’m sure she’d be happy if you fed her,” Bonnie told Lauren.

  Lauren smiled, although the smile was quick, almost too brief to notice. “Here, Grandma,” she said gently, lifting a spoonful of the chicken noodle soup to her grandmother’s mouth, the spoon gingerly prodding the woman’s dry lips apart. Lauren tipped the spoon toward Elsa Langer’s throat, brought it back empty. Some liquid dribbled down her grandmother’s chin, and Lauren quickly wiped it away with a napkin. “Isn’t that good, Grandma?” she asked, as Bonnie often asked Amanda. “Isn’t that good?” She tipped another spoon into the old woman’s mouth, then another. “She’s eating,” Lauren exclaimed proudly, another smile appearing, this one lasting slightly longer than the first. “Do you want to feed her, Sam?” she asked.

  Sam shook his head, slumped down lower in his chair, although his eyes never left his grandmother’s face.

  “She loves soup,” Mary proclaimed.

  “Do you remember us, Grandma?” Lauren was asking.

  Elsa Langer said nothing, her lips parting slightly to admit the spoon.

  “You haven’t seen us since we were really little. Do you remember us? Joan was our mother,” Lauren continued softly, her voice cracking at the sound of her mother’s name. “Do you remember her?”

  Elsa Langer slurped at her soup.

  “Joan is dead,” Mary said.

  “I’m Lauren, and this is my brother, Sam,” Lauren continued, her arm moving rhythmically between the soup bowl and her grandmother’s mouth. “We’re Joan’s children. Do you remember us at all, Grandma?”

  “I’m sure she knows deep down who you are,” Bonnie told her.

  “Why do you say that?” Sam asked, sitting up in his seat, leaning forward, eyes darting between Bonnie and his grandmother.

  “It’s just a feeling,” Bonnie admitted, the odor of the macaroni and cheese reaching up into her nostrils, curdling her stomach.

  “Does my grandmother ever talk to you?” Sam asked the woman in the wheelchair.

  “Maybe,” the woman replied. “Who’s asking?”

  “Sam,” he told her, his eyes rolling to the top of his head. “Sam Wheeler.”

  “It’s hard to keep all these names straight,” Mary announced. “I mean, we don’t have visitors for weeks on end, and suddenly, it’s like a parade.”

  “What do you mean?” Bonnie asked.

  “Another gentleman was here first thing this morning. A good-looking man too. Reminded me of my late husband, may he rest in peace.”

  “Someone else was here?” Bonnie asked.

  “Maybe. Who’s asking?”

  “Do you remember the man’s name?”

  “Maybe. Who’s asking?” Mary repeated stubbornly, prodding at her dentures with her tongue.

  “Bonnie, Bonnie Wheeler. Do you remember the man’s name?”

  “What man?”

  Bonnie closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “The man who was here earlier this morning.”

  “He didn’t say. But he was a good-looking man. Reminded me of my late husband, may he rest in peace.”

  “Can you tell me what he looked like?” Bonnie pressed.

  “He looked like my late husband,” Mary repeated.

  “Do you remember what color hair he had?” Bonnie asked.

  “I think it was blond,” the woman said.

  Bonnie immediately pictured her brother standing over the stove in her kitchen, his blond hair falling into his face.

  “Or maybe it was gray,” Mary said.

  Bonnie saw Rod’s face tilting toward hers as he’d tucked her in bed last night, his prematurely gray hair accentuating his boyishly handsome face.

  “Maybe it was brown,” Mary mused, unaware of the havoc she was causing to Bonnie’s insides. She suddenly thrust her dentures out of her mouth, balancing them on the tip of her tongue.

  “Oh gross,” Lauren said.

  Bonnie’s stomach reeled.

  Mary popped the dentures back inside her mouth, clicked them sharply into place. “Can I have her vanilla custard?” she asked, her hand reaching toward the tray.

  “I think my grandmother might like to try her custard,” Lauren said, with surprising authority, lifting the small cup of custard away from Mary’s grasp. “Wouldn’t you like to try some custard, Grandma?” Lauren scooped a tiny amount onto the edge of a small plastic spoon and placed it delicately on her grandmother’s tongue. “Do you like that, Grandma? Is it good?”

  Slowly, Elsa Langer’s face turned toward her granddaughter, her eyes slipping into gradual focus, like a kaleidoscope.

  “Grandma?” Lauren asked. “Grandma, can you see me? Do you know me? Grandma, it’s Lauren.”

  Elsa Langer stared at her granddaughter, as everyone in the room leaned forward. No one breathed. “Lauren?” the old woman said, the word a sigh.

  Lauren’s eyes grew wide with wonder. “Did you
hear that, Sam?” she whispered. “She knows me. She knows who I am.”

  “Grandma,” he said quickly, jumping out of his chair, lurching toward the bed, almost upsetting her lunch tray, “it’s me, Sam. Do you remember me?”

  “Lauren,” Elsa Langer repeated, eyes not moving from her granddaughter.

  “I’m here, Grandma,” Lauren said. “I’m here.”

  But the focus in Elsa Langer’s eyes was already shifting, retreating, disappearing.

  “Where does she go?” Lauren asked, several seconds later, when it became obvious she wasn’t coming back.

  “I’m not sure,” Bonnie said.

  “Do you think she really knew who I was?”

  “I’m sure she did.”

  Sam pushed himself off his grandmother’s bed, walked to the door. He said nothing, but it was obvious he was ready to leave.

  “Do you think she’s thinking about anything?” Lauren asked, watching her grandmother’s face.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think she must be thinking about something,” Lauren said.

  “I don’t think she thinks about anything,” Sam said, impatiently. “And you know what else I think? I think it’s better that way.” He opened the door and walked from the room.

  “Testy young man,” Mary said, dentures clicking in and out of her mouth. “Just like my late husband. May he rest in peace.”

  “We should go,” Bonnie said, gently touching Lauren’s shoulder, grateful when Lauren didn’t automatically pull away.

  Lauren leaned forward, planted a delicate kiss on her grandmother’s cheek. “Good-bye, Grandma,” she said. “We’ll be back again soon. I promise.”

  Elsa Langer said nothing. Bonnie led Lauren from the room.

  “Bonnie was sick on the way home,” Lauren told her father as soon as they walked in the front door, Sam immediately disappearing up the stairs to his room.

  “I wasn’t sick,” Bonnie insisted.

  “You had to pull over. Sam had to drive home.”

  “I got a little dizzy,” Bonnie explained, seeing the worry in her husband’s face. “I don’t think the air conditioner is working properly in my car.”