Now on this Sunday, weeks later, Pasteur found Will Clemens, just as he’d feared, in the education room, making a killing in hearts. Mister, maybe you didn’t get the news, Pasteur said. Will was just dropping the deadly queen of spades on Ray Spofford, who’d never once won a Bundt. You’ve got a nice wife downstairs waiting to say hello to you.
Will squinted down at the paper by his wrist, perfect zero score. Such a position was a salable commodity. Knowledge Pasteur overlooked officially, but he knew Will could easily trade that slip for a carton of cigarettes or more right now. Here you go, Ray. Will pushed the score across the table and picked up Ray’s and stuck it in his pocket. Okay.
Pasteur didn’t know much about Will Clemens. He seemed decent, quiet, gave him no trouble. But he was a boil on Warden Flagmeyer’s neck for some undisclosed reason, and now Emily couldn’t stop asking about him: Is he coming for supper, is he winning, how did he know to call me Emily, is his wife a blonde and has she let herself go? These questions were an irritant. But Pasteur had cautioned himself over the years not to take his personal problems out on the men, as so many other officers did, even when they were the cause of the personal problem. There was no turning back from that kind of thinking.
Pasteur followed Will back out of the education room, down the south stairway to the reception area. Pasteur pointed to Mrs. Clemens, still standing under the archway. The rookie guard chattered away at her. Will thanked Pasteur and slowly approached his wife. The denim pants Will wore looked like they fit him, Pasteur noticed, and wondered if Will had them tailored in some way. Maybe he did it himself. When Will got close to his wife, she saw him and swiveled, something deep in the hips, just as his Emily had, and her face lit and darkened at the same moment. Will took her hand, as he had taken Emily’s cake, and Mrs. Clemens was stunned into stillness in the same way. Will led her over to the nearest table, and they spoke for less than four minutes. When she stood she looked calmer, as if she’d gotten what she’d come for, and Will Clemens reached across and held his wife very briefly, kissed her, and let her go. Next to them another exec, buried in the shoulder of a massive woman, never moved. Mrs. Clemens stood watching her husband traverse the hall, his tall, slim body in his good-fitting clothes. Pasteur studied her. He knew she couldn’t hear the rookie guard who spoke to her now. She watched her husband, her eyes satisfied, calm, and lost. Pasteur felt very sorry for her. He resolved to put the fix in, or to cancel the hearts altogether. This man was dangerous.
The worst time to be awake at New York Hospital was after midnight. Especially hot and thirsty and itching because no one could hear Bo, and no one he really liked was ever on duty at such a time. Even the generators, which always rumbled, were quiet. No one laughed or talked or even prayed. No priest or rabbi stood at anyone’s messy bed, no one at all. Only Clarissa. And she was more sour than ever because her fiancé had taken a job laying pipe in Alaska to secure their financial future. He’d be leaving any day now.
Three different attachments exited from three different parts of Bo’s body. He had a tube in his nose to move his breath, a tube attached to a permanent shunt in his arm to feed his blood, and a wired cloth disk taped to his chest under his pajamas to listen to his heart. Whatever that disk detected tapped out in green lit dots on a ticking machine with its own wheeled cart. In the green light, Bo could see the tube on his arm where all the itching was.
From the hallway, the sound of Clarissa’s footsteps, splats and squeaks, came closer. Then a shadow took up the entire doorway. Bo was all alone in his room now that Jimmy was gone, Jimmy and all of his toys and all of his father’s football posters.
Bo, you awake again? What did I tell you about sleep. It’s more important than anything for you.
Bo lifted up the arm with the tube apparatus. The itch wakes me up.
Well, let me take a look, but no big talks now. The shadow moved out of the door and the light fell in softly, a relief, as if the darkness made him hold his breath and the air in the nose tube got caught and cold.
Here, Clarissa.
I think I can find an IV, thank you.
Clarissa moved the trolley and let the plastic tube pull tight. That smarted like a Band-Aid being readjusted. No squiggling there, mister. She flicked on the tiny light. For reading, if he knew how to read, that’s what it was for. Jimmy knew how to read, and certainly Lou-Lou, though she liked to read in the dark.
Well, you’re on empty here, no wonder you’ve got an itch. Fat Clarissa smacked her lips. Her tiny diamond sparkled like a buoy light in the swell of her big hand. You hold on there now, and I’ll be right back. She turned a knob on the line, then made a fast, loud retreat down the hall. Bo heard her talking on the phone, very angry, she was calling someone incompetent. Her favorite word. Bo had heard it so often he asked Hollis what it meant. She told him funny in the head, the idea doesn’t connect up with the right action. Her example had been if Bo wanted to paint an ocean blue and then got distracted and left it blank. No ocean.
Clarissa returned. She brought a tall guy with acne. He wore an intern’s jacket. He looked like a sleepwalker, but his hands were softer than Bo’s mother’s. He put gentle, exact fingers where the tube was in the shunt, and before Bo could blink, the old tube was removed and a new one in, with a quick wet touch around the edge. The itching stopped right away. The tall boy-man tipped the tube in Bo’s nose, made a slight adjustment somewhere on the line, and the little jets of air stopped pulsing so tight and cold inside his nostrils. Everything calmed down around this man. He put his warm hand over the disk on Bo’s chest and kept it there, soothing everything. Bo would tell Hollis and she would be glad, and Bo was asleep before fat Clarissa made the floor squeak again or the light vanish in the door.
June 16
Merrill gave Lou-Lou a discerning once-over. Hold it right there, now. Lou-Lou stood dripping water on the ivory-colored carpet. Just hold on, little lamb. Lou-Lou tucked the velvety towel tighter around her belly and stood at attention. Merrill reached for the tiny gold Blessed Virgin medal that hung around Lou-Lou’s neck, a recent gift from her grandmother, and she scrutinized it for meaning. Well, there’s a bit more to be achieved in the here and now.
Susie, Merrill’s daughter, lay prone, faceup in her French linen navy blue dress. Her feet in patent-leather T-straps hung just off the edge of the mauve satin cover on the king-size bed. She was five. She did not want to see Man of la Mancha again. Merrill gathered a handful of Lou-Lou’s pixie hair and stood back. Yes, I think we can do something with this.
Merrill looked like a person on television: tiny waist, teeth whiter than her daughter’s. She smiled at Lou-Lou, and Lou-Lou fell in love. Merrill bent down and rubbed petal-pink fingernails across the bumpy scarred surface of Lou-Lou’s knees. Loofah! she declared, and Lou-Lou felt herself soften with wonder. Merrill could just touch her all over and turn her into someone just like herself. A small round dark-haired Merrill. Lou-Lou squinted toward Susie’s face, not an inch of Merrill anywhere. Not a molecule. Not an atom. Lou-Lou saw her own atoms, just as Sister Barbara had drawn them in red chalk, jiggling all around to create the new Lou-Lou in perfect likeness to the beauty telling her to tuck in her tummy and her bottom, both at once. Now, breathe too, baby doll, that’s right.
The doorbell sounded with a loud electronic bark. Merrill frowned and stood up straight. Shit. Took him long enough. She gave Lou-Lou one last appraising glance, then left to answer the door. Once her mother was gone, Susie closed her eyes.
Are you tired?
Susie didn’t respond. But when Lou-Lou turned to find her own clothes, just as Merrill had laid them out on the paisley chair—her new dress, a variation on Susie’s navy linen—Susie propped herself on her elbows and asked how long Lou-Lou planned to stay. Forever seemed a possibility. Lou-Lou shrugged.
Well, you can’t have my dog. Susie lay back down. She had a teacup Yorkie who appeared only for walks. Usually he lived under the sofa in the library. Lou-Lou’s mother had w
arned her about Susie. She explained that Susie was very lonely and missed her daddy, who lived in Chicago.
On business?
Yes, I suppose he is.
Something in her mother’s face, a distraction, kept Lou-Lou from drawing the obvious parallel to her own father out loud: business. Lou-Lou nodded. Kay flipped through the magazine with an all-yellow house on the cover. The train rocked through the marshes of the Amboys, and Lou-Lou thought that business was frightening in its ability to swallow fathers whole. All dressed in white, Merrill was waiting to greet them at Pennsylvania Station. She hugged and kissed Kay as a missing father might, then Kay had to go right away to the hospital and to Bo. When she said good-bye, there were tears stuck beneath her bottom lashes but not on her cheeks.
In the limousine, Merrill had some crucial things to tell Lou-Lou about bravery. She said that Lou-Lou was naturally brave, that any feelings to the contrary were just a pestering little devil and that Lou-Lou should pay that creature no mind whatsoever. Her voice was like a harmonica, a happy song in it all the time. Her ideas just burst out that way. She had some things to say about her daughter, Susie, who was at ballet school until three o’clock. Susie was an extraordinary girl, and Merrill knew that for Lou-Lou a very special friendship was waiting in the wings. That’s why Lou-Lou would stay with Merrill instead of at the hotel with her mother. Sisters of the heart, Merrill said with certainty, knocking on her beautiful white blouse, I can feel it already.
She had some further thoughts about the vital importance of a good dress when the thorns of life reach out for you, and that’s why she directed the driver to Saks before they did another thing. Lou-Lou understood that questions would slow Merrill down. She smiled and wondered which thorns were reaching for her as they crawled along Fifth Avenue. The car smelled like the leather of her father’s good wallet and like a whole garden of flowers, but that was Merrill.
There must be a lot going on in the foyer. Whoever rang the buzzer was keeping Merrill very busy, laughing and cooing almost. Lou-Lou wondered if she should just go ahead and dress herself. Merrill would have other chances to change her into a beauty. She edged her fanny onto the paisley chair and started wrestling with the spider-fine white lace stockings Merrill had chosen for her. She was a girl, more a girl than ever before, something that everybody liked all the time.
My father is in business too, Lou-Lou whispered to Susie’s closed eyelids.
Your father’s in jail, Susie whispered back.
Lou-Lou regarded the upside-down face for a second. Business, she said.
Jail. Susie didn’t bother to open her eyes. Jail, jail, jail, she sang like a Tweety Bird, high and chirpy, an imitation of her mother’s beautiful voice. Jail, jail.
Not so! Merrill stood now in the doorway. Not so, and no more stupid talk out of you, young lady.
I heard you on the phone. Susie’s puffy mouth began to tremble.
You heard wrong.
Susie burst into tears without moving an inch from her position on the bed. Her face reddened and she howled a little: Oh, oh, oh.
Lying hurts, doesn’t it. Her mother’s voice had changed. Now Merrill was laying down a few more observations on life, just as in the car. And Susie cried on, as if she’d only been suffering a long pause and was picking up the beat. Lonely, thought Lou-Lou. And lying always causes crying, that much was a certainty.
I think we’ve had just about enough drama for one day, you’ll wear us all out for the theater. Come on now. Merrill displayed a fan of three tickets and fluttered them toward her heart-shaped face. All her blond hair flowed back from her forehead in a perfect wave, tucked for a brief soft instant beneath a pale aqua grosgrain ribbon, and then a rush of blond curls. Let’s get a look at you two.
The doorbell screeched again. Merrill jumped. Good Lord. Lou-Lou thought she’d never get used to the sound, or the sirens muffled and constant beyond the thick white curtains, still loud. She missed Gert in that moment, she missed the dirt pile down by the water that constituted her area of the Maguire boys’ fort. The annex. But her mother wasn’t speaking to Gert right now, that’s why Lou-Lou was here. Gert had lost her. And no matter what Lou-Lou said about that: I helped the girl with the hole in her heart, I saw my name written by the ants and in the stars, I have a calling, her mother closed off her face, much like Susie did now lying on the bed. What was I thinking? Kay said to Merrill on the phone. She’d always known Gert was careless. For a few days Meemaw stayed with Lou-Lou, drove her to school and picked her up again at three in the Thunderbird, had snacks on the kitchen table all set when they got home, but then she needed to go back to Baltimore. Your grandfather’s the biggest baby of them all, she said. On the train Kay shook her head in anger. It’s better, goose, you’ll see, you’ll be nearby now. Merrill gave Susie a hard look, then went to answer the door again.
Jail, whispered Susie.
I know you are just lonely, I know your father is far away. Lou-Lou closed her eyes too and saw two Ls and a hyphen made of sparklers in the sky.
Merrill’s limousine was being used that night by someone else, she didn’t say who, so they took a taxi to the theater. Merrill said to the driver: Take the park. But the driver wanted to argue with her, he turned around and threw his hairy arm over the glass divider, his voice quaked slightly. The traffic is bad, he said, he said bad as if the traffic would injure them. Merrill hummed: I have my reasons. Suit yourself, the driver said. He looked at every inch of Merrill he could see. Turning back around, he repeated it, Suit yourself, as if he was saying something pleasing and wise.
When sometime later, the Tavern on the Green finally appeared, the hot smell of mulch and horse manure flowing through the open windows, when the lights rippled behind the elm tree and the road curved up and back into the city, Merrill wrapped her arms around Lou-Lou and they were soft as the petal of the best, most important flower. Lou-Lou let herself be drawn into that spot, even though Susie gave her a narrow eye. Lou-Lou fell in. And then they were out, out of the park, and shuttling down the vibrating circus of Broadway to the Beaumont Theater and all the things that happened there.
Susie was sick right away. Even in the taxi, she kept holding her stomach and saying she didn’t feel so good. Merrill delivered a sharp tap to Susie’s knee and said, Take a deep breath, it does wonders. But when the theater came up and all the people crowded in together in shiny groups, women in coats of satin with glimmer collars, men in dark jackets, Susie burst from the cab and doubled over toward the sidewalk. Merrill, slipping out, all in palest aqua tulle, looked unimpressed. Lou-Lou peered into Susie’s tipped-over emergency-style face. She had to say, she’d seen a lot of this kind of thing, and Susie looked okay.
Now Merrill, smiling to no one in particular, grabbed Susie by her navy linen collar and yanked her upright. Susie’s eyes remained squinting shut, her mouth a grim line.
Lou-Lou tried humor, as her father always advocated in difficult moments. Who poops faster than Superman? Lou-Lou inquired to the small shut face. Give up?
No. I don’t give up, you stupid fuck.
Whack. Susie’s head was hit so fast, Lou-Lou wasn’t even sure it happened. Susie’s eyes and mouth popped open. Lou-Lou thought she would shriek right in the mash of all that satin and summer trousers pressing in with cigarette smoke and steam from the sidewalk. A shriek was coming. Lou-Lou could see it starting. Merrill bent down and whispered, with her singing voice, We’re talking about what you can handle. What did that mean? But Susie got serious. She nipped that scream, wherever it was, shivered out of her mother’s grasp, and walked to the door, as if she had all the tickets in her hand and nothing had happened. Merrill followed with a how-dare-you expression, but when she reached the doors and Susie, a tall thin man stood, smiling a giant smile that waved like a net floating high in the air. Well, said Merrill, and planted about twelve possible meanings on the word.
Susie, peach, you remember Mr. Henning?
Susie dropped a curtsy, and Mr. He
nning bowed, straightening up to open and close his teeth, beaming right into Merrill’s face like she was the big steak he’d been waiting to cut into. Ding. Ding. They had barely gotten here on time, Mr. Henning and the meat feeling of him receded, as the special usher skipped them right down the aisle to the very best seats in the house. The very best. When the Man of La Mancha scrubbed his eyebrows into place, Lou-Lou could see where his real ones ended and the fake ones began. At the intermission, Merrill drank four glasses of champagne in a row with Mr. Henning and didn’t return with Susie and Lou-Lou to their seats. Susie cried, head on her knees, in the best seat in the house. That and the exasperated looks of the theatergoers all around made it hard to concentrate on Dulcinea and all the sadness singing there on the stage. Finally the theater manager tiptoed down the aisle. Susie and Lou-Lou had to sit in his office, with old Playbills on their laps to keep them busy. Susie cried harder still, but no one except Lou-Lou could hear her.
In the morning, Lou-Lou’s special blood test was happening first thing, and although her mother and Merrill had made the arrangement when they hugged at Pennsylvania Station, Merrill had momentarily forgotten. So when Kay appeared at the door at seven-thirty as planned, just sweeping by to get Lou-Lou over to the clinic at the hospital, Mr. Henning answered the door wearing only a bargello-flame-stitch throw pillow. Merrill’s still asleep, he whispered, with a wink.
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