Wavemaker II

by Mary-Beth Hughes

  In the taxi to the hospital, Lou-Lou finished dressing. Her mother was very angry because the T-strap was so difficult to buckle on Lou-Lou’s new shoe. She did only half the buttons on Lou-Lou’s dress before looking out the window to think. She said they were late and she would explain what was happening as soon as they got there. But when they pulled up to the awning at New York Hospital, someone else needed their cab immediately, and inside, the elevator was just about to depart, and they arrived on the seventh floor with the green walls and the long slanting ramps with strips of black sandpaper and the bolted-down chairs. The person who was supposed to meet them wasn’t there. Kay told Lou-Lou to wait while she found a technician. Lou-Lou finally managed to get her shoe secured and her dress buttoned, just in time for the nurse to ask her to take them off and put on a cold green nightie.

  The procedure lasted only a minute. A man with hands so large they wrapped around the entire circumference of her arm, took a blood sample from the crook of her elbow. She saw the blood, dark and thick-looking, fill the needle’s barrel. While he drew the blood, he let his mouth open and his tongue lay like a tiny pink carpet six inches from Lou-Lou’s eyes. He told her to keep sitting on the wheeled chair while he ducked next door to the lab. We’ll do a smear right away, he said. She never saw him again. Lou-Lou held the gauze pressed for a while, then let it go; she could barely find the dot where the needle had been.

  Forty-five minutes passed before the door opened and her mother entered. She kissed Lou-Lou’s forehead. Come on, pumpkin, she said, put your dress on, we’ll see Bo. Then she kissed her again on her hair and began handing Lou-Lou her clothes.

  Lou-Lou kept a close watch for discrepancies, for oversights, while Bo counted the freckles on his body. On the television mounted high on the wall opposite the two beds, Superman was deep in the woods, spying on Lois Lane, just to make sure she was okay in that lonely cabin. Bo did not exaggerate the way Lou-Lou was said to do, but sometimes he got excited and lost count of things: trucks, days until Christmas.

  Right there! She could see the shadow of a freckle in the IV bruise, peeping out from the tape. But she’d let that slide, too hard to tell. What about your nose? You have a ton on your nose.

  Bo looked hurt. No, he said. They don’t count.

  It’s an avalanche. One million, one. One million, two.

  Shut up, Lou-Lou.

  One million, three.

  Bo tucked his nose into the elbow of his unbandaged arm. No.

  I can still count with my photographic memory.

  No! said Bo.

  A large black wolf howled just outside Lois Lane’s cabin door. Lois reached for the phone, but the line was dead.

  Hollis looked in a very bad mood. Her sneakers made a ripping sound on the floor, like Band-Aids coming off a knee. Are you bothering him? I’m going to bounce you if you don’t cut it out. Hollis reached up and snapped off the television. Let’s see, Bo, let’s take a look at that arm. Hollis lifted Bo’s IV arm in both hands and traced along the forearm and above the elbow like a weaver smoothing silk. She flicked her middle finger ever so lightly just above the shunt. Shit.

  What? asked Lou-Lou.

  Bad luck.

  What’s bad luck?

  Sweetie pie, your mommy’s out in the hall talking to Dr. Fred, do you want to get them for me?

  Um, not right now.

  Please?

  Bo was grinning at her.

  What’s so funny, Mr. Million Freckles?

  Now, Lou-Lou, please.

  Hollis shook the bottle on the cart and watched carefully. Nothing, no movement. The vein was definitely collapsed. Jones Beach, David Hetzler chased her to the end of parking lot D, and then planted his hands on her hips like he owned them. God. She didn’t know if she could find another vein. Bo, angel, is there any ache in your arm? Anything hurt?

  Lou-Lou thinks I have a million freckles.

  In this case, Lou-Lou is wrong.

  Hollis pulled a sterile gauze packet from her pocket. She closed the clamp on the IV tube. Bo? What time is it when an elephant sits on your fence? She shimmied the plastic tubing off of the exterior end of the shunt, pinched the tube before the liquid spurt, then carefully, carefully removed the tape from his arm.

  Time to get a new alarm clock.

  What kind of alarm clock? Hollis took a breath in, and on the exhale, tried to pull out the shunt in one movement. Reverse archery. Hollis covered the wound fast with the sterile gauze, taped it tight, pressed all around with her fingertips.

  Big Ben.

  Big Ben? Hollis looked up at Bo’s face. He did have a lot of freckles. Bo smiled at Hollis. Big Ben. Good answer, Bo.

  After the hospital, Kay went back to Merrill’s to explain. The treatment was being delayed, it turned out. She made some hand signals. Then she said Bo just wasn’t ready. Merrill and Kay sat in the white deck chairs on Merrill’s white brick terrace and drank iced espresso. Merrill looked sad and blue. She didn’t say anything. Kay tried to explain it again, about the experiment, the bone marrow transplant, about the white cells, the need for strength. They’d be going out on a limb as it was, and now they’d have to find another donor. She might as well send Lou-Lou home.

  Kay and Merrill, each stretched long in the lounge chairs, closed their eyes as if asleep. Their blond hair was pulled from their faces in identical black headbands. The late-afternoon sun made their arms and legs whiter than the bricks. Susie rubbed the bare feet of her Barbie back and forth against the cement wall, grinding away the toes. Lou-Lou drank a real Coke. Then she went into Susie’s all-pink bedroom and packed her own red suitcase.

  Chef Brodie’s cheeks were flushed and just visible above the mound of ground chuck on his wood-block table. Pasteur gave a quick salute, then looked around for his charge. Even in the basement kitchen, sunlight striped the walls, pouring down from six-foot gashes near the ceiling. Chef Brodie in tennis sneakers stood on discarded wood pallets, but Will Clemens wore his prison oxfords, and light or no light, the stone floors chilled him. He was glad to leave the pile of Spanish onions and climb two levels to the ground floor, to the small alcove some artist had carved with a statue in mind. Two tiny sconces with bare bulbs poised to light a marble torso lit the wall phone instead. Special calls, if warranted, could be patched through to prisoners. Will thought it must be Roy. He picked up the line, gave the operator his name, and read off the number inked on every article of his clothing. It was his mother. And she was crying. Oh, Will.

  It’s all right, Mama, he said. This was perhaps the fourth or fifth time she’d called.

  And Bo.

  Yes. Will started to cough. I know.

  You’re not sick?

  No. No. But I shouldn’t stay too long on the phone. Will coughed harder, and Pasteur gave him a look from where he stood a polite distance away. Will kept coughing until he made himself gag. Rita began to cry again.

  Mama, don’t do that, I’m okay, please don’t worry about me.

  I’m coming there.

  No. Don’t. Promise me you won’t come. I’m better, at least for a while, without visitors, please. I need to go now, but we can write.

  Your father too, he wants to come.

  Both of you write, please.

  Will said good-bye, that he loved her, then hung up the phone. Pasteur watched Will sit there hacking into his hands.

  Do I need to take you over to the infirmary for that cough?

  It’s my head. Any head doctors?

  Could be arranged.

  Will did feel nuts, but it was in his body. A word about Bo and he felt a kind of bizarre misery. It started in his groin, then radiated down toward the space behind each kneecap with a slow red insistence. It stopped there, rested in an oscillating on-off pattern, then traveled upward again, reaming his hip joints, landing in the center of his sternum. His throat would swell, then his head would finally dry out like a gourd and swing with pain. This choreography was completely reliable.

  Mayb
e you should take a small break, Pasteur said. Twenty minutes in the library, then I’ll haul you back downstairs. Pasteur had read the newspapers. He didn’t much care for this man with his slicked hair, or the spin Will had put on Emily, but he could feel for him. Pasteur knew about being a father.

  Will nodded. Thought he had conned Pasteur, as he did everyone else, but nonetheless let himself be escorted to the carved door off the center dome. Pasteur let him in. The library was dark, smelled of mice and old paper. Well out of the sunlight and the endless blue. In off hours, the library staff was off duty. Pasteur took a swivel chair behind the center station. He had a panoramic view there of the stacks. He reached under the desk for the main light switch.

  Leave them off, could you?

  Sure, said Pasteur. He turned on the little desk lamp instead and picked up a bulletin to read. Will felt a little sorry for Pasteur. The other guards didn’t like him. They called him the social worker, said Pasteur was administering his fat ass as therapy. Said Pasteur could always hear the sound of a stiff dick in need. But Pasteur seemed oblivious, continued his usual methods as if they were standard. And got good results. Warden Flagmeyer let him do what he wanted.

  Will took a chair at the big oak table and stared for a while at the black tape on all the spines of all the books. He waited for the dark and the dust to act medicinally. He looked at the tape and the white hand-inked titles describing things that happened slowly enough to make sense, unlike his experience, which was random, fast, and overwhelming. And then it was all hindsight. Sorting the past. Figuring. That’s all anyone did here.

  Here was Kay in the past: eighteen, dark blond curls tucked in amber clips shaped like poodles. White shorts. White blouse, exaggerated darts, pinpoint bra, round breasts, a nice surprise. In Sid Plowporter’s borrowed truck, Kay sat in the ocher trim paint by mistake. Later, when she bent in to the soda case to pull out a Coke, the paint amoeba wriggled in the double-stitched seam of her crotch, made Will ache. At the beach, in the boardwalk shower, Kay sulked when he said her lips, little clams, were shriveled by the ocean salt. He kissed her and let the water down into her bathing suit, held out the straps to wash away the sand.

  But then there was Enid Cartwoll. Enid could be found any day serving iced tea and fried oysters at Sandy’s Fish Bar. She wore the insignia blouse like a child, without care. Often he caught her between chores and willing to fool around. Enid had a thing going with the cook, Swanson, a jaundiced-looking guy with long false teeth. He let her come and go. If she was gone, Swanson served the customers himself.

  Enid Cartwoll didn’t have a car or a driver’s license, though she was nearly nineteen. She walked to Sandy’s Fish Bar from the carriage-house apartment she shared with three other girls. On that walk, in the early afternoon, though Will did not like to plan such things, there was a spot, a little copse of trees, white pine and underbrush that bloomed in summer. Huge flowers like heads of cauliflower sagged along the sandy road to the tennis courts. If Will happened to be walking himself to get some fresh air after a late night’s work, waking at noon, stretching his legs. If he did see her from, say, a distance of a hundred feet away, she would take that turn. A waitress rumpled already in her Sandy’s Fish Bar blouse, she’d turn as if to catch a little tennis, then turn again into the heavy heads of the flowers, and there she would do something peculiar that Will could never quite shake from his head.

  Will would continue along as if he’d seen nothing. He’d untuck his shirt, a breeze toying with the flap. He’d pull it down, cars would pass, he’d play with his shirt and the wind. In the driveway to the tennis club, feet sinking in the soft ground, he’d figure out which way she went, look for a torn flower. Or listen, he’d listen for a crackle in the underbrush, cup his hand over his ear to block out the swish of the wind. When he made the right choice to locate her in the midst of sand and sticks, she’d be squatting, face away, skirt curled and bunched at her waist, barefoot, her white waitress shoes lined toe to toe beside her. Her ass spread right at him, that’s what he would see first. She was like a girl taking a crap, and he just happened to stumble over her.

  At the librarian’s station, Pasteur was caught up in the bulletin. Big on the benefits of study, he advocated the exploration of the stacks, such as they were, for his executives. Pasteur faithfully delivered the news of every recent acquisition. He promoted studying the law, said it was useful to know the system that curtailed you. Will had no interest, he already knew what curtailed him.

  Once Roy took him on a business trip to Europe to meet the White Russian. Kay bought him the most beautiful luggage he’d ever seen. He hadn’t known luggage could look like that, and in it she’d packed his ordinary shirts and ordinary underwear, but in Paris, the fabulous container lent them its air . What did you sell? The house? Kay put her temple to his cheek, some tea-rose scent. Nothing you’d notice, she said. What you don’t know, you know.

  In Paris with Roy, Will could barely breathe. Who knew the world could be so big. His bed had a fucking footstool. His ordinary laundry came delivered back to him in blue tissue. The White Russian stroked his cock with her foot under the table while eating tiny roasted birds, three to a plate. And Roy caused a big diversion, some problem with his snapper, everyone frantic, yelling in French. Will slipped away, yelling too, but no one heard. Every day, clean soft sheets that smelled of ocean water and honey.

  Later, Roy wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the courtroom with Will that morning. No need, he said, this is just routine, a little hassling from our friends. What can they do? A sentencing hearing for a misdemeanor? What can they ask for? Frank will take care of it. We’re talking misdemeanor. This is an irritant. I’ll meet you for lunch. If not, dinner.

  But there was confusion even before they arrived. The whole business of going at all. Earlier, there had been the advice to plead guilty, it was nothing, forget about it. And he had forgotten. Then months later, more, Bo was already sick, he got a visit from a junior attorney, an infant, asking for his testimony against Roy, which was, of course, impossible.

  Off the record, the attorney said.

  Can’t do it, said Will, sorry.

  Right away Will got the notice, delivered by a U.S. marshal, a subpoena, a sentencing date.

  For what? Hiding the typewriter ribbon? This is science fiction, they’re making it up as they go, said Roy.

  Sentence?

  Frank said it was no big deal. Teapot-tempest kind of thing.

  Roy said lunch, maybe dinner, he’d know by eleven, some dope wanted justice and Roy had promised. Either way, they’d meet up later and eat.

  It was a small courtroom, a miniature, like a room in Lou-Lou’s dollhouse. Walls fitted with wood paneling and empty nooks too heavy for its size. A dark room with no windows. Half the space swallowed by the judge’s bench, flanked by two scarred desks. Behind the one on the right sat the judge’s clerk, Hiram Green, with voluptuous lips and a cough deep in his chest. On the left the bailiff arranged a calendar, moved a pair of handcuffs. It was still early, just past nine o’clock. Frank Reilly looked fresh as a young athlete, pink-cheeked, he ran ten blocks from the wrong subway station. Where’s the car? Will asked.

  Don’t ask.

  More confusion. Kay didn’t hold Will’s hand. She rested her hip against his and seemed calm. Her navy blue suit, and legs in soft beige stockings, so pretty. The clasp on her purse a tiny seashell.

  There were others in the room as well. Scattered in the benches, maybe six men. A couple dozed, others read the paper. One gripped a briefcase in his lap. The judge entered the room from a side door, and everyone stood before the bailiff could make the announcement. Kay’s purse dropped to the dirty floor. She ducked to get it and Will did too. The bailiff called his name. Frank said, Good, we’ll get this over with.

  Another man entered from the back through the swinging doors, blond, a baby face with heavy glasses. The bailiff stood to protest, but Hiram Green waved and coughed him down. The young man was al
lowed a brief private conference with Hiram, even though Will was already standing. Hiram listened to the whisper, plunged out a lower lip in response. The man left the room swiftly, glancing only once at the fellow with the briefcase. Hiram wrote something down on a sheet of yellow paper, carefully, as if working out a sketch. He handed this to the judge, who was polishing his own glasses on the sleeve of his robe. The judge read the scrap, squinted at Hiram, who squinted back, looked at Frank Reilly, looked down.

  There seems to be some kind of a mix-up here. Hiram Green nodded, and the judge looked like he tasted something bad on his teeth. All right, all right, he said.

  Frank stepped forward with Will to the bar, a thick wood railing, and waited. The judge cleared his throat and said it had been brought to his attention, but then he stopped, there was a protocol to be observed here, a word or two from the bailiff. The judge leaned his face toward his left hand, patted down the hair on the top of his head. The bailiff reseated himself. The judge said, looking down all the while at the paper, Mr. Reilly, your client pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the State of New York, but in this courtroom, as you are well aware, other rules apply. He looked up for confirmation.

  Your honor, the charge to which my client pleaded is a misdemeanor.

  I’m afraid not, sir. No, I think not. The circumstances reveal a larger ramification to his actions.

  Your honor, the circumstances are that my client is being used to prove a political point far beyond his own course of action. I also want to bring to your attention, before any kind of sentencing, the condition of this man’s child, who is gravely ill. Also, I’ve submitted a motion to withdraw the initial plea.