The Crooked Heart of Mercy

by Billie Livingston

  FIFTEEN

  Ben

  Ben,” Dr. Lambert says. He’s early today.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re here.” Lambert’s grin just about splits his face in half.

  “I am.” The word I still feels awkward. Feels like an electric shock.

  We’re sitting in the white, white room that doesn’t look so white anymore.

  What was so white, white about it?

  This morning, only the sheets are white. The blanket is blue. Lambert’s chair is chrome and beige. Pale green curtains frame that whole other world: willows and sky, cars and asphalt.

  “How do you feel?” Lambert says.

  “Awake.”

  Lambert nods. “Yesterday was—Dr. Raymond said that you had, well, yes, an awakening is a good word for it. She phoned me at home. I was delighted, Ben. I was just delighted to hear it.”

  “You thought I—” I. It echoes. Like an onus, an accusation. There’s still a bandage on my head, but smaller now. “I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to wake up.”

  To get the hell out of hell. Nobody’s got a chance in hell.

  “And you did.” Lambert watches my face, searching. His eyes are steady. They’re not fool blue. They’re faith blue. Mercy blue. “You’re here,” he says again. “I’m glad you’re alive, Ben.” Lambert’s voice is as gentle as peace, and its tone vibrates in my guts. “Are you?”

  “I am.”

  FIFTEEN

  Maggie

  Was that the hospital?” Francis watches me.

  It’s just past 9 A.M.

  “It was Dr. Lambert, Ben’s therapist.” I set my cell phone down on the windowsill. “It’s like you said—they feel that Ben is no longer a danger to himself. But, before Dr. Lambert releases him, he wanted to know that Ben would be going home to someone. Family.” I look out the window. I feel the urge to pace, but this apartment isn’t big enough for pacing. “He could be discharged as early as this afternoon. If we’re ready. He’s ready. He thinks.” My chest clenches.

  “Who thinks?”

  “Ben. And the doctor. Or he could come home tomorrow.” I feel weightless and heavy at once. As if I’m roaring down the first skyscraping hill on a roller coaster.

  “You don’t sound so sure.”

  “Well, he shouldn’t be alone. So—” I look across the road to a couple of little girls drawing on the sidewalk with electric blue chalk. “And so, he should come here.”

  Behind me, Francis keeps watching me. I can feel him. I walk into the kitchen and stand at the counter. My eyes poke around as if I’ve come in here for a purpose. I tap my fingernails on the countertop. Eventually I move back into the living room and stare out the window again.

  Francis is right where I left him on the couch. “Well, what’d you tell him? Yes, no? Today, tomorrow?”

  “Today. At one. He said I should bring a change of clothes for him. Because the clothes that Ben arrived in are—” The little girls across the road are using neon purple chalk now. And screaming green. They’re drawing beasts with big teeth and happy faces. Friendly monsters. “Which means I have to go back to the old apartment.”

  “Right. Do you want me to come?”

  I turn and make for the coffee table, start clearing things off.

  “I’m not done with that.” My brother reaches out for his mug.

  My hands are full of stuff and I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not done with mine either.

  He takes his cup back, swirls the last of his coffee around. “I’m guessing nobody cleaned up the place after. It could be pretty . . . tough to see.”

  I march back to the kitchen and start washing out my coffee cup, stick it in the drying rack, and then pick up the sponge again and begin wiping surfaces. Any surfaces.

  Francis calls out to me. “Just to remind you, I’m supposed to check into Our Lady of Perpetual Help tomorrow. But if Ben’s coming here tonight, I could see about going in earlier. Or I could always go back to Holy Trinity.”

  “No.” I stop wiping. “Let’s be together tonight. Okay? If you don’t mind. And tomorrow—is Father Michael supposed to take you? Because I could drive you.”

  There’s no answer for a few seconds and so I move to where I can see him.

  His smile is thin and melancholy when he says, “I’d rather go with you. I could leave my car for you. You could use it while I’m gone.”

  Sagging against the wall, I stare at the raggedy sponge in my hands. “I don’t want to go back to our place. I don’t want to see it.”

  SUNLIGHT IS BREAKING through the clouds when we pull into the visitor parking in the back lot of the old building. I’d like to view this as some kind of cheery sign that things are getting better, but dread has got me by the throat.

  In the passenger seat, Francis looks up at the apartment window. I can’t do the same. I can’t face that window.

  “Do you want to give me the keys and I’ll go up?”

  I pick at a small tear in the seat of Lucy’s Volvo. After we made up, she asked me to take it home again. I keep hearing her frightened voice in my head. Don’t leave me is wrapped around Ben’s Don’t let me go. If Ben had said that to begin with, I would have stayed. I’m sure of it.

  “Mags?”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Okay. But if you want to tell me what to get, I don’t mind.”

  “I’m coming.” I open the driver’s door.

  The two of us climb out of the car. Francis heads for the back door of the building and I stand there looking at the pavement under our window. It’s clean now. Like nothing happened. Sirens, red spinning lights, police. My skin prickles, my limbs feel gelatinous. Francis comes back and takes my hand, leads me to the back door.

  We take the stairs to the third floor.

  Outside my old door, I look at the raised brass suite number and then down at the keys in my hand. What if there’s blood all over the living room? The false memory of a gunshot sounds off in my head and for a moment, I’m sure I’ll throw up.

  Francis takes the keys from me and puts one in the lock. He turns it slowly and as the door opens, he holds my hand again. “I’m with you,” he says, and we walk into the front hall of my old home. A sharp smell cuts my nostrils.

  “What the hell is that?” I take my hand back.

  “Smells like solvent or varnish or something.”

  The two of us creep down the hall, past the closed bedroom door. I hold my breath as we turn the corner into the living room.

  Clean. No blood. Although the couch is covered with what looks like an old drape: brown and amber, with rod pockets at one end. I don’t need to know what’s under that drape. Don’t want to.

  The venetian blinds clank as Francis opens the window. He brushes dust off his hand and heads for the little dining area outside the kitchen. I follow him and half-expect to see Ben and Frankie and me: a jar of peanut butter on the table, a bag of bread. Except I don’t. There’s old newspaper spread out with a small wooden box in the middle, stained blue. A couple of cans sit next to it: wood stain and polyurethane. Scattered over the rest of the table are bits of sandpaper, and rags.

  The two of us stand over the box. The lid is carved with the letters BEN.

  A thump from down the hall—our heads jerk toward the bedroom.

  Someone hisses in frustration.

  Francis and I look at one another. We head toward the noise.

  Francis knocks on the bedroom door. “Hello?”

  “It’s me, Maggie,” I say, as if that will mean something to whoever’s in there. Francis turns the knob. Grabbed from the other side, the door flies open.

  “You scared the shit out of me!”

  Cola. He’s got a tire iron in his hand.

  Hand on my chest, I back up and lean against the hall wall. “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “The spare,” he says, clearly hurt that I would need to ask. “Ben always keeps the spare key with me.”

  THE THREE
OF us are sitting at the table staring at the blue box. Cola’s been holed up here since the night they took Ben away.

  “He was so pissed with me and—and, Vera was really like, fucking mad-dog,” he says. Cola has been explaining to us that he “borrowed” his girlfriend’s car. He also “borrowed” some veterinary drugs from her clinic. He just needed to store the drugs with Ben for a little while. I’d like to punch Cola right now—just punch him and punch him until I start to feel some relief.

  “—so I was coming back to get my stuff,” he goes on. “And then I get here and there’s cops and paramedics and lights are flashing. They were loading someone into an ambulance.” He blinks and fidgets with a corner of newspaper.

  “I asked one of the neighbors standing on the sidewalk and he says, ‘Dude committed suicide. Shot himself in the head.’ I knew it was Ben. Cuz of me. I bought the gun. He did it with that. And I thought—” Tears come into Cola’s eyes.

  “But then I realized he couldn’t be dead, you know, cuz of how they were rushing and they’d put a respirator on him. So I waited till everyone was gone and came in to see if the drugs and stuff were still here. I didn’t want him to get in trouble on top of it. Except the gun was gone. I guess the cops took it. The boxes were still in the closet, though, so I brought them back to Vera’s. Plus her car. She really hates my guts now. But I gave it all back!”

  Cola shoves the hair out of his eyes and my brother’s words echo: Kid? What is he, thirty?

  “I don’t know if the cops are going to come after me. Vera must’ve told them, right? Maybe. I was kind of freaking when I went down to the hospital to find out how he was. They won’t say shit over the phone. The bullet didn’t even penetrate his skull—always told him he had a hard head!” Cola smiles a little and looks away. He picks up the blue-stained box, stares at the carved letters on top. “You, um, would you give this to him?” He opens the hinged lid. Inside, it’s smooth and finished with a paler blue. “He used to like when I did woodwork in school. He thought I should be a real carpenter-dude, make furniture and stuff.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Francis says. “May I?”

  Cola puts the box in my brother’s hands. “Buddy of mine let me use his tools. He’s got a garage full of shit.”

  Francis opens the box again and looks closer at the inside of the lid. “‘We’ll Sing in the Sunshine,’” he reads. “You carved all this?”

  “That’s a song we used to like when we were kids. And I want to put this in there too.” Cola gets up and goes into the kitchen, returns with a clear plastic bag. He pulls out an old greeting card, folded in half. Flattening it out, he hands it to Francis. “My dad gave this to Ben for his sixteenth birthday.”

  I lean over my brother’s shoulder. The front of the card says, “Son: On your special day I want you to know that . . .” Inside it continues, “Having a son like you is reason to be proud and thankful—not just on your birthday, but always.” Underneath is some scrawled handwriting. “Ben,” it says. “You’re a smart, talented guy and I’m proud of you even though I don’t always say it. Love, Your Old Man.”

  Cola takes the card back and looks at the inside, his lips moving as he reads. “Dad was all right when he wasn’t drinking.” He closes the card. “I used to feel like I disappeared when my brother came into the room. When Ben left home, I found this under his bed. And it seemed like proof, you know. Of, like, I don’t know, that our dad loved us. Ben didn’t seem to care about it, so I kept it. Maybe he might like it now.” Cola folds it in half again and slips it into his blue Ben box.

  “I’m sure he’ll love it. You’re an excellent craftsman,” Francis says. “I can see why Ben’s impressed with you.”

  He can see why Ben’s impressed with him? Goddamn donkey-boy and his stolen veterinary drugs and his fucking gun. I look at my brother’s big soft hands on the box, the loving, appreciative way he runs a finger over the corners.

  I can’t find it in myself to say something kind. I want to smack Cola. Tell him to grow up. “So why are you here? Vera kicked you out? You get kicked out of your own place too?”

  Cola keeps his eyes away from mine. “I owe a guy some money. That’s why I bought the gun. Because this guy was going to . . . And then Ben gave me—he borrowed a thousand bucks from the old man and I tried to bring it to the guy as a down payment. Show of good faith, you know. Turned out the guy got arrested for assault and battery. Bought me some time.”

  Cola rolls an edge of newspaper between his fingers and then finally meets my eyes. “I know I fucked up. It’s not like I don’t know. But I called the hospital and they told me Ben’s out today. Dad’s getting out at the end of the week. Maybe it’s like a second chance for us.”

  My anger is getting stringy, turning into something like pity, and I’m not sure what to do with any of it. I wait for Francis to say something. He’s better at that stuff.

  The dead air drags on. My brother’s leaving me on the hook this time. Finally I say, “Do you want to come to the hospital with us?”

  Cola takes a breath and then takes another before he says, “I’m going to get on a bus this afternoon. Buddy of mine says he can get me a job doing construction out west. He says he can get me into an apprenticeship program.” Cola shoots a hopeful glance at Francis. “And then I’d be a certified tradesman.”

  “Sounds like a wonderful opportunity,” my brother says. He sets the box on the table and we all look at it.

  The carved letters are so smooth and exacting, it seems impossible that the jerk sitting across from me had anything to do with their creation. If there weren’t sandpaper and wood dust all over the floor, I’d have been worse than skeptical.

  “Yeah, that sounds, um—I’ll tell Ben,” I say. “He’ll be . . .” And I pause, wrestling with the word. “He’ll be proud of you.”

  Cola’s face brightens. He smiles and he nods as if he can’t think of a better outcome.

  SIXTEEN

  Ben

  Sitting on the skinny, blue-blanket bed, waiting. She’ll be here any minute. Maggie. Ben’s sweet Maggie. My Maggie. I liked Ben a little better when he was far away. When the lights were on but he wasn’t home. Now he’s going home in a box and I am that box.

  Lambert said his goodbyes this morning. Shook my hand, grabbed my shoulders. Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you. I am his pet project. Star pupil. A star in a jar. Feels like I’ve been shot from a cannon, aimed at a jigger of water, and here I sit with my nose against the glass, waiting.

  Tap at the door.

  Look who’s here: Gwen. Blessed Gwen. Disappearing Gwen.

  “Hi,” she says. She shines her nervous gaze straight at me. As if she can see, hear, and smell through my glass. See my willing spirit and my weak flesh.

  “Hello.” That’s all I can come up with. Was it this hard to speak before? Actions speak louder than words and mine have been deafening. Yet, here’s Gwen. No one in the room, but me, and still she’s here.

  “I’m going home today,” she says. “I wanted to say goodbye and thank you for, for—” She looks away. Words are hard. Hard as hell. Hard as the back of God’s head. “For listening to me,” she finally says. “And for sharing your friend—your priest friend—it meant a lot to me.”

  “Yeah. He’s ah, he’s my—” Deliver your servant, Gwen, from every sorrow . . . Maybe it worked, a little deliverance. You can see clear into Gwen’s eyes today: acid eyes. Burn-through-it-all eyes. It must hurt to see so much. “You’ve got eyes like my Maggie.”

  Gwen looks up, raises those torches of hers as if they’re heavy lifting. “Your Maggie?” A little smile melts across her lips and she says, “You love her.”

  You got no idea, Gwen. “I’m leaving today too.”

  “Your Maggie is coming,” she says. She says it like a prophecy. A revelation. The way Maggie herself would. “You’ll be okay,” Gwen says. “We’ll be okay.”

  Are you sure, Gwen? How can you be? Like a mind reader, she takes a step forward
. Her hands rise from her sides, just enough to cue me, get me on my feet.

  I take hold of her hands, her mother hands, and we stand in the middle of the room, listening to our hearts thump and the squawk and chatter of every lost soul still wandering the halls.

  “Ben?” Maggie. Maggie’s at the door. The way she says Ben—like it’s a nice place to be.

  “It’s you,” I say. “You’re here.”

  Her kaleidoscope eyes shift and turn at the sight of Gwen’s hands releasing mine.

  Gwen turns to her. “You’re Maggie.” She extends a hand. “I’m Gwen. I’m glad to have met you before I leave. You’re just like I imagined.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes meet Gwen’s and soften. As if Gwen’s told her a secret. Maggie shakes her hand.

  “I guess this is it.” Gwen looks back, right at the holes where Ben’s eyes are now. “Be well. Let’s all be well.”

  Maggie watches her go. Then she looks down at the bag in her hands. She looks at me. And then away again, around the room.

  Don’t look away. Please don’t look away. I won’t if you won’t.

  Scared to touch her now. Scared she might pull away. “You’re here.” I say it again, say it the way Lambert said it to make sure. Make it real.

  “I brought you some clothes.” She reaches for the sleeve of my hospital pajamas, as if she might touch me, but stops.

  Look at me again. Pin me to the earth, Maggie. How can I be Ben, if I’m not your Ben?

  She looks at the black hole, the bandage, the reason we’re here.

  “And I saw Cola today,” she says. “He wanted me to give you something. It’s in here.” She puts the paper shopping bag in my hand and the graze of her fingers sends a sharking blue jolt up my veins.

  She pulls her hand back.

  Inside the bag: It’s a box, letters carved into the lid. Have to sit down for this. Sit on the bed.

  Smooth and light in my hands. Beveled and blue. BEN, it says. Calls my name like a little boy. Like he would love me forever. “Where is he?”

  “He’s out of town.”

  “Oh yeah?” Look at this thing. Smooth as a pup’s ear. “Huh. He’s a talented little fuck.”