The Crooked Heart of Mercy

by Billie Livingston

  A smirk from my Maggie. A sniff of laughter. “Yeah. Maybe he’ll—he had a job offer, an apprenticeship program he said. He’s, um, he feels terrible. About what happened.”

  Raise the lid. Cola’s carved the inside too. We’ll Sing in the Sunshine: Cola’s prayer.

  And something else. “What’s this? A bill?” It’s an old birthday card, yellowed with rough silver sparkles that spell “Son.”

  Son?

  Son: On Your Special Day. Here we go down a rabbit hole. Down the old man’s hidey-hole. Ben, it says. Love, Your Old Man, it says.

  Jesus. Where the hell did Cola find this?

  Maggie’s watching, waiting. Should tell her what I remember. “There was a piece of paper inside when he gave it to me. It said ‘This voucher entitles the bearer to six free driving lessons.’ He even managed to give me one.”

  I stare some more at the scrawl at the bottom. I’m proud of you. Love, Your Old Man.

  Cola’s been holding on to this. Like a promise. Like a hope.

  THE EXIT DOORS buzz and it feels like another jolt of electricity when they open. Nathan, the orderly, wheels my chair out of the psych ward and into the main hall. The free hall. Free fall. Maggie walks beside the chair. Her face is all nerves and twitch. Like we’re working without a net. We are.

  Cola’s box sits in my lap. Velvety smooth. Rub it like a genie bottle; rub it for luck; rub it for faith.

  Black phones on the wall, along the hall, they’ve got no keypads on them. Hospital house phones.

  “Hey, Nathan, you want to do me a favor? Pick up one of these phones and find out what room Ben Brody is in?”

  Not a word from Nathan. Poor old Nathan. Can feel him tense, feel him trade looks with Maggie.

  “Senior,” she tells him. “Ben Brody Sr. is his dad. The middle name’s Stanley if they ask.”

  “Oh right, I gotcha,” says Nathan. “You wanna stop and say hey to your pop.” He coasts up to the next phone, picks up the receiver, and slumps on the wall like he knows a long wait is coming.

  Maggie’s eyes flick from the elevators to the floor. She doesn’t want to see the old man. Maybe she doesn’t want to see any of us. Who could blame her? Maybe she’s going to dump me at the dump and leave it at that.

  “Are you taking me back to the apartment?”

  Her lips flutter. A wet butterfly. “Not the ah, not our . . . I’m taking you to my place.”

  Nathan hangs up the phone. “Room 3126,” he says.

  “I can take him down,” Maggie offers. “You don’t have to—”

  “Oh, yes, I do have to. I got to take my man, here, all the way out the front doors. Hospital regulations.”

  MAGGIE AND NATHAN wait in the hall outside 3126. Two other patients in the room, both old men, both sleeping. My old man is in bed C, his eyes fixed on the window. His teeth are in. No restraints on him anymore. Hands free, feet free. Everybody’s free now.

  Box in hand, I stand by his bed, and look outside to the trees, look where he’s looking. His head turns. He starts.

  “Jesus Christ.” His hand jumps and grips the bed rail. “Ben.” He stares, looks at the bandage. “They said you—” Thin lips clamp shut like he can’t say what they said. “You look good.”

  Rub the box. Rub the box for hope. “Thanks. I, ah, I even got a get-well present from your other son.”

  The old man takes it in his shaky hands, stares at it. “Look at that. That’s nice. What is it?”

  Inside, the old birthday card is knocking, it’s kicking at the hinges. Or maybe that’s just the echo of Miriam. My mother and her very pretty singing voice.

  He opens the lid. He looks at the silver sparkles on the card. His card: son.

  He eyes his own handwriting, head shaking like a big “no” to time and space and hurt. “No” to it all.

  Seconds hang thick.

  He keeps looking, his own words trembling in his knotted hands. Mouth open, my old man turns his watery eyes to me. “Ben,” he says. Whispers it. Mouths it. His fingers grip hard and crush the card to his chest.

  SIXTEEN

  Maggie

  I type, “Ben stopped to see his dad. Down in 5,” into my phone and hit SEND.

  Nathan, the orderly, watches my hands with a bored sigh.

  I look at my cell and then back at him. “Sorry, is this okay? Using my phone here?”

  “You’re not supposed to, but . . .” He shrugs. “S’mostly intensive care, they don’t like it. Messes with the monitors.”

  My phone buzzes. A text from Francis: “At gas station. Security kicked me out of the pickup zone.”

  Shit. He shouldn’t be driving. I’ve got him babysitting Lucy’s car. Goddamn hospitals charge a limb for parking.

  Nathan leans against the wall. He winks at a young nurse who passes. Something she does in return makes him laugh. I lean around the doorway to get a look inside the room, see what Ben and his father are up to. All I can see is Ben’s back, his hands on the bed rail.

  Careful. You don’t want to be invited in.

  Used to feel like a punch in the heart to see Ben try to be a son to that old bastard. The first time Ben held Frankie—the look in his eyes, the roar of love like white-water rapids—I wondered how he was capable of it. The way he grew up, you’d think he’d have shut down long ago. I guess he did, eventually. Losing Frankie must have been the last straw.

  “Okay, I’m ready.”

  It’s Ben. Nathan and I jerk out of our daydreams.

  “Ready to roll, man?” Nathan takes hold of the wheelchair handles.

  Ben’s got Cola’s blue box in his hands. He holds it close like an amulet, a rabbit’s foot. I can’t quite read his eyes. They look more wistful coming out of his father’s room than they did going in. I wonder what Old Misery-Guts said to him.

  Ben gives me a light smile as he sets himself back in the chair. I return the expression. Polite. We are like cordial neighbors. After that phone call yesterday, the crying love, as if Ben were falling into my arms, I imagined that somehow, when I saw him, it would be easy between us. Instead every word feels stilted, as if we don’t know exactly who we are to one another—like second cousins, twice removed.

  In the elevator, I send a quick text to Francis to let him know we’re almost there. I look at Ben’s hands in his lap, holding the box.

  Gwen? Who was she? She held his hands. She did it like she’d done it before. She did it like she was his friend, his confidante. She held his hands.

  On the ground floor, I walk alongside, watching Nathan’s hands on my husband’s wheelchair. Part of me wants to shove Nathan out of the way, as if he’s just one more barrier. One more confidant. “Nice day for getting out,” Nathan says.

  “Sure is,” I say, Ben says. Cordial and polite.

  Through the front doors, I can see Lucy’s Volvo pull up. Francis leans and waves, gets out of the driver’s side, and runs around to the passenger’s side.

  The hospital doors glide open as we come close and the fresh air rushes my face, clear and bracing.

  “Here you go, man.” Nathan stops the chair just outside the doors. “You have a good one,” he says as Ben gets up.

  Ben shakes Nathan’s hand, thanks him.

  Nathan wheels the chair back inside and the two of us stand there, staring at his retreat as if we’re lost without him.

  A car honks and Ben flinches. Must feel strange, the sudden noise and bustle.

  Francis comes over to us. He takes Ben’s hand and shakes it. Gently. “Good to see you, brother! Welcome back.”

  “You, too, man.” Ben looks away and I wonder if he feels embarrassed, naked in front of Francis now. In front of the world.

  Francis claps his hands together as if we’re about to embark on a wonderful adventure. Then he turns and jumps into the backseat.

  Ben gets into the passenger seat up front and I stand here in a fog until it dawns on me to go around and get behind the wheel.

  “Whose wheels?” Ben’s voi
ce is quiet and wondering as he does up his seat belt.

  “One of my ladies,” I tell him. I don’t know if he hears me, his eyes flicking around at people and cars. “You okay?”

  He starts, as if I’ve given him a poke. “Sure. I’m—yeah. Just a little ah—” He pulls his elbows close in a pantomime of vulnerability. “Been inside too long, I guess.”

  “I feel like that if I’m in the house for a couple of days even,” Francis says. “Get outside and I’m jumpy as a whore in church.”

  “Oh, Father Luke.” I put the car in drive. “Your gentility is only surpassed by your vulgarity.”

  “My crudité, as we say in France. I’m huge in France.”

  Ben gives a soft snort. I wonder if we’re trying too hard.

  SEVENTEEN

  Ben

  Maggie’s place. It smells like Maggie and not-Maggie. Someone else’s furniture. Someone else’s dishes. Seems like Francis has been staying here.

  Maggie’s bedroom. The bed is kiddie-width. Her brother calls it the Monk’s Cell.

  “Maybe you guys should take the pullout tonight,” Francis says. “A little more space. Tomorrow you’ll have the place to yourselves.”

  Maggie shoots him a look, shuts him up. Protecting me? Or Francis?

  “I thought we’d just slide my top mattress onto the floor,” she says. “Um, and then we’d, ah, it’d be a double bed.” Double bed. It hangs in the air like a bad smell. Who’d want to sleep with a man who put a bullet in his head?

  “We got you some more clothes,” she blurts. “Underwear and shirts, another pair of jeans. Bottom two drawers.”

  The dresser is in the closet. No room for it in the Monk’s Cell.

  Now what? Nowhere to look. Nowhere where Ben is not.

  “Okay. Ah, I’m just going to—” I jab a thumb toward the bathroom. Let me in there. Let me breathe. Let them breathe. Don’t hold your breath.

  Bathroom door closed, it’s just me and the mirror. The black hole sighs. Man in the mirror. Man in the moon. Ben and not Ben. Me and not me. Wave at Ben and Ben waves back.

  The bandage is small and fresh and white. A nurse put a new one on this morning. You could probably go without, she said, but it’s nice to go home with a fresh change.

  Go without? Peel back the tape and look at the hole. Scabbed in a thick blood-black, it’s framed with a bouquet of yellow-green bruise.

  Wake up, wake up, please wake up. Blood streaming down, off my jaw, down my shirt, across the couch.

  Ben shudders in the mirror, shakes his head at me. At us. “Dumb fuck.”

  Put the bandage back where you found it.

  Sitting on the back of the toilet are the only hints of what used to be Maggie and me, bits of us in a little clay bowl: earrings, a beaded hair clip, jeweled barrettes. I bought her most of it. She likes that stuff. I like her in it. Her red-and-orange headband sits beside the bowl. Maggie’s turban. It stretches in my hand, stretches me, turns me over, floats me into Christmas, before the apartment on Williams Street, before Frankie was born. Our first Christmas together? Second? One of Maggie’s old ladies had given her a Deepak Chopra book. Cover-to-cover daffodils; a platitude for every occasion.

  She pulled the turban on and slid it back over her hair. Sitting cross-legged with a pole-straight spine, she turned her acid eyes my way and read from the book. “Ben,” she said, “you were created to be completely loved and completely lovable, for your whole life. This is what I am telling you.”

  “Is that supposed to be an Indian accent?” Those eyes of hers could burn a hole in your skin. Completely loved, completely lovable. Little did she know. This is a face only a mother could love. And even she skipped town. Maggie kept looking at me, grinning like a love-shaped lunatic. Completely lovable. For your whole life. Nothing to do but brush it off: “You are stone-cold racist, sister!”

  “Oh no, Ben!” She laughed and bobbled her head. “This is not so. The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.”

  I made a microphone out of my thumb and pushed in for an interview. “Mr. Chopra, what would you say to critics who feel you’re completely full of chapati?”

  “Let me put it to you this way, Ben.” Another head bobble, swallowing the giggles. “These skeptics, this band of bastards, need a tap in the tikka. No joke, Ben. Serious business. They need a pop in the paneer, a shot—”

  Rap at the door. My Christmas movie snags and fades to black.

  “Are you okay in there?” Maggie asks.

  Am I okay? Look in the mirror. Are you okay? Smooth the bandage over the black hole. “Yup. Be out in a sec.”

  DINNER ON THE couch. Just pasta. Just simple. Francis sits on a cushion on the floor. The two of them tell stories, their stories, childhood stories. They laugh. I try.

  I’m here and I’m not here. Nose against the glass. Ben in a bottle. I don’t know how to play. I don’t know how to find her. “You ever read that Deepak Chopra book anymore?”

  The two of them turn their heads. Laughter trickles away. What the hell has that got to do with the price of eggs?

  “I was just thinking of that Christmas. Who gave you that book?”

  Maggie thinks for a second. “Cecily.”

  She looks at me; she looks at the monster. Have I reached Mrs. Cecily G. Riley? She knows. I probably should be in a bottle, corked and tossed.

  SEVENTEEN

  Maggie

  It takes about three hot seconds to show Ben around the apartment and then we’re left staring at each other.

  Francis takes a seat on the couch. Ben stands in the middle of the room as if he’s not sure about that couch business. He eyes the chairs at the little table by the window.

  I ask if anyone would like something to drink. “There’s juice, water, coffee, milk?” At milk, a clunky ha-ha comes out of me and echoes around the room. Jesus.

  “I’m good with water,” Ben says.

  My brother rests an arm along the back of the couch as though he’s very relaxed. “I’ll have coffee if you’re making it,” he says.

  I escape to the kitchen, turn on the cold-water tap, and stare at the steady stream a few moments. I never would have imagined feeling this way with Ben. Every word, every movement we make feels so precise and judicious. Francis too. All of us, careful-careful-careful—like three drunks trying to play sober.

  I fill a glass with water and then start on the coffee. Then I hear Francis open his big mouth. “Maybe you guys should take the pullout tonight,” he says. “A little more space.” Like it’s nothing, he adds, “Tomorrow you’ll have the place to yourselves.”

  Snatching the water glass off the counter, I head back into the living area and give him a look. “I thought we’d just slide my top mattress onto the floor.” My voice is full of brittle cheer.

  Ben is now seated in a chair he has placed kitty-corner to the couch. I put the glass in his hand and the surprise of touching his fingers sends me babbling about the extra clothes I brought for him, extra underwear in the bottom two drawers—in the dresser—in the closet—blahblahblah.

  When I run out of steam, the room is crushingly still.

  Ben sets his water on the coffee table and excuses himself to go to the bathroom.

  The moment the door closes Francis jumps up and yanks me into the kitchen.

  “What was that?” he whispers. “Why can’t I say that I’m leaving tomorrow?”

  “Because—I don’t know.” I glance into the living room toward the bathroom door. “Because then he’s going to ask why and we’ll have to talk about your drunken viral video crap.”

  “So?”

  “So I want him to feel like he’s come home to a stable family, okay.”

  “Oh please, the Manson Family had more stability than this one.”

  “Fine,” I hiss at him. “Say what you want then.” I wrap my arms up over my head as if debris is falling from above. “Do you really have to go tomorrow?”

  Francis leans against t
he stove. “Yes.” He sighs. He takes his cell phone out of his pocket and then stuffs it back. “That Katie Wilks from the Herald keeps leaving me messages. And I know—it’s my own fault. I just need to disappear for a while.”

  “You and whose army?” I look back through the living room again. “What’s taking him so long? What’s he doing in there?”

  “I need a cigarette. Do you think Ben would mind if I smoked?”

  How am I going to do this? Why, Francis? Why can’t you just stay?

  EIGHTEEN

  Ben

  It’s nearly midnight. Maggie found a dozen things for the three of us to watch on TV. A dozen reasons to keep our mouths shut and the lights on. Her brother finally gave us the heave. He needed the couch; it was his bedtime.

  The mattress and box spring are side by side now. We’ve put sheets on both. Blankets. Pillows. The room is all bed. Can’t even open the door all the way. She keeps finding more to do.

  Pajamas on. Her old ones, red plaid. She put them on in the bathroom.

  Water—we both need water, Maggie says, and she’s gone again, slipping out sideways through the little space left. Slipping through the cracks.

  Must have water. We had the hell, it’s time for high water. Suppose it’s time for Ben’s pill too. Bottle’s in my pocket. Pills rattle against plastic. Have I reached Mrs. Cecily G. Riley? Who gave you that book? Of course it was old Cecily. Who else?

  Maggie’s hand pokes back through the door with a cold, sweating glass. She sidesteps in. Sock-footed, she stands on my mattress with a glass in each hand and watches.

  Hold them up for display: Benjamin Brody. One tablet at bedtime.

  “Water wings,” I tell her. She doesn’t know what that means, asshole. Try making sense. “They’re antidepressants. Lambert said they’d be like water wings till I got back on my feet.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Makes sense, right? I mean, you know, tons of people take antidepressants, so, that’s um . . . totally fine.” She smiles like a nurse with a loaded bedpan. “Could you?” She hands over the waters.