by Amanda Davis
I stood in the entrance and inhaled. Things washed over me faster than I could track them. I floated and plummeted all at once. And then I turned and saw the fat girl behind me, a blue flash beyond the glass, watching me from the other side.
I went to the front desk. There were flyers under the glass on the countertop. Winston’s Grief Counseling, one read, Helping Time Do Its Job, Helping You Move On.
“Room twelve sixteen,” the nurse said, and pointed towards a bank of elevators.
The twelfth floor had the wide hallways and cold bright lights I remembered. My stint at Gleryton swept up on me, but I shook it off. That was over, I told myself. All that had happened long ago, nearly a year ago, no one would recognize me. It was a closed chapter, a done deal. Still the speckled linoleum floors and the ceiling tiles and the rounded gray Formica nurses’ station were uncomfortably familiar.
A calm disembodied voice flooded the corridor at regular intervals. Kchshhskksh. Dr. Samuels to Radiology. Dr. Samuels to Radiology. Even this was like a newly remembered dream.
I found 1216 easily but instead of going in, I walked around the floor trying to appear inconspicuous and peeking in other rooms. There were lots of legs and feet and ends of beds. Lots of IV stands and the clattering sound of curtains being pulled back, skittering along their metal tracks. There were a few people: the occasional bored or distracted patient in a pale, flapping gown walking slowly or being pushed in a wheelchair down the hall, or just sitting there, not even taking it in anymore, their faces all the same, blank and tired. I kept going, strolling as though I knew where I was headed, my face warm, my head pounding. I wasn’t quite ready to face Andrea Dutton.
I found a rest room and went in, leaning into the mirror to study my face. I looked more like me now. Which is not to say that I looked so different from the girl my mother had brought home from Berrybrook those months ago, only that now I knew she was supposed to be me.
I took a deep breath. If I was going to be brave, then I’d better be brave. I threw my shoulders back and swallowed. “Hi!” I said to the mirror. Too cheerful. “Hello there,” I said with more tragedy in my voice.
The nurses’ station hummed and bustled behind me and ahead there was an empty gurney in the hall. Men and women in pale blue scrubs sauntered by. I didn’t look at them, just straight ahead, as though I knew exactly what I was doing.
Then I reached 1216. It had a plain brown door with a high small window. I peeked in and through the crosshatched glass I could make out the foot of a hospital bed with a dark green curtain partially drawn, and beyond that, by the window, another bed. So Andrea Dutton didn’t have a private room. There were flowers on a table by the window, ordinary cheerful bouquets of bright carnations and baby’s breath with small stiff cards peeking from between their petals.
A face stared back at me, eyes even with mine. I jumped back and froze. A blond woman in a pale yellow sweater opened the door. She had bags under her eyes and a brittle smile. “Are you a friend of Andie’s?” she said. Her voice was breathy.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. I smiled and gave a half-nod while trying to peer around her and into the room. The green curtain moved and a nurse walked out, stepping past me into the hall.
“They were just taking blood,” the woman said. She looked like Andrea, but grown up. “Did you want to come in?”
I nodded and she stepped aside to let me pass.
Andrea Dutton lay small and limp, arms by her side, hooked to machines that beeped and hummed. Without the customary veil of makeup, she looked as though she were made of porcelain, except that a yellowish bruise covered part of her cheek, neck, and the collarbone that peeked through her pale gown. Her head had been shaved; her skull was bandaged.
“It’s nice that you’re visiting,” Mrs. Dutton said. “She was awake for a while today.” She sat on a chair near the bed and her small reddish hands rubbed themselves up and down on her denim thighs. “What’s your name, so I can tell Andie you stopped by?”
The air in the room was dizzying, so bright and stale. All the energy came from the voice of machines. Over where the curtain around the next bed ended, feet, covered by a thin white sheet, poked out. I didn’t know what to say. Andrea Dutton. When I spoke my voice sounded too loud for the room.
“Annabelle. Tell her Annabelle visited.” Mrs. Dutton nodded.
“She’s feeling better?”
Mrs. Dutton took her daughter’s limp right hand in hers. “Yes,” she said cheerily. “Maybe you heard that she got out of the ICU a week ago? The doctors say we’re right on schedule.” She smiled at me for just a moment and then her eyes focused on something behind me, high up the wall. I resisted the urge to turn around. “It just takes a long time,” she said, but now she sounded like she was talking to herself.
“I really hope she feels better.”
“I come every day.” Mrs. Dutton leaned forward and fluffed Andrea’s pillows. “And her brothers come after school. Her father comes when he can but I think it’s the school friends that do her the most good.”
I looked at Andrea, who hadn’t moved at all, not even to blink or wiggle, and wondered how Mrs. Dutton could tell.
“I know everyone’s worried about her.”
“I’m sorry, Annabelle,” she said, smiling and wiping at one eye. She laughed. “I don’t know why I’m so wound up. Sometimes this even feels normal.” She gave a short laugh. Her eyes were incredibly sad.
I backed towards the door. I wanted to run out of that room.
“Come back soon,” she said. “If you see Missy or Jenny at school, tell them to come and see her. Andie loves visitors. They don’t have to stay long.”
“I will,” I said, nodding. “I’ll do that.” And then I took off down the hall as fast as I could.
By the time I got home it was late. The hall light was on and my mother had pinned a note beneath the vase on the table. F, it said. No Fern? What happened this afternoon? Am at GHFA mtg. Home by 8, then we talk! Lv, M.
“Shit,” I said.
The fat girl plopped down on the living room couch. “What did you expect?”
I walked past her and into the kitchen. I took an apple from a bowl on the table and bit hard as I sat down, but it was mealy so I got up and tossed it in the garbage. In the fridge there was a pint of skim milk, half a bottle of white wine, something brown in a Tupperware container, a package of Weight Watcher’s lasagna with a yellow Post-it on it (Faith), and some white cheese.
The night seemed incredibly quiet. I sat there with my feet on the table, telling myself lasagna was fine, but then my mind drifted to the hospital and Andrea Dutton, to her mother’s bright voice, and then to the “talk” with my mother, which I could almost map out word for word before she even got home. All about my need to take responsibility and my incredible insensitivity and selfishness… There were only a few variations on how self-centered I was and how much my mother sacrificed to do well by me since my father’s departure. Even departure, a word she often used when yelling at me, made it sound like he’d left her on purpose, not keeled over. I sat in the growing darkness, waiting for her to return.
“Let’s have a glass of wine,” the fat girl said. “One little glass.”
I closed my eyes and sighed.
“Come on,” she said. “You want to sit here and wait to get into trouble?”
No. I rose and went to the fridge again and got out the lasagna. I took a cold bite, standing at the counter, but it seemed to grow in my mouth. I forced myself to chew and swallow and took another, and a third, then dumped the rest down the garbage disposal and switched it on.
The fat girl was watching me. “Well?” she said.
“I haven’t had anything to drink since a certain red punch. I thought you were supposed to look after me.”
“Says who?” The fat girl winked. “Come on. We’re practicing for the real world.”
I grabbed the bottle by the neck and followed her out the door.
When
I returned home for the second time that evening I was cold and drunk. The fat girl and I had wandered around drinking from the bottle and sneaking through the darkness until the damp ground and icy air got to be too much.
My mother was asleep on the couch in the living room with an empty glass on the floor by her head and a magazine by her feet. I closed the front door carefully and tiptoed up the stairs holding my breath to be as silent as possible.
“Faith?”
I froze.
“Faith?”
“Yes.” My lips were rubbery and thick. I concentrated on sounding normal. “I’m really tired. I’m going to bed.”
“I want to talk to you.” Her drowsy voice still came from the living room and I weighed the idea of running up the stairs and locking my door but thought better of it. Reason was nearly always the best approach to my mother.
“Can we do it in the morning?” I took a deep breath. “Mom, it was an accident about Fern. I should have called.”
Wrong thing to say. I heard her rise and thump down the hall.
“You’re damn right you should have called! You think money is free? I have to pay for your therapy even if you don’t show up, and you wasted Fern’s time, Faith. That’s a very arrogant thing to do.”
I didn’t say anything. My back was still to her, my hand on the banister heading up. My cheeks were hot.
“Turn around and answer me, young lady.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” I turned around but kept my eyes lowered, staring at the brown carpet and my mother’s stocking feet, the tiny black seam across her toes. “I stayed after for help in chemistry and…” I tried to control my voice, but my words were blurry and I felt myself sway. My mother didn’t seem to notice.
“This is a warning, Faith,” she said. “I want you to think about your actions. Understand?”
I stifled a sigh.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
She seemed satisfied and turned to go. “Oh, by the way,” she said over her shoulder, “some woman from Clark’s restaurant called and left a phone number. Didn’t say what it was about.”
She hovered for a minute, her back to me. She seemed to be waiting for something.
“Job,” I said. “I applied for a job.”
“Oh.” She straightened a picture on the wall. “I see. You don’t have time to go to Fern, but you have time to run across town? Is this job going to interfere with your schoolwork? With your therapy?”
“No. I promise.”
“We’ll see,” she said, and left.
Gratefully I made my way to bed.
In the morning I stumbled to the bathroom and drank glass after glass of water, head pounding, mouth full of sand. My skin smelled sour, like wine. A shower helped immensely, and by the time I’d made it downstairs, dressed and ready to go, the evening before had diminished to a dull throb and some wooziness. Not entirely pleasant, but manageable.
On the kitchen table was a note: Emily—Clark’s, and a phone number. I folded it, tucked it in my pocket, drank a glass of skim milk, and left for school. The fat girl met me at the corner of Darby Road.
“Ugh,” she said. She looked awful. She was wearing an enormous gray coat over her shapeless blue dress. Her hair was matted on one side and she had dark bags under her eyes.
“You look terrible,” I said, but she just glared at me and lumbered along. Each car that passed seemed to fill her with pain. “Ugh,” she said. “Oh.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
She didn’t speak. I fingered the note in my pocket. “I’ll call after school,” I said.
She stopped short and swayed a little. Her face was shiny and pale. “You okay?” I reached out to touch her but she backed away, then turned and walked in the opposite direction of school. I waited for a minute, watching her. After a few more steps she turned and bent double, vomiting into the ditch by the road. I dropped my bag and ran over. I pulled her hair back and ran my hand in circles on her back. When her heaving finally stopped she straightened slowly and wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve.
“You’re going to be late,” she said.
I stood uncertainly and then walked ahead, scooped my bag up, and headed towards school. I checked over my shoulder. She was still standing there in her gray coat but I went ahead anyway.
Jenny Sims was a cheerleader like Andrea. She had big pouty lips and a way of listening with her head tilted gently. Today she wore jeans so faded they were almost white and a gray zip-up sweatshirt over a pale pink T-shirt. Her streaked blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail that hung with just the right amount of bounce. Her heavy bangs brushed her eyes, which were clear and lashy and so blue they were almost violet. She was endearingly shy and very smart. All the guys were in love with her. Everything about her was feminine—she even walked in a quiet, girly way. Everyone wanted to be near her. Though I’d been in classes with her since elementary school, I had never actually spoken to her, but she was best friends with Andrea Dutton, so she must have been who Mrs. Dutton meant.
After third period American history I followed Jenny Sims into the hall. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. All around us people called to each other and slammed lockers. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the back of Jenny Sims’s tiny head or her swinging ponytail. The fat girl stood by my side.
Jenny reached her locker and fumbled with her combination. I shifted from one foot to the other, unsure of what I wanted to say. Someone walked past and bumped me so that I banged against the lockers. Jenny Sims looked up.
“Hi,” I said. My mouth was dry. I was acutely aware of the fat girl humming beside me.
Jenny focused on her locker and the business of exchanging books. I tried to remind myself that she was shy. “I’m Faith,” I said.
Silence, then a small “I know.”
I cleared my throat and took a deep breath. “I was at the hospital yesterday. I mean I had to visit someone, so…my uncle, I had to visit him and so I was in Gleryton Hospital, you know…”
She faced me, hands crossed over her textbooks, a patient, slightly bored look on her face. I could tell she was watching people pass by to see if they noticed us talking.
“…and so I just happened to be near the twelfth floor and so I stopped in to see Andrea Dutton—”
“What?” She gave me her full attention now. “You did what?”
“I visited Andrea and her mother—”
Jenny Sims shook her head, turned around, and walked away. I followed. I had to dodge people to keep up with her. “Hey,” I called. “Hey!” But she just kept going, slipping up the stairs towards the library.
“She wants you to visit,” I yelled after her retreating figure. “That’s all.”
People in a hurry jostled past me so that I bounced to one side, then the other. Jenny Sims disappeared through the library doors. I just stood there, my whole body loose and confused.
“Smoke,” the fat girl said.
Tony Giobambera could have finished his cigarette by now, but I hadn’t the heart to hurry. Who was I to care whether Andrea Dutton got visitors if her best friend didn’t even care? We pushed outside and plopped down on the cold ground.
“I can’t take much more of this,” the fat girl muttered. I saw frosting on her cheek. She had her head back as though sunbathing, but the day was gray, the light was thin.
I lay back and closed my eyes and tried, like her, to feel the sun.
FOUR
I CALLED Clark’s restaurant and was told to report for training that afternoon. I hung up the phone and leapt around the room whooping and shouting. Job! Job! Job! I didn’t care how hard it would be as long as I could make some money, stash it away, and go somewhere else, somewhere it was possible to start over. The fat girl watched me from the couch, a pint of mint ice cream in her lap. She didn’t say anything, just shook her head and licked the back of her spoon.
I arrived at the restaurant wearing the white oxford shirt and black pants I’d had on
when I applied. Emily introduced herself as the night manager and then presented me to Chuck, a tall stringy guy with spiky red hair and tattoos that wound up his arms, disappearing under his rolled-up sleeves and reappearing at the edge of his neck. He didn’t look directly at me but handed me an apron and showed me how to tie it, then pointed things out to me—bus buckets, bar mops, lowboys—I thought that even the lingo was exciting.
I had a dull flicker I couldn’t place. I recognized him as the guy who’d been wiping glasses when I came in to apply, but I also had the sense that I knew him from somewhere. I expected this feeling to diminish over the course of the evening, but it didn’t. While Chuck showed me how to set a table, where the utensils were kept, how to pour water from the side of a pitcher, it grew, slow and steady, like a subtle warmth. I knew that I knew him.
We were halfway through the shift when I figured it out.
“You have to empty the trash periodically,” Chuck was saying. “Otherwise the wait staff can’t scrape for the dishwasher and he’ll get mad and call you a son of a bitch and the chefs can’t toss their shit and they get mad and you don’t eat, right? So here’s the fresh bags and out there’s the Dumpster.”
He had a way of talking and moving at the same time, illustrating things with his hands by slicing the air in big circles or, now, hoisting a huge garbage bag over one shoulder.
I followed him to the Dumpster. “We can smoke out here,” he said. “Provided it’s not too busy. If it’s busy they’ll kill you. Or if they’re just in a bad mood.” He laughed. “Whichever.”
“Are they too busy now?” I asked, but he ignored me.
“Make no mistake. You’re the fall guy around here. Someone needs a scapegoat, you’re it. It’s always the bus. Waitress gets a bad tip, her first reaction is Chuck, did you take money off twenty-six?”