by Joan Opyr
“What is the matter with you?” Tipper asked. “Stomach cramps?” He started to turn around in his chair, and I grabbed his arm.
“Don’t look,” I said, crouching down so as to be less visible.
“Why not?”
“Sylvie’s here.”
“So? Let’s ask her to join us,” he said, attempting to turn around again.
“We can’t.” I gripped his arm tightly and dropped my voice to a low whisper. “She’s not alone.”
“Oh. Would you like a menu to hide behind?”
“Don’t be funny.”
“Okay. Would you like to leave?”
“We’d have to walk right past them.”
Tipper considered the possibilities and then shook his head. “It looks like we’ll have to wait. Just eat your dinner, and I’ll try to shield you from view as much as possible. If you’ll stop staring at her, she’ll be less likely to notice you.”
I made a conscious effort to look away, but I couldn’t resist sneaking glances. It took me several minutes to place the other woman. She was one of the fire-eating Lesbian Avengers who had made Sunday night so memorable. They downed at least two rounds of drinks, and then, apparently without Sylvie noticing me, they got up and disappeared among the pool tables in the back room. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“Is the coast clear?” Tipper asked.
“They’ve gone into the billiard room. Go ahead, eat your dinner.”
“Look, maybe she’s just a friend.”
“No one has friends who look like that.”
“Look like what? I wasn’t allowed to turn around.”
“Like k.d. lang.”
He paused to consider this. “Like k.d. lang on Grammy night or when she’s caught by the paparazzi on her way to put out the trash?”
“Grammy night. When she’s won.”
“I’ll eat quickly,” he said, forking a huge pile of lettuce into his mouth.
I wadded up my napkin and tossed it onto the middle of my plate. What right did I have to be miserable? I was no better than A. J. I’d behaved like a drunken slut, both in Fiesta Jack’s and afterwards, and I didn’t have any legitimate claim on Sylvie, anyway. Tipper was my friend. He thought I should have my pick of the dykes of the world. Sylvie might have other ideas.
We drove home to the accompaniment of Ella Fitzgerald. I had requested Janis Ian. Tipper dismissed this as music to commit suicide by and pointed out that he couldn’t die until he’d slept with all of the Seattle Mariners. I reminded him that he already had a sweetheart, which he dismissed with a wave of his hand before popping the Cole Porter Songbook into the cassette deck.
It was close to eleven by the time we reached Fort Sister. I pulled into the gravel drive, my headlights pointing at the front gate. The silver padlock flashed in my high beams, and I found myself thinking about Sylvie and Kate and Sam’s dead cell-mate. I turned the engine off.
“What’s up?” Tipper asked. “Are you coming in?”
“No,” I said. “I was just thinking of something. The man who died . . .”
“Sylvie’s father?”
I nodded. “Yeah. You said he was out here, and that’s why you got the padlock.”
“I know it’s useless. It’s only for psychological reassurance.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I mean. What did he want? What did he say to Cedar Tree that made your mother put a padlock on your gate? People don’t even lock their cars in Cowslip, much less their front doors or their front gates.”
Tipper thought for a moment. “I don’t think he actually spoke to Cedar Tree, he just scared her. It’s not all that surprising, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he continued, “Cedar’s out communing with nature, worshipping the moon or something, and she sees this figure creeping along the edge of the woods. When she screamed, he ran off. She probably thought she’d conjured him up with one of her smudge sticks.”
“This was at night?”
“Just after nine,” he said. “Still light enough to see, but dark enough to be creepy. But that was on Wednesday, I think. He came back the next day.”
“He was here twice?”
“That’s what Cedar Tree says. He was walking along the edge of the property early the next morning. Cedar Tree saw him, and my mother went out to have a word with him. He said he was just passing through, and then he tried to bum some money off of her.”
“Did she give him any?”
“Probably.”
“But she put the lock on the gate?”
He shrugged. “I guess she didn’t want to have to shoot him. Some people see that you’re a soft touch, and they decide to come back in the night for seconds.”
I nodded. “What did your mother do after that? Can you think of anything else?”
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the seat. “She called the neighbors,” he said.
“Including Kate Wood?”
“Of course. When Cedar Tree caught him on Thursday morning, he was on the old footpath that runs past the dugouts. As you know, that goes straight up over the ridge and drops down onto Kate’s farm. She lives there all alone with only a couple of dogs for protection. I don’t know if she has a gun or not. My mother offered to send over an armed squadron. I believe that Kate thanked her politely but turned the offer down.”
“Did she say if he’d been to her place?”
“No,” Tipper said, “she didn’t. Of course, considering who he was, I guess it’s not too surprising. It’s got to be unnerving when your husband comes traipsing back after sixteen years. You can have someone declared dead after seven.”
We sat quietly for a moment. I thought of telling him Sylvie’s story and seeing what he made of it. I’d trust Tipper with my life, but in the dark, I couldn’t seem to dismiss what Sylvie thought she had seen in her backyard as the wishful thinking of an abused child. Tipper seemed to guess some of what was on my mind.
“You’re wondering if he made it all the way over to Kate’s, aren’t you?”
I shook my head. “No, I know that he did. Sylvie told me.” I explained about her seeing him in her mother’s kitchen on Thursday. “What I’m wondering is what he was doing over here on your mother’s property.”
“Maybe he didn’t know about my mother,” he said, “or how she feels about trespassers. We moved here after he did his vanishing act. If he was walking along the road, a detour across our place would cut nearly three miles off his trip.”
“Unless your mother happened to shoot him.”
“True.” He looked at me closely. I avoided making eye contact. “Let me sum up, for you,” he said at last. “You think Sam is in the clear. If Sylvie’s father was murdered, that leaves one or two suspects very close to home.”
I started the truck. “I’ve got to be going.”
He shook his head, smiling. “Goodnight, honey. When you want to tell me about it, and I do mean all about it, give me a call.”
He leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek before he got out. I watched him climb over the fence, shining my headlights down the gravel driveway until he was well out of sight. Then I backed out. Instead of driving straight home, I drove up the road to Kate’s. I missed the entrance the first time and had to back up. I pulled in and drove part of the way up to her house. Then I shifted the truck into neutral and turned the headlights off.
I didn’t get out. The trees were thick on either side of the drive, and it was impossible to see the house—you couldn’t see that until you were about fifty yards from it. The only light visible was a halogen bulb mounted on the front of the barn. I could see the glow from where I was parked, but it illuminated nothing.
I sat there for about a quarter of an hour, thinking. The woods seemed to close in on either side of the truck. I locked my door and then reached over to lock the passenger side. I don’t know what I thought I was locking out, ghosts maybe.
Chap
ter 19
When I got home, I found a note from Emma pinned to my pillow. It said, “Emergency Room.” I drove back into town.
I met Hugh down in the lobby. It was where I expected to find him; he avoided being up in the ER with Sam whenever possible. Unlike my mother, who loved talking hospital jargon with the doctors, Hugh was completely at a loss. If a physician told him decapitation was the cure for a headache, my father would say, “Do what you think is best.”
“What’s happening?” I asked, sitting down in the vinyl seat next to him.
“It’s pretty bad,” he said. “Sam’s also making it a lot worse than it has to be.”
“Of course.”
He smiled. “He’s been vomiting all day, couldn’t seem to stop. He’s not vomiting now, but he’s so potassium-depleted that he can’t walk. His muscles don’t work properly. He’s had a liter of potassium solution, and he’s refusing to drink any more. They’re up there trying to work out some kind of compromise.”
“So you came down here?”
“I’m not going to sit up there and listen to him yelling at the nurses. Everyone’s doing their best.”
The nurses never minded the yelling as much as my father did. They considered it an occupational hazard and didn’t seem to take it personally.
I said, “Is it life-threatening?”
Hugh seemed to shrink before my eyes. I noticed the gray in his hair and the ashy stubble on his chin. I always forgot my father’s age; he was three years older than Emma. To me, he always seemed about forty. That was the last time I could remember him having a birthday with a specific age attached to it. He looked at me over the top of his half-glasses.
“I don’t know. I asked your mother that.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said the heart’s a muscle, too, just like his legs. It could stop beating.”
I let this sink in. “Can I go up?”
“Sure. They probably won’t let you stay very long. Not unless you can convince him to drink another liter of potassium.”
The nurse was pumping up a blood-pressure cuff when I went in.
“That fucking pinches,” Sam snapped. He was wearing his usual hospital outfit, a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top. He refused to wear the gowns that tied up the back. “Take it off.”
“She has to take your blood pressure,” Emma explained calmly. She was wearing her hospital face—patient, unflappable, and as much a part of the routine as Sam’s outfit. “Just relax.”
“Fuck off.”
I sat down on the windowsill, as far out of the way as possible. The nurse’s face was a complete blank. She finished her count and stuck a Thermoscan thermometer in his ear.
“The doctor will be by in a couple of minutes to talk about your options.”
“She can forget it, I’m not drinking any more of that shit.”
The nurse smiled mechanically and left the room. Sam was watching TV. The six million dollar man ran across the screen in slow motion.
“That’s what I need,” Sam said. “New fucking legs.”
Emma shook her head. She was fussing around the bed, tucking the blankets in beneath him. “What you need is to do what you’re told. If you want to walk out of here, you’ve got to drink another liter.”
“Then I won’t be walking out.”
Emma punched the mute button on the TV remote. “Hi, Bil,” she said cheerfully. “I see you got my note.”
I kept my features carefully neutral. My mother was hell in the sheriff’s office, but she didn’t allow emotion to intrude in the hospital room. Anyone caught crying got kicked out the door.
“Hi, Sam.”
“Hi,” he said, not looking at me.
Emma gave me her do-something look. I made no sign that I’d seen it.
“Could we turn the sound up a little?” I asked. “I think this is the episode with the Fembots.”
Sam nodded. “It’s two parts, and they’re showing them back-to-back. It’s some kind of Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman marathon.”
“Oh good.”
Emma sat down in a chair next to the bed, looking more old and tired than Hugh. “I don’t know how you can watch this trash.”
“You know,” I said, ignoring her, “I wonder if they’ll ever make a feature film out of this. They’re making one of The Brady Bunch.”
“And they’ve done The Beverly Hillbillies,” Sam added.
“Exactly. You’d think this would be an obvious choice. It’s got everything—action, technology, the chance for some really spectacular special effects. Who would you get to play Steve Austin? Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
Sam shook his head dismissively. “No. Maybe Steven Seagal, or that guy who played Batman.”
“Michael Keaton?”
“Yeah.”
Emma gave me the look again, meaning press him now into doing what we want. I ignored her. I couldn’t hammer him like that, even when he needed it.
“I used to want to be bionic,” I said. “I wanted to fall out of an airplane just so I could get the arms and legs. I never really wanted the ear, though. I thought the bionic eye was much cooler.”
“That’s because you already had the ear,” Emma observed. “Everything I said went down in your little notebook.”
Sam smiled, and I hoped his humor was improving. “Remember when Sarah went as Wonder Woman for Halloween?”
“Who could forget that? We dipped the boobs on one of Emma’s old bras in baby shoe bronzer. Then she painted Dad’s climbing rope gold and hung it on her belt.”
“And she stole Naomi’s high-heeled boots out of her closet and spray-painted them red.”
“Agony,” I said. “All hell broke loose when she came out into the living room.”
Emma, seeing our mission was nearly accomplished, smiled now. “Be sure to confine your reminiscing to this room and away from Naomi. She still hasn’t forgiven Sarah.”
“She never forgives anyone,” I said. Sam nodded in agreement.
We settled down to watch the Fembots in companionable silence. Sam was approaching the point where he’d be pliable enough to discuss that second liter of potassium, but he hadn’t reached it yet. My mother was champing at the bit, so much so that she nearly jumped out of her skin when the doctor, a short, round, competent-looking woman, came in.
Emma stood up. “I hope you can talk some sense into him,” she said.
The doctor smiled and looked at my brother. She extended her hand. “Hi, Sam. Dr. Nordquist has gone off duty. I’m Deborah Trilby. I’ve heard about you from your sister, Ruth. We’re friends.”
He took her hand reluctantly but said nothing.
“We need to discuss your options here. As you know, potassium depletion is a very serious thing. The first step was to get your vomiting under control, which you’ve done. The second step is to get your potassium levels back up to normal. That’ll restore your muscle function.”
“I know all this,” Sam said. “I’ve been here for hours.”
“Listen,” my mother interrupted, “you’ve got to be made to see sense. Either you drink that other liter . . .”
Sam had opened his mouth, no doubt to tell Emma to fuck off again, but Dr. Trilby intervened. “You must be Mrs. Hardy. I’ve heard a lot about you.” Dr. Trilby smiled enigmatically. “And you must be Bil,” she said, turning to me. “I’ve heard a lot about you, too.”
Turning to my mother, she said, “Mrs. Hardy, it’s my practice to consult with my adult patients in private. If you and Bil wouldn’t mind leaving the room for a few minutes, I’ll run over Sam’s options with him, and then he can make a decision.”
“What options?” Emma argued. “He can drink the rest of that potassium or he can die. I don’t see why I should leave the room and let him kill himself.”
“Nevertheless,” I stood up and took her arm, “we’re going.”
“Bil,” Emma objected, “I’ve never been asked to leave the room before.”
> “She means hospital room,” I said to Dr. Trilby. “She’s been asked to leave lots of other rooms.”
“Sam is my son,” Emma began.
“Sam is twenty-two,” I finished firmly, “a grown man by any standards. He can make his own medical decisions. We’ll see you later, Sam.”
My brother, who had been slouching into a monumental sulk, sat up and turned the television off, something I’d never seen him do while in the hospital. Even when doctors asked him to turn it off, he either ignored them or turned up the sound. Dr. Trilby sat down on the edge of the bed, and I gave Emma a firm push, propelling her into the hallway and shutting the door behind us.
“Bil . . .”
“Come on,” I said.
“I should be in there!”
“Bullshit. You should be letting him make his own decisions, not babying him.”
She had been walking as if on autopilot toward the elevator. Now she stopped, folding her arms across her chest and glaring at me.
“What does Deborah Trilby know about it? She’s not even his doctor.”
“She’s a friend of Ruth’s,” I replied. “She passed on the information about Burt Wood’s autopsy results. Didn’t the name ring a bell with you?”
This surprised her enough to allow me to get her moving again. “I forgot that.” Then, recalling her anger, she said, “Whoever she is, her high-handed treatment . . .”
“Will get Sam to drink that second liter of potassium,” I replied, guiding Emma onto the elevator and pushing the button for the basement. “I’m sure of it.”
“She’s an asshole,” my mother observed bitterly. “I’ve never been shuffled off like that, and she couldn’t have done it without your help.”