Keepers ch-2

by Gary A Braunbeck

  “This area is for sanctioned personnel only,” he said. His face and voice were both granite.

  I reached down and fumbled at the thing hanging around my neck. “I’ve got a visitor’s pass.”

  “That doesn’t matter-you shouldn’t be in here. What’s your name?”

  Mabel’s face drained of color the second I answered his question but I figured it was more out of concern that she was about to get into trouble. I decided to play it safe and act as if I didn’t know her, like I was just some schlub off the street who couldn’t find his butt with both hands, a floodlight, and a seven-man search party.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted anything but I was looking for… for my uncle, Marty Weis?” I pointed over my shoulder, looking directly at Mabel. “His room’s empty, ma’am. Has he been moved to another unit?”

  Mabel released a breath and said to Bowler-Hat, “I’ll take care of this,” then walked over and gestured for me to move toward the nurse’s desk. As we walked down the hall she slapped an iron clamp that looked like her hand on my elbow. “How the hell did you get in?”

  I looked back to see Bowler-Hat standing outside the break room, watching her escort me out. “Arlene let me in, she said-”

  “-she shouldn’t have let you in. Unless it’s an emergency, there are now no visitors allowed after eight-thirty.”

  “I’m sorry, Ma-uh, ma’am, I didn’t know.” She shot a quick thank-you glance at me when I said “ma’am.” “Where is he?”

  “Mr. Weis is no longer with us,” she said, a little too loudly. She pulled me past the nurse’s desk toward the hallway where I’d entered; her entire body was rigid and we were moving a little too fast.

  “Please tell me what happened.”

  “Mr. Weis is no longer with us, sir. You can call the Admissions office after nine tomorrow morning.” We turned down the hall and moved toward the door. After a few steps Mabel looked back over her shoulder, then doubled her pace, yanking me along. Her grip on my arm tightened.

  “That hurts,” I whispered.

  “Jesus, I wish you hadn’t told him your name.”

  “So what? Big deal-what’s he going to do, issue an APB?”

  Mabel swiped her card-key as she none-too-gently spun me around and began to push the door open with my back. “Listen, you know I love you, right?”

  “What the-aren’t you worried about him hearing you?”

  “He didn’t follow us and this hall isn’t monitored. You know I love you, right?”

  “Yeah…?”

  “And you know I don’t say or do anything without a damn good reason, right?”

  “Yeah…?”

  “Good.” She blinked, then gave a weak, unreadable smile. “You need to leave right now and go home and not come around here or the house for a little while, a couple of weeks, at least, okay?”

  “Where’s Marty? He didn’t… didn’t-”

  “-Mr. Weis is no longer with us. That’s all I can tell you.” Then she silently mouthed the words He’s fine while slowly shaking her head. “Please do this for me, will you? Go home and stay away for a couple of weeks.”

  “But… but what’s… I mean-”

  “Do it for me, please?” This wasn’t just out of concern for her job-there was hard, raw, genuine fear in her voice. Before I could say anything else she pushed me outside, closed and locked the door, then spun around and returned to the unit, not giving me so much as a brief backward glance. I was just some schlub off the street.

  Back home in the kitchen I put all of Mom’s morning medications in their compartment and then went to bed, where I lay weeping for another hour or so before there was a soft knock on my door and Mom stuck her head inside.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Fine,” I said in the same clipped, melodramatic way we’ve all said it when we’re upset and don’t want to say Everything is awful and I just want to die so leave me the hell alone, please.

  She held the collar of her tattered blue housecoat closed as she looked out in the hall toward the stairs. “Well, try to keep it down, will you? Your dad will be upset something terrible if he comes home and finds you this way.”

  I stared at her; she stood silhouetted in the doorway like some wisp of a dream that lingers in the eyes for a moment upon waking. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t need to apologize, hon, it’s all right. We just don’t want to upset him. He works so hard.”

  “I know.”

  She started to close the door, then said: “Is it time for my medicine?”

  “Not yet, you take it in the morning.”

  “Well, it is the morning. It’s after midnight, isn’t it?”

  “Go back to bed, Mom. Take it when you get up again.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a good boy, you know that?”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  She looked at me for a few more moments, then closed the door.

  After another half hour I got up and put on my headphones and listened to records until a little past eight-thirty. The songs-some of them were old even back then-wove a curious kind of safety cocoon; this one came out when I was in sixth grade; this one was playing the first time I told so-and-so that I liked her in the eighth grade and she didn’t laugh at me-didn’t kiss me, either, but at least didn’t laugh; and this one, this one I always listened to by myself because it struck at something deep inside me that I didn’t want anyone else to know about because they might make fun of it or find a way to use it against me when they were mad or just feeling mean and needed to take it out on someone.

  Around nine I took off the headphones and called the Cedar Hill Healthcare Center, asking to speak to someone in Admissions. As soon as they answered I gave them the same bullshit story about being Marty Weis’s nephew and how I’d tried to visit him last night, cha-cha-cha. It wasn’t hard to sound scared and confused.

  “Mr. Weis is no longer with us,” said the Admissions person.

  “I know that, ma’am, I was just wondering if you could tell me where he’s gone.”

  “Mr. Weis was checked out of our facility two days ago.” Was checked out, not Checked himself out.

  “Can you tell me who checked him out? Was it his daughter from Los Angeles?”

  “I can’t give out that information, sir, and no forwarding address was provided.”

  This went on for about ten minutes, I was transferred to three different people, all of whom gave me the same story, word for word: Mr. Weis is no longer with us.

  I hung up while being transferred yet again, paced my room for a few minutes, then lay back down on my bed and listened to some more music.

  Then I fell asleep, and dreamed of Mom standing over her medicine in the kitchen.

  I jolted awake, snapping up my head so fast I heard the bones in my neck crack and felt a sharp stab of pain.

  Something had happened.

  Something was wrong.

  I had no idea how I knew this, but the feeling was too strong to be ignored.

  Yanking off the headphones, I headed downstairs. If I remembered filling the compartment and replacing the lids on the bottles, then I must have put the meds back in their hiding place as I usually did; even half-awake, your body more times than not will remember certain physical routines even if your brain doesn’t.

  She was sitting at the table, face-down, her nose pressed against the Local section of The Cedar Hill Ally. One hand was still clutching the newspaper, the other held the cup of now-cold coffee she’d taken the pills with.

  The radio was tuned to the local classical music station. It was playing something from some opera, Mom being the opera fan.

  On the counter, five bottles of prescription medications sat where I’d left them last night. The “Morning” compartment was unopened, as were all the bottles except one-the sedatives; that bottle lay on its side, displaying the depth of the nothing it contained.

  Oh, hon, I
didn’t think it would hurt anything, I’ve just been real jumpy.

  I knew she was dead before I even touched her. I sat there, holding her hand and saying over and over again: “You rest now, Mom, you’ve earned it. You rest now, Mom…”

  I wondered what song I’d been listening to when she’d died. I wondered if she’d tried calling up to me but I didn’t hear her because of the headphones. I wondered if she’d died thinking that her life had been wasted and no one would remember her. “… you’ve earned it. You can rest now…”

  I wondered if her hands had ever held blossoms.

  I made the necessary calls, I waited with her body until the coroner’s wagon and police arrived; I answered all their questions, let the police collect the items they requested, and agreed to come down to the station later that day and let them take my prints. (“A formality,” said the officer. “It will help us make a determination.”) After they left, I called Criss Brothers Funeral Home and told them what happened and, yes, I could come over in a little while and make the arrangements; then it was only a matter of gathering together all the necessary papers (insurance information, etc., which Mom kept in the same metal filing box with everything relating to Dad’s death), calling what few relatives Mom still had in the area, and going about the rest of the awful business.

  A lot of the next several days is something of a blur, so I’ll skip around and just hit the high points, if you don’t mind: her death was ruled accidental, I was not charged with gross negligence or anything else, her doctor was quick to mention her depression and confused state of mind, and the fact that she’d lost her husband only four weeks before confirmed for everyone that the entire incident was a terrible tragedy. Her obituary ran three short paragraphs and read more like a job resume than the summation of a life. Her remains were cremated (she’d been very specific about this for as long as I’d been alive) and placed in the finest urn Criss Brothers had to offer. There was a brief and bleak memorial service held in the chapel at the funeral home with about thirteen people, myself included, in attendance. When all was said and done, I was left sole owner of an empty, paid-for house, and had a respectable amount of money left from their insurance policies. At twenty-one, I was “set” for a good while, provided I used my resources intelligently.

  The memorial service was held the Friday morning Beth’s show was scheduled to open. The night before she called at eight-thirty from a phone at the theater. I hung up as soon as I heard her voice. Less than a minute later the phone rang again and I let the answering machine pick up.

  “Listen,” she said, “we’re taking a dinner break. The dress rehearsal was a disaster and we’re running through the whole thing again at ten. We need to talk and-God! I just heard how stupid that sounds. I’m so sorry about your mom, I really am, and so is Mabel. Did you get the flowers we sent? I’d really like to come to the service tomorrow morning. I would’ve called sooner but I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to-”

  I picked up the receiver. “I love you, Beth, and we should be together, and you know it. I feel so alone right now, and I could just

  … never mind. I don’t think I want to talk right now.”

  “Then don’t say anything, just listen for a minute, okay?

  “Happiness scares the hell out of me, it always has. I mean, it’s great at the time but I know it’s never going to last. I didn’t come to live with Mabel right away, you know. Mom tried palming me off on other relatives for a long time, and I’d stay with them for a couple of weeks, a month maybe, but eventually they’d always send me back because I was in the way, or didn’t get along with their cat, or made them nervous or whatever. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, how I concentrated on changing myself, remaking myself so they’d like me better and want to keep me, it was never good enough. This went on for a few years, and after the first couple of times I learned how to adapt, okay? I wasn’t going to be in any place for very long, so I found a way to make fast friends. Mostly boys. If I put out, they didn’t treat me like I was some kind of dog. And I’d spent so long being treated that way I started to believe that’s what I was-I still do, sometimes. But you spread your legs for them and you’re the most beautiful girl in the world, even if it’s just for one night. I knew it was okay to enjoy their company and stuff and not care about the consequences because I wasn’t going to be around long enough for anything I said or did to matter. I learned to trust happiness only if it was temporary, because then it’s okay when it ends. You can always find another quick fix in the next place.

  “Then Mabel took me in and that was that. I stayed. And that meant having to trust I’d be happy for the long run, but the long run wasn’t in my repertoire so I just kept acting like I was going to be moving on any day now. But I didn’t. I stayed. Then one day I meet the cutest little boy in the world while I’m in the hospital and even though he’s only nine he acts like he’s thirty and I know that he’s going to be something really great when he grows into himself. And he was, and I loved him-I still love him, even though he can’t see what a great person he is. I got… I got comfortable, all right? And I always associated ‘comfortable’ with bored, because I always wanted things to be new, do you understand? I hate that about myself, but things are only interesting to me when they’re new- that’s when I feel the most alive. So anytime I’d start feeling bored, I’d see someone else for a week or so and that was new, I made myself new with them, and it was exciting and unpredictable and when it ended, when I’d get back in sync with you, we were new again. I’ve just been so used to re-making myself for so long that I couldn’t stop.

  “I know that doesn’t justify what I’ve done-what I’ve been doing-and I’m not trying to make excuses, right? I just wanted to give you an explanation because I do love you and I’ve hurt you so much and you didn’t deserve it and if there’s anything I can do, any way to make it good again, to fix things, to make you feel less alone-”

  “-are you done?”

  A soft breath, a softer swallow. “Yes.”

  I looked at the room in which I was sitting, at the furniture and the small bits of dust here and there and the faded pictures on the mantel and decided that I couldn’t remain here. This was an alien shelter in an alien world where outside the walls people you thought you knew were just stacks of carbon hiding behind the scrim of humanity you put in front of them so you wouldn’t have to deal with what they really were.

  “I’m sorry you got bored with me. And I’m sorry there’s no way this can ever be fixed. I can’t be your friend anymore. I love you… I love you too much in another way for that, so I can’t be your friend anymore and that makes me sad. Please don’t come to the service tomorrow, and please don’t ever call me again. I hope the show goes well. Break a leg.”

  I hung up. She did not call back.

  I spent the next two weeks making all the necessary arrangements to leave Cedar Hill, stopping only long enough to eat or sleep, neither of which I did in any great quantity. Pippin received decent reviews, especially for Beth.

  I gave notice at work. I stored most of the furniture and all of the keepsakes. I hired a cleaning crew to come in and scrub the place from top to bottom. I hosed down the outside until the aluminum siding shone. I had a landscaper come in and fix the lawn, adding flowers and plants out front and a pair of small trees in the backyard. Both Mom and Dad had often remarked how they’d wished we had more shade back there.

  One of the offices I cleaned nights was a downtown real estate firm. I showed up an hour early on one of my last nights and spoke with the manager, who was all too happy to help make arrangements to put the house on the market. I gave her all the necessary information on the house, as well as the bank account number where the funds were to be deposited, and told her I would call with my new address as soon as I was settled. We made copies of the keys, signed some forms, and shook hands.

  I decided to go down to Kansas and visit my grandmother for a while. She was old and not in the best of health
and had cried for an hour on the phone when I called to tell her about her daughter’s accidental death. She had neither the strength nor the money to make the trip to Ohio for the service. I wanted to be around her for as long as she might still be alive; I wanted to be around someone who’d known my mother as a child and could tell me things about her that I’d never known. Dad’s mother never entered into the picture; she never liked me and I never liked her, so there would be no love lost between us.

  Two nights before I planned to leave, I was sitting in the middle of the emptied living room reading an excellent biography of the late blues guitarist Roy Buchanan when it suddenly occurred to me that I never knew what Mom’s or Dad’s favorite song was. I have no idea where the thought came from, but once it entered my head it would not leave, and soon-after polishing off half a twelve-pack of Blatz (Dad’s beer of choice)-I started to cry. It seemed to me that someone should have cared enough to ask either of them if they even had a favorite song and, if they did, should have cared enough to remember what it was. So I focused on that until my head felt like it was going to implode.

  The ringing of the phone jarred something back into place, and as soon as I answered, the first thing out of my mouth was, “ ‘Kiss an Angel Good Morning.’ Mom’s favorite song was-”

  On the other end, someone burst into sobs.