The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

by John Sandford

  She’s standing in the doorway, watching, caramel-brown hair hanging in a braid over one shoulder. She’ll learn to tie it back.

  “Jenny, after I get Noni set up you don’t worry about her. She feeds herself fine. Just keep an eye out for when she’s near done, and take her tray before she throws it.” Ida chuckles deep in her chest. “Make sure you get out of the way if she lets fly. She’s got a pretty good arm.”

  “Ten minutes?” he’d say after I shut off the alarm. Now I wish I could have turned off the clock. All the clocks.

  “You want a little more sleep?” I’d ask.

  “Hell, no.” Words from his lips moving down my neck, felt more than heard.

  “Can’t be more than ten minutes.”

  He’d laugh, and always oblige.

  Jenny comes over, sits by me, picks up the plastic fork. Her hand shaking a little. There’s nothing I can do to help. She’s young enough to be my daughter. I haven’t seen my daughter in two months.

  “How do I know what she wants to eat?” Jenny asks Ida.

  “Just look at her face, honey. She’ll smile or blink. But if you can’t tell, just go ahead. Rachel won’t fight you, not like some.”

  Scrambled eggs. Two pancakes. Bacon dry as paper. Coffee. Orange juice that tastes like the inside of an old freezer. Jenny is slow, careful, and I am grateful. She gives me time to chew and swallow.

  So many important things are small, so small I never noticed them before. Bits of life that just happened now have to be intentional, and always under someone else’s control. How long a cup is held to my mouth. How big a piece of food is on the fork. If every wrinkle is smoothed out of the sheet beneath me. Life and death in those little things. So I don’t choke. So I get enough fluids. So my skin doesn’t break open in pressure sores down to the bone. So I can hold on to the pieces of life I have left.

  “This is my first day.” Jenny’s eyes are green and intent, watching me eat.

  I smile and nod. She lifts the fork with the next clump of syrup-soaked pancake and I open my mouth like a nestling.

  “I hope I’m doing this right. Will you let me know if I’m not?” she asks.

  I smile, nod again. She has to look closely to see that I’m nodding. It’s all I can do for an answer today. Some days there’s more. I used to be such a talker. Loved to argue, loved to debate. I’d interrupt people—didn’t mean to, it was a bad habit, but I’d so want to get my point across.

  “Rachel, would you just let other people get a word in?” my mother said time and again.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I’d tell her, and I’d try to listen, but then somebody would say something that made me think of another idea, and off I’d go, explaining, excited, my hands waving, drawing pictures in the air, even when I was old enough to know better, to control myself.

  Not a problem anymore, is it? Wouldn’t my mother be proud? I’m such a good listener now. Even in my dreams. In the ones that I tell myself are just nightmares. Couldn’t be real, couldn’t be someone really coming into my room night after night, whispering, whispering.

  “What’s wrong?” Jenny’s voice has gone tense. “Are you okay?”

  I must have let the fear show on my face. I force a smile back. I’ve learned that happy patients get treated better.

  Time for a distraction. I cut my eyes over toward Noni, back to Jenny, over to Noni again.

  “Oh, is she done?”

  Noni definitely is. She’s staring at her tray, bushy eyebrows drawn together. Her gnarled hands roll the aluminum spoon and fork carefully back in the paper napkin, turn the coffee cup and juice glass upside down, leftover brown and orange liquids sloshing around on the plate. She’s reaching under the tray, but Jenny lifts it away just before Noni can get a good grip and send it flying like a rectangular Frisbee. Noni always aims for the door. I think she’s trying to help clean up; the aides only get hit if they’re in the way. By the time Jenny’s taken the tray out to the cart in the hallway and come back, Noni is off the bed, feet pushed into her worn pink slippers, bathrobe slung over one arm. She’s heading out. Jenny looks in the hallway and clearly finds no one to tell her what to do, because she turns to me and asks, wide-eyed, “Do I let her go?”

  Just try to stop her, I think, but settle for nodding and rolling my eyes. Jenny seems to get the message, because she contents herself with arranging the flowered chenille more neatly on Noni’s bony shoulders as she pushes by.

  Ida comes in, looks us over. “Everybody fed, you got the tray in time? Good. I passed Noni making her rounds out in the hallway.”

  “I hope that’s okay, to let her go?” Jenny asks. “Rachel said that it . . .” and then she stops, realizing that of course I hadn’t said anything.

  “She did, huh?” Ida shakes her head. “Come on, something I want you to help me with. We don’t deal with it every day, thank God. It’s a good chance for you to practice.”

  Jenny smiles at me as she leaves, and I tell myself not to like her too much. Getting attached to friendly aides is pointless. They come and they go. And why should they get attached to us? We go too.

  Ida doesn’t look at me when she says, “I’m afraid it’ll be longer than normal before we’re back to get you dressed and in your chair, Rachel.”

  I can’t ask her why, but there’s no need. She closes the door behind her. Not usual here. Privacy is just one item on the long list of what we’ve lost. Half an hour later I hear the gurney rattle in the hall. I can’t see the parking lot from my window, but I know there’s a hearse in it.

  And I know what he told me during the night was the truth.

  Friday

  “We haven’t discussed my criteria, have we? The selection process?”

  His hand rests flat on my forehead. Palm heavy. Sweating this time. Is he sick?

  “No. I didn’t think so. But regardless, it bears repeating. Especially as I’ll be starting again soon, once a prudent amount of time has passed.”

  He sighs, gently, like my teachers used to, years ago, giving me time to think of the implications of a new piece of information. Noni stirs in her bed, her feet kicking at the steel side rails. His fingers tighten on my face until my bones ache.

  “Well, I see I must explain it to you tomorrow, my dear. I wouldn’t want my presence to disturb your roommate enough to earn us a visit from the night staff.”

  He pats my cheek. I can hear his slow careful footsteps as he leaves in the darkness. Noni is deaf as a post, she has never heard him, never will. All that disturbs her are her dreams.

  But hers aren’t real.

  Today is shower day. It’s quite a production. Poor Jenny, having to hold my slippery, floppy self on the shower chair. Even with the straps tightened it’s hard. I know it is safe enough. I’ve never fallen, and I’m not so scared anymore. But it’s never easy.

  I can feel the water. I haven’t lost any sensory capacity. Once I’m settled in and she’s washing my hair (still dark, but cut so short now), the water running over me, I close my eyes. Try to escape.

  Every August at Twain Harte. Gold-leafed aspens lined the rocks between water and tall mountains all around. We swam in shore water warmed by the high summer sun, water clear enough to see the minnows, light moving in ripples around them. The brown and green pebbles smooth under our feet until we were deep enough to stretch out. It felt like flying, arms become wings. Splashing, chasing each other, swimming into the colder water. We turned on our backs and floated, buoyed, weightless, Sam twining his fingers in my long hair that streamed and coiled between us like black ribbons.

  After I’m dried and dressed and in my wheelchair, Jenny pushes me out to the common room. I’ll be here for the rest of the day, except for lunch and dinner. It’s a pretty enough place, windows on three walls, a fireplace that’s only used on Christmas. Dried flowers in oranges and yellows fill it now. Cheerful colors abound for the benefit of our residents!—I remember that from the brochure Sam showed me when we were deciding.

  �
�Is here okay?” she asks me. She’s looking a little bedraggled, strands of fine hair escaping from her long braid, her name tag askew.

  I smile my answer. Any place is fine as long as I can see the trees and birds. I sit with my back to the room, watching for the floating gulls, the bright blue flash of a Steller’s jay. Listening to the voices of the people slowly coming in around me. They keep our rooms so dark, I’ve never seen him clearly, and couldn’t, even if I could talk, tell anyone what he looks like. He’s part of the darkness.

  I don’t hear his voice. Almost everyone’s here, and there aren’t that many men in the whole place. Besides the patients, there are a few orderlies, custodians, the occasional repairman, visiting doctors, patients’ relatives. Female patients outnumber the male patients ten to one, and flutter around the coherent ones like faded butterflies. When the tables are set out for late-afternoon bridge, there is a fuss to make sure the men are shared equally, but some groups still end up with four women, and angry looks are exchanged.

  “Rachel, come on now,” Mina calls to me, “we need our third partner.” It’s kind of her to pretend that I can travel the twelve feet across the carpet on my own.

  Liz bustles over and wheels me to the corner of the table by Mina’s chair, then sits down with a theatrical sigh.

  “Finally ready, ladies?” she asks, looking pointedly at orange-haired Geri and blond Bea. She picks up the cards and deals. When she comes to Mina, Liz reaches across the table and slots each card into the plastic tray that holds them upright. Mina hasn’t been able to hold cards for years now.

  Geri and Bea aren’t happy about missing out on having a man at their table. Their faces mirror sulky images of each other—pursed wrinkled lips, and eyelashes drooping under the weight of layered mascara. They’re constantly glancing around the room. I can see from the smiles on my partners’ faces that they’ve noticed and intend to use our opponents’ distraction to our advantage.

  “One spade,” Liz bids quickly.

  “Wait a minute,” Bea whines, “I’m not ready.”

  “Snooze and loose,” Liz says.

  Bea counts points to herself in a whisper. She’s rattled. Mina tilts her head to listen, and Liz never takes her eyes off Bea. Geri doesn’t notice. She’s too busy scowling at the flirting going on at the table next to ours.

  “Pass.” Bea glares at Liz.

  Mina looks at me, softly taps her bent fingers twice on the jack. I nod. “Two spades,” she says.

  No response from Geri.

  The table shifts and the ashtray jumps a little, dislodging a puff of smoke from the ashes already accumulated there.

  “What!” Geri snaps, and Liz does her best to look innocent and aggrieved, even though she was the one doing the kicking under the table.

  “Time to bid, dear,” Liz tells her.

  Geri sucks on her cigarette. Everyone around the table looks at the ceiling and waits.

  “Three. Diamonds.”

  No one is surprised. The rest of the bidding also goes as expected. They resolve at four spades.

  Mina’s the dummy, and the other three pitch in to set her cards out flat. She’ll let them do that much for her. But when Liz calls which card to play, Mina sets the backs of her fingers against the card and pushes it to the center of the table herself. Fingers like bent twigs that used to handle dozens of glass test tubes a day. That used to hold the smallest of camel’s hair brushes and transfer grains of pollen from one flower to the next, and write in perfect tiny script the results of each hybridization. She’s shown me her lab books. The covers worn and cracking now, but everything inside still neat, precise—observations, numbers, and the curving black-line illustrations, colors washed in afterward. I look down at my own hands, smooth skin, straight fingers. Aren’t I lucky? I try to move just one finger. Just an inch.

  Wednesday

  “It’s not as easy as when I was young, of course. But here, it takes so little, that I can still . . . even being as frail as I find myself. One must adapt, after all. When I hold the pillow over them, that is just the beginning. They finish the work themselves. The fear, you see. It’s never been determined to be anything other than heart failure. Only to be expected. Nothing to raise any alarm. I just need to not be greedy, since I am practicing in such a limited field now. It is good, isn’t it? That I have learned to be patient? I find the anticipation almost as good as the act. Almost.

  “It will be next month, I think. Yes.”

  Tuesday

  Mina’s roommate has moved out. Helen had been waiting for one of the private rooms at the ends of the halls to become available. Mina never speaks ill of anyone, but I could tell she was glad.

  Saturday

  No one sleeps deeply. We keep at least one hand twisted into the sheet, or on the bed rail, the thin pillow, anything to help us find our way back in the morning. The only bright pool of light is over the nurses’ station, where the four hallways converge. I saw it once at night, when I ran a 105-degree fever and they had to take me to the acute-care hospital over the hill. Noise pounding in my head with every heartbeat and people’s steps on the carpet loud loud never so loud before and thin towels wrapped around ice shoved in my armpits and between my legs and around my neck like a necklace of cold but my skin melted everything it touched and the light glowed around Mel her red hair fraying around her face and her white cap reflecting the light so hard and bright even when I closed my eyes everything was on fire the edges of walls and people and

  But now it is full dark, even shadows lost within it, and he is here again, has reached in, pushed the door almost shut behind him, and I cannot see him, can only feel the cold as he turns my face so I look at him, and see nothing.

  He is whispering. “I don’t choose them for themselves, you know, I never have. What matters is who loves them. What it will do to the ones left behind. That is what I want to accomplish, something that lasts. The effect I have upon my nominal victims, well, that is transitory, isn’t it?”

  He stops. I hear him swallow. “We all have thought about it, I expect. What we do in our lives. If anyone will remember? Everyone who comes here must have, at one time or another, mulled over what kind of mark they will leave on the greater world, don’t you agree? Even the now mindless ones like her.”

  His fingers brush across me in Noni’s direction. No, not her, I shout at him, and no one but me hears anything, she’s so strong and alive and I think sometimes she’s even happy.

  He laughs a little. “No, not her. Weren’t you listening to me? Who comes to visit her? Who would mourn? You? That’s not enough, not at present anyway. No, I am still considering which other choice would be best.” He is humming, the wordless tune high and buzzing, and he taps the rhythm.

  1,2,3, 1,2,3, it’s a waltz, over my face, cheeks, forehead, 1,2,3, 1,2,3, my mouth, 1,2,3, 1,2,3

  “This stage is very enjoyable, a bit unfocused perhaps, but so alive with possibilities.” His fingers quiet, then push, his hands are strong, and my face is half buried in the pillow. “Oh, my dear,” he says, when he realizes what he’s done, “I am so very sorry. I was musing.” He adjusts my head, smoothing the rumpled pillowcase away from my mouth and nose, leans down: “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Today the sun is shining, the air outside looks clear and cold. We’re gathering in the common room for a concert by the a cappella quartet from the community college over the hill. I know I have to be one of the last brought in. My chair is so tall in back, solid all the way up past my head, straps and pads to keep me straight, I block anyone’s view sitting behind me, but it’s hard to wait. No, that’s a lie, isn’t it? It’s the easiest thing in the world now, waiting. Really. Waiting to be fed. Waiting to get the food brushed off my teeth and the cowlicks brushed out of my hair. Waiting to be dressed in one of the hospital’s thin gowns and one of my two robes. (“Green or blue today? Oh, the green one’s in the wash, so it’s the blue. You like the blue, don’t you?”) Waiting to be moved or
turned so I can see what someone else wants me to see.

  Jenny sets me by the window. “Is this all right here, Rachel?” And bless her, she did wait for as much of an answer as I could give her. A look.

  Their voices are beautiful, and so young. I don’t understand the words. The lyrics might be Italian, or French, or Latin. It doesn’t matter. All I care about today is the music. Glowing threads of sound weaving over and around each other. Music like sunlight.

  I could never sing. I even failed my audition for the school choir in fifth grade. I’d been diligently practicing at home. “This Land Is Your Land” over and over. In the car. In my bedroom. In the bathroom. My mother finally knocked, loud enough for me to hear, told me through the closed door, “Rachel, some of us just can’t sing.” I still tried out. Later, when I was a mother, I could sing to my daughter when there was no one else around to hear.

  There is pink lemonade and three kinds of cookies. The four singers separate and circulate among us. Families have been invited and the grandchildren have started zigzagging around the grownups, faster and faster, all that pent-up energy. The young curly-haired boy right in front of me during the concert had sat still for the first song, then started fidgeting, I could see his legs swinging back and forth, his hand reaching up to pull on his mother’s shoulder, then he turned around in his seat and stared at me, silently. I didn’t mind.

  One of the singers sits down beside me. She’s tall and thin, and has to lean over as she introduces herself—“I’m Sheila”—and tries to make conversation. It’s difficult. The weather—“So glad it’s sunny today . . . usually so foggy here.” The music—“We all love singing. I so hope you enjoyed it.” I wish I could tell her how happy it made me. She sets down her napkin and cookies on the windowsill and gestures toward my food that someone who didn’t know me had brought over and set on my lap. I try to shake my head; it’s enough to get the point across. We’d both be embarrassed if she tried to feed me. Drink me? Too late now to ask anybody why we never say that.