Graceland

by Lynne Hugo

  “I told you, I explained to you, I’m not going back there. But I guess I’m not really your responsibility, am I?” Claire leaves a pause in what she says, looking at Wayne to read where she stands. He’s illegible.

  Wayne keeps staring at his boots. The steel-reinforced toes are scuffed and display their wear like a union card. “…I don’t know all that much…about girls, your mother’s…she’s always seen to…”

  Ellie is watching Claire’s face, and sees an entire drama play out. Claire had been hoping for a vehement assertion from Wayne that she’s his daughter, that that fact hadn’t changed, wouldn’t and couldn’t change.

  Wayne does look up, now. “It’s not…that,” he gets out, but Ellie doesn’t trust him. Maybe he is going to say what Claire needs to hear and maybe he’d even say it because it’s true, but good grief, what if he doesn’t? What if he comes up with another page of lame nonsense? She jumps in. “Claire, I think you and I better stay together. It’s probably best if you’re not alone during the day, at least until you’re strong enough to be back in school. I have so much vacation time coming that Wal-Mart won’t give me any more until I take some.”

  “Use it or lose it, the plant’s the same way, and I’m up to five weeks a year,” Wayne mumbles, nodding. Was there relief on his face, or is she just imagining it? He’s taken a few steps, so he can stand leaning against the refrigerator, as if it’s an oversize back support.

  “Yeah. It makes me mad, but what can you do?” Ellie says. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. After this year, she’d have the maximum amount of time she could accrue. She’s not there yet. Still, what’s the difference? It’s not as if she has anywhere to go. “So, Claire, I’ll take some vacation time, and we’ll do this thing together. What has your doctor said about school?” If she’d had time to think, Ellie would have been surprised at herself. As it is, she pulls out a kitchen chair and sits down at an angle to the table. Then she thinks again, gets up and pulls out another chair and gestures to Claire. “Get off your feet,” she says, and then hearing herself, goes on to soften it with, “You’re supposed to rest, honey.” She doesn’t want to sound as if she’s talking to Mama or Charles or Daddy. “Wait a minute!” she almost shouts. “You’re not supposed to eat dairy.”

  Claire sighs and puts her carton of mainly eaten yogurt in the trash and then does come back and sit down. “I was hungry. I’m supposed to graduate next Thursday night.” Anger leaves a wispy trail in Claire’s voice, or maybe it’s a smoke of regret. “I don’t have to go back, I have the last work that I have to turn in. I’ll just need someone to take it to school for me.”

  “Don’t you have to…take exams, or…?” Wayne looks surprised.

  “Seniors who have a B or better in any course don’t have to take the final.”

  “And you…” he begins the question, surely one he should have known the answer to.

  “Had all As and one B, but now, because of the accident and missing school, I’ll probably get a couple more Bs. But I still won’t have to take exams, actually, the teachers already told…said that.” Claire twirls a piece of her ponytail, knotting it into her fingers.

  “Oh,” he says, remembering that Lydia had gone to get Claire’s assignments and talk to her teachers. He doesn’t remember her telling him that Claire didn’t have to take any exams, but maybe she did.

  “That’s wonderful, honey,” Ellie speaks up, surprised that Wayne doesn’t have more to say, surprised at herself that she does. Of course, it was always Lydie who said things like this. “I’m so proud of you, with all you’ve been through and all. Did the doctor say you could go to graduation?”

  “She said, we’ll see,” Claire answers. “I hate it when someone says that. But I’m going. I’m determined.”

  Ellie lets this pass, not knowing the right response. She switches the subject. “We need to figure out what to do. I mean, there’s not really space at Mama and Daddy’s, well, I guess we could manage for a while, but the other thing is, we can’t trust Charles around the equipment…and lord, where can we put those boxes, the ones with all the full bags?”

  A long moment. No one knows what to say. Ellie hesitates even after she thinks of it, then internally shrugs. Somebody’s got to do something. She swivels in her chair enough to look straight at Wayne and waits until he looks back at her, and then she holds him that way with her eyes. “Wayne, can you get me and Claire a room at a hotel? It’s got to be a decent place, like with a really clean bathroom. We’ll need two beds. And floor space, you know, a place for the equipment. Oh, and a good chair, for Claire, for when she’s doing her exchanges.” She just gives it to him as she thinks of each thing, not lowering her eyes.

  Wayne can only take so much. Before Ellie gets to the end of her list, he has to look away. “Yeah, okay…where?”

  “Good grief, Wayne. Do I have to do everything?”

  Apparently the answer is yes, because Wayne doesn’t answer.

  “I’ll figure out a list from the phone book, but you’ll need to go look at them to make sure the room is big enough and has what we need. And you’ll need to help with the dialysis stuff, getting it there and all.”

  “Okay.”

  “Aunt Eleanor, are you sure? I mean, I don’t feel right about putting you to this trouble. What about Maw Maw and Charles…and Presley?” Claire tacks the dog on as an afterthought, startling to the recognition that, for Ellie’s sake, she should have mentioned Presley first.

  “Well, it’ll just have to be a place that takes pets. I guess your mother can go check on Maw Maw and Charles. I don’t know, we’ll just have to figure things out as we go along.”

  “Are you sure?” Claire is hesitant and grateful, all mixed together. “I really appreciate this. I don’t have any money and…well, actually, I do have a couple of hundred dollars in my savings account—” Claire breaks off, glancing at Wayne. Her hands flutter like two small, nervous birds between her denim lap and Maddie’s kitchen table. It’s not like her, and seeing it, Ellie quiets her own hands that have started rearranging dirty dishes resting on the counter.

  “Well, I know your mother will just sign her paycheck over to the hotel if she needs to.” Ellie says this pointedly, a shot at Wayne, still propped against the refrigerator like a permanent part of the closed door.

  “I don’t want her to do any…”

  “Okay, well, we’ll figure it out.” Ellie interrupts and stands up, takes two spoons over to put them in the sink, in order to get out of the way of the real issue, let it pass by untouched again. She’s got a lot of figuring to do.

  CHAPTER 28

  It’s been four days since I’ve seen my daughter, and more since I’ve seen Wayne. I know someone’s been here because there are things missing from Claire’s room, and a few more of Wayne’s things are gone. The most obvious sign is the disappearance of boxes of her dialysis solution from the basement. I wonder if Wayne brought someone to help him from the plant. The boxes weigh better than thirty pounds each and there were thirty-five of them down there when all this started. Shame is what’s preventing me from pasting up picture posters of Claire like those terrible ones on milk cartons that plead Have You Seen Me?

  Three days ago I called Wayne at work. “Yes, it’s an emergency,” I had to say to the switchboard operator so she’d page him.

  “Hullo,” he said when he finally answered, his voice flat and unperturbed.

  “Wayne, it’s me, Lydia. Is Claire all right? Where is she? What’s going on?”

  “She’s all right.”

  “Is she getting her treatments? I don’t think you understand how complicated this is, she has to do everything exactly right or…”

  “I told you, she’s all right.”

  “But where is she?”

  “It’s taken care of.”

  “I’m begging you, don’t do this. I have a right to know where my daughter is. I have a right to talk to her.”

  “She don’t want to talk to you,”
he said, and hung up.

  John’s called me every day, and, each night, like it’s a brand-new idea, he says, “I bet you haven’t eaten. How about I come get you and put some food into you?” I’ve done it out of…well, gratitude, I guess, or maybe it’s that I know in my heart that we are guilty together. My mind bumps back and forth from Claire to John to Wayne, switching directions like a cumbersome houseboat on the river, heading across the wake of faster, larger traffic trying to avoid collisions and jouncing heavily into the wave troughs. That’s just what it’s like, and I’m struggling to stay afloat.

  I had decided to accept John’s offer to hire a private investigator to find Wayne and Claire if one of them didn’t call today. He knows about these things, he said, from the seamy side of being a lawyer, and know that an investigator can find them and just let me know where they are, whether Claire’s really all right. How can they not know I’m wild with worry? Or maybe that’s exactly what they intend. Just exactly what they intend.

  Naturally, though, it’s also John who came up with another possibility. “Try the dialysis unit at the hospital,” he said tonight while I toyed with beef-and-noodle casserole at the little Frisch’s west of town.

  “I’ve called the hospital every day to make sure she hasn’t been readmitted,” I said, trying to keep annoyance weeded out of my voice. He should have remembered that that’s my first call every morning.

  “Down, girl,” he said, but it was gentle, undefensive. “I mean, how about checking personally with the dialysis nurse or director or whoever trained you and her, the one from the outpatient clinic. If she’d had problems and wouldn’t come to you, who else would she call?”

  “Well, supposedly, Ellie. That’s why they make you have a second person.”

  “Have you checked with Ellie?”

  “She wouldn’t call Ellie. Neither of us thought for a minute that Ellie would really learn the stuff, or really be a backup.”

  “Then why…?”

  “Because she was ready to be released and Wayne was upset about my calling you, and it somehow seemed, just, well, not right to ask Maddie. We, I, never thought we’d really need a second person. It’s just a precaution, they said.” How could I have been so careless while I thought I was doing everything, anything, to keep my daughter alive and safe? “I intended to train Maddie later, and Wayne, if…”

  “I know,” he said, “I know,” and reached across the table to put his hand over mine for a moment. Moist, warm. I looked up at his face and saw a light sheen of sweat on his forehead; myself, I’d been chilly since we sat down. “But back to the dialysis unit. Wouldn’t she…?”

  When I actually bent my mind around to his point, it was absolutely logical. “How can I…what can I say?”

  “Lydie, who cares? Just ask. Call Dr. Douglas, have her ask. She already knows the whole thing. Whatever.” He set his fork down too hard and I could tell he thought I was being ridiculous.

  My own fork clattered on the table, anger for anger. “Isn’t it strange how now you don’t care what people think? It must be wonderful to be so brave with other people’s lives, when it doesn’t count for you anymore.” In the booth behind John, the conversation quieted and the man glanced over his shoulder at me. I averted my eyes. I hate scenes. Usually, I am the one trying to stop Ellie or Maddie from carrying on.

  I’d stung him, but he didn’t sting back. He just sat and stared me down and when he could tell I was finished, spoke quietly. “The point here is finding Claire and making sure she’s okay. How about I call Dr. Douglas and ask her to check it out.”

  “No. It’s my job. Of course you’re right. I’ll call her. It’s a good idea.”

  Dr. Douglas’s voice comes through the receiver as if from a great distance. My ears roar their blood and I can feel my hand shake as I press the phone against my ear.

  “Look, we can’t have this,” she says. “I’ll have to get Children’s Services to put her in a medically qualified foster home, Lydia. She’s got a whole regimen and…how many days has it been? You should have called me right away.”

  “She’s with her…with Wayne,” I say.

  “Is he trained?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  “Don’t you know she could become dizzy? It’s not unheard of to faint during dialysis if her blood pressure’s a problem. Once she’s used to it all, being by herself will be all right, but…” An indictment.

  “Yes.” Guilty.

  She hesitates, then backs off a little. “Well, all right then, I’ll check with the staff. They’ll be a record of it if she’s called or come in. I’ll let you know. Lydia…hang in there,” she says, and when I hang up, I am crying.

  Ten minutes later the phone rings. I stub my toe hard on the foot of the couch as I run to the kitchen to pick it up before the second ring. The pain momentarily distracts me from the impact. “Ellie Sams has been in once and called once about her niece’s peritoneal dialysis, according to Joann. Joann thought you’d sent her because you’d misplaced the review material,” Dr. Douglas says.

  I can’t process the news. “No, I…didn’t,” is all I get out.

  “How do you want to handle this? I’ve got to know that her exchanges are occurring. When is she scheduled to see me?”

  “Tomorrow.” I am nauseated, flopping like a just-hooked fish, trying to reject what Dr. Douglas is saying. “Ellie? Ellie went in? Was she…was Claire…? I mean, is Claire all right?”

  “Joann didn’t see Claire, so she really doesn’t know. She asked, and your sister said she was all right. Joann didn’t pursue it because she assumed Claire was with you.”

  “Oh…God…” I fold at the hips into a kitchen chair, my legs giving out.

  “Lydia, are you okay? Look, there’s no need to presume any disaster. Your sister did get a review sheet and go over the procedure with Joann. Joann said she seemed to be paying attention this time.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes.” Words won’t form in my brain.

  “Give me a call when you’ve talked to your sister, and seen Claire. Check to see if she’s missed any exchanges, or is having any problems.” Dr. Douglas’s voice has grown kinder. Obviously she feels sorry for me.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  I have to stand up to replace the phone in the hook. My foot won’t support its share of weight, so I brace myself against the kitchen counter and run the cold water. Filling the cup of my two hands, I stick my face into them to quell the nausea. I am light-headed, tears hot beneath my skin.

  “Maddie? Maddie? Answer the door, Maddie. It’s me. I know you’re there. Answer the door,” I shout, pounding on the door with the heel of my fist between demands. I looked through the back door into the garage when she didn’t answer; her car was there, so I went back to the front and leaned on the bell again before I began this banging.

  The dead bolt turns and Maddie’s face appears in a slot of open door.

  “Will you be quiet? What do you want?”

  “What do you think I want? Let me see Claire.” I push on the door, but Maddie blocks it with her foot.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Don’t tell me that. I was just out home, and Mama said that Ellie was staying here with you. I know Claire’s with Ellie. How could you do this? I’ve been frantic. Let me in.” With that, I push hard enough that Maddie’s foot slides back and I force my way into her living room.

  “Claire’s not here and neither is Ellie.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say, and head for her family room. Nobody there. I am nearly running, bumping into things as I make my way back through the kitchen to the bedroom hallway. The bedrooms are innocent, Jennifer’s bed neatly made and Maddie’s a rumpled tangle, but both empty. I glance in the open bathroom door, being thorough, looking for an IV pole or any other trace.

  I wheel on her and start to advance, backing her into the kitchen. She puts out a hand as if to stop an assault. “You tell me. What’s going on?” But even as I shout this,
I see for myself. The laundry-room door is open and I see it all, clear as day and twice as real on top of her dryer: a roughly folded pile of underwear and denim, topped by Wayne’s green plaid shirt, next to a plastic glass with Wayne’s toothbrush and razor sticking up above the rim. His deodorant—same brand as always—lies on top of the clothes. “My God, Maddie. Wayne’s here, too? You didn’t tell me? You let him do this to me? You did this to me? You got Ellie to help you do this to me?”

  Maddie’s face is white, but her eyes, bloodshot and widened in fright when I tore through the house, have narrowed back down. The web of gray on the top of her head looks more dense, less lacy than it used to, but this can’t be. It’s only, what?—three weeks?—since the accident.

  “Well, excuse me,” she spits. “Maybe you’d rather I’d just let your child die, like you did mine. Next time I’ll be sure to get it right.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Madalaine knows perfectly well that Lydia’s assumption was on the mark. She had taken in first Wayne and then—if only briefly—Claire, intending Lydia’s suffering, but she can make herself forget it when she needs to. When Lydia first burst into the house, Madalaine had been frightened and sputtered out a denial, but then anger, wild and inevitable, had chosen weapon and target at once, and unrecallable words had been shot like bullets.

  In fact, Madalaine happens to know exactly where Claire and Ellie are. Ellie had asked for a hotel room, but once they started looking around at the slim pickings in town that had two beds, an easy chair, enough space for two people, space for medical supplies, a microwave to heat the solution and would allow a dog, well, it had come down to a double at the Maysfield Manor downtown, for a hundred and forty-five dollars a night not including the damage deposit for Presley. So Ellie and Wayne, who knew which one of them, had somehow come up with a two-bedroom furnished apartment rentable on a month-to-month basis, and Wayne had paid for a month.

  Madalaine hadn’t let on to Lydia that she knew, though. She’d not bothered to contradict that Wayne was staying there after Lydia saw his stuff, but the house hadn’t given up a clue about Ellie or Claire, and she hadn’t either. Push Madalaine hard enough and she’ll push back harder without even thinking about it. Now she’s popped a beer and paces in the kitchen, trying to figure out what to do. The sun is still around on the back side of the house, so the kitchen holds last night’s cool even without the air-conditioning on. The comparative darkness and the beer are calming, even as she rehearses her grievances and justifications and finds them satisfactory. What’s nagging at her is what an idiot Ellie is and a certain concern about whether Ellie and Claire are actually getting the dialysis right. She can’t quite convince herself that she doesn’t care if Claire dies. Oh, she can say it all right. She just can’t quite make it stick in place.