by Molly Giles
He settled back into his chair and picked up his crossword. His gold pen caught the late afternoon sun and flashed a swift wand of light around the room as he filled in word after word. He could feel night coming on—the great weight of the dark massing up from the mountain—but for a second, pen snapping and sparkling, he felt as though he could still keep it back.
The nurse at the desk was a young Filipina with an engagement ring who gave Kay a plastic container for the gladiolas at once. “You’re Mrs. McLeod’s daughter?” she asked.
Kay nodded, prepared for a curious look. People either liked Ida or they didn’t—there were no in-betweens—and they often studied her brother Victor and her as if looking for clues to their mother. Victor was easy, as long as he didn’t start witnessing about Jesus; he had Ida’s dark blue eyes and cleft chin. Kay was harder to pinpoint. Grocery clerks sometimes asked for her ID when she filled her cart with jug wine, but that, she thought, was probably because her face still broke out. No one but Nicky thought she was beautiful, though Neal used to say she “looked fresh” and her glamorous friend Zabeth said she had “an old-fashioned face,” whatever that meant.
“Your mother is an amazing woman,” the nurse said now.
“Yes,” Kay agreed.
“And your father!”
“Yes.”
“Devoted.”
“Thank you.”
She dawdled down the polished hall, reluctant, after her great rush to get there, to return to Ida’s room. She had always secretly liked hospitals, their jangle of bells and intercoms and footfalls, the underrush of Muzak and the occasional startling moan of human need. She liked the cool chemical smells and the bland wafts of hot food. Like home, she thought, like all those drafty glass houses Victor and I grew up in. “The Famous Francis,” she remembered another architect telling her years ago, at one of her parents’ drunken parties, “can design prisons and palaces but he sure can’t design a place for people to live in, can he.” She wondered now what had happened to that man; she had slept with him later, partly out of pity for his jealousy of Francis and partly out of gratitude for his contempt, and he’d been an eager, tender lover—a surprise—who wanted to keep seeing her, but she’d met Neal by then, and had broken it off. She had not had a lover since. Unless she counted Charles Lichtman. And how could she count Charles Lichtman?
Still, at the thought of his name, she shivered, rose on tiptoe, and hugged herself in the hospital corridor. Charles Lichtman always arrived with both names in tow, the way they looked on his library card, and though he was sometimes in the library, in her fantasies, reaching to pull her down to the fake bearskin rug in the Nature Nook, he was more often up on the ridge above West Valley. He appeared in walking shorts, no shirt, a rose-colored bandanna around his curly black hair. He drank from a canteen and rested on his bike, waiting for her to catch up with him. And the one time she had—what a disaster. Why had she just glared at the ground and pretended not to know who he was? How could she have pretended not to know who he was when she had been obsessing about him for months? And when he called to her, “Hey, Library Lady,” why had she just waved as if batting a deerfly and trudged on? She didn’t deserve to have a lover. She wasn’t good enough to be an adulteress. They’d have to sew a big red D for Dud to the front of her dress. And anyway—“Library Lady”—he wasn’t interested in her. He must have a hundred girlfriends. And she had Neal. And Nicky. And Ida, waiting for this vase.
Ida studied the horse. Say he was right. Say she could somehow get to the window. Say she could somehow open it—say she could even strap the damn wings on by herself. Then what? It was ten floors to the ground. Did he want her to die? Did everyone want her to just give up and die? Well they had a second think coming if that’s what they wanted. “Nice try,” she said to the horse. “But no deal.” She was not as good at jokes as Kay and Francis but she tried one. “I’m not falling for it,” she said to the horse. She heard a soft, uncertain footstep and followed the horse’s bulging eyes to the door but there was no one there but Kay, unsteady as a twelve-year-old in high heels and cheap hose twisted at the ankles. “If God would give me my legs back, I’d even settle for ones as shapeless as yours,” Ida said.
She winced at the hurt look that flattened Kay’s eager face, closed her eyes, said, “Just kidding,” and held out the novel. “Read to me?” she asked.
An hour later, Kay closed the book. A best-selling love story set during the Civil War, it had seemed a good choice for Ida, but already, by page 50, the hero had lost an arm in battle and his young wife had died in childbirth in a hospital with the same name as this one. “Sorry,” she said.
Ida, still frowning out the window, said, “That’s all right. Get my purse and find my lipstick, will you?”
“Where is your purse?”
“How should I know? Honestly. Use your eyes.”
I am, Kay thought, and crossed them. Ignored, she searched the room until she found the navy blue pocketbook under a pile of magazines. She opened it with distaste. The stained silk lining stank of L’Heure Bleue and tobacco and the zippered compartments were crammed with loose pills and grimy candies. She stopped to look through a photo folder containing pictures of Nicky as a baby and Coco as a puppy, four of each. Ida’s driver’s license, expired three years ago, showed her in a turban and cat glasses, looking mean. Three $100 bills fell out of a dog-eared copy of The Prophet and a fortune cookie fortune (“Never apologize, never explain”) was tucked inside the cellophane of a package of Merit 100s. “Hey,” Kay scolded, “you’re not supposed to smoke anymore.”
“Oh good!” Ida brightened. “Hide them, will you? Here, by the bed so I can reach them later? Dr. Deeds will give me hell if he sees me.”
“If I can quit, you can,” Kay said as she put the cigarettes in a drawer in the nightstand.
“You’re a better person than I am.”
Kay looked up, surprised, but Ida was staring out the window again. She handed her the lipstick. The same red Revlon shade Ida had always worn, “Fire and Ice,” worn to a beaky point. Ida took it without looking. She had thrown off the sheet and was flexing her thigh. It rose and fell, thickly bandaged in bright white strips.
“Is that a cast?” Kay asked.
“Of course not.”
“It’s bigger than your other one.”
“That’s because it’s swollen, dum-dum.” Ida lifted it up and down, up and down; she might have been working out at a gym. “Have you ever felt as if you’ve gotten half a BM out and not the rest? Because that’s how I feel now.”
“Probably a reaction to the anesthesia.”
Ida nodded. “Like the horse.”
“What horse?”
“Oh this horse who’s out there talking to me. You don’t have to look so understanding. I know he’s not real. He’s blue.”
“Sounds pretty.”
“He is not pretty.” Ida took the lipstick, uncapped it, and without a mirror applied two swift red strokes to her lips. Kay watched, her own lips parted.
“I can never do that.”
“Of course not. You don’t even wear lipstick. Anyway, it’s just a question of knowing where your mouth is. You do know where your mouth is, don’t you?”
“Sure. I just look for my foot.” Kay held her breath, waiting for Ida to say, “Look for mine too, why don’t you,” but Ida was rubbing more color on her cheeks and frowning. Kay pulled a small stiff brush out of Ida’s purse and walked to the side of the bed, careful not to bump it. “Here, let me brush you out.” She tugged as gently as she could through Ida’s curls, shaping and fluffing. The tips were soft and blond but the roots were grey and damp with sweat. “You’re so hot. You feel like you have a fever. Have you been taking …” Kay started, then stopped. Aspirin, she had been about to say. Have you been taking aspirin? You’ve just endured a major amputation, you’re sick on anesthesia, you have bronchitis, you’re hallucinating horses, and I want to know if you’ve been taking aspirin. She be
nt and lightly kissed the top of Ida’s head. “There. You look gorgeous.”
It was true. Ida’s light hair haloed out around her heart-shaped face and the bright red lipstick which should not have looked good looked very good indeed. Ida flashed a thanks and continued to flex. Kay studied the new stump. She was used to the old one. Shaped like a slim beige sausage, tied at the tip in a neat knot, it often poked from beneath the hems of Ida’s silk dresses. This new stump, though, was rawer. Ruder. More butchered-looking. Meat, Kay thought. That’s what we’re made of. No wonder Neal won’t touch me. She licked her own dry lips. “Did the therapist tell you to exercise so soon?”
“Oh the therapist,” Ida said. “The therapist is a Nazi.”
Kay waited. Sometimes Ida liked Nazis.
“She picked me up this morning and threw me into that chair in the corner. As if I were some old pillow. And then she went to a staff meeting and left me there alone. I screamed,” Ida said. “I screamed and screamed and screamed. Finally an orderly came in and I told him what had happened and he said, ‘Here I think you and I can do better than that,’ and he wheeled me over to the side of the bed and I clawed and scratched and pulled myself in. I did not stop crying for two and a half hours.”
Her eyes on Kay were fierce and satisfied, and Kay could not look away. She could see it vividly: Ida like a maimed cat clawing her way back into the bed. I’ll have to find the administrator in charge, Kay thought, her heart sinking. I’ll have to make a complaint. She bit at her cuticle, stalled with dread. Then quietly it occurred to her that her mother might not be telling the truth. Things like this had happened to Ida before. She insisted she’d been blackballed from college sororities years ago, snubbed during her modeling career, dropped from dance troupes, and excluded from country club committees by jealous women who hated her. Just two weeks ago, she had locked herself in the bathroom to storm because a neighbor’s wife had not smiled when they’d passed on the street.
“Did you talk to Dad about it?” Kay asked, her voice careful.
“Francis is useless in situations like this.”
“Did you talk to your doctor?”
“You bet I did. Jim Deeds was absolutely shocked. No one should touch you, he told me. And when Morey Schoenfeld came in and I told him, tears came to his eyes.”
“What happened to the therapist?”
“Oh she’s biding her time. She’ll probably try to get me tonight, when she thinks I’m sedated.”
Kay nodded, silent, and stared glumly at the table where she’d set the flowers. There weren’t as many bouquets as usual. Ida’s friends must be getting used to her hospitalizations. There were some yellow asters from Victor and Stacy, with a plastic crucifix stuck in the middle, a basket of ferns from Peg and Pete Forrest, and two dozen long-stemmed red roses so dark they were almost black. “Who sent these?” Kay asked, smelling them. Beautiful things, but no odor at all.
“Aren’t those spectacular? Glo Sinclair sent them. Duffy’s widow.”
“Remind me: is Duffy Sinclair the one who got electrocuted in the hot tub?”
“No, that was Darcy Lavin. Duffy Sinclair is the one who committed hara-kiri in his bathroom during 60 Minutes. Glo was devastated. He used her best knife. Don’t laugh, Kay. It’s not funny.”
“It’s not unfunny,” Kay said. She reached behind the roses and pulled out a small handsome house plant. It had a name she couldn’t quite remember, though she’d seen one like it at the nursery last week when she’d gone in to buy tulip bulbs. She read the card, looked more closely at the plant, and frowned.
“The mystery plant,” Ida said. “It came yesterday and neither your father nor I could figure it out.”
“It’s from my friend Zabeth. You met her last summer. I had her to dinner right before you were supposed to leave for Greece.”
“Oh. Right. The night I fell.”
“One of the nights you fell.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I hate it when you mutter. We never did make it to Greece, as you know. Now Francis is talking about going to India.”
“With you? How?”
“I don’t know. He thinks he can hire a bearer or some fool thing. Maybe he wants to stick me on a corner with a cup to beg.”
“Mom.”
“I don’t know what he thinks. I just know it’s late and he hasn’t shown up yet. I remember Zabeth. Thin and tan and very flirty. Not your type.”
“You’ve never liked my friends,” Kay reminded her.
“Well you haven’t had that many and most of them have been whores. Oh where is he? This is ridiculous. Yesterday he hardly stayed at all. What time is it now?”
“It’s almost four. Most of my whore friends are just waking up.”
“He gets so restless here, well, who can blame him. Yesterday he paced and paced, I thought I’d go crazy. I asked him to bring the sheepskin pad from the bed at home and do you know what he brought instead? The bathroom rug! He didn’t even wash it! Oh look at you. You’re still mad about that Zabeth person?”
“I like her,” Kay said. “And she liked you. She thought you were beautiful and brave.”
“Honestly,” Ida said. “She doesn’t even know me.” Still she smiled, pleased, and started flexing again. A wiry swatch of grey pubic hair poked out from beneath the sheets as she lifted one stump after another. The old flasher, Kay thought. Ida had always been an exhibitionist, a breast barer, a skinny-dipper. The less you wanted to see, the more she wanted to show you. Just last week Kay had caught Nicky in the bathroom with her, dutifully peeling her nylon panties down so she could go to the toilet. “I’d do it myself,” Ida had snapped, one hand holding a highball glass, the other waving a lit cigarette, “if I could, but I can’t. Besides, Nicky’s six; children in France help their grandparents pee all the time.”
“No they don’t.”
“How do you know. You’ve never been to France.”
Nicky, who was, Kay knew, fascinated, had started to say, “I’m seven, not …” but Kay shooed him out. “Poor Gramma,” he had said, as he left.
“Grandmère,” Ida had corrected. “And there’s nothing poor about me.”
“Do one thing for me?” Ida asked now. “See if the phone is off the hook? Sometimes I don’t put it back correctly.”
“It’s on.”
“Are you sure?”
Kay picked it up, listened, put it back. “Yes.”
“He must be on his way. So. How’s Neal?”
“The same.” Kay wondered if there was anything amusing or interesting she could say about Neal. Nothing came to mind. “He’s been working hard.” What had he said last night just before he had fallen asleep? Oh yes. Another wasted day. “Today’s our anniversary,” she added, “and he forgot.”
“That slug. I always said he was too old for you. Well at least you have your music. I wish I had something. How are the rehearsals going for your concert?”
“It’s not my concert, Mom. It’s Walt Fredericks’s concert.”
“But you have an important solo.”
“One piece. Yes. I wish …” She stopped. I wish I could play better, she thought. The first notes of the piece she was to play began to sing in her head and she tapped her fingers on her lap, too fast.
“And the concert hall has wheelchair access?”
“It’s not a concert hall. It’s the West Valley Community Church. And, yes. It does.”
“Good. Because I am going to be there.” Ida drew the sheet up, smoothed it down, and fixed her eyes firmly on Kay. “I am going to be there if they have to carry me in on a stretcher. Tell me again what day it is.”
“November something. Still a few weeks to get ready. By then maybe we’ll be worth hearing. But right now …” Kay thought of Walt Fredericks and shook her head. Walt was a large, tremulous, excitable man with tiny hands and feet who liked to say that he had “discovered” Kay after he heard her playing on the old upright at the library last
summer. He insisted he “knew talent,” yet in rehearsals he never noticed when Kay’s playing was all passion and slop or when it went tick-tick-tick like a mechanical pulse. He looked at her with his hot eyes brimming no matter how well or how poorly she played and that scared her to death. Someone else to let down. “I need to practice,” she said. She rose. “I ought to go.”
“Do one last thing for me? Phone Francis? I have this feeling he’s home. Just a feeling. He won’t answer for me. But he might answer for you.”
Kay dialed her parents’ number, a number she knew better than her own, and waited. Nervous, she twisted a strand of hair between her fingers and tugged; when she looked down she was not surprised to see the frizzy strand in her fingers was grey. She heard Ida break into a trill of dainty laughter and glanced over her shoulder. Tall, good-looking Dr. Deeds stood in the doorway and Ida leaned toward him, dimpling.
“Who is it now?” Francis started out of his nap, blinked back a bad dream, and picked up the phone as Coco howled.
“Just me, Dad. Your daughter. Kay? Sorry to bother you. Mom asked me to call but now it looks as if the doctor’s here so she can’t talk after all.”
“Too bad,” Francis said. “Goodbye.”
“Dad? Don’t hang up! Just wait a second. How have you been?”
“I’m fine. It’s your mother, you know. She’s the sick one.” Francis hugged his elbows and yawned. The golden light had left the house and the air had cooled. Winter coming, he thought. Time to order firewood soon. What was the name of that fellow he’d used last year? Hippie fellow, lived out near Kay, in the boonies.
“Now you’re supposed to ask me how I’ve been,” Kay prompted, her voice faint on the other end.
“You’re fine,” he said. “Aren’t you? Still have your part-time temp job at the smallest library branch in the county?”
“Yes.”
“Still making four cents an hour?”
“Something like that.”