Keeper, The

by Langan, Sarah,

  At Olsen’s Diner, she’d asked him how, exactly, he planned on leaving a sick wife and two young children. He told her he didn’t know, but he’d figure it out. Just say the word, Georgia. That’s all you have to do and I’ll worry about the rest. He’d said this impatiently, as if she had been Thomas fingering Christ’s wounds.

  It would have been nice if the three of them could have lived happily ever after and all that, but it wasn’t worth the time thinking about, really. Because she knew he would never leave his wife. It had sounded like a good idea at the time, but when he went home to the woman who couldn’t get out of bed without his help, he’d change his mind.

  In the waiting room, only feet away from the Marley family, she dialed his number from memory. It was as simple as remembering her old locker combination from high school: letting her fingers move without thought.

  “Paul?” she asked as soon as he picked up the phone.

  “Georgia,” he said without having to be told. He whispered this, and she knew that the rest of his family was sleeping. She heard movement, a bump of some sort, a muted curse, and imagined him carrying the cordless phone into the bathroom on the ground floor of his house, and then sitting on a fuzzy pink toilet seat.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, breathing heavily.

  “I’m at the hospital.”

  “What happened?”

  “Matthew took a spill.”

  “Do you need me to come down there?”

  “No. He’s sleeping. It’s Susan Marley. I don’t know if Danny Willow told you and I thought you should know. She’s not going to make it through the night.”

  There was a long silence. She heard tap water running. “How’d I get to be such a fuckup, Georgia?” he whispered. “When did that happen?”

  Her throat tightened, and immediately she wanted him to explain himself. She wanted to ask him why he was not at the hospital, if he was trying to be considerate of the family, or why he’d been sniffing around Susan Marley in the first place. What happened to you, Paul? she wanted to ask. But she chose not to open that particular can of worms. With Paul, it was so easy to get sucked in. So easy to see the world the way he saw it if she let him talk. He used to rant about the mill for hours unless she stopped him, always asking: Didn’t she care? Why didn’t she care? As if he thought that pointing out the bad things in life was the same as fixing them.

  “You’re drunk,” she said.

  “Always.”

  “Your liver’s gonna explode, you know.”

  “Really? I never went to college and took biology.”

  “Neither did I. Liz Marley said she wouldn’t mind if you came down here. They know it was an accident.”

  “Danny told me not to go. They’d get upset.”

  “Oh. Liz, her sister, said they wouldn’t. She’s about to die.”

  He waited a while before answering, and she knew he could feel her disappointment. “Do you think I should come?”

  “You should do what you want.”

  “I want to say I’m sorry.”

  “Good. I’m leaving soon, but good luck or something like that.”

  “You’re not staying at the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “It’d be nice if you stayed.”

  “Can’t Cathy come with you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I guess not.”

  “You don’t have to wait for me. I know that’s asking a lot,” he said, but the statement hung in the air like a question.

  No, she wanted to say. I can’t do that. I dropped you a long time ago. My father just got fired. I have almost no gas in my car and it’s raining so hard in Bedford that I don’t even know if I’m going to make it across the bridge back home if I wait any longer. The Marleys don’t have fond memories of me. You must be kidding to think I’d do that for you. No.

  She told him yes, she’d wait for him at the cafeteria. It surprised her as much as the fact that she remembered his phone number.

  NINETEEN

  Everything That Rises Must Converge

  The clock in the cafeteria ticks. Its second hand wavers for a moment, as if it will go backward.

  Paul waits at the hospital with Georgia. He is not sure why he has chosen to come. He will have to see Susan again. If she dies, whether they know it or not, he believes he will carry a good deal of the blame. Things not to think about now, another item to add to a very long list.

  Georgia hands him a cup of coffee, and the steam rises and curls under his nose like cigarette smoke. He wishes he was drinking something other than coffee.

  She pats his back out in the open because it does not mean anything anymore, at least to her. He thinks this is nice, I wish I could take you home, Georgia. I wish you hadn’t been such a prig when I knew you or things would have been different. But you still live with your dad, darling, you’ll never get away from Daddy, and no matter how many times you tell yourself it’s because you want your son to have a grandfather, you know you’re just afraid.

  The woman behind the counter stares at Georgia. He has forgotten the eccentricity of her appearance, the way eyes always follow her lips, hair, and stature across a room. She carries herself as if she does not know that she is any different.

  He tells her thanks, again, and she nods. This is what he likes about her: She does not talk when there is nothing to say.

  “How’s Matthew?” he asks.

  “He’ll live.”

  “Can I see him?” he asks, he doesn’t know why; he doesn’t want her son to see him in this condition. Maybe to test the limits of this kindness she is showing him.

  “He’s sleeping,” she says. What she really means is, even if he wasn’t sleeping, you couldn’t see him. The kid you offered to adopt as your own. You’ll never see him.

  She does not mention the times he has called and hung up. Or the times he has visited her house, watching. He thinks that if there had been one person, a single, sane person in his life, he would not be here right now. He wishes he had married a woman other than Cathy. He wishes he loved Cathy. Well no, let’s not get dramatic. He wishes he didn’t live in this town where life is dark and cuts to the center of him and that he was not shaking either because he needs another drink or because he needs to vomit. Again.

  He waits.

  Georgia rises, tells Liz that Paul has arrived. They will be waiting for word in the cafeteria. Liz mutters something, agrees to find them if Susan’s condition changes. When Georgia returns, Paul smiles and she knows he is glad to see her, that he has missed her. She has missed him, too. She does not like to admit that. She stays with him because he is alone. She thinks he deserves to be alone. She cannot let him wait by himself.

  He smells to her like an alcoholic. She has not been this close to him for a very long time. This is the change in him: He is resigned. He thinks it is Cathy who has done this to him, but it is not Cathy. Paul does not understand that life isn’t always fun. He thinks that when he leaves a room, everyone else gets up and has a party, dances the Charleston. He thinks that Cathy has prevented him from this life. He thinks that he could have been more. He doesn’t understand that if that were the case, he would already be more.

  She waits.

  Liz paces in slow, elliptical figure eights. She would like to make love right now, on the hospital floor. She doesn’t know why. She thinks it might hurt, the hardness, her head slamming against it. She thinks she might like it.

  She waits now.

  Bobby imagines the sound of the rain against the windows in his bedroom. The hospital is cold, open. He thinks about going outside, smoking a Lucky; he’d have an excuse to be somewhere other than here. Oddly, the one thought he can’t get out of his head is that he should finally face the truth: He will never be tall.

  He waits.

  Mary does not think at all. She can hardly feel. The daughter she loved died long ago. She wants to be home, watching television. She wants a glass of wine. She wants to cut
her vision apart, make the world all black, run a knife through it and pull back the reality. She wants to hold Liz, pacing Liz, and by touching her be reassured. But Liz will shake her off, and so she continues reading the same magazine article she has been clutching since she arrived at the hospital because she can’t get any farther than, “Parsley is the much neglected garnish in American cuisine.”

  She waits.

  They all wait.

  In Bedford the mill is quiet. Rain falls and makes hollow splashes. There is no thunder. Only black. There is no sound. Snow melts, feet of it, and drifts along the banks of the river. Things buried during the long winter surface and float in the water. There are mittens, bottles of beer, pipes, shoes, their laces swerving like worms, dead animals, all clogging the gutters or falling inside, into the depths.

  Houses are dark. Shades are drawn for the night while water rises and circles the town. People have prepared, readying their flashlights, fortifying their cellars. The banks will soon flood. The valley will not drain. The road to I–95 will be impenetrable. This will be the worst rain in Bedford’s history.

  It is three A.M. on Friday when they stand over her bed, all of them. They think time has stopped, that it is past and present, mixing. If there were sound, it would travel in a curve, a loop, a circle.

  Georgia does not want to be here. Paul has begged. He needs to see Susan again. He cannot do it alone. She touches Paul’s shoulder to tell him that she is going to wait outside. He puts his arm around her and she is frozen where she stands, unwilling to hear her own voice in this silence.

  Liz and Bobby stand together. Bobby sees Paul’s action and mimics it. Liz shudders. Bobby holds her tighter. Mary stands far off, in the back.

  Susan’s eyes roll. She has returned to consciousness. She fixes on a point. On Georgia and Paul. Paul looks down at his feet. He moves backward, and Georgia follows. Susan’s eyes drift. She sees Liz and Bobby. Liz takes a step toward her sister, but Bobby, his hands clamped tightly, anxiously, does not let her go. Susan’s eyes drift again. She looks in Mary’s direction and Mary shuffles out of view.

  Their dreams return to them; a stain of blood in white snow, a little girl in Mary Janes, a hooker proffering a bottle of scotch, a mill in flames, a woman giving birth to things that have no business in this world. Susan smiles, and they know that she has sent these visions to them.

  “Soon,” she whispers. Her soft voice is so resonant that it carries through the buzzing fluorescent lights, and the beeping machines, and the walls of the room. This is the first and last word she had spoken in five years. Her eyes do not close when she dies. They do not roll back. They remain open, while in the corner, a heart monitor makes one long beep.

  For a long time no one takes a breath. Something is coming now. They can feel it.

  RESURRECTION

  The next few days passed quickly.

  Early Friday morning, Georgia and Paul were the first to leave. When they left the hospital, Georgia knew what she was about to do. She knew how this would look. What people would say. She did it anyway. She kissed him on the cheek, took his hand. Told him to get into his car and follow her home.

  At her house, she raised her finger to her lips to show him to be quiet. His hands were shaking so she made some coffee, liberally spiking both cups with brandy. They sat next to each other at the kitchen table that was spotted with Chips Ahoy! cookie crumbs.

  “More brandy?” she asked in jest.

  “Yeah,” he said, “as a matter of fact, I’d love some more brandy.”

  He drained half his mug in one gulp and she filled it to the top with more of her father’s cherry brandy. “Swill,” he said after sipping it.

  “You’re all charm.”

  “Sorry, no indication of my feelings for you,” he said, sipping, not looking at her, his words so dry and bitter that they could not have been sarcastic.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Move to Spain. Watch the bullfights. Drink absinthe. Want to come?” She had a blank look on her face. “Hemingway, Georgia.”

  “That’s nice.”

  He raised his hands in defeat. “I’m going to go home and sleep this off, unless there happens to be a police car waiting at my house, in which case I’m going to jail for fleeing the scene of an accident. Really, it all depends.” He gave her a wry smile. Not a slur. Every word spoken with slow concentration. She wondered how much he would have to drink in order for it to affect his mind. His body, she could safely say, had already been affected.

  “I don’t mean to sound like such an asshole,” he told her.

  She shrugged. “I used to babysit for Susan. I had a run-in with her parents. There were things going on there.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Something feels very wrong about all this. It’s like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “Has anything ever been right in this town?”

  She shrugged again. “Were you with her long?”

  “No. Just for a little while after you.” He said this as if there was a cause-and-effect relationship in there somewhere.

  “But you gave her money,” Georgia said.

  “For rent sometimes. She didn’t have anywhere to go.” He cradled his head in his hands.

  “Do you think she needed to be hospitalized?”

  “My fault, too, right?”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s as easy as all that. She might have been crazy or mean or, well, I don’t know what, but I never heard about anyone except you treating her decent.”

  He pushed his empty cup away. She made a motion toward it. “No, I’m all set, don’t you think?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Her eyes watered and she rubbed them. There usually comes a time when you see someone that you once cared for, and realize that you do not care any longer. When that happens, it is easy to show affection. It is easy to talk. It is easy to give a kiss on the cheek or a happy wave hello. Though that time should have come long ago, she still didn’t feel it. He noticed the water in her eyes, seemed to draw something from it, inspecting her, and then pretended not to notice.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Georgia,” he said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  He smiled as if this admission only made her more attractive. “How’s Matt?”

  “Fine.”

  “And how are you doing, Georgia?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My father got fired yesterday,” she told him.

  “Figures.”

  “I thought you’d have more to say.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t.”

  Before he got up to leave, he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. She tilted her head a little, and their lips touched. He left without speaking. It was not until several hours after he was gone that she admitted to herself that she still loved him.

  Saturday morning Mary confirmed funeral arrangements. It would be a quick ceremony. Susan was not insured. She called the bank and the funeral parlor. The wake was scheduled for Sunday, the burial Monday. Then she called the Corpus Christi Sentinel, let them know the times. They would print a notice in the weekend edition. When the reporter asked for more details she’d answered, “Ask Paul Martin. He knows her better than I ever did.”

  The autopsy results showed no skin underneath Susan’s fingernails, no bruises on her face from a violent struggle, no cancer in her womb that would have killed her anyway. Accidental death, the coroner had declared it. Misadventure.

  Mary had been given the next seven days off from work. She did not know what she would do with herself during that week because she could hear Susan around every corner on this bleak and rainy day, within the walls of her memory.

  She was tired, but could not bring herself to climb the stairs to her bedroom. Instead she poured herself a glass of wine and sat on the couch. Too early to answer phones, listen to people say how sorry they were.

  But the phone did ring. She
did not want to answer it. The machine would click on. The phone kept ringing. She picked it up. Said hello. No one answered. The connection was bad, all static. She did not know why she said this, could not explain to anyone, except that once, this had happened before. Once, someone had called, then hung up, and only later had she guessed who it had been. “Susan?” she asked. There was a buzzing on the line. “Susan, come home,” she said because it was something she always should have said. The person on the other end hung up.

  Only the Fullbright and Willow families paid their respects at Susan’s wake Sunday evening. The rain was falling hard, and after picking up supplies to collect the rain that seeped through their ceilings, most people stayed indoors. Because of the autopsy and the position of the injury, the casket was closed. Nevertheless, Susan’s body was fitted into a high-necked blue dress that Mary had supplied. The night was a quiet one, interrupted only by the sound of the rain.

  The funeral the following Monday was even less attended. Danny Willow was called out to a traffic accident at the old train tracks on Mayflower Street, so only the Fullbrights made the trek to the top of the hill. The shallow grave was only four feet deep. The mattock the gravediggers used to loosen the earth had cracked against a six-inch-thick sheet of ice in the middle of the job. Almost all the snow had melted on the hill. The sewers in the valley were clogged, and the water-logged old railroad tracks mired several small cars. The sound of hydroplaning could be heard all over town. At the cemetery, Liz Marley listened to Father Allesando talk about ashes and dust and the great hereafter, while she held Bobby’s hand.

  When Liz and her mother got home Monday night from burying Susan, they sat at the kitchen table. Two people lived in the house, when once there had been four. There were worlds of things they could have said to each other. Worlds of regrets, and desires, and emotions like love that had somehow persevered. In the corner of Liz’s eye was a clump of yellow sleep, and Mary reached over and wiped it away. Liz did not flinch or raise her hand defensively, as Mary might have expected. Instead she sat perfectly still. Stiff.