“Dr. Lonnigan is covering for Dr. Pokorny,” the nurse told me. “And there’s nothing to worry about. Your father is doing fine; he’s mostly resting anyhow, you know, just resting.”
When I returned to Arthur’s room, Rose was gone. She’d left her purse tucked under the sheet of Arthur’s bed so it wouldn’t be stolen in her absence. My father patted it, as if it were a sick doll.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked. I’d already decided not to mention Pokorny’s accident; soon enough he’d be at my father’s bedside with his hand in a splinted bandage and they could both have a nice comradely laugh on it.
“Calling home,” Arthur said. “We got ourselves a cleaning woman now and Rose wants to see if there’s any messages. She can’t get used to having someone in the house.”
“She was always against it,” I said.
Arthur shrugged. “Since I moved back. It’s a big help. But I don’t like having someone pick up after us. And Rose watches the poor woman like a hawk. You know how particular your mother is. It’s no picnic cleaning Rose’s house. But we pay her twice what other people pay, so there’s that.”
“Dad,” I said, “you know—” I stopped; Arthur had grabbed ahold of my hand and the sudden pressure startled me.
“Are you all right?” he whispered. “Are you happy?”
I nodded.
“I want you to go back to her. Today. Tomorrow. Soon. It’s a little risky here, until we work everything out with the court. I’m not saying some arrangement can’t be made but until then I want you to be careful. You’re taking a big risk coming here, I hope you know.”
“I had to.” I put my hand on the side of his face. “It scared me to hear you were sick. I really love you, you know. I love you a lot.”
Arthur suddenly let go of me and his eyes focused on the white ceiling. Taking his cue, I sat straight in my chair and a nurse came in holding a tray with a glass of water and a little pleated cup on it. She had dyed yellow hair and wore dark glasses; she looked more like a waitress at a truck stop than a nurse.
“Medicine woman,” announced Arthur. With great eagerness he grabbed the paper cup and poured three pills into his open palm. His face fell like a child’s at a disappointing birthday.
“Three?” he asked. “Where’s the little orange one? The…the…whatever it’s called?”
“Doctor’s orders,” said the nurse.
“What do you mean?” Arthur showed me the pills and furrowed his eyebrows, as if asking my opinion.
“The orange was a sedative,” the nurse said.
“Well, I need it,” Arthur said, with a moan. “I’m not so relaxed.” He stared miserably at the pills in his hand, like someone who’s been underpaid.
The nurse held the water out to him. “Down you go,” she said.
The disappointment left my father’s face, to be replaced by a look of fear. He turned the pills over in his hand and shook his head. Across the room, from behind the curtains drawn around the second bed, came a low, distressing sound, a grating, bubbling noise such as one would make sucking up the last of a milkshake through a paper straw.
“Nurse,” a voice said. The curtains parted and a tall black man emerged. “Nurse? It’s making that noise again. You want to take a look?”
“Your mother is being drained,” the nurse answered, exasperated. The man nodded uncertainly and disappeared behind the curtains. “Poor soul,” the nurse murmured. “He’s been sitting with that woman for eleven days and she doesn’t even know he’s…” the nurse’s eyes happened to rest on the pocketbook Arthur cradled beneath the sheet, but with a shake of the head she decided not to notice.
Moments after the nurse was gone, Rose returned.
“Everything OK?” asked Arthur.
“Yes. Fine. Everything’s fine.” She pulled her purse away from Arthur and tucked it under her arm. She looked warily at both of us; she was sure we’d been talking about her. Then she looked over her shoulder to make certain we were alone and said, “That parole office Eddie Watanabe called the house about an hour ago.”
“Oh boy,” said Arthur, softly.
“Dinah took the call,” said Rose. “She said that we were here.”
I was standing. I walked to the window, expecting, perhaps, to see a squad car pulling in, but Arthur’s window looked on nothing but other hospital windows, grimy and opaque, like the view from a cheap, desperate hotel.
“Did she say anything else?” I asked.
“Who knows?” said Rose.
“Did you say anything to her?” Arthur asked. “Does she know he’s here?”
“I don’t know. I may have,” said Rose.
“You don’t know?” said Arthur.
“I think I’d better be going,” I said.
“Where are you going?” whispered Arthur.
“Back?” asked Rose.
“I don’t know. I’m scared.” But even as I said it, I knew I was leaving. I would leave without talking to Arthur’s doctor, leave without discovering anything more about my parents’ new and difficult truce, leave immediately to save myself.
I heard footsteps coming down the hall. They sounded deliberate, official. My life seemed to be balanced like an egg at the edge of a table but the footsteps passed—a doctor in surgical green.
“I better go right now,” I said to Rose.
“I’ll take you,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“But don’t get excited. Don’t react to things before they happen. Do you understand me? You’ll wear yourself out just by worrying?”
I nodded. I was thinking: she’s stalling; she wants me to be caught.
“You’re a little fish in a big pond,” said Rose. “I know how these people work. He was sitting on his fanny in his office, making calls.”
Arthur patted the bed. “Come here for a minute,” he said. “Sit.”
I lost control. “No,” I shouted, nearly at the top of my lungs. The world flapped like a flag before my eyes. “I want to get out of here right now!” My voiced echoed in the room. The enduring son peeked through the curtains around his mother’s bed. Footsteps were hurrying toward us. “I really think I should be going,” I said, bringing my voice as much under control as I could. My parents were looking at me, a huge beam of disapproval coming from their eyes: I was behaving like a fool, humiliating them.
I bolted from my father’s room just as the nurse in sunglasses was entering. I jostled her but didn’t look back. I hoped I was heading toward an exit. I heard running behind me and looked over my shoulder, against my better judgment. It was Rose, holding her purse like a football, moving with astonishing grace. I stopped and waited for her. In silence, we walked out of the hospital and we maintained the silence until we were in the car and she’d started the engine.
“Have you gone out of your mind again?” she asked, glancing into the rear-view mirror.
“Yes. Completely. Now please, take me to the airport. And you’re going to have to loan me the money for a ticket, too. I’m broke.”
“You think I carry that kind of money around?”
“Then charge it on a credit card.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking to. I don’t have a credit card, except from Weibolt’s.”
“Then pay by check. I don’t care.”
“I don’t know how much money is in my account.”
With a lunge, I grabbed her behind the neck and squeezed her with my fingertips. She let out a scream and slammed her foot on the brake. We both swung forward but I kept my grip on her, only incidentally aware of what I was doing. “Then take me to the bus station,” I said.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, with a small cry. She reached behind and dug her fingernails into my hand.
I let go of her. I was shaking uncontrollably. I pulled my suitcase from the back of the car. Our car was stopped in the middle of Stony Island Boulevard and the cars behind us were sounding their horns. This is how I get caught, I thought to myself, but even f
ear seemed remote and distorted. Rose was rubbing her neck and staring at me—with fear, or hatred, I don’t know, it could even have been pity.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” I said. “Please, if you could just take me—”
A couple of cars managed to swing around us. The rest—I don’t know how many—were still sounding their horns.
“I’m not moving,” said Rose. She rotated her head, testing the soreness of her neck muscles.
I closed my eyes, covered my face, and saw myself grabbing her shoulders, shaking her back and forth, back and forth, smashing her…I threw the door open and set off down the street, my suitcase banging against me like a separate self.
The bus route from Chicago to Stoughton was a complex one, and the bus that would bring me there left the Randolph Street terminal at four that afternoon, a three-and-a-half-hour wait. It seemed unsafe. Rose would know I was there; it would not be beyond her to convince herself that I was in the pain of psychosis and to take me out of my misery by turning me in. I could not stand to look at the people who filed around the station. Even the derelicts looked menacing—if they did not look like disguised cops, they seemed like omens. The devastating green watery light of the place; the shrieking odors of cheap food, disinfectant, old newspaper. I had enough money for a ticket to New York City. I wasn’t sure what I would do from there but a bus was leaving in fifteen minutes.
I called Jade. She answered the phone herself and accepted the charges.
“I’m coming home right now,” I said.
“What’s wrong with you? Tell me what’s happened!”
“I’m all right. I’m just in a rush. The bus for New York leaves in a couple of minutes, and I want to make sure I’m on it.”
“Are you—” she stopped herself. She knew I was in trouble. “Well, get on it, then. I’m glad you’re coming back. One night without you is all I can take. I miss you.”
“I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“I called your job and said you wouldn’t be back for a week. All the puppies leave tonight. We’ll have nothing to do except lock ourselves in our room and force ourselves to eat from time to time.”
“I’m coming right away. I better hurry.”
“Then hurry.”
“Are you doing OK?”
“I miss you.”
“How was Bellows Falls?”
“Intense. Horrible. I’ll tell you all about it.”
“God.”
“I know. Also, Hugh’s old girl, Ingrid Ochester, called. She says she has to talk to me. She’s driving through in that van of hers. I’m having breakfast with her tomorrow.”
“What does she want?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. She sounded very determined, though. She’s been very messed up since Hugh. Therapy three times a week and all that. I think she’s worked something out and now she wants to share it with me. If she only knew how much I didn’t want to get into it. I really don’t.”
I held the phone, unable to speak.
“David?”
“I better go,” I said. “I don’t want to…” My voice evaporated.
“OK. Don’t miss your bus. I’m waiting for you. We’ll cry on each other’s shoulder. It’ll be wonderful.”
I said nothing.
“David?”
“I better go.”
“I’ll see if I can borrow Colleen’s car and maybe I can drive down to New York and pick you up. What time do you get in?”
“I don’t know. Don’t do that. I’ll just take another bus. I have to go.” I almost hung up but I held the phone very tightly and close to my mouth. “I love you,” I said. “I’ll always love you.”
“Don’t miss your bus, David.”
“I won’t.” I waited a moment and then, finally, I hung up.
Time after time, during the long rumbling ride east, I went rigid in my seat, certain that this was the moment when Ingrid was telling Jade that it was me Hugh chased after just before his death. I had a dollar seventy-five to my name and I somehow turned all my anxiety and grief into a hunger I was too poor to satisfy. I had nothing to read, I could not sleep, and it wasn’t until we were past Cleveland and it was long dark that I finally got a place next to a window.
I could have changed it all. I could have asked Jade to meet me in New York and then she would not have been able to meet Ingrid Ochester for breakfast. It would have only been a delay, but it would have been better. It would have engendered hope. Nothing is inevitable. Sometimes by stalling an event you contribute to its nonoccurrence. Ingrid could have left, gone somewhere far away, drifted back into the forgetfulness that had protected me for the past months, or perhaps dropped dead of a bee sting. It’s crazy not to throw yourself into the path of a coming event, crazy to convince yourself that if it doesn’t happen now it will happen quite soon, so what’s the use. We can sabotage the future, with a glance, a phonecall, a misplaced message.
I arrived in New York around ten in the morning. I felt foul, exhausted, and what thoughts I had seemed bunched up in one small corner of my mind, like a throw rug that a dog’s been pawing. I used the bathroom at Port Authority to change clothes and once I was naked in the middle of that vast tiled room I learned from the way people looked at me that changing your clothes like that isn’t acceptable behavior.
I realized I didn’t know where to begin hitchhiking to Stoughton. New York encircles you in a dense druidical mass and I couldn’t imagine how to get out of it. I asked a few people at random in the bus station, but the only person who seemed to know anything about it was in a hurry and he only called to me over his shoulder, something about “getting on Henry Hudson.” There were plenty of policemen around but I couldn’t ask them for anything. It was against the law to hitchhike and for all I knew they’d been informed by the Chicago cops to keep an eye out for me—I knew my self-important fears were absurd, but knowing was no cure. I went to a ticket window and asked how much a ride to Stoughton cost—it was five or six dollars more than I had but…I don’t know: perhaps I was expecting a clearance sale.
I had nothing worth selling and lacked the courage to beg, and so I did the only thing I could to get the money for a bus ticket: I called Ann.
“I’m broke,” I said, as soon as she said hello. “I need to borrow six dollars to get on a bus.”
“Where’s six dollars going to take you?” she said.
“To Stoughton.”
“Did she kick you out?”
“No. Why? Why do you ask that?”
“I’m wondering, that’s all. You sound like you’re close by.”
“I’m at Port Authority.”
“I’m wondering what you’re doing here without any money. But I recognize there are many things beneath heaven that are none of my damn business. Come by. I’ll give you some money. But you can’t stay. I’ve got a date for lunch and I’m nervous as a cat.”
Taking two wrong subways and a long walk, I made my way to Ann’s. She met me at the door and put a ten-dollar bill in my hand.
“You’re late,” she said, “and making me late, too. I wish you were staying around because you’re just the person I’d like to tell whatever happens today.” She touched her forehead. “I feel pregnant with anecdote.”
I looked at the money in my hand. I felt my eyes filling with tears.
“That’s a loan, remember,” Ann said. “My finances are in shambles.”
“I’ll pay you back. I’ve got money in…Stoughton.”
“Don’t be shy about saying it,” Ann said. “I’m glad. I know it’s not my place to be…to be anything about it. But I’m glad. You two belong together.”
I nodded.
“And besides, I don’t want to lose you.”
“Then don’t,” I blurted out. “Stay loyal to me. Try to understand. No matter what happens.”
Ann nodded but she didn’t know what I was talking about; she felt a soft wave of embarrassment over how ardent my plea had been, but she was letting it pa
ss right by. It was just as well.
“OK,” said Ann. “Off you go. I’m going to be late and for all I know my Mystery Man is as punctual as death.” She smiled, but a little uncertainly, as if she suspected she’d said exactly the wrong thing.
I put the money in my pants and shifted my suitcase from my right hand to my left.
“How come you’re in New York?” Ann asked.
“I had to go to Chicago and I only had enough money to get this far. Didn’t Jade…?”
“No. Of course not. That’s the condition of our truce. Jade wants an old-fashioned relationship, based on kinship and ignorance—what she calls respect. And I think she’s absolutely right; it’s the only way it can ever work between us. Did you ever tell her about the night you and I spent here?”
“No. There was never a reason to. It wouldn’t matter. It would only—”
“I agree. It’ll go away on its own.”
Coming in through the open windows at the front of Ann’s apartment was the sound of church bells, ringing in the quarter hour.
“OK,” she said. “Out. Away.”
“Let me in,” I said. “I have to tell you something. I wasn’t going to but I have to. I want to now. You’ll know soon enough anyhow but I want you to hear it from me.”
“No. I’m late. And I’m not sure I really want to know. I hate confessions. They always make me think I’m supposed to match them with a bit of breast-beating of my own. I don’t want to get into it.”
“No. You have to. You want to know.”
“You are so wrong. I don’t. At least not today.” She put her hand on my face and rubbed her palm against the grain of my whiskers. “You look strange unshaved. I don’t think it suits you. You’re not growing a beard, are you?”
“No. I just haven’t shaved.”
“Good. I think you should get on the bus, get up to Stoughton, and hope to God that Jade’s not home when you arrive and you’ll have time to shave—and bathe.”
Endless Love Page 39