“‘Fixture.’ Oooh. I love it when you talk like an interior decorator. Tell me about accouterments next. Whisper about them slowly.”
“You are the most evil boy, aren’t you?”
“I get a lot of complaints about that, yes.”
“Who said I was complaining?” And with that Arlene led me to the unit and left me to my own devices. The break room was in the hall opposite the one leading to Whitey’s room, so it didn’t exactly take a lot of sneaking and skulking to get to his room—though I was anxiously aware that I was on camera now.
I passed the room which had been the former home of the Captain Spalding Brothers and slowed. The new occupant—who for the moment had the room to herself—was sitting in her wheelchair, asleep in front of a color television displaying a muted re-run of The Waltons. There was a vibrantly green potted plant on the windowsill, several books stuffed between a set of hand-carved cherry-wood bookends, themselves shaped like books; an antique Tiffany lamp whose stained-glass shade glowed softly from the 40-watt bulb underneath, diffuse sunlight warming church windows. A patchwork quilt lay neatly folded at the foot of her bed, while the head was covered in an assortment of small, colorful pillows. There were framed photographs hanging on the wall next to her bed; a black and white wedding picture, so faded around the edges it looked like something glimpsed through a fog; several color photographs of the same cat and dog taken years apart, the cat going from a bright-eyed gray-furred kitten to something that looked like an overused feather duster with a rheumy gaze, the dog journeying from its days as a square-bodied bundle of muscles and legs to an arthritic bundle atop an old throw rug that, like the animal lying on it, had seen better days. I wondered if the animals were still alive, and then why there were no pictures of children and grandchildren anywhere to be seen. Everything about the room and the woman sleeping in the chair whispered of weariness, of too much quiet, not enough voices and visitors. A lamp, a quilt, some books, a television, and frozen moments from memory framed on the walls; this is what her life had come down to. I wondered if any of those books were poetry collections, if perhaps it contained any Browning, if she had certain well-thumbed pages marked for easy finding or knew them by heart; did she ever fall asleep repeating snippets of sonnets in her mind as she looked at the frozen moments from her life?
My heart is very tired, my strength is low,
My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
Held dead within them till myself shall die.
I knew Whitey would kick my ass up between my shoulders if he knew I was thinking these things. (“Know what your name would have been if you’d’ve been born an Indian? ‘Dark Cloud.’ Trust me on this. They wouldn’t have had to worry about having their land stolen by the White Man and then being systematically slaughtered, no. You would’ve depressed them to death!”)
I smiled at the thought, wished this sleeping woman pleasant dreams and a happy day to come (I also couldn’t help but smile at the bumper sticker someone had pasted to the back of her wheelchair: I ACCELERATE FOR FUZZY BUNNIES), then headed on down to Whitey’s room.
His door was closed.
I stood there staring at the thing, my poised fist frozen in mid-knock.
Maybe this was part of the new security measures, keeping the doors closed at night—but then why hadn’t Miss Acceleration’s door been closed, as well? No, this wasn’t what it appeared to be, it couldn’t be, I wouldn’t accept it, wouldn’t allow it. Whitey might not be in the best shape, but it had only been three days since I’d last seen him (he wasn’t very talkative and insisted he wasn’t feeling well, though I suspected he was just depressed and wanted to be left alone) and I refused to believe that anything had happened to him. Mabel would have told me. I knocked, then waited for him to shout something insulting.
Nothing.
I grabbed the door handle and began to open it when the rest of it finally registered: his nameplate had been removed from its slot in the wall next to the door, the clipboard that held his chart was no longer hanging on its hook underneath his name, and the lights in the room were off. Whitey always kept the bathroom light on at night so he didn’t have to stumble through the dark to take a leak.
If I don’t turn on the light, everything will be fine, I thought. Right now it’s dark and you’re not looking at anything that confirms what you’re trying not to think about, so for this moment, in the dark, Whitey’s here and sleeping and everything’s the way it was the last time you were here.
The smart thing to do was not turn on the light. I’d lost too many people recently. Dad was chewed up and dead and gone, Mom might as well be dead for all the joy she found in her day-to-day existence, and I’d seen so little of Beth for the last six weeks she might as well have been in Guatemala with the Peace Corps. I would not allow another person to slip away from me. And the best way to ensure that would be to do the smart thing, and the smart thing was not to turn on the light.
I turned on the light.
Two beds, both empty. No television, no video tape machine, no pictures, no books in precarious stacks; nothing in the closets but hangers, nothing in the restroom except an unused roll of toilet paper, a full soap dispenser, and a tub and sink that were desert-dry.
I stood in the empty room shaking my head while something in the middle of my chest tried to snap through my rib cage. This was not—repeat not—happening. Maybe I’d gone into the wrong room, it could happen. So there I was back out in the hall checking the room number and it was the right number but that didn’t mean anything, Whitey was always bitching about how little space he had in there so maybe they’d just moved him to another room, a bigger room, one big enough to hold all of his stuff and leave space for his ego, left side first, I went down the left side of the hall first, checking and double-checking the names next to the doors and Whitey’s wasn’t among them, so now it up the right side, double- and triple-checking the names and it wasn’t there, either; I reached the end of the hall and went left toward the break room because Mabel was there and she’d know, she could tell me what was going on—
—unless she didn’t know, unless something happened earlier today and the detritus had already been cached away and no one had told her—
—the door to the break room stood half-opened. I started to push my way inside when I heard Mabel say, “It’s probably for the best,” but there was something in her voice that told me she was simply parroting a practiced response, that she didn’t really believe what she was saying but wanted whomever she was talking with to think she did. Then a male voice replied, “It’s always for the best, it’s important you remember that.” Then I had the door open and was standing there long enough to see that the man she was speaking to was dressed in an expensive gray suit with white shirt and blue tie and wore a bowler hat on his head that was pulled down to cover the top half of his ears—then he noticed me.
“This area is for sanctioned personnel only,” he said. His face and voice were both granite.
I reached down and fumbled at the thing hanging around my neck. “I’ve got a visitor’s pass.”
“That doesn’t matter—you shouldn’t be in here. What’s your name?”
Mabel’s face drained of color the second I answered his question but I figured it was more out of concern that she was about to get into trouble. I decided to play it safe and act as if I didn’t know her, like I was just some schlub off the street who couldn’t find his butt with both hands, a floodlight, and a seven-man search party.
“I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted anything but I was looking for … for my uncle, Marty Weis?” I pointed over my shoulder, looking directly at Mabel. “His room’s empty, ma’am. Has he been moved to another unit?”
Mabel released a breath and said to Bowler-Hat, “I’ll take care of this,” then walked over and gestured for me to move toward the nurse’s desk. As we walked down the hall she slapped an iron clamp that looked like her hand on my elbow. “How the hell did you get in?”
>
I looked back to see Bowler-Hat standing outside the break room, watching her escort me out. “Arlene let me in, she said—”
“—she shouldn’t have let you in. Unless it’s an emergency, there are now no visitors allowed after eight-thirty.”
“I’m sorry, Ma—uh, ma’am, I didn’t know.” She shot a quick thank-you glance at me when I said “ma’am.” “Where is he?”
“Mr. Weis is no longer with us,” she said, a little too loudly. She pulled me past the nurse’s desk toward the hallway where I’d entered; her entire body was rigid and we were moving a little too fast.
“Please tell me what happened.”
“Mr. Weis is no longer with us, sir. You can call the Admissions office after nine tomorrow morning.” We turned down the hall and moved toward the door. After a few steps Mabel looked back over her shoulder, then doubled her pace, yanking me along. Her grip on my arm tightened.
“That hurts,” I whispered.
“Jesus, I wish you hadn’t told him your name.”
“So what? Big deal—what’s he going to do, issue an APB?”
Mabel swiped her card-key as she none-too-gently spun me around and began to push the door open with my back. “Listen, you know I love you, right?”
“What the—aren’t you worried about him hearing you?”
“He didn’t follow us and this hall isn’t monitored. You know I love you, right?”
“Yeah … ?”
“And you know I don’t say or do anything without a damn good reason, right?”
“Yeah … ?”
“Good.” She blinked, then gave a weak, unreadable smile. “You need to leave right now and go home and not come around here or the house for a little while, a couple of weeks, at least, okay?”
“Where’s Marty? He didn’t … didn’t—”
“—Mr. Weis is no longer with us. That’s all I can tell you.” Then she silently mouthed the words He’s fine while slowly shaking her head. “Please do this for me, will you? Go home and stay away for a couple of weeks.”
“But … but what’s … I mean—”
“Do it for me, please?” This wasn’t just out of concern for her job—there was hard, raw, genuine fear in her voice. Before I could say anything else she pushed me outside, closed and locked the door, then spun around and returned to the unit, not giving me so much as a brief backward glance. I was just some schlub off the street.
Back home in the kitchen I put all of Mom’s morning medications in their compartment and then went to bed, where I lay weeping for another hour or so before there was a soft knock on my door and Mom stuck her head inside.
“Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” I said in the same clipped, melodramatic way we’ve all said it when we’re upset and don’t want to say Everything is awful and I just want to die so leave me the hell alone, please.
She held the collar of her tattered blue housecoat closed as she looked out in the hall toward the stairs. “Well, try to keep it down, will you? Your dad will be upset something terrible if he comes home and finds you this way.”
I stared at her; she stood silhouetted in the doorway like some wisp of a dream that lingers in the eyes for a moment upon waking. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize, hon, it’s all right. We just don’t want to upset him. He works so hard.”
“I know.”
She started to close the door, then said: “Is it time for my medicine?”
“Not yet, you take it in the morning.”
“Well, it is the morning. It’s after midnight, isn’t it?”
“Go back to bed, Mom. Take it when you get up again.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a good boy, you know that?”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She looked at me for a few more moments, then closed the door.
After another half hour I got up and put on my headphones and listened to records until a little past eight-thirty. The songs—some of them were old even back then—wove a curious kind of safety cocoon; this one came out when I was in sixth grade; this one was playing the first time I told so-and-so that I liked her in the eighth grade and she didn’t laugh at me—didn’t kiss me, either, but at least didn’t laugh; and this one, this one I always listened to by myself because it struck at something deep inside me that I didn’t want anyone else to know about because they might make fun of it or find a way to use it against me when they were mad or just feeling mean and needed to take it out on someone.
Around nine I took off the headphones and called the Cedar Hill Healthcare Center, asking to speak to someone in Admissions. As soon as they answered I gave them the same bullshit story about being Marty Weis’s nephew and how I’d tried to visit him last night, cha-cha-cha. It wasn’t hard to sound scared and confused.
“Mr. Weis is no longer with us,” said the Admissions person.
“I know that, ma’am, I was just wondering if you could tell me where he’s gone.”
“Mr. Weis was checked out of our facility two days ago.” Was checked out, not Checked himself out.
“Can you tell me who checked him out? Was it his daughter from Los Angeles?”
“I can’t give out that information, sir, and no forwarding address was provided.”
This went on for about ten minutes, I was transferred to three different people, all of whom gave me the same story, word for word: Mr. Weis is no longer with us.
I hung up while being transferred yet again, paced my room for a few minutes, then lay back down on my bed and listened to some more music.
Then I fell asleep, and dreamed of Mom standing over her medicine in the kitchen.
I jolted awake, snapping up my head so fast I heard the bones in my neck crack and felt a sharp stab of pain.
Something had happened.
Something was wrong.
I had no idea how I knew this, but the feeling was too strong to be ignored.
Yanking off the headphones, I headed downstairs. If I remembered filling the compartment and replacing the lids on the bottles, then I must have put the meds back in their hiding place as I usually did; even half-awake, your body more times than not will remember certain physical routines even if your brain doesn’t.
She was sitting at the table, face-down, her nose pressed against the Local section of The Cedar Hill Ally. One hand was still clutching the newspaper, the other held the cup of now-cold coffee she’d taken the pills with.
The radio was tuned to the local classical music station. It was playing something from some opera, Mom being the opera fan.
On the counter, five bottles of prescription medications sat where I’d left them last night. The “Morning” compartment was unopened, as were all the bottles except one—the sedatives; that bottle lay on its side, displaying the depth of the nothing it contained.
Oh, hon, I didn’t think it would hurt anything, I’ve just been real jumpy.
I knew she was dead before I even touched her. I sat there, holding her hand and saying over and over again: “You rest now, Mom, you’ve earned it. You rest now, Mom …”
I wondered what song I’d been listening to when she’d died. I wondered if she’d tried calling up to me but I didn’t hear her because of the headphones. I wondered if she’d died thinking that her life had been wasted and no one would remember her. “ … you’ve earned it. You can rest now … .”
I wondered if her hands had ever held blossoms.
I made the necessary calls, I waited with her body until the coroner’s wagon and police arrived; I answered all their questions, let the police collect the items they requested, and agreed to come down to the station later that day and let them take my prints. (“A formality,” said the officer. “It will help us make a determination.”) After they left, I called Criss Brothers Funeral Home and told them what happened and, yes, I could come over in a little while and make the arrangements; then it was only a matter
of gathering together all the necessary papers (insurance information, etc., which Mom kept in the same metal filing box with everything relating to Dad’s death), calling what few relatives Mom still had in the area, and going about the rest of the awful business.
A lot of the next several days is something of a blur, so I’ll skip around and just hit the high points, if you don’t mind: her death was ruled accidental, I was not charged with gross negligence or anything else, her doctor was quick to mention her depression and confused state of mind, and the fact that she’d lost her husband only four weeks before confirmed for everyone that the entire incident was a terrible tragedy. Her obituary ran three short paragraphs and read more like a job resume than the summation of a life. Her remains were cremated (she’d been very specific about this for as long as I’d been alive) and placed in the finest urn Criss Brothers had to offer. There was a brief and bleak memorial service held in the chapel at the funeral home with about thirteen people, myself included, in attendance. When all was said and done, I was left sole owner of an empty, paid-for house, and had a respectable amount of money left from their insurance policies. At twenty-one, I was “set” for a good while, provided I used my resources intelligently.
The memorial service was held the Friday morning Beth’s show was scheduled to open. The night before she called at eight-thirty from a phone at the theater. I hung up as soon as I heard her voice. Less than a minute later the phone rang again and I let the answering machine pick up.
“Listen,” she said, “we’re taking a dinner break. The dress rehearsal was a disaster and we’re running through the whole thing again at ten. We need to talk and—God! I just heard how stupid that sounds. I’m so sorry about your mom, I really am, and so is Mabel. Did you get the flowers we sent? I’d really like to come to the service tomorrow morning. I would’ve called sooner but I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to—”
Keepers Page 18