Читать книгу The Hour I First Believed - Wally Lamb - Страница 10

FIGURING IT WAS BETTER IF they talked with someone who could speak “medical,” I had Maureen call the hospital. She tried twice but couldn’t get past “Louella’s resting comfortably” and “Someone from the medical team will be calling” and “Can you verify that her insurance provider is Blue Cross/Blue Shield?” And goddamnit, by the time the medical team did call, Mo’d gone out.

“Mr. Quirk? This is Dan, one of the nurses over at Shanley Memorial.” Over at? Three Rivers was two time zones away. “I’ve been caring for your mother today and—”

“She’s my aunt,” I said.

A pause, a shuffling of paperwork. “But you’re her next of kin, right?”

“Yes. Why? Did she…”

“Oh, no, no. She’s hanging in there, Mr. Quirk. Dr. Salazar will be speaking to you in just a few minutes about her test results. But first, I wonder if you could answer some questions for us about Louella’s medical profile.”

“Yeah, well, the thing is, my wife’s a nurse, so she’s more on top of Lolly’s medical stuff. I can have her call you back.”

Dan said he was going off-shift soon. Whatever I could help him with. “Okay,” I said.

No, I wasn’t sure what medications she was taking. No, I didn’t know which medical practice she’d switched to after Dr. Oliver died. (I hadn’t known he’d died.) Surgeries? None that I could recall. Yes, she smoked: one Marlboro a day, after her evening meal; she’d done that for years. No, she wasn’t much of a drinker. A beer every now and then. Brandy on special occasions. Diabetes? No, not that I knew of.

Dan wanted to know if there was anything else I could think of.

“Just hearing loss. The TV’s always shouting when I call her. She claims I mumble.” When I call her: now there was a face-saving lie.

“That’s helpful,” Dan said. “We’ve been assuming Louella’s incomprehension is stroke-related, but maybe she’s having trouble hearing us.”

“She goes by Lolly, actually. Not Louella.”

“I’ll make a note of that. Now, let’s talk about her family history. I’m assuming both her parents are deceased. Can you tell me what they died of?”

“Well, let’s see. Her father—my grandfather—died of Alzheimer’s.”

“At what age?”

“I’m not sure. His late seventies, maybe?”

“What about her mother?”

“She died during childbirth.”

“Of?”

“I don’t know. Childbirth, I guess. Lolly and my father were raised by their grandmother.”

“So she has a brother. Any other siblings?”

“No. My father was Lolly’s twin.”

“Was? He’s deceased?”

“Yeah…. Yup.”

“And what was the cause of his death?”

The question tightened my grip on the phone. “Officially? Officially, it was internal injuries and…loss of blood. His legs were severed.”

“Were these war injuries?”

“No. He was a drunk. He was fishing off a trestle bridge, and they think he must have passed out or something. And a train came along.”

“Whoa. That’s tough. And how old was—”

“Thirty-three. But look, like I said, my wife can fill you guys in a lot better about Lolly’s medical stuff. And as far as her medications, what I can do is get hold of her handyman. Have him go by the house and look around. Make a list, or bring you her prescription bottles, or whatever.”

Dan said that would be super. One more thing. Did I think I was going to be able to make the trip back to be with my aunt?

“Oh, well, it would be tough…. But if it becomes necessary.”

Dan said he understood. Were there friends or other family who might be able to check in on her? Stroke was such an upheaval. So frightening. Familiar faces were reassuring at a time like this.

“Uh, well…I know she gets together, plays cards with some of the gals she used to work with. And they go down to the casino once or twice a month. Eat at the buffet or whatever.”

“Sounds like my mother,” he said. “Is one of her friends Kay? She keeps asking for Kay.”

“I don’t know. There’s a Hilda. And a Marie. A Shirley.”

Dan thanked me. I thanked him. “Dr. Salazar will be coming to the phone shortly,” he said. “Can you hold?”

Maybe the lite-rock station Dan switched me to was penance for my shortcomings as next-of-kin. I bit at some ragged skin on my thumb. Grabbed a beer out of the fridge. The deejay had a theme going: “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” “Colors of the Wind,” “Windy.” When was it that FM radio had started sucking? The eighties, right? The Reagan era?

That morning’s newspaper was on the counter. “NATO Air Strikes in Yugoslavia Intensify”…“Hockey Great Gretzky to Retire”…“Love Bug Computer Virus Delivers ‘Fatally Attractive’ Message” …Before we moved west, I’d promised Lolly I’d get back to see her twice a year—summertime and Christmastime—but I’d reneged. Hadn’t even gone back for Hennie’s funeral…. And what did my father’s shit-canning his life have to do with Lolly’s stroke? Nothing, that’s what. I should have kept my fucking mouth shut…. I saw Lolly, standing at the doorway of my algebra class, freshman year—not Ma, not Grandpa. As soon as I saw her there, I knew Daddy was dead.

I crooked the cordless against my shoulder. Filled the dogs’ water dish. Finished my beer…. Stroke is such an upheaval, so frightening…. This Dr. Salazar was taking his sweet time. They must teach that tactic in medical school: keep the loved ones waiting, so that by the time you pick up the phone, it’ll seem like the voice of God.

“And the lite favorites just keep on rolling,” the radio said. “If you like pina coladas, getting caught in the rain…” Oh, God, not that stupid song. Guy decides to cheat, so he answers his own wife’s personal ad? Yeah, like that’s going to happen. In real life, some psycho chick would be waiting at that bar, and they’d go to a Motel Six, and he’d have erectile dysfunction. Have to call Bob Dole for some Viagra. Shit, he goes from running for president to being the poster boy for the All-American boner? How much did he get for that gig?…

“If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the Cape…” No, thanks. Too many sand fleas. Now that shitty song was going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. And if that Dan guy thought I was indifferent because I couldn’t make it back to Connecticut, then fuck him. I loved Lolly. She’d been more of a father to me than my father ever had. Taken me fishing, taken me on my first trip to Fenway. I had almost total recall of that trip. Boston versus Milwaukee, an exhibition game. Lolly’d won tickets on the radio, and we’d gone up in her old green Hudson. Nineteen sixty-one, it was. Yastrzemski and Chuck Schilling in their rookie year, Monbouquette on the mound. We’d had a blowout on the way home, and Lolly’d given me a lesson on how to fix a flat…. But shit, this was the busiest stretch of the school year. Curriculum meetings, placement meetings for the special needs kids, term papers to grade, exams to write. I could get back there once school was over, but—

“Hey there,” a woman’s voice said. “You’re the nephew?”

Dr. Salazar was a fast talker, devoid of personality. Lolly’s vitals had stabilized, she said. Her stroke was ischemic, caused by a clot rather than a rupture. She’d come in exhibiting classic symptoms: weakness on her left side, double vision, aphasia.

“What’s aphasia?” I said.

“A disconnect between what the patient’s trying to say and what’s being communicated. For instance, Louella thinks to herself, I’m thirsty. I want more ice chips. But when she verbalizes it, it comes out as gibberish.”

“So you’re saying she’s incoherent?”

“Less so than when she first came in.”

The EMTs had given Lolly magnesium on the ride in, Dr. Salazar said, and that had put the injury in “slo-mo.” And with stroke victims, “time was brain,” she said; the quicker there was treatment, the better the odds of avoiding permanent damage. “When she got here, we gave her a clot-buster called tPA. Great drug if the patient gets it in time—acts like Drano on clogged arteries—but the operative word here is if. Time-wise, there’s only a small window of opportunity. When the blood supply’s cut off, brain cells begin to die. I think you’d better prepare yourself for the fact that your aunt will most likely have an altered life.”

“Altered how?”

“Too soon to tell. We’ll know more in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Are you coming to be with her?”

“I don’t…We’re out in Colorado. The timing’s not great.”

“No, it never is.”

After I hung up, I paced. Let the dogs out. Let them back in. I had to chaperone the post-prom party that night. Two of my classes were handing in their term papers on Monday. I had meetings all week….

When Maureen got back, I showed her what I’d scrawled in the margins of the newspaper: “Salazar, ischemic, magnesium, Drano.” Mo rattled off Lolly’s medications: Lipitor for her cholesterol, Triamterene for her blood pressure, an antidepressant called Trazodone.

“She takes an antidepressant?”

She nodded. “Since Hennie died. You knew that, didn’t you?”

Did I?

“They’re pressuring me to fly back there and be with her,” I said.

“Are you going to?”

“I can’t. Not until the school year’s over.”

For several seconds, she said nothing. Then she volunteered to fly back and be with Lolly herself. I sighed. Drummed my fingers against the counter. “Who’s Kay?” I said. “One of her bridge buddies?”

“Kay?”

“They said she keeps asking for Kay.”

Mo’s eyes met mine. Her smile was sympathetic. “She’s saying ‘Caelum.’ Lolly wants you.”

I SKETCHED OUT A WEEK’S worth of lesson plans for the sub. Mo went online and found me a beggars-can’t-be-choosers flight out of Denver: a 5:45 a.m. takeoff, a three-hour layover at O’Hare. I’d land in Hartford by late afternoon, rent a car, drive to Three Rivers. Maybe I’d go out to the farm first—get her medications, see if anything else needed doing. Barring complications, I’d be with her at the hospital by six or so.

Mo tried to talk me out of chaperoning the post-prom.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Drink a lot of coffee, drive right from school to the airport. I can crash once I get on the plane.” She frowned. “Okay, let me rephrase that. I can sleep once I get on the plane.”

I opened my closet door and stared. Should I pack my good suit and black loafers? Uh-uh. Travel light. Think positive. Go there, get done whatever there was to do, and get back. I loved Lolly, but I couldn’t let her stroke hijack my life. How many guys would do this much for their aunt?…I saw the two of us out there, stranded on that rural road between Boston and home with that flat tire. It was pitch-black except for her flashlight beam. She was aiming it at the lug nut, at my hands on the wrench.

“Come on, kiddo,” she’d coaxed. “Just a little more elbow grease. You can do it.”

“I can’t!” I’d insisted. I was Caelum Quirk, the kid who sucked at sports and walked around by himself during recess. The kid whose father was a drunk.

“Sure you can. I know you can.” And so I’d strained. Grunted. And the nut had given way.

POST-PROMS ARE BRIBES, REALLY: PARENTS and teachers induce their kids to party the night away at the school gym so that they won’t drink and drive. Kill themselves, their friends, their futures. The enticements that night included raffles, a deejay, a hypnotist, and nonstop food: burgers, pizzas, six-foot subs. I was put to work as a roving patroller in search of alcohol and, later, as an ice cream scooper at the make-your-own-sundae station.

They were together in the sundae line, I remember. I served them both. “One scoop? Two scoops?” Dylan had requested three, but Eric wanted just one, vanilla. I asked him if he thought they’d have a sundae line like this at boot camp. He shook his head. Half-smiled.

“When do you leave?” I said.

“July one.” In another sixty hours, he’d be lying dead in the midst of the chaos, half of his head blown away. And he knew it, too. It was in the videotape they left to be discovered. Their suicides were part of the plan.

There was one other thing that night. It happened during one of the raffles. The winner got free passes to Bandimere Speedway or Rock’n’Bowl or some such, and Dylan’s number got called. I was standing on the periphery. Saw the whole thing. Instead of saying, “That’s me,” or just walking up to get his prize, he showed Eric his ticket and the two of them high-fived. “Sieg Heil!” they shouted. A few of the other kids laughed; most just looked. “Assholes,” someone near me muttered. I considered taking the two of them aside, saying something about the inappropriateness of it. But it was late at night, late in the school year. I was a few hours away from my flight. I let it go.

God, that’s always the thing you have to decide with high school kids: what to make an issue of, what to let go. In the aftermath, in the middle of all those sleepless nights, I did plenty of soul-searching about that. We all did, I guess. Had it been preventable? Could those kids have been spared?…

I left the school a little after four a.m. Got my overnight bag out of the trunk and threw it onto the passenger seat next to me. Drove northeast toward a lightening sky. My eyes burned; my stomach felt like I’d swallowed fishhooks. As usual, Maureen had been right. I should have skipped the chaperoning detail and grabbed some sleep.

So why hadn’t I?

Punishment, maybe? Self-flagellation?

For what?

For having defaulted on her. For having sent Maureen to Hennie’s funeral the year before instead of going myself. They’d been common-law spouses for forty-something years, those two. She was depressed. She called me every Sunday night. It was my guilt that was flying me home…. And once I got there, then what? How bad off was this stroke going to leave her? How much of my summer was going to get gobbled up by Lolly’s “altered life”?

At Denver International, I opted for the garage instead of the Pike’s Peak shuttle lot, even though I’d pay through the nose for the convenience. The machine spat me a ticket. The arm lifted. At this hour, there were plenty of empty spaces.

I passed from the jaundiced lighting of the parking garage to the halogen glare of the walkway. Passed two porters, slumped on plastic chairs. Both glanced at my carry-on luggage, then blinked me away, as disinterested as sunning lizards. And right inside the terminal, who do I see but Velvet Hoon. Hard to miss a girl in a blue crew cut.

She was wearing a gray uniform, part of a cleaning crew. A hippie-looking guy with a gray beard was buffing the floor. A scrawny black woman was running a vacuum. Velvet had a squirt bottle and a cleaning cloth and was wiping down plastic chairs. I thought about the kids I’d just left at the post-prom party—their fun and games, their Gummy Bear sundaes and college plans. But, hey, Velvet was her own worst enemy. I walked a little faster, relieved that she didn’t see me. Better for both of us. I had to talk to Maureen again about not getting sucked into the black hole of Velvet’s needs. She’d just get used and abused. You can’t undo that kind of damage. You can’t.

No line at my airline counter. Just two attendants keeping each other company. They were both good-looking women. The buxom redhead was in her forties, the little blonde maybe two or three years out of high school. A phrase bubbled up from my college days, something Rocco Buzzi and I used to say about pretty girls: I wouldn’t throw her out of bed. Big Red took the lead.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Morning. I have an e-ticket. Last name’s Quirk.” Red nodded. Her fingers whizzed across her keyboard.

“Caelum Quirk?”

“Yes.”

“And your final destination today is Hartford-Springfield?”

“That’s right.”

The blonde squinted at the screen. “I never heard the name Caelum before,” she said. “Is it from the Bible?”

I shook my head. “Old family name.”

“Well, at least you weren’t named after some stupid song on the radio.”

I squinted to read her name tag: Layla. My eyes bounced over to Big Red’s, too: Vivian. That’s the tricky part about women and name tags: to read them is to check out the frontal real estate. Which I was doing when Vivian caught me. “Well,” I told Layla. “You could do worse than being named after a Clapton song.”

“Picture ID, sir?” Viv said.

I nodded. Fumbled for my wallet. Handed her my driver’s license. Layla asked me if I was traveling for business or pleasure.

“Neither,” I said. “Sick relative.” Freshman year, Rocco and I had had four classifications for the girls we scoped out from afar in the BU cafeteria: wouldn’t screw her blindfolded; would screw her blindfolded; wouldn’t throw her out of bed; and, for girls of the highest order, would screw her grandmother to screw her. Rocco and I were both virgins back then, of course—huddled together, eating our turkey à la king and room-temperature Jell-O and rating girls we were too chicken-shit to approach.

“My son’s sick, too,” Layla said. “Four ear infections in one year. Wanna see his picture?”

Viv’s nostrils flared. “I think what Mr. Quirk wants is to get to his gate,” she said. She gave me a professional smile. “This is her first day on the job.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “And actually, I’d like to see her son’s picture.”

Viv’s smile became a grimace. Layla produced her purse. Her son dangled from her key ring, in a little plastic frame. Nappy hair, coffee skin.

“He’s cute,” I said. “How old?”

Three, she said. His name was Shabbaz. Vivian asked if I was checking any bags with them today.

“Uh, no. I just have the one carry-on.”

“And has anyone asked you to hold anything for them since you entered airport property, sir?”

Only the heroin smuggler, Viv. “Uh, no. Nope.”

“And has the bag you’re carrying on board been in your possession at all times since you packed it?”

Pretty much, except when I left it with the Unabomber. “Uh-huh.”

She looked up, concerned. “What?”

Had I just said Unabomber? “Yes. Yes, it has.”

She nodded. “Aisle seat? Window seat?”

“Window, I guess. Better for sleeping.”

“Try sleeping when you’re a single mom,” Layla said. “Last night—”

“Well, then,” Viv interrupted. “You’re all set. Concourse B, gate thirty-six.” She handed me my boarding pass. “Have a nice flight.”

“Have a nice flight,” Layla echoed.

Ten or twelve steps toward the security gate, I looked back. Layla was getting chewed out in spades.

AT GATE 36, I JOINED my fellow sojourners: guys with laptops, guys on cell phones, tanned retirees in jogging suits and gold jewelry. A college-age couple leaned against each other, napping. A Mexican dad passed out churros to his kids. I caught a whiff of the fried dough and started thinking about the Mama Mia Bakery. Maybe I’d stop by, check in with Alphonse while I was home. Or maybe not. Alphonse’s e-mails were depressing: all those politically incorrect jokes, all that silent salivating over some latest counter girl he’d just hired. Pushing fifty, Alphonse was still afraid to approach women. Still searching for his holy grail, too: a 1965 yellow Mustang hardtop with 289-cubic-inch engine, four-barrel carburetor, and solid-lifter valve train. He belonged to something called the Yellow Mustang Registry. Checked eBay five or six times a day. Phoenician Yellow, his dream car had to be, not the paler Springtime Yellow, also available back in ’65. “Eat your breakfast now,” the Mexican dad said.

“Whoever don’t finish theirs don’t get on the plane.” One of the kids began to cry.

I got up, grabbed a seat closer to the TV. CNN Sports. Tim Couch had gone number one in the NFL draft. The Eagles had nabbed McNabb. Darryl Strawberry was in trouble again.

I watched the approach of a freaky-looking couple. Early twenties, maybe. She was fat, her hair a bunch of pigtail stubs. He was rat-faced. Nose ring, tattooed hands and fingers, missing teeth. She was eating a churro, too. They plopped down across from the napping college couple, whose eyes cracked open, then opened wider.

“Hi,” Pigtails said.

“Hey,” College Guy said.

“What are you guys going to Chicago for?”

They answered in unison. “Back to school.”

“Guess why me and him are going?” The college kids both shrugged. “We’re gonna be on Jerry Springer.”

“Really?” College Girl said. College Boy leaned forward.

“They’re picking us up in a limo and paying for our hotel. The chauffeur’s meetin’ us at the baggage pickup. He’s gonna have a sign with my name on it.”

“That’s awesome,” College Boy said. “What are you going to be on for?”

Pigtails smiled at Ratso. Her fingers grazed his chest. “Me and him are lovers. And first cousins. Which is fine, because he got fixed.”

The airline rep announced that boarding would begin, small children and passengers with special needs first.

“Acourse, what’s fixed can get unfixed,” Ratso assured College Guy. “You know what I’m saying?”

“See that fat cow sitting over there?” Pigtails said. “That’s my mom. She’s gonna be on the show, too.” College Boy, College Girl, and I followed her gaze to a sad, puffy-looking woman with dyed black hair, seated by herself in the otherwise empty sea of chairs at gate thirty-seven. She was glaring back. “He done her, too. When we get on Springer, there’s gonna be a showdown!”

“This so rocks,” College Boy said. He raised his fist and punched the air. “Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!”

“She had sex with her own nephew?” College Girl said. “Eww.”

“It’s gross, ain’t it?” Pigtails said. “I don’t blame him, though. She was always strutting around our apartment half-naked. Throwing it at him like Thanksgiving dinner. His mom? Her sister? She disowned her.” She shouted across the walkway. “What are you looking at, slut?” Now she had everyone’s attention, the gate attendants included. Her mother stood, turning her back to her daughter. The boarding of first-class customers began.

“If she flashes titty, they give her a bonus,” Ratso said.

“Not money, though,” Pigtails added. “Restaurant coupons. I may do it, I may not. Depends on how I feel. They blur it, so no one sees nothing.”

“What about the studio audience?” Ratso said. “Ain’t nobody blurring nothin’ out for them.”

“So?” she said. “Shut up.”

Rows thirty through forty were called to board. I was both relieved and disappointed when the Springer guests stood up. There went Mexican Guy and his brood, too. Pigtails’ mom was in the rows-twenty-to-thirty group. I found her strangely sympathetic. Well, pathetic, I guess. What, other than dim-wittedness, would have ever motivated her to go on that show?

My row was among the last called. I grabbed my breakfast tote from the self-serve cart, got through the tunnel, and made it to my window seat, 10A. This morning’s flight was a full one, the intercom voice told us. Would we please be seated, seatbelts secured, as soon as possible?

Through the magazine and blanket distribution, the headset sales and overhead baggage jockeying, the seat next to mine remained empty. With any luck, I’d be able to flip up the armrest and stretch out a little, the better to sleep my way to Chicago.

I heard him before I saw him. “’Scuse me. ’Scuse me, please. Oops, sorry. ’Scuse me.” He negotiated the aisle with the grace of a buffalo and stopped dead at row 10. “Howdy doody,” he said. “Hold these for a sec?”

I took his coffee in one hand, his pastry in the other—a catcher’s-mitt-sized cinnamon bun. His suitcase was cinched with leather belts. As he jammed and whacked it into the overhead space, his shirt untucked, exposing a jiggling, tofu-colored stomach. Mission accomplished, he crash-landed into seat 10B.

“Whoa,” he said, adjusting his safety belt. “I think an anorexic must have had this seat before I did.” He buckled the belt, flopped down his tray table, reclaimed his coffee and pastry. “Oh, geez,” he said. “Forgot to take my jacket off. Do you mind doing the honors again?” He folded his tray, unbuckled his belt. Struggling out of his sleeves, he whacked my arm, sloshing coffee onto my shirt. “Oops, me bad boy,” he said. His giggle was girlish.

He was Mickey Schmidt, he said. I told him my name. We shook hands. His was sticky. “And what does Caleb Quirk do for a living?” he asked.

It’s Caelum, douchebag. “I teach.”

“At Colorado State? Me, too!”

I shook my head. “I teach high school.”

“High school!” He groaned. “I almost didn’t survive the experience.” I nodded, half-smiled. Told him a lot of people remembered it that way.

“No, I mean it,” he said. “Freshman year, I tried to kill myself. Twice.”

“Gee,” I said. I mean, what can you say?

“The first time, I filled the bathtub and climbed in with my father’s electric shaver. It kept shutting off. I thought it was God, willing me to live. But come to find out, it had a safety switch.” That giggle again. He took another slug of coffee, another mouthful of cinnamon bun. He talked and ate simultaneously. “The second time, I tried to OD on my mother’s Kaopectate. She used to buy it by the case. I drank five bottles. I was going for six, but I couldn’t do it. You ever have your stomach pumped? I don’t recommend it.”

I fished out the in-flight magazine. Thumbed through it to shut him up. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small vial of pills. Popped one. “Flight anxiety,” he said. “Takeoffs and landings, mostly. Once I’m in the air, I’m calmer. Want one?” The pill vial hovered in front of my nose. I shook my head. “Well, Mickey, how about you? Would you like another to help you fly a little higher through the friendly skies? Why, yes, please. Don’t mind if I do.” He took a second tablet, a slurp of coffee. “So what do you know about chaos-complexity theory?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Chaos-complexity theory.”

“Uh…is that the one where a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and—”

“And it triggers a tornado in Texas. Yup, that’s it. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Of course, that’s an oversimplification. It’s all about bifurcation, really. Three types: subtle, catastrophic, and explosive. See, when bifurcation occurs, a dynamical system destabilizes. Becomes perturbed, okay? You with me so far?”

A crowded flight probably meant no seat-switching. And who would I end up next to if I did switch? The incest aunt?

Mercifully, the video screens blinked on and the emergency landing spiel began. At the front of the plane, a flight attendant mimed the on-screen instructions. You’d think someone with “flying anxieties” would shut up and listen, but Mickey talked over the audio. “Of course, the fascinating thing is that there’s a self-organizing principle at the edge of chaos. Order breeds habit, okay? But chaos breeds life.”

“Yeah, hold on,” I said. “I want to hear this.”

He resumed as soon as the video was over. “But anyhoo, that’s my area of expertise. I’m adjunct at Colorado State. I teach one course in math, another in philosophy, which makes perfect sense, see, because chaos-complexity cuts across the disciplines. Actually, I could teach in the theology department, too, because chaos theory’s entirely applicable to the world’s religions. That’s not a concept Pat Robertson and the pope would embrace, but hey. Don’t shoot the messenger!” The giggle. “Of course, three classes is full time, so they’d have to give me the benefits package, which would kill them. Screw the adjuncts, right? We’re the monks of higher education. How much do you make?”

I flinched a little. “Rather not say.”

He nodded. “Thank God I have another income stream. Whoops, there I go again. I’m the only atheist I know who keeps thanking God. Well, what do you expect, growing up with my mother? I mean, she made my father put a shrine to the Blessed Virgin in our backyard. Immaculate conception? Yeah, sure, Mom. So what do you teach?”

“American lit,” I said. “And writing.”

“Really? So you’re a writer?”

“Uh, yeah. Yes.” My answer surprised me.

“That’s what I’m doing this summer: writing a book.”

I nodded. “Publish or perish, right?”

“Oh, no, no, noooo. This isn’t part of my scholarly work. It’s a manual for the casino gambler. I’m going to show how the principles of chaos theory can be employed to beat the house. Gambling’s my other income stream, see? Know how much I pull in in a year? Go ahead, guesstimate.”

I shrugged. “Five thousand?”

“Try fifty thousand.”

I’d seen that suitcase of his. Who did he think he was kidding? “Well,” I said, “if you can teach people how to hit the jackpot, you’ll have a best-seller.”

“Oh, I can teach them, all right. Not that I’m going to give away all of my trade secrets. In Vegas? I’m banned at Harrah’s, the Golden Nugget, and Circus Circus.” I nodded, then closed my eyes and shifted my body toward the window. Mickey didn’t take the hint. “I get ten steps in the front door, disguised or not, and security approaches me. Escorts me out of the building. It’s all very cordial, very gentlemanly. They don’t make trouble and neither do I. I could, though, because it impedes my research. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of publication, right? That’s why I’m flying to Connecticut. To do research for my book. The Indians have a casino there called—”

I opened my eyes. “Wequonnoc Moon,” I said.

“Right. You’ve been there?”

I nodded. “It’s about ten minutes from where I grew up.”

“Biggest single gaming venue in the country,” Mickey said. “Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never been there before. Been to Atlantic City many times over. I’m no longer welcome at Mr. Trump’s venues either. Now I ask you: is it legal to ban me, simply because I’ve figured out how to beat them at their own game? If I could afford to do it, I’d sue the bastards.”

The plane lurched forward. The intercom clicked on. The captain said we’d been cleared for takeoff. Would the flight attendants prepare the cabin?

“Oh, boy, here we go,” Mickey said. He pulled the vomit bag from his seat pocket. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to puke. I use these for my breathing exercise.”

“Right,” I said. Closed my eyes.

Mickey grabbed my arm. “I was wondering if, when we lift off, would you hold my hand? It helps.”

“Uh, well…”

The plane began to taxi. “Oh, boy,” Mickey muttered. “Oh, boy, oh, boy.” Paper crinkled in my right ear. In my peripheral vision, I saw his vomit bag expand and contract like a lung. The plane turned right and started down the runway, picking up speed. “Please,” he said, his shaky hand groping for mine. Instead of taking it, I pushed it down against the armrest between us.

The cabin rattled. Mickey’s hand gripped the armrest. We rose.

With the whine of the landing gear’s retraction, he returned to his abnormal normalcy. “Fascinating stuff, though, chaos-complexity,” he said. “Order in disorder. Disequilibrium as the source of life. Can you imagine it?”

“What?”

“God as flux? God as mutability?”

His pupils were dilated. Stoned from whatever he’d taken, I figured. For the next few minutes, neither of us spoke.

The captain turned off the seatbelt sign. The flight attendants wheeled the beverage cart down the aisle. Mickey flopped down his tray table and began to play solitaire with a deck of cards that, in my peripheral vision, I noticed were pornographic.

I dozed, woke up, fell into a deeper sleep. Somewhere during the flight, I heard Mickey and a flight attendant joking about Mr. Sandman….

IT TOOK TWO FLIGHT ATTENDANTS to rouse me. I looked around, lost at first. Mickey was gone. Up front, the last of the passengers were deplaning.

Inside the terminal, I wandered myself awake. At the pay phones, I fished out my calling card and punched in the numbers. Back in Colorado, our machine clicked on. “Hey,” I said. “It’s me. I’m at O’Hare. Doing all right, I guess—a little groggy…. Guy next to me on the flight here was a lunatic. And there were these kissin’ cousins going to be on Jerry Springer. You want evidence that Western civilization’s in sharp decline, just come to the airport…. Hey, Mo? I’m a little scared to be going back there. Lolly’s my last link, you know?…Well, okay. I’ll call you tonight. Don’t let the dogs drive you nuts.” I stood there wondering what would come first: me saying it or the beep ending my message.

“I love you, Mo.”

I love you, Lolly: I should have been saying it at the end of every one of those goddamn Sunday-evening calls. Should have been calling her. I love you: Why did that simple three-syllable sentence always get stuck in my throat?…Well, I was flying back there, wasn’t I? She’d asked for Caelum, and here I was at fucking O’Hare instead of sleeping off my post-prom assignment. It was like what Dr. Patel told me that time: that “I love you” was just three meaningless words without the actions that went with them. Lolly’s crippled tongue had said my name, or tried to, and I was halfway there.

I walked—up one concourse, down another, in and out of a dozen stores stocked with crap I didn’t want. Walked past the smokers, sequestered like lepers in their Plexiglas pen, and a crazy-looking shoeshine guy, wearing a do-rag and muttering to himself at the base of his empty platform chair.

I bought a coffee and a U.S.A. Today. Sat and read about that Love Bug computer virus. It arrived via an e-mail titled “I Love You.” Opening its attachment, “Love-Letter-for-You,” was what infected you. Well, I thought, the diabolical prick who designed it understood technology and human psychology. I mean, something like that arrives, and you’re not going to open it? It was both a virus and a worm, the article said; as it erased your files, it raided your address book, sending copies of itself to everyone on your e-mail list and spreading the havoc exponentially. Like HIV, I thought. Like that chaos-complexity stuff. Small disturbances, big repercussions. God, we were all so vulnerable.

Walking back, I passed that crazy shoeshine guy again. On impulse, I did an about-face, climbed up onto his platform, and sat. I was nothing more than a pair of shoes to him, and he went to work without so much as an upward glance. But as it turned out, he hadn’t been mumbling to himself, as I’d assumed; he’d been rapping. He rapped under his breath while he shined my shoes. I caught a little of it: “Calvin Klein no friend of mine, don’t want nobody’s name on my behind…” When he finished, he rose from his stool. “Five dollar,” he said, looking over my shoulder.

I handed him two fives. “One for the shine, the other for the performance,” I said, at which point he did look at me. I figured he’d return my smile, but instead he nodded, blank-faced, stuffed the bills into his pocket, and gave me his back.

At the food court, I bought a turkey sandwich and another coffee. As I ate, an entourage caught my eye: four Buddhist monks, camped at the periphery of the food court seats, about thirty feet away. Shaved heads, maroon and pumpkin-colored robes. Each was smiling, even the one who slept. You’d think monks would be wearing sandals, wouldn’t you? But these guys were wearing what I wear: Nike sneakers, Timberland boots. Two were horsing around with a Hacky Sack. Another was chatting quietly with a black woman in a Chicago Bulls sweatshirt.

I spotted a fifth monk, seated apart from the others. He was staring at something on his finger—studying it, or meditating on it, or whatever.

It moved.

Slowly, gently, the monk put his index fingers together, tip to tip, and it crossed the bridge they made, then traveled the back of the monk’s hand and halfway up his arm. I got up. Got closer. Saw that it was a praying mantis. I watched that monk watch that mantis for…well, I don’t know how long. But somehow, it made me feel better. Less anxious or whatever. Less alone.

THE FLIGHT TO CONNECTICUT WAS uneventful, and Bradley Airport looked and felt as glum as ever. I rented a Camry and picked up Interstate 91 going south. In Hartford, I exited onto I–84 and drove, with gathering dread, toward Three Rivers. Lolly’d been a life force my whole life. I didn’t want even to see her diminishment, never mind have to do something about it. I wanted to be back in Colorado, facing nothing more than my computer monitor and three or four open bottles of beer.

En route, I passed billboards luring travelers to Wequonnoc Moon, the U.S. Army, the home cooking at Cracker Barrel, Jesus Christ. Weird how they all promised the same thing: rescue. Salvation from your dissatisfying life. “Begin the Quest!” one of those signs advised, but I didn’t quite catch the quest for what. Smart advertising, whatever it was. A personal lord and savior, a casino jackpot, a Phoenician Yellow Mustang: everyone was out looking for something.

Right you are, Quirk. And what, pray tell, are you looking for?

Me? I don’t know. To avoid the Love Bug virus, maybe?

Not something you’re looking to escape, Quirk. Something you’re looking for.

A little peace of mind, maybe? A full night’s sleep?…Yeah, that’d be nice: eight uninterrupted hours of repose.

Don’t play dead before you have to.

Approaching Three Rivers, things looked both the same (the dog’s face painted on the rock ledge, the abandoned textile mills) and different (Wal-Mart, Staples, an Olive Garden restaurant). At the foot of the downtown bridge, they’d put up a sculpture: a Wequonnoc warrior, steroid-enhanced from the looks of him. For most of the twentieth century, Three Rivers had been in bed with the defense industry—the submarine base, Electric Boat. But the affair had fizzled when the Cold War ended, and now, for better or worse, the town was sleeping with the Indians. Or, as Lolly liked to grouse, “those phony-baloney one-eighth Indians. Those white one-sixteenth Wequonnocs.”

I’d intended to drive out to the farm first, but changed my mind. I’d come all this way to see her, so I should go see her, right? I got to the hospital a little after six. They had a parking garage now—that was new. They’d redone the entrance: added an atrium, a gift boutique, a coffee bar. “Courtesy of the Wequonnoc Nation,” a banner proclaimed. The receptionist told me Lolly was on the fourth floor. In the elevator, I could feel the beat of my heart.

At the desk, two nurses were conferring over a takeout menu. “Well, they wouldn’t call it spicy tuna if it wasn’t spicy, but you can probably order it milder,” the frizzy-haired one said. Then, to me, “Can I help you, sir?”

“Louella Quirk?” I said.

“Oh, yes. I’m her shift nurse. Are you her nephew from California?”

“Colorado,” I said. “How is she?”

“Well, according to her chart, she had some agitation earlier in the day, but she’s been sleeping peacefully since I came on. Her vitals look good. I just took her temp and b.p. a few minutes ago. You can go on down. She’s in 432, four rooms down on the left. I’m Valerie, by the way.”

“Caelum.”

“Hi. Hey, are you hungry? We were just about to order sushi.” I shook my head and started down the corridor. Sushi? In blue-collar Three Rivers?

She was in a semiprivate, her bed the one near the window. I exchanged smiles and nods with the roommate and her visitor. Lolly’s curtain was half drawn, her light dimmed. Her TV was on, moving images minus sound.

Her face looked lopsided, her mouth drooping open on the left side. Her coloring, usually burnished by the sun, was as gray as putty. There was dried blood at the point where the IV tube entered her hand. A sour smell hung in the air around her. When I kissed her forehead, she sighed in her sleep.

Valerie came in. “Aw, look at her,” she whispered. “Sleeping like a baby.” She checked her IV drip, plumped up her pillow, and left us.

A baby, I thought. Babies. Within the first few minutes of their lives, their mother had died, leaving them to be raised by a distant father and a no-nonsense prison matron of a grandmother. Daddy—born second and assigned the burden of having killed his mother in the process—had drunk his life away. Lolly had soldiered on, worked hard, kept her spunk and her spirits up. She’d found love, too, whether people liked it or not. And now here she was, widowed and weakened, the rest of her life to be dictated by a damaged brain.

I kept a vigil by her bedside, feeling, in waves, both moved and bored. In the top drawer of the nightstand, I found the standard issue: tissues, lotion, a cellophane-wrapped comb. Lolly’s short gray hair, usually permanent-waved and poufy, lay limp and oily. I pulled the wrapper off the comb. Tried to fix her hair a little. I didn’t want to wake her if rest was what she needed, but I was hoping, too, that she would wake up. See me and know that I’d come. When I stopped combing, she did open her eyes. She stared at me for several seconds without recognition, then closed her eyes again…. Had she been awake? Had I just missed another chance to tell her I loved her?

Valerie reappeared, a cup of coffee in one hand, a cup of ice cream in the other. “Thought you might like a little something,” she said. “I figured you for a chocolate man, but we have vanilla and strawberry, too.”

“Chocolate’s good,” I said. “Thanks. She opened her eyes a few minutes ago. She looked right at me, but I don’t think anything registered.”

Valerie shrugged. “Hard to tell,” she said.

I asked her how to activate the TV’s closed-captioning, and as she did it for me, the 60 Minutes stopwatch filled the screen. “Kind of fitting this show’s coming on,” I said. “It’s her favorite.”

“Oh, mine, too,” Valerie said. “I love it when they nail the hypocrites.”

I nodded toward Lolly. “She calls me every Sunday night after her supper, gives me all the updates. But as soon as that stopwatch starts ticking, she’ll say, ‘Well, gotta go, kiddo. My boyfriend’s coming on.’”

Valerie smiled. “Who’s her boyfriend?”

“Morley Safer.”

She nodded. “Mine’s Ed Bradley. I like his little earring.”

I touched Lolly’s shoulder. “Safer interviewed her once.”

“Your aunt? What for?”

“This story they did called ‘The Prison That Cures With Kindness.’ Their researchers went looking for the correctional facility with the lowest recidivism rate in the country, and they came up with Bride Lake.”

“The women’s prison? When was this?”

“Long time ago. ’Seventy-eight, ’seventy-nine. The producers came up, dug around, and discovered Lolly. She was a guard there at the time, but she was also the granddaughter of the woman who’d established the place. See, before my great-grandmother came along, they used to just lock up the women with the men. The assumption was that they were throw-aways anyway.”

“Oh, my God, that’s horrible,” Valerie said.

“But my great-grandmother had this idea that a separate facility run by women—plus fresh air, sunshine, farmwork, schoolwork—would rehabilitate. Community service, too. Giving back was part of her formula. And it worked, too, I guess. Sociologists, criminologists, shrinks: they came from all over to study her methods. Sigmund Freud visited once. That was in the 60 Minutes story, I remember. There’s this great picture of Freud and my great-grandmother strolling the grounds arm in arm.

“But anyway, they loved Lolly—the producers, the crew, Morley Safer. She’d never paid much attention to television, so she wasn’t intimidated by it. And that made her, whaddaya call it? Telegenic. And on top of that, Lolly’s a great storyteller. She told Safer about the day Sophie Tucker came to visit an old vaudeville friend who was in for larceny and stayed on to do a show. And about the summer when the inmates served as surrogate mothers for a bunch of monkeys that were being fed experimental doses of lithium up the road at the state hospital. And the time when ‘the gals’ made hootch from the dried fruit platters the Baptist church ladies had given them for Christmas, and they were drunk on their asses when the state inspector dropped by for a visit.”

Valerie laughed. Touched Lolly’s hand.

“But like I said, Morley Safer got a kick out of Lolly. Sent his crew back to New York and stayed for supper. My aunt’s companion fried some chicken and made peach cobbler, and Lolly told more stories. And somehow that night, he and Lolly discovered they shared a birthday, November the eighth. They’ve sent each other a birthday card ever since.”

“Wow,” Valerie said. “Well, now that I know I’m taking care of a TV star, I’ll have to give her the VIP treatment.”

I smiled, teared up a little. “I just want her to be okay,” I said.

Valerie pulled a tissue from the little box on Lolly’s tray table and handed it to me. “Sure you do.”

I left the hospital sometime between eight and nine. There was a Taco Bell on West Main Street now; that was new. I pulled up to the drive-thru, got a couple of burritos. Ate as I drove. The endless day flew back at me in fragments: the post-prom, the monk and his praying mantis, the chaos theorist’s jawing. God as mutability, I thought. God as flux….

THE ROAD HOME WAS TRAFFICKY with cars heading to and from Wequonnoc Moon. I drove past its purple and green glow. Took the left onto Ice House Road, and then the right onto Bride Lake. Nearing the farm, I approached the prison compound. Braked. “Grandma’s prison,” Lolly always called it.

I put on my blinker. Slowed down, swung left, and headed up the dirt driveway to the farmhouse. My headlights caught a raccoon on the front porch, feasting out of the cat food dish. I cut the engine and got out of the car. “Get!” I shouted. Unintimidated, it sat up on its haunches and looked at me as if to say, And who might you be? It took its sweet time waddling down the stairs and into the darkness.

The storm windows were still in; the door latch was busted. I could take care of that stuff while I was here. The old tin coffeepot was where it always was. I reached in, and touched the front door key. In the foyer, I fumbled, my hand batting at the darkness until I felt the old-fashioned pull chain. I yanked it, squinted…. Things looked the same, pretty much—a little shabbier, maybe, a little more cluttery. Things smelled the same, too: musty carpet, cooking grease, a slight whiff of cat piss. I put down my travel bag and walked over to the large framed photograph that hung on the wall at the foot of the stairs. “Bride Lake Farm, Aerial View, August 1948.”

God, this house, I thought. This abandoned Bride Lake life.

The place was radioactive with memories.