farmer in a Ford pick-up truck filled with apple baskets, a perfectly
ordinary fellow: not old and not dead.
"Where you goin, son?" he asked, and when
I told him he said, "That works for both of us." Less than forty
minutes later, at twenty minutes after nine, he pulled up in front
of the Central Maine Medical Center. "Good luck. Hope your ma's
on the mend."
"Thank you," I said, and opened the door.
"I see you been pretty nervous about it,
but she'll most likely be fine. Ought to get some disinfectant on
those, though." He pointed at my hands.
I looked down at them and saw the deep,
purpling crescents on the backs. I remembered clutching them together,
digging in with my nails, feeling it but unable to stop. And I remembered
Staub's eyes, filled up with moonlight like radiant water. Did
you ride the Bullet? he'd asked me. I rode that fucker four
times.
"Son?" the man driving the pick-up asked.
"You all right?"
"Huh?"
"You come over all shivery."
"I'm okay," I said. "Thanks again." I slammed
the door of the pickup and went up the wide walk past the line of
parked wheelchairs gleaming in the moonlight.
I walked to the information desk, reminding
myself that I had to look surprised when they told me she was dead,
had to look surprised, they'd think it was funny if I didn't . .
. or maybe they'd just think I was in shock . . . or that we didn't
get along . . . or . . .
I was so deep in these thoughts that I
didn't at first grasp what the woman behind the desk had told me.
I had to ask her to repeat it.
"I said that she's in room 487, but
you can't go up just now. Visiting hours end at nine."
"But . . ." I felt suddenly woozy. I gripped
the edge of the desk. The lobby was lit by fluorescents, and in
that bright even glare the cuts on the backs of my hands stood out
boldly--eight small purple crescents like grins, just above the
knuckles. The man in the pick-up was right, I ought to get some
disinfectant on those.
The woman behind the desk was looking at
me patiently. The plaque in front of her said she was YVONNE
EDERLE.
"But is she all right?"
She looked at her computer. "What I have
here is S. Stands for satisfactory. And four is a general population
floor. If your mother had taken a turn for the worse, she'd be in
ICU. That's on three. I'm sure if you come back tomorrow, you'll
find her just fine. Visiting hours begin at--"
"She's my ma," I said. "I hitchhiked all
the way down from the University of Maine to see her. Don't you
think I could go up, just for a few minutes?"
"Exceptions are sometimes made for immediate
family," she said, and gave me a smile. "You just hang on a second.
Let me see what I can do." She picked up the phone and punched a
couple of buttons, no doubt calling the nurse's station on the fourth
floor, and I could see the course of the next two minutes as if
I really did have second sight. Yvonne the Information Lady
would ask if the son of Jean Parker in 487 could come up for a minute
or two-just long enough to give his mother a kiss and an encouraging
word--and the nurse would say oh God, Mrs. Parker died not fifteen
minutes ago, we just sent her down to the morgue, we haven't had
a chance to update the computer, this is so terrible.
The woman at the desk said, "Muriel? It's
Yvonne. I have a young man here down here at the desk, his name
is--" She looked at me, eyebrows raised, and I gave her my name.
"- Alan Parker. His mother is Jean Parker, in 487? He wonders if
he could just . . ."
She stopped. Listened. On the other end
the nurse on the fourth floor was no doubt telling her that Jean
Parker was dead.
"All right," Yvonne said. "Yes, I understand."
She sat quietly for a moment, looking off into space, then put the
mouthpiece of the telephone against her shoulder and said, "She's
sending Anne Corrigan down to peek in on her. It will only be a
second."
"It never ends," I said.
Yvonne frowned. "I beg pardon?"
"Nothing," I said. "It's been a long night
and--"
"- and you're worried about your mom. Of
course. I think you're a very good son to drop everything the way
you did and come on the run."
I suspected Yvonne Ederle's opinion of
me would have taken a drastic drop if she'd heard my conversation
with the young man behind the wheel of the Mustang, but of course
she hadn't. That was a little secret, just between George and me.
It seemed that hours passed as I stood
there under the bright fluorescents, waiting for the nurse on the
fourth floor to come back on the line. Yvonne had some papers in
front of her. She trailed her pen down one of them, putting neat
little check marks beside some of the names, and it occurred to
me that if there really was an Angel of Death, he or she was probably
just like this woman, a slightly overworked functionary with a desk,
a computer, and too much paperwork. Yvonne kept the phone pinched
between her ear and one raised shoulder. The loudspeaker said that
Dr. Farquahr was wanted in radiology, Dr. Farquahr. On the fourth
floor a nurse named Anne Corrigan would now be looking at my mother,
lying dead in her bed with her eyes open, the stroke- induced sneer
of her mouth finally relaxing.
Yvonne straightened as a voice came back
on the line. She listened, then said: "All right, yes, I understand.
I will. Of course I will. Thank you, Muriel." She hung up the telephone
and looked at me solemnly. "Muriel says you can come up, but you
can only visit for five minutes. Your mother's had her evening meds,
and she's very soupy."
I stood there, gaping at her.
Her smile faded a little bit. "Are
you sure you're all right, Mr. Parker?"
"Yes," I said. "I guess I just thought--"
Her smile came back. It was sympathetic
this time. "Lots of people think that," she said. "It's understandable.
You get a call out of the blue, you rush to get here . . . it's
understandable to think the worst. But Muriel wouldn't let you up
on her floor if your mother wasn't fine. Trust me on that."
"Thanks," I said. "Thank you so much."
As I started to turn away, she said: "Mr.
Parker? If you came from the University of Maine up north, may I
ask why you're wearing that button? Thrill Village is in New Hampshire,
isn't it?"
I looked down at the front of my shirt
and saw the button pinned to the breast pocket: I
RODE THE BULLET AT THRILL VILLAGE, LACONIA. I remembered
thinking he intended to rip my heart out. Now I understood: he had
pinned his button on my shirt just before pushing me into the night.
It was his way of marking me, of making our encounter impossible
not to believe. The cuts on the backs of my hands said so, the button
on my shirt said so, too. He had asked me to choose and I had chosen.
So how could my mother still be alive?
"This?" I touched it with the ball of my
thumb, even polished it a little. "It's my good luck charm." The
lie was so horrible that it had a kind of splendor. "I got it when
I was there with my mother, a long time ago. She took me on the
Bullet."
Yvonne the Information Lady smiled as if
this were the sweetest thing she had ever heard. "Give her a nice
hug and kiss," she said. "Seeing you will send her off to sleep
better than any of the pills the doctors have." She pointed. "The
elevators are over there, around the corner."
With visiting hours over, I was the only
one waiting for a car. There was a litter basket off to the left,
by the door to the newsstand, which was closed and dark. I tore
the button off my shirt and threw it in the basket. Then I rubbed
my hand on my pants. I was still rubbing it when one of the elevator
doors opened. I got in and pushed for four. The car began to rise.
Above the floor buttons was a poster announcing a blood drive for
the following week. As I read it, an idea came to me . . . except
it wasn't so much an idea as a certainty. My mother was dying now,
at this very second, while I rode up to her floor in this slow industrial
elevator. I had made the choice; it therefore fell to me to find
her. It made perfect sense.
The
elevator door opened on another poster. This one showed a cartoon
finger pressed to big red cartoon lips. Beneath it was a line reading
OUR PATIENTS APPRECIATE YOUR QUIET! Beyond
the elevator lobby was a corridor going right and left. The odd-numbered
rooms were to the left. I walked down that way, my sneakers seeming
