The women climbed a listing flight of pine stairs flanked with an ornate carved banister. Light from the upper landing’s cracked window shone on the polished wood. The staircase was missing treads. The rotted boards shuddered and creaked, but the elegant banister glided up to the second-floor landing like a velvet rope. Emily couldn’t imagine who had thought to decorate this shabby entryway with something so lovely. Also how the staircase bore the weight. With every step’s shrill whine, she expected to tumble down to the foyer, shatter a bone, embrace the pain that would pierce her numbness. She told herself that Dinah was playing with her. Emily would follow her through the door at the top of the landing, find Ang’s overstock of exotic cans neatly stacked on shelves, and Dinah would grin, I really had you going.
At the landing, Dinah rapped on the only door. Behind them, cold air hummed through the window pane’s jagged crack. The sharp aroma of star anise and wild mushrooms filled the landing. Ang heaped the mushrooms high in raised rectangular bins, the moist, sticky stems laced together like raw tentacles. When she untangled the long stems from the caps, Emily would plug her nose against the raw dank odor that reminded her of basements. Although she hated the smell, she loved their earthy taste. Her kids wouldn’t touch mushrooms; she ate them alone.
Dinah opened the door without waiting for an answer. By this Emily knew how often she’d visited. Emily slipped in behind her. The apartment was as cramped as the foyer. An efficiency, with a kitchenette on the far wall, a neatly made cot lodged in the nook where a dining table should be. Sealed mover’s boxes made a corridor to him, reclining in an easy chair by the room’s only window. The reek of iodine and, faintly, urine reached her before she saw the stand looped with dangling tubes and an IV bag next to his chair. A cup and saucer rested on a box top near his feet. A spoon stood upright in a Ball jar filled with honey. A handwritten label, Wildflower, curled around the jar under the lip. On a water-stained love seat, a cobalt-blue silk robe was folded neatly on a bright granny-square afghan. A beekeeper hat lounged near the afghan. Black mesh curled around the hat’s white rim like a lacy nest of hair.
He lay deeply unconscious. Another of Dinah’s tricks, not warning her of his illness, but Emily’s numbed wade closer to him felt like curiosity, not shock. Under a thin, faded nightshirt dotted with orange—old yolks or iodine—a Hickman port wormed from the sallow chest. A growth below the waist poked at the nightshirt’s loose fabric. Angry purple veins popped from the drooping hands like rain-swollen crawlers. Thickly ridged nails curled toward the palm like branches sloping toward sunlight. One of her terrors, the memory of how he’d slashed her with them.
How could she have ever thought she wouldn’t know him? But he wasn’t anything like he’d been. Swollen purple pouches under his shuttered eyes and plump bleached lips bloated his most familiar features. The mustache had been weeded, the round naked head a faint mustard color. She should have recognized jaundice right away, but she was disoriented by a swooping feeling of flight. She blinked, stepped back, brushed against Dinah. Dinah must have thought Emily meant to touch her. She slid an arm around her shoulder.
“Where’s the sister?” Emily whispered. She was terrified of waking him, witnessing his slow dawning recognition. A lack of recognition would terrify her more.
“She is often out at this time, grabbing a smoke and coffee. He is usually out cold, easy to leave.”
He didn’t react to their hushed voices. Emily watched for a flutter beneath the eyelids. He might have been dead except for the pulse at the throat’s hollow and the chest’s uneven rise.
“His liver?” Emily’s voice registered high, unfamiliar. The room must be cold. The iron radiator behind a tattered sofa was steadfastly quiet, but a prickly warmth seared her back and neck. No goose bumps on his bare legs and arms, either. They shared this dream of heat.
“A sarcoma. Rare, I am told.”
He stirred. A hand curled into a fist. The nails dug into the yellowed palm. Had he meant to cut her back then, or were his nails so long he couldn’t help it? She’d been pinned to the concrete floor, her shirt twisted around her neck. The furnace fan whirred in her ear. Hot air fanned her back. Wonder seeped through the numbness, if the furnace is broken, why is the fan working? It would take her days to understand he’d lied about needing to fix the furnace. Stupid, she was so stupid to have let him in when her parents weren’t home. But he wouldn’t have had to lie. He was her father’s friend, a man she’d flirted with, even held hands with once when her father couldn’t see. He used to call her sweetheart. She loved hearing him say it. Shit, she’d loved him. She would have let him in no matter what he said, with her twelve-year-old rash craving to find out if he loved her back. The lie proved he’d meant to hurt her. She was too stupid to realize he possessed this intent all along.
He still didn’t trim those nails. The sister didn’t groom him, either.
The yellowed hand relaxed. Blood rose to a crescent notched in the palm. A sour taste tickled Emily’s throat.
Dinah pushed her scarf back. Her hair spilled out over her coat. Dinah’s weight struck Emily then as it hadn’t before. Her lips were pinched red slashes, her eyes slits snipped from the fleshy pillows plumping her cheeks. A musky odor clogged the air. His wasting, or Dinah’s sweat, or the worn oak floorboards steeped with mushrooms and spice.
“Val will be back soon. You have to decide what to do. Emily?”
Emily stumbled to the kitchenette and vomited into the sink.
The radiator clanged. A hiss spiraled from the valve. Emily wiped her mouth with her hand, wouldn’t risk touching the stained towel draped over the faucet. Dinah was moving around the room. Emily hoped she would have the sense not to come near her. “What do you mean, decide what to do?”
She turned to see Dinah placing a gun on the box next to the dirty cup and spoon, a chunky revolver straight out of some cheap Western. So Dinah’s glib comment in the car had been the truth, but Emily knew this was a fucking kid’s toy, just another jab at Emily’s provincialism. Dinah was the last person to carry a weapon. Self-defense wasn’t nearly as colorful as martyrdom, and besides, Dinah wasn’t afraid of anything.
“What are you doing to me?” Not what she intended to say, and why was she pleading? Words slipped out of her sloppy, all out of order.
“I promised you a second shot.” Impatient, as if explaining it all to Emily for the millionth time. “Or if you prefer, euthanize him like one of your animals. Look in the cupboard there, you’ll find his medications. You must know which drugs you can use. You have this skill, right, you know what to do.”
“Fuck you, Dinah.”
Dinah went on as if all Emily needed was to see reason. “Look at him, you can see this is for mercy. The gun is licensed to me, I will be blamed, and I will say I did it. But if you use medical means, no one will know his death is not natural. Your choice. Revenge on us both, or just on him.”
“That’s ludicrous.”
“Or you can forgive us both. Decide quickly.” Emily’s gaze flickered from Dinah to him. Incredulity and anger softened to thoughtfulness. Or curiosity. Reliable, ruthless Em. Dinah relaxed. How little Em had changed, how easily she slipped back into the child who had swiped her grandfather’s war prize, determined to kill her rapist. Emily would never for a moment believe how much the memory of her gutsy move kept Dinah from giving up. But Emily needed to quit picking the wrong weapon for her targets. “We can always just leave, if you don’t think you can.”
Emily would never simply leave. Dinah watched her approach the chair, then stop near the box holding the gun. For a moment it appeared she would snatch up the gun, take aim. But she seemed frozen in place.
“Show him to me,” she said.
“What?”
“Show me.” When Dinah didn’t move, Emily pointed to his waist. “The tumor.”
Emily would want to observe him, that was her training, her way to courage. Dinah knelt heavily at his slippered feet, rolled up the nightshi
rt’s frayed hem. She leaned into him to ease the bulk past his hips, coughed at the odor of urine and mildewed cotton. Under the wafer-thin eyelids, his eyes fluttered.
When she had arranged the fabric above the belly, Dinah sat back as if Emily had merely asked her to fetch a glass of water. Dinah’s calm always felt like teasing. The stained underwear was frayed along the seams, Emily saw. The crotch was hollow, squished and emaciated, but she didn’t want to see his sex. The tumor was a tight balloon of flesh protruding from the rib cage. Patchwork veins laced the skin like leather stitching. A new body, nourished by his failing one.
Dinah said, “Just think. If you’d stayed in cancer research you might have been his cure.”
Emily lunged for the gun. Heavier than she expected, not a fake at all. She pointed and squeezed the trigger, realized too late she was aiming too close to Dinah, at Dinah. She screamed.
His eyes snapped open. “Leave me alone!”
Dinah was on her, fist closing around the barrel. “Shut up, Em, Jesus Christ.”
“Jesus Christ! Leave me alone!” He tipped forward, struggled against the jutting leg rest. The IV tubes rattled on the stand. A gurgle rose in his throat. Had she hit him?
She must have said this aloud. Dinah took the gun and hissed, “Jesus. I keep it chambered on an empty cartridge.”
“Jesus! Oh Jesus!”
Emily pushed past Dinah and ran to the sofa. She rammed the beekeeper hat on her head, covered her face with the black netting. Lunged at him, wiggled her fingers in front of his marbled bloodshot eyes. The mesh shrouded him in a shallow gloom but he saw her, he did. Those marbles bore through the mesh as if he’d never stopped seeing her. “Boo, you fuck! Boo!”
“You fuck!” he cried.
“Fuck you!”
“Boo!” he screamed.
“Em! Stop it! He doesn’t even see you.”
“He sees me all right. Come back. Come back you fuck!”
“Em, calm down.” Dinah caught at her shoulder.
“Get off that monkey machine, Jesus! You’re an addict!” He rattled the tubing as if swatting at her. The IV stand tipped, hit Emily in the back.
Dinah grabbed Emily by the arm, peeled off the beekeeper hat, tossed it away. The gun clicked and was in Emily’s hand again. “Just don’t shoot at me this time, you numbskull.”
“You numbskull!” he shouted.
Stripped of the mesh’s curtain, the room oozed glare and heat. Her arm steadied. His babble and bullshit were no barrier at all, with one shot she could slip through his stupid noise. Emily felt a revulsion too close to grief, squelched her pity just as she quashed mercy in the lab, pointed the barrel at his plump pale lips.
He moaned and opened his mouth. His throat worked as if he were swallowing her aim.
She lowered the gun and moved toward him.
Dinah groaned. “Christ, Emily. You’re close enough.”
Emily didn’t hear her. He quieted down as she knelt at his feet. “Hand me his robe,” she told Dinah.
“Emily.” But Dinah fetched the silk robe from the love seat, shook out the folds, handed it to her.
The silk was genuine, light and smooth between her fingers. Emily tucked the robe around the tumor, the belly. She drew the collar gently around his slack neck, taking care not to disturb the port. The deep hue lit up a rich blue under the irises’ calm surface. She’d never been close enough to his eyes to see they weren’t really black. He burrowed his chin into the robe. Touched her hand with his mouth briefly, a kiss, or maybe he’d mistaken her flesh for silk.
Emily plunged a finger into the honey jar, sticky and warm. Perfectly smooth, no crystals. Fresh, except it couldn’t be new. Did the stuff spoil? She didn’t think so. Perhaps this everlasting purity was what had drawn him to tend bees. She leaned over and smeared his lips, daubed his chin, his cheeks, painted him tenderly with sweet. His eyes blinked slowly into focus, shrewd, back.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured.
“I forgive you.” She tried the words on. Hated how they scraped the surface of her numbness.
“I forgive you,” he whispered back.
Emily licked her finger clean and nestled the barrel in the notch above his lip.
“Don’t!” Dinah moved quickly to pull her hand away.
“Get off me, Dinah.”
“Get off!” he cried.
“She’s here.” Dinah pried the gun from Emily, broke the cylinder open, tapped the bullets from their chambers. Slipped the revolver into her coat pocket like she was stashing a joint. “Clean him off, for heaven’s sake.”
Emily mopped the mess with the robe’s collar. The silk stuck to the honey, draped his chin and mouth. She jumped back when the apartment door swung open. A woman impeccably dressed in wool slacks and the type of glossy mink coat Emily had only ever seen in vintage magazines slipped into the room on a wreath of smoke.
“You’re an addict, you numbskull!”
His shrill muffled voice stopped the woman in her tracks. “Oh, Christ. Not again.”
“Oh Christ! Oh Christ!”
The woman took a long drag, held the smoke in her lungs, aimed a gray vapor at the ceiling. The faint caustic odor of mothballs wafted under the smoke. The woman took in the silk robe stuck to the chin, the shrunken lap and bared legs, the IV stand toppled against the box. “Oh, Bill. How indiscreet.”
She threw the mink on the sofa back. The lining was moth eaten, the coat’s luxurious sheen matted under the arms and collar. Some ancient relic from a shabby closet. She crushed her cigarette out in the cup next to her brother’s chair. Untangled the IV line that had looped around his wrist. Tossed the silk robe on the love seat, pulled his nightshirt down, tucked the loose ends around his legs. “Bill, you’re all sticky. Have we been after the honey again? Hand me a blanket, would you, Dinah?”
“Sure, Val.” The beekeeper hat had landed on the floor. Dinah replaced it carefully on the sofa cushion, took up the granny-square afghan, bent to wrap his legs. His eyes fluttered closed. He became as lifeless again as Emily’s first glimpse of him, the throat’s pulse a faint restless skitter under the brittle skin.
“There we are.” Val frowned at her brother, as if his peace were more troubling than his agitation. “I’m a nurse, so you’d think I would have seen it all. But these fits are so awful.”
Emily couldn’t breathe. Her skin was scorched crimson like a drunk. Dinah saw her distress, shook her head, keep it together. But Dinah too was pale, for once as rattled as Emily. “I’m sorry, Val. We must have upset him. He was sleeping soundly when we got here.”
“Oh, bosh, it’s not your fault. No rhyme or reason to these episodes, he just explodes. It does reach the point when you just wish him gone. Anyway, it’s not Bill anymore, is it?”
Emily’s eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, I am sorry.” Val clasped Emily’s hand. “Of course, seeing him this way is a shock. Are you all right?”
Val’s clammy palm slid against hers. Emily pulled away. “You should call hospice.” Remarkable, her steady voice. “They can manage this.” She didn’t say better, but from Val’s sharp look Emily guessed her meaning was plain.
“You should, you know, Val.” Dinah smoothed the blanket around his knees.
“Oh, I know it. But Bill never liked strangers touching him. He was always so private. And one can’t let him get the upper hand.”
Emily couldn’t have heard right. “The upper hand?”
Val glanced at Dinah as if sharing a private joke. “Bill has a bit of the devil inside. In this condition, there are things he might say that he ought not to. People who don’t know him wouldn’t understand.”
The radiator’s hiss crawled along Emily’s skin. “What might he say?” She stared at Val. Not a hint of him in her steely gaze, no family resemblance in the features. Shouldn’t his healthy ghost lurk in his sister, or had Emily lost all memory of how he used to look?
Val met her gaze coldly. “Things he ought not.”
Over Val’s shoulder, Dinah touched him. Showing Emily how he didn’t move, how he couldn’t feel. Val’s firewall stare waited her out. Was it a warning of some sort that she hadn’t asked her name, or questioned why they hadn’t removed their coats? Val must have overheard the commotion on her way up the stairs. She was managing the women as warily as she was being managed.
Emily took a step back, bumped into a box behind her. Val relaxed. “Better to have a quiet passing, and I am perfectly capable of seeing to that. But how nice that you came in time. How do you know Bill? Were you a student, like Dinah? Bill insisted on moving back home here to pass. A few of his former students have managed to find us and send condolences.” She smiled brightly. “Dinah said Bill was her favorite teacher.”
Of all the ruses Dinah could have used, she chose Bartley as their cover. Dinah removed her hand from his shoulder. Smiling a little, but exhaustion lined the crescent wrinkles at her mouth. She waited, as she always used to, for what Emily might do next.
“Yes.” Emily’s voice was distant, but normal. “He was our favorite teacher.”
Such a cool liar, Dinah noted, ruthless to the core once she was poked. Interesting that Emily had aimed at Dinah first. Likely a heat-of-the-moment slip, but they never would be certain, would they?
When Emily returned to the lab the next morning, Kate asked if she’d recovered from her stomach bug. Abel overheard her quiet yes, took in her pallor and evasive brush past him to her station; chose not to ask what was really wrong. The frog bones still lay loosely wrapped on her desk. The Jell-O was propped against her lamp’s blue circular base. She felt Abel watching her as she gathered up the bones and the vial and pitched them in the wastebasket.
States of Motion Page 27
