The Other Side of Dark

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  For a moment Donna and I just stare at her, so she quickly adds, “Didn’t they tell you I was coming? I’m Brandi Mayer, a reporter from the Houston Evening News.” She peers at me. “You’re Stacy McAdams?”

  I watch a strand of hair flop across her glasses. They’re huge and round and too big for her. She pushes her glasses up on her nose but doesn’t seem to notice the hair in her eyes. “Yes. I’m Stacy,” I answer.

  Donna steps slightly in front of me, taking charge. “I’m Stacy’s sister, Donna Kroskey. Maybe I’d better call the clinic’s supervisor. No one here told us a reporter was coming. I really don’t know if you should be here or not.”

  Brandi pushes up her glasses again and perches on the edge of my bed, since I’m in the only chair. “Communication foul-ups,” she says. “Happens all the time. Drives me absolutely batty.” She pulls a tiny tape recorder out of her handbag. The strand of hair drifts back over her forehead. “You mind if I tape this?” she asks.

  “Tape what?”

  Brandi says, “If you don’t know, I’d better fill you in. I’m doing a story for the News about Stacy. My editor is real soft on human-interest stuff, and he thinks that what happened to Stacy, coming out of a coma and all that, ought to make a good feature story.”

  “But how did he know about Stacy?” Donna asks.

  “Easy,” Brandi says. “Medical news is a regular beat. We check the hospitals and clinics all the time, and we have people who call us about things they think might make stories.” She smiles at me. “Okay. Now that you know what I’m doing here, do you want to talk?”

  Donna answers. “Not yet. I’m going to call the supervisor’s office and make sure this is all right. But first, we’re going to ask Stacy if she wants this interview.”

  I shrug. “I don’t care.” A puff of hair drifts over Brandi’s glasses again. She probably doesn’t know what a mess her hair is. It looks as if she were caught in the rain and then in the wind. So I say, “Look, before you ask me any questions, do you want to comb your hair? You can use my bathroom mirror.”

  “Stacy,” Donna mumbles. She looks embarrassed.

  Brandi just gets up, goes into the bathroom, and comes right back. “Looks the way it’s supposed to look,” she says. “I worked hard to get it like this.”

  “I can’t get mine to do that,” Donna says. “I think it’s the wrong length.”

  “You’re kidding,” I tell them. “You mean it’s supposed to look messy?”

  “Stacy! You’re being rude.”

  But Brandi grins. “It’s the latest thing, kid. But you wouldn’t know that. You’re still into what was going on four years ago. That’s great! Real reader-interest stuff. How do you feel about the new cars and new movies and—”

  “Wait!” Donna says, so while Donna telephones we sit and stare at each other. Brandi impatiently fiddles with her tape recorder.

  Donna hangs up the receiver and says, “The woman in the supervisor’s office says it’s all right, but maybe I should try to get in touch with Dad and see what he thinks.”

  “Could I just take a couple of pictures and get some basic answers from Stacy while you’re doing that?” Brandi looks at her watch. “I’ve got another appointment in less than an hour, and it’s over near the Loop.”

  “It’s all right with me,” I tell them, so while Donna makes the call Brandi quickly aims her camera at me and snaps a few pictures. Then she tucks away the camera, turns on her tape recorder, wiggles into a shoulders-back alertness, and says, “Stacy McAdams—and that’s spelled M-C and not M-A-C. Right?”

  “Dad’s not in his office right now,” Donna says. She comes to stand beside me and rests a hand on my shoulder.

  “If I ask anything you object to, just stop me,” Brandi says. And without waiting for Donna to answer, she asks me, “What did it feel like, Stacy, coming back to the real world after four years asleep?”

  The question throws me. “I—I don’t exactly know yet. There’s a lot to get used to.”

  “New songs, new fashions, new television shows,” Brandi says. “Sleeping Beauty, coming back to the world. Hmmm. That’s good.”

  “No. That’s wrong. Sleeping Beauty slept for a hundred years, and everyone else slept with her. Everything would be the same when she woke up.”

  “Details, details. Doesn’t matter,” Brandi says. “What did you remember when you woke up?”

  I close my eyes for a moment, thinking, trying so hard to think. I can see our screen door flying open. I can see the guy with the gun running out and pausing as he sees me standing there. And I can see him raise the gun, pointing it at me. But I can’t see his face!

  “She’s getting tired.” Donna breaks in.

  “No. I’m trying to see his face, and I can’t!”

  “Whose face?” Brandi asks.

  “The guy who shot Mom. He ran out our back door. The screen door slammed open. I was standing there. We looked at each other, and he raised the gun. He shot me. I know him. I know his name. I think that’s why he shot me.”

  Brandi leans toward me eagerly. “You’re an eyewitness! You saw your mother’s murderer!”

  “Yes.”

  “So tell me about him.”

  “I can’t remember his face.”

  “But you said that you know him.”

  “I do!”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  I scrunch up my face. Trying to remember hurts. It aches. “It’s in my head. It’s like I can touch it. But it won’t come close enough.”

  Brandi’s eyes sparkle. “Think hard. Maybe all of a sudden it will all come back to you.”

  Donna interrupts. “I don’t think we should even talk about it. Maybe it would be traumatic for Stacy to remember. We ought to leave it up to Dr. Peterson. Stacy is all that’s important. The rest isn’t.”

  I speak up. “It’s important to me to know who that guy is. He killed my mother!”

  Donna’s arms are around me. “Shush, shush. It’s okay, Stacy. Don’t get upset.”

  “I hate him, Donna!”

  “And you want to see him get what he deserves!” Brandi’s eyes are bright.

  “Yes!” The hollow inside me begins to fill, churning upward with boiling bubbles of anger, until there is nothing inside me but a burning red hatred for the man I saw, the killer, the murderer, the person who took my mother away from me.

  Donna’s cheek is against mine. She’s holding me tightly. “Stop!” she says to Brandi. “Please stop and get out of here. This isn’t good for Stacy.”

  “Listen to her. She wants to remember.”

  “Go away!” Donna stands and takes a step toward Brandi.

  “Okay,” Brandi says. She climbs off the bed and smiles at Donna as though they were best friends. “I’m going. I’m gone.” She fishes a business card from her pocket and hands it to me. “Thanks for the interview, Stacy. If you remember anything else about this guy who shot you, please give me a call. Okay?”

  I just nod and stuff the card into the pocket of my jeans.

  Donna follows Brandi into the hall, and in a couple of minutes she comes back with Alice.

  “Got a little excited, did we?” Alice asks. Before I can answer, she wraps a cuff around my left arm and takes my blood pressure. She beams at Donna and at me. “Very good. Nice and normal. No harm done.”

  “I still don’t think they should—”

  “The supervisor has a new secretary. She didn’t know—”

  “Patients should have privacy, and—”

  “I agree. I agree. Unfortunately they don’t let nurses make the rules, although—”

  I get to my feet, and the walls of the room lean a little to the left and then to the right. So I rest my head against the wall to steady it.

  “Oh, Stacy,” Donna says, and her arms are around me. I can feel the warm bulge of her belly against mine.

  “Donna,” I murmur against her hair, “I want to go home. Take me home.”

  “As
soon as the doctor says so.”

  “Where is he?”

  Alice gently pulls me away from Donna, leads me to the bed, and pats me into place. “Mrs. Montez is your physical therapist, Stacy. She’ll be in soon. She wants to talk to you. Just be patient, honey. You’ll be home in no time.” Task accomplished, Alice rustles from the room.

  I close my eyelids. The anger glows against them. “I wish I could see his face.”

  Donna leans over to kiss my forehead. She gives a little grunt as she bends, and I’m very much aware of the baby who is making her body so thick in the middle that it’s hard for her to lean over the bed.

  “I’m going to let you rest now,” Donna says. “I have to get to class. I’ll see you later.”

  Her face is close to mine, and I can see the tiny beads of perspiration that lie on her upper lip like a glistening mustache. “Donna,” I say, grabbing her right hand and holding it tightly, “do you remember a couple of years ago when Mom was pregnant?”

  “That was more than a couple of years ago, Stacy. You were only ten.”

  I groan. “Ten—whenever. Oh, Donna, I was so excited about Mom’s baby, and I’d rest my hand on her stomach and feel it kick. And when she lost it, it hurt so much it nearly killed me.”

  There are tears on Donna’s cheeks. “I know. It hurt all of us.”

  I struggle to sit up and wrap my arms around her. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m so mixed up. I mean, I think about Mom having a baby, but not you. And now that you’re grown-up and pregnant I can’t get used to it. It’s like you should be Mom and not Donna, and it makes me feel strange and faraway and—oh, Donna, I don’t even know how to tell you what’s in my head.”

  But Donna soothes me, patting my back and nuzzling her cheek against mine. “It’s okay, Stacy. It’s okay. Calm down. Everything’s not going to happen at once. It’s going to take awhile for you to get things straight. Don’t punish yourself by trying to rush it. Just relax. Just take each day as it comes.”

  We hold each other without talking. The room is warm. The window spills sunlight onto the beige tile floor, and the voices in the hall hum in the background like contented bees. Donna is the big sister, the comforting one, yet the hurt we share is the same, and it flows between us. I can feel how much Donna misses Mom too. I begin to realize that there’d be questions she’d want to ask Mom, little scary sparks that Mom could pat out with a smile and a few words. There’d be the baby clothes to buy together, the excitement to share about the first grandchild.

  As I close my eyes I see our screen door fly open. Someone runs out and pauses on the steps. He stares at me. He raises the gun and points it at me. But where is his face? For Donna, for me, I must see his face!

  Donna leans back, holding my shoulders. “Are you all right now, Stacy?”

  I nod. The storm blew away some of the clutter in my mind, and I found my sister. “Thanks, Donna.”

  “Whenever you need me, I’ll be here,” she says.

  I pat her stomach and smile and answer, “Whenever you need me. I’ll be here too.”

  Alice opens the door in a hurry, nimbly stepping back, saying, “Stacy, this is Mrs. Montez.”

  The physical therapist bursts past her into my room, leaning forward a little, breaking a path with her chin and the end of her nose. She’s short and solid with clipped gray hair, and she’s packed into a rose velour jogging suit. She checks the chart at the end of my bed, grins at it and then at me.

  “All that good, regular exercise has paid off,” she says. “Aren’t we proud of ourselves!”

  “I don’t remember exercising,” I tell her. “And I’m sorry, but I don’t even remember you.”

  Her left hand chops at the air, as though she were cutting off something unnecessary. “Doesn’t matter if you remember or not,” she says. “What matters is that I kept you in good physical shape. Once you’re over the temporary effects of your operation, you’ll find yourself in fine condition, thanks to my care and skill.”

  Behind Mrs. Montez’s back Alice winks at me.

  “You may think this all sounds immodest,” Mrs. Montez says, half turning to include Alice, who blinks and looks embarrassed, “but the body is like a machine that must stay fine-tuned in order to operate correctly. And keeping you in condition was my job.” She beams again, looking so pleased with herself she reminds me of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.

  “So,” she says, bouncing a little on her toes, “if Dr. Peterson allows it, tomorrow morning I’ll put you through your paces. Then, after you return to your home, you can keep up the good work. Do you have a swimming pool?”

  “No.”

  “Exercise cycle?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Rowing machine? Oh, never mind. Of course, you don’t have any of the things you’ll need. No one ever does. Well, I’ll just trot off and see what we can do about it.”

  Without another word she charges from the room. Alice smiles sheepishly and whispers to me, “She’s really awfully good. One of the best.”

  A white-coated orderly with shaggy yellow hair comes in with a lunch tray. His gap-toothed grin is friendly as he arranges the tray on the table by my bed and swings it around in front of me.

  “Thanks, Monty,” Alice says.

  “No problem,” Monty says, and dashes off before Alice can hoist me up and plump up my pillows.

  There’s nothing special on the tray, but I’m hungry. I don’t pay much attention to what I’m eating. I’m tired, and after I’ve finished my lunch, I push the table away, lie back, and go to sleep.

  The dreams don’t make sense as they lap one into another, trailing through the afternoon. I wake to long shadows in a room lit with late orange sunlight.

  The light touches Donna in her chair, brushing brightness into her hair and on her cheek. Her head is bent as she reads a newspaper, and a little worry wrinkle flickers on her forehead.

  I stretch lazily, arching my back, and Donna looks up.

  “You’re purring,” she said. “I remember how Mom said you were like a little cat the way you stretched. You always used to purr.”

  “I must have slept a long time.”

  Donna sighs and hands me the newspaper. “I wish I hadn’t let that reporter interview you.”

  I wiggle up, sitting cross-legged, the newspaper on my lap. There, on the front page, are two photographs of me—one my class picture when I was thirteen and in the seventh grade and the other the picture Brandi took this morning. Two girls, so very different, yet they’re both me. One I recognize, but the other is someone I don’t even know. I keep staring at the photos until Donna says, in the same tone of voice she’d use if she’d found a roach in the bathtub, “She even used that ‘Sleeping Beauty’ stuff.”

  For the first time I read the headline over the pictures and story: SLEEPING BEAUTY AWAKES TO NEW WORLD. “Does she write what I said about her messy hair?” I ask Donna.

  Donna groans. “Read it.”

  So I do. Brandi’s story is not too bad, just a little dramatic, and she did put in the part about her hair, only she didn’t use the word messy. She made everything seem more exciting than it was, especially the part about how I was the only one who could identify my mother’s murderer.

  I throw the newspaper on the bed and complain to Donna, “She didn’t write things the way they happened. She makes it sound like any minute now I’m going to remember who I saw. But I can’t! I want to, and I’m trying, but I still can’t!”

  “It’s my fault that story was written,” Donna says. “I should have sent her away.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.” I sneak another look at the girls in the photographs. “I wonder where she got my seventh-grade picture.”

  “Not from Dad or from me,” Donna says. “She might have got it from your school or from one of your friends.”

  “Maybe Jan.” I study the picture the reporter took. Am I really as grown-up as I look in that second pi
cture? Donna sighs and mumbles something else about making a mistake, so I quickly say, “It doesn’t matter. It’s just a dumb story. I bet nobody will even read it.”

  “Of course, they’ll read it!” Donna says. “And what worries me is what if—”

  I wait a moment, watching worry pucker her forehead and turn down the corners of her lips. When she doesn’t finish what she was saying I ask, “What if what?”

  “Nothing,” Donna says.

  “You were going to say something. Don’t just stop like that. I want to know what’s bothering you.”

  Donna tries to smile. “Stacy, my thoughts were just wandering around. I don’t even remember what I had in mind.”

  “But—”

  She stands up and hugs me. “I’ve got to get home and put something together for dinner. Dennis made dinner the last three nights, and I promised I’d take my turn tonight. He comes home starving to death, and I need to stop by the grocery store and get lettuce because we’re out …”

  Donna is talking nonstop, not letting me get in another word. I remember that technique of hers, and I have to smile. Okay. She doesn’t have to tell me now what she has in mind. She’ll come out with it sooner or later.

  “Dad will be here to see you tonight,” she says as she reaches the door. “And I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Bye, Stacy.” The door closes before I have a chance to answer.

  I turn on the bedside lamp, take another quick look at the photographs, and go to the bathroom mirror. As I comb my hair I study my face. This is me, Stacy McAdams, and I have to start getting used to it. This is how other people see me. This is how people who read the newspaper will see me. This is how—

  I suck in a deep breath and hang onto the edge of the basin as what Donna meant suddenly socks me. Brandi wrote that I could identify the murderer. What if the killer reads that? What will he do?

  “Somebody help me!” I whisper to the girl in the mirror. “I’ve got to be able to see his face!”

  Chapter Four

  The bones in my legs are like Jell-O, and chills shiver up and down my spine. Somehow I make it back to the chair and drop into it, trying to think, wondering what I can do.