The Piper

by Lynn Hightower

  ‘I already planned to take the day off,’ Olivia lied. ‘When’s the last time you had a meal? There’s a little place right near the house, home cooked southern food.’

  ‘I’m up for anything. I’m starved.’

  Big Fatties was empty of clientele. A cheerful box of a restaurant, sharing a building with an adult bookstore. Two blocks down from Olivia’s house, and around the corner from Teddy’s school.

  Amelia paused in the doorway, taking in the bright tile floors, the blond wood table and chairs. A guy who looked college age sat behind a table near the cash register, engrossed in an open textbook, making notes on a laptop. The shelves behind him looked like what you’d find in a messy house full of children – sweaters, shoes, books, toys. Family stuff, nothing that said restaurant. The boy looked up.

  ‘Sit anywhere you want. There’s menus on that table over there.’ He jerked a thumb over one shoulder. ‘The special’s on the board. My name is Greg if you need me.’

  They settled at a table as far away from Greg as they could get, right in front of a window, where they could see the car wash next door, and the traffic up and down the Pike.

  ‘What y’all drinking?’ Greg said from across the room. ‘Sweet tea’s good.’

  Amelia looked across the table at Olivia. ‘Sweetie?’

  ‘Sweet. Tea.’

  Amelia smiled at Greg over one shoulder. ‘Bring us two.’

  After querying Olivia on what was meant by Meat & Three, Amelia ordered the chili, and Olivia had the barbecued chicken sandwich with shoestring fries.

  When Greg was in the back, seeing to their orders, Olivia leaned across the table and lowered her voice. ‘Is it Marianne that’s got you shook up, Amelia? Is she getting worse?’

  ‘Yes and no. There’s something I didn’t tell you, Livie. I haven’t told anybody, but I can’t get it out of my head.’

  Olivia realized that while she had assumed Amelia had come to provide moral support, she was actually there for help. ‘I’m listening.’

  Amelia clasped her hands together as if she were saying a prayer. ‘It all started a few months ago. Marianne was having bad dreams. Dreams where she couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t call for help. So Alexis and I sat down with her, and talked it out. And we told her that Mommy and Daddy would always be there to look out for her, and that I’d be the backup, and I’d come when she needed me. And I gave her a special pager, it was an extra I had, and I set it up so that all she had to do was push a button, and it would buzz me day or night.

  ‘Truth to tell? I just gave it to her for comfort value. Like a security blanket. Because the hospital staff in her peds unit is top notch. And Alexis and Jack – when Marianne’s in the hospital, they’re with her night and day, it’s not like she’s alone.

  ‘I told Marianne the pager would show a special code so I would know it was her, but that she could only use it if she really needed me, because if I saw her special code come up, I was going to drop everything and be there as fast as I could. We put the pager in her special lovee, this stuffed platypus she has – it has a little tummy pouch for platypus eggs, and we tucked the pager in there.

  ‘Then one night, after Marianne was already starting what I call the downhill run . . .’ Amelia took a breath. ‘She was spiking a fever and having a hard time getting her breath, fluid building up in her lungs. I met all three of them in the ER, we got Marianne medicated and stable, and we were keeping her in a night or two for tests and observation, and then the oncologist was going to come in and tell us what was next.

  ‘So. Middle of the night twenty-four hours later. I’m home, sound asleep, and something wakes me up. I don’t know what. I come up out of a deep sleep, like someone has touched my shoulder or called my name. And I sit up in bed, turn on the lamp, and look at the clock. Three sixteen a.m. I’m yawning and rubbing my eyes, thinking it was maybe some noise outside, a neighbor coming home late, when the pager goes off.’

  ‘Marianne’s code?’

  Amelia nodded. ‘So I pull on my scrubs, pick up my cell and get peds on the line while I’m rounding up my car keys, putting on my shoes. Trying not to panic, there’s a whole hospital staff there after all, and Alexis and Jack. I’m thinking maybe it was an accident or maybe Marianne was just lonely or scared.’ Amelia swallowed hard, rubbed at her left eye. ‘Night nurse tells me Marianne is coding, so I’m on the way.

  ‘By the time I get there, Livie, the excitement is over. Marianne is stable again, sedated, sleeping hard. Doesn’t even twitch when I touch her hand. I look but the platypus isn’t there. I ask Alexis about it, and she says they left it at home, because the hospital wouldn’t let Marianne have it in the ICU.

  ‘So. Alexis and I have been friends a long time, right? I have a key to the house. The dog, Harry the Hound, he and I are old buds. So on my way home I stop by. Harry is sleepy but glad to see me, and I fill up his water bowl and take him out for a pee.

  ‘Then I head upstairs to Marianne’s room, Harry on my heels, wagging his tail. There’s a nightlight on in the hallway, and I go in. And it’s like the lair of a little princess. White canopy bed, pink quilt. Tiny little desk and bookshelves filled with Dr Seuss. Everything in miniature, fluffy, white, gold and pink. And the platypus is on the bed, laid out on the pillow. I open up the belly – it’s Velcroed shut, and sure enough, the pager is right there. It shows me being paged at exactly three sixteen a.m. Only Marianne and her parents have been in the ER for the last thirty-six hours. So who set off the pager? The next day I look at Marianne’s chart. She coded at two fifty-eight a.m., and lost all vital signs at three sixteen right on the nose.’

  Olivia felt a chill begin at the top of her arms. ‘Sometimes those pagers just go off.’

  ‘At the exact same time Marianne’s vitals are lost?’ Amelia leaned close across the table. ‘So you can see now, when you got that phone call from your brother, why I was so, so—’

  ‘Obsessed.’

  ‘Okay. Obsessed.’

  ‘So you haven’t been researching this just lately. This has been going on a while.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Look, you have to be careful with this, Amelia. You can’t let it take over your life.’

  ‘You’re telling me to back away, when a little girl’s life is involved? I know I need to help her. I’m trying to find my way. What do you think it means, Livie?’

  ‘I don’t know, Amelia. I don’t think it means anything bad. Maybe Marianne needed you, and was somehow able to ask for help.’

  ‘Exactly. In a hospital full of qualified doctors and nurses, and her parents just a few feet away, she wants my help. Because she’s drowning with fluid in her lungs, and she doesn’t want to be on the ventilator.’

  ‘You can’t be sure that’s what it meant.’

  But Amelia did not seem to hear. ‘And I can’t seem to get her parents to understand that prolonging things is torture, and the end game is not going to change, it’s only a matter of how much their little girl is going to suffer before she dies. Sometimes, Livie, there are things worse than death, and a lot of those things are in hospital rooms.’

  Olivia put a hand to her throat. ‘What did you do, Amelia? Tell me you didn’t pull the plug on that little girl.’

  ‘Pull the plug? Livie, number one, if I was going for euthanasia, I wouldn’t have to do something quite so crude. And second, I did take an oath. It’s not my decision to make.’

  ‘Sorry, Amel. It’s just . . . the look on your face when I picked you up at the airport.’

  ‘It wasn’t that. It’s what happened later. When Alexis and I had our talk.’

  Greg swooped in from the kitchen with their orders, setting the plates down on the table, refilling their tea.

  ‘So?’ Olivia said, when Greg had gone away.

  ‘Livie, I think he can hear us. This room echoes.’

  ‘It does not echo and just talk soft. You said at the airport you did something bad, now you tell me what you mean.’


  Amelia looked at the cornbread. ‘They put butter on it.’ She broke off a piece and crumbled it in her fingers. ‘I just . . . I was talking to Alexis, late in the night. Jack was sitting with Marianne, and Alexis and I went down to the cafeteria to get some coffee. The doughnuts are delivered hot at three a.m., and I was trying to get her to eat. We were both so tired we didn’t know which end was up. And out of the blue, Alexis starts going on and on about the afterlife, about children going to heaven and how could you be sure they would be okay. Who would take care of them, when they were dead.’

  ‘Is she religious?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘She seems to go back and forth. I thought she was finding her way to letting Marianne go. She was pretty shook up, Marianne had been having a horrible night, gasping for every breath, and Alexis asked me point blank what it felt like, what Marianne was going through, and I told her the truth. That her little girl was drowning in air.’

  ‘Amelia.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, it was a rough thing to say. I thought it through before I said it. But somebody needs to wake her up. She’s right there, she can see how bad it is. I’m not going to let her off the hook and give her platitudes. Marianne might survive another surgery, she might not, but the chemo is making her sick and miserable, it isn’t helping, it’s just making her death slower and more agonizing. Alexis and Jack have to make the call, but it needs to be an informed decision.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s bad, Amelia. I think it’s tough, but true. I think Alexis needed to hear it.’

  ‘But that’s not all I said. She just seemed to want to talk about it, what happens when you die. Like we can know, right? So I told her about your phone call from Chris. That your brother actually called you after he died. And he said it was all right, that everything was okay. I thought it was going to be like one of those Hallmark television specials, where Alexis would be comforted, and get the strength to man up and let her little girl go. Instead we go straight to the paranormal channel, where she accuses me of having demonic influences, and trying to manipulate her into – how did she put it? The sin of euthanasia. She freaked out on me, Livie.’ Amelia put her hands over her face and tears streamed through her fingers and into the chili. ‘Sorry, Livie. I didn’t mean to cry.’

  ‘How are things between you now? How’d you leave it?’

  ‘Alexis went to the attending and had me barred from Marianne’s room.’

  ‘Good God, no wonder you’re upset. What a horrible thing for her to do.’ Olivia tried to ignore what felt like a tiny betraying twinge of satisfaction. Shameful. She had always been envious of Amelia’s friendship with Alexis. She tried to push it down. ‘And how long have you guys been friends?’

  ‘Since college,’ Amelia said. ‘And I love Marianne like she was my own. And Alexis knows that. She and Jack know how much I love that little girl. I was in the damn delivery room when she was born. I thought . . . I thought I was family.’

  Olivia put a hand on Amelia’s shoulder. ‘You’re still family, Amel. Their daughter is dying, they’re not going to be all that rational. Look, remember the other night on the phone when you said Charlotte and Janet were looking for someone to blame? I know it’s not fair, but that’s all this is. You were talking to a friend, you were honest, you tried to help. You didn’t do anything wrong. Alexis has her back to the wall and she’s looking for somebody to be mad at and someone to blame.’

  ‘I know. I know you’re right. It’s just not fun being the one.’

  ‘Hey. I’ve got news to distract you. I’m cooking a big dinner tomorrow afternoon. You’re going to get to meet the famous McTavish. Only you have to promise not to let him fall in love with you, so keep the charm on medium, because I’m calling dibs on this guy.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The dinner had almost gone off the rails when Jamison refused to come into the house. Olivia, who remembered the blond heartbreaker her big sister Emily had idolized, saw nothing of that boy in Jamison the man. He was tall still, big shouldered like McTavish, but stooped now, with an uncertain, sideways cant to his walk. He wore stiff, off brand jeans and a short sleeved plaid shirt, a UT ball cap, and Timberland boots that looked brand new. He was in his forties, but he looked older, and the shiny blond hair had dulled, showing gray. He was freshly shaved, jeans creased. He wore his clothes as if someone else had picked them out.

  ‘Go ahead, Jamison. You want me to go first?’ McTavish headed through the arched front door, pausing on the stoop.

  ‘Maybe he’s shy,’ Amelia said.

  Teddy pushed her glasses back on her nose. ‘Shy people don’t like it when you say that, Dr Amelia. Are you scared, Jamison? See Winston, his tail is wagging, and there’s lots of people around. You know who only watches when there are so many people around. It should be safe if you go home before dark.’

  Olivia looked at Amelia, who slid the cat glasses up on her nose and stared at Teddy.

  ‘Who is you know who?’ Amelia said.

  Teddy frowned. ‘It’s better if you don’t say his name.’

  Olivia looked at Teddy. Considered saying something, then decided to deal with it later, in private.

  ‘Come on, Jamison,’ Teddy said. ‘I’m icing brownies, want to help? You can wear an apron, like me.’

  Jamison followed Teddy across the threshold and back to the kitchen. He did not look right or left, but focused on Teddy, like a man walking through the woods and whistling in the dark.

  Teddy tied Jamison into an apron and handed him a table knife, and the two of them iced the brownies while Amelia drank a dirty martini, three olives, and critiqued their work. But Olivia could see that Amelia was watching Teddy, and sipping steadily, as if unaware there was high octane vodka in her glass. Olivia was watching Teddy too.

  McTavish breezed past them after grabbing a beer. ‘You handle the brownies there, Jamison. I’m going to tackle that grill.’

  Olivia made potato salad and baked beans, and McTavish grilled fresh asparagus along with the ribs, brushing them with the Bone Sucking Barbecue Sauce Olivia had found at Earth Faire. Olivia had to hide in the hallway just before they sat down to eat to wipe the tears out of her eyes. It was ridiculous, of course, but in her mind’s eye she imagined Chris, elbows on the table, eating ribs, and that knock at the door she had listened for all of her life, where they found Emily and Hunter waiting on the front porch, home at long last. Olivia was flooded with that mix of happy and sad that comes to those who move away and come back.

  They ate in the sunroom, a late dinner as the sun went down. McTavish was sweaty in his tee shirt and jeans, the hairs on his arms smudged with the blackened grease he’d cleaned out of the barbecue grill. McTavish drank Killians, and Olivia had martinis with Amelia, and Jamison and Teddy had bottles of lemonade. By the second martini Olivia had forgotten to be mad at Teddy for acting weird. They would talk later, when their guests were gone.

  They left the mess in the kitchen and piled into the living room. McTavish and Amelia amused themselves at Olivia’s expense by swapping Olivia stories, trying to mesh the Tennessee Livie with the Livie in LA.

  ‘I’m the same no matter where I live.’ Olivia threw an olive at McTavish, which he caught in midair.

  ‘Well, yeah, Livie, that’s kind of what’s so funny. The fish out of water, and Innocents Abroad. I need another beer. You ladies want to really go for it with a refill? One more martini and Livie’s going to sing.’ McTavish was heading past the staircase when he stopped and cocked his head. ‘Do you hear that?’

  Amelia had just asked Olivia in a whisper if she’d bedded him yet. ‘Hear what?’ she said, talking loud.

  They went quiet, and Olivia turned the music down. Sobbing, soft sobbing, distinctly masculine, coming from upstairs. She looked at once for Teddy, who had curled up in the red leather chair with The Sign of the Twisted Candles and fallen asleep. Teddy looked exhausted all the time now. She did not seem to sleep much at night.

  ‘Where’s Jamison?’ McTavish
said. He glanced around the room, then headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, Olivia and Amelia right behind. ‘Jamison? Where are you, buddy? You okay?’

  The bathroom door was shut tight, and Winston was scratching at the door, whining softly. McTavish knocked once, then went in. ‘Jesus, man. Are you okay?’

  Olivia looked at Amelia.

  ‘You need help or privacy?’ Amelia said.

  ‘He’s decent. But Olivia, you better look at this.’ McTavish pushed the door open wide. ‘I noticed you had a big hole in the ceiling when I was up here earlier, but—’

  ‘Oh, hell,’ Olivia said.

  Jamison had clearly been washing his hands after using the bathroom, and a section of the ceiling had come down on his head. He had plaster in his hair, and blood running down his temple from a gash on his scalp.

  ‘Let me look at that,’ Amelia said.

  But Jamison backed away. Pointed up to the ceiling. ‘Waverly,’ he said.

  ‘Will he freak out if I clean up that cut?’ Amelia said to McTavish. ‘It looks like it might need a stitch or two.’

  ‘Jamison doesn’t cry when he gets hurt, do you buddy? Jamison is the King of Stoic. He only cries when he’s scared. It would have scared me too, buddy, if the ceiling came down on my head.’

  Jamison looked at McTavish and frowned. His face was flushed and there were beads of sweat mixing with the run of blood. ‘Waverly.’ He pointed up into the ceiling. ‘Names.’

  ‘What names, buddy?’

  ‘His name is up there, in the ceiling,’ Olivia said. ‘But I don’t know how he could see that from here.’

  McTavish picked chunks of plaster off of Jamison’s shoulders and tossed them in the trash. ‘What are you talking about, Livie?’

  ‘Just what I said. There are names up there. Look, I can get you a stepladder and a flashlight and show you.’

  ‘Jamison, why don’t you go back downstairs, and maybe you and Teddy could watch a movie.’

  Jamison folded his arms and put his back to the wall, shaking his head. He had barely spoken all day – McTavish said that was the norm – but he was talking now, repeating Waverly over and over.