Catwalk

by Sheila Webster Boneham

  “… you and Tom.”

  thirty-nine

  The phone jolted Tom and me off the couch. As I shot straight up and climbed over Tom to answer, the previous evening played at warp speed in my mind, beginning with an achy awareness that we had never talked about whatever Tom had started to bring up the previous afternoon. I had been thinking about so many other things at the time that I had tuned him out until he said something about listing his house for rent.

  And what about that conversation I had overheard about quarantines and rabies titers? The two things had to be connected. He must have been talking about Drake, about taking him to another country. Tom had a sabbatical coming up next year or the year after, and he had mentioned the possibility of doing research or teaching abroad, but he hadn’t said anything specific. If he intended to begin something the following summer or fall, his plans must be well underway by now.

  I felt wrung out from grappling with my mother’s latest health problems and another murder up close and way too personal, even if I wasn’t fond of the dead guy. Top all that off with what Tom’s plans might mean for our relationship, especially in light of the obvious fact that he had kept me in the dark, and I wanted to run away to a wild place to be alone with Jay and Leo and my tangled thoughts. I should have asked him right then and saved myself a lot of heartache, but by the time I had the right words and thought I could keep my voice under control, Tom had fallen asleep. I had lain awake for what seemed like hours, listening to Tom’s heart beat and feeling more alone than I had in years.

  Clearly I had fallen asleep at some point, but I was wide awake now and fighting off the adrenaline rush that comes with being startled out of sleep. Jade’s voice on the phone brought me fully into the moment, and I looked into Tom’s eyes and mouthed “hospital” as I listened. I tapped my wrist where my watch would have been if I could find it, and Tom said, “Quarter to three.” He got up, let the dogs out, and disappeared into the bathroom. By the time he came back, I had put on jeans, socks, and shoes. I took my turn in the bathroom and clamped a jaw clip around my hair while Tom got the dogs in. We were out the door in eleven minutes flat.

  The sleet had stopped and the wipers handled the windshield ice easily, so it had softened in the past few hours. “Looks like the warm front has arrived,” said Tom. He reached for my hand, but I left it where it was, tucked into my jacket pocket. He laid his hand where mine might be, but when I didn’t react, he turned the radio on. “Maybe we can catch the forecast,” he said.

  The news had just started. Another downtown convenience store had been robbed, and a portion of West State Street would be closed while a culvert was replaced. It was all so much background noise until the voice said, “Fort Wayne police say they may be close to making an arrest in the murder of area entrepreneur and philanthropist Charles Rasmussen, who was found dead early Sunday morning under suspicious circumstances.”

  I blurted, “Philanthropist?” and turned the volume up.

  “Police spokesperson Suzanna Idris said that the exact cause of death has not yet been determined, but that Rasmussen was struck several times, and foul play is suspected.” They went on to the next story, and I turned the radio off.

  “Nothing really new there,” said Tom.

  “No, but who are they going to arrest?” My stomach knotted up as I thought about my last conversation with Hutchinson. I should have felt some compassion for Rasmussen, but the man was making me angrier than ever. Irrational as I knew it to be, I couldn’t help thinking, It wasn’t enough to cause my friends trouble when you were alive? You have to keep at it now that you’re dead?

  “We’ll get through this,” said Tom. I was glad he hadn’t tried to tell me everything would be okay, because I knew that an inane comment like that would set off the explosion building inside me.

  I watched homes and businesses slide by, their darkened windows punctuated by the occasional garish glare from an all-night convenience store or fast-food joint or all-night drug store. We turned onto Jefferson, hit a red light at Clinton, and sat there idling. “Does this light seem long to you?” I asked after a few hours, or maybe just seconds.

  “We’re almost there,” said Tom, and a minute later we pulled up in front of the emergency entrance and for the first time since we’d been jolted awake, I really looked at Tom. I wished I had let him take my hand in the car. “Seems like déja vu all over again, doesn’t it?” I whispered, thinking of how Tom had helped me through Mom’s first day at Shadetree Retirement. And I hardly knew him then.

  He squeezed my arm and said, “Go on. I’ll be right there.”

  I found my mother on the third floor. She was sitting up in bed, pale but perky, eating what appeared to be raspberry sherbet. Norm sat by the bed, and a big woman in a white jacket stood on the other side. She spoke in a low contralto that rolled up and down with the rhythms of South Asia.

  “Mom?”

  The big woman stopped speaking and turned toward me, smiling and stepping back to make room for me.

  My mother tilted her head and waved her spoon at me. “Oh, hello, dear. So glad you could make it.”

  I felt my eyes widen and felt both guilty for not getting here sooner and a little ticked off and hurt. Then I realized that her tone was upbeat and almost giggly, and that she meant exactly what she had said. “Mom, how are you feeling?”

  She tapped her lips with her spoon and gazed at me, then said, “I know we’ve met somewhere, but I just can’t remember your name.”

  I glanced at Norm, but he was watching Mom. “Janet,” I said, leaning lightly into the bed. “I’m Janet.”

  Mom turned her focus to her sherbet, which suddenly seemed to be all-consuming. I looked at the woman in the lab coat and said, “I’m Janet MacPhail. Daughter.” I glanced at the name embroidered over her pocket. A capital K followed by a very long last name. Then I looked up into her face.

  “Yes, I see,” she said. She was very tall and neither slim nor fat. “I am Doctor,” and the very long last name rolled off her tongue. “Don’t worry, I couldn’t pronounce it myself until I was nearly out of medical school. Call me Krishna.” Her features were coarse, almost mannish, but her smile lit the room, and I knew my mother was in good hands, at least for now. “May we step out to the hall for a moment, Janet?”

  Norm smiled and waved me on, and I followed Krishna out of the room, past another room, and into a small lounge.

  “So how is she, really? This isn’t what I expected to find.”

  “No, she did not look like this when she arrived.” She checked her watch. “Such fast responses always make me marvel.” She rocked her head from side to side, and then said, “We still are waiting for some of the lab results. The short of it is that your mother’s sodium levels plummeted and she became unresponsive.”

  “They told me she’d had a respiratory event.”

  “Yes, she was also in some respiratory distress. That is why we are checking her blood chemistry.” She smiled. “It is really quite common in the elderly and may be also related to other issues.”

  “And what happened, I mean, what did they, you, do …” I couldn’t find a way to ask whether she had actually stopped breathing and been resuscitated. Mom had made out a directive, legally executed, several years ago, long before her competence could be questioned. I knew how the idea of being kept alive by machines horrified her. But how do you ask a doctor you don’t know why your mother wasn’t allowed to die?

  forty

  “Rest assured, she never stopped breathing, but her breathing was very labored,” said Doctor Krishna. We were standing a few feet from the door to my mother’s hospital room. The doctor’s gaze slipped sideways. I heard footsteps behind me, and then Tom was at my side.

  “This is my, uh …” We really need to come up with something better than “my uh,” I thought.

  Tom spoke up before my hesitation became even
more awkward. “Tom Saunders. Friend of the family.”

  “Ah.” She looked from Tom to me the same way Goldie does when she knows more than I think she should, but she didn’t comment. The good doctor returned to the subject at hand. “Janet, we are aware of your mother’s wishes and I—we—will honor them if it comes to that. I do not think we are at that point. But we would like to keep her here and run some tests to determine the cause of this misadventure.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “Depending on what we learn, we may release her this afternoon, or it may be a day or two,” said Krishna. She gave me her card so I could reach her directly and walked away.

  I went back to the room and found Norm and my mom in deep, apparently serious, conversation.

  “Janet,” said my mother, patting the bed beside her.

  “Don’t let me interrupt you,” I said, relieved that she knew me again, at least for the moment.

  “We’re finished,” she said, patting the bed once more. I perched there, and she took my hand, surprising me with her grip’s boniness and strength. “I’m glad you’re here, dear, but I don’t want you worrying too much.” Her eyes were clear, and my real mother seemed to be fully present, the shadow at bay for now. “I’ve given Norm my power of attorney regarding medical decisions. I won’t want you to be hurt by that. I just don’t want you or Bill having to make those decisions.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Norm, are you okay with this?” My brother-in-law has a deceptively tough, rational shell over a very tender center, and I wondered whether he really wanted this job.

  “Yes, it’s fine. I’m fine.” He and my mom exchanged a smile. “I think we’re all fine.” He stood and reached for his pocket and, although I hadn’t heard it ring, pulled out his phone. “That was Bill. Let me go call him back. I left a message to call me, but he had early meetings. He doesn’t know …”

  “Where is he, anyway?” I asked.

  “Amsterdam.” He picked up his jacket and turned to my mother. “I’m going to go now. But I’ll be back later to check on you.” He kissed her cheek and then he was gone.

  Tom teased Mom a bit about making him come out in the middle of the night. “I had more carousing to do,” he said, and she giggled. A nurse came in and said she had a few things to do if we could give her twenty minutes. I didn’t want to know what kinds of things. Just the thought of jabbing sharp implements into flesh makes me want to scream and flail my arms. I picked up my tote bag and said, “Okay, Mom, we’ll be back in a bit.”

  “Coffee?” asked Tom.

  We took the stairs down two floors to the cafeteria. It was a stark place of plastic and chrome, and very quiet. A couple of nurses ate salads by the windows and a family huddled over coffees and soft drinks in the back corner, but that was it.

  “Are you hungry?” asked Tom.

  “Just tea,” I said. I sat down at an out-of-the-way table and took stock. My mom was, apparently, going to be okay, at least physically. There’s a big fat thumbs up. My brother-in-law is taking charge of the messy world of legal directives. Another thumbs up. Tom is planning to leave the country and hasn’t told me. Big fat thumbs down. And I’d become embroiled in another murder investigation. Even worse, the suspects are all people I know and like. Including Tom. And me. Possibly in cahoots with one another, according to Hutch-

  inson’s source in the investigation.

  Tom returned with a cardboard drink carrier loaded with a cup of coffee, another of steaming water, a tea bag, two creamers, and a flimsy paper plate struggling to accommodate a big fat Danish oozing golden goo from one end. He set a pile of napkins on the table, unloaded the carrier, took it to the recycle bin, and returned with a plastic knife, which he used to saw the Danish into quarters. I ripped open the packet and pushed the tea bag into the cup of water, then bit into the gooey end of a bit of pastry. It tasted like sweetened cardboard. I ate it anyway.

  A blast furnace seemed to have opened around me. I leaned back with a thud against the chair and fanned my face with a napkin. Great. That’s all I need, I thought. Hot flashes.

  Tom was talking, but once again I managed to tune out the first part of what he said. I tuned back in just as he said, “… because life’s too short not to do what we know we want to do, don’t you think?” I looked at him, and he winked and said, “Besides, it will be fun.”

  So he was planning to go somewhere. My whole body felt hot and clammy, my temples throbbed, and I thought my brain might explode. I said, “I need some water,” and started to get up.

  “I’ll get it,” said Tom. He stood but hesitated as he studied my face. If it looked anything like I felt, it must have glowed like Rudolph’s nose. He put his hand on my shoulder and leaned into me. “Are you faint?”

  I shook my head. “Hot flash.” And, oh yeah, my mother and my relationship may both be dying and then there’s that matter of the police … “And I feel a headache coming on. Water and drugs should do the trick.”

  The ice dispenser sounded as disturbed as I felt, and it may have been having a hot flash, too, because no matter how many times Tom shoved the cup into the release level, it didn’t give up a single cube. He went to the counter and handed my cup to the woman behind the rgister and she disappeared into the kitchen.

  I reached into my tote and rummaged around until my fingers found a bottle. I pulled it out. Anti-nausea meds for Jay, expired two years earlier. I shook the bottle, and heard the sound of one pill clapping around. I set it down and resumed my search, intoning, “Drugs, drugs …” I didn’t think I mumbled all that loudly, but two young men wearing lab coats with stethoscopes in the pockets both looked up from the files they had been poring over. I smiled and they looked away as my fingers closed over another plastic bottle.

  Tom was still waiting for the glass of ice, and I felt a pang as I watched him. I couldn’t tell who I was most upset with, him or myself. I pushed and twisted the top of the bottle but couldn’t open it. I watched the woman hand Tom the glass of ice as I pushed and twisted again. Nothing. Tom turned away from me, headed back to the water dispenser on the pop machine. I muttered and set my teeth for one last attempt on the bottle before I resorted to violence, talking myself through the process. Push down hard on cap. Twist firmly.

  I twisted a little too firmly. Despite pressure and stress, the cap remained attached to the bottle, and the two together leaped out of my hands. I tried to catch them, but as I lunged forward, my chair skidded on the waxed linoleum and I nearly fell out of it. The bottle hit the floor with a loud clack! and rolled. The acoustics in the cafeteria were terrific, and the pills on plastic sounded remarkably like popcorn popping. The young doctor who had his back to the ruckus whirled around and said, “What’s that?” The other one started to laugh. The bottle passed under a table and finally rolled to a stop under the next one.

  “Sorry,” I said, walking to the second table. “It got away.” I tried to reach the bottle, but it was too far under the table. I pulled a chair out, got down on my hands and knees, and grabbed it by both ends. The cap came off in my hand.

  forty-one

  Tom and I talked about my mother’s hospital adventure and the investigation. No, that’s not quite right. Tom did most of the talking, and I vacillated between giving him my full attention and none at all. My eyelids felt like sandpaper as the dry heat of the hospital joined forces with fatigue and I wondered where I might find a secret sofa for a twenty-minute nap. I may even have been drifting into sitting-up sleep when Tom’s voice broke in.

  “How are you doing?” asked Tom.

  Swell. “I’m okay.”

  I didn’t look at him, but I could feel his eyes on my face.

  “It doesn’t look as dire as we thought at first,” he said.

  “Nope.”

  “Did I do something wrong?” He sounded confused with a hint of annoyed.

  “Not t
hat I know of,” I said, and immediately wanted to kick my own butt. Passive aggressive, anyone? I looked at Tom. He was leaning forward, both forearms resting on the table. His face was relaxed, but there was something in his eye that said he didn’t like this game. I didn’t much like it either, even if I was the one making the moves. You’re out of control, said a voice in my head. My whole life is out of control, said I. Aloud I said, “I’m tired and I’m worried and I’m the tiniest bit terrified.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of what? Are you kidding?”

  “No, but she’s doing okay, unless I missed something. What did the doctor say?”

  I filled him in on what Doctor Krishna had told me before he arrived. Three women sat two tables away, so I leaned across the table and lowered my voice. “And there’s the little matter of our possible status as murder suspects.”

  He laughed at that. “Oh, come on. That’s just the police brainstorming possibilities. Lots of people saw us leave the trial long before Rasmussen was killed.”

  “Did they?” I thought back to Saturday at the agility trial. I was pretty sure that no one stood in the parking lot at Dog Dayz and watched our departure. Why would they? “Even if someone did see us leave, who’s to say we didn’t go back? I mean, Rasmussen himself left and came back.”

  “What else?” asked Tom.

  I took a long moment to answer, “I don’t know.” It seemed less confrontational than you tell me.

  “So what do you think? Should I put my house up for rent?”

  “Do whatever you want,” I said. I tried to keep my voice noncommittal, but my tone came out sharper than I intended. Then again, you’re the one with the secret plans, I thought.

  Tom looked like I had dumped the missing ice in his lap, and I could heard the tight bands of control around his voice when he said, “What?”

  I knew I should shut up, but my mouth took off on its own. “Apparently you’ve already decided what you’re going to do, so why ask me?”