Any Minute: A Novel

by Deborah Bedford

  “Here,” Pete said. “Drink this.” He handed Joe a cup of water from the medics’ truck. Joe stared into it, skeptical, before he downed it. He winced at the last swallow, handed back the cup.

  “Thanks.”

  “You need coffee or something? They’ve got that too. You’re looking a little green around the gills.”

  “I’m fine, Pete,” he lied.

  “At least go over there and let them check you out.”

  Joe’s shoes squished as he walked.

  “They can give you something to help you relax, or they might need to treat you for shock—”

  “Do I look like I need treatment for shock?”

  Pete surveyed Joe’s appearance as Joe realized he’d left himself open for rebuttal. “Never mind. Don’t answer that question. I’m sure I look like a total wreck.”

  Pete signaled for Gail to bring a blanket anyway as he fell into step beside his friend. “I’m here for you, Joe, whatever you need and whenever you need it.”

  As sun spilled through the clouds in a broader circle, downtown Chicago took on a green cast, the same sort of faint glow that came with oxidation of copper. Rows upon rows of office windows glinted, reminding Joe of vacant eyes. The skyscrapers protruding overhead seemed to lean in on each other.

  Pete searched the ground at his feet.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A skipping rock. Anything I can throw across the water.”

  There weren’t many rocks for throwing in this high-rise district of the city. The river was bound on both sides by concrete walls and tour boats at their moorings, by colonnade arches and lines of lampposts marching farther than the eye could see. Pete’s hand darted inside a concrete planter, filled with small stones and dried remains of chrysanthemums, well past their prime.

  Gail appeared with the requested blanket and stretched it across Joe’s shoulders. Joe humored her. He gripped the blanket around his arms and held it there for a good ten seconds. As soon as Gail turned away, he let it fall to the ground.

  Pete sidearmed the stone across the river and counted. It skipped three times before it sank.

  “Is that the only one?” Joe asked.

  “There’s plenty. Help yourself.” Pete pointed toward the planter.

  Side by side, they flung stones. Settling into the camaraderie that, for male members of the human species, doesn’t require speech. Joe didn’t know why throwing the rocks made him feel better, but somehow it did. At least it was something to do.

  Joe pitched a rock, and Pete followed its arc with his eyes.

  Pete launched one, and Joe shook his head, thinking he could do better.

  Joe sorted through the stones remaining in the flowerpot, searching for the perfect shape.

  They kept this up for a while. Until Pete finally voiced the question Joe had also been thinking, the one Joe hadn’t been brave enough to even ask himself.

  “Joe? You don’t think she would have meant to do it, do you?”

  Joe’s arm froze in mid-windup. His arm lowered to his side.

  “I hate to bring it up. But you told me the two of you were not getting along. I just want you to get it out in the open if you’re thinking that maybe she did it on purpose.”

  Not until Pete turned did he read Joe’s face—haunted, sick, breathing fast with unspent anger. The stone fell at Joe’s feet. He locked his fists on his friend’s collar and his voice bit: “Don’t say it. Don’t say that. How dare you?”

  There was a crack of static as a nearby officer saw the fight and radioed for backup. He charged in to make a tackle, the badge catching the light on his chest. With legs broad as clubs, with cuffs and nightstick swinging from his belt, he tried to grapple them apart but didn’t stand a chance. Joe, every movement magnified by frustration, ground out to Pete, “Go home. Take Gail with you and go. Who said I want you down here? Not if you say things like that. How dare you say that?”

  Just as the fight grew intense enough for them to start throwing punches, Joe yanked Pete forward by the shirt and began sobbing against Pete’s neck with pent-up grief, his tears racked with hopelessness. And there was nothing Pete could do to take it back. Nothing.

  Pete clamped his huge forearms around Joe’s midsection. He hung on to his buddy and wouldn’t let go, as if he could save Joe from drowning, as if he could keep his friend from being tugged into a bottomless place.

  By noon, Nona said, coworkers from Lathrop would be bringing casseroles.

  Mitchell had heard her on the phone first thing, calling the big steel-pipes company where she’d worked since before he was born, trying to explain that she had to take care of him and that’s why she wouldn’t be working today. Nona had one of those big phones for the hard of hearing—Harold said it was because he was deafer than a doorpost—and when Nona talked on that thing, it looked like she had a sea creature from Pirates of the Caribbean suctioned to her head.

  “Jane? Isn’t your grandson school-aged? Why isn’t he in class? Is he sick today?”

  “No. He isn’t sick.”

  “Well then. Why?”

  Nona issued a long weary sigh that sounded like air being let out of a tire. “My daughter’s been in a car accident.”

  “Goodness, Jane. You should have said something at the beginning. That’s horrible. Is she hurt?”

  “We believe so. She’s driven off a bridge.”

  “Oh my.”

  “And actually, they can’t find her…”

  “Jane.”

  “… but there’s no need for everyone to be worrying about me.”

  “Of course we’re worrying about you, Jane. What can we do to help?”

  “Casseroles would help. I don’t feel like cooking. And I know I said Mitchell isn’t sick, but actually he is.”

  “I’ll let everyone know. Don’t worry about anything.”

  “Actually, we are all sick. We’re sick at heart.”

  “Understandable.”

  “I have to go because I don’t want Mitchell to overhear this. We’re trying not to upset him.” Even though he could have overheard this particular conversation clear over in Wheeling.

  Nona had never been one to offer up much in the way of entertainment or juvenile handicrafts. Which is the reason Mitchell was surprised when she pulled apples from the pantry and told him she’d come up with an idea—they would make sour-faced dolls.

  “Dolls?” he asked, wrinkling his nose. Mitchell didn’t quite know what had inspired Nona’s burst of inventiveness.

  “Like this.” She pushed cloves into the apple skin, one after another. By the time she finished, the apple had a face. “Next, we set them in the window and forget about them. After about three weeks, they get all shriveled up like mean people.”

  With a hollow feeling in his stomach, Mitchell obeyed her. Nothing could replace his ache to speak to his dad or his distress that something had happened to his mom. And any mention of dolls made a boy Mitchell’s age want to run in the opposite direction. Still, Nona offered a diversion that included poking sharp objects into fruit and leaving it to rot. Mitchell straightened his crooked glasses and proceeded to impale the McIntosh, leaving numerous holes.

  Not until he carried his creation to the sill and set it beside Nona’s did he glance out the window. Mitchell stared, pressed a hand to the glass. On the other side of the pane, there was a sight he’d thought he’d never see again, something that made him realize he wasn’t alone.

  Nona didn’t miss him until the screen door slammed behind him. By the time she turned, Mitchell had already bolted outside.

  When it rang, the phone’s screen lit up Joe’s pocket. He stood leaning against Patterson’s cruiser, finally letting the chaplain corral him and offer encouraging words. Beneath the blanket, which someone had managed to wrangle over his shoulders again, Joe slipped his fingers inside his jeans and played them over his vibrating mobile. Didn’t people know they shouldn’t call at a time like this?

  When
the shrill signal ended, Joe breathed a sigh of relief. Only to be interrupted by it starting all over again. In desperation he yanked it out and stared it down. Not until the third call did Joe recognize that, each time, it was the same number.

  He didn’t even have to ask. He rocked forward, stood straight. “It’s my son,” he said. “It’s… it’s difficult. Will you stay while I talk to him?”

  “I’m right here.”

  Joe triggered the button. “Mitchell. Hello, son. It’s good to—”

  “Dad!”

  “—it’s good to talk. I’m sorry I haven’t—”

  “Dad, listen.”

  “There isn’t anything to say about your mom yet, Mitchell. They still haven’t—”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

  “—found her. There still isn’t any news.”

  “No, Dad. Listen. He was here.”

  “Who was there?”

  “The man from the scoreboard. Remember? I told you about him at the Cubs game?”

  This call was coming from the opposite side of the world. It seemed so out of place that momentarily Joe was completely stumped.

  “He came to Nona’s house.”

  “Son. I’m sorry, but those things aren’t important right now.”

  “They are. He came to Nona’s house to tell me Mom is going to be okay.”

  “I know you want everything to be okay with your mom, Mitch. I know it’s what you wish for.”

  “I’m not just wishing, Dad. He said—”

  Icy fear threaded Joe’s veins. “Who is this man talking to you about your mom?”

  “He’s an angel sent by God,” Mitchell said. As matter-of-fact as if he’d said, “He’s a shoe salesman.”

  “For the Cubs? That man you saw in the scoreboard?” Joe gripped the chaplain’s arm in terror. He hadn’t suspected Mitchell might take this so hard. “Mitchell, can you put your grandmother on the phone?”

  “That’s what he said, Dad. He said they’re going to find her. Right now.”

  “Son, I know that’s what you want to hear. Please, Mitchell. Tell Nona I want to talk to her.”

  “He says they’re going to find her any minute.”

  At that precise moment, an earsplitting whistle speared the width of the river. Joe snapped to attention, stood erect. The phone clattered to the ground.

  “Joe,” Patterson said. “Joe, get off the phone.”

  The cry went up across the water. Patterson’s radio exploded in a celebration of static. “She’s down there. They’ve got her!” Voices twisting against each other made it difficult to decipher the words.

  …when we cable-lined the car.

  …got that clean shot.

  …don’t know how we missed her…

  The diver appeared midriver with a sodden bundle in his arms. It couldn’t be Sarah, Joe thought as his whole body buckled. She looked no bigger than the dog that had accosted him.

  The swimmer powered his way to the makeshift platform, toting the rag-doll body. Many hands hauled her toward dry land. Joe saw the CPR begin. He felt Pete’s grip on his elbow, holding him upright. An ambulance engine started up from what seemed, through the blur, to be a great distance. Its light bar remained dark, bleak with emptiness.

  Joe had seen emergency vehicles rush to accidents, lights fencing the sky. He’d seen those same vehicles slink back to dispatch, lights off and sirens silenced—embarrassed to have made such a fuss and not be needed—after a fatality.

  The joy of finding Sarah would be short-lived. In the end, they’d say it had been a blessing just to find a body. A gift. “The family should be thankful for closure,” mourners would whisper at the memorial service. How could Joe even think about getting everyone—or even just himself—through a funeral?

  Joe didn’t recognize his own voice when he spoke. The frantic EMTs working over the crumpled silhouette had blurred. “I want to see her. Will they let me see her?”

  That’s when the ambulance light bar flashed to life like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. That’s when a disbelieving voice overrode everything else on the frequency. “Do we have cold-water revival?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Water’s not that—”

  Someone interrupted. “We’ve got a pulse over here, guys. I kid you not. I repeat: we’ve got a pulse. It is faint, but we’ve got one.”

  Pete gasped at Joe’s side.

  When she finally coughed and the fluid rushed from Sarah’s lungs, she took her first breath since everyone had thought she was dead. Joe felt his chest heave with a jolt of relief. He gasped for air as though, all along, he’d been the one who’d needed to breathe for her. How could it be? How could she be in the water that long and still be alive?

  Realization tunneled around him as his fists fell open at his sides. The worst hadn’t happened. He hadn’t lost his wife yet.

  Was it possible that he and Sarah still had a chance? Could they possibly make things work?

  Joe vaguely wondered what was ahead. He was grateful to have her back, but he didn’t want things to be like they were. He felt deep inside that he had to find a way to love Sarah into wholeness, even if that meant being firm with her. He had to stand behind the words he had spoken to her. He knew he would have to be strong.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sarah didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten here.

  Small things began to ply her awake. The sharp smell of disinfectant. The crisp burned scent of laundered bedsheets, which she’d always loved. The cradle of a pillow beneath her head. A blanket tucked so tight around her feet that she felt the need to kick free.

  For a moment she suffered from a bout of claustrophobia. She thrashed in the bed, trying to spring herself loose, until she felt the cool touch of a hand calming her, the click of dosage being turned up in an IV overhead. She remembered this from giving birth to Kate; when nurses entered the room on their soundless soles while you were sleeping, their uniforms sounded like rustling angels’ wings.

  A distant beep called her toward consciousness. Still, she drifted, floating in and out. She was aware, or so she thought, of the passage of time. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so odd. And somewhere in her dreams, she thought she might be at Annie’s house—a lost, faded memory from when she was a child.

  It had been like this, waking up at Annie’s when she was a little girl. She’d never wanted to sleep late at Annie’s. She’d always wanted to get up and play with the kittens or find out what was happening with Grandpa Gordy in his workshop out in the garage.

  She remembered the day of Annie’s funeral when she’d walked to the grocery store and bought flowers because her mother didn’t have time to take her to the florist. She remembered laying the pale pink roses in the casket around her grandmother’s shoulders. She remembered how even light pink had looked garish, how Annie’s hair looked an awful blue, the way the funeral home had done it up. For as far back as she could remember, Annie’s complexion had always shown like pale crepe, a blush of satin.

  The names were on her lips when she slit open her eyes against that blinding light. “Wingtip. Annie.” She sprang to life and gripped the coat sleeve of the woman leaning over her. “They were there. I was with them.”

  Even though the nurse had hurried away, someone was still in the room with her. Sarah sensed it, rather than knowing for sure. A presence lingered at the foot of her bed.

  “Annie?” she whispered again.

  There wasn’t any answer. Only a gasp and a soft shift of fabric as someone stood from a chair.

  For reasons she didn’t understand, Sarah felt a burst of freedom. She wiggled her toes, realizing someone must have loosened the blankets around them. What an odd dream she’d had! It flittered through her mind the way moonlit clouds flitter unnoticed through a night sky.

  Sarah opened her eyes and struggled to sit up. Where was Kate? She’d seen Kate. She’d been with Annie. And what about the ang
el that seemed a bit off his rocker? Where had he gone?

  It was a hospital. The beeping came from a monitor, the rhythm of her own chest. The lights splayed down on her face from a deck of fluorescents overhead. As she raised herself on her elbows, she shook her head to clear the fog.

  “Joe?” she asked.

  But the person she recognized took her back much further than that. She realized who had unfastened all those sheets at the foot of the bed. She’d always made perfectly sure her mama knew how she hated to be confined.

  “Mother?”

  Jane jumped when Sarah said her name. She looked as guilty as someone who had just been released from the slammer.

  “Why am I in the hospital? How did I get here?”

  Jane didn’t even try to answer her questions. She just started scolding. “Goodness, Sarah. You can’t wake up right now. They’ve all been waiting. I’m not the person you should be seeing first.”

  Normally Sarah would have thought, You don’t want to see me, Mama? You aren’t glad I’m here? But to her own surprise, she found herself feeling sorry for Jane. She wanted to say, Mother, I know why you’ve been so unhappy. I know why you never really liked me, and I forgive you. But that had all been a dream, hadn’t it? Sarah’s thoughts were so confused; she didn’t understand any of them.

  Jane continued: “You got yourself in an accident. That’s what you did.”

  “Is Joe angry at me? We had a terrible argument.” Sarah covered her face, at least remembering that much. “And I wrecked the Lincoln.”

  “Let me go get them,” her mother said.

  “Would you? Would you get my kids? I want to see them.”

  Something flickered through Sarah’s mind, as evasive as a child hiding among trees—a name, although she didn’t know where it had come from. “Ronny,” she framed the name in a whisper. “Ronny Lee Perkins.” Now what did that name have to do with anything?