After This

by Alice McDermott

  The Keanes were asleep when the phone rang, although Annie was awake, her bedside light still on, Clare breathing softly across the room. She was writing in her diary and when she heard the phone, it was well past midnight, she raised her pen, skipped a line, and then wrote down, “Here it is.” And then waited. Through the wall she could hear the tension in her father’s voice, the effort to be alert and comprehending when he had just woken from a deep sleep. He seemed to be saying, Yes, yes.

  She’d had a vision, once, of what would happen to her if her brother was killed in the war. She would not become one of those folk-singing peace-sign hippies, she knew, she would become instead something outrageous, something screaming, full of rage, burning things, tossing flaming bombs. How else would anyone get it, get what it would mean to lose Jacob? Now she saw that she would merely close the book in her hand, get out of bed, go into her parents’ bedroom. It would mean their small family made smaller still. Her father’s limp more pronounced from now on, her mother steely somehow (she thought of Susan’s eyes, in the abortion clinic, getting through this). Michael more disdainful, Clare too babyish for a little longer. Crying jags for her, when she got drunk. No more effort or inclination to record it all in her little diaries, to remember how it had all played out.

  Her father said, “No, not her sister. Just a friend.”

  Pauline was going to be kept in the hospital for a few days at least, and of course they could have visited her in the morning, but there had been some questions about psychiatric history and her mother felt it would be best if they went right down there. Pauline all alone, she said. She must be so scared. Her father had already dressed and gone down to warm up the car. Annie stood in the doorway, watching her mother run a quick comb through her hair.

  “The woman is such an ass,” she said, loud enough to wake Clare. “I thought it was about Jacob.” It seemed the crying jag was going to happen anyway.

  Her mother took her briefly in her arms, she smelled of her familiar lotion, warmed by sleep. “I know,” she said. “It startled us all. But the army doesn’t call. They send a telegram. Or they come to the door. And not in the middle of the night, I should hope.” Then she backed away, brushed her daughter’s hair. “It’ll be over soon,” she said. “Things are winding down over there. He’ll be home before we know it.”

  Annie followed her downstairs. She watched her get into her coat in the small vestibule. “You’ll be all right?” her mother said. “We won’t be long.”

  Annie could hear the idling engine of her father’s car. “Poor Dad has to go to work tomorrow,” she said, but her mother missed the accusation.

  “And you have to go to school,” she said. “Go back to bed.” Then she asked again, “You’ll be all right?” and Annie said, impatiently, “Yes.”

  The front door stuck a little before her mother got it open. Annie could see the headlights of her father’s car, the wet glimmer of frost on the black windshield. “Lock up,” her mother said, over her shoulder, and with a small smile, “and don’t let anybody in,” because there were other things to fear, out there in the darkness, even if the army didn’t come in the middle of the night.

  It was full daylight by the time her parents returned. Annie had gotten Clare up and dressed and they were eating cereal with Susan Persichetti, who was giving Annie a ride to school, when they came in to say that Pauline was all right—a lie by the looks on their faces. Annie saw them glance at Clare. A broken wrist and a broken nose and some bad bruises. Upset, though, their mother added. “The fall,” their mother said, “kind of threw her for a loop.” And then, again to Clare, “She’ll be fine, really. Although,” she added—and now she glanced at Annie—“she might have to come stay with us, for a while. When she gets out. We thought she could have the boys’ room, for a while.”

  Annie glanced at Susan and then said, complaining, “What about when Michael comes home for the weekend?” After only the briefest pause, “What about when Jacob gets back?”

  Her mother held up her hand. Her lips were pale. Her hair was littered with gray. “I’m not saying all year. I’m saying till her wrist is healed. Till she’s herself again.”

  Annie said, “Who wants her to be herself again? I’d rather she be someone else.” And Clare cried, “That’s mean.”

  But her father, who was watching the coffee percolate on the stove with something of Jacob’s own distracted absorption, looked at her over his shoulder and smiled. He’d liked the joke.

  “I think it’s mean to make the boys sleep in the basement,” Annie said.

  Susan laughed. “Hey, I sleep in the attic,” she said.

  “Well, the attic would make sense,” Annie said. She turned to her mother. “Let’s put Pauline in the attic. Like Grace Poole.”

  But her mother, buttering toast, was thinking of something else. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said shortly. She was about to lose her temper. “It will just be for a few weeks.”

  “Your mother has enough on her mind,” their father said.

  There was only the smell of coffee, the sound of the pot over the blue flame. The heater in the basement ticking on. “It’ll be fine,” Clare said into the quiet, as if she were the one to settle things. “The boys won’t mind. It will be fine.”

  There was more silence and into it Annie whispered, “Bet she never leaves.”

  As the girls were going out the door, Mr. Keane asked Susan, his voice low, if her father would be around this afternoon. He’d like to call him. Susan said he was usually up by noon.

  Standing in the small vestibule, Annie asked him, impatiently, in a way that conveyed her disinterest in both the question and the answer, “Why?” The lack of sleep had turned her father’s skin to gray parchment. It had hollowed out the skin around his eyes. Just last evening he and Pauline had sat in the living room together with their cocktails, discussing retirement and pensions, the high cost of living on Long Island, the bargain that was Florida.

  “They’re talking about sending her over to Creedmoor,” he said, quietly, shielding Clare. “For some treatment.” And to Susan: “I’d like to ask your father about that.”

  The girls left the house, walking down the front steps into the icy morning cold. It occurred to them both that a year ago, they would have put their heads together and laughed wickedly at the news. They would have said, The loony bin. Perfect. Annie would have said, I knew it all along. She had already said, Grace Poole. But it was a cold morning, the dry air seemed scoured by the cold, and in their shortened uniform skirts and thin jackets they were both shivering by the time they reached Susan’s car at the curb. It would not be worth the effort it took to make a joke out of it all. The cold was bitter enough. Between the sidewalk and the curb the grass was frozen, each small blade frosted white. Annie heard it crunch beneath her feet as she reached for the passenger door. Tramp, tramp, tramp.

  There was a car approaching from the opposite end of the street, the white of its exhaust no doubt exaggerated by the cold. Susan leaned over and opened the lock for Annie. Annie got in. Susan already had the heat blasting and the radio turned up and an unlit cigarette between her lips. They were late, but they were seniors, they were obliged to be late. The car passed them, moving slowly in what might have been an illusionist’s elaborate billowing of exhaust. Last night, when she’d gone back to her bed, she’d picked up the diary and written, underneath, “Here it is,” “Well, maybe not. Silly me. Only Pauline.” She and Susan stopped at White Castle for doughnuts and coffee and then spent five minutes in the school parking lot brushing powdered sugar and cinnamon from their plaid skirts. The old nun at the front desk, Sister Maureen Crosby, although the girls called her Chuckles, waved them away as they began to fill out their late slips, saying, with exaggerated patience, “Just get to class, ladies.” And they had only just turned away, heading toward their lockers, when the nun said, “Hold on, Miss Keane.” Annie looked back; the nun was squinting at a small strip of paper, as
if it were a bit of late-breaking news, just in. She was soft and shapeless, slump shouldered in the black suit she now wore instead of a habit, a mouth breather, as solid as gray granite, as dependable, as immobile. The challenge was to get her to laugh just once during your four years at Mary Immaculate. “Call home,” she said.

  There had been the car, of course, in its cloud of smoke, dreamlike, slow-moving, reading house numbers, perhaps. Chuckles lifted the phone from her desk and placed it on the counter just above her. “Don’t dawdle,” she said. The lights in the office were bright. They were bright against the linoleum in the hallway behind them. “Miss Persichetti, you can get to class,” Chuckles said, but Susan, standing close to her, murmured, “I’ll wait.”

  “I am quite sure,” Chuckles said, as nuns did, “that Miss Keane is capable of calling home without your assistance.”

  But Susan shook her head, lied easily. “I’ve got my stuff in Annie’s locker. I have to wait for her.” She touched Annie’s arm and said, “Go ahead, I’ll wait.” And then walked with her anyway, the few steps back to the desk. She knew, of course, what it was like to dread every message, every phone call, every change in the day’s routine. She knew what it was like. She watched Annie dial home (“Don’t each of you girls have your own locker?” Chuckles was saying), their eyes meeting briefly as she waited. Her mother said only, “Daddy’s coming to get you.” And then she was in Susan’s arms.

  IV

  MR. PERSICHETTI was good enough to come along. Mary Keane was in the backseat and she touched his shoulder with her gloved hand to say, “This is good of you.” He shook his head, “No trouble,” he said. It was a wet, gray morning, cold yet somewhat humid: the terrible winter being edged out, once again, by spring. There were green spears of crocus, mere buds against the dirt, under front windows and along the edges of lawns. There would be daffodils soon, too, she knew. Then forsythia, azalea, rose, and rhododendron.

  She leaned back against the seat, folding her hands in her lap. Up front, her husband said, “Do you take the Cross Island or go side streets?” and Mr. Persichetti said, “At this hour, the Cross Island’s fine.” At this hour, the neighborhood was quiet, and somewhat sodden from last night’s rain. John Keane drove cautiously, as was his habit. He wore his topcoat and his fedora—he would head for work as soon as they brought Pauline home—and beside him, hatless, wearing only a thin Windbreaker, Mr. Persichetti looked like a youngster. “I cut over to Northern Boulevard,” Mr. Persichetti said, “when it doesn’t look good.”

  Mr. Keane nodded. They passed the church and the school, the row of shops. From the backseat, Mary said, “I think Susan and Annie actually left for school early this morning. They said they wanted to see the juniors get their rings.”

  Mr. Persichetti turned a little in his seat. “That’s a first, hey?” he said.

  “They’re the big shots this year,” John Keane said. “They think they run the place.” He touched his turn signal, pulled cautiously into the mid-morning traffic. “Next year they’ll be lowly freshmen again.”

  “Coeds,” Mr. Persichetti said. He was both poking fun at the word and revealing his pleasure in the thought. “Can you believe it? Those two? College girls.”

  “Lord help the professors,” Mary Keane said.

  “Lord help the boys,” Mr. Persichetti said with a laugh because girl children went off, but they also came back. They were a comfort in your old age, in your sorrow over lost sons.

  The three of them rode silently for a while, looking out at the passing homes.

  As they neared the hospital, Mr. Persichetti sat forward, a hand on the dashboard, showing John Keane where to park. “It’s short-term,” he said. “But then when she’s ready you can pull right up to the door.”

  Inside, he took them just where they needed to go. In his element, Mary Keane would have said, walking them assuredly through the halls to the desk where the paperwork was waiting and an orderly talking to another nurse looked up and waved and said, “What’s a matter? You’re back already? They didn’t let you in at home?”

  “Can’t get enough of this place,” Mr. Persichetti said, laughing. When the nurse said she’d call to have Pauline brought down, Mr. Persichetti waved her away from the phone and took Mary Keane’s arm. “We’ll get her,” he said gently. And to her husband, “We’ll go up and get her. It’ll be easier.”

  The floor of the elevator was wet, with streaks of mud, as if people had been coming and going all night. Mr. Persichetti pushed some of the dirt with his shoe and said, “Sheesh,” disapproving. He pushed the button for Pauline’s floor and then looked up at the row of numbers, his hands in the pockets of his Windbreaker. He turned to Mary Keane as the elevator began to rise and said, “I’m the regular mayor of this place, you know,” and then, as if to prove his point, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open and another orderly appeared, a middle-aged black man, pushing a wheelchair in which a pale, dark-haired boy was slumped, his long thin arms raised before his bent head, waving. The black man said, in military parody, “Mr. Persichetti, sir,” and Mr. Persichetti held out a hand. “Darrin, my man,” he said. Then he grabbed the pale, yellowed hand of the boy in the wheelchair, gripped it firmly. “How you doing, Larry?” he said. The boy, head down, neck twisted, his mouth veiled with saliva, said a tortured, “Good. Real good.”

  “Behaving yourself?” Mr. Persichetti asked. And the boy drew out a long, “Yes, yes.”

  “Yeah, I bet you are,” Mr. Persichetti said sarcastically. He looked up at the orderly and winked, and then at Mary Keane, as if they were all in on some joke the young man would never understand. For a moment, she thought this cruel, or just childish, on Mr. Persichetti’s part, but as the elevator rose again, she saw how he kept the boy’s hand in his, clasping it between both of his own, and then, briefly, tightening his grip before letting go when the doors opened again. Alone with him once more, she said, “I don’t know how you do what you do.” But Mr. Persichetti only shrugged. “Oh, Larry’s a piece of work,” he said, refusing her the larger meaning.

  The hallway on Pauline’s floor was no worse and no better than Mary Keane had imagined it would be. There were all the usual hospital smells, food and urine and disinfectant, along with the smell of the old building itself, a subway smell of dust and metal. Some of the patients were in the hall, tied into wheelchairs. Old women, mostly, or so it seemed, hair streaming and yellowing eyes, glimpses, here and there, of bruised flesh under the limp white and speckled blue of the hospital gowns. “Hello,” one or two of them said as they passed by, Mr. Persichetti with his hand on her elbow. One or two of them called out a name. Mary Keane tried to smile at them all. “Hello,” she said, passing by. “How are you?” A lifetime of friendliness. A shout went up briefly, from one of the rooms, and then a low moaning. At the end of the hall there was a dull window of either smoked glass or grime, black wire inside its frame, and she had a moment of utter disorientation because although she knew they were on an upper floor, that the elevator they had just ridden had risen, she believed, for just a moment (perhaps it was the subway smell of the old tile walls), that they were underground.

  Mr. Persichetti stopped briefly at the nurses’ station—she was glad for his hand on her arm—and then he led her down another corridor. She had some guilt that she had not visited Pauline before, not since the night she fell, that Pauline had been alone all these weeks in this place. But she knew too that she could not have done it, in the midst of all that these weeks had held. In this corridor, another woman, her dark skin stretched thinly over her bones, sat in a wheelchair with her head bent into one hand and her long fingers held up over her face, touching her eyes and her mouth. Her other hand, in her lap, was white-palmed, empty. She was the weary image of every sorrow women knew. Seeing her, Mary Keane felt herself absolved, at least briefly, of all she had neglected in these past weeks. Were she to bend down and speak to this woman she would say, “I have buried my child.” She would ask, “And you?�
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  “Here we are,” Mr. Persichetti said, and with his hand on her arm guided her into Pauline’s room. She was in a chair by another opaque window, crossed with wire. Her hair was longer than she usually kept it, swept back from her face and showing a good line of gray roots, but she looked well, even younger, perhaps—Mary was surprised to see it—than she had that last night at dinner. It might have been that she was more rested, or better fed. It might have been that she was no longer drinking (psychosis brought on by depression and alcoholism, was what they had said), although never in a million years would she have guessed that the drinking was a problem. It might simply have been, Mary Keane was suddenly sure it was true, that Pauline looked better without her makeup. Her complexion, she had always been glad to point out (usually just after Mary had complained about her own), had always been good.

  She crossed the room and kissed Pauline on the cheek. There was only the hospital bracelet on her wrist. Not a hint of the broken nose. Or the shock treatment. “You look good,” she told her and Pauline said, as she might of old, “What’s new?”