561

by Katherine Heiny

  Charlie thought of the vintage crocheted poncho she’d bid for on eBay and lost to a last-minute customer. Her sense of loss had been so keen she’d almost felt the poncho’s fringe flipping over the ends of her fingers. For the briefest of moments, her heart and Emory’s touched, two wires making the world’s smallest closed circuit.

  “I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said softly.

  “Also, I miss my mother,” Emory said, and hung up.

  At four thirty in the morning, sleepiness washed over Charlie, like a giant wave, sucking the oxygen out of her lungs and threatening to slam her to the floor. She looked at Barbara groggily. “I think I need to rest.”

  “Me, too,” Barbara said, yawning.

  On overnights, the volunteers were allowed to turn off the phones and sleep for an hour to increase the odds that they could go to work the next day with functional brains. It wasn’t enough—it wasn’t nearly enough—but it helped.

  They put the phones on hold and wheeled the two rollaway cots out of the closet. These were beds whose sheets had never, ever been changed so far as Charlie knew, whose pillows were flat and musty-smelling, and whose blue blankets were piled with lint, like shredded coconut. They were the most welcoming sight in the world.

  Barbara went into the bathroom with a small cosmetics bag and bundle of clothing, but Charlie was the veteran of many spontaneous, alcohol-fueled, sex-related sleepovers. She merely kicked off her jeans and put a drop of Visine into each eye before she lowered herself carefully onto one of the cots—both were unsteady on rusted casters and lying down on one was something like trying to mount a skittish horse. By the time Barbara emerged, smelling of Noxzema and wearing a long white nightgown with puffed sleeves, Charlie was almost asleep and could only think wearily that Barbara looked like the prissy guest at a slumber party whom the other girls would want to beat the shit out of.

  The hour of sleep slipped by, as it always did, too quickly, and seemingly in just a moment, Barbara was turning off the alarm clock and shuffling back to the bathroom. Charlie pulled on her jeans, folded up the rollaway beds and put them back in the closet. She got a Diet Coke out of the fridge and sat at her desk.

  Barbara came out of the bathroom, dressed again in her blouse and skirt, ruby-red lipstick applied, hair brushed. Now Charlie understood the value of the whole nightgown routine because Barbara looked fresh as a strawberry daiquiri and Charlie felt like a grimy burlap bag.

  “Good morning,” Barbara said. “Shall I make coffee?”

  “Not for me, thanks,” said Charlie, who felt coffee breath, on top of her wrinkled shirt and smudged mascara, would be one step too far on the spectrum of personal grubbiness. She glanced at the clock. It was almost six. They had one hour to go.

  She punched the hold button and a call came through at once.

  “Hopeful Place,” Charlie said, her eyes still bright with sleep.

  “Hello, 561.”

  The skin on Charlie’s scalp crinkled. She could not have been more spooked if a caller had stepped out of the supply closet. “Who is this?”

  “Now you’re the one asking,” said a sourly triumphant voice.

  “Emory?” Charlie said doubtfully.

  The not-quite-Emory voice snorted. “Just thought you’d want to know, I finally did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “You all never believed I’d do it.”

  Charlie was sure it was Emory now, but something was wrong with his voice. “You did what?” she asked again.

  “Took my mother’s Seconal,” Emory said, and suddenly Charlie felt as though her esophagus were filled with sawdust. No air could get in or out. That was why Emory didn’t sound like himself—the Seconal had slowed his speech.

  Charlie blinked and heard the tiny clicks of her eyelids. “Emory,” she said carefully, making sure to speak loudly enough for Barbara to hear, “I believe you. I absolutely believe you. How many Seconal did you take?”

  She was aware of movement behind her, then Barbara standing next to her desk, her face an urgent question mark. Charlie nodded emphatically. Barbara picked up her phone and tapped the button for an outside line.

  “Listen to me,” Charlie said to Emory. “There’s another volunteer here with me and she’s going to call you an ambulance. I need you to give me your address.”

  “I don’t want an ambulance,” Emory said pettishly. “I want to die.”

  “I don’t think you do,” Charlie said, “because you called me. Now let me help you. Emory, what is your address?”

  “I told you, I want to die.”

  Charlie had the sense that her voice was no longer just her voice, but a force that leaped wildly out of her, spinning down the line, trying to reach Emory. Her voice was a missile speeding through tunnels, flashing through wires. She had never had this sensation before. She gripped the receiver tightly.

  “Dying is an awfully big decision,” Charlie said. “And I want to talk about it. But first I need your address. Can you give it to me, Emory?”

  Silence.

  “Emory? Can you give me your address?”

  Emory sighed, a long, guttural sigh that sounded as though it started at the soles of his feet. “745 Locust Street.”

  Charlie scratched it on a piece of paper and handed it to Barbara, who was already speaking to 911 in a low voice.

  “Okay, that was excellent, Emory, really, really good.” Charlie tried to think. “Can you get up and unlock your front door so the EMTs can get in?”

  “No,” Emory said, sounding strangely matter-of-fact. “My legs seem to have stopped working.”

  “Don’t worry about that, then,” Charlie said. The EMTs could break down the door. “How many pills did you take?”

  “There weren’t but twenty in the bottle,” Emory said. “I took fifteen just to be on the safe side.”

  The safe side of living or the safe side of dying? Charlie was suddenly terribly sure Emory had gambled and lost. Emory’s mother had been dead for three years. What was the shelf-life of Seconal? Did that matter? No, the Seconal was working. She could hear it in Emory’s voice. “How long ago did you take them?”

  Silence.

  “Emory, when did you take the Seconal?”

  A pause and then Emory said, “I … don’t know.”

  Charlie knew those pauses meant the Seconal was putting out small electrical fires in Emory’s brain. How long until it went completely dark, like the stark black wasteland after a forest fire? “The ambulance is on the way,” she said. “I need you to stay on the line with me, okay?”

  Emory didn’t say anything.

  “Emory?” Charlie asked. “Just stay with me, all right? You stay on the line with me until the EMTs get there. One of them will take the phone from you and speak to me.”

  That was how it was supposed to work, at least in theory.

  Barbara leaned close and whispered, “911 says it’s a duplex—which side should they go to?”

  The one that doesn’t smell like garlic, Charlie thought frantically. You don’t want to bother those gypsies. “Emory,” she said. “Which side of the duplex do you live on?”

  No response.

  “Emory?”

  Silence.

  “Emory!” Charlie said sharply.

  And suddenly, like a ray of sunshine, Emory’s voice was back. “Mmmm,” he said.

  “I know you’re getting sleepy,” Charlie said, “but I need you to stay with me here.”

  “Here?” Emory asked thickly. “Where?”

  “Where you are,” Charlie said. “Just stay right where you are, but don’t hang up. I’m there with you, Emory. Do you understand? I’m not going to leave you. You and me, we’re waiting together. Now, tell me which side of the duplex you live on.”

  Silence. Then Emory said something that might have been “No.”

  “Emory,” Charlie said. “Stay with me.” Then, more sharply, “Stay with me!”

  But Emory said nothing more.

 
; It took the EMTs eleven minutes to get to Emory’s house. They were the longest eleven minutes of Charlie’s life, of anybody’s life. They had to be.

  She kept the receiver pressed to her ear. She still had the sense that her voice was out there, pushing desperately at a blocked connection. It felt like some vital part of herself had poured down the line towards Emory, and now the Charlie sitting at the desk was nebulous, pixelated, slowly dissolving. She was a shadow girl, a phantom. Only Barbara’s strong, warm hand on her shoulder kept her anchored in her chair until the unstable feeling faded and Charlie slowly grew whole again.

  Toward the end of lunch, Charlie finds an inch-long bone in her salmon burger. Substandard cooking preparation or murder plot? Really, it’s impossible to say. Charlie removes the bone from her mouth with two fingers and sets it on the edge of her plate—the edge facing Barbara.

  Forrest knocks over his iced-tea glass, making an amber puddle on the table. He tries to mop it up with his napkin but that just causes a stream of liquid to run between the leaves of the table and spatter on the floor.

  “Stop it,” Barbara snaps. “You’re dribbling all over!”

  That’s what she said, Charlie thinks. (And according to Forrest that is exactly what she said, or at least the kind of thing she used to say.) She decides this would be a good time to go back outside. Better physical suffering than emotional torture. “I’ll get back to packing,” she says, pushing back her chair.

  She walks back to the coat closet where she shrugs into the down parka and pulls on her hat and the deerskin gloves. She picks up a box and opens the back door.

  Outside, the cold bites through the parka like an actual animal, teeth tearing at her vitals. Charlie gasps and steels herself to keep moving, squinting against the afternoon sunshine as it bounces off the U-Haul van in sharp, dazzling points. The whole world is bright and bleached, reminding her suddenly of how G Street looked on the morning Emory died.

  Charlie’s memory of that morning is patchy. She remembers an EMT picking up the phone and telling her how sorry he was. She remembers Barbara crying softly into a paper towel from the roll on top of the microwave. She remembers leaving the call center and how the world—even G Street, with its chain-link fences and broken sidewalks and garish storefronts—felt washed clean of color. She remembers stopping to buy a jelly doughnut on her way to the Metro, how sweet it tasted, how the sweetness lasted much longer than the doughnut; all day, in fact.

  Charlie tucks her chin down from the wind. Her shoulders ache from being tensed against the cold. She will never be warm again, never. She is sure of that.

  Zap. Zap. Zap-zap. After an hour, the pile of boxes is noticeably smaller and then suddenly it is almost gone. Only five remain, plus whatever Forrest and Barbara are packing now.

  She picks up one of the last cartons and walks through the house to the dining room. Barbara and Forrest are bubble-wrapping a series of cups and saucers. Charlie, pausing in the doorway, sees that the little gold-embossed footed teacups are all the same soft lemony color but each is decorated with a different floral pattern. Even the faint winter sunlight filtering through the window makes the porcelain glow.

  Barbara sees her looking and runs her finger around the rim of a cup with a pansy design. “This was the cup you gave to me on our first wedding anniversary,” she says to Forrest.

  He squints at it. “Could be.”

  “I didn’t know then that each anniversary has a flower,” Barbara says to Charlie. “But Forrest did, and every year, he gave me a different antique cup and saucer with that year’s flower.” She touched each one lightly with a finger as she said, “Cosmos, fuchsia, geranium …”

  Charlie looks at Forrest in mild amazement. She cannot reconcile the man she knows to a sentimental buyer of teacups. But, then, Charlie would hate being given even a single such teacup. She wonders how much of your personality depends on whom you’re married to.

  Barbara is still identifying the cups: “… daffodil, morning glory, peony. Peony’s the last one, of course, because then we got divorced. I’d always thought by this point I would have thirty-five teacups. Sometimes I wondered where I would put them all, but I was sure we would keep going. I was sure we’d get to nasturtium or even rose on our fiftieth.” Her eyes are not visible behind the dark glasses, but her mouth has taken on a pouty look. She turns her head toward Forrest and says drily, “I guess that wasn’t your plan, though.”

  “At least you’re not bitter about it,” Forrest says cheerfully, and suddenly Charlie’s love for him is like a ripe melon in her hands, that sweet, that full.

  Charlie smiles at him. “Almost finished,” she says. “I’ll be back for that box in ten minutes.”

  She carries the last few boxes out in huge double handfuls, daring Fate to make her slip on the porch stairs. She retrieves the boxes of teacups from the dining room, and carries them out of the front door. She slides the last ones into the U-Haul trailer and swings the door shut. The icy feel of the metal sinks right through her glove. It feels as though she and the trailer are going to be cold-forged into some sort of deformed centaur. She stumbles up the back porch steps for the last time and bursts into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  In the closet, she changes back into her suede coat and hangs up the down parka. She walks to the dining room. Barbara and Forrest have put away the packing supplies and Barbara is using a sponge to sweep all the bits of paper and torn bubble wrap into a wastebasket. In a moment, the table is restored to gleaming emptiness, except for Barbara’s water glass.

  “All set?” Charlie says to Forrest, unnecessarily since he is standing there in his coat with his cane in his hand.

  “Just a moment,” Barbara says. She starts rooting around in her purse and, for a long happy moment, Charlie is sure Barbara is going to get out some cash and tip her. How wonderful, finally, for everyone to acknowledge that a transaction has taken place here! But Barbara is only getting another migraine pill. She pops it into her mouth and takes a sip of water.

  For no reason at all, Charlie has a sense of Barbara as a real person, living a real life. Barbara will eat her solitary supper tonight, here, in the dining room, whether Charlie is there to see it or not. Charlie can hear the click and scrape of one set of silverware. It is the loudest sound in the world and it seems to follow them to the door.

  Barbara also follows them to the door and out onto the porch. “Thank you both so much,” she says.

  “Good luck tomorrow,” Forrest says, as he grips the porch railing and navigates the steps.

  “Good night, Forrest,” Barbara calls. “Good night, 561.”

  From the bottom of the steps, Charlie gives Barbara big smile but she doesn’t wave: if she took her hands out of her pockets, Barbara would realize that she is still wearing those nice fur-lined gloves. Who cares if they don’t fit very well? Payback is endless, endless. Karma is not a bitch, Charlie thinks—it’s more like an eternal unwelcome gift exchange.

  She trots along the flagstone path in front of Forrest and opens the passenger door for him, then scurries around to the driver’s side before he gets in. She switches the heat on full-blast and aims all the vents so they are blowing directly on her. She supposes Forrest would like some heat on his side of the car, also, but she is too cold and preoccupied to worry about that too much.

  “Shut the door,” she says impatiently.

  She is thinking that they’re going to have pizza and beer for dinner—Charlie will show Forrest how civilized people live. (She has forgotten momentarily that she and Forrest are married, that they already agree on pizza and beer, and the importance of democracy and art and education and heated floor tiles and all that.)

  Barbara is no longer on the porch. She’s gone inside, because guess what? It’s fucking freezing out here. Forrest shuts his door and puts on his seatbelt. Glancing over, Charlie sees that he’s gazing at the house, his eyebrows drawn together. Until this moment, Charlie has not realized that this day migh
t be sad for Forrest, in some way.

  She doesn’t want to pull away from the curb, tires screeching happily, while Forrest is having some sort of moment. So they sit there, the engine idling.

  “Well, that’s done,” Forrest says at last.

  Charlie is so startled that that she accidentally presses the gas pedal without putting the car in gear and the engine gives a little upset roar—it sounds like a giant has stepped on his pet cat’s tail. She had not realized until now that they are, actually, done—or Charlie is, anyway.

  She can feel Forrest looking at her, but she just sits there with the keys swinging in the ignition. It has never occurred to Charlie before but of course she knows—everyone knows—that the top three most stressful life events are death, divorce, and relocation. As of today, she and Barbara have been through one of each together, in a way. Not as friends, not as family, and certainly not by choice, but together. And now it’s over. She and Barbara don’t have to do anything else together because there isn’t anything else for them to do.

  Acknowledgements

  My most heartfelt thanks to Felicity Rubinstein, Kim Witherspoon, and Helen Garnons-Williams. And as always, to Ian.

  Read on for a preview of Standard Deviation…

  chapter | One

  It had begun to seem to Graham, in this, the twelfth year of his second marriage, that he and his wife lived in parallel universes. And worse, it seemed his universe was lonely and arid, and hers was densely populated with armies of friends and acquaintances and other people he did not know.

  Here they were grocery shopping in Fairway on a Saturday morning, a normal married thing to do together—although, Graham could not help noticing, they were not doing it together. His wife, Audra, spent almost the whole time talking to people she knew—it was like accompanying a visiting dignitary of some sort, or maybe a presidential hopeful—while he did the normal shopping.