I glided into the wall and stopped, holding on to it with one hand. I shook my head to get the water out of my ears and heard a voice. “Come over here, sweetie. That nice man doesn’t want to play. He’s busy working.”
I followed the sound and watched as a mother reached for her little boy’s hand, nudging him away from the lifeguard stand. It occurred to me they should have lifeguards for parks, with all those predators walking around. My eyes climbed the ladder and studied the lifeguard. Tanned and young. Cut from granite, those muscles of his. I thought of David, with his summer tan and the glint in his hair, his back to me as the elevator doors closed behind him.
I fought an overwhelming urge to cry, my goggles fogging up from a quick, unexpected flood of tears.
I washed out my goggles and wrestled my mind away from the stifling, persistent grip of self-pity. There was no time to go there. I finished my swim, hopping out of the pool an hour later physically renewed but mentally frustrated. I’d gotten exactly nowhere perusing my memories of the park.
I headed for the locker room, still obsessing over what I might be missing. I got myself reasonably well put together, my hair fluffed and clean for the first time since my hours under the sweaty mortarboard. Graduation seemed like months ago, though it had been only a few days.
I threw my stuff in my truck, swung by my office to pick up a few things, and headed home, glad to see my house in the daylight. The porch light was still on. I flipped it off when I walked in the front door and went to check on the rabbits, throwing my mail on the kitchen table as I walked by. Eeyore and Melissa were bored and lonely, I could tell. I let them out into the backyard and gave them each a few apple slices.
My answering machine light was blinking, as usual, that insistent red light screaming out a strident warning: “Do not approach. You are entering the Obligation Zone. Do not approach.”
I punched the button and zipped through messages from the usual suspects. My father. My department chair. Twice. My father again. He never tells me what he wants. He just baits me into calling him back.
There was nothing from David. Answering machines are secretly programmed to accept only messages from people you don’t want to hear from. Satan and his minions at work again.
I hit the Erase button and smiled at the satisfaction of demands unanswered.
I grabbed a pen and notebook, sat down at my kitchen table, and started to write. Too many details were stacking up in my head. I couldn’t keep track of them all. Nicholas, the man watching the soccer game, the arm that grabbed for Christine, and the hand that burned when he touched her. The man telling Christine he didn’t want her, only Nicholas. The man who knew Nicholas’s name. The white car. The baseball cap. The snake that only Christine saw. The blue van that turned out to be nothing.
After half an hour of scribbling, moving the ideas around on paper like blocks in a Rubik’s Cube, I still couldn’t make sense of any of it. But it was a start. At least I’d dumped it out on the page.
The house smelled musty, so I opened a few windows to let the air in, then propped the back door open with a brick, locking the screen door with the little hook lock. I packed a bag for Liz. Fresh clothes, makeup, toiletries, jammies for her and Christine both, warm socks, a worn quilt, and Christine’s scrap of a stuffed animal—a disintegrating teddy bear she aptly called No-Nose. I zipped it all into a bag, then fixed myself a glass of iced tea. I reached into the pantry for a package of lemon cookies dusted with powdered sugar, then sat down and opened my mail.
I leafed through a few bills and a catalog filled with stiff, conservative clothing I wouldn’t be caught dead in. (It has long been a matter of twisted pride that I haven’t worn plaid since elementary school—and even then, not by choice.) I picked up a letter from my employer. My heart always skips a few beats when I see the little SMU emblem on the corner of an envelope. A letter from your employer is almost never good news.
I ripped open the letter and groaned. My three-year academic review had been scheduled for August. That was only three months away. I’d known it was coming, of course. The letter was a benign formality. But somehow seeing it in print made it seem more menacing. I picked up the phone and dialed my boss.
Helene Levine rarely bothered with pleasantries. “Where have you been? I’ve called you twice.”
“Why, I’m just fine, Helene. Thank you so much for asking. How are you?”
“Oh, hello and all that. Why do we have to go through a silly routine? Answer my question.”
Helene is a rare breed of academic—brilliant mind, impeccable credentials, yet not at all boring. She possesses a searing sense of humor and an astonishing acuity for sizing people up. As an added bonus, she has an atypical knack for cutting through the truckloads of bull hockey that pile up thick on college campuses. She’s impatient, imposing, and impossible to get along with. Everyone’s afraid of her. I adore her.
“I’ve been tied up,” I said.
“Tied up? You want me to tell that to the student who’s trying to get an incomplete off his record before he goes home for the summer? Why don’t you call his parents and tell them you’re tied up?”
“It’s after graduation, Helene. I’m off duty.”
“Well, I realize that. You can still pick up your phone when I call, can’t you? It does ring, right? Or is your phone off duty too?”
“What is wrong with you? You’re in a worse mood than usual.”
“You’re no peach yourself,” she shot back.
I waited.
“I can’t tell you,” she said at last.
“Why?”
“It’s confidential.”
“It’s not about me, is it?”
“No. Well, not exactly about you.”
“Not exactly about me? What is it about, exactly?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Helene?” I tapped the phone loudly. “I can hear you breathing.”
“What?”
“Come on. Cough it up.”
She sighed. “A student came in today and complained about John Mulvaney. She says he’s harassing her.”
A former colleague of mine, John had been arrested the previous January and hauled downtown to Lew Sterrett Justice Center.
The whole thing had been a big, muddy mess, and I’d been in it up to my Thigh Recovery Program. The man was a nut-ball. A sicko, screw-loose fruitcake. Even so, I’d succeeded, I’m happy to say, in blocking him from my mind completely. I’d checked him off my worry list the minute the doors banged shut behind him. As far as I knew, he was still in there, contemplating his navel lint and awaiting trial.
“I thought John Mulvaney was locked up,” I said. “Did he make bail or something?”
“He’s still in jail. Apparently geography isn’t much of a deterrent.”
“Say something that makes some sense to someone other than you, please. Did the student go see him in the poky or something?”
“He has a blog.”
“A blog? They let them have computers in there?”
“That’s what I wanted to know. I spoke with the district attorney’s office. I quote: ‘No inmate in the Texas prison system has direct access to the Internet.’ ”
“Then how …”
“Lots of inmates have blogs, it seems. They send letters to people on the outside, who post the letters on the Internet for them,” she said. “Death-row inmates’ blogs tend to get the most attention.”
“And people read them?”
“Apparently they attract a fair amount of traffic.”
“That’s sick.”
“Someone on the outside is managing the blog for him.”
“Who?”
“The blog says it’s you.”
I felt the room get cold. “You know that’s not true.”
“I know, I know. That’s why I didn’t want to mention it. Why can’t you let anything go?”
“Notice how I’m letting that jab go,” I said pointedly. “What are you going
to do about the blog?”
“There’s nothing I can do. The DA says it’s a First Amendment issue.”
“Even though he’s using my name and directing the content at a particular person? That’s not illegal?”
“This is America, not the Middle East. John Mulvaney has the same right to free speech as any other citizen.”
“It just seems wrong that he can do that.”
“Take it up with your congressman.”
“Or woman.”
“Or woman. Whatever.”
“What did you tell the student?”
“I told her the DA recommended she get a new e-mail address.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. She just sat in my office and cried.”
“I don’t blame her.”
“I gave her your e-mail address.”
“Great.”
“Since you refuse to answer your phone.”
I sighed. “You’re going to be sorry you were mean to me when I tell you what’s been going on.”
I told Helene about Nicholas and about Christine’s asthma attacks. “You’ve got the worst luck,” she said.
“Thanks for pointing that out. Because, you know, I hadn’t really noticed.”
“I’m just saying …”
“I’ll try to get by the office and deal with the incomplete.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“I’ll call the parents and hold them off a little longer.”
“Thanks, Helene. You’re a sport.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Okay, you’re not.”
After we’d said our good-byes and hung up, I realized I’d forgotten to ask her about my review. I couldn’t imagine concentrating on journal articles and teaching evaluations with Peter Terry staring over my shoulder, breathing his foul, cold breath onto my neck. I’d have to try to get the review rescheduled somehow. Or close the gate to the wormhole.
I stared at the phone and pondered Helene’s news. John Mulvaney, of all people. A first-class loser and third-rate human—popping up now, of all times. How much worse could things get?
A lot worse, probably. I should know better than to tempt the universe by tossing out a stupid question like that.
I was determined, however, not to expend one ounce of energy worrying about John Mulvaney. He was surrounded by lots of armed, uniformed men who were paid (salary plus benefits) by the state of Texas to make sure he stayed locked up tight. That was going to have to do for now.
I spent a few minutes resetting my house, cleaning the kitchen and making the bed, folding up the blankets from Christine’s pallet. We’d left in such a hurry, there was still medical packaging on the floor where the medics had been working on her—disarray I would never have tolerated under normal circumstances. It was a graphic sign of the severity of my distress that I’d forgotten about the mess entirely.
I opened the screen door for the rabbits. They hopped back in, and I settled them again in their hutches, with apologies for making them spend so much time alone. They twitched their noses at me and sniffed as though they understood.
11
WHEN I GOT BACK to the hospital, Christine had already graduated from ICU and was back in her room. She was awake and pink-cheeked, drawing with a purple pen that had a big, fuzzy ball on top.
She looked up at me. “Mr. David is nice.”
I looked helplessly at Liz.
“You just missed him,” she said.
I walked over and tucked a strand of brown hair behind Christine’s ear. “Yes, he is. He’s very nice.”
“He said to tell you hi,” Liz said.
I smirked at her. “Lucky me.”
“Why don’t you and Mr. David get married?” Christine said.
I waited for Liz to intervene, but she just crossed her arms and pursed her lips, holding back a smile.
“I don’t think Mr. David wants to marry me.”
“But you’re so pretty!”
“It’s more complicated than that, Punkin.”
Christine thought for a second, her brow furrowing. “Is it your personality?”
Liz burst into laughter.
“Well, yes, it is, I think,” I said.
“Oh.” Her face fell. She thought for a moment, then brightened. “Maybe you should bake him some cookies.”
“I’ll try that, hon. Thanks for the suggestion.” I sat down in my fake-leather chair and caught my first whiff of the sour disinfectant smell.
“I’ve got a great snickerdoodle recipe,” Liz said to me.
“Mommy makes the yummiest snickerdoodles. They have cimmony on them.”
“Cinnamon, Punkin.”
“Cimanon.”
“It’s worth a shot.” I stood and looked out the window. “The truth is, I’m better single than I am paired up. It suits my natural inclination toward self-absorption.”
“What’s self-distortion?” Christine asked.
I smiled. “Self-absorption.”
“They’re sort of the same thing,” Liz said to me.
“It’s when you think you’re more important than you really are,” I said.
“Like Paris Hilton?”
I laughed. It felt good to laugh. “How do you know about Paris Hilton?”
“I saw her in the grocery store.”
“Magazines at the checkout stand,” Liz said. “Try explaining Paris Hilton to a six-year-old sometime.”
I unzipped the bag I’d brought. Christine squealed at the sight of No-Nose and immediately settled him in beside her on the bed. Liz excused herself and hauled the bag into the bathroom with her. After a few minutes, we heard the shower running.
“What are you writing, Punkin?” I asked.
“I’m practicing my letters. S’s are hard.”
I walked over to the bed and looked at the paper. “Hmm. You make them backwards sometimes, huh?”
She shrugged. “I can’t ever remember which way they go.”
“Want to know a trick?”
She nodded.
“Well, if you think of the s as a snake, its head is at the top, and it’s always pointed at the next letter. Like it wants to eat it up.” I drew one for her, putting a little face on the top end of the letter, its mouth open and waiting. “See?”
“Hey! That’s easy-peasy.”
I sneezed and grabbed a Kleenex. “Easy-peasy-I-have-to-sneezy!”
She practiced a few, then frowned. “What if there’s no letter for the snake to eat?”
“Snakes are always looking for something to eat.”
“How do you spell snake?”
I spelled it for her and watched her carefully draw the letters. She picked up a red crayon and began drawing a snake.
“Can you draw the snake you saw on the man in the park?”
“I don’t know how to draw that one.”
“Why not?”
“I like to make the long ones.” She drew a long, squiggly loop and put a face on it.
“That one wasn’t long?”
“Um, I don’t really know.” She colored in the outline she had drawn.
“Why don’t you know, sweetie?”
“All I could see was its face.”
“Then how did you know it was a snake?”
“It looked real snaky.”
“Where was it? On his arm? Like a tattoo?”
“On his head,” she said matter-of-factly.
“His head? Coiled around on top?”
“No. Just stuck there.”
I tried to get a picture. Did the man have a snake tattooed on his forehead? Surely someone like that would call enough attention to himself to have been noticed by someone.
Liz emerged, a little cloud of steam puffing from the bathroom as she stepped into the air conditioning. She wore the clothes I had brought, and her hair hung wet to her shoulders.
“I guess I forgot the blow-dryer,” I said.
“I don’t care,” she said
. “It’s such a relief to be clean. Christine, you ready for a shower?”
Christine nodded, and Liz called the nurse to help her untangle tubes and unplug the breathing monitor. The nurse took Christine into the bathroom to bathe her while Liz and I sat together and looked out the window at the setting sun.
“Did the doctor come?” I asked.
“Finally. At three o’clock this afternoon.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. Just ordered a bunch of tests.”
“What’s she having done?”
“I can’t even remember. It’s a long list.”
“Does Christine know?”
“I haven’t told her yet.”
Liz picked up No-Nose and smelled him, closing her eyes. I saw a tear push past her lashes and fall silently to her cheek.
“You okay, Liz?”
She shook her head, opened her eyes, and hugged No-Nose. “I’m fine. I’m as fine as I can be under the circumstances.”
“Any word from Guatemala?”
“Not directly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Christine woke up this morning talking about Andy and the boys. She said they were eating tortillas and bananas and playing soccer.” She smiled. “Earl told her.”
“Earl’s reliable.” I grinned.
“He is that. The weather’s probably cleared. I’m sure I’ll hear something shortly.”
“Let’s hope for good news.”
“I can’t stand to think otherwise.”
“Hey, did Christine say anything else to you about the snake she saw?”
“No, just that the man had a snake.”
“She told me just now it was on his head.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was hoping you’d know.”
“I can’t get a picture of that at all.”
“All I can conjure up is something coiled on his head—maybe a turban or something.”
“I think she knows what a turban is.”
“How would she know that?”
My Soul to Keep Page 9
