Hey, Joe

by Ben Neihart

  Many of the foundations played games with the hospital, matching it against rivals while having no intention of making a grant. The word among players at the monthly lunch of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives, New Orleans branch, was that certain foundations—the Whitsunday Trust, Discon Foundation, and Fontenot Family Charities, for instance—hadn't made any new gifts in at least four years, even though their boards still met regularly and their tax returns showed otherwise. And some foundations—the Kina French Trust, the Myrtha Murphy Shaw Foundation, the Bronte Fund—were tied up in lawsuits. You'd read about the misdeeds in the newspaper and get a raw sickness in your gut, but still you had to kiss the foundation's ass, just in case. Sherry's hospital had current proposals "under consideration" at every trust in town, regardless of their legal status. And that's my job, she always said to herself. Used to be a nurse and then I made myself into something else entirely.

  She pushed the proposals to the side of the bed and threw her head back on the stack of pillows and turned on her side. The pillows smelled like peppermint, the lingering charm of one of Joe's goofy all-natural laundry detergents.

  Joe, come on, you promised.

  She wouldn't be able to go to sleep until he was home. Never had been able to. He had to be shut inside his bedroom. The front and back doors had to be bolt locked. Only then could she doze off—and even then with her door open so she could listen for intruders. She knew where every shadow fell in the dark house at three a.m., and again at six. She recognized the noise of creaking aluminum siding and branches tapping the windows. The only times she couldn't hear the sounds of her house were when the central air-conditioning pump first roared to life in its spot outside her window; after a few minutes, the pump settled into a gentler hum.

  With just herself and Joe in the house, there was a different kind of anticipation before she went to sleep. She had only one person to expect home, and in a few years he'd be gone. No more husband, no more son— Sherry, Sherry, what will you do then?

  Lately, since Andy's death, she'd been thinking about Florida and her past there and how nice it might be to move back.

  They'd been some of the best days of her life, when she was a nurse and Andy was an orderly and they both worked the seven-to-three-thirty shift. Routines, gentle voices, windows open to let in the predawn breeze from the nearby ocean. It had been Sherry's job to make sure that Joe was dressed by five fifty-five. Andy, out in the kitchen, fixed a portable breakfast: banana bread and orange sections and a thermos of coffee and a plastic squirt bottle of apple juice. She'd sneak up behind him, put her cheek against his skinny, suntanned back, pat his butt through washed-out boxers. They ate in the car, still waking up, listening to the radio news. The sun rose from the same pocket of the sky that was blue-black and green like a reflection of the ocean. The old Corvair, gold, with just the lap seat belts, shifted cleanly as it sped across the grated sections of Dania's low-arch drawbridges.

  When Andy first got sick, their family doctor couldn't make a diagnosis, so Sherry had to take him from specialist to specialist. She gathered and carried records from hospital to hospital, kept track of his medications, read up on new advances in trade journals whose advertisements for equipment, drugs, and software left her breathless. Right before he died, propped up in bed watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean, he gripped her hand tight and said, "When I married you, I meant for you to have everything.'' His skin was translucent, his eyes sunken in their hollows; he weighed 120 pounds. Sherry hummed the gentlest songs she knew, songs by the Eagles and Linda Rondstadt, as she waited for him to die.

  On a pillow beside Sherry's head, the phone rang. Half dazed by reverie, she unfolded it and answered, "Joe, no bullshit, where are you?"

  "Hello," a woman said brightly. "I apologize for calling so late, but I have an urgent message for Sherry Keith of the Tulane University Medical Center."

  She pushed herself upright in bed. "This is Sherry Keith."

  "Oh, good. Hi, Sherry. It's terrible of me to call this late, and I apologize. I'm calling on behalf of the board of directors of the Shaw Foundation."

  "Can we talk about this after the weekend?" Sherry said coldly. "I don't take business calls at this time of night."

  "I realize that, and please let me apologize again. I wouldn't call if it weren't urgent."

  "Please don't apologize again," she said wearily. "What can I do for you?"

  "We've talked before, haven't we?"

  "You haven't introduced yourself."

  "Oh, I haven't?"

  "No."

  "My name is Rae Schipke. I'm the executive director at Shaw."

  "Ms. Schipke, don't you have some more pressing concerns at the moment? I've been reading about your situation in the paper."

  "I have good news for you."

  "A grant?'' Sherry said before she could stop herself, her voice suddenly and stupidly high pitched. Her face grew hot. A grant? Put a nice exclamation point on a shitty, shitty summer. My totals are low this quarter. "A grant would be extraordinary news."

  "I wouldn't ever call this late," Rae said in a hushed, confidential voice, "but I wanted to tell... you ... first. I was sure you'd want to know ..."

  "What? What would I want to know, Ms. Schipke?"

  "Please call me Rae."

  "Rae, it's very late."

  "The Shaw Foundation will fund your waiting-room pavilion. We will make two five-million-dollar payments. We liked the plans you submitted, as well as the revised mission statement. The board asks that you name the pavilion for Mrs. Shaw."

  Sherry was out of bed, dancing softly around the room. The pavilion was a hard sell, and here she had gone and sold it. She could scarcely believe her ears. "This is tremendous," she said. "Thank you on behalf of the chancellor and on my behalf, too. I don't even know where to begin. This is such a boost to our campaign."

  "We respect the staff at Tulane; we all get our doctoring there; wouldn't have it any other way."

  "Let me catch my breath. Hoo! There! I'll be very interested to know what Mrs. Shaw thinks of the finished pavilion. We break ground in a month. I'd like to talk to her before we issue the press release. Do you want us to write the release?"

  "I think Mrs. Shaw would like to do it herself. I'll ask her."

  Sherry made an admiring coo. "What a remarkable woman she is."

  There was a sudden dead space on the line, followed by Schipke's booming voice: "Thought you'd appreciate me contacting you first. The Shaws wanted me to talk directly to Chancellor Trilby, but I know the fund-raising world. You've done all the hard work. Sherry— every bit of legwork, I'd guess. You and I will have to build a meaningful partnership. We'll be working closely. Which is why, I guess, I rather arrogantly took the liberty of interrupting you at this late hour. I've been busy this evening, but as soon as I was free I got into the car and I drove right out here—"

  "You what?" Sherry stopped in place. She reached for the doorknob and leaned into the doorway, listening. "Where are you?"

  "I'm out in the driveway."

  "You're in my driveway."

  "Yes. I'm here with the check for the first installment. I'd like to present it to you before I take off for a vacation I've planned."

  Sherry hesitated a moment—as long as it took for her imagination to create and sign a $5 million check—before saying, "Absolutely. I'm being very ungracious. The chancellor would have my head if he could see me in action."

  "Were you asleep? I do apologize. Sherry."

  "Just one minute, one minute. Let me have one minute."

  "I certainly will. I'm sorry that this is so uncomfortable for you."

  "Hold on, Rae. I'm coming." Sherry loped into the hall, pulling her bedroom door shut after her; she had the work day's panties and bras lying on the floor, and what if Schipke asked to use the bathroom and had to walk past the bedroom to get there and looked in and saw what a pig she was?

  She was halfway down the hall when she heard just the ec
ho of a gruff voice carried on the wind—as if it came from the backyard. She stopped in place. The hallway was dark, and she hesitated before taking another step to reach the light switch. She thought about going back to her bedroom to see if Schipke was still on the phone, see what was that noise.

  What is it?

  Nothing; answer the door. It was five million, blowing in the wind.

  She did feel safer, just knowing that Joe was due home any minute. He was never more than a half hour late. Funny, wasn't it? He turns sixteen and suddenly she felt certain that she could rely on him. She'd do for him, and he'd do for her.

  Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the living room ahead of her: familiar shapes, the packages she needed to put away, the sofa, the clock on a table, slowly clicking.

  She tripped across the floor and flipped on the overhead light; it was a glass wand that hung low from a silver chain—some stupid design that she'd hated the moment it was installed—and gave the room a flat glow.

  She was unlocking the door when she heard a noise that made her scalp tingle: a high-pitched voice, like a small child's. She thought about locking the door again, but her hands didn't listen and she pulled the door open. The screen door—white metal framing a screen that took up half the door—swung shut and latched.

  "Rae?" she called.

  Nothing, no one—not from where she stood. Just the lawn, smooth as ice cream; the rose bushes climbing the split-rail fence; the mailbox; the tall black-and-chrome driveway light; the few illuminated windows of neighboring houses.

  "Hello?" she called in a low voice, unlatching and then propping the screen door open with her shoulder, leaning out into the silent nighttime, the deep black-blue sky spangled with black clouds that poured toward the horizon, as if the earth itself were being pulled out of its place and the sky were coming undone. There was a sharp metal smell in the air. She leaned farther out of the door to see past the trees and shrubs that flanked the front door.

  A red minivan sat in the driveway. "Rae?" Sherry called. There was the sound of wings fluttering: moths above her head, beating against the porch light.

  And then, smiling, floating directly before her, the face of Rae Schipke, and her thin neck, the whole woman, in a red dress of tight, creased leather. Schipke extended her hand. "Fantastic project. Sherry," she said in a buttery voice. "Congratulations! Let me be the first to congratulate you. May I come in? This will just take one minute."

  Sherry had always believed that the most dangerous people were those who wanted "just one minute," and suddenly she had an awful feeling about the woman standing before her. The cold feeling melted from her stomach through her legs and into her feet. "My house is a terrible mess," she said softly. "I'm sorry; I can't invite you in. My son's asleep and I wouldn't want to awaken him."

  "I don't mean to insist," Rae said, and she grabbed hold of the edge of the screen door and started to pull it toward her.

  "Don't you dare!" Sherry pulled hard on the latch, bringing the door toward her. Just as she heard the hard metal click of the latch pin fastening, Rae Schipke's fist punched through the screen. Her hand seized Sherry's and twisted it off the latch.

  Schipke laughed in short, airy bursts and pushed her other hand through the same screen hole, bursting it wider, and took a fistful of Sherry's hair, pulling her screaming face up against the screen, and then out through the hole so that the front of her face—all the way to her ears, which were caught on the piercing spokes of wire—was out in the air. All that Sherry could hear was the thrum thrum of moths beating against the light.

  Schipke pulled the screen door open another few inches, and Sherry fought to pull it back, but the wires dug into her face with every motion. In the alarm-ringing recesses of her brain, she feared decapitation. She cried out and dug her fingertips into the slot where the screen fitted into the door frame. She pulled with a panicked burst of strength and at the same time yanked her head free of the screen. She didn't know she had taken her chain of car and house keys off the table inside the door until she had brought the spiked end of her trunk key into the palm of Schipke's hand.

  She lurched back a step and pushed the wood door shut with her shoulder and thigh. It immediately began to bounce inward.

  "Shit, shit, shit, shit," she said to herself, fumbling her hand along the side of the door, taking hold of the bolt-lock knob. Her thumb pressed on it.

  The door bumped inwards and two fingers wiggled around the side.

  She shoulder-butted against the door and slammed the fingers, and they slithered out of sight, and she thumb-and-index-fingered the bolt lock, then hit it with the palm of her hand.

  And the door thudded inward against her forehead hard enough to knock her to the floor.

  She landed on her back.

  Up, she ordered herself.

  She twisted onto her hands and knees and tried to push up to her feet.

  Up, Sherry, and she rose and stumbled in the dark and, teetering, grabbed hold of the hanging glass light fixture. It came out of the ceiling as she was knocked flying forward into the kitchen. She landed hard on her elbows and chin. Her mouth clamped down on her tongue. The wand light skidded across the floor and shattered against the wall.

  The front door slammed shut, and then footsteps ran toward her; knees pressed into the backs of her legs, and her hands were pulled tight behind her.

  Schipke's voice: "Where's Joe? Don't make me put you on my list."

  "What do you—?"

  "Tell me," Schipke said, "where's your little son?"

  11:30 p.m.

  Seth waited in standstill traffic to get on the highway. His Toyota sat on a road beneath a road; fitting, he thought: a wet road twinkling with broken glass and glamorized with stunted palm trees and abandoned grocery carts. The massive highway supports on either side of him lent a fucked-up aspect to the setting. Was he inside or was he outside? There was a roof, there were walls. But however you called it, you were in a dark-as-shit place. The only illumination came from headlights and the sparkling floats of the passing festival parade. It was the last of the evening.

  Seth was first in line, but his access to the on-ramp was blocked by three police cars a few yards in front of him. Extending from the police barricade all along the parade route as far as he could see were flimsy metal fences that nominally separated the parade from the crowds of revelers ten or fifteen deep. The throngs were everywhere, even pressed up against Seth's newish green sedan. They were looking in at him, just teeth and eyes in the dark.

  Can I withstand their fucking gaze? he asked himself.

  I can.

  But how much longer for this parade? The floats were wood-and-papier-mache representations of sea nymphs and tortoises and plump ruby fish. Girls in bikinis with their skin painted pink clapped in time to the music as they strutted on runways along the edge of the spotlighted float that was on view now. It was some kind of trippy lair—perhaps the home of an eel, Seth thought, an eel with a tired psychedelic interest in home decor. The girls were either eels or eel feed; the latter, he hoped desultorily.

  He wished he had a cigarette and a beer and a sixty-four-ounce frozen daiquiri, one of the hundred-proof brands sold by the storefronts on Bourbon, and a bottle or two of Xanax or Valium, something mellow to grind up and snort. To get the jump on this town, he had to stay cool.

  He looked away from the float, fixed his gaze on the comforting lights of his dash. They were complemented by the spangle of shadows and colors thrown off by the eel lair. If these strobes and flashes didn't stop soon, he thought he might cry.

  The car phone shrilled.

  Then a second time.

  He looked down at it with mild affection and tore it from its cradle. "Yeah?" he said.

  No answer.

  Then: "Oh, hi.''

  "Can you talk, sweetie?"

  "Maybe it's not a good time."

  "They showed you on CNN. Your father and I worry."

  "I don't think it's a good time to
talk."

  "We're ready to talk to you, Seth. We want to sit down with you and work things out."

  "Mom. I want to do that, too. But, Mom, we can't talk right now."

  "Honey, there's music. Are you near a bar?"

  "Mom, I'm going to hang up."

  "Will you call me? What more can we do? We have both looked deep in our hearts. We were never perfect. We never said we were. Why can't you give it another chance?''

  "I'll call you. Mom, I'll call, but it's not gonna be real soon. There's some changes in my life."

  "Why? Let me put your father on."

  "Mom, don't get yourselves upset over me. There's better things to worry about. Good night." He hung up.

  He thought to himself. Yes, yes, I'm ready to haul ass with just a quick stop at my apartment, lah-de-dah, but where in the fuck am I gonna go? Am I gonna take a chance on Mobile? On Dothen? Destin? He had a friend in Why, Arizona, right on the Mexican border. He had some friends in New York and one in Lancaster, Pennsylvania—what was her name, Thelma?

  He was going to miss his New Orleans. He ached sometimes when he left town on business. Late summer here, nothing like it anywhere. The wet tent of final summer nights hung over you, and as much as you longed for relief, part of you was sad that its fierceness had to end.

  The phone rang again. The digital beep hung in the air like a knife-movie scream; you'd heard the same shriek before, but it still fucked with your head. Just as he decided to let the machine pick up, and settled in his seat, a scrawny man pressed his pale, greasy chest against the driver's side window. He writhed against the glass, leaving a milky smear.

  Unperturbed, Seth leaned across the passenger seat and fumbled in the glove compartment for his gun. "Hey, belly dancer," he said through the opening at the top of the window, "pass by." When he pointed the gun through the opening, the man and his belly disappeared.

  The phone stopped ringing.