Anne Tyler

by Noah's Compass

  “This room doesn’t have a phone.”

  “Well, she’ll probably call once you’re home. I told her you’d be discharged today. She wants you to get a burglar alarm as soon as possible.”

  He nodded, not bothering to argue, and raised his other foot.

  Then there was a period of limbo while they waited for his paperwork. Barbara took a crossword puzzle from her grocery bag, and Liam lay back on the bed, shoes and all, and stared at the ceiling.

  The few times he’d been hospitalized before, he could hardly wait to leave, he remembered. He’d pressed his call button repeatedly and kept sending whoever was with him out to the nurses’ station to see what the holdup was. But now he was grateful for the delay. At least here, he wasn’t alone. He felt lazy and content, and the sound of Barbara’s pencil whispering across the paper almost put him to sleep.

  Imagine he was a man who lived in the hospital permanently. He’d been born here and he had somehow never left. His meals, his clothes, his activities—all taken care of. No wonder, therefore, he had forgotten how he had arrived! He had been here all along; this was the sum of his world. There was nothing more to remember.

  Eventually, though, a nurse came with his prescriptions and instructions. She perched on the very edge of his bed, giving off a smell of mouthwash, and went over the doctor’s orders line by line. “You can’t be alone for the next two days, and you can’t drive your car for a week,” she said.

  “A week!”

  “Longer than that if you experience the slightest sense of vertigo.”

  “You’re being unreasonable,” Liam told her.

  “And it’s crucial to complete the full course of antibiotics. There is nothing on earth more septic than the bite of another human being.”

  “A what?” he said. “A bite?”

  “The bite on your hand.”

  “I was bitten?”

  A sickish zoom hit the bottom of his stomach, as if an elevator had dropped. Even Barbara looked taken aback.

  “Well, not on purpose, maybe,” the nurse said. “But from the shape of the wound, they think you must have flailed out and made contact with the other guy’s teeth.”

  She gave him a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. “So it is very, very important to take these pills for the full ten days,” she said. “Not nine days, not eight days …”

  Liam lay back and covered his eyes with his good hand. On purpose or not, there was something so … intimate about a stranger’s biting him.

  After that they had the usual endless wait for a wheelchair, and Barbara used the time to go off to the hospital pharmacy and get his prescriptions filled. Liam picked up her crossword puzzle and studied it while she was gone. Famous WWII battlefield and Birthplace of FDR and Palindromic Ms. Gardner—she had known them all, good librarian that she was, and so did Liam, or at least he recognized her answers as correct once he saw them. But Stressful occupation? gave him an itch of anxiety deep inside his skull, the way riddles used to when he was a child. Poet, Barbara had answered, so confidently that the cross of the T flew tip-tilted across the upright. He felt overcome with discouragement, and he dropped the puzzle onto the bed.

  It was nearly eleven a.m.—Barbara long back from the pharmacy and deep in a novel—before an orderly arrived with a wheelchair and they were free to go. Shifting from the bed to the wheelchair made Liam realize that he didn’t have his wallet. He missed the pressure of that slight bulge in his rear pocket when he sat. “How did they admit me?” he asked Barbara.

  “What do you mean?” she said. She was trotting down the hall behind him, keeping pace with the orderly.

  “I mean, without my insurance card and ID.”

  “Oh, Xanthe gave them the information once she got here. I have your insurance card now in my purse; don’t let me forget to return it.”

  He pictured how it must have been—his flaccid, unaware form heaved onto a stretcher, loaded into an ambulance, trundled through the emergency room. It was the most unsettling sensation. “Depending on the kindness of strangers,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing.”

  But as soon as they were alone—as soon as she’d brought her car around and the orderly had settled him inside it—he told her, “I hate, hate, hate not remembering how this happened.”

  “It’s probably just as well,” she said.

  She was fumbling in her pocketbook, and she sounded distracted. He waited until she’d paid at the parking booth before he spoke again. “It is not just as well,” he said. “I’m missing a piece of my life. I lie down one night; I go to sleep; I wake up in a hospital room. Can you imagine how that feels?”

  “You don’t have any recollection whatsoever? Like, hearing a suspicious noise? Seeing somebody in the doorway?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Maybe it will come back to you when you get into bed tonight.”

  “Ah,” he said. He thought about it. “Yes, that makes sense.”

  “You know how sometimes you dream about someone, and you forget you dreamed at all but then you happen to see that person and this sort of inkling will flit across your mind …”

  “Yes, it’s possible,” Liam said.

  They stopped for a traffic light, and he suddenly felt impatient to be home. He would lie down on his bed immediately and see if the memory wafted up from his pillow the way his past dreams often did. Probably nothing would come until dark, but it wouldn’t hurt to try earlier.

  “If it were me, though,” Barbara said, “I’d be happier not knowing.”

  “You say that now. I bet you wouldn’t feel that way if it really happened.”

  “And how about your nerves? Do you really think you’ll be able to sleep comfortably in that apartment again?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  She sent him such a long doubtful glance that the car behind them honked; the light had changed to green. “I’d be terrified, myself,” she said as she stepped on the gas.

  “Well, I will lock the patio door from now on. Do you know how you would lock one of those plate-glass doors that slides sideways?”

  “There’s a thingamajig, I believe. We’ll look.”

  This implied that she would be coming in with him, and he was happy to hear it. It wasn’t fear of another break-in he felt so much as distrust of his own capabilities. He had lost his self-confidence. He wasn’t sure anymore that he was fully in charge. Intruders were the least of his worries.

  Barbara parked in the proper lot without his directing her. Obviously she had grown familiar with his apartment. And she had his keys in her purse—his worn calfskin key case with his car key and his door key. She took them out as she was waiting for him to inch forth from the passenger seat. (Standing up too fast made his head go spacey.) “Want an arm?” she asked him, but he said, “I’m all right.” And he was, once he’d waited for the amoebas to clear from his vision.

  The pine needles gave off a nice toasty scent in the sunshine, but the foyer smelled as cold and basement-like as ever. Barbara unlocked his front door and then stood back to let him go first. “Now, the girls and I did clean up a little,” she said.

  “Did it need it?”

  “Well, somewhat.”

  He wasn’t sure what she meant when he first entered, because the living room looked just the way he’d left it: more or less in order if you didn’t count the few unpacked cartons lined up along one wall. He moved down the hall past the den, Barbara close on his heels, and saw nothing different there, either. But when he reached the bedroom, he found a runner of brown wrapping paper on the carpet leading toward the bed. And the bed was fitted with linens that he had never seen before—an anemic light-blue blanket, slightly pilled, and sheets sprinkled with flowers. He had avoided patterned sheets ever since a childhood fever in which the polka dots on his sheets had swarmed like insects.

  “We rented one of those carpet shampooers from the supermarket,” Barbara said. “But the carpe
t’s not completely dry yet; you’ll have to walk on the paper a while. And your sheets and blanket were, well, I’m sorry; we put them in the trash. I didn’t know where you kept your extras.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

  He stood there in a daze, looking slowly from bed to window to closet. Everything seemed benign and ordinary and somehow not quite his own. But maybe that was because it wasn’t quite his own; he had so recently moved in.

  “Was anything taken?” he asked.

  “We don’t think so, but you’re the only one who’ll be able to say for sure. The police are going to come back and interview you later. We did see that the drawer was yanked out in that table between the armchairs, and there wasn’t anything in it but we didn’t know if that meant something was missing or you just hadn’t filled it yet.”

  “No, it was empty,” he said.

  He walked into the room, his shoes scuffing across the brown paper, and sat on the edge of the bed and continued gazing around him. Barbara watched from the doorway. “Are you all right?” she asked him.

  “Yes, fine.”

  “Really the police made more mess than the burglar, I think. And the ambulance people.”

  “Well, it was nice of you to clean up,” he said. His lips moved woodenly, as if they too were not quite his own.

  “Louise was the one who rented the carpet shampooer; Louise and Dougall. You might want to offer to pay them back; you know they’re not rolling in money.”

  “Yes, certainly,” Liam said.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Liam?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d be happy to get you something before I go.”

  She was going?

  “A cup of coffee, or tea,” she said. “Or maybe a bowl of soup.”

  “No, thanks,” he said. The thought of food made him want to gag.

  “Okay, then. I’ll put your insurance card here on the bureau. Don’t forget to take your pills.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  She hesitated. Then she said, “Well, so, Kitty should be here around six. And meanwhile you have my number in case anything goes wrong.”

  “Thank you, Barbara.”

  She left.

  He sat motionless until he heard the front door shut, and then he lifted his feet onto the bed and lay back. His pillowcase smelled of some unfamiliar detergent. And the pillow inside was unfamiliar as well—filled with feathers or goose down, something that sank in and stayed there.

  He knew that he should be thankful to Barbara for even this much. It wasn’t as if she were responsible for him any longer.

  But hadn’t she promised to check the lock on the patio door?

  Outside his window he saw pine boughs, almost black even in daylight, and a sky as blue as bottle glass. No stars, of course. Nothing connected with that night.

  He must get up. He had things to do. He would fix himself a nice lunch and force himself to eat it. He would find out which box his linens were in and set them out on the daybed for Kitty. Maybe finish his unpacking, too. Break down the last of the cartons for the recycling bin.

  But he went on lying there, looking not at the window now but at the bedroom door, and summoning up the image of a hulking figure emerging from darkness. Or a small, slight, sneaky figure. Or maybe two figures; why only one?

  Nothing came. His mind was a blank. He had heard that expression a thousand times, mind was a blank, but only now did he understand that a mind really could be as blank and white and textureless as a sheet of unused paper.

  3

  Kitty arrived with a duffel bag almost bigger than she was. She carried it slung over her shoulder, and the weight forced her to stand at a steep slant in the doorway—a tiny person in a halter top and minuscule denim shorts, with chopped-looking, sand-colored hair and a quick, alert little face. “Poppy!” she said. (She was the only daughter who called him that.) “You look like you’ve been run over!”

  Even so, she shucked off her bag and heaved it into his arms. His knees buckled as he received it. “What’s in here, the kitchen sink?” he asked, but secretly, he was pleased. She must be planning to stay a while.

  He stood still for a fleeting kiss on the cheek and then followed her into the living room, where she threw herself into an armchair. “I am so, so tired of old ladies,” she said. “There’s not a patient in that office who’s under ninety, I swear.”

  “Oh, and, ah, is that how you dress for work?” he asked.

  “Huh? No, I changed before I left. You would not believe my uniform. It’s polyester! And pink!”

  He set her bag on the floor beside her. (In his current condition, he couldn’t imagine lugging it all the way to the den.) Then he lowered himself into the other armchair. “What do you think of my apartment?” he asked.

  “Your old one had a fireplace.”

  “I never used it, though.”

  “And your old one didn’t have homicidal maniacs climbing through the window.”

  “Door,” he said. He pressed his hands between his knees. “But one assumes that won’t be an everyday occurrence.”

  Kitty didn’t look convinced. “Anyway,” she said. “Let’s see: what am I supposed to ask. Do you know what year this is? Can you tell me your last name?”

  “Yes, yes …”

  “And you don’t feel dizzy or sleepy?”

  “Certainly not,” he said.

  In fact, he had slept for most of the afternoon, waking only for check-up calls from Louise, Louise again, and his sister. He had been troubled by strange, vivid dreams and some sort of olfactory hallucination—a smell of vinegar—but he had answered each of the calls in his brightest voice. “Yes, fine, thanks! Thank you for calling!” Louise had seemed reassured, but his sister, who knew him better, was harder to deceive. “Are you positive you’re all right?” she had asked. “Do you think I ought to come over?”

  “That would be a waste of your time. I’m fine. And Kitty’s due here shortly,” he’d said.

  “Oh. Well, okay.”

  She was glad to be let off the hook, he could tell. (He knew her pretty well, too.) They didn’t actually set eyes on each other more than once or twice a year.

  Kitty was examining the lamp table next to her chair. She pulled out the drawer and peered inside. “What was in here?” she asked Liam. “Any valuables?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “It’s usually got, you know, pens and pencils and memo pads, but I hadn’t unpacked them yet. In fact, as far as I can tell, I’m not missing a single thing. My wallet was still on the bureau, even—the first place you’d think a burglar would look. I guess he just didn’t have time.”

  “Lucky,” Kitty said.

  “Lucky, right. Except …”

  Kitty was bending over now to rummage in the outside pocket of her duffel bag. She drew forth a flat, silvery computer of the type that Liam believed was called a “notebook,” a rather attractive pink iPod, and finally a cell phone no bigger than a fun-size candy bar. (So much equipment, these young people seemed to need!) She flipped the phone open and put it to her ear and said, “Hello?” And then, after a moment, “Well, sorry! I had it on Vibrate. Yes, of course I’m here. Where else would I be? Yes. He’s fine. You want to talk to him?”

  Liam sat forward expectantly, but Kitty said, “Oh. Okay. Bye.” She snapped the phone shut and told Liam, “Mom.”

  “She didn’t want to talk to me?”

  “Nope. That woman is eternally checking up on me. She thinks I might be with Damian.”

  “Ah.”

  “This business about me staying with you? It’s just an excuse. Really she wants to make sure I’m properly chaperoned every everlasting minute, and now that she’s got a boyfriend she’s too busy to do it herself, so she ships me off to you.”

  “Your mom has a boyfriend?” Liam asked.

  “Or something like that.”

  “I didn’t realize.”

&
nbsp; But Kitty was punching phone keys. “Hey,” she said. “What’s up.”

  Liam collected himself with some effort and rose to see about supper.

  The smell of vinegar persisted. It seemed to emanate from his own skin. He asked Kitty over supper (canned asparagus soup and saltines), “Do I smell like vinegar to you?”

  “Huh?”

  “I keep thinking I smell like vinegar.”

  She fixed him with a suspicious stare and said, “Do you know what year this is?”

  “Stop asking me that!”

  “Mom told me to. It’s not my idea.”

  “Half the time I don’t know what year it is anyhow,” he said, “unless I take a minute to think. The years have started flying past so fast that I can’t keep track. You’ll see that for yourself, by and by.”

  But Kitty appeared to have lost interest in the subject. She was crushing saltines into her soup with the back of her spoon. Her fingers were long and flexible, ending in nail-bitten nubbins—lemur fingers, Liam thought. He wasn’t sure she had taken so much as a mouthful of soup yet. When she felt his eyes on her, she looked up. “I’m going to have to sleep in the room he broke into, aren’t I,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “The room where the burglar came in. I saw that door! That’s the one he entered through, isn’t it.”

  “Well, but then it wasn’t locked. Now it is,” Liam said. He had checked the lock himself, earlier. It was a little up-and-down lever arrangement, not complicated at all. “If you like, though,” he said, “I can sleep there.”

  So much for letting his memory come back to him in the dark. But already he had begun to admit that that wasn’t likely to happen.

  “Seems to me you’d be scared too,” Kitty told him. “I would think you’d have the heebie-jeebies forever after! Living in the place where you were attacked.”

  “Now that I have been attacked, though, I somehow feel that means I won’t be attacked again,” he said. “As if a quota has been reached, so to speak. I realize that’s not logical.”