The Fall of Never (10 page)

When Mendes finished, he rubbed his eyes with his fingers and exhaled shakily. Perhaps he was waiting for Josh to contest what he’d just said, or perhaps even react with utter shock or disbelief, but Josh did not. The truth was, Josh didn’t fully understand the gravity of what Mendes had told him. Wasn’t there some sort of delusion that went along with strokes, something Josh’s mom would have called a tumble of loose screws?

Mendes recognized his ignorance. The doctor said, “Josh, people who are paralyzed like that can’t just turn it on and off like a switch. Either they have motor control or they do not. It’s not an option, not like wiggling your damn fingers or choosing the type of tile you want to go on your kitchen floor. For the sake of argument, we’re talking
permanent
here.”

“All right…”

“Josh, my wife is five months pregnant. If it’s a boy—and I have a strong feeling now that it just might be—we’re going to name him Julian, after Marie’s father.”

Josh just looked at the doctor. In some distant part of his brain, he wondered how old Mendes was. It was nearly impossible to tell for sure. Carlos Mendes, with his dark eyes, dark skin, dark hair, dark aura. This man before him—this doctor—looked very, very frightened.

“I guess,” said Josh, “that I don’t need to ask if you’d previously told Nellie about your son’s name?”

The doctor exhaled with a shudder. “I’m not usually a superstitious man,” Mendes said, his voice quieter now, “but there are some things that can get lodged in the heads of even the most rational and cynical human beings. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“How do you explain it?” Josh asked him—then realized it had been Mendes’s intention to bring him here and ask him that very same question. “I’ve only known Nellie Worthridge for a few months,” he said, sounding almost apologetic. “I don’t know how…” But there was nothing he could say.

“Does she have any family that you know of? Any living relatives at all?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“How about close friends?”

“I’m not sure.” Then he remembered: “She told me once that she played bridge with group of women on Wednesday nights.”

“Bridge,” Mendes mused. He produced a third Lucky Strike from the pack in his breast pocket, lit it, and inhaled deeply.

“I’d think a doctor would know how unhealthy those things are,” Josh said, trying for levity.

“Knowing and caring are two different things,” said the doctor.

“True,” said Josh. “Could I bum one from you now?”

Forty minutes later, Josh pulled up a plastic folding chair beside Nellie Worthridge’s hospital bed. The old woman was asleep, or perhaps just resting soundlessly, and did not stir when he entered the room and sat down beside her. He watched her for an exorbitant amount of time, watched the reluctant rise and fall of her frail chest, her withered old hands folded neatly atop the bedclothes. Her left hand, he noticed, appeared somewhat gnarled and tense, painfully frozen. The tips of her fingers looked almost blue.

Startling him, a wan smile crept across the old woman’s face.

“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath. Then, in a whisper: “Nellie?”

“Dear?” she whispered back. Her voice sounded strained and was difficult to hear. The left side of her mouth did not move at all. “Dear?”

“Did I wake you?”

Her smiled only widened. Such a crooked, obscene smile, as if half her face was trying to scowl at the same time. Again, when she spoke, it was like she was sucking on a mouthful of chew. “I was just resting my eyes.” And then she opened them.

Why is it,
he thought then,
that old people’s eyes look so wise? Is it really possible that you can see all the years of knowledge they’ve attained just by looking into their eyes?

“The doctor phoned me,” he told her. “Said you were doing some weird stuff. How you feeling?”

“Could be better.” With some difficulty, she raised her right hand and extended it across her midriff to rest it atop Josh’s own. “Thank you. The nurses told me what happened. Thank you, Josh. Dear.”

“He said you sat up in bed and used your hurt arm.”

“I know.”

“You remember?”

“I remember him
telling
me that’s what happened.”

“But you don’t remember?”

She looked past him and at the window on the far wall. The blinds were pulled, but she stared at it nonetheless. And after two minutes, as if she’d summoned it, it began to rain. Josh heard it begin to patter gently on the glass.

“It’ll turn to snow before dark,” the old woman muttered, more to herself than to him. “Been around long enough to know such things.”

He squeezed her hand lightly. “Some other things too,” he continued. “Something about a baby named Julian?”

“Julian?” she said, and for the briefest moment her eyes shifted away from the window. “Who told you that?”

“Doctor Mendes, the fellow who’s been treating you, Nellie. That name doesn’t sound familiar to you? Julian?”

She rolled the name around on her tongue, and when she finally spat it out, it came out sounding like
Droo-leen.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said, uninterested.

“Did you happen to overhear any of the staff talking about Doctor Mendes’s wife having a baby?”

“No, Joshua, I don’t know what this is about.” She tried to adjust the pillow behind her head. Josh leaned over and did it for her. He was right—it was starched to all hell.

But aren’t you even curious?
And then as if to scold himself:
No, she’s old and she’s been through enough already.

“One last thing,” he added quickly. “The name Kellow—does that mean anything to you?”

This time there was something behind the woman’s old eyes. Recognition? He couldn’t be sure, but there was
something,
some glimmer, there and then gone. Split-second action, as his mother had been fond of saying. The woman had a saying for everything.

“Kellow,” he repeated, hoping to see that spark again. But no, not this time.

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Are you certain?”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, dejected.

“I said it?”

“You said it in your sleep. Mendes heard you. He said he spoke to you about it.”

“Hmmm. What does it mean?” she asked him.

He just shook his head and rolled his shoulders. “I don’t know, Nellie.” He sighed. “Just wanted to pay you a visit, you know? See how my favorite lady is doing.”

“Favorite lady,” the old woman mused, beginning to grin. Then the grin faded, and her eyes again locked with the window across the room. The rain was coming down heavy now and Josh was quite sure that Nellie was right, that it
would
turn to snow before the day was through. “Kelly…” she said, hardly audible.

“Kelly? Is that what you’d been saying? Were you dreaming about Kelly?”

A veil of confusion fell across the old woman’s face. Her wrinkled, pale brow creased together while her eyes became even more distant. She worked at her crooked lower lip with her yellowed upper teeth, as if deep in concentration.

She said, “I remember Kelly telling me something…something about a hurt animal, a boy and a hurt animal…some story, Josh. I don’t…I can’t even remember it all now. I’m sorry. My head hurts.”

“When did she tell you this story?”

“I can’t remember. Maybe back at the apartment. Could I have some water? There’s a pitcher and a glass there behind you.”

“Sure.” He poured her some water and handed it over to her. She took it with her one good hand and, shakily, brought it to her quivering lips. She sipped it like a perfect lady.

“Better,” she sighed when she’d drank all she could.

“Have you told the doctor about those?”

“The headaches?”

“You’ve been having them for a while now, right?”

She turned away from him as much as her uncooperative body would allow. “Off and on, on and off. Nothing unusual in that. I’m an old lady, Joshua, dear.”

He leaned over the bed and adjusted the bedclothes over her shoulders. “Just get some rest, all right? I’ll hop in to check on you before they let you out of this prison, okay?”

“Don’t trouble yourself, dear. It was nice this once.”

“No trouble,” he said truthfully. “I’d like to.”

“Well,” she said, trying to smile again, “in that case, see if you can sneak me in some coffee, will you? What a lousy damned hospital this is, doesn’t even serve coffee.”

Grinning, Josh stood and slid the folding chair back into the corner of the room. “I’ll see what I can do,” he promised.

Chapter Eight

She awoke very late, and still exhausted. Upon opening her eyes, she found herself staring at the underside of the sheer pink canopy and all in one great tidal wave, she remembered where she was:
home.

She showered quickly, dressed, and slipped into the upstairs hallway as silent as a sigh. Passing Becky’s closed bedroom door, she reached out and jiggled the doorknob. Locked.

What the hell is that all about, anyway?

Downstairs, Glenda had prepared her a full course meal: eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, English muffins, cornbread, a variety of peeled fruits, a pitcher of crisp milk beside a pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice. Centered on the table in a beautiful ornate vase was a bouquet of cream-colored peonies. She sat down readily and ate by herself, the house silent and brooding all around her. How much of this place did she remember, exactly? Sure, there were bits and pieces of childhood memories—Halloweens and Christmases, Thanksgivings and even birthdays—but none of those memories seemed to be connected to anything, just free-floating and incorporeal, ghosts at the window. And then there were what could only be called “snippets”—those bodiless images surfacing in her head, of faces hardly remembered, of a certain pair of patent leather shoes with brass buckles, of chasing squirrels and rabbits through the wooded hills behind the house.

And the almost forgotten words to a child’s song:

Little Baby Roundabout,

Someone let the Baby out,

And now, sweet Babe, it’s time for bed,

So close your eyes and rest your head.

“Shit,” she muttered, grinning softly to herself.

“Well,” said a woman’s voice behind her.

Startled, Kelly swung her head around and saw her mother standing in the kitchen doorway. A tall, thin, pointed woman, Marlene Kellow stood with her bony arms at her hips and her face occupied with an unreadable expression. Her nearly lipless mouth was pressed tightly together and her eyes were sharp yet somehow vacant, the way space is vacant. The woman’s barrage of thoughts were practically surface level, nearly there and ripe for Kelly to pluck them out of the air. Mother and daughter—and the lumbering passage of so many years.

“Mom,” she said, and her voice hitched. She quickly pushed herself away from the table and stood.

“Kelly,” her mother said and made a move as if to step closer to her, then perhaps changed her mind at the last second. Instead, Marlene Kellow moved around the kitchen table, a strained smile quickly adopted. “You’re looking well, dear. Are you well?”

“I’m fine, mom.”

“I apologize for not being here when you came in last night.” She sighed, fidgeting with her fingers, twisting her hands. “Your father and I…you know, with Becky and everything…”

“No, it’s all right. It’s good to see you.”

Her mother nodded. “Yes.” And in the silence that followed, they both examined each other. Not like mathematicians to a textbook of equations; rather, like two children meeting for the first time in the sandbox.

Little Baby Roundabout,
Kelly thought, head spinning.
Someone let the Baby out.

“How’s Dad?”

“Occupied,” her mother said. “Gets up early, has his eggs, goes for walks around the compound. He’s crushed, this whole thing with your sister…”

“How is she? Becky?”

“Oh,” said her mother. Kelly had to hand it to her—the woman was doing one hell of a job sporting that smile. “Well, the doctors have been in and out, in and out. A madhouse, really. And the police too. This whole thing has been so trying. On everyone.”

“But she’ll be all right?”

“We’re just waiting for her to wake up now.”

“How come she isn’t at a hospital?” And she almost asked why the girl’s bedroom door was locked half the time, but decided she’d save some tinder for future fires.

“She was,” said her mother, “but we insisted she come home.”

“Why?”

“Why not? There isn’t anything a hospital can do that we can’t pay good doctors good money to do it here, am I right?” She dropped her voice. “Anyway, I wouldn’t want that poor girl waking up in some institutional white room, stinking of antiseptic.”

You didn’t have a problem with that when it was me,
Kelly thought.