Now, standing outside the closed office door, feeling pain pulse in sync with her heartbeat behind her right eye, she listened to the telephone ring a third time, and a fourth. Halfway through the fifth ring there was a click and then her own voice, telling whoever was on the other end that he or she had reached 727-5932. There was no false promise of a callback, not even an invitation to leave a message at the sound of what Amanda called the bleep. Anyway, what would be the point? Who would call here to talk to her? With Scott dead, the motor was out of this place. The one left was really just little Lisey Debusher from Lisbon Falls, now the widow Landon. Little Lisey lived alone in a house far too big for her and wrote grocery lists, not novels.
The pause between the message and the beep was so long that she thought the tape for replies had to be full. Even if it wasn't, the caller would get tired and hang up, all she'd hear through the closed office door would be that most annoying of recorded phone voices, the woman who tells you (scolds you), "If you'd like to make a call . . . please hang up and dial your operator!" She doesn't add smuckhead or shit-for-brains, but Lisey always sensed it as what Scott would have called "a subtext."
Instead she heard a male voice speak three words. There was no reason for them to chill her, but they did. "I'll try again," it said.
There was a click.
Then there was silence.
8
This is a much nicer present, she thinks, but knows it's neither past nor present; it's just a dream. She was lying on the big double bed in the
(our our our our our)
bedroom, under the slowly paddling fan; in spite of the one hundred and thirty milligrams of caffeine in the two Excedrin (expiration date: OCT 07) she took from the dwindling supply of Scott-meds in the bathroom cabinet, she had fallen asleep. If she has any doubt of it, she only has to look at where she is--the third-floor ICU wing of the Nashville Memorial Hospital--and her unique means of travel: she's once more locomoting upon a large piece of cloth with the words PILLSBURY'S BEST FLOUR printed on it. Once more she's delighted to see that the corners of this homely magic carpet, where she sits with her arms regally folded beneath her bosom, are knotted like hankies. She's floating so close to the ceiling that when PILLSBURY'S BEST FLOUR slips beneath one of the slowly paddling overhead fans (in her dream they look just like the one in their bedroom), she has to lie flat to avoid being whacked and cracked by the blades. These varnished wooden oars say shoop, shoop, shoop over and over as they make their slow and somehow stately revolutions. Below her, nurses come and go on squeak-soled shoes. Some are wearing the colorful smocks that will come to dominate the profession, but most of these still wear white dresses, white hose, and those caps that always make Lisey think of stuffed doves. Two doctors--she supposes they must be doctors, although one doesn't look old enough to shave--chat by the drinking fountain. The tile walls are cool green. The heat of the day cannot seem to take hold in here. She supposes there is airconditioning as well as the fans, but she can't hear it.
Not in my dream, of course not, she tells herself, and this seems reasonable. Up ahead is room 319, which is where Scott went to recuperate after they took the bullet out of him. She has no trouble reaching the door, but discovers she's too high to get through once she arrives. And she wants to get in there. She never got around to telling him You can take care of the rest of this mess later, but was that even necessary? Scott Landon did not, after all, fall off a hayrick yesterday. The real question, it seems to her, is what's the correct magic word to make a magic PILLSBURY'S BEST carpet go down?
It comes to her. It's not a word she wants to hear emerging from her own mouth (it's a Blondie word), but needs must when the devil drives--as Dandy also said--and so . . .
"Freesias," Lisey says, and the faded cloth with the knotted corners obediently drops three feet from its hoverpoint below the hospital ceiling. She looks in the open door and sees Scott, now maybe five hours post-op, lying in a narrow but surprisingly pretty bed with a gracefully curved head and foot. Monitors that sound like answering machines queep and bleep. Two bags of something transparent hang on a pole between him and the wall. He appears to be asleep. Across the bed from him, 1988-Lisey sits in a straight-backed chair with her husband's hand folded into one of her own. In 1988-Lisey's other hand is the paperback novel she brought to Tennessee with her--she never expected to get through so much of it. Scott reads people like Borges, Pynchon, Tyler, and Atwood; Lisey reads Maeve Binchy, Colleen McCullough, Jean Auel (although she is growing a bit impatient with Ms. Auel's randy cave people), Joyce Carol Oates, and, just lately, Shirley Conran. What she has in room 319 is Savages, the newest novel by the latter, and Lisey likes it a lot. She has come to the part where the women stranded in the jungle learn to use their bras as slingshots. All that Lycra. Lisey doesn't know if the romance-readers of America are ready for this latest from Ms. Conran, but she herself thinks it's brave and rather beautiful, in its way. Isn't bravery always sort of beautiful?
The last light of day pours through the room's window in a flood of red and gold. It's ominous and lovely. 1988-Lisey is very tired: emotionally, physically, and of being in the South. She thinks if one more person calls her y'all she'll scream. The good part? She doesn't think she's going to be here as long as they do, because . . . well . . . she has reason to know Scott's a fast healer, leave it at that.
Soon she'll go back to the motel and try to rent the same room they had earlier in the day (Scott almost always rents them a hideout, even if the gig is just what he calls "the old in-out"). She has an idea she won't be able to do it--they treat you a lot different when you're with a man, whether he's famous or not--but the place is fairly handy to the hospital as well as to the college, and as long as she gets something there, she doesn't give a smuck. Dr. Sattherwaite, who's in charge of Scott's case, has promised her she can dodge reporters by going out the back tonight and for the next few days. He says Mrs. McKinney in Reception will have a cab waiting back by the cafeteria loading dock "as soon as you give her the high sign." She would have gone already, but Scott has been restless for the last hour. Sattherwaite said he'd be out at least until midnight, but Sattherwaite doesn't know Scott the way she does, and Lisey isn't much surprised when he begins surfacing for brief intervals as sunset approaches. Twice he has recognized her, twice he has asked her what happened, and twice she has told him that a mentally deranged person shot him. The second time he said, "Hi-yo-smuckin-Silver" before closing his eyes again, and that actually made her laugh. Now she wants him to come back one more time so she can tell him she's not going back to Maine, only to the motel, and that she'll see him in the morning.
All this 2006-Lisey knows. Remembers. Intuits. Whatever. From where she sits on her PILLSBURY'S BEST magic carpet, she thinks: He opens his eyes. He looks at me. He says, "I was lost in the dark and you found me. I was hot--so hot--and you gave me ice."
But is that really what he said? Is it really what happened? Or was that later? And if she's hiding things--hiding them from herself--why is she hiding them?
In the bed, in the red light, Scott opens his eyes. Looks at his wife as she reads her book. His breath doesn't scream now, but there's still a windy sound as he pulls air in as deeply as he can and half-whispers, half-croaks her name. 1988-Lisey puts down her book and looks at him.
"Hey, you're awake again," she says. "So here's your pop quiz. Do you remember what happened to you?"
"Shot," he whispers. "Kid. Tube. Back. Hurts."
"You can have something for the pain in a little while," she says. "For now, would you like--"
He squeezes her hand, telling her she can stop. Now he'll tell me he was lost in the dark and I gave him ice, 2006-Lisey thinks.
But what he says to his wife--who earlier that day saved his life by braining a madman with a silver shovel--is only this: "Hot, wasn't it?" His tone casual. No special look; just making conversation. Just passing the time while the red light deepens and the machines queep and bleep, and from her hov
erpoint in the doorway, 2006-Lisey sees the shudder--subtle but there--run through her younger self; sees the first finger of her younger self's left hand lose its place in her paperback copy of Savages.
I'm thinking "Either he doesn't remember or he's pretending not to remember what he said when he was down--about how he could call it if he wanted to, how he could call the long boy if I wanted to be done with him--and what I said back, about how he should shut up and leave it alone . . . that if he just shut the smuck up it would go away. I'm wondering if this is a real case of forgetting--the way he forgot that he'd been shot--or if it's more of our special forgetting, which is more like sweeping the bad shit into a box and then locking it up tight. I'm wondering if it even matters, as long as he remembers how to get better."
As she lay on her bed (and as she rides the magic carpet in the eternal present of her dream), Lisey stirred and tried to cry out to her younger self, tried to yell that it did matter, it did. Don't let him get away with it! she tried to yell. You can't forget forever! But another saying from the past occurred to her, this one from their endless games of Hearts and Whist at Sabbath Day Lake in the summertime, always yelled out when some player wanted to look at discards more than a single trick deep: Leave that alone! You can't unbury the dead!
You can't unbury the dead.
Still, she tries one more time. With all her considerable force of mind and will, 2006-Lisey leans forward on her magic carpet and sends He's faking! SCOTT REMEMBERS EVERYTHING! at her younger self.
And for a wild moment she thinks she's getting through . . . knows she's getting through. 1988-Lisey twitches in her chair and her book actually slides out of her hand and hits the floor with a flat clap. But before that version of herself can look around, Scott Landon stares directly at the woman hovering in the doorway, the version of his wife who will live to be his widow. He purses his lips again, but instead of making the nasty chuffing sound, he blows. It's not much of a puff; how could it be, considering what he's been through? But it's enough to send the PILLSBURY'S BEST magic carpet flying backward, dipping and diving like a milkweed pod in a hurricane. Lisey hangs on for dear life as the hospital walls rock past, but the damned thing tilts and she's falling and
9
Lisey awoke sitting bolt-upright on the bed with sweat drying on her forehead and underneath her arms. It was relatively cool in here, thanks to the overhead fan, but still she was as hot as a . . .
Well, as hot as a suck-oven.
"Whatever that is," she said, and laughed shakily.
The dream was already fading to rags and tatters--the only thing she could recall with any clarity was the otherworldly red light of some setting sun--but she had awakened with a crazy certainty planted in the forefront of her mind, a crazy imperative: she had to find that smucking shovel. That silver spade.
"Why?" she asked the empty room. She picked the clock off the nightstand and held it close to her face, sure it would tell her an hour had gone by, maybe even two. She was astounded to see she had been asleep for exactly twelve minutes. She put the clock back on the nightstand and wiped her hands on the front of her blouse as if she had picked up something dirty and crawling with germs. "Why that thing?"
Never mind. It was Scott's voice, not her own. She rarely heard it with such clarity these days, but oboy, was she ever hearing it now. Loud and clear. That's none of your business. Just find it and put it where . . . well, you know.
Of course she did.
"Where I can strap it on," she murmured, and rubbed her face with her hands, and gave a little laugh.
That's right, babyluv, her dead husband agreed. Whenever it seems appropriate.
III. Lisey and The Silver Spade (Wait for the Wind to Change)
1
Her vivid dream did nothing at all to free Lisey from her memories of Nashville, and from one memory in particular: Gerd Allen Cole turning the gun from the lung-shot, which Scott might be able to survive, to the heart-shot, which he most certainly would not. By then the whole world had slowed down, and what she kept returning to--as the tongue keeps returning to the surface of a badly chipped tooth--was how utterly smooth that movement had been, as if the gun had been mounted on a gimbal.
Lisey vacuumed the parlor, which didn't need vacuuming, then did a wash that didn't half-fill the machine; the laundry basket filled so slowly now that it was just her. Two years and she still couldn't get used to it. Finally she pulled on her old tank suit and did laps in the pool out back: five, then ten, then fifteen, then seventeen and winded. She clung to the lip at the shallow end with her legs trailing out behind her, panting, her dark hair clinging to her cheeks, brow, and neck like a shiny helmet, and still she saw the pale, long-fingered hand swiveling, saw the Ladysmith (it was impossible to think of it as just a gun once you knew its lethal cuntish name) swiveling, saw the little black hole with Scott's death tucked inside it moving left, and the silver shovel was so heavy. It seemed impossible that she could be in time, that she could outrace Cole's insanity.
She kicked her feet slowly, making little splashes. Scott had loved the pool, but actually swam in it only on rare occasions; he had been a book, beer, and inner-tube sort of guy. When he wasn't on the road, that was. Or in his study, writing with the music cranked. Or sitting up in the guest-room rocker in the broken heart of a winter night, bundled to the chin in one of Good Ma Debusher's afghans, two in the morning and his eyes wide-wide-wide as a terrible wind, one all the way down from Yellowknife, boomed outside--that was the other Scott; one went north, one went south, and oh dear, she had loved them both the same, everything the same.
"Stop it," Lisey said fretfully. "I was in time, I was, so let it go. The lung-shot was all that crazy baby ever got." Yet in her mind's eye (where the past is always present), she saw the Ladysmith again start its swivel, and Lisey shoved herself out of the pool in an effort to physically drive the image away. It worked, but Blondie was back again as she stood in the changing room, toweling off after a quick rinsing shower, Gerd Allen Cole was back, is back, saying I got to end all this ding-dong for the freesias, and 1988-Lisey is swinging the silver spade, but this time the smucking air in Lisey-time is too thick, she's going to be just an instant too late, she will see all of the second flame-corsage instead of just a portion, and a black hole will also open on Scott's left lapel as his sportcoat becomes his deathcoat--
"Quit it!" Lisey growled, and slung her towel in the basket. "Give it a rest!"
She marched back to the house nude, with her clothes under her arm--that's what the high board fence all the way around the backyard was for.
2
She was hungry after her swim--famished, actually--and although it was not quite five o'clock, she decided on a big skillet meal. What Darla, second-oldest of the Debusher girls, would have called comfort-food, and what Scott--with great relish--would have called eatin nasty. There was a pound of ground beef in the fridge and, lurking on a back shelf in the pantry, a wonderfully nasty selection: the Cheeseburger Pie version of Hamburger Helper. Lisey threw it together in a skillet with the ground beef. While it was simmering, she mixed herself a pitcher of lime Kool-Aid with double sugar. By five-twenty, the smells from the skillet had filled the kitchen, and all thoughts of Gerd Allen Cole had left her head, at least for the time being. She could think of nothing but food. She had two large helpings of the Hamburger Helper casserole, and two big glasses of Kool-Aid. When the second helping and the second glass were gone (all except for the white dregs of sugar in the bottom of the glass), she burped resoundingly and said: "I wish I had a goddam smucking cigarette."
It was true; she had rarely wanted one so badly. A Salem Light. Scott had been a smoker when they had met at the University of Maine, where he had been both a grad student and what he called The World's Youngest Writer in Residence. She was a part-time student (that didn't last long) and a full-time waitress at Pat's Cafe downtown, slinging pizzas and burgers. She'd picked up the smoking habit from Scott, who'd been strictly a Herber
t Tareyton man. They'd given up the butts together, rallying each other along. That had been in '87, the year before Gerd Allen Cole had resoundingly demonstrated that cigarettes weren't the only problem a person could have with his lungs. In the years since, Lisey went for days without thinking of them, then would fall into horrible pits of craving. Yet in a way, thinking about cigarettes was an improvement. It beat thinking about
(I got to end all this ding-dong for the freesias, says Gerd Allen Cole with perfect fretful clarity and turns his wrist slightly)
Blondie
(smoothly)
and Nashville
(so that the smoking barrel of the Ladysmith points at the left side of Scott's chest)
and smuck, here she went, doing it again.
There was store-bought poundcake for dessert, and Cool Whip--perhaps the apex of eatin nasty--to put on top of it, but Lisey was too full to consider it yet. And she was distressed to find these rotten old memories returning even after she'd taken on a gutful of hot, high-calorie food. She supposed that now she had an idea of what war veterans had to deal with. That had been her only battle, but