I stood there, gaping at her.
Her smile faded a little bit. "Are you sure you're all right, Mr. Parker?"
"Yes," I said. "I guess I just thought--"
Her smile came back. It was sympathetic this time. "Lots of people think that," she said. "It's understandable. You get a call out of the blue, you rush to get here . . . it's understandable to think the worst. But Muriel wouldn't let you up on her floor if your mother wasn't fine. Trust me on that."
"Thanks," I said. "Thank you so much."
As I started to turn away, she said: "Mr. Parker? If you came from the University of Maine up north, may I ask why you're wearing that button? Thrill Village is in New Hampshire, isn't it?"
I looked down at the front of my shirt and saw the button pinned to the breast pocket: I RODE THE BULLET AT THRILL VILLAGE, LACONIA. I remembered thinking he intended to rip my heart out. Now I understood: he had pinned his button on my shirt just before pushing me into the night. It was his way of marking me, of making our encounter impossible not to believe. The cuts on the backs of my hands said so; the button on my shirt said so, too. He had asked me to choose and I had chosen.
So how could my mother still be alive?
"This?" I touched it with the ball of my thumb, even polished it a little. "It's my good-luck charm." The lie was so horrible that it had a kind of splendor. "I got it when I was there with my mother, a long time ago. She took me on the Bullet."
Yvonne the Information Lady smiled as if this were the sweetest thing she had ever heard. "Give her a nice hug and kiss," she said. "Seeing you will send her off to sleep better than any of the pills the doctors have." She pointed. "The elevators are over there, around the corner."
With visiting hours over, I was the only one waiting for a car. There was a litter-basket off to the left, by the door to the newsstand, which was closed and dark. I tore the button off my shirt and threw it in the basket. Then I rubbed my hand on my pants. I was still rubbing it when one of the elevator doors opened. I got in and pushed for four. The car began to rise. Above the floor-buttons was a poster announcing a blood drive for the following week. As I read it, an idea came to me . . . except it wasn't so much an idea as a certainty. My mother was dying now, at this very second, while I rode up to her floor in this slow industrial elevator. I had made the choice; it therefore fell to me to find her. It made perfect sense.
*
The elevator door opened on another poster. This one showed a cartoon finger pressed to big red cartoon lips. Beneath it was a line reading OUR PATIENTS APPRECIATE YOUR QUIET! Beyond the elevator lobby was a corridor going right and left. The odd-numbered rooms were to the left. I walked down that way, my sneakers seeming to gain weight with every step. I slowed in the four-seventies, then stopped entirely between 481 and 483. I couldn't do this. Sweat as cold and sticky as half-frozen syrup crept out of my hair in little trickles. My stomach was knotted up like a fist inside a slick glove. No, I couldn't do it. Best to turn around and skedaddle like the cowardly chickenshit I was. I'd hitchhike out to Harlow and call Mrs. McCurdy in the morning. Things would be easier to face in the morning.
I started to turn, and then a nurse poked her head out of the room two doors up . . . my mother's room. "Mr. Parker?" she asked in a low voice.
For a wild moment I almost denied it. Then I nodded.
"Come in. Hurry. She's going."
They were the words I'd expected, but they still sent a cramp of terror through me and buckled my knees.
The nurse saw this and came hurrying toward me, her skirt rustling, her face alarmed. The little gold pin on her breast read ANNE CORRIGAN. "No, no, I just meant the sedative . . . she's going to sleep. Oh my God, I'm so stupid. She's fine, Mr. Parker, I gave her her Ambien and she's going to sleep, that's all I meant. You aren't going to faint, are you?" She took my arm.
"No," I said, not knowing if I was going to faint or not. The world was swooping and there was a buzzing in my ears. I thought of how the road had leaped toward the car, a black-and-white movie road in all that silver moonlight. Did you ride the Bullet? Man, I rode that fucker four times.
Anne Corrigan led me into the room and I saw my mother. She had always been a big woman, and the hospital bed was small and narrow, but she still looked almost lost in it. Her hair, now more gray than black, was spilled across the pillow. Her hands lay on top of the sheet like a child's hands, or even a doll's. There was no frozen stroke-sneer such as the one I'd imagined on her face, but her complexion was yellow. Her eyes were closed, but when the nurse beside me murmured her name, they opened. They were a deep and iridescent blue, the youngest part of her, and perfectly alive. For a moment they looked nowhere, and then they found me. She smiled and tried to hold out her arms. One of them came up. The other trembled, rose a little bit, then fell back. "Al," she whispered.
I went to her, starting to cry. There was a chair by the wall, but I didn't bother with it. I knelt on the floor and put my arms around her. She smelled warm and clean. I kissed her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. She raised her good hand and patted her fingers under one of my eyes.
"Don't cry," she whispered. "No need of that."
"I came as soon as I heard," I said. "Betsy McCurdy called."
"Told her . . . weekend," she said. "Said the weekend would be fine."
"Yeah, and to hell with that," I said, and hugged her.
"Car . . . fixed?"
"No," I said. "I hitchhiked."
"Oh gorry," she said. Each word was clearly an effort for her, but they weren't slurred, and I sensed no bewilderment or disorientation. She knew who she was, who I was, where we were, why we were here. The only sign of anything wrong was her weak left arm. I felt an enormous sense of relief. It had all been a cruel practical joke on Staub's part . . . or perhaps there had been no Staub, perhaps it had all been a dream after all, corny as that might be. Now that I was here, kneeling by her bed with my arms around her, smelling a faint remnant of her Lanvin perfume, the dream idea seemed a lot more plausible.
"Al? There's blood on your collar." Her eyes rolled closed, then came slowly open again. I imagined her lids must feel as heavy to her as my sneakers had to me, out in the hall.
"I bumped my head, Ma, it's nothing."
"Good. Have to . . . take care of yourself." The lids came down again; rose even more slowly.
"Mr. Parker, I think we'd better let her sleep now," the nurse said from behind me. "She's had an extremely difficult day."
"I know." I kissed her on the corner of the mouth again. "I'm going, Ma, but I'll be back tomorrow."
"Don't . . . hitchhike . . . dangerous."
"I won't. I'll catch a ride in with Mrs. McCurdy. You get some sleep."
"Sleep . . . all I do," she said. "I was at work, unloading the dishwasher. I came over all headachy. Fell down. Woke up . . . here." She looked up at me. "Was a stroke. Doctor says . . . not too bad."
"You're fine," I said. I got up, then took her hand. The skin was fine, as smooth as watered silk. An old person's hand.
"I dreamed we were at that amusement park in New Hampshire," she said.
I looked down at her, feeling my skin go cold all over. "Did you?"
"Ayuh. Waiting in line for the one that goes . . . way up high. Do you remember that one?"
"The Bullet," I said. "I remember it, Ma."
"You were afraid and I shouted. Shouted at you."
"No, Ma, you--"
Her hand squeezed down on mine and the corners of her mouth deepened into near-dimples. It was a ghost of her old impatient expression.
"Yes," she said. "Shouted and swatted you. Back . . . of the neck, wasn't it?"
"Probably, yeah," I said, giving up. "That's mostly where you gave it to me."
"Shouldn't have," she said. "It was hot and I was tired, but still . . . shouldn't have. Wanted to tell you I was sorry."
My eyes started leaking again. "It's all right, Ma. That was a long time ago."
"You never g
ot your ride," she whispered.
"I did, though," I said. "In the end I did."
She smiled up at me. She looked small and weak, miles from the angry, sweaty, muscular woman who had yelled at me when we finally got to the head of the line, yelled and then whacked me across the nape of the neck. She must have seen something on someone's face--one of the other people waiting to ride the Bullet--because I remember her saying What are you looking at, beautiful? as she led me away by the hand, me snivelling under the hot summer sun, rubbing the back of my neck . . . only it didn't really hurt, she hadn't swatted me that hard; mostly what I remember was being grateful to get away from that high, twirling construction with the capsules at either end, that revolving scream machine.
"Mr. Parker, it really is time to go," the nurse said.
I raised my mother's hand and kissed the knuckles. "I'll see you tomorrow," I said. "I love you, Ma."
"Love you, too. Alan . . . sorry for all the times I swatted you. That was no way to be."
But it had been; it had been her way to be. I didn't know how to tell her I knew that, accepted it. It was part of our family secret, something whispered along the nerve-endings.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Ma. Okay?"
She didn't answer. Her eyes had rolled shut again, and this time the lids didn't come back up. Her chest rose and fell slowly and regularly. I backed away from the bed, never taking my eyes off her.
In the hall I said to the nurse, "Is she going to be all right? Really all right?"
"No one can say that for sure, Mr. Parker. She's Dr. Nunnally's patient. He's very good. He'll be on the floor tomorrow afternoon and you can ask him--"
"Tell me what you think."
"I think she's going to be fine," the nurse said, leading me back down the hall toward the elevator lobby. "Her vital signs are strong, and all the residual effects suggest a very light stroke." She frowned a little. "She's going to have to make some changes, of course. In her diet . . . her lifestyle . . ."
"Her smoking, you mean."
"Oh yes. That has to go." She said it as if my mother quitting her lifetime habit would be no more difficult than moving a vase from a table in the living room to one in the hall. I pushed the button for the elevators, and the door of the car I'd ridden up in opened at once. Things clearly slowed down a lot at CMMC once visiting hours were over.
"Thanks for everything," I said.
"Not at all. I'm sorry I scared you. What I said was incredibly stupid."
"Not at all," I said, although I agreed with her. "Don't mention it."
I got into the elevator and pushed for the lobby. The nurse raised her hand and twiddled her fingers. I twiddled my own in return, and then the door slid between us. The car started down. I looked at the fingernail marks on the backs of my hands and thought that I was an awful creature, the lowest of the low. Even if it had only been a dream, I was the lowest of the goddam low. Take her, I'd said. She was my mother but I had said it just the same: Take my Ma, don't take me. She had raised me, worked overtime for me, waited in line with me under the hot summer sun in a dusty little New Hampshire amusement park, and in the end I had hardly hesitated. Take her, don't take me. Chickenshit, chickenshit, you fucking chickenshit.
When the elevator door opened I stepped out, took the lid off the litter-basket, and there it was, lying in someone's almost-empty paper coffee cup: I RODE THE BULLET AT THRILL VILLAGE, LACONIA.
I bent, plucked the button out of the cold puddle of coffee it was lying in, wiped it on my jeans, put it in my pocket. Throwing it away had been the wrong idea. It was my button now--good-luck charm or bad-luck charm, it was mine. I left the hospital, giving Yvonne a little wave on my way by. Outside, the moon rode the roof of the sky, flooding the world with its strange and perfectly dreamy light. I had never felt so tired or so dispirited in my whole life. I wished I had the choice to make again. I would have made a different one. Which was funny--if I'd found her dead, as I'd expected to, I think I could have lived with it. After all, wasn't that the way stories like this one were supposed to end?
*
Nobody wants to give a fella a ride in town, the old man with the truss had said, and how true that was. I walked all the way across Lewiston--three dozen blocks of Lisbon Street and nine blocks of Canal Street, past all the bottle clubs with the jukeboxes playing old songs by Foreigner and Led Zeppelin and AC/DC in French--without putting my thumb out a single time. It would have done no good. It was well past eleven before I reached the DeMuth Bridge. Once I was on the Harlow side, the first car I raised my thumb to stopped. Forty minutes later I was fishing the key out from under the red wheelbarrow by the door to the back shed, and ten minutes after that I was in bed. It occurred to me as I dropped off that it was the first time in my life I'd slept in that house all by myself.
*
It was the phone that woke me up at quarter past noon. I thought it would be the hospital, someone from the hospital saying my mother had taken a sudden turn for the worse and had passed away only a few minutes ago, so sorry. But it was only Mrs. McCurdy, wanting to be sure I'd gotten home all right, wanting to know all the details of my visit the night before (she took me through it three times, and by the end of the third recitation I had begun to feel like a criminal being interrogated on a murder charge), also wanting to know if I'd like to ride up to the hospital with her that afternoon. I told her that would be great.
When I hung up, I crossed the room to the bedroom door. Here was a full-length mirror. In it was a tall, unshaven young man with a small potbelly, dressed only in baggy undershorts. "You have to get it together, big boy," I told my reflection. "Can't go through the rest of your life thinking that every time the phone rings it's someone calling to tell you your mother's dead."
Not that I would. Time would dull the memory, time always did . . . but it was amazing how real and immediate the night before still seemed. Every edge and corner was sharp and clear. I could still see Staub's good-looking young face beneath his turned-around cap, and the cigarette behind his ear, and the way the smoke had seeped out of the incision on his neck when he inhaled. I could still hear him telling the story of the Cadillac that was selling cheap. Time would blunt the edges and round the corners, but not for awhile. After all, I had the button, it was on the dresser by the bathroom door. The button was my souvenir. Didn't the hero of every ghost-story come away with a souvenir, something that proved it had all really happened?
There was an ancient stereo system in the corner of the room, and I shuffled through my old tapes, hunting for something to listen to while I shaved. I found one marked FOLK MIX and put it in the tape player. I'd made it in high school and could barely remember what was on it. Bob Dylan sang about the lonesome death of Hattie Carroll, Tom Paxton sang about his own ramblin' pal, and then Dave Van Ronk started to sing about the cocaine blues. Halfway through the third verse I paused with my razor by my cheek. Got a headful of whiskey and a bellyful of gin, Dave sang in his rasping voice. Doctor say it kill me but he don't say when. And that was the answer, of course. A guilty conscience had led me to assume that my mother would die immediately, and Staub had never corrected that assumption--how could he, when I had never even asked?--but it clearly wasn't true.
Doctor say it kill me but he don't say when.
What in God's name was I beating myself up about? Didn't my choice amount to no more than the natural order of things? Didn't children usually outlive their parents? The son of a bitch had tried to scare me--to guilt-trip me--but I didn't have to buy what he was selling, did I? Didn't we all ride the Bullet in the end?
You're just trying to let yourself off. Trying to find a way to make it okay. Maybe what you're thinking is true . . . but when he asked you to choose, you chose her. There's no way to think your way around that, buddy--you chose her.
I opened my eyes and looked at my face in the mirror. "I did what I had to," I said. I didn't quite believe it, but in time I supposed I would.
*
Mrs. McCurdy and I went up to see my mother and my mother was a little better. I asked her if she remembered her dream about Thrill Village, in Laconia. She shook her head. "I barely remember you coming in last night," she said. "I was awful sleepy. Does it matter?"
"Nope," I said, and kissed her temple. "Not a bit."
*
My Ma got out of the hospital five days later. She walked with a limp for a little while, but that went away and a month later she was back at work again--only half shifts at first but then full-time, just as if nothing had happened. I returned to school and got a job at Pat's Pizza in downtown Orono. The money wasn't great, but it was enough to get my car fixed. That was good; I'd lost what little taste for hitchhiking I'd ever had.
My mother tried to quit smoking and for a little while she did. Then I came back from school for April vacation a day early, and the kitchen was just as smoky as it had ever been. She looked at me with eyes that were both ashamed and defiant. "I can't," she said. "I'm sorry, Al--I know you want me to and I know I should, but there's such a hole in my life without it. Nothing fills it. The best I can do is wish I'd never started in the first place."
*
Two weeks after I graduated from college, my Ma had another stroke--just a little one. She tried to quit smoking again when the doctor scolded her, then put on fifty pounds and went back to the tobacco. "As a dog returneth to its vomit," the Bible says; I've always liked that one. I got a pretty good job in Portland on my first try--lucky, I guess--and started the work of convincing her to quit her own job. It was a tough sled at first. I might have given up in disgust, but I had a certain memory that kept me digging away at her Yankee defenses.
"You ought to be saving for your own life, not taking care of me," she said. "You'll want to get married someday, Al, and what you spend on me you won't have for that. For your real life."
"You're my real life," I said, and kissed her. "You can like it or lump it, but that's just the way it is."
And finally she threw in the towel.
We had some pretty good years after that--seven of them in all. I didn't live with her, but I visited her almost every day. We played a lot of gin rummy and watched a lot of movies on the video recorder I bought her. Had a bucketload of laughs, as she liked to say. I don't know if I owe those years to George Staub or not, but they were good years. And my memory of the night I met Staub never faded and grew dreamlike, as I always expected it would; every incident, from the old man telling me to wish on the harvest moon to the fingers fumbling at my shirt as Staub passed his button on to me, remained perfectly clear. And there came a day when I could no longer find that button. I knew I'd had it when I'd moved into my little apartment in Falmouth--I kept it in the top drawer of my bedside table, along with a couple of combs, my two sets of cufflinks, and an old political button that said BILL CLINTON, THE SAFE SAX PRESIDENT--but then it came up missing. And when the telephone rang a day or two later, I knew why Mrs. McCurdy was crying. It was the bad news I'd never quite stopped expecting; fun is fun and done is done.