Invisible

  “Here we go.” Martin leaned forward and, with his left hand, dropped two wooden tiles onto the Scrabble board. His right hand lay on the armrest. Two red-filled tubes snaked from the crook in his arm to the boxy machine beside him.

  “QIS?” I said. “That’s not a real word.”

  Martin raised his white eyebrows. “Sure it is.” He held a tissue and from time to time dabbed his nose. He wouldn’t let on how much he was grieving, and neither would I. We’d always understood that about each other. Deal, and move on.

  “It’s chee,” he said. “Chinese for energy. And because it’s a noun, I can put it with that S.”

  “You can’t use foreign words.”

  “It’s not foreign. It’s the English word for the Chinese word.”

  “If you say so. I just never thought you’d stoop so low as to cheat.”

  He swept the tiles from the board. “Then I’ll just come up with something else, missy.”

  I took a sip of tepid coffee poured from the nurses’ pot. Two nurses were watching us from their station. I gave a little wave and they instantly got busy. “When did they build this place?”

  “Opened six months ago, and not a moment too soon. The drive to Fargo in January was brutal.”

  His hair was so sparse, I could see right through the pale strands to the pink skin beneath. Age spots mottled his hands. Martin was sixty-six. He looked a hundred. He glanced up from the board and I raised my Styrofoam cup to hide the dismay I feared was written all over my face.

  “So, you own your own demolition company.”

  “We specialize in implosions.”

  “Speak English, Miss No-Foreign-Words.”

  Good old Martin. “We collapse structures down on top of themselves, instead of exploding them outward.”

  “How does a little thing like you do something like that?”

  “Doesn’t take muscle to wire a building.” The muscle came in dealing with the forceful personalities on a demolition site, and that sort of strength had no size limitation.

  “You like it?”

  “I do.” There was a certain magic in the tidiness of it all, a way to restore a natural harmony to the world by clearing out the old to make room for the new. And how do you describe to someone who’s never seen it the way the earth shakes when the building tumbles down, as if it were clapping its hands? “You should come to a shoot sometime. You’d love it.”

  He grunted, and we both knew he never would. “All this time, we thought you were a doctor.”

  I’d never even made it to college. I’d meant to, but it hadn’t seemed important at the time, and now it was too late. But you didn’t need a college degree to do implosions, just a steady hand. I nodded toward the board. “You could use that I.”

  “I see it, I see it.” He fumbled with the tiles, then dropped a small handful on the board. One by one, he pushed them into place. “Quit,” he pronounced. “Twenty-six points. Write that down.”

  “Two more than you would’ve gotten with that made-up word.” Obediently, I jotted down the number. “You’re ahead by fifty-two points.”

  “Yah, but it’s not enough, not if you put that Z on a triple word score.”

  How on earth did he know I was holding the Z? He gave me a satisfied smirk. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d always had a sixth sense about this game. How many times had he known exactly what I had and where I was going to place it, well before I’d even figured it out? “You still driving for Gerkey’s, Martin?” I asked, though it was hard to believe he’d be on the road, making deliveries.

  “Nah. I work security now. It’s not so bad being inside all the time. The place is warm, and it always smells good. Even in the dead of winter when nothing’s blooming, I’m breathing in lavender. Honeysuckle. Pear. I stop right there and suck in a deep lungful of spring.” He cleared his throat. “So how come you’re spending time with an old geezer like me, when you could be getting together with your old friends?”

  “You are my old friend.” Martin had been far more than that. He was the one who’d escorted Julie so proudly down the aisle; he was the one who’d instructed me on the finer points of driving stick shift.

  “Ha.” But he looked pleased. “What do you think about Peyton? First time you’ve ever met her, right? Now, there’s an interesting kid.”

  “Is she?” I asked. It was important to know. I couldn’t figure her out, this composed, dark-eyed creature who stood back and just watched. Peyton was the only family I had left. No cousins, aunts, or uncles, just a father who’d vanished one day, leaving behind a wife and two little daughters. If he’d gone on to start another family with someone else, it didn’t matter. They could never be family to me. There was Frank, of course, but he and I had never really gotten along. We’d only just pretended to, for Julie’s sake. Now that she was gone, there was nothing holding us together. Nothing but Peyton, who visibly cringed whenever I entered the room. I realized I was clenching the pencil, the wood biting into my fingers. I relaxed my grip.

  “You bet. That kid can kick anyone’s butt at Scrabble, including yours truly. You should hear her talk about marine animals. Why, Brian Gerkey hires her to take care of his big, fancy aquarium when he’s out of town. He could bring in someone from Fargo to do it, a specialist, but he’s happy with Peyton. That’s how good she is.”

  Was she content with that arrangement, taking care of someone else’s fish, instead of going out into the world to see them for herself ? There had been no exotic trips in Peyton’s world. That much I knew from the worn rug in my sister’s living room and the chipped dishes in her kitchen cabinets. But surely there had been love.

  “I can’t believe Brian’s taken over the plant,” I said.

  “He’s been voted Businessman of the Year, two years running.” He tugged at the sheet pulled to his waist. I’d been careful not to stare, but I hadn’t been able to avoid seeing the fat mushy-looking vein swelling out of the crook of his scrawny arm. It looked swollen and tender where the two tubes were taped into place, one drawing the blood out, the other putting it back in. It made me cover my own arm protectively with my hand.

  “Yeah? So who was his competition, Mel the Barber?”

  He snorted with laughter. “I’ve missed you, Little Bear.”

  His old nickname for me. I’d missed him, too. But how could I explain that in turning my back on Black Bear, I had to walk away from him, too? “I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t blame you. You had to get out, start your own life.”

  “Excuse me, you two.” The nurse stood over us. Sue Delinski had been in Julie’s high school class. The two of them had been on the basketball team together, Sue playing wing to Julie’s point guard. She’d brought over a blender as a wedding gift, just showed up at the door one day with the wrapped and ribboned package, and I’d realized that Julie had had friendships that ran deeper than I knew. Had Julie been the inspiration for Sue going into nursing?

  “Sorry to interrupt your game,” Sue said, “but it’s time to take your blood pressure, Martin.”

  “No problem,” he mumbled.

  Sue tapped the Start button and the blood pressure cuff around Martin’s arm inflated. “We were all so sorry to hear the news, Dana. Julie was such a dear. How are poor Frank and Peyton holding up?”

  “Hanging in there, I guess.” Frank wasn’t that young man I remembered, the one Julie loved so desperately, the stern, handsome fellow who’d seemed unfailingly solid and capable. Now he walked stiffly and his blond hair had dulled. It was obvious he didn’t want me around. He’d said barely two words to me since I arrived. Grief, yes, but there was something else. Something simmering below the surface. With any luck, I’d be gone before it reared up and identified itself. I didn’t want to hear what Frank thought of me.

  “Such a terrible thing. We all loved Julie. We were praying a transplant would come through in time.” Sue kept her gaze fixed on the glowing numbers on the machine, but her disapproval, oily and i
nevitable, slid toward me. If only you had come through.

  But I hadn’t known. In the end, Julie’s life had spun out without me.

  Sue scribbled on her clipboard. “It’s funny. I’d forgotten how much Julie and you looked alike.”

  My sister lying so still, her porcelain skin drained of color, her hair chopped short. Her lips parted as though she’d been in mid-speech. I’ll be right back, she seemed to say. Wait for me. I’d pressed my cheek against hers, lifted her hand to my lips, but she didn’t even smell like Julie. She was hollow, gone.

  She must have aged since I’d last seen her, but I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t reconcile the sight of her in that hospital bed with the young and vibrant mother I’d left standing years before on the sidewalk.

  A tear plopped onto my lap and I hastily scrubbed my eyes. But neither Sue nor Martin noticed; they had their gazes trained on the blinking numbers of the blood pressure machine. A beep, and the cuff audibly relaxed its grip around Martin’s biceps.

  “Your pressure’s still too high.” Sue frowned as she removed the cuff. “How are you feeling in general?”

  “I got no complaints.”

  Sue shot me a quick glance. You don’t know? I raised my chin defiantly, and she pressed her lips together.

  “You never do.” She sighed and patted Martin’s shoulder. “It doesn’t look like we’re going to reach your dry weight today.”

  “Dr. Gunderson always sets it too high.”

  Julie had lived her whole life in this town. Had she been happy? “When was Julie diagnosed?” I asked.

  “Two years ago, I’d say.” Sue made another note on Martin’s sheet, and he nodded.

  “She didn’t even feel that bad at first,” he told me. “She was just a little tired. Me, I itched.” He shrugged. “Nothing to race to the doctor about. That’s the way it goes.”

  Only two years. I thought people could live for decades on dialysis, but what did I know? I’d never known anyone with kidney disease. Now, it seemed, I knew several. “A lot of people around here have kidney disease.”

  Sue gave me a look that said, Hello, you’re in a dialysis center. Martin looked interested. “Julie said the same thing.”

  “I found her notebook.” Strange how people could be summoned back to life merely by the sight of how they formed their T s.

  “That’s right,” Martin said. “She was tracking the numbers. She thought the numbers were too high. She even wrote the Department of Health.”

  “Which I can’t understand,” Sue said. “Julie was a nurse. She knew these things come in cycles. Sometimes we see a rise in miscarriages. Sometimes, heart attacks. You can’t blame her, I suppose. She was just trying to make sense of it.”

  Julie had gone to the trouble to pull medical records. She’d drawn maps, written letters, talked to people. As sick as she was, she’d made it a priority. But Sue had a point. It was probably just the musings of an extremely ill person struggling to make sense of the insensible.

  “You really don’t think she was onto something?” Martin asked Sue.

  “How is that possible? The Department of Health looked into it. If there was something wrong, they’d have found it.” She jotted something down on her clipboard. “Half an hour more, and then I’ll unhook you, Martin. Nice to see you again, Dana. I just wish it weren’t under these circumstances.” She hung up the clipboard and strode over to the next chair in line. “Ready for some ice chips, Beverly?”

  I moved the tiles around on the wooden stand. I had some nice letters. The trick was maximizing their point value.

  “Stop dillydallying,” Martin scolded. “You gonna take your turn or not, ’cause I have a good word waiting.”

  I had the tiles. I’d been staring at them all along.

  “Come on, come on. You don’t think I can take it? Bring it on.”

  I removed five tiles from the wooden stand and arranged them on the board.

  POISON

  “Huh. Thirty-three points.” He pulled over the pad to jot down the number. “Not bad. Never even saw it coming.”

  SIX

  [PEYTON]

  BELOW THE SUNLIT LAYER LIES THE TWILIGHT ZONE, so deep that only blue light can penetrate. It’s really dark there. You’d think the animals that live there would learn to cope without the light, but instead, they rely on it for everything: scaring away predators, luring prey, looking for love, disguising retreat. In some species, it’s language. Since there’s no light source, the animals make it themselves, and it can be pretty spectacular. Picture a velvety darkness filled with delicate glowing necklaces, blobs of brightness that dart here and there, tiny cascading sparks.

  The only people who’ve ever witnessed this light display are the scientists in submersible boats. As they descend, they watch through their portholes as animals emerge from out of the murk all around them, amid a steady fall of white particles. This is called marine snow and it’s the remains of plants and animals from above. It makes the twilight zone look like a night sky sprinkled with stars. Maybe the creatures there look around and, amazed, wonder if they’ve reached heaven.

  Arnie’s Fresh Corn stand was open for business. Too early for corn, but there were fluffy green heaps of lettuces and boxes of bright red strawberries on the wooden table. Her mom would have squealed with delight and braked to a stop. But her dad drove past without even noticing.

  “I decided on cherry,” he said, “with a blue satin lining. Your mom’s favorite color. She’d have liked blue, don’t you think?”

  It sounded expensive. Her mom would have hated it.

  “Tomorrow we should go to the florist and pick out flowers. We need something to put on the casket.” He swung the steering wheel and drove through the entrance to the nursing home.

  “Okay.”

  “Roses, do you think?”

  “Not red ones, Dad.”

  “I know. Your mom always said they reminded her of craft projects gone bad.” When she didn’t smile, he probed, awkwardly, “You okay?”

  “I guess.” Someone had planted yellow petunias by the front door, glowing mounds of color that seemed wrong somehow against the faded brick. A man with a walker stood by the door looking as if he was gathering his energy to burst into a trot.

  Silence stretched out, and then her dad said, “Your mom was so proud of you, honey.”

  She winced at the nakedness of his grief. He never talked to her about feelings. Why couldn’t he just go back to talking about that stupid casket?

  “She’s still here with us, you know. We just can’t see her.”

  Whatever. Peyton hadn’t decided about that.

  “It’ll be all right, honey.” Was he talking to himself or to her?

  He put a hand on her shoulder and steered her up the wide flat path to the nursing home doors. The place smelled wrong. Bleach, ammonia, cooked food, and old people.

  The carpet was the worst of all, a trampled brown stained by things you just knew you didn’t want to know about. Whoever had tried to scrub it clean had done a crappy job. Whatever these liquids and solids were had soaked in permanently, as though the residents were trying to stamp their mark on something, anything, before they died.

  Her grandma shared a room at the end of the hall with Mrs. Gerkey. The two old ladies got along pretty well, which always surprised Peyton. With everyone else, they were cranky, angry at losing their memories and always complaining that no one wanted them. Today, her grandma sat alone, reading in her chair, Mrs. Gerkey off playing cards or doing chair yoga, probably.

  “Mom,” her dad began, and Peyton’s grandma looked up, her eyes watery behind the thick lenses of her glasses. She held a child’s paintbrush, rolling it between her fingers as if wondering what to do with it. They’d taken away her sable brushes after they found her snipping the bristles into stubs. A button pinned to her sweater had a long wire trailing across the room to the bed. That way, if she got up, the nurses would come running. “Karen?” She blinked at Peyton.


  Peyton sighed. She was always confusing Peyton with her dad’s sister. “Hi, Grandma.”

  Her grandma lifted her powdery cheek to be kissed. She never used to be touchy-feely. Now she always wanted to be kissed hello and goodbye; she was always snatching at Peyton’s arm with greedy soft hands as if searching for something. Peyton stepped over the long cord, kissed her grandmother’s cheek, then sat on the folding chair in the corner.

  “How are you feeling today, Mom?” Her dad perched on the bed.

  “Have you come to take me to supper?”

  She thought he was the orderly. “It’s a little early for that, Mom.”

  “It’s pot roast today, isn’t it?”

  “Sounds right,” he agreed in a fake cheerful voice.

  Actually, it was chicken potpie. The menu was prominently written out in bold black marker on poster board and propped on an easel in the lobby, as if to encourage family members to stay and share. Her dad had never once eaten here. Only Peyton and her mom had, and afterward they’d stay and play pinochle, and her mom would pretend not to notice Peyton’s grandma sneaking peeks at the cards.

  “Listen, Mom, I have some bad news.”

  She peered up at him. “No pot roast?”

  “It’s about Julie, Mom. You remember Julie. My wife.”

  Her cheeks reddened the way they always did when her memory was challenged and she felt lost. Peyton crossed her arms. Why were they even here?

  “She’s gone,” he said. “Julie’s gone, Mom.”

  All the terms people used. Gone, passed on, no longer with us. Why pretend? Her mom was dead. She was turning back to carbon molecules. Period.

  Her grandma gripped the arms of her chair. “I told her I would never tell.” She looked to Peyton. “And I never have, Karen.”