Angel of Mercy (17 page)

Her words were so confusing. Where was he? What did she say? Bad time?

“This will help you sleep better. Just swallow this.

Go on,” she insisted. She knelt down and put her arm behind his head, lifting him off the pillow. He felt light, as if he were floating.

“I… screamed?”

“Yes. Over and over,” she said. “Just take this.”

“What is it?”

“Just a sleeping medication. My sister says it will relax you. Here,” she said, bringing the lethal dosage of chloral hydrate to his lips.

He hesitated, wondering for a moment why he was doing this, and then, out of fatigue and confusion, he opened his lips and took in the clear liquid. She had him chase it down with the glass of cool water and then she pulled her arm out from behind his head and his head fell back to the pillow as if it were made of stone. He closed his eyes.

“Just think about Sylvia now,” she told him. “Sylvia… poor Sylvia.”

“Sylvia,” he said.

“Yes, Sylvia,” Susie said. She sighed. How she wished she could be there when they were joined together once again. But she was permitted that only with her own parents. After all, the love other people shared was private. They didn’t need an audience.

She turned and left the bedroom. Then she went around the house, straightening it up, fluffing pillows in the living room, making sure everything was cleaned and put away in the kitchen. She couldn’t help the cleaning neurosis. It was her way of dealing with the tension and the excitement whenever she sent someone to join his deceased loved one.

When she was finished, she returned to the bedroom and took Tommy Livingston’s hands, pressing the fingers around the glass of water.

She went into the bathroom to the medicine cabinet and found Sylvia’s bottle of chloral hydrate. She shook out all but two and wiped the bottle clean. Then she pressed his fingers around that, too. Faye would be proud of her, she thought.

Satisfied she had done everything right, she put his left arm across his diaphragm and drew his fight arm over it so the hands rested gently.

She watched him for a moment.

“Goodbye, Mr. Livingston,” she said. “I know you’ll give my love to Sylvia.”

She turned and left the bedroom and paused only to go into the living room on her way out, just so she could check the expression on Sylvia’s face in some of the photographs. All the smiles had returned. There was thank you written on the lips in every picture, too.

“Don’t thank me,” she murmured. “It’s why I’m here; what I am to do.”

She slipped out of the house and into the night softly, but when she had driven away, she accelerated so she could feel the warm breeze lift her hair and fill her with a sense of excitement and life.

In Faye’s black BMW convertible with her hair in the wind and her white uniform picking up any light she passed or that passed her, Susie truly looked like Death Itself, fleeing gleefully from Its latest triumph.

Corpsy had sat attentively and watched that house, catching every shadowy movement in the windows.

He had thought about sneaking up to it and peeking in.

After all, he had to know what his beloved was doing.

He was afraid to get out and go up to the house because he thought she might emerge from it at any moment. When some time had passed and she hadn’t, he got out and scurried across the road. He climbed over the small brick wall and scampered over the lawn to the side of the house.

He gazed into the first lit window and saw an older man sleeping.

Moments later, he saw Susie come in and help the man drink something.

She was only taking care of him, he thought, and he breathed in relief.

This wasn’t any kind of love affair.

But he wondered why she was wearing surgical gloves. When she reappeared a few moments later, he saw her do a strange thing. She put the glass and then a pill bottle into his hands. Why? To get his fingerprints on them, he concluded. He was sure it was something her sister had told her to do.

He darted back to his own vehicle and waited until she emerged from the house and drove off. He followed her back to the apartment complex and pulled into his dark space just as she started up the steps to her front door. She heard him drive up, for when she reached the door, she paused and turned to look.

She was looking his way, but surely she couldn’t see him in these shadows, he thought. Still, his heart pounded because she was gazing in his direction. She lingered a moment and then she went into her apartment. He took some deep breaths and sat there. He reviewed what he had accomplished this day. He hadn’t spoken a word to Susie, but he had learned where she and Faye lived and he had learned she liked soft rock. That was a good start. Tomorrow he would find a way to approach her or Faye. Satisfied, he started the engine and drove off.

He had no way of knowing that Susie had not closed her apartment door completely. She had kept it open a crack and stood there peering out in his direction. She waited.

“What is it?” Faye asked from behind.

“Someone’s out there, just sitting in a car in the dark.”

“Let me see.”

Faye pulled her aside and looked out herself just as Corpsy started his vehicle and backed up. For a moment he and his car were under one of the parking lot lamps. Faye squinted.

“There’s something familiar about that car and that man,” she muttered.

“That’s what I thought.”

“How could you have thought that? You didn’t see it clearly.”

“! just thought so, that’s all. Who was it?”

“I don’t know… I’m not sure.”

“Yes you are.”

“Never mind that. Why did you rush out of here when I was in the bathroom’? Where have you been’?”

“I went to see Mr. Livingston,” Susie said proudly.

“But he was at his son’s for dinner.”

“I was there when he returned and he was happy to see me. I helped him relax.”

“What else did you do, Susie?”

“I made him some tea and had him eat a biscuit.”

“Susie?”

“It was time,” Susie said.

Faye stared. Then she crossed the living room quickly and went into her bedroom. She pulled open a drawer and sifted through her pill bottles.

Susie was standing in the doorway.

“You used chloral hydrate.”

“It was his wife’s sleeping pills. Just like Mr. Murray used his wife’s insulin,” Susie said proudly. “And I wiped everything clean.

See, I even wore your surgical gloves.” She pulled the pair from her uniform pocket.

Faye sat down on the bed.

“The Livingstons are together again and a perfect love affair goes on into eternity, just the way all Mommies and Daddies should go on,”

Susie said. After a moment she asked, “Why don’t you say something, Faye?

You’re just sitting there staring at the floor.”

“Not all Mommies and Daddies should be together forever, Susie.”

“Of course they should. Faye, when I left I looked at Sylvia’s picture and she was smiling again. Just like Mommy was smiling in all her pictures.”

“She wasn’t smiling, Susie,” Faye said. “She was crying.”

“That’s a silly thing to say. Why do you say such things? I’m tired,”

Susie said quickly, afraid to hear the answer. “I always get tired afterward. I’m going to sleep. Good night.”

“Good night,” Faye said. When she looked up, Susie was gone, which was good, for she wouldn’t see the tears streaming down Faye’s face.

Perry Livingston jumped in his seat when his car phone rang; he was deep in his thoughts. He couldn’t help feeling guilty about returning to work so soon after his mother’s death, but the contemplation of all that paperwork piling up on his desk overwhelmed his sense of grief and mourning. He decided he would go to the office for just a little while to clear away some of the more important stuff. He could be in and out without most people realizing it and he would take no phone calls.

This rationalization was enough to get him into his suit and tie and send him out of the house.

“What are you doing?” Todd demanded after Perry said hello. “I called your house and Grace said you were on your way to work.”

“Just going in for a few minutes to get rid of the ASAP business.”

“I can stay home from work and you can’t? What’s my ASAP business, less important?”

“I just thought… even Dad says we’ve got to get on with our lives, Todd.”

“He means after a decent period of mourning. Any way, Dad’s why I’m calling.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Did you try to call him this morning?”

“Dad? No, I thought it was too early so…”

“I’ve been calling and calling but there’s no answer.”

Perry lifted his foot from the accelerator.

“No answer? Maybe he got up early and left the house.”

“He wouldn’t do that. Where would he go? He doesn’t have any ASAP business.”

Perry pulled to the side of the road.

“You sure you let it ring long enough?”

“Nearly ten times each time I called.”

“Maybe he was in the shower.”

“I’ve called every ten minutes for the last hour, Perry,” Todd said.

“I’m not stupid.”

“Okay, I’ll turn around and go back that way,” Perry said.

“I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”

“Right.”

As he turned around, Perry chastised himself for not calling his father first thing in the morning. His father should have been his first thought, not the pile of papers on his desk.

Why wouldn’t Dad answer the phone? He sped up, his pulse quickening so that he could actually feel it vibrating in his neck.

Todd had obviously left his house right after he had ended his conversation, Perry thought, for his brother mentor so after he had turned into the driveway.

“He’ll probably bawl us out for rushing over here,” Perry said. He smiled a tight, nervous smile as Todd joined him, but Todd’s gaze fell on his father’s newspaper, still lying on the walkway. He bent down and in one motion took a step and scooped up the paper.

Perry’s younger brother was much stouter and broader shouldered. He had been the athlete, the high school and college football player, whereas Perry had been the student, the debater, the thespian. If anyone made a comparison in a deprecating manner, Sylvia Livingston would always claim to be happy her boys were so different. ‘?“They’re individuals,” she would brag, “each his own man and each successful in his own way.” She was proud that there hadn’t been very much sibling rivalry, but there hadn’t been very much sibling love, either.

So unalike in temperament and manner, they could never partner up to inherit Tommy Livingston’s business, even if they had been inclined to do so. They had different groups of friends and amused themselves in different ways. Their taste in clothing, homes and cars was dramatically dissimilar, too. And the contrasting personalities of their respective wives—Bobbi, who was more casual and colloquial in speech and more like the California girl of the Beach Boys songs;

Perry’s wife Grace, who was more concerned about style and elegance, a product of an Eastern finishing school—reinforced the dissimilarity of the two brothers.

Perry tried ringing the doorbell, but they heard no sound from within.

After a moment he rapped hard on the door.

“Dad!”

They waited.

“Check the garage. See if his cat’s in there,” Todd ordered. Perry cupped his hands around his eyes to peer through the small window in the door.

“It’s there. Maybe he left with someone el?” in their car.”

“Dad ?”” Todd rapped harder.

“Maybe he just went for a walk,” Perry added, but not with any confidence. Todd .just shook his head.

“I’ve got a key to the house on my car key chain,” Perry remembered.

He rushed back to get it.

“What the hell’s going on? Why would he leave the house without letting us know and where would he go?” Todd thought aloud as Perry returned and inserted the key.

They opened the door and looked at each other. No lights, no sounds; nothing was what greeted them.

“Dad?”

“Dad?” Perry followed.

The two brothers hurried down the hallway, glanced in the kitchen and then turned to the master bedroom.

The moment they set eyes on him, there was no question in either of their minds that their father had passed away. Neither let the reality set in, however, and both rushed to his bedside. Todd seized Tommy’s right hand and shook it hard. “Dad!”

Perry put out his hand slowly and placed his fingers against his father’s neck, vainly searching for a throbbing. But Perry Livingston merely had to look at his father’s eyes to confirm his worst fears.

Tommy’s eyes were glassy and still, that spark Shakespeare had called

“the Quick” was gone. They were fixed in his head now like two old marbles, their color faded.

“What happened to him?” Todd cried. Perry shook his head and then fixed his gaze on the pill bottle and the glass of water.

“Sleeping pills,” he said lifting the pill bottle to read the label.

“They were Mom’s. He must have taken too many; there are only two left.”

“No, he wouldn’t do that. Let’s call a doctor. Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe…”

“It’s too late,” Perry declared, his words hammering the reality home.

Nevertheless, Todd went to the phone and dialed 911 to report an emergency. Then he flopped back into the chair at the side of the bed and stared at his father’s corpse dumbly while Perry went to the window and gazed out at the yard in which he had spent many happy hours playing. If only it were possible to blink and send yourself back in time. He’d never long to be eighteen or twenty-one; he wouldn’t rush the clock; he’d be a little boy forever, for his mother would forever be young and happy and his father would be strong, immortal.

It was too much: losing their mother and then their father in so short a space of time; it was too much.

Perry turned, tears streaming down his cheeks, and shook his head. The sound of an ambulance siren could be heard in the distance, the anthem of hope now an anthem of futility.

“Nolan wants to see you,” Billy Gibson, the dispatcher, told Frankie the moment he entered the station. He nodded and looked around. “Where’s everyone?”