Angel of Mercy (7 page)

“No, I… I’m just surprised to see you,” he said. It began to fall into place… Faye helping him to bed, giving him the sedative. “When did you say you arrived?”

“Last night. I finished cleaning up while you were sleeping, and you were sleeping so soundly, I decided to keep people from bothering you.

I hope you don’t mind.”

“You’ve been here all night?” He shook his head, still a bit confused.

“I never heard a sound.”

“I unplugged your phone so it wouldn’t ring and wake you, but I took down the names of everyone who called this morning. I have the list in the kitchen.”

“Where did you sleep?”

“On the sofa in the den. It was quite comfortable.

I’ve slept on worse sofas and in pretty uncomfortable chairs, believe me.”

Tommy nodded. He started to get up and stopped.

She sensed his modesty and went to the closet to take out the robe. He was surprised she knew it was hanging inside the door. She brought the robe to him and he took it without comment, although dozens of questions were buzzing around in his head.

“I’ve got some oatmeal cooking, some juice and some coffee made. I also made some of those breakfast rolls your wife had in the freezer. Faye says you need something hot and substantial in your stomach.

Grief wears you down, drains your body,” Susie said.

He nodded.

“I’ll just take a quick shower,” he decided.

“I thought you would. I put a fresh towel in the bathroom for you.”

“Thanks,” he said and continued to gaze up at her.

Susie and Faye Sullivan couldn’t be much more than thirty, he thought.

Either one could have been the daughter he and Sylvia had so wanted, but it was as if Sylvia’s body had shut down after Todd’s birth. She didn’t get pregnant again for the longest time, and when she did, it was an ectopic pregnancy.

“I’ll get your breakfast together while you take your shower,” Susie said.

He rose and went into the bathroom. After he was freshly shaved and dressed, he entered the kitchen to find his place all set, his orange juice waiting and his coffee steaming hot. She poured the oatmeal into a bowl and brought it to him with a hot roll. “You want honey or molasses over it?”

“Honey’s fine,” he replied and she smiled, nodding.

“That was the way my father liked it,” she said. She fetched the jar of honey and brought it to him, and then she poured herself a cup of coffee and joined him at the table.

“How is it? It’s not overcooked, is it?” she asked the moment he brought a spoonful to his lips.

“It’s great.”

Susie nodded.

“I like to cook. Faye hates it,” she said. “After our mother died, I did all the cooking for her and my father. Actually, I did a lot of the cooking before she died, too.”

“What did she die of”

“Heart disease, just like your wife/’

“Everyone seems to think it’s a man’s problem,” Tommy said. “I must say, I was surprised when Sylvia had a heart attack.”

“Faye says that’s a common misconception,” Susie remarked. “Especially now that women smoke more than men and eat the same fat-filled diets.”

She blew on her coffee for a moment, her eyes fixed in a blank stare.

“You said there was a list?”

“Pardon?”

“Of people who had called?”

“Oh, yes.” She rose and returned to the counter to tear a page off the notebook by the phone.

“Wow,” Tommy said. “This many calls and I slept through all of it.”

“Faye said she gave you a powerful sedative to be sure you got a good night’s rest.”

“Yeah, I remember now. Something of Sylvia’s, she said. I don’t take sleeping pills as a rule.”

“I’m sure Faye thought you needed them. She wouldn’t give anyone pills if she wasn’t positive. She hates to overmedicate and she’s very critical of doctors who prescribe pills like candy,” Susie said.

Tomnly smiled at the vehement way Susie defended her twin sister.

“I guess you two are pretty close, being twins and all.”

“We’ve always been close, even when Faye was away at college. We look after each other.”

Tommy smiled.

“With all that’s going on in this rotten world, that’s nice to see nowadays. Too many of the younger generation are into themselves,” he remarked. Susie picked up on it quickly.

“Faye says the generation gap just seems to be growing wider and widen Different values, different priorities.”

Tommy nodded. These were almost Sylvia’s exact words.

“Both you and your sister seem very wise for women so young,” he said.

“Faye and I side with the older generation more often than not, which is why we both work so much and spend most of our time alone.”

“Neither of you has been close to being married, then?”

“Faye was once … with a young doctor,” she replied.

“What happened?”

“He had a tragic accident… he took too many uppers to keep working and crashed in his car.”

“Oh. That is sad. But how about you? You’re just as pretty,” Tommy remarked. She was. She had the same beautiful eyes, the same rich-looking hair and complexion and just about the same figure. Big deal, so she limped, he thought.

“Every time I measure a prospective boyfriend against the man my father was, a man like you, he comes up short. I just won’t settle for anyone less,” Susie added firmly. Tommy smiled.

“Well, you’re a very pretty and a very nice person, so the man who finally wins your heart is going to be a very lucky man,” Tommy said.

Susie didn’t smile. Her eyes suddenly turned cold and her lips firm.

“I’m not optimistic,” she said. “And besides, when I see how much it hurts to lose the one you love, I’m afraid I hesitate to get too involved. It’s a horrible paradox. The more you love someone and he or she loves you, the harder it is to face life without him or without her.”

Tommy just stared up at her. He didn’t know whether to feel sorry for her or admire her. Was she better off with this attitude? He certainly couldn’t disagree with her description of the pain accompanying the loss of a dearly beloved.

“I know how much you’re going to miss Sylvia,” she said, “even though you’re the strong, silent type.

Just like my father was,” Susie said wagging her head.

“Men think if they keep their sorrow inside and let their tears fall behind their eyes, they’re more manly and it hurts less. But the truth is, that hurts more. It pulls and pulls at your heart and wears you down until you feel just like you do right now. I bet I could blow you over like a feather,” she said.

Tommy smiled.

“Maybe you could.”

“Of course, I could. Keep eating, Mr. Livingston, even if it’s just something you do mechanically.”

Tommy nodded and lifted the spoon.

“Yes, ma’am. I guess I do need someone like you around right now,” he confessed.

“Of course you do. It’s what I do best, too.”

“Oh? And what’s that exactly?”

“Help grieving people deal sensibly with their grief.

Faye says it’s a logical thing for a nurse’s sister to do, when you think about it. For hours and hours after she returns from her nursing work, she talks about her patients and the doctors and all that goes on.

I’ve learned a lot about medicine and treating people just by sitting and listening to her.

“And what is grief? Grief is like a sickness, like a disease. It debilitates, tears down the body, has symptoms like… like the flu.

It fatigues you, rains your appetite, fills your stomach with butterflies.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Tommy said, impressed with how vehemently she spoke about it. He ate some more of the oatmeal and drank some of his coffee.

“Grief over a lost loved one, especially a wife, turns grown men such as yourself into little boys again,” she continued. “Our daddy was like that. It got so I had to remind him to brush his teeth. I stood over him and forced him to eat, just like I’m hovering over you and forcing you to eat. He became forgetful, too, and left things everywhere.”

“Sounds like he was quite along in years when your mother passed away.”

“No. He was your age. Don’t underestimate what’s happened, Mr.

Livingston. Your wife was a much bigger part of your life than you realize even now.”

Tommy stared at her for a moment. She looked so confident and sounded so positive. He began to wonder more about this young woman. Where were she and her sister from? How long had they been in Palm Springs?

What sort of a childhood had she and her sister had?

“You’re from L.A.?”

“Pacific Palisades, originally, but Faye and I have lived in a lot of places.”

“Don’t say? You seem too young to have lived in too many places,” he said.

“Faye’s work has taken us all over the country.”

“How long you been here?”

“A few months. I like it here,” she said quickly. “My father would have liked it here, too.”

“What happened to him? After your mother’s passing, that is.”

“He…”

“Yes?”

“Took his own life eventually,” she said and looked away. She sighed and turned back to him with a soft smile. “It was sad, but I understood.”

Tommy continued to gaze at her for a moment. He had half suspected something like this. “How did he…?”

“He swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. But when Faye and I found him…”

“Yes?”

“He was smiling. My mother must have been waiting for him, don’t you think?”

For a long moment, Tommy said nothing. Then he shook his head.

“I’m afraid I don’t believe in much after this life,” he replied finally.

Susie was devastated. She sat back aghast.

“But if you don’t believe in anything after… how will you ever…”

Tommy looked up sharply.

“Ever what?”

“Be with your wife again?”

“I don’t expect I will,” he confessed and rose from his seat, obviously anxious to end this topic. “Thanks for preparing my breakfast. I’d better go call some of these people back,” he said referring to the list. Susie watched him go to the den to use the phone and then she rose slowly.

“It’s just his way of dealing with his sorrow,” she muttered. “He didn’t mean it. Daddy would never have said anything like that.

“Never.”

She brought the dishes to the sink and thought for a moment. Then she turned and stared angrily after Tommy Livingston.

“She’s waiting for you. You can’t leave her waiting.

You won’t,” she vowed, and she vigorously sponged down the bowl, the glass, and the cup as if Tommy Livingston had some infectious disease.

“You won’t.”

Corpsy Ratner followed the gas pump attendant’s suggestion and took the Ramon Avenue exit off the 1-10 freeway into Palm Springs. Once on Ramon, he lifted his foot slightly off the accelerator to hover closer to the speed limit. Corpsy, so nicknamed by his associates in the pathology department at the hospital in Phoenix because of his enthusiasm for his work, had an obsessive need to obey all laws, especially traffic laws. He prided himself on the fact that he had not gotten so much as a parking ticket his whole driving life, nearly twenty years, to be exact. What other man in his mid-thirties could claim so spotless a record? If nothing else, Faye Sullivan should have been impressed with that, he thought ruefully.

Instead, on every occasion, she had rejected him firmly, once even reinforcing this maligning of his image by claiming he reeked of the odor of formaldehyde.

At nearly six feet tall, Corpsy was as lean and awkward as a young Abe Lincoln, with the same soulful face cut deeply by premature wrinkles around his cheeks and etched in his wide forehead. He was hairy: the same dark strands that streamed down his forehead unevenly also curled up his spine and even over his shoulders. His eyebrows were bushy and thick like near-term caterpillars, and no matter how closely he shaved, his face was haunted by a five o’clock shadow mere hours afterward.

When he was a teenager, Corpsy would beg his mother to shave his back during the summer months; otherwise, he would never take off his shirt, never go swimming. Of course she would do it; she would do anything he asked of her. His mother was a simple, soft-spoken, meek woman who dwindled rapidly after his father’s truck accident and death until she resembled a bird with a broken wing, denied song and flight, its eyes vacant, waiting for the inevitable end.

Corpsy was her reason to go on. He was Lillian Ratner’s only child, and as such was babied and spoiled.

Corpsy was the first to admit this, but he rationalized that he suffered his mother’s indulgence for her benefit more than for his own. I’m all she has, he thought, which was especially true after his father’s smashup returning from a haul to Texas.

No two people looked more mismatched than Bret Ratner and Lillian.

Corpsy’s father was a muscular, hard, gruff six-foot-three-inch man with sinewy arms and wide shoulders, a trucker who wolfed down his food even when he was on a week’s layover. Corpsy had his long arms and legs and long fingers, but it was as if his mother’s daintiness and fragility had interfered during his formation to prevent him from inheriting any of his father’s strength. No matter how much he exercised, his body refused to become anywhere as hard as his father’s, and his muscle structure remained mediocre, if not downright underdeveloped.

He gave up trying to be like his father and withdrew, feeding his ever-festering interest in the internal nature of things, from mere insects and flowers to animals and people. Not bright enough or rich enough to become a doctor, he became a lab technician and eventually got a job in the pathology department at the hospital. He had been at the job most of his adult life, devoting himself to his work with a religious intensity that rivaled monks’ and priests’ and that earned him the notoriety that resulted in his nickname.

But he no longer minded. In fact, Corpsy saw the outside world as a world populated by envious people, people who wished that they cared about something as intensely as he did, people who wished they had his capacity to love something other than their miserable selves.

To say he was obsessive was to understate. Corpsy wouldn’t deny it.

When he found something that interested him, he pursued it with a passion that threatened to kill him. It was true about aspects of his work, but it was also true about his hobbies, the latest being collecting the kidney stones and gallstones he found in the corpses he dissected. He kept them in jelly jars on the shelves in his bedroom, each jar labeled with the age and sex of the deceased. His mother was upset about it, but she rarely went into his room anyway. In fact, other than his mother, no woman had ever been in Corpsy’s room.