WIDOW (2 page)

Too late.

He swung the barrel toward little Gabriel's stunned face and pulled the trigger a second time. The reverberation was magnified so that it filled the house, it filled the world. Gabriel was flung back across the floor as if he had been hit by a great blast of wind. A large portion of the back of his head disappeared.

Scott threw Kay off and immediately put the gun into his mouth. He did not smile or flinch or say goodbye or explain himself.

As she watched in horror, he pulled the trigger and blew his brains across the den walls. His body fell across those of his dead children.

There was a keening in the air. Kay crawled to the bloody bodies and tried to gather them all into her arms to rock, to rock, to rock, to put back together again, and to rock.

 
One

 

Charlene nicknamed the woman Shadow because she drifted around the place behind other patients like a shadow dogging their heels. Shadow did not speak and she did not respond to conversation. Sometimes she began chewing her fingernails until they were down to the quick and bleeding. The nurse had to tie her into a wheelchair then, or into the bed, to keep her from gnawing the flesh right down to the bone. When this occurred, Charlene, a patient known throughout the ward as a nurturer, spent a lot of free time sitting beside Shadow and patting her on the hand, talking in a soft voice, telling her it was going to be all right, really it was.

A year passed this way and then one day Charlene sat on the floor next to Shadow prattling on about this and that when suddenly Shadow tossed her head and her eyes focused on Charlene's face. “What?” she asked.

Although Shadow's unused vocal chords were rusty and the word came out of her mouth as if she were spitting gravel, Charlene understood. She reached out and caught Shadow's hands in her own, tugging at her until her face was but inches away. “Did you say something, honey? Did you really speak to me? Is that you in there, Shadow?”

She shook her head. Her name wasn't Shadow.

Her name was something else entirely, she knew that, and soon it would come to her what exactly that name was. “What?” she said again, more plainly this time. “Where . . . ?”

Charlene jumped to her feet and went whooping around the big open room. She grabbed some of the other women and told them the news. She rushed to the nurse's window and announced it. She slid across the waxed tile floor like a baseball player stealing second base. When she returned to where Shadow sat on the floor, legs crossed, looking confused, there was a small group of women crowding around. “Get outta the way, give the lady some air, don't be scaring her now.”

Some of the women moved aside and let Charlene sit down as if it were her divine right to take up the place of honor. She scooted very close to Shadow, took hold of her arm and held it close protectively. “They're just surprised, sweetie, that's all. You can't blame us for acting this way. You haven't said a word in months and months, not since you were brought here. It's just a miracle is what it is, a real life hotdamn miracle. Some said you'd never come out of it, some said you'd never speak again, ever, and some I can name thought you were playing a game. . .”

Shadow's face crumpled. Tears leaked from the lower lids. “I don't know . . .” she began. “I . . . want . . .”

“What you want, sugar? You want to see the doctor? He'll be coming along soon. I told them you came out of it and they'll be falling all over themselves to get to you, don't worry. They're gonna be real surprised, but a happy surprise, you know, because it's been soooo long . . . oh, you poor thing, so terrible, you poor little thing . . .”

Shadow buried her face in her hands and wept as if her heart were broken. Charlene took this as an excellent sign. Highly preferable to the mindless vegetative state the younger woman had suffered for so long. She put her arm around Shadow's heaving shoulders and pulled her close. For once she didn't have any encouraging words to say.

Stingy Betty crept along the floor on her hands and knees. She plucked at Shadow's hospital-issue slippers. Charlene reached out to swat her hand. “You leave her alone. You want to make her crazy again, is that what you want? Here.” Charlene kicked off her own slippers. “Take mine instead. Leave Shadow alone for now. I never seen such manners in all my born days. What are you, trying to prove something here . . . ?”

More women swarmed around until the crowd completely surrounded the two women sitting on the floor. Some gibbered and motioned to unseen beings, some wept with Shadow, heartbroken, and some laughed inappropriately. It took Barclay, the orderly, the on-duty nurse, a woman the inmates affectionately called “Skeeter,” and Dr Shawn, to clear out all the women so that Shadow could be extricated and walked down the hallway to Shawn's private office.

Charlene stood at the wire gate waving. “Don't worry,” she called. “You're going to be all right now. No one's going to hurt you anymore, sweetie, you gotta believe that. Remember, okay, what I said, about being fine and getting well and making a new start . . .“

Her chatter followed the patient and the doctor until more doors were opened and closed against her.

~*~

Dr Shawn sat beside Kay Mandel on the sofa in his office. He wanted nothing to appear threatening, nothing adversarial. “Hello. Didn't they call you Kay? I'm your doctor, Kay, and I've been waiting a long time for us to be able to talk together.”

“Yes. Kay. Ka . . . Katherine. That woman. She called me Shadow. I don't know why.”

“Hmm.” The doctor waited for the questions. There should be questions she needed answering. He had taken more interest in her case than any other in his career. Not often did he find himself challenged by a patient. There were so many he simply could not help, so many the state had to write off. They were so far gone that they had to be maintained, chemical dependents, and shunted aside in order to care for the patients who might still have a chance. He had always held out hope for Kay Mandel despite her year-long catatonic state. She was relatively young, no history of past mental problems, and he felt the trauma she had undergone might eventually let go of her. As today it had.

Now to step carefully, to take it slowly, to give her every chance of recovery. He might save this one, return her to society—if not whole, then enough so to function and to find some kind of life beyond institution walls. Even doctors needed an occasional triumph. It had been some time since he could count anything he had done as victorious in the Marion State Mental Facility. It wasn't the sort of place where success was assured. And it was for that reason he stayed, despite the low pay and the lack of stature a psychiatrist was afforded on the staff. He had to make a difference.

“Where am I?”

Shawn smiled at her. He said as gently as he could, “Marion State. Austin, Texas. You were transferred here from Houston immediately after . . .”

“But why? Isn't Marion a . . . it's a . . .”

“State mental hospital, yes. It is.”

“Have I been crazy?”

He noticed her use of the past tense. It buoyed him even though it was not yet true that her psychosis had been put behind her. “You were traumatized, Kay. Do you remember what happened?”

She frowned, shook her head. Her long black hair moved slightly, her bangs fell loose across her forehead. He thought she could still be an exceptionally pretty woman with a proper diet, a little sun.

She asked, “Where's Scott? The boys? Have they been here to see me? Did I do something wrong?”

Her voice was squeaky and high. Shawn needed to back up, let her discover the past in her own time, at her own pace. “I'm so glad you're able to talk about things with me now, Kay. It's been almost a year. Next month, I think, makes it a year. And you haven't spoken to anyone until now. How do you feel? We're here to help you, you understand that, don't you?”

“But why am I here? Why didn't I speak before, can you tell me that? I don't remember . . . anything. God, my throat hurts. Can I have a glass of water?”

Shawn went to the adjoining bathroom and ran a glass of water from the sink. While she drank he said cautiously, “That's all right, you don't want to rush it. Your memory will return eventually. You have a lot to catch up on. The important thing is that you're no longer catatonic. You were in a trancelike state caused by a traumatic event. It will take a while to sort it all out. I want you to take it easy. Don't be surprised if there are missing blocks of time, they'll come back to you more easily if you don't try too hard.” He was glad she wasn't insisting on knowing about her husband and children. It was much too soon for revelations.

She set the glass on the table and lifted her hands in front of her face, puzzled. She turned them back and forth, peering finally at the fiercely bitten nails. There were raw sores and dark scabs along the nail rims where she had ripped them off completely. Only last week, he had given the order to remove the bandages. Her hands looked pretty sorry still.

“Who did this?” she asked. “It hurts.”

“You did it, Kay. You were just . . . worried. Your hands will heal.”

“I couldn't have done this. I've always had long beautiful fingernails. I always polished them with clear nail polish because Scott didn't like . . .” She paused in mid-sentence and let her hands fall into her lap. Her gaze took on a faraway look. It was the hundred-yard stare that he was used to seeing during months of silence. Shawn waited, hoping she could not yet see behind the curtain of memory to that night when she lost all she owned in the world. Had she had any family at all to come visit her, he thought she might have come out of shock sooner. It was infinitely sad that she was left alone, everyone in her life now dead. Most of Marion's patients had someone who cared, but Kay Mandel had no one.

Except Charlene. It was a good sign when one patient took on the responsibility for another. He did not hold out any expectations that Charlene Brewster would ever be fully well again, but it was encouraging that she seemed to care so much for the lost waif who had wandered into the open ward a year ago.

While he waited he watched Kay Mandel's face for a change in expression. The big round white clock on the wall ticked off minutes and still she did not respond again to his voice. He sighed, helped her stand, led her to the ward bed, asked the nurse to watch over her closely. When he hurried down the hall to a meeting with other staff members, he wanted to be able to tell them Kay Mandel had spontaneously exited catatonia, that she was well on her way to recovery, but the truth was she might not be. She might not speak again for another year. He just didn't know.

~*~

Charlene sat beside Shadow's bed soothing her with a torrent of words. “So see, I get everybody's story who comes in here, and then if they get shock treatment and they forget, well, I can tell them their life stories, give them back the past. I figure that's the least I can do, maybe what I was meant to do being here and all, can't get out, except now and then, you know, but they picked me up that time on the streets down in Houston, said I was carrying a duck around in my arms and talking to God and stuff, but hey, I'm better off here where it's safe, you know, where I know these people won't slit my throat, or mug me, they'll just hassle me with their stories so I can remember for them and, like I say, I don't mind that, I figure that's my job, since I don't have a real job, I might as well do what I can. They don't give me electroshock “cause I don't get violent, see, so I got this good memory, honey, the best, it's like photo. . . uh . . . graphic, kind of, and. . .”

On and on, a cascade, a typhoon of words and words and words that flooded Shadow's brain and kept her from thinking at all.

She had not slipped back into the gray world. She was biding her time until the dark came and she could be alone, away from Charlene's battering voice, though she understood that the woman cared for her and was merely trying to help. It was the relentlessness that bothered her, though she would rather bite off her tongue than say anything to stop Charlene's recital. She had the idea that already she had done something or seen something that stopped people, stopped them in their tracks, horrified them so badly they never moved again, ever, and she would not chance doing it again. She didn't know whether Charlene needed all those words or not, but it seemed that she did, and it would not be Kay who interrupted the lava flow.

Finally the day waned and the darkness crept over the sills of the wired windows. Charlene hardly drew breath, but dinner time came, and she wandered away, never giving the words a break, swamping the other women with them as she joined in line for the cafeteria. “Betty put down your bag of stuff, we're going to eat. Marta, that's a mighty fine smile you got on your face, you got a secret we don't know? Hey, Shere, wanna play a game of checkers later?”

Kay was left alone on the bed, the place empty, and the night coming on. Lights flickered to life in the nurses' station, wheels rattled carts down some far hallway, voices drifted and died.

Scott liked clear nail polish. He made fun of her red nails that time and she, feeling ashamed for not somehow guessing his preferences, sponged off the scarlet polish and threw away the bottle of Revlon Watermelon Red.

Where was Scott now?

She knew.

Sounds told her. Big sounds. Blasting sounds. Sounds that boomed and ricocheted in her brain.

She reached for the place where the sounds came from. It was in her home. Not here in this place of women who spoke too much, who made repetitive hand motions, who had not had their hair done in ages; in this place where a doctor was interested in her—a kind doctor with gentle eyes—but careful, too, treating her as he would a fragile bit of glassware he might drop.

In her home. The sounds.

In the closet. The gun.

On her knees holding . . .