Bellweather Rhapsody (41 page)

“I’ll see you at the hospital later,” Minnie says, and Sheila looks away.

The roads are passable. There’s a mound of snow down the median, but it was harder to extract her car from the Bellweather lot—Auggie howling along with the radio as Minnie dug out all four of the wheels—than it is to drive through town. By the time she thinks to do so, it’s too late to catch one final look at the hotel in her rearview. She’s never going back to the Bellweather again. There’s no need. All the ghosts are coming with her this time.

She’s glad she was able to say goodbye to Alice. And to her brother, though they’d really only just met. The twins were dozing in her room, contorted over the chairs because the tall, skinny man who’d been thrown in the pool, the man with the woman Hastings shot, was passed out in her bed.

“Did you guys have a nice sleepover?” she asked. Not funny, Minnie. “Just came to pack my things. And get Auggie. Hi, boy.” Auggie pressed his forehead against her shins and whined. She told them as much as she knew about Hastings. They told her as much as they knew about the woman who’d been shot. They sat in silence until Alice (of course), her voice strengthening above a whisper, said, “So this weekend. Right? What the hell was
that?
”

Minnie grinned at her.

She shook Rabbit’s hand. She was in the middle of thanking Alice for taking good care of Auggie overnight when Alice, eyes glistening in the murk of the room, skinny guy sleeping blissfully on, rushed toward her with arms wide open. “Thank you for listening to my bullshit,” she murmured, sniffling into Minnie’s shoulder.

“It’s not bullshit,” Minnie said. “Try not to worry too much about the future. Or the past.” She patted Alice’s back. “Pay attention to the people around you.” Look at you, Minnie Graves; big sister. “Also, do as I say and not as I do.”

Auggie had yipped a little when Alice closed the door, but he was back to his natural state of happy oblivion now, riding shotgun on the way to the hospital with his tongue lolling out. Minnie rubs his ears every time they come to a stoplight. He howls when the Bee Gees play on the radio, like he always has, though she’ll never know if this is a complete coincidence or if Gibb falsetto is the only frequency her deaf dog can discern. But that’s Auggie’s only real mystery, other than where he came from. Minnie knows her best friend. She knows his excited bark from his anxious bark, his I’m-hungry whine from his I-have-to-go-out whine. When he rolls on his back, he wants to be rubbed not on his belly but on the top of his head, and she shares his belief that the pizza delivery guy simply must be given a hero’s frenzied welcome every time. She’s given him food and shelter, walks and tossed Frisbees; he’s given her courage and strength by first giving her unconditional love. She never had to ask for it. It came into her life. All she had to do was trust it.

Which is so much harder than it sounds.

The hospital looks an awful lot like the little community hospital where her Grandma Harris passed away, the spring before her sister’s wedding, before she had ever heard of the Bellweather: off-white walls with gray-green tile, long corridors that lead God knows where. When she finally finds the psychiatric unit, she doesn’t want to lie, but the truth is too complicated, so she says she’s his granddaughter.

Hastings is diminished. His face is as gray as the walls, as dull as the linens tucked around his thin body. Without his smart maroon jacket and his bow tie, he looks like what he is: an old man, bled out and lost. His wrists are tied down with wide cloth restraints. Minnie sits beside him and slips her hand into his.

That first afternoon he doesn’t even look at her. She can’t stay long with Auggie out in the car, but she stays as long as she can.

Rabbit has to find Alice. Where could she have gone? She was just here, in the auditorium with Fisher Brodie, and the orchestra and he—Rabbit glows—only just finished playing
Faun.
The orchestra has left the stage and Rabbit’s packed up Beatrice; they couldn’t have gone far in that time. He bounds up the auditorium aisle, elastic with joy. He. Can’t. Believe. He did that. It had occurred to him in the shower, out of nowhere—he really ought to play the solos Fisher transcribed for him. It would be just the thing to rally his conductor, to get him up on that podium. Then he actually saw Fisher, sunk in the middle of the bed, colorless and hollowed. Fisher would not be conducting again, at least not today.

“You have to tell someone.” Alice hugged her arms over her stomach. “Whoever you can find. I’ll stay here with Aug.”

So Rabbit left Fisher with his sister and the dog to seek out the closest Statewide-associated adult he could find and deliver the message that his chaperone had been shot. His conductor was comatose. He wanted to play
Afternoon of a Faun
on a bassoon.

Which was more improbable, that he’d had the idea or that they went for it? Considering the concert band conductor was kind of a kook and the fact that it was a glorified rehearsal instead of a concert, it was totally plausible all around. The performance was far from perfect, not even in the same neighborhood as perfect, but it had been so full of feeling Rabbit doesn’t know how he’s still standing, why he isn’t collapsed in the corner, disintegrated by bliss.

This is why. This is
why.
This is why he plays, why he loves, why he listens. It isn’t even a high—a high is too low—it is synchronicity with the universe. Physical proof of the three-part harmony between body and soul and song, all three living, dying, resonating. He needs to find Alice and they need to celebrate. This soaring sensation that he is part of a greater symphony is the antidote to the mortal vertigo he feels when he closes his eyes. When he closes his eyes he sees Mrs. Wilson on her back in a glossy pool of blood. It’s mostly black, the blood—it isn’t red like you’d expect, it shines on the edges and swallows the light in the center, and one of Mrs. Wilson’s knees lifts her skirt like a circus tent and there’s a rip in her stockings that starts at her bent knee and disappears under the dark of her skirt. Blood surrounds her right hand, fingertips submerged.

Don’t think about it.

The lobby is loud. Schools of students swim against one another, orchestra heading for their rooms, concert band heading for the auditorium. Did Alice stay inside to listen to the band? No, she wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t head back to the room they’d slept in, either, since Minnie turned in the keys when she checked out this morning. The weekend is slipping through his fingers, scattering before it’s finished. It isn’t time yet, he still has questions, he can’t find his sister—

The Tenor bashes into his shoulder.

Rabbit rocks back on his feet, swinging his bassoon case wide and grazing another kid in the thigh. Pete the Tenor—the college guy, the
a cappella
guy, Rabbit has to remind himself—of all people, Pete is the one in the crowd who runs into him. They both stop. Pause.

So awkward.

“Hey,” says Rabbit.

“Hey yourself, Bert.” Pete smiles and Rabbit remembers why he fell. His knees go buttery. “Heard you were looking for me.”

“Huh?”

“Well, you found me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Weren’t you running around looking for someone last night?”

“How’d you—how’d you know?” He
doesn’t
know. He can’t.

“I hear things.”

Rabbit readjusts his grip on his case, which jostles against his leg. So . . . this guy. This guy’s always going to be the first guy you sort of almost made out with, with his dark skin and white teeth, floppy brown hair tucked under a Yankees cap and curling around the tops of his ears. This guy you literally saw across a crowded room, who made time stop with his voice and his dark eyes, who looks a little like you imagine your first crush grew up to look like, who rocks a Macchio vibe in 1997. He’s always going to be the first guy who singled you out and talked to you, who breathed down the side of your neck. This ordinary, exactly-as-expected guy is no one to run from. Or run to, frankly.

“I gotta go,” says Rabbit. “See you.”

His room door is propped open with a pink sneaker.

“Never gave you back your key,” Alice says when he steps inside. His roommate, onstage with the band, has already packed his bag and set it neatly beside his bed. He wonders what kind of weekend Dan’s had, that he’s so ready to leave. Rabbit ought to feel like running, like getting the hell away from this crazy place, but he doesn’t yet. He has one more thing to say.

“You made him cry,” Alice says.

Rabbit sets his bassoon down. “Fisher? Cried?”

“Not like great wailing sobs, but his face was wet. I think that’s why he didn’t stick around, he had to go collect himself. He told me to tell you, ahem”—Alice continues in a Scottish accent—“that he was quite moved. That you’re bloody talented. That you should apply to Westing, if you haven’t already.” Sadness flits across her face. “I told him you had. That we both had.”

College! Rabbit plunks down on his bed. Suddenly he can’t wait to go to college. To go away again, away from home, and make his life in this wider, wilder world. College had seemed like such a remote idea, an intellectual inevitability, but now it feels like a real thing, an actual thing that will happen, with hot plates and highlighters and no one to answer to but himself. He’d applied to more schools than Westing—unlike his sister, Rabbit never thought of the future as a predestined line—but hadn’t felt that special zip you’re supposed to feel. You’ll know, they said; you’ll know what feels right. Now he feels Westing deep in his gut.

“We should have talked about this before,” Alice says. She sits on the bed opposite. “We can go to the same school or not. I mean, if we both go to Westing, I’ll stay out of your hair, we don’t have to be attached at the hip or anything. Not that you need my permission, but you should go wherever you want. I know it’s pretty self-centered to say this, but don’t you dare base your decision on me in any way. Don’t go to Westing because you feel obligated to follow me. And don’t go someplace else just to avoid me.”

“Thanks.” He wrinkles his nose. “You thought that? That I would choose where I went to school because of you?”

“No,” she says, grinning down at her chest. She looks at her lap and blushes, and Rabbit gets it.

“I won’t leave you,” he says. “I can’t leave you. What if I ever need a kidney?”

That gets her to laugh.

“What if
I
ever need a kidney?” she says.

“We’ve got four between us. That should be plenty.”

She takes a breath. Then she looks straight at him and asks if he’s gay.

His ears pound with blood.

“Hurm?” he says automatically, looking down. The carpet is brown and orange.

She switches beds and sits beside him, and thank God, because it’s easier when he doesn’t have to look straight at her. “I asked if you were gay,” she says. “I don’t know—if I’m wrong—I just. Got a feeling.”

“Okay.”

She kind of laughs. “
Okay,
” she says, drawling. “If you are, I mean. It’s okay. It’s fine. I don’t care. That’s not true—it’s really not my business, but I do care. I care about you.”

“Okay.”

He’s boiling. He’s sweating and freezing at the same time. He grabs her hand.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she says.

Now he’s falling. Falling.

“Unless he’s hot.” Alice balances her chin on his shoulder. “Then you better believe I’m going to tell him about my brother.”

“That would be okay,” he says, and they both laugh, high, a little hysterical, and Rabbit throws his arm around Alice and they squeeze each other until Alice says, “You know what I feel like doing?”

“What?”

“I feel like dancing.”

“But there isn’t—”

“Like I don’t know every word of that song. And like you don’t know every step.” She clears her throat and hums.

He does remember every step. Every turn, every jump. She might be wearing her black and white clothes, but Rabbit expects Alice will skip the chorus concert this afternoon. This is her performance today, here in this ugly old room, in this dilapidated hotel, her voice strong and young and beautiful. She stands in front of Dan’s bed, he stands in front of his own. Step forward. Step back. Step side, repeat. Shoulder rolls, head flicks. They look at each other and know, as they knew when they first taught each other this dance, to leap on their respective beds at the same time, to leap back to the floor, to grab each other’s arms, to spin. Rabbit closes his eyes and hears his sister singing in the darkness. She’s singing for Whitney Houston and Julie Andrews, Eponine and Eliza Doolittle, Auntie Mame and Maria, for every part she aches to play. She’s singing for herself at seventeen, for herself at seven—she’s singing for their past and their future. She’s singing for him. Her voice opens and Rabbit hears nothing but music, inside and out, nothing but the songs they were both born to live.

Natalie opens her eyes. The world is made of light.

A soft beep keeps the time. It’s her heart, given an electronic voice. Even though it seems every square inch of her body hurts, she smiles. It’s kind of nice to hear your heart outside your body, gently reminding you of its existence. She wiggles her toes. Rotates her feet. Rolls her head from side to side across the pillow. Takes a long, deep breath.

The light has a strange quality, a sensitivity—too clean, too new. A New Year’s Day sort of feeling, and Natalie, aching, her right side stiff with bandages and stitches (but no bullet—that went clean through), knows she has every right to call this the worst hangover of her life. And yet it feels like the
best
hangover she’s ever had. The most earned. The most . . . deserved. Less like a hangover than a karmic feedback loop, closed. Like she’s on the other side of a collapsed wormhole, a stargate leading from that other life, that not-life, that place where even the air felt as if it could hurt her.

Jesus, morphine is
awesome.

She giggles.

Her arm itches under the IV adhesive. She stares at her forearm as fine reddish hairs spring up around her tape-puckered skin, her own fine reddish hairs, her own forearm, her own skin.