Mr. X (18 page)

“Uncle Clark is all right, I hope?”

“An expert on everything under the sun, same as ever. What time is it?”

“Not quite twelve-thirty.”

“He’s driving around the parking lot to find a good enough place. Unless Clark has empty spaces on both sides, he’s afraid someone’ll put a scratch on his car.” She looked up at me. “James passed away last year. Fell asleep in front of the television and never woke up. Didn’t I give you that news?”

“I wish you had.”

“Probably I got mixed up if I called you or not.”

For the first time, I was seeing my relatives from an adult perspective. Nettie had not considered telling me about James’s death for as long as a heartbeat.

“Here comes your Uncle Clark, right on schedule.”

The old man in the loose yellow shirt coming around the desk bore only a generic resemblance to the man I remembered. His ears protruded at right angles, like Dumbo’s, from the walnut of his skull. Above the raw pink of his drooping lower lids, the whites of his eyes shone the ivory of old piano keys.

Uncle Clark drew up in front of his wife like a vintage automobile coming to rest before a public monument. “How are we doing at the moment?”

“The same,” said Nettie.

He lifted his head to inspect me. “If you’re little Ned, I’m the man who saved your mother’s life.”

“Hello, Uncle Clark,” I said. “Thanks for calling the ambulance.”

He waved me aside and moved through the curtain. I followed him inside.

Clark went to the side of the bed. “Your boy is here. That should help you pull through.” He examined the lights and monitors. “Hadn’t been for me, you’d still be on the kitchen floor.” He raised a bent finger to a screen. “This is her heart, you know. You get a picture of how it beats.”

I nodded.

“Up, down, up, then that big one—see? That’s a strong heart.”

I wrapped my hand around my mother’s. Her breathing changed, and her eyelids flickered.

Clark looked at me with a familiar combination of provisional acceptance and lasting suspicion. “About lunchtime, isn’t it?”

My mother’s suddenly open eyes fastened on me.

He patted Star’s flank. “Get yourself back on your feet now, honey.” The curtain swung shut behind him.

Star clutched my hand, lifted her head a few inches off the pillow, and uttered my name with absolute clarity.
“Hvv … tkk tt ooo.”

The machines emitted squawks of alarm. “You have to get some rest, Mom.”

She propelled herself upright. Her fingers fastened around my bicep like a handcuff. She dragged in an enormous breath and on the exhalation breathed, “Your father.”

A nurse brushed me aside to place one hand on my mother’s chest, the other on her forehead. “Valerie, you have to relax. That’s an order.” She hitched up the bedclothes, introduced herself as June Cook, the head nurse in the ICU, and clasped my mother’s hand. “We’re going to go out now, Valerie, so you get some rest.”

“She’s called Star,” I said.

My mother licked her lips and said,
“Rob. Ert.”
Her eyes closed, and she was instantly asleep.

Outside the cubicle, Uncle Clark was tottering up the row of curtains in black-and-white spectator shoes, like Cab Calloway’s.

“Where’s he going?” I asked.

“Late for lunch,” Nettie said. “Lunch is late for him, more like.”

On the way out, I took off my blazer, folded it into my duffel, and zipped the bag shut again.

19

Nettie lowered her bag onto a table in the visitors’ lounge and pulled out sandwiches wrapped in cling film and a Tupperware container filled with potato salad. “No sense spending good money on cafeteria food.”

Clark dumped potato salad onto his plate, sectioned off a portion the size of a gnat, and raised it to his mouth. “When did you blow in, Neddie, a couple days ago?”

“This morning,” I said.

He cocked his head. “Is that right? I heard something about a big-money poker game.”

May gave me a look of bright approval.

“I don’t play poker.” I bit into a roast beef sandwich.

“Where did you happen to hear a thing like that?” Nettie asked him.

“Checking my traps.”

“Uh-huh.” Nettie rolled her eyes at me. “The old fool can hardly walk upstairs anymore, but he has no trouble getting to his favorite bars. If he missed a day they’d think he dropped dead.”

“Neddie, did you win a lot of money?” Aunt May asked.

“I didn’t win any money,” I said.

“Where was the game?”

Clark took a minuscule bite of his sandwich. “Upstairs in the Speedway Lounge. My friends there treat me like royalty. Like a king.”

“Friends like that common tramp Piney Woods, I suppose.”

Clark coaxed another pebble of potato salad onto his fork. “There’s no harm in Piney. Son, I hope to have the pleasure of introducing you to Piney Woods one of these days. I consider Piney a man of the world.” He brought the speck of potato salad to his mouth. “Matter of fact, it was Piney who told me about you winning that money.”

“How much?” May asked. “A whole lot, like a thousand, or a little lot, like a hundred?”

“I didn’t win any money,” I said. “I got into town this morning, and I came straight to the hospital.”

May said, “Joy told me—”

“You heard him,” Clark said. “Joy doesn’t see too good these days.”

“How are Aunt Joy and Uncle Clarence?” I asked.

“Clarence and Joy don’t get out much,” May said.

Clark nibbled at his sandwich. “It could be put that way. My advice is, die young, while you can still enjoy it.” He examined the contents of my plate. “A boy like that could eat you out of house and home.”

“I’d be happy to help out with the shopping and cooking, things like that.”

“Is that what you do now, son? You a short-order cook?”

“I’m a programmer for a software company in New York,” I said. His expression told me that he had never before heard the words
programmer
or
software
. “We make things that tell computers what to do.”

“Factory work keeps a man out of trouble, anyhow.” He bit off a tiny wedge of sandwich and put the rest on his plate, getting into stride. “The problem today is that young men do nothing but hang out on the street. I blame the parents. Too selfish to give their children the necessary discipline. Our people are the worst of all, sad to say.”

He could have gone on for hours. “Tell me about this morning, Uncle Clark. I still don’t know what happened.”

He leaned back in his chair and aimed his best sneer at me. “Carl Lewis wouldn’t have been out of his chair by the time I was dialing the second 1 in 911. Saved the girl’s life.”

“The bell rang about six in the morning,” Nettie said. “I’m up at that hour because I have trouble sleeping.
That’s Star
, I said to myself,
and the poor girl needs her family’s loving care
. I could feel my insides start to worry.”

“The Dunstan blood,” Clark said, nodding at me.

“As soon as I opened the door, Neddie, your mother fell right into my arms. I never in my life thought I’d see her look so bad. Your mother was always a pretty, pretty woman, and she still would have been, in spite of how she let herself go.”

“Extra body weight never hurt a woman’s looks,” Clark said.

“It wasn’t the pounds she put on, and it wasn’t the gray in her hair. She was scared. ‘You’re worried about something, plain as day,’ I said. The poor thing said she had to get some sleep before she could talk. ‘Okay, honey,’ I said, ‘rest up on the davenport, and I’ll make up your old bed and get breakfast ready for when you want it.’ She told me to take her address book from her bag and call you in New York. Of course, I had your number right in my kitchen.

“I had a feeling you were already on the way, Neddie, but I didn’t know how close you were! After that, I did the coffee and went up to put clean sheets on the bed. When I came back down, she wasn’t on the davenport. I went into the kitchen. No Star. All of a sudden, I heard the front door open and close, and I rushed out, and there she was, walking back to the davenport. Told me she was feeling dizzy and thought fresh air would help.”

She turned her head from side to side in emphatic contradiction. “I didn’t believe it at the time, and I don’t believe it now, though I’m sorry to say it to her own son. She was looking for someone. Or she saw someone walk up.”

May said, “According to Joy—”

Nettie glanced at her sister before looking back at me. “I asked her, ‘What’s happening, sweetheart? You can tell me,’ and she said, ‘Aunt Nettie, I’m afraid something bad is going to happen.’ Then she asked if I called you. ‘Your boy’s on the way,’ I said, and she closed her eyes and let herself go to sleep. I sat with her a while, and then I went back into the kitchen.”

Sensing an opening, Clark leaned forward again. “I come downstairs and see a woman holed up on my davenport! What in tarnation is this, I wonder, and come up slow and easy and bend over to get a good look. ‘Hello, Clark,’ she said, and just like that she was out again.”

“May came over, and I made all of us a nice breakfast. After a while, in she comes, putting on a nice smile. She told Clark, ‘I thought I saw your handsome face, Uncle Clark, but I thought I was dreaming.’ She sat at the table, but wouldn’t take any nourishment.”

“Those two took it for her,” Clark said. “Eat like a couple of tobacco farmers.”

“Not me,” May said. “It’s all I can do to eat enough to stay alive.”

“She looked better, but she didn’t look
right
. Her skin had a
gray cast, and there wasn’t any shine to her eyes. The worst thing was, I could see she was so
fearful
.”

“That girl was never afraid of anything,” Clark announced. “She knew she was sick, that’s what you saw.”

“She knew she was sick, but she was afraid for Neddie.”

“For me?” I said.

“That’s right,” May put in.

“Clark heard her, too, but he paid no attention because it wasn’t about his handsome face.”

“What did she say?” I thought my mother had already given me a clue.

“ ‘A terrible thing could happen to my son, and I have to stop it.’ That’s what she said.”

“I ain’t deef,” Clark said.

20

A few minutes later, I jumped into a brief, uncharacteristic lull to ask if my mother had said anything more about the terrible thing from which she wanted to protect me.