Personal injuries (37 page)

Rainey slept for nearly half an hour after Evon arrived. She was wearing a full oxygen mask now, a transparent plastic shape covering her mouth and nose. Her breathing was growing more shallow every day. She had no energy to leave the bed, and Evon knew that soon she would be engirded in something called a cuirass, a negative-pressure device to assist in drawing air into her lungs. But that could put off only so long the ultimate crisis of whether she would allow the installation of the mechanical ventilator. Robbie remained hopeful of persuading her as the time for decision drew nearer.

When Rainey woke, Evon reminded her who she was and swung into place the hospital tray that held the computer mouse and its pad, lifting Rainey's fingers onto it. Lorraine was far more adept with the speaking machine than she'd been only a few weeks ago. She scrolled through lists of words, clicking rapidly.

"Oh I Know Who You Are," the bleating boy's voice said. Even without any emphasis, there was something ominous in the choice of words. Evon had no idea what to do if Rainey began to pelt her with the kind of abuse she sometimes hurled at Robbie. He said he'd actually turned off the volume on the speakers on a couple of occasions, but she had no right to be so callous. She busied herself instead. She pulled the covers back on the bed and buttered Lorraine's flaccid arms with almondscented lotion, but Rainey was not about to be put off.

"He Is Such A Great Liar," Rainey said. "Do You Know What He Says About You?" Evon stopped. A clutch of devastated feeling was already gathering in her chest.

"He Says You Are A Lesbian."

Evon laughed, longer than she might have but for the relief.

"I am.”

Expression remained alive in the submerged depths of Rainey's eyes, which contracted somewhat in doubt.

"He Talks About You."

"We work together. We're friends. Robbie has lots of friends." Evon found a pillow and pulled Rainey to her side and put it behind her. She'd seen all of this done with her grandmother. Her skill was amazing to her, the ease and naturalness of it once she started. At the side of the bed, she placed her face near Rainey's on the pillows.

"We aren't lovers," she told her.

Even with her body wrecked, Rainey clearly craved to believe her, but she had been hardened by the disappointments Robbie regularly delivered. Rainey circled there in the ruinous back-and-forth of doubt and longing.

Evon read to her for some time. Robbie had begun
Mitigating Circumstances
, and Evon went through several chapters. No doubt she was a poor substitute for Robbie and his stagecraft. Even to herself, she barely sounded more dramatic than Rainey's voice machine and she was not surprised when Rainey dropped off again. She awoke with a pathetically contained shudder that reached only her right arm and foot. Her eyes sprang open and the palest rasp of sound emerged from her, almost certainly meant to be a scream. Evon could feel the pounding when she touched Lorraine's cheek.

"I Dream I'm Dead. All The Tune."

Evon closed her eyes, caught on the barb of her own dread. It came back to her a second, like some bitter, regurgitative mess rising with a hiccup.

"That must be frightening," she said.

"In Some Ways." Lorraine took her time in thought, then described the dream. She had seen her mother-in-law. "We Were Wearing The Same Hat. It Had A Peacock Plume On The Front." Rainey paused for several breaths amid the bare whooshing of the oxygen tank. "But Then I Wanted To Take It Off. And Realized I Couldn't. That Was Frightening. But It's Not Usually That Way. They Say Dreams Are Wishes. Have You Heard That?"

She had been a psychology major, so she probably had. She'd figured she was going to learn to understand people that way. These days the thought of it made her laugh.

"You Know He's Promised Me." Somehow Evon was beginning to discern expression in the squawking from the computer speaker. It wasn't possible, she realized, yet this dry adenoidal male voice corresponded more and more to the broken person now shaped like a question mark in the bed.

What was it he'd promised? Evon asked. She took Rainey's hand and touched her brow.

"He's Promised. He'll Help Me. Whenever I Tell Him. He Swore To Me." Unconsciously, she had tightened her grip on Rainey's fingers and barely had the presence of mind to release them. Lorraine was undeterred. She went on describing the arrangement she'd reached with Robbie long ago, when she learned about the disease's inevitable progression. She'd made him reaffirm the agreement only recently when she'd begun to lose the last control of her limbs. It petrified Evon to listen to this. Rainey's voice poured from the speakers at the same volume as before, words that should have been hushed. It was not the act or the idea that frightened Evon so much as contemplating the moment it would be for both of them. But Rainey seemed at ease. The certainty of a reprieve, an outlet, a way to end the suffering seemed a part of bearing it.

"Don't Let Him Back Out. Don't."

"No," Evon said, more as a reflex.

"Promise."

God, she was a cluck, Evon thought of herself, never even to suspect this, particularly given Robbie's longstanding desperation to be certain he was free throughout Lorraine's decline. Robbie, she thought. Good or bad, you'd just never get to the end.

"You can't ask me that, Rainey."

"I Suppose I Can't. But I Ask All His Friends."

She slept again, and Evon herself drifted off, waking at the sudden sound of voices downstairs. Joan had returned, along with Mort's mother, a stout woman with a white bun. Linda, one of Robbie's cousins, wore a hairdo that looked harder than an insect shell and so much jewelry she glittered like a Christmas tree. The women had returned following the service to ready the house for the remainder of the crowd, which would begin arriving after the interment. There had been nearly nine hundred people at the mortuary, they told her, enough to fill a second chapel, where the ceremony was broadcast on closed-circuit TV. Center City must have been a ghost town with the exodus of Feaver's friends-lawyers, clients, court personnel, the legion whom Robbie amused and aided. Joan worried that the house could be overrun.

Evon helped the women carry in a dozen heaping trays of cold cuts, which had been sent to Mort's house by friends offering comfort. The new home care person, a grandmotherly Polish immigrant, came in at the same time. She had a heavy suitcase, and Joan, who knew the house, showed her where she would be staying.

Rainey was awake when Evon went back up.

"Cavalry's arrived. I guess I'll be going."

"Come Back."

She promised that.

"I'm Sorry. For Before. I Say Things Now. Sometimes I Don't Believe I Even Thought The Words That Are Coming Out."

Evon took her hand again. She didn't mind, she said. What Rainey feared wasn't true, and she was glad she could reassure her.

"It's Your Loss Anyway," Rainey said. "That's What He Would Tell You." Humor. Evon smiled. She was sure he would, she thought. Rainey's eyes darkened in the labor of a more serious effort.

"You Would Think I Wouldn't Mind Now. Finally. Sick And Twisted As My Body Is. But I Still Want Him. All Ways Too. I Can Still Feel That. There. And Do It. Did You Know That?" Hardly. The astonishment must have crept through her face.

"It's The One Thing Left. I Think I'm Homier Than Ever. It Probably Sounds Vulgar. Or Perverted. But It's Not. It's Wonderful. To Feel Him Around Me. To Think He Wants Me. Even Now. So Broken And Ugly. They Say It's The Partner Who Loses Interest. But He Hasn't. And I'm So Grateful. We Love Each Other You Know."

"I know," Evon said and found a tissue to blot Rainey's tears, creeping to the pillow even while her hand clicked away on the mouse.

"He Hurt Me. Too Much. And I Hurt Him Back. We Hurt Each Other Every Way You Can. But I Love Him. And He Loves Me. I Never Knew It The Way I Did After This Happened. But That's Why I'm Living. Isn't That Strictly Amazing? I'm Not Alive Really. And I'm Still Living For Love."

The new nurse's assistant entered energetically, talking in an accent that Evon could barely decode, but she greeted Rainey lovingly and clearly knew her business. She propped up Rainey and straightened the sheets, transforming the bed in such short order that Evon was predictably embarrassed by her relative incompetence. After an uncertain moment, she leaned over the bed and embraced Rainey quickly.

Downstairs a short time later, through the large living room windows, Evon saw Robbie arrive in a long limo. His mother's younger sister from Cleveland was with him and he held tight to the older woman's arm as she wedged herself out of the car. Evon caught them in the foyer. Bobbie was pale and his features appeared loosened by a bleary uncertainty. His elderly aunt, humpbacked from age, seemed temperamental and largely unmoved by the day's proceedings. Somewhat crossly, she asked for directions to the powder room. When he returned, Robbie offered to walk Evon out. He was on automatic pilot again, talking as they drifted down the drive.

Once, he said, when he was eight or nine, his mother had taken him fishing during the white bass run up near Skageon. He'd been getting in trouble, lifting stuff from the five-and-dime, and his mother was convinced the problem was a lack of manly activity and attention. In the retelling, Robbie marveled over the sight of Estelle, who would never leave the house with so much as a wrinkle in her nylons, appearing that morning in a flannel shirt and old hat. She later told him that after two hours rocking in the river she'd become seasick to a point where suicide seemed sensible, yet she'd given him no clue that day.

They were near Evon's car, parked at the foot of the property. The neighbor's lilacs, white and soft purple, were open and as sweet on the air as cologne. His mother had been laid to rest on a glorious day. Evon turned her face up to the perfect sky and found him watching her when she looked back.

"This was spectacular of you," he said. "I can't even tell you what it means to me, I really can't. This is one of the nicest things anybody's ever done for me in my life." She answered with the thought that had been circulating unvoiced most of the morning. "You'd have done it for me," she told him and that harp string in her center sang out, plucked by the truth. You could never count on him for honesty, assuming he even knew what it was. He was unruly and incorrigible. But if she stumbled, he'd come running. She couldn't even say for sure she'd be able to reach out when he extended a hand. But he'd be there. She wasn't going to forgive him, really. But she had to stop pretending with herself. Nine hundred people had just turned out, all there to buoy Robbie Feaver in his grief, nearly every one a friend who'd experienced his openness and the soothing warmth of his care. And she was one, too. You couldn't fight facts. She asked how he was holding up.

"Eh," he answered, and let feeling swirl him off elsewhere for a moment.

"Losing my dad was something," she said, "but my mom, being last and my mom-I can't even imagine."

"Yeah," he said. "But I read something once and I keep thinking about it now. Èvery little boy loses his mother the first time, the day he realizes he's a man."'

Evon didn't understand and Robbie said he hadn't either. Not originally. But the idea seemed to be that boys had to come to terms with the fact that they couldn't be like their mothers, they had to be somebody else. He was still and his face was heavy in the light. He didn't seem entirely happy with these thoughts.

She had decided long ago she wasn't going to be like her mother, probably because her mother had let Evon know she was nothing like her. But the notion of her mother actually disappearing from her life still seemed to suck the center out of the world. It would be as if the force of gravity, which was down there at the midpoint of the earth and which kept it from flying apart, was suddenly missing. Her mother, past seventy, still hung out her wash every day, except in blizzards, preferring the touch of mountain air to the hot breath of the dryer. In her mind's eye, Evon saw her there, with the clothespins in her mouth, securing a tattersall shirt or a sheet to the line, standing her ground, asserting her intentions, while the wash gave in and snapped on the wind. He asked if Evon got along with her.

"Some. She judges. You're always being weighed on her scales. But you know, she's strong." Her arms went out. "She's big, You know what I mean?"

He drifted down the curb line with her. They were interrupted by a neighbor who had awaited his return before bringing another huge tray, piled up like the others with pale mounds of foods Evon had never really seen and suspected she couldn't stomach. The woman paid her respects and then proceeded up the driveway.

He hugged Evon then, before she could withdraw. That was apparently going to be standard now. She only hoped he had the good sense not to do this in front of McManis or Sennett. When he was halfway to the house, he turned and shouted as he walked backwards, just before he disappeared into shadow, "You're great. I love you, I really do."

She realized that somewhere nearby there was probably a surveillance agent, covering her. God knows what he'd seen. Or heard. That'd be some 302. `The cooperating individual then stated to UCA Miller, I love you.' Great. She'd recognize the agent by the size of the shit-eating grin he'd throw her through the driver's window. And what was she to respond? `We're just friends'?

But when she settled in the Chevette she caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror and spied traces of a cheerful look. How could that be, amid all this anguish and misfortune and flat-out confusion? She took herself to task, then gave up. What the hell, she thought suddenly. Really. What the hell. She put the car into gear, and felt the spry, lively wind of spring as soon as she lowered the window.

CHAPTER 32

THE NEXT MORNING WHEN I CAME IN, Danny, my receptionist, had taken a message from the U.S. Attorney, Stan Sennett, asking if I could arrange to see him in my office at 12:30, with my colleague, which was how he referred to Robbie. Feaver, who was at the nursing home to begin the dismal business of sorting through his mother's effects, was cranky about being summoned, but he arrived on time, still with bleared eyes and appearing vaguely disheveled, as he'd been when I'd made a condolence call the prior evening.