Skeleton Key (46 page)

For more than a day, Bennis Hannaford had been afraid of what would happen when she had to see Gregor Demarkian again. There was so much he had every right to be angry with her about: the fact that she'd gone so long without telling him how seriously ill she felt; the fact that she'd left Litchfield County without giving him a chance to ask her for explanations of any kind. It didn't help that she still felt so enormously awful, or that she couldn't seem to sleep without dreaming of the biopsy. She thought that it would be a much better idea to put people who had those things under general anesthetics instead of local ones, so that they wouldn't have to see so much of what was going on. Actually, she had been given something general. She thought it might have been sodium pentathol. She thought she might have been in a kind of twilight sleep, so that she knew what was going on without really knowing. Maybe what she remembered wasn't a memory at all, but just a re-creation, built out of her fear. The needle coming down to the Center of one side of her chest. The doctor bending over her with a mask on his face that showed only those eyes. She had imagined, at the time, that he would know what the tumor was made of as soon as the stuff rose up in the hypodermic. That was why his eyes looked as blank as mirrors, like one of the evil robots in an
Outer Limits
episode.

It would be
The X-Files
now, Bennis told herself, turning over onto her side so that she could look out the two plate glass windows that made up much of the outer wall. All she could see was the dead flatness of Philadelphia in the latening autumn. The sides of the buildings looked as if they had been sprayed with chalk. The roofs looked as if they had been eaten away by bugs. Cavanaugh Street never looked ugly like this, not in the worst of weather. If
she sat up a little and looked off to the side, she would be able to see a cemetery.

Why was it that hospital rooms so often looked out over cemeteries?

She was turning onto her back again and trying to sit up when she heard Gregor in the hall. He had a deep voice that carried, blocking out anything else that might be going on around him. She could tell he was coming close by the way the sound was getting louder as he moved.

“Three twenty-one?” she heard him say—and then nothing. The nurses' voices were much too quiet.

Bennis turned over on her back and pressed the control button. The back of the bed behind her slid upward, and she slid upward with it. She still felt too weak to sit up on her own, but she was still doing better than she had been the night before. She got hold of the side rail and pulled herself upright that way.

She was just stretching forward a little to unkink her back when the door to her room opened and Gregor walked in. For some reason, it startled her that he looked just the way she remembered him. He was big.
He
was going to seed a little, especially around the middle. He was wearing a suit. Bennis thought that she herself probably looked like hell, but she had no intention of looking into a mirror and finding out for sure.

“Well,” she said.

Gregor came all the way into the room and shut the door behind him. “I was here last night. Did you know that? You were asleep.”

“The nurse left me a note.”

“I was here for a couple of hours, with Tibor. Then he made me go home.”

“It was probably a good idea.”

Gregor went over to the windows and looked out. “I talked to Gerald Harrison last night. He's supposed to come in and talk to you this morning.”

“Did you?” Bennis said.

It was funny, but she seemed to have become weightless.
She thought that if she looked down at herself, she would find that her body had disappeared. She was nothing but a disembodied spirit, hovering in the room. Except that she was violently, undeniably sick to her stomach. If she had known where the barf pan was, she would have thrown up in it. She thought she might end up having to throw up on the floor.

“I don't know if I want to talk to Gerald Harrison,” she said.

“You want to talk to Gerald Harrison. The biopsy report is back.”

Bennis tried to take a deep breath. It didn't work. There was no air in the room. Gregor had his back to her.

“So?” she said. “What is it? Are you having a good time with this? Why won't you just talk to me?”

Gregor turned around. “I'm trying very hard to find a way to say what I want to say.”

“To say what? Am I going to die?”

“Only if I kill you. Which is a distinct possibility at the moment.”

There
was
air in the room. There
was.
Bennis couldn't remember ever having needed so much air. She let herself fall onto the raised back of the bed and collapse. And then, for no reason at all, she was crying.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“Pneumonia of apparently long standing, for one thing. Malnutrition. Exhaustion. I think Gerald has a list.”

“But the tumor wasn't malignant.”

“It wasn't even a tumor.” Gregor came and sat at the edge of the bed. “As far as Gerald can figure out, what you've got is some slight scarring. He thinks you've been walking around with the pneumonia for maybe over a month. Smoking all the time. Never getting enough sleep. Not eating. And otherwise doing yourself damage.”

“Oh,” Bennis said. “Oh, God.”

“Yes, well. He wants you to stay in the hospital for at least a week. He says if your insurance won't cover it, your
bank account will. I think it's a good idea. Tibor says he'll board up the door to your apartment so that you can't come home.”

“I'd be happier at home.” Bennis sat forward again. For some reason, it was easier than it had been.

“You'd go to work in three hours,” Gregor said. “And you still need more tests. Messing yourself up with pneumonia may not be as bad as lung cancer, but it can still kill you if you aren't careful. Besides, here in the hospital, they won't let you smoke.”

“I've noticed that.”

“I thought you had.”

“Maybe we can compromise on something a little less than a week,” Bennis said. “Forget the cigarettes for a moment. I'd be better off where I could get some decent food. Maybe somebody would be willing to take me in. Maybe Lida would let me sleep on her couch.”

Gregor looked up at the big plate glass windows. He still had something on his mind. Bennis squirmed on the bed. There was really no way for her to get comfortable. She wanted to be sitting in her big leather armchair at home. She wanted to be—alone.

Well, no. She didn't want to be alone. She just didn't want to hear whatever it was Gregor had to say.

“Listen,” he said finally. “Do you know what cancer is?”

“What?”

“Do you know what cancer is?” he asked again. “Elizabeth died of cancer. Elizabeth my wife. You do remember that I once had a wife.”

“Of course I remember. That wasn't fair, Gregor.”

“I'm not trying to be fair. I'm trying to make a point. Elizabeth died of cancer. It was ovarian cancer, in her case. But cancer is cancer, in some respects. It took her five years. Five years is a long time.”

“I know.”

“I don't think you do. I don't think you can begin to realize what it is to watch somebody die and take five years to do it. To watch the progressive deteriorization of everything
you've ever loved. To watch the pain, the continual and unbearable pain, that no amount of drugs can relieve. To make it through the emergencies, the ambulance rides, the ICU admissions, the feeding tubes, the IVs and blood transfusions. I think that part of my life was like a tunnel, a tunnel of defeat that I thought was never going to end. And yet, you know, I am who I am. I couldn't stop fighting for her. I couldn't stop hoping for her. I think she was ready to die a long time before I was ready to let her go. People always say that they watch pain like that and compassion makes them want to see the end come soon. Well, it didn't for me. I couldn't believe that I could fight that hard for something and not win in the end.”

“Gregor—”

“Stop. Listen to me. Let me say what I've got to say.”

“All right.”

He was still looking out the window. She wished he would turn and look at her. She thought that if he did, he would be struck speechless.

“I am who I am,” he said finally. “If that biopsy had come back and the news had been bad, if you had been diagnosed with lung cancer, I would have done for you what I did for Elizabeth. I would have fought for you, for years if it had been necessary, for any extra time we could manage to have together. I would have fought doctors and hospitals and drug companies. I would have organized your life so that no part of it fell through the cracks, so that no emergency happened to you while I was out of the way and unable to cope. I wouldn't have been able to help myself. I know we don't say it to each other, not seriously. When we use the words we joke around. We're so sophisticated, it's practically a terminal condition. But I love you, Bennis. I think I have for years. And it's not a joke.”

“I love you, too, Gregor. And I have for years. And it was never a joke.”

Now he turned to look at her. “Good,” he said. “Because I'm here to hand you an ultimatum. And I mean it. If you had been diagnosed with cancer, I would have fought for
you,
but you weren't. Right now, except for that scarring,
your
lungs seem to be perfectly clear. Which is lucky for
you,
and lucky for me. And that puts the future on an entirely different footing. Do you hear me?”

“Of course I hear you. I think I hear you. You're just scaring the hell out of me.”

“That's good, too,” Gregor said. “Because I want you to get this through your head. As of this very moment, right now, not a second later, you have quit smoking. Cold turkey and forever. You will never smoke another cigarette as long as you live. Because if you do, I'll walk. I'll pack my things and go to Europe and stay there. I'll leave no forwarding address. I'll disappear so thoroughly that you'll never be able to find me, and I'll stay gone until I have
you
out of my system, no matter how long it takes.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bennis said.

“Well, Tibor would say that wasn't a bad name to call
on.
I say do whatever it takes, but get it done. I saw one woman I loved die of cancer and I don't want to do it again.”

“What if I quit and I get cancer anyway? It happens to people. What if it happened to me?”

“Then I'd find a way to live with it. As long as you'd quit. But you have to quit.”

She was crying again. She could feel the tears rolling down the sides of her face. She wanted to make it stop and she just couldn't do it.

“This is crazy,” she said. “This is just crazy.”

Gregor stood up and came closer to the head of the bed. He leaned over and kissed her gently, on the lips, but so sexlessly that it might have been the kiss of a child.

“I'm going to go back to Cavanaugh Street. I'll be here again this evening, with food, if I can talk Lida into it. I can't believe I won't be able to. You get some rest.”

“I want a cigarette so badly, I'd kill for it,” Bennis said. “Do you realize that?”

“I don't care what you want, Bennis. Only what you do. At least in this case. Get some rest.”

He kissed her again, on the forehead this time. Then he left the room and closed the door behind him. Bennis hit the control button on the bed and laid herself out flat, with her eyes shut.

She couldn't just quit smoking, just like that, with no preparations and no program. She had to ease off gradually. She had to give herself a start date and then smoke like crazy up till then. She had to—what?

For the very first time in her life since the day she had first picked up a cigarette, it occurred to Bennis Hannaford that she was not in control of her smoking, and that she could not stop anytime she wanted to.

Half an hour later, Gregor Demarkian got out of a cab on Bridgefort Street and walked the block and a half to the intersection with Cavanaugh. It was a bright, cold, energetic first of November, and all around him were the signs that Halloween was only barely over. The row houses on Bridgefort Street had pumpkins on their front steps and crepe paper black cats in their windows. One or two of the car windshields had been soaped. A couple of the ground floor windows had been soaped, too. He knew that when he got to Cavanaugh Street, nothing would have been soaped. People didn't do that kind of thing there.

He turned the corner and looked down the long three blocks to the awning of the Ararat Restaurant, where he should have had breakfast this morning. He hadn't been able to, because he'd been too agitated about his coming talk with Bennis, he hadn't been able to stand the idea of sitting still. Down a block there was a little cluster of people in front of one of the houses. If he wasn't mistaken, they were in front of the house where his own apartment and Bennis Hannaford's were. He looked at the scattering of Halloween decorations that would stay up for another few days, the pop-up black cats and the banners with stylized
witches on them. Then he started down the block, wondering if Father Tibor was at home or doing something at the church. He thought that he had meant everything he had said to Bennis, but that if in the end he had to leave her, it would kill him.

He had gone about half a block when he realized what he was looking at. Donna Moradanyan was standing most of the way up a tall ladder she had placed on the side of their building, tacking something underneath the sill of what looked like one of his own windows. Old George Tekemanian, her son Tommy, and Father Tibor were all standing on the ground, watching her. Donna was decorating. Donna was
decorating.

Gregor walked the rest of the way to his building and the people standing in front of it and looked up. Donna seemed to be stringing long lengths of chocolate brown crepe paper across the front of the building. Farther up, she had strung a little roundish area in beige.