The Dark Lake (5 page)

"I'm very thirsty, I'm sorry, I can't go on with this till I get a drink of water."

"Well why don't you try. We are going to have to stop soon and you …"

"I … I can't
; I'm sorry. I am so thirsty. I have to go. I have to go to work now. I don't want to get disoriented and end up missing work. I was late yesterday."

But I didn't have to be to work for a couple hours. I knew that Miriam knew this too, but she didn’t stop me when I got up to leave. I left without using my full hour, but I had to get water, and I had to get out of there.

Dad sat in a lawn chair on the freshly mown grass reading a book when I drove up. I went directly through the back porch though, so I didn’t speak to him.

"Well you're home early. Aren't you supposed to go to work?” Mom asked.

"Not till three."

"How did your session go?"

"Okay."

"How was the meeting last night?"

"Good, I guess."

"I was worried about you when you didn't get home till 2
:00 a.m."

"You shouldn't worry about me
—I'm an adult."

"That's true.
It's time to grow up, Jane
."

"Uh huh. Do we have any pop? Juice? Anything? I'm so thirsty. Lemonade?"

"I don't know—whatever's in there, I guess."

I opened the door and felt the cool air come out. It was refreshing, but there wasn't anything to drink. Just milk.

"Milk isn't thirst-quenching."

"Well if that's all we have
, then that's all we have."

"I guess I'll have to go to the store, which is too bad
; I barely have time." I thought maybe if I looked in there a little longer something might appear.

Nothing in the fridge
. I decided to walk to Walker’s.

Walking to Walker's
, I could still hear the echo of Krishna’s laughter. She thought Walker’s was the funniest thing ever, because there was a huge, 1950s-style, garish painting of a woman in a dress and pearls shopping, and underneath it said, “Walker’s, the largest grocery store on New York Avenue.”

Why wouldn’t she answer the phone? I needed to tell her about my dream.

I bought a big, cold jug of lemonade—so nice to buy it with my own money. To not feel a single twinge of guilt when I bought it. To not have to explain.

If this job worked out for me
, maybe I could move into my own apartment. For all my talk, I had never done that. And you couldn't exactly call a room at the state hospital an apartment. I'd been away from there quite a while now. For a long time I thought I would never live away from that place for more than a year at a time. Part of being able to stay out of that place was staying drug-free.

Nothing could be worse than trying to get hold of weed when you are out of high school. For a few years, maybe ten at the most, you could still get it by hanging around the same crowds, going to the same parties. But then
, as you got older, you had to hang back. You couldn't be the screaming life of the party anymore.

I arrived at back my house, passing my dad again, reading in the chair. He had a big
, thick “whodunit.”

"How's the book?"

"Oh, this is a good one.” He looked up from it and smiled. "Dorothy Lee Sayers. You really should read her."

"Oh, I will
, Dad, I will."

I headed in through the front hall, the one that had last been remodeled when I was nine years old. It used to be an open front porch
, but now it was an enclosed entryway. The red carpet in it matched nothing else in the house. In fact, none of the rooms matched any of the other rooms. Mom had done each with its own theme. The kitchen was done with New Orleans in mind.

The Danish dining room’s blue and white walls were still dotted with plates, painted with pictures of the sea, and sailboats
, and mermaids. The gaudy, gold living room—a tribute to antiquity with paintings of Roman ruins on the walls—had once been lined with shelves stuffed with books, many of which were valuable, rare editions, published in the last century, the pride of my father, the history professor. My mom went on a rampage one day and cleared the bookshelves and sold them all for twenty-five cents at a garage sale, leaving those shelves barren and meaningless.

I went upstairs to my room after drinking a big glass of lemonade. Up in my room
, I lay down to rest before getting ready for work. One nap. Would I wake up in time?

I did. I made it in, with a minute to spare, except I again forgot that I was supposed to be there at fifteen till. I must ha
ve a mental block against this.

As I did the rounds
, caring for the patients—getting them drinks, fluffing their pillows, putting lotion on their dry skin as per the stats—I kept thinking,
I should have called Krishna
. I forgot again.

I wouldn't get out of there till 11 o'clock. It would be too late then. Or would it? That never used to be a late time for her. Was it now? I didn’t know anymore. I had no idea what her
schedule was now. What she did.

Maybe I could just make a quick call from one of these rooms. Maybe if I could get the curtain closed. Mrs. Taylor's room was quiet. She couldn't talk. She'd been comatose since she'd arrived. She wouldn't say anything. I shut
the curtain around her bed, then I shut the door, and quickly picked up the phone and dialed. I had dialed it enough times now that I remembered. Actually, the first time I dialed, I dialed her old number by accident. Every time I dialed that phone number, I thought about how her brother always said to remember the number by the year Hitler invaded Poland.

I hung up as soon as I realized my mistake and redialed. There, that was right, and I got her machine again. No wait. It was her.

"Krishna?"

"Yea
h?"

"It's Jane."

Silence. That silence was deafening.

"The reason I'm calling is to tell you something important
, so just listen okay? I can't talk right now. But I need to tell you something. I'll call you back."

"What?” I heard her say as I put the phone back on its cradle as the door to the room opened. Francine put her head around the curtain.

"Was that you talking?"

"No. I mean yes. I was just telling Mrs. Taylor something. I like to talk to her
, even though she can't talk back. I'm sure it helps her."

Francine eyed me suspiciously. Then sh
e opened Mrs. Taylor's curtains.

"Goldie needs you to go in there and help her get to the bathroom. Then we need to get them to dinner."

"I thought I was doing feeding tubes this evening."

"You still need to help with dinner."

Bringing the old folks to dinner meant the overwhelming smell of institutional food. The noxious blend of brown
, unidentifiable mush, corn, always corn, chocolate pudding sitting way too close to some kind of stew, or cooked carrots, and always those segregated trays, those school-lunch trays. Those pale pink or light tan or dull yellow, ugly, depressing things. Look, just cause they're old do their lives have to lack any vibrancy whatsoever?

I fed Mr. Morgan. I put a spoonful of mush into his mouth, which could barely chew anymore
, and smelled the smell of oldness and bland food. No air circulated in the cafeteria.

"Can't they feed us anything better'n this?”
old, fat Helen said from across the table. She was able to feed herself and talk to me, but she was so cranky all the time. Plus she said it like I'd designed the menu, and scowled at me when she spoke, scrunched up her eyes and squinted.

"I don't pick the food Mrs. St. James. I just serve it."

"Oh,” she said, and looked like she was getting ready to rebut me, but then feeble-minded staring took its place.

"I was in the w
ar you know,” Mr. Morgan began.

"I didn't know that
, Mr. Morgan."

"Hank. Mr. Morgan is my father
.” He laughed a bit at this.

"Which war were you in
, Hank?"

"The last war to end all wars."

His eyes were sunken in, and I don't know why he wore glasses. I knew he couldn't see me. His shirt was indistinguishable from a bathrobe. His hands were gnarled fists, and his legs were crossed and revealed that yes, his shirt must be a bathrobe. And what was the color—faded brownish green—like the mush. And there was some of that on his bathrobe too, even though I didn't remember spilling any.

I spooned it up to him.

"Don’t give me any more of that."

I set it back down.

"This food tastes like they poisoned it.” Helen perked back up and scowled at me again.

I don't know how she could have known that
, though. She hadn't taken a single bite.

"How about some of this
applesauce?"

"Is that what the hell you call that?"

I looked deeply into the applesauce. It was the least noxious-looking thing there. It looked like applesauce. How do you mess up applesauce?

"My husband poisoned our dog,” Helen began.

"Now come on, Hank, you have to eat something.” I turned to my chart, ready to mark his dinner amount at 'little.' I noticed his breakfast and lunch marked that way too.

"I never had to eat anything that tasted that bad in the war."

"Dog just up and died one night after he fed him."

"I faced bullets flying, bombs exploding around me, blood and guts everywhere, but nothing that tasted this bad."

"He denied it. Denied it till the day he died. But you know,” her eyes got real squinty and she balled up her fist, still not having taken a single bite, "he never liked that dog."

"Helen
, I will have to mark you as 'little' too if you don't eat something."

"What the hell does that mean?” she asked.

"I never got wounded anywhere, except right here.” He pointed toward his heart.

When I checked on him later that night
, I asked him again about the war and which one was it and what was he, soldier on the ground or a perhaps a pilot? Was he in Germany? France? Did he storm the beaches at Normandy? He didn't answer, just stared off. At night a lot of them just stared.

I got him ready for bed, helped him brush his teeth and take his medicines. I did it for all the patients. I charted them and watched over them and tucked them in. I rubbed lotion on old fat Helen's back. I poured water over the mentally alert
, diabetic woman's withered vagina while she peed, so it wouldn't sting. I changed a colostomy bag. And when the coast was clear, I went back to Mrs. Taylor's room and called Krishna again, just before my shift was over.

She didn't answer again. And when I hung up the phone and left for the night, I found myself wandering the street
s of Oshkosh.

Downtown Oshkosh has more bars per street corner than any other town in the country, I have heard. More than any in the world except for Dublin, Ireland, I remember someone saying. I walked past them, watching the teenagers spill out of them, and the
late-twenties crowd. People my age in there were usually tethered to the bar, and you didn't see much of them until close. The ones who went to the nice bars weren't to be found on Main Street. They mostly went clubbing at places like the Pioneer Inn or the Ritz. I think I must have walked the whole length of Main Street.

What was I doing
here? Cruisin' for a bruisin'?

"Jane! Is that you?” I looked into the face bu
t felt no sense of recognition.

"Yea
h, it's me.” I feigned a smile.

"Well hell, where've you been? I thought you were dead
!"

I still couldn’t place the face. It was pudgy and freckled. Her hair was mouse brown and too curly. She had fat hips
, and dressed as if she were the hottest thing in town.

"I'm trying to remember …"

"It's Lisa.” She nodded, knowing that I couldn't remember her.

"I'm so embarrassed. I should know you
, shouldn't I?"

"Well, maybe not. Everybody knows you
.” She started laughing.
"Hell, everybody knows who you are!"

I looked inside the smoky bar.

"Are you going home?” I asked her.

I was beginning to finally place her. She was the short
, stubby, fat girl we all made fun of. She was the girl who sat stunned in her car that night. She gaped at me with a look on her face that said, "You've got to be kidding."

***

"What?” I say, honestly forgetting that I am wearing black and white checked shorts, a purse over my shoulder, and no top.

“I’ll give you a quarter to walk naked from here to High Street,” Ziggy had dared us. Well, who co
uld say no to a deal like that?