The Free (P.S.) (2 page)

3

The nurse looked at her wristwatch. She had forty minutes left in her shift. She was nearly done charting and the night meds were taken care of. She kneeled down and re-tied her shoes and then walked down the hall to her last patient, Mr. Flory. He was a thin, weathered old man with stage IV stomach cancer. He lay on his side staring out the door into the hallway. He smiled when he saw her come in the room.

“You haven’t gone home yet?” he asked.

“Almost,” she said. “I’m at the finish line. You’re my last, Mr. Flory. I save my best for last.”

Even though it hurt him to do so, he moved on his back so he could see her better.

“How’s the pain?”

“Well . . .  ” he said.

“Well what, Mr. Flory?”

“I hate to ask, but is it time yet?”

“You’re in a lot of pain?”

He nodded.

“If you were going to rate it from one to ten, what would it be?”

“I’d say about an eight.”

“You always say eight.”

“It always seems about the same,” he said.

“I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call the doctor again, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Where’s your wife?”

“She had to go home and take care of some things.” He tried to stay on his back, but the pain was too much. He moved to his side and cried out in pain.

“That bad, huh?”

“I just get tired of lying on my side, but I guess I have to.” With his left hand he tried to comb back his thin, gray hair. “Is your shift almost over?”

“In thirty minutes,” she said.

“What are you doing tonight?”

“I have a big date.”

“Who’s taking you out?”

“Donna. But we’re staying in and watching TV.”

The old man laughed. “Donna’s your rabbit, correct?”

The nurse nodded.

“Did I tell you that my sister had a rabbit when we were kids? She used to bring it to the dinner table.”

“I bet your parents didn’t like that.”

“My mother didn’t like it, but if my dad had his way we’d eat every meal with the animals. What color’s Donna?”

“Black and white.”

“A Dutch rabbit.”

“I think so.”

“You had her a long time?”

“Maybe a year,” she said and went to the computer and looked at his chart. “My neighbors moved out of their apartment one night. They skipped out and left most of their stuff, including Donna. She’d been alone in her cage for two weeks when the landlord went in. They’d left a big bowl of water in the cage but I don’t know how long she’d gone without food. She was in rough shape. The landlord brought her to me ’cause he knows I’m a sucker.”

“Maybe he just thought you were kind.”

“Maybe.”

“I never got used to people mistreating animals.”

“It makes me mad. That’s for sure,” she said as she charted.

“If I saw a guy mistreat his dog or a horse, I never hired him again. When you see that you know what’s in his heart. You know that’s the way he sees the world. And I never liked seeing it that way.”

“You’re pretty smart for a guy living out in the sticks with a bunch of cows, Mr. Flory. Alright, buster, down to business. Are you thirsty?”

“I’m never thirsty anymore.”

“You should try to drink more water.”

“It just never sounds good anymore.”

“I bet if I had an ice-cold beer you’d drink that.”

“I quit drinking years ago.”

“Good for you.”

“I wasn’t the best drunk,” he said.

“Most people aren’t.”

“But I liked it.”

“Well, you can always imagine.”

“Maybe . . .” He looked at her and then closed his eyes. “I wish I could get out of here.”

“I know the doctors want to get you home. It won’t be long. Are you getting tired?”

“Guess all this talking is doing me in.”

“You’ll be asleep soon. When you wake up Rhonda will be here with new instructions from the doctor. I’m sure they’ll be able to increase your pain meds and you’ll be able to get some real rest.”

“Alright,” he said.

“Good-night, Mr. Flory,” she said.

“Good-night, Pauline.”

She clocked out at 11:00
PM
and walked down to the parking lot and got into a dented, green four-door Honda. She started the engine and scraped the windows and left. She drove to a grocery store and bought twenty-four cans of chicken noodle soup on special, a pint of chocolate ice cream, a container of fat-free coffee creamer, and two glazed donuts.

She left the soup in the trunk of her car and walked up the stairs to her apartment with the rest. Inside she turned on the TV, let the rabbit out of its cage, and sat down on the couch. She put the rabbit on her lap and gave it small bites of donut. She opened the ice cream and watched TV until she fell asleep.

The next morning she drove to a rundown suburb on the opposite side of town, to the small tract home she had grown up in. She parked in the driveway, took a laundry basket full of clean clothes from the trunk, and set the case of soup on top of it. She carried the basket to the front door and knocked on it with her foot.

“Come on,” she yelled. “It’s me. Hurry up.”

She could hear rustling from inside but there was no answer.

“Come on. It’s heavy!”

She kicked three more times and then set the basket on the ground and looked through her purse and found the keys. She unlocked the door and went inside to see her father lying on the old military cot in the living room. He was underneath an electric blanket and a sleeping bag and was watching TV.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

He lifted his head. “I wasn’t sure who it was.”

“Who else would it be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is it so cold in here?”

“They shut off the goddamn gas.”

“Who did?”

“The gas company.”

“Don’t lie to me, buster. I paid the bill and you know it. Anyway, all your mail comes to my house, and you never check your messages so you’d have no idea.” She went to the thermostat and turned it to seventy. There was a click, a hum, and then warm air began coming through the floor vents. “You can lower it when I leave but I’m not going to freeze just to cook you lunch . . . I did your laundry so I want you to take a shower and change your clothes. It’s cold in here but I can still smell you.”

“The hot water heater’s broken,” he said half-heartedly with his eyes still on the TV.

“You’re getting on my nerves already.” She took the case of soup into the kitchen and set it on the counter. She turned on the water and put her hand under it. “Don’t burn yourself in the shower. I’m gonna do the dishes and you’re going to wash your body and hair with lots of soap. Then you’re going to get dressed in clean clothes. I’m not going to argue. You either get up and get ready or I’m going to call Uncle Jeff again.”

The old man sprang from the cot. He was dressed in a sweatshirt and urine-stained long underwear. An electric blanket and sleeping bag fell to the floor as he stood. He was a bony man in his mid-sixties with thick, gray hair and six-day-old stubble. His eyes were small and brown and sunk back in his head.

“Why do you always got to call him?” he yelled. He picked up the basket of clothes and began walking toward his bedroom.

“I call him because you won’t listen to me, and because he’s your brother and he’ll put you in your place. He’ll come down here and kick your ass.”

“Goddamn it, don’t call him.”

“Then do what I say.” Pauline came from the kitchen. “Stop right there.”

“What now?” he said and turned around.

“I want you to shave, too. And I’ll be listening for the shower. If you don’t smell like shampoo when you come to lunch, I’m dialing his number.”

“This is bullshit.”

“And when you get done, you’ll eat lunch and we’ll go for a walk.”

“I don’t want to go for a walk.”

“You need to and I need to. I’ve gained six pounds since November and I don’t like walking alone. It wouldn’t kill you to leave the house once in a while.”

He went to his bedroom and slammed the door behind him. Pauline washed a sink full of dishes and opened a can of soup and turned on the stove. In the cupboard were three boxes of saltines. She found one open, took out ten crackers and put them on a plate. She chopped iceberg lettuce into bite-size pieces, put the salad in a bowl, and went into the living room and watched TV and waited.

He came out twenty minutes later. His hair was combed back and wet. Bits of toilet paper covered a series of shaving cuts on his neck and chin. He wore brown pants and a flannel shirt.

He pointed to the cuts. “Are you happy?”

“If you’d use the electric razor I bought you then you’d never cut yourself. Then you wouldn’t hate shaving so much,” she said.

“I don’t trust electric razors.” He went into the kitchen and sat. She poured the soup into a bowl and set it in front of him.

“It looks like you keep losing weight.”

“Don’t be a nurse,” he said and began eating. “I don’t like it when you talk like a nurse.”

“Alright,” she said. “Fair enough. What do you want to talk about?”

He looked up from his soup. “What?”

“What’s going on with you?”

The old man slurped the soup into his mouth and stared at the table. Broth leaked out his lips and dribbled down his chin.

“What are you going to do this weekend?”

He took two saltines and put them in his mouth and began chewing.

“What are you going to do this weekend?” she asked again.

“What do you think?” he said and put his face back down to the soup. He held the spoon like a knife and began shoveling it in and again broth fell to the table.

In a man’s voice she said, “What about you, Pauline? What are you going to do this weekend?”

“I don’t know really,” she answered in her own voice. “Maybe I’ll go to New York and become a prostitute.”

“Isn’t New York cold this time of year?” she said in the low voice. “Maybe you should wait until it’s spring.”

“Spring, you think?”

“Yeah, spring’s a good time to walk the streets.”

“Thanks for the advice, Dad. You really are something. You’re always such a help.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said in the man’s voice and hit the table.

Her father stopped eating and looked at her. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“I didn’t mean to be an asshole.”

“When you’re an asshole, you’re an asshole. It doesn’t matter if you want to be or not. You just are. The trick is not to be.”

He pushed the bowl away. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she said and sighed. “I guess I’m just in a bad mood. You done?”

“I’ll finish the rest later.”

“What about the lettuce? You’ve only had one bite.”

“I hate vegetables.”

“I don’t think you can consider iceberg lettuce much of a vegetable.”

“You know what I mean.”

“So you’re finished?”

He nodded and she took the dishes from the table and set them in the sink. “Now put on your shoes and let’s go for a walk. I only have an hour before I have to go to work.”

“Can I bring my cigarettes?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I started again, so you’re off the hook.”

4

Leroy Kervin woke up to the sound of the TV. There was a Western on; a kid was AWOL from the cavalry and was killing Indians. A man with one leg was trying to stop him, but he was having a hard time. He watched the show for a moment then fell back to sleep. The next time he woke it was to the sound of crying. He opened his eyes to see a brown-haired nurse in the corner of the room. She stared out the window into the parking lot. It was night and the main room lights were off. He could hear her sobs and could see her wiping her tears while she looked at her wristwatch. He heard a voice from the hallway call, “Pauline.” The brown-haired nursed replied that she would just be a minute and again looked at her watch. He tried to keep his eyes open, but couldn’t.

When he opened them the next time it was daylight. He could see the sun from the window and could hear people talking. He saw an old man using a walker go down the hallway and nurses walking past. He could remember that a nurse named Pauline had been in the room crying the last time he was awake. He could remember that a Western was on TV. He still had his memory; he still had clarity. Nothing made sense anymore. He tried to move his hand to hit the call button to let them know the pain he was in, but his fingers wouldn’t move. Everything felt as heavy as concrete. And then the pain worsened. He tried to speak, to scream for help, but nothing would come out. His mind became hysterical while his body lay lifeless.

His thoughts grew darker. It would be more hospitals, and this time it was his fault. He’d failed; he was to blame. It would be this room and then another and then another and then finally, if he were lucky, he’d be back where he started: at the group home in the suburbs, stuck away forever.

The pain seemed to stop time. Had he been waiting like this for minutes or hours or days or weeks? It was too much to take and he was so tired of being in pain. He decided then that he would give up, that he would run his mind as far away as he could. He would lose himself inside himself. He would disappear from the world.

It was early morning as he walked down the crowded city street. It was cold and most of the people wore green-and-gray military uniforms. There were hundreds of them passing by in all directions. Leroy looked out to the sea and military ships filled the bay, and on the streets black-and-green military vehicles lined the curbs. He was dressed in his uncle’s Pendleton wool coat as he walked to the National Guard recruiting office. As he drew closer, he saw a woman in a blue parka knocking on the front door. She was slender, in her twenties, with black hair.

“Do you know why they aren’t open?” she asked. Her pale face was red from crying.

“No,” he told her. “They’re supposed to be. They’re always open.”

“Oh, I hate this place.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“My friend’s disappeared,” she cried. “I begged him not to join but I think he did. I used to see him every day but now I can’t find him. I’m hoping they’ll tell me where he is. Why are you here?”

“I’m joining,” he told her.

“You’re joining?” she said in horror.

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“My boss wants me to. He’s a captain in the Guard. It sounds crazy, but I know I won’t get laid off if I join. He’s let half of the crew go already, but he likes me. I’m an electrician. Jobs are hard to find where I live. No one’s building anymore. There’s two guys that have more seniority than me, but I know he won’t lay me off if I join. He thinks of me as a son. Someone to carry on the business when he gets old. I don’t mind. I just want to keep my job. Anyway, he said I can be an electrician for the National Guard so I won’t have to go overseas. I won’t have to be in the wars.”

“I think they’ll send you wherever they want to send you,” the woman said. “That’s how it works. It has nothing to do with what you want or what you think.”

“They won’t send me to the wars,” he said.

“You’re wrong,” she said and wiped her eyes with a Kleenex. They waited for nearly twenty minutes, staring at the closed brick building. It began raining and grew colder. Wind began howling against them.

“I’m starting to get hungry,” Leroy said and turned to her. “Are you hungry?”

“Me?” she said as she leaned against the glass door.

“Yeah, you.”

“Worrying always makes me hungry.”

“There’s a restaurant up the street. I think it’s called Paul’s Place.”

“That’s the last place I want to go,” she said.

“Why?”

“I work there, but you should go. The food’s pretty good.” For the first time she looked at him. She had green eyes and a small face with freckles and a nose that sloped upward. He thought she was about to smile when across the street a group of twenty soldiers walked past them. They were dressed in new uniforms. One of the soldiers at the back of the pack, a haggard man of forty, noticed her and stopped. He walked across the street toward them and lit a cigarette. When she saw him coming, tears filled her eyes and she moved closer to Leroy. “If you walk me home, I’ll make you breakfast.”

He looked at the soldier. “He makes you nervous?”

“Of course.”

“Then let’s go,” Leroy said and put his arm around her. When the soldier saw this and that she was crying he turned around and jogged back to his group.

“Everything is falling apart. So now it seems like all I do is fall apart. I’m sorry I keep crying.”

“It’s alright,” he said. “You should see what I’ve been like. You should see where I’ve been living.”

“My name is Jeanette.”

“I’m Leroy.”

“Please don’t join the guard, Leroy,” she said. “I know I don’t know you, but I’m begging you not to.”

“But I’ve already committed,” he whispered to her.

They walked through hundreds of passing soldiers to her apartment, men and women, young and old. A sea of soldiers next to the sea. The uniforms were new, as were the packs on their backs and the boots on their feet. They spoke loudly and freely among themselves, and all of them stared as the two civilians walked by. Then Jeanette took Leroy’s hand and led him off the main road and down a side street. They walked up a long hill to where she lived, a brick building from the 1930s that sat alone overlooking the bay.

The main entrance door was broken-down, as were the windows around it. They stepped over shattered glass and splintered boards and passed busted furniture and bags of trash to get to the stairwell. She led him up six flights until they came to the door of her apartment. She took a key from her coat and opened three bolt locks. Inside, the walls and ceiling of her apartment were ragged, the plaster falling down in patches from water damage. Her front room was simple, just a couch, two wooden chairs, and a bookcase lined with novels and comic books. There was a balcony with a view of the harbor, which held a long row of warships. The walls had old water-stained floral wallpaper and nothing hung from them except a single framed picture of the Portuguese singer Amália Rodrigues.

“How do you know Amália Rodrigues?” Leroy asked. “I love Amália Rodrigues.”

Jeanette went to the picture. It was an old black-and-white press photo. She took it from the wall and handed it to him.

“You’ll think I’m crazy, but one time I had a dream that I was in a trailer. It was like an Airstream trailer but it wasn’t as nice. Inside there was music playing and I was in love. The boy in the dream held me. He was very corny. He would whisper in my ear that he loved me more than anything. He’d say things like, ‘I love you more than a thousand planets. I love you more than all the oceans in the universe and more than all the candy bars ever made . . .’ You should have heard him. He was very funny. So that day we danced while Amália Rodrigues sang to us. There was a record player on a table and he would play her albums for me over and over. He said he would take me to Portugal: he said he’d find her for me even if he had to spend his whole life looking. He would kiss my neck as he told me these things. I had never heard of her before that. I barely knew where Portugal was, but in my dream we fell asleep together in the trailer. He held me on a fold-out bed. While I was sleeping I dreamt that she came to me and told me to find her. When I woke up, I remembered her name, and began looking for her records. It took me a year to find one.”

“She just came to you in a dream like that?”

“Yes,” Jeanette said.

“That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. My uncle had a trailer once, and we would sit in it and listen to Amália Rodrigues records every Friday after he got off work . . . See, years before that, after he’d gotten out of high school, there were no jobs. He wasn’t really worried at first, but then everything he applied for he didn’t get. He was going to have to move to a different city to find work, but then he got drafted. The Vietnam War was going full blast by then. In a way he was relieved. At least he’d have money; at least in a way he would have a job. The notice he received said he had three months until he had to report. So his father took him aside and told him he should see something of the world in case he got killed. He gave my uncle his life savings of two thousand dollars and a plane ticket to Europe.

“My uncle landed in Madrid, Spain. He worked his way to Portugal and one night in a club in Lisbon he heard Amália Rodrigues sing. He said she sang the most heartbreaking songs and had the most beautiful voice he’d ever heard. He stayed in Portugal until his time ran out. He saw her night after night after night.

“Years later he lived with my mom and me in the backyard of our house. He lived in a trailer, a trailer that looked like an Airstream but wasn’t as nice. On Fridays when the work-week was done, he’d sit down with a twelve-pack of beer and listen to her music. My mom would sometimes yell at him for playing the records so loud, but my mom liked her too, and she liked that there was something her brother still loved. Sometimes you’d go into his trailer and Amália Rodrigues would be singing and he’d be sitting at his table smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, smiling and crying at the same time.”

“I can’t believe in my dream there was a trailer, and in reality your uncle listened to her in a trailer. That doesn’t make any sense. How would we both like Amália Rodrigues?”

“I don’t know,” Leroy said.

Jeanette took off her coat, turned on a portable heater, and went to the kitchen. She came back with two bottles of Rainier beer.

Leroy took a bottle and drank from it. “You know what else? This beer is the same beer my uncle used to drink.”

“I’ve always liked Rainier,” Jeanette said.

“Me too.”

“Is your uncle still alive?”

“No, not anymore,” Leroy said.

“What was he like?”

“My uncle was like my father and my brother, except he never gave me a hard time. I think really, he was always just glad to see me. It’s lucky when you know someone and you can tell they’re glad to see you, almost relieved to see you. It doesn’t happen very often, but it sure makes you feel good. My mom says my uncle was one person when he went into the army and another person when he came out. Before he went in, my mother said he was the funniest person she knew, and she’s his sister. She’s supposed to be annoyed by him. But it wasn’t like that. She loved him but she liked him, too. He was a clown and very goofy. But when he came home from the war it was like that part of him was gone. There was no silliness left, the lightness he’d always had had disappeared.”

As they spoke, they heard a loud siren coming from below. It was followed by the distant sound of sledgehammers breaking down doors. Then came the sounds of yelling and boots running up the stairwell.

“It’s them,” she cried.

“Do you have any neighbors who they could be coming for?”

“I’m the only one left in the building.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said. She lifted her leg and pulled down her sock. Her skin had the mark, the blue-and-red-and-green mark that looked like a deep bruise.

“Do you have any place to hide?”

“No,” she cried and began to hyperventilate.

“Are you sure there’s nowhere?”

She shook her head in panic.

There were fists beating on the door and then a sledgehammer breaking it. They rushed into her apartment. There were three of them in military uniforms. Two men and a woman. They carried rifles and wore bulletproof vests and helmets with spotlights on them.

“Take her pants off,” the leader of them yelled. He was a young soldier, not even twenty years old.

“No,” Jeanette cried. “Please don’t.”

Leroy ran to stop them, but the woman soldier hit him in the chest with the sledgehammer. The pain exploded inside him. He fell to the ground. He couldn’t breathe. It felt like his chest had been ripped open and was being pulled apart. He was unable to move or speak. A fat, middle-aged male soldier, out of breath and sweating, dragged Jeanette to the living room. Leroy could see her from where he lay. The soldier began taking off her clothes. She screamed and kicked at him but he wouldn’t stop. The female soldier went to Jeanette and hit her in the face and then held her down while the other soldier finished stripping her. They left her naked and crying on the floor.

“She’s got it,” the woman soldier yelled and pointed to her foot. The young commander got on the radio and called it in. He took a pistol from his holster and pointed it at her head. Leroy tried to scream for them to stop but nothing came out. He couldn’t move and the pain in his chest swelled.