The Keeper (15 page)

I
t was close to midnight. Georgia O’Brian had been at the hospital for several hours. She sat at the side of her son’s bed and watched his slumbering face. Her father had been right. She was turning into one of
those
mothers. The kind that can’t leave their kid alone for more than five seconds. The kind that have nothing better to do than act like smothers. It was time to go home.

Before she left, she took one last look at him. He was nothing like her. She had a brief understanding of the man he would become if all went well and he didn’t fall off any roofs or decide to drink some of that polluted water in the Messalonski River. He would be small and dark with bookish glasses, and he would leave this town. He would leave this dead mill town, and be something better than where he came from. She hoped that, at least.

On her way out of the hospital, Georgia swerved to avoid colliding with Liz Marley. Georgia recognized her, kept walking, then turned around and caught up with her. She tapped the younger woman’s shoulder. “Liz Marley, I used to babysit for you,” she said. “Hi, how are you?”

Liz was a pale, pretty girl with a natural flush to her cheeks. Georgia remembered having seen Liz at the Chop Mop a year or so before and finding her frumpy. She smiled that this was no longer the case.

Liz uttered a sound of surprise. “Oh. I didn’t know, I thought I was alone, uh…”

“Georgia, remember? I used to babysit for you.”

“Oh, I know. I should have known. I’m just all shook up, I guess. I’m sorry, Georgia. How are you?” Liz asked. Then she looked down at the waxed floor and traced the cracks with the tips of her Keds.

“How are you?” Georgia replied.

“Good.”

“Are you visiting someone?”

“Oh, my sister,” Liz said.

“Susan?”

“She’s fine. I mean, no, she’s not fine.” Liz cradled the back of her skull with the palm of her hand in a sympathetic gesture. “She hit her head.”

Georgia looked down at Liz’s feet, and realized that the red dust on her sneakers was Susan Marley’s blood. “What happened?”

“I knew she wouldn’t like it if I brought Bobby with me but I was afraid to go alone. He’s nice. He doesn’t need this.” Then Liz looked up into Georgia’s face. “She hates me. She hates everyone.”

A chill ran down Georgia’s spine as she remembered her dream, and more importantly, the way she’d grinned at Matthew before his fall.
Was it possible that Susan had caused it?
“Tell me what happened,” Georgia said.

“Bobby and I found her and he called the hospital. I think it was the hospital. My mom didn’t even say thank you.” Liz looked at Georgia, waiting for her to make a judgment on this statement, but Georgia only nodded.

“Susan wasn’t popular in high school. Neither am I. I don’t know why Bobby likes me. My mom says she’ll find us when it gets really bad but I’m not even where I’m supposed to be. I’m supposed to be at the cafeteria with Bobby. He tried to kiss me but he gave Susan CPR. I could taste her on him.” Liz looked again at Georgia for affirmation, and whatever she saw on Georgia’s face made her squint. “My sister’s hurt and I’m talking about Bobby. I’m talking like an idiot.”

“You’re just shook up.”

“I can’t stop thinking about her. I always think about her,” Liz said. Then her eyes watered. “Sometimes I think she’s not really a person. Like she can’t die. She’s different from everyone else. But the thing is, I want her to die.”

Georgia blanched, not because Liz had just confessed that she wished her sister harm, but because she realized that she felt the same way.

Liz smiled a bitter smile. “You must think I’m out of my mind. I’m sorry. Forget it. How are you, anyway? I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

Georgia reddened from the memory of the last time she had babysat for Liz and her sister. She had not thought about it for years. “It has been a long time. I always meant to see you after that. I wanted to tell you I did what I could.”

Liz seemed not to understand. She gave Georgia a quizzical look. And then she sucked in a quick breath, as if she had been physically struck. “I’m sure you did.”

Georgia shifted uncomfortably. “What happened to your sister?” she asked.

“You saw. Your mom told everyone in town. Danny Willow even came to our house.”

Georgia coughed. She looked at the ceiling. “I mean, that she’s in the hospital.”

“They’re saying it was an accident. Bobby thinks it might have been murder but I know it wasn’t my dad. He’s dead, too.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying, Liz.”

This silenced Liz for a while. Then she said, “Maybe I’m crazy, just like her.”

“No,” Georgia told her without conviction.

Liz considered, and then she shrugged, as if she didn’t care what Georgia thought, and for this small act Georgia liked her. “Would you give me a hug?” she asked. Georgia opened her arms, and Liz squeezed her so hard that she knocked the breath out of Georgia’s chest. Soon, she began to cry.

Sitting there with Liz in her arms, Georgia wished she had found the bathroom before this had happened, and wondered why an almost grown woman she no longer knew was crying on her breast, or why she had decided to turn around and reacquaint herself with this girl in the first place. Over Liz’s shoulder, she could see people in the cafeteria eating dinner, the late shift. Meat loaf, soup, their hands curled around large cups of coffee. She wondered what it would be like to work at a hospital. Like another world where nothing counts but what is happening right then. Your whole life in a big building with colored tape and white uniforms and the smell of Top Job cleanser. She could feel the softness of Liz in her arms. She wondered if the staff was looking; if these things happened all the time. If they no longer cared very much, just something they watched, enacted before them every day.

After a while, Liz sat up. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s okay.”

Liz blushed. “Thank you. You’re nice.”

“Glad to help. Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“I’d kind of like it if you stayed,” she said.

“Okay.” Georgia wiped Liz’s hair from her face. “How did it happen, anyway?”

Liz recounted the events of the evening. When she finished, Georgia asked, “Where is he, then?”

“Who?”

“Paul.”

Liz did not understand.

“Mr. Martin, your teacher,” Georgia said.

“I don’t know. Mr. Willow, the cop, police officer, said he was gonna see him later.”

“If she’s about to die, shouldn’t someone call him?”

Liz looked at her with recognition and it made Georgia’s cheeks redden. A small town. A very small town. “I’d feel weird calling a teacher. And I don’t think my mom would like it.”

“I can call him if you want, just to let him know what’s happening. He should be here,” she said. “He should be told what’s going on.”

“I guess you’re right. But later, maybe? Could we just sit here for a while?”

“Yes,” Georgia said, “we can.”

T
he most unsettling thing about Georgia’s visit to the hospital was not Susan Marley’s unhappy circumstances, or crying Liz, or the memory of her old babysitting days, but the fact that she remembered Paul’s phone number. She had not used it often. Only at night, when his wife had been sleeping. Once Andrew, the angry son, picked up the phone. She hung up. And then, before a relationship had ever really formed, they broke up.

At Olsen’s Diner, she’d asked him how, exactly, he planned on leaving a sick wife and two young children. He told her he didn’t know, but he’d figure it out.
Just say the word, Georgia. That’s all you have to do and I’ll worry about the rest.
He’d said this impatiently, as if she had been Thomas fingering Christ’s wounds.

It would have been nice if the three of them could have lived happily ever after and all that, but it wasn’t worth the time thinking about, really. Because she knew he would never leave his wife. It had sounded like a good idea at the time, but when he went home to the woman who couldn’t get out of bed without his help, he’d change his mind.

In the waiting room, only feet away from the Marley family, she dialed his number from memory. It was as simple as remembering her old locker combination from high school: letting her fingers move without thought.

“Paul?” she asked as soon as he picked up the phone.

“Georgia,” he said without having to be told. He whispered this, and she knew that the rest of his family was sleeping. She heard movement, a bump of some sort, a muted curse, and imagined him carrying the cordless phone into the bathroom on the ground floor of his house, and then sitting on a fuzzy pink toilet seat.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, breathing heavily.

“I’m at the hospital.”

“What happened?”

“Matthew took a spill.”

“Do you need me to come down there?”

“No. He’s sleeping. It’s Susan Marley. I don’t know if Danny Willow told you and I thought you should know. She’s not going to make it through the night.”

There was a long silence. She heard tap water running. “How’d I get to be such a fuckup, Georgia?” he whispered. “When did that happen?”

Her throat tightened, and immediately she wanted him to explain himself. She wanted to ask him why he was not at the hospital, if he was trying to be considerate of the family, or why he’d been sniffing around Susan Marley in the first place. What happened to you, Paul? she wanted to ask. But she chose not to open that particular can of worms. With Paul, it was so easy to get sucked in. So easy to see the world the way he saw it if she let him talk. He used to rant about the mill for hours unless she stopped him, always asking: Didn’t she care? Why didn’t she care? As if he thought that pointing out the bad things in life was the same as fixing them.

“You’re drunk,” she said.

“Always.”

“Your liver’s gonna explode, you know.”

“Really? I never went to college and took biology.”

“Neither did I. Liz Marley said she wouldn’t mind if you came down here. They know it was an accident.”

“Danny told me not to go. They’d get upset.”

“Oh. Liz, her sister, said they wouldn’t. She’s about to die.”

He waited a while before answering, and she knew he could feel her disappointment. “Do you think I should come?”

“You should do what you want.”

“I want to say I’m sorry.”

“Good. I’m leaving soon, but good luck or something like that.”

“You’re not staying at the hospital?”

“No.”

“It’d be nice if you stayed.”

“Can’t Cathy come with you?”

He didn’t answer.

“I guess not.”

“You don’t have to wait for me. I know that’s asking a lot,” he said, but the statement hung in the air like a question.

No, she wanted to say. I can’t do that. I dropped you a long time ago. My father just got fired. I have almost no gas in my car and it’s raining so hard in Bedford that I don’t even know if I’m going to make it across the bridge back home if I wait any longer. The Marleys don’t have fond memories of me. You must be kidding to think I’d do that for you. No.

She told him yes, she’d wait for him at the cafeteria. It surprised her as much as the fact that she remembered his phone number.

T
he clock in the cafeteria ticks. Its second hand wavers for a moment, as if it will go backward.

Paul waits at the hospital with Georgia. He is not sure why he has chosen to come. He will have to see Susan again. If she dies, whether they know it or not, he believes he will carry a good deal of the blame. Things not to think about now, another item to add to a very long list.

Georgia hands him a cup of coffee, and the steam rises and curls under his nose like cigarette smoke. He wishes he was drinking something other than coffee.

She pats his back out in the open because it does not mean anything anymore, at least to her. He thinks this is nice, I wish I could take you home, Georgia. I wish you hadn’t been such a prig when I knew you or things would have been different. But you still live with your dad, darling, you’ll never get away from Daddy, and no matter how many times you tell yourself it’s because you want your son to have a grandfather, you know you’re just afraid.

The woman behind the counter stares at Georgia. He has forgotten the eccentricity of her appearance, the way eyes always follow her lips, hair, and stature across a room. She carries herself as if she does not know that she is any different.

He tells her thanks, again, and she nods. This is what he likes about her: She does not talk when there is nothing to say.

“How’s Matthew?” he asks.

“He’ll live.”

“Can I see him?” he asks, he doesn’t know why; he doesn’t want her son to see him in this condition. Maybe to test the limits of this kindness she is showing him.

“He’s sleeping,” she says. What she really means is, even if he wasn’t sleeping, you couldn’t see him. The kid you offered to adopt as your own. You’ll never see him.

She does not mention the times he has called and hung up. Or the times he has visited her house, watching. He thinks that if there had been one person, a single, sane person in his life, he would not be here right now. He wishes he had married a woman other than Cathy. He wishes he loved Cathy. Well no, let’s not get dramatic. He wishes he didn’t live in this town where life is dark and cuts to the center of him and that he was not shaking either because he needs another drink or because he needs to vomit. Again.

He waits.

G
eorgia rises, tells Liz that Paul has arrived. They will be waiting for word in the cafeteria. Liz mutters something, agrees to find them if Susan’s condition changes. When Georgia returns, Paul smiles and she knows he is glad to see her, that he has missed her. She has missed him, too. She does not like to admit that. She stays with him because he is alone. She thinks he deserves to be alone. She cannot let him wait by himself.

He smells to her like an alcoholic. She has not been this close to him for a very long time. This is the change in him: He is resigned. He thinks it is Cathy who has done this to him, but it is not Cathy. Paul does not understand that life isn’t always fun. He thinks that when he leaves a room, everyone else gets up and has a party, dances the Charleston. He thinks that Cathy has prevented him from this life. He thinks that he could have been more. He doesn’t understand that if that were the case, he would already be more.

She waits.

L
iz paces in slow, elliptical figure eights. She would like to make love right now, on the hospital floor. She doesn’t know why. She thinks it might hurt, the hardness, her head slamming against it. She thinks she might like it.

She waits now.

B
obby imagines the sound of the rain against the windows in his bedroom. The hospital is cold, open. He thinks about going outside, smoking a Lucky; he’d have an excuse to be somewhere other than here. Oddly, the one thought he can’t get out of his head is that he should finally face the truth: He will never be tall.

He waits.

M
ary does not think at all. She can hardly feel. The daughter she loved died long ago. She wants to be home, watching television. She wants a glass of wine. She wants to cut her vision apart, make the world all black, run a knife through it and pull back the reality. She wants to hold Liz, pacing Liz, and by touching her be reassured. But Liz will shake her off, and so she continues reading the same magazine article she has been clutching since she arrived at the hospital because she can’t get any farther than, “Parsley is the much neglected garnish in American cuisine.”

She waits.

They all wait.

I
n Bedford the mill is quiet. Rain falls and makes hollow splashes. There is no thunder. Only black. There is no sound. Snow melts, feet of it, and drifts along the banks of the river. Things buried during the long winter surface and float in the water. There are mittens, bottles of beer, pipes, shoes, their laces swerving like worms, dead animals, all clogging the gutters or falling inside, into the depths.

Houses are dark. Shades are drawn for the night while water rises and circles the town. People have prepared, readying their flashlights, fortifying their cellars. The banks will soon flood. The valley will not drain. The road to I–95 will be impenetrable. This will be the worst rain in Bedford’s history.

I
t is three
A.M.
on Friday when they stand over her bed, all of them. They think time has stopped, that it is past and present, mixing. If there were sound, it would travel in a curve, a loop, a circle.

Georgia does not want to be here. Paul has begged. He needs to see Susan again. He cannot do it alone. She touches Paul’s shoulder to tell him that she is going to wait outside. He puts his arm around her and she is frozen where she stands, unwilling to hear her own voice in this silence.

Liz and Bobby stand together. Bobby sees Paul’s action and mimics it. Liz shudders. Bobby holds her tighter. Mary stands far off, in the back.

Susan’s eyes roll. She has returned to consciousness. She fixes on a point. On Georgia and Paul. Paul looks down at his feet. He moves backward, and Georgia follows. Susan’s eyes drift. She sees Liz and Bobby. Liz takes a step toward her sister, but Bobby, his hands clamped tightly, anxiously, does not let her go. Susan’s eyes drift again. She looks in Mary’s direction and Mary shuffles out of view.

Their dreams return to them; a stain of blood in white snow, a little girl in Mary Janes, a hooker proffering a bottle of scotch, a mill in flames, a woman giving birth to things that have no business in this world. Susan smiles, and they know that she has sent these visions to them.

“Soon,” she whispers. Her soft voice is so resonant that it carries through the buzzing fluorescent lights, and the beeping machines, and the walls of the room. This is the first and last word she had spoken in five years. Her eyes do not close when she dies. They do not roll back. They remain open, while in the corner, a heart monitor makes one long beep.

For a long time no one takes a breath. Something is coming now. They can feel it.