Travelers Rest (21 page)

“Hi, Seth.”

He tried to wet his lips with his tongue. His voice was muffled by the oxygen mask. “You look like a nurse.”

Jane laughed lightly behind the surgical mask. “Yeah. Truman said we have to wear all this stuff to come in and see you.”

Seth nodded. Then he asked, “You mad at me?”

“No. Of course not. Why would I be mad at you?”

“What I said. Last time.”

“No. No, I’m not mad, Seth.”

“You haven’t been here.”

“I just needed a little time away. But I’m here now. Truman called to tell me you have pneumonia. I wanted to see how you are.”

“Well,” he said, raising his brows, “I’ve been better.”

“Listen, you shouldn’t talk. Reserve your strength. I just wanted to let you know I’m here.”

He seemed to fall back to sleep then. But after a moment he opened his eyes and looked up at her. “You know . . .”

When he didn’t go on, she leaned closer and said, “What, Seth?”

“I won the game. I beat Jon-Paul.”

She smiled, surprised by the surge of pleasure and pride that coursed through her. “But of course,” she said, “I knew you would.” She leaned over and, through the mask, she kissed his moist brow. “I have to go now. You get some more sleep. I’ll be back soon.”

Truman was in the waiting room, along with several other people who had family members in the ICU. Before Jane could sit down beside him, Truman said, “Listen, there’s a small chapel right down the hall. The pews are kind of hard, but at least it’s someplace quiet to sit.”

“All right.”

She followed him slowly as he moved on stiff knees down the hall. He turned into a small windowless room and slipped into a pew. Jane slid in beside him. The door and the altar were separated by only half a dozen pews. The entire chapel was almost as small as Seth’s room on the fifth floor.

“It looks like they don’t exactly expect a crowd for services,” Jane noted.

Truman smiled. “There’s a larger chapel off the front lobby where they hold services. This one seems to be reserved for people who want to come and pray.”

The room was largely unadorned, save for a brass cross and a couple of matching candlesticks on the altar. Jane waited a moment, expecting Truman to ask her where she’d been this past week. But he didn’t ask. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak first.

“Truman?” she finally said.

“Uh-huh?”

“How did you let Maggie go?”

Truman frowned in thought. Then he said, “I didn’t have any choice.”

“But you said you tried to get her to go away with you.”

“Oh yes. I begged her to come. But I had very little time to convince her. Once we knew Tommy Lee Coleman was still alive, I had to get out of Travelers Rest. I had to disappear quickly.”

“I just can’t believe she’d give you up so easily.”

“Easily? She saw me refuse to help a man. She saw me leave him to die. That’s no small thing.”

“I suppose. But part of me thinks she should have understood. After all, Tommy Lee’s father left your brother to die.”

Truman chuckled quietly. “As Mamma always said, two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“But, Truman, even if what you did was wrong, Maggie should have forgiven you. She should have allowed you to be human.”

Truman shrugged. “I wish she had.”

“Why didn’t she?”

“Everything happened so fast. There was just no time.”

“Did you ever contact her again, once you left?”

“No, I never did. I know it must seem strange to you, but I couldn’t let my whereabouts be known. In the ’60s a white man didn’t need much of an excuse to lynch a black man. Well, the Colemans had an excuse, all right. I had to disappear, start all over again somewhere else.”

“And you’ve never been back to Travelers Rest since?”

“No, I never have. But then, I had no real reason to go back. My folks moved to Greenville and lived there till their deaths. My siblings scattered, most of them leaving the South. Only one of my sisters stayed there in Greenville.” He shrugged again. “I never had any reason to go back.”

“Well, then, how do you know about Maggie’s death?”

“Cecily—that was my sister in Greenville. She saw it in the paper, since by then Maggie too had been living in Greenville for many years. Cecily cut out Maggie’s obituary and sent it to me. Cecily herself died not long afterward. Sending me Maggie’s obit was just about the last time she was in touch with me.” He shook his head, then reached for his wallet and rummaged through it. “I used to carry it around with me . . . Now what’d I do with it?” He shrugged and tucked the wallet back in his pocket. “Oh yes, it was getting dog-eared so I put it in my dresser drawer for safekeeping. Anyway, that’s how I found out.”

Jane pressed her lips together. “That’s kind of a sad ending to the story, you know.”

Truman sniffed. “Kind of a sad story all the way around, I guess. But then again, nobody’s got it easy in this life.”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t marry someone else. Didn’t you want to?”

“I thought about it, of course. Even dated now and again, but”—he shrugged again—“it just never happened. Wasn’t meant to be, I guess.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“What? Of not marrying at all if you don’t marry Seth?”

Jane nodded.

“I think you will.”

“
You
didn’t.”

“That doesn’t mean you won’t. I was just a stubborn old coot, is all. Couldn’t find anyone who lived up to Maggie, and I wasn’t going to settle.”

Silence. Then Jane asked, “Did you ever get over it, Truman?”

“Yes and no. It finally stopped hurting quite so much. In fact, I finally came to the point where Maggie became a fond memory instead of a painful one. But at the same time, I spent a lifetime hoping to make amends somehow. I’d have given just about anything to hear her say she forgave me. But, as I said before, it’s too late for that now.”

“The one unanswered prayer.”

“The one unanswerable prayer, I suppose. There’s no way I can hear her say she forgives me now. But listen, Jane, I’m wondering about you. Are you all right? Did something happen?”

Jane shut her eyes, took a deep breath. She opened her eyes and looked at the cross. “Last Friday Seth told me it’d be better for him if we weren’t engaged.”

“Ah. I see.” Truman shifted on the pew, leaned forward with his arms resting on the pew in front of them. “I’m sorry, Jane.”

“I’m trying to understand how he feels, what he’s going through.”

“He’s got a long, tough fight ahead of him just to regain some sense of normalcy. That may be all he can handle right now.”

Jane nodded. “That’s kind of what he said. That he’s only got the strength for so much, as though the engagement was an added burden.”

“My guess is that he’s afraid of being a burden to you.”

“Yes. That too.”

“So you’re working on trying to let him go. At least for now.”

“I guess, like you, I have no choice.”

“You’re going to be all right, you know. It may not feel that way at the moment, but later you’ll see. You’ll be all right.”

Jane thought of the empty bottles at home. She was going to have to be stronger. She was going to have to do better than that if she was going to be all right.

“After all, you survived, didn’t you, Truman?” she said.

Truman laughed lightly. “I guess I did.”

“Proving that the human heart can be broken into a thousand pieces and still go on beating.”

Truman nodded. He looked at his hands, at the cross, at Jane. He nodded again.

31

J
uly first dawned hot and steamy. Jane spent the morning hours in the air-conditioned coolness of the Penlands’ house, cleaning up from her days of mourning. She dumped the contents of half a bottle of bourbon down the kitchen drain and promised herself that was it. No more. It hadn’t helped Meredith Morrow. It wasn’t going to help her.

She made a mental note to replace everything she’d taken from the liquor cabinet. That way Diana would never know. Nor would she know what happened with Ted, how Jane had been foolish enough to meet him again, and how she had run. She cringed at the thought. That was the behavior of a schoolgirl, not a grown woman. And the drinking—that was college fare. In the last week she’d been slipping backward when she needed to go forward.
“Life’s gearshift’s got no reverse . . .”
Yes, but even as you moved forward in years, you could evidently fall backward in emotion and behavior.

After cleaning the house, Jane showered and dressed. Then she sat at Diana’s computer to catch her up on the news about Seth’s pneumonia. For her own sake, not Diana’s, she tried to make it sound less serious than it was. She had always thought it bad practice to put her worst fears into words; to verbalize them was like giving them skin with which they could rise up and become real.
He’s on powerful IV antibiotics,
she wrote,
and he should be fine, once he finishes this course.

She paused before signing off. She wanted to ask Diana to pray.
Keep Seth in your prayers, will you?
Something simple like that. After all, people said that all the time, didn’t they? Especially in times of tragedy or trial.
We ask that you keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

But she knew Diana didn’t pray. Diana didn’t believe in God, at least not a god who could be persuaded by the pleas of mere mortals.
“If he’s there he’s completely hands off,”
Diana had once remarked.
“Honestly, I don’t think he’s there, but if he is, he set the clock ticking, and then he stepped back to watch all us little people get caught up in the cogs.”

Jane didn’t agree with her. At least, she hoped Diana was wrong. She had spent enough years listening to Laney singing hymns in the kitchen to know that some people thought otherwise.

By noon Jane was at the hospital. She found Seth sleeping. For her allotted ten minutes she stood beside his bed, wanting both to wake him and not to wake him. She stood quietly, watching him breathe. Watching him struggle to breathe, for each breath was a battle.

“Keep fighting,” she whispered.

The waiting room was empty when she sat down. Like the chapel, it was another small windowless room, furnished only with a dozen vinyl chairs, a couple of lamps, a coffee table littered with torn magazines. One framed print hung on the wall, a patriotic picture of men and women in military uniform, gazing at the American flag.

What should I do now?
Jane wondered, and just as quickly she realized there was nothing for her to do but wait. Wait for the time to pass until she could spend another ten minutes with Seth. Wait until Sid and Jewel showed up later in the day. Wait for a change in Seth’s condition, a turn in the course of his illness, hopefully a turn for the better.

Jane clasped her hands together and looked around the sterile room. She wasn’t sure she could bear it. Maybe she should get up and walk. Maybe she should seek out Truman. Maybe she should leave the hospital altogether and come back later.

No matter what she did or where she went, though, it would be there, the nagging fear that Seth would not get better. It would be right there with her, rattling the cage of her heart, demanding her attention. She wouldn’t be able to get away from it.

But she had to do something,
something.
She couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. Not, and keep her sanity too.

She put her hands on the armrests to push herself up, but before she could rise she heard movement in the hall. The rapping of footsteps and the fainter pendulum-like tapping of a cane against the polished linoleum floor, precise as clockwork.

And then Jon-Paul was in the doorway to the waiting room, his white cane poised in front of him. “Jane?” he called.

“I’m here.”

He turned toward her voice. He made his way to where she sat and took the seat beside her, laying the cane to rest against his left leg. He had a book tucked up under one arm, which he settled on his lap. “Truman said I might find you here. How’s Seth?”

“I’m not sure,” Jane said. “When I saw him a few minutes ago, he was asleep.”

Jon-Paul nodded, as though Jane’s answer satisfied him. “I’ve been by every day since he went into ICU, just to check on him.”

“That’s nice of you, Jon-Paul. Thank you.”

Jon-Paul waved a hand. “I’m concerned. I want to see him get better.”

“Thanks,” Jane said again. “I do too.” She hesitated to ask, but at length she said, “Listen, you have to tell me, did you let Seth beat you at chess?”

He shook his head firmly, even as he smiled. “I’m guilty of many things, but of letting someone beat me at chess? Not a chance. Seth played a good game and won.”

Jane smiled in return, then remembered Jon-Paul couldn’t see her. “No offense,” she said, “but I’m glad he won.”

“No offense taken.” Jon-Paul laughed lightly. “But you have to know that when he won, I challenged him to two out of three, and he accepted. If I win the next game, I’ll be the one going on in the tournament.”

“Will Hoboken let you do that?”

“Hoboken? What’s he got to do with it?”

“He’s keeping the flow chart, right? Maybe the others in the tournament won’t think that’s fair. By the rules, you should be out.”

Jon-Paul laughed again and shrugged. “Our rules are pretty loose. So far no one’s complained.”

“And I guess you and Seth started the whole thing anyway. So you can do whatever you want.”

“Yeah. There wouldn’t be a kitty of prize money without us. So listen, soon as Seth’s out of ICU, we’ll start the next game.”

Jane liked the way that sounded.
Soon as Seth’s out of ICU.
As though it were a given that he would be.

“You’ll be there, won’t you?” he went on. “To watch the game?”

“Of course,” she said. She couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. “Why would you think I wouldn’t be there?”

“It’s just that you were gone a few days. You didn’t witness Seth’s victory.”

“No.” Jane shook her head. “I wish I had. I should have been there. But I needed a few days away.”

“I understand.” His hands moved to the book in his lap, as though he suddenly remembered it was there. “Since your visiting time with Seth is limited while he’s in ICU, I figured you’d need something to do. I brought you a book.”