After This (26 page)

 

The Keanes were asleep when the phone rang, although Annie
was awake, her bedside light still on, Clare breathing softly across the
room. She was writing in her diary and when she heard the phone, it
was well past midnight, she raised her pen, skipped a line, and then
wrote down, “Here it is.” And then waited. Through the wall she
could hear the tension in her father’s voice, the effort to be alert and
comprehending when he had just woken from a deep sleep. He
seemed to be saying, Yes, yes.

 

She’d had a vision, once, of what would happen to her if her
brother was killed in the war. She would not become one of those folksinging peace-sign hippies, she knew, she would become instead
something outrageous, something screaming, full of rage, burning
things, tossing flaming bombs. How else would anyone get it, get
what it would mean to lose Jacob? Now she saw that she would
merely close the book in her hand, get out of bed, go into her parents’
bedroom. It would mean their small family made smaller still. Her
father’s limp more pronounced from now on, her mother steely
somehow (she thought of Susan’s eyes, in the abortion clinic, getting
through this). Michael more disdainful, Clare too babyish for a little
longer. Crying jags for her, when she got drunk. No more effort or
inclination to record it all in her little diaries, to remember how it had
all played out.

 

Her father said, “No, not her sister. Just a friend.”

 

Pauline was going to be kept in the hospital for a few days at
least, and of course they could have visited her in the morning, but
there had been some questions about psychiatric history and her
mother felt it would be best if they went right down there. Pauline all
alone, she said. She must be so scared. Her father had already dressed
and gone down to warm up the car. Annie stood in the doorway,
watching her mother run a quick comb through her hair.

 

“The woman is such an ass,” she said, loud enough to wake Clare.
“I thought it was about Jacob.” It seemed the crying jag was going to
happen anyway.

 

Her mother took her briefly in her arms, she smelled of her
familiar lotion, warmed by sleep. “I know,” she said. “It startled us all.
But the army doesn’t call. They send a telegram. Or they come to the
door. And not in the middle of the night, I should hope.” Then she
backed away, brushed her daughter’s hair. “It’ll be over soon,” she
said. “Things are winding down over there. He’ll be home before we
know it.”

 

Annie followed her downstairs. She watched her get into her
coat in the small vestibule. “You’ll be all right?” her mother said. “We
won’t be long.”

 

Annie could hear the idling engine of her father’s car. “Poor Dad
has to go to work tomorrow,” she said, but her mother missed the
accusation.

 

“And you have to go to school,” she said. “Go back to bed.” Then
she asked again, “You’ll be all right?” and Annie said, impatiently,
“Yes.”

 

The front door stuck a little before her mother got it open. Annie
could see the headlights of her father’s car, the wet glimmer of frost
on the black windshield. “Lock up,” her mother said, over her
shoulder, and with a small smile, “and don’t let anybody in,” because
there were other things to fear, out there in the darkness, even if the
army didn’t come in the middle of the night.

 

It was full daylight by the time her parents returned. Annie had
gotten Clare up and dressed and they were eating cereal with Susan
Persichetti, who was giving Annie a ride to school, when they came in
to say that Pauline was all right—a lie by the looks on their faces.
Annie saw them glance at Clare. A broken wrist and a broken nose and
some bad bruises. Upset, though, their mother added. “The fall,” their
mother said, “kind of threw her for a loop.” And then, again to Clare,
“She’ll be fine, really. Although,” she added—and now she glanced at
Annie—”she might have to come stay with us, for a while. When she
gets out. We thought she could have the boys’ room, for a while.”
Annie glanced at Susan and then said, complaining, “What about
when Michael comes home for the weekend?” After only the briefest
pause, “What about when Jacob gets back?”

 

Her mother held up her hand. Her lips were pale. Her hair was
littered with gray. “I’m not saying all year. I’m saying till her wrist is
healed. Till she’s herself again.”

 

Annie said, “Who wants her to be herself again? I’d rather she be
someone else.” And Clare cried, “That’s mean.”

 

But her father, who was watching the coffee percolate on the
stove with something of Jacob’s own distracted absorption, looked at
her over his shoulder and smiled. He’d liked the joke.

 

“I think it’s mean to make the boys sleep in the basement,” Annie
said.

 

Susan laughed. “Hey, I sleep in the attic,” she said.

 

“Well, the attic would make sense,” Annie said. She turned to her
mother. “Let’s put Pauline in the attic. Like Grace Poole.”

 

But her mother, buttering toast, was thinking of something else.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said shortly. She was
about to lose her temper. “It will just be for a few weeks.”
“Your mother has enough on her mind,” their father said.
There was only the smell of coffee, the sound of the pot over the
blue flame. The heater in the basement ticking on. “It’ll be fine,” Clare
said into the quiet, as if she were the one to settle things. “The boys
won’t mind. It will be fine.”

 

There was more silence and into it Annie whispered, “Bet she
never leaves.”

 

As the girls were going out the door, Mr. Keane asked Susan, his
voice low, if her father would be around this afternoon. He’d like to
call him. Susan said he was usually up by noon.

 

Standing in the small vestibule, Annie asked him, impatiently, in a
way that conveyed her disinterest in both the question and the answer,
“Why?” The lack of sleep had turned her father’s skin to gray
parchment. It had hollowed out the skin around his eyes. Just last
evening he and Pauline had sat in the living room together with their
cocktails, discussing retirement and pensions, the high cost of living
on Long Island, the bargain that was Florida.

 

“They’re talking about sending her over to Creedmoor,” he
said, quietly, shielding Clare. “For some treatment.” And to Susan:
“I’d like to ask your father about that.”

 

The girls left the house, walking down the front steps into the icy
morning cold. It occurred to them both that a year ago, they would
have put their heads together and laughed wickedly at the news. They
would have said, the loony bin. Perfect. Annie would have said, I knew
it all along. She had already said, Grace Poole. But it was a cold
morning, the dry air seemed scoured by the cold, and in their
shortened uniform skirts and thin jackets they were both shivering by
the time they reached Susan’s car at the curb. It would not be worth
the effort it took to make a joke out of it all. The cold was bitter
enough. Between the sidewalk and the curb the grass was frozen, each
small blade frosted white. Annie heard it crunch beneath her feet as
she reached for the passenger door. Tramp, tramp, tramp.

 

There was a car approaching from the opposite end of the street,
the white of its exhaust no doubt exaggerated by the cold. Susan
leaned over and opened the lock for Annie. Annie got in. Susan
already had the heat blasting and the radio turned up and an unlit
cigarette between her lips. They were late, but they were seniors, they
were obliged to be late. The car passed them, moving slowly in what
might have been an illusionist’s elaborate billowing of exhaust. Last
night, when she’d gone back to her bed, she’d picked up the diary and
written, underneath, “Here it is,” “Well, maybe not. Silly me. Only
Pauline.” She and Susan stopped at White Castle for doughnuts and
coffee and then spent five minutes in the school parking lot brushing
powdered sugar and cinnamon from their plaid skirts. The old nun at
the front desk, Sister Maureen Crosby, although the girls called her
Chuckles, waved them away as they began to fill out their late slips,
saying, with exaggerated patience, “Just get to class, ladies.” And they
had only just turned away, heading toward their lockers, when the nun
said, “Hold on, Miss

 

Keane.” Annie looked back; the nun was squinting at a small strip of
paper, as if it were a bit of late-breaking news, just in. She was soft
and shapeless, slump shouldered in the black suit she now wore
instead of a habit, a mouth breather, as solid as gray granite, as
dependable, as immobile. The challenge was to get her to laugh just
once during your four years at Mary Immaculate. “Call home,” she
said.

 

There had been the car, of course, in its cloud of smoke,
dreamlike, slow-moving, reading house numbers, perhaps. Chuckles
lifted the phone from her desk and placed it on the counter just above
her. “Don’t dawdle,” she said. The lights in the office were bright.
They were bright against the linoleum in the hallway behind them.
“Miss Persichetti, you can get to class,” Chuckles said, but Susan,
standing close to her, murmured, “I’ll wait.”

 

“I am quite sure,” Chuckles said, as nuns did, “that Miss Keane is
capable of calling home without your assistance.”

 

But Susan shook her head, lied easily. “I’ve got my stuff in
Annie’s locker. I have to wait for her.” She touched Annie’s arm and
said, “Go ahead, I’ll wait.” And then walked with her anyway, the few
steps back to the desk. She knew, of course, what it was like to dread
every message, every phone call, every change in the day’s routine.
She knew what it was like. She watched Annie dial home (“Don’t each
of you girls have your own locker?” Chuckles was saying) their eyes
meeting briefly as she waited. Her mother said only, “Daddy’s coming
to get you.” And then she was in Susan’s arms.
IV

 

M

.

PERSICHETTI
was good enough to come along. Mary Keane was
in the backseat and she touched his shoulder with her gloved
hand to say, “This is good of you.” He shook his head, “No trouble,”
he said. It was a wet, gray morning, cold yet somewhat humid: the
terrible winter being edged out, once again, by spring. There were

green spears of crocus, mere buds against the dirt, under front
windows and along the edges of lawns. There would be daffodils soon,
too, she knew. Then forsythia, azalea, rose, and rhododendron.

She leaned back against the seat, folding her hands in her lap. Up
front, her husband said, “Do you take the Cross Island or go side
streets?” and Mr. Persichetti said, “At this hour, the Cross Island’s
fine.” At this hour, the neighborhood was quiet, and somewhat sodden
from last night’s rain. John Keane drove cautiously, as was his habit.
He wore his topcoat and his fedora—he would head for work as soon
as they brought Pauline home—and beside him, hatless, wearing only
a thin Windbreaker, Mr. Persichetti looked like a youngster. “I cut over
to Northern Boulevard,” Mr. Persichetti said, “when it doesn’t look
good.”

Mr. Keane nodded. They passed the church and the school, the
row of shops. From the backseat, Mary said, “I think Susan and
Annie actually left for school early this morning. They said they
wanted to see the juniors get their rings.”

Mr. Persichetti turned a little in his seat. “That’s a
first, hey?” he
said.

 

“They’re the big shots this year,” John Keane said. “They think
they run the place.” He touched his turn signal, pulled cautiously into
the mid-morning traffic. “Next year they’ll be lowly freshmen again.”

 

“Coeds,” Mr. Persichetti said. He was both poking fun at the word
and revealing his pleasure in the thought. “Can you believe it? Those
two? College girls.”

 

“Lord help the professors,” Mary Keane said.

 

“Lord help the boys,” Mr. Persichetti said with a laugh because
girl children went off, but they also came back. They were a comfort in
your old age, in your sorrow over lost sons.

 

The three of them rode silently for a while, looking out at the
passing homes.

 

As they neared the hospital, Mr. Persichetti sat forward, a hand on
the dashboard, showing John Keane where to park. “It’s short-term,”
he said. “But then when she’s ready you can pull right up to the door.”

 

Inside, he took them just where they needed to go. In his
element, Mary Keane would have said, walking them assuredly
through the halls to the desk where the paperwork was waiting and an
orderly talking to another nurse looked up and waved and said,
“What’s a matter? You’re back already? They didn’t let you in at
home?”

 

“Can’t get enough of this place,” Mr. Persichetti said, laughing.
When the nurse said she’d call to have Pauline brought down, Mr.
Persichetti waved her away from the phone and took Mary Keane’s
arm. “We’ll get her,” he said gently. And to her husband, “We’ll go up
and get her. It’ll be easier.”

 

The floor of the elevator was wet, with streaks of mud, as if
people had been coming and going all night. Mr. Persichetti pushed
some of the dirt with his shoe and said, “Sheesh,” disapproving. He
pushed the button for Pauline’s floor and then looked up at the row of
numbers, his hands in the pockets of his Windbreaker. He turned to
Mary Keane as the elevator began to rise and said, “I’m the regular
mayor of this place, you know,” and then, as if to prove his point, the
elevator stopped and the doors slid open and another orderly
appeared, a middle-aged black man, pushing a wheelchair in which a
pale, dark-haired boy was slumped, his long thin arms raised before
his bent head, waving. The black man said, in military parody, “Mr.
Persichetti, sir,” and Mr. Persichetti held out a hand. “Darrin, my
man,” he said. Then he grabbed the pale, yellowed hand of the boy in
the wheelchair, gripped it firmly. “How you doing, Larry?” he said. The
boy, head down, neck twisted, his mouth veiled with saliva, said a
tortured, “Good. Real good.”