Baker Towers (20 page)

She cleaned herself with rough paper towels from the dispenser on the wall, then buttoned her coat as though she were simply leaving for the day. As though she would soon return.

Y
EARS LATER
she would try to remember, to identify the precise moment she decided she would never go back. The next morning the alarm clock woke her as usual. She shut it off, rolled over, and went back to sleep. She slept for most of the day. In the evening she went downstairs to dinner.

She was surprised by how easy it was, simply to stop. The struggles of twelve years, the daily gauntlet of loneliness and anxiety—deciding what to wear each day, knowing from long experience that whatever she chose would be wrong; waiting for the bus in the rain; the elevator full of strangers’ smells; stilted conversations with the new hires, impossibly young, who chattered in the powder room about dates and weekend plans. All that she had endured in those years, thinking she had no choice. Then one day she stopped, and no one even noticed.

She stopped setting the alarm. In the morning she heard noises overhead: footsteps on the stairs, the other boarders setting out into the world, to live another day in the city. She drifted back to sleep. She had surrendered everything. Her sleep was deep and peaceful as a child’s.

For the first week she went downstairs each night to dinner.
I’m on vacation,
she said when Miss Straub inquired. Soon she was no longer hungry. She left her room only to use the toilet, to take a bath.

She bathed during the day when the house was empty, lying in the tub
while the water slowly cooled. Afterward she crept downstairs to the kitchen and foraged through the cupboards, taking what she could find: crackers, bread, a piece of fruit.

Two weeks passed, then three. After that she lost count. Toward the end she heard knocking at the door. Once, Miss Straub’s voice; later, Mag Spangler’s. Finally her sister came.
For God’s sake, what happened?
Joyce demanded, looking around the room. If she’d said something else, Dorothy might have responded; but that one unanswerable question had paralyzed her. And so began her time of quiet.

J
oyce was astounded by how long her sister could sleep. She hadn’t noticed at first; she had been preoccupied with details: getting Dorothy from boardinghouse to taxicab to train station, from train to automobile to her mother’s house in Bakerton. Simple enough. But Dorothy was so weak she could barely stand; so confused or addled, so
something,
that she couldn’t follow the simplest instructions. And now that the crisis was past, she would not stay awake. Joyce did the cleaning and shopping and laundry, paid the bills and helped Lucy with her homework. Now that Sandy was gone, she raked leaves and shoveled snow and cut the grass with the old reel mower. Every night, bone-tired, she banked the coal furnace and fired it again at dawn. All this in addition to her actual job at the high school. What reason
Dorothy
had to be tired, she could not imagine.

“Dorothy.” Joyce gave her a gentle shake. “Dorothy, wake up.”

Dorothy sighed. A moment later her eyes opened. They had put her in the lavender bedroom, which Lucy had surrendered without complaint.
Facing north, the room stayed dark all morning. Unless someone woke her, she’d stay in bed until suppertime.

Joyce sat on the edge of the bed, willing herself to be patient. “Dorothy, I have to leave now. Ed’s brother is getting married. We’re going to the wedding.”

Dorothy sat up, dazed.

“I need you to put on some clothes and get Lucy her breakfast. Can you do that?” Joyce made an effort to keep the edge out of her voice. “I have to run. Ed is waiting in the car.”

Dorothy blinked. “When will you be back?” she asked softly. Her speech had returned, but her mouth was clumsy, as though she’d forgotten how to form the words.

“Suppertime. Maybe sooner.” Joyce rose and took a dress from the closet. “Here. Put this on.”

Dorothy raised her arms like an obedient child.

“Lucy’s in the kitchen,” said Joyce. “Have some breakfast with her. Then you can take a bath.”

She hurried downstairs and out the front door. Ed Hauser was waiting in the car.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Joyce, a little breathless. “I had to wake Dorothy.”

“That’s okay.” Ed kissed the cheek she offered. “We’ve got to get that girl an alarm clock.”

W
HEN EXACTLY
it started—when her sister lost her footing—Joyce never knew. By the time the family was notified, it was too late. Dorothy had already begun to slide.

That year, like every year, she had visited at Christmas. Later Joyce
would remember that she’d seemed distracted, her attention elsewhere, as though she were listening for sounds in the next room. “Too skinny,” Rose added, as though that clinched it. To her, thinness was always a sign of trouble.

Later, after the thing happened, Joyce would blame herself for not noticing. She’d been preoccupied that Christmas. Baker Brothers had put its company houses—Rose’s included—up for sale. Joyce couldn’t afford the down payment. If another buyer came along, the family would lose the house. Rose was seeing a new doctor, a diabetes specialist several towns away. The laser treatments had failed to save her eyesight, but there was her heart to worry about, her kidneys, a sore on her foot that refused to heal. More, and still more, that she might lose.

The call came late on a Friday evening, after Lucy had gone to bed. In the parlor, Rose sat dozing in her chair. Joyce stood at the kitchen sink, drying the last of the supper dishes. The ringing startled her. Since Sandy had left, the phone seldom rang. Georgie had already made his monthly call.

“Joyce?” A female voice. “I don’t know if you remember me. This is Mag Spangler.”

It took her a moment to recognize the name. They’d met years before, when Joyce spent a weekend visiting Dorothy in Washington. They had toured nearly every monument and museum in the capital. Mag had led them around town like a drill sergeant.

“I hate to call so late,” said Mag, “but this is an emergency. Something is terribly wrong with Dorothy.”

“Is she sick?”

“Not exactly. I got a call this afternoon from the landlady at the boardinghouse. She said Dorothy hasn’t come out of her room in weeks.”

Joyce thought of the tiny room, cramped and dark, its one window facing an alley lined with trash cans.

“When I went over there, she wouldn’t open the door. The landlady had to let me in with her key.” Mag hesitated. “Joyce, I don’t know what to say. I think she’s had some kind of nervous breakdown. Someone really should come and get her.”

J
OYCE TOOK THE TRAIN
the following day. At the boardinghouse she was greeted by Miss Straub, who’d inherited the place from her mother.

“Your sister’s room is a disgrace,” she said. “This is a respectable establishment. I can’t allow this sort of thing.” She was a pale, fleshy woman, tightly corseted. Her hair was teased in the elaborate style of ten years before.

“How long has she been in her room?”

“Honey,
I
don’t know. A few weeks, maybe. I’ve got a dozen people living here. I don’t keep tabs.” She knocked briskly at the door. “Miss Novak. Your sister is here.”

They waited. Miss Straub knocked again, then opened the door with her key. The room was dark, the shades drawn. It smelled dankly of mildew, an odor sweet and dark, like rotting fruit. Stiff towels covered the radiators. The mattress was bare. Dorothy lay curled on her side, facing the wall.

“Dorothy?” Joyce stepped around the piles on the floor—sheets, towels, dirty clothes.

“I tried talking to her. She acts like she doesn’t hear.” Miss Straub sounded annoyed.

Joyce sat on the bare mattress. Dorothy’s forehead was cool to the touch.

“Has she seen a doctor?” she asked.

“How would I know?”

Joyce took a deep breath. “Well, could you call one, please?”

Miss Straub crossed her arms. “First things first. She hasn’t paid rent in three weeks.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Joyce reached for her pocketbook. “I’ll pay whatever she owes, but she has to see a doctor.”

Miss Straub took the money.

“Has she been eating?” Joyce asked.

The landlady shrugged elaborately.

“Well, I just paid you room and board,” said Joyce. “So could you please bring her something to eat?”

Miss Straub’s heels clicked away down the hall. Joyce took Dorothy’s hand. It felt cool and very light, as though it were filled with air.

“Come on,” she said softly. “We need to get you out of bed.”

Dorothy frowned slightly, as though she had forgotten something. Her skin had a greasy shine.

Joyce rose. “Let’s get some light in here.”

She raised the shades. The disorder of the room astonished her. Clothes were piled on the floor. The wastebasket overflowed: blackened banana peels, an apple core astir with ants. Everywhere were piles of old magazines.
Silver Screen. Backstage Gossip. Screen Stars.

Dorothy mumbled something, a single syllable. She covered her head with a pillow.

“Ready?” said Joyce. “We’re going to get you cleaned up.”

She slipped an arm around Dorothy’s waist. Dorothy moaned softly but didn’t resist. She wore an old cotton slip, decorated with stains. Through the thin fabric Joyce could feel her ribs. She picked a ratty plaid bathrobe off the floor and draped it over Dorothy’s shoulders.

Slowly they made their way down the hall, Dorothy leaning heavily on Joyce’s shoulder. The corridor was empty; so was the washroom. Joyce ran a bath and eased Dorothy into the tub. Her neck was ringed with grime. Her oily hair clung to her head like a cap.

“Sit and soak a while,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She closed the door behind her and hurried down the hall.
Straight ahead,
she thought. It was a phrase she’d picked up in boot camp and repeated in her head while she marched: in the mornings, half asleep; in the afternoons, in the heat.

She found a clean dress in Dorothy’s closet, a comb and toothbrush in the bureau drawer. She laid them on the bed, then attacked the room with the broom and dust cloths Miss Straub had provided. She filled a trash bag with magazines, then a second. The clothing on the floor had a fungal smell, as though it had been dropped there soaking wet. The stiff towels smelled strongly of soap.

The doctor arrived an hour later. Dorothy sat waiting for him on the bed, bathed and dressed, her hair curling damply at her shoulders. He took a stethoscope from a leather bag and listened to her heartbeat. He took her blood pressure, then examined her ears and eyes and throat.

“She’s a little weak,” he told Joyce. “Underweight. Her blood pressure is low; she may be dehydrated. But she isn’t running a temperature. Physically, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her.”

“But why won’t she talk?”

He closed his bag. “Has she experienced some kind of emotional trauma? Trouble with a boyfriend, that kind of thing?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Problems at work?”

“I don’t know,” said Joyce. Dorothy rarely phoned; lately her letters had been erratic. They hadn’t heard from her in more than a month.

In the end they went home to Bakerton; there was nowhere else to go. They made it to the station in time for the last train—thanks to Mag Spangler, who’d promised to send the rest of Dorothy’s things. Dorothy still hadn’t spoken, but she ate the sandwich Miss Straub had packed and slept peacefully the whole way home.

Back in Bakerton, Joyce told her mother as little as possible. “Dorothy was sick,” she said simply. “She needed to come home and rest.”

L
UCY WAITED
in the kitchen. She was twelve and would have preferred to make her own breakfast—bacon and eggs, fried toast with syrup—but there were rules about what she could eat. Each morning she made the best of it, doctoring her oatmeal with butter and brown sugar. Still it went down slowly, the flavors bland and gray.

The pot of oatmeal simmered on the stove. Joyce had told her to wait for Dorothy, but there was no telling when she would get out of bed. Lucy would have been perfectly happy if she stayed there all day. Dorothy made her nervous. Once, at night, she’d come downstairs for a drink of water and found Dorothy sitting on the porch swing, humming softly to herself. She looked up, but didn’t speak, when Lucy said hello.

She glanced at the clock.
Space Patrol
would begin at nine, followed by
Captain Midnight
and
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
She carried the Saturday-morning schedule in her head; it was the best television of the week. Having Joyce gone on a Saturday morning was a rare gift. She disapproved of television watching during the day. If she caught Lucy at it, she’d come up with a list of chores that needed doing immediately: sweeping, dusting, ironing a stack of pillowcases; though why a pillowcase had to be ironed, Lucy couldn’t imagine. Her mother was more tolerant, although
she sometimes told Lucy to go out and play. Lucy didn’t know how to explain that girls of twelve did not play, that even if she’d wanted to, there was nobody to play
with.
The boys spent Saturday mornings at baseball practice; they’d all joined the town league that spring. What the girls did Saturday mornings, Lucy didn’t know. The nicer ones simply ignored her. The mean ones called her Jumbo—almost, but not quite, behind her back.

She rose and scooped her own oatmeal from the pot. The last bite was the sweetest, caramel-flavored and slick with butter. In the parlor she turned on the television. The set was a gift from her brother Georgie; each Christmas he sent a wonderful present from Philadelphia. The television had arrived two years ago. It hadn’t worked at first, until Sandy fiddled with the antenna and wrapped its branches in tinfoil. Then they watched television every evening, Lucy and Joyce and even Sandy, when he had nothing better to do. Her mother stayed in the kitchen, where the old radio now sat. She preferred it to television. Lucy suspected that for her there wasn’t much difference.