Fool's Journey (11 page)

           
Deirdre backed away abruptly and shoved her hand into her
pocket. She didn't need a psychic to tell her the dead still spoke. She didn’t
want to look into those pale eyes or hear what he had to say. The messages from
the living were more than she could handle already. She turned on her heel and
stepped out the door into the clean rain, leaving the cloying scent of incense
behind her.

           
A few more blocks up the hill, she came to a brick high
rise. She had taken the hill faster than usual, absurdly anxious to put
distance between herself and the man at the bookstore. Stopping for a moment to
catch her breath, she automatically counted up six floors and noted the
curtains drawn at the fourth window. A sharp pain nagged at her side and she
took several controlled breaths as she waited for it to subside.

           
From the outside, the building was as anonymous as any
upscale apartment house, but when she entered, it was a woman in a crisp white
nurse’s uniform who smiled up at her from the elegant reception desk.

           
“You’re a little late today, aren’t you?”

           
Deirdre’s gaze dropped. “I slept in this morning,” she
said briefly.

           
The nurse nodded. “Just sign in and you can go right up.”

           
Deirdre quickly scribbled her signature on the clipboard,
crossed to the elevator and pushed the up button. She stood with her back to
the receptionist, watching the numbers light on the floor indicator as the
elevator returned to the main floor and the doors swooshed open.

The
smell of antiseptic and hothouse flowers assailed her, creating its own
familiar incense. She stepped into the elevator, waited until the doors closed
again, then leaned back against the mirrored walls and shut her eyes.
 
She hated these visits, hated the fact that
she could not simply accept their necessity, the same way a diabetic accepted
the needle. It was how she had decided to live.

           
The doors opened on a communal living area furnished in
French provincial covered with plastic. She stepped out of the elevator and
threaded her way among the wheelchairs and walkers. She didn’t even see the
people anymore, merely the stainless steel fixtures that provided a measure of
mobility. She passed them with a few murmured greetings, and headed down a
hallway lined with potted palms, framed oil paintings and drip I.V. stands. At
the end of the corridor, she pushed a door open and stepped into a darkened
room.

           
The bed had been raised up to a semi-upright position,
but the patient’s head drooped to the right. One hand trailed off the edge of
the mattress, pale and delicate as an old silk scarf.

           
She knelt at the side of the bed and whispered, “It’s me,
Mama. It’s Katie.”

XIV.

           
Deirdre took the withered hand between her own. It was as
curled and stiff as a whorled seashell. Her mother was no more than fifty, but
she looked seventy or more. Her hair had turned pure white years ago, as white
as the spun glass wings on the first Christmas angel Deirdre had ever seen.

           
“Sweet Mama,” she whispered.

           
On the bed, her mother made no motion, did not open her
eyes, but there was nothing new in that. Deirdre often thought that her mother
was more like a favored old doll put reverently away, than a woman of flesh who
had borne both a child and the sorrows life brought her.

           
Each day, a physical therapist visited and the body was
manipulated and exercised, washed and rubbed with lotion. Hair was shampooed
and combed, nails manicured. For twelve years her body had existed in limbo,
but her mind ...? No one knew. Nor would they ever, if she could help it. If
she had accomplished nothing else, at least she'd kept her mother safe from
intrusion.

"Mama,"
she whispered. "I have some good news. I think I found a way to be happy.
Just a little more time. A few days even." She searched her mother's face
although she knew there would be no sign of understanding or awareness. Some
things needed to be said aloud though, or they wouldn't come true.

           
“And I have a poem for you,” she said softly. “Your
favorite.”

           
Deirdre didn't turn on the light. She merely closed her
eyes and recited:

           
Not
that it matters, not that my heart’s cry

           
Is
potent to deflect our common doom,

           
Or
bind to truce in this ambiguous room

           
The
planets of the atom as they ply;

           
But
only to record that you and I,

           
Like
thieves that scratch the jewels from a tomb . . .

           
Deirdre’s voice rode the rhythm of the lines without
faltering. It had been a long time since she had cried while reciting the poem.
Now her words seemed to become another’s, reciting the lines as her mother had
done in the darkness of childhood all those years ago. Edna St. Vincent Millay
had been her mother’s favorite poet. Even now, when Deirdre found herself
struggling with a line, she’d realize she was trying to emulate the elegant
rhythms of that dead poet. She knew she was trying to please her mother.

           
This
is my testament:
she continued
, that
we are taken;

           
Our
colors are as clouds before the wind;

           
Yet
for a moment stood the foe forsaken,

           
Eyeing
Love’s favor to our helmet pinned;

           
Death
is our master, – but his seat is shaken;

           
He
rides victorious, – but his ranks are thinned.

Deirdre
leaned her cheek against her mother’s frail hand. It smelled like baby powder.
She wondered for the thousandth time if her presence here meant anything at
all. Could her visits be any comfort? Could this husk of a woman laid out on
this sterile bed have any inkling whether her daughter came or not? Could she
possibly care?

Deirdre
had read that sometimes the comatose were able to hear, and when they revived,
even years later, they remembered the words that had been spoken to them. That
tendril of hope might be slender, but it was enough to keep her coming back.
Besides, even if her mother had not the least glimmer of recognition, duty was
duty. Families kept watch over the body before a funeral. This vigil was just a
particularly long one.

           
Deirdre stood up and as she did so, heard a sound behind
her. Startled, she spun around. In the shadows of the room, a woman sat in a
chair, watching.

           
“That was a real pretty poem, Katie. Almost like a
prayer.”

           
Deirdre willed the steel into her bones. This was a bolt
from the blue. “I didn't know you were coming, Aunt Eunice. What are you doing
here?”

           
The woman arose and crossed to her, then offered a
perfunctory embrace. “I suppose I can’t come to see my own sister-in-law? We
were close once, Deirdre. You’ll admit that.”

           
A lot of good it did my mother, Deirdre thought. “When
did you get into town?” she asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral.

           
The woman ignored the question, crossed to the bed and
looked down. “How is she? Have there been any changes?”

           
“In three years? Since the last time you were here?”
Deirdre laughed grimly. “Not a thing. Only the rest of us change,” she said.
“Mama’s beyond that.”

           
Silence hung in the air between them. Eunice broke it
first. “Your life, is it ... are you all right?”

           
Deirdre nodded, but said nothing.

           
Her aunt switched on a table lamp and Deirdre blinked
against the sudden brightness. Bathed in light, her mother’s hospital bed stood
out starkly against the more homelike furnishings the institution prided itself
on.

           
“This place,” Eunice said, gesturing around her, “this
kind of care ... it must cost a fortune.”

           
Deirdre shrugged. “Probably.”

           
“You don’t know?” Eunice asked. “How can you not know a
thing like that?”

           
“There’s a trust that takes care of all her expenses. I
don’t want to know the details.”

           
Eunice sat down in a wing chair, checked her bright red
lipstick in a compact mirror, and reapplied another thick coat.

           
“Seems like a waste of money,” Eunice went on. “I’ve been
sitting here watching all morning. Not a twitch. That poor soul wouldn’t know
the difference if you just put her away in her coffin right now.”

           
Deirdre said nothing for the moment. If she opened her mouth,
she’d end up screaming at the woman and ordering her out of the room. Her
mother might never know the difference, but making a scene in this silent place
seemed an abomination.

           
Eunice
checked her teeth in the mirror, tracing the spaces between them with one long
crimson nail. “That was a lot of money my brother left. It just molders away in
a bank somewhere. Seems a shame nobody enjoys it. Not you. Not me.”

           
“Nothing about my father,” Deirdre said, her voice tight,
“not what he had here, not what he left behind, had any joy in it. Or have you
forgotten?”

           
Eunice looked up and flashed a wide crimson smile. “I
haven’t forgotten a damn thing, little Katie.”

           
Deirdre felt her skin prickle, like a wild animal sensing
a snare hidden in the bushes. She held herself very still, glad she’d held her
tongue and hadn’t given in to the urge to have her aunt escorted out. She
needed to know more. She glanced at the bed. Her mother lay undisturbed as
ever.

           
“Look, Katie, honey,” Eunice said, her tone cloying.
“It’s you I came to visit – you might as well know – but you’re damned hard to
find these days. Your name’s not in the telephone book. There’s not a trace of
you anywhere and I’m good at this sort of thing. I’m very good. I remember a
time I couldn’t pass a grocery store tabloid without seeing your pretty face
plastered all over it, and now you’re nowhere. How did you learn to become
invisible?”

           
Blood runs true, she thought. Her father always liked a
game of cat and mouse. Apparently, so did his sister.

           
Deirdre folded her arms. “How much do you want?” she
asked quietly.

           
“How crass you’ve become,” Eunice drawled. “As I recall,
you used to have some finesse. But since you ask, ten thousand to start. That
way I won’t be forced to come and spend the night with you while I’m in town.
Visit the university, maybe meet your friends. Might be cozy, but somehow I
don’t think you like my company.”

           
Deirdre kept herself from blanching. “I don’t carry the
checkbook for that account with me," she said with a forced calm. "Tell
me where you’re staying and I’ll send it over.”

           
“I’m at the Wyndham, but remember, I said ten thousand to
start
.”

           
“I
heard you. I’ll give you what I give you. It will be enough to keep you. If
you’re wise, you won’t ask me for another dime.”

           
Eunice
smiled and cocked her head. “So, Katie thinks she can scare her old aunt, does
she? Well, maybe she can and maybe she can’t. Do you want to see what happens
if I’m not happy? I don’t think so, Miss Katie. I don’t think so at all.”

           
Deirdre
stepped between her aunt and her sleeping mother. “Don’t bother us again,
Eunice. Don’t call. Don’t visit. And don’t forget: I’ve got a temper.”

XV.

           
An hour later, Deirdre still felt the fire flowing
through her veins. Making a threat hadn’t been something she was proud of, here
in this sanctuary, but the memory of the way her aunt’s face had paled almost
made up for that. Her mother existed on another plane, well beyond grief, pain
and the pettiness of human manipulation. Deirdre needed to remember she herself
was the only one suffering now – and she was equal to it.