Authors: Janette Turner Hospital
Forecast (8 page)
When I woke, I went through the pockets of both pairs of jeans. In one, there was a damp pellet of paper. I spread it out flat with the utmost care but it revealed nothing more than black smudges.
I asked my mother: âWhat's the last name of that black woman who used to come visit the slammer same time as us?'
âHow the hell would I know?' my mother said.
On visiting day, I asked my stepdad: âWhat's the last name of that guy who breeds pit bulls?'
âOh him,' my stepdad said. âFunny you should ask. He's dead. Knifed someone in the shower and got knifed back. Awful bloody mess is what I heard. He's toast.'
âWhat was his name?' I asked.
âDamned if I know,' my stepdad said.
And then I had the most important dream of all, not really a dream, a memory message. We were in the visiting room again and Tiyah was showing me her drawing. There was a kid with four arms on a swing and a school behind. She'd printed
Drysdale Middle School
above the gates.
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Drysdale Middle School was only five miles from my own school so I cut classes one afternoon and walked there. Talk about slums. I was shocked. I mean, my own neighborhood is blue collar, nothing fancy, but I couldn't believe how much worse it got, and so suddenly. There were no front yards in the houses I passed, only stoops, and there was trash and broken glass in the street. A lot of windows were boarded up. There was a dead dog in the school grounds and crows were pecking at it.
I waited by the gate until the last class let out.
I could feel Tiyah coming before I saw her. I could tell from the fever that went rocketing from my feet to my head. When she saw me, she stopped so abruptly that someone behind her tripped and fell. Tiyah looked frightened. She turned and started running back toward the school buildings, then she stopped suddenly and turned again. She walked toward me very slowly.
âI was afraid I made you up,' she said. âI been imagining a lot of stuff lately.'
âYeah. Me too. I missed you something awful.'
She just stared. âHow did you find me?'
âI lost the paper you gave me with your last name. So I tried to find out your stepdad's name.'
âHe was only my stepdad for a couple of years. He was my mom's boyfriend,' she said. âAnd I never took his fucking name.'
âWell,' I said. âIt doesn't matter. Did you know he was dead?'
Her eyes opened very wide and she did a kind of dance step and clapped her hands. âNo, I didn't know. How?'
âKnife fight. Your mom doesn't know?'
âShe wouldn't care. She already hooked up with someone new.'
âIs that why you stopped coming?' I asked.
âThat's why,' she said. âI missed you. I wanted to
write but I didn't know where to send a letter. I've been drawing you though.'
âI've been dreaming you.'
âI've stopped cutting,' she said.
âI've stopped cutting too,' I lied.
âI want to show you something.' She led me back behind the school through a string of lots that were overgrown with weeds â goldenrod and thistles â as high as our heads. Here and there, you could see patches of blacktop. âUsed to be a parking lot,' she said. âUsed to be a used-car lot.'
Where the lot dipped suddenly down into a ravine, there was a tangle of trees and a rusted red pickup on its axles. She patted its metal flank. âI call him Code Red,' she said. âHe's a sweetie. He's the best stepdad I've had. Come on in.'
She climbed into the cabin of the truck and beckoned me. She had a blanket and a pillow in there. She had hard salami and a penknife, packets of crackers, cheddar cheese, a drawing book and her magic markers. âThis is where I live,' she said. âI ran away.'
âBut doesn't the school â¦?'
âThey don't know. I go to school every day.'
âBut doesn't your mother â¦?'
âShe's probably glad to be rid of me. If she's noticed. Anyway, she hasn't showed up at the school. When she does, if she does, I'll have to take off.'
In the back of the pickup she had one of those little barbecues that you set on picnic tables. She had a bag of coals. âI catch fish,' she said. âYou want to stay for dinner?'
âSure.'
âFirst we gotta catch it.'
She had a net and she had a line. She gave me the net and we slid down the bank to the creek. Maybe it wasn't a real creek; maybe it was just a drain, but it was beautiful. All we could see was trees and rocks and water. âIt's private weather down here,' she said.
âIt's beautiful.'
She caught a fish on her line and we took it back up to the truck. She lit the coals and ran a thin skewer through the fish and held it over the fire and then we ate it using our fingers.
âYou want to be blood sisters?' I asked her.
âYou bet.'
We jabbed the skewer into our thumbs and rubbed them together. I sucked the red bead off her thumb, and she sucked mine.
âI know they'll catch me here sooner or later,' she said, âbut I've got a grandma in Georgia somewhere and I'm going to find her.'
âHow will you get there?'
âHitchhike.'
âThat's dangerous.'
She laughed. She put a red dot on my forehead with her thumb. âNot as dangerous as staying here or staying home. You got a grandma?'
âI did have. But she died.
âYou got to do something, Elizabeth.' She lifted my arm and stared. âFor one thing, you got to stop cutting. I've stopped. If you get out of there, you can stop.'
âIt doesn't hurt.'
âThat's the problem,' she said. âLook. I drew you.' She showed me a page of her drawing book. There was a prison with bars, all in black. There was a stick figure, all in red, outside the bars. The stick figure had huge green wings arching above it, bigger than the rest of its body. âThat's you,' she said. âFlying away. You could do it.'
âLet me go with you.'
âAll right. Tell me where your school is. When I have to leave to go look for my grandma, I'll come get you.'
I wrote the name of my school and the address underneath my green wings. âWait by the school gate.'
âI promise,' she said.
She touched her thumb to my lips and I pressed my thumb to hers. I ran all the way home. Maybe I flew. I loved the taste of her blood.
Â
I stopped cutting that day but it was too late.
What happened was this: the very next day the school nurse took me to the principal's office. A doctor and the school counsellor and the county sheriff were there. They were very kind and gentle. We are admitting you to hospital for a while, Elizabeth, they said, until you get better.
âIs this because I cut classes yesterday?' I asked.
Yes, they said. We called your mother and we visited your home and we were very disturbed by what we saw. But we've been worried about you for some time, Elizabeth. We've had you under observation.
âYou don't have to worry any more,' I said. âI've stopped cutting.'
That is very good news, they said. And a safe rest in hospital, they said, will be even better for you. We're aware that your home environment is harmful and we have court papersâ
âNo,' I said, panicked. âNo, no, you can't. I will never cut classes again. I promise I will be in school every day.'
That is not the kind of cutting we are worried about, they said.
I started to cry. I tried to explain that I had to be waiting at the gates when Tiyah came. I tried to
explain that the kind of cutting that worried them was finished, done with, gone forever. I promise, I promise, I promise, I kept telling them.
Â
When I woke I was in a hospital bed.
You became hysterical, one of the nurses told me. She was very kind. You had to be sedated for your own good, she said.
I became hysterical again. Etcetera, etcetera. It wasn't the kind of hospital where you could just get out of bed and walk away.
I suppose I would have to say that in the long run things worked out fairly well for me. I was taken into a Quaker boarding school. People were kind. I went to college. I became a teacher. I work in the poorest parts of the city where I once lived. I've never stopped looking for Tiyah but I haven't found her.
I've been diagnosed as depressive more than once.
Drysdale School no longer exists. It's a fitness centre. On the empty lots behind the school are townhouses covered in vinyl siding. They have small front porches and small front lawns. The creek where Tiyah and I caught our fish flows inside a culvert, unseen.
In the eyes of the children I teach, I watch for storm warnings and I never stop looking for signs of the weather underground.
Personne ne voit les choses comme elles sont, mais comme ses désirs et son état d'âme les lui font voir.
(Luis Buñuel)
Nelson does not know her name but he calls her Beatrice because she reminds him of a painting he found online. When he clicked on the full-screen view, he was transfixed by the strange light that came from the portrait, a light that almost set fire to the woman's hair. Nelson felt heat leap out at him. Instinctively he put his hands in front of his face and promptly felt foolish. Nevertheless he leaned forward so that his forehead was touching that porcelain brow.
The eyes of the woman in the painting were closed. She might have been praying, but the way her lips were parted suggested that she was longing
for someone, yearning for someone in particular. That first time, that first moment of cyber contact, Nelson pressed his lips to the computer screen and lightning hit the back of his throat.
The woman in the painting was wearing a green dress.
Could this have been coincidence? No.
Nelson believes in signs and when the woman revealed herself in pixels, her lips just inches from his, he had to reach for his inhaler because the resemblance was so striking, so shocking. The model for the painting could have been the woman who lives by the park. Every night, pensive, she stares at Nelson from her third-floor window for half an hour at a time. Her attention does not waver.
Of course, he knows this is not literally so. He is not out of touch with reality. He knows she cannot be thinking of him. For one thing, she would not be able to see him in the dark; for another, they have never met; and for another, even if they had â¦
Nevertheless.
All that, it seems to him, is beside the point. There are more ways in heaven and earth, Nelson knows, than are dreamed of, etcetera, more ways for kindred spirits to touch, to commune, to send and receive, whatever. Night after night, in her green nightgown, the woman leans on her
windowsill, haloed by the bedroom lamp behind her, and Nelson watches from behind a tree in the park.
The painting is called
Beata Beatrix
which means, so the website informs, the Blessed Beatrice; or Beatrice the Blessed; or Beatrice Beatified. This third possible translation seems to Nelson the most accurate because the woman is a source of mysterious power. He writes in his diary:
I have been granted a Visitation.
The entry does not seem adequate. On the large wall-calendar above his desk, he marks the date with a star. Beneath the symbol, he writes in small neat script:
The Annunciation.
He is of Catholic stock, and religious calendars adorned the walls of his childhood home. March, Feast of the Annunciation, remains his favourite. In March, the Angel Gabriel, radiant beneath his huge wings, reveals to the Virgin Mary her destiny. Year after year, the March calendar image is the Fra Angelico, fifteenth century: the angel and the awestruck girl, the sense of occasion, the intimation that something momentous has occurred.
Nelson loves the extravagant lapis lazuli blue of Mary's robe.
Now, he realises, green can be equally potent. He orders a print of
Beata Beatrix,
framed and matted, and hangs it on the back of the bookcase divider, facing his bed.
It is the first thing he sees when he wakes in the morning and the last thing he sees at night. After his park vigil he lies on the bed and props himself up on the pillow. The city lights beyond his window cast a golden wash on the green gown and on the woman's red hair. She looks exactly as she looks from the park. Her eyes and lips offer blessing and a drowsy numbness overwhelms Nelson,
as though of hemlock I had drunk
, he murmurs aloud. He has begun to read poetry and falls asleep dreaming Keats. In insubstantial air, he inscribes lines both above and below the portrait.
Being too happy,
he writes with his index finger,
in thine happiness.
The lines flutter about his pillow like little birds.
He has researched the portrait online.
Apparently the painting is famous, and the Beatrice referred to by its title is famous, and apparently the painter â though long dead â was also famous and was a great admirer of Keats and was awash in grief and guilt when he painted his beautiful dead wife whom he had so often betrayed.
Â
Nelson works from home, which is his studio apartment on the twelfth floor of a high-rise in the city. He has a title: Public Relations Associate.
He has a business card. The card attests to his affiliation with Wholesome Food & Beverage whose motto is:
We taste so good, you don't notice we're good for you.
A year ago he was a software designer for the very company that pushed Wholesome's stock through the roof. He is, in fact, the creator of Wholesome's interactive website, and corporate champagne has been fizzed and spilled in his honor. A YouTube video shows Paul, the CEO of Nelson's former company â ExecuTech â proposing the toast:
To the brainiac who kicked our client's stock through the goal posts, and our stock along with it. To winning the World Cup of Interactive Graphic Ads for our team.
A great deal of champagne was drunk. There was heavy-metal music and dancing. There was a drum beat so insistent, so primitive, that the seismic detectors in the building howled like wolves. Paul himself was seen to dance on the desktops with a woman who was not his wife and who did not work for the company. They were quite something to behold, Paul and this woman, fancy-footing between laptops and printers, first position, second position, Kama Sutra tangles of the limbs. The woman wore a long silky green thing that clung like plastic wrap. From time to time, couples disappeared into the photocopying room which had a lettered sign on the door:
Sophie, our office administrator, is available for
reproduction only between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. on weekday afternoons.
Nelson watched as Paul floated down from a desktop (from
Nelson
's desktop) like a man hung by guy ropes from a glider. Office thermals and the inevitable air currents â strictly hierarchical â took Paul to the photocopying room. âThat would be scanned,' Nelson said bitterly to someone, but his listener, none too familiar with Shakespeare, did not get it. The woman was coiled around Paul like a shimmering emerald snake, her red hair tumbling over her shoulders.
âShe's going to regret that,' Sophie, the office administrator, whispered to Nelson. âPaul's an animal, especially when he's been drinking.'
Paul has animal magnetism, Nelson certainly concurs with that. He doesn't hate Paul or blame him. It is more that his loneliness feels so acute in Paul's presence. âHe only has to lift his little finger,' he said, âand women come running.'
âThen they run in the other direction,' Sophie told him. âOr try to. Paul likes to beat around the bush, so to speak.'
âWhat do you mean?'
Sophie raised her eyebrows. âI thought I'd been a bit too blunt.'
âI'm sorry. I don't understand.'
âNelson, you're sweet.' Sophie stroked his hair
as though he were a child. She found his innocence endearing. âTo be even blunter. Paul doesn't like to let anyone go and things can get ugly.'
Nelson stared at her.
âBelieve me, I know,' Sophie said. âThat's why I start a new job on Monday. Haven't told anyone yet and I'm not telling anyone where I'm going, not even you, Nelson, because Paul is a stalker.' She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. âWish me luck. And thanks for always being so nice to me.'
âWait,' Nelson said.
âCan't wait. This is my chance to disappear.' She nodded toward the photocopying room. âYou might want to knock on that door in ten minutes or so. Just in case â¦'
She vanished behind the elevator doors.
Things got a little wild after that.
Â
There is no question that being a mere public relations associate for a former client is a step down from award-winning software designer, but Nelson is grateful. One small step back from the abyss is the way he sees it. He cannot actually remember what happened after a certain point at the ExecuTech celebration, though when he finally reached home,
driven by someone in uniform in a car equipped with flashing lights â he does not know if this was days or weeks later â the suit and shirt and tie and even the underpants he had worn to the party were waiting in a neatly boxed UPS parcel.
Every day he stares at the clothes in the parcel â he has never put them away; he has never even taken them from the box â and he does not regret his lack of recall.
He is not sure where the in-between was â a hospital? a clinic? â but he does remember (at least, he thinks he remembers) the visits from Paul, which seemed to be constant, though of course he does not trust himself on this matter.
âWe've been pushing you too hard,' Paul says and says and says, every time Nelson wakes up. (But perhaps Nelson simply replays this scene compulsively? Perhaps it only happened once? He has the mindset of a mathematician and a composer of algorhythms; data recovery is his thing; he is a sceptic by instinct; on image manipulation, he is the acclaimed wizard; he trusts nothing.) âJeez, man,' Paul says. âI had no idea.'
âWe don't want to lose you,' Paul keeps saying. âHell, man, you're brilliant, you're off the charts, but you're too intense. We only just stopped you, you know. You got any idea what that sort of publicity would have done?'
Nelson squints, concentrating, trying not to recall.
âYou would have put us under, that's what. You would have put us under even faster than you booted us up. Jesus, Nelson, have you any idea? And we only just stopped you, only just.'
Nelson raises his eyebrows. Only just stopped me from what? his eyebrows ask.
âWe stopped you from jumping off the balcony, twentieth floor, for God's sake. Don't tell me you don't remember, because I won't believe bullshit like that.'
Nelson does not believe he would ever do that. âNo,' he says, or tries to say. âI would never do that.'
âYou believed you could fly.' Paul flings his arms in the air and waves them like wings. He mimics a falsetto voice: â
I can fly! I can fly!'
âYou're lying.' Nelson has a fleeting image of the glass surface of a photocopying machine but he cannot hang onto it. It swoops out of his line of sight. There is something he cannot recall. âI would never do that.'
âJesus, Nelson, spare me the crap. There's no way you don't know what you did. Why the hell else would you be in here and doped to the gills? I can't even understand what you're saying.'
Nelson speaks slowly and carefully. He tries to admit that he can be a bit obsessive, maybe tunnel-focused, when he is working on something but not ⦠His tongue feels clumsy to him, like a very old horse that has broken free of the reins but no longer remembers how to gallop. He concentrates on forming each word. âI would never do that. Never. I don't believe you.'
âI have no idea what you're trying to say, Nelson, but believe me, you would've been a splat on the sidewalk by now if we hadn't grabbed you.'
âI
don't
believe you.'
The words come out more or less clearly, and Paul is startled. He rakes his fingers through his hair and butts his forehead against the wall of the room, over and over, though gently. âNelson, I don't even know if you're sane.' He slaps his own forehead with the flat of his palm. âAnd I'm trying to keep you on? What's wrong with me?'
Nelson is asking himself the same question. What is wrong with Paul?
âYou'd had way too much champagne,' Paul says. âThat's for sure. And God alone knows what else you were on. I tried to get that info from your medical records but your doctor says that's privileged garbage,
blah blah blah
. Very convenient.' Paul rattles Nelson's bed rails in irritation. âYou should have told us you were getting other offers.'
Nelson frowns, trying to remember. He raises his eyebrows, a question.
âOh please,' Paul says. âI wasn't born yesterday.' He fans through envelopes on the table beside Nelson's bed. âYou want me to open these for you?'
Nelson shakes his head, no.
Paul thumps the end of the mattress with a fist but makes an effort. âThe pathetic truth is, even if you're a nutcase, which you are, we still want to keep you, you're that good. We're holding open your slot on the Nerd Squad. It's there whenever you want it, whenever you're well enough, whenever they let you go.'
Nelson reaches for the notepad beside his bed.
Thank you
, he writes.
âYou had any other visitors, by the way?'
Yes
, Nelson writes.
âShit! Don't tell me Wholesome â¦?'
Nelson nods.
âMotherfuckers! You know they're sharks, don't you? You do know that, right? You know they are the most fucking hypocritical hustlers in the entireâ'
Nelson writes:
They said I could work from home.
Paul kicks the stand that holds the IV drip, and a long coil of tubing breaks away from Nelson's wrist and writhes in the air. âEven thinking of settling for a
client,
jeez, Nelson ⦠Where's your loyalty?'
Â
All day long, Nelson reads emails, hundreds of emails, from customers who buy the products of Wholesome Food & Beverage Company Ltd. He answers these emails diplomatically and courteously, within the strict guidelines prescribed.
Â
I am so grossed out,
a woman named Jill Willoughby from Macon, Georgia, writes.
I bought a vacuum-pack of one dozen of your chocolate cupcakes for my little girl's birthday party, and one of the girls found a fingernail in her cake! Believe me, if you'd seen the way those children shrieked and gagged, you'd understand what sort of bad publicity your disgracefully defective product is generating. I'm willing to bet that not one of those girls will ever again, for the rest of her life, take a single bite from a cupcake that is not home-made.
