Lisey’s Story (23 page)

She reached for the car radio, wanting some nice loud country music (there was another bad habit Scott had taught her in the last few years of his life, one she hadn't yet given up), then glanced over at Darla and saw that Darla had gone to sleep with her head resting against the passenger window. Not the right time for Shooter Jennings or Big & Rich. Sighing, Lisey dropped her hand from the radio.

Dr. Alberness had wanted to reminisce at length about his lunch with the great Scott Landon, and Lisey had been willing to let him do so in spite of Darla's repeated hand-signals, most of which meant
Can't you hurry him up?

Lisey probably could have, but she thought doing so might have been bad for their cause. Besides, she was curious. More, she was hungry. For what? News of Scott. In a way, listening to Dr. Alberness had been like looking at those old memories hidden away in the study booksnake. She didn't know if Alberness's
entire
recollections constituted one of Scott's “stations of the bool”—she suspected not—but she knew they raised a dry yet compelling hurt in her. Was that what remained of grief after two years? That hard and ashy sadness?

First Scott had called Alberness on the phone. Had he known in advance that the doctor was a puffickly
huh-yooge
fan, or was that just a coincidence? Lisey didn't believe it had been a coincidence, thought that was just a little, ahem, too coincidental, but if Scott had known,
how
had he known? She hadn't been able to think of a way to ask without breaking into the doctor's flood of reminiscence, and that was all right; probably it didn't matter. In any case, Alberness had been intensely flattered to receive that call (pretty much
bowled over,
as the
saying was), and more than receptive both to Scott's enquiries about his sister-in-law and his suggestion that they have lunch. Would it be all right, Dr. Alberness had asked, if he brought along a few of his favorite Landons for signature? More than all right, Scott had replied, he'd be pleased to do it.

Alberness had brought his favorite Landons; Scott had brought Amanda's medical records. Which led Lisey, now less than a mile from Amanda's little Cape Cod, to yet another question: how had Scott gotten hold of them? Had he charmed Amanda into handing them over? Had he charmed Jane Whitlow, the shrink with the beads? Had he charmed both of them? Lisey knew it was possible. Scott's ability to charm wasn't universal—Dashmiel, the southern-fried chickenshit, was a case in point—but many people had been susceptible. Certainly Amanda had felt it, although Lisey was sure that her sister had never fully trusted Scott (Manda
had
read all of his books, even
Empty Devils
 . . . after which, Amanda said, she had slept with the lights on for an entire week). About Jane Whitlow Lisey had no idea.

How Scott had obtained the records might be another point upon which Lisey's curiosity would never be satisfied. She might have to content herself with knowing that he had, and that Dr. Alberness had willingly studied them, and had concurred with Scott's opinion: Amanda Debusher was probably headed for more trouble down the line. And at some point (probably long before they'd finished their dessert), Alberness had promised his favorite writer that if the feared break came, he would find a place for Ms. Debusher at Greenlawn.

“That was so wonderful of you,” Lisey had told him warmly, and now—turning in to Amanda's driveway for the second time that day—she wondered at what point in the conversation the doctor had asked Scott where he got his ideas. Had it been early or late? With the appetizers or the coffee?

“Wake up, Darla-darlin,” she said, turning off the engine. “We're here.”

Darla sat up, looked at Amanda's house, and said: “Oh, shit.”

Lisey burst out laughing. She couldn't help it.

Packing for Manda turned out to be an unexpectedly sad affair for both of them. They found her bags in the third-floor cubby that served as her attic. There were just two Samsonite suitcases, battered and still bearing
MIA
tags from the Florida trip she'd taken to see Jodotha . . . when? Seven years ago?

No,
Lisey thought,
ten.
She regarded them sadly, then pulled out the larger of the two.

“Maybe we ought to take both,” Darla said doubtfully, then wiped her face. “Whoo! Hot up here!”

“Let's just take the big one,” Lisey said. She almost added that she didn't think Amanda would be going to the Catatonics' Ball this year, then bit her tongue. One look at Darla's tired, sweaty face told her this was absolutely the wrong time to try and be witty. “We can get enough in it for a week, at least. She won't be going far. Remember what the doc said?”

Darla nodded and wiped her face again. “Mostly in her room, at least to start with.”

Under ordinary circumstances, Greenlawn would have sent a physician out to examine Amanda
in situ,
but thanks to Scott, Alberness had cut right to the chase. After ascertaining that Dr. Whitlow was gone and Amanda either could not or would not walk (and that she was incontinent), he had told Lisey he would send out a Greenlawn ambulance—unmarked, he emphasized. To most folks it looked like just another delivery van. Lisey and Darla had followed it to Greenlawn in Lisey's BMW, and both of them had been extremely grateful—Darla to Dr. Alberness, Lisey to Scott. The wait while Alberness examined her, however, had seemed much longer than forty minutes, and his report had been far from encouraging. The only part of it Lisey wanted to concentrate on right now was what Darla had just mentioned: Amanda would be spending most of her first week under close observation, in her room or on the little terrace outside her room if she could be persuaded
to ambulate that far. She wouldn't even be visiting the Hay Common Room at the end of the corridor unless she showed sudden and drastic improvement. “Which I don't expect,” Dr. Alberness had told them. “It happens, but it's rare. I believe in telling the truth, ladies, and the truth is that Ms. Debusher is probably in for the long haul.”

“Besides,” Lisey said, examining the bigger of the two suitcases, “I want to buy her some new luggage. This stuff is beat to shit.”

“Let me do it,” Darla said. Her voice had gone thick and wavery. “You do so much, Lisey. Dear little Lisey.” She took Lisey's hand, lifted it to her lips, and planted a kiss on it.

Lisey was surprised—almost shocked. She and Darla had buried their ancient quarrels, but this sort of affection was still very unlike her older sister.

“Do you really want to, Darl?”

Darla nodded vehemently, started to speak, and settled for scrubbing her face again.

“Are you okay?”

Darla began to nod, then shook her head. “New luggage!” she cried. “What a joke! Do you think she's ever going to need new luggage? You heard him—no response to the snap test, no response to the clap test, no response to the pin test! I know what the nurses call people like her, they call em
gorks,
and I don't give a shit what he says about therapy and wonder drugs, if she ever comes back it'll be a blue-eyed miracle!”

As the saying is,
Lisey thought, and smiled . . . but only inside, where it was safe to smile. She led her tired, slightly weepy sister down the short, steep flight of attic steps and below the worst of the heat. Then, instead of telling her that where there was life there was hope, or to let a smile be her umbrella, or that it was always darkest just before the dawn, or anything else that had just lately fallen out of the dog's ass, she simply held her. Because sometimes only holding was best. That was one of the things she had taught the man whose last name she had taken for her own—that sometimes it was best to be quiet; sometimes it was best to just shut your everlasting mouth and hang on, hang on, hang on.

Lisey asked again if Darla didn't want company on the ride back to Greenlawn, and Darla shook her head. She had an old Michael Noonan novel on cassette tapes, she said, and this would be a good chance to dig into it. By then she had washed her face in Amanda's bathroom, re-applied her makeup, and tied her hair back. She looked good, and in Lisey's experience, a woman who looked good usually felt that way. So she gave Darla's hand a little squeeze, told her to drive carefully, and watched her out of sight. Then she made a slow tour of Amanda's house, first inside and then out, making sure everything was locked up: windows, doors, cellar bulkhead, garage. She left two of the garage windows a quarter-inch open to keep the heat from building up. This was a thing Scott had taught
her,
a thing he'd learned from his father, the redoubtable Sparky Landon . . . along with how to read (at the precocious age of two), how to sum on the little blackboard that was kept beside the stove in the kitchen, how to jump from the bench in the front hall with a cry of
Geronimo!
 . . . and about blood-bools, of course.

“Stations of the bool—like stations of the cross, I guess.”

He says this and then he laughs. It's a nervous laugh, an I'm-looking-over-my-shoulder laugh. A child's laugh at a dirty joke.

“Yeah, exactly like that,” Lisey murmured, and shivered in spite of the late afternoon heat. The way those old memories kept bubbling to the surface in the present tense was disturbing. It was as if the past had never died; as if on some level of time's great tower, everything was still happening.

That's a bad way to think, thinking that way will get you in the bad-gunky.

“I don't doubt it,” Lisey said, and gave her own nervous laugh. She headed for her car with Amanda's key-ring—surprisingly heavy, heavier than her own, although Lisey's house was far bigger—hung over the forefinger of her right hand. She had a feeling she was
already
in the badgunky. Amanda in the nutbarn was just the beginning. There was also “Zack McCool” and that detestable Incunk, Professor Woodbody. The events of the day had driven the latter two out of her mind, but that
didn't mean they'd ceased to exist. She felt too tired and dispirited to take on Woodbody this evening, too tired and dispirited even to track him to his lair . . . but she thought she'd better do it just the same, if only because her phone-pal “Zack” had sounded as though he could really be dangerous.

She got into her car, put big sissa Manda-Bunny's keys into the glove compartment, and backed down the driveway. As she did, the lowering sun cast a bright net of reflections off something behind her and up onto the roof. Startled, Lisey pressed the brake, looked over her shoulder—and saw the silver spade.
COMMENCEMENT, SHIPMAN LIBRARY.
Lisey reached back, touched the wooden handle, and felt her mind calm a bit. She looked in both directions along the blacktop, saw nothing coming, and turned toward home. Mrs. Jones was sitting on her front stoop, and raised her hand in a wave. Lisey raised hers in return. Then she reached between the BMW's bucket seats again, so she could grasp the shaft of the spade.

If she was honest with herself, she thought as she began her short ride home, then she had to admit she was more frightened by these returning memories—by the sense that they were happening
again,
happening
now
—than she was by what might or might not have happened in bed just before sunrise. That she could dismiss (well . . . almost) as the half-waking dream of an anxious mind. But she hadn't thought of Gerd Allen Cole for ever so long, and if asked for the name of Scott's father or where he had worked, she would have said she honestly didn't remember.

“U.S. Gypsum,” she said. “Only Sparky called it U.S. Gyppum.” And then, low and fierce, almost growling it: “Stop, now. That's enough. You stop.”

But
could
she? That was the question. And it was an
important
question, because her late husband wasn't the only one who had squirreled away certain painful and frightening memories. She'd put up some sort of mental curtain between
LISEY NOW
and
LISEY! THE EARLY
YEARS!
, and she had always thought it was strong, but this evening she just didn't know. Certainly there were holes in it, and if you looked through them, you ran the risk of seeing things in the purple haze beyond that you maybe didn't want to see. It was better not to look, just as it was better not even to glance at yourself in a mirror after dark unless all the lights in the room were on, or eat

(
nightfood
)

an orange or a bowl of strawberries after sundown. Some memories were all right, but others were dangerous. It was best to live in the present. Because if you got hold of the wrong memory, you might—

“Might
what?
” Lisey asked herself in an angry, shaky voice, and then, immediately: “I don't want to know.”

A PT Cruiser going the other way came out of the declining sun, and the guy behind the wheel tipped her a wave. Lisey tipped him one right back, although she couldn't think of anyone of her acquaintance who owned a PT Cruiser. It didn't matter, out here in Sticksville you always waved back; it was plain country courtesy. Her mind was elsewhere, in any case. The fact was, she did not have the luxury of refusing
all
her memories just because there were some things

(
Scott in the rocker, nothing but eyes while the wind howls outside, a killer gale all the way down from Yellowknife
)

she didn't feel capable of looking at. Not all of them were lost in the purple, either; some were just tucked away in her own mental book-snake, all too accessible. The business of the bools, for instance. Scott had given her the complete lowdown on bools once, hadn't he?