Shades of Simon Gray (20 page)

Despite the assurances of public health officials, residents began to panic. People who discovered even a single mosquito bite lined up outside Dr. Braddock’s office across the street from the south side of the park, making a line that extended halfway around the block.

The town council held an emergency meeting and voted to begin spraying earlier than usual. For two nights in a row, people were instructed to close windows and to bring pets and lawn furniture indoors while trucks drove through neighborhoods spraying thick clouds of insecticide.

The more fainthearted residents even went so far as to pack up their vans and SUVs with their children, pets, and a few basic necessities and head out of town until the whole thing blew over.

The next morning the headline in the
Bellehaven Press
read “West Nile Virus Claims Its First Bellehaven Victim.” The unfortunate casualty was an eighty-seven-year-old man who had lived alone in a small trailer near the river. Devin’s hands were shaking as she scanned the article while she stirred a pot of oatmeal for her brothers and sisters. By now the doctors had determined that her grandmother had also been stricken with the virus. They were concerned that it might develop into the sometimes deadly encephalitis.

Like everyone else in town, Devin had begun to think the residents of Bellehaven had been singled out. Cursed for reasons no one understood. With the count of cases rising daily, more people began to leave town. They took their children out of school, apparently not caring one whit whether their kids would have to spend July and August in summer school to make up the work. Some of the McCaffertys’ neighbors on Meadowlark Drive had gone to stay with relatives in nearby towns; others had taken rooms in motels outside the county.

As soon as school was out, Devin headed for the bus stop. She was meeting her mother at the hospital. Since she and Kyle had split, Devin didn’t dare ask him to give her a ride. And Danny had track.

Kyle was taking their breakup harder than she’d expected. If they passed each other in the hall, he wouldn’t look at her. Because they no longer met after fourth period or ate lunch together in the cafeteria, Devin, who had no appetite at all these days, had taken to spending her lunch period in a stall in the girls’ room writing in her journal.

She had developed her own code because it was too
risky to write about what had really been happening in her life. If the cops ever confiscated her journal, they wouldn’t know what to make of it. Or so she hoped. Sometimes she wrote her sentences backward. Mih ot netsil reve I did yhw? Sometimes she wrote obscure poems that held meaning for her alone. Sometimes she scribbled images in metaphor.
I am at the bottom of a well. The walls are damp and slimy. My fingers slip on the mossy stones. Sometimes I think I will never be able to pull myself out of this dark place
.

The police, if they ever got their hands on her journal, would assume these were the adolescent hormone-induced rages of an overly angst-ridden teen. She was counting on it.

At least she didn’t have to worry about memorizing lines for
Macbeth
anymore. The day before, she’d told the drama coach, Mr. Newcombe, about her grandmother’s illness and how she would probably have to miss a lot more rehearsals than she already had because she’d be spending a lot of time at the hospital. She had told him she couldn’t possibly concentrate on her role.

What she didn’t tell Mr. Newcombe was that Lady Macbeth’s lines had begun to creep into her thoughts at the most unfortunate times, like on the bus on her way to the hospital.
O, these flaws and starts,/Imposters to true fear, would well become/A woman’s story at a winter’s fire,/Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!
You couldn’t grab your head, tear at your hair, rub the palm of your hand, and scream,
Out, damned spot! out, I say!
in front of a busful of people, no matter how desperately you wanted to.

Mrs. McCafferty was slumped in the single chair, staring at the wall, a magazine lying open on her lap, when Devin came through the door to her grandmother’s room. Since the doctors had determined that Devin’s grandmother had West Nile virus, which wasn’t contagious, they had moved her into a double room.

A young girl, about Devin’s age, was in the other bed, the one by the door. An IV needle was taped to her hand. She appeared to be asleep. And since no one was visiting her, Devin quietly lifted the empty chair from the girl’s side of the room and set it next to her mother’s. “How is she?” Devin whispered.

“It’s progressed to encephalitis.” Her mother stared down at the magazine in her lap. “They’re making arrangements to move her to the intensive care unit.”

Encephalitis. Devin looked over at her sleeping grandmother. The woman’s face was ashen. Dried spittle caked the corners of her thin lips. Devin had an overwhelming urge to put her arms around her grandmother and hold on for dear life. Instead she wrapped her fingers around the arms of the chair. “So how are they treating it?”

“Dr. Chu says they’ve had some success with a drug called Ribavirin.”

Devin waited for her mother to go on. When she didn’t, Devin said, “So that’s what they’re giving her?”

Her mother slapped the magazine closed and tossed it on the floor beside the chair. “Yes.” Her eyes shifted away from her daughter.

“But …?” Devin saw the unspoken word in her mother’s expression.

Mrs. McCafferty sighed. “Your grandmother doesn’t seem to be responding to the medication.”

“Why not?” Devin’s legs had begun to twitch. She locked her ankles around the chair legs.

“They aren’t sure. Dr. Chu says this could be a new strain of the virus, one they haven’t dealt with before.”

“So now what?”

“They’re doing what they can—intravenous fluids, nutrition. Mostly they have to be careful she doesn’t get some other kind of infection, like pneumonia.”

“What about antibiotics?” Devin said. “They can give her those, right?”

“If she gets a bacterial infection, yes. But this is a virus, honey. Antibiotics won’t have any effect on it.” Her mother got up and walked to the single window. The only view was a brick wall across an air shaft.

“I’ll stay here if you want to walk around,” Devin said.

Her mother nodded, although her back was still to Devin. “I need to stretch my legs a bit.” She reached for her handbag on the table beside the bed. “If Gram wakes up …” She paused and looked down at Devin. “If she should say something, well … odd, don’t get upset, okay?”

Devin blinked back at her. “What’s that supposed to mean? Odd?”

Mrs. McCafferty slid the strap of her purse over her shoulder and shrugged. “Encephalitis can cause mental confusion.”

“What kind of mental confusion?”

“The doctor called it altered mental states.”

“So, has Gram been saying weird things to you or something?”

“She seemed a little agitated earlier today. That’s all.” Mrs. McCafferty put her arms around Devin and gave her a gentle hug. “I just thought I should warn you.”

When her mother was gone, Devin slid the chair closer to the bed. She would spend some time with her grandmother; then, as soon as her mother returned, she would go down to the ICU and see if she could find out how Simon was doing. Liz had told her Tuesday morning in school how she had sneaked in to see Simon the afternoon before, and how she believed one of his fingers had moved. Devin had been hopeful. But then on Wednesday, there had been rumors at school that Simon had taken a turn for the worse on Tuesday afternoon. Devin didn’t know whom to believe. So she was determined to see for herself.

She reached through the side rail and touched her grandmother’s hand. Her skin felt like fine-grained sandpaper.

She thought about the day her grandparents moved into the already cramped Cape Cod on Meadowlark Drive, how furious she had been with them, with her parents, with the world in general. They had stolen her new bedroom right out from under her. Never mind that Granddad McCafferty was in a wheelchair, unable to talk or move. He was a thief! They both were.

Devin had made sure everyone was at the kitchen table, eating dinner, the night she stomped through the room with the first box, passing them to get to the basement
door. All in all, she carried four boxes and two armloads of clothes from her closet to the cellar, and not one member of her family ever looked up from the table or said a word. They just kept right on eating as if Devin’s moving into the basement was the most natural thing in the world.

As she sat there holding her grandmother’s hand, Devin thought maybe it really
was
the most natural thing, although her intention at the time had been to make them all feel guilty. They had banished her to the basement, after all. A dark hole where you could feel the tickle of tiny feet and tails on your arms as the mice scurried across the bed, where spiders wove webs over your lips while you slept. Or so she sometimes imagined. But no one had forced her to move to the cellar. It had been her own idea.

Now her cozy little corner, curtained away from the rest of them, had become her sanctuary. It wasn’t at all what she’d intended. Neither was her grandmother’s illness. Still, Devin couldn’t help wondering if the silent angry curses she’d heaped on her grandparents each time she passed through the kitchen that night three years before, arms loaded with her few precious belongings, hadn’t come back to haunt her.

One of the nurses came in to change the IV bag. She smiled at Devin. “I’m just checking on her,” she said as she slipped a clean plastic cover on the thermometer and held it inside Mrs. McCafferty’s ear. She checked her pulse and blood pressure, then wrote something on the paper on her clipboard. “They’ll be down soon to take her to the ICU,” she told Devin as she headed out the door.

When Devin looked back at her grandmother, she was startled to see the old woman’s glassy eyes staring up at her. “How are you feeling, Gram?”

Her grandmother didn’t answer. She kept her eyes on Devin. Then, as her grandmother’s lips slowly parted, Devin had the strangest sensation that time itself had slowed down.

“They know,” her grandmother whispered.

Later that night, in her corner of the basement, Devin lay in bed on her side with her pillow curled into her stomach. Not only was her grandmother’s illness worse, but the nurses in the ICU had confirmed that Simon’s condition was still critical. Devin had come away feeling that he might be even worse than the nurses had let on. It was only an intuition. But it was a strong one.

She pressed her forehead against the cool pillowcase, unable to sleep. She kept thinking about what her grandmother had said, wondering who “they” were. When it came right down to it, probably her grandmother didn’t know either. Her warning—or whatever it was—had no doubt been a feverish outburst caused by her illness. That altered mental state Devin’s mother had mentioned earlier.

But despite her attempts to reassure herself, Devin’s mind kept returning to a story she had seen one night on the national news. Stunned, she had watched as lightning knocked a man right out of his Birkenstocks as he stood at the back of his cabin cruiser in a thunderstorm down in Key West. The man had a can of Coors in his hand, his face
turned up to the drenching rain, and was shouting, “Okay, let’s see your best shot. I dare you!” And of course, “they” took him up on it. With one swift bolt of lightning, the guy was history. The video had been filmed by one of the deceased man’s friends, who had been standing in the cabin doorway at the time.

Devin’s father had been watching the news with her. He leaned forward in his recliner, slapped his knee, and held his palm out to the TV. “Well, what the hell did he think was going to happen? You stand out there in the middle of the ocean during an electrical storm, you’re going to end up toast!”

But Devin couldn’t help feeling there was more to it than the scientific inevitability her father’s explanation implied. For some reason, she had thought of the ancient Greek plays she had studied in her English class, and of the Furies. Those ministers of punishment. Those emissaries of swift justice. It didn’t matter who or what “they” were—the gods, the fates, supernatural forces—you simply did not mock them.
Ever
.