The Covenant (8 page)

Pleasant Acres wasn't very pleasant, nor was it situated on any acres. The place was locked up like a maximum-security prison, fences topped with razor wire, mag-locked steel doors, and bulletproof glass around the nurses' station.

Nurse Ratched buzzed me in and met me in the lobby wearing faded paisley scrubs, white Jasco shoes and a Prozac smile. Her narrow brown eyes flicked across my camera as I told her the patient's name. She looked for my name on her clipboard.

I pointed at the video camera hanging from the ceiling above the exit. “What's with all the security? Keeping people out, or keeping them in?”

Her lips tugged themselves a wrinkle closer to her half-closed eyes and she asked, “Are you a member of the family?”

“I'm here at their request.” They hadn't called ahead because they didn't want to give the staff time to clean their daughter up. They wanted pictures of the pool of piss under her bed. They wanted the jury to see the suppurating bedsores.

“You'll have to leave your camera at the front desk,” the nurse said.

“I can't do that.”

“We'll take very good care of it.”

“I'm sure you will, but I'm here to photograph the patient.”

“For what purpose?”

“Glamour magazine.”

She laughed softly, like a woman hiding a coat hanger behind her back. “I need to know what kind of pictures you will be taking.”

“That's not really any of your business, is it?”

“I'm afraid it is.”

“Are you going to let me see her?”

“I'll have to call the family and obtain permission.”

“You do that.”

I sat in the corner beside a potted schefflera that had dropped most of its leaves. While I waited, a family of three and a couple of doctor-looking men in white coats were buzzed in without being questioned. I stepped outside and spotted a security video camera above the door. They had seen me coming from the parking lot and were ready for me. Next time, I'd make sure to hide my camera in a backpack instead of wearing it around my neck.

I gave her about five minutes to call the family; then I hit the buzzer. When no one answered, I leaned on it until they did. Nurse Ratched came through the door like a horse out of a gate. “Please stop that!”

“What did the family say?”

“I'm afraid I was unable to reach them. I left a message. If you'd like to wait…”

I handed her the letter Preston had given me.

“What's this?”

“A demand, giving me permission to enter the facility and photograph the patient.”

“Our lawyer will have to look at this.”

“Fine.”

“I'm afraid he's not here.”

“Of course he isn't.”

“You can wait here while I call him.”

“I'll do that.”

I pretended to sit, but as soon as she opened the door I bolted in behind her.

Their lawyers had trained her well, because she didn't lay a hand on me as I slipped by her. “Ma'am! You can't come in here,” she said as she waved to a couple of big orderlies standing at the end of the hall, probably the guys they called in to wrestle with the paraplegics when they wouldn't take their pills. “You have to wait in the waiting area.”

“Thanks. I'll find the patient while you call your lawyer.”

The nurse ran off to fetch somebody important enough to ignore my letter. The orderlies started down the hall like a couple of bulls that had just spotted a Spaniard with a red neckerchief. I picked a hall at random, then cut through a laundry closet to try to lose them. The place was miles and miles of identical halls, identically carpeted and wallpapered. Apparently they let the more harmless inmates wander unsupervised, because I passed a couple of barely animate corpses gaping at the ten-dollar landscape paintings hanging between every cell.

I didn't know where to look. All the doors had numbers instead of names, and I was moving pretty fast to keep ahead of the orderlies. In the next hall, I met a finely dressed old woman sitting bolt upright in one of the hall chairs. With her pearls and her white gloves and her little black hat, she looked like she was ready to head out for a night on the town, about sixty years ago. She stopped me as I passed.

“Have you seen my brother? He promised to take me to the party.”

I fought the urge to pull away from her. Her hand on my arm was as light as a spider. I wondered how many years she had been waiting in this hall for a brother who was mostly likely dead. I said, “He just called. He's on his way.”

“Oh good. Thank you so much. He said he'd meet me here.” She settled back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap, prepared to wait until the crack of doom.

I heard shouting at the end of the hall, so I dove through a pair of double doors on the right. The change was abrupt, from soft lines and soothing colors to harsh metal and cold hospital tiles. The floor was beige and shined as though recently mopped. It reminded me of the killing room at the dog pound, designed for easy clean up. Two naked bodies lay on gurneys—two old women as small as children, as alike in their naked anonymity as twins. Somebody had parked them here and gone to lunch. Next to them stood a shrink-wrapped case of industrial kitchen-sized cans of lima beans, and beside that a pallet of bags of rice and a cart of soiled linens. I figured Preston would want to see this, so I started snapping pictures.

The next door I opened brought me to the hall where they piled the human wreckage before it headed out to the loading dock. The smell hit me like a garbage truck. I choked down a full bore of gorge and continued snapping the shutter at everything I saw. There was an old lady bent almost double upon herself by osteoporosis, gazing and mumbling into her own crotch. An elderly pantless gentleman pushed himself slowly along by his only foot—the other leg ended in a raw, naked stump just above the ankle. There were people picking at bleeding sores, moaning or mumbling or softly weeping or just sitting, gape-mouthed, blank-eyed, staring into the horror or the nothingness that had blasted their minds.

Suddenly, I was thankful Mom died the way she did—suddenly, with little or no warning, in her own home surrounded by everything she knew and loved, instead of spending months or years lost in a fog of cold piss and hopeless dementia.

As I moved slowly along the corridor shooting pictures, an eight-foot tree of an orderly caught me from behind, spun me around and yanked the camera from my neck hard enough to break the strap. I felt my head dislodge and fall against his chest, which he seemed to enjoy because he kept it there, trapped in the crook of his rough arm.

He twisted my elbow up around my ear and rooster-marched me back into the carpeted areas of the nursing home. “You keep dragging me around like this, you're liable to scuff my shoes,” I said. I was wearing sandals.

“Can't let you run around like that.”

“Afraid I'll trip over a corpse?”

“Something like that.” He had to stop and get his bearings for a moment. I was beginning to suspect they had built it like a maze to keep people from finding their way out.

“Maybe you should have left a trail of breadcrumbs.”

He said, “What?” Then started off, still swinging me along by one arm.

“If you put me down, I promise not to run away.”

“I don't mind,” he said. “You're not heavy at all.”

When we reached the nurses' station, the warden was just buzzing somebody in. The orderly handed Nurse Ratched my camera, then pushed me into a chair. He stood beside me, one hand on my shoulder, crushing me like an empty can.

The nurse was all smiles again, smiles that didn't touch her eyes, smiles that she wore like a name tag pinned to her face. I wondered if she took them off at night and kept them in a jewelry box on the dresser. “As you are employed by a lawyer, I'm sure you'll understand that we can't let people wander the halls unescorted. It's a liability issue.”

“Nobody's escorting him,” I said, nodding at the man who had just entered. He glanced at me, then stopped, almost as surprised as I was. He was my lost preacher, Deacon Falgoust. I didn't even know he was back in town.

He was dressed in the same black suit I'd seen him in at Sam Loftin's wake, same black shoes, same tie. The only thing different about him was the raggedy, dog-eared Bible in his hand. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

“No problem,” I said. “These nice people are just trying to keep me from doing my job.” The orderly's fingers tightened painfully on my shoulder. I shifted in the chair until my heel was crushing his pinky toe. He gritted his teeth and escalated our silent game of Uncle.

“You trespassed into the facility,” Nurse Ratched said.

“You were illegally denying me access. I have permission to be here.”

“I'm afraid you don't.”

“You saw the letter. It was signed by the family.”

“There's no need for all this,” the preacher said to the nurse. “Mrs. Lyons is a friend of mine.”

“Miss,” I corrected.

“In fact, I asked her to meet me here. She is my guest.”

Whatever it was she really wanted to say remained safely behind Nurse Ratched's smile. She swallowed it with some difficulty, then cleared her throat. “Well, then, I suppose…”

I shrugged off the orderly's paw and stood up, shifting all my weight onto his toe for a second before stepping off. “That was fun,” he said. “I should take you dancing.”

“So glad you could come,” Deacon said as he took my hand. “I'm sure this was all just a misunderstanding.”

“Yeah, that's what it was,” I said. “I was just looking for my friend here.”

Nurse Ratched settled herself into a chair behind the nurses' station. “Perfectly understandable.” Her face had resumed its usual catatonic composure. “But we do have our little rules to follow to keep the lawyers happy.”

“Naturally. What about my camera?”

“As the reverend's guest, you are free to visit whomever you like. But you'll have to leave your camera with me until I have permission for you to take photographs on the premises.” She locked it in a drawer under the desk. “It will be safe here until you return.”

Before I could answer, the preacher pulled me down one of the few halls I hadn't got around to exploring.

 

11

F
IRST THING I NOTICED
was the change in light. Gone were the fluorescent bulbs, replaced by lamps on tables in the interior hallways, giving off a warm yellow glow. The exterior halls had windows, and gardens outside the windows, and gardeners in the gardens mowing the lawn and bending over nasturtiums and buttercups. This was the cruise ship deck of the nursing home.

The residents we met in the halls were, for the most part, not so wrecked and thrown upon the shore as the ones I'd seen elsewhere. Dr. Dementia made his daily rounds here as well, punctually and without fail, but his patients were better situated, with nicer furniture and smiling nurses to change their diapers. The pernicious stink of piss was gone, replaced by a wholesome smell, like bacon, with just a touch of rolls warming in an oven, which we soon tracked down to the dining room, where the old ladies dozed over their pudding while a concert piano in the corner played a rondoletto all by itself.

We passed a group of old men who had gathered in a small sitting area, reading their papers or sleeping beneath them. One or two called out to the preacher, lifting their trembling hands in passing. He blessed them with his Bible, drawing crosses in the air. “I come around a couple of times a week to hold services in the chapel,” he explained.

“You lied for me back there, preacher.”

“Call me Deacon.”

“What's your church say about lying, Deacon?”

“It's no sin to lie to the devil,” he said. We turned a corner and nearly ran over a couple of elderly women, one pushing the other's chair, both dressed in cashmere lounge robes and fuzzy slippers. They batted their eyes at the preacher and giggled when he told them how the Lord seemed to have blessed them with eternal youth. The one in the chair straightened her robe where it had fallen open in her excitement.

“I didn't know you were back in town.”

“I only got in this morning. I came here to see Mrs. Ruth—Ruth Vardry—do you remember her?”

“Sure. The crazy cat lady who lived in the woods. So this is where they stuck her.”

“Mrs. Ruth is well taken care of here.”

“Have you seen the rest of the place?”

“Many times.” He stopped in front of a closed door. A white hand towel was draped across the doorknob, as though the occupant didn't want to be disturbed in the midst of fornicating.

“Since you're back, does that mean I can finally start working?”

“Whenever you like.”

“You got everything straightened out in New Orleans?”

“By the grace of God, yes.”

Deacon softly knocked on the door. A woman's voice answered almost immediately. “Come in.” He took the towel from the knob and opened the door.

“I thought you had forgotten about me,” she said as we entered. The room beyond was as dark as dusk, with faint rose-colored light sifting through a red curtain hung over a far door. The room itself was spacious and no warmer than the belly of a Philistine idol. A single long silhouette lounged on the shadow of a divan, but my first impression was that the room was full of people.

She pulled the jeweled chain on a Tiffany lamp. The dim light chased away the shadows and the shades—four and twenty ghostly blackbirds, a dim regiment of men who faded into the patterns in the wallpaper and were no more. The preacher didn't notice them, but that didn't surprise me. What surprised me is that Ruth did. A sad smile passed across her face; then she turned her bright, dark eyes upon me.

“Preacher, you didn't tell me you were bringing someone,” she pouted.