The Deep End (36 page)

Joanne gasps loudly with delight.

“Is everything all right in here?” comes a voice from the doorway. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Hunter,” the nurse continues, recognizing her. “Didn’t expect to see you today. Your granddaddy okay?”

“Do you have any playing cards?” Joanne asks quickly.

“Playing cards?”

“You know, for gin rummy. Cards,” Joanne repeats.

“I think your granddaddy has some right in his drawer,” the nurse answers after a second’s thought. “I remember seeing some around somewhere. Check in the drawer. If there aren’t any, I’ll see if I can get you some.”

“They’re here,” Joanne exclaims triumphantly, pulling out an old deck of well-worn cards. “I found them.” She
slides them out of their faded pink-and-white package.

“You’re looking very fit today, Mr. Orr,” the nurse says, entering the room and lifting the old man’s hand into her own, feeling for his pulse. “Sounds good,” she says, winking at Joanne. “Have a good time, you two. Don’t you beat her too bad now, Mr. Orr.”

She is gone before Joanne has finished dealing the cards onto the stiff gray-white sheets. Her hands shaking, Joanne arranges her cards into proper order, too excited to concentrate.

All she can think about is that she is actually playing cards with her grandfather. And suddenly, she is ten years old again and they are sitting at the round table in the living room of her grandparents’ cottage, listening to the sound of the rain outside. The table is covered with a heavy green felt cloth, trimmed with long white tassels. It is located in the far right corner of the square-shaped room. On the opposite wall are hung a series of small paintings (prints, she realizes now) by such artists as Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Degas. Interrupting this wall are the doorways to the two bedrooms, one room for her parents and younger brother, and the other, which she shares with her grandparents. Her small single bed faces their larger double bed, and she can lie there and watch the leaves shaking on the tall tree just beyond the window. When the window is open, as it usually is, she can hear the sound of the leaves through the screen as they rustle in the breezes. She can smell the grass, hear the distant wail of a passing train whose lonely sound, even now, makes her feel secure whenever she hears it.

On the weekends, when the men have returned from the city, the smells of summer are joined by another
odor—the intrusion of rubbing alcohol, which her grandfather laboriously slaps on his face after he has shaved. It is this smell, more than the sunlight or the noises of the day, that awakens her on Saturday and Sunday mornings, a sort of aural alarm clock. This smell is what makes Joanne, unlike most people, unlike Eve, so comfortable in doctors’ offices, in hospital corridors.

The haunting sound of a train’s whistle and the abrasive smell of rubbing alcohol—her security blankets. She thinks of Paul—skinny arms and allergies. Funny the things we fall in love with.

“You taking that card?” her grandfather is asking impatiently.

Joanne realizes that she has been staring at the two of hearts for several seconds without absorbing which card it is. “No,” she says, deciding, too late, that she should have picked it up. Her grandfather quickly tucks the two of hearts into his hand and discards a seven of diamonds. Joanne checks her hand carefully to make sure she has no use for this card before she draws one from the deck. It is the ten of spades, which she takes, putting it between the eight and the jack of the same suit. She needs the nine.

Her grandfather’s eyes narrow in concentration. He draws a card from the deck and quickly discards it, watching as Joanne does the same, grabbing the next card that she throws out, watching as she picks up his discard. Joanne looks at her hand. She is only one card away from gin—the nine of spades. She debates throwing away a needed card, eager to prolong the game, to let her grandfather win, to further buoy his spirits. And her own.

“Gin,” her grandfather suddenly exclaims, proudly displaying his cards. Joanne stares at him in disbelief. “You
thought I was going to give you this one?” he asks slyly, turning over his gin card, the nine of spades.

“I don’t believe it,” Joanne states incredulously, then eagerly, “Think you can do it again?”

“I’ll try,” he ventures.

The results of the next hand are the same as the first. “Gin!” he cries with a child’s delight. The third and fourth hands proceed in almost identical fashion, though these take longer to play. Each is punctuated by the same satisfied yelp. “Gin!” her grandfather exclaims, though his voice is starting to fade.

“One more hand, Grampa?” Joanne asks.

“Deal the cards,” he tells her softly.

“We can stop now if you want to rest for a while.”

“Deal the cards,” he says again.

Joanne gives them each ten cards and quickly sorts hers out, noticing that her grandfather doesn’t bother, doesn’t need to. “The four of clubs, Grampa,” she tells him, looking up from the exposed card. “Do you want it?” He shakes his head. “Then I’ll take it,” she smiles, and he nods. She throws off an eight of hearts. “An eight, Grampa, do you want the eight?” He shakes his head. “Pick a card,” she instructs him gently, understanding that something has happened, that they are playing a different game.

She watches as his heavily veined hand reaches out and picks a card from the top of the deck. He holds it in front of his eyes and studies it as if it were a foreign object. “Do you want that card, Grampa?” she asks, refusing to acknowledge that he no longer sees it. He shrugs. “Lay it on the pile then,” she tells him, and he does so. “That’s the three of spades, Grampa. You’re sure you don’t need that?”

He shakes his head, regards her with bewilderment.

“Well, I’ll take it then,” she proceeds stubbornly, lifting it into her hand. “And I’ll give you the king of hearts. Grampa, do you want the king?”

She stares at him. The dolphin has become the giant turtle, the smiling eyes vanishing as the long neck stretches back against his pillow, his eyes closing in sleep. “Grampa!” she cries and his eyes snap open before closing once again. “Please don’t leave me, Grampa. Please don’t go. I need you!”

Her trembling hands reach out and gather the cards together, collecting them into their worn box, dropping some on the floor, bending to scoop them up, forcing them inside the package before returning them to the side table. She stands at the foot of his bed for several seconds before turning the crank, lowering the bed to its original position. Then she returns to her grandfather’s side, taking his arm in her hand, surprised by how light it feels.

“Please wake up, Grampa,” she pleads, knowing he will not. “I’m so lost. I don’t know what to do anymore. I lied to you. You asked me how Paul is and I said he was fine. Well, he is fine … it’s just that he’s gone. I told you that before. I told you that he left me…. But I always felt that he’d come back. I thought all I had to do was wait, give him enough time. I love him so much, Grampa. He’s been my life for twenty years. Now he wants a different life, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who I am anymore. Can you understand that? Everything is falling apart. I’m losing my children—they’re growing up. They’re growing away from me. And Eve … you remember Eve? The one who never knew her left hand from her right?”

Joanne searches her grandfather’s face for a flicker of recognition, but finds none. She continues. “Well, something is happening to Eve, Grampa. Something strange. She’s convinced that she’s dying. She’s been to thousands of doctors. Everybody tells her that there’s nothing wrong with her, all the tests are negative, but she won’t accept what anybody says. She’s acting very peculiar. I can’t explain it. She’s been my best friend for thirty years and all of a sudden, I don’t know who she is—I don’t trust her anymore. I’m afraid of her!” Joanne stops, startled by her admission. “I haven’t said that out loud before. I don’t think I’ve even thought it. But it’s true. I’m afraid of her.” Joanne pauses to let this thought sink in. “I’ve been getting these phone calls, Grampa. Scary, sick phone calls. A voice threatening to kill me. And one night last week, it was late and I went outside to the backyard—it was around midnight—and I was standing there staring at the stupid hole in the ground, and I heard that voice from the telephone calling my name, and I got so scared, I thought he had come to kill me … but it was Eve! It was her voice! And, in a way, that was worse than anything I’d been expecting. I can’t get the way she looked out of my mind. I’m afraid, Grampa, afraid that Eve is the one who’s been phoning me. I’m afraid that she wants to hurt me. I can’t believe it, even as I’m telling you this, but then I can’t believe any of the things that have been happening to me these past few months. I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. Please help me, Grampa. I don’t know what to do.”

Slowly, her grandfather’s eyes open. “Would you like to trade places?” he asks gently.

Joanne collapses into the chair beside his bed, his words echoing in her ear. His hand reaches out to hers, bringing her fingers to his dry lips.

The room is suddenly filled with sound. “It’s a long way to Tipperary!” Sam Hensley is bellowing loudly.

Joanne sits by her grandfather’s side, unable to move. She feels that she is in the middle of a surreal painting, something by Dali or Magritte.

“It’s a long way to Tipperary …”

Would you like to trade places?

“To the sweetest girl I know …”

“Linda?” her grandfather asks, startled by the sudden noise.

“It’s a long way to go …”

“Linda?”

Joanne stands up, bends forward, and kisses her grandfather’s cheek. “No, Grampa,” she whispers as his eyes close in sleep. “It’s Joanne.”

As she pulls the car into her driveway, Joanne thinks she sees Eve staring down at her from the small bedroom window at the front of Eve’s house. Joanne climbs out of her car, checking her watch. It is after five o’clock. She has been driving all afternoon, her head an echo chamber in which both spoken words and unspoken thoughts steadily collide, one-legged runners on America’s highways. Now she wants only to take a bath and get into bed, to give the runners a rest, yet something is pulling her toward Eve’s house.

As she crosses her front lawn, she again looks to the window of the small front bedroom, the room Eve had been saving for the expected baby that never arrived, but
the window is empty. No one is watching her. Has Eve seen her approaching? Is she on her way down the stairs to answer the front door?

Joanne knocks several times and then rings the bell. No one comes, though she can hear voices arguing. “Eve,” she calls. “I know you’re there. Are you all right?”

She hears footsteps approach the door and backs away as the door opens. Eve’s mother stands before her. “Eve doesn’t want to see you,” she says simply.

“Why not?” Joanne has trouble digesting this new information.

“She says she’s tired of having to defend herself to everyone, that if you were really her friend she wouldn’t have to.”

“I
am
her friend.”

“I know that,” Mrs. Cameron nods sadly. “And deep down, I think she knows that too, but …”

“I’m tired, Mrs. Cameron,” Joanne hears herself say, “too tired to argue. I’ve had kind of a rough day myself. I’m going home; I’m going to take a bath and get into bed. Tell Eve I was here and … tell her that I love her.” She tries to smile but fails and quickly abandons the attempt.

“I’ll get her to call you.”

Joanne runs down the steps and cuts across her front lawn, taking the stairs to her front door two at a time, turning the key in the lock, pushing open the door and stretching out her hand to shut off the alarm. Except that it isn’t on.

Joanne takes an involuntary step backward. The green light isn’t on, and if the green light isn’t on, that means the alarm isn’t on. Can it be that she has forgotten to set it?

Her mind returns to the morning. She was upset when she left the house, tired, depressed. She was thinking about yesterday, about last night, about Paul’s latest abandonment. This doesn’t change anything, he said. She hears his words now as she heard them on her way out the door. She sees herself grabbing her purse and closing the front door behind her. It is entirely possible that she has forgotten to set the alarm. Stupid! she thinks, deciding she’d better check the doors and windows to make sure they are secure. It’s possible that someone might have tried to get in, she thinks, realizing that, despite Brian’s earlier assurances that he would have someone watch the house, she has never seen any police cars even casually patrolling the area.

Thoughts of Brian lead to thoughts of Eve. What is happening to her friend? she wonders as she proceeds cautiously into her kitchen to the sliding glass door. The lock is securely fastened. No one has tampered with it. Joanne feels herself relax, thinks that she is being silly, but feels her feet leading her into the living room and then the dining room. Nothing has been disturbed. The windows are tightly closed.

Almost reluctantly, she moves down the stairs to the bottom floor, where she quickly checks out the sliding glass door in the family room. Again, it is securely fastened. No one has been here.

The bedrooms are the same—still, empty, as she left them. After satisfying herself that no one has tried to open any of the upstairs windows, Joanne collapses on her bed. Maybe she won’t bother with a bath after all. Maybe she’ll just crawl under the covers and try to sleep.

The phone rings just as she is starting to doze.

Joanne picks up the phone on its first ring. “Hello, Eve?”

“Bad girl,” the voice chides her. “Slut! Whore!”

Joanne slams the phone into the receiver and buries her head in her hands. In the next instant, she is racing down the stairs to the kitchen, rummaging through her address book, finding Brian’s phone number at work. Her hands shaking, she dials the number, misdialing the last digit and having to dial again.

“Sergeant Brian Stanley, please,” she says to the policeman who answers the phone.

“He’s not here right now. Can I help you?”

“Who is this?”

“Officer Wilson.”