The Gendarme (27 page)

I find the phone, the phone that patients may use. I must ask for help, to look up Carl’s number. I have lost my big glasses, and I cannot remember . . . Carl, I say, can you find someone? You, with the FBI. Her name is Araxie. Marashlian. I spell it—perhaps it has changed? She could be anywhere. He says he will try, for me, that I should not expect much. Where am I? he asks. I’m not sure if I respond. He sounds doubtful, and hesitant.

But I am undeterred.

I awake slowly,
my mind stumbling to wakefulness, then not, then life once again. Footsteps plop in the soft distance, a mechanical something rattles and purrs. Water runs. I listen, puzzling. And then there is noise, and spiteful light. Doors scrape, beds creak. Objects move.

“Time to get up!”

Groans, from afar. I push a blanket off, rise to my feet. The surroundings are familiar, but not quite, white walls with metal beds, a low ceiling. A prone form beneath a blanket.

I finger my pajamas. I am in Wadesboro, the facility.
I have not dreamed
.

I turn. I run my fingers down the bed’s metal frame. Have I dreamed but only now just forgotten it? I reach back. I have dreamed for days now, for weeks. Sweat dampens my brow.

A voice calls from the door.

“Get up, John Paul.”

The figure enters the room, moves to the bed opposite. Rustling. I raise my head, turn. “John Paul, quit your faking. You’re getting out of here today.”

John Paul rises. His head twists, taking in the orange-skinned HST hunched before him, the floor, me, the floor again. “Out,” he says quietly, neither question nor statement.

I sink back to my pillow. I stare at the ceiling. The dream is gone—
gone
! John Paul is leaving.

“Mr. Conn.”

The orange-faced man again, the cratered patchwork of scars. Lawrence. He holds his hands back as if clutching a weapon.

“Mr. Conn, it’s time to get up.”

I lie rigid, my eyes fluttering, then closed. If I could only sleep again, then the dream . . . But sounds trickle. The creak of John Paul’s bed, the shuffle of distant feet. A hand wriggles my arm.

“Mr. Conn.”

I sigh, turning. Rising. My body is old and defeated. How could life leave me here? Exiled. Unfinished. I tread to the bathroom, engage again in the sad routine of elimination, the lukewarm shower spray, dazed and naked men. John Paul’s back is to me, his hands soaping, his shoulders hairy and thin. I turn my head, thinking that soon I will sleep again, that waking will occupy only a few placid hours. This provides comfort. I towel myself dry, recover my clothes, stare with contempt at the mirror showing my gaunt, unshaven face, return in small steps to my room.

Breakfast. I avoid John Paul, sitting instead with Puff and some women. I say nothing, eat almost nothing. An incident occurs, someone yelling, the HSTs rushing, but I pay it no mind, old hand that I am now, a lifer—that is the word for it—stiffened and adapted in full to this place. This home. I shake my head slowly. I glower at the others who stare at nothing and slurp tepid coffee. I sling an epithet at them, my voice high and creaky. I want to wake them up, shake them! But few heads even turn.

I return to the dayroom to find John Paul marching ahead of me. He proceeds to our room and begins packing, rearranging, his body in motion in pistonlike jumps. I linger near the door before entering, ashamed now of my silliness, sit on my bed, and watch him bend and shift things. His lips form rapid words, chewed and unspoken.

“Oh, hey.” Our eyes meet. He holds the brown suitcase that had been stored under his bed.

“You heard,” he says, and his eyes shift a moment.

“I did. Congratulations,” I say, and mean it. He should get out of here, go out into the world, live a full life. He is a young man.

“I’ll probably be back,” he says wryly, calmly, and for an instant he appears older, his face chalky and lined. He snaps the suitcase shut, looks around the room, jerks his head up, the old manic smile clamped back on his face.

“It’s been great getting to know you! I wish you well with your dream, with everything.”

The dream. I smile, and nod. If I could sleep now I would. “For me, too, John Paul. I wish you much luck.”

We grip hands and I am surprised when he hugs me, his face against my breast, his arm crooked with force on my neck. We stay clasped this way for several seconds. He smells of soap and pomade. Then he is off, out into the dayroom, to the good-byes and well wishes of others, the sweep and shuffle of feet, the plunk of distant piano keys. Is it his mother who waits outside in her car? I picture a thin, shrewish woman with spidery hands, John Paul’s intent look on her face. What must she think of his coming and going? Has his condition improved? Stabilized—that is the word used here. Is she pleased? I stare at the empty bed, still crimped from his imprint. The room is still now, and silent. The voiceless TV flickers, shaded and distant.

I wander into the dayroom. There are others here, staring. Talking. I sit among them, yet I am alone. I do not wish to talk. Someone expels gas and I think of the things I endure now. A man laughs uncontrollably. Another plays with his fly. A cramping forms at the bottom of my stomach, burgeoning so that for a moment I fear illness beyond just despair. I steady myself, a sailor fixed on the shore, my mind returning again to the dream, the fight and arrest, the cold and bloody necklace. Ani had said she was gone. How could I . . .

“Medicine! ”

A shifting. A queue. I hang near the back. I turn at what I think is the sound of John Paul but is not.

“Not today,” I say softly, when the medicine is handed my way.

The nurse, a milk-faced girl, screws up her face in a nest full of protest. “But, Mr. Conn, they’re what the doctor prescribed.”

I remain steadfast. The nurse consults Lawrence, who attempts persuasion.

“I’ll have to report this to the doctor.”

“Okay.”

“They may put you in the secure area.”

I nod my assent. I want no more treatment, no medication. The drugs have stifled these dreams—I think this is so. I wish to sleep now but there is noise all around me.

I decline my medication again after lunch, the same protests following, the same threats. The day lingers. Recreation area, treatment team (why didn’t you take your medication?), a session in which the facility’s chaplains, an ancient husband and wife, lead off-key hymns and bang on the old piano, a call for art therapy (I decline) with an energetic young therapist. Patients come and then go. New patients are added, Sydney is led off. Finally, late in the afternoon, I am called to the door.

“Mr. Conn! You have a visitor.”

I march past dulled glances. Violet is there in the windowed room, smiling, the weight of our last meeting stowed behind upturned lips. She offers a hug and I grasp her as at a life raft. Images flicker: the blond child fitting under my arm, the girl. The young hippie, beaded and defiant. She is life, passing. Aging. How long since I held her? I cannot shake the feeling that this time is the last.

“How are you feeling?” she asks after disengaging, after we’ve taken our seats.

“Okay.”

“Did you dream?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“I did not dream.”

“Isn’t that wonderful?”

“No.”

A half-laugh escapes her. “Papa, I don’t . . .”

“When can I leave here?” My tone is friendly, but firm.

“Papa, I spoke to Dr. Mellon this morning. They’re still monitoring . . .”

“I want to leave. I want out, Violet. Please.”

She shakes her head. Her face is the color of concrete. “I don’t think it will be that much longer.”

I look at her. She is Grace Kelly—no, Ava Gardner. I am old, my anger a vast plume now that rises so easily. “What is longer?” I say. Birds chirp through the wall.

“I’m not sure. A few days.”

A few days. I do not wish to argue. “Is Wilfred home?”

She nods. I am—what? Anxious. Envious.

I bite my lip. I launch my request, despite this, despite everything.

“In my dream, there is someone.”

Violet’s mouth slips down at its corners.

“A woman. Someone I knew long ago.” I pause. I wait for her gaze to reach mine again. Slowly. “I want to find out . . . what has happened to her.”

She points her head down.

“Violet. Look at me!”

She looks up. “The nurse told me you refused your medicine,” she says softly.

“Violet!” I almost shout it. I hunch forward. “Please.”

She looks down, then away. “Papa. I think this is all in your head. It’s the tumor, the disease. Remember Mother . . .”

The disease? What is she saying? “This . . . is
real
!”

“Papa.”

My eyes cloud with pain. Carol—I am not Carol. I have asked for so little. But Violet couldn’t know, wouldn’t. I should be grateful for this.

I say into silence, “I must get back to things, then.”

Violet raises her hands. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to insult you.” She hesitates before grasping her purse. “You can make it a few more days—don’t you think?”

“No!” My voice creaks. Oh, such a monster.

“I want you to do something for me, Papa.” Her voice is low, and steady.

I do not look up.

“I want you to take your medicine. That will help you get out of here. I want you to get better.”

“I am not going to get better. Can you see that?” I lift my head. “This is who I
am
.”

Andre tilts his head in. He looks from one to the other. “Time for your radiation appointment, Mr. Conn.” He bows his head in retreat.

It is
Sunset Boulevard
, Norma betrayed and abandoned—no,
The Phantom of the Opera
and its enraged, empty ghost. But it is neither of these. I stare at the spots on my hand, the marks of the years. I do not look at Andre, or Violet. I stand and walk out.

 

 

 

No one speaks to me.
I speak to no one. I wander, alone, stung by my banishment. I try to nap but cannot, do not dream. I stare at John Paul’s bed. I replay my argument with Violet, my rage lessened and laced now with shame. A voice calls for medicine and I am stubborn, still. Firm.

I use the phone that evening, after waiting for other conversations to end. Puff’s instructions on what to feed a dog named Button (“he likes his chicken ground up with his beef”), the starchy woman Peg’s complaints about the food stamp office. It is finally my turn. I grasp the phone, unwind the crimped cord. I want to remedy things. I dial Violet’s number.

Wilfred answers. His voice takes my breath away.

“Hello. It is your grandfather.”

“Hey.”

“You are well?”

“Yeah.” He pauses. “I heard you were sick.”

Hasta
. “I am better. I hope to be home soon.”

There is silence.

“And you?” I ask. “How is school?”

His breathing stops, as if a pipe has been disconnected. “Okay,” he says finally. He interrupts himself to shout, the phone muffled, “It’s Papa.” A muted conversation—an argument?—ensues. Stones ping in my stomach.

He comes back.

“Wilfred,” I say. There is so much to tell. I know his exclusion, his being the one that is different. A pariah. An outcast. And yet the promise of youth, of work and reward—he can learn this! He must not let guilt enfeeble him. Prejudice lies ahead, violence. He must persevere.

“Papa, I can’t understand you.” He calls behind him again, “His voice is like gibberish!”

More muffled, parallel dialogue. A scraping of hand on the phone. “My mom says we’ll come see you tomorrow.”

I shudder. Come see me
here
? I cannot get the words out, the words that will stop this.

The phone crackles.

“I hope you feel better, okay? I’ve got to go. Mom says she’ll call you.”

I hear the rasp of my breathing, the whoosh and sigh that were his. Gone now. Silenced. The handset is grimy and slick.

The pain from before knocks my head. How could she do this, bring him here—the one thing I have asked her not to do? She must think I am dying, that this has become the boy’s last chance to see me. Here! I cannot bear it. Her patronizing, suffocating, self-satisfying love.

I return to my room. John Paul’s bed is remade, left askew. I am shaking. I strip away clothing.

The bed creaks as I fall on it, the thin pillows spreading. My head cracks and rolls. I hear snatches of music—singsongs, from before. An imam asks why I have forsaken him.

Sleep takes a long time to come.

 

 

 

Shadows form,
re-form. From somewhere in the distance a dog barks, fueling a sleep-filled anticipation—no dogs at the hospital! But perhaps there are, at least somewhere, for when I open my eyes I am back, listening to the whisper of hospital feet, the same murmurs and snores, the same sighs. I sit up in darkness, my head cocked to the sound of the HSTs, rousting and puttering in their early-morning rounds. I bend forward, straining against damp clothing. The other bed is empty. There has been no dream.

“Time to wake up! That is, if you’re not already awake.”

The shuffling, the routine. Is it gone now, the dreaming? A bland breakfast. The queue for drugs I refuse. The protests, the note scratching in charts. The muttering TV.

I find myself midmorning on a bench in the recreation area, breathing in fumes of tobacco, wishing for strong cups of tea. The sun is bright already, like the sky and the crags I had seen in the desert. I am thinking of her, of how we rode on my horse, her hands clasped about me, her hair falling free of the cap she wore then. Here, it is hot, too. I wipe sweat with my fingers. After a time I stand, grab a darkened basketball, push a low shot toward the rim, miss, shoot again.