The Second Mouse (10 page)

“Thank you,” she said softly, her face inches from his.

Her clean smell of soap with just a hint of perfume drifted by him, and his awareness of her proximity suddenly sharpened. Without thinking, he slipped his hand around her waist and stepped back a pace, ushering her toward the far entrance with his other hand. “Shall we?”

She kissed his cheek, laughing. “We shall.”

They walked arm in arm across the nearly deserted restaurant and out into the balmy air of the parking lot to their cars. There he paused and admitted an earlier concern. “Beverly, I don’t want to sound mother-hennish, but I’d be happy to drive you home. I’m not saying you drank too much tonight, but I—”

She interrupted him by kissing him gently before saying, “I’m as sober as a judge, Joe Gunther.”

Both his hands were on her waist by now, and he slowly brought them up the sides of her rib cage and to her shoulder blades, feeling the heat of her skin and the outline of her bra through the thin cotton fabric of her dress. “I guess you are,” he murmured.

They kissed again, their bodies coming together. He dropped his right hand down below her waist and pressed her closer to him.

Between kisses she said, “I have a much better idea than your driving me home. This is a motel, after all.”

He managed to say only, “True,” before she covered his lips once more.

They proceeded slowly after reaching the room, removing each piece of clothing with the erotic attention it deserved, commingling experience and exploration in their motions. The bathroom light was left on so they could relish what they saw.

There was an unspoken understanding in all of this, which made it doubly precious, for they each knew that what they were doing was as much an homage to their pasts as it was a yielding to the moment. This was a watershed, a marking of passage, but by no means the beginning of anything new. For Joe, he had to accept the finality of Gail’s decision. In Beverly’s case, she needed to feel she was desirable and capable of spontaneity. Both of them knew they were with someone they could trust.

And so, without a word, this fragment of time was to be prized in private, and in all likelihood, never repeated.

Finally, the last garment slid loose and they stretched out naked. Limbs intertwining, they each shed their ghosts and obligations and made love without constraint.

Chapter 8

N
ancy Martin opened her eyes briefly and then shut them again with a wince, the light through the trailer’s window hitting her like twin lightning bolts. She had a headache so painful it made her nauseous.

She rolled over toward the dark closet and tried again, this time managing to see something. Her bedroom. That much made sense. The bed was empty except for her. That was good news. She’d had enough of Mel for the time being.

Slowly, she propped herself up on one elbow and dragged herself along until her shoulders were resting against the bare wooden headboard. She looked down the length of her body to measure the damage. Her torn underwear circled one knee, there were red marks high on the inside of her left thigh from where Mel had bitten her, her breasts were swollen and very tender, and she could feel the tightness of a bruise building on her cheek where he’d butted her with his head. Having sex with her husband had become a hazardous experience.

She tentatively touched a welt along the outside of her hip. And whoever said that ripping underpants off a woman was sexy—even thongs—had clearly never been in them when it happened.

Nancy closed her eyes again and sighed. Drinking wasn’t the anesthesia it was cracked up to be, either, at least not in the aftermath.

She’d had worse; there was that to cling to. And in the throes of it, she couldn’t even say it was so terrible. To be hungered for that much was actually kind of flattering. She’d heard the other side, of course. The times she’d gone to Planned Parenthood for exams or the ER for the occasional repair work, she’d been lectured to by earnest types with plain hair, big butts, and sensible shoes about abusive relationships and sexual dominance and a bunch of other crap she ignored. Those women were college grads from regular homes, taking pity on the less advantaged, with no clue about her crowd or how to actually enjoy life a little. To them, it was all victim and carnivore. They had no idea how you could play the angles, even turn things around now and then.

Nancy thought back to Mel, who’d come home shit-faced and amorous the night before, smelling of stale beer and body odor. She’d held him off at first, thinking of Ellis, but it was clear how things were going to end up. A practical woman, a survivor, she had started matching him shot for shot, hoping either to drink him into unconsciousness or to numb herself enough not to notice what followed.

It hadn’t been that bad, anyhow. He was no Ellis—gentle, attentive, respectful. But then, a little of the rough stuff had never killed anyone.

Until maybe the next morning.

Groaning, she worked her way over to the edge of the bed and dropped her feet to the floor, breathing deeply in order not to throw up.

She surveyed the room through narrowed eyes, trying to separate last night’s detritus from the everyday chaos, wondering what to wear that might be halfway clean.

The phone began ringing from somewhere under the bed.

“Christ,” she murmured and dropped to her knees, ignoring the lurch in her stomach. Thankfully, the portable phone was under the first pillow she moved.

“What?” she asked.

“Wow,” said Ellis, clearly taken aback by her greeting. “Tough night?”

“You know it.”

His laugh sounded forced, and she imagined him putting on a brave face to mask his disappointment. “I do. He left me to go to you. I saw the shape he was in. You gonna live?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“He still there?” His voice had dropped a confidential notch.

She stood up, the remnants of her underwear slipping down her leg to the floor. She felt dizzy and no less ill, but catching sight of herself naked in the closet mirror also came as a pleasant surprise. She paused and turned slightly, looking. The face wasn’t much—that she knew. It was becoming hard, and the jaw was wrong somehow, and the nose a little out of whack. But the body looked pretty good. Compact but athletic. Wouldn’t be too long before her butt began to go, but so far, so good. And her breasts were damn near perfect—a point of some vanity with her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Let me check.”

Buoyed by her self-appraisal, she left the bedroom naked and entered the narrow hallway to the living room. The place was quiet, and Mel’s truck was gone from its usual parking space.

“We’re alone.”

“Don’t I wish,” he said leadingly.

Not that attractive a notion right now, Nancy thought, brushing her throbbing forehead with her fingertips. But she understood his need to voice the desire, especially with Mel’s success in that department still lingering between them.

“You up for a trip?” he asked, surprising her.

She was more up for six aspirin, but the softness of his voice stirred a nascent interest. “Where to?” she asked.

“I’d like you to meet my mom.”

That made her laugh. “God, Ellis. I don’t guess I ever heard that one before. Where’s she live?”

“Well, it’s not a house or anything. She’s in the hospital. Dying of cancer.”

“Oh,” Nancy said, caught off guard, the smile still on her lips. Her nakedness now felt merely embarrassing, and she returned to the bedroom for a robe.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. I’ve gotten too used to it. But she’s good people and I wanted you to meet her at least once. Sort of stupid, I know—”

“No, no,” she interrupted. “It’s not stupid. I just wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t even know you had a mother.” She held her aching head in frustration. “I mean, I figured you did, but . . .”

“That’s okay. I don’t know anything about your family, either.”

She laughed again, but without humor this time. “Yeah, well, let’s keep it that way if it’s okay with you. Not a place I want to go back to.” Standing again in her bedroom, the robe forgotten in her hand, she surveyed the mess around her, feeling the meaning of it seeping in. Her new boyfriend was asking her out on a date while she was staring at her husband’s underwear on the floor.

“Hey, why not?” she finally said. “Mel’ll be gone for the rest of the day, probably cooking up new ways to get us killed. Can you give me a couple of hours to put myself together?”

“I’ll pick you up at eleven,” he said.

The hospital was at the edge of Bennington. They rode on Ellis’s Harley, barely talking because of the wind and the noise, the bike having a muffler in name only. But despite her slowly ebbing headache and fragile stomach, Nancy discovered it was all curiously soothing. She found herself holding on to Ellis’s waist, enveloped by the summer warmth, her eyes closed, breathing in the smell of him and thinking of next to nothing. Times like these, she could almost believe that life had a future worth anticipating. There was no Mel, no madcap schemes, no vigilance about whose headlights might be lurching over the trailer park’s uneven road late at night.

Ellis had given her a glimpse of something better than the ever more slippery slope she occupied with Mel.

When they arrived, Ellis stowed the helmets in the bike’s travel bags and led the way into the hospital’s lobby, bypassing the receptionist with the ease of familiarity.

“You come here a lot?” Nancy asked, getting used to the antiseptic smell she found that all such places shared.

“As much as I can,” he said, slowing down to fall in beside her down the wide hallway.

“I gotta tell you, too,” he added in a low voice. “It’s been a little rough lately. Mom’s got thyroid cancer. Maybe it’s all the smoking. I don’t know—it’s not what they say, but you gotta wonder. Anyway, they’ve been trying stuff on her and they just got through something that pretty much cut her off from everybody for a few days, so she might be kind of emotional.”

Nancy looked alarmed. “What did they do?”

His eyes widened with the memory. “It was like
Star Wars.
Two guys in white suits. I was in a gown with gloves and booties and a hat. She’s in a lead-lined room where everything’s covered in plastic. All so they can give her a single pill. But it’s radiated, like nuclear or something, so it has rays. They took it out of a box inside another box, and as soon as she took it, her whole body lit up the Geiger counter one of them had. It was really creepy. And then we all had to leave—for days.”

“Oh, my God,” Nancy said. “Why?”

“The thyroid eats up iodine like it’s going out of style—or in her case, what’s left of the thyroid. Why, I don’t know. But that’s what the pill was—loaded with radioactive iodine. So the iodine goes straight to the remaining thyroid tissue, and the radiation kills the cancer there. At least that’s the theory.”

Nancy pondered that for a moment before saying hesitantly, “But you said she was dying.”

Ellis stopped to look at her. “She is. I’m sorry. I’m not doing this right. They took the thyroid out with surgery. That was before. This was just to catch what bits and pieces they might’ve missed. But no one’s kidding anybody. Her chances are basically nothing. This thing’s a killer. It isn’t always. In fact, with younger people it’s usually not that big a thing, but for people her age, it’s a done deal.”

She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Ellis, I’m so sorry.”

He smiled back sadly. “It’s really not that bad. We’ve all accepted it. There’ve been counselors and everything. Most of the time we joke about it. It’s just that this time might be a little worse, only because she’s been alone so much. I did wave at her through the window a couple of times,” he added brightly. “I think that helped some.”

Nancy frowned, trying to absorb it all. “What’re we about to do here?” she finally asked.

He resumed walking and laughed at her, understanding her reservations. “It’s over now, Nance. It’s safe now. That’s why we came. Because they’re done and she can see people again. This is sort of a welcome-back visit.”

“She in really bad shape?” she asked, her voice small.

He remained upbeat, totally at ease with the patient, the disease, and the routine. “She might be a little shaky after this round. She’s just a skinny little thing, so it sort of takes it out of her, but you’ll like her. I wouldn’t have brought you otherwise.”

Nancy kept silent.

He tried to make her feel better. “It bummed me out at first, but she’s really been a trouper. Made me realize that if she’s okay with it, I should be, too. Here we are.”

He held open a door leading into another hallway, this one clearly not shared by a lot of people—narrower, quieter, and with more ominous-looking signs on the walls warning against contamination. Nancy got the distinct sensation of being swallowed deeper inside a building containing dangers she didn’t want to know about. There had been a time when not much had given her pause, from barroom brawls to men better suited to post office walls. And though she was tiring of that life now and becoming more vulnerable to its downside, she still had an instinctive kinship with it.

But this was very different. Places like hospitals were all about the lack of knowledge, coded information, and the maintenance of a hard, placid sheen over the human business of wasting, dying, and despair. It was very far from what she knew, and it made her anxious.

“Okay,” Ellis finally said, stopping before a door with a movable wardrobe beside it. “Here we are.” He opened the wardrobe and handed her a white jumpsuit. “Gotta get into one of these. Just this time, since it’s so soon after. And you can’t get closer than six feet today. Doctor’s orders,” he added with a laugh.

Dreading what she was about to see, Nancy covered up and stepped over the threshold.

The room was spare, larger than she thought it would be, and dazzling white, the outside sun reflecting oddly off a sculpture on the lawn and shooting straight at the door. Nancy stopped dead in her tracks and shielded her aching eyes. Her headache, almost gone, got a sudden jump start.

“Come in, come in,” said a small, frail, distant voice. “It’s nice to see people, even space walkers.”

Squinting, Nancy identified the problem and sidestepped the shaft of light.

“Wow,” Ellis said, coming in behind her. “Like walking into a spotlight.”

“Here,” said the voice. “I can fix that.”

With a mechanical snapping sound, the room suddenly went so dark, both visitors were left walking with outstretched arms in a twilight brought about by a striped line of vertical venetian blinds.

A thin, reedy laughter greeted their reactions. “God, this isn’t working out at all.”

“No, no, Mom,” Ellis said, stepping farther into the room, with only one hand out now. “It’s okay. It’s getting better already. How’re you doin’?”

Nancy came up behind him, using his bulk to stay half hidden, the jarring entrance having undermined her attempt at self-confidence.

“I’m fine, Ellis. A little beaten up, but fine. Introduce me to your friend. Don’t be rude.”

Her eyesight recovered, Nancy was ushered forward and saw a small, emaciated woman dressed in a hospital gown and sitting in a fake-leather armchair by the side of the window.

“How do you do?” she asked, not daring to approach for fear of breaking a rule. All around her, as Ellis had described, everything was wrapped in plastic, from the furniture to the phone to the TV on the wall. She felt as if she were surrounded by invisible killer rays, all watching for a chink in her rustling white armor.

The old woman’s face broke into a wide smile. “Dangerous question to ask around here. But I’m fine. I’m Doris Doyle, by the way, since my son has totally forgotten his manners.”

“I’m sorry,” Nancy said, remembering her own. “Nancy Martin.”

“The thing with the sunlight threw me off,” Ellis tried to explain.

Doris Doyle gave her son an approving look. “I don’t care about that. You’ve done well. She’s a very pretty girl. Complicated, but very pretty.”

Both younger people were at a loss for words. Doris nodded toward Nancy’s left hand. “The wedding ring.”

Nancy’s face turned bright red, making Doris laugh again. “It’s all right, dear. Lives are led all sorts of ways. I’m no one to judge, God knows.”

She leaned over slightly to fetch something by the side of her chair, clearly fumbling.

“Can I help?” Nancy offered.