Текст книги "The Lost"
Автор книги: Sarah Beth Durst
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
Chapter Twenty-Six
Alone in the apartment, I don’t sleep well. But somehow I drift off by dawn and then sleep through my alarm. I lurch out of bed when my eyes do at last open. William is due in ten minutes. When he left last night, he offered to come back and drive me to the hospital today. I hurry to my dresser to pick out clothes, and I freeze.
Perched on top of my jewelry box is a stuffed puffer fish.
I don’t breathe. I feel as though the world shuts off around me.
When I suck in air again, the spell breaks. I hear cars outside the window. I smell the cleaning supplies that we doused the apartment in last night. And I see the fish, fragile and brittle and old and beautiful.
Trembling, I reach out and touch a spine. It’s pliable under my finger and very real. I draw my hand back. I stare at it, at its puckered lips and unblinking eyes.
Maybe my mother put it here. There were several weeks between when I fell into the coma and when she checked into the hospital. She could have found this somewhere, a yard sale, a store that sells oddities, eBay, and placed it here for me to find when I woke up. It would be like her to leave me a present. She likes to surprise me with things she thinks I’ll like. One morning, when I was around fifteen, I woke up to discover an entire bag of sea glass on my plate for breakfast, in lieu of toast. I used it to make a mosaic mirror frame. It hangs in Mom’s bedroom. I could bring the mirror to the hospital, I think, except I don’t think she’d like to look in the mirror right now. It’ll stay here.
I’m aware that my thoughts are spinning, spiraling. I can’t stop them.
I need to get to the hospital, to ask Mom about the puffer fish. She must have put it here, but how would it enter my dream if she bought it after the car accident? Maybe it was here before, and the accident had wiped the memory away. It had wiped away the memory of the crash itself. Who knows what else I’ve forgotten?
I comb through the apartment, looking for other differences. I find minute ones: different books on Mom’s bedside table, a beige sweater I’ve never seen, new magazines...all things easily explained by the weeks I was in the coma. I return to the puffer fish.
There’s a knock on my door.
William.
Grabbing a blanket off my bed, I wrap it around me and waddle to the door. I open it, but I can’t make myself smile. “Hi.”
“Are you all right?” He looks perfect, impeccable in his scrubs.
“Just...didn’t sleep well,” I tell him. “Worried about my mother. Overslept. I’m not dressed yet. Sorry.”
“Sure. I understand.” But he looks worried now. I wish I could explain. I definitely cannot explain. He comes inside, and I shut the door behind him.
I want to be with Mom now. I have to know if... Stop, I tell myself. The fish had to be from Mom. I was in a coma. Of course I was. Every doctor in the hospital thinks so. There are X-rays and photos and hospital records. Plus William talked to me while I was in my coma. I’d momentarily forgotten that. “What did you talk to me about? When I was in a coma. What did you say?”
“Described things in the hospital. Read to you sometimes. Just a visit or two a day, so you’d know someone was out here. You had friends that stopped by, too. Coworkers. Especially in the beginning.” He pauses. “Do you want coffee? I was going to grab some coffee. There’s a Peet’s Coffee on the corner of Hempsted and Latoya.”
“Okay. Yes. Thanks.”
He leans forward as if to kiss me, but I feel as if my brain is mired in sludge and I don’t react fast enough. His lips brush my cheek. He withdraws. We look at each other for a moment. My smile is strained, and I’m certain he can tell, though that doesn’t register in his face. The silence grows awkward.
“I’ll fetch the coffee,” he says.
“I’ll shower,” I say simultaneously.
I shower in record time and am dressed and staring again at the puffer fish by the time he returns. He rings the doorbell, and I let him in again. “Can we drink it in the car?” I ask.
“Of course.”
I’m silent on the drive, pretending that sipping the coffee takes all my concentration. My heart, though, is beating fast as a hummingbird’s wings. At every stop sign and traffic light, William shoots glances at me. His forehead wrinkles as he looks at me, and several times he seems on the verge of speaking but stops himself. I feel vaguely guilty for making the drive so uncomfortable, but all I can think about is Lost.
One very important facet of Lost.
No one leaves Lost. Not without the Missing Man. Even the dead don’t leave.
If it’s real... The hope hurts so much that I don’t complete the thought.
At the hospital, I sign in at the front desk, and then I ride the elevator up with William. He pushes the button for seven—he has lockers there with spare scrubs for days when he’s in the hospital twenty-four hours. “Lauren...” he begins. He sounds unhappy.
“I’m only worried about my mother,” I lie. “Really. I slept terribly.”
He believes me. The circles under my eyes must be even darker than I thought they were. The elevator doors open, and I manage to smile at him as he exits. The instant the doors shut, I drop the smile, and I pace. The elevator rises. I know I’m clinging to an impossible hope. I’m supposed to be reconciled to my mom’s fate. I thought I had come to terms with it. But here I am, hoping for the impossible. It is far, far more likely that I simply forgot the puffer fish and it entered my subconscious and joined my coma dream.
The elevator reaches Mom’s floor. I wave to the nurses, who jot down my name on the visitors register. I think that this is the first time they’ve seen me in my own clothes. I speed to Mom’s room. I want to burst in with my question. But I check myself at the door. I tiptoe inside.
She’s asleep.
I shift from foot to foot, waiting. She doesn’t show signs of waking up soon. I can’t wake her, even to ask her this. She needs her sleep. Sighing, I sink into the chair. I fidget, watching her. At last, I grab the paper and pencil, and I begin to sketch Peter.
He takes shape through my fingers. I know every curve of his face. I capture the look in his eyes, the sardonic twist of his lips. I fill out his body in broad strokes, trying to catch the flow of his coat. I draw him in a crouch as if on a rooftop, looking at me, his hand extended, as if he’s waiting for me to join him on the roof. Bending over the paper, I focus on his hands. It takes three tries before I’m satisfied with them. I add the swirl of his tattoos to his chest.
“It’s nice to see you draw again,” Mom says from the bed.
I look up. I don’t know how long she’s been watching me.
“Can I see?”
For an instant, I don’t want to show her. This seems personal. But I’ve already told her everything about my dream. She knows about Peter. I go to her bedside and show her.
“Last night didn’t go well?” she asks.
“Last night was great.”
“That’s not a sketch of William,” she points out.
“Mom, I have to ask you an odd question.” I sit on the edge of her bed, careful not to bounce her tubes or wires.
“Yes, William’s father was excellent in bed.”
“Not that question!” I feel my face flame red. I’m positive that uncomfortable questions about last night are coming, and this is far too important to be derailed. “In my room, on my dresser, I found a stuffed puffer fish. Have you seen it before?”
“Stuffed puffer fish? Is this a trick question?”
“I want to know if I’m forgetting things. You know, because of the...” I tap my forehead. “Do you know where it came from?”
“Never seen one.”
“Really? Are you 100 percent certain?”
“Yes. Sounds like a knickknack I’d remember.”
I exhale and then I can’t stop smiling. “How would you like to leave the hospital? Go on a little trip with me?”
She gestures to the IV. “I’m not exactly portable. And, Lauren, no offense, but you don’t know the first thing about nursing. Remember how you fainted when our cat had to get shots?”
“In fairness, that was mostly because of the smell. I swear that vet smelled like formaldehyde.”
“I can’t argue with that. But, Lauren, I told you before, I can’t ask this of you. It’s a lot to take care of me. Too much. You have a life, a job. Have you called them yet? Please tell me you have. Your friends are worried about you.”
“I will, I will,” I lie. I push forward before she can call me on the lie. She can read me better than anyone. “I’ll talk to Dr. Barrett and...”
“Talk to me about what?” asks a familiar, smooth voice from the doorway.
I look up and wish I weren’t holding a sketch of Peter. I quickly put it down. He sees my movement.
“You drew again. Great.” He looks at Mom. “I saw some of your daughter’s artwork last night. You’re right. She has real talent.” He checks the chart that hangs from the foot of Mom’s bed. “How are you feeling today? Can you rate your pain?”
“I continue to think that’s the stupidest question ever,” Mom says. “It’s random. How do I know what a four is? How do you know that my four corresponds to anyone else’s four?”
“Humor me.”
“Four.”
“Great.”
“Or 4.2.”
“Can she be moved?” I ask, cutting into their banter. “Can I...can I take her home?” It isn’t home that I want to take her, but I can’t explain that. Even voicing my fragile belief out loud would, I’m afraid, make it shatter. And make them think I’m crazy. If she can be moved, I’ll drive her out as far as a tank of gas will take us, until we’re lost. And if it fails, we’ll come back home. At the very least, we’d have one more journey together. A road trip, kind of like we took when we moved to Maine. I remember the hours and hours in the car, pointing out license plates from every state, making up stories of the lives of the people in the cars, stopping at every kitschy tourist trap we saw. It took six weeks, and they were six of the best weeks of my childhood. We ate every regional fast food we found, and we slept in several motels that were too dingy for the cockroaches to approve of them. We even tried camping, which was a dismal failure when I insisted on commenting on every little sound I heard. Ended up sleeping inside the car, crammed in with all our stuff.
He’s surprised and then guarded. “It would be...difficult.”
My heart rises. “But not impossible?”
Mom is frowning at me. “You don’t want this, Lauren.”
“Yes. I do. You don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here.” I jump out of my chair and pace around the room. “Of course we should make this happen. How do we make this happen? Is there paperwork I have to fill out? How do we move her? Can she come in my car...I mean, her car...if I take the IV and the catheter? I can wheel her in a wheelchair...”
“Lauren. Lauren.” Mom cuts through my babble. “You don’t want this. Listen to me. Lauren, I am going to die. You don’t want me to die in our home with you as my nursemaid. You’ll blame yourself when it’s only what’s inevitable. It’s best if I’m here. It’s better now that you’re here with me.”
“You hate it here, Mom,” I say. “At home...” I can’t expound on the glories of home. I’m not planning on taking her home. If Lost exists...
It does.
The puffer fish.
The menu.
The little noose that Tiffany made.
With the sketch of Peter in my hand, I can’t look at William. I try to seem as if I’m focusing only on Mom. “Let me try.”
She nods. There are tears caught in her eyelashes.
“I’ll see what I can do,” William says, which sounds like a promise to me.
* * *
I am given a lot of pamphlets, and a nurse trains me to change Mom’s IV and catheter. I help bathe her and shift her position to avoid bedsores. The training is rudimentary and rushed, and I feel woefully unprepared. She will have hospice care coming into the apartment, I’m told. Insurance will cover most of it. This isn’t an uncommon thing. Lots of people go home to die.
She won’t have that care in Lost, I think. She’ll die sooner without it. But it won’t be a real death. Look at Tiffany. We won’t have to say goodbye.
I listen carefully to every bit of instruction. I am on the phone with the insurance company, and I’m filling out paperwork in stacks to arrange for a nurse to come to our apartment. I’ve also handed over my newly arrived credit card to purchase equipment to care for her. I plan on stocking the car with it and bringing it with me.
I don’t know exactly how I’ll find Lost. By definition, it shouldn’t be a place you intend to find. But I’m hoping that my Missing Man powers will help. After all, the puffer fish and the menu found me here.
It’s a whirlwind, all the preparation, and I’m itching to be on the road, though I’m dreading the moment where I have to tell Mom where we’re driving. I don’t know how she’ll react. Poorly, I imagine. But there’s only one point I need her to understand: in Lost, she won’t be gone when she dies.
I don’t go on any more dates with William. I tell him I’m too distracted; he tells me he understands. He is remarkably understanding and compassionate and helpful in the extreme, and every time I talk to him, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. After all, what I am contemplating is crazy.
But then I talk to Mom again, and I know I am both crazy and right. We could have years together. Countless years. Centuries of years. I think of all the things in Lost I’ll show her. She’ll love the art barn. She’ll like the little yellow house. I’ll bring her to the diner. We’ll find her clothes in the junk pile. New books, countless lost library books. She’ll like pawing through the luggage—I’ll bargain with Tiffany for some. This time around, the townspeople won’t be a problem. I’ll take up the Missing Man’s duties, like Peter wanted me to. And he’ll help me find whatever I need to care for her. Or I’ll find it myself.
She’s scheduled to be released on Tuesday. That morning, I drive her car to the parking lot. I repark the car three times, even though I know I’ll be moving it closer to the door when it’s time to wheel Mom down. The hospice service offered an ambulance as transportation, but I declined. William offered to drive us, too, but I turned him down, as well. I’ve filled the tank with the same amount of gas that I had on the morning that I found Lost. It was near full. I don’t know if that will help. I’ve charged up my cell phone and have William’s number in it in case this is a terrible idea.
I’ve decided to tell Mom before we leave L.A. It’s her life, and it should be her decision. But I’m not telling her in the hospital. I want plenty of time to explain myself as we drive. If she says no, we turn around, and I take care of her in the apartment, like I told the hospital I’d do. I won’t force her. But I hope she says yes.
I’m not planning on telling William at all. His remarkable understanding must have limits, and I’m aware of how crazy my plan sounds. The more days that pass, though, the more convinced I am that I have found the perfect solution.
Inside the hospital, I check in at the front desk. My heart is thumping fast. I press the button in the elevator and ride it up. It seems infinitely slow, as if it’s being pulled inch by inch. I’m ready to claw my way out when the doors slide open with agonizing slowness. I wave at the nurses at the nurses’ station. One of them rushes around the desk to intercept me.
“You can’t go in there right now,” she says.
She isn’t a nurse I know well, but I recognize her. She always wears earrings the size of my palms. Today they’re oak leaves that rival actual leaves in size but are made of tin. “Why not? I’ve seen everything—”
The door to my mother’s room slams open, and she’s wheeled out on a gurney. An oxygen mask is strapped to her face. Her eyes are closed. William is with her, as well as a fleet of nurses.
I try to run to her. But the nurse is surprisingly strong.
“You have to wait, Ms. Chase.” Her voice is kind. “They’ll take good care of her.”
“What happened?” My voice is shrill. “She was leaving today! Why did this happen?”
Oh, God, it’s my fault. I pushed too hard. She wasn’t ready to leave. Her body wasn’t up to the stress. And then another thought: I’m too late. If I’d tried to bring her to Lost earlier, if I’d found a way to leave Lost earlier...
The nurse guides me to a chair. Someone presses a cup of coffee into my hands.
“We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the waiting room, I draw sketches of her. Her, in the hospital bed. Her, at home with her plants. Her, at the kitchen table. Her, on the beach. Her and me with our toes in the ocean. In Maine. In California. In the woods. At the movies. The nurses keep feeding me paper, and I don’t look up except when I need the next sheet.
One hour passes, two, three.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a doctor enter the waiting room. William. He crosses to the nurses’ station, speaks to them, and then walks toward me.
I shoot to my feet, and the sketches scatter across the floor. I search his face for a hint. His face is kind, sympathetic, and my hands begin to shake. I clasp them together.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “There’s nothing more we can do. She’s not in any pain right now, but all we can do is keep her comfortable. It won’t be much longer.”
It feels as if the earth has quit spinning. Everything feels hushed, as if it’s holding its breath. Or maybe that’s only me. I can’t breathe. I nod as if what he’s saying makes sense, as if it even sounds like words.
“You had better go in now and say goodbye.”
I am still nodding, as if I’m a marionette and my head is on a string. Bending, I scoop up my drawings and clutch them to my chest, and then I feel my feet walking toward her door. I think William is beside me or behind me, but I don’t look. My eyes are only on her door, partially ajar. It feels both infinitely far and much too close. Like the void. It gapes at me. I reach it and push it open, and I walk inside.
Mom lies on the bed. Her eyes are closed. She has an oxygen mask on her face, and it makes her look shrunken around it. I focus on her chest, and I can’t see the rise and fall, but I hear the beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor. Each beep seems to wait a painfully long time until the next one. I drag the chair close to her bed, and I take her hand.
Her eyes flutter open. I see her smile under the oxygen mask as she turns her head and sees me. Her fingers curl around mine, but it seems as if that takes all her strength, because she releases and lets her hand simply rest in mine, limp.
“Hi,” I say.
It’s all I can think of to say. Hi.
“I drew you some pictures.” I fumble for the papers. I’ve been clutching them in my hand, and the edges are rumpled. I smooth them out and hold them up one after another so that she can see. She points to the one of her and me by the beach.
“Yeah, that’s my favorite, too,” I say. “Mom...” There are a million things I want to say, but only one of them is important. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Lauren.” Her voice is muffled under the mask, but I can hear it fine. She has tears in her red eyes. I stroke her hand and she stares at me as if drinking me in. Softly, slowly, she then says, “If I had any sense of timing, I would have died after saying that.”
I smile because I know she wants me to. I can’t make myself laugh, even for her. I lean forward so only she will hear me, though we are alone. “I wasn’t taking you home. We were going on one last road trip. You were going to come with me to Lost.”
“That would have been nice. Can’t make it right now. Pressing engagement elsewhere. Can I take a rain check?” Her words are staccato and breathy, so soft and light that they float like bubbles in the air.
This time, I do laugh, but it’s a choked strangled sob-laugh. I can feel the tears pressing against my eyes and heating my face. But if I break down in tears, I can’t talk, and I desperately want to be talking to her. “Can’t take a rain check in Lost. I never saw it rain. But the ocean is amazing. I told you about the dolphin, right?”
“You know it wouldn’t have worked, right?”
“I think it’s real, Mom. I know that sounds crazy, but—”
“I couldn’t have gone.” Mom smiles, the barest upturn of her lips, as if even that movement costs her. “I’m not lost. Even on the day your father left, and everything I’d planned and dreamed of went up in smoke, I was not lost. I had you. Knowing you, loving you...I couldn’t...I can’t...be lost.” Each word is slowly delivered, as if she’s wrapping and packaging them to give to me. “I told him that, too.”
“Who? Dr. Barrett?”
She beckons me closer. I lean in as she says, “You aren’t lost, either.”
I nod because she wants me to, not because I believe her. “I don’t know who I am without you.”
“Liar,” she whispers.
I take a deep breath and then let it out. It’s never calmed me before, but it helps now. My mom watches me breathe as if I’m doing something alien and interesting. Her breaths are shallow and ragged, as if through a crushed straw.
“You will be okay,” she tells me. “Maybe not at first. Maybe not for a while. But you will. And if you ever feel lost again...promise me one thing.” Her voice is very, very faint. Her words are carried on her breath, the slightest bending of her breath. “Kiss that tattooed boy of yours for me.”
I laugh. A real laugh. But then her eyes flutter closed. “Mom?”
“Talk to me,” she whispers. “Tell me about Lost, about your Finder, about the Missing Man.”
I tell her everything, every detail I can think of, every word that was said. I tell her about the red balloon that always floats over town, about the buttons and socks and keys and glasses that overflow the gutters, about the stacks of luggage, about the houses, about the diner and the motel, about Claire and Peter, about Victoria and Sean, about the barn with the lost masterpieces. Sometimes nurses come in. Sometimes William. Every time one does, I pause talking and Mom murmurs for me to continue. So I do. When I run out of stories about Lost, I switch to my memories of us, the times we shared in both California and Maine, childhood memories and teenage memories and recent memories, happy and sad and embarrassing and silly and good and bad. And she listens with a smile on her face and her hand in my hand.
She dies at 2:34 in the afternoon.
Her hand is limp in mine. Her breath falls and doesn’t rise. The beep becomes a shrill, steady alarm. Doctors and nurses rush in. I back away as they try to revive her. Her body arches as the paddles shock her, and I turn away and focus instead on the sketches that fill the wall until my ears blur. After a while, I hear the monitor shut off. And silence.
I feel a hand on my shoulder.
I cover William’s hand with mine.
There isn’t anything to say. I’ve said it all.
* * *
I arrange for the funeral on a Saturday, and in the obituary I list her favorite flowers so that the funeral home will be full of them, and it is. I throw away any fake flowers. I hang the sketches of her on the wall between the peonies and lilacs and irises and gerbera daisies and roses, along with some of our favorite photographs.
I stand next to the casket and greet people: far-flung cousins, my condescending uncle, her coworkers from the library, my coworkers Kristyn and Angie, our neighbors, a few of her childhood friends, a few of mine, some of the kindest doctors and nurses. I’ve put a blank book by the door for them to write a memory of her if they want, and a lot of them tell me a memory as they shake my hand or hug me. Some of them are stories that I’ve never heard, and I drink them in.
Outside, in the cemetery, I read poems that she liked. My voice doesn’t crack. Afterward, my supervisor from work is the first to hug me. “Take as much time as you need. Your position will be waiting for you.”
“I won’t be returning,” I say, “but thank you.”
She clearly doesn’t believe me, but I mean it. That life is done for me. A few of our family friends and cousins speak to William, assuming that he’s with me. He accepts their sympathy gracefully. I’m grateful that he’s there to deflect some of the people, especially the aunts and uncles whom I’ve never met and the uncle whom I never liked. Theoretically, I’m grateful that they came for Mom’s sake. In reality, I’m tired inside and out.
As the line of well-wishers dwindles, I glance around me to see how many people remain. Only a few are left. A man with white hair in a suit is walking away from the gravesite. He carries a suitcase and a cane with a black handle. My heart begins to thud faster. “Excuse me,” I say to William. “I’ll be back.”
I walk after the man.
He looks as if he’s only walking, but the distance between us lengthens. I sprint after him. “Missing Man? Missing Man, wait!” His stride lengthens and he doesn’t look back. “Please, stop!”
He rounds the corner of a mausoleum near a grove of trees. Catching up, I race around the corner, and he’s gone. I skid to a halt beside a gravestone, and I look across the cemetery. There’s a curl of dusty mist around a few of the gravestones, and then it dissipates.
Gasping from the chase, I sink down into the grass.
And I let myself cry.
