Chat (6 page)

Julia:
Okay, to get the idea, you should sort of think of the Wizard of Oz.

Cat:
ok.

Julia:
There’s a woman scientist, a butch team leader, a big-hearted archaeologist, and an alien guy with a snake in his stomach.

Cat:
yes. simple. is he gonna do something about the snake?

Julia:
Oh, he doesn’t have it anymore.

Cat:
oh ok.

Julia:
It died, and he couldn’t get another one in time, so he’s on a drug now that mimics what the snake did for him.

Cat:
ohhhhhhh of course

Julia:
So now he’s only like an alien because he has a gold brand on his forehead.

Cat:
oh that guy! ok. i know which one he Is.

Chapter 6

“
H
i, sweetheart.”

Joe opened his eyes without otherwise stirring, a habit born on the job, where catching a nap, sometimes with coffee still in hand, often made it possible to keep going for hours more.

But he was sitting empty-handed in his mother’s hospital room. Across from him, she was looking at him, her head turned at last on that white pillow.

He smiled at her. “Hi, yourself. How’re you feeling?”

He rose and crossed over to her, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking her hand up in both of his.

“Woozy,” she conceded, adding after a moment’s consideration, “Thirsty, too.”

He reached for the pitcher by the bed and poured out a cup of water, fitting a straw to it and holding it so that she could draw a sip.

She emptied half the cup before setting her head back. “Good Lord, that hit the spot.”

“How’s your head?” he asked her.

“Fine. What did I do to it?”

He pursed his lips slightly, concerned. “You don’t remember the crash?”

Her response set him at ease. “Oh, yes. Well, most of it. I remember the snow crashing against the windshield. I thought it would break. But that’s about it.” Her eyes suddenly widened and she gripped his hand. “Is Leo all right?”

“He’s fine,” he soothed her. “Banged up a little, too, but on the mend.”

She closed her eyes. “Thank God. Poor boy.”

Joe smiled at that, considering the man’s age. The door to the room opened, and a nurse stepped in, smiling. “So,” she said brightly, “you decided to join us, after all? I would have, too, with a good-looking son like that hanging around.”

Joe’s mother narrowed her eyes as she scrutinized him. “How long have I been like this?”

“A few days, Mom,” he told her, bending quickly to kiss her cheek. “We’ve been keeping you company in shifts. You just missed Gail. She had to go back to Montpelier.”

“Oh, my,” she reacted, her cheeks pinking up, as if she was embarrassed at being caught napping too long.

The nurse set about checking her vitals and asking her questions. Joe rose and crossed to the window. The surrounding trees had maintained their thick mantle of snow in the windless cold and so now were almost hard to look at in the sun’s glare.

“Mr. Gunther?”

He turned at the nurse’s voice.

“The doctor will be wanting to check your mom out. If you’d like to take a small break and maybe grab a cup of coffee, now would be the perfect time. She’ll be in good hands, I promise.”

He smiled at the roundabout, practiced verbiage. “You’d make a good bouncer.” He reached out and touched his mother’s foot. “You have fun with the doc. I’ll go torture Leo a little. Tie a knot in some of his tubing.”

“You’re an awful child,” she told him, but he could see that he’d hit a nerve with the mention of tubing.

“Never claimed otherwise,” he said, adding, “I’ll be back with a report card.”

That, as it turned out, was going to be a bit tricky, assuming the news was to be upbeat. Leo was still in intensive care, was in fact still hooked up to multiple tubes and wires, and, if anything, was in slightly worse shape than when Joe had seen him last.

He remained coherent, however, though only barely.

“Hey, Joe,” he said weakly as his brother came into view by his side.

“Hey, yourself. Got good news: Mom just woke up. They’re checking her out, but she seems fine. Just needed to sleep it off.”

Leo closed his eyes briefly with relief. “Jesus.” He then tried to move his hand to grasp Joe’s, but grimaced and failed. Joe took his fingers in his own and gave him a squeeze. “Relax, Leo. It’s going to be fine. All that’s left is for you to get better.”

Leo nodded quietly, taking his time. Joe noticed a tear building up in the corner of one of his brother’s eyes. He reached out and wiped it away.

“I don’t know,” Leo said, so softly his words were almost lost in the whir of the surrounding equipment.

Joe leaned over to be near his face when he whispered. “Leo, you’ve got to do this. It’s not like I have any spare brothers, and Mom’ll make my life hell if you kick the bucket. Stop thinking of yourself, for Christ’s sake.”

Leo smiled slowly. “You are a son of a bitch.”

Joe kissed his bristly cheek. “I love you, too.”

His brother sighed and gave a halfhearted nod. “Okay. What about the car?”

“The nut on the tie rod went,” Joe said, hoping that made sense.

Leo’s eyes widened. “No shit? How the hell would that happen?”

“You had it serviced lately?”

“Yeah, but not for that. It’s too new. The tie rod ends should be factory fresh.”

“You bring it to Steve’s, right?” Joe asked. “Exclusively?”

His brother nodded, beginning to fade.

“You ever have problems with them?”

Leo didn’t respond immediately. Joe bent close again, not wanting to miss his chance. “Leo?”

“No problems,” Leo mumbled.

Joe straightened back up. That would have to be it. He placed his palm flat on Leo’s forehead and told him, “Hang in there. Mom’s fine. That part’s over. But we need you back, okay?”

He thought he could feel his brother nod agreement under his hand, but it was too slight a gesture to trust.

Their mother was discharged later that day. Joe had remembered to salvage her wheelchair from the trunk of the shattered Subaru, and used it to roll her out of the hospital and into the cold New England sunlight. As they cleared the overhang of the main entrance portico, she tilted her head back and let the sun hit her full in the face.

“God, that feels good.”

Joe was relieved by the gesture. She’d refused to leave without first visiting Leo, and the sight of her last born, rigged up like a science experiment, had clearly shaken her. But she’d spoken to his physician in detail and had been told of a probable, though long-term, full recovery. Joe hoped that had helped with the worst of her concerns. But he wasn’t sure. She hadn’t spoken until hitting the sidewalk—she was, after all, of hard-core Yankee stock, a people who were not cold, as was their weather and their reputation, but who were indeed prone to self-containment. By instinct, people bred and brought up among these ancient mountains didn’t speak of their feelings and didn’t pry after those of others. For that matter, he hadn’t asked her outright himself.

She worked at being upbeat during the drive home, insisting on stopping by the market to pick up a few things she thought he’d enjoy, and chatting about everything but the accident and her broken son. Joe let her find her emotional bearings, which, he sensed, would only really fall into place once they reached home. He therefore wasn’t surprised when she quieted as he topped the same rise in the driveway that had similarly affected him the day before. He did, however, reach out as he stopped the car before the house, and squeeze her hand.

“He’ll be fine, Mom. We’ll see him through it.”

She turned to him then, her eyes glistening. “He wouldn’t be there now if he hadn’t taken me to the movies.”

Joe actually laughed as he leaned over and kissed her. “You probably saved his life. He would’ve been driving at twice the speed with some bimbo in one of his favorite wrecks. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She smiled despite her sadness. “He doesn’t carry on as much as he claims. But I suppose you’re right.”

Joe hadn’t told her about the missing tie rod nut.

They spent much of the day getting used to each other. Joe hadn’t been at home without Leo in more years than he could recall, and he had a hard time gauging between too much together time with his mother and too little. She and Leo were like an old married couple, working on instinct, memory, and habit. Joe had only the first to draw on, and that was dulled by their both thinking of the missing member of their small company. He had to ask her about lunch, to discover if and when she napped, whether she could handle the bathroom on her own, what her rhythm was for reading, watching TV, and moving about in pursuit of various errands or tasks.

For her part, of course, he appeared like a fish out of water. He did nothing like his brother, had little here that belonged to him or would occupy him for long, and knew even less about the house’s organization.

Still, they managed, mostly with humor, sometimes with reservations, and were clearly relieved when the doorbell rang.

At that moment they were both in the kitchen, where she was giving him a crash course on product geography, as he mentally termed it, struggling to retain how she liked her groceries organized.

More to the point, since dinner was looming, they’d also been discussing the upcoming meal. Sadly, Leo was the house’s primary cook—Joe had no such talent, being of the opinion that all food should come packaged and ready to eat, preferably unheated—and it was becoming clear that the kitchen was where their cordiality might collapse.

“Who would that be?” Joe asked, the sound of a doorbell being a rare thing in a farmhouse.

“Maybe one of the neighbors,” his mother suggested, “seeing we were home and knowing my son was about to poison me.”

Joe moved toward the door. “Just trying to broaden your mind, Mom. We came out of the caves eating with our fingers. Sandwiches are an homage to a cultural heritage.”

“We came out of the caves eating other people, period,” his mother corrected him. “Go see who it is.”

The other oddity, of course, was that the doorbell belonged to the front entrance, which almost everyone knew to ignore in favor of the kitchen door, around to the side, where the car was parked at the bottom of the wheelchair ramp.

As a result, Joe was expecting either a salesman or a Bible thumper as he opened the door.

Instead, there was a tall, slim, long-haired woman, looking both expectant and nervous.

Joe stared at her in astonishment, his hand frozen on the doorknob and his mouth half open in a generic greeting he didn’t deliver.

He knew her, but not from around here. It was from a case a couple of years ago, when they’d met in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and he’d interviewed her in her capacity as a local bartender. She’d been helpful, aiming him toward someone who proved useful later on, but more importantly, in giving him a single kiss after a conversation laced with a subtle and meaningful subtext. That gesture had filled his head with thoughts, questions, yearnings, and possibilities that he’d retained ever since. By then, he and Gail had begun their slide away from each other, if only in small increments, and the woman now standing before him had loomed as an occasionally comforting fantasy to ease the transition.

But he’d never called her, had never thought of her except at odd moments, and had certainly never expected to lay eyes on her again. He didn’t even know her last name.

At his stunned befuddlement, her nervousness yielded to an embarrassed smile. She stuck her hand out. “Joe Gunther . . .”

“Evelyn,” he blurted, interrupting her.

She wrinkled her nose, the smile expanding. “You remember. I never figured how that got out. It’s my real name—Evelyn Silva—after my grandmother.” She added with a laugh, “But I don’t like it much. Wasn’t too crazy about her, either. Most people just call me Lyn.”

He was still processing her appearance. Names could come later. “What are you doing here?” he asked, the host in him hoping it didn’t sound too hostile, while the cop wondered if maybe it should.

“I read about your family’s accident in the paper,” she explained. “I wanted to see if you needed any help.”

He stared at her. “In the Gloucester paper?”

She shook her head, her cheeks flushing. “No, no. The
Brattleboro Reformer
. I live in Brattleboro now. I moved.”

“Who is it, Joe?” his mother asked from behind him.

Joe stepped aside to reveal his mother rolling up to them. Lyn broke into a wide smile. “You’re all right,” she exclaimed. “They said you were in the hospital.” She hesitated only a moment and then took one step forward and stuck her hand out. “I’m Lyn Silva, Mrs. Gunther. I’m really just an acquaintance of your son’s, but I wanted to see how you were doing.”

Joe’s mother looked at her son. “I’m freezing. You’re heating the whole state.” Then she smiled brightly at their unexpected guest and shook hands. “He’s still in training. I’m happy to meet you.”

Joe removed his fingers from the knob as if it had been electrified. Like most locals, he was usually compulsive about open doors and drafts. He reached out and gently steered Lyn across the threshold. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

“Come into the living room,” his mother said, preceding them. “We have a fire going in the woodstove. Where are you from, Miss Silva?”

“Brattleboro now,” Lyn told her, entering the cluttered, homey living room, adding, “Oh, I
love
this room. When was the house built?”

“Eighteen-thirties,” Joe told her, bringing up the rear. “And we haven’t done much to it since, except for the modern amenities.”

He studied the back of their guest as if she might suddenly pull a gun. He kept retrieving fragments of the one time they’d met, and coming up with only good memories. She was a single mother of a then twenty-year-old girl, a bookkeeper by day and a bartender at night, and at the time, at least, she’d been genuine, smart, sexy, and remarkably appealing—just as she appeared today.

But what was she doing here? When they last parted, he’d felt they had forged a definite connection, one that he would have pursued in Gail’s absence. He’d even thought of locating her after his breakup, but had been stalled by both geography and a general emotional inertia.

On that level, therefore, he was astonished and pleased to see her again. But at his core he remained a cop and, as such, wary and watchful. Once the social niceties were dealt with and he found a quiet moment, he planned to inquire about the details behind this visit.

His mother parked her chair in her docking station of tables before asking, “What brought you to Brattleboro? And did I overhear that you came from Gloucester?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lyn answered. “I was a barkeep there, and I just bought a bar in Brattleboro—I found it through the Internet, if you can believe that.”