Moving On (88 page)

“They’re on four,” she said. “No room, honey, we’re full. Just look in the halls.”

And it was in a corner of one of the fourth-floor corridors that she found the Hortons finally. Flap was by no means the only patient without a room; the halls were full of wheezing bulks and silent bulks. Emma sat in a straight chair at the head of the bed. Patsy tiptoed up, supposing Flap to be asleep or unconscious, but then she saw his eyes move. The corridor was shadowed, but there was a light coming in the window behind Emma, enough that Patsy could see that she had been crying.

Patsy didn’t know which of them to speak to. She couldn’t see them well enough to judge what the emotional terrain was like. Flap was looking at her.

“Hi, Pat,” he said.

“How are you?” she asked, bending over him. She felt relieved. She had expected him to look crazed or doped, and he didn’t. His face was hollow, but the look he gave her was sheepish, not crazed.

Flap sighed, as if he too were relieved. “I’m feeling much better,” he said. “Very good of you to come. Will you help me with Emma? I’m having trouble with her.”

She looked at her friend, but Emma wouldn’t look at her. Emma looked lonely.

“What’s the matter?” Patsy asked, not sure who she was addressing the question to.

“See if you can persuade her not to treat me like a leper,” Flap said.

“I’m not going to do any such thing. You shouldn’t have shot yourself. My god. What did you think you were doing?”

“He doesn’t know what he was doing,” Emma said in a flat tone.

“Emma, I do too,” Flap said. He tried to turn so he could see her but moving hurt his neck and he couldn’t make it. He sighed and was silent.

“What did Momma say?” Emma asked.

“Very little,” Patsy said, trying to suppress her irritation with Mrs. Greenway.

“What did she do to tick you off?” Emma asked, looking up for the first time.

Patsy sighed. “She wondered if you had time to change the sheets.”

Emma smiled and after a moment bent over and began to cry, hiding her face in her arms, almost as Teddy had. Patsy looked at Flap and tried to be angry with him but couldn’t. He didn’t seem very upset by the crying. For a man who had just done the unpredictable, he looked very dependable. After Emma had cried awhile he reached awkwardly back with one arm, trying to get Emma to take his hand, but she wouldn’t and he gave up and raised his eyebrows at Patsy.

“I hope you’re not crying because your mother wondered if you’d changed the sheets,” he said. “That’s just the way she thinks. There’s nothing so bad about it.”

“I wish I had a chair,” Patsy said, and she went and found one several beds away. When she brought it back Emma was drying her tears and Flap was reaching for her hand again and still getting nowhere. For Emma’s sake Patsy decided to help him. It was incumbent that the two of them get cheered up.

“I’m afraid I may have spoiled Teddy,” she said. “I ended up reading him the same story three times.”

“God,” Flap said. “He’ll be trying to get me to shoot myself every day.”

“Oh, hush!” Emma said, so loudly Patsy was afraid it would wake the hall. “He doesn’t really know what you did. Tommy doesn’t really know either.”

Flap sighed and looked at Patsy to be sure she was on his side. He looked very tired, as if he wanted to go to sleep, but he made an effort for Emma’s sake. “I’ll tell them,” he said.

“I don’t want you to tell them. I don’t want them to know.”

“I’ll tell them, anyway,” Flap insisted. “I didn’t commit any crime against God. I was very depressed and I was sitting there thinking about suicide, I admit, but I didn’t intend to kill myself.”

“Bullshit!” Emma said. “Patsy knows it’s bullshit too. Who do you think you’re fooling?”

“I don’t know anything,” Patsy said. “I wasn’t a spectator.”

“Well, I know. I don’t care what you two decide about it. It’s just an accident I’m not a widow right now. You don’t sit around thinking about killing yourself and then shoot yourself in the neck without there being some connection.”

“I never said there was no connection. I was examining how it felt to face a loaded gun. I knew it was loaded. I thought I was pointing it past my head.”

“Why did it shoot, then? You don’t usually shoot guns past your head.”

“I squeezed too hard,” he said. “Quite accidentally. Even if it wasn’t accidental, so what? Maybe I wanted to scare myself. It was in the nature of a warning shot. It worked too. I feel a lot more sensible now. I certainly found out I don’t like to shoot myself.”

“Well, I’m glad you did,” Emma said, her voice still breaking.

Flap tried again to get her hand and finally did, and she scooted her chair a little closer to the bed so his arm would not be twisted so awkwardly. He seemed relieved and subdued. They were all silent for several minutes. Patsy could think of absolutely nothing to say.

“It’s eerie taking prelims,” Flap said. “I had to do something to get it off my mind.”

“That’s a weak excuse,” Emma said instantly.

“I know, but it’s the only one I’ve got.”

“How inconsiderate can you be?”

“Pretty inconsiderate,” Flap said quietly.

Patsy felt lighter all of a sudden. The Hortons would go on arguing forever. She looked behind Emma, out the window, and could see, beyond the trees, the wall of another, larger hospital, with only a few of its many rooms lit. It had begun to mist; the streets would be wet. When she looked back Flap was asleep and Emma more composed. “Can you stay while I find a john?” she asked.

“Want me to stay all night?” Patsy asked when Emma returned. “We could take shifts.”

“Doing what? There’s no place to lie down. You might as well go.”

Patsy looked doubtful. “No, I’m okay,” Emma added. “I just get mad at him every time I think of him doing that. It’s so unfair to the boys.”

“I think it’s probably like he said. He needed some kind of a jar.”

“Not that bad, he didn’t. If he’d waited a week he might have found out he passed with flying colors. He can’t expect me to forgive him for doing that. It’s too unfair.”

It was true; Patsy looked down. For a moment she felt more kinship with Flap than with Emma. Emma didn’t know what it was to do something that was completely unfair. Emma had never done anything that threatened everything. Patsy didn’t know what to say, but nothing was necessary. Emma sighed and rubbed her eyes.

“Well, there’s no use brooding over it,” she said. “I didn’t think he would die, you know, even when I was so scared. I just couldn’t believe it. I knew the minute I started going with him years ago that I’d never get rid of him and I just couldn’t believe he would die.”

They were silent. Emma rested her cheek on Flap’s arm.

“I wish you had at least a cot,” Patsy said.

“Damn it. Now we have to stay in this cruddy hospital for days. It’s going to seem like years.”

Patsy saw there was no use in staying longer and got up to go. “Let me know what you want done,” she said. “We can keep the boys. One of us could stay with Flap while you go home and rest, maybe tomorrow.”

“He’s not that sick,” Emma said. “If we ever get in a ward he can stay by himself. There is one big favor I need you to do. I hate to ask it.”

“Well ask it.”

“Go over early in the morning and clean up the blood,” Emma said, looking up at her. “I don’t want the boys discovering it.”

“Sure. What time do they get up?”

“I guess you ought to go by seven.”

Flap had begun to snore softly, his mouth open. As she had been coming to the hospital it had begun to rain; the wind had died. She took a silk scarf out of her purse and bent over to look at Flap as she was tying it around her head. “So that’s what you have to sleep with every night of your life,” she said, joshing a bit. “I always wondered how he looked asleep.”

Emma looked at him and smiled. “That’s it,” she said. “Fool that I am. Thanks for coming.”

The smell of the soft rain on the sidewalks and the grass, and the patter of it on the tops of cars in the parking lot was so nice, after the hospital, that Patsy almost wished she could go in and get Emma and bring her out in it. It made a mist in the high branches of the trees in Hermann Park, and the street lights were misty golden circles. She drove slowly, her window down, enjoying the swish of her tires on the wet street and the shine of neon through the rain. Though it was November, the night had turned warm. The wind was gone and the rain held nothing of winter. She yawned and pulled the scarf off her head as she drove.

It was a relief knowing that Flap Horton was not going to die. Having to mop his blood off the garage floor at seven in the morning was not going to be convenient, but convenience was nothing compared to what might have happened. As she turned off Sunset she thought of Hank and slowed down. Albans Road was only a block away. She had never been there at night. Jim was doubtless already asleep and anyhow she had a perfect excuse. Good excuses were rare—there might never be another. Lately she had been able to see him only twice a week, at best. She drove around the block, debating as she drove. She wanted to tell him about Flap, but she wanted even more just to go up and see what he was doing. She parked near his house, but slightly past it, so that someone coming out wouldn’t notice the Ford. She sat under the wheel for several minutes, tapping it with her fingernails, trying to decide. What if Kenny were there? What if she met him at the door? What could she invent? It wouldn’t do to spread the story of Flap’s near suicide.

As she was sitting pondering it all, the light in Hank’s front room went off. No one was there. She got out and hurried across the squishy grass and up the stairs. When she tapped on his door he asked who was there.

“Let me in,” she said.

He was very surprised, and Patsy, once in, found that she was trembling. It was always an adventure—always scary. He had been taking off his shirt and it was unbuttoned. “Your hair’s misty,” he said.

“I’ve been at the hospital.” She told him, swearing him to secrecy. Once she calmed down she found that she was hungry and got herself a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich.

“I was just going to bed,” Hank said.

Patsy took her milk and sandwich to the bedroom and snooped through his bedside books while she ate. There was a fat red anthology of the Romantics open on the bed. There was also a book on Defoe.

“Aren’t you reading any books? These all seem to be studies. I could never live with you. Who wants someone who’s always reading studies?”

He bent to kiss her but she fended him off with her milk glass.

“Quit,” she said.

“Jim reads studies,” he pointed out.

“No he doesn’t. He just carries them home and carries them back. That’s better than someone who reads them. Flap reads them and look how he turned out.”

He had gone to turn off the light in the kitchen.

“Why are you turning off the lights?” she asked. She put her plate on the floor. Hank sat on the bed and began to untie his shoes. She put her hand under his shirttail and rubbed the smooth curve of his back. “A nice back,” she said. “Guess I’ll be going, since you’re sleepy. If you had a book I’d stay and read awhile, but I don’t like to read studies.”

“Keep doing that,” he said, and she did. He scooted back in the bed more comfortably, so that he sat in the curve of her body. It was very relaxing. Patsy’s mind had gone back to the hospital, to Flap’s hollow face and Emma sitting in the straight chair, and the children in the waiting room, their faces either too thin or bloated-looking. Hank noticed that she was a little depressed and began to rub her neck. The bed light was in his eyes and he turned it off. “Come on,” he said, meaning undress. He took off his shirt, but Patsy sat as she was, her lips thoughtfully against the skin of his shoulders.

“I ought to go home,” she said, but she didn’t feel like moving. The prospect of a night there, enclosed by darkness and the arms that were already around her, was too delicious to allow, even as a thought. Hank pulled her blouse out of her skirt and put his hand under it, low on her back, touching her where she had been touching him. She put her face against his shoulder while he stroked her back, and as he touched her lightly the faces in the hospital faded, the need for thought slipped from her attention, and the time axis swung again, but in a better way. They undressed sitting on the bed, in a timeless darkness. For months time had controlled them; the need for haste had been with them at every meeting; heat could be worked off but often the working off was rushed and not very subtle. It was fighting or sex, sex or fighting. Unknowingly, Flap had given them a fine gift, a time to be together unhastily. Patsy had never been so awake to the light touch, the cool or gentle touch, to breath and skin and the feel of arm against arm and leg against leg. It was so long after they had made love.

Once she felt a flutter of fear, a tug of home, but it was not strong enough to make her get up. She raised up on her elbows, for a time, and saw her driveway, the dark room where Jim and Davey were sleeping, saw Emma in the chair at the hospital, and then she lay back down and put her fingers on Hank’s lips. The darkness seemed to add a different quality to it all; it made the nearness of each other’s bodies seem so natural that it seemed something that would go on forever, or until it got light. They slept and awoke together, as if by plan, and made love again, almost too greedily, reducing the small subtle tastes to a single taste. Then, a little numb, they recovered and talked companionably, their voices as soft as the gray rainy dawn that eventually lighted the room. Patsy sat up to watch it, idly straightening her hair, and Hank sat behind her, both arms around her shoulders.

“I didn’t mean to do this,” she said. “Suppose Jim found out somehow. I’d be hung.”

“It was worth it,” Hank said, yawning.

Patsy closed her eyes for a minute. “Right now it is,” she said. “How do I know how I’d feel about it if it really happened?”

The clock said six-thirty. She got up and showered, came back, combed her hair, put her panties on, collected her clothes and brought them to the bed. Hank was dozing. She sat down on the bed to sort out her garments. Hank woke and looked at her strangely, as if he were surprised to see her on his bed at that hour of the morning, untwisting her bra straps. She fastened the bra, making a small grimace at the effort it took, and went to the window. Her hair was loose about her shoulders and her face still softened by the night. “I love this kind of rain,” she said. “You can go back to sleep.” He held out a hand to her and she sat back down for a minute, tapping her fingers on his chest. “I hope you enjoyed all this,” she said.