The Thirteen (12 page)

Audra groaned. “Oh, Paula. Oh dear.”

“It’s okay. We’re here now, and I’ll figure it out.” When she said it out loud, it felt true. “And I don’t want you to worry. First you have to get well.”

Audra shook her head fiercely, distressed. “We’ll go. Somewhere.”

“Mom, I’ll look into Lakewood Hospital, but Rowan and I would like to stay at the house—”

Her mother started coughing. Paula reached behind her and propped her up with the pillow. She struggled to continue, shaking her head.

They heard Tula shout, “Not here!” And then a slam. Audra squeezed Paula’s hand, harder than Paula would have thought possible, and for a second she wanted to yank away.

“It’s okay. Don’t talk. I’ll tell you what we’ve been doing. We saw a couple of old friends. Last night we had dinner with Sanderson Keyes. Do you remember him? I went to school with him and his brother. His mother stopped by this morning. She sends her best wishes,” Paula said.

Audra managed, “Who else?”

“Of course, Marla heard we were in town. She dropped in. We’re going to her house on Friday—”

Audra squeezed even harder, her lips tight. She pulled Paula close so she could whisper. “Don’t. Go. There.”

“Mom!”

Audra didn’t let go of Paula. Her fingers dug in.

“Promise. Me.”

Paula was confused. “Promise what, Mom? It was
Marla
. You know who I mean, don’t you? Izzy’s daughter. Mom, she’s my oldest friend.”

Audra shook her head violently, then gasped in pain. She let go of Paula’s hand. She wrapped her arms around her chest, awkwardly, as if she couldn’t quite control their movement.

Paula rubbed her fingers, staring at her, worried. “Mom, are you all right? You’re not well. I’m sorry … I’ll get Tula—” She got up.

“No,” Audra rasped.
“Promise.”

Whatever was wrong with her, Paula thought, was affecting her processing. She wasn’t thinking right. And then Tula’s footsteps were coming fast down the hall, her great weight in inappropriate shoes, as accurate as a GPS.

“Paula!” her mother said frantically. The sunglasses had slipped low on her nose. Paula gently pushed them back up.

“Okay, Mom, I promise,” she said.

Audra relaxed, slumping back on the pillow, just as Tula came into the room.

“There was some kind of accident,” she announced. “Bunch of people got hurt and they want to bring some of them here.” She tugged her uniform down. “Can’t have it, of course. We’re completely … understaffed.” She straightened and adjusted her nurse’s cap, pleased with her assessment. “And there’s no doctor here,” she added, “right now.”

She stared closely at Audra, narrowing her eyes. “And how are we doing in here?” She shot a glance at Paula. “Not upsetting the patient, I hope. Her colour doesn’t look too good.”

She bent over to feel Audra’s forehead. “Sweaty. What were you talking about? You’re so upset.”

“Tula, about that. Did you reach the doctor?”

Tula straightened up and beamed at Paula. “Yes, I did. But he’s
unavailable
. I gave him your message and Audra’s home number. He’ll call you.”

“Really. Thank you,” Paula said, truly grateful. “When?”

Audra groaned. “Water, Tula. Please.”

“Uh, tonight. Or tomorrow. I’m not his secretary,” she said. Then, clearly thinking she needed to soften her bluntness, she laughed, a false little chuckle. She stared at Audra.

“Water.”

“I’ll get it,” Paula said.

Tula stopped her. “I will. I’m the nurse.” She moved with deliberate slowness to the water pitcher on the side table. She picked up the glass and raised the pitcher, poured. She gently sat on the bed and gave her the glass. “Drink that, Audra.”

To Paula, Tula said, “I think you’d better let your mother rest now. You come back tomorrow. Your mother will feel much better.”

Paula looked at her mother, then leaned to kiss her cheek. “I’ll say goodbye to Rowan for you, and we’ll be back tomorrow.”

Audra spoke, her voice smoothed a bit by the water: “Paula. Remember? Promise.”

“I promise,” she said. “Bye, Mom. Get some sleep.”

Rowan sat on a plastic chair in the hospital lounge. Except for the ticking of the clock, the floor was quiet. Sometimes she could hear voices coming from her grandmother’s room, but not from any other room. She’d peeked in one of the rooms on her way down the hall, opening the door a crack. No one. The bed wasn’t even made. All the rooms were empty.

Creepy. Weird.

There was a phone in the lounge, though, and magazines. The magazines were seriously old—Angelina didn’t even have kids yet. The phone had a faded note taped to the handset:
FOR PATIENT USE ONLY
. Ignoring it, she had pulled out the piece of newspaper with Mr. Keyes’s number on it and picked up the phone. But she’d put it down again. What would she have said?
Hi, Mr. Keyes. This is Rowan. There’s no one in this hospital except my grandma. That’s weird, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

She settled for reading about Britney’s diet. Then a phone had started ringing at the nurses’ station, where there were no nurses. No one answered it, of course, until

(another weirdo)

the nurse Tula came down the hall.

Rowan had gone to stand near the lounge doorway so she could hear Tula on the phone. Her voice wasn’t exactly quiet, but the call hadn’t been very interesting. Just Tula getting upset and telling someone, “Not here! Not here!” and hanging up. Then she had called someone and this time attempted to whisper. Rowan didn’t catch it all, just a few things when Tula forgot she was trying to whisper.

She heard: “She’s on and on about the doctor.”

And: “The kid’s with her here.”

“I can’t stay on the phone. They’re alone in there.”

When Tula hung up, Rowan scuttled back to the couch and was flipping a magazine when the woman stomped by. She had been talking about them—her and her mom. She wondered about that.

Then her mom came. “Hey, Ro. Sorry I left you so long. Let’s go home, honey.”

I’ll be glad to
.

They walked to the elevator. “I don’t like it here,” Rowan said.

Her mom was distracted and maybe hadn’t heard her.

When she heard the elevator doors close, Tula turned to her old friend—her
sister
—and said, “You caused trouble. I know you did.”

“She’s my daughter. My
granddaughter.”

“Well, I took care of it.” Her expression was smug.

Tula stepped to the end of the bed and pulled something out of her pocket. A handkerchief. She brought her hands to chest level and clasped them, the handkerchief between her palms. She looked as though she were about to recite a bit of poetry, or maybe sing a short chorus from a song.

“Tula, don’t—”

“I know you made trouble. You have to sleep. Cooperate now.” Tula cleared her throat. “I always have trouble remembering this.”

“Just give me a pill—” Audra rasped.

Tula stared balefully. “I’m not a
nurse
, Audra.” And she began a songlike recitation like nothing you would hear in church or at a theatre. This was suited to darker arenas.

Slowly she raised the handkerchief until it hid her face from Audra’s view. The room grew darker still and then—

Nothing. Audra was out.

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” Tula laughed at her own joke.

ELEVEN

M
ARLA DROVE ALMOST BLINDLY
, relying on automatic pilot to get her home, gripping the wheel tightly. Her breath was still coming in gasps, much more than it ever did after a hard run.
What just happened?
It wasn’t supposed to happen—not like that.

Not like that.

a broken leg a concussion clavicle shoulder something minor not a—

not what just happened

What just happened?

She couldn’t bear to think about it, but the sounds of screaming, the crunch of the Jeep as it hit the guardrail, wouldn’t leave her. She wanted very much to call her mother.

(get your godforsaken mother to do something)

Marla was pulling off the highway onto Proctor when she remembered Glory. She’d promised Glory. She was in no state to provide any kind of comfort, to soothe, to coax, to cajole, but she’d promised. She turned west and made her way there.

Glory was waiting on the patio when Marla pulled into the driveway. Her hands were tucked under her arms just as if she were wearing a straitjacket, and her face was puffy from crying. When she saw Marla’s car, she jumped and waved her arms in the air, her face twisting with new wails.

“Marla! Marla!” Her hands were loosely wrapped in what looked like Tensor bandages. An end dangled and flapped as she waved.

And she was getting fat again.

“I’m here, Glory. Take it down a notch,” Marla said. She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to five, breathing deeply, trying to slow the pounding of her heart. She squared her shoulders and gave her hair a smoothing down.
Ready
. Then she got out of the car.

Glory ran over to paw at her, the bandaged hands clumsy, not so much touching her as … 
pawing
was the only word for it. She started to sob, then got a grip enough to say, “Oh
gawd
, Marla, I’m so glad you’re here. I can’t stand to be alone. I had to get the kids off to school, I had to explain what was happening to Mommy—”

“You didn’t
tell
them?”

“No! I said I’d bur—bur—burned my hands making cookies. What am I going to do? What?” She held up her bandaged hands in front of Marla. Pink flesh showed between the bandages over the palm of her right hand. The left hand was worse—where the fingers should have been, the bandage was loose.

“Let’s go inside,” Marla said.

Marla unwrapped Glory’s hands, starting with the left. Glory refused to look. “I’ve seen it,” was all she would say. She stared at the ceiling of the kitchen.

Three fingers on the left hand were missing: baby, ring and index. That somehow made it worse, that middle finger sticking up all alone in a permanent obscene gesture, as if from

(Him)

Glory wouldn’t look but she couldn’t stop talking. “Last night I was wearing rubber gloves, you know, because I can’t let the kids see, and I was putting them in the tub when I could feel—actually
feel
—the baby one coming off. It was like it was
alive
. I had Avis in my hands, was just putting him in the water, and my hand started to feel … buzzy. It was vibrating, and then the baby finger—The baby one, it started to wiggle like a worm, Marla, like it was alive. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle … and it wiggled off my hand and into the end of the glove!” She burst into tears again.

Marla grimaced. The flesh where the fingers had been attached was smooth and pinky white, as if they had never existed. As if she’d been born that way.

The kitchen smelled of cooking. The counter was messy, jammed with covered dishes. Every element on the stove held a pot. She could smell soup, spicy baking, fresh bread, roast.

Glory wiped tears off her cheeks with her right hand, which was still mostly covered in bandages. She waved it around the kitchen. “And every time I come back in here, there’s more food.” She looked helplessly at the counter, the stove. “I
didn’t cook it,”
she said. “I just come in and it’s
here
. Lasagna, pork roast, mashed potatoes with butter and garlic, cake, cream soups—This morning I got up and there was a
milkshake
on the counter … the outside of the glass was frosty …” Her face relaxed as she remembered.

“Did you drink it?”

Glory giggled salaciously, then swallowed saliva. “Yeah.”

Marla was disgusted. Glory had been her housekeeper for a while. She’d been horribly fat, nothing like now. Then she’d been at least a hundred pounds overweight. One day she’d said to Marla, “Oh, how I would love to be thin like you.” That had been a mistake. Glory’s priorities were askew.

“Yesterday when I went on the treadmill—you know, to do something about this weight gain—I was walking, walking, and I kind of zoned out a little. When I gave my head a shake to wake it up, there was a plate of eclairs on the table beside the treadmill.
Eclairs
. Chocolate-covered. That’s when my thumb fell off. I reached for an eclair and my thumb fell to the floor. Just … 
plop.”
She looked at Marla with such naked confusion that Marla had to look away.

She took Glory’s right hand. “Let’s see this one, then.”

Glory submitted to Marla’s unravelling the bandage.

“You know what else I’ve eaten?” Glory asked, her voice dipping as if it was a secret. “Last night I ate a macaroni casserole, a kind of stroganoff thing. All by myself. Ben was working late. Somehow I got the kids through that bath with my little finger stuck in the rubber glove.” Her voice cracked, but righted itself as she talked about the food. “When I got the kids settled and I came down here, I could smell it. It was still in the oven. I took it out. Burned my hand, look—”

Marla let the bandage drop to the table. On the right palm was a dark pink arc.

“I put the dish on the counter and got a fork and ate the whole thing.” Glory licked her lips. “It was so good. I don’t make it that good.” She laughed uncomfortably. “In fact, I didn’t make it at all.”

On that hand the middle finger and thumb were missing, the skin as smooth as on the left hand, no sign of anything ever having been there.

“Have you seen Sharie?” Glory asked suddenly. “With her it’s her feet … or at least her foot. It’s not working. She came along after I did, and it’s her foot. I was thinking that maybe because we’re new, maybe that’s why we’re getting hit so hard. So
hard,”
she emphasized.

“Sharie’s a dancer. I think it’s because she’s a dancer,” Marla said. “Don’t you? Doesn’t it make more sense?” Sharie’s great priority in life was to dance. She didn’t have children yet.

What the hell had they been thinking? It was all wrong.

Esme had brought Sharie in. Esme, who had pretended not to care when her baby was born dead. “It’s about sacrifice, right? It’s all smooth sailing from here.” She’d said that to Marla as she lay in the hospital bed, blood still flowing from her empty uterus.

Marla helped Glory find a pair of lady’s cotton gloves, not yet worn. They stuffed the empty fingers, and for now at least she looked normal.

“Am I going to die?” Glory suddenly asked.

“I doubt it.”

Glory grinned oddly. “But if they keep falling off I won’t be able to eat.”

Marla left her in the kitchen.

Paula was still distracted when they climbed into the car in the hospital parking lot. After she’d missed for the second time what Rowan was saying, she apologized. She didn’t get any better, though, and so the daughter left the mother to her thoughts. The drive was quiet.

Paula couldn’t understand what exactly she had promised her mother, what her mother was so upset about. She wasn’t thinking straight. Could it be early Alzheimer’s, something in her brain? A tumour? It didn’t bear thinking about.

Marla was her oldest friend, and the idea that her mother didn’t want her to see Marla was … wrong. It was a wrong idea. So something had to be wrong with her mother’s brain.

For so many years Marla had been Paula’s best friend. Two little girls, playing in Paula’s room, Marla’s room, after school, on weekends. Paula had known her practically all her life. They fitted together, the two girls. Marla had been chubby and Paula had been quiet, awkward and shy. By junior high they had begun to grow out of their old ways, and though Marla didn’t suddenly get small

(unlike now)

she was smart and funny and commanding. Paula had stayed quiet but had grown pretty. Paula had spent so much time with Marla that Izzy would introduce her as “our adopted daughter, Paula.”

hey Paula don’t you have another home?

Then it had become the three of them: Marla, Paula and David. They had been thrown together so often. David, two years older than Marla and Paula, had been a reluctant playmate when they were little. Then he became like a brother and teased her as much as he did his sister. Then later, when they were teenagers, he became something else.

The sun was pouring into the car, streams of midday light, the sort of light she remembered from childhood. When it had been easy.
Why did I come back here?
She could remember crying with her mother the night she told her she was pregnant, could remember the two of them crying

don’t tell your father

But no matter what her mother said or how it looked at the time, she had loved David Riley. And he’d loved her too.

David was a guy everybody loved. He was nice to people, even people shunned in the adolescent pecking order. David would stop the outcasts in the hall at school and ask, “What’s up?” High-five them. “Hey, you coming to the game Saturday?” Nobody bugged him about it.

He was good-looking in an unflashy way, and talented. He played baseball, basketball and football, not just on the school teams but in the community leagues as well. On weekends you would find him on the b-ball court in front of the school, the ball field at Haven Woods Park, throwing the football to his dad or his friends in the Rileys’ backyard.

It had only been a matter of time for her and David. She remembered when it started. The three of them, Paula, Marla and David, had been at the park just after the less predictable days of spring had passed and the warm weather had become reliable. The ground was starting to dry out and they’d gone to look at the river. It moved so fast in the spring, turning into something fierce and exciting, while the rest of the year it was just a nothing strip of slow-moving creek. Since just about every year somebody died in the water, they weren’t supposed to set foot in the park until the river had dropped, so there was an element of fear to their being there.

They were tossing stones, trying to hit the rock that jutted out of the water near the far bank. David’s frequent hits echoed, while the girls’ rocks generally fell short. Marla got bored and wandered farther along the bank, away from them. Then it was just David and Paula.

Paula still had a handful of pebbles, but she’d stopped throwing them; the water was moving so fast she could hardly hear the
plop
when one missed the big rock. She’d begun instead to drop them at her feet and press them into the soft earth with the toe of her running shoe.

It had gotten so quiet on the bank, just the sound of the water rushing. She could feel him looking at her, the way she sometimes looked at him—sideways, fascinated, from under lashes, under bangs. She felt suddenly very aware of herself, of her movements, how warm the little stones were in her palm. She couldn’t seem to move; she was stuck there, the ground at her feet littered with pebbles.

“Pauls?”

“Uh-huh?” She hadn’t been able to raise her eyes to his face, pretending hard that nothing was going on. She kept her chin tucked in, staring into the mud, at the beiges and browns and pinks of the pebbles against the rich black earth.

“Pauls,” he said again.

Eventually she had to raise her face to him. “What?”

“Um, I don’t know,” he said. “Do you want to—”

She didn’t even nod, in fact hardly reacted at all, but he leaned in and kissed her on the mouth. They stood there, the cool, wet smell of earth around them, his mouth on her mouth, for a long time. His lips were so warm, so soft, tasting like the air warming up, tasting like light diffused through cluttered trees.

That was when it had started. She and David.

Paula turned the poky little car onto her mother’s street and wondered if that was why she had come back, if she’d hoped to find just a bit of that
good
here. Of course, David was dead. It would be like wishing for a ghost.

She didn’t turn into her mother’s driveway but instead drove slowly past. She and Rowan turned their heads and looked at the house as they went by. A cat was sitting on the porch. What she wanted was to touch a piece of that history, to revisit it as best she could, even if only remotely. She wanted to see Marla.

“Hey,” Rowan said quietly.

“I don’t feel like going home just yet. Do you mind if we go see my friend?”

“Which friend?”

“Marla,” Paula said.

Rowan shrugged. “I guess.”

Paula reached out and squeezed the girl’s knee. She was so skinny under her jeans. “We don’t have to stay long.”

Rowan gave her the side-eye and sighed.

Paula followed the road when it curved, nearly to the end.

Marla sat at the table in her tidy kitchen, her head down on folded arms. Her cell was off, but there had been six messages on her home phone’s voicemail when she’d walked in. She didn’t bother to look at the numbers; she knew who they would be and she couldn’t face another crisis. She had her own to figure out.

She would have liked to go for a run, burn off the feelings, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t even think of running, not with that image in her head: Crawford’s body in his jogging clothes wrapped around the front of the Jeep, the Jeep not stopping, not even pausing. The most awful feeling, uncomfortable and clinging, was taking root in her thoughts. It was … unusual.

Marla was a pragmatic woman—every mother is. There were things that had to be done when you cared for others, and you just did them. It was not pleasant to pull a sliver or a piece of glass from a screaming child’s foot, but you did what you had to do. It wasn’t nice to say no, to spank, to deny your husband sex if he was misbehaving. But a woman runs her world her own way, and to the benefit of everyone.