The Dead Zone Read online

  “I will,” Sarah said, and they smiled at each other falsely, knowing that nothing of the kind was ever going to happen. “Johnny, is there anything that you need?”

  Only you, babe. And the last four-and-a-half years back again.

  “Nah,” he said. “You still teachin?”

  “Still teachin, for a while yet,” she agreed.

  “Still snortin that wicked cocaine?”

  “Oh Johnny, you haven’t changed. Same old tease.”

  “Same old tease,” he agreed, and the silence fell between them again with an almost audible thump.

  “Can I come see you again?”

  “Sure,” he said. “That would be fine, Sarah.” He hesitated, not wanting it to end so inconclusively, not wanting to hurt her or himself if it could be avoided. Wanting to say something honest.

  “Sarah,” he said, “you did the right thing.”

  “Did I?” she asked. She smiled, and it trembled at the corners of her mouth. “I wonder. It all seems so cruel and ... I can’t help it, so wrong. I love my husband and my baby, and when Walt says that someday we’re going to be living in the finest house in Bangor, I believe him. He says someday, he’s going to run for Bill Cohen’s seat in the House, and I believe that, too. He says someday someone from Maine is going to be elected president, and I can almost believe that. And I come in here and look at your poor legs ...” She was beginning to cry again now. “They look like they went through a Mixmaster or something and you’re so thin ...”

  “No, Sarah, don’t.”

  “You’re so thin and it seems wrong and cruel and I hate it, I hate it, because it isn’t right at all, none of it!”

  “Sometimes nothing is right, I guess,” he said. “Tough old world. Sometimes you just have to do what you can and try to live with it. You go and be happy, Sarah. And if you want to come and see me, come on and come. Bring a cribbage board.”

  “I will,” she said. “I’m sorry to cry. Not very cheery for you, huh?”

  “It’s all right,” he said, and smiled. “You want to get off that cocaine, baby. Your nose’ll fall off.”

  She laughed a little. “Same old Johnny,” she said. Suddenly she bent and kissed his mouth. “Oh, Johnny, be well soon.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully as she drew away. “Johnny?”

  “You didn’t leave it,” he said. “No, you didn’t leave it at all.”

  “Leave what?” She was frowning in puzzlement.

  “Your wedding ring. You didn’t leave it in Montreal.”

  He had put his hand up to his forehead and was rubbing the patch of skin over his right eye with his fingers. His arm cast a shadow and she saw with something very like superstitious fear that his face was half-light, half-dark. It made her think of the Halloween mask he had scared her with. She and Walt had honeymooned in Montreal, but how could Johnny know that? Unless maybe Herb had told him. Yes, that was almost certainly it. But only she and Walt knew that she had lost her wedding ring somewhere in the hotel room. No one else knew because he had bought her another ring before they flew home. She had been too embarrassed to tell anyone, even her mother.

  “How ...”

  Johnny frowned deeply, then smiled at her. His hand fell away from his forehead and clasped its mate in his lap.

  “It wasn’t sized right,” he said. “You were packing, don’t you remember, Sarah? He was out buying something and you were packing. He was out buying ... buying ... don’t know. It’s in the dead zone.”

  Dead zone?

  “He went out to a novelty shop and bought a whole bunch of silly stuff as souvenirs. Whoopee cushions and things like that. But Johnny, how could you know I lost my r ...”

  “You were packing. The ring wasn’t sized right, it was a lot too big. You were going to have it taken care of when you got back. But in the meantime, you ... you ...” That puzzled frown began to return, then cleared immediately. He smiled at her. “You stuffed it with toilet paper!”

  There was no question about the fear now. It was coiling lazily in her stomach like cold water. Her hand crept up to her throat and she stared at him, nearly hypnotized. He’s got the same look in his eyes, that same cold amused look that he had when he was beating the Wheel that night. What’s happened to you, Johnny? What are you? The blue of his eyes had darkened to a near violet, and he seemed far away. She wanted to run. The room itself seemed to be darkening, as if he were somehow tearing the fabric of reality, pulling apart the links between past and present.

  “It slipped off your finger,” he said. “You were putting his shaving stuff into one of those side pockets and it just slipped off. You didn’t notice you’d lost it until later, and so you thought it was somewhere in the room.” He laughed, and it was a high, tinkling, tripping sound—not like Johnny’s usual laugh at all—but cold ... cold. “Boy, you two turned that room upside down. But you packed it. It’s still in that suitcase pocket. All this time. You go up in the attic and look, Sarah. You’ll see.”

  In the corridor outside, someone dropped a water glass or something and cursed in surprise when it broke. Johnny glanced toward the sound, and his eyes cleared. He looked back, saw her frozen, wide-eyed face, and frowned with concern.

  “What? Sarah, did I say something wrong?”

  “How did you know?” she whispered. “How could you know those things?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Sarah, I’m sorry if I ...”

  “Johnny, I ought to go, Denny’s with the sitter.”

  “All right. Sarah, I’m sorry I upset you.”

  “How could you know about my ring, Johnny?”

  He could only shake his head.

  7

  Halfway down the first-floor corridor, her stomach began to feel strange. She found the ladies’ just in time. She hurried in, closed the door of one of the stalls, and threw up violently. She flushed and then stood with her eyes closed, shivering, but also close to laughter. The last time she had seen Johnny she had thrown up, too. Rough justice? Brackets in time, like bookends? She put her hands over her mouth to stifle whatever might be trying to get out—laughter or maybe a scream. And in the darkness the world seemed to tilt irrationally, like a dish. Like a spinning Wheel of Fortune.

  8

  She had left Denny with Mrs. Labelle, so when she got home the house was silent and empty. She went up the narrow stairway to the attic and turned the switch that controlled the two bare, dangling light bulbs. Their luggage was stacked up in one corner, the Montreal travel stickers still pasted to the sides of the orange Grants’ suitcases. There were three of them. She opened the first, felt through the elasticized side pouches, and found nothing. Likewise the second. Likewise the third.

  She drew in a deep breath and then let it out, feeling foolish and a little disappointed—but mostly relieved. Overwhelmingly relieved. No ring. Sorry, Johnny. But on the other hand, I’m not sorry at all. It would have been just a little bit too spooky.

  She started to slide the suitcases back into place between a tall pile of Walt’s old college texts and the floor lamp that crazy woman’s dog had knocked over and which Sarah had never had the heart to throw out. And as she dusted off her hands preparatory to putting the whole thing behind her, a small voice far inside her whispered, almost too low to hear, Sort of a flying search, wasn’t it? Didn’t really want to find anything, did you, Sarah?

  No. No, she really hadn’t wanted to find anything. And if that little voice thought she was going to open all those suitcases again, it was crazy. She was fifteen minutes late in picking up Denny, Walt was bringing home one of the senior partners in his firm for dinner (a very big deal), and she owed Betty Hackman a letter—from the Peace Corps in Uganda, Betty had gone directly into marriage with the son of a staggeringly rich Kentucky horse breeder. Also, she ought to clean both bathrooms, set her hair, and give Denny a bath. There was really too much to do to be frigging around up in this hot, dirty attic.

  So the pulled all three suitcases open a
gain and this time she searched the side pockets very carefully, and tucked all the way down in the corner of the third suitcase she found her wedding ring. She held it up to the glare of one of the naked bulbs and read the engraving inside, still as fresh as it had been on the day Walt slipped the ring on her finger: WALTER AND SARAH HAZLETT—JULY 9, 1972.

  Sarah looked at it for a long time.

  Then she put the suitcases back, turned off the lights, and went back downstairs. She changed out of the linen dress, which was now streaked with dust, and into slacks and a light top. She went down the block to Mrs. Labelle’s and picked up her son. They went home and Sarah put Denny in the living room, where he crawled around vigorously while she prepared the roast and peeled some potatoes. With the roast in the oven, she went into the living room and saw that Denny had gone to sleep on the rug. She picked him up and put him in his crib. Then she began to clean the toilets. And in spite of everything, in spite of the way the clock was racing toward dinnertime, her mind never left the ring. Johnny had known. She could even pinpoint the moment he had come by his knowledge: When she had kissed him before leaving.

  Just thinking about him made her feel weak and strange, and she wasn’t sure why. It was all mixed up. His crooked smile, so much the same, his body, so terribly changed, so slight and undernourished, the lifeless way his hair lay against his scalp contrasting so blindingly with the rich memories she still held of him. She had wanted to kiss him.

  “Stop it,” she muttered to herself. Her face in the bathroom mirror looked like a stranger’s face. Flushed and hot and—let’s face it, gang, sexy.

  Her hand closed on the ring in the pocket of her slacks, and almost—but not quite—before she was aware of what she was going to do, she had thrown it into the clean, slightly blue water of the toilet bowl. All sparkly clean so that if Mr. Treaches of Baribault, Treaches, Moorehouse, and Gendron had to take a leak sometime during the dinner party, he wouldn’t be offended by any unsightly ring around the bowl, who knows what roadblocks may stand in the way of a young man on his march toward the counsels of the mighty, right? Who knows anything in this world?

  It made a tiny splash and sank slowly to the bottom of the clear water, turning lazily over and over. She thought she heard a small clink when it struck the porcelain at the bottom, but that was probably just imagination. Her head throbbed. The attic had been hot and stale and musty. But Johnny’s kiss—that had been sweet. So sweet.

  Before she could think about what she was doing (and thus allow reason to reassert itself), she reached out and flushed the toilet. It went with a bang and a roar. It seemed louder, maybe, because her eyes were squeezed shut. When she opened them, the ring was gone. It had been lost, and now it was lost again.

  Suddenly her legs felt weak and she sat down on the edge of the tub and put her hands over her face. Her hot, hot face. She wouldn’t go back and see Johnny again. It wasn’t a good idea. It had upset her. Walt was bringing home a senior partner and she had a bottle of Mondavi and a budget-fracturing roast, those were the things she would think about. She should be thinking about how much she loved Walt, and about Denny asleep in his crib. She should think about how, once you made your choices in this crazy world, you had to live with them. And she would not think about Johnny Smith and his crooked, charming smile anymore.

  9

  The dinner that night was a great success.

  Chapter 10

  1

  The doctor put Vera Smith on a blood-pressure drug called Hydrodiural. It didn’t lower her blood pressure much (“not a dime’s worth,” she was fond of writing in her letters), but it did make her feel sick and weak. She had to sit down and rest after vacuuming the floor. Climbing a flight of stairs made her stop at the top and pant like a doggy on a hot August afternoon. If Johnny hadn’t told her it was for the best, she would have thrown the pills out the window right then.

  The doctor tried her on another drug, and that made her heart race so alarmingly that she did stop taking it.

  “This is a trial-and-error procedure,” the doctor said. “We’ll get you fixed up eventually, Vera. Don’t worry.”

  “I don’t worry,” Vera said. “My faith is in the Lord God.”

  “Yes, of course it is. Just as it should be, too.”

  By the end of June, the doctor had settled on a combination of Hydrodiural and another drug called Aldomet—fat, yellow, expensive pills, nasty things. When she started taking the two drugs together, it seemed like she had to make water every fifteen minutes. She had headaches. She had heart palpitations. The doctor said her blood pressure was down into the normal range again, but she didn’t believe him. What good were doctors, anyway? Look what they were doing to her Johnny, cutting him up like butcher’s meat, three operations already, he looked like a monster with stitches all over his arms and legs and neck, and he still couldn’t get around without one of those walkers, like old Mrs. Sylvester had to use. If her blood pressure was down, why did she feel so crummy all the time?

  “You’ve got to give your body time enough to get used to the medication,” Johnny said. It was the first Saturday in July, and his parents were up for the weekend. Johnny had just come back from hydrotherapy, and he looked pale and haggard. In each hand he held a small lead ball, and he was raising them and then lowering them into his lap as they talked, flexing his elbows, building up his biceps and triceps. The healing scars which ran like slashmarks across his elbows and forearms expanded and contracted.

  “Put your faith in God, Johnny,” Vera said. “There’s no need of all this foolishness. Put your faith in God and he’ll heal you.”

  “Vera ...” Herb began.

  “Don’t you Vera me. This is foolishness! Doesn’t the Bible say, ask and it shall be given, knock and it shall be opened unto you? There’s no need for me to take that evil medicine and no need for my boy to let those doctors go on torturing him. It’s wrong, it’s not helping, and it’s sinful!”

  Johnny put the balls of lead shot on the bed. The muscles in his arms were trembling. He felt sick to his stomach and exhausted and suddenly furious at his mother.

  “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” he said. “You don’t want the Christian God at all, Mom. You want a magic genie that’s going to come out of a bottle and give you three wishes.”

  “Johnny!”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “Those doctors put that idea in your head! All of these crazy ideas!” Her lips were trembling; her eyes wide but tearless. “God brought you out of that coma to do his will, John. These others, they’re just ...”

  “Just trying to get me back on my feet so I won’t have to do God’s will from a wheelchair the rest of my life.”

  “Let’s not have an argument,” Herb said. “Families shouldn’t argue.” And hurricanes shouldn’t blow, but they do every year, and nothing he could say was going to stop this. It had been coming.

  “If you put your trust in God, Johnny ...” Vera began, taking no notice of Herb at all.

  “I don’t trust anything anymore.”

  “I’m sorry to hear you say that,” she said. Her voice was stiff and distant. “Satan’s agents are everywhere. They’ll try to turn you from your destiny. Looks like they are getting along with it real well.”

  “You have to make some kind of ... of eternal thing out of it, don’t you? I’ll tell you what it was, it was a stupid accident, a couple of kids were dragging and I just happened to get turned into dog meat. You know what I want, Mom? I want to get out of here. That’s all I want. And I want you to go on taking your medicine and ... and try to get your feet back on the ground. That’s all I want.”

  “I’m leaving.” She stood up. Her face was pale and drawn. “I’ll pray for you, Johnny.”

  He looked at her, helpless, frustrated, and unhappy. His anger was gone. He had taken it out on her. “Keep taking your medicine!” he said.

  “I pray that you’ll see the light.”

  She left the room, her
face set and as grim as stone.

  Johnny looked helplessly at his father.

  “John, I wish you hadn’t done that,” Herb said.

  “I’m tired. It doesn’t do a thing for my judgment. Or my temper.”

  “Yeah,” Herb said. He seemed about to say more and didn’t.

  “Is she still planning to go out to California for that flying saucer symposium or whatever it is?”

  “Yes. But she may change her mind. You never know from one day to the next, and it’s still a month away.”

  “You ought to do something.”

  “Yeah? What? Put her away? Commit her?”

  Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know. But maybe it’s time you thought about that seriously instead of just acting like it’s out of the question. She’s sick. You have to see that.”

  Herb said loudly: “She was all right before you ...”

  Johnny winced, as if slapped.

  “Look, I’m sorry. John, I didn’t mean that.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “No, I really didn’t.” Herb’s face was a picture of misery. “Look, I ought to go after her. She’s probably leafleting the hallways by now.”

  “Okay.”

  “Johnny, just try to forget this and concentrate on getting well. She does love you, and so do I. Don’t be hard on us.”

  “No. It’s all right, dad.”

  Herb kissed Johnny’s cheek. “I have to go after her.”

  “All right.”

  Herb left. When they were gone, Johnny got up and tottered the three steps between his chair and the bed. Not much. But something. A start. He wished more than his father knew that he hadn’t blown up at his mother like that. He wished it because an odd sort of certainty was growing in him that his mother was not going to live much longer.

  2