Riding The Bullet Page 4

  "Then shit," I croaked. The top of the mist was

  moving slowly, like mist on a clouded mirror. "I'm never talking about this. Never, not in my whole life, not even on my deathbed."

  But it had all happened just the way I remembered it, of that I was sure. George Staub had come along and picked me up in his Mustang, Ichabod Crane's old pal with his head stitched on instead of under his arm, demanding that I choose. And I had chosen-faced with the oncoming lights of the first house, I had bartered away my mother's life with hardly a pause. It might be understandable, but that didn't make the guilt of it any less. No one had to know, however; that was the good part. Her death would look natural-hell, would be natural-and that's the way I intended to leave it.

  I walked out of the graveyard in the lefthand rut, and when my foot struck my pack, I picked it up and slung it back over my shoulders. Lights appeared at the bottom of the hill as if someone had given them the cue. I stuck out my thumb, oddly sure it was the old man in the Dodge-he'd come back this way look-ing for me, of course he had, it gave the story that final finishing roundness.

  Only it wasn't the old guy. It was a tobacco-chewing farmer in a Ford pick-up truck filled with apple bas-kets, a perfectly ordinary fellow: not old and not dead.

  "Where you goin, son?" he asked, and when I told

  him he said, "That works for both of us." Less than

  forty minutes later, at twenty minutes after nine, he pulled up in front of the Central Maine Medical Cen-ter. "Good luck. Hope your ma's on the mend."

  "Thank you," I said, and opened the door.

  "I see you been pretty nervous about it, but she'll most likely be fine. Ought to get some disinfectant on those, though." He pointed at my hands.

  I looked down at them and saw the deep, purpling crescents on the backs. I remembered clutching them together, digging in with my nails, feeling it but unable to stop. And I remembered Staub's eyes, filled up with moonlight like radiant water. Did you ride the Bullet? he'd asked me. I rode that fucker four times. "Son?" the man driving the pick-up asked. "You all right?"

  "Huh?"

  "You come over all shivery."

  "I'm okay," I said. "Thanks again." I slammed the door of the pickup and went up the wide walk past the line of parked wheelchairs gleaming in the moonlight. I walked to the information desk, reminding myself that I had to look surprised when they told me she was dead, had to look surprised, they'd think it was funny if I didn't . . . or maybe they'd just think I was in shock . . . or that we didn't get along . . . or . . . I was so deep in these thoughts that I didn't at first grasp what the woman behind the desk had told me. I had to ask her to repeat it.

  "I said that she's in room 487, but you can't go up just now. Visiting hours end at nine."

  "But . . ." I felt suddenly woozy. I gripped the edge of the desk. The lobby was lit by fluorescents, and in that bright even glare the cuts on the backs of my hands stood out boldly-eight small purple crescents like grins, just above the knuckles. The man in the pick-up was right, I ought to get some disinfectant on those.

  The woman behind the desk was looking at me patiently. The plaque in front of her said she was yvonne ederle.

  "But is she all right?"

  She looked at her computer. "What I have here is S. Stands for satisfactory. And four is a general popula-tion floor. If your mother had taken a turn for the worse, she'd be in ICU. That's on three. I'm sure if you come back tomorrow, you'll find her just fine.

  Visiting hours begin at-"

  "She's my ma," I said. "I hitchhiked all the way down from the University of Maine to see her. Don't you think I could go up, just for a few minutes?"

  "Exceptions are sometimes made for immediate

  family," she said, and gave me a smile. "You just hang

  on a second. Let me see what I can do." She picked up

  the phone and punched a couple of buttons, no doubt

  calling the nurse's station on the fourth floor, and I

  could see the course of the next two minutes as if I

  really did have second sight. Yvonne the Information Lady would ask if the son of Jean Parker in 487 could come up for a minute or two-just long enough to give his mother a kiss and an encouraging word-and the nurse would say oh God, Mrs. Parker died not fif-teen minutes ago, we just sent her down to the morgue, we haven't had a chance to update the com-puter, this is so terrible.

  The woman at the desk said, "Muriel? It's Yvonne. I have a young man here down here at the desk, his name is-" She looked at me, eyebrows raised, and I gave her my name. "-Alan Parker. His mother is Jean Parker, in 487? He wonders if he could just . . ." She stopped. Listened. On the other end the nurse on the fourth floor was no doubt telling her that Jean Parker was dead.

  "All right," Yvonne said. "Yes, I understand." She sat quietly for a moment, looking off into space, then put the mouthpiece of the telephone against her shoulder and said, "She's sending Anne Corrigan down to peek in on her. It will only be a second." "It never ends," I said.

  Yvonne frowned. "I beg pardon?"

  "Nothing," I said. "It's been a long night and-" "-and you're worried about your mom. Of course. I think you're a very good son to drop everything the way you did and come on the run."

  I suspected Yvonne Ederle's opinion of me would

  have taken a drastic drop if she'd heard my conversa-tion with the young man behind the wheel of the Mustang, but of course she hadn't. That was a little secret, just between George and me.

  It seemed that hours passed as I stood there under the bright fluorescents, waiting for the nurse on the fourth floor to come back on the line. Yvonne had some papers in front of her. She trailed her pen down one of them, putting neat little check marks beside some of the names, and it occurred to me that if there really was an Angel of Death, he or she was probably just like this woman, a slightly overworked func-tionary with a desk, a computer, and too much paper-work. Yvonne kept the phone pinched between her ear and one raised shoulder. The loudspeaker said that Dr. Farquahr was wanted in radiology, Dr. Farquahr. On the fourth floor a nurse named Anne Corrigan would now be looking at my mother, lying dead in her bed with her eyes open, the stroke-induced sneer of her mouth finally relaxing.

  Yvonne straightened as a voice came back on the line. She listened, then said: "All right, yes, I under-stand. I will. Of course I will. Thank you, Muriel." She hung up the telephone and looked at me solemnly. "Muriel says you can come up, but you can only visit for five minutes. Your mother's had her evening meds, and she's very soupy."

  I stood there, gaping at her.

  Her smile faded a little bit. "Are you sure you're all right, Mr. Parker?"

  "Yes," I said. "I guess I just thought-"

  Her smile came back. It was sympathetic this time.

  "Lots of people think that," she said. "It's understand-able. You get a call out of the blue, you rush to get here . . . it's understandable to think the worst. But Muriel wouldn't let you up on her floor if your mother wasn't fine. Trust me on that."

  "Thanks," I said. "Thank you so much."

  As I started to turn away, she said: "Mr. Parker? If you came from the University of Maine up north, may I ask why you're wearing that button? Thrill Vil-lage is in New Hampshire, isn't it?"

  I looked down at the front of my shirt and saw the button pinned to the breast pocket: i rode the bullet at thrill village, laconia. I remembered thinking he intended to rip my heart out. Now I understood: he had pinned his button on my shirt just before pushing me into the night. It was his way of marking me, of making our encounter impossible not to believe. The cuts on the backs of my hands said so, the button on my shirt said so, too. He had asked me to choose and I had chosen.

  So how could my mother still be alive?

  "This?" I touched it with the ball of my thumb, even polished it a little. "It's my good luck charm." The lie was so horrible that it had a kind of splendor.

  "I got it when I was there with my mother, a long time ago. She t
ook me on the Bullet."

  Yvonne the Information Lady smiled as if this were the sweetest thing she had ever heard. "Give her a nice hug and kiss," she said. "Seeing you will send her off to sleep better than any of the pills the doctors have." She pointed. "The elevators are over there, around the corner."

  With visiting hours over, I was the only one waiting for a car. There was a litter basket off to the left, by the door to the newsstand, which was closed and dark. I tore the button off my shirt and threw it in the basket. Then I rubbed my hand on my pants. I was still rubbing it when one of the elevator doors opened. I got in and pushed for four. The car began to rise. Above the floor buttons was a poster announcing a blood drive for the following week. As I read it, an idea came to me . . . except it wasn't so much an idea as a certainty. My mother was dying now, at this very second, while I rode up to her floor in this slow indus-trial elevator. I had made the choice; it therefore fell to me to find her. It made perfect sense.

  The elevator door opened on another poster. This one

  showed a cartoon finger pressed to big red cartoon

  lips. Beneath it was a line reading our patients

  appreciate your quiet! Beyond the elevator lobby

  was a corridor going right and left. The odd-numbered

  rooms were to the left. I walked down that way, my sneakers seeming to gain weight with every step. I slowed in the four-seventies, then stopped entirely between 481 and 483. I couldn't do this. Sweat as cold and sticky as half-frozen syrup crept out of my hair in little trickles. My stomach was knotted up like a fist inside a slick glove. No, I couldn't do it. Best to turn around and skedaddle like the cowardly chickenshit I was. I'd hitchhike out to Harlow and call Mrs. McCurdy in the morning. Things would be easier to face in the morning.

  I started to turn, and then a nurse poked her head out of the room two doors up . . . my mother's room. "Mr. Parker?" she asked in a low voice.

  For a wild moment I almost denied it. Then I nod-ded.

  "Come in. Hurry. She's going."

  They were the words I'd expected, but they still sent a cramp of terror through me and buckled my knees.

  The nurse saw this and came hurrying toward me, her skirt rustling, her face alarmed. The little gold pin on her breast read anne corrigan. "No, no, I just meant the sedative . . . She's going to sleep. Oh my God, I'm so stupid. She's fine, Mr. Parker, I gave her her Ambien and she's going, to sleep, that's all I meant. You aren't going to faint, are you?" She took my arm.

  "No," I said, not knowing if I was going to faint or not. The world was swooping and there was a buzzing in my ears. I thought of how the road had leaped toward the car, a black-and-white movie road in all that silver moonlight. Did you ride the Bullet? Man, I rode that fucker four times.

  Anne Corrigan lead me into the room and I saw my mother. She had always been a big woman, and the hospital bed was small and narrow, but she still looked almost lost in it. Her hair, now more gray than black, was spilled across the pillow. Her hands lay on top of the sheet like a child's hands, or even a doll's. There was no frozen stroke-sneer such as the one I'd imagined on her face, but her complexion was yellow. Her eyes were closed, but when the nurse beside me murmured her name, they opened. They were a deep and iridescent blue, the youngest part of her, and per-fectly alive. For a moment they looked nowhere, and then they found me. She smiled and tried to hold out her arms. One of them came up. The other trembled, rose a little bit, then fell back. "Al," she whispered. I went to her, starting to cry. There was a chair by the wall, but I didn't bother with it. I knelt on the floor and put my arms around her. She smelled warm and clean. I kissed her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. She raised her good hand and patted her fingers under one of my eyes.

  "Don't cry," she whispered. "No need of that."

  "I came as soon as I heard," I said. "Betsy McCurdy called."

  "Told her . . . weekend," she said. "Said the week-end would be fine."

  "Yeah, and to hell with that," I said, and hugged her.

  "Car fixed?"

  "No," I said. "I hitchhiked."

  "Oh gorry," she said. Each word was clearly an effort for her, but they weren't slurred, and I sensed no bewilderment or disorientation. She knew who she was, who I was, where we were, why we were here. The only sign of anything wrong was her weak left arm. I felt an enormous sense of relief. It had all been a cruel practical joke on Staub's part . . . or perhaps there had been no Staub, perhaps it had all been a dream after all, corny as that might be. Now that I was here, kneeling by her bed with my arms around her, smelling a faint remnant of her Lanvin perfume, the dream idea seemed a lot more plausible. "Al? There's blood on your collar." Her eyes rolled closed, then came slowly open again. I imagined her lids must feel as heavy to her as my sneakers had to me, out in the hall.

  "I bumped my head, ma, it's nothing."

  "Good. Have to . . . take care of yourself." The lids came down again; rose even more slowly.

  "Mr. Parker, I think we'd better let her sleep now,"

  the nurse said from behind me. "She's had an extremely difficult day."

  "I know." I kissed her on the corner of the mouth again. "I'm going, ma, but I'll be back tomorrow." "Don't . . . hitchhike . . . dangerous."

  "I won't. I'll catch a ride in with Mrs. McCurdy.

  You get some sleep."

  "Sleep . . . all I do," she said. "I was at work, unload-ing the dishwasher. I came over all headachey. Fell down. Woke up . . . here." She looked up at me. "Was a stroke. Doctor says . . . not too bad."

  "You're fine," I said. I got up, then took her hand. The skin was fine, as smooth as watered silk. An old person's hand.

  "I dreamed we were at that amusement park in New Hampshire," she said.

  I looked down at her, feeling my skin go cold all over. "Did you?"

  "Ayuh. Waiting in line for the one that goes . . . way up high. Do you remember that one?"

  "The Bullet," I said. "I remember it, ma."

  "You were afraid and I shouted. Shouted at you."

  "No, ma, you-"

  Her hand squeezed down on mine and the corners of her mouth deepened into near dimples. It was a ghost of her old impatient expression.

  "Yes," she said. "Shouted and swatted you. Back . . . of the neck, wasn't it?"

  "Probably, yeah," I said, giving up. "That's mostly where you gave it to me."

  "Shouldn't have," she said. "It was hot and I was tired, but still . . . shouldn't have. Wanted to tell you I was sorry."

  My eyes started leaking again. "It's all right, ma.

  That was a long time ago."

  "You never got your ride," she whispered.

  "I did, though," I said. "In the end I did." She smiled up at me. She looked small and weak, miles from the angry, sweaty, muscular woman who had yelled at me when we finally got to the head of the line, yelled and then whacked me across the nape of the neck. She must have seen something on some-one's face-one of the other people waiting to ride the Bullet-because I remember her saying What are you looking at, beautiful? as she lead me away by the hand, me snivelling under the hot summer sun, rub-bing the back of my neck . . . only it didn't really hurt, she hadn't swatted me that hard; mostly what I remember was being grateful to get away from that high, twirling construction with the capsules at either end, that revolving scream machine.

  "Mr. Parker, it really is time to go," the nurse said.

  I raised my mother's hand and kissed the knuckles.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," I said. "I love you, ma." "Love you, too. Alan . . . sorry for all the times I swatted you. That was no way to be."

  But it had been; it had been her way to be. I didn't know how to tell her I knew that, accepted it. It was part of our family secret, something whispered along the nerve endings.

  "I'll see you tomorrow, ma. Okay?"

  She didn't answer. Her eyes had rolled shut again, and this time the lids didn't come back up. Her chest rose and fell slowly and regularly. I backed
away from the bed, never taking my eyes off her.

  In the hall I said to the nurse, "Is she going to be all right? Really all right?"

  "No one can say that for sure, Mr. Parker. She's Dr. Nunnally's patient. He's very good. He'll be on the floor tomorrow afternoon and you can ask him-" "Tell me what you think."

  "I think she's going to be fine," the nurse said, lead-ing me back down the hall toward the elevator lobby. "Her vital signs are strong, and all the residual effects suggest a very light stroke." She frowned a little. "She's going to have to make some changes, of course.

  In her diet . . . her lifestyle . . ."

  "Her smoking, you mean."

  "Oh yes. That has to go." She said it as if my

  mother quitting her lifetime habit would be no more

  difficult than moving a vase from a table in the living

  room to one in the hall. I pushed the button for the

  elevators, and the door of the car I'd ridden up in

  opened at once. Things clearly slowed down a lot at CMMC once visiting hours were over.

  "Thanks for everything," I said.

  "Not at all. I'm sorry I scared you. What I said was incredibly stupid."

  "Not at all," I said, although I agreed with her.

  "Don't mention it."

  I got into the elevator and pushed for the lobby. The nurse raised her hand and twiddled her fingers. I twid-dled my own in return, and then the door slid between us. The car started down. I looked at the fin-gernail marks on the backs of my hands and thought that I was an awful creature, the lowest of the low. Even if it had only been a dream, I was the lowest of the goddam low. Take her, I'd said. She was my mother but I had said it just the same: Take my ma, don't take me. She had raised me, worked overtime for me, waited in line with me under the hot summer sun in a dusty little New Hampshire amusement park, and in the end I had hardly hesitated. Take her, don't take me. Chickenshit, chickenshit, you fucking chickenshit.