Before I Wake (9 page)

Foolish old woman. I needed to be a part of their lives, needed to know that I had made a difference to a child, to the life of a family. And that couldn't happen.

I had forced myself to take early retirement. I did have legitimate medical grounds, and all my benefits came through without any problem. The arthritis that had messed up my hips had settled into my fingers so badly that it was becoming difficult for me to keep up with the demands of the ward.

My fingers…

 

“Barrett.”

“Simon. John Richards.”

“How are you, sergeant?”

“Same as I ever was. Just older. You?”

“Weathering the storm.”

“Like an old sailor or an old building?”

“Depends on who you ask. Do you have anything?”

“I'm sorry, Simon—”

“Come on, John. People don't just disappear.”

“You know better than that. People disappear all the time. The last we've got on Henry Denton is that phone call right after the accident. Nobody's seen him since. He hasn't made contact with his girlfriend or his family. He's gone.”

“So?”

“So we're keeping it open. The case'll stay open until we find him. But Simon, we can't…They're pulling us back.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean, the most we can do with this guy, if we ever find him, is talk to him. Maybe get a charge of leaving the scene…”

“You don't understand…”

“No, I do understand. But seeing this guy, even talking to him—it's not going to explain anything to you. It's not like it's all gonna make sense all of a sudden.”

“Thanks, John.”

“I wish there was more that I could tell you. I still owe you one.”

“We'll see.”

 

HENRY

It was kind of exciting being locked in the library when I wasn't supposed to be there.

It wasn't too dark. There were orange security lights, and the computer screens glowed orange or green. The shelves loomed in the shadows like entrances to a maze in a video game. I went down a few aisles, my heart beating faster, but they were the same aisles they were in the daytime.

I don't know why I had expected them to be different.

As I wandered I whistled, not a tune or anything, just whistling. I wasn't even really aware that I was doing it.

Until someone whistled back.

RUTH

I waited until I got home to make the telephone call. I let myself into the apartment, scratching both cats under their chins as I took off my shoes. I set my purse on the kitchen table before dialing. I didn't sit down; I couldn't sit.

Sarah answered after the third ring. “Hello?” Her voice was rough and weak.

“Sarah, it's Ruth.” I had to stay my impulse to speak too loudly to her, as if she was deaf as well as dying.

“Ruth.” I could hear the surprise in her voice. We didn't have the sort of relationship where one of us would just call out of the blue. My sister lived less than two miles from me, but for the past few years we'd only really seen each other on birthdays and Christmas. “How
are
you?”

“I'm well. How are
you?
”

“I'm not dead yet.” She chuckled at her own joke, which started her into a fit of coughing I could feel in my own lungs. My hand clutched at my thick winter coat over my chest.

“Not yet,” she sputtered out of the cough. “It's been a while. Are you working?”

“I am. I'm still with that family. The little girl in the coma?”

“Is she the one who was in the accident? That hit-and-run up by the mall?”

“Yes. Sherilyn Barrett.”

“I heard her parents were having troubles.” My sister had once had a memory like a leghold trap. It had served her well when we were working together on the ward. I had retired first. She filed for disability a few months after I did, but by the time the tumors were removed they had already metastasized,
cancer clinging to her lungs “like Christmas lights,” she said. The doctors had predicted six months for her, at the outside. That was three years ago. I got the impression that she stayed alive only to prove them wrong.

“They separated a few months ago.”

“Only three, right? Poor little thing.”

“She turned four in the summer. She's a little sweetheart. Listen, would you like to meet her?” I tried to make it sound as if the idea had just then occurred to me.

“Well, I don't…”

“No, it would be good for you to get out. Karen—Mrs. Barrett—goes out sometimes in the afternoon, and you could come over then.”

“That would hardly be appropriate, would it?” Her voice was a hoarse wheeze. She was two years younger than I was, and dying.

“Mrs. Barrett won't mind. She's told me that if I ever wanted to have anyone over for a visit…You could meet her if you'd like. I just thought it might be nicer just the two of us. And Sherry.”

“What have you got up your sleeve?”

Sarah was still able to see right though me.

“Nothing. I just thought it might be nice for us to have a visit. We're the only family we've got left.” Our parents had died during Sarah's last year of high school. I was away at nursing school, and our older brother, John, had taken care of her until she graduated. Then she came to Victoria and stayed with me while she took her own nurse's training. John had died four years ago of lung cancer, just before Sarah was diagnosed.

The cancer was a family legacy that I had been lucky enough to dodge. Maybe because I didn't smoke two packs of cigarettes a day.

“Have you been reading those self-help books again?”

I knew she was joking with me now, and that she would
come over to the Barretts'. “Well, there is this one you might be interested in…” I played along.

“Okay, okay, stop. I surrender. For Christ's sake, no more self-help books!” I could hear her restraining her laughter and the choking cough it would bring. “So how do I get to this place?”

I gave her directions, and hung up after telling her she was welcome to come anytime in the afternoon. The next day was Tuesday, and Karen went to a movie most Tuesday afternoons with Jamie.

After hanging up, I raised one hand level with my eyes and held it flat, fingers extended.

There were no tremors, no shaking. Not even the slightest vibration. My hand was as steady as a rock.

Then I slowly curled it into a fist, which I clenched tightly, not releasing it for several seconds.

When I did release it, there was no pain, none of the tearing in my knuckles that I had lived with for so long, none of the dull, continuous ache that had been my companion, even at rest. There was no pain as I reached into my pocket, gripping the Barretts' house key between my thumb and forefinger, turning it from side to side, fully rotating my wrist.

There was no pain, no hesitation, no restriction of movement.

My arthritis was completely gone.

HENRY

I stopped short at the bottom of the stairwell, suddenly chilled. Somewhere above me, the whistle echoed through the empty building.

It might be the janitor. I had seen him in the distance and done my best to avoid him.

My mouth was dry as I pursed my lips and tried to whistle again. I tried a little “Dueling Banjos” this time.

In the distance I heard the next part of the song.

It wasn't different enough, though. It could have just been an echo, distorted by the books and shelves.

That's what I told myself.

I whistled a bit more and listened as the whistle came back, followed a moment later by the next line.

The silence waited for my response.

Then it hit me: someone knew I was in the library. Someone could hear me.

I took the stairs two at a time, my footfalls echoing off the bare walls. The landing on the second floor was a narrow space, clogged with paperback racks and bins of records.

I slowed just as I was about to round the corner. I peered into the reference area, the rows of tables that during the day were filled with students writing essays.

I couldn't believe my eyes.

The chairs were full and the tables piled high with books. People wandered between the shelves, taking armloads of books back to their seats. Dozens of them, all like me, shabbily dressed, dirty, unshaven. I recognized some of them from the newspaper tables.

“Had we but world enough, and time,” a voice boomed out. My heart jumped in my chest. “Your coyness, boy, would be no crime…” There was a skittering sound, like dry leaves, as the people all started whispering at once.

“You,” came the voice again, “you out on the landing…” My stomach dropped into a deep hole between my feet. “What are you waiting for? What are you afraid of?”

I stepped around the corner and into the reference area.

All of the men stopped their work and turned toward me, silent again, not surprised by my presence.

“Well, it's about time,” the large man at the back table said, in the same resounding voice. “Of course, time is the one thing we have no shortage of.”

KAREN

It was hard to say just what the hardest part was. I found myself wanting to preface every conversation with Jamie or Ruth or my mother on the telephone by saying “But the hardest part is…” But I couldn't make such a distinction—
everything
I prefaced with that statement would be true.

Getting out of bed, knowing what lay ahead of me in the day. Showering, washing—for who? No one cared. Eating…

I invited Ruth for dinner most nights, hoping to have someone to eat with, but she always declined. I could see her point.

So I ate alone. In the first few weeks after Simon left, I ate whatever was at hand: tins of soup, boxes of macaroni and cheese, ravioli, all of that crap stuff we'd give Sherry once in a while as a treat. I'd heat it up on the stove, dump it onto a plate, toss the pot into the sink.

I couldn't bear to sit at the table. The table was for family dinners, and Sherry was all the family I had left. I'd eat alongside her bed, mindlessly shoveling forkfuls into my mouth, staring out the front window, at the overgrown yard, the sidewalk, the cars going by on the street.

I made sure I did the dishes each night, but that was only because I knew Ruth would be in the kitchen the next morning.

I don't know how long I would have continued eating that garbage if it hadn't been for Ruth. One morning in early September she arrived carrying a large brown paper bag.

“I hope you don't think I'm trying to mother you,” she said. Setting the grocery bag on the table, she began pulling items from it. A head of lettuce. A small cauliflower. “I know that with everything that's going on you haven't had much chance to get out to the supermarket.” Several stalks of broccoli. Pale green celery. A bundle of carrots with the tops on. “So I thought I'd pick up some veggies for you while I was out doing my shopping last night.” Four apples, each a different variety.
Several oranges. A grapefruit that almost rolled onto the floor. “If you want me to, I can pick up whatever you need when I go.” Setting a bunch of bananas with the rest, she artfully folded the bag.

I don't think I had ever seen anything so beautiful. The table looked like a child's treasure chest. I felt a craving so deep it was primal, a desperate need for the sweetness, the fibers, the textures.

When I turned to Ruth, I realized she knew exactly what I was feeling. “Of course, if you wanted to,” Ruth said, “I could stay here with Sherry and you could go for a walk, buy yourself what you needed. I know that in a lot of places, people shop every day, just for what they need. Everything so fresh.” She inhaled heartily, as if swept away by the thought herself. “There's a little market not far from here, isn't there?”

I smiled at her. “What do I owe you for all this?”

She shook her head. “We'll call it insurance money.”

Picking up a McIntosh, I bit, the skin exploding under my teeth, the sweetness flooding my mouth.

Ruth smiled at me and went to check on Sherry. I finished my apple in private.

So most days, early in the afternoon, I walked to the market. I loaded up the basket with what called to me as I passed: a glossy red pepper, a purple onion, snow peas, a cauliflower, grapes, a chicken breast, fresh flowers for Sherry's room. And I took my time walking home, canvas shopping bag slung over one shoulder, the warm sunlight on my face, the breeze cool against my skin.

The meals always seemed to come together as naturally as the shopping did. I lived on stir-fries over rice or noodles, maybe a piece of fruit afterward, and I ate at the table.

Every so often, though, I looked at the empty place across from me, the empty chair. These chairs were the first pieces of furniture we ever bought new, for the kitchen of our first house. This house. The house where I live alone with my silent
daughter, where the man who used to be my husband visits twice each day, knocking on the door like a salesman.

We had lived here together for five years; I had been alone here for five months. Lifetimes.

 

When he went to the daily Masses at the cathedral, the stranger kept the collar and his Bible in the pocket of his coat. He sat near the back, in a pew of his own. He paid little attention to the sermons and homilies—what interest had he in the purported wisdoms of some provincial priest?

He was there to watch the congregation.

He knew the sort of people he was seeking. They would be there most days. They would be devout, building their lives around their faith rather than paying lip service with once-weekly observances. They would sit close to the front, close to the altar, close to the aisle. They would carry their own Bibles with them. They would be the first to their knees when told to drop.

Soldiers. He was looking for soldiers of the Lord. There were many candidates, as he knew there would be. As there always were. They would come to him when he called. They would serve.