“Well, I hope it comes to you soon,” I said. I told him that Ruby thought she was in love with Colin, and that I suspected that Sheila and Colin had shared some sort of personal history. I wasn’t specific.
“Oh, yeah?” McQuaid asked, interested. “I guess I did have the feeling that I was walking in on something yesterday, when I went into that shop of his.”
I looked up sharply. “They weren’t—”
“No, they weren’t, but it looked like they might have been.” He shook his head, frowning. “I keep thinking he was involved with a case. Drugs, maybe. But damned if I can remember what it was. Trouble is, he’s got such an ordinary face. You sort of remember it, but nothing stands out enough to give you a good fix.”
I reached for the blueberry syrup. “I didn’t ask how your New Orleans investigation turned out,” I said, pouring it over my pancake. “Seems kind of strange that somebody would send you all the way there just to check up on a résumé.”
McQuaid growled something I couldn’t catch.
“I’m sorry,” I said, looking up. “What was that?”
His eyes were chilly. “Don’t ask,” he said distinctly.
“Well, okay,” I said, “if you feel that way about it. Have some more bacon.”
After breakfast, McQuaid put on his cowboy hat and went out to drive the riding mower around the back lawn, work he seems to enjoy. I did some serious housecleaning: vacuuming and dusting and picking things up, while I kept a wary eye out for Brian’s roving
reptilia
. I don’t know why, but—now that I’m living in a place I like, with people I care about—chores don’t feel like chores. I’m not wild about housework, but it doesn’t bother me the way it used to. And I had plenty of stuff to process while I was working.
Hank and the Obermann sisters. What had he been after? What was he trying to prove? And why was Florence Obermann afraid of her sister? Of course, I could have been wrong, but that’s how it had seemed to me when I saw that look on her face.
And there was Ruby and Colin to think about, and Sheila and Colin. Not a pretty triangle, or one that promised good things for the future.
And Alana Montoya, too, and Blackie. Was he seriously interested in her, or was it just a rebound relationship, the sort of thing you fall into when you’re feeling vulnerable? And what did McQuaid have against her? An illogical dislike, it seemed to me. And her department—why were they so slow in getting her program set up? Was she running into some sort of ethnic discrimation?
No answers, of course, just questions, the kind of questions that loop endlessly through your mind as you push the vacuum cleaner around the house. I finished, put my cleaning equipment away, and was heading out to the garden when the phone rang. It was Blackie.
“Hi,” I said. “If you’re looking for McQuaid, you’ll have to hang on while I fetch him. He’s mowing the grass.”
“Don’t,” Blackie said. “I need to talk to you, China.”
The urgency in his voice stopped me, and I immediately thought of Brian, on his Scout camping trip. “Is everything okay?” I asked, as my stomach muscles contracted.
“It’s Alana. Alana Montoya. She’s . . . in the hospital.”
“Oh, gosh,” I said, feeling relieved that Brian was safe, and then feeling guilty for my relief. “That’s too bad. What happened? An auto accident?”
“No.” He was gruff and harsh. “They pumped her stomach. Alcohol and antidepressants, they said. Could have been an accident. Could have been . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence, but I understood. It could have been a suicide attempt. Had he been the one to discover her and get her to the hospital?
I felt a sudden sympathy for him. “Is there anything I can do?” I asked, meaning: Is there anything I can do for you? There was nothing I could do for Alana.
“She was asking for you,” Blackie said. “She’s sleeping it off just now, but I thought, well, maybe in a couple of hours, you could come over and see her. They’re just keeping her overnight, I think. She’ll be going home in the morning.”
“She was asking for me?” I said warily. “But I barely know her.”
I wasn’t being honest. I remembered Alana’s visit to the shop the previous week, remembered it more clearly than I wanted to admit. She had wanted to talk to me—about her drinking, I had suspected. And I had put her off. I’d been too busy with my own stuff to pay attention to her. The guilt wrapped itself around me like a gray blanket. But I had offered Alana an alternative, a chance to sit down together and talk over lunch. That was enough, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?
Blackie cleared his throat. “I know you don’t want to get involved, China,” he said heavily. “But I’m asking you to do this as a personal favor—to me. Something’s bothering Alana, and I can’t help her. She seems to think you can.”
“I . . . guess so,” I said, thinking once again that I was reluctant to get involved with an alcoholic. The only thing I could tell her was that she needed to get help—and I wasn’t the person to get it from. I’d been there and done that, with my mother, and I wasn’t eager to go there and do that again.
On the other hand, I had to admit to some curiosity. People attempt suicide for all sorts of reasons, some deeply profound, others as superficial as a bid for attention. What was Alana’s reason? Was it somehow connected to McQuaid’s dislike of her? And what made her think that I could help?
I heard myself say, with evident reluctance, “I was planning to go to the hospital today, anyway, to see Florence Obermann.” This was something of a surprise, since I hadn’t consciously made this plan. But it sounded like a good idea, and having said the words, I couldn’t very well take them back.
“I’m glad,” Blackie said, and I could hear the relief in his voice. “About five or six? I’ll be here when you come, and then I’ll leave the two of you alone. But I’ll stick around. Maybe, after you’ve seen Alana, we can talk.”
I held my breath for the count of three, and then said it anyway. “Blackie, why you?”
There was a silence. “Because,” he said. More silence. “Because she’s in trouble.” After a moment he spoke once more, so low I could barely hear him. “And because I care what happens to her.” He broke the connection.
I distrust two-bit psychologizing, which often reduces multilayered emotional situations to an oversimplified and formulaic explanation. But this situation seemed pretty clear, on the face of it, anyway. Alana, rejected by her colleagues, lonely and friendless, needed somebody to stand by her. Blackie, rejected by the woman he had loved, sad and vulnerable and lonely, needed to be needed. All the ragged, hurting pieces fit together. It was a perfect match.
Perfectly toxic, that is.
I took my apprehension out to the garden and put it to work cutting red clover blossoms and leaves, for tea. According to the weather forecast, we were due for some rain, and I wanted to cut the herbs before they got wet.
THE sky was growing dark in the northwest when I left to go to the hospital late that afternoon, but the rain still hadn’t arrived. I had told McQuaid only that I was going to see Florence Obermann. He didn’t like Alana, and he had made it clear that he wasn’t in favor of Blackie’s getting involved with her. He wouldn’t be delighted to know that I was about to get involved as well—and for that matter, neither was I.
Then why are you doing it?
my hardheaded, lawyerish self wanted to know, as I started the car and drove off.
Because Blackie asked me to
, my softer, more compassionate side replied, with (it must be admitted) a touch of smug superiority.
Bullshit
, my lawyer side hooted sharply.
You’re doing it because you’re curious about the woman. Confess!
My softer side, recognizing that there’s no arguing with a lawyer, shut up.
THE Adams County Hospital has two contrasting architectural components, the two-story main building and a one-story wing that was built in the late 1950s with a bequest from Herr Doctor Obermann. It is called, naturally enough, the Obermann Wing. The main building is built of red brick and set back from the street behind a row of sweeping live oaks. It has a mannerly, gracious look about it, unlike the tacked-on wing, a long, narrow stucco affair that angles off from the main building like a broken arm in a plaster cast, bent at the elbow. The hospital board has planned to build a second matching wing when they’ve raised the money. Rumor has it that the Obermann sisters have promised to donate a million dollars after the first million has been raised—a promise that may never be fulfilled, since nobody’s stepped forward yet with that first million. In the meantime, the space is occupied by a lawn and an herb garden, maintained as a public service by the Myra Merryweather Herb Society.
There are fifty-plus patients’ rooms in the Obermann Wing, which sports gray walls and a gray floor waxed to a glossy sheen. To liven things up, the corridor was decorated for Halloween, with crayoned pictures of witches and pumpkins lovingly drawn by Pecan Springs elementary school artists, and sheafs of decorated cornstalks in the waiting area, along with a grinning skeleton—a veteran of a medical school classroom, most likely—with a stethoscope dangling playfully around his neck. More dead man’s bones.
I stopped at the desk, where Helen Berger was on duty again. “Hi, Helen,” I said. “I’d like to drop in on Miss Obermann for a few minutes.”
Helen looked up from her chart, peering at me over the tops of her glasses. “Oh, hello, China,” she said. “She’s in 107. Ruby’s there now, I believe.”
I hesitated. “Okay for both of us to visit?”
“Sure—for a little while, anyway. If she seems tired, one of you might leave.” She put the chart down and poked her pencil into her brown hair. “Oh, by the way, you haven’t forgotten that you’re giving the talk at the November herb guild meeting, have you? What’s your topic?”
Helen is an active guild member and as competent an herbalist as she is a nurse. Last year, she presented a slide show and talk on toxic plants. Most of her audience were surprised to hear that lantana, yellow jessamine, and Mexican poppy—our native prickly poppy—are poisonous to animals and humans. I suppose her interest comes with being a nurse.
“I haven’t forgotten,” I said. “I’m going to talk about native dye plants.” I sighed. “If I can get the time to dye some sample skeins.”
Helen rolled her eyes. “Time,” she said, “it’s always in short supply, isn’t it?”
I went to see Florence first. The witch on her door wore a jaunty hat and bore a child’s inscription, “Happy Halloween, from Janna J.” The door was ajar, and I saw that the private room was as nicely appointed as a hotel room—the privilege of the wealthy, I thought, or perhaps the prerogative of the hospital benefactor’s daughter. You wouldn’t want the blue bloods to mingle with the riffraff, especially when they’re sick.
And Helen had been right—Ruby was there, sitting beside the bed, looking like Little Miss Sunshine: yellow tunic, yellow leggings, yellow wedgies, and a flowing yellow scarf tied around her carroty hair. A walking Happy Face.
“Oh, now I have two visitors,” Miss Florence said, with evident pleasure. “How nice of you to come, Ms. Bayles. And thank you for the flowers.” She waved a thin, dry hand toward the vase on the windowsill. Her voice was trembly, and her face was almost as white as the sheets of her hospital bed.
“I’ve just come from the matinee performance,” Ruby said with a bright smile. “We’ve been chatting about the play.” She held up the Saturday
Enterprise
, which had been enthusiastic about the new theater and the performances, if not about the play itself. “I read her Hark’s review.”
Florence made a little face. “I’m afraid my sister didn’t like the way Max Baumeister played Father. But I thought it was him, to the very life. He was always so . . . well, so formal, you know. To tell the truth, Mama used to say he was—” She giggled and lowered her voice as if she were telling a secret. “Stodgy. We loved him, but he was stiff as a board.”
“Men were very formal in those days,” I said. I smiled and put my hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “Did you like the way Ruby played your mother?”
“I’ve already told her I thought she was perfect,” Florence said, smiling. “Somehow, she managed to catch my mother’s sense of fun. I remember especially how much Mama loved playing hide-and-seek with Andy when he was a little boy. She was a child herself, always laughing and giggling.” She paused, puzzled. “My sister didn’t portray Mama that way—I know, because I read the script. What made you decide to do it like that, Ruby?”
Ruby smiled a little. “To tell the truth, it was a strange experience. The more I played her, the more I understood her—understood what wasn’t there in the script, I mean.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice. “Jean Davenport and the others, they thought I was making it up, but I wasn’t. It was almost as if . . . as if your mother were speaking to me.”
Ruby ducked her head self-consciously, and I knew what she wasn’t saying out loud. She had gone inside Cynthia Obermann. She had made some sort of psychic connection with the woman and gotten some insights about her character—and she didn’t want to say so because she was afraid that Florence would think she was weird.
But maybe this isn’t as far-out as it seems. Doesn’t a good actress have to become the person she plays? Doesn’t she have to reach down and find that character within herself, somehow? Ruby had reached down into herself and found Cynthia. And Florence was confirming that she had gotten it right, in spite of the constraints and limitations imposed by the script.
“Mama was an . . . unusual woman,” Florence said in a halting voice. A shadow passed over her face, like a remembered pain. “Father was terribly stern with her, of course. He had to be, because sometimes she couldn’t control herself. She went too far. And then she . . . she—” Her voice trembled, and she turned her head away.
I patted her hand, knowing that she was thinking about her mother’s death and not quite knowing how to respond. What do you say to someone whose mother jumped off the roof of the house?