C
HAPTER
8
I had desk duty at the library on Monday. It was the most boring part of my job, and I usually had a crossword puzzle to work on when no one was looking, or a magazine tucked into a partly closed drawer. Today it was a magazine. I was reading covertly, and keeping an eye on the closed door behind which Miss Grafton sat, when Rooster came in at a little after twelve-thirty, his suitcoat in a bundle under his arm. He stood just inside the double doors until he saw me at the desk, then he marched over and said, “We have to talk.”
I glanced around and put a finger to my lips.
“Don’t shush me,” he said evenly. “I drove all the way up here, I had to park on the top level of the ramp, I have exactly twenty-six minutes to eat and get back—so please don’t shush me.”
Everyone in the rare books room was looking at us. “I’m working,” I said. “My break’s not till three. I’m sorry.”
“Ten minutes,” he said. “Five—just walk out into the hall with me.”
Miss Grafton had opened her door at the first sound of his voice, and now she walked across the room, her heels clicking on the linoleum. “You may go,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll sit here until you return.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “This’ll never happen again.”
I got my purse from the staff room and headed for the door, looking back just in time to see Miss Grafton pull open the desk drawer and withdraw my
Harper’s Bazaar
—not, alas, one of the periodicals housed on the shelves of the rare books room.
“Great,” I said to Rooster when the double doors had swung shut behind us. “There goes my job.”
But he didn’t respond. Several paces ahead of me, he led the way down to the ground floor and out of the library, not looking back once. Finally he stopped and leaned against the building. We were on a wide, empty plaza, the sun blazing down and reflecting off the concrete. Across the way, a woman sat behind a blanket arrayed with Guatemalan goods, pants and hats and bracelets woven from colorful yarns. There was no one else in sight.
“Listen, Carrie,” he began. “We go way back, and we’ve always got along pretty good, right? I mean, none of this my-best-friend’s-girlfriend shit, right?”
I nodded, although I had no idea what he meant.
“So excuse me when I say you have to try harder.”
“What are you talking about?”
His eyes widened. “What am I talking about? What am I
talking
about? I’m talking about Mike. Jesus fucking Christ, Carrie.” He threw up his hands in disgust. “You’re failing here, do you understand that? You’re like,
Oh, poor me, my boyfriend’s in the hospital but I’m the one suffering
. It’s like
you’re
the one this is hard on, forget anyone else. His own mother feels like she’s gotta act like it’s not so bad in case you take it into your head to walk. She does—she told me so.”
“No,” I said. “No what?”
“No, I won’t excuse you.” I turned to leave and he grabbed my arm and held it tightly, his fingers digging into my flesh. “Carrie, Christ,” he said. “This is
Mike.”
“Don’t you think I know that? Let go of me.”
He dropped my arm roughly. Then his expression softened. “He needs you to be there for him, Carrie. I don’t care what was going on before, you just have to forget all of that and be there for him.”
I bowed my head.
“Look, I’m sorry about Saturday. I shouldn’t have said what I did, especially in front of Stu and Jamie. I blew it, OK? But—”
“Did he
tell
you about it?” I said.
“Of course! What do you think?”
I was crushed. The idea that it had been real enough for Mike to have told Rooster, real enough so that he’d
had
to—it was too awful. I could just imagine Mike, the slow, halting way he would have begun, avoiding Rooster’s eyes. I wondered when he’d first mentioned it, how many times they’d talked about it. “What did he tell you?”
“I don’t know, he didn’t go into any details—he just let me know you were having troubles.”
I stared at him, and all at once I despised him for knowing, for being the good friend to Mike that he was. “ ‘Be there for him,’ ” I said. “I hate that expression.”
Rooster crossed his arms over his chest. “When was the last time you were at the hospital?”
The answer was Friday: after skipping Saturday, it had been all too what?—easy, maybe, or inevitable—to skip yesterday, too.
“I
know
when,” he said. “Why didn’t you go yesterday? Why didn’t you go Saturday—because
Chicago
sounded like fun?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t go to Chicago.”
“Then why?”
“Because I didn’t feel like it.”
His mouth tightened. “You think I felt like it? You think Mrs. Mayer
felt
like seeing her son with his head in a fucking cage? No one feels like it. You go anyway. That’s what love means.”
“Oh, really,” I said. “I thought it meant never having to say you’re sorry.”
He turned and slammed the edge of his fist against the wall. “I can’t get through to you! Not at all! You know, I liked you for about five minutes back in ninth grade, did you know that? I sort of thought maybe it would be me and you, and Mike and Jamie.” He laughed. “Hah. You’re some cold woman, Carrie Bell. You’re ice. Mike’s well clear of you, that’s what I think. Well clear of you. Just do it, OK? Don’t keep him hanging.”
I stood against the library and watched him walk away, his red hair bright in the midday sun.
You don’t know a thing about me
, I imagined calling after him. Then I remembered wanting to call the very same words at Dr. Spelman’s back, and I covered my face with my hands: Rooster
did
.
“Oh, my God,” I said out loud. “Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please.”
I went straight to the hospital after that, and for the next four days I spoke to no one but Mike and Mrs. Mayer, skipping work without so much as calling in sick. Visiting hours were much looser in rehab, and I just hung out during the day, before Mike’s other visitors arrived—hung out, watched his sessions, stayed out of the way when I had to, kept him company when he was back in bed. I brought bags of supplies with me: books and newspapers and magazines, anything I could read aloud
from. He liked to hear baseball scores and political stories, but his favorites were movie reviews, and whenever I read a review of a movie that sounded good, he would sigh a little and say he guessed we’d have to wait for the video.
We
, he’d say—hesitantly, hopefully—and I’d nod, thinking it sounded right. Renting movies had always been one of my favorite things to do with him anyway, because of how he got into them, laughing so hard he’d be falling out of his chair, or sniffing loudly enough for me to hear when something was sad, when most guys would have been saying,
Those raw onions from the chili must be bothering me, babe
, or whatever.
When he asked what had happened, why I wasn’t at the library, I brushed him off. “I worked this morning,” I said, or, “I traded with Viktor,” but what had really happened was that Rooster was right, I did have to be there for him. The question was not a question. Mike needed me.
Mike
needed me—so here I was.
At home I let my answering machine do all the work. Jamie called, my mother, Viktor, Miss Grafton—even Rooster once, his voice high and strained as he apologized, begging me to call him. I left the volume up so I could listen, but I never picked up. I was across the room, at the table where I sat sewing and sewing—my refuge after the hospital, my antidote. I made two skirts that week and decided this: that my next project would be something silk, I didn’t know what. I had savings, I’d been sewing for eleven years, and it was about time I made something silk.
On Friday night, the unneeded skirts finished, I put away my sewing machine for the first time in over a week. The table seemed vast. I sat down with an old
Elle
and flipped through it, studying the fashions more carefully than usual, thinking that I wanted to learn to design my own patterns, break free of the confines of Simplicity and Butterick, even Vogue. How to do that, though? Invent a silhouette, break it down to parts, put it together again with fabric. I sat there thinking for a while, then I got a pencil and a piece of paper, sat down again, and started to draw a dress.
The phone rang and I heard the machine click on. After the beep, I heard a male voice it took me a moment to recognize as Simon Rhodes’s.
“Hi, Carrie,” he said. “I’m leaving tomorrow and I was hoping maybe you’d be free for a drink. Uh, this is Simon. Well, if you get home before too late, give me a call.” He started to give the number, and I crossed the room and picked up the phone.
“You’re there,” he said. “Great. Can you go out for a drink?”
I half wanted to, but I didn’t feel like running into anyone. I told him about my week, explaining it to him more satisfying than I would have
dreamed. We talked for ten or fifteen minutes, and finally I suggested we have the drink at my place so we could keep talking without my having to brave the world again. I gave him the address and hung up, and the phone rang again instantly.
I looked at the machine.
“Carrie, I know you’re there. I’ve been getting a busy signal for the last five minutes, so I know you’re there.
What
is going on?
Why
haven’t you called me back? I’ve left like twenty messages on this stupid machine. Pick up.”
It was Jamie. I so much didn’t want to talk to her at that moment that it felt visceral, like a physical aversion.
“OK, I’m coming over,” she said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I crossed the room and forced myself to pick up the receiver. “Hi.”
“What’s going on?” she exclaimed. “Everyone’s worried sick about you. I just talked to your mom and she’s having a cow—she’ll probably pull up outside your house any minute now. Viktor called her tonight and told her you haven’t been at work since Monday.”
“Well, I haven’t,” I said. “So what?”
“So what? Are you sick? Is it because of Rooster going to the library on Monday?”
I held the phone away from my ear. Why did everyone know so much about me? I hated the notion that they were talking about me behind my back, figuring me out. “I’ve just been out of circulation for a few days,” I said at last. “Relax.”
“Relax! I don’t get it. Why haven’t you called? And why haven’t you gone to work?”
“I didn’t feel like it. I wanted to be at the hospital.”
She was silent. When she spoke again her voice was quiet, controlled: “Should I come over?”
I felt a wave of disgust. “No, thanks.” I heard her sigh and I said, “I’m fine, Jamie, I am. But thanks.”
“Are you going to work tomorrow? Viktor said you’re still on the schedule.”
“I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Well, what have you been doing in the evenings?”
“Sewing.”
“I’m worried about you,” she said. “I really am.”
I tried calling my mother after that, but I got her machine, so I went outside and sat on my upstairs porch and waited, watching the night fall
fast from the trees. I didn’t know who would arrive first, Simon or my mother, and I thought that it didn’t really matter. I thought that aside from being there for Mike nothing much mattered, although I was looking forward to buying some silk first thing in the morning. I guessed that meant I wouldn’t be going to work.
Down on the street my mother’s car pulled up and stopped, and I stood. When she opened the door, the inside light illuminated her narrow figure and the speed with which she was moving, and for a moment I felt hot and tearful, a heavy storm of feeling gathering around me. Then the car door closed, and I moved to the edge of the porch and called hello.
She stopped and looked up. “Honey?”
“Hi.”
“Is everything OK? Are you sick?”
“I’m fine.”
“I—I heard you hadn’t been at work and I was worried.”
I put my hands on the porch rail and felt its rough, splintery surface. A streetlight a couple houses down revealed her shape to me, but I wondered if she could see me at all.
“Are you going to come up?” I said, and finally she made her way up the walk and disappeared onto the downstairs porch.
I went inside. I heard her steps on the enclosed stairway, and I picked up my sketch and pencil and shoved them into a drawer.
She was still in her work clothes, a two-piece beige linen dress over brown suede pumps. She blinked at the bright lights and smiled uneasily. “I’ve called you, a couple of times,” she said. “Is your machine working?”
I nodded. “I’m sorry. I was going to call you tonight.”
“Why no work, hon? Can you tell me?”
“There’s nothing really to tell. I’ve been at the hospital.” I shrugged. “I guess I should’ve called in sick.”
She shifted, and I noticed she was carrying something, a metal box with a handle.
“What’s that?”
She turned it around. On the front there was a red cross.
“I’m really sorry,” I said. I turned and went into the kitchen so she wouldn’t see me struggling not to cry. There was something about being alone with her and on the verge of tears that made me feel desperate. “Do you want something to drink?” I called. She didn’t answer, and I filled two glasses with ice and water and went back to the table. She’d set the first-aid kit down, the blank side up.
“I gather you had words with Rooster,” she said.
“Actually he had most of the words. Who told you?”
“Jamie.”
“It was no big deal.”
“Just a big enough deal to make you hide out for a few days?”
“I don’t like my job. I don’t want to work there anymore.” My heart pounded: the idea had come out of nowhere, but once I’d said it I knew it was true.
“Quit,” she said.
“I might.”
The doorbell rang then, and our heads turned in unison toward the stairway.
“Who’s that?” she said. “Are you expecting someone?” There was a touch of something in her voice that I thought just might be hopefulness.