“She's dying,” said Alice. “Or already dead.”
“Who are you talking to on the phone?” asked the priest, approaching, hat in one hand, unwrapping his scarf with the other.
“Her, sort of,” said Godwin. “The line is open, but she's not answering.”
“May I try?” asked Father John, taking the receiver. “Betsy, this is Father John Rettger of Trinity.” He was speaking slowly and firmly. “Can you hear me? We are going to pray for you and for your rescuers. Let us pray. In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.” He crossed himself. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be doneâ” He began nodding hard, and gestured at the trio standing around the table, and his voice slowed further, as if to give a slow-speaking person time to catch up. “âon earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Betsy, lean forward and make your horn blow.” He said to Jill, “Tell them to listen for it!”
“Is she doing it?” demanded Shelly. “Is she doing it?”
Jill grabbed the mike attached to her shoulder and said, “Fifty-six ten.”
“Ten fifty-six, go.”
“Tell the plow to shut all engines off, tell them to listen for a car horn!”
“Ten fifty-six, copy.”
Father John said, “Again, let us pray,” and started in on The Lord's Prayer again. This time, both in prayer and psychic encouragement to Betsy, everyone joined in. At the end, he said, “Are you blowing your horn, Betsy?”
Godwin, standing beside him, leaned toward the priest's ear. Very, very faintly, he heard a sound that could have been a car horn blowing steadily. Or it could have been static.
Then there was a wait that went on foreverâor about ten minutes' worth of forever.
Jill's radio suddenly crackled, “Ten fifty-six.”
Jill lifted the microphone fastened to her shoulder and barked, “Ten!”
“They've located the car, and Ms. Devonshire. They're putting her in the emergency vehicle now. Transport will be to Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis.”
Jill was the only one who understood the crackling transmission, but when she translated, the room broke into cheers. People slapped one another on the shoulder or shook hands or hugged. Father John was roughly handled, but he kept grinning.
“How did you know what to do?” Jill asked, when she could be heard.
“All priests visit the dying, of course, and often, as the end approaches, the dying person will sink into unconsciousness. They don't respond when you talk to them, won't squeeze your hand when you take it. But when you start to pray, and you come to The Lord's Prayer, very often they will surprise you by suddenly joining in. If they're Christian, that is. I understand that Jewish people on their deathbeds will equally often join in on the Shâmaâyou know, âHear O Israel, the Lord your God is one God, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' I wonder if there's a deeply familiar prayer in the Muslim faith that would work the same way. I know there is that statement that starts all their services, âThere is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.' But that's rather short to rouse an unconscious person and give him or her time to join in. Perhaps there's something longer. I should look that up sometime.”
7
B
etsy had little memory of what was done to warm her up, save that it was unpleasant. By the time she was able to pay attention, they had taken the noisy part away, or put her in another room, one or the other.
Then she slept for a long time.
She woke and it was night. She felt clear-headed and able to take an interest in her surroundings. A nurse came in and took her temperature and pulse and had a nurse's aide bring her a cup of cocoa. Betsy turned on the television and watched the second half of a movie with such a strange plot that the next day she wondered if it had been a dream. She slept again.
She woke famished. It was daylight, and someone brought her toast and coffee. Then a nurse came to tell her she was going home.
This sure isn't like television,
she thought, signing papers. On sitcoms, whatever brought the hero or heroine into hospitals as a patient quickly faded into the background and he or she was soon joking with visitors and/or enjoying the ministrations of kind and attentive nurses.
The nurse gave Betsy copies of the papers along with a lengthy list of things she should do (eat lightly, get plenty of bed rest) and shouldn't do (operate heavy machinery) for the next twenty-four hours. There was also a list of symptoms to watch for. If any appeared, Betsy was to call her doctor immediately.
Oh, and Betsy wasn't to drive a car for forty-eight hours.
As
if,
thought Betsy, whose car was, so far as she knew, still crumpled against a pine tree somewhere.
As she handed the pen back, she said, “If I'm in such precarious condition, with dangerous symptoms threatening, maybe I shouldn't go home just yet.”
The nurse laughed. “No, you'll be fine recovering at home. The only people who go home well from the hospital nowadays are the doctors.”
Betsy chuckled obediently and asked, “But what about my clothes?”
“They're in this closet here,” said the nurse.
“Oh, no,” said Betsy. “I'm not putting that underwear back on again.”
“Then you'll have to call someone who can bring you fresh underwear.”
Reluctant as Betsy was to have anyone but herself rummaging around in her lingerie drawer, she called Godwin at his home. Not that she would allow him to do it, but he had Jill and Shelly's phone numbers. When she got an answering machine, she left a quick message asking him to call her at the hospitalâshe had to consult her wrist to find out what room she was inâand then tried the shop.
“Of course we're open!” said Godwin, when he answered. “My dear, you wouldn't believe how many women woke up this morning desperate to find a Christmas gift for Aunt Mary, who never does anything but needlepoint! And, of course, there are the curious, who want to hear all about your adventure in the storm.”
“Thank God for Aunt Mary,” said Betsy, who then explained her dilemma. Godwin said at once, “I'll call Shelly. She's already asking if there's anything she can do.”
Betsy told him to tell Shelly she wanted a complete change of clothing. “There's a spare key to my apartment in the bottom drawer of the desk,” said Betsy.
“Winter break starts today,” Shelly said an hour later, when Betsy asked why she wasn't at school. She had brought lingerie, jeans and a sweater, socks and walking shoes. And that ugly secondhand coat from the shop's back room, Betsy's only other winter outerwear. And a big garbage bag for the used clothes.
She walked beside Betsy as a nurse wheeled her down to the main entrance, and then left her there while she went to get her Dodge Caravan from the parking lot. The vehicle, a purple so dark it was almost black, pulled up under the wide, tall portico. Betsy abandoned the wheelchair the nurse wanted her to stay in and walked the few yards to the vehicle. Getting up and in was a problem, but Betsy gritted her teeth and managed. Shelly had turned the heat on high, it was like July in the Mojave in there. Betsy unzipped the coat.
But it was definitely December in Minnesota outside. Even the parking meters wore thick caps of snow, and every sharp angle of brick and glass and steel was softened by drapes and mounds of white. As they pulled out into light traffic, their tires chewed a brown sugar mix of snow, salt, and sand. Once they got onto 394, the lanes were already mostly clear, though about half the cars they saw wore slabs of snow on their roofs, which trailed thin comets' tails behind them.
For a wonder almost everyone was driving only forty-five or fifty miles an hour. In Betsy's experience, Minnesotans took speed limits under advisement.
They took the exit onto Highway Fifteen, just past Wayzata, where there was mostly countryside. The road was covered with snow, and the fields were a dazzle of white, with shadings of gold, pink, and lavender under the trees. Evergreens were trimmed in white, and the crotches of leafless trees were filled with snow. Not a footprint marred the surface anywhere.
“Very Christmasy,” noted Shelly.
“I don't like snow as much as I used to,” replied Betsy, looking at young pines bent almost double under their burdens.
“You'll get over that,” said Shelly. “By the way, you won't have to cook for days, everyone's bringing something for you.”
“Including you?” asked Betsy hopefully. “I just love that casserole thing you do with chicken and noodles and cream of mushroom soup.”
“Casserole? Is that what you call a hot dish?”
Betsy laughed. “No, hot dish is the name Minnesotans gave to what everyone else calls a casserole.”
“Well, I'm glad you like them, because that's what almost everyone is bringing. There were four lined up on the counter when I got there. Pick the ones you want for today and tomorrow, and I'll put the others in the freezer.”
The road narrowed and ran between a large bay on one side, already frozen over, and a steep slope upward on the other. “Some nice houses up on top of that,” remarked Shelly. “We'll have to bring you out here in the spring and show them off.”
“You know, I think I've been on this road,” said Betsy. “Doesn't it connect with Nineteen and take us back to Excelsior?”
“There you go!” said Shelly. “You're learning your way around.”
“I thought I was,” said Betsy. “But obviously, I'm not as good at navigating around the lake as I thought.”
“Betsy, the way that snow was coming down,
no one
could find their way. People from out of state think we laugh at snow. We don't. We listen to the weather reports, and when a blizzard blows in like it did Monday night, we stay at home. We close schools and businesses until it's over and the roads get plowed, and if we take the kids sledding or skating, we all wear serious cold-weather gear. I can't believe Godwin and the others let you go out in that.”
“What should they have done, locked me in a closet? I was going. I was sure I knew what I was doing. Besides, no one knew the storm system was going to park itself over us and keep dumping snow.”
Shelly sighed. “I suppose so. But if people scold you about this, remember, they're really scolding themselves. I think it was divine providence that made Jill insist you take her present along.”
Betsy said, “Have they towed my car yet?”
“I don't think so. Why?”
“Because I keep thinking about it, up against that tree, buried in snow. If Jill hadn't given me that cell phone, I'd be sitting in it yet.”
Shelly had to pull over to the side of the road and hug Betsy for a minute.
Back on their way, Betsy said, “I guess it's like people who live near deserts know the rules, like to tell someone where you're going and when you'll be back, and to fill your gas tank and take a couple gallons of water along.”
“Exactly. Mother Nature can be a merciless bitch. But once she gets over her tantrum, isn't it beautiful?” Shelly nodded out toward an expanse of Lake Minnetonka, where the snow piled up in exotic, glittering, wavelike drifts, the tops of which appeared to be steaming as the wind continued its work.
Betsy shivered. “It's like a dead planet.”
“But it's not dead,” Shelly countered. “Just wait till spring, when the land jumps up green and blooming again. I love living in a place where there are seasons; I don't think I could live in the tropics. How would you know when it's Christmas?”
“Look in the store windows or at a calendar,” said Betsy, remembering Christmas in San Diego. “Listen to the radio or watch television, look at the lights on the houses next door, orâ”
“All right, all right, all right,” laughed Shelly. “I get your point. But look over there, isn't it just like a post-card?” She gestured toward a point of land extending into the bay, where a yellow log cabin crouched among evergreens, the snow piled like sugar frosting all around.
But Betsy was far too close to her recent adventure to appreciate the view. Nor did she like any of the other unpeopled, silver-gilt scenes that presented themselves around every bend on the road to Excelsior.
Once they got to town, that was different. Betsy looked with pleasure at the flower shop, the tiny jewelry store, Leipold's Antiques, the bakery, the pet shop, the bookstore, and Haskell's on the corner, its decorative marine pilings buried under snow. Christmas lights and decorations underlined the season. People were out, walking, shopping, greeting one another. This was lovely; this she liked. There were warm cookies in the bakery and hot cider in the Waterfront Café. One could not possibly sit down and freeze to death on a crowded street like this.
Shelly made the turn onto Lake Street, and in another block they were in front of the old redbrick building that housed the sandwich shop, the used book store, Crewel World, and Betsy's apartment over it. Home. Betsy was suddenly very tired. She sighed and reached for her purse, fumbled in it for keys.
“You go right on up and get into your jammies,” said Shelly, helping her through the narrow pass in the mountain range of snow along the curb. “No one expects you to stop in the store.”
“All right.”
Betsy went through the door that led directly to the upstairs apartments. She walked up the stairs, Shelly close behind, and unlocked the door to her place. The first thing she saw was Sophie ambling unhurriedly toward her.