Authors: Carol Masciola
A shout of delight went up from the carolers as they stampeded toward their reward. Lola set about her task. Some of the candy canes had slid under the bed, and she saw several stuck under a radiator.
As she crawled around the floor, filling her wicker basket, Lola noticed that the old lady, who a moment ago had appeared to be asleep, was watching her. She leaned forward and craned her crinkled neck, showing far more interest in this janitorial task than she had in the caroling performance.
“Hello,” Lola said, unnerved by the staring.
Mrs. Ryan made no answer but brought out an old, old hand from under her bedspread and picked up a pair of heavy glasses from the bedside table. She put the glasses on and looked at Lola.
“Am I dead?” she croaked.
Lola stood up in surprise. She had assumed Mrs. Ryan was long past talking.
“Have I gone to heaven?” the old lady demanded.
Lola glanced out the door for a nurse, but the corridor was empty. Everyone was at the party.
“No,” Lola said. “This isn't heaven.”
The old lady put her head to one side and stared even harder at Lola. “Then why are you still young, Mike? Why are you still young and I'm so damn old?”
Now Lola recognized beyond a doubt the tone of the voice, the blue of the eyes, the shape of the face. The basket fell from her hand. Her heart was beating out of her chest.
I'm not crazy,
was all she could think
. I'm not crazy. I was never crazy. They made me think I was crazy, but I never was.
“Whoopsie?” she said.
“Ha. Nobody's called me that in eighty years,” the old woman said.
Nurse MacDonald's loud, honking voice could be heard from over in the multipurpose room, directing the festivities. It seemed that at least for the moment, she had forgotten about Lola and the spilled candy canes. Lola pulled the door closed and grabbed Whoopsie's hand.
“It is you. It is.”
“Yeah, it's me all right,” Whoopsie said. “Or what's left of me.”
“I can't believe it. Look at you. You're so old,” Lola said. “You're ancient.”
“I know,” Whoopsie said.
“Did you dance on Broadway, like you wanted to?”
“Oh yes. In the
Follies
.”
“What else? Did you get married?”
“Six times. Saw the pyramids. Sailed down the Ganges on a barge. The whole nine yards.”
“Everything you wanted.”
Whoopsie blinked under her glasses and her chin trembled a little. “But none of it any good without Thumbtack. I never spent a truly happy day after I lost Thumbtack.”
“You never went back to him?”
Old Whoopsie pinched the corner of her bedspread and drew it up to her eyes. She was crying. “I couldn't.”
“Couldn't? Why not?”
“Don't you know, Mike? Didn't you hear? Thumbtack came to look for me. That summer I left. He ran his car off the road halfway to New York and was killed. It was the thirtieth of August, 1924, at four o'clock in the afternoon.”
“No,” Lola said. “It can't be.” Then she remembered the hot day at the swimming hole, when Thumbtack had been so restless. He was already thinking of going to get Whoopsie.
“I wanted to come home for his funeral, but they wouldn't have me. The town wouldn't have me anymore. Not even Mother and Daddy. They wouldn't see me. They all said I'd killed Thumbtack with my flightiness.”
Lola put her arm around Whoopsie's shoulder. Whoopsie felt boneless under her thick robe, like nothing more than a pile of soft clothes.
“So I went on with the chorus line. That first one. I forget the name.”
“The All-Cutie.” It was fresh to Lola, as fresh as last month.
“Yes, I believe that was it. I left that operation after a month or two. That impresario wanted more than dancing out of us chorus girls, if you get my meaning. He was a dirty old rascal. Fink was his name and it fit. Wouldn't even give me my back pay when I quit. I couldn't go home, so I just joined up with another outfit, and another, and oh, I don't know how many others. The years kept on rolling; one marriage, then another. I came back to Ashfield when I was eighty-one, after the last people who remembered about me were gone. I looked after myself until I was ninety-six, and then the old carcass gave out and I ended up hereâpeople bringing me Jell-O all day and singing at me. We used to come here and sing at people. Remember that?” The old lady shook with a few silent sobs. Then she seemed to think of something and looked up toward the door. “Is Peter with you? Is he young, too?”
“No.” Lola said. “He isn't here.”
Whoopsie looked down at her hands. “Oh yes, I remember now. I'm sorry, Mike. I'm so sorry.”
“Sorry?” Lola felt a cold trickle of dread. “About what?”
“Peter. You loved him.”
“Something happened to him,” Lola said. The words felt like poison in her mouth.
“Don't you know? That fire. At the school. He died in the fire. Oh, such a long, long time ago. People said he'd set it himself. Set it because you'd disappeared and his heart was broken.”
“No. It isn't true. It didn't happen.”
“A terrible thing. The dear professor.” Whoopsie gazed up at a point on the ceiling. “How come you don't know? Have you lost your memory? I've still got mine and sometimes I wish I didn't.”
“I have to go back to him. Tonight,” Lola said. “I'll change what happened.”
“Are you an angel?”
“No. I just know a way to go back. I'll go back, and I'll stand in the way of it.”
“For Thumbtack, too?”
“For both of them.”
A wave of laughter came from the party in the next room and snow skittered on the window, as if someone had thrown a handful of rice at the glass.
Whoopsie closed her eyes, and for a moment Lola worried that she had dozed off. But when she opened her eyes again they were bright and alert. “Imagine. If I could see Luther again, one more time, only for a minuteâI could sit on a park bench and wait for him to pass by. He wouldn't notice me, an old, old lady on a bench.”
Whoopsie's hand found the top of her head and scratched. “He wouldn't know me now, of course. Not without my curls. Not with these false teeth.” She chomped her dentures up and down. “You sure I'm not dead?”
“I'm sure.”
“You're the one who's still young, so you must be the one who's dead. You're a ghost. Right?”
“Nobody's dead.”
“I don't get it, Mike, but take me back with you if you know how,” Whoopsie said. “I wanna see Thumbtack before I croak.”
Lola held Whoopsie's relic of a hand. It was out of the question, wasn't it? Whoopsie was outlandishly old, Guinness-Book-of-World-Records old, or almost. “You look pretty delicate, Whoopsie,” she said. “The trip might be hard.”
“What? Afraid I'll die?” The old woman clutched at her blanket, and with a grunt pushed it aside, revealing her two matchstick legs, blue with veins, that ended in big red bed socks. “Come on, Mike, take me along. I'm all ready to go.”
Lola felt she had no right to deny the request. Whoopsie only wanted what she wanted: to go back and see the person she loved.
“Can you walk?” Lola said.
“Not too well. I've got that wheelchair.”
Lola scooped Whoopsie up from the mattress and set her down in the wheelchair that was standing behind her bed. She was nearly as light as the wicker basket of candy canes. Lola pulled the blanket from the bed and began to tuck it around her legs.
“Hold on there,” Whoopsie said. “Hold on a minute.” The faded blue eyes looked back at Lola. They were confused, dreamy, as if part of Whoopsie had already gone to the next world.
Lola knelt down beside the wheelchair. “Change your mind?”
“Hell, no. I forgot to put on my lipstick.” Whoopsie patted Lola's arm to let her know it was a joke, and for a second Lola recognized the girl in the pink dress and the long beads who'd sipped hooch in the reserve room.
She pushed the wheelchair to the doorway and set the brake. “I'll be right back.”
The party had not ebbed, and in fact Nurse McDonald was putting on a new CD as Lola closed in on her. Lola's eyes were fixed on the nurse's back, with its starched white smock billowing out on both sides, and dangling from the right pocket, her key-card badge.
Speed
, Lola told herself.
Do it fast.
She moved into position behind the nurse. Around her everyone was laughing at a joke someone had just told, and the gongs and sleigh bells of Christmas were pouring from the CD player. No one was looking. With a quick flick of thumb and forefinger she sent Nurse McDonald's Santa hat sailing toward the floor. As the nurse bent over to retrieve it, Lola unclipped the badge from the pocket of the white smock and it dropped into her hand.
Lola turned and began to retrace her steps. Twenty paces away she allowed herself a backward glance. The party was continuing as if nothing had happened. One of the girls had launched into a funny anecdote, and the others had crowded around to listen. Nurse McDonald was choosing a cookie. And then she noticed Marsha. From the center of the crowd Marsha was watching her with a kind of secret surprise written on her face, her plastic cup of cocoa halted halfway to her open mouth. She had seen.
Lola quickened her pace back toward Whoopsie. She wanted to run but didn't dare; every orderly in the place would appear if she started to run. She stepped into Whoopsie's room, grabbed hold of the handles of the wheelchair, kicked up the brake lock, and pushed toward the exit.
The first obstacle was the nurse's station. Lola made small talk as they rolled past, pointing out the Christmas decorations, and Whoopsie nodded along, as if they were out for a pleasant sightseeing trip through the ward. One nurse sat behind the desk, staring at the computer. She glanced up at the pair as they passed her station and said nothing. The security doors came into view but were still far off at the end of the long hallway. The wheelchair skimmed past a series of patient rooms. Over the jabbering of televisions someone was moaning at perfect two-second intervals. The woeful sound made Lola itch to run. She and Whoopsie were twenty yards from the locked doors, then ten, then five. Lola readied the key-card badge. In that instant it entered her mind that the card might only open the doors in the youth psychiatric ward where Nurse McDonald worked, but as she swept it through the slot, a green light appeared. Lola shoved open the door. They were free.
She pushed the wheelchair through the set of doors, and then through another unlocked set that led to the outside. The cold, clean air hit her like a slap as she angled the wheelchair down a ramp. She paused to pick up a heavy piece of sandstone near the front doors that was left over from a summer rock garden, and continued down the long path toward the parking lot.
The snow, heavy now, dimmed the lights overhead. Lola was grateful for the cover as she threaded along the rows of parked cars.
“Which one's yours?” Whoopsie asked.
“We're stealing one,” Lola said.
“Stealing?”
Lola stopped beside a beat-up Ford Taurus and raised the rock to smash the driver's side window.
“Wait,” Whoopsie said. “Don't.”
Lola turned back. The old lady had extracted one of her arms from under the blanket and was pointing with a trembling finger at a vintage Cadillac parked next to them. “That one's better.”
Lola turned away from the Taurus and heaved the rock through the Cadillac's window, reached in, and snapped the door locks open. Then she lifted Whoopsie from the wheelchair and buckled her into the front passenger seat. The next challenge would be finding a flat-head screwdriver. Lola tore through the glove compartment and then the trunk, but there was nothing. Despite the cold, she was sweating. She glanced toward the building she'd just left.
What if I'm caught?
she began to think, but suppressed the idea. There was no way but forward, and no time to entertain thoughts of failure. She raised the rock and smashed the passenger-side window of the Taurus. Inside the glove compartment she found a wallet containing $50 and some credit cards. She dropped the useless wallet on the seat and popped the trunk. She could have screamed with joy when she saw the heavy plastic case marked “Craftsman.”
By the trunk's weak light she found the screwdriver and the bonus hammer she was hoping for, quietly closed the trunk, turned away from the Taurus, and flung herself into the Cadillac's driver's seat. The flat-head fit neatly into the key slot. Lola pounded the handle of the screwdriver as hard as she could with the hammer to break the ignition cylinder.
One turn and it should start
, she thought.
“I think they're onto us,” Whoopsie said.
Lola looked up. A posse of orderlies was pouring from Hillside's front doors. They ran toward the parking lot. Marsha. Pink-haired Marsha. She'd told.
Lola twisted the screwdriver and the big engine roared to life. She backed the car out normally, just in case there was any hope she could pass for a staff member leaving after a shift. At this, the orderlies began to sprint toward the car, but they were too late. Lola steered out of the parking lot and onto Hillside Boulevard, heading straight for Ashfield High School.
The drive was only five miles, but after half that distance Lola heard multiple sirens. The thickening snow made everything fuzzy. Lola was afraid she might crash. It was like nightmares she'd had where she was barreling down the highway but her eyes would only open a slit.
Lola pressed down on the big gas pedal and veered into an alley, a shortcut she knew from her bike rides, as Whoopsie hunkered in the seat. In a minute Ashfield High appeared, half-hidden under a curtain of falling snow. Lola drove into the parking lot. The sirens were louder now, and seemed to be circling, getting closer and closer, like wolves. Time was running out. Lola slammed on the accelerator and with a cry of “Hold on, Whoopsie!” piloted the big Caddy across the school parking lot and straight through the chainlink fence that surrounded the school. Snow and turf flew as the car rounded the campus, dragging a mangled fence panel, and pulled up right under the reserve room window.