I Can Hear the Mourning Dove Page 15

She adds some remark about home cooking, then goes to the refrigerator. She returns with the mason jar of red soup. “You want this heated, Honey?”

  “No, thank you, I’ll just take the jar, please. I’m planning to share it.”

  I carry the cold jar in both hands and follow the yellow line, walking rapidly. What if the nurse won’t let me give him the gazpacho? What if she sends me away? I lick my lips, but when I see the double doors of the lockup unit, I start to tremble. I’m afraid I’m going to get the shakes real bad.

  I stand in front of the nurse’s cubicle and she slides her panel as soon as she sees me.

  Her tone of voice is curt when she asks me what I want.

  The mason jar is clutched against my chest. “I brought some homemade gazpacho. I would like to share it with Luke.”

  “What is gazpacho? Do you have a pass?”

  “Please, I don’t have to stay and talk with him. May I just give it to him?”

  “There is a procedure for visiting a patient on this unit.”

  I don’t want to hear it all again. The shakes begin immediately and so do the tears. “My mother and I make it at home. We do it together. It’s been approved by Mrs. Bonner. If I could just give it to him, then I would be happy to leave.”

  “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you just leave it here with me? If I can get approval over the phone, I’ll be happy to give it to him.”

  This is not going to work, and I am losing it. My heart is palpitating and the flashbulbs are exploding. I can see Luke across the lounge, and the guard is walking toward me. “The mist will come,” I say to the nurse. “The flashbulbs will blind me and the mist will come.” Now all my words are caught in my throat.

  The instant before I faint, I see more flashbulbs popping in the darkness, and then there is just the mist and the dark.

  When I come to, I am lying in the soup and the broken glass. The ceiling tile has water stains. You notice things on your back. The nurse from the cubicle and another one I don’t recognize are hovering over me, advising me to lie still. They are cloaked in the mist; their voices are far away. They are like Miss Shapiro in the parking lot.

  They have a pillow for my head. This is very like a dream. The nurse I don’t recognize is sponging gazpacho from my neck and arms with gauze pads and collecting shards of broken glass in her cupped hand.

  “I hope it’s not in my hair,” I say. “Please tell me the gazpacho is not in my hair.”

  “Your hair is fine. There are some superficial cuts on this arm. Please lie still while we clean you up.”

  “I have processed my hair with shampoo and conditioner. It made a dramatic improvement in my appearance.”

  “You don’t need to worry about your hair. Mrs. Grant is coming soon to take you back.”

  I twist my head so my eyes can search the room. The guard is not here, but neither is Luke. I’m certain he has escaped; I have created the diversion in spite of myself.

  In my room, Mrs. Grant removes my soiled shirt and puts it in a hamper. There are bandages on my right arm. I lie on the bed while she fits the blood pressure cuff to my left arm. I think of Luke at large and my pulse begins to race.

  “How are you feeling?” she wants to know.

  “I’m a little woozy. The static is gone and so is the mist.”

  “Your pulse is rapid.”

  “Mrs. Grant, please tell me what happened.”

  “You fainted, and your mason jar broke.”

  “I mean with Luke. What happened to Luke?”

  “He broke out.” Mrs. Grant’s lips are pursed with disapproval. “When everyone was fussing with you, he broke out.”

  “Something horrid will happen now, won’t it? What will happen to him?”

  “He’ll be caught, only now he’ll be in much more trouble than he was before. He had a violent row with the security guard.”

  I have seen his violence and I am suddenly short of breath. “Mrs. Grant, what violence? What happened?”

  “I didn’t see it, I only heard about it.”

  “Mrs. Grant, it really wasn’t my fault. I only wanted to share the gazpacho with him.”

  “Of course it wasn’t your fault.” She asks me to sit on the edge of the bed, which I do. She takes my blood pressure again.

  “Mrs. Grant, my heart is pounding and pounding. Is it possible for a person’s heart to just pound itself to death?”

  She smiles. “No, Grace, that isn’t possible.”

  I am taking deep breaths and exhaling slowly. “You have to understand one thing,” I say to her. “I would never, never do anything to hurt you.”

  “I know that, Grace. I don’t think you’re capable of hurting anyone. At least not on purpose. By the way, I don’t think I’ve mentioned how nice your hair looks.”

  It is comforting having her here, but I can only think of Luke. Is there suffering because of me? I am getting the shakes again, so I clamp my hands between my knees.

  “Mrs. Grant, I have no shirt on.” My very small breasts have very pebbly gooseflesh.

  “I know; I don’t want you to get chilled.” She puts away the blood pressure cuff and asks me if I’m still woozy.

  “No, just chilled. Mrs. Grant, you are a kind and generous person. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

  “I believed that the first time you said it. Here.” She sticks a thermometer in my mouth.

  I speak clumsily with the thermometer in my mouth: “The Looney Tunes tee shirt please, and my uncle’s fatigue jacket.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll be too warm with the fatigue jacket.”

  “But I need it. Please.”

  She reads the thermometer and gives me some pills in the little plastic cup while I slip into the shirt and the jacket. “It’s not time for my medicine, Mrs. Grant.”

  “Dr. Rowe is just increasing your Mellaril.”

  “I hope this doesn’t mean I’m in trouble.”

  “Of course not.”

  “They used to give me Thorazine. Several times they changed my dosage. How long will I be on this increased dosage?”

  “Not for very long, hopefully. Let’s wait and see, okay?”

  “Mrs. Grant, when you’re a cuckoo bird, you are like a chemistry experiment. They put chemicals in your body and then observe the results.”

  She smiles at me. “Come on, Grace. Down the hatch.”

  After I take the pills I ask her, “It isn’t my fault, is it?”

  “If you mean about Luke Wolfe, of course it’s not your fault. He’s perfectly capable of messing up his own life all by himself.”

  “Please don’t be too hard on him. He does have redeeming qualities.” Luke asked me to help him escape. I did it in spite of myself. I’m afraid to tell her the whole truth. “But I would never cause anyone’s suffering on purpose.”

  “I know that.”

  “I’m supposed to go home on pass tomorrow. Please tell me I still get to go.”

  “Of course you still have your pass. Why wouldn’t you?”

  She leaves me to rest and advises me to try and sleep. I try, but I have the shakes and my teeth are chattering. When I finally do fall asleep, I doze fitfully; no train comes, but I dream of the sticky, broken gazpacho and the flour on my mother’s apron.

  Nine

  Mother works the edge of the mixing bowl with a rubber scraper while I drop the dollops of batter in straight rows on the cookie sheet. The hedges of Allerton are straight and regular like geometry. I wonder if Miss Ivey helped to make her birthday cookies in the hospital cafeteria. Her vibrating wrist would be like an electric mixer. I wonder where Miss Ivey is now.

  “These are tollhouse cookies, Mother. We say chocolate chip, but their real name is tollhouse.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “I don’t know who makes the rules about naming cookies. Whose authority is it? But you wouldn’t offer someone a tollhouse cookie. You would offer them a chocolate chip cookie. You wouldn’t find a Girl Scout going d
oor to door selling tollhouse cookies.”

  My mother laughs.

  I put the cookie sheet in the preheated oven, and I say to her, “As far as that goes, what is a tollhouse? I know what a troll house is, it’s a place where a troll lives. But what is a tollhouse?”

  Mother is smiling. “Where does all of this lead, Grace?”

  “There are beginnings and endings but I can never locate them.”

  She wants me to go to her school with her to help decorate the gym for Halloween. I tell her I’d rather not.

  “You might enjoy it, Grace. You could meet the other teachers.”

  “It’s hard for me. People would know about me.”

  “They know you’ve been in the hospital, but they’re very kind people. No one would make you feel uncomfortable.”

  “Ghosts and goblins and black and orange crepe paper.”

  “Yes, basically. A few staples and some Scotch tape.”

  I know my mother means well. “Not this time, Mother. I don’t feel ready for it. I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  She has put the mixing bowl to soak and is washing her hands. “My feelings aren’t hurt, I just hate to see you miss out on things you might enjoy.”

  “I’ll come another time. I’ll spend some time writing in my journal while you’re gone. Dr. Rowe wants me to keep it up.”

  “I might be gone most of the afternoon. Will you be okay?”

  “I’m a little groggy because of the increased dosage. I think I’ll be fine, though.”

  “You won’t forget to take the cookies out? I’ve set the timer.”

  “I’ll probably forget, but the timer will remind me.”

  After she leaves I take my journal and go to the balcony where the sun is weak against the chilly air. I cloak the old wool Navajo blanket around me like a cowl and wedge my chair back under the eaves. There are no towels draped over the railing.

  I hope I’ll be able to hear the timer from up here; it’s very important. The scraggly Russian olive has lost all its leaves. It was forlorn when it had leaves, and now it’s naked.

  Then suddenly, I can think only of Luke.

  Is he safe or is he captured? What will the authorities do to him when they capture him? If he does get away, will he spend his whole life running from predicaments? There was violence, I wonder if he is suffering; with my whole heart I hope not. I may never see him again; in fact, it’s highly probable. It’s so very, very odd, the sense of loss I feel.

  I decide I’d better write these thoughts.

  I take out the ballpoint pen and the doorbell rings. My heart begins a rapid pounding. I didn’t see anyone approaching the apartment.

  The doorbell is ringing and my mother is gone. I will have to answer it myself, there is no one else. What if the pounding turns to palpitations? Maybe the person will go away.

  But it rings again and I rush downstairs. I crack the door and find that it is DeeDee. We hug each other and start talking. My cardiovascular system has returned to normal.

  She wants to know how I’m doing.

  “I think I’m doing better,” I say. “I get a better night’s sleep. I have learned the meaning of the train dream. Dr. Rowe has increased my Mellaril and sometimes I feel groggy.”

  “Are you home for good?”

  “No, this is just a pass. I have to go back Monday. Dr. Rowe says I’m not ready to be discharged yet. Mother says we have to trust Dr. Rowe and take one day at a time.”

  “I’m so sorry about what happened to you, Grace. We never talked about it when Miss Braverman and I visited you.”

  She means about the Surlies. I look away.

  “It was terrible what they did to you,” she says. “It was horrible.”

  I can’t look up. My stomach starts to swell. The halls at school are so long and there was the hot cigarette breath and there were hands tearing at my clothes. I swallow and take a deep breath.

  “If MacFarlane found out, they would be expelled from school and they would probably go to jail. It’s what they deserve. I don’t want to butt in, Grace, but I would stand by you. It was De Wayne and Brenda and those hoods, wasn’t it?”

  I know she means well, but my stomach is twisted. “I can’t say, DeeDee. I can’t talk about this. Please, my mother asks me the same thing.”

  “I’m really sorry, Grace. You know how I open my mouth sometimes. I’m really sorry. I don’t want to say things that might hurt you.”

  I look up and her eyes are bright, as if she has tears forming. Her hair is so lovely. “I was sick and you visited me,” I say. “You are a dear friend. You could never say anything wrong.” This could be a special moment. I would like to reach out and touch her. Dr. Rowe says it would be okay, but I don’t have the nerve. I wish I could tell her more, how much her friendship means to me, how much she teaches me about trust.

  But she says, “Can I change the subject? I brought you this.” She is giving me a folded piece of paper which turns out to be a handout on the science fair. I glance at the time of departure, the cost of meals, et cetera.

  “You’ll be out in time for the science fair, right? I hope so.”

  “I’m not sure. This is only a week from now. If I’m not out, I think Dr. Rowe would let me have another pass.”

  Then the timer goes off. It startles me. “The cookies are done,” I say. “There are cookies.”

  I take the cookie sheets from the oven and set them on the counter. DeeDee calls from the living room: “Do you need any help?”

  “No, thank you. These are chocolate chip cookies. In a few minutes we can eat some.”

  “That sounds good to me.”

  I am looking and looking at the cookies. So much order in the rows that are so regular. “Chocolate chip cookies are tollhouse cookies,” I call to her.

  “I know.”

  The rows are straight as arrows, up or down or diagonal, no matter which way you rotate the cookie sheets. So much geometry. And then I know, so suddenly and clearly it takes my breath away:

  The hedges of Allerton. Luke is at Allerton Park.

  It is vivid in my brain like a very sharp slide projected on a screen. He is at Allerton, in the sunken garden, where acoustics are so fine that sounds carry as easily as beams of light, where you can whisper at one end and be heard at the other.

  I lean on the counter and begin deep breathing. He is at Allerton. How do I know this?

  DeeDee is in the kitchen, with her hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay, Grace? What’s the matter?”

  “I think I’m fine. I need a few deep breaths and I’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. Sit down.”

  We sit at the kitchen table and I blurt it out with no introduction: “DeeDee, I know where Luke is. I know exactly where he is.”

  “It’s like you’re a million miles away. And who is Luke?”

  “Who would think the knowledge could come from cookies?” As quickly as I can, I summarize about Luke and how he broke out of the lockup wing. I use my deep breathing to keep control.

  “But you don’t know he’s there, you just think so.”

  “I know he’s there. I’m certain as anything.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I can’t explain it, I just know that he’s there. It’s amazing to me now. When I first met him I thought he was evil; he terrified me. I believed he was part of the Surly conspiracy. My voice warned me about him; that’s the sickness. Maybe you know him—he goes to West High, or at least he used to.”

  DeeDee shakes her head. “I don’t know him.”

  “The staff thinks he’s a psychopath, but he’s not; you have to know him beneath the surface. It’s a tragic thing if a life is wasted because a person never gets a chance to be understood.”

  DeeDee says if I’m so certain where he is, I should call the hospital staff or the authorities so they can bring him back.

  “Oh, DeeDee, I couldn’t. He would be in so much more trouble. He needs to come ba
ck on his own, for the right reasons.”

  “What do you mean, the right reasons?”

  “He has to trust somebody. He has to know that he can’t spend his whole life running away from people in authority or rebelling against them. He has to know that everything will go better for him if he comes back on his own.” I get one of the warm, soft cookies for myself and two for DeeDee.

  “Let’s say you’re right, and he is there. You can’t really be certain, but let’s say you’re right. What’s the point?”

  It’s hard for me to believe the next words that come out of my mouth: “I want to go get him. I want to bring him back.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I can’t force him to come back, I just want to convince him to come back on his own. DeeDee, please, I’m trying to ask you a huge favor. Would you drive me to Allerton?”

  “That’s almost two hours from here, isn’t it?”

  “Just about. It’s so hard for me to ask for favors, DeeDee. I was pushy with the nurse on lockup. Please, I need this favor; I need to do this.”

  “I’m supposed to drive you down there and bring him back in my car? When I don’t even know him and you told me he’s violent?”

  “Not bring him back, just drop me off. He wouldn’t come back with someone he doesn’t know anyway.”

  “Just drop you off? I’m sure.”

  “You don’t have to worry, I’ll be fine.”

  “You want me to drive you down there and leave you in the middle of nowhere? What kind of friend would I be?”

  “It’s not the middle of nowhere. I used to live there; I know all the grounds like the back of my hand.”

  DeeDee is shaking her head. “Why don’t you ask your mother to help you?”

  “My mother wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t want me to go near him, not after what those people at school did to me. She would call the hospital and tell them where to look for him, or she would tell me to forget it altogether. She would mean well, but that’s what she would do.”

  DeeDee is munching on her cookie. “Grace, you don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I do, though. Would you like another cookie?”

  “No, thanks. Grace, this is such an impulse. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to think it over for a day or two?”