The Black Hour (26 page)

“My mom died,” I said. My screeching voice rendered the statement hideous. Dr. Emmet looked up from lining up both drinks on her side of the table. “Cancer. Just, uh, last year.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yeah.”

“In her bed?” she said.

“In a hospital bed, after being sick at home for a long time. There’s something to be said for dying in a hospital, though. I mean—old age, in your sleep, sure. But. But we—were able to leave it there afterward. Mostly. There’s this afghan on the couch—”

I couldn’t tell her about that. Couldn’t tell her about the forest-green squares, the frilled edges. How it smelled of sickness and her shampoo and something else, pungent and ripe.

“I’m so sorry.” Her words slurred at the edges.

I shrugged and tried to smile a little. Grief unnerved people. Something I’d learned a long time ago.

“That’s the part you want to jump past,” she said. She had the last of the drinks in her hand. I waved off the bartender as he tried to bring us another round. “That’s the real stuff, there. As usual, I’m selfish. I want to leap past the—the
humiliation
.” She raised her voice for this last. The barman paused, then poured the rejected drinks into the sink.

“Maybe we should get you home, Dr. Emmet.”

“Here’s what I’ve been thinking. Just because I didn’t know him, that doesn’t mean he didn’t know me.”

“Leo.”

“Think about it. Say you want to make some point about violence. Say you want to make that point at Rah-rah-Rothbert.” She flicked her fingers like pom-poms. “Say you manage to get a gun. What a cute trick it would be to track down the professor who thinks she’s got this violence thing strapped down to the examining table and give her a surprise. Huh? That’s what I’ve been thinking.”

Her empty glass hit the table, heavy. She looked toward the bar. “Is he bringing us another?”

“Don’t you have to teach today, Dr. Emmet?”

“Does that make sense? Or am I foo—” She hiccupped. “Fooling myself? Maybe he looked me up in the faculty directory. I’ve been known to turn a few heads.
Right, Joe?
Used to. Used to turn—”

She looked over the row of empty glasses, then brought her elbows to the table and let her head fall into her fists.

“What?” I said.

“This is the part I want to skip. Right now.”

I reached across the table, then recoiled when I saw the bartender watching. “This we can skip,” I said. “Give me your keys.”

The drive took only a few minutes, but Dr. Emmet fell asleep before we reached her building. I sat for a while, giving her a chance to wake up on her own, thinking about Leo. Had the kid had some point to make? Or thought he did, only to have the meaning lost, like Dr. Emmet’s book, on fire in the barbecue? A big gesture, and nothing to show for it.

“Dr. Emmet.”

She cozied against the door.

“Dr.—
Amelia
.”

“What?”

I got out and went to her door. A few heavy knocks on the window got her to sit up so that I could open it, unbuckle her, and pull her out. I remembered the cane at the last minute.

I was her cane now, half-carrying her toward the door. “Which key?”

“’s code.” She managed a few buttons, sagging in my arms with the effort. If she hadn’t been recovering from a bullet wound, I might have thrown her over my shoulder. Instead, I hauled her inside as carefully as I could, tried the code I’d seen her use on one door for the next, and hustled us both into her apartment before any nosy neighbors gathered around.

Dr. Emmet sat heavily on the couch. She winced. “Pills.”

I took her bag from across her chest and rummaged until I found the bottle, the same one I’d retrieved for her at our first meeting. This time, I checked the label. The name of the drug was familiar, one of the pain meds my mom had taken at the last. “These? The orange ones?”

“Two.”

I filled a glass half-full at the kitchen sink, thinking about the heavy pours we’d had at the bar. Back at the couch, she’d slumped to one side. I handed her the glass and shook a single pill into her hand.

“
Two.
”

“That’s your second.”

She peered at the pill, then accepted the water and tossed it back.

I took the bottle back to the kitchen to find a hiding place. We’d done this for my mom, too, before the hospice nurse had taken over. The freezer would work. I’d leave a note, and when she could read and understand what it said, maybe she’d be ready for more pills.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said.

“You do?” For a second I thought she might tell me something useful. I didn’t know what I was doing. Then I realized she might mean my secret project. I stared at her, waiting for the pronouncement.

Nothing came. Her head lay against her chest in an awkward angle. “Dr. Emmet?”

Nothing.

Ohgod.

I rushed to her side and nudged her. “Dr. Emmet, please wake up.” Had even one pill been too much with all the alcohol? My mind leapt ahead to how much trouble I’d be in. Killing my research subject? So goddamned stupid.

I shook her shoulder until her teeth clattered together.

“Sssstop,” she moaned. “What?”

“OK, OK. You’re not—oh, Jesus. OK. How do you feel?” I leaned in to see her fluttering eyelids.

And then she threw up all over me. Herself, the couch, the floor.

She fell off the couch onto her hands and knees and retched until I was sure I’d join her.

When she’d finally stopped, the place was a crime scene, her clothes a total loss, and some of mine.

“Nathaniel,” she said. “I’m so—”

And then she started to cry. Not the silent tears of pain from our first meeting. The real kind, wretched and endless, like someone from a movie. Like someone at a funeral.

I patted her shoulder.

After a while, she quieted, sniffled. Her breath evened out. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “So sorry,” she whispered.

Dr. Emmet sat on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, while I tackled the floors and couch.

“I should probably say that I never saw my life coming to this,” she said. “But that’s a lie. I’ve been headed here for quite some time.”

I didn’t say anything. I’d thrown away the sweater I’d been wearing and located some cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink. In a way I couldn’t have explained to her, it felt good to have something to do. My dad and the nurse had taken most of the heavy work for my mom at the end, but I’d done my share during the first rounds of chemo. Scrubbing Dr. Emmet’s carpet seemed like I’d found a portal into another afternoon, another soiled floor. A slip through time to when I’d had more hope. When I looked up, the sight of Dr. Emmet rather than my mom jarred me back.

“No, really,” she said, though I hadn’t put up any argument. “The whole time. I’ve been in over my head all along. Wait ’til I tell you how long shoes had to last in my family. The hand-me-downs from people I’d never met. Didn’t want to meet. Hoped I’d never meet while I wore one of their shirts.” She looked around as though she’d just walked into the room for the first time. “This is all someone else. The person I was supposed to be. The person I promised I’d become.”

I’d stopped scrubbing and leaned back on my heels.

“They tell us all we have to do is work,” she said, smiling in a strange way at her hands. “Work hard. Work harder than anyone else, and you’ll rise. You’ll—find a way out. But it’s lonely once you do. They don’t tell you that. The ones you leave behind don’t understand.” She gave a strange, wheezy laugh. “But then the people you meet along the way aren’t yours, not the way—not the way the others were, or like you need them to be. You know how they got me?”

I’d lost track of which
they
we meant. “How?”

“They gave me a scholarship. They gave the poor little smart girl a scholarship so that she could go make something of herself.”

“And you did, didn’t you?”

She gazed over the room again. In a corner, I saw some framed certificates and diplomas, stacked on the floor in a careless pile. “Yes. I certainly made
something
of myself.”

“All clean,” I said.

“You didn’t have to do that. The—Ausra would have gotten to it.”

“Ausra?”

She glanced away. “Cleaning service.”

The rag went into the trash, the supplies back where I found them. “When? And then you’d have to find a new housekeeper. She’d definitely never want to see this place again.”

“You have every right to be pissed at me.” Her voice was hoarse, her eyes puffy.

“Your turn to get cleaned up.”

“I can do it.”

“Really?” I said. “Go ahead and stand up, then.”

We both knew she couldn’t. Cane or no cane, she’d be on the floor until someone pulled her up. She wouldn’t look at me.

“If you could get me to the bathroom, I’m sure I could take it from there.”

I didn’t think that was likely either. “We’ll see.”

“I could call someone. My—” She thought for a second. “Friend.”

She didn’t sound certain that such a person existed. “I’m your friend,” I said.

“But you’re—”

“It’s OK.”

“It is?”

How to explain to her the last year of my mom’s life. How everything fell away, how everything real became a symbol of itself. How my mother’s body became a talisman, a prayer, a wish. A moment of silence we all shared.

In the bathroom, I held Dr. Emmet upright while she brushed her teeth at the sink, then unwrapped her from the sodden blanket. She slid off her shoes, revealing strangely pale and naked feet.

This was—fine.

I helped her remove her sweater, her arms skinny in the T-shirt underneath. Then the T-shirt, my eyes averted. It was not OK in the least. She was who she was. She was not a specimen. She was not a whisper or a prayer. She was flesh and blood, the warmth of her body radiating toward me.

She paused, her hand at the button of her jeans. “Is it OK?”

I nodded, still not looking. She was not the memory or the shadow of herself. It shouldn’t be OK. It wasn’t. And it was.

I steadied her, her arm around my neck, as she pulled the pants down and stepped out of them. Bra and underwear, and long, pale legs.

I wasn’t looking, but then I was. The mirror. I could see the raw pink splotch in her abdomen, an explosion of new skin and scar tissue.

She found my eyes in the mirror.

Is it OK?
I knew what she really wanted to know, but I didn’t know the words.

“You’re—”

She hung from me as though I were a life raft, watching my lips for what I would say.

“You’re beautiful,” I said.

The space between us disappeared. Her lips were on mine, soft at first, then hard and hungry. For a moment I was gone, my body not my own.

I held on like a man drowning.

It wasn’t a kiss.

Was it?

I had started this. Or had he?

I couldn’t decide. I didn’t want to decide. I pressed into Nath, checking myself against him.

Was I alive?

Yes.

Was I desirable?

Yes.

My body hadn’t forgotten anything. Damaged, but not broken. Not wasted. I felt myself rise into Nath’s grasp, placing myself at his mercy. His hands were clumsy, but he was learning.