The Dead Zone
PART ONE The Wheel of Fortune Chapter Nine
1.
Johnny's first surgery was scheduled for May 28. Both Weizak and Brown had explained the procedure carefully to him. He would be given a local anesthetic - neither of them felt a general could be risked. This first operation would be on his knees and ankles. His own ligaments, which had shortened during his long sleep, would be lengthened with a combination of plastic wonder-fibers. The plastic to be used was also employed in heart valve bypass surgery. The question was not so much one of his body's acceptance or rejection of the artificial ligaments, Brown told him, as it was a question of his legs' ability to adjust to the change. if they had good results with the knees and the ankles, three more operations were on the boards: one on the long ligaments of his thighs, one on the elbow-trap ligaments, and possibly a third on his neck, which he could barely turn at all. The surgery was to be performed by Raymond Ruopp, who had pioneered the technique. He was flying in from San Francisco.
'What does this guy Ruopp want with me, if he's such a superstar?' Johnny asked. Superstar was a word he had learned from Marie. She had used it in connection with a balding, bespectacled singer with the unlikely name of Elton John.
'You're underestimating your own superstar qualities,' Brown answered. 'There are only a handful of people in the United States who have recovered from comas as long as yours was. And of that handful, your recovery from the accompanying brain damage has been the most radical and pleasing.'
Sam Weizak was more blunt. 'You're a guinea pig, huh?'
'What?'
'Yes. Look into the light, please.' Weizak shone a light into the pupil of Johnny's left eye. 'Did you know I can look right at your optic nerve with this thing? Yes. The eyes are more than the windows of the soul. They are one of the brain's most crucial maintenance points.'
'Guinea pig,' Johnny said morosely, staring into the savage point of light.
'Yes.' The light snapped off. 'Don't feel so sorry for yourself. Many of the techniques to be employed in your behalf - and some of those already employed - were perfected during the Vietnam war. No shortage of guinea pigs in the V.A. hospitals, nuh? A man like Ruopp is interested in you because you are unique. Here is a man who has slept four-and-a-half years. Can we make him walk again? An interesting problem. He sees the monograph he will write on it for The New England Journal of Medicine. He looks forward to it the way a child looks forward to new toys under the Christmas tree. He does not see you, he does not see Johnny Smith in his pain, Johnny Smith who must take the bedpan and ring for the nurse to scratch if his back itches. That's good. His hands will not shake. Smile, Johnny. This Ruopp looks like a bank clerk, but he is maybe the best surgeon in North America.'
But it was hard for Johnny to smile.
He had read his way dutifully through the tracts his mother had left him. They depressed him and left him frightened all over again for her sanity. One of them, by a man named Salem Kirban, struck him as nearly pagan in its loving contemplation of a bloody apocalypse and the yawning barbecue pits of hell. Another described the coming Antichrist in pulp-horror terms. The others were a dark carnival of craziness: Christ was living under the South Pole, God drove flying saucers, New York was Sodom, L.A. was Gomorrah. They dealt with exorcism, with witches, with all manner of things seen and unseen. It was impossible for him to reconcile the pamphlets with the religious yet earthy woman he had known before his coma.
Three days after the incident involving Weizak's snap-shot of his mother, a slim and dark-haired reporter from the Bangor Daily News named David Bright showed up at the door of Johnny's room and asked if he could have a short interview.
'Have you asked the doctors?' Johnny asked.
Bright grinned. 'Actually, no.'
'All right,' Johnny said. 'In that case, I'd be happy to talk to you.'
'You're a man after my own heart,' Bright said. He came in and sat down.
His first questions were about the accident and about Johnny's thoughts and feelings upon slipping out of the coma and discovering he had misplaced nearly half a decade. Johnny answered these questions honestly and straightforwardly. Then Bright told him that he had heard from 'a source' that Johnny had gained some sort of sixth sense as a result of the accident.
'Are you asking me if I'm psychic?'
Bright smiled and shrugged. 'That'll do for a start.'
Johnny had thought carefully about the things Weizak had said. The more he thought, the more it seemed to him that Weizak had done exactly the right thing when he hung up the phone without saying anything. Johnny had begun to associate it in his mind with that W. W. Jacobs story, 'The Monkey's Paw'. The paw was for wishing, but the price you paid for each of your three wishes was a black one. The old couple had wished for one hundred pounds and had lost their son in a mill accident - the mill's compensation had come to exactly one hundred pounds. Then the old woman had wished for her son back and he had come - but before she could open the door and see what a horror she had summoned out of its grave, the old man had used the last wish to send it back. As Weizak had said, maybe some things were better lost than found.
'No,' he said. 'I'm no more psychic than you are.'
'According to my source, you...
'No, it isn't true.'
Bright smiled a trifle cynically, seemed to debate pressing the matter further, then turned to a fresh page in his notebook. He began to ask about Johnny's prospects for the future, his feelings about the road back, and Johnny also answered these questions as honestly as he could.
'So what are you going to do when you get out of here?' Bright asked, closing his notebook.
'I haven't really thought about that. I'm still trying to adjust to the idea that Gerald Ford is the president.'
Bright laughed. 'You're not alone in that, my friend.'
'I suppose I'll go back to teaching. It's all I know. But right now that's too far ahead to think about.'
Bright thanked him for the interview and left. The artide appeared in the paper two days later, the day before his leg surgery. It was on the bottom of the front page, and the headline read: JOHN SMITH, MODERN RIP VAN WINKLE, FACES LONG ROAD BACK.
There were three pictures, one of them Johnny's picture for the Cleaves Mills High School yearbook (it had been taken barely a week before the accident), a picture of Johnny in his hospital bed, looking thin and twisted with his arms and legs in their bent positions. Between these two was a picture of the almost totally demolished taxi, lying on its side like a dead dog. There was no mention in Bright's artide of sixth senses, precognitive powers, or wild talents.
'How did you turn him off the ESP angle?' Weizak asked him that evening.
Johnny shrugged. 'He seemed like a nice guy. Maybe he didn't want to stick me with it.'
'Maybe not,' Weizak said. 'But he won't forget it. Not if he's a good reporter, and I understand that he is.'
'You understand?'
'I asked around.'
'Looking out for my best interests?'
'We all do what we can, nuh? Are you nervous about tomorrow, Johnny?'
'Not nervous, no. Scared is a more accurate word.'
'Yes, of course you are. I would be.'
'Will you be there?'
'Yes, in the observation section of the operating theater. You won't be able to tell me from the others in my greens, but I will be there.'
'Wear something,' Johnny said. 'Wear something so I'll know it's you.'
Weizak looked at him, and smiled. 'All right. I'll pin my watch to my tunic.'
'Good,' Johnny said. 'What about Dr. Brown? Will he be there?'
'Dr. Brown is in Washington. Tomorrow he will present you to the American Society of Neurologists. I have read his paper. It is quite good. Perhaps overstated.'
'You weren't invited?'
Weizak shrugged. 'I don't like to fly. That is something that scares me-'
'And maybe you wanted to stay here?'
Weizak smiled crookedly, spread his hands, and said nothing.
'He doesn't like me much, does he?' Johnny asked. 'Dr. Brown?'
'No, not much,' Weizak said. 'He thinks you are having us on. Making things up for some reason of your own. Seeking attention, perhaps. Don't judge him solely on that, John. His cast of mind makes it impossible for him to think otherwise. if you feel anything for Jim, feel a little pity. He is a brilliant man, and he will go far. Already he has offers, and someday soon he will fly from these cold north woods and Bangor will see him no more. He will go to Houston or Hawaii or possibly even to Paris. But he is curiously limited. He is a mechanic of the brain. He has cut it to pieces with his scalpel and found no soul. Therefore there is none. Like the Russian astronauts who circled the earth and did not see God. It is the empiricism of the mechanic, and a mechanic is only a child with superior motor control. You must never tell him I said that.'
'No.'
'And now you must rest. Tomorrow you have a long day.
2.
All Johnny saw of the worldfamous Dr. Ruopp during the operation was a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses and a large wen at the extreme left side of the man's forehead. The rest of him was capped, gowned, and gloved.
Johnny had been given two preop injections, one of demerol and one of atropine, and when he was wheeled in he was as high as a kite. The anesthetist approached with the biggest novocaine needle Johnny had ever seen in his life. He expected that the injection would hurt, and he was not wrong. He was injected between L4 and L5, the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, high enough up to avoid the cauda equina, that bundle of nerves at the base of the spine that vaguely resembles a horse's tail.
Johnny lay on his stomach and bit his arm to keep from screaming.
After an endless time, the pain began to fade to a dull sensation of pressure. Otherwise, the lower half of his body was totally gone.
Ruopp's face loomed over him. The green bandit, Johnny thought. Jesse James in horn-rims. Your money or your life.
'Are you comfortable, Mr. Smith?' Ruopp asked.
'Yes. But I'd just as soon not go through that again.'
'You may read magazines, if you like. Or you may watch in the mirror, if you feel it will not upset you.'
'All right.'
'Nurse, give me a blood pressure, please.'
'One-twenty over seventy-six, Doctor.'
'That's lovely. Well, group, shall we begin?'
'Save me a drumstick,' Johnny said weakly, and was surprised by the hearty laughter. Ruopp patted his sheet-covered shoulder with one thinly gloved hand.
He watched Ruopp select a scalpel and disappear behind the green drapes hung over the metal hoop that curved above Johnny. The mirror was convex, and Johnny had a fairly good if slightly distorted view of everything.
'Oh yes,' Ruopp said. 'Oh yes, dee-de-dee ... here's what we want ... hum-de-hum... okay ... damp, please, Nurse, come on, wake up for Christ's sake ... yes sir ... now I believe I'd like one of those... no, hold it... don't give me what I ask for, give me what I need ... yes, okay. Strap, please.'
With forceps, the nurse handed Ruopp something that looked like a bundle of thin wires twisted together. Ruopp picked them delicately out of the air with tweezers.
Like an Italian dinner, Johnny thought, and look at all that spaghetti sauce. That was what made him feel ill, and he looked away. Above him, in the gallery, the rest of the bandit gang looked down at him. Their eyes looked pale and merciless and frightening. Then he spotted Weizak, third from the right, his watch pinned neatly to the front of his gown.
Johnny nodded.
Weizak nodded back.
That made it a little better.
3.
Ruopp finished the connections between his knees and calves, and Johnny was turned over. Things continued. The anesthesiologist asked him if he felt all right. Johnny told her he thought he felt as well as possible under the circumstances. She asked him if he would like to listen to a tape and he said that would be very nice. A few moments later the dear, sweet voice of Joan Baez filled the operating room. Ruopp did his thing. Johnny grew sleepy and dozed off. When he woke up the operation was still going on. Weizak was still there. Johnny raised one hand, acknowledging his presence, and Weizak nodded again.
4.
An hour later it was done. He was wheeled into a recovery room where a nurse kept asking him if he could tell her how many of his toes she was touching. After a while, Johnny could.
Ruopp came in, his bandit's mask hanging off to one side.
'All right?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'It went very well,' Ruopp said. 'I'm optimistic.'
'Good.'
'You'll have some pain,' Ruopp said. 'Quite a lot of it, perhaps. The therapy itself will give you a lot of pain at first. Stick with it.'
'Stick with it,' Johnny muttered.
'Good afternoon,' Ruopp said, and left. Probably, Johnny thought, to play a quick nine on the local golf course before it got too dark.
5.
Quite a lot of pain.
By nine P.M. the last of the local had worn off, and Johnny was in agony. He was forbidden to move his legs without the help of two nurses. It felt as if nail-studded belts had been looped around his knees and then cinched cruelly tight. Time slowed to an inchworm's crawl. He would glance at his watch, sure that an hour had passed since the last time he had looked at it, and would see instead that it had only been four minutes. He became sure he couldn't stand the pain for another minute, then the minute would pass, and he would be sure he couldn't stand it for another minute.
He thought of all the minutes stacked up ahead, like coins in a slot five miles high, and the blackest depression he had ever known swept over him in a smooth solid wave and carried him down. They were going to torture him to death. Operations on his elbows, thighs, his neck. Therapy. Walkers, wheelchairs, canes.
You're going to have pain ... stick with it.
No, you stick with it, Johnny thought. Just leave me alone. Don't come near me again with your butchers' knives. If this is your idea of helping, I want no part of it.
Steady throbbing pain, digging into the meat of him.
Warmth on his belly, trickling.
He had wet himself.
Johnny Smith turned his face toward the wall and cried.
6.
Ten days after that first operation and two weeks before the next one was scheduled, Johnny looked up from the book he was reading - Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men - and saw Sarah standing in the doorway, looking at him hesitantly.
'Sarah,' he said. 'It is you, isn't it?'
She let out her breath shakily. 'Yes. It's me, Johnny.'
He put the book down and looked at her. She was smartly dressed in a light-green linen dress, and she held a small, brown clutch bag in front of her like a shield. She had put a streak in her hair and it looked good. It also made him feel a sharp and twisting stab of jealousy -had it been her idea, or that of the man she lived and slept with? She was beautiful.
'Come in,' he said. 'Come in and sit down.'
She crossed the room and suddenly he saw himself as she must see him - too thin, his body slumped a little to one side in the chair by the window, his legs stuck out straight on the hassock, dressed in a johnny and a cheap hospital bathrobe.
'As you can see, I put on my tux,' he said.
'You look fine.' She kissed his cheek and a hundred memories shuffled brightly through his mind like a doubled pack of cards. She sat in the other chair, crossed her legs, and tugged at the hem of her dress.
They looked at each other without saying anything.
He saw that she was very nervous. If someone were to touch her on the shoulder, she would probably spring right out of her seat.
'I didn't know if I should come,' she said, 'but I really wanted to.'
'I'm glad you did.'
Like strangers on a bus, he thought dismally. It's got to be more than this, doesn't it?
'So how're you doing?' she asked.
He smiled. 'I've been in the war. Want to see my battle scars?' He raised his gown over his knees, showing the S-shaped incisions that were now beginning to heal. They were still red and hashmarked with stitches.
'Oh, my Lord, what are they doing to you?'
'They're trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again,' Johnny said. 'All the king's horses, all the king's men, and all the king's doctors. So I guess.. 'And then he stopped, because she was crying.
'Don't say it like that. Johnny,' she said. 'Please don't say it like that.'
'I'm sorry. It was just ... I was trying to joke about it.' Was that it? Had he been trying to laugh it off or had it been a way of saying, Thanks for coming to see me, they're cutting me to pieces?
'Can you? Can you joke about it?' She had gotten a Kleenex from the clutch bag and was wiping her eyes with it.
'Not very often. I guess seeing you again ... the defenses go up, Sarah.'
'Are they going to let you out of here?'
'Eventually. It's like running the gauntlet in the old days, did you ever read about that? If I'm still alive after every Indian in the tribe has had a swing at me with his tomahawk, I get to go free.'
'This summer?'
'No, I... I don't think so.'
'I'm so sorry it happened,' she said, so low he could barely hear her. 'I try to figure out why... or how things could have changed -,. and it just robs me of sleep. if I hadn't eaten that bad hot dog ... if you had stayed instead of going back...' She shook her head and looked at him, her eyes red. 'It seems sometimes there's no percentage.
Johnny smiled. 'Double zero. House spin. Hey, you remember that? I clobbered that Wheel, Sarah.'
'Yes. You won over five hundred dollars.
He looked at her, still smiling, but now the smile was puzzled, wounded almost. 'You want to know something funny? My doctors think maybe the reason I lived was because I had some sort of head injury when I was young. But I couldn't remember any, and neither could my mom and dad. But it seems like every time I think of it, I flash on that Wheel of Fortune ... and a smell like burning rubber.'
'Maybe you were in a car accident...' she began doubtfully.
'No, I don't think that's it. But it's like the Wheel was my warning... and I ignored it.'
She shifted a little and said uneasily, 'Don't, Johnny.'
He shrugged. 'Or maybe it was just that I used up four years of luck in one evening. But look at this, Sarah.' Carefully, painfully, he took one leg off the hassock, bent it to a ninety degree angle, then stretched it out on the hassock again. 'Maybe they can put Humpty back together again. When I woke up, I couldn't do that, and I couldn't get my legs to straighten out as much as they are now, either.'
'And you can think, Johnny,' she said. 'You can talk. We all thought that... you know.'
'Yeah, Johnny the turnip.' A silence fell between them again, awkward and heavy. Johnny broke it by saying with forced brightness, 'So how's by you?'
'Well... I'm married. I guess you knew that.'
'Dad told me.'
'He's such a fine man,' Sarah said. And then, in a burst, 'I couldn't wait, Johnny. I'm sorry about that, too. The doctors said you'd never come out of it, that you'd get lower and lower until you just... just slipped away. And
even if I had known ...' She looked up at him with an uneasy expression of defense on her face. 'Even if I had known, Johnny, I don't think I could have waited. Four-and-a-half years is a long time.'
'Yeah, it is,' he said. 'That's a hell of a long time. You want to hear something morbid? I got them to bring me four years worth of news magazines just so I could see who died. Truman. Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix - Jesus, I thought of him doing "Purple Haze" and I could hardly believe it. Dan Blocker. And you and me. We just slipped away.'
'I feel so bad about it,' she said, nearly whispering. 'So damn guilty. But I love the guy, Johnny. I love him a lot.'
'Okay, that's what matters.'
'His name is Walt Hazlett, and he's a...'
'I think I'd rather hear about your kid,' Johnny said. 'No offense, huh?'
'He's a peach,' she said, smiling. 'He's seven months old now. His name is Dennis but we call him Denny. He's named after his paternal grandfather.'
'Bring him in sometime. I'd like to see him.'
'I will,' Sarah said, and they smiled at each other falsely, knowing that nothing of the kind was ever going to happen. 'Johnny, is there anything that you need?'
Only you, babe. And the last four-and-a-half years back again.
'Nah,' he said. 'You still teachin?'
'Still teachin, for a while yet,' she agreed.
'Still snortin that wicked cocaine?'
'Oh Johnny, you haven't changed. Same old tease.'
'Same old tease,' he agreed, and the silence fell between them again with an almost audible thump.
'Can I come see you again?'
'Sure,' he said. 'That would be fine, Sarah.' He hesitated, not wanting it to end so inconclusively, not wanting to hurt her or himself if it could be avoided. Wanting to say something honest.
'Sarah,' he said, 'you did the right thing.'
'Did I?' she asked. She smiled, and it trembled at the corners of her mouth. 'I wonder. It all seems so cruel and ... I can't help it, so wrong. I love my husband and my baby, and when Walt says that someday we're going to be living in the finest house in Bangor, I believe him. He says someday he's going to run for Bill Cohen's seat in the House, and I believe that, too. He says someday someone from Maine is going to be elected president, and I can almost believe that. And I come in here and look at your poor legs...' She was beginning to cry again now. 'They look like they went through a Mixmaster or something and you're so thin ...
'No, Sarah, don't.'
'You're so thin and it seems wrong and cruel and I hate it, I hate it, because it isn't right at all, none of it!'
'Sometimes nothing is right, I guess,' he said. 'Tough old world. Sometimes you just have to do what you can and try to live with it. You go and be happy, Sarah. Ann if you want to come and see me, come on and come. Bring a cribbage board.'
'I will,' she said. 'I'm sorry to cry. Not very cheery for you, huh?'
'It's all right,' he said, and smiled. 'You want to get off that cocaine, baby. Your nose'll fall off.'
She laughed a little. 'Same old Johnny,' she said. Suddenly she bent and kissed his mouth. '0h Johnny, be well soon.'
He looked at her thoughtfully as she drew away.
'Johnny?'
'You didn't leave it,' he said. 'No, you didn't leave it at all.'
'Leave what?' She was frowning in puzzlement.
'Your wedding ring. You didn't leave it in Montreal.'
He had put his hand up to his forehead and was rubbing the patch of skin over his right eye with his fingers. His arm cast a shadow and she saw with something very like superstitious fear that his face was half-light, half-dark. It made her think of the Halloween mask he had scared her with. She and Walt had honeymooned in Montreal, but how could Johnny know that? Unless maybe Herb had told him. Yes, that was almost certainly it. But only she and Walt knew that she had lost her wedding ring somewhere in the hotel room. No one else knew because he had bought her another ring before they flew home. She had been too embarrassed to tell anyone, even her mother.
'How...
Johnny frowned deeply, then smiled at her. His hand fell away from his forehead and clasped its mate in his lap.
'It wasn't sized right,' he said. 'You were packing, don't you remember, Sarah? He was out buying something and you were packing. He was out buying... buying... don't know. It's in the dead zone.'
Dead zone?
'He went out to a novelty shop and bought a whole bunch of silly stuff as souvenirs. Whoopee cushions and things like that. But Johnny, how could you know I lost my r...
'You were packing. The ring wasn't sized right, it was a lot too big. You were going to have it taken care of when you got back. But in the meantime, you.. ....... That puzzled frown began to return, then cleared immediately. He smiled at her. 'You stuffed it with toilet paper!'
There was no question about the fear now. It was coiling lazily in her stomach like cold water. Her hand crept up to her throat and she stared at him, nearly hypnotized. He's got the same look in his eyes, that same cold amused look that he had when he was beating the Wheel that night. What's happened to you, Johnny? What are you? The blue of his eyes had darkened to a near violet, and he seemed far away. She wanted to run. The room itself seemed to be darkening, as if he were somehow tearing the fabric of reality, pulling apart the links between past and present.
'It slipped off your finger,' he said. 'You were putting his shaving stuff into one of those side pockets and it just sllipped off. You didn't notice you'd lost it until later, and so you thought it was somewhere in the room.' He laughed, and it was a high, tinkling, tripping sound - not like Johnny's usual laugh at all - but cold ... cold. 'Boy, you two turned that room upside down. But you packed it. It's still in that suitcase pocket. All this time. You go up in the attic and look, Sarah. You'll see.'
In the corridor outside, someone dropped a water glass or something and cursed in surprise when it broke. Johnny glanced toward the sound, and his eyes cleared. He looked back, saw her frozen, wide-eyed face, and frowned with concern.
'What? Sarah, did I say something wrong?'
'How did you know?' she whispered. 'How could you know those things?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'Sarah, I'm sorry' if I...' 'Johnny, I ought to go, Denny's with the sitter.' 'All right. Sarah, I'm sorry I upset you.'
'How could you know about my ring, Johnny?' He could only shake his head.
7.
Halfway down the first-floor corridor, her stomach began to feel strange. She found the ladies' just in time. She hurried in, dosed the door of one of the stalls, and threw up violently. She flushed and then stood with her eyes closed, shivering, but also close to laughter. The last time she had seen Johnny she had thrown up, too. Rough justice? Brackets in time, like bookends? She put her hands over her mouth to stifle whatever might be trying to get out - laughter or maybe a scream. And in the darkness the world seemed to tilt irrationally, like a dish. Like a spinning Wheel of Fortune.
8.
She had left Denny with Mrs. Labelle, so when she got home the house was silent and empty. She went up the narrow stairway to the attic and turned the switch that controlled the two bare, dangling light bulbs. Their luggage was stacked up in one corner, the Montreal travel stickers still pasted to the sides of the orange Grants' suitcases. There were three of them. She opened the first, felt through the elasticized side pouches, and found nothing. Likewise the second. Likewise the third.
She drew in a deep breath and then let it out, feeling foolish and a little disappointed - but mostly relieved. Overwhelmingly relieved. No ring. Sorry, Johnny. But on the other hand, I'm not sorry at all. It would have been just a little bit too spooky.
She started to slide the suitcases back into place between a tall pile of Walt's old college texts and the floor lamp that crazy woman's dog had knocked over and which Sarah had never had the heart to throw out. And as she dusted off her hands preparatory to putting the whole thing behind her, a small voice far inside her whispered, almost too low to hear, Sort of a flying search, wasn't it? Didn't really want to find anything, did you, Sarah?
No. No, she really hadn't wanted to find anything. And if that little voice thought she was going to open all those suitcases again, it was crazy. She was fifteen minutes in picking up Denny. Walt was bringing home one of the senior partners in his firm for dinner (a very big deal), and she owed Bettye Hackman a letter - from the Peace Corps in Uganda, Bettye had gone directly into marriage with the son of a staggeringly rich Kentucky horse breeder. Also, she ought to dean both bathrooms, set her hair, and give Denny a bath. There was really too much to do to be frigging around up in this hot, dirty attic.
So she pulled all three suitcases open again and this time she searched the side pockets very carefully, and tucked all the way down in the corner of the third suitcase she found her wedding ring. She held it up to the glare of one of the naked bulbs and read the engraving inside, still as fresh as it had been on the day Walt slipped the ring on her finger: WALTER AND SARAH HAZLETT - JULY 9, 1972.
Sarah looked at it for a long time.
Then she put the suitcases back, turned off the lights, and went back downstairs. She changed out of the linen dress, which was now streaked with dust, and into slacks and a light top. She went down the block to Mrs. Labelle's and picked up her son. They went home and Sarah put Denny in the living room, where he crawled around vigorously while she prepared the roast and peeled some potatoes. With the roast in the oven, she went into the living room and saw that Denny had gone to sleep on the rug. She picked him up and put him in his crib. Then she began to dean the toilets. And in spite of everything, in spite of the way the dock was racing toward dinnertime, her mind never left the ring. Johnny had known. She could even pinpoint the moment he had come by this knowledge. When she had kissed him before leaving.
Just thinking about him made her feel weak and strange, and she wasn't sure why. It was all mixed up. His crooked smile, so much the same, his body, so terribly changed, so light and undernourished, the lifeless way his hair lay against his scalp contrasting so blindingly with the rich memories she still held of him. She had wanted to kiss him.
'Stop it,' she murmured to herself. Her face in the bathroom mirror looked like a stranger's face. Flushed and hot and let's face it, gang, sexy.
Her hand dosed on the ring in the pocket of her slacks, and almost - but not quite - before she was aware of what she was going to do, she had thrown it into the clean, slightly blue water of the toilet bowl. All sparkly clean so that if Mr. Treaches of Baribault, Treaches, Moorehouse, and Gendron had to take a leak sometime during the dinner party, he wouldn't be offended by any unsightly ring around the bowl, who knows what road-blocks may stand in the way of a young man on his march toward the counsels of the mighty, right? Who knows anything in this world?
It made a tiny splash and sank slowly to the bottom of the dear water, turning lazily over and over. She thought she heard a small clink when it struck the porcelain at the bottom, but that was probably just imagination. Her
head throbbed. The attic had been hot and stale and musty. But Johnny's kiss - that had been sweet. So sweet.
Before she could think about what she was doing (and thus allow reason to reassert itself), she reached out and flushed the toilet. It went with a bang and a roar. It seemed louder, maybe, because her eyes were squeezed shut. When she opened them, the ring was gone. It had been lost, and now it was lost again.
Suddenly her legs felt weak and she sat down on the edge of the tub and put her hands over her face. Her hot, hot face. She wouldn't go back and see Johnny again. It wasn't a good idea. It had upset her. Walt was bringing home a senior partner and she had a bottle of Mondavi and a budget-fracturing roast, those were the things she would think about. She should be thinking about how much she loved Walt, and about Denny asleep in his crib. She should think about how, once you made your choices in this crazy world, you had to live with them. And she would not think about Johnny Smith and his crooked, charming smile anymore.
9.
The dinner that night was a great success.
Johnny's first surgery was scheduled for May 28. Both Weizak and Brown had explained the procedure carefully to him. He would be given a local anesthetic - neither of them felt a general could be risked. This first operation would be on his knees and ankles. His own ligaments, which had shortened during his long sleep, would be lengthened with a combination of plastic wonder-fibers. The plastic to be used was also employed in heart valve bypass surgery. The question was not so much one of his body's acceptance or rejection of the artificial ligaments, Brown told him, as it was a question of his legs' ability to adjust to the change. if they had good results with the knees and the ankles, three more operations were on the boards: one on the long ligaments of his thighs, one on the elbow-trap ligaments, and possibly a third on his neck, which he could barely turn at all. The surgery was to be performed by Raymond Ruopp, who had pioneered the technique. He was flying in from San Francisco.
'What does this guy Ruopp want with me, if he's such a superstar?' Johnny asked. Superstar was a word he had learned from Marie. She had used it in connection with a balding, bespectacled singer with the unlikely name of Elton John.
'You're underestimating your own superstar qualities,' Brown answered. 'There are only a handful of people in the United States who have recovered from comas as long as yours was. And of that handful, your recovery from the accompanying brain damage has been the most radical and pleasing.'
Sam Weizak was more blunt. 'You're a guinea pig, huh?'
'What?'
'Yes. Look into the light, please.' Weizak shone a light into the pupil of Johnny's left eye. 'Did you know I can look right at your optic nerve with this thing? Yes. The eyes are more than the windows of the soul. They are one of the brain's most crucial maintenance points.'
'Guinea pig,' Johnny said morosely, staring into the savage point of light.
'Yes.' The light snapped off. 'Don't feel so sorry for yourself. Many of the techniques to be employed in your behalf - and some of those already employed - were perfected during the Vietnam war. No shortage of guinea pigs in the V.A. hospitals, nuh? A man like Ruopp is interested in you because you are unique. Here is a man who has slept four-and-a-half years. Can we make him walk again? An interesting problem. He sees the monograph he will write on it for The New England Journal of Medicine. He looks forward to it the way a child looks forward to new toys under the Christmas tree. He does not see you, he does not see Johnny Smith in his pain, Johnny Smith who must take the bedpan and ring for the nurse to scratch if his back itches. That's good. His hands will not shake. Smile, Johnny. This Ruopp looks like a bank clerk, but he is maybe the best surgeon in North America.'
But it was hard for Johnny to smile.
He had read his way dutifully through the tracts his mother had left him. They depressed him and left him frightened all over again for her sanity. One of them, by a man named Salem Kirban, struck him as nearly pagan in its loving contemplation of a bloody apocalypse and the yawning barbecue pits of hell. Another described the coming Antichrist in pulp-horror terms. The others were a dark carnival of craziness: Christ was living under the South Pole, God drove flying saucers, New York was Sodom, L.A. was Gomorrah. They dealt with exorcism, with witches, with all manner of things seen and unseen. It was impossible for him to reconcile the pamphlets with the religious yet earthy woman he had known before his coma.
Three days after the incident involving Weizak's snap-shot of his mother, a slim and dark-haired reporter from the Bangor Daily News named David Bright showed up at the door of Johnny's room and asked if he could have a short interview.
'Have you asked the doctors?' Johnny asked.
Bright grinned. 'Actually, no.'
'All right,' Johnny said. 'In that case, I'd be happy to talk to you.'
'You're a man after my own heart,' Bright said. He came in and sat down.
His first questions were about the accident and about Johnny's thoughts and feelings upon slipping out of the coma and discovering he had misplaced nearly half a decade. Johnny answered these questions honestly and straightforwardly. Then Bright told him that he had heard from 'a source' that Johnny had gained some sort of sixth sense as a result of the accident.
'Are you asking me if I'm psychic?'
Bright smiled and shrugged. 'That'll do for a start.'
Johnny had thought carefully about the things Weizak had said. The more he thought, the more it seemed to him that Weizak had done exactly the right thing when he hung up the phone without saying anything. Johnny had begun to associate it in his mind with that W. W. Jacobs story, 'The Monkey's Paw'. The paw was for wishing, but the price you paid for each of your three wishes was a black one. The old couple had wished for one hundred pounds and had lost their son in a mill accident - the mill's compensation had come to exactly one hundred pounds. Then the old woman had wished for her son back and he had come - but before she could open the door and see what a horror she had summoned out of its grave, the old man had used the last wish to send it back. As Weizak had said, maybe some things were better lost than found.
'No,' he said. 'I'm no more psychic than you are.'
'According to my source, you...
'No, it isn't true.'
Bright smiled a trifle cynically, seemed to debate pressing the matter further, then turned to a fresh page in his notebook. He began to ask about Johnny's prospects for the future, his feelings about the road back, and Johnny also answered these questions as honestly as he could.
'So what are you going to do when you get out of here?' Bright asked, closing his notebook.
'I haven't really thought about that. I'm still trying to adjust to the idea that Gerald Ford is the president.'
Bright laughed. 'You're not alone in that, my friend.'
'I suppose I'll go back to teaching. It's all I know. But right now that's too far ahead to think about.'
Bright thanked him for the interview and left. The artide appeared in the paper two days later, the day before his leg surgery. It was on the bottom of the front page, and the headline read: JOHN SMITH, MODERN RIP VAN WINKLE, FACES LONG ROAD BACK.
There were three pictures, one of them Johnny's picture for the Cleaves Mills High School yearbook (it had been taken barely a week before the accident), a picture of Johnny in his hospital bed, looking thin and twisted with his arms and legs in their bent positions. Between these two was a picture of the almost totally demolished taxi, lying on its side like a dead dog. There was no mention in Bright's artide of sixth senses, precognitive powers, or wild talents.
'How did you turn him off the ESP angle?' Weizak asked him that evening.
Johnny shrugged. 'He seemed like a nice guy. Maybe he didn't want to stick me with it.'
'Maybe not,' Weizak said. 'But he won't forget it. Not if he's a good reporter, and I understand that he is.'
'You understand?'
'I asked around.'
'Looking out for my best interests?'
'We all do what we can, nuh? Are you nervous about tomorrow, Johnny?'
'Not nervous, no. Scared is a more accurate word.'
'Yes, of course you are. I would be.'
'Will you be there?'
'Yes, in the observation section of the operating theater. You won't be able to tell me from the others in my greens, but I will be there.'
'Wear something,' Johnny said. 'Wear something so I'll know it's you.'
Weizak looked at him, and smiled. 'All right. I'll pin my watch to my tunic.'
'Good,' Johnny said. 'What about Dr. Brown? Will he be there?'
'Dr. Brown is in Washington. Tomorrow he will present you to the American Society of Neurologists. I have read his paper. It is quite good. Perhaps overstated.'
'You weren't invited?'
Weizak shrugged. 'I don't like to fly. That is something that scares me-'
'And maybe you wanted to stay here?'
Weizak smiled crookedly, spread his hands, and said nothing.
'He doesn't like me much, does he?' Johnny asked. 'Dr. Brown?'
'No, not much,' Weizak said. 'He thinks you are having us on. Making things up for some reason of your own. Seeking attention, perhaps. Don't judge him solely on that, John. His cast of mind makes it impossible for him to think otherwise. if you feel anything for Jim, feel a little pity. He is a brilliant man, and he will go far. Already he has offers, and someday soon he will fly from these cold north woods and Bangor will see him no more. He will go to Houston or Hawaii or possibly even to Paris. But he is curiously limited. He is a mechanic of the brain. He has cut it to pieces with his scalpel and found no soul. Therefore there is none. Like the Russian astronauts who circled the earth and did not see God. It is the empiricism of the mechanic, and a mechanic is only a child with superior motor control. You must never tell him I said that.'
'No.'
'And now you must rest. Tomorrow you have a long day.
2.
All Johnny saw of the worldfamous Dr. Ruopp during the operation was a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses and a large wen at the extreme left side of the man's forehead. The rest of him was capped, gowned, and gloved.
Johnny had been given two preop injections, one of demerol and one of atropine, and when he was wheeled in he was as high as a kite. The anesthetist approached with the biggest novocaine needle Johnny had ever seen in his life. He expected that the injection would hurt, and he was not wrong. He was injected between L4 and L5, the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, high enough up to avoid the cauda equina, that bundle of nerves at the base of the spine that vaguely resembles a horse's tail.
Johnny lay on his stomach and bit his arm to keep from screaming.
After an endless time, the pain began to fade to a dull sensation of pressure. Otherwise, the lower half of his body was totally gone.
Ruopp's face loomed over him. The green bandit, Johnny thought. Jesse James in horn-rims. Your money or your life.
'Are you comfortable, Mr. Smith?' Ruopp asked.
'Yes. But I'd just as soon not go through that again.'
'You may read magazines, if you like. Or you may watch in the mirror, if you feel it will not upset you.'
'All right.'
'Nurse, give me a blood pressure, please.'
'One-twenty over seventy-six, Doctor.'
'That's lovely. Well, group, shall we begin?'
'Save me a drumstick,' Johnny said weakly, and was surprised by the hearty laughter. Ruopp patted his sheet-covered shoulder with one thinly gloved hand.
He watched Ruopp select a scalpel and disappear behind the green drapes hung over the metal hoop that curved above Johnny. The mirror was convex, and Johnny had a fairly good if slightly distorted view of everything.
'Oh yes,' Ruopp said. 'Oh yes, dee-de-dee ... here's what we want ... hum-de-hum... okay ... damp, please, Nurse, come on, wake up for Christ's sake ... yes sir ... now I believe I'd like one of those... no, hold it... don't give me what I ask for, give me what I need ... yes, okay. Strap, please.'
With forceps, the nurse handed Ruopp something that looked like a bundle of thin wires twisted together. Ruopp picked them delicately out of the air with tweezers.
Like an Italian dinner, Johnny thought, and look at all that spaghetti sauce. That was what made him feel ill, and he looked away. Above him, in the gallery, the rest of the bandit gang looked down at him. Their eyes looked pale and merciless and frightening. Then he spotted Weizak, third from the right, his watch pinned neatly to the front of his gown.
Johnny nodded.
Weizak nodded back.
That made it a little better.
3.
Ruopp finished the connections between his knees and calves, and Johnny was turned over. Things continued. The anesthesiologist asked him if he felt all right. Johnny told her he thought he felt as well as possible under the circumstances. She asked him if he would like to listen to a tape and he said that would be very nice. A few moments later the dear, sweet voice of Joan Baez filled the operating room. Ruopp did his thing. Johnny grew sleepy and dozed off. When he woke up the operation was still going on. Weizak was still there. Johnny raised one hand, acknowledging his presence, and Weizak nodded again.
4.
An hour later it was done. He was wheeled into a recovery room where a nurse kept asking him if he could tell her how many of his toes she was touching. After a while, Johnny could.
Ruopp came in, his bandit's mask hanging off to one side.
'All right?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'It went very well,' Ruopp said. 'I'm optimistic.'
'Good.'
'You'll have some pain,' Ruopp said. 'Quite a lot of it, perhaps. The therapy itself will give you a lot of pain at first. Stick with it.'
'Stick with it,' Johnny muttered.
'Good afternoon,' Ruopp said, and left. Probably, Johnny thought, to play a quick nine on the local golf course before it got too dark.
5.
Quite a lot of pain.
By nine P.M. the last of the local had worn off, and Johnny was in agony. He was forbidden to move his legs without the help of two nurses. It felt as if nail-studded belts had been looped around his knees and then cinched cruelly tight. Time slowed to an inchworm's crawl. He would glance at his watch, sure that an hour had passed since the last time he had looked at it, and would see instead that it had only been four minutes. He became sure he couldn't stand the pain for another minute, then the minute would pass, and he would be sure he couldn't stand it for another minute.
He thought of all the minutes stacked up ahead, like coins in a slot five miles high, and the blackest depression he had ever known swept over him in a smooth solid wave and carried him down. They were going to torture him to death. Operations on his elbows, thighs, his neck. Therapy. Walkers, wheelchairs, canes.
You're going to have pain ... stick with it.
No, you stick with it, Johnny thought. Just leave me alone. Don't come near me again with your butchers' knives. If this is your idea of helping, I want no part of it.
Steady throbbing pain, digging into the meat of him.
Warmth on his belly, trickling.
He had wet himself.
Johnny Smith turned his face toward the wall and cried.
6.
Ten days after that first operation and two weeks before the next one was scheduled, Johnny looked up from the book he was reading - Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men - and saw Sarah standing in the doorway, looking at him hesitantly.
'Sarah,' he said. 'It is you, isn't it?'
She let out her breath shakily. 'Yes. It's me, Johnny.'
He put the book down and looked at her. She was smartly dressed in a light-green linen dress, and she held a small, brown clutch bag in front of her like a shield. She had put a streak in her hair and it looked good. It also made him feel a sharp and twisting stab of jealousy -had it been her idea, or that of the man she lived and slept with? She was beautiful.
'Come in,' he said. 'Come in and sit down.'
She crossed the room and suddenly he saw himself as she must see him - too thin, his body slumped a little to one side in the chair by the window, his legs stuck out straight on the hassock, dressed in a johnny and a cheap hospital bathrobe.
'As you can see, I put on my tux,' he said.
'You look fine.' She kissed his cheek and a hundred memories shuffled brightly through his mind like a doubled pack of cards. She sat in the other chair, crossed her legs, and tugged at the hem of her dress.
They looked at each other without saying anything.
He saw that she was very nervous. If someone were to touch her on the shoulder, she would probably spring right out of her seat.
'I didn't know if I should come,' she said, 'but I really wanted to.'
'I'm glad you did.'
Like strangers on a bus, he thought dismally. It's got to be more than this, doesn't it?
'So how're you doing?' she asked.
He smiled. 'I've been in the war. Want to see my battle scars?' He raised his gown over his knees, showing the S-shaped incisions that were now beginning to heal. They were still red and hashmarked with stitches.
'Oh, my Lord, what are they doing to you?'
'They're trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again,' Johnny said. 'All the king's horses, all the king's men, and all the king's doctors. So I guess.. 'And then he stopped, because she was crying.
'Don't say it like that. Johnny,' she said. 'Please don't say it like that.'
'I'm sorry. It was just ... I was trying to joke about it.' Was that it? Had he been trying to laugh it off or had it been a way of saying, Thanks for coming to see me, they're cutting me to pieces?
'Can you? Can you joke about it?' She had gotten a Kleenex from the clutch bag and was wiping her eyes with it.
'Not very often. I guess seeing you again ... the defenses go up, Sarah.'
'Are they going to let you out of here?'
'Eventually. It's like running the gauntlet in the old days, did you ever read about that? If I'm still alive after every Indian in the tribe has had a swing at me with his tomahawk, I get to go free.'
'This summer?'
'No, I... I don't think so.'
'I'm so sorry it happened,' she said, so low he could barely hear her. 'I try to figure out why... or how things could have changed -,. and it just robs me of sleep. if I hadn't eaten that bad hot dog ... if you had stayed instead of going back...' She shook her head and looked at him, her eyes red. 'It seems sometimes there's no percentage.
Johnny smiled. 'Double zero. House spin. Hey, you remember that? I clobbered that Wheel, Sarah.'
'Yes. You won over five hundred dollars.
He looked at her, still smiling, but now the smile was puzzled, wounded almost. 'You want to know something funny? My doctors think maybe the reason I lived was because I had some sort of head injury when I was young. But I couldn't remember any, and neither could my mom and dad. But it seems like every time I think of it, I flash on that Wheel of Fortune ... and a smell like burning rubber.'
'Maybe you were in a car accident...' she began doubtfully.
'No, I don't think that's it. But it's like the Wheel was my warning... and I ignored it.'
She shifted a little and said uneasily, 'Don't, Johnny.'
He shrugged. 'Or maybe it was just that I used up four years of luck in one evening. But look at this, Sarah.' Carefully, painfully, he took one leg off the hassock, bent it to a ninety degree angle, then stretched it out on the hassock again. 'Maybe they can put Humpty back together again. When I woke up, I couldn't do that, and I couldn't get my legs to straighten out as much as they are now, either.'
'And you can think, Johnny,' she said. 'You can talk. We all thought that... you know.'
'Yeah, Johnny the turnip.' A silence fell between them again, awkward and heavy. Johnny broke it by saying with forced brightness, 'So how's by you?'
'Well... I'm married. I guess you knew that.'
'Dad told me.'
'He's such a fine man,' Sarah said. And then, in a burst, 'I couldn't wait, Johnny. I'm sorry about that, too. The doctors said you'd never come out of it, that you'd get lower and lower until you just... just slipped away. And
even if I had known ...' She looked up at him with an uneasy expression of defense on her face. 'Even if I had known, Johnny, I don't think I could have waited. Four-and-a-half years is a long time.'
'Yeah, it is,' he said. 'That's a hell of a long time. You want to hear something morbid? I got them to bring me four years worth of news magazines just so I could see who died. Truman. Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix - Jesus, I thought of him doing "Purple Haze" and I could hardly believe it. Dan Blocker. And you and me. We just slipped away.'
'I feel so bad about it,' she said, nearly whispering. 'So damn guilty. But I love the guy, Johnny. I love him a lot.'
'Okay, that's what matters.'
'His name is Walt Hazlett, and he's a...'
'I think I'd rather hear about your kid,' Johnny said. 'No offense, huh?'
'He's a peach,' she said, smiling. 'He's seven months old now. His name is Dennis but we call him Denny. He's named after his paternal grandfather.'
'Bring him in sometime. I'd like to see him.'
'I will,' Sarah said, and they smiled at each other falsely, knowing that nothing of the kind was ever going to happen. 'Johnny, is there anything that you need?'
Only you, babe. And the last four-and-a-half years back again.
'Nah,' he said. 'You still teachin?'
'Still teachin, for a while yet,' she agreed.
'Still snortin that wicked cocaine?'
'Oh Johnny, you haven't changed. Same old tease.'
'Same old tease,' he agreed, and the silence fell between them again with an almost audible thump.
'Can I come see you again?'
'Sure,' he said. 'That would be fine, Sarah.' He hesitated, not wanting it to end so inconclusively, not wanting to hurt her or himself if it could be avoided. Wanting to say something honest.
'Sarah,' he said, 'you did the right thing.'
'Did I?' she asked. She smiled, and it trembled at the corners of her mouth. 'I wonder. It all seems so cruel and ... I can't help it, so wrong. I love my husband and my baby, and when Walt says that someday we're going to be living in the finest house in Bangor, I believe him. He says someday he's going to run for Bill Cohen's seat in the House, and I believe that, too. He says someday someone from Maine is going to be elected president, and I can almost believe that. And I come in here and look at your poor legs...' She was beginning to cry again now. 'They look like they went through a Mixmaster or something and you're so thin ...
'No, Sarah, don't.'
'You're so thin and it seems wrong and cruel and I hate it, I hate it, because it isn't right at all, none of it!'
'Sometimes nothing is right, I guess,' he said. 'Tough old world. Sometimes you just have to do what you can and try to live with it. You go and be happy, Sarah. Ann if you want to come and see me, come on and come. Bring a cribbage board.'
'I will,' she said. 'I'm sorry to cry. Not very cheery for you, huh?'
'It's all right,' he said, and smiled. 'You want to get off that cocaine, baby. Your nose'll fall off.'
She laughed a little. 'Same old Johnny,' she said. Suddenly she bent and kissed his mouth. '0h Johnny, be well soon.'
He looked at her thoughtfully as she drew away.
'Johnny?'
'You didn't leave it,' he said. 'No, you didn't leave it at all.'
'Leave what?' She was frowning in puzzlement.
'Your wedding ring. You didn't leave it in Montreal.'
He had put his hand up to his forehead and was rubbing the patch of skin over his right eye with his fingers. His arm cast a shadow and she saw with something very like superstitious fear that his face was half-light, half-dark. It made her think of the Halloween mask he had scared her with. She and Walt had honeymooned in Montreal, but how could Johnny know that? Unless maybe Herb had told him. Yes, that was almost certainly it. But only she and Walt knew that she had lost her wedding ring somewhere in the hotel room. No one else knew because he had bought her another ring before they flew home. She had been too embarrassed to tell anyone, even her mother.
'How...
Johnny frowned deeply, then smiled at her. His hand fell away from his forehead and clasped its mate in his lap.
'It wasn't sized right,' he said. 'You were packing, don't you remember, Sarah? He was out buying something and you were packing. He was out buying... buying... don't know. It's in the dead zone.'
Dead zone?
'He went out to a novelty shop and bought a whole bunch of silly stuff as souvenirs. Whoopee cushions and things like that. But Johnny, how could you know I lost my r...
'You were packing. The ring wasn't sized right, it was a lot too big. You were going to have it taken care of when you got back. But in the meantime, you.. ....... That puzzled frown began to return, then cleared immediately. He smiled at her. 'You stuffed it with toilet paper!'
There was no question about the fear now. It was coiling lazily in her stomach like cold water. Her hand crept up to her throat and she stared at him, nearly hypnotized. He's got the same look in his eyes, that same cold amused look that he had when he was beating the Wheel that night. What's happened to you, Johnny? What are you? The blue of his eyes had darkened to a near violet, and he seemed far away. She wanted to run. The room itself seemed to be darkening, as if he were somehow tearing the fabric of reality, pulling apart the links between past and present.
'It slipped off your finger,' he said. 'You were putting his shaving stuff into one of those side pockets and it just sllipped off. You didn't notice you'd lost it until later, and so you thought it was somewhere in the room.' He laughed, and it was a high, tinkling, tripping sound - not like Johnny's usual laugh at all - but cold ... cold. 'Boy, you two turned that room upside down. But you packed it. It's still in that suitcase pocket. All this time. You go up in the attic and look, Sarah. You'll see.'
In the corridor outside, someone dropped a water glass or something and cursed in surprise when it broke. Johnny glanced toward the sound, and his eyes cleared. He looked back, saw her frozen, wide-eyed face, and frowned with concern.
'What? Sarah, did I say something wrong?'
'How did you know?' she whispered. 'How could you know those things?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'Sarah, I'm sorry' if I...' 'Johnny, I ought to go, Denny's with the sitter.' 'All right. Sarah, I'm sorry I upset you.'
'How could you know about my ring, Johnny?' He could only shake his head.
7.
Halfway down the first-floor corridor, her stomach began to feel strange. She found the ladies' just in time. She hurried in, dosed the door of one of the stalls, and threw up violently. She flushed and then stood with her eyes closed, shivering, but also close to laughter. The last time she had seen Johnny she had thrown up, too. Rough justice? Brackets in time, like bookends? She put her hands over her mouth to stifle whatever might be trying to get out - laughter or maybe a scream. And in the darkness the world seemed to tilt irrationally, like a dish. Like a spinning Wheel of Fortune.
8.
She had left Denny with Mrs. Labelle, so when she got home the house was silent and empty. She went up the narrow stairway to the attic and turned the switch that controlled the two bare, dangling light bulbs. Their luggage was stacked up in one corner, the Montreal travel stickers still pasted to the sides of the orange Grants' suitcases. There were three of them. She opened the first, felt through the elasticized side pouches, and found nothing. Likewise the second. Likewise the third.
She drew in a deep breath and then let it out, feeling foolish and a little disappointed - but mostly relieved. Overwhelmingly relieved. No ring. Sorry, Johnny. But on the other hand, I'm not sorry at all. It would have been just a little bit too spooky.
She started to slide the suitcases back into place between a tall pile of Walt's old college texts and the floor lamp that crazy woman's dog had knocked over and which Sarah had never had the heart to throw out. And as she dusted off her hands preparatory to putting the whole thing behind her, a small voice far inside her whispered, almost too low to hear, Sort of a flying search, wasn't it? Didn't really want to find anything, did you, Sarah?
No. No, she really hadn't wanted to find anything. And if that little voice thought she was going to open all those suitcases again, it was crazy. She was fifteen minutes in picking up Denny. Walt was bringing home one of the senior partners in his firm for dinner (a very big deal), and she owed Bettye Hackman a letter - from the Peace Corps in Uganda, Bettye had gone directly into marriage with the son of a staggeringly rich Kentucky horse breeder. Also, she ought to dean both bathrooms, set her hair, and give Denny a bath. There was really too much to do to be frigging around up in this hot, dirty attic.
So she pulled all three suitcases open again and this time she searched the side pockets very carefully, and tucked all the way down in the corner of the third suitcase she found her wedding ring. She held it up to the glare of one of the naked bulbs and read the engraving inside, still as fresh as it had been on the day Walt slipped the ring on her finger: WALTER AND SARAH HAZLETT - JULY 9, 1972.
Sarah looked at it for a long time.
Then she put the suitcases back, turned off the lights, and went back downstairs. She changed out of the linen dress, which was now streaked with dust, and into slacks and a light top. She went down the block to Mrs. Labelle's and picked up her son. They went home and Sarah put Denny in the living room, where he crawled around vigorously while she prepared the roast and peeled some potatoes. With the roast in the oven, she went into the living room and saw that Denny had gone to sleep on the rug. She picked him up and put him in his crib. Then she began to dean the toilets. And in spite of everything, in spite of the way the dock was racing toward dinnertime, her mind never left the ring. Johnny had known. She could even pinpoint the moment he had come by this knowledge. When she had kissed him before leaving.
Just thinking about him made her feel weak and strange, and she wasn't sure why. It was all mixed up. His crooked smile, so much the same, his body, so terribly changed, so light and undernourished, the lifeless way his hair lay against his scalp contrasting so blindingly with the rich memories she still held of him. She had wanted to kiss him.
'Stop it,' she murmured to herself. Her face in the bathroom mirror looked like a stranger's face. Flushed and hot and let's face it, gang, sexy.
Her hand dosed on the ring in the pocket of her slacks, and almost - but not quite - before she was aware of what she was going to do, she had thrown it into the clean, slightly blue water of the toilet bowl. All sparkly clean so that if Mr. Treaches of Baribault, Treaches, Moorehouse, and Gendron had to take a leak sometime during the dinner party, he wouldn't be offended by any unsightly ring around the bowl, who knows what road-blocks may stand in the way of a young man on his march toward the counsels of the mighty, right? Who knows anything in this world?
It made a tiny splash and sank slowly to the bottom of the dear water, turning lazily over and over. She thought she heard a small clink when it struck the porcelain at the bottom, but that was probably just imagination. Her
head throbbed. The attic had been hot and stale and musty. But Johnny's kiss - that had been sweet. So sweet.
Before she could think about what she was doing (and thus allow reason to reassert itself), she reached out and flushed the toilet. It went with a bang and a roar. It seemed louder, maybe, because her eyes were squeezed shut. When she opened them, the ring was gone. It had been lost, and now it was lost again.
Suddenly her legs felt weak and she sat down on the edge of the tub and put her hands over her face. Her hot, hot face. She wouldn't go back and see Johnny again. It wasn't a good idea. It had upset her. Walt was bringing home a senior partner and she had a bottle of Mondavi and a budget-fracturing roast, those were the things she would think about. She should be thinking about how much she loved Walt, and about Denny asleep in his crib. She should think about how, once you made your choices in this crazy world, you had to live with them. And she would not think about Johnny Smith and his crooked, charming smile anymore.
9.
The dinner that night was a great success.
