To Michele, Hope, and Troy. All my love.
NATHAN
I can trace so much of my life back to a summer night when I was seventeen. Everything starts from then and links the years that follow, like one of those connect-the-dots pages you played with as a kid: Begin right here, draw a line to there, then another, then again. Sooner or later, an image emerges.
I’d recently finished my junior year of high school and was kicking around a few ideas on how to get out of Locksburg, a Central Pennsylvania backwater I’d wanted to flee ever since I was old enough to misspell its name. College was a possibility. The marines, a cheaper one. Either would work, as long as it got me away.
I had a nodding acquaintance with my classmates but no real friends among them. That’s not because of bad behavior on my part. The opposite was true: I was the only child of a sweet-spoken, disabled mother and a deacon father who together looked after a struggling church that was too poor to support a full-time priest. When I wasn’t doing schoolwork or house chores, I was at Saint Stanislaus, chipping melted wax from the candleholders or cementing the cracks that the bitter winters brought to the stone walls outside.
One Saturday night I was walking home from the church, head down, hands in pockets, when I turned a corner. LeeLee Roland was bounding down the steps of her house, ten yards away. She was a soon-to-be sophomore who stood out from the other girls at school. Even at fifteen, she was brazenly flirty to most every guy but me. I’d watch her with a side-eye, fascinated but wary, as she bounced along the high school halls.
“Hey, Nate!” she called, employing a nickname I didn’t use. I raised my chin and hid my surprise. We’d never spoken before, and I was a little amazed that she knew who I was.
“You going to the party too?” she asked.
“Nah,” I said, as if I knew which party that was.
“Yes, you are. I’m kidnapping you.”
She hooked a hand around my arm, and the breath left my lungs. To feel a girl touch me, even with just a friendly move, nearly froze me. That touch, combined with the warm June breeze, was instantly intoxicating, as if I’d swallowed an entire bottle of altar wine.
“Where is it?” I said, tamping down my voice in the hope of sounding somewhat cool.
“Tracy’s house,” LeeLee said. “Willow Street.”
I nodded a few times too many while piecing it together: Tracy Carson lived there, another girl I’d never spoken to. LeeLee and I walked two blocks then turned onto Willow.
“I’m … I’m not really sure I’m invited,” I said, entirely sure I wasn’t.
“She don’t care. Anyway, too late,” LeeLee said, and turned to walk up the steps of a house. She let go of my arm. I felt both real relief and deep disappointment.
LeeLee courtesy-knocked then pushed the door open. Inside, about fifteen people were circled around the dining room table, playing some kind of drinking game. All were familiar faces. In a town of about five thousand, you saw everyone at one time or another.
“Look who I found,” LeeLee told the group. They seemed indifferent. For that, I was grateful. Anything short of disdain was enough to make me half happy. Like any seventeen-year-old, I was perpetually confused and occasionally anxious, all while acting as confident as I could.
Forty-five minutes later, the number of people had nearly tripled, and the radio, blaring classic rock, had gotten turned up twice as loud. I’d taken a place against a wall, nursing a can of lukewarm Keystone Light and watching the games that no one asked me to join. After finishing my beer, I acted as if the can were full, bringing it to my lips time and again. LeeLee had gone to the kitchen and brought me the beer when we’d arrived. She’d since disappeared upstairs with a pack of other girls.
I debated leaving. No one would notice.
I eyed the door.
Any time up until then had been pivotal, of course. What if I had stayed at church a few extra minutes and never saw LeeLee? Or what if I had taken another route home? But when I look back, that moment seems the most decisive, the last real instant when something could have changed. Had I walked out that door then, how many lives would have been different?
Instead, I decided to hang around the party for a little longer. I wandered into the kitchen and took another can from the fridge, hoping no one would notice or yell at me or say I had to pay.
When I went back to my spot at the wall, LeeLee had returned.
“Hey!” she said. “I was wondering where you were.”
I showed her the beer.
“Finish it,” she said.
“Why?”
“This place is lame,” she said, not caring who heard. “Let’s get out of here.”
We passed the can back and forth until we emptied it, then left. I imagined that everyone was watching us go. Maybe someone might gossip about me later—a delicious notion for a guy whom surely no one at school ever thought about.
LeeLee took my hand when we reached the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to make of it and didn’t question her when she led me into a nearby patch of woods, where we sat on a fallen tree trunk.
“Gettin’ chilly,” she said, and leaned against me. I put an arm around her.
“You don’t say much,” she said.
I had no response other than a shrug.
“See!” she said, and nudged me.
She smiled.
With no other prelude, we were kissing.
I didn’t try to stop her when she unzipped my pants and reached inside. I didn’t have the words. I didn’t know if I wanted her to stop anyway. Within a minute her shorts were down, and she was on top of me. To hold out, I soon moved her below, then slowed. That extended my efforts for at least two minutes until we finished. Then we lay there on the ground.
“That was good,” she whispered after a while.
“Yeah,” I said, because I had to say something.
* * *
I pined over LeeLee each day that summer, and scanned the streets whenever I was out in Locksburg. When my parents and I went on a three-week church retreat, I called our home number often to check the machine, in case LeeLee had left a message. I debated endlessly about whether to call her, some days convincing myself that she wouldn’t want to talk to me, other days swearing that she was probably waiting for me to make a move. Then in August she knocked on my front door. I couldn’t help smiling when I saw her.
“Hey.”
“Hey. You alone?”
“Yeah. My mom and dad are at the church.”
“Anybody else here?”
“No.”
“Can I come in?”
I opened the door. She came inside, then stopped in the middle of the living room and turned to face me.
“I’m pregnant.”
Dry words caught in my throat, while terror and anguish and fear swirled in my gut. I can feel the echoes of those emotions still. They sometimes creep into my dreams and wake me with remnants of the panic I felt at that moment.
When I could finally speak, I asked LeeLee every question twice: if she had had sex with anyone else (“No! I’m not some slut—I was drunk! It’s your fault too!”) and if she was sure (“I had my cousin buy two pregnancy tests for me. Both came back positive.”).
“So what do we do?”
“My cousin said I could use her ID. She can take me to Philly for an abortion.”
“Good. Yeah. Good. OK,” I said, clutching hold of her answer like it was a life raft. We could salvage this without my parents knowing.
“It’s expensive,” LeeLee said.
“How much?”
“My cousin would have to take two days off work. Then there’s the drive to Philly. We were thinking, she could tell my mom that we were going to a concert there, so we’d need to stay in a hotel. Then, you know, the doctor’s bill. She thinks almost a thousand. For everything.”
“Do you have it?”
“I got like sixty bucks. That’s why I’m here. I would have gone already if I had the money. How much do you have?”
The balance of my bank account had only recently topped a hundred dollars.
“When are you going to Philly?”
“Next weekend, if I can get the money. If not, I dunno.”
“I’ll get it,” I promised her. “Make the appointment.”
* * *
Over the next few days, I lived in torment, staying up late into the nights to devise ways to get a thousand dollars. None of my plans had a chance of coming together. By Wednesday I was desperate. Theft, which I’d dismissed from the start, became the only option. Anything from the church wouldn’t be easy to sell. That brought my thoughts to my mother’s wedding ring.
She kept it in a small wooden box on her dresser.
I took the ring, promising myself I’d get it back to her soon, though I had no concrete plan for doing so. Then I borrowed my dad’s car and drove forty miles to Harrisburg, where a pawnbroker offered me three hundred dollars. I took the ring and turned to leave.
“Wait,” he called. “How much you need?”
“A thousand.”
He huffed.
I reached for the door.
“I can do seven fifty,” he said.
I shook my head.
“OK, come back here,” he said when my hand was on the door handle.
* * *
A week later LeeLee had gone and returned from Philadelphia. When I called her, she said, “Yeah, it’s done.”
Three sentences later, she said, “Don’t call me again, OK?”
* * *
My father tapped on my bedroom door a few nights later.
“Have you been in our room lately?” he asked.
“No. Why?”
“Cleaning up, maybe?”
“No.”
“Your mother’s very concerned. She can’t find her wedding ring.”
“Did she, like, lose it while shopping or something?”
“She doesn’t wear it except on special occasions.”
“Oh.”
“I had it appraised at ten thousand dollars for our homeowner’s insurance. But it’s not the money. My father gave it to me, to give to her. It was my mother’s.”
“She probably dropped it somewhere.”
“Let’s help her look, though.”
“Now?”
“No. It’s too late. But tomorrow. In the light.”
“I will.”
I tried to get back to the book I was pretending to read, but he remained in the doorway.
“You feeling OK? I’ve heard you up at nights sometimes.”
“I’m good.”
“You can tell me anything, you know. I would never judge you.”
“Yeah. I know that.”
He turned to leave, then stopped and turned around.
“Nathan. You didn’t see the ring at all?”
I knew what it took for him to ask me that question. He never spoke when a motion or a sound would serve just as well. In these words were expectations of trust, and truth. Ideals he lived by, and encouraged me to honor too.
“No,” I said.
The next day I scoured the house with my mother: dumping out the vacuum bag, reaching between furniture cushions. She’d lost her leg at the knee in a car accident when she was twelve and limped with the prosthetic, so I was the one who climbed up on chairs to peer onto shelves.
I acted like I was seriously searching, even when there were tears in my eyes.
* * *
My mother slipped and fell down the basement steps the next day, shattering both hips and fracturing her skull on the cement floor. She’d been combing the house for her ring and had gone down there to search for it, we surmised.
She died two days after the fall.
* * *
Some people run away from their shame. Others, like me, move closer, try to smother it.
After high school I stayed in town to be there for my father, who was devastated by my mother’s death. I lived with him, kept the house, and tried my best to make him happy, all the while remaining silent about what I’d done. I came to quietly loathe myself and the thing that I’d done for money.
I took a job at an assembly plant and sleepwalked through the next few years, never dating, still so thrown by what had happened. Then my father had a stroke, and I spent several more caring for him, before one morning going into his room to find that he had died during the night. I wept, and some of those tears were of relief: I wouldn’t have to hold my horrible secret from him anymore.
* * *
A month later, on a late shift at work, I sliced my upper arm on a jagged piece of sheet metal, sending me to Locksburg General, where some young-buck doctor sewed fifteen stitches into my skin.
“You didn’t flinch once,” the nurse, Paula, said, and grinned after the doctor left the room.
I was enamored of her at first sight: she was tall, only two inches shorter than the six feet I stood, with short brown hair and attentive hazel eyes. All of that could have made her seem stern. Yet from her first words, she exuded warmth in that sterile white hospital room. She made me work only a little to see her smile, a sincere, warm prize that made me immediately respond in kind.
A year and a half later she became my wife.
Paula and I settled into Locksburg and set about renovating a coal executive’s old house that hadn’t been occupied in years. The six bedrooms would soon be filled with cheery children, we assumed, and we painted the walls in bright colors that would surely match their moods. Though I never escaped this town, I would find joy here with a family, and raise sons and daughters who would go out to see the world, then regale me with stories of their adventures while their own kids ran around my home.
Paula and I finished our work on the house after four years. It was still only the two of us.
But no hurry. We had both only recently turned thirty.
We were still young.
* * *
Paula turned forty-two last week. For her birthday we drove an hour and a half to Harrisburg to see a traveling production of Les Misérables. Paula’s a heck of a nurse, professional and no-nonsense on the job. Yet she’s got a not-so-secret sentimental streak, and she went through a pack of tissues during the show, before starting on her sleeve. That made me grin. At one point, though, I felt us both stiffen, or at least imagined we did, when the lead character sang a line about not having any children. I didn’t move in my seat when those words were sung. I just hoped they’d pass soon, much like I do when the two of us watch television and see some sitcom where the parents complain about their offspring, or when we walk past a children’s clothing display in a shop window, or when we drive by a billboard with a cute toddler holding her mother’s hand.
When you have no children, everything is eager to remind you of that fact, particularly in a small town. City life may be different, but around here, large families are prized, and couples without kids are considered odd. Even our house, in which our awaited children never arrived, now seems to mock us with its empty rooms. Yet to move out of it would be an admittance of defeat that would be almost as painful as the failure itself.
Only once has Paula asked me how much I was disappointed that we hadn’t had children. Only once, I’ve lied to her. That was when, after asking, she broke down and blamed our troubles on herself. I said, “It’s not such a big deal to me. Really.”
A year or two ago, an unspoken agreement passed between us. Paula and I started to busy ourselves with added work: her at the hospital, me at the plant. I began to go fishing more. Joined the volunteer fire department. From that I gained twenty pounds from all the beers I’d drunk with the crew after coming back from a call, and I began to take on the general appearance of most every guy my age in town whose stomach, covered by a flannel shirt, was only a few years away from drooping over the brown leather belt that held up his faded blue jeans, and whose well-worn baseball cap covered his soon-to-be-thinning hair. I’d glance in the mirror too often and think: Well, there you go, Nathan. You’re the guy you promised yourself you’d never be. Soon I began avoiding my reflection.
For nearly fifteen years, Paula and I had been hoping for a child, following every recommendation, reading countless articles, seeing specialist after specialist. Without admitting it aloud to each other, we’d given up on the dream that so many others have achieved so easily.
If we couldn’t face that, at least we could find other things to occupy our time.
* * *
I was returning from Laurel Lake one afternoon when my phone beeped the three-note alert that preceded an incoming fire department announcement. I was surprised at the sound. I was barely out of the state game lands, where cell service was spotty.
“Report of a cabin fire at mile marker 16 on Michaux Road. Pumper truck and ambulance being dispatched. Repeat: mile marker 16 on Michaux Road.”
I was already on Michaux, at mile marker 18, so I didn’t bother with the dash flash. At least I could feel somewhat useful today. The fishing at Laurel Lake had been fruitless, and I’d found myself sitting in my jon boat staring into the water, wasting time, in no hurry to go home. Someone else launched a boat, a guy about my age, with a boy of twelve or thirteen. The kid let out a joyful laugh when they were free of land. Though I try to avoid thinking of children, I couldn’t help it this time. Boys at that age are everything: mischievous, curious, and affectionate, before the world teaches them not to be. I smiled and lifted my hand to wave at the two of them. Caught up in their own delight, they didn’t see me. I brought my hand down from the wave, then went back to fishing alone.
I came around a bend on Michaux Road slowly. The boat was in the bed of my pickup with its nose over the gate. Last thing I needed was to have the thing flip out onto the blacktop. After the turn, a plume of smoke came into view.
The house was a single-floor shack, one I’d passed a hundred times, yet I don’t think I’d ever noticed it, or, if I had, I’d considered it abandoned. It sat fifty yards off the road, with no driveway other than two ruts in the dirt where cars must have driven to the front. Parked there now was a green Chevy beater.
Most of the houses that remained standing in the region were abandoned or served as hunting cabins. Occasionally the high school kids from town would ride up to party in them, and a couple years back they set one ablaze, either intentionally or not. It burned to the ground, and this one would soon do the same if the pumper truck didn’t arrive within the next five minutes. The curtains had caught fire in the room farthest from the front door, and smoke was rising through a hole in the roof.
The thought that some high school kid could be in there both pissed me off and spurred me on. Maybe one of those acne-faced idiots was passed out drunk in a room. Entering a burning building alone is forbidden under fire company rules, yet I decided it was worth the risk, especially with the fire only at the far side of the building. There was time to rush in and scan the place.
At the front door, I felt the handle, then turned it and pushed inward. The room was lit by a table lamp. That was a surprise. The place must have a gas generator. I shut the door behind me to prevent any fire-fueling breeze from coming in.
“Fire! Fire!” I hollered, loud enough to wake any sleepers. “Anyone in here? Anyone need help?”
A window shattered in the back of the house. Underneath the sound I might have heard something. I stepped farther inside. As long as the door was in view, I could throw myself outside if things got too hot too fast.
“This place is gonna come down! Get out now!” Half a foot of smoke was creeping along the ceiling. If the owner of the car was in here unconscious, he’d soon be fried.
“Anyone? Anyone!”
There was a door off the main room, probably to a bedroom. Felt the knob. Cool. Turned it. Inside, there was a mattress on the floor, surrounded by beer bottles and other junk.
A green, industrial-strength trash bag sat on the mattress. Whatever was inside was heavy, judging by the dent it made. I stepped over and opened the top.
When I saw the first bundle of cash, I nearly laughed at the preposterousness. I pushed aside that bundle. Beneath it, dozens and dozens like it: crisp, two-inch-thick stacks of twenties. Fifties. Hundreds. Dug my hand in and felt more and more money.
My crazy first idea—the guys at the fire department were playing a joke on me. Maybe there was a hidden camera in the room somewhere. I shook that out of my head when I coughed on smoke. This place was about to be a death trap.
There was no thought about what to do. I just did it. Lifted the bag. It weighed fifty pounds or so. Then I swung it over my shoulder and hurried from the bedroom.
I crossed the main room of the house and went for the front door.
Someone shrieked, an agonized sound: part words, part wail.
I turned to see a guy running down the hallway, his arms reaching out for me.
He was on fire.
CALLIE
“You’re gonna take my blood pressure?”
“No. I’m going to wrap this cuff around your neck and pump it until your face turns purple and your cheeks bulge out like an overfed hamster.”
That’s what I wanted to say. I didn’t, of course. Instead, I forced a pressed-lip smile and nodded.
“Why?” the patient asked through an opening in her face that sat above her two double chins. I had to look twice to see which crevice the sound came from.
“It’s standard procedure to check your vital signs.”
“But my blood pressure’s fine,” she said, blissfully ignorant of all evidence to the contrary. “My ankles hurt.”
“I understand that. But—”
“Can I see the doctor now?” She pointed to the door. The blood-pressure cuff, stretched to the limit and held on by a few hairs of Velcro, popped off, forcing me to start over.
“He’ll be in shortly.”
“I don’t have all day.”
“Of course not. You’ve got Twinkies to eat.”
Another thing I didn’t say.
Sarcasm, even if only internally, is what gets me through so many of my nursing shifts these days, and pretty much every other minute outside of work. And truth be told, it’s barely fun anymore. There’s not a lot to smirk at when you’re dealing with whining patients like this one, or the woman before her: a twenty-six-year-old who’d been in twice in three weeks, this time for a broken nose and a bruised eye, punched around by her husband in front of their four kids. When I slipped her the number of the domestic abuse hotline, she tore it to pieces and told me to mind my own fuckin’ business. Then she looked at my face and said, “How would you know anything about gettin’ a man?”
Ms. Sore Ankles grimaced as I reattached the blood-pressure belt then pumped.
“My ankles hurt,” she said, as if moving the stress to the third word rather than the second was the secret to getting some Nobel Prize–winning research physician to come in and examine her. But the best—and only—doctor we currently had on duty at Locksburg General was Dr. Willis, all seventy-seven years of him. When he sits with a patient, I bring a bedpan with me. Twice I’ve had to drop it, seemingly as an accident, when he started to nod off midexamination. Ms. Sore Ankles here better watch it or he’s apt to misdiagnose her with malaria.
“OK, let me ask you a few questions,” I began. Dr. Willis was going to be another twenty minutes at least, so drawing this out as long as possible would keep the woman occupied and, I hoped, distracted enough to quit her bleating.
She sighed, and her extra-large chest heaved.
“On a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?”
“Ten!” she bellowed.
“And when did it begin?”
“Yesterday!” Ah, her new strategy: exclaiming every answer.
“Have you visited your family doctor?”
“No! I come here!”
“This is the emergency room. It’s made for—”
“I know what it’s for! This is an emergency. My ankles hurt!”
I could handle no more.
“The doctor will be in shortly.”
I stepped out and double-knocked on the room across the hall, then entered. Dr. Willis was in there, recounting his years in the navy to a gray-haired widow who’d come in earlier for arthritis pain. I sympathized, I really did, but she’s another one who needs to find a family practitioner rather than use the emergency room every time she feels an oncoming ache. And, as usual, Dr. Willis was happy to chatter away as the woman smiled and nodded like she was scoping out husband number three.
“Doctor?” I interrupted. The woman shot me a look as if I were stealing away the last bite of her final meal.
“Yes?” Dr. Willis asked. “Is it an emergency?”
“It’s no small problem,” I said. Considering Ms. Sore Ankles tipped the scale at over three hundred, that wasn’t a lie.
“Ah, I’m sorry, Miriam,” Dr. Willis said to his patient. She didn’t correct him, though her name was Rita Anne. I had written it on the chart myself. “But keep taking your prescription and you’ll be feeling like you’re twenty-one again.”
I coughed to hide a snort, and shuffled the doctor over to the ankle lady’s room. Then I excused myself and headed to the front desk, twenty feet down the hall. Our receptionist had called out sick, so I’d turned the ringer up to its highest volume and kept an ear open. It was a fairly slow Saturday afternoon, though I pitied the night shift. Paula was scheduled as the on-duty nurse, and she’d have her hands full with drunks who’d been skull-cracked by beer bottles and brawlers whose eyes would be swollen shut for days.
The main hospital phone rang. I pulled down my mask and answered.
“Locksburg General.”
“There’s a fox in my yard.”
Silence.
“Didja hear me?”
“This is the hospital,” I said. “You can call the police or animal control. Maybe they can help with that…”
“No. I need you guys.”
“Why?”
“Because, like, I wanna go out there and pet it. But if that fox bites me, I’m gonna have to come into the hospital. You’re open, right?”
“Let’s not allow it to get that far, OK?”
“I’m just being—what’s that word—proactive?”
“Sir, have you been drinking?”
“Well, yeah,” he said, his tone implying that I should feel stupid for asking.
“Um…”
“Or, wait, is the word preemptive?”
“Leave the fox alone and—”
“Dang, he’s running off,” the guy slurred. “Lookee! Do ya see ’em?”
It took me a moment to realize he was asking me that sincerely.
“Uh,” I said, in the hopes of signaling that this call should be coming to an end.
“Catch ya later, buddy! See you next time!” the guy cried out before hanging up.
And that was far from the strangest caller of that month. We’d had people call to ask if the explosive diarrhea they had last Thanksgiving could be a symptom of the kind of liver cancer they heard about on this week’s Today show, or demand to know which brand of aspirin they should buy and if they could pay with food stamps, before shouting that they’re standing in line at the pharmacy and you’re not answering fast enough. It’s usually easier just to say Excedrin than to explain to them why they shouldn’t be dialing a hospital for that kind of advice, or hanging up on them only to have the line ring again when they inevitably call back and spew a stream of insults.
Down the hall, Dr. Willis stepped out of the examining room. I put my mask back up and went to him.
“Callie? Can you fit Ms.… What was her name?”
“Mason.”
“Hmm?”
“Mason.”
“I can’t…” He motioned to his ear and then to my mask. He’s practically deaf even on a good day and can’t hear anything when I’m masked up. I pulled it down to my neck.
“Ms. Mason,” I said.
“Yes. Ms. Mason. Can you fit her with compression socks for her ankles?”
“Sure,” I said. He could hear well enough to gauge my mood.
“I’m sorry, Callie. I’d do it myself, but my arthritis is acting up too.”
“I got it, Doctor,” I said, and patted his shoulder to let him know I wasn’t really peeved. The guy does the best he can.
The patient was sitting there barefooted when I returned. I dug two compression socks from a drawer and rolled a chair in front of her, then patted my knee.
“Can you place your foot up here?”
She made the attempt, but mounds of compressed flesh prevented her from lifting the foot more than six inches from the floor. I slid the chair aside and got down on one knee to slide the sock on. She grunted, uncomfortable, but I’m good at this. The socks were on in record time.
“I’ll give you an extra one, you might need it. You should wear them at least—”
“The doctor told me,” she said. “And keep my feet elevated.”
“Right.”
I stood, went back to the drawer, found another sock, then turned to her.
She said, “Were you in an accident?”
She motioned to her upper lip, as if I didn’t know what she was talking about. As if I haven’t lived with this every single day from the moment of my birth.
Still, I was a little stunned and didn’t immediately answer. Then I cursed myself for failing to put my mask back up.
To live with a disfigurement is something you can’t forget. It’s there every morning when you gaze into the bathroom mirror, in every touch you bring to your face, in every glance of a stranger who wants to look but doesn’t want you to see them looking.
Though everyone sees it, very few say anything. People suck, yet I’ll give them this—they themselves are loathe to appear rude.
“No,” I told her. “It’s a craniofacial disorder I was born with. A cleft palate and harelip, with complications. The scar is from one of the operations I had.”
“Does it hurt, honey?” she asked.
And goddamn it, what infuriated me most was that she sounded sincere. She really did hope that I wasn’t uncomfortable.
“No,” I said. “There’s no pain.”
“That’s good, then,” she said, and offered a small smile, which I returned. Then I regretted snarking at her inside my head earlier. Really, who am I to comment on someone’s appearance?
I handed her the extra sock and told her that she could leave after she put her shoes back on. I might even have helped her with those, but the phone began ringing, and I hurried out of the room and down the hall.
“Locksburg General,” I answered.
It was an ambulance driver, telling me to prepare, they were bringing in a burn victim from a house fire out on Michaux Road, and the guy was in grim shape.
“Is it one of the firefighters?” I asked. Paula was on duty next, and god forbid it was Nathan, her husband.
“No,” the driver said, “it’s a civilian.”
I told him we’d be ready, though the best I could do would be to fill Dr. Willis with coffee to keep him standing, call in Dr. Lennard, who was the biggest gun in this small-town hospital, then have the three of us waiting at the front door for the ambulance.
I put the phone down. It rang again five seconds later.
“Locksburg General.”
“Callie, that you?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s Police Chief Kriner.”
“Is this about the fire?”
“What fire?”
“There’s a fire up on Michaux Road. They’re bringing in a burn victim.”
“I didn’t hear about any of that. My chest radio’s busted and I been away from the car, in a house over on Clay Street.”
“What’s up, Chief? I have to get ready for this patient.”
“When that ambulance is done there, I’ll need it over on Clay Street.”
“You’ll have to call them yourself. I may be busy.”
“I will. But I called to tell you: when the ambulance comes in again, it’ll be bringing you two bodies.”
“What kind of care will they need?”
“None,” he said. “They’re both cold and dead. One’s a little kid.”
NATHAN
I dropped the bag of money and reached for the guy as he ran at me. He was in agony, with flames scorching his shoulders and the back of his head, and even those who are well versed in fire safety can succumb to mindless panic when their skin starts to sear.
I grabbed his arms, stuck out a leg, and flipped him onto the floor.
“Roll!” I yelled. “Roll!”
He shrieked. I held him down—it wasn’t tough, he was well under one hundred fifty pounds—then turned him on his back to extinguish the fire there. His hair sizzled, and I sucked up a lungful of that smoke when it went into my face. I ripped his shirt off and tossed it aside, felt my own hands singe.
“Is anyone else here?” I yelled at him. A useless question. He was moaning and probably couldn’t hear me. Then I saw that one of his ears was burned down to a nub. “Get up! Hurry!”
I helped him stand, then took both of his arms, bent down, and threw him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I opened the door with one hand, then reached back and grabbed the bag of money before carrying both outside.
The rear of the house started to fall in on itself. A section of the roof collapsed as I laid the guy on the ground in front of my truck, then propped him upright. He slumped to his side when I let go. No matter. As long as he wasn’t on his back, he’d be OK for the moment. The skin there was charred and would soon be covered in boils.
From a couple miles away, the ambulance siren sounded.
I was surprised, then and after, at how composed I felt. It seemed like only a job to do, and, therefore, one to do right. I picked up the bag, went to the back of my pickup truck, and tucked it under the jon boat. From the utility box, I grabbed a gallon jug filled with distilled water, kept for such an emergency. Then I went to care for the burned man. He mumbled something. I shushed him and began to speak to him—really talking to myself, to make sure I went through all the right steps.
“The three Cs of burns: cool, cover, and call. Help’s already on the way, so I’m going to cool you with this, buddy, then cover you up.”
He moaned as the water flowed over his back, and that was it: he passed out. Better that than awake and in pain, I figured.
The rest of the roof was caving in on the house. A blast of warm air hit the two of us when the front wall collapsed. I hoped my truck was parked back far enough in case too many sparks came down.
The ambulance arrived and the EMTs got to work, fast. The burned man was in the ambulance and on the road within five minutes, right as the fire truck pulled in.
The crew set about watering down what was left of the place. I began directing the other volunteers who’d arrived, steering them as far away from my truck as I could, leaving me a path to drive out of there as soon as I could without raising suspicion. The fire was fairly under control within minutes, when Jack Naugle, the fire chief, came over to me.
“You went in there?” he asked.
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts. You should know better.”
“I was worried that maybe some high school kids were inside.”
“Who was it?”
“A guy, he was about thirty or so. Hard to tell. He’s burned up pretty bad.”
“I hope you stayed close to the door.”
“Yeah. I was safe. My hands got singed some. Otherwise fine.”
We peered through the windows of the guy’s car. Nothing was visible except for some old newspapers and two empty beer cans in the back seat. We both knew better than to open the car door. This was sure to turn into a police matter, and they’d want us away from any evidence.
“What did it look like inside?” Naugle asked.
“There’s a gas generator in there for electricity, so … maybe drugs?”
“Cookin’ meth, most likely,” Naugle said. “Out here with no one to bother them.”
“Them?”
“Usually takes two or more guys. Maybe the other guy went out. Maybe he’s in there under all this shit. If so, he’s dead. Did you see anything else?”
I pretended to take a moment to consider his question.
“No. Typical shithole, lots of trash and stuff.”
“All those meth chemicals are crazy flammable. Something probably caught a spark, lit the place up. Remember last year, outside of Ranshaw?”
“Right,” I said. We both knew it, so there was no need to waste breath. It was the biggest story in the county at the time, thirty acres of woods accidentally set alight by two meth cookers who ended up cremating themselves and saving their families the expense.
“Get your ass to the hospital,” Naugle said.
“I don’t think I need—”
“That’s an order. Have ’em check you out, just in case.”
“Yeah. All right,” I said. It was a good excuse to get me and the money away from there. “I’ll go now.”
“Good. And hey, nice work here,” Naugle said. “If that guy lives, you saved his life.”
* * *
Paula walked in after one a.m. with that half-exhausted, half-exhilarated expression she gets after a busy night at the hospital. It’s a look that sometimes makes me jealous, her with a job that can make her feel that way. I’ve certainly never experienced those same emotions while assembling shelving or bending sheet metal. For the first time, though, I was the more wired one. I’d been that way since returning home with the money. I tried to tamp down the energy as we spoke, though it wouldn’t stop pulsing through me.
“There’s my brave man!” Paula said, and I couldn’t help grinning. So often she greets me with a compliment. I doubt I earn them all, though they always seem genuine.
“Who told you?”
“The ambulance team. They said you ran into the burning building. Weren’t you scared?”
“The part of the house I went into was safe. At least for a few minutes.”
“And you carried that guy out.”
“How is he?”
“Not so good. Callie was on duty when he got in, so she bandaged him up. He’s too injured to move, or they would have taken him to Philadelphia.”
“Will he survive?”
“It’s a coin flip. He may not make it through the night.”
I nodded, tried to process this new information.
“Chief Naugle stopped at the hospital. He said he ordered you to get checked out. Why didn’t you come in?”
“I felt better,” I said.
“Hey, what are you doing up? It’s late.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Let me make you a snack. Or I have melatonin. That usually helps.”
“No. I want to talk.”
“You seem jumpy. Are you OK?”
I thought about it. “I can’t be sure how I feel.”
She went to sit on the sofa. I pointed to a chair that I wanted her to take instead, across from me, so we could face each other.
“What’s the matter?”
Since getting home, I’d been running through everything that had happened to me since finding the money, then wondering how to tell the story to Paula. I’d had hours to think it through and practice. Yet now that the time had arrived, I sputtered my words. I pushed out a few in hopes that the rest would follow.
“In the attic … you know that old gun cabinet that’s up there?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s about two million dollars in it.”
“Rob a bank?”
“I doubt there’s two million dollars in all the banks in Locksburg combined.”
“That’s probably true.”
“But there’s two million upstairs. In cash.”
She laughed. “I bet you went out with the fire crew tonight, huh?” she said. “I rode by Maxie’s, and they have the sign out for two-for-one drink specials. Knowing you, you probably got eight-for-four! Good for you, hero. You deserve it.”
“Paula? Do I seem drunk?”
She used her nurse’s eyes, examined me for a moment.
“You don’t.”
“So listen. When I ran into that burning building? There was a bag in there. It was filled with money.”
“Whose money?”
“It was in an empty room. I got there before anyone else. So I hid the bag in my truck. Then drove back here.”
“Why do you have it? Shouldn’t the police have it?”
“The police don’t know about it. No one does. Only you.”
“Whose money is it?”
“Mine.”
“It’s not yours.”
“It’s mine now. The place was burned to ashes ten minutes after I got out.”
“So it’s someone else’s money.”
“It’s got to be drug money. And if I gave it to the cops, they’d only skim off the top, then send it someplace, to a politician who’d do the same.”
Paula stood up. Took her purse in hand, and her car keys.
“Come on. I’ll go to the station with you, right now. You’ll say you made a bad judgment. And you’ll say that you were—”
“I’m not taking it back.”
“It’s not yours! It’s wrong!”
I couldn’t help but snort at that.
“There’s no right or wrong here. There’s only what is. I’ve been sitting here for something like six hours, thinking it all through.”
“Do I get a say in this?”
“Sure you do. But you need to understand: if I turn it in now, I’ll get arrested. Even if I don’t, I’ll be kicked out of the department.”
“You’re a volunteer. It doesn’t matter.”
“And when everyone at the plant hears about it? What are they going to do? They’re going to fire me, that’s what.”
When I saw her consider that, I followed the line of thought.
“Everyone around town will be calling me a thief. I made the choice, now I have to live with it. It’s two million dollars that—”
“Did you count it?”
“No. I got scared. Wondered if maybe they put a GPS thing in there, or some kind of remote tracker. That’s why I put it in the gun cabinet. It’s half-inch-thick steel. No signals can get in or out of there. Before I put it in, I gave a fast count of the stacks.”
“And what are you going to do? Go around town spending it?”
“Wait a couple weeks, then leave Locksburg. We’re always saying we’d move to Florida.”
“That’s a joke we say to each other! It’s not serious. What would we do there? Our lives are here.”
“Our lives.” I spat the words, angrier than I’d expected. “I work in a metal shop that’s always in danger of closing. What kind of life is that? A shit job, in a shit place, with a shit future…”
And that’s where I paused. Another step, and we’d be venturing into all the stuff we never talked about and were afraid to admit to each other, almost all of it surrounding our inability to have children. We did such a dance daily, it seemed. When we’d see a father and son having a catch, Paula would ask a random question to distract me, or I’d do the same when we’d be walking through a store and inadvertently find ourselves among the baby furniture. It had become second nature for us.
To change the direction of what I was saying, I went with: “I’m not happy in this place. I’ve never really been happy in Locksburg.”
“I don’t make you happy?”
“You do. But … think of it, Paula. We could sell this house. Go to Florida or California, buy a nice little place, never have to work again…”
“I like to work.”
“Then work! We could do good things with the money too. Invest it, then give some away. Charity. Anything.”
She was skeptical, but I imagined that she was moving closer to my way of thinking until I blew it by saying, “Come up to the attic. Just see all this money.”
Paula shook her head, as if to dislodge any notions that may have started to take root there.
“No. I don’t want to see it. It’s not ours. And the longer you keep that money, the more trouble you’re going to be in.”
“Who’s gonna know? The cops? The guys at the fire department? No one saw it. Even if they thought there was money inside, the place burned. If the guy had friends, they’d think that too.”
“But he saw you. The guy.”
“He was in a lot of pain. I don’t know what he saw. Or what he remembers. And you said it yourself: he’s probably not going to make it through the night.”
She disagreed with each rationalization I made, and I worked again and again to convince her, to no avail. We ran around our same arguments for another hour and a half, exasperating Paula and frustrating me to the point where my voice was raising in anger. Finally we called some kind of truce and agreed to go to sleep and continue tomorrow. It was close to four a.m.
In our bed, she tossed for another hour. I know, of course, because I couldn’t fall asleep either. Every time I seemed ready to drift off, my thoughts would return to the money in the attic. And those thoughts would alternately excite me and alarm me, again and again and again.
* * *
Paula and I woke in silence the next morning and both went into the kitchen for coffee. And as if we were in the middle of the same conversation we had been in the night before, the first thing Paula said to me was:
“And what happens if he pulls through? What happens if that guy recovers, and he remembers seeing you take the money?”
CALLIE
I called Dr. Lennard in and briefed him that a burn victim was on the way. He’s the hospital’s chief physician, and better still, he’s had some experience with burn patients from when he did his residency in Pittsburgh. Yet even he breathed through his teeth when he arrived to examine the patient: an accelerant or chemical must have splashed onto the victim’s back and seared through his skin when ignited. A section of the guy’s spine was visible, the flesh burned off and the underlying fat bubbled up. The bone had turned a sickening shade of sizzled red brown. The smell, like some unholy combination of overcooked hamburger and burnt plastic, was appalling.
Dr. Willis came to assist, and the three of us worked to stabilize the patient. For a hick hospital, we provide some decent burn care, at least enough to steady a victim before transferring him to a better-equipped place in Philadelphia, which takes four hours by ambulance or two and a half by helicopter, assuming we can wrangle one.
“He won’t survive the ride,” Dr. Lennard said, practically reading my mind.
“No.”
“If it were closer, half hour maybe, we could chance it. Best to keep him here for a while to stabilize. Then we can see.”
“Right.”
We cleaned the wounds, hooked the patient to an IV, and set up his oxygen in a non-rebreathing mask. By then Paula had arrived, and she took over with the burn victim, in time for me to meet Joe Kriner, the police chief, who pulled in leading the returning ambulance.
Inside the ambulance were two bodies for the morgue: a thirty-four-year-old woman and her nine-year-old daughter. Since the town had only one ambulance, the two had been placed side by side on the same gurney. The girl had Down syndrome and had apparently died from a congenital heart defect, while the woman had intentionally overdosed on heroin. No matter how many bodies I’ve seen in my years as a nurse, and no matter how much snark I dish out, at least in my head, I never experience anything other than deep sorrow at the death of a child.
Dr. Willis declared them both dead, a formality, in a whisper. Chief Kriner took off his hat.
I smoothed the little girl’s hair before covering her with the sheet.
* * *
All I’ve ever wanted to be is a nurse. A dime-store psychologist might say that’s because I spent so much time in hospitals when I was a kid. Perhaps that’s true. The nurses were kind to me. They looked me in the eye when they spoke and never lied. Doctors, on the other hand, would tell me that everything would be fine and that another operation would fix me for life. Then, when my face failed to heal properly, they’d promise that next time, things would mend the right way, filling me again with hopes that were ultimately dashed. Nurses made no such promises. They only encouraged me to be strong.
The official name of my condition, bilateral complete orofacial cleft, caused a severe harelip and a badly deformed palate. Today, such a problem in children can usually be fixed with a few surgeries and will result in a small-enough scar if you operate while the child is growing. But nearly thirty years ago, the technology wasn’t as sophisticated, and two resulting and nearly deadly infections worsened the problem, until doctors deemed my case too risky to operate again.
“She’ll just have to learn to live with it,” one surgeon told my mother, addressing her rather than me, though I was sitting in the chair beside her.
So I’m saddled with a thick, two-inch pink scar that runs from my top lip up beside my nose and sometimes pulls my mouth into a bit of a sneer. All of this is made worse, I think, by my bright red hair, which brings more attention to my face. Covid was a disaster for our town, but there was one small, interesting side effect of the pandemic for me. My mask hid the scar so well that I once traveled to Harrisburg, telling myself it was only a shopping trip, but in reality I was curious to see how strangers would treat me if they couldn’t see the bottom half of my face. There, in one day, two different men had asked me on dates. I can’t say if I was happy or sad about that, or about the fact that I politely declined them both.
I can say that, without a mask, I’d never been asked out once in my twenty-eight years.
* * *
The next day I returned to Locksburg General and checked the inpatient log to find only one room occupied, that of the burn victim brought in the day before. The night nurse departed when I arrived, leaving me with the receptionist and Dr. Willis, who went to sleep in a vacant room with a request not to be awakened unless there was an emergency.
A ten-bed, one-floor hospital can be a quiet place for hours on end, and I wondered if I should take a snooze myself, when a car pulled up in front. The driver stepped out and came through the automatic doors.
“Do you have a wheelchair?” he asked. His voice held no panic, so there was probably an older patient in the car, I surmised, suffering from a bad back or a twisted ankle.
I wheeled an embarrassingly squeaky chair to the car and found a girl of sixteen, who low-moaned in discomfort. So much for my powers of deduction.
“Hi, hon,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“It … kinda hurts,” she said, trying hard to hold back her anguish. Her eyes, though, couldn’t lie.
“I don’t want to move you if anything’s broken or…”
“Nothing’s broken,” she said. Then, matter-of-factly, “I have cancer.”
She attempted to smile and was stopped by a grimace when a new round of pain stabbed into her.
“My name is Callie. What’s yours?”
“Gabriella.”
“OK, Gabriella. Let me help you from the car.”
Her father stood to one side, as if he were ashamed of all of this.
“I forgot her pain medication,” he said. “I mean, I forgot to get it refilled.”
Hell of a dad, I thought, and nodded only to indicate that I understood his words.
“Who’s her doctor?” I asked him.
“Excuse me?”
“Who’s her primary physician?”
“Why does that matter? I mean, she just needs something for the pain.”
“Dr. Stacy Yellen,” the girl said. “We’re from Pine Hill.”
“Right. Let’s get you to a room.”
I got her settled in a bed then woke Dr. Willis, who went to her while I called the girl’s doctor.
“We have a patient of yours here, Gabriella Stanhope,” I told Dr. Yellen.
“How is she?”
“She arrived in severe pain. Dr. Willis wants to know what he should prescribe.”
“Give her hydromorphone for the pain,” Dr. Yellen said. “Who is with her?”
“Her father.”
“Great,” the woman mumbled, in a way that meant anything but.
“Why?”
“Do you know the girl at all, or anyone in her family?”
“No. I’ve never seen her before.”
“What’s your name again?”
“Callie.”
“Callie, can I speak in confidence with you? Between us? I need to know that I—”
“Doctor, I’ve got a sixteen-year-old girl in another room in great discomfort. Please make this fast.”
“Right. Sorry. This is what you do. Give her the hydromorphone via IV, and stay in the room with her. Under no circumstance should she be left alone with her father.”
“Why?”
“Go take care of her. Then call me back later. I’ll tell you everything. But remember: don’t leave the two of them alone. Understood?”
“Got it,” I said, and hung up.
Dr. Willis administered the drug to Gabriella while her father leaned forward in a chair, hands folded in some kind of silent prayer. He didn’t offer any soothing words to his daughter or ask us any questions. I didn’t see what kind of danger this guy could pose: he was five-foot-eight if he was an inch and skinny enough so that his suit jacket hung loosely on him. If I had to grab him, I wouldn’t go for the hair, though. His was cut short and slicked back.
To pass some time, I took the needed information and had him sign the usual patient and guardian forms.
“Will you pray?” he asked. I first thought that he was speaking to his daughter, but she had drifted off to sleep. He was asking me.
“I’ll pray for her, sure,” I said. I’ve never been religious, but I’d pray to any god for a patient, if it would help or comfort. He blessed himself and I followed suit, feeling a bit like an impostor or even a spy of this faith that I’d never practiced outside of an occasional funeral or a relative’s church wedding.
“Let us pray: Our dearest Father in Heaven,” he began, and I folded my hands. “We thank you for your mercy, and we welcome our sufferings, in that they shall move us closer to you. We…”
I gave up listening after that. A god who would do this to a child was no god who delivered mercy and no god who deserved thanks. After another two minutes of long-winded groveling, the guy ended with an amen, which I echoed, if only out of habit.
He stood.
“Can I take her home now?”
“Um, no,” I said, half convinced he was joking. “She’ll need another dose of the hydromorphone, and she can’t be released with that in her system. She’ll need to rest. Overnight, at least.”
“Well, OK,” he said, as if I were giving him a choice.
“You can go, if you need to.”
“I do. I have other children that need attending to. You have my phone number in case you need to reach me. I’ll be back tomorrow. Bless you.”
After he pulled away in his car, I called Dr. Yellen again.
“Gabriella is sleeping. Her father left a minute ago.”
“How is she?”
“Her vitals aren’t stellar. But she’s better. What can you tell me?”
“Her father is the pastor at Shepard’s Staff Tabernacle. Do you know them?”
“I’ve heard of them. Isn’t there a church over there, in Pine Hill?”
“Right. They don’t believe in medicine, other than prayer. Gabriella collapsed a couple months ago in a grocery store. Someone brought her in. She has Ewing’s sarcoma.”
“Her parents didn’t know that she was sick?”
“Oh, they knew something was wrong with her. But they wanted to pray it away. Fucking idiots. If you diagnose Ewing’s early enough, you’ve got a good chance of stopping it. Now it’s spread all over her body. She’s in stage four.”
“And there’s no stage five.”
“Correct,” she said. “What a beautiful kid.”
“Why shouldn’t she be left with her father?”
“I don’t trust him. I’m not confident that he gives her her prescriptions. I wanted to make sure he didn’t deny her any.”
“Why didn’t he come to you today, instead of here?”
“I can guess. Last time, I told him I’d have him thrown in jail if he didn’t take care of her. He argued over the treatment we provided. Said it was his right to deny it. I said, fine, and it’s my right to report you for neglect, and my right to take you to court and see what a judge might say about this. The only thing he hates worse than me, apparently, would be publicity. So now he does the bare minimum for her, so he doesn’t have the police on his ass.”
“He was in the room, praying about how god was going to save her.”
“Yeah, he did that with me. And then I did something really dumb.”
“What?”
“Are you religious?”
“No,” I said.
“When he went off on one of his rants about how his god can heal, I said, ‘Has your god ever healed an amputee? If so, you should show me. I’d love to see that magic trick.’ That got him yammering about how he didn’t want a heathen treating his child. I’m guessing that’s why he came to your hospital.”
“What should we do now?”
“What else can we do? Keep her comfortable.”
“How long does she have?”
“Based on the last round of tests, she’s got a week, maybe.”
* * *
The next day I went into Gabriella’s room. She’d slept since being admitted the previous afternoon, heavily medicated to help her through the night. Ewing’s sarcoma attacks the bones and soft tissue, and her case had caused her legs and hips to swell. Yet her face had regained color, and the sleep seemed to have recharged her. If I hadn’t seen her so weak the previous day, I’d have been surprised to learn of her condition. Other than a propensity for plainness—she wore no jewelry, and her corn-colored hair was so long and straight it looked like something out of Little House on the Prairie—Gabriella seemed like any other sixteen-year-old you’d see around town, who’d be giggling with her friends and carelessly carrying a bag full of schoolbooks if she wasn’t lying in a hospital bed.
“How do you feel?” I asked her.
“Better.”
“Better than what?”
“Better than if I were being eaten alive by wolverines.”
“That’s good for you. Not for the wolverines. I hate it when they go hungry.”
“How long will I stay here?”
“At least another night. You’ve had some strong painkillers, and Dr. Willis took a blood sample that he wants tested. We probably won’t get those results back until midday tomorrow at the earliest.”
She glanced around the bland hospital room.
I said, “Yeah, it can be boring. Do you have a cell phone or a book or something you might want?”
“No. I sorta fell down when we were out and my dad drove me here. I didn’t have time to get anything.”
“We have a small library. Mostly stuff that people left behind. I’ll bring you some books. What do you like?”
“Anything about the ocean. Seriously, anything—novels or nature books or science stuff. I’ve been, like, obsessed with it for years and years. And then when I was studying fish and biology, I read everything about the sea.”
“I’ll check if we have anything like that.”
“Can you show me how to use this too?”
She pointed at the television. That was a bit of a surprise: most patients have that thing turned on and are scanning the stations before they warm the bed.
“You don’t have one at home?”
“We’re only allowed to watch it sometimes, when my dad is there.”
“Are you allowed to watch this one?”
“I won’t tell if you won’t tell,” she said, and grabbed the remote.
I turned on the television and went to find her a book. On the way past the front desk, Mona, the morning receptionist, was looking up to the ceiling while attempting, fruitlessly, to get out a few words to someone who apparently wouldn’t listen. I tried to speed up and race past her, but Mona thrust out her hand holding the phone.
“He’s demanding to talk to someone on medical staff,” Mona said.
I crinkled my nose as if she’d handed me a roadkill skunk, and drilled my eyes into hers. She gave me a What can I do? shrug.
“Locksburg General!” I said, all cheery.
“You a doctor?” a guy’s voice said. I immediately pictured him sitting in a sweat-stained lounge chair and wearing a wife-beater undershirt with more food on it than there was in his moldy refrigerator.
“I’m a nurse.”
“Maybe that’s good enough…”
“Well, we’ll take our chances.”
“I can’t remember shit anymore. What should I take so I can remember?”
“You should take … Oh, shoot. I just forgot.”
“What kind of nurse are you?”
“The kind who doesn’t tie up a hospital phone with lame questions.”
“I’ll call your supervisor. What’s your name?”
“Mona,” I said, then hung up.
Mona’s mouth dropped open.
“Don’t worry. He won’t remember.” Then I flashed her a smirk that said: That’ll teach you to hand me the phone.
I found two things for Gabriella to read—one a National Geographic magazine that had a cover story on sea turtles, and the other what looked to be a cheesy romance novel set in a fishing village—and brought them to her. I’d been gone barely fifteen minutes, but she’d already shut off the television.
“Gave it up?”
“It’s exhausting.”
“I know.”
“I like real people better,” she said.
“I like people too. I just feel better when they’re not around.”
“That’s called cognitive dissonance.”
“That’s also called life.”
“You’re a smartie.”
“In a good way or a bad way?”
“Sorta bad.”
“I’m sorta sorry,” I said.
“It’s OK. Everyone tries to seem nice all the time, and I kinda do too, but sometimes I don’t want to be. Do you think that’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think you should always be a nice person, every single minute of the day, even if you don’t want to be? And if you don’t want to be nice, but you act nice, is that a kind of lie?”
It wasn’t a first, but it was a rarity: a philosophical question from a patient. I’d gotten so used to the crazy callers and the barely ill patients who treat every minor inconvenience as if it were an earth-shaking tragedy that now, when an interesting comment arrived, it caught me off guard.
“I … I think you’re asking the wrong person,” I said. “I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’m not always so nice. And the opposite sometimes happens: I can easily be nice, but I choose to be … well, you said it, a smartie.”
“And what happens if you aren’t nice in actions, but you’re nice in your mind?” Gabriella asked. “Or, wait, what if your actions help others but your thoughts are mean? Like, if you do something kind for someone, but in your heart, you hate doing it?”
“Wow, you won’t hear this on TV.”
“They’re interesting questions, aren’t they?”
“They are. Are you a philosopher too?”
“I just think things like that sometimes.”
“That’s admirable,” I said.
“Can I ask you another question?” she said.
“Whatever you want.”
“I’m not doing so well, am I?”
I took a while before answering. Checked her water pitcher. Smoothed a section of the bedsheet.
“Not really, no.”
She took just as long before saying, “Thank you for the truth.”
“I wish I didn’t have to tell it.”
“Have you ever lied to a patient?”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Seriously? Not even to little kids?”
“A long time ago I promised myself to never lie to a patient. No matter who.”
Gabriella stared directly into my eyes, as if she were about to test me. Then she said:
“I’m going to die any day now, aren’t I?”
ANDY
I sat with Kate and Angie for an hour, my head in my hands, moaning like some wounded beast in a field. Then I tried to pray, before giving up and telling god: You know what? Go fuck yourself and take your universe with you. Finally I rose from the corner of the room where I’d collapsed and called the police. Before they arrived I took the half-filled baggie of heroin that Kate had left and hid it behind the needlepoint in our bedroom that read:
The best part about
Tomorrow is that there will
Be more things to love.
The police chief showed up as I was hiding the extra syringes that Kate had bought in a three-pack from a drugstore. Within an hour I was sitting in front of the chief’s desk at the station while an ambulance took away the only two people I’d ever loved.
Chief Kriner checked out that I’d been at work all morning, and asked enough questions at the hospital to ease his mind that I’d had nothing to do with the deaths. In a town as small as Locksburg, he was essentially a beat cop in a cruiser with an extra stripe on his sleeve. As a rule, I didn’t trust anyone who wore a badge, though the guy seemed to have at least one measure of compassion more than the Philadelphia police, who were, in many cases, as hard and jaded as the junkies.
“So where’s the heroin?”
“I haven’t done any of that in more than nine years.”
“You’re no longer an addict?”
“I’m an addict, all right. I’m always an addict. I crave it every single day of my life. I’ve just gotten good at holding off the urges.”
“Where did your wife get the drugs?”
“I don’t know,” I said, though I had an idea or three. There were plenty of losers in Locksburg who’d be happy to sell you whatever you wanted. This cop surely had to realize that.
“I didn’t see any of those little bags left over.”
“Bags?”
“For heroin.”
“Oh. I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe it’s around the room somewhere.”
“You’re not thinking of doing the same, are you?” he asked.
“No,” I lied.
“If this was the city, I’d refer you to a grief counseling center. But the best we got is Father Glynn over at Saint Stanislaus. He’s trained in that sort of thing.” He took a card from his desk and handed it to me. “This is his phone number. He’s a good friend of mine.”
“Thanks.”
“Go see him.”
“I will.”
“You won’t go, will you?”
“No,” I said, figuring a dose of truth wouldn’t hurt. I checked the clock on the wall. I’d been at the station for four hours. “Can I leave?”
“I’ll drive you home.”
“I’d like to walk.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
He offered his hand, and we shook.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.
I nodded and left and started on the fifteen-minute walk home through Locksburg. I never thought much of this town, but Angie liked feeding the ducks at Dykeman Pond and talking to people who seemed to have more time to chat than those who lived in Philadelphia and shied away from strangers. After a year away, I lost much of my strange pride for that city, which fostered such unexamined feelings of arrogance and, to be flat-out honest, deserved none of them. Locksburg was a better place for my wife and my daughter, and that made it good enough for me.
On the walk, I took the card with the grief counselor’s name that the cop gave me and tossed it into a recycling can. Then I got home and into bed and tried to get a decent night’s sleep.
I had a lot to do tomorrow before killing myself.
* * *
I woke the next morning and listened for Angie, and for half a minute was amazed that she was still sleeping. I wondered why Kate, always a late riser, had gotten out of our bed so early.
Then the realization slammed into me like a high wave of water, and I lay there in a kind of shock, so devastated that I became jittery, eyeballs darting around, feeling confused and trying to convince myself that what had happened yesterday had been a dream I’d just awakened from. Soon, though, I had to force myself to understand that they were gone. When the emotions began to overwhelm me, I found consolation in the idea that my despair wouldn’t last long. Make it through this morning, I told myself. Then you can end this life and all its pain.
I showered and made myself as presentable as possible, which for me was a pair of two-year-old jeans and a plain black T-shirt. I walked a few blocks over to Lombard Funeral Home, chosen because it was closest.
I stood on the porch, unsure of whether to knock or enter the place, and after a few moments of indecision was saved by a woman inside who must have seen me. She opened the front door.
“Good morning,” she said. She was maybe sixty, her hair gray and well styled, and, like me, in jeans and a shirt, though she carried an air of respectability and professional friendliness that I’d never had. She looked me right in the eye. I glanced elsewhere, embarrassed that mine were so bloodshot.
“Are you … open?”
“Yes. My husband had to step out on an errand, but I can help you. Would you like to come in?”
I followed her to a small office to the right, close to the front door. She offered me a heavy wooden chair; then she moved to the business side of the desk.
“I shoulda called, I guess, but uh, you know…” I was reverting to Philly-speak, and I willed myself to slow down. My city accent occasionally baffled Locksburg listeners—I often can’t help cutting the g from ing-ended words, and my vocabulary choices sometimes run counter to townsfolk-language. I’ll say, “Can I get a soda?” and be asked, “You’nz want a pop?” with a bewildered look.
I stopped to collect myself. She saved me with: “You’re fine. How about a cup of coffee?”
“No. I mean, unless you’ve got some made.”
“It will take one minute. I’ve got one of those new Keurig makers. Tell you the truth, I’d like a cup too. I’ll be right back.”
I scanned the office: plaques on the wall, framed certifications, photographs. The place was so silent I could hear the coffee streaming into the cup in the next room. She popped back in. “How would you like yours?”
“Milk, no sugar, please.” I might have asked for some whiskey in it had it not been so early in the morning, and had I not been here on such a task.
She returned with the coffee, then retook her seat.
“Oh, I’m sorry—I’m Carol Lombard. And you’re…?”
“Andy Devon.”
“How can I help you, Andy?” she asked.
“I, uh, I … my wife. And my daughter…”
Just saying those words aloud made my bottom lip tremble. I stared at the floor and resigned myself to pushing the information out of my mouth, reminding myself to get this done, finish this part, and later, all will be over.
I began again. “I’m guessing you already heard. Everyone knows everything in this town, it seems.”
“I had heard something, yes, about a mother and daughter. I’m so sorry.”
“I’d like to have them both cremated. No ceremony or anything.”
She surprised me by asking, “How long were you married?”
“Ten years. My daughter, she had Down syndrome. We used to take a lot of walks. Sometimes we’d walk by here. You probably saw us.”
“Yes, I remember you.”
The woman didn’t appear especially familiar, but I knew she’d remember us. You don’t forget a crew like Kate, Angie, and me and how we walked the streets, happier than anyone else around us, surely. And I will say this for myself: even with a miserable early life, I knew that I had experienced real happiness later on. I had the kind of pride that comes from surviving a terrible time and still finding love, a love that was powerful and …
“Dear?”
I had faded away. I swallowed hot coffee to burn me to attention.
“Sorry. What did you say?”
“I asked, where are they now? Are they at…?”
“At Locksburg General. I really don’t know … how this works. If I need to call there or…”
“We’ll take care of everything.” I got the feeling that if I were sitting there next to her, she would have touched my hand in sympathy.
“So, like, how much will this cost?”
She tapped a few numbers into a desk calculator, then wrote a total on a piece of paper and handed it to me. The price was higher than I expected.
“And that’s … no ceremony or anything, right? I’m really sorry if I sound stupid. I’ve never done this before. Obviously.”
“Don’t apologize. Yes. Only the cremations. Andy, are you sure you don’t want to go home and rest? I could have my husband stop by later today. Or tomorrow. Take some time. You can—”
“No. I need to get this done now. Can I pay by check?”
“Yes. That’s fine.”
“There’s one other thing,” I said. “I’ve … This may sound … but, um. When I die … See, it’s only me now. And I’m afraid, if I go. You know, die. No one will take care of me. What I want to do is leave instructions for when I go. To have me cremated too. And have all our ashes put together and scattered. So … do people, like, pay ahead of time?”
“Some do. But as I said, Andy, you should take some time to think about—”
“I don’t need any more time,” I said. It was blunter than I wanted it to sound to this nice woman. But I had to plow through, in case my resolve began to wane. “I just want to get all this done right now. Please.”
A half hour later I walked out with a receipt in my pocket for three cremations, totaling a mere fourteen dollars less than the balance of my savings account.
Pretty good, I told myself. There’s not much left to leave to anyone.
* * *
I considered doing something darkly romantic, like surrounding myself with the hundreds of photographs that Kate, Angie, and I had taken over the years, or playing the children’s records that we’d listen and sing along to together. But then I thought of Kate, who wasn’t one for sentimentality. If she wanted to do something, she did it, no frills. Her favorite phrase wasn’t anything dreamy or clever or cute. It was: “I get shit done.”
“Then let’s get this shit done, motherfucker!” I shouted inside my empty house. Punched the door frame for good measure.
From behind the needlepoint I took the remainder of the baggie that Kate had used. As I cooked it up in the spoon, I couldn’t help thinking back on my life, which I often considered in chapters: the first, as a kid growing up in Northeast Philadelphia, wild as a street rat, with parents who didn’t care much about themselves, and less about me. Then the next chapter was tougher, and began the night my dad beat my mother into a pulp then never returned, leaving her permanently changed and distracted, not even noticing when I dropped out of high school in tenth grade. The heroin chapter followed that, when I hit the junk hard and eventually met Kate, and we’d shoot up side by side and live together on and off the streets. Finally, the only good section, when Kate and I had Angie, and we cleaned ourselves up and lived our best lives.
That’s the last memory I wanted in my mind.
I sucked up the juice from the spoon then steadied the overfilled syringe. Yanked the belt tight and tapped a vein in my arm. Felt the pinch as the needle went in. Then shot hard.
A second later, the overdose hit my heart.
I gasped.
My eyelids weighed two hundred pounds each. They dropped and put me into blackness, then my neck weakened and my head … felt …
so
unimaginably
heavy
that
it
bobbed
and
I
couldn’t
lift
it
at
all.
I mumbled as I fell away into something infinitely dark and bottomlessly deep. I don’t know if I said the words, though I know I felt them. The words were:
Kate.
Angie.
Here I come.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I learned that this novel was to be published, I celebrated first with my good-luck charms: Michele, Hope, and Troy Jaworowski. Hope, I’ll remember that hug forever. Then I called four people who’ve supported me, drank with me, joked with me, and annoyed me for years. In other words, they’re essential friends: Murielle Jacquemin-Harman, Jennifer Kitses (a terrific novelist herself), Lisa Reeves, and Rick Yost.
Speaking of essential, Doug Stewart, Tim Duggan, Anita Sheih, and Hannah Campbell define that word.
There are too many people with the last names Bier, DiPietro, Simons, and Wallace to mention individually, so thanks to all of you collectively. Joan and Gus Jaworowski too, of course.
I contacted some of my favorite authors, blindly, for blurbs and advice, and they came through, big-time: Ken Bruen, John Darnielle, Laura Dave, Fabian Nicieza, Jason Rekulak, Scott Smith, Willy Vlautin, and Chris Whitaker. I am in awe of these writers. Read them and you will be, too.
And to you, kind reader, so much thanks.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ken Jaworowski is an editor at the New York Times. He graduated from Shippensburg University and the University of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he was an amateur boxer, and has had plays produced in New York and Europe. He lives in New Jersey with his family. Small Town Sins is his first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
SMALL TOWN SINS: A NOVEL. Copyright © 2023 by Ken Jaworowski. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 120 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10271.
