She stood as well, offering her right hand, then remembered and, embarrassed, held out her left. “Failure of imagination,” she apologized. “Amazing how often it comes down to that.”
At the door it occurred to Raymer that there was one thing he wanted to ask. “Have you ever treated anybody who’d been struck by lightning?”
She blinked, then shook her head. It pleased him to see her so completely wrong-footed. “Why?”
“I just wonder what something like that would do. What effect it would have?”
“Well,” she said, “human beings are mostly water and electrical impulses. A sudden surge like that, even if it didn’t…fry you?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, there’s nowhere in the body the current wouldn’t go.”
“Do you think it could put something inside you that wasn’t already there?”
“Like what?”
“Like thoughts that aren’t yours?”
“Doubtful.”
He nodded. “What about afterward? Would things go back to normal, eventually?”
He was surprised to see how seriously the woman was regarding him. “You’ll have to let me know,” she said.
—
LEAVING THE HOSPITAL, Raymer heard a metronomic banging sound coming from the parking lot but paid it no mind. A cab was idling out front, so he got in and gave the driver Jerome’s address. Once he fetched his car, he’d drive back to Bath, check in to one of the interstate motels and catch a few hours’ sleep. In the morning, semi-rested, he’d decide how to proceed. The longer he thought about it, the more inclined he was to just leave everything and make a clean getaway. If there was such a thing.
“Hold on a minute,” he said as the driver put the taxi in gear. Because standing in the middle of the parking lot, directly beneath a streetlamp, was a man Raymer recognized, even from behind, as Gus Moynihan. He was leaning forward, with his elbows on the roof of his car and his forehead resting on the frame. Only when he got closer was Raymer able to make out what he was using to make the banging sound: Alice’s phone. “Gus?” he said, causing him to straighten up guiltily.
“Doug,” he said, quickly putting the handset behind his back. “What are you doing here?” Even in the poor light Raymer could see that his eyes were red and puffy. Raymer held up his bandaged hand. “Oh,” he said, “right.”
Had the mayor been thinking clearly, he would’ve asked why, for such a complaint, Raymer hadn’t been treated in Bath, but he obviously wasn’t tracking. Something bad must’ve happened, bad enough to make him forget that Raymer had stood him up for all those interviews on the evening news.
“Gus,” he said, “is Alice okay?”
“Yes, she’s fine,” he said, forcing a smile, but it soon crumpled. “No, that’s a lie, actually. She’s not fine. Alice…has never been fine.”
“What happened?”
“She took some pills.”
“I’m sorry. Is she—”
“She’ll live. They pumped her stomach in Bath. Unfortunately, there’s no mental health unit there,” he laughed bitterly. “Yet another amenity Schuyler Springs offers that we don’t. Anyway, she’s resting. That’s what they say, right? Resting comfortably? Words in lieu of truth. As if a mind like hers could ever rest.” He shook his head and looked off into the distance. “Tomorrow she’ll be admitted to the state mental hospital in Utica. The last time she was there I promised her she’d never have to go back.”
“Maybe they’ll be able to—”
“Yeah, but Doug? The thing is, I thought I could help her. I mean, wasn’t that the whole idea? Me, helping? The man she was with before…” He let the thought trail off. “I thought I could do a better job, but instead I ended up making everything worse.”
“How is it your fault if Alice is sick?”
Instead of answering, he took the handset out from behind his back and stared at it. Then, without warning, he hit himself in the forehead with it. Hard. Then twice more before Raymer, caught off guard, could yank it away from him. One of the blows, Raymer saw, had cut through his eyebrow, which now bled freely.
“Don’t you see?” he said. “I took it away from her. I told her all those imaginary conversations were making her sick. That if she didn’t want to go back to Utica, she had to give it to me.”
“And you think that’s why she swallowed those pills?”
He didn’t answer, just stared at his bloody hands. “I’m bleeding,” he said. “Good.”
“Hold still,” Raymer told him. “Tilt your head back. That’s a deep wound, Gus. You need stitches.”
“Better yet,” he said. “You know what my problem is? In a nutshell? I always think I can fix things. The whole town of Bath. Turns out I’m the one in need of repair.” He nodded at the phone. “Can I have that back?”
“Not if you’re going to hit yourself again.”
“I won’t,” he promised. “I’ll go back inside and leave it on her bedside table. They say she’ll sleep until morning, but if she wakes up in the middle of the night it’ll be there for her.”
Raymer reluctantly handed it over.
“Here’s what I’d like to know. Why did I do such a thing? Why did I take it from her. Actually, I think I know. It made me angry that when she got scared and the world made no sense, it was never me she came to.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Raymer allowed.
“It was like she knew I didn’t have what she needed. To her, talking to someone who didn’t even exist, on a phone that wasn’t even connected, gave her more comfort than I ever did. I think maybe that’s what I couldn’t bear.”
“You want to know what I think?” Raymer said, astonishing himself that he not only had an opinion but also wanted to share it.
“I would, actually,” Gus told him, weeping openly now. “Especially if you think better of me than I do of myself. I’d really like to hear that. Do you think you could say something along those lines and make me believe it?”
What Raymer had intended to say, and what over the course of the last forty-eight hours he was coming to understand, was that it was a shame, indeed a crying shame, though probably not a crime, to be unequal to the most important tasks you’re given. That was true of just about everyone Raymer knew, including himself. All his life, it seemed to him, he’d come up short, but his shortcomings were not, he hoped, criminal. And who knew? Maybe telling Gus something like that would be helpful. On the other hand, he seemed to want something else entirely, and Raymer found he could deliver that as well. “In the end I think things are going to work out,” he said. “I think Alice loves you more than you know, and I think you love her. I think this time the Utica doctors will know what to do. There’ll be a new medication to try, or there’ll be somebody new on staff who understands. I think that in no time she’ll be back here with you. I also think it’s possible for us to be better people tomorrow than we are today.”
He had no idea, of course, whether any of these things were true, in whole or in part. Still, what possible good could come of believing otherwise?
—
HE WAS ON the interstate, halfway back to Bath, when he noticed an orange glow on the horizon and then, between the trees, what looked like the tip of a tiny flame. His first thought, given last night’s weird atmospheric disturbances, was that this, despite the star-filled sky, must be yet another. Turning on the police band, he learned there was in fact a fire on Upper Main Street in Bath.
Unlike houses, trailers didn’t take long to burn, and by the time Raymer arrived, there wasn’t much left of Sully’s. The fire department had managed to keep the flames from leaping to Miss Beryl’s house, though the clapboards were scorched black right up to the eaves. About the only thing recognizable in the trailer’s smoking rubble was the commode Raymer had fallen asleep on early that morning, waiting for Sully to return home.