When they hit the floor, his leg twists behind him, and he’s howling. All three hundred and twenty-six pounds of Gloria Luby pin him to the cold concrete.
She amazes him. She’s rolled in his arms so his face is pressed into her soft belly. The knee is wrecked. He knows that already, doesn’t need to wait for a doctor to tell him. Destroyed. He keeps wailing, though there’s no point, no one in that room but the woman on top of him, insisting she will not hear, not ever. There’s no one in the hallway, no one in the basement. There are three closed doors between Sidney Elliott and all the living.
He has to crawl out from under her, has to prod and shove at her thick flesh, has to claw at her belly to get a breath. Inch by inch he moves, dragging himself, his shattered leg, across the smooth floor. He leaves her there, just as she is, face down, the lumpy mound of her rump rising in the air.
Dr. Enos is trying not to smile while Sid explains, again, how it happened. Everyone smiles, thinking of it, Sid Elliott on the floor underneath Gloria Luby. They’re sorry about his leg, truly. It’s not going to be okay. There’ll be a wheelchair, and then a walker. In the end, he’ll get by with a cane. If he’s lucky. It’s a shame, Dr. Roseland tells him, to lose a leg that way, and Sid wonders if she thinks there are good ways to lose a leg. He remembers the boy on the table. He remembers all the boys. Are those my legs?
He’s drifting in and out. He hears Roxanne laughing in the hallway. Then he sees her at the window, her mouth tight and grim as she sucks smoke.
She wants to know if it’s worth it, the risk, the exchange: Gloria Luby’s dignity for his leg. The idea of her dignity. She laughs, but it’s bitter. She tells him he’s a failure; she tells him how they found Gloria Luby. It took six orderlies to get her on the slab. They grunted, mocking her, cursing him.
He sleeps and wakes. Roxanne’s gone. Even her smoke is gone. He asks the nurse, a thin, dark-skinned man, Where is she? And the nurse says, Where’s who, baby? Nobody been here but you and me.
His father stands in the corner, shaking his head. He can’t believe Sid’s come back from the jungle, nothing worse than shrapnel in his ass, only to get it from a three-hundred-pound dead woman in a hospital in Seattle. Three hundred and twenty-six, Sid says. What? Three hundred and twenty-six pounds. His father looks as if he wants to weep, and Sid’s sorry — not for himself, he’d do it again. He’s sorry for his father, who’s disappointed, and not just in him. He’s been standing in the closet in Sid’s old room all these years, sobbing in the musty dark, pressing his face into the soft rabbit fur. He’s been in the other room, in the summer heat, listening to Sid plead with Roxanne, Just let me lick you. He’s been in the kitchen, watching Sid’s mother fry pork chops, chop onions, mash potatoes. He’s tried to tell her something and failed. He’s stood there, silent in the doorway, while she and Sid sat at the table chewing and chewing. Now, at last, when he speaks to his son, he has nothing to tell him, no wisdom to impart, only a phrase to mutter to himself, What a waste, what a waste, and Sid knows that when he says it he’s not thinking of the leg. He wants to forgive his father for something, but the old man’s turned down his hearing aid. He looks befuddled. He says, What is it, Sid?
The nurse shows him the button to press when the pain comes back. Straight into the vein, babe. No need to suffer. Just give yourself a little pop. Some people think they got to be strong, lie there sweating till I remind them. Not me, honey — you give me one of those, I’d be fine all the time. He grins. He has a wide mouth, bright teeth; he says, You need me tonight, honey, you just buzz.
Gloria Luby lies down beside him. She tells him, I was exactly what they expected me to be. My brain was light, my liver heavy; the walls of my heart were thick. But there were other things they never found. She rolls toward him, presses herself against him. Her soft body has warmth but no weight. She envelopes him. She says, I’ll tell you now, if you want to know.
The blond girl with the spikes on her jacket leans in the doorway. Outside, the rain. Behind her, the yellow light of the hall. She’s wearing her black combat boots, those ripped fishnets, a sheer black dress, a black slip. She says, Roxanne’s dead. So don’t give me any of that shit about risk. He turns to the wall. He doesn’t have to listen to this. All right then, she says, maybe she’s not dead. But I saw her — she don’t look too good.
She comes into the room, slumps in the chair by the bed. She says, I heard all about you and that fat lady.
She’s waiting. She thinks he’ll have something to say. She lights a cigarette, says, Wanna drag? And he does, so they smoke, passing the cigarette back and forth. She says, Roxanne thinks you’re an idiot, but who knows. She grinds the cigarette out on the floor, then stuffs the filter back in the pack, between the plastic and the paper. She says, Don’t tell anybody I was here.
The nurse brings Sid a wet cloth, washes his face, says, You been talking yourself silly, babe.
You know what I did?
The nurse touches Sid’s arm, strokes him from elbow to wrist. You’re famous here, Mr. Elliott — everybody knows what you did.
Roxanne sits on the windowsill. She says, Looks like you found yourself another sweetheart.
Sid’s forehead beads with sweat. The pain centers in his teeth, not his knee; it throbs through his head. He’s forgotten the button on his IV, forgotten the buzzer that calls the nurse. Roxanne drifts toward the bed like smoke. She says, Does it hurt, Sid? He doesn’t know if she’s trying to be mean or trying to be kind. She says, This is only the beginning. But she presses the button, releases the Demerol into the tube. She stoops as if to kiss him but doesn’t kiss. She whispers, I’m gone now.
Sidney Elliott stands in a white room at the end of a long hallway. He’s alone with a woman. He looks at her. He thinks, Nobody loved you enough or in the right way.
In some part of his mind, he knows exactly what will happen if he lifts her, if he takes her home, but it’s years too late to stop.
He tries to be tender.
He prays to be strong.
FATHER, LOVER, DEADMAN, DREAMER
I WAS a natural liar, like my mother. One night she told my daddy she was going to the movies with her girlfriend Marlene. Drive-in, double feature, up in Kalispell. Daddy said, How late will you be? And my mother said she didn’t know.
Hours later, we tried to find her. I remember my father hobbling from car to car while I sat in the truck. The faces on the screen were as big as God’s. Their voices crackled in every box. I was certain my mother was here, stunned and obedient. Huge bodies floated over the hill. They shimmered, lit from inside. This was how the dead returned, I thought, full of grace and hope.
It was midnight. I was nine years old. By morning I understood my mother was five hundred miles gone.
I remember the clumsy child I was. Bruises on my arms, scabbed knees. Boys chased me down the gully after school. I remember falling in the mud. They stole things I couldn’t get back, small things whose absences I couldn’t explain to my father now that we lived alone: a plastic barrette shaped like a butterfly, one shoelace, a pair of white underpants embroidered with the word Wednesday. I was Wednesday’s child. I wore my Tuesday pants twice each week, the second day turned inside out.