“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I know it was your first day back.”
“You had me at ‘Are you hungry?’” I said.
Besides, there were things I needed to ask him about.
We met at the Downtown Diner, a local institution that had been unapologetically raising the cholesterol and blood sugar levels of Dover residents for nearly fifty years. When I arrived at seven thirty, Paul waved to me from a booth. The dinner crowd had thinned out, and except for the sounds of cleanup—clanking dishes, rattling silverware—the place was pretty calm. It smelled good, though. Very good. Grease hung in the air as thick as humidity, reminding me I hadn’t eaten much all day. Not for the past few days in fact. I needed to eat, and Paul knew that too.
He looked better than the last time I had seen him in the hospital parking lot. He looked a little more rested, a little less old and tired. He smiled when I sat down, and only mild strain showed in his eyes.
“I’m surprised you wanted to come here,” I said. “You know…” I pointed to his chest.
Paul had suffered a mild heart attack a few years earlier, one that required an angioplasty to reopen a clogged artery. In the wake of the procedure, he adopted a healthier diet and started walking or riding a bike a few miles every day.
“Oh, that,” he said. He made a dismissive wave of his hand. “I cheat sometimes.”
The waitress arrived, notepad in hand, and we both ordered cheeseburgers, fries, and Cokes. Paul even asked for a side of mayonnaise for his burger. “You know,” he said when she’d walked away, “you’d think having my sister die would make me take more caution with my health, but instead…” He let the thought trail off, but I got the point.
“You want to live it up while you can,” I said.
“I guess so. Living it up with my cheeseburger.” He forced a smile. “The police paid me a visit today,” he said. “Those two detectives.”
“What did they want?”
“Who knows?” he said. “I guess they just wanted to ask me some routine questions. Mostly it was stuff about your mom. You know, did she have any enemies? Did she have any friends? A background examination, I guess you’d call it. They want to know if there was anything in her life that might have driven someone to harm her.”
“So they’re not just focusing on Ronnie?” I asked.
“They asked about him as well. Just more stuff about violent tendencies or whatever. I didn’t have anything else to tell them.”
“Good,” I said, allowing myself to feel relief.
“I have a feeling they’ll be coming to you soon,” he said.
“I can’t wait.”
“You need to be prepared for the kinds of things they’re going to ask you,” he said. A firmness had crept into his voice. “They’re going to— I don’t know. They may say things that will upset you.”
“Like what?”
He seemed about to say something, then thought better of it. “I don’t know. Just be ready for anything they might throw at you. And remember, they’re cops. They may push you a little, rattle your cage. Just keep your cool with them.”
I wanted to say more but didn’t. “Okay.” I let it go.
I sensed Paul’s mood slipping in the wrong direction. The cheer he’d summoned when I came into the restaurant seemed to be draining away, so I tried to steer him toward something else.
“I made it through my first day back,” I said. “No casualties.”
He brightened again. “Good.”
“I wasn’t prepared and I’m light-years behind, but I went.”
“Work can be good for that,” he said. “Taking your mind off your troubles. I almost wish I was still working for that reason. Almost.” The waitress brought the Cokes, and Paul peeled a straw from its wrapper and took a long drink. “You have that practical aspect to your personality. It comes from our side of the family.”
“Work through things by just moving on?” I asked.
“Exactly.” He looked a little distant, a little lost in his own thoughts. “I don’t have that quite as much as Leslie did. I get a little hung up on things, and they turn over in my mind. Over and over sometimes.”
I drank my Coke, felt the sugar and caffeine hitting my bloodstream. It was delicious, and I wished they could serve it to me through an IV. “It’s because you care,” I said.
“Like Ronnie,” he said. “I think of him in there, in that hospital.” He shook his head. “I worry about that and all the pressures on him.”
“I just came from there,” I said. “Did you go today?”
“This morning. I guess I was there until about two.”
“How did he seem to you?”
Before he answered, our food arrived. The waitress set the thick plates heaped with meat and fries down in front of us, then handed over a sticky bottle of ketchup. I asked for another Coke, and once that was delivered, Paul and I were ready to continue our conversation.
“He seemed fine,” he said. “Quiet still, just like he was at home. But not bad, I guess.” He sighed. “I guess I expected the police to show up and bug him, but they didn’t. Not while I was there.”
I considered not telling him about Ronnie’s outburst during the afternoon. I didn’t want to make him feel any worse or more guilty or conflicted over Ronnie’s stay at Dover Community. But I needed to know if he had any guesses as to who else could have gone to Ronnie’s room that day, so I told him all about it, relating Janie’s story as accurately as I could recall it. While I was telling Paul, he stopped eating. He picked at his fries, lifting them up and setting them back down on his plate without taking any more bites. When I was finished telling him, he didn’t look up.
I asked, “Do you have any idea who this woman might be? Does she sound like anyone Ronnie or Mom knew?”
Paul lifted his hand to his forehead and rubbed his temple. “I don’t think so. I don’t know everybody they knew.”
“Could it be someone Ronnie knew?” I asked. “Someone from where he went to speech therapy, or someone from work?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said, his voice weary.
“The nurse thought it might be a relative.”
“We’re short on those,” he said. “And getting shorter every day.”
I decided not to press him too hard. I turned my attention to my food—which I enjoyed a great deal—and tried to think of non-bothersome small talk. But what was there to talk about? What else existed in the world besides the crisis enveloping my family? I gave up trying to talk about anything else and said, “Ronnie said something strange when I asked him about it.”
Paul ate a couple of fries. “What was that?” he asked.
“Well, first he said my name. I asked him who came to see him, and he said, ‘Elizabeth.’”
“He was doped up by then?” Paul asked.
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t know what you were asking him.”
“Right. But then he said that Mom had been there.”
Paul slumped when I said those words. I could see the energy draining from him.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
“I thought—”
“What does it have to do… with anything? He’s high as a kite and he’s dreaming,” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry.” I looked down at my plate of food. I wanted to stop myself from saying anything more, but I couldn’t. “I just really want to know who this woman is who went to Ronnie’s room and upset him so much. Don’t you want to know?”
He sighed. “Elizabeth, I’m not sure I want to know anything else about any of this.”