"Oh, no, honey," Louise said, putting her hand impulsively on Nan's. "Not…I mean, your future. Not the old-age money."
Nan looked at her, her eyes full of tears again. "I don't even know how to say this, Louise. II it beggared me…and it won't…it wouldn't matter. I'm going to give Mary Alice her school, if she lives. And I'm going to get it out of the red, and make it work tike clockwork, if the job takes my every waking hour and every dime my husband left me." She wiped her eyes. "Could…could I borrow your car, please? I'm going to the hospital, and I might as well talk to the man while I'm there. I'll fix it with the finance department."
Louise pressed the keys into her hand, her own eyes moist "Gee, Annie…you're a peach. You really are. But…you think you can swing it all? Really? I mean, you never told us who you were, anyhow…"
"Who am I?" she said, her eyes going out of focus as she pondered the question. I've been having a lot of trouble with that question lately. I used to think I knew. I used to think I was plain old Polish Anna Karpowa of Pigiron City, Pennsylvania. Then…then I was Ed Mikell's wife, for a long time, and until he passed away I was very happy to be nothing but that Since then…I don't know. But I can tell you one thing. I'm going to find out"
She went to the finance office first; visiting hours weren't until early afternoon, and it seemed better to take care of the practical things first since they were, at the moment virtually the only thing she really could take care of reliably.
The interview went quickly. As she'd suggested, the man had called D and B first and his tone was respectful and reassuring, in a way she knew he wouldn't even consider if she were, indeed, plain old Anna Karpowa, from the wrong side of a town that'd never amount to much in a million years-a steelworkers' company town full of Polacks and Ukrainians and Hankies and Bohunks and all those other low-class parish Catholics from the poor countries of Central Europe, people with good hearts and hot tempers and ten kids apiece and no more chance of ever getting out of their grubby ghetto life than…
But of course she had. How lucky she'd been!
Or had she? she thought now. Was she, after all, all that much happier than the girls she'd grown up with had been? She who'd had one kid-practically barren, by Pigiron City standards-and who virtually never saw her? She who was, right now, lonelier than she'd ever been back in the crowded little brick row house in the narrow valley the Monongahela had cut through the folded mountains of Western Pennsylvania millions of years before? She wasn't sure. When all this was over, she promised herself a trip back to Pigiron City, just to see. She hadn't been back in years, not since she'd paid to have Mom moved to a nice nursing home and settled an annuity on her sister Polya for taking care of Pop. Now she had to know, had to go there and…and pay attention, this time, and really see.
Had her childhood been really so bad?
Was her adulthood really so good?
The years with Ed…how much was there to remember? Mickey had grown up under the care of a nanny. You did that kind of thing in Ed's upper-class Church-of-England, everything-modeled-on-the-English-upper-class sort of world. She'd missed all the lovely things her sisters had told her about in their own kids: the first words, the first little sentences…And what had she to show for what she'd missed, not really being a housewife? Not really being a mother? Not, perhaps even, really being a woman all those years?
That was easy. She had a house full of empty memories, and a bunch of family friends who turned out on closer inspection to be his friends, not hers, and she didn't have a damned thing in common with them. She had closets full of clothes she didn't wear, and fifty pairs of shoes she didn't need…and all she needed to be happy was what would fit in a weekender bag tike the one she'd flown here with. Mary Alice hadn't known a damn thing about her except that she was her friend, and she'd done everything she could to make her feel loved and at home and happy on the basis of that. For that you didn't need twenty million dollars. What did you need to be happy? Just a roof over your head, and a way to keep food in the larder, and the good body God had given you. And people you loved around you…
She was in a good mood when she went to the ward where they'd moved Mary Alice. The doctors took some of this away almost immediately, with their talk of trauma and possible paralysis and the loss of one eye. And their long faces. Doctors didn't have long faces-not in her experience. Not unless they'd been straggling with something difficult all night and now found themselves on the verge of losing.
Nothing could quite have cushioned the shock of seeing Mary Alice, though. Most of her face was covered with white bandages, including one eye. The mouth, gray and drawn, was visible, and one bloodshot eye. The eye looked at her; she could see no sign of recognition.
Nan-Annie, she was now, ah Annie-sat down beside her. She looked, and she gulped, and she tried three times before she got something out
"Mary Alice," she said finally. "I…I hope you're feeling all right I don't know if you can hear me…and I guess I'll have to take that chance…anyhow, darling, I…I wanted you to know that I'm taking care of the school, and it'll all be okay…I'm going to pay up all the bills…and I'm going to stay here until you're okay…and maybe I won't go back…and I'm going to pitch in here and make the place work until you'll be so proud of me…"
She broke down a little here, and the unseeing eye stared at her out of the bandages, uncomprehending, and it took her a minute or so before she could go on. But when she could, it was to bend over close to Mary Alice's one visible ear to tell her "I love you" and kiss her softly on the cheek. The one glaring eye saw nothing, registered no knowledge that she'd even been there.
It was too much. She made it out of the room, made it down the stairs and out to the parking lot, and to Louise's car. And then, sitting in the driver's seat with the key in her hand, she broke down. She had a long cry, but this time it didnt seem to help the way it had in the past when she'd had a long cry. It got something but of her system but it didn't change the situation. And it did nothing, nothing at all about the terrible, nagging feeling of guilt that was eating away at her.
After all, while Mary Alice was out there, having these…these awful thing happen to her, where had Nan been? Taking her pleasure with two other women. Betraying her friend's love and affection with not one, but two other women…With a strangled sob Nan banged her head savagely against the steering wheel. "You fool!" she said to herself. "Damned weak fool!"
…And as she reached into the pocket of her dress for Kleenex, her fingers closed around the little box of pills Zora had given her, wrapped in the little note that had accompanied them. She opened the paper with trembling fingers and read again:
…If yon get to feeling that way again take a couple of these. I'll be by tonight to see how you're doing…
Taking the pills was a bad mistake. She realized this the moment she got out on the freeway. The white line started to weave the first time she got the car into high, and the cars ahead started going in and out of focus. She narrowly missed sideswiping another car, getting back into the right-hand lane where it was supposed to be safer. And, weaving in and out of her lane, she steered into the off-ramp as soon as she possibly could. At the bottom of the grade she pulled over and shook her head, but the cobwebs wouldn't clear. Things kept going in and out of focus, in and out…
It took her a full half-hour to get the rest of the ten or twelve blocks home. She kept having to pull off to one side and stop to shake her head; once she saw a cop car slow down, its driver giving her a suspicious glance. She would have been a cinch for a ticket if he hadn't almost simultaneously spotted somebody up ahead doing something wrong, blatantly and recklessly. And when she finally pulled the car up in the school parking lot she knew she was in such bad shape she'd really do best to avoid Louise; she left the keys in the car and headed for the stairs to Mary Alice's apartment, weaving drunkenly.