Mr. X

‘Yes?’

‘Dr Barnhill told me that you spoke to my mother this morning.’

She began looking prickly, and a trace of pink came into her cheeks. ‘Your mother came in while we were having the first patient summaries.’

I nodded.

‘She was confused, which is normal for a stroke person, but when she saw my uniform, she got hold of my arm and tried to say something.’

‘Could you make it out?’

Anger heightened the color in her cheeks. ‘I didn’t make her say anything, Mr Dunstan, she wanted to talk to me. Afterwards, I came up here and made a note. If my report to Dr Barnhill displeased your aunts, I’m sorry, but I was just doing my job. Stroke victims are often disordered in their cognition.’

‘She must have been grateful for your attention,’ I said.

Most of her anger went into temporary hiding. ‘It’s nice to deal with a gentleman.’

‘My mother used to say, No point in not being friendly.’ This was not strictly truthful. Now and again my mother had used to say, You have to give some to get some. ‘Could you tell me what you reported to the doctor?’

Zwick frowned at a stack of papers. ‘At first I couldn’t make out her words. Then we transferred her to the bed, and she pulled me in close and said, “They stole my babies.”’

18

As regal as a pair of queens in a poker hand, Nettie and May surveyed their realm from chairs brazenly appropriated from the nurses’ station. Somehow they had managed to learn the names, occupations, and conditions of almost everyone else in the ICU.

Number 3 was a combination gunshot wound and heart attack named Clyde Prentiss, a trashy lowlife who had broken his mother’s heart. 5, Mr Temple, had been handsome as a movie star until his horrible industrial accident. Mrs Helen Loome, the cleaning woman in 9, had been operated on for colon cancer. Four feet of intestine had been removed from Mr Bargeron in number 8, a professional accordionist in a polka band. Mr Bargeron drank so much that he saw ghosts flitting through his cubicle.

‘It’s the alcohol leaving his system,’ said Nettie. ‘Those ghosts are named Jim Beam and Johnnie Walker.’

May said, ‘Mr Temple will look like a jigsaw puzzle all the rest of his life.’

Their real subject, my mother, floated beneath the surface of the gossip. What they saw as her heedlessness had brought them pain and disappointment. Nettie and May loved her, but they could not help feeling that she had more in common with the drunken accordionist and Clyde Prentiss than with Mr Temple.

Technically, Nettie and May had ceased to be Dunstans when they got married, but their husbands had been absorbed into the self-protective world of Cherry Street as if born to it. Queenie’s marriage to Toby Kraft and her desertion to his pawnshop had taken place late in her life and only minimally separated her from her sisters.

‘Is Toby Kraft still around?’ I asked.

‘Last I heard, dogs still have fleas,’ Nettie fired back.

Aunt May levered herself to her feet like a rusty derrick. Her eyes glittered. ‘Pearl Gates turned up in her second-best dress. Pearlie’s in that Mount Hebron congregation with Helen Loome, you know, she went there from Galilee Holiness.’

Nettie craned her neck. ‘The dress she dyed pea-soup green, that makes her look like a turtle?’

Aunt May stumped up to a hunchbacked woman outside cubicle 9. I turned to Nettie. ‘Pearlie Gates?’

‘She was Pearl Hooper until she married Mr Gates. In a case like that, the man should take the woman’s name, instead of making a fool out of her. Considering the pride your Uncle Clark takes in our family, it’s a wonder he didn’t call himself Clark Dunstan, instead of me becoming Mrs Annette Rutledge.’

‘Uncle Clark is all right, I hope?’

‘An expert on everything under the sun, same as ever. What time is it?’

‘Not quite twelve-thirty.’

‘He’s driving around the parking lot to find a good enough place. Unless Clark has empty spaces on both sides, he’s afraid someone’ll put a scratch on his car.’ She looked up at me. ‘James passed away last year. Fell asleep in front of the television and never woke up. Didn’t I give you that news?’

‘I wish you had.’

‘Probably I got mixed up if I called you or not.’

For the first time, I was seeing my relatives from an adult perspective. Nettie had not considered telling me about James’s death for as long as a heartbeat.

‘Here comes your Uncle Clark, right on schedule.’

The old man in the loose yellow shirt coming around the desk bore only a generic resemblance to the man I remembered. His ears protruded at right angles, like Dumbo’s, from the walnut of his skull. Above the raw pink of his drooping lower lids, the whites of his eyes shone the ivory of old piano keys.

Uncle Clark drew up in front of his wife like a vintage automobile coming to rest before a public monument. ‘How are we doing at the moment?’

‘The same,’ said Nettie.

He lifted his head to inspect me. ‘If you’re little Ned, I’m the man who saved your mother’s life.’

‘Hello, Uncle Clark,’ I said. ‘Thanks for calling the ambulance.’

He waved me aside and moved through the curtain. I followed him inside.

Clark went to the side of the bed. ‘Your boy is here. That should help you pull through.’ He examined the lights and monitors. ‘Hadn’t been for me, you’d still be on the kitchen floor.’ He raised a bent finger to a screen. ‘This is her heart, you know. You get a picture of how it beats.’

I nodded.

‘Up, down, up, then that big one – see? That’s a strong heart.’

I wrapped my hand around my mother’s. Her breathing changed, and her eyelids flickered.

Clark looked at me with a familiar combination of provisional acceptance and lasting suspicion. ‘About lunchtime, isn’t it?’

My mother’s suddenly open eyes fastened on me.

He patted Star’s flank. ‘Get yourself back on your feet now, honey.’ The curtain swung shut behind him.

Star clutched my hand, lifted her head a few inches off the pillow, and uttered my name with absolute clarity. ‘Hvv … tkk tt ooo.’

The machines emitted squawks of alarm. ‘You have to get some rest, Mom.’

She propelled herself upright. Her fingers fastened around my bicep like a handcuff. She dragged in an enormous breath and on the exhalation breathed, ‘Your father.’

A nurse brushed me aside to place one hand on my mother’s chest, the other on her forehead. ‘Valerie, you have to relax. That’s an order.’ She hitched up the bedclothes, introduced herself as June Cook, the head nurse in the ICU, and clasped my mother’s hand. ‘We’re going to go out now, Valerie, so you get some rest.’

‘She’s called Star,’ I said.

My mother licked her lips and said, ‘Rob. Ert.’ Her eyes closed, and she was instantly asleep.

Outside the cubicle, Uncle Clark was tottering up the row of curtains in black-and-white spectator shoes, like Cab Calloway’s.

‘Where’s he going?’ I asked.

‘Late for lunch,’ Nettie said. ‘Lunch is late for him, more like.’

On the way out, I took off my blazer, folded it into my duffel, and zipped the bag shut again.

19

Nettie lowered her bag onto a table in the visitors’ lounge and pulled out sandwiches wrapped in cling film and a Tupperware container filled with potato salad. ‘No sense spending good money on cafeteria food.’

Clark dumped potato salad onto his plate, sectioned off a portion the size of a gnat, and raised it to his mouth. ‘When did you blow in, Neddie, a couple days ago?’

‘This morning,’ I said.

He cocked his head. ‘Is that right? I heard something about a big-money poker game.’

May gave me a look of bright approval.

‘I don’t play poker.’ I bit into a roast beef sandwich.

‘Where did you happen to hear a thing like that?’ Nettie asked him.

‘Checking my traps.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Nettie rolled her eyes at me. ‘The old fool can hardly walk upstairs anymore, but he has no trouble getting to his favorite bars. If he missed a day they’d think he dropped dead.’

‘Neddie, did you win a lot of money?’ Aunt May asked.

‘I didn’t win any money,’ I said.

‘Where was the game?’

Clark took a minuscule bite of his sandwich. ‘Upstairs in the Speedway Lounge. My friends there treat me like royalty. Like a king.’

‘Friends like that common tramp Piney Woods, I suppose.’

Clark coaxed another pebble of potato salad onto his fork. ‘There’s no harm in Piney. Son, I hope to have the pleasure of introducing you to Piney Woods one of these days. I consider Piney a man of the world.’ He brought the speck of potato salad to his mouth. ‘Matter of fact, it was Piney who told me about you winning that money.’

‘How much?’ May asked. ‘A whole lot, like a thousand, or a little lot, like a hundred?’

‘I didn’t win any money,’ I said. ‘I got into town this morning, and I came straight to the hospital.’

May said, ‘Joy told me –’

‘You heard him,’ Clark said. ‘Joy doesn’t see too good these days.’

‘How are Aunt Joy and Uncle Clarence?’ I asked.

‘Clarence and Joy don’t get out much,’ May said.

Clark nibbled at his sandwich. ‘It could be put that way. My advice is, die young, while you can still enjoy it.’ He examined the contents of my plate. ‘A boy like that could eat you out of house and home.’

‘I’d be happy to help out with the shopping and cooking, things like that.’

‘Is that what you do now, son? You a short-order cook?’

‘I’m a programmer for a software company in New York,’ I said. His expression told me that he had never before heard the words programmer or software. ‘We make things that tell computers what to do.’

‘Factory work keeps a man out of trouble, anyhow.’ He bit off a tiny wedge of sandwich and put the rest on his plate, getting into stride. ‘The problem today is that young men do nothing but hang out on the street. I blame the parents. Too selfish to give their children the necessary discipline. Our people are the worst of all, sad to say.’

He could have gone on for hours. ‘Tell me about this morning, Uncle Clark. I still don’t know what happened.’

He leaned back in his chair and aimed his best sneer at me. ‘Carl Lewis wouldn’t have been out of his chair by the time I was dialing the second 1 in 911. Saved the girl’s life.’

‘The bell rang about six in the morning,’ Nettie said. ‘I’m up at that hour because I have trouble sleeping. That’s Star, I said to myself, and the poor girl needs her family’s loving care. I could feel my insides start to worry.’

‘The Dunstan blood,’ Clark said, nodding at me.

‘As soon as I opened the door, Neddie, your mother fell right into my arms. I never in my life thought I’d see her look so bad. Your mother was always a pretty, pretty woman, and she still would have been, in spite of how she let herself go.’

‘Extra body weight never hurt a woman’s looks,’ Clark said.

‘It wasn’t the pounds she put on, and it wasn’t the gray in her hair. She was scared. ‘You’re worried about something, plain as day,’ I said. The poor thing said she had to get some sleep before she could talk. “Okay, honey,” I said, “rest up on the davenport, and I’ll make up your old bed and get breakfast ready for when you want it.” She told me to take her address book from her bag and call you in New York. Of course, I had your number right in my kitchen.

‘I had a feeling you were already on the way, Neddie, but I didn’t know how close you were! After that, I did the coffee and went up to put clean sheets on the bed. When I came back down, she wasn’t on the davenport. I went into the kitchen. No Star. All of a sudden, I heard the front door open and close, and I rushed out, and there she was, walking back to the davenport. Told me she was feeling dizzy and thought fresh air would help.’

She turned her head from side to side in emphatic contradiction. ‘I didn’t believe it at the time, and I don’t believe it now, though I’m sorry to say it to her own son. She was looking for someone. Or she saw someone walk up.’

May said, ‘According to Joy –’

Nettie glanced at her sister before looking back at me. ‘I asked her, “What’s happening, sweetheart? You can tell me,” and she said, “Aunt Nettie, I’m afraid something bad is going to happen.” Then she asked if I called you. “Your boy’s on the way,” I said, and she closed her eyes and let herself go to sleep. I sat with her a while, and then I went back into the kitchen.’

Sensing an opening, Clark leaned forward again. ‘I come downstairs and see a woman holed up on my davenport! What in tarnation is this, I wonder, and come up slow and easy and bend over to get a good look. “Hello, Clark,” she said, and just like that she was out again.’

‘May came over, and I made all of us a nice breakfast. After a while, in she comes, putting on a nice smile. She told Clark, “I thought I saw your handsome face, Uncle Clark, but I thought I was dreaming.” She sat at the table, but wouldn’t take any nourishment.’

‘Those two took it for her,’ Clark said. ‘Eat like a couple of tobacco farmers.’

‘Not me,’ May said. ‘It’s all I can do to eat enough to stay alive.’

‘She looked better, but she didn’t look right. Her skin had a gray cast, and there wasn’t any shine to her eyes. The worst thing was, I could see she was so fearful.’

‘That girl was never afraid of anything,’ Clark announced. ‘She knew she was sick, that’s what you saw.’

‘She knew she was sick, but she was afraid for Neddie.’

‘For me?’ I said.

‘That’s right,’ May put in.

‘Clark heard her, too, but he paid no attention because it wasn’t about his handsome face.’

‘What did she say?’ I thought my mother had already given me a clue.

‘“A terrible thing could happen to my son, and I have to stop it.” That’s what she said.’

‘I ain’t deef,’ Clark said.

20

A few minutes later, I jumped into a brief, uncharacteristic lull to ask if my mother had said anything more about the terrible thing from which she wanted to protect me.

‘It wasn’t much,’ Nettie said. ‘I don’t suppose she could have explained.’

May said, ‘She asked how I was getting on without James. Star was here for his funeral, you know.’ A dark glance reminded me that I had been absent. ‘She didn’t seem lively and full of fun, the way she used to be. I remember she asked Nettie to get in touch with some of her old friends. Then she started toward the counter and made this funny surprised sound. That’s when she fell smack down on the floor. I swear, I thought she had left us. Lickety-split, Clark was on the phone.’

‘Superman never moved faster,’ Clark said.

I drew in a large breath and let it out. ‘This is going to sound funny, but did she mention anything about my father?’

May and Nettie stared at me, and Clark’s mouth dropped open, momentarily making him look witless.

‘I think she wants me to know who he was.’ An irresistible idea soared into my mind, and I hitched forward in my chair. ‘She wanted me to get here before it was too late. She didn’t want me to spend the rest of my life wondering about him.’

Clark seemed baffled. ‘Why in heaven would you wonder about that?’

‘Star never said a word about your father from the day you were born,’ Nettie said.

‘Probably she kept putting it off and putting it off until she realized that time was running out.’

The aunts exchanged a glance I could not interpret. ‘You must have felt that my mother brought shame on your family. You took her in, and you gave me a home. Aunt Nettie and Aunt May, I’m grateful for everything you did. But I’m not ashamed that Star wasn’t married when I was born.’

‘What the dickens are you talking about?’ Clark said.

Nettie said, ‘Star never brought shame on our family.’

‘At the time, you must have thought you had to conceal …’ The sentence trailed off before their absolute incomprehension.

May seemed to try to get me into better focus. ‘Neddie, Star was married when she had you.’

‘No, she wasn’t,’ I said. ‘This is exactly what I’m talking about.’

‘She most certainly was,’ Nettie insisted. ‘She took off, the way she did, and when she came back she was a married woman about a week before delivery. Her husband had left her, but I saw the papers.’

All three regarded me with varying degrees of disapproval, even indignation.

‘How come she never told me?’

‘Women don’t have to tell their children they were born on the right side of the blanket.’

A myriad of odd sensations, like the flares of tiny fireworks, sparkled through my chest. ‘Why did she give me her name instead of his?’

‘You were more a Dunstan than whatever he was. His name didn’t count for anything.’

‘Do you still have the papers?’

‘They’d be long gone, by now.’

I silently agreed. With the exception of her driver’s license, my mother’s attitude toward official documents tended toward a relaxation well past the point of carelessness.

‘Let me see if I have this right,’ I said. ‘She left home with a man you didn’t know, married him, and became pregnant. Her husband abandoned her shortly before I was born.’

‘It was something like that,’ Nettie said.

‘What did I get wrong?’

Nettie pursed her lips and folded her hands in her lap. Either she was trying to remember, or she was editing the story into acceptable form. ‘I recall her telling me that the fellow took off a couple months after she learned she was carrying. She could have come back here, but she bought a ticket somewhere … I can’t remember, but she had a girlfriend in school there. At the time she left town, Star wasn’t living with me. She was in with a crowd from Albertus, doing God knows what.’

The women got to their feet. A second later, I joined them. ‘Didn’t Star want us to call her friends?’

Nettie rammed the pickle jar into her bag. ‘Most of those people didn’t know how to conduct themselves in a decent home. Besides, they probably moved out a long time ago.’

‘She must have had someone in mind.’

‘If you want to waste your time, here’s her address book.’ She groped through the contents of her bag and brought out a worn, black leather book like a pocket diary.

From the door of the lounge, Clark was casting irritated glances at May’s efforts to unhook her cane from a chair. Nettie moved grandly away. I knelt down to free the cane and placed it in May’s outstretched hand.

‘Aunt May,’ I asked, ‘what did Joy say to you this morning?’

‘Oh. We straightened that out. Joy made a mistake.’

‘About what?’

‘I said to her, “Joy, you’ll never guess, Star’s over at Nettie’s.” “I know,” she said, “I saw her with my own eyes, standing out front and talking to her boy. He’s an extremely handsome young man!”’

‘I guess that proves it wasn’t me,’ I said.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said, ‘but I know what does. If Star met you outside the house, she wouldn’t ask Nettie to call you on the telephone.’

21

Star’s address book was a palimpsest of the comings and goings of herself and her acquaintances over what looked like a great many years. I stood beside the bank of telephones on the ground floor and leafed through the chaos, looking for the Edgerton area code. I came up with three names, one of them that of a person in deep disfavor with Nettie and May.

I dialed his number first. A sandpaper voice said, ‘Pawnshop.’ When I spoke his name, he said, ‘Who were you expecting, Harry Truman?’ The impression that Nettie and May were right to despise their late sister’s husband vanished as soon as I had explained myself. ‘Ned, that’s terrible news. How is she doing?’

I told him what I could.

‘Look,’ Toby Kraft said, ‘I got some people in from out of town on a big estate deal, and I’m trying to expand my business, understand? I’ll be there quick as I can. Hey, I want to get a look at you, too, kid, it’s been a long time.’

Before he could hang up, I said, ‘Toby, Star wanted us to call her old friends, and I wondered if you knew two people who were in her book.’

‘Make it fast,’ he said.

I turned to the first of the Edgerton names. ‘Rachel Milton?’

‘Forget it. Way back when, she used to be Rachel Newborn. Used to go to Albertus. Nice knockers. Rachel was okay until she married this prick, Grennie Milton, and moved out to Ellendale.’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said something I could not hear. ‘Kid, I have to go.’

‘One more. Suki Teeter.’

‘Yeah, call Suki. Talk about jugs, she was the champ. She and your mom, they liked each other. Bye.’

The former jug champ’s telephone rang six times, then twice more without the intervention of an answering machine. I was about to hang up when she answered on the tenth ring. Suki Teeter was no more given to conventional greetings than Toby Kraft.

‘Sweetheart, if you’re looking for money, too bad, this is the wrong number.’ The underlying buoyancy in her voice made a little self-contained comedy of the time she had taken to answer, the unknown caller, her financial condition, and anyone straitlaced enough to take offense.

I told her who I was.

‘Ned Dunstan? I can’t believe it. Where are you, in town? Did Star give you my number?’

‘In a way,’ I said. ‘I’m calling from St Ann’s Community.’

‘Star’s in the hospital.’

I described what had happened that morning. ‘Before the stroke, she said to call her friends and let them know if there was an emergency. Maybe you’d like to come here. It might do her some good.’ Without warning, sorrow blasted through my defenses and clutched my chest. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to do this to you.’

‘I don’t mind if you cry,’ she said. ‘Is she conscious?’

The question helped me climb back into control. ‘When she isn’t asleep.’

‘I’ll be there as soon as I put myself together. Who else did you call?’

‘Toby Kraft. And I have one other name. Rachel Milton.’

‘Really? I’m surprised. Maybe they stayed friends, I don’t know. Rachel sure as hell dropped everybody else. Ned? I hope we can spend some time together.’

In a voice made of honey and molasses, the woman who answered the Miltons’ telephone told me that she would inform Mrs Rachel she had a call, and who was it from? I gave her my name and added that I was the son of an old friend. The line went dead for a couple of minutes. When Rachel Milton finally picked up, she sounded nervous, impatient, and bored.

‘Please let me apologize for the time you’ve been waiting. Lulu went wandering all around the house trying to find me when all she had to do was use the intercom.’

I was almost certain that she had spent two minutes deciding whether or not to take my call.

‘Is there something I should know?’

After I explained, Rachel Milton clicked her tongue against her teeth. I could practically see the wheels going around in her head. ‘I hope you won’t think I’m terrible, but I won’t be able to get there today. I’m due at the Sesquicentennial Committee in about five minutes, but please give your mother my love. Tell her I’ll see her just as soon as I can.’ The wish not to be unnecessarily brusque led her to say, ‘Thank you for calling, and I hope Star has a speedy recovery. The way I’m going, I’ll probably wind up in the hospital, too!’

‘I could reserve you a room at St Ann’s,’ I said.

‘Grenville, my husband, would kill me. He’s on the board of Lawndale. You ought to hear him get going on the federal funds pouring into St Ann’s Community. They should be able to raise King Tut from his tomb, is all I can say.’

After Rachel Milton hung up, I shoved my hands in my pockets and followed the corridor past the glass wall of the gift shop. A few men and women in bathrobes sat on the padded benches on the side of the immense, gray lobby, and half a dozen people stood in a line before the reception desk.