Critical Injuries (28 page)

“It looks to me,” Mrs. Shaw said, “as if you have a nice family. Your grandmother and your dad speak very highly of you.” They do? Even his dad? His dad spoke at all? “You and your father moved in with your grandmother when you were what, seven?” He nodded. “Can you tell me your first memory before then? What you recall from when you were very small? Where you lived, your home then?” She looked inviting; there was something shrewd about those blue eyes, though, something about how she widened them that didn't look natural.

There was nothing to say. His mother laughing and playing, making up dramas and games, and days when she didn't get dressed. “I don't remember much. We lived in a house, it seemed big but I was only a kid, so I don't know. Then we moved.”

“After your mother got sick.”

He shook his head sharply, felt his lips tighten. He had no words for this woman on that subject, none at all. At least she noticed. Or at least she didn't push at him. “How did you feel about moving?” she asked instead.

Violently. He felt violently enough to scream and kick and resist the whole way. “Okay, I guess. My grandmother's okay.”

“Yes, she sounds it. And your father?”

“Yeah, him too.”

She waited a few seconds. “Still, it must have been a big change for you, moving to a different house in a different place, without your mother. Did you find it very difficult?”

Not after he and Mike started hanging out, which was practically right away. Then it wasn't so bad. “Not really.”

And so on: about school, about friends, about hobbies and habits, all questions he did his best not to answer. “Where did you get the idea for the robbery?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. TV, maybe.”

Finally she smiled slightly and looked at her watch and said, “I expect that's enough for the time being. I'll tell you what I think we'll do next, and that's assign you shortly to one of the groups that meet every week. Everybody takes turns discussing their questions and problems, things that have come up in their lives. Most people find it quite useful, although I bet you don't think much of the idea right now. You'd be surprised, though, how often people learn they have a good deal in common, and how helpful it is to exchange points of view and experiences. So I'll organize that for you, and we'll see how it goes. I really do think you'll find it interesting. And of course it helps you get to know some of the others better, too.”

Oh no, that wouldn't be happening. Exchange points of view and experiences? He didn't think so. He's not the kind of person, it turns out, who gets second chances. He sure can't have guys knowing he has dreams, or for sure that he's cried. He'd be really fucked then. Sit around in a circle of guys talking about backgrounds and crimes, motivations and hopes? Their
feelings
, like they should have any here?

Bad idea.

Still, maybe she meant well, maybe she truly had hopes.

More likely she figured he's just an asshole. One among many.

“Now,” and she leaned forward, passing a sheet of paper over the desk to him, white paper grid-lined in day-blocks along the top, time-blocks down the side, “here's your class schedule. Our goal, I think, will be to get you the high school credits you need to graduate by the end of your time here. That should be doable, if you buckle down. You'll begin tomorrow. What do you think?”

It hardly seemed to matter what he thought, did it, if it was done, decided, and starting tomorrow? “Okay.”

“Good. You'll get your books and other supplies when you turn up for class. I expect you'll do fine. It may sound strange, but in many ways it's easier here. Not the courses, but the learning.”

That did sound strange, but it turns out she's right. He's taking math, history, and English, and one thing that's different is that there's no way to skip, there isn't any kind of decision to make about that. Also that there's only guys, and that every classroom has a guard as well as a teacher. The teachers come from outside. They probably like it that there's no skipping, and that mostly the classes are pretty quiet, because of the guards. They maybe don't like it that a lot of the guys are either really stupid or let on like they are, pretending they're sleeping, some of them, or staring up at the ceiling, or just sitting there not lifting a pencil. Also different is that the desks and chairs are bolted down.

Classes take up a little over three hours a day. Some of the stuff he already knows from before. Sometimes he has to put an effort into not looking too smart. He doesn't think that's one of the good ways to get attention around here.

Everybody also gets assigned chores, really massive ones, not like weeding or trimming a hedge or vacuuming. He's in the kitchen this week, next week the laundry. In the kitchen he peels bag after bag of potatoes, pile after pile of carrots. It's stinking hot, there's always a racket of pots slamming around, and mainly it's mindless and his fingers hurt and he's aware of how closely he's watched, due to having knives in his hands. He has no idea why this work gets done here by prisoners, “clients,” they're called, instead of getting shipped in from outside. Maybe it's supposed to be discipline, or training, or punishment.

He doubts the laundry will be easier, or more interesting, and Darryl says it's even hotter and steamier.

He and Dare aren't assigned to the same jobs at the same time. “They like to keep everybody mixed up and moving around,” Dare says. “So there's not too much buddy-buddy.” Dare reckons he can be out of here, himself, in eleven more months; just before Roddy, if Roddy also keeps his nose clean. That's Dare's goal, “keeping my nose clean, keeping them happy,” and he's been here for a couple of years already, so he should know how that works. Roddy almost immediately figured out that Dare must have been only fourteen, maybe fifteen, when he stabbed the frat guy. Hard to know how different he's gotten in here, but it's pretty freaky, thinking of a kid that age out on the street in the middle of the night, so bad off he'd kill somebody. A kid who has grown older and stronger and is now Roddy's cellmate.

He's okay so far with Roddy, though, at least has been willing to point out the most basic customs and rules.

But the third night, something creepy happened that made Roddy think if Darryl got into a better state of mind here, it'd be some kind of miracle. Same thing happened the next night, then there was a break for a while until again last night, around midnight, one of the guards came and unlocked the cell door and gestured to Dare to get up and get out. Dare came back bleeding from the nose the first time, limping and bent over the second, and last night he vomited, mainly into the crapper.

No wonder Roddy sleeps lightly, dreams uneasily.

“What happened?” he asked the first time, and could have bitten his tongue, such a stupid, maybe dangerous, question. Still, how could he have avoided asking, “Can I do something?” thinking at least of stopping the blood that sprayed the cell when Dare shook his head.

Well, it's not what Roddy figured at first, what he most feared, what everybody's most scared of in jails. It's more of a game, as Darryl finally explained it, but probably not one that's going to bear down on Roddy “unless they decide to use you for bait. You know, like training fight dogs with puppies, shit like that.”

Okay, that was insulting, but being insulted is better than some of the things that can happen here.

Dare talked about it like it's just something he does, just another thing to put up with, but what it is, is a middle-of-the-night boxing club, organized by bored, maybe greedy guards. They roust out their favourite inmates, and their unfavourites. They set them up inside a ring of tables and chairs in one of the rec halls. They place bets, and then the guys fight. “No rules,” Dare explained. “Except, don't get killed, or kill anybody, because that'd be too hard to explain.”

It's like street fighting, he said; wild wrestling, no gloves or timed rounds or real regulations. “It's complicated, though. Like if you're the betting favourite, but you lose, you're in all kinds of shit. Not right then, but later. Or I guess if you win when you're not supposed to, but that hasn't happened to me.”

“Doesn't anybody notice the next day when you're all smashed up?”

“Oh shit, everybody knows, except maybe the top brass, those kind of people. And you know, people fall down. They trip over stuff or bang into things, who's to know? They can think all they want, but they're not going to know.”

It would be dumb to even wonder why guys who are tough and have real serious records — like Darryl, for one — go along with this. It's because this place is all about power. Who has it, who doesn't. At the high end there's the guards, who are up close, with immediate or invisible powers. Administrators, those “top brass,” don't count. Sure as shit therapists don't. It's useful to see power stripped down, no camouflage or extra flesh, so he sees how it really works.

“I'm good,” Dare said, like even if it wasn't his choice, he was still proud of himself. “I don't hardly get beat.” Quick grin through battered lips. “At least not when I'm not supposed to get beat.”

“So you were supposed to this time?”

“Shit no, why'd you think that? You should see the other guy.” All this confirms Roddy's belief that going unnoticed is best. He also has a feeling that because Darryl was chosen, Roddy doesn't need to be; like he's somehow hiding, or hidden, behind Dare's in-demand fists. The idea of just-one-from-a-cell doesn't make sense and is not likely true, but it seems like it might be. He feels a little bad about that, but safer.

Besides classes and chores, there's workshops in this and that. It's amazing how many sharp tools get into the hands of guys who might want to use them. Not just the kitchen, with its knives; Roddy signed up for woodworking, and is learning about chisels and lathes. So far he's made a salad bowl set, one big one, four small, all a bit tipsy and rough, but still real-looking and useful, although the wood is donated and is obviously not the best grain. It's kind of cool, feeling it turn and shape in his hands and become something.

He gave the bowls to his grandmother to take home with her. She's been once, on her own because his dad was working. She caught a bus north, and said she'd try to make the journey at least once a month, maybe twice. It wouldn't be easy for her to do that. For one thing she's so big, it has to be really uncomfortable on a bus. She took the bowls and said, “Oh, Roddy, these are lovely. You do have an eye. I'll take very good care of them.” He knows she will; she's sentimental that way.

She also said, “Will you be all right here? Do you feel safe?”

“Sure, it's not as bad as it looks, honest.”

She was nervous; out of place and unfamiliar, of course, with the customs. She chatted on for a while about people in town, little events, keeping the air filled, as best she could. It wasn't very interesting. He didn't know the people she spoke of, her acquaintances or his dad's, very well. A minor accident involving one of her friends and a transport going through town was as good as it got. Roddy understands that of course the most interesting of the town's news is bad, and so falls too uncomfortably close to his own bad news. Which will have been a huge deal, and humiliating for her and his dad, no need to say it out loud.

Just before she left, she got tears in her eyes, and started shaking her head back and forth. She looked even sadder right then than his mother, in his dreams, up on the bridge. “Oh, Roddy,” she said, “I'm so sorry all this has happened. I never dreamed such a thing, never once.”

Well, he could have said, but did not, you can't count on dreams anyway. Dreams don't mean shit.

What he did say was “You don't have to come visit, Grandma, I'm fine. It's a long way on a bus and it's not for a whole lot more months. I'm okay.”

“Of course you need visitors, Roddy, and I don't mind a bit. I miss you, I want to see you. Anyway, most times your dad will be driving, it's just, this time he couldn't. And you know, the bus is quite interesting. Lots of interesting people.”

Yes, he imagined: others coming this way.

“So by bus or by car, dear, I'll be back very soon. You won't be forgotten, believe me. You're very precious to me.”

What do you say to being called
precious
? Someone of value. He flushed and looked down.

Now he wishes he'd had the gumption, or the courage, or the cruelty, or the compassion, to order her not to come back. His dad, either. It's hard enough figuring out how to be here, without being reminded and jerked back by tenderness. He can't afford to let down his guard, he feels this very strongly. But —
precious
. That nearly cracked him, honest to God.

The Useful Mother

They knock her out overnight, then when she wakes up they sedate her, they do this and that busy, unseen thing with her body, adjusting here, prodding there, an anaesthetist comes by to tell her about procedures, question her about allergies — they don't seem to know anything about what's important: that time is short. They have their priorities, their necessities, and in the end, which this may be, they don't care about hers. It's as if none of them has become acquainted with her. They've gone back to the efficient bare bones of her body.

So it's unexpectedly late in the day when Lyle, Madeleine, Jamie, and Alix are allowed to come back. By then, Isla has quite a number of things on her mind.

She is missing acutely, for one thing, her lost ability to make lists, to write down everything she needs to remember. Today this strikes her as a great loss even among much greater ones, as beyond her as throwing herself into Madeleine's arms, or embracing her children, or wrapping her legs around Lyle.

The kinds of things people choose: as their houses burn they grab photo albums rather than jewellery; in an invasion they hike up their skirts and their children and run. What has come first to Isla's mind, besides hope and its unshakeable partner dread, is the extent of her abandoned possessions: right down to her underwear, aged panties, the slack-elasticked bras she wears, if at all, for gardening or lawn-mowing — there it all lies in a bedroom bureau drawer, alongside the nice stuff, right where she innocently, carelessly left it, not dreaming that stepping off that porch could finally come to mean someone else's hands rummaging, sorting one thing from another.

“If things go badly,” she tells Madeleine, “I want you to just tip my whole underwear drawer into a garbage bag, never mind sorting or saving. But everything in my closet is in good shape, I think all those clothes can be bundled up and given to some charity, whichever you like. Do you suppose anybody'd want used shoes? If they do, that's okay, too. A clean sweep, though. Everything out. It shouldn't take long, do you mind?”

Of course Madeleine minds. “Please, don't even think about that kind of thing. You're going to be fine. Just concentrate on how well tomorrow's going to go, and getting better, don't worry about little things.” Little? Madeleine's never been stupid before. Perhaps she sees this herself. She sighs, which is too bad, but says, “All right. If need be, you can be sure I'll do whatever you want.”

Love is hard. It makes a person too vulnerable to the well-being of others. That's how grief happens.

Also joy.

“Thanks. I'll feel better if I know it's all taken care of.” She turns her attention to Lyle. “We've never talked about funerals. I want any useful organs — do you suppose there are any? — donated, then cremation. And no open casket, nobody staring.” As long as she's talking, she doesn't have to wonder whose eyes these might be in a very few hours, what they might see from someone else's more flexible, entirely different perspective.

If she paused, she'd be scared rigid.

When she laughs, everyone frowns. Never satisfied, these people.

The machinery off to the side, where she can't see, starts to whuff and clatter at a new quickened pace. Lyle's long fingers reach out, touch, linger over, her forehead; but just for an instant, seeing his hand coming, she thought he was striking her, and her eyes flinched closed.

Which is crazy. In a million years Lyle wouldn't hit her, so where did that come from? Could he have seen fear before her eyes snapped shut? Did he glimpse doubt? “No doubt,” she says, or intends to.

Except he has already broken a promise. In her mind's eye, her own right arm rises, swings back, swings forward straight, hard and fast into Lyle's jaw, snapping his head back. Which might be why she would dodge his hand: a fear, a knowledge, that he too is furious. Specifically, as well as generally.

If it were possible, she would protect him, even from herself, but that's no more possible than it was for him to protect her from the unguessable vagaries of an innocent step off the porch, a guileless walk into Goldie's.

There's grief here: for skin, that singular good thing, and everything it comes to mean. Head-to-toe touch. Bones and flesh. All that
meeting
. All that gone.

She has a memory, although it's not her own memory, of him in another hospital, with another wife in terrible trouble. In this memory Lyle and Sandra, Sandy, are sitting up straight beside each other, holding hands tightly, both their faces taut and drawn as that famous painting of the farmer standing with pitchfork and his solemn, pinched, shoulder-to-shoulder wife.

For all Isla knows, this is an old routine for Lyle.

“I don't know if you've already made burial arrangements for yourself?” He shakes his head; looks struck dumb. “I don't suppose it really matters where we each land up. You'll have to do what you think best, I guess.” Tricky etiquette, deciding which wife to be buried with. If his arteries had exploded, where would she have put him?

Not with Sandy. Although his sons would have had something to say. And why would it matter? Dead is dead. “You should discuss it with Jamie and Alix, though. But of course you all know that. And you know my will is in the top left-hand drawer of the rosewood desk in the spare bedroom, right? It shouldn't be out of date, except maybe to do with the business. It doesn't take into account that I think Martin wants to sell now. It says he should be offered my share of the agency, and the money should go into trusts for Jamie and Alix. That's probably okay, more or less, but if he's into selling rather than buying, I'd like you to go along with whatever he wants.”

“Please, Isla, don't worry. I'll do the right thing, trust me, I promise.” Well, he does look trustworthy. “It's not going to go wrong, you know. You're going to come out of this right as rain.”

A curiously old-fashioned expression, is it not, right as rain? And rain is not always right, is it? Sometimes it floods, sometimes it drowns. “I expect so. But bear with me, I need to know I've thought of everything. I'm sure in a few days, we'll be laughing.” But she isn't sure at all, and having said the words out loud, has frightened herself again. Promises and big predictions are bad luck, they invite random shock.

“It's just that it's kind of morbid, Mum,” Jamie offers. “Depressing.”

“Not to me. And surely to God it's my turn to be depressing.”

That was sharper than she intended. It silences them all, until Lyle says, “I know it's hard, Isla. But you can count on us to do whatever you need, whatever we can. You know any of us would go to the ends of the earth for you.”

That's nice. “I'm afraid you'd probably have to. Since I can't seem to do that myself.” Well, she thinks it's funny. “Hey, work with me, all right? I'm dying down here.”

“Should I get somebody?” Madeleine asks Lyle anxiously.

“No!” Isla cries; then more calmly, and cruelly, “I'm sure everything's easier if I'm knocked out, but it doesn't do much for me.” Having said that, though, again she isn't sure. It almost seems as if something goes on when she's out of reach of the world, although she can't put her finger on what it is, or where it takes her.

She is forty-nine years old, and may, or may not, soon be fifty. She once had red hair, which has darkened and greyed and grown coarser. She had excellent legs and strong arms, but all their skin and muscles are shrivelling. She was a fool for lanky and lean, but some foolishness is a curse, some a blessing. She has been very good at her work, and likes to make lists, and has been known to race after running children with the object of rescue.

She is smart enough, but seems to have pulled up, puzzled, at the line drawn by wisdom.

She has patience, but not this much.

Now this is what it comes to: these people, this mass of dismay and affection are her only real grip on the planet. The only ones she can think of right now, anyway, and they seem both too much, and also not nearly enough.

“There's one other thing I want to be clear about. If I get through surgery but there's some other difficulty, I want you all to understand I do not want to be kept plugged in to anything that just keeps me breathing. We all know these things happen, so in case there's any doubt or discussion, if it happens to me, just let me go. Do you promise?”

Lyle's mouth is working strangely, lips tugging at each other, although not with laughter, not his usual way. Perhaps this, too, he has lived through before. “All right,” he says finally. “We understand. Don't we?” and looks to the others.

Brave words; his and hers both. And if she is unsure she meant her words, and she is, can she be certain of his? She can feel in her throat some clotted protest rising up, a terrible desire to stay on this earth. To merely keep breathing, if that's all it comes to.

But to be kept merely breathing is as unknown, dark, and solitary as death. And you have to be brave about something, she has to mean what she says. Only, she doubts, too. She hopes she can trust Lyle not to doubt.

Madeleine places a thin, firm hand on Isla's forehead: driving in reassurance. Testing. Something like that. As when Isla was young and got sick and Madeleine was assessing her temperature and willing her well while she was at it. “There's nothing to be worried about. I hope you know that.” Even lying, Madeleine's voice is as firm as her hand.

Is it strange that the details of tomorrow's full-tilt run at a dark, solid wall are, if nothing else, simpler than considering the — well, complexities is the easiest word — of staying alive? And even so, there's only so far a person can take that train of thought before it dead-ends. Grief and panic come to their own conclusions at the exact moment life does, which is not precisely comforting, but certainly puts a limit on things.

Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. How is that possible? But it is.

Being mourned and missed would be good. Being a burden, their pet cripple, would not.

Being healed would be fine.

Her options are too broad, too radically disparate.

Alix steps forward, light catching her halo of hair. “Do you have anything in particular you want me to do, Mum?” Well, no, come to think of it, the kids get off scot-free here, task-wise; as if they really were kids. “Because if you don't, here's my plan, if it sounds okay.” She sounds firm, practical, and — could it be? — normal. “I'm going to go shopping. So the next time you see me, I'll have all new clothes. Then I think I should write a letter or two. For luck, in a way.”

If no one else knows what she's talking about, Isla does. The perfect gift, too, no more goddamn brown dresses. One letter, no doubt, to Master Ambrose. The other, well, the other doesn't bear thinking about. But maybe yes, for luck, in a way.

“Get something gorgeous, then. And really bright, okay?”

“I will.” Alix's jaw is strangely set, descending over Isla, brushing lips to forehead. “I'll see you, for sure.” She stares down for one last, long moment. Then she's gone.

Well. It's a hard way to win, but triumph is triumph. Take that, Master Ambrose.

In the strained, puzzled silence left by Alix, Madeleine places a hand on Jamie's much higher shoulder; is she shrinking? Leaning? Hard to tell, from this angle. She does look more rested today, and also much stronger. “I wonder,” she says to Jamie, “if you and Lyle would mind leaving your mother and me alone, just for a few minutes. Do you feel like a coffee?” When Lyle nods, she looks at him fondly, and when he and Jamie have gone, and she has settled herself in that well-used chair beside Isla, she smiles and says, “Haven't we been lucky, the two of us, really: my Bert, your Lyle. So fortunate in our second choices.” Second chances.

“But.” Madeleine takes a deep breath. “Here's what I wanted to say, and it may sound odd to you, but for some reason it's got stuck in my mind: I've been wondering if you've missed being brought up in some faith, if you wish you had that sort of comfort right now.” She's right, this is startling; ominous, even. “If so, I guess I'm sorry, but I just couldn't do it. The stories, yes, I know we told those, but not the kind of religion people go to church for, or say they feel. So I'm sorry if you've ever felt that was missing. And I guess in a way I wish now I knew how to pray.”

Oh dear. “You do? That doesn't exactly charge up my optimism, you know.” Isla would like to get Madeleine smiling. She'd like to feel there's some faint reason to laugh. A faint smile is what she gets, a mere flicker. “But no, I can't see that religion would make much difference to this. Not to me. It hasn't particularly crossed my mind.” Belief has, trust has, hope has, even some of the stories have, but not what Madeleine's talking about.

“Good. Well then, my actual point is, I may not know how to pray, but I'm with you, I don't believe any of it makes a damn bit of difference.” Doesn't she look angry now!

“Anyway, you know, Mum, if I were going to pray, or even wish very hard, at the moment I'm not sure I'd know exactly what for. Know what I mean?”

Madeleine's blue eyes may be more opaque than they used to be, but they can also turn sharp. “I think so. Yes. You must have thought I was stupid, telling you not to worry, and you'd know I was a liar if I said I'm not worried, so I won't waste more time on phony business like that. I am worried, and you must be as well, and that's all there is to it. But I do want you to know that we may not be able to pray, but I'm aiming every ounce of strength and will I have in your direction. And you know, I believe that counts for something.”