Shelter (68 page)

    "I don't expect you to thank anybody for anything," he said. She supposed he'd had a lot of practice at staying so calm. "Not right now, maybe not for a long time. And I wouldn't presume to tell you whom to thank, or when, or for what. But I have a hunch you'll be thinking about Mitzi longer than those roses will stay alive."

    "Good guess. Are you going to answer that page now?"

    He smiled at her. "Sure. I can tell when I'm being dismissed. Roberta, if the family has services of some sort for Mitzi, do you want to go?"

    "I don't know," she said.

    "Okay," he said, and stood up. "But I'll talk to the family and make sure they put you on that list, at least, so you can make up your own mind about it and go if you want to."

    "All right. Thank you, Brother Matt."

    "You're welcome. Water and aspirin and sugar, remember. And good food for yourself." He squeezed her shoulder again, and then he was gone and she was alone, with the horrible furniture and the sterile air. She didn't want to be here anymore. Her apartment could be desolate, but at least it was a familiar desolation. She wanted to go home and crawl into bed.

    Which was exactly what she did, as soon as she could get her legs to move. First she put the roses and ivy in water, and gave them some aspirin, and took some aspirin herself. Then she set her voicemail for outgoing messages only, turned off the phone, disabled the doorbell, and buried her head under her pillow.

    * * *

    She slept for eighteen hours, awaking with a blazing headache and a spasming stomach and the panicky realization that because she'd turned off her voicemail, Doe or Hugh would have had no way to leave a message about the funeral. She crawled out of bed, crawled to the phone table, where she turned the message tape on, and then fought her way on weak legs to the kitchen, where she methodically devoured everything edible she could find.

    Leaning against the kitchen counter, munching on bread and peanut butter, she looked up at her wall clock and shuddered. Eighteen hours. That meant it was six on Sunday already. She was going to have to go to work tomorrow, and Nicholas wouldn't be there and Mitzi wouldn't be in the world, and what was she going to do? She knew she could survive it, just as she had survived Doe's desertion, by becoming a dumb animal who ate and slept and moved in certain accustomed ways while thinking as little as possible. She knew she could do it, but she didn't know if she wanted to, or why. Who would be upset if she just stayed in bed? Who'd notice?

    Fred, she thought bleakly. Fred and Preston and Zephyr and Mr. Clean, her motley menagerie. Speaking of which, where was Mr. Clean? Maybe she should take him to visit Zephyr, as she'd promised. It would give her something to do, other than being a pathetic FOP and talking to Preston. It would give her contact with an actual human. It would keep her from having to think about Nicholas and Mitzi and Iuna and Doe.

    "Clean?" she called. "Mr. Clean? Yoo-hoo? Where are you? Here, botty botty botty ... "

    She was answered with a steady beeping sound that rose rapidly in pitch and volume, and then died down before cycling upward again: a bot distress signal. A cybernetic siren.

    "Where are you?" she asked, following the sound. Bots couldn't die. Mr. Clean wasn't going to keel over on her too, was he? He couldn't. It would be too ludicrous.

    She found him, perched precariously on the edge of the living room wastebasket—what the hell?—just as a sharp rapping came on her front door. "Hey, is he okay?" The voice was Zephyr's, of course. "Is he all right? What's wrong?"

    Roberta opened the door. "I'm not sure," she said.

    Zephyr squinted, cocked her head, and said, "You look horrible, Roberta," before racing over to the trash can. "I heard the signal and came right—oh, Mr. Clean, you little glutton!"

    "What is it?" Roberta asked, taking a cautious step closer.

    Zephyr was laughing. "He ate too much. He's constipated, the little dummy. Look at him: perched there on the trash can trying to do his business, and he can't. How long has he been there?"

    "I don't know," Roberta said, feeling foolish. "Can he be fixed?" "Sure. Easy." Zephyr picked up Mr. Clean, flipped him over, pried open a hatch on his underside, and lifted out what looked like a giant pink hairball. "Mmmm! Sweet-smelling shit you have here, baby." She lifted the hairball and sniffed. "What's this? Roses?"

    Roses. Roberta turned to the coffee table, where she'd put the vase of ivy and flowers before she—no, not crashed. Before she went to sleep.

    The roses were dead, every single one of them, the petals shed, only bare stems left. They'd died while she was sleeping, and Mr. Clean had tried to tidy up the mess they made. A red mess it must have been, a bloody mess, all those petals falling, crashing silently onto the uncaring table. Roberta hadn't even been there to say good-bye.

    "Hey," Zephyr said. "Hey, Roberta, sweetheart, you'd better sit down. You really don't look so good. Hey, are you all right? What's wrong?"

    "I'm okay," she managed after a minute, although she was shaking. "The flowers—a friend of mine just died and it's a long story, but—"

    "Oh," Zephyr said, very quiet now. "I'm sorry. If you want to tell me the story, I'll listen. If you want me to go away, I'll do that too. Or I'll bring you tea and scones, or—"

    "Thanks. It's all right. I'm all right. I think I want to go back to sleep now." If someone like Zephyr had to offer to take care of her, she was really in bad shape. Even if Zephyr was another human.

    "Okay," Zephyr said. "I'll go back downstairs. We won't rehearse tonight, I promise. We'll keep it quiet."

    "Thank you," Roberta said. She knew she should be grateful that everyone was being so nice to her—Matt, Iuna, now Zephyr—but she couldn't stand it, couldn't stand the feelings of unworthiness their kindness evoked, or the anger that lay under the shame. She didn't know where any of it came from. Turn it off. Turn it all off. Go to sleep again. Go to sleep for as long as possible, for another eighteen hours, forever.

    * * *

    It didn't work. She woke up at seven, at her normal going-to-work time, even though she hadn't set the alarm. She was going to have to get up, go in, go on. Dutifully, still exhausted even though she was awake, she got up, showered, ate breakfast, and collected the bare rose stems and limp ivy to take to school. Matt had asked her to return them to the earth. Buster's grave seemed like just the spot.

    She got there early, so she wouldn't have to explain to any of the kids why she was putting dead ivy in the garden. She knew she'd have to explain it to Fred, and that would be hard enough. "Roberta," he said, the minute she walked into the building. "How are you?"

    ''I'm okay, Fred."

    "And your friend, the one in the hospital?"

    "She died this weekend."

    ''I'm very sorry, Roberta. You must be very sad."

    "Yes," she said quietly. "I'm going to put these things in the garden, and then I'm going to come back inside, and I don't want to talk about Nicholas and I don't want to talk about dead mice and I don't want to talk about my dead friend, Fred, okay? And I know you care about me, and I know you think I'm special, but I don't want to hear that right now. Have you got all that?"

    "I've got all that, Roberta. Will you let me know if there's anything I can do?"

    "I just did," she said, and went out and laid the dead plants on the ground and then came in and started putting out finger paints for the children. She knew it wasn't fair to take out her anger on Fred, who had never been anything but maddeningly kind to her, and in a few hours or a few days she'd apologize, but right now she didn't care.

    It was a quiet day. The children seemed listless, subdued, as if still grieving Buster; several of them asked where Nicholas was, and Roberta said that she didn't know, that she thought Nicholas's Mommy might be putting him into another school, but she wasn't sure. She knew Fred would be hurt, if he could be hurt, that she hadn't told him first. She didn't care.

    "Does that mean Nicholas won't be coming back?" Zillinth asked, frowning. "He won't be coming here ever again?"

    "I don't know, Zillinth."

    Zillinth shrugged and went back to her fmger painting, and the others did too, and everything went fine until the end of the day, when Roberta—trying to zip Steven into a recalcitrant jacket—looked across the room to see Kevin Lindgren leaning down and talking to Zillinth.

    What the hell? Fortunately, Steven's mother appeared at that precise instant; Roberta handed over the problem zipper and sped over to Nicholas's father. "Mr. Lindgren! What a surprise!"

    "That makes two of us," he snapped, scowling. "I got home early today and Merry and Nicholas weren't there, so I headed down here, thinking I'd meet them on the way, and now Zillinth tells me Nicholas isn't coming here anymore? Since when?"

    Holy fuck. Didn't the guy ever talk to his wife? Shit! Why did I mention anything to Zillinth? "Um," Roberta said, "well, on Friday your wife mentioned something about changing schools, and then Nicky wasn't here today, so I thought—"

    "Changing schools? Why did she mention that, and why didn't she mention it to me?" Roberta swallowed, and Kevin glared. "I know, don't tell me: I should ask my wife that. No kidding. Do you have any idea where Nicholas is right now?"

    "No. The last time I saw him was Friday."

    "Yeah, well, the last time I saw him was this morning, when Meredith told me she was taking him to school. She didn't bother to mention that they wouldn't be coming here." He took a deep breath and added, his voice ragged, ''I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you."

    "It's all right."

    ''I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk to the press about this."

    "Of course not," Roberta said.

    Kevin Lindgren cocked his head up at the nearest monitor. "Fred? What about you, buddy? Maintain radio silence, okay?"

    "Mr. Lindgren, I assure you that I wouldn't dream of doing anything else." Meredith wondered if Kevin knew, or suspected, that he was also talking to Preston.

    "Great," Lindgren said, his voice ragged. "Hey, listen—Nicholas really loves it here. He loves you two. Thank you for what you've done for him."

    "You're welcome," Roberta said, and then, "good luck."

    He gave her a wan smile. "Thank you. I think I'm going to need it."

    And so will your son, Roberta thought, wondering just how much the man knew. Poor bastard. He'd certainly gotten more than he bargained for from his celebrity marriage.

    * * *

    She got home to find fresh roses outside her door, with a note from Zephyr, and a voicemail message from Doe on the answering machine, saying that Mitzi's services had been set for the following Saturday afternoon.

    Saturday, Roberta thought wearily, remembering Mitzi's most recent birthday. Mitzi's last birthday. That had been on a Saturday too. She looked down at the white and yellow roses in her hand. Zephyr's note explained that white and yellow were traditional mourning colors in certain cultures, and anyway, they go better with your color scheme than red does.

    What color scheme is that? Roberta thought, looking around her apartment. Right now, all she could see were shades of gray. They were pretty flowers; she should take them to Mitzi's funeral, except that they wouldn't last that long. She put them in water, anyway, and plunked in some aspirin, and plodded downstairs to thank Zephyr.

    "Hey, hey, you're looking much better—I guess the scandal's revived you, huh?—and I've got fresh scones. Come in and gossip, girl."

    Scandal? Gossip? Roberta, bemused, sat down on the couch and submitted herself to a scalp massage from a particularly officious, blindingly polished bot while Zephyr bustled about with cups and plates.

    "That's Louie. Used to work in a hair salon. He cuts hair too. He's pretty good; if you ever want a free haircut, just let me know—so hey, what do you know about this latest do with Little Lord Fauntleroy?"

    "What?" Roberta said.

    "What do you mean, what? You're his teacher. This is all over ScoopNet. You must know why she pulled the kid out of school and then kept it a secret from her husband!"

    "I avoid ScoopNet," Roberta said. How the hell had ScoopNet gotten hold of this, and so fast?

    "Damn! I'd've taped it for you, if I'd known. Right now they're doing their daily hour on the royals." Zephyr plunked down a plate loaded with scones and said gleefully, "But it turns out that somebody snuck a bug into Kevin's briefcase—probably somebody at MacroCorp, looks like they've got a little security problem there, but if anybody has more money than MacroCorp, it's ScoopNet—and anyway, after months and months of nothing, today they get this rip-roaring argument between Meredith and Kevin about why she took Nicky out of your place and then lied about it. I mean, screaming and cursing, threats of divorce, tears, the works. The MacroCorp people are having conniption fits. You can really work this one if you want to, girl." Zephyr struck a dramatic pose and intoned theatrically, "The inside story: what Nicky's teacher knows!" and then cackled again. "Milk it for everything it's worth. You'll be rich."

    "No," Roberta said coldly. "I don't think so."

    Zephyr shrugged and plopped down into a chair. "Well, all right then, don't. But seriously, do you have any idea what's going on?"

    Yes, and I'm not going to tell you. And I'm not even going to tell you that I'm not telling you, because I don't want you to sic ScoopNet on me. "The family lives of my students are none of my business," Roberta said.

    "Hmmmph! Which really means that they're none of mine. You're not that big a prig, Roberta, and you don't imitate your old roomie very well. Okay, never mind. I can deal with it."

    You have to be polite, Roberta told herself You're eating her food, and she just gave you flowers. "What does ScoopNet say?"