The Girl in a Coma (17 page)

Twenty-nine

Mary

Mary stripped off her prison dress. They weren't allowed undergarments. She stood naked in the moonlight. Agnes and Apple sat up straight. Mary was like a goddess.

They shifted over and sat on the edge of Agnes' bed. Then, shyly, they got up and helped Mary put on her new clothes.

They still didn't know what Mary was going to do. But she was a goddess in a beautiful gown, surrounded by moonlight. She could do whatever she wanted.

Mary reached under her bed and pulled out her square-toed black slippers. For three years she had been wearing rags bound around her feet. Winter and summer. She had been saving her slippers. She wore them the day Charles Dickens visited. She was ready to wear them again.

She picked up her sewing bag from the bench beside the table and walked over to Lily's bed. The other two women watched with their eyes wide and their mouths gaping. They were in awe but so scared of what she might do, they were shaking.

Mary wriggled into the brown canvas bag. She was careful not to crush her dress any more than she had to. She checked that her gold coins from Charles Dickens were sewn into the little pocket she had made in the top of her bloomers. She checked to see that her silver medallion with the polished amber at the center was safe on its silver chain around her neck—it had been in her family for a long time. It was her only possession in the world.

Then she handed her sewing bag to Agnes.

“Now, my darlings,” she declared. “You must sew me up.”

“Inside there,” Apple squealed. “You're not even dead.”

“Not yet,” said Agnes.

Agnes couldn't help herself, she was grinning from the excitement. Without any teeth, her face in the moonlight looked like a death's head and yet prettier than she had looked in years.

“You're crazy, you know,” said Agnes. “You are out of your bloody skull.”

But Agnes and Apple started sewing, taking turns. When there were only a few inches left, Mary puckered and blew them each a kiss. Mary asked for her sewing bag and Agnes slipped it through the narrow slit still left in the canvas.

“I'll finish up from in here,” said Mary.

“Have you got your scissors?” Agnes asked her.

“Glory, yes. I'll need to cut my way out of here, won't I? Of course I've got my scissors, unless Apple has stolen them.”

“Glory, no,” said Apple, horrified. She was embarrassed to be in prison only for being a thief.

“Glory is the bloody right word,” said Agnes. “Miss Mary, they're going to bury you alive. What'll you do then, with a mouthful of dirt?”

“I'll be dead, I guess,” said Mary.

The room was quiet. Mary finished sewing the bag closed from the inside.

“I love you both,” she said in a muffled voice.

She could hardly hear Agnes say, “We love you, too, Mary Cameron.”

And then Mary felt the air squeezed out of her as Apple gave the brown canvas bag with Mary inside a huge bear hug.

“Go to sleep, girls,” she wheezed.

“All right, Mary. Night, night,” Agnes whispered through the canvas.

“Good-bye Mary Cameron, don't get yourself dead,” said the girl who called herself Apple.

Allison

The Harvard geniuses didn't come in today. It must be the weekend. Science keeps regular hours. If you're a
colleague
. Gordon was here but he ignored me. I'm sure he doesn't see it that way. He's reading a bunch of instruments that let them know I'm alive.

He's always here. It really seems like he is. Or maybe it's just, when he's gone, I don't notice. I suppose he goes home to sleep, he goes out to eat. But I seem to be the center of his life.

Well, Maddie and me.

When Maddie comes in, she clambers up on my bed and begins doing my eyes. But this evening she talks to Gordon. At first they talk about nothing. I ignore them. I have better things to do with my time.

Then they start talking about the murdered woman.

Suddenly, I'm listening.

They talk about the old woman's smile.

It turns out there was another murder about a month go. At night, in Harvard Yard. A beautiful young woman. She was so beautiful, Gordon explained, that she had no friends. But she was smiling when they found her. Her corpse was smiling.

“So, what's this yard?” asks Maddie.

“It's not a yard,” Gordon explains.

“Then why call it a yard?” Maddie is very straightforward. You can't get much past her. If it's called a
yard
, it's a yard. If it's something else, call it whatever it is.

“It's a park, sort of, with lots of trees and buildings and statues.” Gordon says this with a certain amount of pride.

“That's what we call a campus,” says Maddie.

“Well, good for you.”

They chatter on like this and I try to tune them out. But when they're talking right over top of you, it's hard to ignore. When they get back to the murder, I listen again.

“It's a serial killer,” says Maddie in her matter-of-fact way.

“Only two so far. It's a tragic coincidence.”

“They both died smiling in Harvard's Yard.”

“Harvard Yard.”

“Gordon, you mustn't let words get in the way of thinking.”

“Do you want to go for a coffee?”

Just like that, Maddie climbs down, they turn out the lights and leave.

I feel as if I've been socked in the gut.

I watch as the door swings shut. I feel abandoned. She didn't even say goodbye. I stare at the door.

Slowly, it dawns on me. I'm staring at the door.

My eyes have moved in their sockets. My anger disappears, swallowed up in wonder. Until now, I've only been able to stare straight ahead.

Slowly, I bring my eyes back to the center, so I'm staring straight ahead. Then I shut them.

I open them again and concentrate. I make them shift the other way. I expect to see a window but there's only a blank wall. It's green, like Granny Smith apples before you cut them up for a Dutch apple pie.

Good glory, when I thought about pie yesterday, or was it the day before, my mouth got all watery.

My eyes move, I can make spit!

I'm lying here, amazed at my astonishing progress, when Maddie and Gordon return. I can smell coffee in the air. That's the second time I've smelled coffee. I can smell things. Thing. Coffee. But that's good, it's progress!

They turn on the lights.

“Hi, Allie,” Maddie says, climbing up on the bed. “You were asleep, so we went for a coffee. How're you doing, sweetheart?”

“It's still asleep,” Gordon mutters.

Maddie swivels around violently and slides off the bed. Her voice is trembling.

“Don't you ever call her that again, you ignorant lowlife good-for-nothing ice-for-brains jerk.”

“What. I just said,
it's still
—”

She punches him. I can tell by the thud. It isn't a smack or a slap, it is a punch to the jaw. She would have blackened his eye but she couldn't reach that high.

I can hear something crash as he staggers backwards. He must have fallen into a chair because the pitch of her voice shifts direction.

“Allison Briscoe is my friend,” she declares in a low and powerful voice. “She is a human being. Get that through your skull. She is a human being. Look at me, Gordon. Look, I am a human being. You—a human being? I'm not so sure about you.”

“But—”

“Get the hell out of here, Gordon. Your shift is over. I'll close up and tuck her in for the night.”

“But I. It was just one word.”

“Yes.
It.
”

“Sorry.”

“Go! Get, disappear. Now.'

“I, I—”

“You are nothing! Tomorrow, you nothing jerk, you will apologize to Allison. Now get the hell out of our sight.”

She looks over at me. I've moved my eyes and have been watching the whole blurry scene.

If she recognizes anything astonishing, she doesn't let on.

Gordon putters around and then leaves. Maddie turns down the lights and climbs back up beside me.

“I know,” she whispers.

She dabs at my eyes with a tissue. Good glory, I've been crying. Not in anger or humiliation. I've been crying for joy.

I can cry!

Maddie stretches her bent body out beside me. I can feel her settle in. I'd swear I can feel her settle in.

Maybe she didn't notice that my eyes moved. She saw my tears.

She's staying for the night!

I'm bone-tired. I'm determined not to sleep.

My eyes close.

Thirty

Mary

Mary stayed awake all night. She could hear through her canvas shroud but the moonlight was extinguished. The canvas against her face was rough and smelled. She had a sickening feeling that it had been used for other dead bodies before. That didn't make sense. It was a burial shroud. But it smelled of death.

The air in the bag was thick. She was choking. She could hardly breathe. She desperately wanted to cut the bag open. But Mary was determined. She had a plan. Come hell or high water, she would follow it through.

Agnes and Apple stayed awake, too. Mary could hear them whispering. They were both in the same bed, but Mary couldn't tell which bed. Probably Apple's. It was farthest away from the bed where Lily's corpse was resting under Mary's blanket.

They wouldn't dare speak to Mary. Not now that she had taken the place of a dead woman.

“Arhrrrrrrrr,” Mary growled.

Agnes and Apple screamed.

Mary giggled and decided she had better be still. But the night guard didn't bother to check about the screaming. There was a dead body in the cell. Screaming would not surprise him.

Mary began to doze off but roused herself when the darkness began to fade. The cell door clattered as it were being unlocked. The burial crew had arrived.

She tried to stiffen up as much as she could.

Two men, one on each end, picked the body bag up roughly and dropped Mary onto a flat wheelbarrow.

“Oomph!” Mary groaned when the air was knocked out of her. She rolled a little to the side.

“A noisy one,” said the man at her feet.

“Sometimes they moan and groan,” said the man at her head. “They fart and belch. You never know what the dead ones are going to do. I never yet heard of one sneezing, though.”

Mary could hear Agnes and Apple whimpering. Then Apple sneezed. Mary nearly choked, trying not to laugh in spite of her bruised ribs.

“That'd be funny,” said the man doing the pushing. “Farting and sneezing.”

They maneuvered the barrow out through the door, both of them grunting and complaining.

“This here's a heavy one.”

“She looked like nothing but a sack of bones, did you see?”

“Well, she's still got a good bit of meat on her,” said the man trying to pull from the front. He gave Mary a slap across her thigh.

It was all Mary could do not to yell through the canvas,
keep your fat hands to yourself.
She stiffened and prepared for more blows, but the other man exclaimed:

“Here Joe, you mustn't be hitting a dead one. She won't like it none and her ghost will come back in your dreams.”

“You think so? Do you really?” They pushed and pulled through the long hallway.

“No, you idiot. But we'd best treat her with due respect.”

“
Due respect
means she got what was coming to her.”

“She's dead. It's comin' to us all.”

“That don't bear thinking about, so just keep pushing.”

Neither man spoke another word as they wheeled Mary into the early morning light.

She nearly slid off the barrow as they turned sharply and headed down a steep hill. The steel wheel clattered on the cobblestone path and the barrow wobbled. The burial crew struggled to stop it from tipping over and Mary was thrown around. It was all she could do not to protest. Or at least moan and groan. But she was supposed to be dead. Dead people don't complain.

At the bottom of the hill, they came to a stop. The air was bright and Mary could see shapes through the canvas. It was her two-man burial crew moving around as they tilted the barrow on its side and dumped her on the rough ground.

She lay still. She could hear water lapping against wood. There were no other voices. She heard a shovel ring out as it struck gravel. This must be the cemetery, just outside the prison wall. They were down by the wharf where supplies were dropped off for the prison. It was an abysmally isolated spot. That was good.

A shovel clanged against gravel again.

“Damn,” said the one. “This is hard going. You got any ideas, Mike?”

“You're thinking what I'm thinking?”

“Yeah, probably.”

Mary clutched her scissors in her left hand. She was counting on a shallow burial. Later in the day, if she were lucky, a priest or a minister would come and say a few words over an
empty
grave. If she didn't suffocate, if she could cut the canvas, if she could claw to the surface, if she could crawl out of the earth with no one seeing her.

If the grave wasn't empty—then Mary would be in it. She would be dead.

She wanted her burial to speed up. She was afraid the guards would discover Lily's body in her bed. She hoped Agnes would tell them it was Mary under the blankets and she was sick. Maybe sick with whatever killed Lily. They had better let her sleep.

Mary had not asked Agnes to say that. But Agnes had been around. She'd try to give Mary as much time as possible.

Still, Mary was almost relieved when she heard the shovels again, scraping away at the coarse ground.

Then they stopped.

“Okay, that looks like a burial mound.”

“For sure, for sure.”

“Grab an end.”

Each man took hold on an end of the canvas bag. They hoisted Mary into the air and then dumped her hard on the wooden wharf.

“Tie her up good.”

“Got her, don't worry.”

Mary felt a rope bind her ankles. It dug in through the canvas.

They were tying a weight to her feet. It sounded like a big piece of scrap iron.

“Okay, Mike, up and over. It's easier than digging. And it looks like she's buried.”

“They'll be saying prayers over an empty grave.”

“And this one won't know no difference.”

Mary felt herself swinging through the air. For a moment she was soaring. Then the weight on her ankles lurched her around. She hit the water.

And sank, feet first. Cold water rose up around her. She could make out the sun through the canvas. It looked like a big wheel on the horizon. She took one last breath before water seeped through the canvas around her face. Then the light dimmed as she went under completely.

She stifled a scream as the brown canvas bag settled against the rocky bottom Water pressed all around and the sun disappeared.

Allison

If I could take a pill now and go back to sleep so I could help her, I would. But I can't. I can't even control my own breathing. I just breathe. I can't breathe for Mary. But my pulse is racing, my heart is pounding. What have I got her into?

I'm awake. Does that mean she has until I go back to sleep to save herself? No, it's not up to me. It's her life. I can't change anything.

I feel helpless. I'm not the one drowning with my feet tied to a weight. Inside a canvas bag. I'm just here, I'm worried sick.

If I hadn't started dreaming about Mary, maybe she'd still be—where? In prison? Not Mary, not when she had a chance to escape. She's her own person. I respect that.

If you're going to take the risk, you've got to take the consequences. Mary never whined, she never complained. She takes risks because she's Mary. She'll survive. I know she will. I'm wearing the silver medallion she was wearing. That's proof she'll be okay. Unless they took it from her drowned body and gave it back to her family.

I'm feeling D, D, and thoroughly D.

And who walks in but Gordon. I realize, it's morning. Maddie has left. She must have got up and gone to work. It's not like she would have pinned a note on my pillow.

I open my eyes and stare straight ahead. Gordon leans over. He looms, he's very tall.

“Knock, knock,” he says.

Who's there?

“It's Gordon.”

Gordon who?

“
Gor'd on-ly
knows what a jerk I've been.
God only knows—
d'you get it?”

He paused. He seems embarrassed by his own awkwardness. Then he continues:

“Allison, I'm really really sorry. I've been up all night. Thinking.”

Did it hurt?

“Thinking about you and what it must be like if you're really in there.”

If!
But, okay, I'm listening.

“In my line of work, we use our brains but sometimes we don't think.”

I've noticed.

“Intellectuals aren't always smart, Allison.”

Do you actually call yourselves
intellectuals?
You and the
colleagues!

The poor guy is distressed. I wonder if it's about me, or if he's upset about Maddie. He likes her. He knows she's bright. Maybe she's not an
intellectual
, but she's fearsomely smart. And she's awesomely beautiful. And interesting, intriguing, amazing.

Gordon is standing there, staring. He's a blur.

I concentrate.

My eyes bring him into focus.

I bring him into focus.

He backs away a little.

My head is totally still but my eyes follow him.

I follow him with my eyes. Really!

He gasps.

“Holy good Lord,” he says. “Good God Almighty.”

I've made Gordon's day.