The School on Heart's Content Road (74 page)

Don't die. Don't die. Don't die.

Claire St. Onge.

The one small and two large waiting rooms farther down the hall are always filled with us. We fill up seats. We stand along the walls. Then there are people who have come to see Gordon whom we don't know. Only immediate family is allowed to see him. But they hang around anyway, waiting for news.

Immediate family. As you can guess, the St. Onge immediate family has given more than one nurse a bit of a stutter.

There are reporters too. Some identify themselves. We have agreed not to talk with them. But we try to be courteous. None of them act like jerks, so why should we? It's just a kind of war of polite smiles. A war of patience.

When Mary Wright, an old pal of Gordon's, came down the hall, the reporters came to life. “Senator Wright, what brings you here?” She replies, “Same thing you're here for.” She smiles. She is a petite person, but her smile is usually panoramic. Now her smile is spare.

Marian, Gordon's mother, does not hang out with us or eat from our baskets of food. I'm not sure where in the hospital she has been going off to, to wait alone. But she has been near. She and I go way back. It hurts to see her handsome face all swollen from constant sobbing. Once Whitney went up to her and hugged her, two lovely tall women, one older, one so young, those pertinacious St. Onge–De Paolo genes. The embrace was a long one, though not a single word was said. I believe there will come a time when Marian embraces
all
her grandchildren, will hold them dear. But not today. She still needs to pretend that her son is an ordinary man.

We always have kids with us. They read to each other, brush one another's hair, play word games, whittle out whistles and animals and little soldiers from basswood in satchels. Some knit or stitch. Some just slump against a parent and look bored. The teenagers whisper a lot. They walk the halls together, restless. They help change diapers or take little kids to the restrooms. “Don't let them sit on the seats,” the mothers caution. The reply: “We'll try not to.”

Bonny Loo St. Onge speaks.

During the night, Gordon stirs. The doctor tells us he's not paralyzed, that he remembers who he is, where he was born, what year he was born, but not a lot of recent events, but some of that may eventually come back okay. He explains that there is sight in one eye but the other eye needs more surgery and more time—“severed ligaments” and something about the cornea. Trauma. And
blah blah blah
. The doctor smiles, says, “He's tough. Give him a medal.”

We cheer. Some of us scream and sing. Cheers and chants go up and down the hall. We are promptly told by a small unsmiling nurse to shut up or leave.

In Augusta, the attorney general sits in his new remodeled office, a few boxes still unpacked.

He stretches his arms over his head, phone receiver between ear and shoulder. He chuckles, drops his arms. “I would say this could be one of those times.” He listens, smiling. Then, “Yeah, yeah. That was when I was just a pup. I think you'll find my tastes have changed.” He listens. Laughs again. “When?” He listens. “Right. Right.” He listens. Laughs. “Yeah, they were the only Democrats in the county. It was lonely for them.” He listens and he laughs heartily. Snorts. “Was that one of the figures in their coat of arms?” More hearty laughter.

More listening, shifts in his wheeled office chair, reaches for his pen, writes on a pad. “Yes, uh-huh . . . right.” He listens. Writes. He is left-handed. His hand and the pen and pad are twisted as if in a pose of anguish or ardor, waiting for the caller's next words. “I see.”

He listens some more, pen raised.

He listens even harder, pen raised.

He listens, pen moving now, down toward the pad. “Arraignment date would be when?” He scribbles.

More listening. “Richard York? With a
Y
? Well, is Bernie on this? He's our Oxford County guy now.” He leans toward keyboard and screen, chair a soundless swiveling, cool leather shoulder-high. He taps into the recesses of the Maine
justice
system. He says, “Oh, of course. That's the reality . . . Yes . . . Yes, I'll see what I can do. You, uh—” He listens and
mmms
as he taps, pokes, taps, jabs, taps. Stops. Eyes sweep the screen. Then lock. “Well, now, it seems as though we don't have to do anything here. Mr. St. Onge
himself
is not filing charges.”

He listens. Then, “I have no clue. It's not unlikely. But if
you
people want him out of there, he's going to—”

He listens. He laughs. He listens. “Well, yes. Sure.” He looks at his watch. “Okay.” He writes REX. He chuckles. He says gravely, “Great nickname. When he's not assaulting his friends, what is he, a German shepherd?”

S. A. Kashmar hangs up the phone, swiveling to scribble up an old, old, old-fashioned pink while-you-were-out memo. His thoughts.

If you want bees to make honey, you have to let them fly around. If you want a large choice of patsies for when you need them, you have to keep them out of jail, keep them out and about. You want all these guys not to trust each other, okay, and you want them to act crazy—but also to be handy as a mop when you need to use their faces and names and bad reputations for what we must accomplish, which I cannot tell you, the public, about, because you, the public, can't handle necessities and complexities. Hell, even some people here in this line of work can't. The numbers of stars in their eyes could light the Superbowl playoffs into infinity.

One of the many calls Lisa Meserve has made from Boston to the Settlement, always scheduled and always answered with the long golden fingers of the child who never gives up.

As always, the dark hair is barretted prettily, gushing in bubble curls from the latest Settlement-made ornament. As always, Jane keeps her face to the wall, away from those who might otherwise see her private expressions. Sometimes she stands. Sometimes she sits, if Gordon's ancient wooden office chair isn't filled with books, maps, letters, or junk. Today she sits. She doesn't wear her powerful pink spy person's glasses. There are just her clear black eyes.

Without any help, she “sees” her mother's eyes, blue “like wonderful jewels.” She listens to her mother's voice, which sounds slow. She doesn't know about the drugs called sedatives given out in jail to prevent wailing. She speaks. “Mum, Claire says you are postponed again in the trial thing.”

She listens.

Then, “But that's stupid, Mum.”

Her mother agrees. As usual. On the workings of the world, both Jane and Lisa have come to unfailing agreement.

“Mum, tell them they are—”

Her mother butts in with a woozy jokey moment.

Jane laughs.

Her mother tells her it'll all work out. She explains this very slowly, almost gravely, due to the wail-preventing sedatives.

Later next year, when Lisa is sentenced to a mandatory life sentence, to be served in a California women's penitentiary, her wooziness comes naturally (drug free) as it does when a person faints while being nailed to a cross or tied to a wheel to be broken and dismembered and buried alive by pharaohs and queens or modern systems working efficiently.

Jane finds Mickey still living in his tree house. She visits awhile. Mostly painful silence.

He passes the bag of Cajun Tacos to her, and her long fingers squirm happily inside the noisy bag.

He watches her a minute while she isn't looking at him. “So your mother . . .” He jiggles his foot.

“What about her?”

“Jail . . . what's it like? Does she say, how . . . how bad it is?” He jiggles his foot faster.

“Well, she gets to wear a very pretty orange thing.” Now she laughs and covers her face. Dark eyes peer out between her long golden fingers, her forehead wrinkled. “Actually, it's hideous . . . orange and hideous.”

“What's her cell like, small?”

“I don't know.”

He watches his own foot, tries to stop the jiggling. He says in a husky way, “Some people never get out.”