Yellowcake (28 page)

He stares into Rosy's eyes. She seems to understand, because she says, "Maggie, keep everybody out of here. Eddy and I can handle this. But get a blanket."

She pushes his oxygen tube up against his nose. "We've got to get you out of there," she whispers. She slips her hands under his armpits and tries to lift him. He can hear her breath in his ear. He knows her cheek is against his, but he can't feel it.

"Mom, I really don't think we should move him. He may have fallen. Injured his spine or something."

"Ryland, wiggle your toes." She stares at his feet, bending down closer to them. He thinks he's wiggling them. Can't tell.

Now she grips him by the shoulders, bringing her face inches from his, her pupils pinpoints. "Did—you—fall?" She shakes him.

It seems ridiculous. He fell asleep, he got cold.

She puts her hand over her mouth, her eyes suddenly watery. She blinks rapidly. Her nostrils flare.

The water has drained out. Rosy is tucking the down comforter from his bed around him in the tub. She begins rubbing him through the comforter, his arms, his torso, his legs. "Got to get you warm," she says. Her tongue's sticking out between her lips, a habit of hers. When Rosy works, the tongue comes out. This makes him want to laugh, and he does, his teeth knocking together.

She sits back on her heels. The tongue goes in. Her chin is trembling, her lips, too, and it looks like she's going to cry. He tries to remember the last time he saw her cry—not since the kids were little, not since then. "Look at you, you're all pruned up." She takes his hand, rubbing his fingers. Their eyes lock, her eyes filmy, blinking, blinking, and her lips tremble.

She puts his hand back under the comforter and goes to rubbing his ankles and calves. "Here," she says. "We can do this. You getting warmer? I don't think you injured your spine."

"Nope," he manages to say. A thousand pins have started pricking his feet.

Eddy peers over her shoulder. "You okay, Pop?"

"Tell them..."

"Tell who what?" Rosy says.

"No ambulance." But already he hears the siren. Shame washes over him again.

 

A doctor he doesn't know is talking to Rosy and Eddy and someone else outside the blue curtain. He's lying on a gurney. The blue curtain separates him from a couple of other gurneys in the crowded emergency room. The doctor is telling them that the EKG showed no sign of heart attack, and the MRI no sign of stroke. He thinks Ryland got a touch of hypothermia.

They have been waiting for Dr. Callahan. The doctor on duty had told them that Dr. Callahan wouldn't officially be back from vacation until tomorrow, but Rosy has his home number, and she insisted on calling, and now Ryland recognizes the doctor's voice. The emergency room doctor tells Callahan that he sees no sign of stroke, and Rosy says, "Don't you want to monitor him overnight?"

The curtain parts and Dr. Callahan comes in. He's wearing a white polo shirt and khaki pants. He has a good tan.

"How you doing, Ryland?"

"I'm fine."

"Gave everybody a scare, my man." The doctor leans over Ryland, pulling his eyelid up, his lower lid down, and shining a penlight in his eye. Ryland can smell garlic on his breath.

"Guess I interrupted your dinner?"

"That's okay."

He uses a stethoscope to listen to Ryland's heart.

"Got a headache, Ry?"

"No."

"Noticed any pain in your arms?"

"No."

"Neck?"

"No."

"Is this wedding a pain in the neck?"

Ryland smiles; the doctor smiles.

"Did you take pills, Ryland?" He stares him in the eye. Ryland stares back. Says nothing. "I know this is a stressful time, but you don't want to overdo the sedatives." Ryland holds his gaze.

"Well. I think you're fine. I think you just got cold."

"Man freezes to death in his own bathtub. Pathetic," Ryland says.

"In ninety-degree weather." The doctor smiles and slips outside the curtain. Ryland listens to him tell Rosy to take Ryland home but to remember that he's not at the top of his game, and anything she can do to reduce stress she ought to do. He says that if Ryland seems confused or if at any time he has trouble speaking or understanding speech, or if he loses his balance, to call immediately.

"And Rose, keep an eye on his medications." He says that Ryland must have been sleeping heavily for the water to have gotten so cold.

 

Like a kid fibbing to his mother, Ryland tells Rosy he doesn't know where the bottle of Xanax is and then feels so ridiculous he immediately fishes it out from under his shirts in the dresser drawer and gives it to her, which makes him feel like a kid owning up. She watches him ceaselessly. Eyes dim with fatigue—it's a fear-tinged fatigue, like he used to see in the eyes of sleepless soldiers—she examines him, looking for evidence of what, stroke? Has he had a stroke? Will he? It is odd to think that if he does, she'll know before he does. That's the nature of strokes. The body and the mind separate; an open-eyed witness gives evidence. What is his wife if not open-eyed?

Suddenly the house is empty. Tuesday evening he listens to her hushed conversations on the telephone as she relocates Wedding Headquarters Central to Eddy and Sue's house. He's just getting into bed when she comes in and sits on the mattress next to him, searching his face. He wants to tell her to stop looking at him like the grand inquisitor, but he knows that'll just make her self-conscious—or mad. He is so tired. Is tiredness evidence of stroke?

"I think maybe we ought to have Eddy walk Maggie down the aisle," she says. "It's enough that you're at the wedding."

"I'm walking Maggie down the aisle," he says.

She blinks, swallows; eyes unfocused, she stares at the oxygen tank in the corner.

"You scared me, Ryland."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I don't know what I'd do if..."

He takes her hand, squeezing it. "I'm okay, Rosy."

She stands up, threads of pink bleeding into her wan cheeks. "Thursday will be such a long day, Ryland. You could skip it. Skip the rehearsal. The rehearsal dinner. Just rest up for Saturday."

"I'll be fine."

And yet when has he been so tired? He doesn't remember sleeping, but it's almost noon when he wakes on Wednesday to Rosy's fretful face inches from his, telling him he's been asleep for over fifteen hours and asking him if his shoulders ache or if he has a headache.

Everything does ache, though no more, he thinks, than yesterday, or any other day of his life, for that matter.

He had been dreaming about the mill. Woody was in the dream, his leg splashed with sulfuric acid. But that never happened. It happened to Ryland once in Durango. Ryland has a brown burn patch on his right calf and has had it for thirty years now.

Eddy is at the table having lunch when Ryland goes into the kitchen. "You off today?"

"Until Sunday. I'm taking a few vacation days."

"Where's your mom?"

"She had some errands."

By midafternoon, when Eddy, who has stationed himself in front of the television to watch soap operas, shows no sign of leaving, Ryland realizes that his son is on duty. Eddy must have a million things he should be doing. He most certainly should not be spending his vacation days before the wedding watching soap operas. Except he's not really watching them, not closely, because every time a car passes he looks out the window. When Rosy comes back, Eddy goes into the kitchen and Ryland strains to hear their conversation. It becomes clear that Eddy has been watching for Sam. If he can, Eddy will intercept Sam without Ryland knowing. In that way they will save Ryland whatever stress Sam might cause. And probably have Sam arrested.

Ryland sets up a vigil of his own, though he is so tired—when has he been so tired? Every time he feels himself drifting, he struggles out of it, keeping his eyes on the front window, his ears tuned to the traffic on the street. He sleeps badly Wednesday night, waking every half hour. At breakfast Thursday morning, Rosy tells him he looks like death warmed over. She invites him again to skip the rehearsal, and he considers that, because then he could be alone, and maybe Sam would come. But when she says that if he skips, she'll skip, too, he rallies. He may never be alone again.

The rehearsal is chaotic. No one told the church cleaners about it, and four Mexican women are scouring the altar area when they arrive, one pushing an industrial vacuum with an engine that sounds like a B-52. Father Liam and Rosy both holler directions over the clatter, and Mrs. Gruber, the organist, plays the Wedding March over the noise of the vacuum.

All of the young people—George and Maggie, Sue and Eddy, the best man, who is George's brother—wear jeans and T-shirts. This bothers Ryland. Why it should bother him, he doesn't know, except it's a church. Their costumes seem a study in disrespect. The little girls are wearing summer shorts, halter tops, and thongs, and they're chewing gum. Which bothers him.

His job isn't hard. The hard part is waiting in the noise while Sue and Rosy argue about letting Teri walk alone down the aisle. Sue thinks she ought to walk with Teri and help her keep pace, but Rosy says Sue's place is in the procession ahead of Ryland and Maggie, that it has to be that way, that's where the matron of honor always is, and it doesn't matter if Teri runs down the aisle because she's so cute and little. They argue about this for fifteen minutes, Rosy finally winning.

It has been decided that Ryland will leave his oxygen cart at the back of the church. Unencumbered by the tank, he'll walk Maggie up the aisle, and his other, smaller tank will be with Rosy in the head pew, where he'll hook himself back up.

Finally they start. He doesn't remember the aisle in the church being so long. He leaves Maggie at the altar, handing her to George, steps into the pew next to his frowning inspector-general wife.

Then they have to rehearse it again. Why again? Nobody else seems to wonder.

It's on the third long walk that his knees buckle. It's the noise, he thinks, that caused it. He was leaning toward Maggie, trying to hear what she is saying about her petticoats, which will make her twice as wide on Saturday, but the organ music was so loud he couldn't quite hear her. Everybody was chattering. His knees buckled, and he fell into Maggie, who fell into a pew.

They all swarmed, Rosy grabbing his wrist, checking for a pulse, and wanting to look in his eyes. "Enough," he yelled.

Now he sits in the pew, the church utterly silent, everybody watching him. Maggie squats next to him. "Daddy," she says, "maybe Eddy should walk me down the aisle. You could just wait in the pew with Mom and give me away when the time comes. Or Eddy could do that. Really, all that matters is that you're there. If you want, you can sit in the back of the church. Quick escape, you know. If you want to."

He looks at his daughter and thinks about explaining that he's really okay, it was just the noise that got to him. But why did it get to him? Why did it seem so loud?

He simply says, "I'll be fine."

 

It's late by the time they get out of the church and head up to Whitaker Mesa for the rehearsal dinner at Edna Friedan's house. Edna, an old friend from Durango, was a mill wife who came with them to Shiprock with her first husband. She has been married four times since, widowed each time. The last one, Friedan, a real estate mogul from Los Angeles, left Edna very well off.

The sun is just slipping behind the horizon when the wedding party tops the mesa. It's 7:45. They're driving in a caravan, Eddy and Sue in the lead, Ryland and Rosy behind them. Approaching the security gate, squinting against the setting sun, Ryland sees something that makes no sense: Sam's truck, with Sam and somebody else—Alice?—inside.

He and Eddy are out of their cars simultaneously. "Ed!" Ryland calls. "I'll handle this." Eddy looks back at Rosy. Ryland unhooks himself from his oxygen and covers ground.

Not Alice but an old Navajo woman sits on the passenger's side of the truck.

"Ry. You know Ariana Atcitty? This is Alice's mother/' The strong smell of liquor-soaked sweat wafts through Sam's open window. Sam is badly sunburned, his nose peeling. Red dirt cakes his neck and throat above his T-shirt.

"Can I talk to you?" Ryland says, motioning for Sam to step out of the truck. "Where the hell you been?" he says as soon as they're out of earshot, though where Sam has been is clear. He's found Alice.

"Been camping out at Ariana's place, helping her rig an irrigation system."

Sam looks at the line of cars idling at the gate. "What's with the parade?"

"So I guess you found Alice."

"Sort of. She's due back—"

"What, are you just sitting out there roosting?"

Chin raised, eyes half closed, Sam looks at him and doesn't answer.

"Lily called."

"Oh?"

"What do you think you're doing, buddy?"

Sam purses his lips, nodding, taking his time to answer, finally saying, "What does she think she's doing? Did she tell you the story?"

"Yeah, we heard the story. Sam, if you needed money, I told you..."

"It's not about that."

"What's it about?"

"For the insult, Ry. I mean, what the fuck. Seventeen years I think I'm divorced and then find out I'm not. Anyway, she can afford it. You've seen how she lives? Christ, she's got more than you and me put together."

"It's not your money, Sam. You're not entitled."

"What do you care?" Sam says. "Why are you so pissed?"

Ryland swallows. A young man whom he recognizes as Sam's son—he's run into the kid now and again over the years—has just driven out of the gate in a little white go-cart. He parks near the adobe wall that encircles the estates, starts toward Sam's truck, but detours when Rosy gets out and calls him over to her.

Something that feels like a vise steadily tightens around Ryland's chest.

"Wouldn't think you'd give a damn," Sam is saying.

"I don't. Rosy does."

"Ah." Sam smiles. He takes his flask from his back pocket and sips. "Rosy." He recaps the flask. "So you're her messenger?"

"What do you mean by that?"