Whispers and Lies Read online

  Again I nodded, hoping she wouldn’t go into details.

  “But we managed. I think we felt we should, it being the New Year and everything. Sort of like on your anniversary or your birthday. You just feel you should. Anyway, we made love and then we fell asleep. Sex always puts me right to sleep.” She laughed. “And later, I was so glad we’d made love that night because it turned out to be the last time we ever did. Steve had a heart attack the following week and died a month after that.”

  “You must miss him a great deal.”

  “There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think about him. But I guess I’ll be seeing him again pretty soon,” she said brightly.

  “Well, let’s hope not too soon.” I patted her arm and stood up, straightening her covers, although there was no need. I checked my watch. Another twenty minutes and it would be a brand-new year.

  “Will you sit with me until midnight?” she asked. “Then I promise to go to sleep like a good little girl.”

  I sat back down, watched Myra’s eyes flutter to a close.

  “I’m not asleep,” she warned. “Just resting my eyes.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I assured her, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest beneath the covers, noting the satisfied smile that lingered in the folds of her ancient face.

  At seventy-seven, she’d still been sexually active. At eighty-seven, the thought of sex still made her smile. I was envious, I realized. When had sex ever made me smile? When had it brought me anything but embarrassment and shame?

  My first time had been fast and uncomfortable and not particularly pleasant. I remember Roger Stillman trying to pry my legs apart, the few hurried grabs at my breasts that served as foreplay. And then the sudden jolt of pain as his body pushed into mine, the unexpected weight of his torso as he collapsed on top of me when it was over.

  The last time I’d had sex hadn’t been much of an improvement, I thought with a shudder, again envying the dying old woman lying in bed before me. She’d been so open, so honest with me. What would she think if I were to be equally open and honest with her?

  Could I tell her that the last time I’d had sex—real sex, not just the hint of it with Josh or the threat of it with Lance—had been the night my mother died? I shook my head in disbelief. Dear God, how could I have done anything so vile? What on earth had possessed me?

  In truth, I’d all but pushed the details of that night out of my mind altogether. But Myra’s memories had unleashed a flood of my own. I sat back in my chair, stared at the window, saw the ghosts of my past etched in the dark mirror of glass.

  I watched myself as I sat stiffly by my mother’s bedside, her death obvious in the grayness of her pallor, and the stillness that had settled over her body like a fine coating of wax. Her eyes and mouth were open, and I reached out to close them, her skin already cool against my fingers. Even in death, there remained a hint of the anger that had fueled her life. Even with her eyes closed and her breath stopped, a certain ferocity clung to her features. She was still a force to be reckoned with, I remember thinking as I bent down to kiss her lips, surprised to find them so soft and pliant. When had I ever experienced softness from those lips? Had she ever kissed me as a baby, a toddler, a child? Had those lips ever brushed across my forehead to check if I was feverish? Had they ever whispered “I love you” while I slept?

  The sad fact was that I’d hated my mother almost as much as I’d loved her, that I’d spent my entire life trying to please her, to make up for whatever wrongs, both real and imaginary, I’d committed. After she’d suffered her stroke, I’d tried everything in my power to nurse her back to health, and when it became obvious to both of us she wouldn’t get better, I’d continued to do my best to make sure she was as comfortable as possible. I’d sacrificed so much of my life for her, and suddenly she was gone, and I had nothing. No one. I was left with an emptiness so overwhelming I didn’t know what to do.

  I remember pacing back and forth at the foot of her bed. Back and forth. Back and forth. I could feel her watching me through closed, dead eyes, casting her continuing disapproval across my shoulders like a heavy cloak. What kind of nurse are you that you couldn’t keep your own mother alive? I could hear her demand through cold, dead lips. And it was true, I conceded. I’d failed her. Again. As I’d always failed her.

  “I’m so sorry,” I cried out loud. “So sorry.”

  Sorry, sorry, sorry.

  A sorry excuse for a nurse. A sorrier excuse for a daughter.

  I don’t remember leaving the house, although at some point I obviously did. I must have showered and changed my clothes, although I have no memory of having done so. I do remember being in a bar on Atlantic Avenue, throwing back several glasses of tequila, and flirting with the handsomely nondescript bartender until he abandoned me for a girl who kept tossing her long blond hair from one shoulder to the other at the far end of the bar. I then turned my attention to another generically handsome man, this one wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt, who casually slipped his wedding band into the pocket of his tight jeans as he sidled up beside me.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before,” he said.

  Yes, he actually said that. Maybe because it was true, maybe because he was too lazy to think of anything more original, maybe because he sensed I was such an easy mark that nothing was to be gained by being more creative.

  “It’s my first time,” I told him, trying—and failing—to toss my hair over my shoulder like the blonde at the end of the bar.

  “First time, huh?” He signaled the bartender to refill our drinks. “I like first times. Don’t you?”

  I gave him what I hoped would pass as a mysterious smile and said nothing. Instead I pushed my shoulders back and crossed my legs, his eyes tracing each move. I was wearing a striped jersey that accentuated the swell of my bosom, and strappy sandals that dangled provocatively from my bare toes. He was tall and slender, with hair as black as coal and eyes the color of cool mint. He did most of the talking—about what I don’t remember. I’m sure he told me his name, but I’ve successfully blocked it out. Jack, John, Jerrod. Something with a J. I don’t think I told him mine. I’m not sure he asked.

  We had a few more drinks, and he suggested going somewhere more private. Without another word, I slid from my barstool and walked to the door. Surprisingly, I had no trouble walking, despite all the liquor in my system. In fact, I didn’t feel the least bit drunk, although afterward, I convinced myself I’d been very drunk indeed. But as much as I’d like to blame what happened that night on a combination of grief and alcohol, I’m no longer sure I can do that. The truth is that I wasn’t drunk that night, at least not so drunk I wasn’t responsible for my actions. The truth is that I knew exactly what I was doing when I agreed to leave that bar for somewhere more private, when I let Jack or John or Jerrod feel me up as we stumbled toward his car, when I whispered that I lived just around the corner.

  He parked on the street in front of my house, and I led him around the side to the cottage at the back. “Who lives in the main house?” he asked as I opened the cottage door and began turning on the lights.

  “My mother,” I told him, glancing toward her bedroom window.

  “Aren’t you afraid she’ll see us with all these lights on?”

  “She’s a very sound sleeper,” I said, pulling off my jersey in front of the window, hearing my mother’s silent gasp.

  After that, we said little. But if I’d been expecting great sex, I was sorely disappointed. If I’d been looking for some kind of release, I got nothing of the sort. Instead I got a lot of grunting and thrashing about to no particular purpose, and when it was over—too fast, yet not nearly fast enough—I couldn’t wait for Jack or John or Jerrod to put on his tight jeans and Hawaiian shirt and leave.

  “I’ll call you,” he said on his way out the door.

  I nodded, looking up at my mother’s room, feeling the crushing weight of her disapproval, as heavy as the weight of the man
who’d just left my bed. I took a shower and got dressed, then I called for an ambulance and returned to the main house, where I sat dutifully by my mother’s side until it arrived. Then I wiped that night from my mind as if it had never happened and refused to think of it again.

  Until now.

  I glanced at my watch. It was midnight. “Happy New Year,” I whispered, kissing Myra’s warm cheek.

  “Happy New Year,” she repeated, opening her eyes briefly, her thin lashes brushing against my skin.

  Seconds later, she was asleep, and once again, I was alone.

  NINETEEN

  I thought I heard something when I stepped into the hallway. I stopped, looked around, saw nothing but an empty corridor. I stood there, my hand still on the door to Myra’s room, my head cocked to one side, like an attentive puppy, my ears on full alert for any errant sounds—a stray step, a heavy breath—anything at all out of the ordinary.

  But there was nothing.

  I shook my head and started down the hall, looking in on my patients as I passed each joyless room. Most were asleep, or pretending to be. Only Eliot Winchell, a middle-aged man saddled with the brain of a toddler as the result of a seemingly harmless spill from a bicycle, was awake. He waved when he saw me.

  “Happy New Year, Mr. Winchell,” I said, automatically checking his pulse. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

  He smiled his eerie child’s smile and said nothing.

  “Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

  He shook his head, smiled wider, the white of his teeth flashing in the semidarkness of the room.

  “Then try to get some sleep now, Mr. Winchell. You have a very busy day ahead of you.” I doubted this was true, but what difference did it make? One day would be pretty much the same as the next for Eliot Winchell for the rest of his life. “Why weren’t you wearing your helmet, Eliot?” I scolded in my mother’s voice, watching the child’s smile vanish abruptly from his face. “Get some sleep,” I said, softening, patting his arm, and making sure his covers were secure. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I heard the noise as soon as I stepped back into the hall.

  I spun around, my eyes darting back and forth, up and down the brightly lit corridor. But again, there was nothing. I held my breath, waited, tried unsuccessfully to figure out exactly what it was I thought I’d heard. But there was nothing I could put my finger on, nothing but a vague sense of disquiet.

  “It’s nothing,” I said out loud as I walked past Sheena O’Connor’s former room. Sheena O’Connor was no longer a patient at Mission Care. Her doctors felt she’d recovered sufficiently to release her, and her parents had arrived to take her home the day before yesterday.

  “Isn’t it great? I’ll be home for New Year’s,” she’d exclaimed.

  “You take good care of yourself,” I urged.

  “You’ll keep in touch, won’t you? You’ll come visit me?”

  “Of course I will,” I said, but I think we both knew that once she left the hospital, I’d never see her again.

  She hugged me. “I’m gonna call you every time I can’t sleep,” she warned. “Have you sing to me.”

  “You won’t have any trouble sleeping.”

  What was she doing now? I wondered, returning to the nurses’ station, realizing I missed having someone to sing to.

  On holidays, the hospital retained only a skeletal staff. Beverley and I were the only nurses on the floor. Truthfully, I would have preferred total solitude. Then I wouldn’t have to spend the first moments of the New Year mired in boring small talk or pretend to be interested in Beverley’s mind-numbingly stupid problems. I wouldn’t be expected to offer advice I knew would never be followed. I could simply enjoy this time alone. Chances were slight there’d be an emergency, and doctors were on call if I needed them. A glorified baby-sitter, that’s all you are, I heard my mother whisper.

  “Did you hear something?” I asked Beverley, drowning out the sound of my mother’s voice.

  “Like what?” Beverley looked up from the double issue of People she was perusing and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

  I shrugged, unconvinced. The silence of the night pounded against my head like a hammer.

  “Just your imagination working overtime,” Beverley pronounced.

  God knows I have plenty of imagination, I thought. Yes, sir—lots of imagination.

  And no life.

  The people dying in their beds just down the hall had more life than I did. Myra Wylie, for God’s sake, at eighty-seven and sick with leukemia and heart disease, still grew wistful at the very thought of sex. Ten years ago, ten years ago, she’d still been sexually active! And here was I, almost half her age, with only a tiny fraction of her life experience. What was I waiting for? How much of my life was I going to waste?

  I’d never made New Year’s resolutions before, but I made one now. Come hell or high water, this year was going to be different. Josh would be back from California in a few days, and I was going to be ready for him.

  “Who would you sleep with if you had the chance?” Beverley startled me by asking, as if privy to my thoughts. “Tom Cruise or Russell Crowe?” She held up the magazine, tapped fake, orange nails against the appropriate pictures.

  “Is George Clooney an option?”

  She laughed, and I listened in mounting fear as the laugh spun circles around us. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear that.”

  “I heard it.” Beverley dropped the magazine to the counter and rose to her feet. “Probably Larry Foster in 415. He has that weird little laugh. I’ll go check on him.”

  “Maybe we should call security.”

  Fake, orange nails waved my concerns aside as Beverley headed down the hall.

  I picked up the People magazine and flipped through its pages, trying to pretend there was no cause for alarm by concentrating on which stars had undergone plastic surgery in the last year. “You, definitely,” I said, pointing to the picture of an aging starlet who, except for an exaggerated mane of curly blond hair, barely resembled her former self. In fact, it was only after I read the name beneath the photograph that I realized who she was.

  That’s when I heard the sound again.

  The magazine dropped from my hands and slid off my lap as I jumped to my feet. “Who’s there?” I demanded, eyes straying toward the alarm button on the wall.

  A figure emerged from behind a nearby pillar and sauntered slowly toward me, his fingers hooked into the pockets of his black jeans, a cruel smile tugging at his lips. Tall, skinny, dressed all in black, his brown eyes laughed at me from atop his hawklike nose. I didn’t need a name beneath a photograph to identify him.

  “K.C.!”

  “Happy New Year, Terry.”

  I fought to get air into my lungs. “What are you doing here? How did you get past security?”

  “You mean my friend Sylvester?”

  “What did you do to him?”

  The smile disappeared from his mouth. “You mean after I slit his throat?”

  My voice fell to my knees. “Oh, my God!”

  K.C. laughed, slapped his thigh in disbelief. “What—you think I’m serious? You think I’d hurt my friend Sylvester? What kind of people have you been hanging out with, lady? Of course I didn’t hurt him. I just explained how unfair I thought it was you had to miss out on all the festivities and said I wanted to surprise you with a party of your own. Sylvester was very understanding, especially when I presented him with a nice bottle of ten-year-old Scotch. What’s the matter, Terry? You don’t look very happy to see me.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “What do you think?” He lifted his right hand, aimed it at my heart. It was only then I saw the gun.

  There was a loud bang, and in a blinding flash, the world exploded. I fell back, cried out, glanced toward my chest, waiting for the sight of my blood to seep through the whiteness of my uniform.

  “My God, what’s going on here?” Beverley exclaimed as my vision began to
blur. “Who are you?” she demanded of K.C. as the taste of blood filled my mouth.

  “Friends of Terry’s,” K.C. answered easily, and I was too weak to object.

  And then Alison suddenly jumped into view. “Happy New Year!” she shouted.

  “Happy New Year!” echoed Denise, popping up beside her.

  “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life,” Lance announced from another corner, laughing as champagne gushed from the large bottle in his hand to spill across the floor. “That was one noisy cork. Anybody see where it went?”

  “What’s going on here?” Beverley asked again, although a smile was already creeping into her voice.

  “New Year’s celebration,” Lance told her. “We didn’t think you angels of mercy should miss out on all the fun.”

  “Well, aren’t you sweet. I’m Beverley, by the way.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Beverley. I’m Lance. This is Alison, Denise, and K.C.”

  “Any friends of Terry’s”—Beverley began, then stopped when she saw the look on my face.

  “You scared me half to death,” I said, realizing I hadn’t been shot after all.

  Lance laughed. “A little scare’s good for you. Gets the adrenaline pumping.”

  “We didn’t mean to scare you,” Alison apologized. “We just wanted to surprise you.”

  “Don’t you like surprises, Terry?” Denise asked, approaching the nurses’ station. Her black hair had outgrown its trendy cut, and as a result, its spikes had lost some of their sharp edges, collapsing around her pale face like ash from a cigarette. Her eyes were rimmed with black, making her look more ghoulish than sophisticated, an effect I don’t think was intentional, although knowing Denise, perhaps it was.