The Night Visitors(68)

When I’ve repeated the same facts a dozen times Anita accuses the deputy of harassment and asks if I’m going to be charged with anything.

“Not now,” the officer answers, indicating with a glare that he’s not done with me.

I sign my statement and learn that Oren has been claimed by Child Welfare and taken to a residence. No one will tell me which one. Alice is half crazed with panic; Wayne is trying to calm her down. “Doreen will find out where they’ve taken him,” I tell her. “Let’s go over to Sanctuary.”

At Sanctuary I find Alana and the Bard intern both wide-eyed and jittery, like they’ve been up all night drinking Red Bulls and cramming for an exam. “Thank God!” they both exclaim when they see me. “No one else showed up for their shifts, so we stayed on.”

“We lost power but we got the generator going!” Bard tells us.

“We took in a dozen people stranded by the storm,” Alana says. “I know we’re not supposed to let people stay overnight, but what could we do?”

“We made frozen pizzas for everyone—”

“And directed the highway department to rescue people who were stranded on the road—”

“And organized a shoveling brigade this morning!”

They are giddy with their success. The place looks like a wreck. “Good job,” I tell them as I plug in my phone to charge it. I don’t mention that they gave away our location to Davis. I’ll leave that lecture on confidentiality for another day. After all, I’ve broken a lot of rules myself. “But didn’t Doreen come in?”

“She never showed up,” Alana says. “We figured she was snowed in. I’ve called her a dozen times.”

A ripple of unease passes through me. Doreen lives two blocks away in a second-floor apartment. Her landlord is a fit ex-fireman who gets out his snowblower at the first flakes. There’s no way she’s still snowed in.

My phone beeps to life. There’s Doreen’s message to me from last night.

Called Dept. of Child Welfare. Alice isn’t Oren’s mother. Not even stepmother. She’s the next-door neighbor who babysits. The father has had custody since the mother OD’d. Oren’s caseworker expressed concerns over Oren’s welfare but there was no evidence, etc. etc. Anyway, thought you should know. Call if you need me.

It’s the “etc. etc.” that gets me. All the times Doreen tried to convince a caseworker that her son, Gavin, wasn’t doing well at his father’s and they told her that there was no evidence of abuse so they couldn’t do anything . . .

“Etc. etc.”

I can hear her weariness even in the text. And then there’s the last line: “Call if you need me.”

I hadn’t called. Would she have assumed I lost power, or think I didn’t need her?

I’ll stick around as long as you need me, Doreen had said when I talked her down from killing herself.

Reflect back the invitations the person has given you, Doreen teaches in her suicide awareness training sessions.

Doreen had been upset by the call from Alice. I’d meant to talk it through with her but I never had. She asked if she could come stay with us last night. She hadn’t wanted to be alone. She left a message asking if I needed her . . .

And the answer had been no.

“Call an ambulance and send it to Doreen’s address,” I bark at Alana and Bard as I rush out of the building.

I run the two blocks, dodging shovelers and snowblowers. How could I have been so blind? So deaf? Doreen had been telling me that she was struggling. I knew that Oren would remind her of Gavin. And yet I still let her go home alone to sit out the storm with her own bad thoughts.

The three-story Victorian house where Doreen lives is cheerful against the snow. The front path is neatly cleared. Assorted wind chimes peal on the outdoor staircase that goes up to Doreen’s door. These stairs have been cleared too, and a note from her landlord has been left on her door telling her that garbage pickup has been delayed because of the storm.

I knock, but when I don’t get an answer I kneel and move a Buddha statue aside to get her spare key. As I let myself in I hear the ambulance pull up downstairs. I’m going to feel really stupid if I’m wrong. Doreen will never let me live it down—

The only light in the apartment comes from a lava lamp in the corner of the living room—a gag gift the volunteers gave Doreen once because she is such a hippie. It bathes the room in purple, then red, then green, painting the bare white walls and the futon couch in lurid colors. The colors do nothing to disguise the fact that this is a lonely place. Why haven’t I ever asked Doreen to come live with me in my great big lonely house? Because you were too in love with your own solitude, wallowing in your guilt and pride. Mattie Lane, the judge’s daughter, in her big house on the hill.

Doreen is lying on the futon under an afghan. There’s a bottle of whiskey and three pill bottles on the coffee table.

It feels like falling to reach the couch. I’m shaking so badly that I can’t tell if she has a pulse. I try to remember CPR training, but all I can hear is Doreen’s voice saying, Call if you need me, call if you need me.

“I need you,” I scream into Doreen’s slack face. “I need you, goddamn it!”

And then the EMTs are there. They push me aside and start to work on Doreen. “I’ve got a pulse,” one says. They load Doreen onto a stretcher, strap an oxygen mask to her face. I have just a second before they take her away.