Lisey's Story(141)

13

The sun came out as they approached Patel's Market, putting a rainbow like a fairy-gate over the road ahead. "You know what I'd like for supper?" Amanda asked.

"No, what?"

"A big, nasty mess of Hamburger Helper. I don't suppose you've got anything like that at your house, do you?"

"I did," Lisey said, smiling guiltily, "but I ate it."

"Pull in to Patel's," Amanda said. "I'll spring for a box."

Lisey pulled in. Amanda had insisted on bringing her house-money from the blue pitcher where she kept it stashed in the kitchen, and she now extracted a crumpled fivespot. "What kind do you want, Little?"

"Anything but Cheeseburger Pie," Lisey said.

XIV. Lisey and Scott

(Babyluv)

1

At seven-fifteen that evening, Lisey had a premonition. It wasn't the first of her life; she'd had at least two others. One in Bowling Green, shortly after entering the hospital where her husband had been taken after collapsing at an English Department reception. And certainly she'd had one on the morning of their flight to Nashville, the morning of the shattered toothglass. The third one came as the thunderstorms were clearing out and a gorgeous gold light began to shine through the breaking clouds. She and Amanda were in Scott's study over the barn. Lisey was going through the papers in Scott's main desk, aka Dumbo's Big Jumbo. So far the most interesting thing she'd found was a packet of mildly risque French postcards with a sticky-note on top, reading, in Scott's scrawl, Who sent me THESE THINGS??? Sitting beside the blankeyed computer was the shoebox with the revolver inside. The lid was still on, but Lisey had slit the tape with her fingernail. Amanda was across the way, in the alcove that held Scott's TV and component soundsystem. Every now and then Amanda heard her grumbling about the haphazard way things had been shelved. Once Lisey heard her wonder aloud how Scott had ever found anything.

That was when the premonition came. Lisey shut the drawer she had been investigating and sat down in the high-backed office chair. She closed her eyes and just waited, as something rolled toward her. It turned out to be a song. A mental jukebox lit up and the nasal but undeniably jolly voice of Hank Williams began to sing. "Goodbye Joe, we gotta go, me-oh-my-oh; we gotta go, pole the pirogue down the bayou..."

"Lisey!" Amanda called from the alcove where Scott used to sit and listen to his music or watch movies on his VCR. When he wasn't watching them in the guest room in the middle of the night, that was. And Lisey heard the voice of the professor from the Pratt College English Department - in Bowling Green, this was, only sixty miles from Nashville. Not much more'n a long spit, Missus.

I think it would be wise if you got here as soon as possible, Professor Meade had told her over the phone. Your husband has been taken ill. Very ill indeed, I'm afraid.

"My Yvonne, sweetest one, me-oh-my-oh..."

"Lisey!" Amanda sounded just as bright as a new-minted penny. Would anyone believe she'd been totally zonked only eight hours ago? Nay, madam. Nay, good sir. The spirits have done it all in one night, Lisey thought. Yay, spirits. Dr. Jantzen feels that surgery is warranted. Something called a thoracotomy. And Lisey thought, The boys came back from Mexico. They came back to Anarene. Because Anarene was home.

Which boys, pray tell? The black-and-white boys. Jeff Bridges and Timothy Bottoms. The boys from The Last Picture Show.

In that movie it's always now and they are always young, she thought. They are always young and Sam the Lion is always dead.

"Lisey?"

She opened her eyes and there was big sissa standing in the alcove doorway, her eyes as bright as her voice, and of course in her hand she was holding the VCR box containing The Last Picture Show and the feeling was...well, coming home. The feeling was coming home, me-oh-my-oh.

And why would that be? Because drinking from the pool had its little perks and privileges? Because you sometimes brought back to this world what you picked up in that world? Picked up or swallowed? Yes, yes, and yes.

Chapter 23

"Lisey, honey, are you all right?"

Such warm concern, such smucking motherliness, was so foreign to Amanda's usual nature that it made Lisey feel unreal. "Fine," she said. "I was just resting my eyes."

"Would it be all right if I watched some of this? I found it with the rest of Scott's tapes. Most of them look pretty junky, but I always meant to see this one and never got around to it. Maybe it'll take my mind off things."

"Fine by me," Lisey said, "but I should warn you, I'm pretty sure there's a blank spot in the middle of it. It's an old tape."

Amanda was studying the back of the box. "Jeff Bridges looks like such a kid. "

"He does, doesn't he?" Lisey said wanly.

"And Ben Johnson's dead, of course..." She stopped. "Maybe I better not. We might not hear your boyf...we might not hear Dooley, if he comes."

Lisey pushed the top off the shoebox, took out the Pathfinder, and pointed it at the stairs leading down to the barn. "I locked the door to the outside stairs," she said, "so that's the only way up here. And I'm watching it."

"He could start a fire down there in the barn," Amanda said nervously.

"He doesn't want me cooked - what fun would that be?" Also, Lisey thought, there's a place I can go. As long as my mouth tastes as sweet as it does right now, there's a place I can go, and I don't think I'd have any trouble taking you with me, Manda. Not even two helpings of Hamburger Helper and two glasses of cherry Kool-Aid had taken away that lovely sweet taste in her mouth.