Lisey's Story(31)

4

They got her into the living room, Amanda walking docilely between them, and sat her on the couch. Then Lisey and Darla went back into the kitchen doorway, where they could keep an eye on her and still consult without being overheard.

"What did she say to you, Lisey? You're as white as a damn ghost."

Lisey wished Darla had said sheet. She didn't like hearing the word ghost, especially now that the sun had gone down. Stupid but true.

"Nothing," she said. "Well...boo. Like, 'Boo on you, Lisey, I'm covered with blood, how do you like it?' Look, Darl, you're not the only one stressing out."

"If we take her to the ER, what'll they do to her? Keep her on suicide watch, or something?"

"They might," Lisey admitted. Her head was clearer now. That word, that bool, had worked on her oddly like a slap, or a whiff of smelling salts. Of course it had also scared the hell out of her, but...if Amanda had something to tell her, Lisey wanted to know what it was. She had a sense that all the things that had been happening to her, maybe even "Zack McCool"'s telephone call, were somehow tied together by...what? Scott's ghost? Ridiculous. By Scott's blood-bool, then? How about that?

Or his long boy? The thing with the endless piebald side?

It doesn't exist, Lisey, it never did outside of his imagination...which was sometimes powerful enough to cast itself over people who were close to him. Powerful enough to make you uneasy about eating fruit after dark, for instance, even though you knew it was just some childhood superstition he never completely cast away. And the long boy was like that, too. You know it, right?

Did she? Then why, when she tried to consider the idea, did a kind of mist seem to creep over her thoughts, disrupting them? Why did that interior voice tell her to hush?

Darla was looking at her oddly. Lisey gathered herself and brought herself back to the present moment, the present people, the present problem. And for the first time noticed how tired Darl looked: the grooved lines around her mouth and the dark circles under her eyes. She took her sister by the upper arms, not liking how bony they felt, or the loose way Darl's bra-straps slid between her thumbs and the too-deep hollows of Darla's shoulders. Lisey could remember watching enviously as her big sisters went off to Lisbon High, home of the Greyhounds. Now Amanda was on the cusp of sixty and Darl wasn't far behind. They had become old dogs, indeed.

"But listen, hon," she told Darla, "they don't call it suicide watch - that's mean. They just call it observation." Not sure how she knew this, but almost positive, just the same. "They keep them for twenty-four hours, I think. Maybe forty-eight."

"Can they do it without permission?"

"Unless the person's committed a crime and the cops have brought them in, I don't think so."

"Maybe you ought to call your lawyer and make sure. The Montana guy."

"His name's Montano, and he's probably at home by now. That number's unlisted. I've got it in my address book, but my book's back at the house. I think if we take her to Stephens Memorial in No Soapa, we'll be okay."

No Soapa was how the locals referred to Norway-South Paris in neighboring Oxford County, towns which also happened to be within a day's drive of such exotic-sounding wide spots in the road as Mexico, Madrid, Gilead, China, and Corinth. Unlike the city hospitals in Portland and Lewiston, Stephens Memorial was a sleepy little place.

"I think they'll bandage her hands and let us take her home without too much trouble." Lisey paused. "If."

"If?"

"If we want to take her home. And if she wants to come. I mean, we don't lie or make up some big story, okay? If they ask - and I'm sure they will - we tell the truth. Yes, she's done it before when she's depressed, but not for a long time."

"Five years is not such a long - "

"Everything's relative," Lisey said. "And she can explain that her boyfriend of several years just showed up in town with a brand-new wife and that had her feeling rather pissy."

"What if she won't talk?"

"If she won't talk, Darl, I think they'll probably be keeping her for at least twenty-four hours, and with permission from both of us. I mean, do you want her back here if she's still touring the outer planets?"

Darla thought about it, sighed, and shook her head.

"I think a lot of this depends on Amanda," Lisey said. "Step one is getting her cleaned up. I'll get in the shower with her myself, if that's what it takes."

"Yeah," Darla said, running her hand through her cropped hair. "I guess that's the way to go." She suddenly yawned. It was a startlingly wide gawp, one that would have put her tonsils on view if she'd had any left. Lisey took another look at the dark circles under her eyes and realized something she might have gotten much earlier if not for "Zack"'s call.

She took hold of Darla's arms again, lightly but insistently.

"Mrs. Jones didn't call you today, did she?"

Darla blinked at her in owly surprise. "No, honey," she said.

"Yesterday. Late yesterday afternoon. I came over, bandaged her up as well as I could, and sat up with her most of last night. Didn't I tell you that?"

"No. I was thinking it all happened today."