Lisey's Story(49)

At five past nine, Lisey sat down in front of the telephone and got the Greenlawn number from Directory Assistance. She gave Darla a wan and nervous smile. "Wish me luck, Darl."

"Oh, I do. Believe me, I do."

Lisey dialed. The phone on the other end rang exactly once. "Hello," a pleasant female voice said. "This is Greenlawn Recovery and Rehabilitation, a service of Fedders Health Corporation of America."

"Hello, my name is - " Lisey got this far before the pleasant female voice began enumerating all the possible destinations one could reach...if, that was, one were possessed of a touch-tone phone. It was a recording. Lisey had been booled. Yeah, but they've gotten so good, she thought, punching 5 for Patient Intake Information.

"Please hold while your call is processed," the pleasant female voice told her, and was replaced by the Prozac Orchestra playing something that vaguely resembled Paul Simon's "Homeward Bound."

Lisey looked around to tell Darla she was on hold, but Darla had gone up to check on Amanda.

Bullshit, she thought. She just couldn't take the susp -

"Hello, this is Cassandra, how may I help you?"

A name of ill omen, babyluv, opined the Scott who kept house in her head.

"My name is Lisa Landon...Mrs. Scott Landon?"

She had probably referred to herself as Mrs. Scott Landon less than half a dozen times in all the years of her married life, and never once during the twenty-six months of her widowhood. It wasn't hard to understand why she had done so now. It was what Scott called "the fame-card," and he himself had played it sparingly. Partly, he said, because doing so made him feel like a conceited ass**le, and partly because he was afraid it wouldn't work; that if he murmured some version of Don't you know who I am? in the headwaiter's ear, the headwaiter would murmur back, Non, Monsieur - who ze f**k air you?

As Lisey spoke, recounting her sister's previous episodes of self-mutilation and semicatatonia and this morning's great leap forward, she heard the soft clitter of computer keys. When Lisey paused, Cassandra said: "I understand your concern, Mrs. Landon, but Greenlawn is very full at the present time."

Lisey's heart sank. She instantly pictured Amanda in a closet-sized room at Stephens Memorial in No Soapa, wearing a foodstained johnnie and looking out a barred window at the blinker-light where Route 117 crossed 19. "Oh. I see. Um...are you sure? This wouldn't be Medicaid or Blue Cross or any of those things - I'd be paying cash, you see..." Grasping at straws. Sounding dumb. When all else fails, chuck money. "If that makes a difference," she finished lamely.

"It really doesn't, Mrs. Landon." She thought she detected a faint frost in Cassandra's voice now, and Lisey's heart sank even farther. "It's a question of space and commitments. You see, we only have - "

Lisey heard a faint bing! then. It was very close to the sound her toaster-oven made when the Pop-Tarts or breakfast burritos were done.

"Mrs. Landon, can I put you on hold?"

"If you need to, of course."

There was a faint click and the Prozac Orchestra returned, this time with what might once have been the theme from Shaft. Lisey listened with a mild sense of unreality, thinking that if Isaac Hayes heard it, he would probably crawl into his bathtub with a plastic bag over his head. The time on hold lengthened until she began to suspect she'd been forgotten - God knew it had happened to her before, especially when trying to buy airline tickets or change rental car arrangements. Darla came downstairs and held her hands out in a What's happening? Give! gesture. Lisey shook her head, indicating both Nothing and I don't know.

At that moment the horrific holdmusic was gone and Cassandra was back. The frost was gone from her voice, and for the first time she sounded to Lisey like a human being. In fact, she sounded familiar, somehow. "Mrs. Landon?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long, but I had a note on my computer to get in touch with Dr. Alberness if either you or your husband called. Dr. Alberness is actually in his office now. May I transfer you?"

"Yes," Lisey told her. Now she knew where she was, exactly where she was. She knew that before he told her anything else, Dr. Alberness would tell her how sorry he was for her loss, as if Scott had died last month or last week. And she would thank him. In fact, if Dr. Alberness promised to take the troublesome Amanda off their hands in spite of Greenlawn's current booked-up state, Lisey would probably be happy to get on her knees and give him a nice juicy hummer. A wild laugh threatened to surge out of her at that, and she had to clamp her lips tightly shut for a few seconds. And she knew why Cassandra had suddenly sounded so familiar: it was how people had sounded when they suddenly recognized Scott, realized they were dealing with someone who'd been on the cover of smucking Newsweek magazine. And if that famous person had his famous arm around someone, why she must be famous, too, if only by association. Or, as Scott himself had once said, by injection.

"Hello?" a pleasantly rough male voice said. "This is Hugh Alberness. Am I speaking to Mrs. Landon?"

"Yes, Doctor," Lisey said, motioning for Darla to sit down and stop pacing circles in front of her. "This is Lisa Landon."

"Mrs. Landon, let me begin by saying how sorry I am for your loss. Your husband signed five of his books for me, and they are among my most treasured possessions."