Lisey's Story(56)

The young nurse hesitates, then gives a nervous little laugh.

"Your husband's a little bit of a magician, isn't he?"

For no reason at all Lisey thinks: SOWISA: Strap On Whenever It Seems Appropriate. But she only smiles and says, "He has a bag of tricks, all right. Sick or well. Which one did he play on you?" And somewhere deep down is she remembering the night of the first bool, sleepwalking to the bathroom in her Cleaves Mills apartment, saying Scott, hurry up as she goes? Saying it because he must be in there, he's sure not in bed with her anymore?

"I went in to see how he was doing," the nurse says, "and I could have sworn the bed was empty. I mean, the IV pole was there, and the bags were still hanging from it, but...I thought he must have pulled out the needle and gone to the bathroom. Patients do all kinds of weird stuff when they're doped up, you know."

Lisey nods, hoping the same small expectant smile is on her face. The one that says I have heard this story before but I'm not tired of it yet.

"So I went into the bathroom and that was empty. Then, when I turned around - "

"There he was," Lisey finishes for her. She speaks softly, still with the little smile.

"Presto change-o, abracadabra." And bool, the end, she thinks.

"Yes, how did you know?"

"Well," Lisey says, still smiling, "Scott has a way of blending in with his surroundings."

This should sound exquisitely stupid - the bad lie of a person without much imagination - but it doesn't. Because it's not a lie at all. She's always losing track of him in supermarkets and department stores (places where he for some reason almost always goes unrecognized), and once she hunted for him for nearly half an hour in the University of Maine Library before spying him in the Periodicals Room, which she had checked twice before. When she scolded him for keeping her waiting and making her hunt for him in a place where she couldn't even raise her voice to call his name, Scott had shrugged and protested that he'd been in Periodicals all along, browsing the new poetry magazines. And the thing was, she didn't think he was even stretching the truth, let alone lying. She had just somehow...overlooked him.

The nurse brightens and tells her, "That's exactly what Scott said - he just kind of blends in." She blushes. "He told us to call him Scott. Practically demanded it. I hope you don't mind, Mrs. Landon." From this young southern nurse, Mrs. comes out Miz, but her accent doesn't grate on Lisey the way Dashmiel's did.

"Perfectly okay. He tells that to all the girls, especially the pretty ones."

The nurse smiles and blushes harder. "He said he saw me go by and look right at him. He said something like, 'I always was one of your whiter white men, but since I lost all of that blood, I must be in the top ten.'"

Lisey laughs politely, her stomach churning.

"And of course with the white sheets and the white johnny he's wearing..." The young nurse is starting to slow down. She wants to believe it, and Lisey has no doubt she did believe it when Scott was actually talking to her and gazing at her with his bright hazel eyes, but now she's starting to sense the absurdity which lurks just beneath what she's saying.

Lisey jumps in and helps her out. "Also, he's got a way of being so still, " she says, although Scott is just about the jumpiest man she knows. Even when he's reading a book he's constantly shifting in his chair, gnawing at his nails (a habit he stopped for awhile after her tirade and then resumed again), scratching his arms like a junkie in need of a fix, sometimes even doing curls with the little five-pound hand-weights that are always parked under his favorite easy chair. She has only known him to be quiet in deep sleep and when he's writing and the writing's going exceptionally well. But the nurse still looks doubtful, so Lisey forges ahead, speaking in a g*y tone that sounds horribly false to her own ear. "Sometimes I swear he's like a piece of furniture. I've walked right past him myself, plenty of times." She touches the nurse's hand. "I'm sure that's what happened, dear."

She's sure of no such thing, but the nurse gives her a grateful smile and the subject of Scott's absence is dropped. Or rather we pass it, Lisey thinks. Like a small kidney stone.

"He's ever so much better today," the nurse says. "Dr. Wendlestadt was in for early rounds, and he was absolutely amazed. "

Lisey bets. And she tells the nurse what Scott told her all those years ago, in her Cleaves Mills apartment. She thought back then it was just one of those things you say, but now she believes it. Oh yes, now she believes it completely.

"All the Landons are fast healers," she says, and then goes in to see her husband. 15

He's lying there with his eyes closed and his head turned to one side, a very white man in a very white bed - that much is certainly true - but it's impossible to miss that mop of shoulder-length dark hair. The chair she sat in last night is where she left it, and she resumes her position beside his bed. She takes out her book -  Savages, by Shirley Conran. She's removing the matchbook cover that marks her place when she feels Scott's eyes on her and looks up.

"How are you this morning, dear one?" she asks him.

He says nothing for a long time. His breath is wheezing, but no longer screaming as it did while he lay in the parking lot begging for ice. He really is better, she thinks. Then, with some effort, he moves his hand until it's over hers. He squeezes. His lips (which look dreadfully dry, she'll get a Chap Stick or Carmex for them later) part in a smile.