Lisey's Story(71)

Lisey tried to make all the right responses, just as she had earlier while on the phone with Canty, and for exactly the same reason: so she could get past this shite and go on with her business. She supposed she would come back to caring about her sisters later -

she hoped so - but right now Darla's guilty conscience mattered as little to her as Amanda's gorked-out state. As little as Jim Dooley's current whereabouts, come to that, as long as he wasn't in the room with her, waving a knife.

No, she assured Darla, she hadn't been wrong to call Canty. Yes, she had been right to tell Canty to stay put down there in Boston. And yes indeed, Lisey would be up to visit Amanda later on that day.

"It's horrible," Darla said, and in spite of her own preoccupation, Lisey heard the misery in Darla's voice. "She's horrible." Then, immediately, in a rush: "I don't mean that, she's not, of course she's not, but it's horrible to see her. She only sits there, Lisey. The sun was hitting the side of her face when I was in, the morning sun, and her skin looks so gray and old..."

"Take it easy, hon," Lisey said, running the tips of her fingers over the smooth, lacquered surface of Good Ma's box. Even closed she could smell its sweetness. When she opened it, she would bend forward into that aroma and it would be like inhaling the past.

"They're feeding her through a tube," Darla said. "They put it in and then take it out. If she doesn't start to eat on her own, I suppose they'll just leave it in all the time." She gave a huge, watery sniff. "They're feeding her through a tube and she's already so thin and she won't talk and I spoke to a nurse who said sometimes they go on this way for years, sometimes they never come back, oh Lisey, I don't think I can stand it!"

Lisey smiled a little at this as her fingers moved to the hinges at the back of the box. It was a smile of relief. Here was Darla the Drama Queen, Darla the Diva, and that meant they were back on safe ground, two sisters with well-worn scripts in hand. At one end of the wire is Darla the Sensitive. Give her a hand, ladies and gentlemen. At the other end, Little Lisey, Small But Tough. Let's hear it for her.

"I'll be up this afternoon, Darla, and I'll have another talk with Dr. Alberness. They'll have a clearer picture of her condition by then - "

Darla, doubtful: "Do you really think so?"

Lisey, with no smucking idea: "Absolutely. And what you need is to go home and put your feet up. Maybe take a nap."

Darla, in tones of dramatic proclamation: "Oh, Lisey, I could never sleep!"

Lisey didn't care if Darla ate, busted a joint, or took a shit in the begonias. She just wanted to get off the phone. "Well, you come on back, honey, and take it easy for a little while, anyway. I have to get off the phone - I've got something in the oven."

Darla was instantly delighted. "Oh, Lisey! You? " Lisey found this extremely annoying, as if she had never cooked anything more strenuous in her life than...well, Hamburger Helper. "Is it banana bread?"

"Close. Cranberry bread. I've got to go check it."

"But you'll be coming to see Manda later, right?"

Lisey felt like screaming. Instead she said, "Right. This afternoon."

"Well, then..." Doubt was back. Convince me, it said. Stay on the phone another fifteen minutes or so and convince me. "I guess I'll come on home."

"Good deal. Bye, Darl."

"And you really don't think I was wrong to call Canty?"

No! Call Bruce Springsteen! Call Hal Holbrook! Call Condi Smucking Rice! Just LEAVE ME ALONE!

"Not at all. I think it's good that you did. Keep her..." Lisey thought of Amanda's Little Notebook of Compulsions. "Keep her in the loop, you know."

"Well...okay. Goodbye, Lisey. I guess I'll see you later."

"Bye, Darl."

Click.

At last.

Lisey closed her eyes, opened the box, and inhaled the strong scent of cedar. For a moment she allowed herself to be five again, wearing a pair of Darla's hand-me-down shorts and her own scuffed but beloved Li'l Rider cowboy boots, the ones with the faded pink swoops up the sides.

Then she looked into the box to see what there was, and where it would take her. 2

On top was a foil packet, six or eight inches long, maybe four inches wide and two inches deep. Two lumps poked out of it, rounding the foil. She didn't know what it was as she lifted it out, caught a ghostly whiff of peppermint - had she been smelling it already, along with the cedar-scent of the box? - and remembered even before she unfolded one side and saw the rock-hard slice of wedding cake. Embedded in it were two plastic figures: a boy-doll in morning-coat and top-hat, a girl-doll in a white wedding dress. Lisey had meant to save this for a year and then share it with Scott on their first anniversary. Wasn't that the superstition? If so, she should have put it in the freezer. Instead, it had wound up here.

Lisey chipped off a piece of the frosting with her nail and put it in her mouth. It had almost no taste, just a ghost of sweetness and a last fading whisper of peppermint. They had been married in the Newman Chapel at the University of Maine, in a civil ceremony. All of her sisters had come, even Jodi. Lincoln, Dad Debusher's surviving brother, came up from Sabbatus to give away the bride. Scott's friends from Pitt and UMO had been there, and his literary agent had done the best-man honors. No Landon family, of course; Scott's family was dead.