The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(15)

“What’s the occasion?” Patricia asked.

“I’m taking Haley to lunch.”

“Paisley,” she said. “Why are you taking Dr. Haley to lunch?”

He started putting on the red tie as he came down the stairs.

“I’m throwing my hat in the ring,” Carter said, wrapping his tie around his neck and looping the knot into existence. “I’m tired of waiting in line.”

He stood in front of the hall mirror.

“I thought you said you didn’t want to be chief of psychiatry,” Patricia said.

He tightened his tie in the mirror.

“We need to make more money,” he said.

“You wanted to spend time with Blue this summer,” Patricia said as Carter turned around.

“I’ll have to figure out a way to do both,” Carter said. “I’ll need to be at all the morning consults, I’ll have to spend more time on rounds, I’ll need to start bringing in more grants—this job belongs to me, Patricia. I only want what’s mine.”

“Well,” she said. “If it’s what you want…”

“It’ll only be for a few months,” he said, then stopped and cocked his head at her left ear. “You took off your bandage?”

“Just to show Korey and Blue,” she said.

“I don’t think it looks so bad,” he said, and examined her ear, his thumb on her chin, cocking her head to the side. “Leave the bandage off. It’s going to heal fine.”

He kissed her good-bye, and it felt like a real kiss.

Well, she thought, if that’s the effect trying to become chief of psychiatry has on him, I’m all for it.

Patricia looked at herself in the hall mirror. The black stitches looked like insect legs against her soft skin, but they made her feel less conspicuous than the bandage. She decided to leave it off. Ragtag clicked into the front hall and stood by the door, wanting to go out. For a moment Patricia thought about putting him on a leash, then remembered that Ann Savage was in the hospital.

“Go on, boy,” she said, opening the door. “Go tear up that mean old lady’s trash.”

Ragtag charged off down the driveway and Patricia locked the door behind him. She’d never done that before, but she’d never been attacked by a neighbor in her own yard before either.

She walked down the three brick steps to the garage room, where she unlatched the side of the hospital bed.

“Did you sleep well, Miss Mary?” she asked.

“An owl bit me,” Miss Mary said.

“Oh, dear,” Patricia said, pulling Miss Mary into a sitting position and swinging her legs out of bed.

Patricia began the long, slow process of getting Miss Mary into her housecoat and then into her easy chair, finally getting her a glass of orange juice with Metamucil stirred into it just as Mrs. Greene arrived to make her breakfast.

Like most elementary schoolteachers, Miss Mary had drunk from the fountain of eternal late middle age; Patricia never remembered her as young, exactly, but she remembered when she had been strong enough to live on her own about a hundred and fifty miles upstate near Kershaw. She remembered the half-acre vegetable garden Miss Mary worked behind her house. She remembered the stories of Miss Mary working in the bomb factory during the war and how the chemicals turned her hair red, and how people came to tell her their dreams and she would tell them lucky numbers to play.

Miss Mary could predict the weather by reading coffee grounds, and the local cotton farmers found her so accurate they always bought her a cup of coffee when she came by Husker Early’s store to pick up her mail. She refused to let anyone eat from the peach tree in her backyard no matter how good the fruit looked because she said it had been planted in sadness and the fruit tasted bitter. Patricia had tried one once and it tasted soft and sweet to her, but Carter got mad when she told him about it, so she’d never done it again.

Miss Mary had been able to draw a map of the United States from memory, known the entire periodic table by heart, taught school in a one-room schoolhouse, brewed healing teas, and sold what she called fitness powders her entire life. Dime by dime, dollar by dollar, she’d put her sons through college, then put Carter through medical school. Now she wore diapers and couldn’t follow a story about gardening in the Post and Courier.

Patricia’s pulse throbbed in her bandaged ear, sending her upstairs for Tylenol. She had just swallowed three when the phone rang, exactly on time: 9:02 a.m. No one would dream of calling the house before nine, but you also didn’t want to appear too anxious.

“Patricia?” Grace said. “Grace Cavanaugh. How are you feeling?”

For some reason, Grace always introduced herself at the beginning of each phone call.

“Sad,” Patricia said. “She bit off my earlobe and swallowed it.”

“Of course,” Grace said. “Sadness is one of the stages of grief.”

“She swallowed my earring, too,” Patricia said. “The new ones I had on last night.

“That is a pity,” Grace said.

“It turns out Carter got them for free from a patient,” Patricia said. “He didn’t even buy them.”

“Then you didn’t want them anyway,” Grace said. “I spoke with Ben this morning. He said Ann Savage has been admitted to MUSC and is in intensive care. I’ll call if I find out anything further.”