He was backed into a corner like Frankenstein's monster facing the pitchforks. Except that the pitchforks were really upheld hands belonging to some nurses and more than one security guard.
"I'm sorry," Timmie gasped, skidding to the edge of the crowd. All up and down the aisle she could hear the anxious babble of fractious voices responding to the uproar.
Joe never looked her way. "Timmie! Where's my daughter?" he pleaded, striking out at the nearest security guard, a beefy kid named Dave who just ducked and held his ground. "They have her," he insisted, pleading, his eyes wet. "In Glen-Car. Look for her there, please?"
"Glen-Car?" one of the nurses asked at the back of the crowd. "Where's that? What's he talking about?"
Dave smiled, never taking his eyes off Timmie's father. "That poet he likes, Yeats. 'The Stolen Child,' isn't it, Joe? 'Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild'? It's about fairies."
The nurse nodded, impressed. "No shit."
"Da!" Timmie called, shoving her way through. "Da, it's me! It's Timmie!"
It was the damn popcorn. She should have remembered that that was something else she'd rarely had at home for this same reason. He smelled it, boomeranged back to the great old days, and became frightened when he couldn't find the door into the bar.
He still couldn't. '"For the world's more full of weeping,'" he all but sang to Dave, as if explaining, tears trickling down his face, "'than you can understand.'"
Timmie carefully set down the coat-wrapped box with the county seal on it before approaching her father, hands lifted so he could see her better. Don't, she wanted to beg. Don't be wild and sad. Not tonight. I can't take it tonight.
"Da, I'm here," she pleaded. "I haven't gone off. I'm here."
He was too lost in his own fairy world to even hear. "Timmie, where are you? Help me! They won't let me out and I have a gig at nine!"
She lifted her hands to his clean-shaven, soft face. "Da, I'm here!"
He swiveled those watery blue eyes her way like a horse trying to escape fire and flinched back. "Where is she?" he pleaded, taking hold of her arms so tightly it hurt. "I can't find her. I... she'll be afraid, and I can't find her..."
"I'm here," Timmie pleaded back, suddenly tired to death of all this drama. She wanted to go home and crawl under her comforter, play with her daughter, chase a chameleon or two. She wanted, for once in her life, not to have this man on her conscience.
He looked straight through her. "I know she can't get home, please, please help me because she comes to the water and the wild..."
Well, at least it wasn't "Innisfree."
"Da, please, Da, it's Timmie, it's all right, I swear, shhhhh, come on now, Da, please," Timmie begged until she was chanting just like he was. Like they all were, the words mindless and meaningless and meant to be soothing.
Except that they weren't. They grated in her like ground glass until she was sure she was bleeding, and she ended up holding on to him as he crumpled into an untidy ball in the corner, sobbing because his daughter had never come home and he didn't know what to do.
* * *
In the end, Timmie made it back to her own daughter. She sent Cindy home after getting one more harangue about faithless asshole boyfriends, and then she crawled up into her bed and let Meghan do her homework on top of the aqua-and-pink duvet. And all the time she thought of gomer noises. The chanting, wailing, mindless repetition she could no longer stand. The morass her father was quickly sinking into, from which she couldn't save him. Near which she was so afraid to venture.
She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew it was late and Meghan was curled up next to her, sound asleep in her play clothes. For a minute Timmie couldn't figure out what had woken her. Then the phone rang again and she jumped to answer it.
The alarm clock said 2:00. Only bad things happened at two in the morning, which meant that either her father had had a new crisis or the emergency department had a disaster on its hands.
"Hello?"
"Timmie?"
The voice was soft. So soft. Creepy. It made her shiver, even cocooned within down and her daughter's small warmth.
Timmie sucked in a breath to calm her racing heart. "Yes?"
"You're not alone, Timmie. I thought you should know that."
"Alone? What do you mean?"
"Your father..." The voice paused, but Timmie had already held her breath, not recognizing it. "He's such a special man. An awful lot of people in town love him. They can't stand to see what's happening to him any more than you can."
Not creepy. Hypnotic. Compelling. A snake that had slithered straight out of her subconscious to torture her. "Yes?"
"He used to be so strong.... Why, he could hush a room by just walking in, remember? He could bring the entire town to tears with just one song... a poem. Like the poem about the lions of the hills, you remember it?"
Timmie heard her voice grow smaller as the other voice took hold. A low voice, a soothing voice, a compelling voice in the dead of night. "Yes."
'"The lions of the hills are gone, and I am left alone—alone.' It's him, yes? Such a beautiful thing. It's so hard to see that light fade right before your eyes when you know how magnificent it once was."
Now her heart was bouncing around like a frog in a skillet. "Who is this? What do you want?"
"This just has to hurt him so much. Somebody like him, not even remembering his name, much less all those beautiful words he used to love so much. But I know you know that."
I do. Jesus, I do.
"It's torture, isn't it?"
Yes.
"What do you want?" she repeated, her voice a whisper.
It was so dark outside, no moon, no stars. The lights were off in the house, too, so that Timmie could see only shadows. Could hear only tickings and creakings and whisperings, as if the house were already haunted with her father's voice.
"What do you want?"
A soft sigh, like the wind. Like her own regret. "I just want to help."
"To help."
"To help you and Joe both. You have the power to help him, Timmie, do you know that? Only you. It would be so easy."
She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. "I do?"
"So easy," the voice purred, sinking straight into her. "He deserves better than to be tied down and drugged, Timmie."
Don't ask me to answer, she all but begged. Don't.
"And you just have too much to deal with right now. You have to be tired. And you have to be wondering if you're really helping anybody after all with all those questions."
In all truth? Probably not. Timmie turned her head toward the window where the sky should have been, where trees should have stood out against a moon of some kind. There was just the faint reflection of her own face, moon pale in the darkness. As insubstantial as the voice on the phone.
"And?"
"And... I thought we could help each other out. You could just kind of leave this alone, and I could... well, your father could finally have some peace."
Timmie went perfectly still. She closed her eyes and held on to the phone. "If I just... stop. Right?"
"He's only going to get worse, Timmie. You know that."
She didn't answer. She couldn't. It didn't seem to matter.