Mary had been shot, and John was standing in her hospital room, playing with the cord to the blinds. The private nurse usually went out when someone came into the room, but he noticed that when he was there alone, she stayed. She feigned interest in the book she was reading, but from time to time she would look up. She disapproved of his fiddling with the cord.
“How would you like things to change?” he said.
“Am I going to flunk summer school? Or will she feel sorry enough for me to pass me? If she passes me, I never want to read another book as long as I live.”
“Summer school,” he said. “Summer school. Shell pass you, I’m sure. If you have to make up work, you can make up work.”
“But I don’t have to go back?”
“It’s almost over. You won’t be out of the hospital, I don’t think.”
“I mean ever.”
“To school?”
“Yeah. To school.”
He looked uncomfortable. He didn’t answer. He had made a knot in the cord that was too tight. It was going to be a problem to untie it. He ran his thumb over the knot. He thought about it-how to untangle the knot. Then he realized that it was there before he had started fooling with it. The other cord also had a knot. They were made that way. He hadn’t done it. He smiled, holding the cord.
“I’d be embarrassed to go back,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he said. “It wasn’t anything you did.”
“Yes it was.”
“No it wasn’t. What do you mean?”
The private nurse turned the page. She was reading a copy of Life. Life was back. Gone, then back. He wondered how Life was doing.
She would have shrugged, but it hurt to move her body that way. She looked at her hands. Angela had painted her nails before it happened. They were an orangey-red, a color she didn’t much like. She had already picked the polish off two of the fingers. It felt like a match had just been lit in her side.
“What can I do for you?” he said. “What would you like? Is there something I can bring you here, or something I can promise you?”
“I don’t want anything,” she said.
“But you want things to change. You want things to change-how? By my being in Connecticut?”
“Be where you want to be,” she said.
“I don’t blame you for taking it out on me.”
“I’m not,” she said. “Be where you want to be.”
The night before, Louise had said to him: “Maybe you flatter yourself. Maybe all of this doesn’t have much to do with you.”
The private nurse coughed. “If they keep making movies like this, the world is going to go to hell in a handbasket,” she said. She looked at John. “Please excuse me while I get a drink of water,” she said. She looked at Mary. “Is there anything I can get for you?” she said. “A Coke?”
“No, thank you,” Mary said.
It was the same private nurse his mother had had when she had a tonsillectomy five years ago. Then, he remembered, the nurse had been reading Robert Frost. Now she was reading Life. She had also dyed her hair the color of a tangerine, and she wore necklaces that you could hang ornaments on. There were several chains around her neck, but whatever dangled from them was hidden under her white uniform. She wore white clogs and white stockings and a white uniform with a pleated top and a wide skirt. He had no idea whether Mary liked her. Her name was Mrs. Patterson. He had no idea what her first name was. His mother paid the nurse. His mother had arranged for the nurse, and she was picking up the bill. Louise and his mother had worked it out and he didn’t know anything about her being there until he walked into the hospital room and she was there. Louise said that she had more things on her mind than to tell him about the nurse — did he mind that there was a nurse? Did he suddenly want to be consulted about decisions made in the family?
Mrs. Patterson came back. “They had a perfectly fine movie, a good movie, and they had to do it: They had to show Sally Field’s breasts. Norma Rae couldn’t just be a winner — she had to be a sexy winner. It disgusts me that a good movie like that existed, and they had to stoop to a — pardon me — a boobies shot.” She coughed into her hand. “Pardon me,” she said again.
“I thought we might go to Nantucket,” he said. “Your grandmother said she’d look after John Joel for a while. He’s seeing a doctor. You knew that?”
She nodded yes. He had sniped her, from up in a tree, when she didn’t know he was there. It was the first time he had ever gotten the best of her. It was hard to hate him for winning just once. She decided not to tell anyone that she didn’t hate him anymore, though. If she ever started to hate him again, she did not want to have to explain it.
“Mary?” John said.
“What?”
“What do you think about the idea of going to Nantucket?”
“If you want to,” she said.
“When you get out,” he said.
“If you want to,” she said. She began to chip the polish off another nail. It was sour on her tongue.
“Your mother and I would like to do something you’d like to do. Is there somewhere you’d like to go?”
“The beach is fine.”
“You don’t want to go,” he said.
“It’s okay. We can go.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I’m just guessing about what you might like. What can I do, send for Peter Frampton?”
“He wouldn’t come.”
“I was just kidding,” he said. “But is there anything I could do? Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
“You know what she probably wants,” Mary said. “You could get her another German shepherd.”
“Your mother?”
“Yeah. That’s what she’d like. Another dog. I’ll bet you.”
“I think she just liked that particular dog. If she wanted another one, I think she would have gotten it.”
“Maybe not,” Mary said. “Maybe she just never got around to it.”
“Would you like to have a dog around the house?”
“She would. She talks to Tiffy all the time about the dog.”
“She talks to Tiffy all the time about you, too, you know.”
“She liked the dog better. You know she did. Face it.”
“Of course she didn’t like the dog better than she likes you.”
Mrs. Patterson looked up from the magazine, pretending to be shaking a curl that had fallen on her forehead out of the way. She pushed the curl back in place and bent over the magazine again.
“Mary,” he said, “I don’t want to upset you, but I can’t let you say something like that. You don’t believe that.”
“I was just kidding.”
“No you weren’t. Do you believe that?”
“No,” she said.
“Good,” he said. He thought that she was lying to him and that she had meant it. He was trying to think of what to say next, when a man carrying a lunch tray came in. He took the top off the tray, clattered it onto the shelf underneath his pushcart and said, “There you go,” setting the tray on the tray table. Mrs. Patterson jumped up. There were carrots on the plate. Mashed potatoes. Gray meat.
“Doesn’t this look delicious,” Mrs. Patterson said.
He went to the waiting room while she ate. He said that he had to make a phone call and would be right back, but it was a lie. He couldn’t stand to see her eat that food. He couldn’t stand to think that his daughter thought Louise had liked her German shepherd more than she liked her. There was some truth in it, of course. The dog wasn’t distant. It wasn’t self-absorbed. But didn’t adolescents always draw away from their parents? Didn’t they all have a period when they felt superior, when they were critical or distant, just wanting to block their parents out? Mary had blocked them out. They had also blocked her out. His son had shot his daughter. He was not entirely sure who his daughter was. John Joel was much more understandable, even though he still couldn’t believe that he had fired a gun, that he had shot not caring if he killed Mary. He was understandable because … He got up and went into the phone booth. His son wasn’t understandable, and his daughter wasn’t understandable, except now, when she was hurting and punishing her parents for what had happened. Louise was understandable, up to a point. He had thought that he had understood her a while back, when he had been standing at the bedroom window watching shooting stars dart and fade in the sky, and something they had been talking about, whatever it was — somehow she had told him, point-blank, that she didn’t want to know everything. That meant that she knew, and didn’t want confirmation. Didn’t want details. Yet if she knew, and if she didn’t have much feeling for him or even care if he was there, why would she plan a vacation to Nantucket? And if she did, why wouldn’t Tiffy have talked her out of it? Louise had told him that Tiffy said her greatest problem was that she had to develop a sense of pride. He could tell by the way Tiffy looked at him that she hated him.