Back at his apartment a message from Elaine warned him of a meeting Osbourne had called for first thing Monday morning. “New client,” Mal said, as a few of them were still finding their seats. “This one is national. Four TV spots, three thirties and a sixty, and two print campaigns, one one-page and one for an eight-page insert.”
He sat and stared at them for a minute as they drank their coffee.
“That’s it,” he said finally. “Meeting’s over. Go, get to work.”
They looked at one another. “Who’s the client?” Elaine said.
Osbourne scratched his chin. “As you know,” he said, “in the end I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the First National campaign. I’ve been spending a lot of time these past weeks thinking about why that is. I believe the answer is that as talented as all of you are, certain ideas are so deeply ingrained in you that it’s going to take some sort of shock to root them out. I’m not just talking to those of you with a background in advertising, either. I’m talking about certain very elemental, cultural ideas. We need to find a new approach to get around those dead ideas.”
Another silence ensued.
“So,” Elaine said finally, “then, I’m guessing you’re not going to tell us who the client is.”
“Correct. Nor am I going to tell you anything about what sort of business the client is or isn’t in. I do not want advertising. There are no reference points for you. Any inspiration here has to come from somewhere inside of you. Four TV spots, nine pages of full-color print, but we don’t need it all in one shot. Give me the keynote, the starting point. Don’t worry about budget. All the questions you’re going to ask me when I stop talking? Don’t ask them. You have until the twenty-seventh of October. Amaze me.”
JOHN AND MOLLY got to the San Francisco airport and discovered her flight had been delayed an hour; so they had a couple of drinks in the tiny, unenclosed bar nearest her gate, followed by a standing makeout session which had the other passengers staring. At the Albany airport, there was no one there to meet her, only a line of four taxis just outside the door to the baggage claim; the driver of the second said he would take her to Ulster for twenty-five dollars. The eight hours in between, except for the quick change at La Guardia, was time airborne, time nowhere: it gave the slowly sobering Molly a different sense of time entirely, the ways in which it passes and the ways in which it can fold back upon itself again or collapse unexpectedly. It was like flying backwards in her own mind. Even so, she was not anxious for that flight to end.
John had wanted to come with her, but she said no. The less there was to deal with, the better, and Kay’s reaction to something as unprecedented as a new boyfriend was too hard to calculate. It was dark when the taxi decelerated off the thruway, too dark to start picking out landmarks, but once they got to the center of Ulster, where the traffic light was, Molly became reoriented and she started feeling each turn of the steering wheel deep in her body. The lights in the house at Bull’s Head were blazing. Unseen, Molly walked up the path and opened the front door. Everything was instantly itself again, after more than a year. Kay was not in the kitchen, nor in the living room. Molly did not call out. She caught herself walking almost on tiptoe, not wanting to be heard. The one conspicuous thing about the house was that it was immaculately clean.
“Mom?” Molly called finally.
Every upstairs light was on, and the doors to all the rooms, including hers and Richard’s, were standing open. As Molly passed her parents’ bedroom, she saw her mother’s feet, in high heels, on the bed. Knocking softly on the wide-open door, Molly stuck her head inside.
Kay was asleep on top of the bedspread, her hands folded on her stomach. She wore one of her best dresses, deep blue with a thin white stripe above the hem, stockings, a string of pearls, and full makeup, as if she were getting ready to go out somewhere. A kind of chill went through Molly and, without really thinking about it, she walked furtively over to her mother’s side of the bed to satisfy herself that Kay was still breathing. Just as she was sure she had seen her mother’s ribcage go up and down, Kay’s eyes fluttered slightly and she woke up.
Mother and daughter, their faces inches apart, pulled back in fright. A second or two passed in silence; then Kay laughed and put her hand to her chest. “My, you scared me!” she said, sitting up, touching her hair. “I must have dozed off.”
She embraced Molly, without hesitation but not especially warmly either, as if they had seen each other just a few hours ago. Then she patted Molly’s shoulders and looked past her, around the room, as if trying to remember something. Her eyes seemed to Molly unusually bright.
“Were you going out somewhere?” Molly asked.
Kay looked once more around the overlit room.
“It’s just that you’re so dressed up,” Molly said.
“Thank you!” said Kay.
They went downstairs, where Kay insisted on finding Molly something to eat. Molly nibbled listlessly on a tuna sandwich while her mother stood leaning against the counter, arms crossed, and stared at her.
“Where’s Richard, by the way?” she said suddenly. “Did he go straight to bed?”
Molly wished very strongly that Richard, or somebody, was in the house with them. “No, Mom,” she said gently. “Richard’s not coming. I think he told you that.”
“Well, of course he did,” Kay said.
That night Molly lay in her old bed, listening to the sounds of her mother moving around restlessly downstairs. When Molly saw her in the morning she was still in the same blue dress with the white stripe. Visiting hours at the hospital in Albany began at nine; it was nearly eight-thirty now.
“You go on,” Kay said. “I have a lot to do here.”
Molly stared. “I don’t know the way,” she said.
Kay’s mouth quivered a little bit, before she abruptly recovered her bright demeanor. “Okay, then,” she said. “Are you ready?”
The whole way there Kay narrated every turn they made. “Now a left on to Route 4,” she’d say. “Left off the exit on to Mortensen Road.” Molly realized that she was expected to pay attention to these remarks so that Kay wouldn’t have to make the trip with her a second time. Kay pulled up before the main entrance and put the car in park; but she did not turn the engine off. Molly put her hand on the door.
“You’re not coming in?” she said incredulously.
Kay smiled. “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said. “Your father will be so happy to see you. And I have some errands to run. It’s not easy being left alone, you know. I have a lot to take care of.” She pushed the button that raised the power lock on Molly’s door.
Molly was too flustered to remember to ask Kay for her father’s room number. She gave his name to the woman behind the high front desk, who typed it into her computer.
“Room eighteen-oh-eight,” the woman said, her face lit from below by the computer screen. “Left off the elevator, then left again, then right through the double doors.”
“Right through, or straight through?” Molly asked.
The woman looked at her in confusion. “Just follow the signs marked Psychiatric Ward,” she said, in a softer voice.
That’s where he was. Molly went through a metal detector and was buzzed through a set of steel doors which locked behind her, electronically and loudly. By the time she had gone past the dayroom — where grown, sometimes elderly men in exam gowns sat in front of a TV or talked into the air or stood in a corner, touching the walls — she was ready to weep with terror, even though no one she saw so much as noticed her. At the nurses’ station, losing her nerve, she asked first to see her father’s doctor; Dr Kotlovitz, she was told, was with an emergent patient but was expected back within the half hour. In the meantime, she could see her father if she liked.