He turned back to Sutter’s stormdoor. In the inside door was a small square of window, head-high, thin white curtain drawn over it on the other side.
He coughed. He scratched at the back of his head. He looked at the stack of firewood. Finally he went down the steps once more and closed up the van’s double doors with more bang than necessary and took one more look at the house—nothing—then climbed into the cab and turned over the engine and pulled out into the street. Three, four blocks away he stopped at the yellow light and sat there through the red.
Hell, you don’t even know that girl. Scare her to death showing up like that.
A car honked and he said, “All right, all right,” and drove through the green and then without signaling or braking he pulled a sudden left into the Phillips 66 and navigated the van around the pumps and back toward the road—pulling out onto the road again and accelerating back the way he’d come and just making the yellow, and there were no more lights after that and when he reached the house he pulled nose-first into the drive and left the van running. He went up the porchsteps and pushed his finger into the button and listened to the two-note chime sounding inside the house. Waited. Pushed the button again. Then he opened up the stormdoor and rapped on the square of glass.
“Audrey—?” He’d never said her name aloud that he remembered and it felt strange in his throat and strange in his ears.
He waited. Rapped again.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, and the door was not locked.
The room was dark, and so cold he saw his breath. But cold as it was the smell was strong and no mistaking it. Daylight spilled in around him and in this light something moved and he stepped aside to let in more light, and a white face rose up from the sofa, up from a dark mound of coverings. Bleary, unfocusing eyes blinking in pain at the light. In confusion.
“Daddy…?” she said. Her voice so thin and hoarse. And then he realized she couldn’t see anything but his shape and he stepped in and shut the door behind him and said, “No, it’s Gordon here. Gordon Burke.”
“…Who?”
“Gordon Burke. Why’s it so cold in here?”
“Oh,” she said, and her head dropped from view again. As if she could not hold it up a second longer.
He came closer. She’d piled every kind of covering over herself—blankets, jackets, sleeping bags. Like a great cocoon. Mail was strewn across the coffee table, and even in that gloom he recognized the Water & Gas envelope. final notice printed slantwise in red, as if hand-stamped by some angry little lackey.
“How long have you been lying here in the cold like this?”
From down in her cocoon she said, “I’m sorry.” Or seemed to say.
“Audrey,” he said.
She didn’t answer. He stepped between the coffee table and the sofa and nearly kicked over the small plastic wastebasket there on the floor. Slosh of liquid and a sharper stink of vomit. He moved it so he could get closer.
“I’m going to feel your forehead now.”
No answer, and he moved aside the clinging hair and shaped his hand to her forehead. Holy God.
“OK,” he said, “that’s it. I’m taking you to the hospital.” He began peeling back the layers one by one.
“No,” she said, weakly reaching for the peeled-away layers.
“No argument here. You are burning up.” He peeled her down to the last thin damp blanket and stopped. Then peeled that slowly until he saw that she was wearing a shirt—red flannel shirt many sizes too big. She was folded up inside the shirt, and from the knees down she wore thick dark socks. She lay curled up and shivering. Heat and sweat and sickness rising from her in a rank steam.
“Please,” she said, “don’t.”
“Can you stand up? Come on, I’ll help you.”
Slowly she rose to sitting and the moment she did so she reached for the wastebasket. He held it for her, held her hair as she heaved and coughed and spat. Almost nothing came up.
“Come on.” Helping her to her feet. Her father’s jacket was among the layers and he found it and got her to put her arms through the sleeves, cast and all, and as she stood swaying he reached down and fed the zipper and drew the metal tab up to her chin. “Here, let’s get these boots on you.”
“Mr. Burke,” she said.
“Yep.” He was trying to help with the boot and at the same time keep his grip on her arm so she wouldn’t fall over. He was doing it all wrong.
“I can’t go back there.”
He looked up at her. He had to think a moment.
“We’re not going up there,” he said. “We’re going to Charlotte.”
She shook her head. “Not there either. Can’t go to a hospital.”
“You have a fever and you’re dehydrated.”
“Please, Mr. Burke.”
“Audrey…”
“Please, Mr. Burke.”
35
HE WAS FIVE minutes late and Jeff was already sitting at the bar with his arms crossed before him and a half-gone glass of beer at his elbow, his face lifted toward the TV above the back bar. Two other men sat at the bar in much the same posture, and all three glanced over their shoulders to see who had come through the door and all three turned back to the TV once they’d seen. No other sound in the bar but the sounds of the game, the announcers and the crowd and the squeaking sneakers.
He took the stool to Jeff’s left and the man behind the bar flipped him a cardboard coaster and asked what he could get him and Jeff said, “Mike, this is a old, old buddy of mine, Danny Young. Danny, this is Mike. He’s good people.” Danny shook the man’s hand and watched his face to see if the name meant anything to him, but he saw no such sign. He ordered a beer and Mike stepped away to draw it.
“You still follow the Gophers?” Jeff said. He was watching the game again and Danny watched too.
“Not much.”
“Smart man. Nothing but aggravation and heartbreak.”
Mike returned with the beer, and after he’d stepped away again they raised their glasses and clinked them together and Jeff said, “Old friends,” and they drank and set the glasses down again. On the TV a young man stood at the free-throw line and they all watched to see if he would make his shots and when he did the man to Danny’s left slapped the bar and said, “Praise the Lord.”
Danny looked over his shoulder at the half dozen empty tables, their surfaces stained red and blue with the neon in the front window. Four booths along the back wall, all unoccupied. A dark and timeless place. A place their own grandfathers might have gone to in a time before there were televisions.
They watched the game. They drank their beers. Jeff asked Danny about his jobs, the places he’d lived, and Danny told him about his travels as he remembered them, unable to make them sound more interesting than they were. After a silence he asked Jeff how his mother was and Jeff shrugged.
“Still alive,” he said. “Still up there in Rochester at the home.”
“You get up there to see her?”
“Holidays. Mother’s Day. She don’t even know who I am anymore. Sometimes she thinks I’m my dad. Sometimes she thinks I’m this guy George Munroe, who I guess was some kid she knew in high school.”
Danny shook his head, no idea what to say.
“Katie works up there now,” Jeff said.
“In Rochester?”
“In the home. As a nurse. Mom doesn’t know her from any of the other nurses.”
Jeff watched the game, and Danny watched too but he was seeing Katie Goss. Her thick blond hair and her dark eyes. Her smell of strawberries and her laugh—she was a good laugher and you had to shush her at night when you snuck her in, and even put your hand over her mouth, because she’d laugh when you touched her, when you kissed her anywhere below the neck, Shh, shh, your hearts beating because you must be quiet, you must be quiet and secret. Summer nights with the windows open and the bugs so loud in their rhythm, their one great pulsing song and Oh Danny, she’d say, Oh Danny. Both of you too young to know how sweet, how fine. To know what could be lost.