Bill Pronzini: Beyond the Grave

The only sound was the whir of the electric ceiling fans.

Al's smile faded. The fleshy folds of his face drooped. He looked like a big baby getting ready to cry. “Do I hear an advance to four-ten?” he repeated.

No one spoke.

Al sighed. “I am going to sell it,” he said heavily. “For the second time … and the third time … and the final time….” Then he looked down at me, and his features did a quick reversal, into a huge, delighted grin.

“Okay, little lady,” he said, “you're going to take it away!”

“And then,” I said to Mama, “the dealer had the nerve to come up and congratulate me on my successful bid on the marriage coffer- even though I had paid too much for it! Can you imagine?”

Mama's lips twitched in a pale imitation of a smile.

“Dealers,” I said in disgust, sounding for all the world like a jaded auction-goer.

Mama was silent.

I frowned and glanced at Nick, who was leaning against the wall next to the window. He shrugged and peered through the slats of the blinds at the parking lot three stories below. Nick didn't look as confident or cheerful as when I'd left for the auction. That worried me more than Mama's unaccustomed silence and was the reason I'd been chattering on about the auction.

It was after four o'clock, and the light that filtered through the blinds had a rich, golden quality. Mama lay on her back, her long gray hair coiled against her pillow, her covers pulled as taut as those on the semiprivate room's other, empty bed. There were flowers on the bureau: a large arrangement of pink and white carnations from Mama's friends at the trailer park, yellow roses from Nick, and my own spray of violets. From time to time Mama's eyes would stray to them, and an expression of bewilderment would cross her face, as if she were wondering how they-and she-came to be here.

The silence in the little white room was making me nervous. I said, “I tried to call Carlota again before I came over here, but she still wasn't home. I think that conference in Duluth was this weekend. I could check with University information up there; maybe they'd know-”

“You must not bother Carlota while she is working,” Mama said.

“Working!” I laughed, but even to me it sounded hollow. “I know what those sociologists do at their conferences: eat and drink too much, and swap lies about … about deviant social groups,” I finished lamely.

“Carlota works hard,” Mama said.

“Yes, but she also plays hard.” My sister is one of the most energetic people I know. She throws herself into everything-teaching, research, writing, beer-drinking-with total abandon. And as proof that this all-or-nothing approach works, she'd earned her Ph.D. in three-and-a-half years and had gone on to a good job at the University of Minnesota. This fall she would be up for her associate professorship, and, true to form, Carlota was fully confident of receiving the promotion.

Mama continued to stare at the ceiling.

I said, “Anyway, when I get hold of her, I'm sure she'll want to come out. It'll be good to see her again-”

“No,” Mama said.

“It won't be good to see her?”

“I do not want her to come.”

“What, you expect her to stay in Minneapolis when you-”

“I do not want her to come.” Mama enunciated every word clearly, as if she were speaking to a small child. “Enough fuss has already been made. I do not want Carlota wasting her money on airplane fare.”

I glanced at Nick. He shrugged again, his brow furrowed, his eyes watchful.

“If Carlota wants to come,” I said, “I don't think we can stop her.”

“You will find a way,” Mama said.

“ I will?”

She turned stern eyes to me, and for a moment she looked almost herself. “You will.” Then she went back to her contemplation of the ceiling.

I watched her for a moment, and then shifted uncomfortably on the hard chair, looking at my watch. We were waiting for the doctor to arrive and give us the test results. He'd promised to be here at four, but he was late.

Again the silence was making me nervous. Nick was no help; he kept looking out between the slats of the blind, as rapt as if one of the nurses were doing a striptease in the parking lot. After a minute I got up and went to read the card that had come with the flowers from the people at the trailer park. They had all signed it: the Walters, Mary Jaramillo, Nick's gang of “old fogies” with whom he jogged every morning, even the new park manager. Someone-probably Mary, who was clever with sketching-had drawn a caricature of Mama above the sticky-sweet preprinted get-well message and had written, “We have a beer cooling for you, Gabriela.” I was glad that in her retirement my mother had found such staunch friends-to say nothing of a nice boyfriend.

I had just returned to my chair when the doctor, George Ruiz, came in. He was an older man, close to sixty, and I'd known him all my life; Dr. George had delivered both Carlota and me in the back bedroom of the little stucco house where I still lived. He'd made us laugh at our childhood chicken pox bumps, counseled us through the teenage acne stage, and-reluctantly-prescribed the Pill when we'd been in college. Just seeing him standing there in his rumpled white coat, with a stethoscope hanging out of one pocket and his gray hair tousled, made me feel better about Mama. She was in good hands.

Dr. George nodded to Nick and me, then went over to the bed and looked down at Mama. “How are you feeling, Gabriela?”

“All right.”

“Mmm. Any pain?”

“No.” But her voice was close to a whisper, and her eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. She didn't demand to know when she could go home, or chide him for keeping her here, or do any of the other things I normally would have expected of her.

Dr. George consulted the chart he held and said, “Well, Gabriela, we're going to have to keep you here a little longer. The ulcer is bleeding, and it could perforate. It should be taken care of right away.”

Mama turned her head slowly. “You mean, I have to have an operation?”

“Yes, and as soon as possible. I've scheduled it for tomorrow morning.”

Mama's face seemed even whiter, her eyes very large. “How did this happen?” she asked. “I've never been sick a day.”

“You've had frequent indigestion attacks, haven't you?”

“Yes, but-”

“You've probably had the ulcer for years. A lot of people wrongly attribute the burning sensation it causes to simple indigestion. Have you been constipated?”

Mama glanced at Nick. As far as she was concerned, ladies didn't talk about such things in front of gentlemen-not even close gentlemen friends. “Yes,” she finally said.

“Sick to your stomach a lot?” Dr. George asked.

“Well, sometimes.”

“You see?”

“I still don't believe it. Isn't an ulcer one of those … psychological things you do to yourself?”

“You mean psychosomatic. Stress is a factor in it, yes.”

“Then, I can't have one. I don't have any stress.”

Dr. George's eyes moved to me, and the laugh lines around them crinkled. “Nonsense, Gabriela. You've had plenty of stress in your time. You raised Elena and Carlota, didn't you?”

“But they're grown now, and all right-so far.”

“You see?”

“I don't worry about them. Except when Elena gets mixed up in murder.”

“And that's happened twice in the past year. No wonder you have an ulcer.”

“Oh,” I said, “so now I'm to blame for Mama's condition.”

Dr. George grinned. “That's what children are for.”

“What, for getting ulcers?”

“No, for blaming our own problems on.”