Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

“Ms. Gibney!” Mrs. Braddock says. “Is it too early to wish you happy holidays?”

“Not at all. Thank you. Mrs. Braddock, my mother called and said my uncle has had an accident.”

Mrs. Braddock laughs. “ Saved one, more like it! I called your mother and told her. Your uncle’s mental state may have deteriorated somewhat, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with his reflexes.”

“What happened?”

“The first day or so he didn’t want to come out of his room,” Mrs. Braddock says, “but that’s not unusual. Our new arrivals are always disoriented, and often in distress. Sometimes in great distress, in which case we give them something to calm them down a bit. Your uncle didn’t need that, and yesterday he came out all on his own and sat in the dayroom. He even helped Mrs. Hatfield with her jigsaw puzzle. He watched that crazy judge show he likes—”

John Law , Holly thinks, and smiles. She’s hardly aware that she is constantly checking her mirrors to make sure Chet Ondowsky ( I’m very fast ) isn’t lurking.

“—afternoon snacks.”

“Beg pardon?” Holly says. “I lost you for a second.”

“I said that when the show was over, some of them headed into the dining hall, where there are afternoon snacks. Your uncle was walking with Mrs. Hatfield, who is eighty-two and rather unsteady. Anyway, she tripped and might have taken quite a bad fall, only Henry grabbed her. Sarah Whitlock—she’s one of our nurses’ aides—said he reacted very quickly. ‘Like lightning’ were her actual words. Anyway, he took her weight and fell against the wall, where there’s a fire extinguisher. State law, you know. He has quite the bruise, but he may have saved Mrs. Hatfield from a concussion or even worse. She’s very frail.”

“Uncle Henry didn’t break anything? When he hit the fire extinguisher?”

Mrs. Braddock laughs again. “Oh, heavens no!”

“That’s good. Tell my uncle he’s my hero.”

“I will. And once again, happy holidays.”

“I’m Holly and therefore must be jolly,” she says, a creaky witticism she’s been using at this time of year since she was twelve. She ends the call on Mrs. Braddock’s laughter, then looks at the dull brick side of the Holiday Inn Express for awhile, arms crossed over her scant bosom, brow furrowed in thought. She comes to a decision and calls her mother.

“Oh, Holly, at last! Where have you been? Isn’t it bad enough I have my brother to worry about without having to worry about you, too?”

The urge to say I’m sorry once more arises, and she reminds herself again that she has nothing to apologize for.

“I’m fine, Mom. I’m in Pittsburgh—”

“Pittsburgh!”

“—but I can be home in a little over two hours, if the traffic isn’t bad and Avis will let me return their car down there. Is my room made up?”

“It’s always made up,” Charlotte says.

Of course it is, Holly thinks. Because eventually I’ll come to my senses and return to it.

“Great,” Holly says. “I’ll be there in time for supper. We can watch some television and go see Uncle Henry tomorrow, if that would be—”

“I’m so worried about him!” Charlotte cries.

But not worried enough to jump in your car and go there, Holly thinks. Because Mrs. Braddock called you and you know. This isn’t about your brother; it’s about bringing your daughter to heel. It’s too late for that, and I think in your heart you know it, but you won’t stop trying. That’s also a default position.

“I’m sure he’s all right, Mom.”

“They say he is, but of course they would, wouldn’t they? Those places always have their guard up in case of lawsuits.”

“We’ll visit and see for ourselves,” Holly says. “Right?”

“Oh, I guess so.” A pause. “I suppose you’ll leave after we visit him, won’t you. Go back to that city.” Subtext: that Sodom, that Gomorrah, that pit of sin and degradation. “I’ll be having Christmas by myself while you have Christmas dinner with your friends.” Including that young black man who looks like he might take drugs.

“Mom.” Sometimes Holly feels like screaming. “The Robinsons invited me weeks ago. Right after Thanksgiving. I told you, and you said it was fine.” What Charlotte had actually said was Well I suppose, if you feel you have to .

“That was when I thought Henry would still be here.”

“Well, how about if I stay Friday night, too?” She can do that for her mother, and she can also do it for herself. She’s sure Ondowsky is perfectly capable of finding out where she lives in the city and showing up there, twenty-four hours early and with murder on his mind. “We could have Christmas early.”

“That would be wonderful,” Charlotte says, brightening up. “I can roast a chicken. And asparagus! You love asparagus!”

Holly hates asparagus, but telling her mother that would be useless. “Sounds good, Mom.”

Holly seals the deal with Avis (at an additional fee, of course) and gets on the road, stopping only once to gas up, grab a Filet-O-Fish at Mickey D’s, and make a couple of calls. Yes, she tells Jerome and Pete, she’s finished her personal business. She’ll be spending most of the weekend with her mother and visiting her uncle in his new residence. Back at work on Monday.

“Barbara is digging the movies,” Jerome tells her, “but she says they’re totally vanilla. She says that watching them, you’d think there was no such thing as black people.”

“Tell her to put it in her report,” Holly says. “I’ll give her Shaft when I get a chance. Now I have to get back on the road. The traffic is very heavy, although I don’t know where they’re all going. I went to a mall and it was half-empty.”

“They’re visiting relatives, just like you,” Jerome says. “Relatives are the one thing Amazon can’t deliver.”

As she merges back onto I-76, it occurs to Holly that her mother will undoubtedly have Christmas presents for her, and she has nothing for Charlotte. She can already see her mother’s martyred look when she turns up emptyhanded.

So she stops at the next shopping center, even though it means she won’t be at casa Gibney until after dark (she hates driving at night), and buys her mother some slippers and a nice bathrobe. She makes sure to keep the sales slip for when Charlotte tells her that Holly has bought the wrong sizes.

Once she’s on the road again, and safe inside her rental car, Holly draws in a deep breath and lets it out in a scream.

It helps.

Charlotte embraces her daughter on the doorstep, then draws her inside. Holly knows what comes next.

“You’ve lost weight.”

“Actually I’m just the same,” Holly says, and her mother gives her The Look, the one that says once an anorexic, always an anorexic .

Dinner is take-out from the Italian place down the road, and as they eat Charlotte talks about how hard things have been without Henry. It’s as if her brother has been gone five years instead of five days, and not to a nearby elder care facility but to spend his old age doing stupid stuff far away—running a bicycle shop in Australia or painting sunsets in the tropic isles. She does not ask Holly about her life, her work, or what she was doing in Pittsburgh. By nine o’clock, when Holly can reasonably plead tiredness and go to bed, she’s started to feel as if she’s growing younger and smaller, diminishing to the sad, lonely, and anorexic girl—yes, it was true, at least during her nightmare freshman year of high school, when she was known as Jibba-Jibba Gibba-Gibba—who lived in this house.