T. Boyle - Riven Rock

“I’m not going to defend her, not anymore, but I still think you’re wrong. If I’m not mistaken, she’s got her own millions that her father left her — and that château in Switzerland and all the rest of it. So what does she need with his money?”

“Hah. You hear that, Pat? ‘What does she need with his money?’ Come on, Eddie, wake up. Did you ever in your life meet anybody thought they had enough money? You get that rich, you only want to get richer.”

O‘Kane still hadn’t set the plate down — or the buttermilk either. He was beginning to feel like a waiter. And he was hungry too, but there was something here that needed to be settled — or at least thrashed out.

“And I’ll tell you another thing,” Nick said, and he dug a pre-rolled cigarette out of his breast pocket and stuck it between his lips, “this right here”—tapping the newspaper—“really opens things up for your Mrs. Katherine McCormick.”

“What do you mean?”

The flare of the match, a whiff of sulphur. “Don’t you get it? He’s incompetent and she’s got hold of the will she had him make out the day after they got married — the one that leaves everything to her? — and now she can traipse all over the country and do whatever she damn well pleases in any kind of society, because when they ask her ‘So where’s your husband?’ she just dabs at her eyes and says, ‘The poor man’s locked away at Riven Rock with his nurses — and he’s mad as a loon.’ ”

Pat let out another laugh. He’d come awake now, setting all four legs of the chair down on the floor and hunching forward, elbows propped up on the buttress of his thighs. “So you think she’d be seeing other men then? Secretly, I mean?”

“Call a spade a spade, why don’t you, Patrick.” Nick let the smoke spew out of his nostrils, a blue haze settling in his lap and then rising, deflected, to irradiate his blunt features and the vast shining dome of his forehead. “You mean whoring around, don’t you?”

“It’s not right to talk about her like that and you know it,” O‘Kane heard himself say, and immediately regretted it. Here he was, defending her again.

“Not right?” Nick echoed. “Why not? You think just because she’s a millionaire’s wife she’s any better than you? You think she doesn’t itch between her legs like any other woman?”

It was a stimulating proposition, the Ice Queen in heat, but O‘Kane never had the opportunity to pursue it. Because just then there was a movement in the room behind Pat, and when he looked up Mr. McCormick was standing in the doorway.

At first no one moved, and they might have been at the very last scene of a play, just before the lights go down. A long slow moment breathed by, the smallest sounds of the house magnified till every creak and rustle was like a scream. And then, very slowly and deliberately, O‘Kane crossed to the sideboard and set down the plate and beside it the glass, freeing up his hands — just in case. “Mr. McCormick!” he cried, his voice animated with pleasure and surprise, as if he were greeting an old friend on the street, and he exchanged a glance with Pat, careful to make no sudden moves. “Good evening, sir. How are you feeling?”

Nick had folded up the newspaper, and though he hadn’t got to his feet, you could see he was ready to spring if need be; Pat, inches from Mr. McCormick and all but impotent in the grip of the chair, looked up with quickened eyes. This was the first time Mr. McCormick had been out of bed in two weeks or more, and the first time in memory he’d got up without any prompting. He’d been violent on the last occasion, veering from a state of utter immobility to the frenzy of released energy that was like a balloon puffed and puffed till it exploded, and it had taken both O‘Kane and Mart to subdue him. But now he merely stood there in his crisp blue pajamas, stooped and hunched over to the right where the muscles of his leg had gone slack from disuse. He didn’t seem to have registered the question.

“You must be feeling better,” O‘Kane prompted. It was vital to engage him in conversation, the first step — he was waking up, coming out of it, coming back to the real world after his long sojourn in the other one.

Mr. McCormick looked right at him, no bugs, no demons, no eyes crawling up the walls. “I… I… is it lunchtime yet? I was wondering about lunch….” And then: “I’ve been sleeping, haven’t I?”

For all his experience and all the cynicism it bred, O‘Kane was exhilarated, on fire: Mr. McCormick was talking! Not only talking, but making sense-or nearly — and he wasn’t lashing out, wasn’t cursing and spitting and attacking his nurses as if they were the devil’s minions. He was hungry, that was all, just like anybody else. In a flash O’Kane saw ahead to the weeks and months to come, the feeding tube discarded, Mr. McCormick dressing himself, using the toilet, joking again, Mr. McCormick reaching into his breast pocket, pulling out his checkbook, Let’s see about that acreage you were interested in, Eddie…

“Hello, Mr. McCormick,” Nick offered from his chair in the corner of the room, and Pat, his face hung like a painting at the level of Mr. McCormick’s waist, echoed the greeting.

“My wife,” Mr. McCormick said, and it was as if they didn’t exist, his eyes focused on some point in the distance, through the walls and across the grounds and all the way out to that fancy-dress party on Arrellaga Street. He shuffled into the room, unsteady on his feet, skating on gravel, his arms leaping to steady himself. “Katherine,” he said, and the name seemed to surprise him, as if he hadn’t spoken it, as if the syllables had somehow separated themselves from the air and spontaneously combined. He shuffled his feet. Started forward. Thought better of it. Stopped. Finally, moving with the wincing deliberation of a man walking across a bed of hot coals, he made the center of the room, his shoulders violently quaking. “Mother,” he said, and he was looking straight into O‘Kane’s eyes now, “I must have fallen asleep….”

“Mr. McCormick!” O‘Kane had no choice but to raise his voice, calling out to someone drowning at sea, the waves crashing, the rocks drawing nearer, and he couldn’t let him go under again, he couldn’t. “Mr. McCormick, sir. Good evening! Don’t you want something to eat? Look, look here,” gesturing to the plate on the sideboard and waving him on like a traffic cop, “don’t you see what we’ve fixed you for dinner? Good ham, it’s delicious. Here, try a bite — you like ham, you know you do.”

And there he was, pale as water, standing suddenly at the sideboard in his pajamas, barefooted, long-armed, slumped to one side like a poorly staked sapling, and he was eating, forcing the congealed lumps of potato into his mouth, his jaws working, eyes lit with accomplishment, normalcy, the first step….

But it wasn’t to be.

The three of them watched in silence as he ate, jamming the food into his mouth with both hands, gulping and gnashing, licking his fingers and wiping his palms on the breast of his pajamas, and that was fine, a small miracle, until the demons took him and he swung violently round on them with O‘Kane’s fork clutched in his hand. Now he was hunted, brought to bay like an animal, the old fever in his eyes. “My wife!” he shouted, “I want my wife! Do you hear me?! Do you?!”

O‘Kane’s voice was a long swallow of syrup, the most reasonable and soothing voice in the world. “Mr. McCormick, it’s me, Eddie O’Kane. And look, your friends Nick and Pat too. Your wife isn’t here — you know that. You’ve been asleep, that’s all. Dreaming. And here’s your luncheon, nice, just the way you like it.”