Джойс Оутс - Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars

The ungrateful husband would miss her, she thought, if she didn’t come home to make supper. All of them, her dear family, would miss her then.

Trailing through the house. Bev? Mom?

Nothing in the kitchen? No food being prepared?

Another time, Beverly tried calling Lorene. Futile to try Lorene’s office, Beverly could never get past Lorene’s assistant, so she tried the cell phone, also usually futile, but this time, unexpectedly, Lorene answered at once.

“Yes? Hello? Oh—Beverly…”

Lorene was sounding anxious, distracted. Saying she was at Hammond General in downtown Hammond where their father was undergoing emergency surgery for a stroke.

The initial surprise, Lorene had answered her phone. For Lorene never answered her cell phone.

But what was Lorene saying?— Daddy has had a stroke?

Beverly fumbled for a chair. Her nightmare come true.

She’d tried to nullify bad news by anticipating it. So often, she’d tried this superstitious ploy. Her father stricken, her mother, both parents— family emergency. Somehow, she had not—quite—believed that the Worst Case Scenario could ever occur.

“Calm down, Beverly. He isn’t dead.”

“Oh my God, Lorene—”

“I told you, calm down. Stop that wailing! Daddy has been in surgery for almost an hour. He had a stroke driving home on the Expressway but he’d been able to pull over to the side—thank God! Police officers saw his car there and called 911—looks like they saved his life.”

Beverly was trying to make sense of this. She was badly shaken and could not hear her sister’s voice clearly.

Except she did hear Lorene say: “Everyone is here at the hospital except you, Beverly. And you live the closest.”

And: “I tried to call you, Beverly. On the way to the hospital. But your phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

Was this an accusation? Which phone? Beverly tried to protest but Lorene said, “Thank God for those police officers. Thank God Daddy was able to park the car at the side of the road, before losing consciousness.”

“But—is he going to be all right?”

“‘Is he going to be all right ’—” Lorene’s voice swelled in sudden fury. “How can you ask such an inane question? Do you think I can predict the future? Jesus, Beverly!”—pausing then, to say in a calmer voice, as if someone with her (Jessalyn?) had admonished her, “They did an fMRI—they think the stroke was not ‘massive’ and it’s a good sign, Daddy is—almost—breathing on his own.”

Almost breathing on his own. What did that mean…

“I—I—I’m just so—shocked…”

Beverly was feeling light-headed. But she must not faint!

“We’re all shocked, Bev. What the hell d’you think?”

How she disliked Lorene. The brainy middle sister who’d always been too certain of herself, bossy, smug. Not for a moment did Beverly believe that Lorene had made any actual attempt to call her, on any phone.

“Is Mom there? I’d like to speak with Mom, please.”

“All right. But don’t upset Mom with your hysteria please .”

Fuck you. I hate you. Beverly was eager to console her mother (who had to be frantic with anxiety) but, as it turned out, Jessalyn seemed determined to console her .

“Beverly! Thank God you called. We were wondering where you were. Virgil tried to contact you—he said. There is good news—I mean, the doctors are ‘optimistic.’ Whitey is receiving the very best care. His friend Morton Kaplan is chief resident here and Dr. Kaplan arranged for Whitey to be given the fMRI at once, and taken into surgery—it all happened so fast. By the time Lorene and I arrived. We’ve been assured that Whitey has the very neurosurgeon available, the very best neurologist…” In a slow careful voice Jessalyn spoke like one making her way across a tightrope, who dares not glance down. Beverly could imagine her distraught mother smiling a ghastly smile. For how like Jessalyn McClaren it was, to assure others that all was well.

Jessalyn had enunciated “Morton Kaplan” as if the syllables possessed magical properties testifying to Whitey McClaren’s connections with the Hammond medical elite—exactly as Whitey would have done in such circumstances.

“It’s a miracle, Beverly—what they can do today. As soon as Whitey arrived at the ER they did a ‘screen’ of his brain—there was a blood vessel that had ruptured the surgeon is going to repair… Oh sorry, Lorene tells me it’s scan. A brain scan. ”

Beverly shuddered at the thought of her father subjected to neurosurgery. His skull drilled open, baring his brain…

“Mom, do you need anything from the house? Any clothes?”

“Just bring yourself, Beverly! And pray for Dad! We are hoping that he will wake from the surgery sometime tonight, and he will want all of you here if he does. He loves you all so much…”

Pray for Dad . It wasn’t like Jessalyn to speak this way.

Lorene took the phone back from their mother whose voice had begun to quaver and told Beverly yes, good idea, bring things for Whitey, underwear, toothbrush and toothpaste, comb, toiletries—one of Jessalyn’s sweaters, the hand-knit heather cardigan, she’d come away dressed too lightly; she’d run out of the house when Lorene drove up, and they’d gone at once to the hospital.

Reproach in Lorene’s voice. As if she were scolding subordinates at the high school.

Hastily Beverly packed a small suitcase upstairs in her parents’ bedroom. Her hands were shaking. Her eyes were filling with tears. Dear God let Daddy be all right. Let the surgery save him . Except at such desperate times Beverly had not much use for God.

Who knew how long Whitey would be hospitalized! Days, a week—even if the stroke was minor, it would (probably) require therapy; it would require rehab. Maybe bring a (flannel, plaid) nightgown of Whitey’s, he’d hate hospital attire and insist upon his own bedclothes. Poor Whitey, how he hated to appear weak .

Jessalyn would insist upon staying with Whitey as much as possible and Beverly was determined to stay with her.

Dear God. Please!

Hurried from the house. But then, at her car, remembered that the kitchen door wasn’t locked, and hurried back to lock it.

Remembered to leave a light on downstairs. Two lights. To suggest that someone was home, the beautiful old stone Forrester House with the steep-slanted slate roof set back from the road at 99 Old Farm Road wasn’t empty, vulnerable to invasion.

“GRANDPA WHITEY IS SICK. WE’REat the hospital with him.”

“Oh.” The girl’s voice was small as a pinprick. Her usual sarcasm had vanished in an instant.

“We don’t know how serious it is. We don’t know when he will come home.”

Brianna had called Beverly on her cell sounding peevish and exasperated. She’d been waiting for forty minutes at a friend’s house for Beverly to pick her up and bring her home and—(how was it possible?)—Beverly had totally forgotten.

“I’m sorry, honey. It’s an emergency. You can defrost something from the refrigerator for supper. OK?”

“Oh, Mom—gosh.”

Beverly had not heard her teenaged children speak so solemnly to her, so respectfully, in a very long time. A sensation of giddy relief washed over her.

She wanted to hug the girl. Oh, she loved Brianna!

Even the bratty ones, you love. Especially the bratty ones because no one else is going to love them like their mother.

A little later, Beverly’s cell phone rang again. She left the Intensive Care room to take the call in the corridor.

Again, it was Brianna. Asking, anxiously: “Should we come to visit Grandpa?”