Элизабет Страут - Olive, Again

But more unsettling to Bernie—he shifted in his chair—was the fact that two years ago Louise Larkin had made a telephone call to Bernie; it was in the evening, and Bernie happened to be in his office preparing for a case the next day, and Louise had screamed into the telephone, “He’s trying to kill me! Help me, help!” And then Roger had taken the telephone away from her and spoken to Bernie in a tired voice and said that his wife had dementia and he could not take care of her anymore. Bernie had talked to Roger for quite a while, and suggested that his wife was not so demented that she didn’t know how to call him, and there might be a need to investigate if Louise was calling him for help about her physical safety. Roger had said, “Well, you do what you need to do, Mr. Lawyer Man.” Bernie had done nothing. But the next week he had called Roger and helped get Louise into the Golden Bridge Rest Home; she jumped the waiting line because of Roger’s money. Bernie did not hear from Roger again until six months ago, when Roger came to him with an updated will.

Bernie watched the river, the clouds made the river seem gray, and then he stopped seeing the river and pictured Suzanne instead, the poor child, so pretty, like her mother had been, and so…so dazed. When she had tightened her hug with him before she left, he had felt— What had he felt? He had wanted to pick her up and stroke her hair and make everything bad in her life go away. He remembered her then as she had actually been as a small girl; she had played with a doll very quietly in the corner of this room while her father had done business with Bernie.

Uneasiness sat with Bernie now, and he realized it was an uneasiness he had felt on and off for years. His life had been tainted, he thought, by some of his clients, but none more than Roger Larkin had caused him to feel this way.

He went into the bathroom; he heard the telephone ring, then stop. When he came out he saw the number and recognized that it was Suzanne’s; she had left no message. He called her back, but she did not pick up. And so he just sat. A tenderness flooded through him.

Suzanne was pulling into the parking lot of the Golden Bridge Rest Home. She had just left the Comfort Inn, where she had gone to pick up her bag, and the woman who worked there had frightened her; Suzanne had called Bernie; she was panicking. He had called her back as she was driving over the bridge and she hadn’t answered; she had been afraid to talk on the phone and drive, she felt that swimmy in her head. Now she sat in her car and glanced at her phone, but remembering how Bernie had pulled away slightly as she hugged him she dropped the phone into her bag and sat with her eyes closed, thinking oh help me help me help me, and then she got out and went inside. Even though she had been there just the day before, the place still took her by surprise. Built back from the road, pleasant-looking with its black shutters, it was a world unto itself, and the smell—of cleaning fluids and also a whiff of human waste—assaulted her the moment she stepped through the double doors.

She moved past a man sitting in a wheelchair in the hallway and walked down to her mother’s room. When she had come in last night, her mother had been asleep, and Suzanne had gasped at the sight of her; her mother lay with her gray hair—what was left of it—sticking out on the pillow, and she was as tiny as a person could be and still be alive. It was as though her mother had been in a science fiction movie and that her body—her essence—had been snatched. When her mother’s eyes flipped open, Suzanne had said, “It’s me, Mom, Suzanne,” and her mother had sat up and said, “Hello.” And when Suzanne repeated to her, “Mom, it’s me, your daughter,” her mother said pleasantly, “No, my daughter is dead.” Then her mother had sung a lullaby as she rocked Snuggles, and she was still doing that when Suzanne left.

Now, as Suzanne entered the room, she had to walk by another woman seated in a wheelchair not far from her mother; the woman looked at her with filmy eyes, and when Suzanne waved her hand at the woman, there was no response.

Her mother sat serenely in her wheelchair in the corner of her room, with Snuggles on her lap. Her hair had been combed, and she wore a sweatsuit of pale off-white, on her feet were clean white sneakers. “Hello,” she said to Suzanne. “You’re a pretty woman. Who are you?”

“I’m your daughter, Mom. It’s me, Suzanne.”

Her mother said politely, “I don’t have a daughter. She died. But when she was a little girl, she had this.” And her mother held up Snuggles. “His name is Snuggles,” her mother said.

“Mom, you remember this was Snuggles?” Suzanne leaned down toward her mother.

“I don’t know who you are,” her mother continued, “but my poor little daughter. She was always such a good girl.”

Suzanne sat slowly down on the edge of her mother’s bed.

“But her brother!” And her mother laughed then. “Oh, her brother was a nasty little boy. Always wanting his willie played with. Oh, he always wanted me to play with his willie, oh my, he was a bad, bad boy.” She laughed again.

Chills ran down Suzanne’s side, she felt them going all the way down her leg. “Doyle?” she finally asked.

Her mother’s face remained uncomprehending, until suddenly it became twisted in fury. “You get out of here right now! Get out! Get out!” Spittle flew from her mouth.

And then the other woman seated in her wheelchair began to cry. It was a terrible sound—a keening, almost. Suzanne stood up and went out into the hallway. “Help me, please,” she said to an aide going by. “I’ve upset my mother and also some woman who was in here, I guess visiting her.”

The aide was a small young woman, with no expression on her face, and she said to Suzanne, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Please come in now,” said Suzanne, but the aide was already going into the room next door. “Oh God,” said Suzanne. She went back into her mother’s room, past the woman who was crying so hard, and her mother was half standing out of her chair. She pointed her arm at Suzanne. “You! Get out of here right now!”

An hour later, Bernie still could not get Suzanne out of his mind. He kept having an image of putting her onto his lap, and holding her to him tightly. That’s enough, he thought, and took out a folder of a case he had to work on.

When his telephone rang again, he saw that it was her, and he picked it up and said, “Hello, Suzanne.”

He could hear that she was crying. “Oh, Bernie, I’m so sorry to call you, I really am, but I—”

“It’s quite all right, Suzanne. I told you to call me anytime, and I meant it. If you call me again in ten minutes, I’ll still mean it.”

“I’m just so scared,” she said. “I’m so scared!”

“I understand that. You have every reason to feel scared. But you’re going to be all right.” Bernie said this gently. “I’ve known you for years, Suzanne. And you have always been focused and smart, and you’re going to be just fine. You’re in the middle of a storm at the moment.”

“Don’t hang up,” Suzanne said.

“I’m right here,” Bernie answered. “You take your time.”

“Where are you?” Suzanne asked. “So I can picture you.”

“I’m sitting right at my desk. Alone,” he added.