4
It was quarter past six on Friday evening when Alan turned into Polly's driveway and cut the motor. She was standing at the door, waiting for him, and kissed him warmly. He saw she had donned her gloves for even this brief foray into the cold and frowned.
"Now stop," she said. "They're a little better tonight. Did you bring the chicken?"
He held up the white grease-spotted bags. "Your servant, dear lady."
She dropped him a little curtsey. "And yours."
She took the bags from him and led him into the kitchen. He pulled a chair out from the table, swung it around, and sat on it backwards to watch her as she pulled off her gloves and arranged the chicken on a glass plate. He had gotten it from Cluck-Cluck Tonite.
The name was country-horrible, but the chicken was just fine (according to Norris, the clams were a different story). The only problem with take-out when you lived twenty miles away was the cooling factor... and that, he thought, was what microwave ovens had been made for. In fact, he believed the only three valid purposes microwaves served were re-heating coffee, making popcorn, and putting a buzz under take-out from places like CluckCluck Tonite.
"Are they better?" he asked as she popped the chicken into the oven and pressed the appropriate buttons. There was no need to be more specific; both of them knew what they were talking about.
"Only a little," she admitted, "but I'm pretty sure they're going to be a lot better soon. I'm starting to feel tingles of heat in the palms, and that's the way the improvement usually starts."
She held them up. She had been painfully embarrassed by her twisted, misshapen hands at first, and the embarrassment was still there, but she had come a long way toward accepting his interest as a part of his love. He still thought her hands looked stiff and awkward, as if she were wearing invisible gloves-gloves sewn by a crude and uncaring maker who had pulled them on her and then stapled them to her wrists forever.
"Have you had to take any pills today?"
"Only one. This morning."
She had actually taken three-two in the morning, one in the early afternoon-and the pain was not much better today than it had been yesterday. She was afraid that the tingle of which she had spoken was mostly a figment of her own wistful imagination. She didn't like lying to Alan; she believed that lies and love rarely went together, and never for long. But she had been on her own for a long time, and a part of her was still terrified by his relentless concern. She trusted him, but was afraid to let him know too much.
He had grown steadily more insistent about the Mayo Clinic, and she knew that, if he really understood how bad the pain was this time, he would grow more insistent still. She did not want her goddamned hands to become the most important component of their love... and she was also afraid of what a consultation at a place like the Mayo might show. She could live with pain; she was not sure if she could live without hope.
"Will you take the potatoes out of the oven?" she asked. "I want to call Nettle before we eat."
"What's with Nettle?"
"Upset tum. She didn't come in today. I want to make sure it's not intestinal flu. Rosalie says there's a lot of it going around, and Nettle's terrified of doctors."
And Alan, who knew more of how and what Polly Chalmers thought than Polly ever would have guessed, thought, Look who's talking, love, as she went to the telephone. He was a cop, and he could not put away his habits of observation when he was off duty; they were automatic.
He no longer even tried. If he had been a little more observant during the last few months of Annie's life, she and Todd might still be alive.
He had noted the gloves when Polly came to the door. He had noted the fact that she had pulled them off with her teeth rather than simply stripping them off hand-for-hand. He had watched her arrange the chicken on the plate, and noted the slight grimace which tightened her mouth when she lifted the plate and put it in the microwave. These were bad signs. He walked to the door between the kitchen and the living room, wanting to watch how confidently or tentatively she would use the telephone. It was one of the most important ways he had of measuring her pain. And here, at last, he was able to note a good sign-or what he took for one.
She punched Nettle's telephone number quickly and confidently, and because she was on the far side of the room, he was unable to see that this phone-and all the others-had been changed earlier that day to the type with the oversized fingerpads. He went back into the kitchen, keeping one ear cocked toward the living room as he did so.
"Hello, Nettle?... I was about to give up. Did I wake you?...